home-Trousers and jeans-Russian revolt and Jewish Bund - Nikolai Smolentsev. Political parties in Belarus at the beginning of the 20th century in the Russian revolt and the Jewish Bund: what’s next

Russian revolt and Jewish Bund - Nikolai Smolentsev. Political parties in Belarus at the beginning of the 20th century in the Russian revolt and the Jewish Bund: what’s next

Almost two years ago we presented interesting material about how V.I. Lenin put the Jews who claimed exclusivity in their place. And here is an academic study of the same issue.

However, one question still hangs in the air. The text repeatedly contains the phrase “ Jewish working class " And how many of them were there compared to the workers of other nationalities in Russia? Miser.

Then why did you have to contact them at all???

A special, exclusive place in the historiography of scientific criticism of Zionism, both in the pre-October period and in all subsequent times, is occupied by the works of V. I. Lenin.

In many of them, he examined Zionist ideology, the Jewish question, the Bund, as well as other phenomena related to the ideology and politics of the Jewish big, middle and petty bourgeoisie.

Even in the first years of the activation of Zionism in the international arena after the formation of the World Zionist Organization (1897) and the Bund ( 1897.)V.I. Lenin opposed these reactionary political formations.

Due to the fact that Zionist organizations persistently sought to subordinate the small but politically active Jewish working class to their influence, V.I. Lenin in a number of publications draws attention to the need for “unity of the Jewish and non-Jewish proletariat.”

“Among the Jews,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “there are workers, toilers... They are our brothers in oppression by capital, our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters, capitalists... Capitalists try to sow and incite hostility between workers of different faiths.”

A serious obstacle to the unity of the Jewish and non-Jewish proletariat of pre-revolutionary Russia was the Bund, a petty-bourgeois organization with a clearly pro-Zionist ideology. The leaders of the Bund - most of them came from among the Jewish bourgeoisie, the Jewish bourgeois intelligentsia - actively collaborated with Zionist organizations and involved socially active elements of Jewry and among the working people in their “workers' union”. To a certain extent, they succeeded in this.

And Lenin’s works, which exposed the petty-bourgeois essence of Bundism, helped weaken the influence of this movement on Jewish workers.

The Bund, which called itself the “General Jewish Workers' Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia” (Yiddish for “bund” - union), arose in September 1897, a few days after the formation of the “World Zionist Organization”. A very eloquent confession was made by one of its leading figures, S. Gozhansky, who wrote that the intelligentsia that led the Bund was never able to “break out of... the psychology of feudal Jewry.” Throughout its existence in Russia until March 1921, the Bund was a militant enemy of the revolutionary movement.

Zionists sometimes openly characterized the “Jewish Union” precisely as a unique kind of Zionist organization. " The Bund and Zionism are not two shoots from the same root,- wrote one of the leaders of international Zionism V. Jabotinsky, - this is a large trunk and one of its shoots.

When the future researcher writes a coherent history of the Zionist movement, in his work, perhaps, one chapter in particular will attract the reader’s attention ... at the beginning of it the reader will encounter a repetition of Pinsker’s thoughts, at the end - the first proclamation “Poalei Zion” (translated from Hebrew - “ Workers of Zion." We are talking about one of the Zionist organizations that covered up its Zionist essence with such a false name.— Auth.). This chapter will tell one of the episodes of Zionism, and it will be entitled “The Bund.”

In the same 1897, the American branch of the Bund was formed - the “Jewish Workers' Union”, which took a Zionist position.

V.I. Lenin paid special attention to the connection between the ideological equipment of the Bund and Zionist ideas. It is necessary to take a more thorough look at the works of the leader of the revolution on the Bund, since they are directly related to the historiography of the topic we are studying.

In the article " Does the Jewish proletariat need an “independent political party”?", published in Iskra on February 15, 1903 (No. 34), V. I. Lenin criticized the Bundist concept of the need for a “separate organization” of the forces of the Jewish proletariat and the Bundist attempts to accuse the working class of “anti-Semitism.” (The Bundists meant here, of course, non-Jewish workers.— Auth.)

Lenin's article was published during the period of preparation for the convening of the Second Congress of the RSDLP, held from July 17 to August 10, 1903. During this period, a vital struggle for the destinies of our country unfolded for the creation of a new type of revolutionary workers' party at the congress. The opportunist position of the Bund, its desire to split the working class of Russia and thereby weaken its revolutionary capabilities could not go unnoticed. V.I. Lenin sharply criticized the federalism and separatism of the Bund in organizational matters.

Even before the Second Party Congress, before the actual formation of the RSDLP, the Bundist newspaper “Last News” emphasized that the Bund had developed into an independent political party. Before the Second Congress, the Bund decided “not enter to the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party." At the Second Congress of the RSDLP, however, the Bundist delegation was present, and the struggle against its militantly opportunist positions took a lot of time and effort from the congress. When will the Bundists' claims to a special position were rejected from the RSDLP, their representatives at the congress Lieber, Abramson, Goldblatt, Yudin and Hoffman announced at the beginning of the congress “the Bund’s departure from the RSDLP” and departure from the congress.

So, during the years of the struggle for the creation of the RSDLP, the Bund, both in theory and in practice, defended its federal position, understood by the Bundists as an allied relationship between two independent parties. “The independence and autonomy of the Bund cannot be doubted, as well as their gradual strengthening,” is how B.I. Lenin assessed the position of this opportunist organization.

Moreover, the Bundists insisted that the entire party of the revolutionary working class of Russia be built on the principles of federalism in its Bundist understanding, that is, divided into independent “national” parties, also connected with one another only as union organizations. This would undoubtedly lead to fragmentation and a serious weakening of the revolutionary movement in Russia.

The works of V.I. Lenin of this period, like his subsequent works on the separatism of the Bund, had both theoretical and practical significance. He pointed out that the Bundists tried to justify their struggle for isolation with the Zionist idea of ​​the Jewish nation. During the preparation period for the Second Congress of the RSDLP, V. I. Lenin wrote:

« Prepare the ground everywhere and among everyone for the fight against the Bund at the congress . Without a stubborn struggle, the Bund will not give up its position. And we can never accept his position ».

The leader called on the Iskra-ists: “ To explain to each and every one... that we must prepare for war with the Bund if we want peace with it. War at the congress, war right up to a split - at any cost» . WITH With remarkable foresight, V.I. Lenin predicted the prospects of the struggle: “ We absolutely cannot and will never accept this ridiculous federation.» .

V.I. Lenin developed precise political tactics in relation to the Bund: “ You have to be correct and loyal with the Bund(do not hit the teeth directly), but at the same time, arch-cold, buttoned up and on legal grounds, pushing it inexorably and hourly, going to the end without fear". The founder of the party of the revolutionary proletariat considered opposition to Bundism one of the most important directions of all the work in preparation for its Second Congress and called: “ Prepare committees against the Bund- one of the most important tasks of the moment, and this is also completely possible without breaking the form.”

V.I. Lenin, all the Iskraists resolutely insisted on discussing the question of the place of the Bund in the party from the very beginning of the congress. “There are both formal and moral reasons for putting the issue of the Bund first. Formally, we stand on the basis of the Manifesto of 1898, and the Bund has expressed its desire to radically change the organization of our party.

