General Jewish Labour Bund
General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia אַלגעמײנער ייִדישער אַרבעטער־בונד אין ליטע, פּױלן און רוסלאַנד | |
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Founded | 7 October 1897 |
Dissolved | 19 April 1921 |
Merged into | Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (majority faction) Communist Party of Lithuania (members in Lithuania) |
Succeeded by | General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland "Bund" in Latvia Social Democratic Bund |
Ideology | |
Political position | Left-wing |
Party flag | |
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The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (
Founding
The "General Jewish Labour Bund in Russia and Poland" was founded in
The Bund actively campaigned against antisemitism. It defended Jewish civil and cultural rights and rejected assimilation. However, the close promotion of Jewish sectional interests and support for the concept of Jewish national unity (klal yisrael) was prevented by the Bund's socialist universalism. The Bund avoided any automatic solidarity with Jews of the middle and upper classes and generally rejected political cooperation with Jewish groups that held religious, Zionist or conservative views. Even the anthem of the Bund, known as "the oath" (Di Shvue in Yiddish), written in 1902 by S. Ansky, contained no explicit reference to Jews or Jewish suffering.[8]
At the heart of the vision of the future of the Bund was the idea that there is no contradiction between the national aspect on the one hand and the socialist aspect on the other, as a strictly secular organization, the Bund renounced the Holy Land and the sacred language (Hebrew) and chose to speak Yiddish.[9]
After Kremer and Kossovsky were arrested, a new party leadership emerged. A new central committee was set up under the leadership of Dovid Kats (Taras).
In 1901, the word "Lithuania" was added to the name of the party.[5][12]
The Bund's membership grew to 900 in Łódź and 1,200 in Warsaw in the fall of 1904.[13]
During the period of 1903–1904, the Bund was harshly affected by
In its early years, the Bund had remarkable success, gaining an estimated 30,000 members in 1903 and an estimated 40,000 supporters in 1906, making it the largest socialist group in the Russian Empire.[8]
As part of the Russian Social Democracy
Given the Bund's secular and socialist perspective, it opposed what it viewed as the reactionary nature of traditional Jewish life in Russia. Created before the
At the RSDLP's second congress in Brussels and London in August 1903,[19] the Bund's autonomous position within the RSDLP was rejected,[20] with both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks voting against, and the Bund's representatives left the Congress, the first of many splits in the Russian social democratic movement in the years to come.[21][22] The five representatives of the Bund at this Congress were Vladimir Kossowsky, Arkadi Kremer, Mikhail Liber, Vladimir Medem and Noah Portnoy.[23]
During this period two trade unions, the Union of Bristle-Makers (Bersther-Bund) and the Union of Tanners (Garber-Bund), were affiliated to the Bund.
Per Vladimir Akimov's account of the history of social democracy 1897–1903, there were 14 local committees of Bund –
4th conference
The 4th Bund conference was held in Białystok in April 1901.[10] The main topic of debate of the 4th Bund conference was the expansion of the Bund into Ukraine and building alliances with existing Jewish labour groups there.[28] The 4th conference reversed the line of the 3rd conference and adopted a line of demanding Jewish national autonomy.[10]
5th conference
The fifth conference of the Bund met in Zürich in June 1903.[29][30] Thirty delegates took part in the proceedings, representing the major city branches of the party and the Foreign Committee. Two issues dominated the debates; the upcoming congress of the RSDLP and the national question. During the discussions, there was a division between the older guard of the Foreign Committee (Kossovsky, Kremer and John (Yosef) Mill) and the younger generation represented by Medem, Liber and Raphael Abramovitch. The younger group wanted to stress the Jewish national character of the party. No compromise could be reached, and no resolution was adopted on the national question.[31]
1905 Revolution and its aftermath
In the Polish areas of the Russian empire, the Bund was a leading force in the
The Bund formally rejoined the RSDLP when all of its faction reunited at the
The 7th Bund conference was held in
After the RSDLP finally split in 1912, the Bund became a federated part of the
Parliamentary representation
