Jewish Politcal Participation in Late Imperial Russia, 1881-1917

by

Alicia L. Lauersen

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IV Table of Contents

Abstract ...vi Acknowledgements .....vii Chapter One Introduction 1 Chapter Two 11 Maxim Mosevich Vinaverand Liberal-lntegrationism 11 Chapter Three 34 Ahad Ha-am and Spiritual Zionism 34 Chapter Four 54 Vladimir Davidovich Medem and the Bund 54 Chapter Five 77 Eva Broido and the Mensheviks 77 Chapter Six Conclusion 99 Bibliography 103 Primary Sources: 103 Secondary Sources: 103

v Abstract

The twilight years of the Russian Empire saw an explosion of political, economic, and social change across all sectors of society. Spearheading these changes were political organisations intent on reforming the egregious societal ills fostered by centuries of autocratic rale. Russia's Jews, though a minority within the Empire, were actively involved in this quest for social justice, participating in a variety of political organisations. Maxim Vinaver and his fellow liberals sought to reform the existing system by limiting the power of the tsar and providing a responsible government to the people. Ahad Ha-am worked to create a separate state that would speak to the special spiritual requirements of the world's Jews. Vladimir Medem and the Bund fought for the unique needs of the Jewish workers, who suffered under a double yoke of persecution.

Conversely, Eva Broido advocated international solidarity for all workers in an attempt to hasten the socialist revolution. The actions of these individuals paralleled the wider quest for social justice in Russia and Europe between 1881 and 1917, while highlighting different interpretations of what it meant to be a Jew.

VI Acknowledgements

I would like to thank John Bingham, Roni Gechtman and Norman Pereira for their help with this work.

VII Chapter One Introduction

The "Jewish question," or the question of how to resolve the political, economic and social circumstances of Russian Jewry, occupied an important place in the debates of

Russia's intelligentsia during the last years of the Empire. After several failed attempts by the tsarist authorities to forcibly convert the Jews into Orthodox Russians, members of the

Jewish community decided that the Jewish question would not, and could not be solved by outsiders, but rather "by the total change, collective action, political planning and organization" of their own people.1 However, there was no consensus among the Jewish population as to how this fundamental emancipation would be brought about.

The Russian Empire acquired its first large population of Jews following the three partitions of Poland under Catherine the Great (1772,1793, and 1795). After acquiring

Polish territories, Russia suddenly found itself with more than one million new Jewish subjects who had no legal classification under Russian law.2 Not entirely sure what to do with her new subjects, Empress Catherine categorised all Jews as members of the urban estate, regardless of their place of residence or occupation. As ethnic-national minorities,

Jonathan Frankel. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 2. 2 The new Jewish subjects did not conform to any of the established Russian castes. They were not peasants, noblemen, nor did they belong to the clergy.

1 they were classified as inorodtsy (aliens), as were the nomadic peoples of Russia's Far

East. It has been argued that "the underlying rationale for including Jews and eastern inorodtsy in the same category was either that the Russian authorities perceived both groups as a dangerous alien presence in the body politic, or simply that it was a pejorative term highlighting the Jews lower level of civic and cultural development." However,

Russia's Jews faced different legislation than other minorities in the empire; for example, they were subject to collective taxes not faced by Ukrainians or Poles. Further underlining their ambiguous place in society, Catherine retained the Jews' traditional self- governing institution known as the kahal, but did not grant the Jews representation in municipal Gentile governments. The kahal was responsible for the payment of collective taxes imposed on the communities, and later for military conscripts, and ensuring the elections of state-sponsored rabbis. Within the Jewish community the kahal was responsible for the enforcement of Jewish law and implementing the decisions of the

Beth-din (Jewish court system), daily administrative functions, and the collection and distribution of taxes for the community, such as the tax on kosher meat. In addition, if

Jews converted to Russian Orthodoxy they would receive the same rights as Great

Russians, but still be classified as "of Jewish descent" on all official documents.

John W. Slocum, "Who, and When Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of'Aliens' in Imperial Russia," Russian Review, 57 (1998): 173-190.

2 The officials of the kahal had to walk the fine line between ministering to the needs of their communities and fulfilling their obligations to the state. Because of their precarious position, the kahal at various times found itself under attack by Russian anti-Semites as well as members of its own communities.4 For example, given the collective nature of

Jewish taxation within the empire, the wealthy often had to pay the taxes of the poor. As such, when compulsory military conscription came into effect in 1827, the kahal sought to relieve the community's tax burden by drafting the sons of the poor first, thereby causing enmity between the classes of the community.

Almost immediately after their inclusion in the empire Jews were considered to be a

"problem," which stemmed from the dual forces of their "fanaticism" and "exploitation."6

For an in-depth examination of the functions and operations of the traditional Jewish kahal within the community, see Isaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1772- 1844 (New York: Octagon Books, 1970).

5 Once a community member was conscripted he was no longer included in the Jewish communal tax assessment. By drafting the poorest first, the kahal reduced the financial burden to the wealthy members of the community, who often had to pay the tax for the poorer members. To further highlight class differences within the community, those exempt from military conscription included rabbis, merchants of the first guild, students and graduates of Russian schools, apprentices and masters in craft guilds, skilled factory workers and agricultural workers. Levitas, The Jewish Community in Russia, 60.

John Doyle Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 1855-1881 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 2.

3 The Jews, it was said, considered themselves to be a chosen people, superior to all other nations among whom they dwelt. They loathed the non-Jew, and kept themselves isolated and apart from Gentile society. Jews felt no loyalty to their place of birth, to their fellow subjects, or to the monarch who ruled over them. Their alienation, firmly buttressed by religious teachings, easily led to extremes, including outrages such as the ritual murder of non-Jews. [The Jews' religious] fanaticism determined the economic pursuits of the Jews, all based on forms of exploitation. The Jews disdained physical labour as something best left to Christians. They sought an easy life, at the expense of the Gentile neighbours, especially the peasantry. Clustered in trade and commerce, the Jews were an unproductive parasitical class. National well-being mandated that the population be protected from them, and that the Jews themselves be rendered harmless.7

Russian anti-Semitism slightly differed from its Western European counterpart. In

addition to its Christian roots, anti-Semitism in Russia was exacerbated by the place of

Jews in the traditional agrarian economy. Forbidden to hold agricultural land with serfs,

Jews often held the positions of middle-men. The majority of Jews were tavern keepers,

Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 2. 8 Typical Christian anti-Semitism involves the belief that Jews are the killers of Christ, and therefore evil. Another popular belief was that Jews would kill a Christian child in order to use his/ her blood to bake Passover matzo. Blood libel charges continued into the twentieth century, see Chapter Two. tax farmers, petty-traders, money lenders and agents for absentee landlords, all positions

which did not endear them to their Christian peasant neighbours.9 Additionally,

members of the Russian intelligentsia such as Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Chekov,

believed that the peasants had to be protected from the Jews who were thought to be

enslaving them through the use of money-lending and liquor.10

With the advent of industrialisation in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century anti-

modernisation became inextricably linked with anti-Semitism. Although the tsarist

government was active in promoting industrialisation, there were many who resented

this modernisation, especially the landed gentry. The Jews, because of their commercial

activity, were seen as the unwanted agents of change. It was felt that the repression of

the Jews could help immunize Russia against the social and economic upheaval that

coincided with industrialisation and modernisation.11

Robert J. Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism: A Sociological Study of Intellectual Radicalism and Ideological Divergence (New York: Schoken Books, 1978), 9. These occupations placed the Jews in the urban estate. Steven G. Marks, How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003) 141. 11 Ibid, 144.

5 The first attempted solution of this Jewish problem was introduced by Nicholas I,

who, by curtailing Talmudic beliefs thought to combat this "religious fanaticism". His

solution was an extreme form of assimilation, conscripting Jews into the Russian

military at a rate much higher than the Christian peasants.12 In order to fulfill these

quotas, the kahal often sent children as young as eight to the front lines. Military service

was for a period of twenty five years, and the young conscripts were often forcibly

baptised in the Russian Orthodox faith.13 As such, military conscription was tantamount

to a life sentence and apostasy.

Taxes were imposed on Jewish dress, including side-locks and prayer shawls, in a

further attempt at assimilation. Also, Nicholas I implemented the creation of a state

school system for Jews, including the state rabbinical school for official state rabbis,

which was supposed to replace the traditional heder, the Jewish primary school for

Talmudic and Biblical studies, and reduce Talmudic "fanaticism." The powers of the

kahal were reduced and the tsarist government declared that each kahal must employ an

official state rabbi, Finally in 1835, limits were placed on the areas in which Jews could

legally reside. Known as the Pale of Permanent Jewish Settlement, the area of Jewish

This rate, 10 conscripts for every 1000 Jews, was so onerous that kahals often petitioned the government to decrease it, arguing that the military had drained so much of the community's economy that they would be unable to pay communal taxes.

1 "X Adina Ofek, "Cantonists: Jewish Child Soldiers in Tsar Nicholas's Army," Modern Judaism 13 (1993): 278.

6 residence encompassed parts of Western European Russia, but excluded major urban

centers such as Kiev and Odessa.14 Many of these attempted solutions failed miserably,

and the forced military conscription resulted in a great deal of hardship for the Jewish

communities.

The ascension of Alexander II in 1855 ushered in the Era of Great Reforms. In

addition to the emancipation of Russia's serfs, the "Tsar-Liberator" took an interest in

the Jewish question, seeking a way to "merge" Russia's Jews with the rest of society15

on the grounds that "the moral decline of the Jews [was] attributed... to their inability

to make an honest, decent living" in the overcrowded Pale.16 As such, the Russian

interior was eventually opened to settlement by specific groups of Jews such as artisans,

first guild merchants, and army veterans. In addition, the rate of Jewish conscription was

dramatically reduced. Most important to this study, however, was an increase in

educational opportunities for Jews. In November, 1861 a statute was passed declaring

that Jews qualified for state employment if they obtained a diploma from a post-

Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter With Late Imperial Russia

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 29.

15 There was a great deal of ambiguity in regards to what this 'merger' would imply. The terms "merger," "rapprochement," "assimilation," "emancipation," and "Russification" were all used by the government and various press organs without any clear definition. Theodore R. Weeks, "Russification: Word and Practice, 1863-1914," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148 (2004): 487.

Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 19.

7 secondary institution. As a result, Jewish students flooded into Russian post-secondary

institutions. By the mid-1880s, Jews constituted 15 percent of the student bodies in

Russian institutions, with an even higher percentage in the fields of law and medicine.

Concurrent with external reforms, sizable changes were occurring in the traditional

Jewish community. Beginning in the early 19 century, Jewish Orthodoxy faced

challenges from both Hasidism and Haskalah. The teachings of Hasidism called for an

emotional, rather than logical path towards one's personal understanding of God. As a

movement it was very popular, especially among the poor, so popular in fact that

Orthodox Jews were labelled as 'opponents' (mitnaggedim). Haskalah on the other

hand, was an attempt to bridge the gap between Western European culture and

traditional Judaism. Originating in Germany, it involved a reformation of religion and

education as well as an adherence to the principles of Enlightenment. Secular

education, and perhaps more importantly, self-education figured centrally in Haskalic

beliefs. The maskilim, as followers of Haskalah were known, believed that "only a

thoroughgoing change in Jewish social, cultural and religious attitudes... could lead to

any real amelioration of the Jewish plight."18 To the followers of both Orthodoxy and

17 Erich Haberer, Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 12-14.

18 David Patterson, "A Growing Awareness of Self. Some Reflections on the Role of Nineteenth Century Hebrew Fiction," Modern Judaism 3 (1983): 26.

8 Hasidism maskilim were seen as dangerous heretics and many traditional families were

unwilling to have their children taught by anyone who had received any form of secular

education. The result was "a three-cornered free for all with no holds barred which

played havoc with the unity"19of Russian Jewry. As we will see, the majority of

Russian Jews who involved themselves in the Russian political sphere were of Haskalic

origin, either having received a secular education from liberal parents, or through their

own initiative against their parents' and communities' wishes.

Over the last four decades of the Russian empire, the Jews' own solution to Russia's

Jewish question resolved itself into four major strains of action: Liberal-Integrationism,

Zionism, Bundism, and Marxism. Each of these political responses answered the Jewish question with varying degrees of success, and attracted a different stratum of Jewish society, with its own agenda and vision of the future. Indeed, so many Jews sought radical political solutions to the Jewish question that by the 1905 revolution, the tsarist government concluded that the Jews of Russia were "highly susceptible to revolutionary fermentation." Numbering roughly 5.2 million, Jews represented a mere 4.2 percent of

Russia's total population, but were highly overrepresented in the empire's radical political groups. Prior to 1881, Jews accounted for less than 10 percent of Russia's radicals; by

Patterson, "A Growing Awareness of Self' 24. Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 201

9 1905 they numbered more than 3o percent.21 This study will examine each of these four political avenues taken by Russia's Jews in an attempt to determine the causes of the radical politicisation of Russian Jewry.

Brym, Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism, 3, 31. This does not include all members of the Jewish intelligentsia, just those who were members of radical groups.

10 Chapter Two

Maxim Mosevich Vinaver and Liberal-Integrationism

Integration was the first means of political participation for Russia's Jews. Although

Russification, that is the integration of ethnic non-Russians into Russian linguistic, cultural and social norms, was a stated goal of the tsarist administration, it was only half­ heartedly implemented in the early nineteenth century. In general, Russification was seen as a way to combat the dangerous Polish influences on the peasants of the western borderlands. However, due to a lack of imperial direction, there was "no coherent, systematic Russification policy in a sense of cultural and linguistic assimilation."

Further, there was no real plan to Russify the non-Christian elements in the borderlands.

It was assumed that as long as the Jews accepted "Russian cultural hegemony" there was no need to replace the Jewish culture with Russian.2 However, Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855) modified this policy, and the first real progress was made to integrate the Jews into the

Empire and decrease Jewish "fanaticism" and "exploitation." Some of the modifications included compulsory military service, and the creation of a new state school system for the Jews. Neither of these actions was considered a success for the goal of Jewish integration; conscription rates for the military were so high that Jewish communities often had trouble functioning economically, and Jewish parents were unwilling to send their children to Jewish state schools, believing that they were an outpost of Haskalah.

Andreas Kappleler, "The Ambiguities of Russification," Kritika: Explorations of Russian and Eurasian History, 5 (2004): 292. 2 Theodore R. Weeks, "Russification: Word and Practice, 1863-1914," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 148 (2004): 481. -J John Doyle Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 2.

11 The first Jews to partially integrate into Great Russian culture were traveling merchants. Acting as unofficial Jewish spokesmen, these merchants had been traveling to

Saint Petersburg to speak on behalf of the Jewish communities since their incorporation into the Empire. The best-known of these traveling merchants were the members of the

Gintsburg family. Originally tax farmers, the Gintsburgs were wealthy and had numerous gentile business contacts. While the Orthodox were scandalised by their penchant for shaving and wearing western-style clothing, the Gintsburgs and their fellow merchants prospered.4 Considering themselves to be the very best of what the Jewish population had to offer, several of these wealthy merchant families petitioned the government in

1856 to separate "the wheat from the chaff and allow those Jews who had proved themselves worthy to permanently leave the Pale of Settlement.5 In 1859 the tsarist government granted this request by eliminating the residency restrictions for first-guild merchants, allowing them to live anywhere in the Empire. The Gintsburgs were quick to take advantage of this new freedom and opened a banking house in Saint Petersburg that same year. The Imperial capital was to become the center of Jewish liberal-integrationism in the next decades.

Once the Gintsburgs and their wealthy cohorts had established themselves in Saint

Petersburg they actively pursued the traditional policy of shtadlanstvo, appealing directly to responsible officials on behalf of their fellow Jews. This "non-political approach to the solution of the Jewish question" was one that the Jews of Eastern Europe had been

4 Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 45-79. 5Ibid, 50.

12 practicing for centuries.6 The Jewish elite of Saint Petersburg continually petitioned the tsarist government on behalf of the Jews in the Pale, and successfully gained residency rights for other groups of Jews who had proved themselves to be better than the average

"idler" who resided in the shtetl.7

Not all of the Jewish notables' efforts were as successful. In 1874 the Empire's military was reformed following the crushing defeat of the Crimean war. Some of the reforms included the reduction in the length of military service from twenty five to six years, and a system of promotion based on merit rather than birth, meaning that anyone who proved himself could achieve the rank of officer.

Gintsburg felt that Jewish military service was the key to emancipation. He asserted that the "strongest argument for expanded rights" was for Jews to prove themselves to be useful and loyal to the state.8As such, he petitioned the government to treat Jews no differently from any other subjects within the scope of the new legislation, and requested that upon completion of military service all veterans be allowed to reside outside the Pale of Settlement. However, the Russian military was not eager to agree to these terms. It has been claimed that the Russian military was a stronghold of conservatism and indeed the "most anti-Semitic institution in pre-revolutionary Russia."9 In any case, the tsarist

6 Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900-1914, (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 1. 7 See Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 50-55. Full rights of residency were granted to first-guild artisans in 1865, to veterans of Nicholas I's army in 1867 and to graduates of all institutes of higher education in 1879. 8 Ibid, 181. 9 Yohan Petrovsky-Shtern, "The 'Jewish Policy' of the Late Imperial War Ministry: The Impact of the Russian Right," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 3 (2002): 218.

13 government decided that Jews would not receive equal treatment and not be allowed to reside outside the Pale upon completion of military service; and the possibility of achieving the rank of officer was, in effect, eliminated.

Nonetheless, the Jewish elites of Saint Petersburg were able to achieve other successes in the areas of culture and education. In 1863 Evzel Gintsburg founded the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among the Jews in Russia, better known by its Russian acronym, OPE. It was established to "further the knowledge of Russian among Jews; to publish and to help others to publish useful works, translations and periodicals ... with the aim of disseminating education among the Jews; and to encourage and subsidize people who devote themselves to study and education."10The OPE was the first and longest-lasting public Jewish organization in Russia. At its founding it included several

Jewish notables including L.M. Rosenthal (a prominent financier) and A.M. Brodskii (the beet-sugar magnate), and over its life-span would include several highly placed tsarist officials. While initially focusing on publications of natural science in Hebrew and

Russian, it would eventually shift to a focus on broader education, establishing schools, training Jewish teachers and providing scholarships for university students.11

Indeed, universities provided the most successful forum for Jewish integration into

Russian culture and society. In 1861 Jewish graduates of Russian universities were given the right to work for the government and to reside outside the Pale upon completion of their studies. Because of this newly announced right, there was an enormous increase in

10 Ilya Trotsky "Jewish Institutions of Social Welfare, Education, and Mutual Assistance," in Russian Jewry (1860-1917), ed. Jacob Frumkin et al. Translated by Mirra Ginsburg. (London: Thomas Yoselff Ltd. 1966), 417. 1' Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 173-174.

