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incorporated Polish Jewish, workers in their organization, which later became part of the Bund. Following the revolution of 1905 mass emigration and 'internal Jewish migration sharply reduced the Jewish settlement in Lithuania. Correspondingly the influence of the Lithuanians declined^ a trend reflected also in the Jewish labor movement." In sum: (1) Regional factors had a decisive influence on the rise and growth of the Jewish labor movement in the period under consideration, tending to invest it with a national character. (2) Precisely the differentiation of the regional characteristics in th Jewish labr movement leads to an integral conception of its history, namely that its development must be' studied in the first place on the broad canvas of'the general history o Russian Jewry in its regional peculiarities* and their dynamic context.
1

The Bund's Nationality Program and Its Critics in the Russian, Polish and Austrian Socialist Movements*
By JACOB S. HERTZ

7T Grinbaum, op. cit., pp. 62-63; Hersch, L., ,Di yidishe emigratsye (Vilna 1913), p. 164.

When new winds began to blow in the social and political atmosphere of Eastern Europe in the 19th century the Jews could not remain isolated from them. Revolutionary and political movements, conspiracies and uprisings, such as the Polish Uprising of 1863, the Narodniki groupings, the Polish party Proletariat, came itto being in Russia and Poland in which only Jewish individuals participated and not the masses. These Jewish revolutionaries did not set for themselves any specific roles in Jewish life. On the contrary, through their participation in the revolutionary movement they loosened their ties with the Jewish'milieu. The leaders and theoreticians of the revolutionary movement in those days were oriented toward the peasantry as the potential revolutionary mass force that would bring the promised salvation. The Jews had no peasantry, consequently they did not figure in revolutionary plans. In 1875 Vpered, appearing in London under the editorship of Peter Lavrov, published an anonymous correspondence by a Vilna Jew on the Jewish condition. Among others, the correspondent said: "The Russian people suffers. It is being strangled by the hand of him who also stamps upon us. Who can remain indifferent to this? . . . The Russian muzhik is our brother. For us socialists there are no nationalities, no race divisions. All of us living in Russia are Russians. . . . We are RussiansI"^
Paper read at the YIVO Conference on Jewish Participation in Movements Devoted to the, Cause of Social Progress. 1 Vpered, no. 16, Sept. 1, 1875 (london).

in

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This is a crystal-clear statement, but thoroughly naive. There can be no internationalism without nationalities. Two decades afterward this same Vilna became the center of an awakening Jewish working class and a rising Jewish revolutionary labor movement, whiph established internationalism on entirely different bases. If socialism means the abolition of injustice and the establishment of equality then these boons are not merely for individuals, but also for the historically developed groupings of mankind, called nations. A number of causes underlay this change. Among the most important were: the growth of industry, crafts and trade in Russia; the rising secularization of Jewish life; the ascendancy of the Marxist point of view among the revolutionary elements. The last meant an end of the orientation to the peasant as the instrument of the coming revolution. He was replaced by the worker, in consonance with Plekhanov's famous dictum: the revolution in Russia will win as a workers movement ornot win at all. Some of the Jewish secular intelligentsia already active in the revolutionary movement drew from the new, Marxist orientation the following conclusion:. If it is to be the workers who will bring victory, then we have them also among the Jews. There is no need to go into the villages or outside the Pale of Settlement. In several large cities and factory centers a movement of Jewish workers sprang up. This movement set the tasks of the revolutionaries and the socialists in a different light. It never occurred to the Jewish workers to say, as that Vilna correspondent had said: "We are Russiansl" Addresses delivered by Jewish workers in Vilna on May 1, 1892, contained such utterances as: "Let us fight like heroes IQT our nation and mankind." Another said: "We Jews need not be ashamed of belonging to the so-called disgraced Jewish race. The history of the Jews . . . has also its pages of glory. There has never been a nation in the world that underwent martyrdom with such steadfastness as the Jewish. Let usthe young generationfollow in the footsteps of our forefathers and manifest our perseverance in the fight for the liberation of mankind." Three years later, in the same city and on a similar occasion, Julius Martov-Zederbaum addressed a group of agitators. His words bore the approval of the leadership of the movement. He said:'
\