Morally, many other organizations expressed disagreement with the Bund on this issue; Thus, sharp differences arose, even causing controversy. Therefore, it is impossible to begin the harmonious work of the congress without eliminating these differences,” said V.I. Lenin in his speech at the congress while discussing the order of the day—July 18, 1903, at the second meeting after the grand opening (July 17).

The majority of the congress delegates: 30 against 10 (in the secretarial entry in the minutes: “with three abstentions”) supported Lenin’s proposal to consider the question of the Bund’s place in the party first of all.

The subsequent meetings of the congress fully confirmed the correctness of Lenin's tactics in relation to the Bund.

The irreconcilable struggle against Bundism, the identification of its opportunist line from the very beginning, undoubtedly contributed greatly to the understanding by the congress delegates of the true role of the Bund at the congress. The Bund delegation invariably, actively, militantly advocated, as V.I. Lenin defined it, for everything “that is worse” and formed blocs with anti-Leninists on many issues.

And this - in a situation where, out of 51 decisive votes that the delegates had, 33 belonged to supporters of Iskra, 10 to the wavering center - the "swamp" and 8 - to opponents of Lenin's ideas - the Bundists (5) and the "Economists" (3). The Iskrists “split, in turn, into two subgroups,” V.I. Lenin pointed out, analyzing the results Total congress.—One subgroup, approximately 9 votes “of the “soft, or rather, zigzag line”... and about 24 votes of hard line Iskraists who defended consistent sparkism...”.

V.I. Lenin called “soft” Iskrists those who followed Yu. Martov, and Martov (pseudonym Yu. O. Tsederbaum a) took a very definite position in relation to Bundism and Zionism. "Day of International Workers' Solidarity, May 1, 1895, well-known Martov, one of the future leaders of Menshevism, without being called a Zionist, expressed the following ideas in his speech: “ Having placed the mass movement at the center of the program, we had to adapt our propaganda and agitation to the class, i.e. make them more Jewish ...
We must resolutely admit that our goal, the goal of the Social Democrats active in the Jewish environment, is to create a specifically Jewish workers' organization».

We are talking about Yu. Martov’s report “The Turning Point in the Jewish Labor Movement,” which he made in Vilna at a meeting of the Jewish intelligentsia approximately two years before the formation of the Bund and the Zionist united organization in Russia.

Thus, there is every reason to see in Martov’s political appearance such features that fully explain his special attitude towards Bundism.

So, in connection with the severity of the struggle against opportunism at the congress, Lenin’s tactics - to bring the question of the Bund up for discussion at the congress from the very beginning - is evidence of V. I. Lenin’s deep understanding of the essence and features of Bundism.

And during the discussion of this issue, the Bundists, in the heat of polemics, fully revealed themselves as opportunists. When voting on the resolution “On the Place of the Bund in the Party,” the congress, by 46 votes against the Bund’s five, rejected, “as absolutely unacceptable in principle, any possibility of federal relations between the RSDLP and the Bund.” It should be noted that Yu. Martov spoke in favor of “more expanded autonomy” for the Bund, and L. Trotsky (L. D. Bronstein) proposed recognizing the Bund as a special party organization for agitation and propaganda among the Jewish proletariat.

During the work of the congress (before the departure of the Bund delegation on August 5 from the 27th morning meeting), the Bund delegates were extremely active. For example, Lieber (M.I. Goldman) spoke more than 20 times during the discussion of the draft Party Program alone. in alliance with the Bundists, the “economists” Akimov (V.P. Makhnovets), Martynov (A.S. Pikker) and others attacked the draft Program written by V.I. Lenin and G.V. Plekhanov.

Trotsky, when discussing the Program, expressed one of his fundamental opportunist positions that “the dictatorship of the proletariat will not be a conspiratorial “seizure of power”, but the political domination of the organized working class constituting the majority of the nation,” that is, he denied the possibility of a socialist revolution in Russia until then until the working class constituted the majority of the nation. According to Trotsky, Russia would have to go through a long period of capitalist development before the conditions for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat would be ripe.

It was the Bundists who especially attacked the draft Program. V.I. Lenin in “The Story of the Second Congress of the RSDLP” wrote: “Each point of the program was discussed and adopted separately, the Bundists repaired it here desperate obstruction and almost 2/3 of the congress, in time, was spent on the program!”

V.I. Lenin and his like-minded people defended the program position on the dictatorship of the proletariat, and on the whole achieved that the “Iskra program” was adopted.

Particularly acute disagreements at the congress arose during the discussion of the first paragraph of the Party Charter - on membership in the party.

Without attempting in this work to consider the entire course of the struggle at the Second Party Congress on this issue (this is not part of the tasks of the historiography of the topic under consideration), we will only pay attention to V.I. Lenin’s assessment of the position of the Bund.

The question was whether the revolutionary party of the Russian proletariat should be highly organized, disciplined and united, or from the very beginning of its real existence, form into something similar to the social reformist parties of the West, whether the party should be highly organized, built on the principles of democratic centralism, or become similar to the vague reformist trade unions.

A bloc of Martovites-Bundists-“economists” and other opponents of the “hard-core Iskra-ists” was formed. V.I. Lenin accurately assessed the role of the Bund in the successful voting for the opportunists at the congress: “Martov won here victory: his wording was accepted, thanks to Bundu, who, of course, immediately realized where there was a crack, and with all his five voted “what’s worse” (the delegate from Rabocheye Dyelo justified his vote for Martov in exactly this way!).”

V.I. Lenin emphasized in his works that the unification of the Bundists led by Lieber, the “soft sparks” under the leadership of Martov and the “Raboche Dyelo” led to a dangerous situation at the congress. "Bund +" Rabochee Dyelo " can decide fate any decision, supporting the minority of Iskra-ists against the majority,” he wrote. “Martov and Co. once again (and not even once, but several times) won most sparkers with the noble assistance of the Bund + Rabocheye Dyelo - for example, on the issue of co-optation into the centers (this issue was resolved by the congress in the spirit of Martov)".

Analyzing the results of the congress immediately after its end, V.I. Lenin stated that out of 55 delegates to the congress (43 with a casting vote and 12 with an advisory vote) Jews made up slightly less than half: 25 delegates (21 - deciding and 4 - advisory).

The Bundists, who represented an insignificant part of the Russian proletariat, occupied an inordinately large place in terms of the number of speeches, as did their comrades, the “economists.”

With all their behavior at the congress, the Bundists clearly sought to impose their line on the congress, and then, through the decisions of the congress, on the entire RSDLP.

They persistently fought so that instead of the organ recognized by the progressive Social Democratic public - the Iskra newspaper created by V. I. Lenin - the congress would approve something else. What exactly? The proposal of the actual head of the Bundist delegation, Lieber, expressed in his speech at the congress cannot but be reproduced. It is very indicative for assessing the maneuvering tactics of the Bund at the congress, which, however, were invariably directed against Bolshevism:

“I believe that the question of a Central Authority is not simply a question of what principles should be upheld by the Central Authority. There still remains the question of the form of the Central Authority. The central organ is considered to be “Workers' Newspaper.” (The newspaper under this name was originally published in Kyiv with the participation and under the leadership of B. A. Eidelman, P. L. Tuchapsky, N. A. Vigdorchik and others. Two issues of this newspaper were published in August and in December 1897. Then the editorial office was arrested. Auth.). Until Rabochaya Gazeta is abolished, we cannot appoint a new body. I think that, despite the shortcomings that I see in Iskra, it should be recognized by the Central Organ.

