S0010417500004114

PRIMORDIAL TIES AND POLITICAL PROCESS
IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA:
THE CASE OF THE JEWISH BUND *
A major problem in the civic integration of new states is the quickening of

"primordial attachments" based on ties of blood, race, language, region,
religion or custom.1 These attachments give rise to separatist, irredentist or
factional groupings whose claims to recognition and autonomy cut across the
claims of civic unity based on a common national territory.
Such conflicting loyalties are most conspicuous today in countries where
the end of colonial rule has left indigenous peoples with responsibility for
self-government. The new opportunity for political participation by the whole
population has stimulated a drive for recognition and distinctive identity on
the part of cultural minorities with deeply-rooted traditions of their own. At
the same time, this drive for separate identity conflicts with the need to
modernize and to create a unified state with influence in the wider world. The
result is a tension between these two motives which Clifford Geertz has
characterized as "one of the central driving forces in the national evolution
of the new states".2
Geertz suggests that this development poses a problem for comparative
study. Can the outcome of such movements be predicted on the basis of
systematic analysis? What are the dynamics of ethnic transformation under
the impact of modernization? As one approach to these questions, we propose
that ethnic transformations be examined as political processes. Such processes
can be observed in the history of countries where national unity has long been
achieved as well as in the new states today. We seek to show, by reference to a
Jewish political movement in pre-Revolutionary Russia, how primordial at-
tachments under the impact of modernization can be transformed into political
ties and thereby made susceptible of redefinition in terms compatible with a
new system of national government.
Unlike the new states where the task of national unification has been
preceded by the withdrawal of a dominant foreign power, Russia was the
* The work has been aided by a grant from the American Philosophical Society.
1
Clifford Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics
in the New States", in Clifford Geertz, ed., Old Societies and New States (The Free
Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 105-157; Edward Shils, "Primordial, Personal, Sacred and
Civil Ties", British Journal of Sociology, VIII (June, 1957), pp. 130-145.
2
Geertz, p. 108.
332 WOODHOUSE AND TOBIAS
scene of a revolutionary movement against an indigenous regime. The cultural

