Table Of ContentEssential Papers on Jewish Studies
General Editor: Robert M. Seltzer
Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict:
From Late Antiquity to the Reformation
Edited by Jeremy Cohen
Essential Papers on Hasidism: Origins to Present
Edited by Gershon David Hundert
Essential Papers on Jewish-Christian Relations:
Imagery and Reality
Edited by Naomi W. Cohen
Essential Papers on Israel and the Ancient Near East
Edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn
Essential Papers on Jewish Culture
in Renaissance and Baroque Italy
Edited by David B. Ruderman
Essential Papers on Messianic Movements
and Personalities in Jewish History
Edited by Marc Saperstein
Essential Papers on the Talmud
Edited by Michael Chernick
Essential Papers on Kabbalah
Edited by Lawrence Fine
Essential Papers on Zionism
Edited by Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira
Essential Papers on Jews and the Left
Edited by Ezra Mendelsohn
ESSENTIAL PAPERS ON JEWS
AND THE LEFT
Edited by Ezra Mendelsohn
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
Copyright © 1997 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Essential papers on Jews and the Left / edited by Ezra Mendelsohn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-5570-4. — ISBN 0-8147-5571-2 (pbk.)
i. Socialism and Judaism. 2. Jewish socialists—History.
3. Communism and Zionism. 4. Socialism and antisemitism.
I. Mendelsohn, Ezra.
HX550.J4E85 1997
335'.oo89'924—dc2i 97-3723
CIP
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction i
Ezra Mendelsohn
I THE JEWISH LEFT
The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess 21
Isaiah Berlin
The Roots of “Jewish Socialism” (1881-189Z):
From “Populism” to “Cosmopolitanism”? 58
Jonathan Frankel
Regional Factors in the Formation of the Jewish
Labor Movement in Czarist Russia 78
Moshe Mishkinsky
The Reassessment of the National Question IOI
Henry Tobias
Ber Borokhov 122
Matityahu Mintz
Social and Intellectual Origins of the Hashomer
Hatzair Youth Movement, 1913-1920 145
Elkana Margalit
V
vt Contents
7 The Bund in Polish Political Life, 1935-1939 166
Antony Polonsky
8 Political Mobilization and Institution Building in
theYishuv 198
Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak
9 “Black Night—White Snow”: Attitudes of the
Palestinian Labor Movement to the Russian
Revolution, 1917-1929 23 6
Anita Shapira
II JEWS IN THE LEFT
2-73
IO A Grandson of the Haskalah 2-75
Israel Getzler
II The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary
Movement 300
Leonard Schapiro
12 The Ties that Bind: Jewish Support for the Left in
the United States 32z
Arthur Liebman
III THE LEFT AND THE JEWS
359
13 Was Marx an Anti-Semite? 361
Edmund Silberner
14 Marx and Jewish Emancipation 40z
Shlomo Avineri
15 “Black Repartition” and the Pogroms of 1881-1882 410
Moshe Mishkinsky
16 The Soviet Regime and Anti-Zionism: An Analysis 44a
Jonathan Frankel V
Contents vil
Karl Kautsky: Between Baden and Luxemburg 483
Jack Jacobs
Select Bibliography 529
Index 531
Introduction
Ezra Mendelsohn
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the proliferation of
radical protest movements based on the guiding principle that the eco
nomic exploitation of one class by another is evil. These movements
agreed in calling for the replacement of bourgeois capitalism and the
various oppressive political regimes associated with it by a more equita
ble social and political system. They also maintained that society must
be reconstructed to guarantee greater equality of opportunity to all
citizens. Beyond these basic agreements there was fierce competition
among highly diverse ideologies, including, to name only a few, anar
chism, populism (narodnichestvo)y Leninist Marxism, the “revisionist”
Marxism championed by certain German socialists, and more moderate
forms of socialism such as that espoused by the Fabian socialists in
Great Britain. These movements succeeded, in certain times and in cer
tain places, in mobilizing large numbers of workers and peasants and in
winning the support of many intellectuals and members of the middle
class who found themselves in sympathy with the plight of the less
fortunate.
Socialism of every variety has been in disfavor since the disintegration
of the Soviet Union and the other communist states of Europe. It has,
understandably, been tarred with the brush of the Leninist-Stalinist ca
tastrophe. Inevitably, the horrendous crimes committed in socialism’s
name have cast considerable doubt on the claims traditionally made by
socialists that they and they alone understand the workings of history
and that in the struggle against their adversaries they invariably occupy
the high moral ground. Nevertheless, it would be premature to raise a
memorial to movements of social protest and to bury socialism in the
1
2 EZRA MENDELSOHN
graveyard reserved for once important but now bankrupt and discred
ited ideologies. After all, rank economic inequality and racial, religious,
and gender discrimination are still with us, as is urge to combat these
abuses. It is this urge (among other things) that has generated and will
doubtless continue to generate ideas and organizations associated with
what is commonly called “the left.”