Another question is whether one organ is enough for us. Did Iskra answer all the requests of readers? I answer - no. It is not enough for the RSDLP to have one Central Organ. It needs the leadership of one Central Organ. But do they really believe that there is no need for a workers' newspaper? I am surprised that the comrades who said before me did not noted this need... We must create a body that would be understandable to the broad masses... I propose to speak out on the question of whether the comrades find it necessary to have a second body - the “Workers' Newspaper” - for the popularization of ideas among the working masses.”

Lieber was immediately supported by Akimov: “I know that Iskra will be recognized as a party organ. But I speak out against this.” In case Lieber’s idea - to declare Rabochaya Gazeta the only Central Organ of the party - is not accepted by the majority of congress participants, the leader The Bund immediately, maneuvering, makes another proposal: to have two central centers.

After a bitter struggle, the congress rejected the claims of the Bundists and the opportunists who supported them, “stated that Rabochaya Gazeta had ceased to exist,” and adopted a resolution canceling the decision of the First Congress of the RSDLP to recognize Rabochaya Gazeta as the Central Organ of the party. A resolution was adopted in which II The congress of the RSDLP declared Iskra its Central Organ.

The attempt of the Bundists to impose their ideological leadership on the party, and even the organizing line of their Central Organ, was not crowned with success.

At the 27th (morning) meeting on August 5, 1903, the congress returned to discussing the issue of the position of the Bund in the party. Having discussed the charter of the Bund, built on the principles of federalism (in the Bundist understanding: an alliance of two parties), the congress rejected it as contrary to the Charter of the RSDLP. Then the Bund delegation, announcing the Bund’s withdrawal from the RSDLP, left the congress, leaving written statements and two letters in which the essence of the congress’s struggle against the separatism of the Bund was grossly distorted.

These Bundist documents were clearly designed to launch agitation and propaganda among the Jewish population against the RSDLP. V.I. Lenin, in the draft resolution on the withdrawal of the Bund from the RSDLP, as well as in a number of his other works, noted the erroneous position of the Bundist delegation and expressed “a firm conviction in the need for complete and closest unity of the Jewish and Russian labor movement in Russia, unity not only of principle, but also organizational." V.I. Lenin considered it necessary that “the Jewish proletariat be thoroughly acquainted... with the attitude of Russian Social Democracy” to what was happening.

Thus, the struggle at the Second Party Congress ended with the “self-rejection” of the Bund from the RSDLP.

You should pay attention to Lieber's speech during the meeting of the congress, from which the Bundists left. He stated: “1895, that is, two years before the founding of the Bund, in one our(my discharge.— Auth.) The brochure said the following: “...We must resolutely admit that our goal, the goal of the Social Democrats operating in the Jewish environment, is to create a specifically Jewish workers’ organization...”.”

Lieber is referring to the Bundist pamphlet “A Turning Point in the History of the Jewish Labor Movement,” and we are talking about Yu. Martov’s report at the congress of Jewish intelligentsia in Vilna. Thus, officially, at the congress level, the Bundists recognized Yu. Martov as the author of the Bundist pamphlet. This fact deserves special attention as irrefutable evidence of the cooperation of representatives of the Jewish bourgeois intelligentsia from among the opportunists on the basis of common class interests and caste traditions - in this case, the Menshevik Yu. Martov and the Bundists.

After the Second Congress of the RSDLP, the Bundists continued their subversive work against Bolshevism, actively propagating, in particular, the idea of ​​Jewish “nationality,” creating, according to V.I. Lenin’s precise assessment, a “ghetto mood” in the Jewish proletariat. After the congress, the leader of the revolutionary proletariat continued the fight against Bundism and Zionism, exposed the “ideological kinship of Zionists and Bundists”.

The carefully substantiated conclusions of V.I. Lenin were and are now of fundamental importance.

At the IV (Unification) Congress of the RSDLP, which met from April 10 to 25, 1906, the Bund’s proposal to join the RSDLP was adopted by 66 votes against 32 with 8 abstentions. Already during the discussion of this issue at the 25th meeting of the congress, a sharp struggle broke out again between opponents of Bundist separatism and the Bundists. “You are a party alien to us,” Lieber openly declared.

But the Bund, if you believe his words at the congress, made significant concessions on issues of federalism, and the unification formally took place. The immediate subsequent experience showed, however, that no actual unification took place at the will of the Bund leaders: already in October 1906, the Bund Central Committee by a special decision prohibited the merger of its local committees with the committees of the RSDLP. The Bund's rejection of real unification was stated at the 1908 RSDLP conference.

So, the Bund, which claimed to represent the interests of the Jewish proletariat, but was a petty-bourgeois organization in its core composition, ideology and politics, formally became part of the RSDLP at the IV Congress in 1906, but in fact remained an independent party. But the leaders of the Bund, who steadily pursued their line on federalism in their grassroots organizations, acted most actively at plenums, conferences and congresses of the RSDLP as militant opponents of Lenin’s ideas and consistent allies of anti-Leninist movements, groups, and blocs.

At the II (First All-Russian) Conference of the RSDLP in November 1906, the Bundists formed a bloc with the Mensheviks and, as a result of this unification, gained a majority of votes and achieved the adoption of the resolution “On the tactics of the RSDLP in the election campaign.” This resolution allowed blocs with cadets.

At the V Congress of the RSDLP (April 30 - May 19, 1907), the Mensheviks and Bundists together had 143 decisive votes (88 and 55), and the Bolsheviks - 89. On all fundamental issues, the Bundists opposed the supporters of V.I. Lenin in alliance with his opponents. Dangerous was the attempt of the opportunists to push through the idea of ​​​​creating a “broad workers’ party”, which, according to the plans of the leaders of anti-Leninist groups, would include Social Democrats (Mensheviks and Bolsheviks), Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, Bundists, etc. This would in fact lead to the liquidation of RSDLP, its dissolution in the petty-bourgeois mass.

During the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) (July 26 - August 3, 1917), the Bundists continued to actively fight against Lenin’s ideas, acting in alliance with the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, Zionists and other enemies of the brewing socialist revolution.

The close alliance of the leaders of the Bundists, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and other petty-bourgeois parties is significant. The famous trinity is widely known in history: Gots-Liber-Dan, accurately assessed in Demyan Bedny’s most popular poem “Liberdan” in the pre-October period. The most active leader of the Bund, M. I. Liber (Goldman), an equally active member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, A. R. Gots, and one of the most militant Mensheviks, F. I. Dan (Gurvich), in personal cooperation, carried out an alliance against the Bolsheviks more actively than this manifested itself in the lower classes of petty-bourgeois parties.

It is less known that the entire leadership of the Menshevik party - P. B. Axelrod, R. A. Abramovich (Rhein), Yu. O. Martov (Zederbaum), including the mentioned F. I. Dan, as well as leading figures of the Bund - A I. Kremer (Wolf), V. D. Medem (Grinberg), A. Ya. Mutnik (Abramov), V. Kossovsky (M. Ya. Levinson), R. A. Abramovich (he was a member of two Central Committees - the Bundist and Menshevik), A. I. Vainshtein (Rakhmilevich), and the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries - V. M. Chernov, A. R. Gots, D. D. Donskoy, M. Ya. Gendelman also formed a closer coalition at the top than that a coalition at the bottom of these parties, which also existed.