minorities in the Empire had to anticipate the future in terms of their relation-
ship to the same dominant ethnic group that had prevailed under the Tsars.
Nonetheless, the mounting of a revolutionary movement in a society where
legal political activity was severely restricted had the same effect as the new
opportunity for self-government in the post-colonial countries has today: it
broadened the range of participation in politics and opened the way for
cultural minorities to assert their claims.
For the comparative analysis of such developments it is important to rec-
ognize the role of political parties as media for advancing minority interests.
Parties provide a framework in which the quickening or the dissolution of
primordial attachments depends on organizational factors. Every political
party faces two problems: that of developing internal solidarity among leaders
and followers, and that of gaining and stabilizing power externally vis-a-vis
other parties and the government. A party socially based in a cultural minority
faces the choice, early in the process of its growth, of binding its members
together and defining their collective goals either as interests distinctive to
the minority, or as interests that are shared by broader segments of the
population.
These contingencies are complicated when the rise of a minority party has
been prompted by modernization in the dominant society. As industrialization
offers greater economic opportunity to broad segments of the population, and
as the base of citizenship and participation in power is extended more widely,
this process of modernization may aggravate two contradictory tendencies
within the minority. If social exclusion from the dominant society hinders
the minority from sharing the benefits of modernization, its members may
seek assimilation individually and strive for equal civil and economic rights
collectively. But if the cultural leavening of modernization poses a threat to
cherished values and institutions, the minority may develop an impulse to
preserve its own way of life in a changing world.
Both of these tendencies were prompted among the Jews in pre-Revolu-
tionary Russia. In the Jewish parties formed to further the revolutionary
cause, the conflict between politico-economic assimilation to Russian society
and the preservation of cultural autonomy had to be resolved at every stage
of organizational development and with every change in the political environ-
ment. The dynamics of this adjustment have implications for the comparative
analysis of minority political movements in newly-formed states.
Using the Jewish case, we may construct a model for such analysis by
delineating the strategies that a party may adopt, given the options that its
milieu provides. If a party seeks to secure the benefits of modernization for
the minority, this encourages the members to participate in the life of the
larger society; but as this also implies a modification of the minority's own
way of life, the party taking such a course risks losing support from some part
THE JEWISH BUND 333
of its social base that might oppose this policy. On the other hand, if the
party seeks to preserve the minority's culture against the threat of social
change the party is then exposed to opposition and isolation from the
broader political community.
The factors which determine a party's choice of strategy thus become the
proper object of comparative analysis. Such factors include (1) the ideological
orientation of the party leaders, insofar as it reflects their linkage with, or
isolation from, the culture of the dominant society; (2) the extent to which
other parties are relied on for organizational support; and (3) the cultural and
economic homogeneity of the party's social base.
The interaction of these factors and their effect on a party's choice of
strategy must be examined historically with a view to the organizational trans-
formations which a party may experience in adjusting to its political environ-
ment. Minority parties may be particularly susceptible of such transformations.
The primordial ties which bind the membership make it possible for the party
to function as an agent for the modernization of the minority's way of life
as well as an instrument of the minority's power in the political system. The
possibility of such a transformation — from a political to a civic or cultural
role — depends on the extent to which the traditional culture of the minority
lends itself to expression through modern means of public communication.
It is important, for example, whether members of the minority are literate
in their own language; it matters how well equipped they are, through educa-
tion and community hie, to engage in creative activity; and it matters whether
formal institutions of self-government, education, religion, entertainment and
social welfare have furnished institutional channels for organized collective
activity. The more such channels there are, the more non-political functions
a party can perform, and the greater is the chance that it will serve ends for
its members that are civic and cultural as well as simply to counterbalance
the authority of the dominant groups in the state.
Thus for the comparative analysis of civic integration, the dynamics of
political movements based on primordial attachments may be understood
more fully through examining the social and historical matrix in which the
cultural minority has developed its collective self-conception. If an upsurge
of political activity does involve continuities with the cultural past, the sud-
denness of such an upsurge need not obscure our conception of its eventual
effect.
The nature of cultural continuities does, of course, differ considerably
among minorities involved in the process of civic integration. On such a
continuum the Jews would represent an extreme case. Historically they have
provided the most notable example of the institutional strength of primordial
attachments in the face of political domination by peoples of other religious
faiths. The state of Israel is the outstanding example of a successful political
movement — Zionism — based on primordial attachments. Yet while the
Zionist movement grew in pre-Revolutionary Russia under circumstances of

modernization, our attention in the present study is focused on another
movement which arose in the same period. The object of this movement was
not the establishment of a new nation; rather it sought to achieve cultural
autonomy and civic equality for the Jewish people within the framework of
an altered Russian state.
The political party which led this movement was the General League of
Jewish Workers of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, founded in 1897 and
commonly known as the Bund. The fate of the Bund in Russia, in its dis-
solution as a political force after the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, stands
in striking contrast to the subsequent success of the Zionist movement. Yet
the political life of the Bund exemplifies the transformation of ethnic affilia-
tion under the impact of modernization in a way that is pertinent to the
nation-building of our time. The conditions of this transformation had their
origin in changes taking place among the Jews in Russia before the Bund
was formed.
The Jews in the Russian Empire
The Jews in the Russian Empire remained distinct from the populations
among whom they lived despite the absence of an historical territory to
define them. The essential differences between them and their neighbors lay
in the area of economic activities, religious, linguistic, and related cultural
phenomena buttressed by legal barriers which the Tsarist regime fostered.
In the nineteenth century, state-created disabilities relating specifically to
Jews included at various times denial of their right to practice certain occu-
pations and restrictions upon residence and upon educational opportunities.
The majority of Russian Jews became part of the Empire as the result of
the partitions of Poland which occurred in the last decades of the eighteenth
century. The Russian state regarded the Jewish community as a problem and
tried various methods to effect a solution. Intent on eradicating the distinctions
between Jews and non-Jews the authorities took strong steps as early as 1844
toward eliminating the official institutions of the Jews for dealing with the
outside world. At the same time it should be noted that the regime partially
contradicted its policy of destroying this quasi-state within a state by forcing
Jews to live in the Pale of Settlement, a large ghetto comprising the western
provinces of Russia.
While the Russian state applied external pressure to destroy the communal
life of the Jews, some elements from within acted to bring the Jews closer to
the populations among whom they lived. An early example of this trend
which gained currency was the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement. The
basis of its motivation lay in the Western European Enlightenment with its
THE JEWISH BUND 335
strong tendency to regard men in universal terms rather than in terms of

