A fascinating document from the Bund’s process of its majority moving from the Mensheviks to the Bolsheviks in the flames of revolution and civil war. In March 1919, the Bund declared for Soviet power. In April, 1920 (shortly after this article) the 12th Congress of the Bund voted in its majority to join the Communist Party. A minority would continue in the Second International.

‘The Jewish Workers’ Movement in Soviet Russia (An Official Declaration of the “Bund”)’ by M. Finkelstein from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 2 No. 10. March 6, 1920.

AS is familiar to most people, the Jewish Workers’ League (Arbeiterbund) was during the whole period of the Revolution Menshevistic in the ranks of Russian Socialism. But during the latter months there has been a parting of the ways. While the Mensheviki in Great Russia are opposed on principle to the Soviet system and only on opportunistic grounds struck from their program the demand of the Constituent Assembly, the Bund has as a matter of principle adopted the position of advocating the Soviet system.

True, there is in the Menshevist element a current which recognizes the Soviet Constitution as the only proper weapon of the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. To this effect a Menshevist Party Conference in the Ukraine recently expressed itself. Nevertheless this view has not become predominant among the Mensheviki. The current opinion in the Russian Social-Democracy favors the maintenance of formal democracy, although rejecting all intervention and any participation in the efforts of the Kolchaks, Denikins, etc., against the Bolsheviki. Still even in this respect the Menshevists are not entirely agreed. Some of them consider it essential to actively oppose the Communists (hence called “activists”); others even aid in one way or another in the fight of the Denikins and Kolchaks against Soviet Russia. These Menshevist elements, however, are excluded from the official party, which quite on the contrary encourages the support of the Soviet Power against the Denikins, the Kolchaks and however else they may be named.

The Jewish Workers’ League has gone beyond this, declaring itself in the last conference in Minsk in favor of the Soviets as the only form of proletarian dictatorship in Russia and in pursuance of this policy voluntarily mobilized all its members, thus taking an active part in the defense of Soviet Russia.

This attitude of the Bund is due to the peculiar conditions under which the Jewish proletariat must fight in the region in which it is concentrated. Two circumstances were decisive: the German occupation and the complete failure of any form of bourgeois democracy. The bourgeoisie in the area of settlement is extremely reactionary, nationalistic and anti-semitic in spirit. Under the pressure of the occupation it became fully demoralized and, supported upon the German bayonets, openly exhibited its hostility to labor. After the outbreak of the Revolution in Germany and the withdrawal of the army of occupation, the latter was replaced in White Russia and Lithuania by the armies of the Polish Legion, frankly a tool of the Polish nationalistic reaction and Entente imperialism which stood opposing the Red Army of Soviet Russia. It is understood that the Red Army was received everywhere as a liberator. And that not only in Lithuania and White Russia, but also in Latvia and the Ukraine. Under these circumstances, in view of the express ultra reactionary sentiment of the bourgeois elements, a constituent assembly was simply out of the question. It became evident that only the actively fighting section of the population, the proletariat could and must take the fate of the land into its hands, and that it would gradually win over also the poorer classes of the rural population. On the other hand, democratic elections would only contribute to drawing the elements passively hostile to labor into the political arena and helping them to form an organization. Thus the principle of the Soviet power became very popular among the Jewish workers. To this is added the impression which the German and the Austro-Hungarian Revolutions made upon the Jewish workers. Even those comrades that had doubted the possibility of a social upheaval in the near future had to admit after the events in Germany and Austria-Hungary that we are experiencing the beginning of the social revolution. It seemed certain that the war would end with the substitution of the socialistic for the capitalistic form of production, and that now the last decisive struggle had actually started.

But if there is any sense in disputing with the bourgeois parties economic and social questions that do not touch upon the present economic principle, the right of ownership, it seems mere waste of time and weakening of the struggle to discuss these questions in bourgeois parliaments. These are questions of might, which can be decided only through might.

True, the elections to the parliaments have an educational and organizatory effect upon the masses, but the same result may be obtained in the elections to the Soviets, which are not debating clubs but fighting organizations. If in peaceful times the parliaments afforded opportunity for valuable disputes between the socialist and the bourgeois representatives which served to educate the masses, just now the thing is direct action. The Revolution must act or it will perish.

In this its activity the Jewish proletariat cannot count upon any bourgeois element, since all of them regard the right of private property as inalienable. Thus a situation arises in which we can no longer say: Through Democracy to Socialism, but Democracy or Socialism. Democracy, in so far as there is any left, opposes the immediate carrying out of Socialism. Hence the Jewish proletariat, following the example of the vast majority of the Russian proletariat, is turning away from bourgeois democracy and favoring the Soviet system.

This idea dominated the majority in the second conference of the Bund in Minsk, and to a far greater extent the rank and file of the Jewish workers. A part of the Bund organizations had already declared themselves as Jewish Communist organizations. This happened in such cases where the leaders had not at the proper moment recognized the change in the sentiments of the workers who formed the bulk of the organization and had not yet left off their Menshevistic complaints against the Bolsheviki. Nevertheless the point of view that the Bund has adopted very essentially differed from that of the Communists.

The Bund has always been a party of the masses, never of leaders. That the working class can liberate itself by its own efforts has been for us not only a slogan but a means of regulating all our activity as well as a principle of organization. In the time of the violent collision of the social forces we are able to dispense with bourgeois democracy but by no means with democracy among the masses themselves. This means that the self-activity of the masses must be the thread of life of the social revolution. The Soviet power must not become a cloak for the Communist dictatorship in which the Central Committee of the Communist party alone and their local party groups shall hold the reins. The Soviet Constitution must not become a dead letter but must be actually realized. That to this end freedom of the press, of speech and of assemblage is necessary for the masses of the workers and peasants, which is entirely contradictory to the system of terror, goes without saying and such terror was severely condemned in the same resolution of the Minsk Conference.

Not to deal with the bourgeois classes, not to compromise, but democracy within the working classes, construction of the revolutionary class organizations on the principles of democracy, making the Soviet power a real organization of the exploited elements. That is the point of view held today by the vast majority of the Jewish proletariat. On this principle it has placed its younger fighting members in the service of the Revolution.

A little less clear was the attitude of the Bund to the questions of the reconstruction of the International. To us it was clear in advance that the future International could not be a mere repetition of the former one, that it is confronted by entirely different questions and must therefor have a different program and a different form of organization. The majority also are of the opinion that the future International must no longer admit to membership parties which conclude compromises with the bourgeois parties, or go even to the extent of combatting the other Socialistic parties with force of arms.

Certainly in this regard the Bolsheviki have been guilty of a number of encroachments against other parties. But these regrettable happenings, if they may not be condoned, at least they may be explained from the extremely difficult position of Russia. At any rate it was a case of a fight in the interest of the social revolution, even though this interest was badly understood. So, if we are not in agreement with all the acts of the Bolsheviki, we still find the fundamental direction of their policy correct, and therefore we believe that the Moscow International, which represents an effort to unite the deciding revolutionary elements, must comprise one of the foundations of the future International. But its basis of organization is too limited. For it will accept only Communist parties, thus excluding itself from several other parties which, although they do not bear the name Communist, nevertheless carry on a revolutionary working class policy. Moreover there are among the centrist parties such as would be prepared to adopt, in conjunction with other parties, revolutionary tactics, while if rejected they would be forced to the side of the opportunistic and social-patriotic elements. Hence the Bund in Soviet Russia has not joined the Moscow International (which, to be sure, the Bund organizations in Lithuania have done), but aims rather to establish closer relations with the other social-democratic revolutionary parties, in order to found in common with them and the Moscow International a new and active International.

Now we shall see to what extent our hopes of bringing all these elements together for the common fight were justified.

At the present moment the Jewish labor movement is going through a new crisis. By far the greater part of the territory inhabited by Jews is occupied by the Whites, who are—in the real sense of the word—conducting a war of extermination against the Jews, staging monstrously cruel pogroms and particularly, of course, persecuting the Jewish workers. Under these circumstances the fight is unspeakably hard. Notwithstanding, the Central Committee has decided that the Comrades in the districts occupied by the Whites should fight for the restoration of the Soviet power, being forbidden to participate in any administrative bodies or in elections for the same, but rather adopting and maintaining as the guiding motive of their activity the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The unusually difficult position in which the Soviet power is placed has, of course, not frightened us from holding high the banner of the social revolution, trusting that the foreign comrades, particularly those of the western European countries, on whom depends the further progress of the revolution, will not desert us but will help through their struggle to bring the proletarian revolution to a victorious close. It cannot be denied that there is danger of Russia, bound by the reaction, becoming in turn the gendarme of Europe, and the Russian White armies being sent to the other lands to suppress the movement. Hence today more than ever the slogan should be: Your cause is at stake. The victory of the reaction in Russia would sound the death knell of the whole proletarian movement of Europe. It would mean the complete triumph of Entente imperialism which would soon unleash a permanent reign of terror. Out of these considerations we deem it necessary to favor and to fight with all our might for the triumph of Soviet Russia everywhere against its enemies.

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v1v2-soviet-russia-Jan-June-1920.pdf