Namely, these people - mostly from among the Jewish bourgeois intelligentsia - formed the leading core of these parties, which embarked on the path of cooperation with “bourgeois democracy” and betrayed the cause of the revolution.

The Bundists also collaborated with the Zionists. So, in 1909 they held a joint conference in Chernivtsi, from 1908 they jointly published the magazine “Literary Monatschriften” in Vilna, the editors of which were Zionists and Bundists, jointly participated in the “Yiddishism movement” at joint Zionist-Bundist congresses, etc. One of the largest Zionist leaders, S. M. Dubnov, put forward the slogan in those years: “Jews of all classes and parties, unite!”

In these conditions, V. I. Lenin’s struggle throughout the entire pre-October period against the Zionist-Bundist ideas of isolating Jews, including the social lower classes of Jewry, from the all-Russian democratic, labor movement was of serious importance, and Lenin’s works on this problem are the most accurate, contain deep reasonable assessments especially fully reflect the essence of the matter.

In the article “To the Jewish Workers,” published in 1905 as a preface to the Yiddish brochure “Notice of the Third Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party,” V. I. Lenin revealed in detail the history of the party’s struggle against the leaders of the Bund in the periods I, II, III of its congresses. Social Democrats in Russia invariably spoke out under the great slogan “Workers of all countries, unite!” They proclaimed that without true unity of the working people, “a victorious struggle” against tsarism is impossible. “Unfortunately...,” writes V.I. Lenin, “the unity of Jewish and non-Jewish Social Democrats in one party was destroyed.”

He notes that the leaders of the Bund began to disseminate ideas that “sharply contradict the entire worldview of social democracy. Instead of striving to bring Jewish workers closer to non-Jewish ones, the Bund began to take the path of separating the former from the latter, putting forward the isolation of the Jews at its congresses...

Instead of continuing the work of the First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party towards an even stronger unification of the Bund with the party, the Bund took a step towards its separation from the party: the Bund first emerged from the single foreign organization of the RSDLP and founded an independent foreign organization, and later the Bund acted also from the RSDLP, when the Second Congress of our party in 1903, by a significant majority of votes, refused to recognize the Bund as the sole representative of the Jewish proletariat.”

The publication of the report on the Third Congress of the RSDLP was an important step towards attracting Jewish workers into the ranks of the RSDLP, contrary to the will of the Bundist elite.

The Bund stubbornly resisted the unification of the Social Democratic workers on the ground, prevented the RSDLP from solving this task, launched propaganda for the idea of ​​“cultural-national autonomy,” and contrasted it with the ideas of proletarian solidarity.

This slogan, idea, line of “cultural-national autonomy”, this policy of the Bund was supported by all the Jewish bourgeois parties in Russia, the Zionists. The August (1912) conference of opportunist liquidators who sought to end the existence of the revolutionary party of the Russian proletariat, that is, the leaders of the Mensheviks, Trotskyists and other anti-Leninist groups in the RSDLP, also recognized the policy of “cultural-national autonomy” as legitimate.

V.I. Lenin in his works gave a detailed assessment of the Zionist-Bundist idea. “Socialists,” he wrote, “ are fighting with all and sundry, gross and subtle, manifestations bourgeois nationalism. The slogan “national-cultural autonomy” is precisely such a manifestation.

The kinship of the ideas of the Bund and the ideology of the Jewish bourgeoisie V.I. Lenin emphasized this in connection with his criticism of the Zionist-Bundist slogan of Jewish “national culture” more than once. “Whoever directly or indirectly raises the slogan of Jewish “national culture,” he wrote, “is (whatever his good intentions) an enemy of the proletariat, a supporter old And caste in Jewry, an accomplice of the rabbis and the bourgeois.”

V.I. Lenin sharply criticized the compilation nature of Bundist ideology as a whole and its particular reactionary nature. “Our Bundists,” he wrote, “...are collecting all over the world all the mistakes and all the opportunistic vacillations of the Social Democrats of different countries and different nations, certainly taking into their luggage the worst..." Repeatedly he points out that the Bund is actually a “second voice” of the Jewish bourgeois parties, that is, of Zionism.

V.I. Lenin accurately assessed the position of the Bundists during the First World War. They were hostile to Russia, Russia in general. “The Bundists,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “... are mostly Germanophiles and are glad of the defeat of Russia.”.

After the February Revolution, the Zionists and Bundists became more active. It was believed that the overthrow of tsarism opened up new opportunities for the capitalist development of Russia, for bourgeois democracy. Now they have openly gone over to the camp of the bourgeoisie, discarding “socialist” phrase-mongering.

The Jewish big, middle and petty bourgeoisie received the widest opportunities for active activity in the country.

The Tenth Bund Conference, held in April 1917, noted “the importance of supporting the new government (it was a counter-revolutionary Provisional Government that actively collaborated with the Jewish bourgeoisie - Author) in order to maintain the won freedom” (read: bourgeois-democratic freedoms, which fully satisfied the interests of the Jewish bourgeoisie and its agents in the petty-bourgeois parties).

Between February and October 1917, the Bund became an integral part of the Zionist movement, both in fact and formally. He participated through his representatives in the committee for convening the Zionist congress, was present at the Zionist congresses in May in Kyiv and Yekaterinoslav, organizationally uniting with the most reactionary formations of the Jewish bourgeoisie.

One of the means of their struggle against the Bolsheviks was a fierce slander campaign, in which the Cadets, Bundists, Mensheviks and all other enemies of the socialist revolution participated. In the article “Political Blackmail,” published in September 1917, V. I. Lenin wrote about this tactic of the class enemies of the proletariat: “ Newspaper bullying persons, slander, insinuations serve in the hands of the bourgeoisie and such scoundrels as the Milyukovs, Hessens, Zaslavskys, Danys, etc., as a weapon of political struggle and political revenge.”

The slanderous campaign was largely directed against V.I. Lenin. But the slanderers did not achieve their goal. The working class believed in its leader and followed him.

The victory of the Great October Revolution was the defeat of Zionism in Russia and its ally, the Bund.

The significance of Lenin's pre-October works for the historiography of the pre-October period and modern scientific criticism of Zionism is invaluable.

V.I. Lenin paid considerable attention to exposing the “Zionist socialists” who, in order to deceive the Jewish social lower classes, sought to preach the theory of combining Zionism with socialism. He noted that “Zionist socialists” belong to the bourgeois parties.

Before the Stuttgart International Socialist Congress, held in August 1907, the Central Committee of the Zionist-Socialist Workers' Party (formed in 1904) approached the Central Committee of the RSDLP with a proposal to admit it to the Social Democratic subsection of the Russian section of the Second International.

The Central Committee of the RSDLP refused. Then the Zionists tried to join the Second International with the help of the Socialist-Revolutionary Rubanovich and the leader of the Socialist Jewish Workers' Party (SERP), Zhitlovsky, who was part of the Socialist-Revolutionary subsection. V.I. Lenin at a meeting of the International Socialist Bureau (ISB) resolutely opposed the admission of Zionists to the International.