"We have to state openly and clearly that the aim of the Jewish Social Democrats consists in the founding of a special Jewish workers organization, which should be the leader and teacher of the Jewish proletariat in -its struggle for economic, civic and political liberation." He continued to say that the awakening in a people of "the striving for liberation from civic inequality is one of the tasks of a socialist party. . . . The national indifference of the Jewish masses is a hindrance in the awakening of their class consciousness. Our task should be to arouse them from both their national and class indifEerence. . . . We have to endow our movement with a definite Jewish character, in the surety that thereby we shall not cease participating in the worldwide movement in general and in the Russian in particular."^ At the founding convention of the Jewish Labor Bund on October 7-9, 1897, Arkady Kremer, one of die top leaders of the Jewish Social Democratic movement, adduced also several Jewsh motives for the necessity of a united Jewish workers organization in the country. He said: "We have to stress constantly the demand for civic equality for the Jews The time is coming when a general Russian workers party will be founded. The Jewish proletariat will certainly occupy a given place. But being divided into separate groups it will not be able to enter that party. * Ostensibly, at the very inception of the Jewish Labor Bund there was the understanding that the Jewish workers have to form an organized unit and fight for equality of rights as Jews and that they have to be united in one social democratic party with the proletariat of the country, but as an autonomous collective. The same line of thought was also accepted at the founding convention of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party on March 13-15, 1898. The convention recognized the Jewish Labor Bund as an autonomous organization, independent in matters Jewish, for the defense of Jewish interests can be undertaken only by a Jewish organization free to act at discretion, without interference of the general party. On the other hand, the Polish Socialist Party refused to recognize the Jewish labor movement and declared war on the Jewish
3 Di naye epokhe in der yidisher arbayter-bavegung (Geneva). 4 Di arbayter shtime, no. 6. Oct. 17, 1897 (Ulegal periodical of the Bund). 6 Op. cit., nos. 9-10, July 1898. The article "Unzere tsiln" was reprinted in no. 11.

2 Pervoe maia, 1892. Chetyre rechi evreiskikh rabochikh (Geneva 189S).

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Labor Bund immediately after its founding. The Polish Socialist Party argued that the Jewish proletariat could have no other tasks than those in common with the proletariat of the country in which it resided. The second socialist party active in Polish territory, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (S.D.K.P.L.) had a friendly attitude toward the Jewish Labor Bund. Some Bundists arrived at the conviction that the Jewish Labor Bund had to formulate and present a national' program in consonance with the specific conditions and needs of the Jews in the Russian empire. This was the standpoint of the Foreign Committee of the organization. An editorial comment on Khayim Zhitlowsky's article in Der yidisher arbayter stated: "We are adamant in our view, that like all nations the Jewish nation too has to have equal political, economic and national rights.'"^ This was published in March 1899. The problem of national rights and of a national program for minority people was new to the international socialist movement and to Marxian theory and subject to division of opinion. It was also a novelty among the Jews. The orthodox and the assimilationists were opposed to the presentation of Jewish national demands; they were content with the demand of religious freedom. National rights smacked of national secularism, which they opposed. The Zionists, on the other hand, were not in favor of national demands in the Diaspora lands. Within the ranks, of the Jewish Labor Bund there were some doubts on this question. The matter was placed on the agenda of the third convention in December 1899. It was resolved to continue the discussion among the membership at large and thus pave the way for a resolution at the following convention. At the fourth convention of the Jewish Labor Bupd on May 24-28, 1901, the problem was discussed at length and a resolution adopted, containing among others the following points: "In the spirit of the Social Democratic program, the oppression of one class by another, of the citizenry by the state, of one nationality by another, or the dominance of one language over arjother is inconceivable." Russia, where there live "various nationalities, should become a federation of nationalities with full national autonomy
9 Przeglqd socjaldemokratyczny, no. 1, March 1902 (Zurich). T Der yidisher arbayter, no. 6, Mardi 1899.