At the 1906 First Duma elections, the Bund made an electoral agreement with the Lithuanian Labourers' Party (Trudoviks), which resulted in the election to the Duma of two (apparently non-Bundist) candidates supported by the Bund: Dr. Shmaryahu Levin for the Vilna province and Leon Bramson for the Kovno province. In total, there were twelve Jewish deputies in the Duma, falling to three in the Second Duma (February 1907 to June 1907), two in the Third Duma (1907–1912) and again three in the fourth, elected in 1912, none of them being affiliated to the Bund.[40]
Political outlook
The Bund eventually came to strongly oppose Zionism,[1] arguing that emigration to Palestine was a form of escapism. The Bund did not advocate separatism. Instead, it focused on culture, rather than a state or a place, as the glue of Jewish "nationalism". In this they borrowed extensively from the Austro-Marxist school, further alienating the Bolsheviks and Lenin. The Bund also promoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language and to some extent opposed the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew.[41][42]
The Bund won converts mainly among Jewish artisans and workers, but also among the growing Jewish
Importance of Yiddish
The Bund recognized the Yiddish language as a social identifier. To maintain its national-cultural autonomy, the Bund advocated for the Polish Jewish minority to use its own language and maintain its cultural institutions in areas where it was considered a sizable portion of the local population.[43]
As a Germanic language, Yiddish also helped maintain the Bund's European identity. This can be compared to the
The Bund had a major role in maintaining and developing Yiddish, including Yiddish literature and other secular cultural uses of the language. The Bund was the first political party to publish a Yiddish paper – Der yidisher arbeyter – in tsarist Russia in 1896.[43]
Activities abroad
Less than a year after the founding of the party, its Foreign Committee was set up in
Between 1901 and 1903, the Foreign Committee was based in London.[44]
The United Organization, the Foreign Committee as well as the Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad were all dissolved at the time of the
Separation of the Polish Bund
When Poland fell under German occupation in 1914, contact between the Bundists in Poland and the party centre in
Revolutions of 1917
The Bund was the only Jewish party that worked within the
At the time of the 1917 upheavals, Mikhail Liber was elected president of the Bund.[50]
The 10th conference of the Bund was held in Petrograd April 14–17, 1917.
In May 1917, a new Central Committee of the Bund was formed, consisting of Goldman, Erlich, Medem, and Jeremiah Weinsthein. One Central Committee member, Medem, was in Poland at the time and could not travel to Saint Petersburg to meet with the rest of the committee.[52]
Four Bund bureaus were represented as such among the 60 delegates to the May 1918 Menshevik Party conference: Moscow (Abramovich), Northern (Erlich), Western (Goldshtein, Melamed), and Occupied Lands (Aizenshtadt).[53]
The political changes at the time of the Russian revolution resulted in splits in the Bund. In Ukraine, Bund branches in cities like
The Bund also had elected officials at the local level. During the 1917 October Revolution and Russian Civil War, the mayor of the predominantly Jewish Ukrainian town of Berdychiv (53,728 inhabitants, 80% of whom were Jewish at the 1897 census) was a Bundist, David Petrovsky (Lipets).[60]
11th Bund conference
The 11th Bund conference was held in Minsk on March 16–22, 1919, with delegates from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania.
In Latvia
The first local Bund organizations in Latvia had been established on 1900 in Daugavpils and on 1902 in Riga. In the autumn of 1904, the Riga Committee of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers Party and the Riga Committee of the Bund signed a co-operation agreement and founded the Riga Federative Committee. The main liaisons were the engineer Jānis Ozols ("Zars") and the railwayman Samuel Klevansky ("Maksim"). Bund was active during the 1905 Russian revolution, organizing demonstrations and fighting units.[62]
In December 1918 the Latvia District Committee of the Bund began publishing the newspaper Undzer Tsayt ('Our Time').[63] As Latvia declared independence, the Bund held the position that Latvian independence should only be a temporary solution and that the area should eventually become part of a democratic socialist Russia.[63] The Bund obtained two seats in the People's Council of Latvia, represented by A. Sherman and M. Papermeister.[63] Moreover, the party obtained four seats in the provisional city council of Riga.[63]
In 1919, a separate
Bund and the Central Rada of Ukraine
After the issuing of the First Universal of the Central Rada (Council) of Ukraine, the Southern Bureau of the Bund issued a statement rejecting the declaration of Ukrainian autonomy.[65] The Bund feared that minorities, such as the Jews, would suffer if a centralized Ukrainian state emerged.[66] Rather the Bund proposed that the Russian Provisional Government convene an all-Ukrainian territorial conference with representatives of both the Rada and non-Ukrainian forces, to establish an autonomous administration.[65]
