The Documentary Heritage of the Bund

The Documentary Heritage of the Bund

Researchers: Isaac Rozental, Doctor of History, Chief Specialist of the Russian State Archive
of Socio-Political History;
Yury Amiantov, Deputy Director of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History.

The objective of the project is to prepare a publication of a collection of documents and materials entitled Bund 1897–1921. Founded in 1897, the Bund (the Universal Jewish Workers’ Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia) was the most influential and popular of all the Jewish parties in Russia in late 19th - early 20th centuries. In 1898 the Bund was one of the constitutors of the rsdLp (Russian Social-democratic Labor Party). From 1898 to 1903 and from 1906 to 1917, the Bund was part of RSDLP with the rights of an autonomous national organization. In 1917, when the Mensheviks ultimately formed their own party, the Bund joined their ranks, while preserving its autonomous status.

The publication of documents and materials on the Bund history serves the purpose of further profound study of the transformation processes in Russia, and involvement of the Russian Empire’s Jewish population in these processes. The collected papers provides for researchers and teachers a substantial academically verified body of previously unknown and little-known sources necessary and will be a significant contribution to the database on the history of political parties, workers’ and national movements.
The collected papers will complete the multivolume series Political Parties of Russia. Late 19th – early 20th Centuries. Documentary Heritage.

The authors believed that it was necessary to provide documents on the links between the Bund and RSDRP and RKP(b) history, to highlight the debatable issues of that time, to reveal the particularities of the Bund evolution as a national political organization of Jewish workers.  The volume includes the documents of the Bund governing bodies demonstrating the above links and also the speeches of the Bund leaders. Included are some official resolutions, polemic articles of publicists and also speeches of Bund delegates on the congresses and conferences of RSDRP voicing the Bund views of the issues under discussion, including those of all-Russia importance.

The project executives continue their work. The results of 2006-2007 will be a full archeographic treatment of the text and scientific comments on the documents included in the volume.

Information: the Universal Jewish Workers’ Union

The Bund was founded in Wilno on1897.  It sought to unite all Jewish workers in the Russian Empire into a united socialist party. On the border of the XIX – XX centuries Bund was the most popular and mighty power among all Jewish parties in the Russian empire; it was especially b in the Pale of Settlement. 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. 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 run up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

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. 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 bly 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." 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.

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.

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