for each, regardless of the territory it occupies. . . . The concept 'nationality' should also apply to the Jewish people." The convention owned that under the current circumstances it was premature to present the demand for national autonomy for the Jews. For the time being it would fight for the annulment of the special laws against the Jews and "protest the oppression of the Jewish nation." The Jewish Labor Bund first'presented the demand for national-cultural autonomy for the Jews in 1904. In pressing the demand for national autonomy, the Jewi^ Labor Bund set out from the assimiption that a people with a history and a culture carries within itself the title to existence and to national rights. These are part of the basic human rights. Without national rights there is no full civic equality; no normal natural development of a people. The Bundists were convinced that this was the proper social-democratic answer to the national problem. Socialism was considered as the fairest social order; how then could socialists tolerate national oppression or the denial of national rights to certain categories of nations? The Bundist spokesmen Vladimir Kosovsky, Vladimir Medem, Mark Liber and others motivated the national program of the Jewish Labor Bund from a socialist standpoint. In an address on the Bundist national program, delivered in New York on December 17, 1906, Mark Liber declared with justifiable pride: "We were the first to give an answer to the general national problem and to the Jewish problem in Russia in full consonance with the class standpoint of. social democracy." Medem has pointed out that "social democracy dfialt less with the national problem than with any other important political problem. ... In the social democratic literature are reflected concepts and moods current in the bourgeois world, which penetrate the camp of the proletariat owing to its weak theoretical defenses.io . . . National oppression is directed not especially against the worklem .... In the social democratic literature are reflected concepts the owner classes and the educated, it crushes with its full weight the working class, which occupies the lowest rung of the social lad!

8 Di geshikhte fun bund (New York 1960), vol. I, p. 180. 9 Forverts, January 4, 1907 (New York). 10 Vladimir Medem (New York 1943), p. 173.

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der and which feels on its back more powerfully the blows dealt to the entire nation."" The Bund's position met with sharp opposition in the ranks of the socialist parties. The opposition to the Jewish Labor Bund's stand on the national problem may be divided into three categories: a grouping with a so-called internationalist argumentation, a grouping with its own national aspirations, a trend that recognized the principle of national rights for minority nations, but not for Jews. Although the founding convention of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, as stated above, had recognized the Jewish Labor Bund as an autonomous organization in matters Jewish, when the latter at its fourth convention formulated the need for national autonomy some Russian Social Democrats launched a sharp attack. However, not all in the Russian party were against the Bundist stand, and some of those who opposed it in the first years later changed their minds. The Rabochaia Mysl, organ of the St. Petersburg committee of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, which appeared surreptitiously in Russia, warmly endorsed the demand for "full national equality" for all nations in Russia. Reporting on the Jewish Labor Bund's resolution at its fourth convention, the paper said: "Let each nation speak in its mother tongue, perfect its literature and art, open its own schools and develop all its spiritual forces in the form that is most convenient for it. . . . All workers regardless of religious affiliation should fight for this equality, not only the workers of the oppressed nations. The latter, the greater sufferers, will naturally fight more eneietically."i2 Entirely different was the attitude of the Russian social democratic organs published abroad. The Association of Russian Social Democrats Abroad and its organ Rabochee Delo had a very positive attitude to the Jewish ILabor Bund and held up its activity as a model for other organizations. It also supported the autonomy of the Bund in the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. Boris Krichevsky, the editor and one of the two representatives of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party in the bureau of the Socialist International, in his article on the fourth convention of the
11 Op. cit., p. 191. 12 Rabochaia Mysl, no. 13, Dec. 1901; no. 14, Jan. 1902. ^