The left, however it is defined, has had a profound impact upon the
modern Jewish community. This is easy to demonstrate, although per
haps not so easy to explain. Consider the situation in the three most
important regions of Jewish settlement in modern times—Eastern Eu
rope (primarily Russia and Poland), the United States, and Palestine/
Israel. The pre-World War I Russian pale of settlement, that part of the
tsarist empire where Jews were allowed to reside, was the cradle of
Jewish socialism, the arena in which the main Jewish socialist move
ments were established. It was there that the two necessary ingredients
for the emergence of Jewish socialism—a large, mostly Yiddish-speaking
Jewish working class, laboring under extremely oppressive economic
conditions, and an acculturated but not necessarily assimilated Jewish
intelligentsia influenced by both Russian socialist and Jewish nationalist
doctrines—were present in a particularly impressive way. During the
1870s and 1880s the first efforts were made to formulate Jewish socialist
ideologies and the earliest organizations appeared. Jonathan Frankel, in
his chapter “The Roots of ‘Jewish Socialism’ (1881-1892),” analyzes
the dilemmas that confronted the founding fathers of Russian Jewish
radicalism, especially the problem of reconciling general socialist princi
ples with an attachment and sensitivity to the special needs of the Jewish
community. Frankel’s chapter also points to a^ defining aspect jof Jewish
socialism from its very inception, namely, its international character.
The emergence of Jewish socialism coincided with the beginningofmass
Jewish emigration from Russia and Austrian Poland (Galicia) to the
New World, Western Europe, and (in much smaller numbers) Palestine.
This great wave of emigration, which stimulated the spread of Jewish
Socialism, was the result of miserable economic conditions in the old
country and the outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Russia in 1881-
1882. As Frankel demonstrates, the pogroms prompted the emergence
of both modern Jewish nationalism (especially Zionism) and Jewish
socialism.
The pale of settlement was a multinational region that included such
distinct territorial units as Ukraine, Lithuania-Belorussia, and the so-
Introduction 3
called Kingdom of Poland (the latter region constituting, technically
speaking, a separate “pale”). Indeed, its multinational character was
an important factor in the emergence of a modern Jewish national
consciousness and, as a consequence, of a specifically Jewish labor and
socialist movement. Moshe Mishkinsky, in his chapter “Regional Factors
in the Formation of the Jewish Labor Movement in Czar ist Russia,”
explains why early Jewish socialism was particularly strong in Lithuania-
Belorussia, where the Jewish community was less subject to russifying or
polonizing tendencies than it was in Ukraine and the Kingdom of Po
land. Injj^Tithe first Jewish socialist party, popularly known as the
Bund (its full name, established several years later, was the General
Jewish Workers’ Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), was founded
at an illegal conference held in Vilna (Vilnius, Wilno), capital of the
Lithuanian-Belorussian region and a great Jewish cultural and religious
center. The Bund was first and foremost a revolutionary organization,
Marxist in orientation and committed to the doctrine of class struggle.
It saw itself as the “sole representative” of the Russian-Jewish working
class, whose historical task was to lead the revolutionary struggle within
the Jewish community and, hand in hand with the working classes of
other nations, topple tsarist despotism and replace it with a classless
society. The Bund set itself against “reactionary” elements within Jewry,
fl^gmhodiH ky tbpi rnhkiftj. fhft^wealthy, and the bourgeoisie; it was
firmly internationalist in outlook, believing optimistically that Jewish
workers had^ore^ïT^ommon with workers of other groups than with
their own “ruling classes.” In fact, from 1898 to 1903 the Bund was an
integral part of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP).
At the same time, it was a specifically Jewish organization, and as such
it had to define its attitude with regard to the “Jewish question,” just as
Polish, Ukrainian, and Latvian socialists had to define their attitudes
toward the special needs of the nations whose working classes they
claimed to represent. Indeed, the debate on the national question within
the Bund should be seen in light of the larger debate on this question
within the socialist movement in general, and in particular within the
socialist movements of the various minority nationalities of Eastern
Europe.
After much hesitation, and despite considerable internal and external
opposition, the Bund came to affirm its own form of Jewish nationalism.
By the early years of the twentieth century it began to insist on the
need for a synthesis between international socialism and nationalism,
adopting the idea that, at least for the time being, the Jews constituted a
