General Jewish Labor Union
 |
A Bundist demonstration, 1917 |
The
General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, in
Yiddish the
Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland (×ַל×'×ž×²Ö·× ×¢×¨ ײ×"ישער ×Ö·×¨×‘×²×˜×¢×¨×¡×‘×•× ×" ×ין ליט×Ö·, פוילין ×ון רוסל×Ö·× ×"), generally called
The Bund (×‘×•× ×") or the
Jewish Labor Bund, was a political party operating in several European countries between the 1890s and the 1930s. Members of the Bund were called
Bundists.
The Bund was founded in
Wilno on October 7,
1897. It sought to unite all Jewish workers in the
Russian Empire into a united
socialist party. The
Russian Empire then included
Lithuania,
Latvia,
Belarus,
Ukraine and most of
Poland, countries where the majority of the world's Jews then lived. The Bund sought to ally itself with the wider Russian
social democratic movement to achieve a
democratic and
socialist Russia. Within such a Russia, they hoped to see the Jews achieve recognition as a nation with a legal minority status.
The Bund was a
secular socialist party, opposed to what they saw as the reactionary nature of traditional Jewish life in Russia. Created before the
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), the Bund became a founding collective member of the RSDLP at its first congress in
Minsk in March
1898. For the next 5 years, the Bund was recognised as the sole representative of the Jewish workers in the RSDLP, although many Russian socialists of Jewish descent, especially outside of the
Pale of Settlement, joined the RSDLP directly.
At the RSDLP's Second Congress in
Brussels and
London in August 1903, the Bund's autonomous position within the RSDLP was rejected by a majority of the delegates and the Bund's representatives left the Congress, the first of many splits in the Russian social democratic movement in the years to come. The Bund formally rejoned the RSDLP when all of its faction reunited at the Fourth (Unification) Congress in
Stockholm in April 1906, but the party remained fractured along ideological and ethnic lines. The Bund generally sided with the party's
Menshevik faction led by
Julius Martov and against the
Bolshevik faction led by
Vladimir Lenin during the factional struggles in the runup to the
Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Bund strongly opposed
Zionism, arguing that emigration to
Palestine was a form of
escapism. The Bund was
internationalist in its socialist orientation, focusing on culture, not a state or a place, as the glue of Jewish "nationalism." In this they borrowed extensively from the
Austro-Marxist school, further alienating the Bolsheviks and Lenin. The Bund also promoted the use of
Yiddish as a Jewish national language and opposed the Zionist project of reviving
Hebrew. Nevertheless, many Bundists were also Zionists, and the Bund suffered from a steady loss of active members to emigration. Many Bundists became active in forming socialist parties in Palestine, and later in
Israel.
The Bund won converts mainly among Jewish artisans and workers, but also among the growing Jewish
intelligentsia. It acted as both a political party (to the extent that political conditions allowed) and as a trade union. It joined with the
Labor Zionists and other groups to form self-defense organisations to protect Jewish communities against
pogroms and government troops. During the
Russian Revolution of 1905 the Bund headed the revolutionary movement in the Jewish towns, particularly in what is now Belarus.
Like other socialist parties in Russia, the Bund welcomed the
February Revolution of 1917, but it did not support the
October Revolution in which the Bolsheviks seized power. Like Mensheviks and other non-Bolshevik parties, the Bund called for the convening of the
Russian Constituent Assembly long demanded by all Social Democratic factions. The Bund's key leader in
Petrograd during these months was
Mikhail Liber, who was to be roundly denounced by Lenin. With the
Russian Civil War and the increase in anti-Semitic pogroms by nationalists and
Whites, the Bund was obliged to recognise the
Soviet government and its militants fought in the
Red Army in large numbers. Given the polarised situation, the Bund split, losing its left wing led by Heifez to the Bolsheviks, who were soon followed by the center faction led by
Moyshe Rafes. The rump was to join with the United Jewish Socialist Party in forming the Jewish Communist Bund or Kombund, which, in turn, joined the Bolshevik Party in 1921. By 1922 the Bund had ceased to exist as an independent party in the newly formed
Soviet Union. Many former Bundists perished during
Stalin's
purges in the 1930s.
Poland and Lithuania became independent in
1918, and the Bund continued to operate in these countries, particularly in the heavily Jewish towns of eastern Poland. It also became active among the Jewish
emigré community in
New York. In Poland, the Bundists argued that Jews should stay and fight for socialism rather than emigrate. When the
Revisionist Zionist leader
Vladimir Jabotinsky toured Poland urging the "evacuation" of European Jewry, the Bundists accused him of abetting anti-Semitism. Another non-Zionist Yiddishist Jewish party at the time in Lithuania and Poland was the
Folkspartei.
During
World War II the Bund continued to operate as an underground organization in Poland. In 1942, the Bundist
Marek Edelman became a cofounder of the
Jewish Fighting Organization that led the 1943
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and was also part of the Polish
resistance movement Armia Krajowa (Home Army), which fought against the
Nazis in the
1944 Warsaw Uprising.
The massacre of Polish Jewry during the
Holocaust destroyed both its base and, in the eyes of many surviving Polish Jews, its ideological validity. By
1945 few of the surviving eastern European Jews believed any longer in the Bund's particular vision of socialism or in a future for the Jews in Europe, and most of the survivors emigrated, to
Israel or to America.
However, the Bund took part in the post-war elections of 1947 on a common ticket with the (non-communist)
Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and gained its first and only parliamentary seat in its Polish history, plus several seats in municipal councils. Under pressure from Soviet-installed Communist authorities, the Bund's leaders 'voluntarily' disbanded the party in 1948-1949 against the opposition of many activists. The latter included
Marek Edelman, who later was to take part in the Polish anticommunist opposition in the 1970s, and a member of the
Sejm after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989.
The Bund survives as a minor political movement in Jewish communities in the
United States, where from the 1950s on it operated a summer camp called Camp Hemshekh in the Catskills region of New York State, as well as in
Canada and
Australia. In the
United Kingdom, the
Jewish Socialist Group claims to continue the work of the Bund. The remnant of the original Bund remains an official affiliate of the
Socialist International.
The politics of the Bund were influential amongst
African American socialists and
communists from the end of the
nineteenth century.
In
1997 commemorative events were organised to celebrate the
100th anniversary of the Bund in New York City, London,
Warsaw and Brussels, where the chairwoman of the Belgian chapter, herself 100 year old, was present.
*
Tsukunft*
Yevsektsiya*
Exhibit: The Story of the Jewish Labor Bund, 1897-1997*
Bund Archives and Library, YIVO*
The Bund Archive in RGASPI is available on microfiche
*
Finding Aid to The Bund Archive in RGASPI (in English and Russian)
*
Un Mouvement Juif Revolutionnaire: Le Bund (in French)
*
In Love and In Struggle: The Musical Legacy of the Jewish Labor Bund*
Sholem Aleichem College,
Melbourne, apparently the world's only surviving Bundist school
*
the Bundist Voice, the website spreading the Bundist ideas and outlooks