their cultural or social distinctions. The Haskalah followers, because of their
interest in secular learning, formed a tradition which drew the Jews closer
to the broader path of modern secular cultural life than did the learning of
the Hebraic religious tradition.
These signs of change within the community were supplemented by changes
occurring within the Russian Empire at large. Following the emancipation of
the serfs in 1861, Russian society began to be transformed rapidly. Social
and geographic mobility became increasingly possible. The state permitted
the Jews to enter universities, granted them limited opportunities to move
outside the Pale, and freed them from some of the most intolerable limitations
they had faced.
By the 188O's, however, the Tsarist regime, frightened in part by some of
the effects of its actions, began to retract the small expressions of its previous
liberality. Outbursts of violence, known as pogroms, began to sweep Russia
in the 1880's and continued spasmodically until 1917. This violence oc-
casioned the re-introduction of restrictive measures against the Jews. The
entrance of Jewish students into Russian educational institutions on the
secondary and higher levels was limited by a numerus clausus. Jews again
experienced more severe restraints on their residential rights. Indeed, they
were gradually forbidden to live in rural areas even within the Pale. The
result was that a vital element in the Jewish community, the youth willing and
able to learn, found the outlet for their energies and hopes blocked while the
crowding into towns and cities resulted in economic hardships for most Jews.
The various disabilities faced by the Jews eventually led them to perceive
a series of options for themselves. Emigration was one. Many simply tired of
their conditions and sought a new life in the West, the bulk of them moving
to the United States. Others, particularly those identified as Zionist, saw
migration in terms of an ideology drawn from within the Jewish tradition and
adapted to modern nationalism.
By far the greatest number, however, could not emigrate. Among these
persons responses ranged widely. At one end of the scale, some sought refuge
in assimilation and even conversion while others accommodated themselves
to the regime in passive ways. At the opposite extreme, revolutionary resist-
ance to the regime began to appear as a meaningful solution. Revolution was,
by its nature, a mode of activity best suited to the young and energetic. The
Bund appeared in the context of this response by Jews to conditions in im-
perial Russia.
Jewish Intellectuals and the Revolutionary Tradition

Both the Haskalah movement and Tsarist policies played an important role
in bringing Jewish youths into the main stream of Russian culture. The Jewish
educational tradition prepared men to become Jews but not necessarily to
participate in secular occupations, and certainly not in occupations which

play a major role in modern society. Medical, engineering, and commercial
training were almost exclusively a part of the apparatus which the Empire
provided for its own population. Jewish aspirants to such learning had to
attend the Russsian school system, or prepare themselves as externes for the
examinations — by hiring special tutors or by self-study — or else study
abroad.
Jewish students who overcame the obstacles and entered the secondary and
higher schools studied alongside Russian students who, like themselves, sought
secular knowledge and careers. The content of the Russian school system was
the secular heritage of the western world. Here Russian, not Hebrew or
Yiddish, the holy tongue or the spoken idiom, was the language of communi-
cation. The educational system thus provided a common meeting ground for
Russian and Jewish students.
Another meeting point between Russian and Jewish students was the search
for justice. The injustice of the Tsarist regime had become an issue for the
youth of Russia in the post-Napoleonic period. The ideologies which sought
to provide remedies for the injustice were drawn from the "great tradition"
of Western Europe. By the late nineteenth century, Russian culture had, to
a considerable degree, assimilated and adapted this body of knowledge into
its own language. A large revolutionary literature and heritage existed, based
on the works and deeds of such figures as Herzen, Bakunin, Chernyshevsky,
and Plekhanov, as well as the exploits of the Decembrists and the terrorists of
the People's Will.
The Jewish students, who often felt a keen sense of the disabilities they
faced in Russian society as a despised minority, found an outlet for their
dissatisfactions by allying with the schemes for justice which the Russians
had already created. Before the Bund and its immediate predecessors came
onto the scene, Jewish revolutionaries, mostly students or ex-students, partici-
pated in common with non-Jews in movements dedicated to drastic change.
They did so in the language, literature, and organizational forms provided by
Russian society.
Jewish Revolutionaries and the Jewish Community