14 the Jewish student population both in universities and in gymnasia. The impetus for integration within the school system did not come from the school authorities but rather from ties with gentile students. Jewish students found it relatively easy to mix with other students and often would use the Russian (rather than the Jewish) form of their name while attending school. In fact, the student subculture (studentchestvo) was so strong that students began to see themselves as a separate estate within Russian society.

The rapid increase of Jews within university student bodies did not go unnoticed by conservatives. By the 1880s there were fears in right-wing circles that there were now too many secularly educated Jews and that too many Jews in Russian schools was dangerous. The argument followed four main points: firstly that Jewish students decreased the opportunity for Russian students; secondly that the Jews would "exercise a negative moral influence on Christian students"; thirdly that Jewish students were highly supportive of revolutionary movements; and lastly that because they were not as loyal to the tsar as Christians it was undesirable to have them take over in the technical and professional spheres.

The series of pogroms that erupted across the Pale of Settlement in 1881-82 were seen by conservative elements to be a reaction against Jewish exploitation, confirming their fears that the Jews had gained too much power. One of the measures to reduce this dangerous Jewish power was the implementation of a quota system on Jewish enrolment in institutes of higher education. By July 1887 the Council of Ministers voted to establish

1 9 Nathans claims that within the university population between 1865 and 1886 Jews increased from 3.2 percent of the total student population to 14.5 percent of the population. For the gymnasia there was an increase from 3.7 percent to 10.7 percent of the total student population during the same time period. Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 218. 13 Ibid, 289.

15 a quota for Jewish students so that in no way would the proportion of Jews in educational institutes be higher than the proportion of Jews in the total population. Specifically, the rates for Jewish enrolment were set at 10 percent within the Pale of Settlement, 5 percent outside, and 3 percent in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Further, amendments were made to previous legislation guaranteeing the right of Jewish graduates to live and work outside the Pale. Various ministries and professions also placed a limit on the number of Jews who could work with them.14 Such quotas were detrimental to the Jews who wished to integrate into Russian culture, yet they remained in force until 1917.

One of the many Jews affected by professional quotas was Maxim Mosevich Vinaver.

Born in 1862 to a non-observant Jewish family in Warsaw, Vinaver attended a Warsaw gymnasium and in 1886 Warsaw University. Upon graduation Vinaver moved to Saint

Petersburg to begin his work as a lawyer, however, until 1904 he was forced to remain an

"assistant attorney" due to a quota on the number of Jewish barristers, despite the fact he occupied a prominent place in the Russian legal profession and civil court system.15

For Vinaver, as well as many other young, integrated professionals this lack of full acceptance into Russian society and into their chosen careers was extremely frustrating.

Their attempts to integrate into Russian culture had been repeatedly thwarted by the government by which they hoped to be accepted. This frustration led to a rediscovery of their lapsed national culture. In 1892, in an attempt to help himself and others find their

14 For example, the quota on Jewish lawyers was established in 1889. See Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 7. 15 P.N. Milukov, "Biograficheskii ocherk," in MM. Vinaver i Russkaia obshestvennost' nachalaXXveka, ed. P.N. Milukov et al. (Paris: 1937): 13-18. Milukov documents numerous articles and essays written by Vinaver prior to 1904, which were highly regarded within the legal profession.

16 lost Jewishness, Vinaver founded the Historic-Ethnographic Commission along with the historian Simon Dubnow. Working for the OPE, the Commission published two volumes on the history of the Jewish people in Saint Petersburg in 1889.

In 1900 a Vilna barber named David Blondes was accused of ritual murder and put on trial for allegedly murdering Christian child in order to use its blood for religious rituals, such as the baking of Passover Matzo. While Vinaver acted on Blondes's legal team as an assistant, he also decided that such blatant anti-Semitism required organized counteraction on a wider basis. He and other members of the Historic-Ethnographic

Commission formed the Defence Bureau to help increase awareness about the Jewish situation in Russia. 16Aside from offering legal aid for pogrom victims and those accused of ritual murder, the Defence Bureau began an active press campaign. With the support of well-known Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Maksim Gorky, and Vladimir

Solov'ev the Bureau provided publications aimed at Russians, rather than the Jewish masses, in an attempt to reduce uninformed prejudice.17

The Kishinev pogroms of 1903 helped to galvanize the Defence Bureau and focused its efforts on exposing the guilty parties. The Bureau, along with the Bund representing the Jewish workers, and a few Zionists such as Ahad Ha-am, proclaimed the need for

Jewish self-defence organizations. The Bureau was also instrumental in drawing attention to Kishinev from abroad, gaining support from Western Europe and the United

States in an attempt to pressure the Russian government into taking action. M.M.

16 The other members of the Defence Bureau included G. B. Sliozberg, M.I. Kulisher, and O.O. Gruzenberg, all well-respected members of the Russian-Jewish legal sphere, who would one day hold a prominent place in the Jewish liberal movement. Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 14-16. 17 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 14-16.

17 Vinaver was the central figure at the pogrom trials for Kishinev. Instead of fruitlessly trying to gain compensation for the pogrom victims Vinaver implicated the tsarist authorities for inciting the violence and demanded an inquiry. When the court president refused to take action the Jewish lawyers read a statement of protest and walked out of the courtroom. Thanks to the coverage of the pogrom trials in the Jewish press Maxim

Vinaver became a household name in the Jewish community as someone who would stand up for Jewish rights.

Nonetheless, Vinaver and several like-minded people realized that legal aid and propaganda would not be enough if they wished to stem the rising tide of ignorance and prejudice in Russia. They realized that they would have to join with like-minded

Russians who felt that "only a constitutionally structured regime could bring the guarantee of equal rights" for everyone in the Russian Empire.19 They perceived this opportunity in the wake of the 1905 revolution. With this goal in mind, Vinaver, Genrich

Borisovich Sliozberg, and others from the Defence Bureau met (illegally) in Vilna in

March 1905 to create an all-Jewish organization that could be represented within the

Union of Unions.

Over the course of this meeting the "Union for the Attainment of Full Equality for the

Jewish People in Russia" (Soiuz dlia Dostizheniia Polpraviia Evresikago Naroda v Rossii,

1 8 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 17. 19 Ibid, 14-16. 20 The Union of Unions was a blanket organization seeking to represent all unions in Russia. This included such diverse groups as the Union of Peasants, the Union of Writers and Journalists, and the Union of Moscow Pharmaceutical Workers. Vinaver and other members of the Bureau regarded the Union of Unions as a way to enter politics and raise Jewish demands before a wider audience. See Alexander Orbach, "The Jewish People's Group and Jewish Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1906 - 1914," Modern Judaism, 10 (1990): 1-15.

18 hereafter denoted as SP) was created, and joined the Union of Unions shortly after. The platform of the SP included the

freedom of the national-cultural self-determination in all its varieties, especially the broad autonomy of the Jewish community; the right to one's own language and the independent regulation of schooling for Jews. In connection with the reorganization of Jewish Communities: the abolition of all taxes - such as the korobka [the tax on kosher meat] and candles tax - which [specifically] oppressed the Jews ... Finally, they demanded the abolition of all specialized decrees for Jews.21

The SP purported to speak for all Jews. Its founding members included Zionists,

Marxists, radical liberals, and cultural autonomists. Following a philosophy of open membership, SP was open to anyone male or female 21 years of age or older who agreed with the Vilna platform. Membership fees were kept at 50 kopecks to ensure broad

99 membership. In addition to the SP, Vinaver and other professionals such as engineers and doctors worked to get their own representative unions to include equality of rights for Jews in their platforms. "In fact, all the unions, including the roof organization Soiuz

Soiuzov [the Union of Unions] adopted the demand of equal rights for the Jews in their programmes."23

While some Zionists and cultural autonomists were not happy that an all-Jewish organisation would be represented by the Russian Union of Unions, they felt that Jewish solidarity was more important at the time than national cultural objectives. For Vinaver and his fellow liberals however, the SP offered the perfect means to reach their goals.

The liberals felt that the Jews were only one nationality within the Imperial Russian body

21 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 22. 22 50 kopecks was the lowest membership fee of any group in the Union of Unions. Ibid. 23 Ibid, 25.

19 politic. It was their priority to have a democratic and constitutional system established first and then to worry about cultural emancipation. Because the liberals were the majority of the SP at its founding the cultural question posed no serious threat to the union's cohesion at the time.

Nonetheless, the October Manifesto of 1905 tested the SP's solidarity. The Manifesto promised an elected assembly, and that no law would be enacted without majority consent from the State Duma. Further, it guaranteed civil freedoms of speech and the press, and indirectly the civil freedoms to minorities. The Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), including Vinaver, were eager to exploit what they perceived as the "first breach in the tsarist defence" and worked tirelessly to campaign for their political candidates.24 The

Bund on the other hand boycotted the elections along with other Marxist groups, believing that a radical overthrow of the government was possible, and indeed preferable.25

Another series of pogroms broke out in the wake of the October Manifesto. The pogroms seemed to confirm the arguments of both the nationalists and Zionists that the

Jews would only be safe outside Russia. The SP held the tsarist government accountable for the pogrom violence and renounced all further cooperation with them, while fully placing their support behind the proposed Duma. The SP concentrated its activities on mobilizing Jewish votes. The organisation's best speakers, including Vinaver, were sent

Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 27. Sidney Harcave, "Jews and the First Russian National Election," American Slavic and East European Review, 9 (1950): 33-41.

20 out to the provinces on a speaking tour to inform the Jewish masses of their rights and the

SP's program for change.

The SP decided early on that they would not run exclusively Jewish candidates, but rather would support any party in the elections that promised to help them achieve full equality for the Jews. Therefore, the SP formed alliances with the Ukrainian Democratic

Party, the Kadets, and several other small parties throughout the Pale.

The democratic franchise faced considerable opposition during the first Russian

National elections. Interference from land-owning nobility and local authorities, as well as ethnic prejudice from other minorities created significant problems for Jewish voters.

There were reports that Jews were not informed of their electoral rights, or simply removed from electoral rolls, or of polling stations being set up at such a distance from

Jewish villages that the poorer Jews could not reach them. Nonetheless, Jews turned out in droves for Russia's first elections. National voting figures for the Jews place voter turnout between 75 percent and 80 percent, compared to the non-Jewish turnout of between 50 percent and 60 percent.26In addition to high voter turnout, most Jews cast their ballot for the Constitutional Democratic Party. The final tally gave the Kadets 180 seats and their political allies the Trudoviki, a non-party labour faction, 84. Working together they managed to control 264 of the 497 Duma seats.27

In addition to his work with SP Vinaver was actively involved with the Kadets. In the fall of 1905 he had helped found the party and chaired its Constituent Congress in

Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 34. 27 Ibid, 37.

21 Moscow. In April of 1906 Vinaver was elected as the Duma representative for Saint

Petersburg on the Kadets' ticket. He was one of twelve Jewish deputies that included eight other Kadets and three Trudoviki.29 Despite the fact that Jews were now represented at a federal level they were unsuccessful in their demands that the Jewish question be addressed. Generally, the Duma was concerned with addressing pan-imperial issues like the Agrarian question, which would help solve crippling poverty in the countryside.

In fact, the Jewish Question was only brought up four times during the course of the first Duma. The first time Jews were discussed in the Duma was during Kadets' response to the Throne Speech, given by Vinaver. He criticized the tsar for failing to mention the

Jews in his speech, behaving as though the Jewish people did not exist and were not citizens of the Russian Empire. He made it clear to the conservative bloc of the Duma that the Jews now had strong representatives who were willing to fight for Jewish rights, and that anti-Semitic policies would no longer be tolerated by the Duma and the people.30Other attempts to address the Jewish Question met with political delays and were kept off of the agenda.31 Before much progress could be made on a civil equality bill or investigations into pogroms in Bialystok the tsar dissolved the Duma on 9 July, 1906, due to the Duma members attempts at governmental reform.

Fearing imminent arrest, Vinaver and 200 other deputies fled to Vyborg, Finland, in order to determine their next move. They felt that the tsar's premature closure of the

28 See Milukov, "Biograficheskii ocherk," 15. 29 Harcave, "Jews and the First Russian National Election," 40. 30 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 39 31 Ibid.

22 Duma was illegal. The deputies drafted a protest manifesto that issued a plea for passive resistance from Russia's citizens. They called on the populace to withhold taxes and army conscripts until the Duma was reconvened.33The plan was not well conceived and it was only a matter of time before the meeting was disbanded by the Finnish authorities.

The entire exercise was fruitless as the Russian population failed to respond to the appeal.

Upon their return to Russia, all the deputies who had signed the Vyborg Appeal, including Maxim Vinaver, were arrested and deprived of their political rights. Vinaver himself spent three months in jail and was denied the right to run for office in the future.

The closure of the first Duma demonstrated to the Jews that the tsarist government was not interested in aiding them in their quest for civil rights. The Duma's dissolution initiated a change in the Jewish approach to politics, moving beyond a basic political program to include economic development and national self-defence. During the second elections, the Zionists ran their own campaign, and the socialist groups decided to participate in the election, thereby splitting the Jewish vote. This lack of solidarity caused

Vinaver and several other Jewish liberals to lose faith in the idea of the SP. Before long the Jewish camp had split into a variety of groups, including a myriad of Zionist factions,

Bundists, and the ENP (Evreiskia Narodnaia Partiia - The Jewish People's Party), the

EDG (Evreiskaia Demokraticheskaia Gruppa - Jewish Democratic Group) and the ENG

(Evreiskaia Narodnaia Gruppa - Jewish People's Group) all of whom purported to speak for the middle class. This final group, the ENG, represented the bulk of the liberal-

See V.A. Maklakov, Pervia gosudarstvennia duma, vospominaniia, sovremennika, (Paris: Maison du Livre, 1939). Maklakov argues that the dissolution of the Duma was permissible according to the Fundamental Laws instituted prior to the Duma's inception. 33 Ann Erickson Healy, The Russian Autocracy in Crisis, 1905-1907, (Connecticut: Archon Books, 1976), 249.

23 integrationists. While the Bund fought for the rights of the workers, and the Zionists for the national homeland of the Jewish people, the ENG decided to work with Russian liberals and "lobby for Jewish interests within the broader Russian liberal movement, rather than appealing to Jewish voters directly."34

Although Vinaver was forbidden to participate in further Russian elections he remained committed to the cause of liberal-integration. In January, 1907 he chaired an organizational congress of the ENG to introduce the party's platform and to increase membership. Vinaver and his cohorts in the ENG were willing to embrace all parties who accepted the Vilna platform; they wanted to mobilize the people, develop a stronger economic base, and continue to fight for the democratization of Russia. On this last point, Vinaver's argument that the liberals were not just an alternative to the Zionists was strongest. "He pointed out that the approach combined the struggle for civil rights with that for a spiritual perfection of the Jewish people in Russia. Therefore, the ENG's main target was to create an atmosphere favourable to Jewish life and its development based on legal and democratic grounds."35Despite active disruption by Zionist groups and cultural autonomists in attendance at the conference, the ENG announced its intention to begin a reformation of the Jewish communal structures of Saint Petersburg including welfare institutions, cultural and educational organizations and to restructure the OPE.

By February of 1907 the ENG had developed a broader political, cultural and spiritual platform based on the idea of self-protection. Self-protection was intended to incorporate

34 Alexander Orbach, "The Jewish People's Group," 5. 35 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Policies, 54. See also P.N. Milukov, "MM. Vinaver kak politik," in MM. Vinaver i russkaia obshchestvennost' nachala XX veka, ed. P.N. Milukov etal. (Paris: 1937): 19-53.

24 an all-encompassing idea of defence of the Jewish nation through civil, national and political rights, spiritual and economic strength, and a constant struggle against the forces of anti-Semitism.36Sitting on the ENG's central committee, Vinaver was active in reorganizing Jewish national education, organizing counter-boycotts to combat economic anti-Semitism, publishing books and pamphlets, as well as continuing to work to mobilize the Jewish vote.

Only four Jewish deputies were elected to the second Duma of 1907, which by and large was more cautious than its predecessor. The slogan of the Kadets was "Preserve the

Duma," and therefore the party felt it had to proceed more carefully than it had in the first

Duma.37 The Jewish Question was only considered in broader bills such as the "Bill for the Freedom of Conscience" or the "Bill for the Inviolability of the Individual."38Vinaver continued to lobby Duma representatives to include the Jewish question on the agenda, and chaired a special Duma Commission on national and religious equality even though not a member of the Duma himself. However, neither the work of the Commission nor any of the bills mentioned above were ever discussed on the floor of the Duma before it also was dissolved on 16 June 1907.

In the intermission between the second and third Dumas, electoral laws were changed to favour the rightist parties. A tsarist decree on 16 June 1907 weighted representation within the Duma in favour of the wealthy, Orthodox, and landowners to the detriment of

36 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 57. 37 For an examination of changing Kadet strategy, see Judith E. Zimmerman, "The Kadets and the Duma, 1995-1907," in Essays on Russian Liberalism, ed. Charles E. Timberlake (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1972), 119-138. 38Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 63.

25 the peasants, workers and national minorities. Nearly half of Jewish voters were disenfranchised.40 The ENG decided to continue to participate in electoral politics in an attempt to reduce the damage that could be done by an ultra-right Duma. Despite their best efforts however, when the third Duma opened in November of 1907 there was heavy representation from Russia's conservative bloc.41

Because of the increasing belligerence and hostility from the Duma, Vinaver and his fellow liberals once again changed their political focus. This time, rather than relying on parliamentary and political tactics, they focused almost exclusively on the Jewish community. In this they were not alone. Various Zionist groups and the Bund cooperated with the liberals in a far-reaching grassroots campaign. The political groups focused on establishing educational, economic and cultural organizations with the goal of modernizing traditional Jewish society. Vinaver and the autonomist-historian Simon

Dubnow collaborated over educational reforms. The Jewish Higher Education Courses for Oriental Studies at Saint Petersburg University was the result of this collaboration.

