Jewish links to Bolshevism... how realistic is this?

Factual Questions
1

Studying around the rise of communism in Russia and the beggining of WW1, one fact is always mentioned time and again. That is a large portion of the Bolshevik party (or relatively large) were Jewish or had Jewish-affiliated links.

I have seen various programmes on the History Channel which have mentioned that when the state of Israel was first created, the US was unsure of its sympathy/relationship to communism (arising from the fact that many immigrants had come from the Soviet Union).

But this affiliation would only really make sense if there was a connection at the grassroots level (never used that phrase before).

But just how substantial was Jewish involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution? Can we determine what percentage of the Bolshevik party was actually Jewish?

Extra Q: Was Lenin Jewish? That Q never seems to be answered.

2

Lenin was not Jewish. No Jew ever made it to the very top of the Soviet Union. Trotsky was probably the most powerful Jew in Soviet history but he lost to Stalin after Lenin died and was forced into exile.

3

I think that Lenin’s mother’s grandfather was perhaps Jewish. I’m not trying to be humorous. That’s the tie.

No doubt Guin will be along to straighten all of this out.

4

Some Jews were involved in Socialist/Communist causes in the Soviet Union, principally because they saw it as an alternative to the Czarist pograms.

But this was self-delusion.

The Communists were willing to accept their help, when they needed it.

And then, they were discarded.

After the discarding process began, the big push towards Israel happened, or rather got more important.

So, a lot of socialist doctrine got intergrated into creating Israel. The kibbutz collective farms, for example.

5

There were a lot of Jews involved in the Russian revolution because the Czars were nasty, nasty Anti-Semites. They thought that anything would be better than the Romonovs. Sadly a terrible evil was replaced with a greater one.

Aside: My great-grand father emigrated from what is now the Georgian Republic and, having escaped Czarist brutality, was an avowed Socialist. He’d probably be very disappointed in his Capitalist progeny.

Haj

6

A large portion of the American Communist party is and has been Jewish–remember in Native Son (and I completely understand if you’d rather not) when the police are interrogating Bigger about Jan, they ask if he’s been around people who move their hands around a lot when they talk, “like Jews”?

7

Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were very high up in the Bolsheviks (ruling as equals with Stalin at one point), were both Jewish. So was another major Bolshevik, Kagaonvich. But Lenin, Stalin, and Bukharin were not.

8

Boy, if you want to visit some scary websites try doing a Googel search on “communist” and “Jews”. Anyway, I found the major Soviet leaders who were Jewish were Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenov, Litvanov, and Kaganovich. There apparently is also a possibility that Yuri Andropov might have been technically Jewish. And of course Karl Marx.

However it appears no Jews were involved in the Communist revolution in China.

9

There’s an old joke:

Once, in the middle of an early 1920’s Politburo meeting, one of the members stood up and started to leave. The man next to him asked him where he was going, and he answered that his mother had died a couple days ago. The other man replied:

“Don’t go! If you just wait 'til Lenin and Stalin leave, we can hold a minyan right here!”
Basically, lots of Jews got involved in Communosm mainly because it seemed like a good idea at the time.