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

Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism, by Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg. 1983, 2016.

Jewish Democratic Socialists Effortlessly Shed Their Professed Democracy and Became Communists

I focus on a few items of lasting importance.

DEBUNKING THE SILLY EXCULPATORY ARGUMENT THAT JEWISH COMMUNISTS WERE “NOT REALLY JEWS”

Authors Brossat and Klingberg write, “The massive revolutionary commitment of a fraction of Jewish youth in the early twentieth century cannot be equated with a flight from the Jewish world, an unqualified rejection of this world. This is clear enough as far as the Bundists and Poale Zion militants are concerned. But it is also true to a great degree of the communists-their commitment to the movement was not a sign of forgetting or denying their identity; they participated in it as Jews, drawing Jewish workers into the great movement of universal emancipation.” (p. 51). They add that, “As indicated above by Shlomo Szlein, the young Jews who turned towards the Communist Party in his region of Galicia did not feel they were abandoning or betraying their Jewish identity, precisely because so many of them met up in the communist movement.” (p. 72).

JEWISH DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS EFFORTLESSLY SWITCHED THEIR SUPPORT TO COMMUNISM

Brossat and Klingberg comment, “It is a fact, however, that in the years following the October Revolution, all the Jewish socialist parties of the former tsarist empire were riven by a strategic debate in which the issue was whether to rally to the Bolshevik revolution and Soviet power or to reject this ‘dictatorship’ in favor of a ‘democratic’ socialism. It is also a fact that large sections of the Bund, Poale Zion and other Jewish socialist organizations such as the Faraynikte rallied to communism, not under the pressure of any kind of repression, but merely under that of a historical situation in which the wind seemed to blow like a storm in the direction of world-or at least European-revolution. No more than a year and a half, for example, passed between the solemn warning of the Bund leader Henryk Erlich, who on 25 October 1917 (7 November by the old calendar) denounced the Bolshevik coup d’etat, and the second conference of the Bund in March 1919 at which a large majority pronounced in favor of the Soviet dictatorship.” (p. 189). They add that, “This radicalization, however, the turn towards communism of a substantial portion (perhaps the majority) of socialist militants of the former empire…” (p. 189).

EARLY JEWISH “ANTI-COMMUNISM” WAS REALLY A DISLIKE OF LENIN’S INSUFFICIENT DEFERENCE TO JEWISH-SPECIFIC DEMANDS

The authors refer to, “…Lenin’s original conceptions of 1903, the time of the first break with the Bund, continued to prevail: organic unity, the centralization of the party above all else. Thus the communist leaders refused to accept the genuine existence of either the Jewish Communist Party that arose from Poale Zion, or the Ukrainian or Polish Kombund. The militants of these intermediate groupings were summoned to join the ‘normal’ structures of the Communist Party individually. Any idea of a specific political organization of Jewish workers, which would take into consideration the particularities of their traditions, their language, their form of organization, etc., was rejected as a symptom of nationalist deviation.” (p. 189).

THE PRIVILEGED JEWISH NOMENKLATURA IN THE SOVIET-SUBJUGATED NATIONS

Brossat and Klingberg write, “The new regime, not just in Poland but also in Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, needed these experienced Jewish militants, who thus turned from revolutionaries into officials, privileged people in countries that had a hard time rising from their ruins. Though militants, they were also now numbers of the NOMENKLATURA whose loyalty to the regime was based not only on conviction, but also on the material advantages that it gave.” (p. 267).

POLISH SOURCES CONFIRMED: NO SUDDEN “EXPULSION” OF JEWS IN 1968

With reference to the Jews in high positions, the authors write, “Some had sought to leave but had not been authorized to do so, as they knew too much about the functioning of the apparatus and its secrets. Their names were placed on ‘ten-year’ and even ‘fifteen-year’ lists (the time until they might be allowed to leave the country), leaving them trapped. Finally, in 1968, the restrictions on emigration were abolished.” (p. 274).

Clearly, these Jews had outworn their privileges. For more on Jews and March 1968, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jews-1968-definitive-work-zebrowski/