The appearance of Jews in the revolutionary ranks of the Russians also
reflected their relation to the Jewish community. Since they usually regarded
themselves as strangers or guests in the Russian Empire, the leaders of the
Jewish community preached obedience to the existing laws. They tried to
assuage their dissatisfaction with the Russian authorities through petitions,
appeals, prayer, and bribery. Violent response was unthinkable. The young
Jewish revolutionaries were therefore not only breaking the law of the land
by their actions; they were also going against the will of the traditionally
learned and powerful Jews who acted as spokesmen for the entire community.
THE JEWISH BUND 337
While the revolutionary tradition of the Russians inspired Jews who were
receptive to it, the conditions under which the latter lived eventually forced
them to consider the relation of the "great tradition" to their own. Some left
their own tradition completely in cultural terms. The appearance of revo-
lutionary circles at Jewish schools of higher learning by the 1870's, however,
reflected a broadening of interest. Unlike those Jews who left the Pale to
attend Russian universities, the students at the Vilno Teachers Institute re-
mained more closely tied to their own traditions. In the mid-seventies some
of these students argued over the possibility of making contact with the Jewish
population in Hebrew, the learned idiom of Jews residing in the Russian
Empire.
The isolated character of such instances, however, changed as a result of
the renewed restrictions upon the Jewish community during the 188O's. The
frustrations encountered by Jewish students seeking admission to higher
schools and the active response of Jewish students to the stimulus of the
revolutionary tradition led to their frequent expulsion from such institutions
and widespread contacts with aspiring Jewish students. The administrative
device whereby expelled students were returned to home towns where no
universities existed merely helped to spread revolutionary phenomena. The
circles led by expelled revolutionaries no longer existed within the framework
provided by academic environment alone. They began to exist in the midst
of the Jewish centers of population.
The Jewish revolutionary who had been drawn into Russian culture via
his studies, finding himself thrown back into the environment of his birth,
could not ignore the fact of his milieu indefinitely. The general conditions
which the Jews faced, the variety of options which were growing up for them
— options which were in some aspects distinct from those considered by the
Russian community — now began to gain his attention.
Cultural Identity and Organizational Formation (1890-1897)
At this juncture the Jewish intellectuals found themselves in a situation

resembling the "crisis of rising expectations" in the underdeveloped areas
today. New aspirations were being blocked but the obstacles to their fulfill-
ment were not regarded as insuperable. The Tsarist policy toward the Jews
focused attention upon the government as the source of their difficulties. The
broadening scope of revolutionary activity in Russia from the 1880's on
fostered the hope of overthrowing the regime.
Jewish participation in revolutionary activity, however, provoked a crisis
of cultural identity. If young Jewish revolutionaries were defying the traditions
of their own communities, they still could not discount the implications of
Jewish activity in relation to Russian society at large. If Jews joined the
movement in order to relieve their special disabilities as an oppressed minority,

how could they promote this aim without arousing traditional prejudice and
discriminatory treatment, and without alienating the support of other revolu-
tionary groups? On the other hand if Jews joined the movement to gain
democratic political liberties for all, or to relieve the oppression of the Russian
proletariat, what certainty was there that Jews would have an equal share in
these benefits?
Before the founding of the Bund in 1897, both sides of this issue had been
anticipated by the intellectuals, but the issue itself was not yet clear. The
intellectuals' prime concern in the late '80's and early '90's was the develop-
ment of cadres for the revolutionary movement through the formation of
circles of students and workers. "We were for assimilation," said T. M.
Kopelson, a leading member of the Vilno Social Democratic circle in that
early period. "We did not even dream of a special Jewish mass movement."8
But by 1895, Julius Martov was telling the leaders of the Vilno Social Demo-
cratic organization that the Jewish proletariat would have to fight its own
way to freedom, without depending on the Russian or the Polish movements,
and "full equal rights" should be the workers' goal.4
Workers and Intellectuals