Jewish Labor Bund united in solidarity with the Bundist formulations and resolutions on political and tactical matters. He was even in accord with the resolution for national equality and against national oppression, but opposed national autonomy for the Jews for, in his opinion, they were merely a religious grouping and not a nationality.! At that time (1901) the Rabochaia Mysl and Rabochee Delo expressed the views of the majority of Social Democrats. The former represented the economistic trend, stressing the role of the workers and their economic struggle and the latter attempted to establish a balance between the econonlic and the political tasks of the social democratic labor movement. In opposition to these two was the group centered about the Iskra and Zaria, which was then in the minority and aspiring to attain the hegemony over the party. This group came out with a spirited attack on the Bundist resolution, branding it as nationalism. Iskra wrote: "The fourth convention of the Jewish Labor Bund is the harbinger of the rise of nationalism in the Jewish social democracy of Western Russia and Poland."" Zaria wrote: "Essentially the Jews have no national culture (not counting religion and in conjunction with it some customs). . . . The Jews lost their national culture a long time ago and now they are suffering unbearably because the autocratic regime denies them access to Russian culture."! The opposition of the Iskra group, including the elite of the Russian social democracy, was predicated upon two major motives: a nihilistic-assimilatory attitude to the Jewish problem and, secondly, this problem was linked in this case with a side issue. The Iskra group launched a sharp fight for the control of the Social Democratic Party and the institution of a strictly centralistic and totalitarian leadership brooking no autonomist tendencies. The attack on the Jewish Labor Bund was therefore in two directions: rejection of its national program and the reduction of its autonomy in the party to a minimum. Both issues were inherently connected. Hypercentralism must be victorious both in the nationalities policy and in the structure and spirit of the party. The RusIS Rabochee Delo, nos. 11-12, Feb. 23, 1902, p. 119. 14 Iskra, no. 7, Aug. 1901. 15 Zaria, no. 4, Aug. 1902, part II, pp. 47-50.

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sian Social Democratic Workers Party did accept the principle of the right of self-determination of peoples. However, when the Jewish workers detemined and stated what they wanted for them^elves and for their people the Iskra group ws categorically against them. Similarly, the Polish Socialist Party was unfriendly to the national program of the Jewish Labor Bund. It insisted that the Jewish workers could .have no other demands than the Polish and denied their right to a special organization. In reply the Bundist organ stated: "The Jewish proletariat is not only 'part' of the Polish-Lithuanian one, but like the proletariat of every nation an independent part of the world proletariat. . . . The Jewish proletariat ehcounters in its clajs struggle obstacles unknown to the proletariat of other nations. These obstacles it must remove by itself. Thus the Jewish proletariat has its own task and immediate historical objectives. To realize these it must form a separate revolutionary organization, an independent revolutionary force."i8 The other Polish socialist party, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania at its second convention in November 1901 adopted a resolution stating in part that: "... Although the cbnvention does not see the Jewish problem eye to eye with the Jewish Labor Bund, it nevertheless regards it as an independent fraternal organization."^'' In 1903 the Jewish Labor Bund withdrew from the Russian Social Democrati Workers Party because of the above issues. In 1906, upon being granted a number of conditions assming its integrity and autonomy, the Jewish Labor Bund reentered the party. The Stockholm convention of the party (1906) went on record that "the Jewish Labor Bund entered into the composition of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party as a social democratic oit ganization of the Jewish proletariat, which is not confined in its activity to regional frames." The discussion of the national pro' gram of the Jewish Labor Bund was postponed to the next convention. The chairman declared that in the interim the Jewish Labor Bund hd the right to maintain its program of nationalcultural autonomy. At th i;ext party convention in London, on May 13-June 1, 1907, there was a point on the agenda: the nais Di arbayter shtime, no. 30, Oct. 1902. 17 See n. 6.