Funded by Baron Gintsburg, the courses were established with the ideal of enriching

Jewish cultural life and national consciousness among the young.42These courses were

The electoral laws were changed on June 16, 1907. The tsar justified the move by use of his "historic power, his right to abrogate what he had granted, and his intention to answer for the destinies of the Russian state only before the altar of God who had given him his authority." Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia: Seventh Edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 385. 40 Orbach, "Jewish People's Group" 12. 41 In the third Duma, the government had the support of 310 out of 422 deputies; there were only 54 cadets and only 36 representatives of all other national minorities, compared to nearly half of the first Duma deputies. Because of strong support the third, and subsequently fourth Dumas, completed their entire five year terms. The first and second Dumas lasted a matter of months. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 386. 42 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 73

26 also meant to substitute for university education as quotas on Jewish students were still in force.

Vinaver and Dubnow also co-founded the Jewish Historiographic Society and the

Jewish Literary Society. Both groups included members from broad sections of the

Jewish community; the Literary Society in particular had branches all over the Pale of

Settlement, reflecting an increasing interest in national identity.43 The organizations however, were not without detractors. The first periodical of the Historiographic Society,

Evreiskii Mir (Jewish World), was forced to close down in 1907 because of pressure from several Zionist groups who claimed that both the paper and Vinaver had anti-Zionist tendencies.44

During this campaign for modernized education, Vinaver and the ENG became involved in a language dispute between the Zionists and Bundists.45 The liberals felt that it was important for Russian Jewry to have an appreciation of the dominant language and culture of the country, while Zionists and Bundists favoured Hebrew and Yiddish respectively. This argument came to a head in the system of modernized schools that the

Members of the Orthodox community were strongly opposed to the secular tendencies of these organizations and launched a campaign to preserve the traditional values of Judaism. It was a sequel to the first intra-community battles between the reforming maskilim and the traditional Orthodoxy. This time however, the reformers found a success the maskilim never had. This did not stop the Orthodox who "claimed the right to prosecute legally any insult towards Jewish religion, orally or written, the right to confiscate brochures and books which can cause damage to the morality of and traditional forms of Jewish religion as well as to punish their authors and editors. This would affect the almost any publication by the reform-minded Jewish intelligentsia." (Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 78.) When the Orthodox community appealed to the tsarist government to recognize this authority it firmly entrenched the opinion that the Orthodoxy had become a tool of tsarist oppression, and only served to increase the popularity of secular movements. 44 Ibid, 74. 45 See the Chapters Three and Four.

27 ENG helped to found. No consensus was reached until 1911, when, ostensibly tired of arguing among themselves, the Bundists, Zionists and liberals agreed that the language of instruction in school was to be the mother tongue of the majority of students, which in

Russia's case was most often Yiddish.46

Nonetheless, the liberals were aware that it was not enough to simply revive the soul of the Jewish nation. Concrete changes were needed in order to ameliorate the desperate poverty of much of the Jewish population. Therefore, the ENG helped to establish a network of Savings and Loan cooperatives as a means to help stimulate local economies.

The Saving and Loan cooperatives were especially important for small artisans who made up the bulk of the Jewish economy, helping them to modernize their workshops and compete economically with non-Jewish manufacturers.47

In March, 1908, Vinaver and other members of the ENG organised an economic conference to help establish Savings and Loan cooperatives across Russia. He also proposed a joint-stock company that would provide artisans with cheap tools, raw materials, and a marketing organization that would help distribute the finished goods across Russia. It was his belief that this joint-stock company could help regulate economic activities, such as setting price floors, and also provide vocational training to compete in the modernizing world economy. However, because of bureaucratic regulation this joint-stock company never received official approval.48

Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 130-133. Ibid, 122-126. Ibid, 127.

28 Vinaver and the ENG also attempted to democratize, secularise and modernize Jewish communal institutions in Russia. In 1909 leaders of Jewish communities from across

Russia met in Kovno in an attempt to reform the communal tax system and secular education. They also attempted to remove some of the ambiguity in Russian law towards what a "Jewish community" and a "Jew" were.49 Officially, the Jewish communal institution known as the kahal had been abolished in 1844 during one of Nicholas I's attempts to reduce "Talmudic fanaticism." However, nothing had been assigned to replace the institution and its responsibilities, which included the collection of communal taxes and the provision of military conscripts.50

In an attempt to keep both the right- and left-wing groups happy, as well as the religious and the secular, a "Jew" was defined as someone who was born to the Jewish faith and had not converted to another faith, which allowed secular Jews to be considered

Jews as well. A member of the "Jewish community" was anyone 18 years of age or older who had lived in a given location for at least one year. Within each Jewish community a progressive income tax was proposed to replace the communal korobka, with a certain amount of earnings considered the threshold income.51Each Jewish community was to be governed by a locally elected council; at the federal level Russian Jews were to be represented in the Duma by a committee of Zionists, Bundists, liberals, and Orthodox.

Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 128-129. 50 John Doyle Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 5. 51 Any member of the community having less than this threshold income would be exempt from the progressive income tax. This method of progressive taxation was considered to be far more equitable than the korobka, the bulk of which was paid by the poorest Jewish families.

29 Despite the trends toward modernization and democratization recommended by the conference these proposals were rejected by wider Bundist and Zionists circles.

While working with the ENG to promote Jewish community development, Vinaver did not give up his quest for Russian liberalism. He was still a high-ranking member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, sitting on its central committee and organising the party's annual conferences. He worked with other party members and Duma deputies to draft legislative proposals and lobby state ministers in hopes of furthering the liberal agenda. In 1913 he was able to continue his analytical writing when he founded and edited an annual juridical journal Vestnik Grazhdanskago Prava (The Civil Law Courier), which was published until the outbreak of the revolution in 1917.

The modernization of Jewish communities under the guidance of Vinaver and the

ENG faced serious opposition following the assassination of Prime Minister Stolypin in

September 1911. After the assassination there was a dramatic increase in reactionary and anti-Semitic acts. Blood libel accusations and acts of violence towards Jews rose considerably, as did anti-Semitic slanders in the press and on the Duma floor.52 Amidst the tide of rising anti-Semitism there were increasing restrictions on grassroots cultural activities such as the closing of the Jewish Literary Society and all of its branches.

However, this increasing oppression only reinforced the determination and ingenuity of

Jewish political groups in their policy of self protection. Anti-Semitism was increasingly fought with delicacy and attempts to educate the Russian public on Jewish culture,

Such statements of anti-Semitism were often concealed in so-called scientific articles on demography in ethnography. See Michael F. Hamm, "Liberalism and the Jewish Question: The Progressive Bloc," Russian Review 31 (1972): 163-172.

30 philosophy and history. The Society for the Dissemination of True Knowledge on the

Jews and Judaism, founded in 1911, was central to this struggle. The Society organized lectures, ran in its own periodical, and was able to provide a forum for Jews to educate the broader public.

The Society also mobilized Orthodox rabbis and Hasidic rebbes to speak out against blood libel. Jewish religious authorities from all over Russia responded that there was no ritual murder of Christian children in Jewish tradition and no Jewish sect that practiced this. The rabbis were able to cite Popes Gregory IX, Clemens VI, Siksta IV and Paul III who condemned blood libel in official papal bulls, as well as Tsar Alexander I who claimed that there was no proof that blood libel existed and that it was merely based on prejudice. Further, the society received support from the Kadets and some socialist groups, who felt that such rampant anti-Semitism was a clear indication of the government's backwardness.54

Vinaver and the ENG continue to encourage activism for self-protection until the interruption of the First World War. The war brought an additional measure of oppression to the Jews of the Pale of Settlement, where most of the fighting occurred.

Many were left homeless and without means of economic support. In addition, Jews were often accused collectively of betraying Russia by hoarding supplies and giving

53 Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 111. 54 The society also lobbied internationally to draw attention to the plight of Russian Jews. The society was so successful that there was a significant strain on U.S.-Russia relations. It is believed that international Jewry was able to influence the respective governments to withhold foreign aid from Russia, which consequently aided Japan in the Russo-Japanese war. See C.C. Aronsfeld, "Jewish Bankers and the Tsar," Jewish Social Studies 35 (1973): 87-104.

31 information to the enemy. Additionally, the Duma offered little help for the Jews. Rather than complete equality of rights for Jews and other minorities the Progressive Bloc, composed of Social Democrats, Kadets and Octobrists, instead called for a gradual increase in their civil rights. When Vinaver and other leaders of the ENG demanded to know the reason the Kadets had abandoned their cause, they were given the answer that discussion of the Jewish Question was "untimely" given the state of war.55

Vinaver's fight for liberalism did not end when Russia's monarchy fell. He worked very closely with the Provisional Government, both as a lawyer and a politician, serving in the Civil Department of Appeals and offering legal opinions regarding selection to the

Constituent Assembly. After the Bolshevik revolution, he was forced to flee Saint

Petersburg under the threat of arrest, and spent six months hiding in Moscow from the

Soviet-controlled police. While there however, he participated in the Moscow

Conference of the Kadet party, speaking on questions of external politics. His public appearance at the Moscow conference forced him to flee once again, this time to the

Crimea, which was outside Bolshevik control. For a time he advised the Crimean Border

Government and Volunteer Army in their fight against Bolshevism, and was sent abroad to rally support from international allies. The Bolsheviks established control of the

Crimean peninsula at the beginning of April 1919, and by May Vinaver was forced into exile in France where he remained until the end of his life in 1926.56

Hamm, "Liberalism and the Jewish Question," 165. Milukov, "Biograficheskii ocherk," 18.

32 Despite the close work conducted by the liberals, Zionists and Bund, the three political streams were ideologically opposed to one another. Although all three believed in the necessity of an improvement in Jewish national cultural life, each had a distinct and often opposing plan to bring about this improvement. While working together to improve life for Russian Jews the three Jewish groups competed with one another for membership, funding and acceptance from the Jewish masses. Arguably, the most emotionally appealing of these movements was Zionism, which promised physical and spiritual redemption from the harsh realities of the Diaspora.

33 Chapter Three

Ahad Ha-am and Spiritual Zionism

Modern Zionism was created in the wake of a series of devastating pogroms that swept through the Pale of Settlement in 1881-1882. The deaths of dozens of Jews and the heavy damage to Jewish property convinced many of the maskilim that any hope of the improvement of Jewish life within the Russian empire was an impossible fantasy. These educated, cultured, elite individuals who had placed their hopes so firmly in the belief that some sort of reconciliation with tsarist Russia was possible watched with shock and horror as these beliefs came crashing down. These maskilim, who had previously believed that Orthodoxy was what kept Jewish culture and the Jewish people trapped behind ghetto walls, rediscovered their Jewish identity. There was a Jewish "going to the people," much like the Populist phenomenon of the previous decades. Jewish students and semi-assimilated intellectuals went to synagogues and prayed with the traditional community on the public fast days after the pogroms. This made a large and favourable impression on members of the Orthodox community. Prior to these actions, Orthodox

Jewry had considered the maskilim to be beyond redemption. In the face of this common crisis, both sides were initially willing to make concessions.

Zionism, or as it was initially known Hibbat Zion, started out as a disjointed group of small organizations. Immediately following the pogroms the raison d'etre of Hibbat Zion was to get as many Jews out of Russia as possible. The group focussed on raising money from wealthy Jews who would support poorer families in their attempts to emigrate from

34 Russia. Indeed, in this it was successful; between 30,000 and 40, 000 Jews emigrated from Russia in 1881-1882 alone,1 many aided by funds from Hibbat Zion.

The early members of Hibbat Zion were not from the Jewish masses, but rather were maskilim, students, former radicals, rabbis, merchants influenced by Haskalah, and a smattering of the assimilated intelligentsia.2 Further organization was impossible due to the oppressive nature of the tsarist government. However, it was not long before the ideological divisions of the movement's founders came to a head.

The first point of contention was the destination of the new Exodus. Many maskilim felt that Palestine was a symbol of "religious fanaticism and obscurantist ignorance." For them, a temporary Exodus to America was a better option. It was their belief that spiritual redemption from the ghetto must precede physical redemption from Exile. In the freedom of America they could achieve a spiritual redemption which they felt would always be unattainable in Russia's autocratic atmosphere. For the Orthodox, messianic redemption could only come after the Jews returned to their homeland. Therefore, "only in the Eretz Yisrael could the Jewish people uphold the Torah as a nation ... as an independent community shaping its life in accordance with the requirements of the

Torah."4 Very quickly, this division grew to an argument over of the fundamental meaning of Zionism. For the maskilim, Zionism was to become a way to prevent the further disintegration of Jewish society. It was their belief that Jewish culture and society

1 Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 49. 2 Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement (1882-1904), (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 30. 3 Ibid, 38. 4 Ibid, 44.

35 needed to be reinvigorated, that religion was no longer enough to hold their people together, that the unity of the Jewish nation was more important than observing Torah, and therefore that the foundations of Jewish life needed to be re-evaluated. For the

Orthodox, such heresy was absolutely unacceptable.

At the head of the secular branch of Zionism was Asher Ginzberg, better known by his pen-name, Ahad Ha-am.5 Ginzberg was born in 1856 in a rural stronghold of Hasidism called Skvira, near Kiev. His family, though not well-off in his early years nonetheless had strong ties to famous Eastern European rebbes. He studied at the local heder until the age of 12 when an improvement in the family's fortunes allowed them to take up a rural leasehold. Here, Ginzberg received instruction in Talmudic law. Being the only son, his parents hoped that he would become a Talmudic scholar; young Asher however, had different ideas. By the age of 14 he had become a vocal critic of Hasidism and traditional

Jewish culture. Within a few short years he had transformed from a devout Hasid to a maskil.

Ginzberg's first forays into secular literature were approved by his father, whose own library was stocked with the medieval philosophy of Maimonides, and certain works of maskilic poetry. Before long however, Ginzberg would sneak home more subversive works, which he read at night and burn before his father woke up in the morning. He also taught himself to read in other languages since the family's rebbe had declared that letters

Ahad Ha-am is literally translated into "One of the People". There is considerable debate over why Ginzberg chose this name, considering he was not seeking anonymity, and never claimed to speak for the Jewish masses. Steven Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha 'am and the Origins of Zionism, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 29.

36 of foreign alphabets were cursed, and by the time of his arranged marriage at 17 he could read and write in Hebrew, Russian, German, Latin, English and French.6

Over time, the center of secular Hibbat Zion developed in Odessa and Vilna became the locus of the Orthodox movement. Neither branch of the informal organisation expected any help from the Hasidim who had a stranglehold on Ukraine. Odessa had long been a haven for revolutionary Jews and a stronghold of Haskalah, so much so "that the pious Hasidim used to say as early as the 1830s that 'the fires of hell began five miles outside of Odessa. '"7 Ginzberg moved his family to this revolutionary city in 1884, and because of his well-known scholarship he was soon invited by the Hebrew intelligentsia to sit on the committee for the fledgling Hibbat Zion organisation. However, the philanthropic nature of Hibbat Zion's work did not impress him. He saw that there was a sizeable gap between what Hibbat Zion could do and what Russia's Jews needed.

Ginzberg felt Hibbat Zion should change from a charitable organisation establishing poor families in Palestine and become instead a "complete system comprehending the entire question of Judaism."8 This view earned him several ideological opponents.9

Moreover, Asher Ginzberg's personality did not endear him to those he met. He was by all accounts an elitist and a snob. He had a great dislike of public life and felt no need to speak for, or directly with the Jewish masses. Though shy, and a poor conversationalist, he was a brilliant essayist. He felt "an inalienable realization that he

6 For a more detailed biography of Asher Ginzberg/ Ahad Ha-am, see Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha 'am and the Origins of Zionism. n Erich Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 57. Luz, Parallels Meet, 86. 9 These opponents included the prominent Zionists Leo Pinsker, Micha Josef Berdyczewski and Moses Lillienblum.

37 had been selected by history to show the Jewish people the way to the Promised Land."

Over the course of his literary career he never felt the need to explain his work, stating that anyone who did not agree with it simply did not understand it. "Like the Biblical prophets, the cultural Zionist [Ginzberg] was convinced that he could probe the depths of the Jewish people's soul. Like the prophets, he felt surrounded by intellectual 'midgets' who unknowingly benefited from the richness of his thought while publicly denouncing him as an insane fool."11

He even took an elitist view of the pogroms of 1881, claiming they were:

an ... excessive gentile response to Jewish exploitation. Indeed... In contrast to the anti-Jewish violence of the fanatical middle ages, Jews are now being attacked for rational, if misguided, reasons. No longer are they hated because there unbelievers; rather, today's hatred is secular and consequently amenable to change.12

Throughout his life, he felt that one-man rule was far superior to democracy, likening it to mob-rule. He was sure that those of higher intellect, like himself, were destined to lead.

When later told that his ideals of spiritual Zionism found no resonance with the masses he scoffed "everybody believes that only the masses are the source of light and progress, and that any idea which the masses cannot grasp is mere nonsense."13

Arnold J. Band, "Ahad Ha-am and Berdyczewski Polarity," in At the Crossroads: Essays on Ahad Ha-am, ed. Jacques Kornberg (Albany: University of New York Press, 1983): 56. David H. Weinberg, Between Tradition and Modernity: Haim Zhitlowski, Simon Dubnow, Ahad Ha-am and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identity, (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1996): 220. 12 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 19. 1 T Ahad Ha-am, "The Time Has Come" in Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism, trans. Leon Simon (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 98.

38 His first contact with other maskilim in Warsaw and Odessa in the early 1880s was disappointing; he found the local Haskilic intellectuals small-minded and condescending;

Ginzberg had never lived in a major urban centre and was treated as a country bumpkin by the Hebrew intelligentsia. Shortly after this he determined that Haskalah was "merely a way-station on the path toward much greater knowledge outside of Judaism."14

Despite his prickly personality, Ginzberg managed to draw a circle of like-minded individuals around him from within the tiny, unorganised Hibbat Zion. He formed these young men into a secret society known as Benei Moshe, the Sons of Moses, which was founded in 1887. These co-conspirators were for the most part, like Ginzberg himself, young, communally disenfranchised, politically ambitious, secular men, who had received no formal education. Each member of Benei Moshe's inner circle was wholeheartedly devoted to Ginzberg, even referring to him as a nistar ("a hidden holy man"). Benei Moshe's purpose was to ready the Jewish people for a return to their homeland through spiritual education and a revival of Hebrew culture. The members of the society saw themselves as the "spiritual elite" of the Jewish people who would act as a vanguard, serving as an example for the masses.15

To become a member of Benei Moshe one had to be at least 25 years old, be prepared to study Hebrew seriously and above all to keep the existence of Benei Moshe a secret, even if the member left the group. Prospective candidates also had to provide detailed information about their lives, including marital status and how their children were

14 Ahad Ha-am, "The Time Has Come," 15. 15 Joseph Salmon, "Ahad Ha-am and Benei Moshe: An Unsuccessful Experiment?" m.At the Crossroads: Essays on Ahad Ha-am, ed. Jacques Kornberg (Albany: University of New York Press, 1983), 99.