Among the workers, this dilemma took its sharpest form among those who
had joined the early circles where the Russian language and secular subjects
were taught. The circles had been formed to prepare the workers for revo-
lutionary activity, but in the early '90's the intellectuals had begun to doubt
the effectiveness of this method. Workers who belonged had begun to aspire
to professional careers, to identify with intellectuals, to raise themselves above
the rest of the working class. This separation could only undermine rather
than promote the revolutionary unity of the proletariat. When leaders of the
movement decided instead on a policy of "agitation" for direct economic
action through strikes, strong opposition developed among the workers in the
circles. Their spokesmen insisted that only through education and culture
could workers become united and independent; that by insisting on agitation
and strikes the intellectuals were trying to monopolize control of the move-
ment by keeping the workers in ignorance.5
Workers who opposed the abandonment of circle activity were expressing
3
T. M. Kopelson, "Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie kontsa 80-kh godov" [The Jewish
Workers' Movement at the End of the 'Eighties and the Beginning of the 'Nineties],
Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie sredi evreev [The Revolutionary Movement Among the Jews]
(Moscow, 1930), I, 71.
4
L. Martov, Di Naie Epokhe in der Yiddisher Arbeiter Bevegung [The New Epoch
in the Jewish Labor Movement] (Geneva, 1900), pp. 9-10.
5
Henry J. Tobias, "The Origins and Evolution of the Jewish Bund until 1901" (un-
published Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1957), pp. 26-30.
THE JEWISH BUND 339
an interest in education that had been much more common among Jewish
youths who could attend Russian gymnasia and universities. The freedom to
do this, plus the greater vocational opportunities which such education made
possible, reinforced the detachment from the Jewish community that already
characterized assimilated Jewish intellectuals. For them, as well as for other
Russian-speaking Jewish intellectuals, revolutionary activity afforded both an
outlet and incentive to overcome those blocks to social and geographic
mobility which the government had imposed.
Intellectuals responded to this option in contrasting ways. Martov, for
example, was an assimilated Jew who chose to go to Vilno after being expelled
from the University of St. Petersburg, and for several years was active in the
Vilno Jewish Social Democratic group. Yet instead of joining the Bund he
first worked closely with Lenin, then later emerged as a leader of the Men-
shevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. On the other hand
Vladimir Medem, whose family was Russified and who had himself been
baptized in the Greek Orthodox faith, was to find in the Bund a means for
identifying more closely with the Jewish community. In the course of his
career he became one of the Bund's most prominent and revered leaders.
The Role of Organization

