Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Third Duma, Election and Profile, by Alfred Levin. 1973

Important Usually Omitted Information on the Much-Mischaracterized 1912 Duma Election and Retaliatory Dmowski-Led Boycott of Jews

This work requires an in-depth knowledge of the political process in the early 20th-century Russian Empire. It focuses on political parties and personages.

This book has a number of shortcomings. It repeatedly refers to “Jewish rights” and “equal rights”, but never defines such terms. In addition, author Levin glosses over the nature of the territories of the western Russian Empire. He treats each of the ethnic and religious groups as if they were independent islands in an unidentified sea. The reader would never guess that these territories were Russian-occupied Poland!

For purposes of this review, I focus on matters that set the stage for the later 4th Duma (1912). This is best known for the Warsaw Jews’ election of Eugeniusz Jagiello (Yagiello) and the ensuing Dmowski-led retaliatory Endek boycott of Jews.

PROPORTIONATE AND DISPROPORTIONATE ELECTORAL REPRESENTATION: WHY JEWS HAD SO MUCH POWER IN THE 1912 DUMA ELECTIONS IN WARSAW

The degree of Jewish over-representation in the Warsaw district (owing to the fact that urban areas were favored by the tsarist Russian electoral policies, and Jews were concentrated in urban areas–especially Warsaw itself) became a factor in the 1912 Duma elections. It exaggerated the impact of Jewish politics and accentuated the political damage to Poland caused by the Jewish vote for Jagiello.

Interestingly, Levin makes it clear that the matter of skewed electoral policies was a long-standing and broad-based issue. For instance, there were pocket boroughs created for Russians in overwhelmingly non-Russian areas. In the Bialystok area, one elector represented 112 Russians while another elector represented 2,900 Poles and Jews. (p. 154). In addition, Poles were strongly under-represented in the Minsk area (p. 89), and the same held for Poles from what Levin calls the “Vistual Provinces” (Warsaw area, formerly Congress Poland). (p. 105).

WHY JEWISH POLITICAL INFLUENCES IN THE DUMA WERE INDIRECT

For a time, Jews tended to take a low-key approach to advancing their interests, partly out of concern with arousing Polish opposition, and because they lacked the political unity to take more overt action. Levin comments, (quote) The first inclination of the Jewish political leadership, like the Polish, was to urge a closing of ranks to assure the election of an exclusively Jewish deputy in the Duma, if possible. But they were resigned to indirect representation, through moderately liberal Poles, since they were aware that the National Democrats could not control nationalist and anti-Jewish sentiment among the landowners, peasantry, and clergy. But the long-standing ideological differences among the Jews resting on philosophical grounds and class sustained a habitual state of disunity which rendered them politically ineffective. (unquote). (p. 54). [The Polish counterpart to this calculus was stated by Roman Dmowski, who pointed out that it did not matter if it was a Pole or a Jew who was elected, if he represented Jewish instead of Polish interests. That is exactly what happened in the 1912 Duma elections. The Jews could not elect a Jew to the Duma, or chose not to do so, for which reason they instead elected Kucharzewski–a Pole who was out of touch with Polish interests.]

INCREASINGLY OVERT POLITICIZED JEWISH SEPARATISM

With reference to Jewish political groupings, Levin writes (quote) Conservative and nationalist groups and, in a sense, the Jewish Bund were opposed to coordination of efforts with non-Jews, or concentration of effort on purely Jewish problems. Ultraconservatives (like the Khassidic [Hasidic] sect) feared liberal and revolutionary influences that made for religious indifferentism or godlessness among the Jewish youth. But it was the Zionists who were largely responsible for the fragmentation of the political efforts of the Society For Equal Rights by their insistence on the Duma concerned with Jewish, and particularly national interests. In 1910 they carried on a separate campaign with their own candidates attacking the Equal Rightists as assimilationists…The position of the Bund in the matter of cooperation with non-Jewish elements was somewhat anomalous. Like other Social Democrats among the national minorities, they would join with non-Marxist elements only insofar as that was practical and with the Populists and liberals when necessary. Their chief concern lay with the Jewish proletariat, and they warned specifically against traffic with the Polish Endeki [Endeks] for fear that Polish nationalists would disregard Jewish interests in general and particularly that of the workers. (unquote). (p. 55).

From the foregoing, a number of facts are evident. Despite the many differences between them, the Jewish groups (including the assimilationists) generally had no concept of being part of the Polish nation, and were essentially self-defined foreigners on Russian-ruled Polish soil. The Bund, and other so-called Social Democrats, were Marxist. (See also p. 53). Furthermore, the polarization between Jewish nationalists and Polish nationalists was mutual, but nowadays only the Endeks are blamed for it. There was a definite tendency towards the self-atheization and radicalization of Polish Jews, as later pointed out in a much-criticized statement, by Polish Cardinal August Hlond in 1936, on “Jews as freethinkers and vanguards of Bolshevism”.