tional problem. At the request of the Bundist delegation and, others the point was tabled for lack of previous preparatory discussion. In 1912 the Bolsheviks brought about an official split in the party. Thereafter the other parts of the party consolidated anew and called a conference in Vienna in August 1912. Prior to the conference the social democratic party orgaidzations in Caucasia adopted a resolution calling for national-cultural autonomy. The Vienna conference declared that national-cultural autonomy was not in contradiction to the party prc^am. After the second Russian rvolution all revolutionary parties, except the Bolsheviks, were in favor of national-cultural autonomy. A special commission of the All-Russian Convention of Work?, ers and Soldiers Councils meeting in June? 1917 prepared a resolutioni The Bundist leader Mark Liber presented and motivated the resolution in the name of the commission. Part of the accepted resolution was for a broad political autonomy for the regions that were ethnically or socio-economically different and assures in the statutes the rights of the national minorities through the cration of special local and federal representational organs. The party representatives clarified this to mean national-cultural autonomy. The representative of the Bolsheviks voiced his group's opposition to national-cultural autonomy for the minorities and declared their determination to vote against it. The convention accepted the resolution, and the central organ of the Jewish Labor Bund saw in this acceptance an indication of the evolution of Russian democracy.i In the beginning of September 1917 the unification convention of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (Mensheyiks, parties of national minorities and other social democratic groups, except the Bolsheviks) took place. The resolution adopted almost unanimously read in part: "The rights of the national minorities should be guaranteed by a state law based on the principle o national-cultural autonomy."^ The Bolsheviks continued in their opposition to national-cultural autonomy for minorities in general nd for the Jews in particular. Their spokesman, Lenin, took an assimilatory stand, reis Weinreich,
M., in Di arbayter shtitne. Do. 25, July 12, 1917 (Petrograd). 1 Di arbayter shtime, nos. 40-41, Sept. 16, 1917.

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fusing to recognize the Jews as a nationality and sharply opposing the movement for Jewish national culture. In a polemic with the Jewish Labor Bund, he wrote: "The idea of Jewish 'nationality' bears a pronounced reactionary character not only among its consistent adherents (the Zionists), but also among those who attempt to couple it with ideas of social democracy (the Bundists). The idea ... is in conflict with the interest of the Jewish proletariat, creating in its midst directly and indirectly a mood hostile to assimilation, a 'ghetto' mood." Ten years later, in a reply to the Bundist leaders Vladimir Medem and Libman Hersch, Lenin wrote: "Jewish national culture is the siegan of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie, the slogan of our enemies. . . . The Jews in Galida and Russia are not a nation, but a caste. . . . Whoever sets forth directly or indirectly the slogan of Jewish 'national culture' (his best intentions notwithstanding) is an enemy of the proletariat, an adherent of the old remains in the Judaic caste, an aid of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie."^ A change took place among the Polish socialists. In 1905 a number of local Polish Socialist Party and Jewish Labor Bund organizations arrived at a coexistence. Occasionally even an isolated voice in favor of the Bundist national program was heard. In 1903-1904 Kazimierz Kelles-Kraus, noted writer and theoretician of the Polish Socialist Party, came out in support of the Bundist position and in favor of Jewish national-cultural autonomy. After the split in the Polish Socialist Party there was a rapprochement between the left wing of the party and the Jewish Labor Bund. Officially, the left wing of the Polish Socialist Party did not accept the demand for national-cultural autonomy. However, it supported a number of Jewish demands that were in the spirit and character of that autonomy. Simultaneously, the relations between the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and the Jewish Labor Bund deteriorated. The former fought against most of the demands of the Jewish population and even opposed the Jewish workers at a time when Polish workers refused their admittance into the large factories.
*