Thus by the late '90's, individual Jews were resolving the dilemma of
identity by affiliating with political organizations. The Russian Social Demo-
cratic circles, the Polish Socialist Party, the Bund, and the Zionist groups —
all these together had created a new context of choices for the definition of
one's status in relation to Jewish society.
The emergence of this organizational context represents a crucial stage in
the transformation of primordial ties among Jews in the revolutionary move-
ment. In the 1890's political organizations began to fill a place in Jewish
community life which had once been held by the kahal, or autonomous
communal institution before its legal abolition by the Russian government in
1844. But unlike the traditional community, which was held together by the
day-to-day fulfillment of a traditional way of life, these new organizations
were held together by the hope for a better future. Membership in these groups
thus meant that one's cultural identity as a Jew could be re-defined in terms
of aspirations to be realized through organizational effort, and expressed
ideologically as a party's political program. Now, however, these organizations
exposed their members to the dilemma of cultural identity on a collective basis.
For the leaders of the Bund this dilemma was brought about by their
dependence on support from the Jewish working class. This dependence
rested on the organizational cohesion already developed among workers in
Jewish trades and also on the need to communicate a revolutionary ideology
to the workers through the medium of their traditional culture. The decision
to rely on mass agitation instead of circles as a means of mobilizing the
workers resulted from their success in strikes. These had been organized
through groups known as kases (funds) which had roots in mutual-aid societies
(khevrat) and long antedated any revolutionary activity by either intellectuals
or workers. Even the early strikes conducted by these groups had occurred
apart from any context of revolutionary propaganda, and worker solidarity
had rested on the Jewish tradition of combining for religious and welfare
purposes in groups by shop or occupation.
But if agitation and strikes for immediate economic gains were to be
effective for imparting revolutionary ideology to the workers, agitators were
needed who could speak to the workers in Yiddish. These agitators were
recruited from the literary "half-intellectuals", students with advanced educa-
tion in the traditional Jewish religious schools, or better-educated workers.
Organizationally, these persons became as important for Unking the Jewish
workers to the Jewish intellectuals, as the Russian-speaking Jewish intel-
lectuals had become for Unking the Jewish communities to the Russian revo-
lutionary movement. At the same time, the changing character of the move-
ment from a circle to a mass movement compelled the intellectuals to define
their goals in terms of the workers' identity as Jews. Their needs and sufferings
stemmed not solely from their class position as a proletariat but also from
their position as an oppressed minority. If the workers were to be drawn to
the revolutionary cause, the promise of a better future had to appeal to the
primordial sentiments that already bound them together and had to give hope
for reUef from their special disabiUties.
Martov's call in 1895 for "full equal rights" as a revolutionary goal fore-
shadowed the task that leaders of the Bund would face from the time of its
founding in 1897. They would have to reconcile the goal of equal rights for
Jews, with the need for winning support from non-Jewish parties in the
common revolutionary cause.
Primordial Ties and Organizational Autonomy (1898-1906)
Up to the founding of the Bund in 1897, its leaders had been more con-
cerned with drawing the Jewish worker into an identification with the general
revolutionary movement than with the fate of the Jews as a people. But as
the organization grew and faced the rivalry of other socialist and national
parties, it had to defend its existence on the grounds that Jewish working
class problems were different from those of the PoUsh and Russian work-
ing classes.
At this point, the crisis of cultural identity emerged on a collective level,
and the question became, 'Does the Bund stand only for the working classes
everywhere, or does it stand for the rights of the Jewish people?' The ideo-
logical response to this dilemma was an attempt to secure the party's cohesion
THE JEWISH BUND 341
internally, and the organizational response was an attempt to preserve the

party's autonomy in the larger political environment.
The Ideological Response

On the ideological level, leaders of the Bund came to justify its existence as
a separate socialist party on ethnic grounds. The Polish Socialist Party, in its
effort to unite the working classes in support of Polish national independence,
accused the Bund of traitorous leanings toward Russian culture and of fostering
anti-Semitism by dividing Jews from the rest of the working class. Bund
leaders replied by stressing their desire to end the civil disabilities of Jews
everywhere in the Russian empire, and accused the Poles of neglecting the
Yiddish-speaking members in their own ranks even while seeking support
from Polish-speaking workers in Latvia and Lithuania.6
At the same time, Zionist groups with a socialist ideology had begun to
draw support from Jewish workers. Although Bund leaders were opposed to
the idea of a new state in Palestine, they now felt it necessary to offset this
appeal by assuring Jewish workers of the right to their own way of life under
a post-revolutionary regime in Russia. In their search for a party program
that would convey this assurance, some Bund leaders were indirectly in-
fluenced by a proposal put forward by the Austrian Social Democrats in
their Congress at Briinn in 1899. This proposal called for cultural autonomy,
without a territorial basis, for separate nationalities in a federated system.
Nothing could have been more congruent with the aspirations of Jews who
sought relief from oppression within the Russian empire but who had no
traditional claim to any "national" territory there.
A program which claimed "national" rights for Jews on the basis of cultural
autonomy seemed calculated to win the allegiance of Jewish workers and
heighten their political consciousness; yet the proposal did not resolve the
dilemma for Bund leaders who feared that too much stress on Jewish rights
would alienate its social democratic co-workers.7 Debates in the Bund's
Fourth Congress in 1901 therefore resulted in a compromise. Instead of
claiming national rights, the Congress protested against national oppression,
and enunciated the same demand for equal civil rights and removal of civil
disabilities for Jews as had been set forth by the Bund's First Congress
in 1897.
The Organizational Response

