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The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Labor Bund Nazism and Stalinism Delivered the Blows; Ideology Did the Rest

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The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Labor Bund Nazism and Stalinism Delivered the Blows; Ideology Did the Rest Philip Mendes The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Labor Bund Nazism and Stalinism Delivered the Blows; Ideology Did the Rest he Jewish Labor Bund was one of the most is recognized by only small numbers of Jews and important leftwing Jewish political organi- progressives. Tzations of the late 19th and early 20th cen- Yet the Bund’s experience as an ethnic and turies. It played a key role in the formation of the class-based organization arguably encapsulates Russian Social Democratic Labor Party well before both the strengths and limitations of the historical, its split into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions, once-prominent Jewish engagement with socialist and was influentially active ideas and movements. The in the 1905 Russian Revo- Bund was an international- lution while emerging as a ist organization that shared leader of Jewish self-defense the core belief of all Marxist against Tsarist pogroms. groups in a common class While the Russian wing of struggle aimed at achieving the Bund was destroyed by the liberation of all workers, the Bolsheviks, the Polish whatever their national or Bund remained influential religious origin. The Bund between the two world wars, nevertheless insisted that and Bundist ideas travelled Jews were a distinct national with Jewish immigrants to group, and that while Jewish influence socialist move- workers should prioritize al- ments throughout the world. liances with other socialists Of course, the Holocaust to advance the revolution- eliminated the mass Jewish ary cause, a separate Jewish labor movement in Poland, socialist organization was and then the post-war Com- required to adequately rep- munist takeover destroyed resent the national, cultural the Bund politically. While needs of working-class Jews the organization later re- in Eastern Europe. Jewish Labor Bund election poster grouped as a world federa- The Bund opposed as- tion, it survives today as only similation, defended Jewish a marginal movement in Jewish cultural and politi- civil and cultural rights, and campaigned actively cal life. Even its historical and political significance against anti-Semitism. However, the Bund’s social- ist universalism precluded support for the notion of Jewish national unity (klal yisrael) or for the Philip Mendes is associate professor at Monash University and the author or co-author of seven narrow advancement of Jewish sectional interests. books, including Jews and Australian Politics (Sus- It eschewed any automatic solidarity with middle- sex Academic Press, 2004). He is currently prepar- or upper-class Jews and generally rejected political ing Jews and the Left: The Rise and Fall of a Politi- collaboration with Jewish groups representing cal Alliance for publication by Palgrave MacMillan religious, Zionist or conservative viewpoints. The in late 2013. Bund’s famous anthem, known as “The Oath” (di 14 JEWISH CURRENTS shvue in Yiddish), composed by the Yiddish poet Salomon Rappaport in 1902, made no specific reference to Jews or Jewish suffering. The Bund’s determination to be both militantly socialist and Jewish often left it politically isolated, accused of being ideologically purist and sectarian and unwilling to engage in pragmatic alliances with either moderate socialists or non-socialist Jews to achieve political power. Still, the Bund’s perspective arguably reflected the real experiences of its working-class constituency. Jews in Tsarist Russia and Poland, between the wars, were heav- ily divided by economic and social factors, with Jewish workers employed almost exclusively by Jewish employers, due to the anti-Semitism of Ukranian Bundists mourning members of their self-defense group their neighbors. As a result, the class struggle of who were killed in a 1905 anti-Tsarist uprising. Jewish workers was principally an internal Jewish class war. There was no united Jewish nation, and . All that would change would be the belief of the Bund could not help but see many Jews as the Jewry in its future — the hope of the Jews in exile class enemy. — the struggle for a better life would be snuffed The Bund was disappointed by the failure of out.” broader socialist groups to display active solidar- Indeed, the Bund articulated the principle of ity with persecuted Jewish workers or with the doykayt (“hereness”) — that is, the preservation of Bund’s consistent internationalist values. Tensions Jewish life and the struggle for liberation wherever between the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party as Jews live — and advocated national-cultural au- well as the Bolsheviks/Communists (under their tonomy for Jews within