39 educated. When a new member joined, he was sworn "to uphold the following tenets:

The land of our fathers and its settlement, the Torah of Israel, our language and its literature, the memory of our people's past, the fundamental customs of our fathers, and the nationalist customs of our lives over the generations."16 Members were not told what was expected of them until a six month initiation period was complete. Ginzberg required that members be wholly devoted to the cause, even at the expense of personal needs; his followers were required to "suffer for the sake of the enlightenment of their people."17

Most of the work accomplished by Benei Moshe was by a small core of members around Asher Ginzberg. This select group began to publish periodicals, set up a library in

Palestine and provided funds for schools, especially schools for girls.18 The rank-and-file members of the society however were never given much to do. In fact there was so much grumbling about the lack of direction that the society eventually dissolved in 1896.

Ginzberg, disappointed that his elite cultural vanguard had failed to live up to its potential eventually referred to Benei Moshe as an "unsuccessful experiment."19

It was during his tenure as leader of Benei Moshe that Asher Ginzberg first revealed himself as Ahad Ha-am. His first work on Jewish nationalism, entitled, "This is Not the

Way" was published in 1888, and was signed as "Ahad Ha-am" ("One of the People").20

16 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 52. 17 Ibid. 47. 1 R Other Zionist groups and Jewish charities had set up schools for boys. The idea of schools for girls was extremely progressive, and did not endear Benei Moshe to Orthodoxy. Ibid. 19 Salmon, "Ahad Ha-am and Benei Moshe," 98. 20 "This is Not the Way" is sometimes translated into English as "The Wrong Way."

40 In this work, he argued that for the Jewish people to survive, "the theological foundations of Judaism would have to be replaced with national-cultural ones."21 He argued that religion had served its purpose in binding the Jewish people together as a nation throughout Exile, but was now preventing them from achieving greatness. The only prudent course would be "to inspire men with a deeper attachment to the national life, and a more ardent desire for the national well-being," lest true Judaism be lost forever.22

"This is Not the Way" articulated the guiding principle of Ahad Ha-am's theory of spiritual Zionism. It was his belief that the Hebrew language, literature, history and above all the land of Palestine were the "fundamental national traditions" of Judaism, was vital that these traditions be maintained as part of the Jewish national spirit. For

Ahad Ha-am, this national spirit manifested itself in a national will to survive which, rather than simple religious traditions, had ensured Judaism's survival through the millennia.24 He later wrote that the Jews are a nation, "not merely a Church. And if we are a nation, then we must have a national spirit, which distinguishes us from other nations, and we must value and protect it as every other nation does with its national spirit."25

Ideally, this national spirit should be allowed to flower in an independent Palestine.

However, as scattered and as dispersed as the Jews were in the Diaspora, they were as yet

Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 35. 22 Ahad Ha-am, "The Wrong Way" in Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism, trans. Leon Simon (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 11. 23 Luz, Parallels Meet, 160. 24 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 110. 25 Ahad Ha-am, "The Time Has Come," 94.

41 not ready for their own, independent state. Therefore, "Zionism's aim was to provide

Diaspora Jewry with a model national Jew; a carrier of a revived Hebrew culture that by its high standards and creativity would draw scattered world Jewry into this circle of

Jewish national consciousness."

This revived Hebrew culture was especially important for the Jews of Western Europe.

Ahad Ha-am argued that the western Jews had been "forced to sacrifice their authenticity as Jews for the sake of emancipation."27Although the Jews of Eastern Europe suffered in great poverty, the plight of the western Jews was worse for they languished in spiritual starvation without even realizing it. For Ahad Ha-am assimilation, such as was extensive in the West, was more of a threat to Judaism than anti-Semitism. He felt that the best minds of the Jewish nation were being lured away from their true home by the promises of civil liberty, and in order to prevent this trend from continuing it was vital to establish a 'spiritual centre' of Judaism which "would in turn establish the basis for our rich and variegated modern national Jewish culture."28

Such a spiritual revival would be impossible in the Diaspora, where the Jews would always be a foreign minority. Therefore Palestine, as the true homeland of the Jews, was the only place that the spiritual revival could be brought about. In Ahad Ha-am's words:

There can be no active national will to live a distinctive spiritual life, even though permission be given under the hand and seal of the ruling power, where the individuals who compose the nation are surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere foreign to them, and breathe this atmosphere whether they will or no, without

Jacques Kornberg, "Ahad Ha-am and Herzl" in At the Crossroads: Essays on Ahad Ha- am, ed. Jacques Kornberg (Albany: University of New York Press, 1983), 108. 27 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 74. 28 Ibid, 80.

42 seeing in the whole world even a square yard of ground which their national spirit, and theirs alone, pervades, subject to no foreign overlord, and in which it creates with its own means of production enough spiritual wealth to satisfy the whole people.29

It was vitally important that Hebrew be revived as national language of the Jews.

Ahad Ha-am had a great appreciation for Jewish culture and history, an appreciation he felt was lacking in the greater community. He loathed the use of Yiddish, claiming that it was only a bastardized jargon. Judaism's rejuvenation would have to be brought about through the catalyst of revived Hebrew. Indeed, all of his essays were written in Hebrew, and he had little patience for those whose fluency in a language was less than his own.

Interestingly, although capable of conversing in Hebrew Ahad Ha-am rarely spoke it, feeling rather that it was a language of literature and lofty ideals. Indeed, when visiting

Palestine he would only converse in Russian, German or Yiddish, even when addressed in

Hebrew.30

Ahad Ha-am felt that Judaism could not survive on its own, but rather needed "to contribute to the common stock of humanity."31 In order to do this, Judaism "needs not an independent State, but only the creation in its native land of conditions favourable to its development: a good-sized settlement of Jews working without hindrance in every branch of culture, from agriculture and handicrafts to science and literature."32This spiritual centre of Judaism would create a common bond for Jews in the Diaspora, preventing

29 Ahad Ha-am, "The Time Has Come," 107-108. 30 Tudor Parfitt, "Ahad Ha-am's Role in the Revival and Development of Hebrew," in At the Crossroads: Essays on Ahad Ha-am, ed. Jacques Kornberg (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), 15-20. 31 Ahad Ha-am, "The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem" in Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism, trans. Leon Simon (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 44. 32 Ibid. (Italics in original)

43 national disintegration through assimilation. That way, when the time was right for independent statehood Palestine would be "a Jewish state, and not merely a state of

Jews."33

In 1896 Ahad Ha-am found an even larger platform for his ideas when he became editor of the new Hebrew periodical Ha-Shiloah.34 The journal itself quickly came to reflect the editor's elitism; all submitted material was to have an "explicitly Jewish content," with scholarship and journalism featured prominently, and frivolities like fiction and belle-lettres appearing only infrequently.35It was to have refined "European-like expression in Hebrew, unlike the sloppy style of maskillic journals."36Ahad Ha-am was even more demanding as an editor than he was as the political leader of Benei Moshe. He often had fights with his writers over the Jewishness of their content, and many of his last-minute editorial changes made without the authors' knowledge.37

While Ahad Ha-am's theories gained popularity with other secular Zionists, the fact that the spiritual revival of Judaism would not include a religious revival greatly upset members of the Orthodox community. They were also highly concerned about the popularity of secular Hibbat Zion. Many of the Orthodox rabbis who had initially supported the Hibbat Zion movement withdrew their support in the early 1890s. By 1894

33 Ahad Ha-am, "The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem," 45. (Italics in original) 34 The title for the periodical Ha-Shiloah was taken from the name of a Biblical River in Jerusalem "whose waters run softly." Ali Attia, "Ahad Ha-am, the Editor of Ha- Shiloah" in At the Crossroads: Essays on Ahad Ha-am, ed. Jacques Kornberg (Albany: University of New York Press, 1983), 28. 35 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 118. 36 Ibid. 116. 37 Attia, "Ahad Ha-am, the Editor of Ha-Shiloah,"30-32.

44 members of the Orthodox community created an anti-Zionist movement known as the

"Defenders of the Faith," which spoke out openly against Hibbat Zion, and forbade the raising of funds within Orthodox jurisdictions. Predictably, Hasidic rebbes were completely unwilling to support the Hibbat Zion.

Hibbat Zion was never very large; in the early 1890s less than one percent of the Jewish population were members. Although the tsarist government officially approved Hibbat

Zion in 1890, their activities were officially limited to raising funds for settlements in

Palestine.38 Hibbat Zion also faced competition for support from the Bund and other revolutionary groups who were "offering something tangible" rather than some vague hope for the future.39 There was also contention among the secular branches of Hibbat

Zion. By 1895 a democratic faction and a labour faction had also formed. When

Orthodoxy withdrew its support in the mid-1890s the tiny Hibbat Zion was crippled, and found that its practical activities, such as fund raising and agricultural developments in

Palestine, were brought to a virtual standstill in the face of the internal opposition.

1 Q The tsarist government was supportive of the early Zionist movement as it encouraged Jewish emigration from Russia and distracted the remaining Jewish youth from revolutionary movements. Zionist groups were allowed to meet without specific permission from local magistrates, circulate periodicals, and raise funds. Once Hibbat Zion received official sanction it became restricted to a few very specific tasks. Interestingly, as an illegal organization the group had had more freedom in choosing its policy and direction. In 1902 the tsarist government realized that Zionism was not promoting Jewish emigration, but rather Jewish nationalism, (as was the case with other revolutionary groups) and withdrew its support. Luz, Parallels Meet, 245. 39Ibid, 150.

45 Fortunately for the Zionist movement, the Austro-Hungarian Jew, Theodore Herzl exploded onto the public scene in 1897.40 It was Herzl's belief that the Jews must be united behind a leader, and that in one great push, using politics and diplomacy, the goal of a Jewish homeland could be achieved. Herzl had many supporters in the religious

Orthodox camp, including those who had left Hibbat Zion, "who were ready to follow him almost blindly."4'This fact seems odd when one considers that while Herzl believed religion was inseparable from the Jewish nation, a separation of church and state was to be a given for the new Jewish homeland. In an attempt to maintain the unity of the

Jewish nation Herzl ignored the issues of secular Hebrew culture, so as not to antagonize his Orthodox following. This of course did not endear Herzl to Ahad Ha-am and his spiritual-Zionist followers.

Although Herzl and Ahad Ha-am met at the first international Zionist conference in

Basel in 1897, the two did not get along well. Herzl saw Ahad Ha-am as backward and ultra-orthodox, while Ahad Ha-am considered Herzl to be "frivolous and glib" rather than thoughtful and intelligent.42 In his opinion, Herzl completely ignored Jewish history and culture, and pandered to the masses, while disregarding the future of Jewry. While it is entirely possible that Ahad Ha-am was simply jealous of Herzl's popularity and standing in the Zionist community, he found substantive reasons to reject Herzl and his plan for the future of Judaism.

As the movement gained popularity in the West it became known as Zionism. Hibbat Zion abandoned its original name to become a part of the larger Zionist movement. 41 Luz, Parallels Meet, 114. 2 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 132.

46 Ahad Ha-am used Ha-Shiloah, which was by this time the most important Hebrew periodical published, to demonstrate what was wrong with Herzlian Zionism. Following the Basel conference Ahad Ha-am wrote a biting peace on Herzl and his views.43 He claimed that the conference had fostered false hopes for the Jews, and that the lofty goal of the conference, the timely establishment of an independent Jewish state, was an impossible dream given the level of Jewish national development. He felt that the Jews were unprepared to run a government, given their lack of political experience. He declared that he had felt alone in his convictions at the conference, the sole voice of reason, where he sat "like a mourner at a wedding feast."44 He remained convinced that the future of Judaism would not be guaranteed by diplomatic means, and that a state would be nothing without a true nation and a distinct identity to uphold it. This essay made a bad impression on his fellow Zionists in Eastern Europe; even the former members of Benei Moshe had nothing but positive things to say of Herzl and the direction he was taking the Zionist movement. Because of the fact that Herzl refused to address the question of secular Hebrew culture for fear of alienating the Orthodox Zionists, he had a large and loyal following and was treated as a folk hero by the masses in Eastern

Europe.45 Thanks to "The First Zionist Conference" Ahad Ha-am was labelled as a

"dangerous scoffer" and a pessimist.46

Ahad Ha-am, "The First Zionist Conference," in Essays on Zionism and Judaism, trans. Leon Simon (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 25-31. 44 Ibid, 30. 45 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 131. 46 Ibid. 135.

47 Nonetheless, from 1897-1902 Ahad Ha- am wrote dozens of essays and letters expounding his philosophy. He continually claimed that Herzl's so-called "practical"

Zionism was like building a house without first digging a foundation. Over the same period those in Herzl's camp pointed out that Ahad Ha-am was overly concerned with the

Jewish soul, and not enough with the practical future of the Jewish people. After all, a foundation without a house is nothing more than a hole in the ground.

Those who shared Ahad Ha-am's opinion were definitely in the minority. Herzl had taken centre stage for the Zionist cause, bringing the political legitimacy and charismatic leadership that Hibbat Zion had been missing. Under Herzl's guidance, Zionism became an international force in Western Europe and America. The centre of Zionism moved to the West with regional branches reporting to Herzl in Vienna. In the next series of international Zionist conferences (in 1901,1903, and 1905, all in Western Europe) Herzl controlled the agenda and refused to address the cultural question which still troubled many Jews from Eastern Europe; both religious and secular Zionists wanted to have the question settled once and for all.

At the turn of the century personal difficulties arose for Ahad Ha-am. He suffered a series of business setbacks and spells of illness that, coupled with his exclusion from the centre of the fight for Judaism's future, caused him to lapse into frustration and depression. Readership of the theoretically based Ha-Shiloah and Hebrew literature in general fell off in the face of increasing anti-Semitism and the growing push for civil equality. In 1902 he gave up his position as editor of Ha-Shiloah and became a tea

48 merchant, a position that required him to travel throughout Russia and left him little time to write.47

Meanwhile, Herzl failed to attract the Jewish elite of Western Europe to his cause.

Baron Rothschild in particular refused to cooperate with Herzl's ideal or to help fund his projects.48 Therefore, Herzl realised that the focus of the Zionist movement would have to return to the East, where the majority of Europe's Jews still resided. But the question of Hebrew culture still remained. Many secular Zionists in Russia, despite having great respect for Herzl, felt that the development of a national Hebrew culture was vital.

The majority of these "culturalists" were Russian University students who because of the numerus clausus imposed on enrolment were educated in Western European universities.49 They had "found assimilated [West European] Jews pathetic, the socialists self-deluded, and the Jewish folk lethargic, superstitious and in need of moral and political transformation," and were vocal with their concerns.50 They used increasingly violent anti-Semitism from the Russian Orthodox Church, to make all religion "appear to

47 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 159. 48 Ibid, 175. 49 "Culturalists" is the term used by Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet, to describe a branch of Zionism often called "radical Zionism." These young students felt the need, as Ahad Ha- am did, to lead the people to a higher level of understanding of Jewish culture and history. They also believed in politicizing the masses in ways that Ahad Ha-am found repugnant. Some of these young Zionists include Chaim Weizmann (the first President of the State of Israel) and Hayyim Nahman Bialik (one of Israel's national poets). Luz, Parallels Meet, 167-170 50 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 141.

49 be the most dangerous enemy of social reform."51 It was not difficult to extend this idea to actions of the Jewish Orthodox community:

Not only did the rabbis preach loyalty and submission to the tsarist government, but on occasion they represented themselves to the authorities as the only force in Jewish Society that remained faithful to them. Obviously such a stance could en only exacerbate the schism between them and the younger generation.

This younger generation embraced the foundations of Ahad Ha-am's ideas but felt that he was highly impractical. He was seen as the philosopher of the bourgeoisie, only satisfying spiritual needs with no concern for the day to day reality of the Jewish masses.

These culturalists had gained such influence and voice within the Zionist movement that by the Zionist Conference in Minsk in 1902 they were able to insist on the inclusion of the culture issue on the agenda. The result was a major battle between the religious and secular factions over the issue of Hebrew culture which Herzl had long hoped to avoid.

In fact, the battle was postponed in the face of a major pogrom which broke out in this city of Kishinev in 1903. By the time the dust had settled, 44 Jews were dead, hundreds had been beaten, and more than a million roubles worth of damage had been done to

Jewish property. In the wake of the violence, Kishinev became a metaphor for Eastern

European Jewish suffering and for the "inadequacy of standard Jewish responses to oppression."53For Jewish communities of the era, the traditional response to violence had been to avoid attracting further attention to themselves by complaining to the authorities or demanding reparations. The pogroms in Kishinev however, drew international attention, and compared to the era of pogroms in 1881-1882 the Jews of Eastern Europe

51 Luz, Parallels Meet, 175. 52 Ibid. 53 Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 201.

50 were highly politicized and much more vocal in their demands for basic rights. Many

Jews shared Ahad Ha-am's opinion that the pogroms had simply demonstrated Jewry's weaknesses. He declared that "a people five million strong must acknowledge that they are men, not beasts ready for the slaughter."54 He, and many others especially among the younger generation, decided that Jewish self-defence was essential. For the Zionist camp this was a radical opinion, but it was shared by many members of the Bund, and resulted in a further increase in the Bund's popularity.55

In 1903, in a seemingly desperate attempt to achieve Zionist goals in one fell swoop, and perhaps to stop the haemorrhaging of Zionism's support in Eastern Europe, Herzl proposed the creation of an independent Jewish State in East Africa.56 His proposition split the Zionists even more than the issue of culture had. Those who had regarded Herzl as a folk hero felt deeply betrayed, accusing him of being nothing more than a

"territorialist" - someone who was willing to give up on Eretz Yisrael for any piece of land on which the Jews would be tolerated. Herzl had never felt any special attachment to Palestine. He viewed the Zionist bond to Eretz Yisrael "more emotional and existential than ideological and theoretical,"57 and was willing to make a homeland for the Jews outside of the Promised Land. He felt deeply betrayed when the Russian delegates at the

Quoted in Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 204. 55 The Bund, a Jewish workers' organisation with Marxist ideology, formed battle squads to defend Jewish workers' homes and properties. See Chapter Three. 56 The proposed land was located in modern Kenya; this entire episode of Zionist history is known as the "Uganda controversy." 57 Luz, Parallels Meet, 263.

