Bundism

 

Part of a series of articles on the Jewish Labour Bund אַלגעמײַנער ײדישער אַרבעטער בּונד אין ליטע פוילין און רוסלאַנד 1890s to World War I Russia · Austria-Hungary Interwar years and World War II Belarus · Latvia · Lithuania · Poland · Romania · Soviet Union After 1945 International Jewish Labor Bund Branches: Australia · France · Israel · United Kingdom People Victor Alter · Henryk Ehrlich · Esther Frumkin · Arkadi Kremer · Pati Kremer  · Mikhail Liber · Vladimir Medem · Noah Meisel · Anna Rozental · Szmul Zygielbojm Press Arbeiter Fragen · Arbeiterstimme · Der yidisher arbeyter · Folkstsaytung · Lodzer veker Associated organisations Klain Bund · Kultur Lige · Morgnshtern · S.K.I.F. · Tsukunft · Tsukunft shturem Splinter groups Communist Bund (Poland) · Communist Bund (Russia) · Communist Bund (Ukraine) · Komtsukunft Categories Bundism · Jewish history · Socialist parties

Bundism is a Jewish socialist and secular movement that originated with the General Jewish Labour Bund, founded in the Russian Empire in 1897. Bundism was an important component of the social democratic movement in the Russian empire until it was violently suppressed by the Communist party after the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bundist movement continued to exist as a political party in independent Poland prior to the Holocaust (the Polish Bund) when many of its members were killed. After the Second World War, the International Jewish Labor Bund was founded.

Ideology

Marxism

While the Bund ["circle"] was a trade union as well as a political party, its initial purpose was the organisation of the Russian Jewish proletariat.

Secularism

Though a staunchly secular party, the Bund took part in the kehillot elections.

Yiddishism

The Bund also promoted the use of Yiddish (Yiddishism) as a Jewish national language and to some extent opposed the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew.

Doikayt

The doikayt (lit. "hereness", Yiddish = do -kayt, German = da-keit, French = "ici-té") concept is central to the Bundist ideology.

National-cultural autonomism

The Bund did not advocate separatism, focusing on culture, not a state or a place, as the glue of Jewish nationhood. In this the Bundists borrowed extensively from the Austro-Marxist concept of national personal autonomy, further alienating the Bolsheviks and Lenin.

In a 1904 text, Social democracy and the national question, Vladimir Medem exposed his version of this concept:

"Let us consider the case of a country composed of several national groups, e.g. Poles, Lithuanians and Jews. Each national group would create a separate movement. All citizens belonging to a given national group would join a special organisation that would hold cultural assemblies in each region and a general cultural assembly for the whole country. The assemblies would be given financial powers of their own: either each national group would be entitled to raise taxes on its members, or the state would allocate a proportion of its overall budget to each of them. Every citizen of the state would belong to one of the national groups, but the question of which national movement to join would be a matter of personal choice and no authority would have any control over his decision. The national movements would be subject to the general legislation of the state, but in their own areas of responsibility they would be autonomous and none of them would have the right to interfere in the affairs of the others".

Opposition to Zionism

Before the creation of the State of Israel

The Bund eventually came to strongly oppose Zionism, arguing that emigration to Palestine was a form of escapism. After the 1936 Warsaw kehilla elections, Henryk Ehrlich created an incident by accusing Zionist leaders Yitzhak Gruenbaum and Ze'ev Jabotinsky of being responsible for recent anti-Semitic agitation in Poland by their campaign urging Jewish emigration therefrom.

After 1947

A Bundist chapter was created in Israel in 1951, the Arbeter-ring in Yisroel - Brith Haavoda, which even took part in the 1959 Knesset elections, with a very low electoral result.

The 1955 Montreal 3rd World Conference of the International Jewish Labor Bund decided that the creation of the Jewish state was an important event in Jewish history that might play a positive role in Jewish life, yet a few necessary changes were needed. The conference participants demanded:

• a) the authorities of Israel should treat the state as property of the Jews the world;
• b) but it would mean that the affairs of the Jewish community in Israel should be subordinate to those of world Jewry.
• c) the policy of the state of Israel would be the same toward all citizens regardless of their nationalities.
• d) Israel should foster peace with the Arabs. This required halting territorial expansion and resolving the Palestinian refugee problem.
• e) Yiddish should be taught at all educational institutions and would be promoted in public life.