a multi-national state. This various titles in Russia and Poland) reflected the perspective was concisely summarized as “nation- Bund’s concern that the specific rights of Jew- hood without statehood,” and differed sharply from ish workers were either being subordinated to the Zionist concept. Polish nationalist concerns, or alternatively to The Bund achieved considerable success in its wider socialist agendas. This was why the Bund early years, and attracted an estimated 30,000 remained organizationally independent of these members by 1903 and 40,000 supporters by 1906, larger movements. which made it the largest socialist group in the Rus- sian Empire. The organization arguably reached The Bund formed in Lithuania, Poland and Rus- the peak of its influence during the 1905 Russian sia in 1897 — the same year as the first Zionist revolution, when it demanded an improvement Congress in Basle, Switzerland — and initially de- in living standards, a more democratic political manded only equal civil rights for Jewish workers system, and the introduction of equal rights for as individuals and an end to anti-Jewish discrimi- Jews. The organization was active in initiating mass nation. Over time, however, the Bund also sought strikes and demonstrations in cities with large Jew- recognition of Jewish national rights, though it ish populations such as Lodz, Riga, Vilna, Warsaw, remained unalterably opposed to Zionism. “[B] Odessa, and Bialystok. etween Zionist activity and Socialist activity,” The Bund also played a lead role in organizing declared Vladimir Medem, one of the Bund’s and hosting the 1898 founding Congress of the foremost ideological leaders, in 1920, “there is a Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). fundamental and profound chasm. A national However, the Bund’s relationship with the broader home in Palestine would not end the Jewish exile. socialist movement collapsed five years later over AUTUMN 2013 15 the question of Jewish nationalism. At the 1903 ing a large social, cultural and political Yiddish RSDLP congress, the Bund sought formal rec- infrastructure that included trade unions, secular ognition as the sole representative of the Jewish Jewish day schools, sporting associations, libraries, proletariat without geographical limits, and also newspapers, youth and women’s groups, and health proposed a federated party based on the multi- centres such as the famous Medem Sanatorium for national model of the Austrian Socialists. The Bol- children with tuberculosis. shevik leader Vladimir Lenin vehemently rejected By the mid-to-late 1930s, the Bund was the stron- the notion of Jewish national culture, arguing that gest Jewish political organization in Poland and the concept was inherently reactionary and that the secured major victories in Jewish communal and only solution to anti-Semitism was the progressive Polish municipal elections. One of the key reasons assimilation of Jews into the broader population. for the Bund’s strength was its active opposition Ultimately, the Bund was forced to leave the to anti-Semitism, with public rallies, strikes and RSDLP. Although Lenin agreed, for tactical rea- self-defense groups that repositioned the Bund sons, to permit the re-entry of the Bund into the as representing the concerns of the broad Polish party in 1906 and to accept their claim to exclusive Jewish population rather than only a narrower representation of Jewish workers, the Bolsheviks swath of Jewish workers. To be sure, the Bund still continued to reject the notion of Jewish national rejected formal alliances with other Jewish politi- culture (as reflected in Joseph Stalin’s 1913 report, cal forces, Zionist or religious, but it joined with “Marxism and the National Question”) and to ac- other progressive groups within Polish society to cuse the Bund of fomenting separatist tendencies. oppose anti-Semitism and seek the establishment of socialism. There would be “no end to persecution During the February, 1917 revolution, the Bund [of Jews],” wrote the Bundist leader Victor Alter played an active part as allies of the Mensheviks. wrote in 1937, “unless there is a simultaneous free- Leading Bundists such as Mark Liber, Raphael ing of the Polish masses from social oppression. Abramovich and Henryk Erlich held prominent . Your liberation can only be a by-product of the positions in the various workers and soldiers’ universal freeing of oppressed people.” councils known as soviets, and large numbers During the Holocaust, the Bund remained reluc- of Bundists were elected to local city councils. tant to form specifically Jewish rather than broader Following the Bolshevik takeover in October, a socialist political alliances. Bundists also preferred Bundist minority led by Vladimir Medem rejected to avoid any unified action with Communists. Lenin’s rule as undemocratic and antipathetic to However, these principles clashed with political Jewish national rights, but the majority agreed reality,
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