Bund and the Belarusian People's Republic
The Bund was among the political parties that participated in the
Gomel conference
The remainder Bund in Russia its 12th conference on April 12–19, 1920 in Gomel, where the majority adopted a Communist position and the anti Bolshevik minority reconstituted themselves as separate party (the Bund (S.D.)).[69][70]
The fourteen point of the resolution "On the Present Situation and the Tasks of Our Party" of the Gomel conference stated that
Summing up the experience of the last year, the Twelfth Conference of the Bund finds:
- that the Bund, in principle, had adopted the communist platform since the Eleventh Conference,
- that the Programme of the Communist Party, which is also the programme of the Soviet government, corresponds with the fundamental platform of the Bund,
- that a ’united socialist front’ with principled opponents of Soviet power, who draw a line between the proletariat and its government, is impossible,
- that the moment has come when the Bund can relinquish its official oppositional stand and take upon itself responsibility for the Soviet government's policy.[71]
The resolution on organisational questions stated that
The logical consequence of the political stand adopted by the Bund is the latter's entry into the [Russian Communist Party] on the same basis as the Bund's membership of the R.S.D.L.P.. The conference authorised the C.C. of the Bund to see to it, as an essential condition, that the Bund preserve within the R.C.P. the status of an autonomous organisation of the Jewish proletariat.[71]
Dissolution of the Bund in Lithuania
In Lithuania, the majority of the Bund had become Communists and at a conference held in Kaunas April 18–19, 1921 the Bund organization in Lithuania was declared dissolved and its members encouraged to join the Communist Party of Lithuania.[72] The anti-Communist minority of the party in Lithuania abandoned Bundist politics altogether.[73]
Unity talks and dissolution
Esther Frumkin and Aron Isaakovich (Rakhmiel) Vainsthein were the key leaders of the Communist Bund 1920–1921.[74] Communist Bund organs, such as Der Veker, were published irregularly in Belarus.[75]
Following the Gomel Conference, a process of negotiations for a merger between the Communist Party and the Communist Bund took place.
On June 9, 1920, the Communist faction of the Fareynikhte party merged into the Communist Bund.[78]
Eventually the Comintern arbiter in the unity commission was convinced by the Yevsektsiya argumentation, and the Comintern ordered the Bund to dissolve itself.[77] At an Extraordinary All-Russian Bundist Conference, held in Minsk on March 5, 1921, the delegates representing some 3,000 party members debated disbanding the Communist Bund.[71][79][80] Vainsthein spoke in favour of disbanding the Communist Bund and merging with the Communist Party.[81] Perel represented the minority view, arguing that the Bund should be retained as a separate party.[81] 47 delegates voted against Perel's proposal, 23 delegates abstained from voting.[81] In April 1921 the Communist International called on all Bundists to join the Communist Party.[74] The Communist Bund was subsequently disbanded.[81] In Belarus, the Communist Party of Byelorussia agreed to provide automatic party membership to any bundist that joined the party, and one bundist was included in the CP(b)B Central Bureau and two bundists in CP(b)B District Committees.[80] Symbolically marking the merger, a ceremony was held in a theatre in Minsk on April 19, 1921, where bundists handed over their banners to the CP(b)B.[80] Der Veker became the organ of the Yevsektsiya (Jewish section of the Communist Party) in the Byelorussian SSR.[80] After their party was dissolved, many former members of the Communist Bund joined the RCP(b) as individuals[82]
Legacy
Around 1923, the remnants of the Bund (S.D.) had ceased to function in Soviet Russia.[70] Many former Bundists, like Mikhail Liber and David Petrovsky, perished during Stalin's purges in the 1930s. The Polish Bundists continued their activities until 1948. During the latter half of the 20th century the Bundist legacy was represented through the International Jewish Labor Bund, a federation of local Bundist groups around the world. A leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 was Bundist Marek Edelman.
In
Former Bundists who became high level officials in the USSR
- Israel Moiseevich Leplevsky (1894–1938), Bundist in 1904–1907, Minister ("People's Commissar") of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic(1937–1938)
- Moisei Leibovits Ruhymovych (1889–1939), Bundist in 1904–1913, Minister ("People's Commissar") for military affairs of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic(1917–1918) and Minister ("People's Commissar") for Defense Industry of the USSR (1936–1937)
- Heavy Industry(1932–1937).
