Kheisin—who had written an article poking fun at the sickness of the imprisoned tsarina—to show “tact and moral sensitivity” lest anti-Semitic passions obscure the achievements of the revolution. In April 1922, after the civil war, he sent the following message to his friend Sholem Asch, to be passed on to the “Jewish workers of America”: The reason for the current anti-Semitism in Russia is the tactlessness of the Jewish Bolsheviks . The Jewish Bolsheviks, not all of them but some irresponsible boys, are taking part in the defiling of the holy sites of the Russian people. They have turned churches into movie theaters and reading rooms without considering the feelings of the Russian people. The Jewish Bolsheviks should have left such things to the Russian Bolsheviks. The Russian peasant is cunning and secretive. He will put on a sheepish smile for your benefit, but deep inside he will harbor hatred for the Jew who raised his hand against his holy places. We should fight against this. For the sake of the future of the Jews in Russia, we should warn the Jewish Bolsheviks: “Stay away from the holy places of the Russian people! You are capable of other, more important, deeds. Do not interfere in things that concern the Russian church and the Russian soul!” Of course, the Jews are not to blame. Among Bolsheviks, there are many agents provocateurs, old Russian officials, bandits, and all kinds of vagabonds. The fact that the Bolsheviks sent the Jews, the helpless and irresponsible Jewish youths, to do these things, does smack of provocation, of course. But the Jews should have refrained. They should have realized that their actions would poison the soul of the Russian people. They should bear this in mind. 126 The Jewish Bolsheviks were not amused. Esther Frumkina, one of the leaders of the Party’s Jewish Section, accused Gorky of taking part in the “attack on the Jewish Communists for their selfless struggle against darkness and fanaticism,” and Ilya Trainin, the editor of The Life of Nationalities and one of the top Bolshevik experts on the “national question,” wrote that the “Stormy Petrel of the Revolution” had finally landed in the “swamp of philistinism.” They did take his point, however. Trotsky, according to his own testimony, refused the post of commissar of internal affairs for fear of “providing our enemies with the additional weapon of my Jewishness” (despite Lenin’s insistence that there was no task more important than fighting counterrevolution and “no better Bolshevik