As a result, the bureau decided to refuse to admit the “Socialist-Zionists” to the II International Council. V. I. Lenin considered the admission into the SME of another Zionist organization, SERP, which the Socialist-Revolutionaries had previously dragged into their subsection of the SME, to be completely unjustified and also protested against the presence of SERP in the SME. His consistent and uncompromising struggle against Zionism was of great importance for the international revolutionary movement.

In the pre-October period, many Russian Social Democrats actively opposed Zionism and Bundism.

G. V. Plekhanov called the Bundists “inconsistent Zionists” and noted that they sought to “establish Zion not in Palestine, but within the Russian state.” And this opinion was not peculiar to him alone. The Bolshevik newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat, in an editorial on November 5 (18), 1912, emphasized in exactly the same wording that the Bund was characterized by “inconsistent Zionism.” The assessment of Bundism as a variety of Zionism is undoubtedly of fundamental importance for historiography.

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The publication mentioned above “How V.I. Lenin put the Jewish Bund in its place. True, later Ilyich received a bullet from them...” - .

Poland and Russia). Among the Jewish craft proletariat that inhabited the cities of Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland, economic organizations in the form of workers' loan banks arose long before the organization of B. In 1888, in Vilna, such banks existed among carpenters, hosiery makers, dressmakers, mechanics, etc. By the same time The first workers' socialist Marxist circles began to be organized. In the early 90s. the idea arose about the need for a special Jewish workers’ organization not only for agitation, but also for “special” national tasks.

This meant some distrust of the Russian proletariat, since the conquest of political rights and Jewish equality was expected not from the proletarian struggle as a whole, but from the activities of a special Jewish workers' party. The organizational formation of the Bund took place in September. With the participation of the Bund, the first congress was held in Minsk in early March 1898 RSDLP(cm.). The period after the first congress was characterized by an exceptional growth of the strike movement and political demonstrations in Vilna, Grodno, Vitebsk and Bialystok.

But mainly the movement developed under the influence "economism"(see) that by the beginning of the 20th century. led to a crisis in the Bund. An independent Jewish workers’ party was organized in Minsk “with the blessing Zubatov a" (see). The Central Committee of the Bund waged an energetic struggle against Zubatovism. The 5th Bund Conference in 1902 dissociated itself from the ideology of “economism”, but succumbed to terrorist sentiments. As the Bund's influence among Jewish workers grew, so did its influence among the non-proletarian sections of the Jewish population. This influence especially intensified after the pogrom organized by Plehve in Chisinau in 1903. The intelligentsia petty-bourgeois youth saw in the Bund the defender of oppressed Jewry. This situation in turn strengthened nationalist tendencies in the Bund. Back in 1901, the IV Congress of the Bund proclaimed the need to fight for national equality and for the reorganization of the RSDLP on a federal basis, which caused a decisive rebuff from Iskra. As a result, the Bund left the party at the Second Congress of the RSDLP in the fall. The Bund insisted on the party’s recognition that “the Bund is a social-democratic organization of the Jewish proletariat, not limited in its activities by any regional boundaries, and is included in the party as its sole representative.” The majority of the congress spoke out against the nationalist aspirations of the Bund.

In the period from 1903 to 1905, the Bund actually acted as an independent political party. The influence of the Bund on Jewish workers and the petty bourgeoisie grew, and at the same time nationalism in the Bund grew. In 1905, at the VI Congress of the Bund, a program on cultural-national autonomy was adopted, formulated as follows: the removal from the jurisdiction of the state and local and regional governments of functions related to cultural issues (public education, etc.), and their transfer to the nation represented by special institutions - local and central, elected by all its members on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage.

During the period of the rise of the revolutionary wave in the Bund, sympathy for the tactical line of the Bolsheviks prevailed. But after the defeat of the revolution, there was a sharp turn towards Menshevism in the Bund; VII Congress of the Bund in September. 1906 adopted an organizational charter, in which § 1 copies the formula proposed by the Mensheviks at the Second Congress. The political resolution also marked a transition to the Menshevik platform. The same congress decided that the Bund should return to the RSDLP. However, even after this, the Bund continued to exist as an independent political party. At the same time, B. is increasingly emerging as a definitely Menshevik organization. The years of reaction 1908-10 dealt a severe blow to the Bund; there are barely a few hundred members left in its underground organizations.

At the same time, a number of legal workers and general democratic organizations were created, under the influence of the Bund. These legal organizations were primarily engaged in cultural work in the Hebrew language. At the same time, the attention of Bund workers to issues of Jewish culture, language and community increased. In this regard, attention was diverted from general political issues towards narrowly national ones. It is characteristic that of the 6 points on the agenda of the 8th conference (October 1910), three were devoted to questions about the Jewish community, the struggle for equality of the Jewish language and the Sabbath rest. After the actual split of the party into two parts in 1912, the 9th Baltic Conference met in June 1912, proclaiming an alliance with the liquidators, and in August. 1912 The Bund was one of the most active participants in the August conference, which organized the so-called. August anti-Bolshevik bloc (see August block). At the same August conference, the Bund achieved approval of national-cultural autonomy.

The war years were characterized by the Menshevik, defensist position of the Bund with the presence of a small pacifist wing. Representatives of B. took part in military-industrial committees together with the Menshevik defense activists. The Bund meeting in Kharkov in May 1916 gave victory to the so-called movement. "revolutionary defencism".

After the February Revolution, two currents emerged in the Bund: the right-wing one, led by Lieber, and the supposedly “left”, “March” movement, led by Abramovich. However, in practice, both of these movements were almost indistinguishable from each other. In Ukraine, B. took part in the Ukrainian Central Rada (see. Central Rada) and dissociated himself from the Bolsheviks; Representative B. entered the government of the Central Rada - the General Secretariat. During the January uprising in 1918 in Kyiv, when the arsenal workers rebelled against the Central Rada, B. called for its support. On Dec. 1918 The left wing took shape in the Bund. In Jan. In 1919, a meeting of Bulgarian organizations took place, at which the leaders of Belarus still occupied a wavering position. On March 1, 1919, a communist organization was created in Ukraine. B., and in July 1919 it merged with the Communist Party of Ukraine. The Mensheviks left the Bund.

Prerequisites for the emergence of the Bund

The Jewish labor movement in the Russian Empire arose and took shape in the Bund in “Jewish Lithuania,” that is, in the six northwestern provinces of the Jewish Pale of Settlement (Vilna, Vitebsk, Grodno, Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev) with the city of Vilna (Vilnius) as the center , and in Warsaw, that is, in areas with an absolutely and relatively large Jewish proletariat. The tendency towards assimilation was less strong in this region. The first leaders of the Bund came from there. From Lithuania and Belarus, the Jewish labor movement gradually spread to Poland and Ukraine.

The Jewish labor movement was formed from three sectors in Jewish society. Firstly, hired workers who had a corporate consciousness and cohesion as a result of the capitalization of crafts and the collapse of traditional craft associations ( hevrot), which led to the creation of separate apprentice organizations (from the mid-19th century, especially in the clothing industry). Sporadic strikes took place in the 1870s among weavers and tobacco workers.

Secondly, there were circles of radical intellectuals who in this region combined revolutionary ideas and Marxist ideology with Jewish identity and responsibility to the Jewish proletariat. Finally, there was a semi-intelligentsia who, although they lacked formal general education, were deeply rooted in Jewish culture. In the 1870s, Aharon Shmuel Lieberman and his circle made the first attempts to spread socialist ideas among the Jewish people in their native language and start a revolutionary movement.

From the 1880s this movement began to develop steadily, creating a Jewish labor movement. In 1882, 70 Jewish weavers in Bialystok stopped working at the factory and demanded higher wages. This is considered the first strike in the Jewish sector in Tsarist Russia.

Circles of Jewish intellectuals for the promotion of culture and socialism among Jewish workers were formed in Vilna during 1886-1887, and all their activities were conducted in Russian. Mutual aid funds for workers were founded and attempts were made to found artels. Gradually, however, the ideology of these circles changed, and from the traditional populist position of Russian socialists turned to Marxism, propagandized by Plekhanov. Intelligentsia circles also gradually changed their attitude towards the Jewish artisan and abandoned their previous “cosmopolitan” position, which in practice meant the “Russification” of Jewish elements in Russia.

The changes took place in several stages until 1895. The leading role in them belonged, among others, to A. I. Kremer, S. Gozhansky, J. Mill, I. Aizenstadt, Z. Kopelson, V. Kossovsky, A. Mutnik (Mutnikovich). The number of circles and their members increased, while at the same time efforts were increased to improve working conditions, in particular to reduce working hours in the sock knitting, tobacco processing and clothing industries, where conditions were simply disgraceful.

In addition to the general revolutionary tensions in Russia at this time, unrest among Jews was expanded due to widespread anti-Semitism in society at large and in government circles, which, combined with social and economic tensions in the overcrowded shtetls, also led to mass emigration and gave rise to the activities of Hovevei Zion.

Ultimately, the leaders of these circles came to the conclusion that Jewish workers could and should form a socialist labor movement within themselves, since their specific circumstances gave rise to demands that were largely characteristic of the Jewish worker. They also believed that the Jewish environment as a whole was more objectively receptive to the idea of ​​opposition and rebellion against the Tsarist authoritarian regime.

A new line of action was formulated by Kremer and Gorzansky in the pamphlet “Letter to Agitators” (1894), which was supposed to influence the entire Russian Social Democratic movement. This “Letter” and “Lecture on May Day” by Yuli Martov (1895) called for a transition from closed circles to agitation among the broad masses of workers. To enable "agitation", it was decided to replace the Russian language with Yiddish as a means of propaganda, and "Slang Committees" were formed (in Vilna in 1895) for this purpose. Thus, the movement was integrated into the accompanying process of revival of the Yiddish language and literature.

The radical Jewish intelligentsia was called upon to abandon its "distrust of the Jewish masses" and "national passivity", to work for the creation of an organization of Jewish workers aimed at gaining their rights, and to carry out a "political national struggle" to obtain civil freedom for all Jews. This organization must associate itself with the non-Jewish proletariat and the all-Russian labor movement, but only on the basis of equal partnership, and not the integration of Jews into the general labor movement. This dualism was the cause of ideological vacillation throughout the existence of the Bund.

The "workers' opposition" to this "new program" led by A. Gordon was not successful, and in 1894 the new trend gained support in many industrial centers. Mutual aid funds were transformed into workers' struggle funds (trade unions). At the beginning of 1896, 32 such foundations existed in Vilna alone. A wave of successful strikes followed. Jewish Labor groups were represented at the Socialist International convention in London in 1896. The Central "Group of Jewish Social Democrats" was formed, and the periodicals "Yiddisher Arbeiter" (1896-1905) and "Arbeiter Shtime" (1897-1905) began to appear - both of which later became organs of the Bund.

Beginning of the Bund

The Bund was founded at an illegal congress in Vilna, with the participation of 13 delegates (8 of them workers). In October 1897, the Bund was part of the Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP); at the 1st (founding) congress of the RSDLP in Minsk in 1898, three of the nine delegates were Bundists. The Bund entered the Russian party as an autonomous body, and Kremer was elected a member of its central committee.

In addition to the founding congress, the following were held:

  • second congress - October 1898 in Kovno;
  • the third - December 1899 in Kovno;
  • the fourth - May 1901 in Bialystok;
  • fifth - June 1903 in Zurich;
  • sixth - October-November 1905 in Zurich;
  • seventh - August-September 1906 in Lemberg (Lvov);
  • eighth - December 1917 in Petrograd.

The Congress elected the Central Committee, which was the main political, administrative and representative body of the Bund. Between congresses there were also conferences whose authority was more limited. Large branches were headed by committees, mainly composed of members appointed by the Central Committee. "Strike funds", including the national unions of brushworkers and tanners, were included in the Bund. There were also groups of intellectuals.

The number of Bund members grew from 25,000 in 1903 to 35,000 in 1905. The "Foreign Committee", founded in December 1898 by students and workers who had left Russia, including at various periods the most important Bund leaders, served as the Bund's representative in the international socialist movement, raised funds, published printed materials and organized their transportation. The Bund received significant assistance from its Landsmanschaften (community) and groups of sympathizers in the United States, led by the Central Union (Zentral Farband), which in 1906 consisted of 58 organizations with 3,000 members.

Although the Bund was opposed to cooperation with Jewish labor movements in other countries, it had significant influence in the formation of the Jewish Social Democratic Party in Galicia in 1905. Bund activists contributed to the founding of the Jewish Socialist Federation of America in 1912. Several prominent figures in the American Jewish labor movement came from the ranks of the Bund, including S. Hillman, B. Hoffman, Zivion B. Vladek, J. B. Salutsky-Hardman, M. Holguin, N. Chanin, and D. Dubinsky. The Bund's activities and ideas also influenced Jewish socialism in Argentina, Bulgaria and Thessaloniki (Greece).

Representatives of the Bund repeatedly argued with the leadership of the RSDLP on the issue of Jewish cultural and national autonomy. The Bund demanded that the RSDLP recognize it as the sole representative of Jewish workers on a national (as opposed to territorial) basis, since, unlike other peoples of the Russian Empire, Jews were not concentrated in a special territory where they would be the national majority.

The organizations of the RSDLP were built on a territorial basis and united all party members living in a given area, regardless of nationality; The Bund pointed out the need to create separate local organizations for Jewish party members. At the beginning of the 20th century. these differences became so acute that the Bund left the RSDLP in 1903 (returned in 1906); Lenin and other leaders of the RSDLP waged an ideological struggle against the position of the Bund.

Bund ideology

The Bund, along with the Marxist ideology of the RSDLP, also adopted some special principles related to Jewish problems, such as the priority of Yiddish as the language of the Jewish working masses and cultural-national autonomy. In full agreement with the views of the RSDLP, the Bund viewed Zionism as a “reactionary bourgeois or petty-bourgeois nationalist” movement that distracted the Jewish masses from the political struggle in Russia.

The Third Congress of the Bund (1899) rejected Mill's proposal that the demand for Jewish "national rights" be included in the program. At the fourth congress, the Bund moved beyond the demand for equal political and civil rights for Jews, and there was a trend towards national cultural autonomy (under the influence of the activities of S. Dubnov, H. Zhitovsky and the growing strength of Zionism).

However, as a compromise with opponents of this proposal, it was decided not to advocate for Jewish autonomy in specific demands for fear of "inflating national feeling" which could "erode the class consciousness of the proletariat and lead to chauvinism." This restriction was not observed in practice even in 1904, and was officially abolished at the Sixth Congress in 1905. Another resolution of the Fourth Congress sought to recreate the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party on national-federal principles. This proposal was rejected at the second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party. As a result, the Bund broke away from it and emerged as an independent party.

The Bund did not view all the world's Jews as a single Jewish people and therefore rejected global Jewish politics, limiting its goals to achieving civil rights and cultural autonomy for Russian Jewry. The Bund rejected, in the name of the principles of class struggle, any cooperation with other Jewish parties, even in organizing self-defense against pogroms. While assimilationists among Russian Social Democrats viewed the Bundist ideology as "unacceptably Zionist", the Bund, for its part, defined the ideas of Zionism as reactionary and bourgeois or petty-bourgeois, even including parties such as Poalei Zion, the Jewish Socialist Workers' Party and the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party (Territorialists).

The party has always been divided into two factions, proportionally represented in the central bodies: centrists (“Eiser”) and leftists (“Zweier”). The split occurred during the discussion of the issue of joining the Socialist International. In parallel with the Combund in Russia, the Polish Bund also showed loyalty to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the power of the Soviets. The Krakow Congress in 1920 decided to join the Comintern, which required that the Bund accept its entire program as a condition of membership.

This did not work out, but as a result, some old famous Bundists felt out of place in the movement and emigrated (V. Medem, A. Litvak). Others (in particular, P. Rosenthal) formed a short-lived Social Democratic Bund. One group, however, organized the Polish Kombund, which later joined the Communist Party. The question of belonging to the Comintern continued to trouble and divide the Bund for a long time, with the majority moving first to one side, then to the other. In 1930, the Bund joined the Socialist International, where it became part of the left wing.

Another reason for the division of the Bund was its relationship with the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), which the left-wing Bundists viewed as an enemy due to its nationalism and reformism, and for forming a center-left front with non-socialist peasant parties. The rapprochement between the two sides occurred mainly as a result of the Bund joining the Socialist International and the radicalization of the PPS in the 1930s. In the 1930s, some of the Bund activists were imprisoned in the Bereza Kartuska concentration camp.

In the early years of its existence, the Polish Bund was subjected to severe persecution due to its opposition to the war against Soviet Russia. In 1921-39 The Polish Bund published a daily newspaper in Yiddish, Naye Volkszeitung. The Bund in independent Poland acted as a legal political party. He organized and supported the youth organization "Zukunft", which on the eve of the Second World War had up to 15,000 members, the children's "SKIF" (since 1926), the women's "YAF" and the sports "Morgenstern".

From the first day of its existence, the Bund in Poland stubbornly and unswervingly opposed Zionism and religious parties, but collaborated in various fields with other Jewish workers' parties. Sometimes he even blocked with the left flank of the Zionist Workers' Party Po'alei Zion in municipal elections. In 1930, a common list was drawn up with the right wing Poalei Zion for elections to the Seimas (parliament). Bund representatives constituted an overwhelming majority in the National Council of Jewish Trade Unions, which at the end of 1921 had 7 unions with 205 branches and 46,000 members, and in 1939 there were 14 unions represented with 498 branches and approximately 99 thousand members.

The Polish Bund, not without internal resistance, organized small craft and construction cooperatives (1927) in cooperation with ORT and Joint. In 1921, with the great participation of the Bund, the Central Organization of Schools was created. The Bund was adamant in its extreme opposition to Hebrew teaching, but changed its position slightly towards traditional Jewish holidays and the teaching of Jewish history. He maintained a bureau to deal with emigration, but his fixed attachment to the principle of "doykeit" ("here") prevented the Polish Bund from appreciating the importance of Jewish emigration.

The Polish Bund achieved its greatest political influence between 1936 and 1939, in the period preceding the Nazi occupation of Poland. He had important achievements in the fight against rampant anti-Semitism in the Polish government and Polish society after Hitler came to power in Germany. The Bund showed a lot of initiative and energy in organizing self-defense groups. The Bund's popularity increased and it achieved significant success in municipal elections.

In March 1936, the Bund declared a general strike in protest against the pogrom in Pszytyk. The Bund organized the Workers' Congress against Anti-Semitism (1936), which was banned by the authorities, and planned the 1938 Congress to Struggle the Jewish Population in Poland (1938).

During the occupation of Poland, the Bund took an active part in the Jewish resistance movement (A. Blum, L.B. Feiner, B. Goldstein, M. Edelman are especially famous). The representative of the Bund under the Polish government in exile, S. Ziegelboim, committed suicide in London in 1943 in protest against the passive attitude of the Allied powers towards the extermination of Jews in Europe. For

Bund

The political oppression of the Jews, the Russification national policy towards the Belarusians, and the restrictions on the Polish bourgeoisie created dangerous tension in society. Aspects of the national liberation movement were woven into the economic and political struggle.

Among a significant part of the Social Democrats in the western provinces, a separatist tendency arose, which manifested itself in the desire to create workers' organizations according to national characteristics in cities with a multinational population. The Lithuanian Social Democratic Party adopted this platform. In September 1987, a congress of representatives of Jewish social democratic organizations of Vilnius, Minsk, Vitebsk, Warsaw, Bialystok was organized in Vilna, but which created the Bund - the General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia. A. Kremer became its leader. The need to create the Bund was motivated by the fact that only a national organization of Jewish workers could better protect their interests.

Immediately after the congress, agitation was launched for the workers' organizations that existed in Belarus at that time to join the Bund. The Brest organization joined the Bund in the fall of 1897, but was crushed by the police. The Gomel Social Democrats, noticing the threat of a split, refused to join the Bund. Many members of the Minsk Jewish Labor Organization also did not agree to join the Bund.

“Some political parties also contributed to the isolation of the Jewish labor movement by limiting their work only among Jews. The Bund was built along national lines on the basis of strike funds of Jewish workers. The Jewish labor movement had its own specifics. Propaganda was conducted in the Jewish language, which made it difficult for workers of other nationalities to participate in the ongoing actions. Many Jewish workers simply did not know the Russian language” 11 P. Socialist-Revolutionary brigadiers in Belarus. Mn., 1994. - P. 29..

The Bund actively carried out agitation and propaganda work, seeking to fill its circles with representatives of the radical intelligentsia, artisans and workers. “Marxism was interpreted in relation to traditional ideas about the special mission of the Jewish people” 22 Political parties of Russia. The end of the 19th - the first third of the 20th century. Encyclopedia, M., 1996. - P. 93. .

In 1898, the Bund participated in the preparation and holding of the 1st Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and entered the RSDLP as an organization autonomous in matters relating to the Jewish proletariat. The Bund led the economic struggle of Jewish workers (in 1890-1900 there were 312 strikes of the Jewish proletariat in the Northwestern Territory), which expanded its influence. By the end of 1900, there were Bund organizations in 9 cities.

In the winter of 1901, the central committee of the Bund officially proclaimed the slogan of “cultural-national autonomy.” In April 1901, the Fourth Congress of the Bund adopted a program on the national question, essentially based on the recognition of the Jews of Russia as an extraterritorial nation, and approved in principle bourgeois-nationalist “cultural-national autonomy.”

The V Congress of the Bund (June-July 1903) put forward as an ultimatum the demand for recognition of the Bund as “the only representative of the Jewish proletariat.” The Second Congress of the RSDLP rejected this demand, and the Bund delegation left it, declaring the Bund’s withdrawal from the RSDLP.

VI The congress in the program on the national question fixed the main position: complete civil and political equality of Jews; for the Jewish population, the use of their native language in relations with the court, government agencies and local governments; national-cultural autonomy.

During the revolution of 1905-1907. The Bund had 274 organizations uniting about 34 thousand people. In 1906, the Bund dropped its demand for recognition as “the only representative of the Jewish proletariat” and joined the RSDLP.

After the February Revolution, the Bund split and some of the Bundists united in Vitebsk into the Social Democratic Bund and shared the common fate of the Mensheviks.

In 1898, three of the nine delegates were Bundists. However, representatives of the Bund repeatedly argued with the leadership of the RSDLP on the issue of Jewish cultural and national autonomy (see autonomism). The Bund demanded that the RSDLP recognize it as the sole representative of Jewish workers on a national (as opposed to territorial) basis, since, unlike other peoples of the Russian Empire, Jews were not concentrated in a special territory where they would be the national majority. The organizations of the RSDLP were built on a territorial basis and united all party members living in a given area, regardless of nationality; The Bund pointed out the need to create separate local organizations for Jewish party members. At the beginning of the 20th century. these differences became so acute that the Bund left the RSDLP in 1903 (returned in 1906); Lenin and other leaders of the RSDLP waged an ideological struggle against the position of the Bund.

The Jewish labor movement in the Russian Empire arose and took shape in the Bund in “Jewish Lithuania,” that is, in the six northwestern provinces of the Jewish Pale of Settlement (Vilna, Vitebsk, Grodno, Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev) with the city of Vilna (Vilnius) as the center , and in Warsaw, that is, in areas with an absolutely and relatively large Jewish proletariat. The Bund, along with the Marxist ideology of the RSDLP, also adopted some special principles related to Jewish problems, such as the priority of Yiddish as the language of the Jewish working masses and cultural-national autonomy. In full agreement with the views of the RSDLP, the Bund viewed Zionism as a “reactionary bourgeois or petty-bourgeois nationalist” movement that distracted the Jewish masses from the political struggle in Russia.

The ranks of the Bund were significantly thinned as a result of the mass emigration of Jews from Russia. With the restriction of political and trade union activity during the period of reaction after the revolution of 1905, the semi-legal activities of the Bund focused on cultural events: the organization of literary and musical-dramatic circles, evening courses, etc. After a short break, the Bund newspapers began to be published in Yiddish (Lebensfragen ", "Zeit"). The Bund became a champion of extreme Yiddishism and began to take an active part in activities related to the problems of everyday life of Jews in Russia and Poland, including the fight against the Polish anti-Jewish boycott and the campaign against the dismissal of Jewish workers. 20 thousand Jewish workers took part in a protest strike against the Beilis case (see M.M. Beilis), organized by the Bund in 1913. After the final split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks in 1912, the Bund remained in the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP, which recognized the right of Jews to national-cultural autonomy, while the Bolsheviks continued to fight fiercely against it.

By the end of 1917, the Bund had about 40 thousand members in 400 organizations. In the general political arena, Bund leaders defended the platforms of the right and left Mensheviks. At the same time, the Bund put forward a demand for the formation of Jewish national-cultural autonomy, participated in communal elections and was represented on the organizing committee of the All-Jewish Convention, which was to be held in December 1917. In Ukraine, the Bund was a supporter of the formation of an autonomous Ukraine as part of federal Russia. In the elections to the All-Jewish National Assembly of Ukraine (November 1918), the Bund received 18% of the total votes. In May 1919 he joined the United Jewish Socialist Workers' Party (Fareinikte), after which the Communist Union (Komfarband) was formed, which merged with the Ukrainian Communist Party in August. After the establishment of Soviet power, the leadership of the Bund in Russia split into “right” and “left” (1920). A significant part of the representatives of the right wing emigrated, and the “left” liquidated the Bund (1921) and partially joined the Communist Party - the RCP (b). Subsequently, under Stalin, most of them were subjected to repression.

In November 1914, when the threat of an invasion of Poland by German troops became obvious, the Central Committee of the Bund (including I. Portnoy and V. Shulman) organized the Committee of Bundist Organizations of Poland in Warsaw. The regime of the German occupation authorities gave the Polish Bund the opportunity to put forward its demands and organize Jewish trade unions, workers' kitchens, cooperative stores and a network of cultural and educational organizations. The Bund also took part in municipal elections. In 1920, the Jewish Social Democratic Workers' Party in Galicia joined the Polish Bund. In 1921–39 The Polish Bund published a daily newspaper in Yiddish, Naye Volkszeitung. The Bund in independent Poland acted as a legal political party. He organized and supported the youth organization "Zukunft", which on the eve of World War II had up to 15 thousand members, children's, women's and sports organizations. In 1930 the Bund joined the Socialist International.

From the first day of its existence, the Bund in Poland stubbornly and unswervingly opposed Zionism and religious parties, but collaborated in various fields with other Jewish workers' parties. Sometimes he even blocked with the left flank of the Zionist Workers' Party Po'alei Zion in municipal elections. Bund representatives constituted an overwhelming majority in the National Council of Jewish Trade Unions, which in 1939 represented 14 trade unions with 498 branches and approximately 99,000 members. The Polish Bund achieved its greatest political influence between 1936 and 1939, in the period preceding the Nazi occupation of Poland. He had important achievements in the fight against rampant anti-Semitism in the Polish government and Polish society after Hitler came to power in Germany. The Bund showed a lot of initiative and energy in organizing self-defense groups. The Bund's popularity increased and it achieved significant success in municipal elections.

During the occupation of Poland, the Bund was active in the Jewish resistance movement. The representative of the Bund under the Polish government in exile, S. Ziegelboim, committed suicide in London in protest against the passive attitude of the Allied powers towards the extermination of Jews in Europe. Two leaders of the Polish Bund, W. Alter and H. Ehrlich, who fled to the USSR, were executed there. After the end of World War II, the Bund resumed its activities among the surviving Polish Jews, but was liquidated by the communist authorities in 1948. At the beginning of the war, some Polish Bundists, with the assistance of the Jewish Workers' Committee, managed to move to the United States and organize a Bund representative office there. The 1st International Bund Conference was held in Brussels in 1947.

The Bund is part of the Socialist International. Having accepted the previously rejected doctrine of the existence of a single Jewish nation throughout the world, the Bund as a whole (excluding a minority) and after the creation of the State of Israel denies the leading role of Israel in the life of Jews in the Diaspora. This is the difference between the Bund and almost all other Jewish workers' parties in the Diaspora, except the communist one. Currently, the Bund continues to function in almost all Western countries where there is a Jewish population, but nowhere does it occupy a significant position in Jewish public life. Despite its consistent anti-Zionist position, the Bund also exists in Israel, but does not play any significant role in the spiritual and social life of the state.



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