The Bundists in North America
Among the exiled Bundists who went on with Socialist politics in America was
The American Labour leader
Between 1913 and 1917, working under the name Max Goldfarb, David Petrovsky (1886–1937) was a member of the Central Committee of the Jewish Socialist Federation of America, a member of the Socialist Party of America, and the labor editor of The Forward.
Sara Szweber (1875–1966) was active in the Bund émigré community and took part in Bund's fourth World Congress at the age of ninety.[87]
See also
- Armenian Social-Democratic Workers Organization– an Armenian organization inspired by the Bund
- The Workers Circle – an American organization inspired by the Bund
References
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- ^ N. A. Bukhbinder: The History of the Jewish Labor Movement in Russia. According to unpublished archive material. Tamar, 1931.
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- ^ a b Minczeles, Henri. Histoire générale du Bund: un mouvement révolutionnaire juif. Paris: Editions Austral, 1995. p. 61
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- ^ a b c Mendes, Philip (30 November 2013). "The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Labor Bund". jewishcurrents.org. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
- ^ TLV-01, von (2017-12-27). "Der letzte Bundist". haGalil (in German). Retrieved 2020-01-31.
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- ^ International Socialism. The rise and fall of the Jewish Labour Bund
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- ^ Mullin, Richard James (2010-06-08). Lenin and the Iskra faction of the RSDLP: 1899-1903 (doctoral thesis). University of Sussex.
- ISBN 978-0-19-924681-6. Retrieved 2009-11-05.
- ^ Jewish social studies. 1968. p. 248.
- ^ Rusiniak-Karwat, Martyna. "The Siedlce branch of the Bund (1902-1939)". Virtual Shtetl. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
- ^ Российская социал-демократическая рабочая партия. Съезд; Институт марксизма-ленинизма (Moscow, Russia) (1959). Второй съезд РСДРП, июль-август 1903 года. Гос. изд-во полит. лит-ры. p. 507.
- ^ Vladimir Akimov (1969). Vladimir Akimov on the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism 1895-1903: The Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party : A Short History of the Social Democratic Movement in Russia. CUP Archive. p. 227. GGKEY:QTN35JK3C26.
- ^ Di Geshikhṭe fun Bund. National Yiddish Book Center. 1999. p. 109.
- ^ "The Relations between the Jewish Bund and the RSDRP 1897-1903". ora.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
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- ^ Minczeles, Henri. Histoire générale du Bund: un mouvement révolutionnaire juif. Paris: Editions Austral, 1995. p. 130
- ^ ח. ל פאָזנאַנסקי (1938). מעמואַרן פון אַ בונדיסט. p. 282.
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- ^ a b c Di Geshikhṭe fun Bund. National Yiddish Book Center. 1999. p. 361.
- ^ Johnpoll, Bernard K. The Politics of Futility; The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917–1943. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967. p. 35
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- ^ Ettinger, Shmuel; Shmuel Spector (2008). "Berdichev". Encyclopaedia Judaica. Retrieved 6 December 2009.
- ^ a b c d Di Geshikhṭe fun Bund. National Yiddish Book Center. 1999. p. 216.
- ^ "Jews During the Revolution of 1905".
- ^ a b c d Di Geshikhṭe fun Bund. National Yiddish Book Center. 1999. p. 200.
- ^ The Jewish Labor Bund: a pictorial history, 1897-1957. Farlag Unser Tsait. 1958. p. 8.
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- ^ Очерки истории Коммунистическоǐ партии Литуй: 1920-1940. Mintis. 1980. p. 45.
- ^ Bernard K. Johnpoll (1967). The politics of futility: the General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917-1943. Cornell University Press. p. 135.
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- ^ Pinkus, Benjamin. Jews of the Soviet Union: A History of a National Minority. [S.l.]: Cambridge, 1990. p. 129
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- ^ Gertrud Pickhan, "Sara Szweber" in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia [1].
Further reading
- Jack Jacobs (ed.), Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
- Alfred Katz, "Bund: The Jewish Socialist Labor Party", The Polish Review, vol. 10, no. 3 (Summer 1965), pp. 67–74.
- Scott Ury, Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012, ch. 3.