Similarly, the Jewish socialist labor movement in Galida had to fight for the right to an autonomous organization and nationalcultural autonomy, both with the Polish Social Democratic Party and with the general Social Democratic Party of Austria. The Jewish sodalist labor movement in Galida began in the 1890's. The Galidan Sodai Democratic Party forthwith dedared its opposition to a Jewish labor organization, with one important ideological concession. At the first party convention in 1892 its leader, Ignacy Daszynski, rejected the theory of assimilation of the Jews. He said: Let us consider them as any other nation, i.e. let us give them the same rights.^^ In 1897, in consonance with the reorganization of the Austriiui party on federative bases, the Galidan party changed to the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galida and Silesia (P.P.S.D.). Simultaneously, Polish patriotic and nationalist sentiment gained the ascendancy in the party and it began to view with favor Jewish assimilation. However, several organizations of Jewish workers of an educational and trade union character, linked to the party from before, had already been established. In the ranks of the Jewish members of the P.P.S.D., because of ideolc^cal and practical organizational considerations, there began a demand for autonomy within the framework of the party, which was categorically rejected. After several years' struggle the Jewish Sodai Democratic Party, based on the same ideological foundations as the Jewish Labor Bund in Russia, was founded in Galida in 1905. Among those actively fighting against autonomy for Jewish workers and opposing the new party were a number of Jews. One of their prindpal spokesmen. Dr. Herman Diamand, at a conference of delegates of Jewish workers assodations, motivated his opposition to autonomy thus: "There are no spedai Jewish traits worth conserving. All retention of Jewish uniqueness is deleterious. We have to assume new forms and not flinch at the difiSculties encountered in Polish sodety. We must bend every effort to eliminate all manifestations of uniqueness."^2 Intensifying its fight against the Jewish Sodai Democratic Party, the Polish Sodai Democratic Party founded under its aegis
21 Naprzd, May 15, 1892 (Cracow), dted from H. Grosman, Der bundhm in galitsyen (Cracow 1907). 22 Shulman, V., "25 yor," Naye Folkstsaytung, Apr. SO, 1930 (Warsaw).

20 Iskra, Oct. 22, 1903, no. 51; Prosveshchenie, nos. 10-12, ct.-Dec. 1913 (St. Petersburg); Lenin, N., Selected Works (Moscow 1927), vol. VIII, part I.

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a Jewish section named The Jewishi Social Democracy in Galicia. Soon the leaders of the Polish party became convinced that their fight against the Jewish party was hopeless and in 1911 they gave it up altogether, permitting their Jewish members to join the Jewish Social Democratic Party. At the Jewish socialist unification convention in 1911 Daszynski said: "You have a separate autonomous party^ you can decide as you please.''^ However, there was no true peace between the two parties the, Plish and the Jewish. The Polish party was far from recognizing the attitude of the Jewish Social Democratic Party. Similarly, the Jewish party did not obtain the recognition of the general Aiitrian Social Democratic Party. Although established on national federative bases, with respect to the Jews the Austrian party assumed an assimilatory standpoint, regarded with disdain the Yiddish language and denied the principle of national rights for Jews ^nd the rights of Jewish workers to an autonomous organization within the framework of the federative party. The convention of the Austrian Social Democratic Party in Brno in 1899 accepted the principle of national autonomy for mi. norities. independent of territory. But the Pohsh Social Democratic Party fought the Jewish socialist organization under pretext that only territorial minorities were entitled to national autonomy. Now Otto Bauer, Austrjian socialist theoretician, in his work Die Nationalittenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie, attempted to ground the denial of Jewish autonomy on different bases. He raised the question whether "the needs of the Jewish workers call for national self-administration," to which he gave a negative answer. In the Middle^Ages, he said, "The Jqws had undoubtedly been a nation," but in the capitalist society they ceased to be a nation and are becoming integrated in the nations in whose midst they live. He said: "To the extent that the Jews in Europe are still a nation, they have the character of an ahistorical nation." Although he added that "in Eastern Europe there still are . . . millions of unassimilated Jews belonging mostly to the lowest strata. This Jewish petty citizenry and workers . . . form today the Jewish nation." Otto Bauer here gave the meaning of "historical" and "ahistorical" a slight twist. It is not past performance that determines
23 Kissman, J., "Di yidishe sotsyal-demokratishe bav^ung in galitsye un bukovine," Di geshikhte fun bund (New York 1966), vol. Ill, p. 438.

the "historicality" of a nation, but'the prospects for the future. And here capitalist development brought about an alienation of the Jewish intellectuals and the wealthy from Jewish life thus rendering the once historical into an ahistorical nation whose language and culture are in a state of utter neglect. Bauer admitted the rise of the national cultural renascence in which the Jewish workers played a great role, but he had no faith in this development. Not only did Bauer ignore the expressed will of the awakened Jewish masses, he also denied their needs. He called upon them to abandon their national-cultural characteristics. He minimized the need for the use of Yiddish in public offices and courts. He appealed to Jewish workers to refrain from the demand for Jewish schools, but to enroll their children in German, Polish or Ukrainian schools. He was alarmed at the thought of Jewish children in their own schools with Yiddish as the language of instruction! What spirit will prevail in these schools? "The children of the Jewish workers will be imbued with the spirit of bygone days," he feared, "with a medieval view of the world, and the life habits of the Jewish tavern keeper." And Bauer called upon the Jewish workers in general to adjust in manners and culture to the "Christian" workers.^* In an article against national-cultural autonomy, Lenin sarcastically and correctly criticized Bauer's inconsistency and vacillation, pointing to his attitude toward the Jews. He said that Bauer had "excluded from the plan of extraterritorial autonomy of nations the sole extraterritorial nation.''^ Thus a breach was made in the socialist principle of the right of self-determination of nations. The denial of national rights to Jews meant in effect a curtailment of their civil rights. Jewish socialists demanded national rights in the name of humane life needs. Bauer and others opposed this demand in the name of hypothetical development tendencies. Curiously, Bauer defined nation as a cormnunity of character derived from a community of fate. He said explicitly: "Th historical in us is the national in us."^ By this definition the Jews are certainly a nationality. Yet in dealing
24 Bauer, Otto, Die Nationalittenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna 1907), pp. 318-331. 25 Lenin, op. cit., p. 133. 28 Bauer, op. cit., pp. 95-120.

I lie

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with the Jewish problem he applied not his own definition but other standards in order to deny them recognition as a nationality.

In December 1906, Gregory Gershuni, the leader of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, addressed a gathering of several thousand Jews in New York in Yiddish. He said that the task of the Russian Jewish revolutionaries was to work among the Russian peasants in the villages. "The Jews are ready for the revolution," he argued, "they know how to shed their blood for freedom. This I don't have to teach them. Therefore I have gone over to the Christians to teach them how to fight for their freedom.''^^ Let us recall an earlier generation of Russian Jewish revolutionaries. They argued the necessity of going into the villages for among the Jewish masses there was no receptivity for revolutionary propaganda. Conceivably, one part of the non-Jewish socialist leaders would not have opposed the national demands of the Jewish working class and the other would not have opposed them so vigorously had they not had the support of some Jewish socialists. The latter served to justify the hesitation of many socialists. Medem pointed this out as early as 1906. Among the reasons for the, antagonistic attitude of the Russian social democracy to the Bundist stand on the national problem he saw "the assimilationist tendencies in Jewry itself " He said: "The argument between the Jewish Labor Bund and the Russian party is in a considerable measure an expression of the internal struggle among the various' trends in Jewry. One of these trends is represented by the Jewish Labor Bund, anotheran assimilationistappears under the sign of the Russian Sodal Democratic Workers Party. . . . This is an infamai Jewish affair. And so long as it will not be liquidated one way or another our difference with the party cannot be conclusively settled."28 The same applied to the Polish and Austrian socialist parties. At the second convention of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party in 1903, at which the conflict over the rights to an autonomous Jewish organization reached its climax, Martov-Zeder27 Forverts, Dec. 15. 18, 23, 1906.
28 Nashe Slovo, no. 3, July 6, 1906 (Vilna). ^

baum presented the resolution opposing this right. The resolution bore the si^ature of 12 delegatesall Jews. Leon Trotsky deemed it necessary to call attention to the fact that Jews introduced the resolution opposing a national organization of Jewish workers within the framework of the general Social Democratic Party. Mark Liber branded "Trotslcy's remark as vulgar tactlessness.^ Medem was right. It was primarily an internal Jewish affair. It was a continuation of the conflict in various forms and guises throughout Jewish history between the strivings for survival and the tendencies to dissolution. In other forms, the same problem exists today.
2 Aronson, G., "Di natsyonale un organizatsyonele frage," fun bund (New York 1962), vol. 11, p. 510. Di geshikhte