Bundist members of parliaments or governments

• Mojżesz Gutman member of the Ukrainian Central Rada in 1917, then Minister without portfolio in the short-lived autonomous Belarusian National Council (1917–1918) and Belarusian People’s Republic (1918–1919).
• Noah Meisel (1891–1956) member of the Latvian Parliament between 1922 and 1931 (twice reelected); Daugavpils city council member
• Moisei Rafes (1883–1942), member of the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly and also of the Ukrainian Central Rada; member, as General controller, of the General Secretariat of Ukraine (the chief executive body of the Ukrainian National Republic from 28 June 1917 to 22 January 1918).
• Emanuel Scherer, member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile after Zygielbojm's suicide; secretary general of the International Jewish Labor Bund (1961–1977)
• Michal Shuldenfrei, member of the Polish parliament in 1947-1948
• Aleksandr Zolotarev, successor of Moisei Rafes
• Szmul Zygielbojm (1895–1943), member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile (March 1942 till his suicide in May 1943)

Documents

• "The resolution of the tenth conference of the Bund, April 1917"

Bibliography

In English

• Yosef Gorni, Converging alternatives: the Bund and the Zionist Labor Movement, 1897-1985, SUNY Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-7914-6659-9
• Jonathan Frankel, Jewish politics and the Russian Revolution of 1905, Tel-Aviv, Tel Aviv University, 1982 (21 pages)
• Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and politics: socialism, nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 978-0-521-26919-3
• Jack Lester Jacobs (ed.), Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe : The Bund at 100, Zydowski Instytut Historyczny—Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy, New York, New York University Press, May 2001, ISBN 0-8147-4258-0
• Jack Lester Jacobs, Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland, Syracuse University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-8156-3226-6
• Bernard K. Johnpoll, The politics of futility. The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917–1943, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1967
• N. Levin, While Messiah tarried : Jewish socialist movements, 1871–1917, New York, Schocken Books, 1977, ISBN 978-0-8052-0616-6
• N. Levin, Jewish socialist movements, 1871–1917 : while Messiah tarried, London, Routledge & K. Paul (Distributed by Oxford University Press), 1978, ISBN 978-0-7100-8913-7
• Y. Peled, Class and ethnicity in the pale: the political economy of Jewish workers' nationalism in late Imperial Russia, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-333-41255-8
• Antony Polonsky, "The Bund in Polish Political Life, 1935-1939", in: Ezra Mendelsohn (ed.), Essential Papers on Jews and the Left, New York, New York University Press, 1997
• C. Belazel Sherman, Bund, Galuth nationalism, Yiddishism, Herzl Institute Pamphlet no.6, New York, 1958, ASIN B0006AVR6U
• Henry Tobias, The origins and evolution of the Jewish Bund until 1901, Ann Arbor (Michigan), University Microfilms, 1958
• Henry Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia from Its Origins to 1905, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1972
• Enzo Traverso, From Moses to Marx - The Marxists and the Jewish question: History of a debate 1843-1943, New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1996 (review)
• A.K. Wildman, Russian and Jewish social democracy, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1973

In French

• Daniel Blatman, Notre liberté et La Vôtre - Le Mouvement ouvrier juif Bund en Pologne, 1939-1949, 2002, ISBN 2-204-06981-7 (French review)
• Alain Brossat, Le Yiddishland révolutionnaire, Paris, Balland, 1983 ISBN 2-7158-0433-4
• Élie Eberlin, Juifs russes : le Bund et le sionisme. Un voyage d'étude., Paris, Cahiers de la quinzaine (6e cahier de la 6e série), 1904, 155 pages ASIN B001C9XEME
• Vladimir Medem, Ma vie, Paris, Champion, 1969 (Memories of a Bund leader)
• Henri Minczeles, "La résistance du Bund en France pendant l'occupation", Le Monde juif 51:154 (1995) : 138-53
• Henri Minczeles, Histoire générale du Bund, Un mouvement révolutionnaire juif, Éditions Denoël, Paris, 1999, ISBN 2-207-24820-8
• Claudie Weill, Les cosmopolites - Socialisme et judéité en Russie (1897–1917), Paris, Éditions Syllpse, Collection "Utopie critique", févr. 2004, ISBN 2-84797-080-0 (presentation)
• Enzo Traverso, De Moïse à Marx - Les marxistes et la question juive, Paris, Kimé, 1997
• Union progressiste des Juifs de Belgique, 100^e anniversaire du Bund. Actes du Colloque, Minorités, Démocratie, Diasporas, Bruxelles, UPJB, 1997, ISSN 0770-5476
• Nathan Weinstock, Le Pain de misère, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe - L'empire russe jusqu'en 1914, Paris, La Découverte, 2002, (Vol. I) ISBN 2-7071-3810-X
• Nathan Weinstock, Le Pain de misère, Histoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe - L'Europe centrale et occidentale jusqu'en 1945, Paris, La Découverte, (Vol. II) ISBN 2-7071-3811-8

• movie: Nat Lilenstein (Dir.), Les Révolutionnaires du Yiddishland, 1983, Kuiv productions & A2 (French review)

In German

• Arye Gelbard, Der jüdische Arbeiter-Bund Russlands im Revolutionsjahr 1917, Wien : Europaverlag, 1982 (Materialien zur Arbeiterbewegung ; Nr. 26), ISBN 978-3-203-50824-5
• Gertrud Pickhan, "Gegen den Strom". Der Allgemeine Jüdische Arbeiterbund, "Bund" in Polen, 1918-1939, Stuttgart/Munich, DVA, 2001, 445 p. (Schriftenreihe des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts, Leipzig), ISBN 3-421-05477-0 (French review)