On the organizational level, no such compromise occurred. Instead, the
* These arguments appeared in a number of Polish and Yiddish newspapers from 1893
to 1898. They are summarized in Tobias, pp. 88-101.
7
"Di Oislendishe Organizatsie fun 'Bund'" [The Foreign Organization of the Bund],
Franz Kurski: Gezamelte Shriften [Franz Kurski: Selected Essays] (New York, 1952),
p. 214. Kurski was a significant figure in the Bund for decades and became its chief
bibliographer.
national question set the terms of the Bund's relationship to the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party. Although the Bund had joined that party at
its founding in 1898 as an autonomous section with the right to make de-
cisions on all Jewish questions, the Bund's autonomy then was predicated on
its representation of Jews in the northwestern section of the Pale of Settlement
and Poland, and on its ability to supply them with revolutionary literature
written in Yiddish. But by 1901 the Bund's base of support had been ex-
tended to include Jewish workers in the south of Russia, where many Russian
Social Democratic groups existed. To clarify its new position, the Bund, at
the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903, asked to be recognized as the
sole representative of the Jewish proletariat, with no territorial limitations on
its activities.
This demand was the culmination of an intra-party struggle from which the
Bund emerged as an organization committed to the goal of Jewish national
rights in post-revolutionary Russia. Its desire for a federated status within
the RSDLP had posed a threat to the plans of Lenin and his growing Iskra
faction which sought to make the Party a single centralized organization of
the entire proletariat.8 The bitter polemics between the Bund and Iskra
between 1901 and 1903 turned on the question whether the Bund was en-
titled to a position with power equivalent to the power of the Party center.
To Lenin's criticism that the Bund was dividing the working class, Bund
leaders replied that equal national rights were just as important to Jews as
the overthrow of Tsarism was to the Russian workers. Such rights could not
be guaranteed unless they were recognized as a legitimate revolutionary goal
by those who succeeded to power; and this could not be expected if Jews
became politically indistinguishable within the framework of an all-
Russian party.
When the Second Congress of the RSDLP refused to grant the demand for
a federative status, the Bund withdrew from the Party rather than risk the
loss of its organizational strength. From this point on, the precedence of
primordial ties over general revolutionary sentiment is constant in the history
of the Bund.
Political Retrenchment through Cultural Activities
Up to the period of reaction which followed the Revolution of 1905 the

activities of the Bund had been primarily political and economic in nature —
aimed at building the revolutionary power of the Jewish working class. An
elaborate formal organization had been developed, combining centralized
control with local representation. Just prior to 1906 the Bund had a total of
8
Henry J. Tobias, "The Bund and Lenin Until 1903", The Russian Review, 20
(October, 1961), pp. 344-357.
THE JEWISH BUND 343
33,890 members, divided among 274 local organizations. Its highest executive
body was a Central Committee to which members were elected or co-opted;
a Foreign Committee held equivalent authority abroad.
These committees functioned continuously to direct and coordinate the
organization. Legislation of major policy decisions occurred at periodic Con-
gresses made up of delegates from local organizations. Prior to the meeting
of a Congress a Conference was convened among a select group of leaders
to determine the Congress's agenda. The function of a Conference in initiating
and formulating major policy issues in advance made it a body which merited
the highest respect of the Bundists, so that leaders who belonged to the
Central or the Foreign Comittee, or attended a Conference, constituted the
"top" leaders in the Bund's organizational hierarchy. Below this level, dele-
gates to Congresses as well as members of local committees and members of
the editorial boards of local Bund journals, constituted a "second echelon"
of leaders.
During the political reaction of 1907 and after, this organizational structure
was tested severely. In the Bund as well as other revolutionary parties, a
sense of futility and disillusionment prevailed. Some leaders emigrated, and
those who remained at home were forced to curtail their activities. Strikes
and demonstrations had become all but impossible because of repression on
the part of employers and police. As a result, the Bund's organizational ma-
chinery at the local level was greatly reduced in the number of positions
being staffed. At the Ninth Conference of the Bund in 1912, for example,
the Central Committee reported that it was in contact with only 30 localities;
delegates to the Conference had been elected by a total of 307 members in
23 localities.
Data based on a large sample of Bund leaders demonstrate the extent of
attrition (See Table I).9 The distribution of positions among leaders active in
TABLE I. Leaders of the Bund by Periods
1897-1900 1901-04 1905-06 1907-10 1911-17

Top Leaders 12 23 38 19 17
Second Echelon 20 21 24 8 17
Total 32 44 62 27 34
9
The sample consists of 154 persons who were active in the Bund between 1897 and
the March Revolution of 1917. The major sources for the biographies were: Doires
Bundisten [Generations of Bundists], J. S. Hertz, ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1956); Leksikon
fun der Yiddisher Literatur, Prese, un Filologie [Lexicon of Yiddish Literature, Press,
and Philology], 4 vols., Zalman Raizen, ed. (Vilno 1928-1929); Leksikon fun der Naier
Yiddisher Literatur [Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature], Samuel Niger and Jacob
Shatski, eds. (New York, 1956-), 5 vols. to date. In addition, many individual volumes
of autobiography and memoirs have been used. These materials provide data on the
each period between 1897 and the March Revolution of 1917, shows the
growth of the organization up to 1905-06 and the curtailment of leadership
activity thereafter. Despite this trend, the biographical data also show that
the number of active members remained comparatively stable between 1907
and 1917 due to an influx of new members replacing those who left.
Leadership and Educational Background

The impact of this change, as well as the Bund's capacity to maintain its
solidarity as an organization after 1906, becomes more apparent through
analyzing the educational background of the Bund's leaders and the relation-
ship of this background to their organizational roles. Before the Bund was
formed, education had been important in the Jewish revolutionary movement
in two ways. In gymnasia and universities, where knowledge of the Russian
language was required, Jewish intellectuals had become conversant with
socialist ideology on the same level of sophistication as Russian intellectuals
had achieved. This laid the foundation for the Bund's organizational effective-
ness in the larger political arena. In the early circles, educational opportunities
as the means for upward mobility had attracted Jewish workers to the move-
ment. This signified a commitment to education which was supported by
Jewish tradition. Learning was important as a basis for individual and family
honor (yikhus) and its value was understood as well by persons who could
not receive much formal schooling as it was by those who could. Since directed
study was a major means for spreading revolutionary ideology and preparing
the working classes for political action, the traditional value attached to edu-
cation supported internal cohesion at the local level of party organization.
These precedents had divergent effects on the composition of the leadership
and played a part in the organizational transformation which occurred during
the political reaction after 1906. When the work was predominantly political,
the need for theoretical knowledge and the skills of literary and oral com-
munication in building a mass movement made formal education a deter-
mining factor in leadership selection.
Of 49 persons who served in "top" positions at some time between 1897
and 1917, 33 (67%) had attended or graduated from Russian gymnasia or
universities; included also are three who attended the Vilno Teachers Institute,
better known members of the Bund. The works include a large proportion of the top
leaders and a smaller representation of second echelon leaders. To verify the coverage
afforded by the biographies, an independent check was made in historical accounts of
the composition of the Central Committee, and delegates to Conferences and Con-
gresses. We believe that our sample includes all members of the Central Committee and
approximately two-thirds of the delegates to Conferences. Of 140 persons who attended
Conferences and Congresses, as well as serving on the Central Committee, we have 70
biographies in the sample. A previous analysis of Bund leadership based on these data
is presented in Henry J. Tobias and Charles E. Woodhouse, "The Leadership of the
Jewish Bund" (paper presented at Yivo Research Conference on Jewish Participation in
Movements Devoted to the Cause of Social Progress, New York, September 1964).
THE JEWISH BUND 345
a state-supported institution for the training of Jewish teachers where advanced
secular subjects were taught. By contrast, among 54 persons who served in
"second echelon" positions during the same period, only eighteen (33%) had
received higher education. