USSR: What Really Happened to Soviet Academic Julius K Shchutskii? (8.2.2023)
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
Author’s Note: The 2017 100th Anniversary was greeted in modern (capitalist) Russia in much the same way it was remembered in the Bourgeois West – with derision, suspicion and a hateful disrespect. This event was an excuse for the Bourgeoisie (which now fully controls Russia) to once again crank up and wheel out its propaganda machine – and attempt (at least officially) to brainwash the ‘Proletariat’ into assisting in the demonisation of one distinct historical element of its own glorious past! This misrepresentation was greeted with the full support of the Trotskyites – who participated in many of these planned events. The Tate Modern in London, for instance, decided to dedicate a room to the work of a prominent British Trotskyite who is well-known for ‘stealing’ educational posters (issued ‘free’) in the Soviet Union – and ‘selling’ this plunder (in ‘copyrighted’ books) back to the working-class that had produced it! Yes, the memory of the USSR was reduced to the libraries of a few Soviet Police Stations and Court Houses, with every forlorn face (essentially ‘Arrest’ photographs) staring back at the audience – a priori considered ‘innocent’ despite being tried, found guilty and punished! Imagine the totality of Western civilisation being reduced to a few arrest pictures. Of course, a major problem has been the fact that the Bourgeois Russian State refused to allow the US to control its Central Bank in Moscow from 1991, and so the modern country of Russia, despite betraying its own Proletariat Revolution, has remained ‘independent’ of the direct financial control of Washington. This matters because it is the Western branch of the Bourgeoisie which was a) first to emerge from the feudal peasantry, and b) first to develop the capitalist system. Today, the UK, Western Europe and Eastern Europe all submit to this US dominance and allow their local economies to be controlled by America – with only the Socialist countries AND modern (capitalist) Russia being the exceptions. This situation has led to the US formulating a strategy of expanding its hegemonic control of Eastern Europe (formerly the ‘Communist Bloc’) through the anti-Russian agency of ‘Neo-Nazism’! As American political and economic control expands into Eastern Europe, the military ‘security’ offered by NATO must follow. The point of this strategy is to manoeuvre NATO up to the geographical boundaries of Russia – as can be clearly seen through events in the Ukraine since 2014. From February 24th, 2022, the Russian military has successfully entered and cleared the Donbass area of Eastern Ukraine (which contains the now ‘Independent’ nations of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic). This Russian action has turned the Western Bourgeoisie against Russia in a typically ‘inverted’ manner. The US, UK and EU-manufactured Euro-Maidan (Neo-Nazi) Junta of Western Ukraine is currently being presented as the harbinger of all things ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ (despite its open eulogising of Adolf Hitler and use of the Nazi German Swastika) - whilst Russia is being portrayed as nothing less than Nazi Germany (despite Russia’s history of fighting fascism and sacrifice of its people for what is considered the ‘just’ cause)! Whether this change in Russian fortunes will alter the manner in which people such as ‘Julian K Shchutskii’ will be viewed is open to debate. There must be millions upon millions of arrest photographs of dubious individuals across the modern, Bourgeois world (since the invention of the modern Police in 1800 Scotland) – and that now includes contemporary Russia! Hundreds of thousands of these people would have been ‘convicted’ - and thousands would have been ‘executed’! The point is that Julian K Shchutskii ‘admitted’ his guilt. If people like him had been successful with their dalliance into the fascist world I doubt many of us would possess the freedom to sit here and read this article today! Indeed, I doubt I would have had the freedom to write it if the Soviet Red Army had not been victorious in 1945!
ACW (9.2.2023)
For academic purposes, the Russian-language name of this person is often written with the surname first as in ‘Shchutskiy, Yulian Konstantinovich’. Therefore, the name of ‘Yulian Konstantinovich Shchutskiy’ is more properly written in Cyrillic as ‘Юлиан Константинович Щуцкий’. In the West his name is written as ‘Julian K Shchutskii’ (1897-1938). During its 74 years of existence, the USSR produced thousands of very good academics in the fields of philosophy, spirituality and religion. These academics did not have to believe in the subjects they specialised within, but they did have to develop a precise and clear ‘objective’ understanding. In this regard, Julian K Shchutskii was a specialist in ‘Philology’ and the speaking and translation of many different languages. Within this field, he developed an interest in the Chinese (written) system of divination as preserved in the 64 hexagrams that comprise the ancient manual known as the ‘Zhou Change’ (周易 - Zhou Yi) - also known as the ‘Yi Jing’ (易經) - ‘Classic Change’. This is more commonly referred to as the ‘Book of Change’ in the West – Romanised as the ‘I Ching’.
The United States has continuously misrepresented any Socialist (Marxist-Leninist) State as being repressive of all religious belief. This is because, like the US, Socialist States separate Church from State. The USSR guaranteed all religious belief in the Socialist legal codes adopted since 1918 onwards (when the old Czarist legal code was abolished). This freedom of thought, belief and conscience culminated in the magnificent 1936 Constitution of the USSR – one of the greatest documents of human freedom ever created. Meanwhile, Joseph Stalin was voted into the office on at least three separate occasions, occupying the elected position of ‘General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR’. He was not a ‘Dictator’ and possessed little if any personal political power. His position was ‘regulatory’ - with the thousands of decisions taken by the hundreds of Committees throughout the USSR being checked and properly put into action.
This is the pivotal aspect through which the principle of ‘Central Democracy’ operates. Ordinary people living within Socialist societies have a greater ‘democratic’ freedom (being called upon to vote continuously) than the toiling masses living within the oppressive capitalist system and the Bourgeois, liberal democratic system – which only allows voting once every four or five years. Citizens living within a Socialist society are guaranteed the right to ‘hold’ or ‘reject’ any and all religious belief. This raises the principle of ‘atheism’ to that of an equal legal status with ‘theism’ - and removes any power of a religious body to persecute those who do not wish to follow a religion. Conversely, those who want to follow a religion are allowed to do so unhindered from attack from any secular power. Although religious bodies were stripped of political power (as religious belief was declared a ‘private’ affair) - the ability to hold a religious belief was not outlawed, oppressed or prevented in anyway. This clearly demonstrates the US attitude (which is still applied toward China, Cuba and Vietnam, etc) as being wrong, ahistorical and the product of the grossest anti-intellectualism.
In 1922, Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy. He is credited with inventing the totalitarianism of modern ‘fascism’. In doing this, he was aided and abetted by the Catholic Church which he rewarded with the ‘Lateran Accords’ of 1929 – conferring ‘sovereign’ status upon the Vatican – a totalitarian award not rescinded by the Western Allies with the defeat of world fascism in 1945. Hitler came to power in early 1933 in Nazi Germany, and immediately formed an alliance with Italy and Imperial Japan. By 1936, Adolf Hitler’s regime was openly supporting the fascist (Catholic) uprising in Spain. The USSR, meanwhile, coordinated the International Working-Class in its support for the democratically elected ‘Socialist’ (Republican) government in its opposition to Franco’s fascist uprising! Within this conflict, the followers of Leon Trotsky were actively seeking to undermine the authority of the (Marxist-Leninist) Soviet Union. Indeed, the British traitor to the Soviet cause – George Orwell – volunteered for a ‘Trotskyite’ militia in Spain. The Trotskyites (like the Anarchists) sometimes fought alongside the fascists and occasionally as allies of the fascists – but always acted against the well-being of the Soviet armed and funded ‘International Brigades’.
In 1938, Leon Trotsky, who had been expelled from the USSR for traitorous activities in 1929 (the same year Mussolini awarded the Vatican for its support) rejected the Third International of Lenin – and found what he referred to as the ‘Fourth International’. An important anti-Socialist element of this was Trotsky’s call for his followers to unite with the forces of international fascism (and the Catholic Church) in any planned (future) attack upon the USSR. Trotsky also called upon Soviet citizens to carry out terrorist attacks upon any aspect of the Soviet State they could target! Trotsky’s vision for the USSR was that it be regressed into a Bourgeois ‘capitalist’ State typical of those operating throughout Western Europe (with the workers giving up their political power and subordinating themselves to the oppression of capitalist ideology). Within this scheme, Trotsky was supported by all capitalist and fascist States, the Zionist establishment of the US and Imperial Japan. His call-to-action mobilised hundreds of his followers throughout the USSR and this led to a general opposition to the Soviet State from within – which sought to unite with the reactionary forces of the external world.
Throughout Europe and the US, Mussolini and Hitler remained popular with the British royal family and Winston Churchill expressing their support. The middle and upper classes applauded the manner in which the fascist leaders firmly put (and kept) the working-classes in their place – and tended to view Trotsky as a ‘hero’ who was a focal point for fighting the working-class and preventing it from gaining and sustaining political power. The USSR faced attack because of these reactionary forces from Nazi Germany in the West and Imperial Japan in the East. Prior to WWII, the USSR had no idea how many capitalist countries would support Nazi Germany in the West. As matters transpired, the USSR was invaded by Nazi Germany and at least five of its allies (including Finland) – but was assisted by the ‘Spanish Legion’ and a host of other voluntary units (especially from Scandinavia) – but excluded the UK, US and most countries of Western Europe. Imperial Japan was contemplating an invasion of the USSR from the East – but Japanese Generals wanted to test the Red Army with an attack using some of its best Imperial Japanese Regiments. This culminated in the battles between the Soviet Red Army and the forces of the Imperial Japanese Army on the Manchurian-Korean border in 1938 – and the Manchurian-Mongolian border in 1939 – both conflicts of which the Soviet Red Army won with a relative ease. These defeats contributed greatly toward influencing Imperial Japan toward cancelling its plans to attack the USSR from the East – in favour of a later attack upon the US (ironically whilst the US was still supplying raw materials to the Imperial Japanese government).
The USSR has promised to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia providing France agreed to do the same. The League of Nations, dominated as it was by the US and UK, was friendly toward the fascist countries, and made clear the fascists possessed a free hand in Spain. Meanwhile Somoza had taken power in Nicaragua in 1936, whilst Metaxas took dictatorial power in Greece in the same year. This is how Trotsky assisted Hitler and Mussolini to formulate the ‘Anti-Comintern Pact’ and assured that the USSR felt threatened from both East and West. This is the historical background within which the case of ‘Julian K Shchutskii’ must be assessed if the truth of the matter is to be ascertained and understood. The ahistorical version of events (fuelled by Cold War US anti-intellectualism) is that religion was ‘banned’ in the USSR and that Joseph Stalin personally had ‘Julian K Shchutskii’ arrested, imprisoned and tortured to death for holding religious beliefs and all his academic work confiscated by the Soviet State. Of course, none of this is true, but its allegation can still be found throughout Western literature and anywhere upon the internet (such as ‘Wikipedia’) where US anti-intellectualism holds sway. About fifteen years ago, I acquired a copy of a book ‘Julian K Shchutskii – Researches on the I Ching’ - translated by William L MacDonald, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and Hellmut Wilhelm. An Introduction is added Gerald W Swanson. This is the hardback, 1980 ‘Routledge & Kegan Paul’ edition. All those involved in this book may be considered complicit in the deliberate misrepresentation of Soviet history.
The inside leaf of the back-cover reads ‘His unorthodox political and religious views were not however looked upon favourably in the prevailing political climate of Stalinist Russia, and Shchutskii was arrested in 1937, later dying in a prison camp.’ Oddly, despite this book originally being published a year earlier in 1979 by Princetown University (US) - the book cover states that Julian K Shchutskii’s work was published in 1960 in Moscow by the Soviet State. Interestingly, the original biographical sketch of ‘Julian K Shchutskii’ provided by NA Petrov (and translated from Russian into English) says ‘nothing’ derogatory about this Soviet academic. NI Konrad’s original Introduction to the Russian language edition states nothing untoward about Julian K Shchutskii. Indeed, the ‘lying’ begins with the English (US) ‘Introduction’ written by the American academic Gerald W Swanson which states:
‘For Shchutskii, instead the revolution, the NKVD came, and he was arrested early in 1937. They took him away in the night along with all his books and papers. Mrs. Shchutskii and their daughter of a few months were left alone. Poppe himself managed to escape through the forests to Finland. Shchutskii’s doctoral dissertation, which we have here in English translation, also escaped. It had been deposited at the Institute library and was buried somewhere in the book-bindary, where it remained until after the death of Stalin.
Although Shchutskii was never brought to trial, Poppe was able to find out that he perished in a prison camp, along with his friend Nevskii and at least one other student. His skull was crushed with a chain. Nevskii, an expert on Japanese as well as His-hsia language, had interested Shchutskii in a study called “anthroposophy.” According to Poppe, “these activities were condemned, and this was certainly one reason he was eliminated.”’ (ibid Page xi Introduction)
Gerald W Swanson is uncritically quoting an interview between Dr. David Knechtges and the supposed ‘expert’ in Mongolian culture – Dr. Nicholas Poppe (which occurred during August 1974). According to Poppe – he was the ‘best man’ at the 1928 wedding of Shchutskii. Despite this seemingly impressive eye-witness – it is even more remarkable that virtually none of the above is true! Of course, when the known coward and revisionist – Nikita Khrushchev – manoeuvred his way into power during 1956, many known Trotskyites and traitors were ‘pardoned’ for their crimes. Julian K Shchutskii was just one individual who received such a ‘rehabilitation’ on March 27th, 1958. Interestingly, even ‘Wikipedia’ - that voice of US anti-intellectualism and defining reality according to current US foreign policy – fully ‘disagrees’ with every word of the above as penned by Gerald W Swanson. This is true of both the English and Russian language version of this US propaganda platform.
According to the Soviet Archives, Julian K Shchutskii was arrested by the Leningrad NKVD on August 2nd, 1937, tried for anti-Soviet agitation and participation in a counter-revolutionary organization, found guilty by the Field Session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in Leningrad (under Article 58-8-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR) and executed for being a Japanese ‘spy’. He was shot on February 18th, 1938 – although his exact place of burial is not known – but is assumed to be somewhere on the Levashovskaya wasteland (meaning the body cannot be ‘checked’ that this version of events is correct). Since the collapse of the USSR and the resumption of the Bourgeois State of Russia – people such as Julian K Shchutskii are now uncritically viewed as ‘heroes’ who were attempting to bring-down the USSR at a much earlier date. In other words, Julian K Shchutskii participated in efforts to overthrow the Proletariat and return the Bourgeois to power. In veneration of his Trotskyite efforts and collaboration with the ruthless Imperial Japanese government – reactionary elements within modern Russia – together with members of the Shchutskii family, placed a Memorial Plaque on March 21st 2015 on the last known place of his habitation prior to his arrest.
As matters unfolded, when the Nazi Germans (but not the Imperial Japanese) finally invaded the USSR between 1941-1945 – around 41 million Soviet men, women and children were killed. Many of those modern Russians that now criticise the USSR and support those accused of criminal activity – are lucky to be alive! Indeed, if Julian K Shchutskii had been successful in his spying for Imperial Japan, in all likelihood the death toll in the USSR would have been much higher with the Soviets probably being defeated! If the USSR had been defeated, then the West would also have lost, and Hitler’s cause would have prevailed! If this had been the case, the world would be a very different place today. Julian K Shchutskii is known to have visited Imperial Japan in 1927 and again in 1928 – visiting a Buddhist temple in Osaka for four and a half months during the latter trip. At his trial, Julian K Shchutskii admitted that he was contacted by Japanese Intelligent Services during these visits to Japan – and that he expressed a positive attitude toward ‘working’ with the Imperial Japanese government. After returning from both trips – he deliberately met with the internally exiled Soviet poet - E. I. Dmitrieva, who encouraged Julian K Shchutskii to compromise his objective study of Asian religion and become personally involved in its subjective exploration through the study of ‘Anthroposophy’ - or the study of the ‘Wisdom of Humanity’. The problem was that this encouraged an anarcho-mystical (inverted) approach to interpreting reality.
Japanese scholarship has routinely misrepresented Chinese culture and history. This became particularly marked with the Meiji Restoration of Imperial Japan in 1868 – and represents the abandonment of the old respect that Japan used to hold for Chinese culture (as so much of this has influenced the development of Japanese culture). Since 1945, the US occupiers of a defeated Japan has encouraged and magnified this misrepresentation to a greater degree – with America using modern Japan as a bulwark against the influence of Socialist China. It is unusual then, that a scholar supposedly specialising in the Chinese ‘Book of Changes’, would choose Japan as his preferred place of study over that of China – the country of the origin of the text he is purportedly studying. The Japanese are NOT experts in Chinese culture – and certainly not the ‘Book of Changes’. This is a suspicious association, even more so when it is understood that many schools of Japanese Buddhism are corrupted variants of transmitted Chinese schools. The Japanese practitioners, over the centuries, have ‘altered’ and ‘modified’ the Chinese traditions until they became unrecognisable. This rupture between Japanese and Chinese culture sheds considerable doubt upon the efficacy of Julian K Shchutskii’s translation of the ‘Book of Changes’ and the associated ‘Commentaries’ he constructed. When it is considered that the Sino-Soviet Split began with Khruschev’s slandering of Joseph Stalin in 1956 (with Communist China supporting Stalin’s correct pursuing of Marxist-Leninism over Khruschev’s Trotskyite revisionism) - it is correct to say that Julian K Shchutskii’s work remains peculiarly ‘Eurocentric’ in its assessment despite him being a Soviet academic. Only the Chinese people are the rightful custodians of their own culture – and it is toward Chinese academics that we should lean if Chinese culture is to be properly understood. Julian K Shchutskii was not a ‘hero’ and despite Cold War Americans (and traitors to the USSR) misrepresenting his history and certain modern (capitalist) Russians eulogising his character and academic work – I would say that there is nothing ‘special’ about either entity.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2023.
Russian Language References:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Щуцкий,_Юлиан_Константинович
http://bdn-steiner.ru/modules.php?name=Books&go=page&pid=20601
https://dzen.ru/a/X2kiOUUjri-PloUz