51 next Zionist conference in Basel, 1903 staged a walkout, calling themselves 'Zionists for

Zion.'58

For Ahad Ha-am, Herzl's proposal showed the depth of his misconception of the nature of Judaism, and he strongly opposed the Uganda proposition. He felt that as the

Jewish National homeland, Palestine not only provided a refuge for Jews who needed

"peace and bread, but for the spirit of the people, for that distinctive cultural form, the results of a historical development of thousands of years, which is still strong enough to live and to develop naturally in the future, if only the fetters ofgaluth are removed."59

Only in Palestine would the Jewish nation be free of the curses of Exile.

Herzl never had a chance to reclaim the status he had lost in the eyes of the secular

Zionists; he died suddenly in 1904 at the age of 44. The Zionist movement found itself without a leader. Given the failure of the Uganda proposal and Herzl's unexpected departure, Ahad Ha-am expected to find his original theories gaining acceptance again as the young culturalists began to take charge of the Zionist movement.

He was to be disappointed. Events in Eastern Europe would soon draw attention away from the struggle for the future of Judaism. Prior to the 1905 revolution, the campaign for Jewish national rights was subordinated to other issues. Domestic events in Russia prompted the Bund and some Zionists to pledge themselves to multinational parties with a stake in Russia's constitutional future, with the idea that when the new order came to power Jews would receive equal civil rights. Ahad Ha-am was dismayed at this lack of

58 Luz, Parallels Meet, 263. 59 Ahad Ha-am, "The Time Has Come," 91-113.

52 national pride, claiming that the Jewish case was unique. "Only the Jews were humiliated and reduced in their moral status as a result of the loss of independence. Thus their situation could not be improved by the simple acquisition of political or legal rights." At the lack of support for his life's work Ahad Ha-am fell into another bout of depression.

When more pogroms erupted after the 1905 revolution he had only a dispassionate reaction. Ahad Ha-am felt that the physical survival of the Jewish masses was not necessarily as important as the survival of Judaism.

Following the failure of Russia's early Dumas to grant equal civil rights to the Jews

Ahad Ha-am immigrated to London in 1907. He disliked the assimilated British Jews and felt that the Russian Jewish expatriates were "an undistinguished mass of revolutionaries and religionists who were more concerned with economic betterment than with enlightenment."61 He welcomed Russia's February revolution of 1917, hoping that it would spread justice and peace throughout the world; he was quickly disappointed.

While in London he compiled many of his essays and letters, which were published in

1919. In 1922 he immigrated to Palestine, where he was treated as a luminary; well- respected and esteemed by the Hebrew intelligentsia. He died in Tel Aviv in 1927.

Ahad Ha-am's emigration coincided with the end of Russia's Zionist movement.

From 1905 onward national consciousness took second place to social and economic developments. For Russia's Jews, the Bund and other socialist movements would become increasingly popular as they promised immediate and substantial change.

Weinberg, Between Tradition and Modernity, 246. Ibid, 251.

53 Chapter Four

Vladimir Davidovich Medem and the Bund

The General Jewish Labour Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, or as it is more commonly known the Bund, began as a series of Jewish workers' study circles in Vilna in the mid-1880s, an outgrowth of the Nihilist movement which had been strong in Vilna in the 1860s-1870s.1 The leaders of these circles, most of whom would become the pioneers of the Bund, were from middle-income families strongly influenced by Haskalah, and had received a secular Russian education. They were guided by the belief that "the duty of the revolutionary intelligentsia was to instill consciousness in the workers and pave the way for self-liberation." Therefore, the circle leaders instructed workers in Russian language, basic natural sciences and the fundamentals of Marxism, with the hope that they would go on to instruct other workers and help to foster proletarian consciousness among the masses. The Jewish Question was not addressed in the circles; rather, the leaders hoped that their proteges would develop the internationalist perspective central to Marxist ideology.

Although an in-depth examination of the Nihilist movement is beyond the scope of this paper, a few facts may be helpful. The Nihilist movement began as a series of student study circles, in which students would gather and share forbidden political literature. The circles soon began to include other members of society with the belief that it was the "moral duty of the educated, privileged individual to dedicate himself to the betterment of society." [Haberer, Jews and Revolution, 36] The Vilna circle was extremely successful; however, most of the circle's senior agents were arrested in 1870. Nonetheless, the sentiment of self-education as a means of salvation remained. For a comprehensive review of Jewish involvement in the Nihilist movement, see Erich Haberer, Jews and Revolution. 2 Henry J. Tobias, The Bund in Russia: From Its Origins to 1905 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 15.

54 Marxism at the time was gaining in popularity throughout Russia as the population of urban workers grew. The abolition of serfdom in 1861, favourable government policies, and a massive increase in population had all helped usher the Industrial Revolution into

Russia. Despite an increase in emigration,3 the Jewish population tripled between 1847 and 1897. In North-Western cities (such as Vilna and Minsk) the Jews represented up to

57.9% of the urban population, while constituting less than five percent of the population of the entire Empire.4 It was in these cities that the Bund would be most successful.

Marxism was also growing in the Polish provinces of Russia. The failed Polish revolt of 1863 had led for a time to passive resistance and Polish nationalism on the part of the defeated Poles. Nonetheless, the generation of Polish nationalists that came of age in the 1880s and 1890s "rejected the complacency and conciliatory politics of their parents and instead formed conspiratorial national and socialist movements."5 While feelings of solidarity with the socialists in Russia existed, the Polish Marxists felt the need for an independent movement that would look to specific Polish interests. Thus the

Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, hereafter PPS) was founded in 1892 with the minimum political goal of independence for Poland.6 The founding members of the PPS included a number of Polonized Jews, who expected that other Jews in the Pale

3 More than 3 million Jews left Russia between 1882 and 1914. Marks, How Russia Shaped the Modern World, 146. Tobias, The Bund in Russia 5, 6. 5 Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892-1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 11. 6 Independent Poland was to consist not only of the Polish provinces, but also parts of Lithuania and Ukraine, provinces previously united with the Polish Commonwealth (1569-1795).

55 and Congress Poland would identify politically as Poles without separate religious or ethnic interests. The PPS platform also included "complete equality of the nationalities entering into the composition of the republic on the basis of a voluntary federation, [and] the equality of all citizens regardless of sex, race, nationality or religion."7 Thus, because of their non-territorial status, Jews were to be denied national rights as the new Polish state was to be formed along national-territorial lines. As individuals, however, the Jews were to receive full civil rights.

Leaders of the PPS met with the Vilna group in 1893, hoping to convince them to join the PPS movement. Members of the Vilna group were uneasy with the idea of Polish independence as a primary goal. They felt that international worker solidarity for the socialist revolution should take precedence over the political goals of any individual group. In turn, the leaders of the PPS accused the Vilna group of acting as agents of

Russification and against the political aspirations of the Poles.8 Both parties were convinced that they should speak for the Jews of Poland. This was the beginning of several decades of squabbling between the PPS and the Bund.

Shortly after this meeting the Vilna group of Jewish social democrats began a gradual change in tactics. Rather than focussing on education, the members began an agitation campaign among the broader Jewish masses. The group concentrated on an amelioration of the daily conditions faced by Jewish workers, such as a call for a 12 hour workday (16 hour days were common), and an improvement in workshop hygiene. The Vilna group began to organise workers and had some success in achieving worker demands through

7 Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality, 22. 8 Ibid. 28.

56 strikes. However, in order to agitate successfully among the Jewish masses, the Vilna group was forced to use Yiddish, which many of them did not speak.9 Worker- intellectuals (also known as polu-intelligenti, or half-intellectuals, usually yeshiva students) who could speak and write Russian were used by the Vilna group to translate

Russian agitational material into Yiddish.10

While Yiddish was only to be a tool used to teach the masses until such time as they were integrated into the wider Russian social democratic movement, it was nonetheless important to have a supply of socialist literature available in the language of the masses.

As such, the Vilna group formed a "Jargon Committee" in 1895 "to spread good literature among the Jewish workers, to found workers' libraries for Jews in the provinces, and to put out popular scientific books and literary works in Yiddish."1' The Jargon Committee established two periodicals, Der Yidisher Arbeter (The Yiddish Worker) and Der Arbeter

Shtime (The Workers' Voice), in addition to a series of pamphlets to communicate with the Yiddish-speaking masses.

The original Vilna group began to found other social democratic branches in cities throughout the Pale of Settlement, such as Minsk and Bialystok.12 Focusing on the immediate needs of the workers, the social democratic colonies were able to strike

9 Yiddish was considered to be a bastardised jargon of the masses, and not a language at all. One of the reasons that Russian was taught in the early worker circles was to because it was considered the "language of emancipation form the ghetto."[Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 32.] Many integrationist families spoke Russian at home, and certainly the leaders of the Vilna group with secular Russian educations would be able to read or write in the Yiddish "jargon." Ibid, 35. 10 Ibid, 36-37. "ibid, 36. 12 In the historiography of the Bund, this is known as the period of "colonization." See Ibid, 22-34.

57 successfully for higher wages, shorter hours, heated shops in the winter months, civil treatment by employers, and more hygienic working conditions.13 These local chapters were not regulated by the Vilna branch, but nonetheless received Yiddish literature, and occasional financial support from the pioneers.

Attempts were made to establish a colony in Warsaw, a stronghold of the PPS. The

PPS responded to the assault from the Jewish social democrats by establishing their own

"Jewish Section." It was the Jewish Section's task to form a bond between the Jewish and Catholic workers in Poland, and convince the Jewish workers that it was in their best interest to belong to an independent Polish state (as Poles). The PPS was determined "that the Jewish proletariat could have common goals only with the proletariat of the nation among whom it lives."14 While the Jewish Section was not as successful in generating

Yiddish literature as the Vilna group, it prevented the Vilna group from becoming established in Congress Poland.

By 1897 the Jews under the auspices of the Vilna group and its colonies were the most politicised, albeit fractured group of workers in Russia. The Vilna leaders realised it was necessary to unite all of the Jewish social democratic groups, not only to provide a united front against the PPS, but also in anticipation of the formation of an empire-wide Russian social democratic party.15 The leaders of the Vilna group and the established colonies all believed that Jewish workers in Russia needed special representation within the broader social democratic movement. Several key factors differentiated the Jewish worker from

13Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 38-43. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality, 87. 15 Ibid, 85.

58 his gentile brother. Although factory mechanisation proceeded apace in gentile factories,

Jewish workshops were slower to incorporate new technologies. Due to this slower rate of mechanisation, Jewish workers were less likely than their Christian brothers to be employed in large factories.16 Rather, Jewish workers were most often employed in smaller workshops, owned by Jews. Moreover, the Jewish worker faced legal and social restrictions that did not hamper the Christian worker. By 1894 the Jewish social democrats affirmed that the Jewish worker suffered under a double-yoke: once as a worker, and once as a Jew.17 They felt that the rights granted in a post-tsarist world depended on the relative political power of each national group at the end of the tsarist regime, and that therefore the Jews must become a visible and powerful political entity to ensure their future rights.

The Bund's founding congress was held in great secrecy in Vilna in 1897. Because of the need for security, only 13 delegates were present, none of whom had been elected by the workers they represented, but rather participated at the invitation of the Vilna leaders.

The congress created a Central Committee to direct the organisation without becoming involved in local affairs.18 A Foreign Committee was also established to help bring illegal socialist literature into Russia from abroad. It was decided that the "new organisation would enter the Russian party (when it was formed) as an autonomous

There is also evidence that Christian employers were unwilling to employ Jewish workers who would not work on Saturdays (the Jewish Sabbath). See Zimmerman, Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality, 14-17. 17 Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 54. The local chapters were to carry on the same activities as before: organising workers, supporting the strike movement, demonstrating worker solidarity, and distributing literature.

59 section, with the right to make decisions in all Jewish matters." Taking the title "The

General Jewish Labour Union in Russia and Poland" was an attempt to demonstrate the

Bund's intention to speak for all Jewish workers in the empire.20 Naturally, the PPS was not pleased as it had hoped to unite all groups in Russian Poland under their banner.

Shortly after the Bund's founding congress the PPS published a series of denunciations in its party organ, condemning the Bund's "separatist" activities, claiming that such actions only strengthened the tsarist government's position. The Bund promptly accused the

PPS of anti-Semitism.22

Despite their disagreements, members of the Bund and the PPS both attended the founding congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Russiskaia sotsial- demokraticheskaia rabochaia partiia - RSDRP) in March of 1898, and both had terms to be met before joining. For the Bund, autonomy over all cultural Jewish matters was necessary, as the defence of the "particular interests of Jewish workers, conducting a struggle for their civil rights, and, above all, waging a campaign against anti-Jewish legislation" was the Bund's raison d'etre.23 The PPS declared that it would only work with the Russian social democrats if Polish independence was included on the party's platform, and if the Russians recognised the PPS's area of territorial control, what is today Poland, parts of Lithuania and Ukraine. When the Russian social democrats were

Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 67. 20 "In Lithuania" would be added to the Bund's title following its expulsion from the RSDRP. 21 Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality, 90. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid, 85.

60 unwilling to fight for Polish independence, the PPS withdrew from the congress, while the Bund became part of the fledgling organisation.24

The Bund's Central Committee members were swept up in the massive wave of arrests that followed the congress. While the organisation was still able to function due to the strength of the local chapters, its printing press was seized, severely limiting its communication abilities. Nonetheless, the Bund was able to function again fully within a matter of months under the guidance of a new generation of leaders. Local chapters were directed to create their own region-specific literature when possible, and continue their agitational activities as before. The Foreign Committee, based in Geneva, was instrumental in smuggling literature into Russia with the help of agents along the border.25 Indeed, with the local committees focused on economic agitation, the Foreign

Committee was to become significant in determining the course of the Bund's political agenda.

The national question was gaining influence in international Marxists circles at the turn of the century. The relation between the nation-state and the ethno-national groups within its borders was becoming more important with the liberalisation of governments in ethnically variegated Eastern and Central Europe. While orthodox Marxism had always claimed that nationalism was a bourgeois concept and that national differences would

24 The Bund's requirements for autonomy fit in well with the RSDRP's structure at the time. The RSDRP was in no position to exercise the tight central control that would later become a hallmark of the organisation. Indeed, the desire for autonomy was necessary for the Bund's inclusion. See Tobias, The Bund in Russia. 25 The bristle- and brush-makers were instrumental in these smuggling operations. They were among the best-organised of all the Jewish trades, and were located along the Western border. See Vladimir Medem, The Life and Soul of a Legendary Jewish Socialist, trans. Samuel A. Portnoy, (New York: KTAV Publishing House Inc. 1979), 163.

61 disappear with the advent of socialism, new theories from Central Europe were gaining credence.26 Particularly helpful to the Bund were the theories of Karl Kautsky. He had proposed a non-territorial solution to the national question in Austria-Hungary - a federation of autonomous nationalities. Kautsky argued that workers should not be hostile to national movements as the proletariat "had to have an adequate answer to the national question before it could correctly lead a class struggle."27 The Bund would eventually develop a national program based on non-territorial cultural autonomy, which

no would be its most distinguishing characteristic.

One of the Bund's most influential theorists was Vladimir Davidovich Medem who, at first glance, would seem to be one of the least likely people to develop a comprehensive theory of Jewish nationality. Medem was born in Minsk in 1879 to a wealthy assimilated Jewish family. He was baptised at birth into the Russian Orthodox

Church.29 The family spoke Russian at home, and participated in all Russian holidays. He was extremely religious as a child, and deeply ashamed of his family's Jewish past claiming "I bore my Jewish origins like a heavy burden. It was shameful to me... a kind

An examination of all relevant Marxist theories is beyond the scope of this paper. Roni Gechtman has conducted a wonderful study of the socialist interpretation of the national question with respect to the Bund's national policies in his doctoral dissertation. See, Roni Gechtman, "Yidisher Sotsializm: The Origin and Contexts of the Jewish Labour Bund's National Program" (PhD Diss., New York University, 2005), 32-75. 27 Zimmerman, Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality, 110. 28 Gechtman, Yidisher Sotsializm, 3. 29 Medem's family had converted to Lutheranism and it is unclear why he was baptised as Russian Orthodox. According to Jewish law, Vladimir Medem was not Jewish, nor did he undergo a religious conversion, believing in the secular Yiddish culture he helped to create.

62 of secret disease.' Medem gives no explanation for his change of self-identity other than a feeling of "nostalgia for Jewishness."31 Indeed, he felt his life had been divided into two parts: a Russian childhood and Jewish adulthood.

After attending a Russian gymnasium, Medem began to study medicine at the

University of Kiev, but was expelled in his second year for participating in a student strike. Returning home to Minsk, Medem discovered that his expulsion was a virtual ticket into the Russian radical movement. He began to study Marx and became involved with the local Bund chapter, agitating among the Christian workers, as he was still considered by his Jewish comrades to be a goy. He had a romantic view of the workers as the bringers of the future socialist revolution, and was disappointed by their seeming lack of poverty when he first met with them. He was arrested in 1901, and sentenced to a term in Siberia, but thanks to family intervention was able to escape to Switzerland.32

At the time, the Bund was the strongest part of the RSDRP. In 1900 the Bund contained approximately 5,600 members, by 1903, this increased to more than 30,000.33

This presence did not go unnoticed by the leaders of the RSDRP in exile. Lenin and

Julius Martov (a former Bundist) under the banner of the new party organ Iskra (The

Spark) sought to reorganise the party into a more centralised structure under their control, a structure which would not have space for an autonomous Bund. A series of attacks appeared in Iskra claiming that the Bund favoured chauvinistic nationalism. Pressure was also exerted from the right as the Bund expanded its territory southward towards Odessa.

30 Medem, Life and Soul, 3. 31 Ibid. 129. 32 Ibid, 150-216. Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 140.

63 Confrontations with Zionist organisations increased. The Bundists believed that the

Zionist ideals were completely naive, and that Jewish employers would continue to exploit their workers in a bourgeois Palestine. They also rejected the bourgeois nationalism of Zionist theorists such as Ahad Ha-am who claimed that the Jews were a chosen people. As such, the Bund faced increasing pressure to define its stance on the national question.

However, at the Fourth Congress in Bialystok (1901) the Bund was considerably divided as to where they stood on the national question. The Foreign Committee in

Switzerland felt that questions of nationality should take a central place in the Bund's platform, while the members still working in Russia were considerably more internationalist in their sentiments. As such, debates on the place of the national question dominated the proceedings. In a compromise, it was determined that as social democrats the Bund should condemn oppression of any kind, whether civil, national, or that of the government over its people, but that the time was not right to press for Jewish autonomy.

Nonetheless, the Bund declared that the Jews were in fact a nation and would work for the repeal of all specifically anti-Jewish discriminatory laws.34

This definition of the Jews as a nation was one of the major points of contention between the Bund and the PPS. The PPS based their definition of a nation on historical territory; therefore, the Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Russians were nations because of their historic territorial claims, and each nation would have cultural autonomy in the future independent Poland. The Jews were not defined as a nation because of this lack of territory. The Bund based their definition of a nation along cultural-linguistic lines; therefore, the Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Jews were each considered separate nations because of their different cultural-linguistic histories. The Bund would eventually call for Russia to become a state-of-nationalities, rather than a nation-state. See Gechtman, "Yidisher Sotsializm," 1-31.

64 The use of terror also divided the Bund. While officially denouncing terror as counter­ productive to revolutionary aims, a grey-area existed over the question of violence as a means of retribution. The Bund's Central Committee insisted that it was their objective to fight against the tsarist regime, rather than individuals. Conversely, local organizations felt that violent retaliation for police brutality was not only reasonable, but offered the

Jewish workers a sense of self-worth, allowing them to stand up for themselves in the face of oppression. The Congress decided to allow the local organisations the choice of whether or not to use retaliatory violence on a case-by-case basis.

Meanwhile, the Iskraites were preparing for an all-out assault on the Bund's power and autonomous position within the RSDRP. The Bund and the Iskraites were given the joint responsibility of planning the RSDRP's Second Congress. Without too much manoeuvring, Lenin was able to place members loyal to himself and Iskra on various organising sub-committees, and give a false impression of his goals. At the same time another wave of arrests had reduced the Bund's representation at organisational meetings.

As a result, the Iskraites behind Lenin and Martov were able to control the agenda for the

Second Congress of the RSDRP.36

While in Bern, Medem had continued to work with the Bund and other members of the

RSDRP. In 1903 he was invited to speak at the Bund's Fifth Congress in Zurich, which was to take place just before the RSDRP's Second Congress. The Zurich Congress was to map out the Bund's future within the RSDRP, and define their stance on the national

35 Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 88, 100. 36 Henry J. Tobias, "The Bund and Lenin Until 1903," Russian Review 20 (1961): 344- 357.

65 question. Personally, Medem disliked "nationalistic aspirations and appetites. [He] passionately hated the very word 'nationalist.' On the other side, the assimilationist school of thought, especially in the form in which it exulted in the columns of Iskra, had aroused a profound distaste in [him]."

Instead, Medem declared that a social democratic solution to the national question existed between the two extremes of assimilation and bourgeois chauvinistic nationalism.

He claimed that socialism must remain neutral in terms of the development of a national culture: if because of historical trends the Jews, or any other national group, were destined to assimilate into the cultures among which they lived, social democracy would support it: if instead, historical trends determined that the Jewish national culture must continue and thrive, social democracy must support that end. What socialism could not support was overtly assimilationist or nationalist tendencies imposed by the state, but must instead support the free development of the national culture for as long as the nation's people wished their culture to continue. It was the responsibility of socialism "to recognise the entitlement of every social collective to solve the national problem any way it deemed acceptable." 38 This statement, which became known as "neutralism," was rejected by the Fifth Congress of the Bund, but would nonetheless remain an fundamental topic of debate in the Bund's national program until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Medem would have opportunity later to more fully develop his theories.

Medem, Life and Soul, 263. Yosef Gorny, Converging Alternatives: The Bund and the Zionist Labour Movement, 1897-1985, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), 34.

66 Overall, the national question was deemed less important than the Bund's position with respect to the RSDRP. At the Zurich Congress, the Bund drafted a set of "minimum proposals" that the RSDRP would have to agree to in order for the Bund to remain a part of the larger party. These proposals included the right of the Bund to be the sole representative of the Jewish proletariat in the Russian empire, the right to pursue their own objectives so long as they were consistent with social democratic goals, and to be substantially independent.39 In effect, the Bund wanted the RSDRP to be a federation of social democratic parties, a desire that was wildly inconsistent with the Iskraite goal of centralisation. In view of the importance of the upcoming Congress, the Bund agreed to present a united front to the rest of the RSDRP and not mention their internal debates over the national question.

When the Kishinev pogrom broke out just prior to the Bund's fifth Congress in 1903, the Bundist leadership was quick to point out the economic aspects of the pogrom: rich

Jews were not bothered by the violent mobs as they could pay others to defend their property, poorer Jews had no such help. The pogromists were deemed to be "socially backward" and "misled workers who followed their spiritual and material masters blindly."40 The leadership also minimized the national aspect of the violence to prevent an increase in Zionist popularity.

The pogroms had a galvanising effect on Jews of all political dispositions. The Bund felt that in this instance violence against oppression was wholly justified, and was among the first to call for self-defence, a call that was echoed by the Jewish Liberals, and some

39 Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 204. 40Ibid,221.

67 Zionists such as Ahad Ha-am. The Bund called on their local organizations to prepare for resistance against further violence "and placed itself on a war footing against the elements in the greater society that would assault the Jewish community."41 Battle squads (Boevie

Otriady, or BO) were formed from among the carpenters, locksmiths, and other trades requiring physical strength. Each BO was given the responsibility for acquiring weapons and defending poorer Jews from pogromists, and later striking workers from police and strike breakers.

The Second Congress of the RSDRP, held in Brussels in July of 1903 was a turning point in the party's history. The Bund representatives felt that federation with the

RSDRP was a "totally proper decision,"43 while the Iskraites held that "in calling for federation the Bund exceeded the autonomy it had been granted in 1898."44 When the

Bund's delegation arrived in Brussels they "gained the impression of having fallen into a swarm of [their] worst enemies."45 The issue of the Bund's status within the RSDRP was placed first on the agenda. The Iskraites immediately demanded to know what the Bund meant by 'autonomy'. Martov insisted that it was impossible for any part of the RSDRP to represent a single stratum of the proletariat or its interests, be those interests national or

Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 226. 42 Not only would the Bund withdraw from the RSDRP over the course of the Congress, but fault lines would appear among the Iskraite leadership. The Second Congress saw the formation of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, which would direct the course of the RSDRP's political platform beyond the Bolshevik victory in 1917. See the Chapter Five. 43 Medem, Life and Soul, 233. Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 207. 45 Medem, Life and Soul, 284.

68 professional. The Iskraites were firm in their declaration that federation would only harm

1 46 the movement.

While the Bund attempted to soften their position somewhat, so as not to break up the party Congress immediately, Medem admits that it was "like talking to a stone wall"; the

Iskraites were determined in their goal of centralisation.47 The Bund could not back down on their demands for autonomy, and the RSDRP refused to accept their minimum proposals. During the 27 session of the Congress, the Bund withdrew from the RSDRP.

After the turbulence of the Second RSDRP Congress, Vladimir Medem was appointed to the Bund's Foreign Committee, and was able to further his theories on the national question. He proposed an "analysis of the problem according to the logic of class struggle and what would be favourable to the development of class-consciousness, a task that few Marxist theorists had so far taken with sufficient intellectual rigor."48

He began by determining the origins of nationalism. He postulated that bourgeois nationalism came from a desire to control a market of material or cultural products, and as such was either a function of a dominant nationality seeking to limit foreign influences by social and administrative restrictions, or that of an oppressed nationality attempting to maintain control over a market sector by "appealing to the rhetoric of national struggle."49

Given these aspects, he dismissed nationalism as an entirely bourgeois phenomenon,

46 Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Protokoyi i stenograficheskie otchety s' 'ezdov i konferentsii Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovietskogo Soiuza; vtoroi s' 'edzd RSDRP, July- August 1903 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1959), 20- 31. 47 Medem, Life and Soul, 284. 48 Gechtman, Yidisher Sotsializm, 51. 49 Ibid, 53.

69 seeing no difference between Otto von Bismarck and Ahad Ha-am. While claiming to speak for an entire nation, nationalists were in fact only concerned with their own class interests. As such, the social democratic answer to the national question would have to be more progressive and primarily concerned with class struggle.

With that in mind, Medem declared that national and folk culture were intrinsic parts of class struggle. The social democrats should concern themselves with preventing the oppression of a weaker culture by a stronger one; for instance, restrictions on the use of national language, for administrative purposes as an example, effectively barred workers from wider economic and cultural circles as they had fewer opportunities to study foreign languages. He maintained his position that the Bund should take neither a pro- assimilationist, nor pro-nationalist stance, declaring that national self-determination should take its course according to historical factors. As such, he felt that cultural autonomy for nations in multi-national states was "the only credible social democratic manifestation" of this national self-determination.50 Even in the future democratic

Russia,

Jews and members of other minorities might still endure restrictions, in particular in matters related to their culture. Whereas Jews as individuals would not be discriminated [against] the Jews as a cultural collective could still be discriminated against without violating the principles of liberal democracy, unless their collective rights were specifically guaranteed.51

As such, social democracy was bound to counteract bourgeois nationalism by fostering working-class culture. The Bund accepted the idea of cultural-autonomy as a political

Gorny, Converging Alternatives, 36. 51 Gechtman, Yidisher Sotsializm, 61.

70 goal at their Sixth Congress in 1905, working toward the ideal that in the fixture democratic Russia each nation would be allowed free cultural development.

Nonetheless, the national question ceased to be the most important item of discussion at the Congress, as revolution had broken out in Russia. As most of the Bund's leadership was abroad attending the Sixth Congress, the party's response was extremely uncoordinated. There was no plan in place to react to the massacre on Bloody Sunday, nor did the leadership have any idea of how far to conduct the revolution.52 Nonetheless, in 1905, the Bund's membership numbered above 30,000 and they were able to make their presence felt through a number of strikes and demonstrations across the Pale of

Settlement. The demonstrations also allowed the Bund to communicate their message to a broader base.

An increase in pogrom activity in the Passover/ Easter season demonstrated the initiative of the Russian conservative element. The Black Hundreds blamed the Jews for all of Russia's woes and encouraged the populace to vent its anger through a series of inflammatory anti-Jewish leaflets and speakers across the Pale.53 Armed with bombs,

Bloody Sunday refers to the events of 22 January, 1905 (9 January according to the Russian calendar) when police fired on a crowd of protesters on their way to the Winter Palace with a petition for the Tsar. Official estimates claim 130 dead, and several hundred wounded. The event enflamed the populace and created social upheaval through the empire. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 380-382. 53 Centered on the nationalistic-patriotic Union of Russian People, the Black Hundreds were groups of rightists who joined with the army and police, thriving on religious and ethnic hatred to fight the revolutionary forces. They were part of the "militantly anti- capitalist and rabidly anti-Semitic Russian far-right movement" who blamed the Jews and socialists as agents of change for all of the woes facing Russia. Marks, How Russia Shaped the Modern World, 147.

71 revolvers and clubs, the BO fought against the Black Hundreds to protect demonstrators and Jewish bystanders, with varying degrees of success.

The revolution also allowed the Bund to repair somewhat their damaged relationship with the PPS. Over the years, internal problems had divided the PPS into the PPS-Left and the PPS-Revolutionary Faction. While the Revolutionary Faction remained committed to the idea of an independent Poland, the PPS-Left was willing to settle for a wider definition of autonomy, for example, recognition of national rights and an independent legislature. The Bund and the PPS-Left managed to coordinate their activities in Polish Russia.

The revolution also forced the Bund to examine their relationship with the liberals. The short-term goals of both groups were the same, namely the abolition of autocracy and the development of a democracy, but the Bund's ultimate goal was the socialist revolution that was to follow. They refused to join with Vinaver and the other liberals in the League for Attainment of Full Rights for the Jewish people, claiming that the empty rhetoric of the League would simply divert the workers from the revolutionary path. Similarly, the

Bund was distressed by the tsar's proposal of a Duma. They felt that "the Duma's very existence threatened the workers' struggle, for even those paltry concessions might be tempting to those who might benefit from them, namely the industrial bourgeois and the liberals."54 As such, they refused to participate in the first Duma elections.55

Tobias, The Bund in Russia, 304. 55 In fact, several Bund chapters advocated an "active boycott" of the Duma elections. Agitators and members of the BO would break into political meetings held by liberals and other political groups with the intent of disrupting or closing them down.

72 After the revolutionary fervour died down, the Bund entered a period of decline. A combination of mass emigration and acceptance of the new Duma greatly decreased Bund membership. Numbers declined from a high of 33,890 in 1906 to a low of 2,000 by

1910.56 The decrease in membership resulted in a massive reduction in funds. The membership shortage was so acute that Medem claimed that after the revolution "there were no masses. What survived were little groups of remaining party leaders involved in constant bickering and in the conduct of small and petty circles and circle politics."57 The

Bund joined the RSDRP again in 1906, an action that had no real bearing on their functions as they maintained the autonomy which had caused them to withdraw from the party three years before; the Bund was officially recognised as the organisation of the

Jewish proletariat.58

Additionally, the post-revolutionary period was one of adjustment for the Bund from being completely illegal underground to a quasi-legal political party. However, their

"ideological perspectives were far more radical than the newly reformed political atmosphere would allow."59 Their press and trade unions were legalised, but either could be closed if they provoked the police or authorities.60 Nonetheless, the Bund was able to gain more support from their legal than illegal activities. The Central Committee decided

56 Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality, 227. 57 Medem, Life and Soul, 457. 58 Ibid. 388. 59 Henry J. Tobias and Charles E. Woodhouse, "Political Reaction and Revolutionary Careers: The Jewish Bundists in Defeat, 1907-1910," Comparative Studies in Society and History 19 (1977): 369. 60 Medem was appointed to the editorial board of the Bund's first legal periodical Der Verker (The Awakener) at the end of 1905. Der Verker only operated for two years before being closed down by the police.

73 to remove itself from the sphere of legal work and distanced itself from Jewish trade

unions to focus on illegal operations.

Official reaction to the concessions granted in the wake of the 1905 revolution was in

full force by 1907; censorship increased and political freedoms were curtailed. Despite

these difficulties, the Bund continued their work and used the inter-revolutionary period

to elaborate on their policy of national culture. The national question took on a more

practical than theoretical quality as the Jewish masses became increasingly politicised.

Similarly Medem's thesis of 'neutralism' was transformed from passivism to national

activism.61

Russian Jews of every political orientation were consumed by the issues of the schul- frage (school question), sprakh-frage (language question), and the kehilla-frage

(community question). Much to the delight of Medem and members of the Bund, it was

not the bourgeois language of the Hebraist (such as Ahad Ha-am), but rather the "jargon"

of the masses that was most widely accepted by the Jewish community in Russia. Yiddish

language had become far more than a utilitarian means of agitation for the Bund; it was

the language of the folk. In the inter-revolutionary period it was transformed into a vital

and living means of cultural expression. Yiddish theatres, libraries, and schools

flourished, and a Yiddish intelligentsia was formed.62 A flowering of Yiddish literature

Gorny, Converging Alternatives, 44. 62 David E. Fishman, "The Bund and Modern Yiddish Culture" in The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe, ed. Zvi Gitelman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 107-119.

74 included everything from political cartoons to treatises on natural science, and was accompanied by a massive increase in Yiddish readership.

At the Bund's Seventh Party Congress in 1908 (Grondo), the leadership decided to cooperate with the liberals to reform the secular institutions of Jewish communal life.

Organisations such as the Jewish Literary Society, music and drama societies and evening schools for adults provided the Bund with an excellent opportunity to carry on their political struggle under a more genteel guise. They also worked with the Polish progressive educational movement to establish the University-For-All in Warsaw, the only university in the Russian empire with equal admissions for all regardless of nationality or gender. The Bund also worked for a democratisation of the kehillah, and for the establishment of national schools where each nationality could be instructed in their mother tongue.

Medem remained abroad after the 1905 revolution, contributing to some Bund publications, and supporting himself by writing as a foreign correspondent for a periodical out of Saint Petersburg. In honour of the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913 a general amnesty was granted to a variety of political prisoners and political exiles, and Medem at last felt safe to return to Russia legally.64 However, due to a technicality he was denied this amnesty and was arrested only five days after his return to

Warsaw. He was held in prison without trial for nearly two years before being sentenced

63 Sarah Abrevaya Stein, "Faces of Protest: Yiddish Cartoons of the 1905 Revolution," Slavic Review 61 (2001): 732-761. 64 During the period of his initial exile in 1901 and his legal return in 1913 Medem had entered the Empire several times illegally, that is using forged papers, and not registering with the police. These trips to Russia were especially dangerous as Medem was quite well-known among radical circles (and therefore to the police).

75 to four years in Siberia in 1915. However, before he could be transported the First World

War erupted and he was held in a Warsaw prison until the Germans captured the city. He remained in Poland after the Bolshevik revolution due to his profound dislike of

Bolshevism in general and Lenin in particular.65 He continued to work with the Polish

Bund until he immigrated to New York in 1921. He died there in 1923.

Despite the popularity of the Bund's national program among Jewish workers, a number of Jewish intellectuals found that the Bund's policies clashed too harshly with the practical theory of Orthodox Marxism. Many of the Jewish intelligentsia flocked to other factions of the RSDRP, namely the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, organisations that respected this Orthodoxy.

Gorny, Converging Alternatives, 44. Medem and Lenin had met often while exiled in Switzerland. Medem notes how he was distastefully struck by Lenin's "imperious will.. and his profound distrust of people." Medem, Life and Soul, 228.

76 Chapter Five

Eva Broido and the Mensheviks

The history and political strategies of the Mensheviks cannot be examined without also scrutinizing their Russian social democratic counterparts, the Bolsheviks. Indeed throughout their history, both groups of the RSDRP formed policy not only in response to wider political and economic events, but also in response to the actions of the other.

While Bolshevism is similar if not identical to Leninism, Menshevism cannot be tied exclusively to any of the organization's ideological leaders.1

Whereas the Bund began as a series of educational circles aimed at Jewish workers, the general Russian social democratic movement emerged from the illegal study circles of students and the intelligentsia. The Group for the Emancipation of Labour was formed in

1883 by students who would later become the giants of Russian Marxism: Vera Zasulich,

Pavel Axelrod and especially Georgi Plekhanov. The Group was concerned primarily with translating and distributing Marxists works. While the Group laid the foundations for the future of Russian social democracy, it was supplanted in 1895 by the Union of

Struggle for the Emancipation of Labour, which focused on worker agitation and socialist education. Lenin and Julius Martov, the future leaders of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks,

Israel Getzler, Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), vii. Due to the more democratic nature of Menshevism, the organisation held a wide range of policies from Isrkaism to Revolutionary Defensism and Siberian Zimmerwaldism. A comprehensive examination of Menshevism is beyond the scope of this work. This chapter will examine only the theories and policies which most directly influenced Eva Broido.

77 respectively, met through their work with the Union.2 However, many of the leaders of the Union were arrested and sent into administrative exile in Siberia, leaving the Bund the strongest bastion of social democracy in Russia.

Eva Broido (nee Gordon) was initiated into the world of underground socialism through a similar student study circle in Kazan. Born in 1876 to Jewish parents in

Sventsiany (Lithuania), she soon developed an "unquenchable desire for learning and escape" from the poverty and ignorance of her shtetl.3 The Gordon family was forward thinking. Once Eva demonstrated a love of learning, her mother sent her to a traditional heder, usually reserved for boys. When the family's financial situation improved, she was given private tutors. By the age of 15 she was fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish and

Russian. Since women were not allowed to study at Russian universities, she studied pharmacology courses on her own before passing her exams as an extern.4 At the age of

15, she moved to Kazan with the idea of furthering her studies, and perhaps attending a university abroad. She became increasingly politicized after marrying a fellow student and moving to Riga. Though she met and sympathised with Jewish Social Democrats in

2 Prior to his involvement with the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of Labour, Martov had worked with the Bund in Vilna. In 1894 he published a pamphlet entitled On Agitation, which would become the "handbook of social democratic action." Getzler, Martov, 22. He also, somewhat ironically given his future career, gave a speech on May Day 1895 that is considered to be the "founding charter of Bundism: the belief that the specific problems of the Jewish proletariat in the Pale of Settlement required a special Jewish labour movement." [Ibid. 24] See also, Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia, for a detailed examination of Martov's work with the Bund. 3 Eva Broido, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, trans, and ed. Vera Broido (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 5. 4 Externs were students who studied on their own, or audited courses with the hope of receiving university or technical accreditation. Such methods were a popular way of avoiding the quotas on Jewish enrolment on institutes of higher learning. See Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 275.

78 Riga, she notes regretfully in her memoirs that her "unhappy marriage ruled out all active participation in the socialist movement."5 Soon after, Broido left her husband, took her two daughters (Alexandra and Galina) and moved to St. Petersburg, taking a job in a dispensary to support her family. Broido supplemented her wages by translating socialist literature into Russian, including German social democrat August Bebel's

Women in Socialism, a work which had aided her in her conversion to Marxism. She also made contact with workers and radically-minded intellectuals, with whom she discussed the idea of creating a workers' library. One of these intellectuals was her childhood friend Mark Broido.

Meanwhile, the RSDRP was formally founded in 1898 in Minsk. Given the general weakness of the movement, the RSDRP was only concerned with achieving minimum organisation that would enable the various existing Marxist groups to aid each other in

• • • R their immediate goals. Shortly after the closing of the founding congress, all the delegates were arrested. The remaining activists of the RSDRP collided ideologically over Economism.9 The exiles in Siberia heard of the founding of the RSDRP within a

Broido, Memoirs, 13. 6 Her pharmacology certificate qualified Broido to reside outside the Pale of Settlement. See Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 102,103. Jane McDermid and Anna Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution: Female Bolsheviks and Women Workers in 1917, (London: UCL Press, 1999), 69. Given the organisational limitations of the RSDRP the Bund's desire for autonomy, or a federative status within the greater party, was necessary; at its founding, the RSDRP lacked the ability to coordinate all of their members' actions. See Chapter Four. 9 The Economism movement favoured using economic rather than political motivations (such as higher wages and shorter work days rather than a democratic franchise or an elected assembly) to build a mass following among the proletariat. Those opposed to Economism felt that such measures reduced the revolutionary fervour of the masses, and would result in trade-unionism rather than a politically- and class-conscious proletariat.

79 month, and it was not long before Lenin began searching for ways to consolidate his own power. He invited two of his friends in exile, Martov and Aleksandr Potresov to join him in forming a "triumvirate in the struggle against Economism and Revisionism." 10 Martov was delighted with the invitation, and promised to join Lenin as soon as his term of exile was complete.l'

Upon their return from Siberia in 1900 Lenin, Martov and Potresov met in Pskov with the goal of founding a central social democratic journal for the RSDRP and establishing a distribution network for this new party organ.12 By 1901 Iskra had been established in

Munich and the triumvirate began to write scathing articles against those who tried to oppose Iskra's emerging leadership, including Martov's former comrades in the Bund, as well as those whom the Iskraites deemed insufficiently revolutionary. The triumvirate felt that it was necessary for Iskra to keep the social democratic movement focussed on the goal of overthrowing the tsarist autocracy. Those supporting Economism were attacked for their lack of political orientation, and the Bund for their sovereigntist tendencies. According to the Iskraite attacks, "the duty of Jewish socialism was now to join in the organization of the whole Russian proletariat [in] a single, strong party" under

Iskra's banner.13

See Jonathan Frankel, "Economism: A Heresy Exploited," Slavic Review 22 (1963): 263- 284. 10 Getzler, Martov, 44. 11 Julius Martov, Zapiski Sotsial-Demokrata (Moscow: KrasnaiaNov', 1924), 411. The Iskraites relied heavily on the Bund's smuggling contacts among the bristle- and brush-makers along the borders to bring Iskra into Russia. Getzler, Martov, 46. Broido contends that the Iskraites "enjoyed the complete confidence of the comrades who worked inside Russia." Broido, Memoirs, 35. 13 Getzler, Martov, 57.

80 The leaders of Iskra were ambiguous when it came to the Jewish question. By and large, the Iskraites were firm assimilationists. As Orthodox Marxism, they held that all problems between nationalities would resolve themselves under socialism, and that questions of nationhood were not something with which true socialists should concern themselves.14 They believed that anti-Semitism was a tsarist device to keep the people's attention diverted from political and social protest. Given Iskra's desire for control, the

Bund's wish for a federative status within the RSDRP was unacceptable. It was only a matter of time before a clash between the Bund and the Iskraites broke out.

Meanwhile, fault-lines were forming between Lenin and Martov. Differences of temperament and ideology began to cool their relationship. Lenin prided himself on his discipline, orderliness and self-restraint while Martov tended to be emotional, disorderly, impatient and talkative.15 Furthermore, increasingly serious clashes over the future organisation of the RSDRP and party ethics emerged. In a draft proposal for the Second

Congress of the RSDRP, Martov put forward the position that the Central Committee should be responsible for the organisation of major movements, but that the local chapters should be given more autonomy in general matters, as long as ideological unity was maintained. He felt that the principles of centrality and discipline were necessary to maintain the secrecy of the organisation, but that the RSDRP should ultimately become a party of the revolutionary working masses. Martov fully endorsed the authoritarian measures against Iskra's opponents. He felt that such measures were necessary as the

RSDRP was in a state of siege. Once the situation had been resolved, with Iskra in a

14 Getzler, Martov, 59. 15 L.D. Trotsky, O Lenine. Materialy dlia biografa (Moscow: Grifon M. 2005), 21-22.

81 dominant position such tactics were to be abandoned. However, he would soon realise that "for Lenin this state-of-siege was a way of life."15 Martov's proposed draft for the

Second Congress was wholly unacceptable to Lenin who envisioned an "elitist party of tough, professional revolutionaries,"17 and a Central Committee that would have enormous powers over local chapters. He wrote a counter-proposal that was accepted at the Second Congress.

Martov and Lenin managed to present a united front at the Second Congress in

Brussels (1903) until Iskra 's hegemony had been established. While they were successful in removing the threat posed by the Bund,18 the two leaders clashed over the appointment of members to the Central Committee and the editorial board of Iskra.19 Before long the

Congress had divided into Lenin's 'hards' and Martov's 'softs,' the editorial board of

Iskra was purged of Martov's supporters, and the Central Committee was staffed with

Lenin's people.20 Although Lenin emerged from the Second Congress in the stronger position, it was not long before Martov's supporters won control of Iskra again, forcing

Lenin to resign from the editorial board in late 1903.

Getzler, Martov, 82. 17 Ibid, 74. 18 See Chapter Three. 19 A complete examination of the Second Congress of the RSDRP is beyond the scope of this work. For a more detailed examination of the Congress see Institute Marxism- Leninism, Protokoly. The names of the party factions Bolshevik (from Bolshinstvo, "majority" in Russian) and Menshevik (from Menshinstvo, "minority) stem from the vote for the editorial board for Iskra. Despite these names the Mensheviks enjoyed more popular support over the course of the RSDRP's history until October 1917.

82 Such intraparty squabbles were unknown to Eva Broido and her family who were serving a term of administrative exile in Siberia. Broido had been arrested in 1900 with many of her comrades for their activity with an illegal printing press in Vilna.21 Initially,

Broido was elated by her arrest, feeling that a political charge "was a diploma of decency in Russia."22 So that they could be exiled to the same place, Mark and Eva Broido married in a Jewish ceremony in prison, with the requisite Jewish witnesses pulled from the convict population.23 The married political prisoners, along with Eva's mother and two daughters were sent to Iakutsk. Most of the Siberian intelligentsia was formed of political or religious exiles and their descendents, and since they were already as far away from the capitals as the tsarist government could send them, the exiles were able to work with a much greater degree of freedom.24

While in Iakutsk, Mark joined several other political exiles in protesting the increasingly harsh conditions they faced, including arbitrary death sentences and the state's refusal to fund transportation from Siberia once a sentence had been completed.25

In January 1901, the Iakutsk protesters barricaded themselves in a house, known as the

"Romanovka." After nearly two weeks of trying to starve the exiles out, the soldiers sent to quell the protest tried to provoke a response. Shots were fired from the Romanovka,

21 Broido worked as an editor for a small social democratic paper called Sotsialist {The Socialist) which was printed on the illegal press in Vilna before being distributed in St. Petersburg. Broido, Memoirs, 24. According to Jewish law, 10 Jewish male witnesses must be present to validate a Jewish wedding. 24 Broido, Memoirs, 27. Broido contends that she would have joined the protest were it not for the fact that she had just given birth to her third child (Daniel). Ibid, 37.

83 which killed one soldier and wounded another. The soldiers opened fire, and killed two of the protesters. When the protesters surrendered, they were charged with insurrection against the state, and sentenced to 12 years hard labour. Mark Broido was charged with murdering one of the soldiers, and sentenced to hard labour for life. The Broidos decided to escape from Siberia as soon as possible.

After sending her mother and baby back to Lithuania, Broido received permission to accompany her husband to his hard labour sentence, bringing her two eldest daughters with her. The girls' presence made the guards somewhat lax with respect to the Broidos, and Mark managed to escape abroad without too much difficulty. After sending her daughters back to her mother in Lithuania with some socialist comrades Broido also escaped, and joined her husband in London. The Broidos's involvement with the

Romanovka incident gave them celebrity status within social democratic circles. It was in

London that they were first introduced to the divisions within the RSDRP and informed that they would have to choose sides. The Broidos preferred the more democratic nature of Menshevism and committed to the cause. Although initially planning to spend some time abroad, the Broidos were anxious to return to Russia after hearing of the Bloody

Sunday massacres.

Far away from the political wrangling in the capital, Eva and Mark Broido were faced with the practical work of Russian social democracy in the oil fields of Baku. Broido writes that the oilfields appeared to her as "a picture of unremitting hopeless gloom."26

Living conditions were terrible and drunkenness was rampant - the tavern was literally

26 Broido, Memoirs, 69.

84 the only place to go outside the workers' dormitories, and it was dangerous for women to be outside alone after dark. There was also conflict along ethnic lines; although the

Russian, Georgian, and Armenian workers were receptive to the social democratic message, the Tartars and Persians were hostile, and more than one agitational meeting ended with the speaker being shot at by the Tartars. In the absence of other professional revolutionaries, the Broidos had a heavy workload writing for the local social democratic newspaper, speaking at meetings and settling disputes with management. The fact that

Eva Broido was female was exploited by those who were against the social democrats.

Someone might yell at a crowd she was addressing: '"What kind of men are you to listen to a woman, to take orders from a woman?'"27 Broido reluctantly admits that this strategy was quite effective against her.28

Given the lack of professional revolutionaries, individual workers had to assume more responsibility than in locations with an abundance of professionals, and the Broidos were able to utilize a variety of natural talents including unschooled speakers and writers. The workers also relished the chance to look to the Mensheviks in Baku as educators, and soon the Union of Baku Workers had thousands of members. Additionally, the Broidos were successful in wooing workers away from the Bolsheviks, as the rigid centralised

Bolshevik structure was wholly unsuitable for the work being done in Baku.

Broido, Memoirs, 101.

85 However, all of their hard work seemed to be in vain when the Tartars in Baku carried out a massacre against the Armenians in August of 1905.29 Dozens of Armenians were killed, and fires were set to Armenian-owned oil derricks. All class loyalties disappeared in the face of ethnic hatred. The social democrats, previously so popular and influential, tried to organise a general strike to pressure the authorities to intervene, but to no avail.

Instead, the social democrats were blamed for the violence when authorities claimed that it was social democratic agitation that had incited the violence. Shortly after the massacre, the Broidos returned to St. Petersburg.

At the time of the Broidos's return to the capital, the SRD was nearly extinct, most of its members having been arrested. The RSDRP realised the need to consolidate their position within the workers' movement and protect the concessions gained from the

October Manifesto. An attempt was made at reconciliation between the disparate factions of the RSDRP in 1906. Unity was deemed necessary for the party to be effective.

However, this was not easy to do given the ideological divisions within the RSDRP.

As the two wings were organised quite separately, with their own central committees and newspapers, this meant in practice that there had to be constant consultations and compromises between them before any decisions and policies could be adopted by the central body of the party. Unfortunately the two wings

The Tartar and Armenian conflict is centuries old, and stems from differing religious beliefs, Armenians generally being Christian, and Tartars generally Muslim. See Louis de Bernieres, Birds Without Wings, (London: Vintage, 2005). 30 Broido's reaction to the break-down of class loyalty is one of total shock. She cannot fathom how two inseparable social democratic friends (one Armenian, one Tartar) could become blood enemies overnight. This incident illustrates how firmly she believed the Marxist philosophy that national differences would disappear in the united international proletarian brotherhood. One wonders whether she would have believed differently if her socialist education had come from the Bund, rather than from the RSDRP. See Chapter Four.

86 did not cease to fight each other in an effort to gain the majority and to impose their own line on the entire party.31

Although some aspects of party activity remained illegal, such as agitation on factory floors, party leaders were determined to exploit the legal opportunities available to them.

All of the party's propaganda work began to be channelled through legal means such as workers' clubs, libraries, and lectures on current affairs. These clubs had particular value to women workers. Before the advent of the worker's social clubs, women had no place for leisure, being barred from taverns by tradition their only options were to stay at work or return home.

While working as the party secretary for one region of St. Petersburg, Broido began to take an interest in the working and social conditions of women. She and Lydia Dan, another prominent Menshevik32, felt that a special effort was needed to raise the political consciousness of female workers. Broido felt that women, much like Jewish workers, suffered under a double yoke, suffering not only class- but sexual-oppression from male foremen and workers. Further, women were often employed in unskilled industries such as cigarette manufacturing or weaving and received the lower wages which accompanied these unskilled jobs. Broido claimed that women workers "lack of skills and unequal wages made their situation even more desperate than that of male workers."33

Broido noted that women were also less likely to join trade unions, both as the unions tended to reinforce pay disparity between skilled and non-skilled positions and the fact

31 Broido, Memoirs, 129. 32 Lydia Dan was Fedor Dan's wife. Fedor Dan was an ideological leader of the Mensheviks and a good friend of Julius Martov. 33McDermid and Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution, 135.

87 that women were felt to be unsuited to this kind of work. She claimed that men needed to accept women as equals in class struggle and that as part of the workers political development social democrats needed to "convince both sexes that women's backwardness was the result of social conditioning, and not prescribed by nature."

Despite her calls for increasing the political consciousness and participation of working women, Broido was quite isolated. As with the Bund, male Russian social democrats were hesitant to endorse the idea that women, like Jewish workers, may have different needs that could not be met by socialism. Further, very few women held leadership positions within any political movements, and Broido in particular had trouble convincing the other leaders of her party as to the need for special efforts with respect to female workers. Female Bolsheviks were more successful in this regard, and created two fully realised proletarian women's movements (1905-1908 and 1913-1914).35 The Bolsheviks agitated among women workers, held rallies on International Women's Day (March 8) and dedicated column space to the cause in major party organs, eventually creating an entire journal dedicated to proletarian women's issues (Rabotnitsa - "The Woman

Worker.") The Mensheviks were considerably less enthusiastic, and due to their

McDermid and Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution, 111. Nadezhda Krupskaia (Lenin's wife) began gathering information on women workers as early as 1894. In 1900 she published the first Russian socialist worker on the Woman Question, The Woman Worker. In 1905, Alexandra Kollontai (also a Bolshevik) took a dominant position in the socialist women's movement, agitating among women workers often under the guise of sewing circles or lectures on maternal hygiene in an attempt to sway them from the bourgeois feminist movement. See Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 233-278. 36 Ibid, 253-256.

88 adherence to the tenets of Orthodox Marxism, did not develop a program on the issues of working women independently from the Bolsheviks.

Governmental repression soon increased as the promised reforms in the Manifesto were curtailed or revised one by one. Local branches of the RSDRP increased internal security and shot suspected governmental agents hiding within their ranks. Broido claims that the RSDRP were not so much concerned with members of the official police, but rather with those in the Black Hundreds whose atrocities aroused indignation even among the

no apolitical masses and forever compromised the moral prestige of the tsarist government.

Despite the misgivings of the Bolsheviks, who continued to believe that it was

"harmful to support the idea of parliamentary government"39 and that the Duma might decrease the revolutionary fervour of the proletariat, the Mensheviks were willing to support any move toward a reduction of absolutism. The issue nearly split the party.

Debates were held between leaders of the two factions, and one evening in front of workers from St. Petersburg, Broido debated against Lenin over the merits of participation in the Duma elections, and won!40 Eventually the RSDRP decided to participate in the elections to the Second Duma. However, when that Duma was dissolved on June 16, 1907 and all of the social democratic deputies were arrested, the period of official repression began.

Broido, Memoirs, 126. 38 Ibid. 118. 39 Ibid. 131. 40 Broido, Memoirs, 131. Broido claims that she was nowhere near the orator Lenin was, but won the debate as she had worked with most of the audience in the preceding months. Lenin, though famous, was a stranger to the crowd.

89 The October Manifesto had provided a pardon for Broido's political sentence, but since Mark received a capital sentence for the murder of a soldier during the Romanovka incident, he was not granted such amnesty. Therefore, Mark Broido lived illegally in St.

Petersburg (under an assumed name) but was arrested again in the summer of 1907 just missing the birth of their fourth child (Vera) in October. In order to support her family,

Broido was forced to give up party work and take a job in a dispensary. She was constantly followed by the police, and could not visit any of her social democratic comrades for fear of exposing them. When some of her fellow dispensary colleagues left work to celebrate May Day, Broido lost her job for being the suspected initiator.

When nation-wide economic conditions improved in 1910 Broido was anxious to begin working with the RSDRP again, but was soon arrested. After her release a few months later she began helping the party prepare for the upcoming elections to the Fourth Duma.

When, in 1912, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split definitively,41 Broido was elected to the Menshevik Organisational Committee (the central body of the Mensheviks in Russia).

She was arrested for a third time in 1913, but released after only six weeks because of the amnesty granted at the Romanov tercentenary.

At the outbreak of the First World War Russian social democrats were shocked by the lack of international socialist solidarity. While Lenin and the Bolsheviks sought to use

The factions of the RSDRP attempted at several times between 1912 and 1914 to reunite, but Lenin was unwilling to alter his position. A final Unity Conference was held in Brussels in 1914, but Lenin had given the Bolshevik delegates instructions to walk out if all their demands were not met. The Bolshevik tactics only served to unite the anti- Bolshevik factions, and brought European social democrats closer to the Mensheviks. See R.C. Elwood, "Lenin and the Brussels 'Unity' Conference of July 1914," Russian Review 39 (1980): 32-49.

90 the war to end capitalism and hasten the international socialist revolution, Martov and his compatriots exiled in Switzerland searched for a way to change the international socialist movement into a movement for peace. Known as the Zimmerwaldists, these social democrats "regarded the use of military force for national purposes as unacceptable and ... insisted on the revival of the Socialist International as the only way to bring the war to a just conclusion."42 Other Mensheviks took a position which came to be known as

Defensism. The Defensists believed that national self-defence against imperial aggressors was necessary and required the participation of all Russians, including the socialist intellectuals.43

Broido was strongly influenced by the Zimmerwald movement and was arrested in

January of 1915 for agitating against the war.44 Sentenced to three years administrative exile in Siberia she found the conditions much more favourable than her previous

Siberian term. She and her children were able to travel by train, rather than by prison transport, and she found the Governor more tolerant of the exiles' petitions. Further, she received newspaper and magazine subscriptions which allowed her to keep abreast of

42 Ziva Galili y Garcia, "The Origins of Revolutionary Defensism: I.G. Tsereteli and the 'Siberian Zimmerwaldists,"' Slavic Review 41(1982): 454. The term "Zimmerwaldist" comes from the location of the movement's headquarters in Zimmerwald, Switzerland. The Zimmerwald movement had influence in socialist circles 1915-196. Ziva Galili, The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 39. The Defensist position was popular with other groups including the liberals. 44 Broido's husband Mark was an avowed Defensist and spent most of the First World War encouraging workers to support the war effort. V. Broido, Daughter of Revolution, 44.

91 wider events. She was able to maintain close contact with the Mensheviks as many prominent members of the party had been exiled to the same place.

Broido's sentence was never completed because the February Revolution of 1917 brought a regime change and freed all the political exiles. The revolution was ignited by the discontent of the war weary soldiers and hungry masses in Petrograd, and was propelled forward by the liberals and propertied classes. These latter groups were ready to take the lead in forming a Provisional Government but were not trusted by the workers who demanded their own Soviet representation. The socialist parties, led by the

Mensheviks were eager to stand for the proletariat, and working class soldiers.47 A Soviet based on the SRD of the 1905 revolution was formed, its temporary executive committee headed by the Mensheviks. Although initially only willing to form an opposition to the

Provisional Government, because of the support of the masses the Soviet members realised that they would be playing a critical role in resolving any governmental crisis.48

Despite the Mensheviks' reluctance to accept ministerial and administrative functions in the new government, the Soviet moved very quickly from a position of conditional support, meaning the Soviet would support the Provisional Government so long as its promises were kept, to that of a position of "dual power." "Dual power" refers to the idea

45 Broido, Memoirs, 142-150. 46 Vera notes that Lydia Dan, Martov's sister, was her tutor while Eva worked in the hospital with Lydia's husband the prominent Fyodor Dan. V. Broido, Daughter of Revolution, 62. Galili, Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution, 29. The two largest groups of Mensheviks were Jews and Georgians. Given the history of violence between Jews and Russian peasants, Menshevik Jews in particular were unwilling to trust Russia's peasant soldiers and did not want them to be represented by the Soviet. [Ibid.] 48 Ibid, 25.

92 that the realities of the political situation, especially given the war, required that the leaders of the social democrats work with the bourgeois government to feed and organise the workers and soldiers thereby ensuring their continued support.49 Nonetheless, dual power was an embarrassment for many of the socialists who were not members of the

Soviet. Many of the socialist intelligentsia felt that the February Revolution was a continuation of the interrupted bourgeois revolution of 1905. The Mensheviks behind

Martov wanted to keep the Soviet from participating in the government as anything other than an opposition while the Bolshevik faction wanted the Soviet to seize power on behalf of the proletariat, peasants and soldiers immediately. In early June, at the First Congress of the Soviets, these positions were both in the minority and Coalition Government was accepted. Menshevik leaders moved into cabinet positions within the Provisional

Government (now a Coalition Government) and urged workers and soldiers to cooperate with the bourgeois.50

For moderate socialists and liberals such cooperation was necessary to defend the victories won by the Revolution, both from reactionary forces within Russia and against the German threat from without. Such Revolutionary Defensism, as it came to be called, was generally accepted by both industrialists and workers who each made concessions, at least initially, to ensure stable production for the war effort and prevent counter­ revolutionary backlash. For example, Industrialists agreed to shorter hours, and workers

Galili, Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution, 45. Ibid, 306.

93 agreed to meet production targets by working longer than eight hours per day provided they received time-and-a-half overtime wages.51

The Broidos were heavily involved in the new Russian order. Mark had been elected to the executive of the Soviet and rarely "left the Tauride Palace, where the Soviet was in permanent session."52 Eva had been elected as the secretary to the central committee of the Mensheviks as soon as she returned to Petrograd from exile. She also headed the women's section of the Menshevik party and called for reforms, such as the introduction of female factory inspectors in factories that employed women.53 Women had been granted the democratic franchise after the February Revolution, and Broido was anxious to see that working women were duly represented, especially given the increasingly difficult situation facing them.

The war only served to intensify the situation as more women entered the workforce as men left for the front. Women became involved in traditionally male-dominated sectors of industry, such as metal work, a move which was cheered by feminists.54 Broido criticised the happy feminists, claiming that while applauding women's progress in industry and self-sufficiency, they were ignoring the bitter reality of working

51 Ziva Galili y Garcia, "Workers, Industrialists and Mensheviks: Labour Relations and the Question of Power in the Early Stages of the Russian Revolution," Russian Review 44 (1985): 256. 52 V. Broido, Daughter of Revolution, 79. 53 Mc Dermid and Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution, 69. 54 A feminist movement had existed in Russia from the late 1860s. It stressed charity, women's self-help cooperatives and a push for education. The socialists disregarded this movement as the liberal feminists sought women's equality under the existing system of autocracy. Unfortunately, a comprehensive examination of the liberal feminist movement is beyond the scope of this work. See Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia.

94 conditions. Food rationing added to women's workload as queuing for food began to take up more and more time. By 1916 "the woman worker was effectively working a double shift as she spent on average 40 hours a week simply searching and standing in line for food" while prices increased and quality decreased.56

However, the Mensheviks were having difficulty maintaining order, and were generally unconcerned with the specific problems of women workers. The first major crisis for the Coalition Government came after a bungled offensive against the German army on June 18, 1917. The failed operation allowed the previously divided anti-war, pro-war, and supporters of the old regime to band together against the Coalition. Reports of soldiers deserting and workers refusing to produce goods necessary for the war put a strain on relations between the socialists and the liberals in power, and between the socialists and their followers. On July 2, four Kadet cabinet ministers resigned their posts over the Soviet sponsorship of autonomy for Ukraine. Attempts by the Mensheviks to re­ establish the coalition were met with an increase in unrest among the workers who felt that they deserved more from the revolution than the paltry crumbs being handed down by the Coalition. Workers began to demand that the Soviet take full power, but the Soviet leaders were unwilling to do so, believing that a Coalition Government without the

Kadets would function, perhaps more efficiently than a Coalition Government with them.

The Kadets had been a problem for the socialists in the Coalition Government. The

Kadets believed that it was necessary to win the war, and that to do so would require the national economy to properly function. As such, they were unconcerned with the

55 Mc Dermid and Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution, 131 56 Ibid. 135. Vera Broido remembers being assigned to the task of hunting for food rations while her mother was working. V. Broido, Daughter of Revolution, 80.

95 socialist attempts to pass labour legislation, such as eight hour workdays, that would make production more difficult. Because of this attitude, the socialists could not help but feel that their efforts would be more easily realised without interference from the

Kadets.57

The period from July - October 1917 was one of decline for the Mensheviks and

Russia in general. The continuation of the war put an enormous strain on the economy and political situation, with each side blaming the other for the deteriorating situation.

Inflation, especially with respect to food prices greatly increased due to shortages. In an attempt to regain control of the economy, the Coalition Government attempted to hold wages at a fixed level which only alienated the working class.58 The workers, peasants and soldiers, initially so supportive of the coalition government became increasingly polarized and willing to support those who would seize power on their behalf. The industrialists, believing that giving into the uneducated masses would destroy the country, wanted the government to break with the socialists to re-establish order.

The Mensheviks also began to fragment ideologically among themselves. On the extreme left were MartoVs supporters who denounced the coalition and were determined to adhere to traditional Menshevist principles. On the extreme right were the Mensheviks from the provinces who had virtually controlled the regional governments since February and were eager to take leadership of the nation. The disappearance of the tsarist bureaucracy following the February Revolution forced the provincial intelligentsia to assume the running of provincial administration, and therefore, these Mensheviks had no

57 Galili, Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution, 317-335. 58 Ibid, 358.

96 ideological objections to assuming power. In the center, the Revolutionary Defensists in Petrograd were desperately trying to maintain control of the situation. The failed coup d'etat by General Kornilov only served to increase revolutionary militancy and the popularity of the Bolsheviks among the masses.

Broido, in her position as head of the Women's section organised a conference of women workers in October. The conference resolved to create an organisation for increasing agitation efforts among female workers. However, before much could be done by the organisation, the Bolsheviks gained power.

By the Second Congress of the Soviets, October 25, 1917, the Bolsheviks and their allies among the Socialist Revolutionaries held the majority, and declared their intentions to depose the Coalition Government and declare all power for the Soviets. The defeated

Mensheviks walked out of the Congress.

The Broido family was split apart when the Bolsheviks took power. While Eva and her youngest daughter went to Moscow inl918 to conduct governmental work, Mark was sent to Vilna, and eventually left for Berlin. Eva and their two youngest children joined him there in 1920.60 The Broidos continued to work for Russian social democracy; Mark was employed by the Soviet Foreign Trade Ministry, and Eva worked for the Menshevik

59 In Minussinsk, Broido's place of exile, the exiles were begged not to leave immediately upon receiving news of the Revolution as it would have left the town without professionals. Broido, Memoirs, 149-150. 60 Eva's second daughter Galina had died of meningitis in 1916 while Eva was in Siberia. Eva's eldest daughter Alexandra blamed her mother for Galina's death. Claiming that she hated all Mensheviks, Alexandra converted to Bolshevism and was exiled to Siberia during a Purge in the 1930s. Daniel had been sent to Tomsk for safety in 1918, but was soon cut off by the civil war, and miraculously found the family again in 1920. V. Broido, Daughter of Revolution, 60-65, 90-94.

97 Delegation in Exile. In 1927, Eva returned to Russia, illegally, on behalf of the

Delegation. She was arrested by the Soviet police, and is believed to have been killed in

June 1941.

98 Chapter Six Conclusion

Denied basic rights for centuries, the Jews of Russia became increasingly politicised as the Empire began to dissolve. No longer content for the gentile intelligentsia to find an answer to the Jewish question, Russian Jewry grew more vocal and radical in their attempts to find their own solutions to the issue of the interaction between Jewish and

Russian society. The depth and breadth of Jewish political participation in late Imperial

Russia demonstrated not only that no single solution would be acceptable for the entire community, but also that the best answers to Russia's Jewish question must come from the Jewish community itself.

Russian Jewry's participation in the solution to their dilemma encompassed all sectors of Jewish society. Liberal integrationism attracted the wealthy and the secular middle class; those who had done well within Russia. Among the first to embrace Haskalah and eventually the broadened opportunities for education, the integrationists had a high regard for Russian society and civilization. They valued Russian language and culture as tools to modernize Jewish life, and were eager to pursue the opportunities provided in the wake of the 1905 revolution.

Others in the Jewish community who had not been as successful took radical steps to change their realities for the better. The Jewish socialists, both members of the Bund and the RSDRP, ultimately believed that Russia could be made better, but that the system of capitalist autocracy was inherently flawed. Each of the two groups had different ideas and emphases for the role of Jewish workers. Members of the Bund felt that because the

Jewish workers suffered, not only as workers, but also as Jews, liberating the Jewish

99 proletariat from bourgeois oppression would require special measures and institutions.

The RSDRP believed that all national problems, such as the persecution of the Jews, would be solved once capitalism was overthrown, and as such, the Jewish workers needed no special consideration.

The poorest members of Russian Jewry, those most alienated from Russian society, were attracted to Zionism, and its core belief that no solution to Russia's Jewish question could be found within Russia's borders. Their belief in the Jews as the chosen people provided hope and inspiration amid the miseries of life within the Russian Pale of

Settlement.

Each movement's solution to the Jewish question was based on the definition of what it meant to be Jewish. The integrationists believed that it was in the best interest of the

Jewish community to merge with the wider population, accepting the laws, culture and language of the state. The Orthodox Marxists felt that nationality was ultimately an unimportant issue, and that the international solidarity of the working class would overcome any problems based on national differences. While Bundists believed that this international Utopia may form at some point in the future, the Jewish nation had a living folk culture, and it was necessary to protect this culture to prevent further exploitation from the bourgeois. The Zionists asserted that the Jews were a chosen people for whom

God had a plan, and required their own land to ensure that this unique destiny was realised.

Other members of Russia's Jewish community had different responses to the hardships of life in Russia. Nearly one third of Eastern European Jewry emigrated between 1880

100 and 1920, many to America or Western Europe, bringing Yiddish and Hebrew culture with them.1 Additionally, conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, either as a means of circumventing anti-Jewish legislation or because of genuine belief, led many to abandon

Judaism. However, because these two responses were at least partly also motivated by factors other than anti-Semitism, they have not been discussed in this work.

Given that so many Russian Jews were involved in anti-tsarist politics, the obvious question is why Russia's Jews were so disproportionately radically inclined. While the tsarist government believed that it was because of some inherently "Jewish" quality,3 the real explanation is more mundane and obvious. In its haste to reduce Jewish exploitation and Talmudic "fanaticism," the tsarist government provided Russia's Jews with opportunities for secular education that were accepted enthusiastically by those of the

Haskalic tradition. While initially qualified Jews had access to state employment, these opportunities, both educational and professional, were eventually curtailed in order to combat the Jewish "threat."4 Thus, having no other outlets for their talents, and spurred on by justifiable anger at the tsarist autocracy, Jews of all ages and social situations turned to ever more radical solutions for Russia's problems and the Jewish question.

1 Gerald Sorin, A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880-1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), xv. More specifically, the American-Jewish population was estimated at 280,000 in 1877,1 million in 1900, 3 million in 1915 and 4.5 million by 1925, this increase "owing almost entirely to mass immigration from Eastern Europe." Marshall Sklare, The Jew in American Society (New York: Behrman House, Inc., 1974), 33. 2 Brym, Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism, 3,31. 3 Eugene M. Avrutin, "Racial Categories and Politics of (Jewish) Difference in late Imperial Russia," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 8 (2007): 13- 40. 4 Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 295.

101 Indeed, the most radical solution prevailed; revolution was necessary to secure the place of Jews in Russian society. Only with the overthrow of the tsarist government in 1917 did Jews achieve equal rights.

The participation of Jews in the quest for social justice is common to the Jewish experience of modern history. Exacerbated by discrimination and prejudice, Jews across

Europe and North America felt that the only way to improve the lot of their people was to improve the social position of the Jewish community. The most obvious example is that of Karl Marx, the secular Jew who envisioned a more equitable life on earth, not just for

Jews, but for all, as a historical inevitability. Marx and his followers worked to hasten the day of revolution that would provide a paradise on earth where each would receive what he needed to flourish. The Russian Jews working for social change were but a piece of a larger movement, whether working with Russian Marxists, attempting to liberalise the current system, or creating a Utopia in a separate Jewish state. The search for social betterment brought Russia's Jews into the wider program for reform.

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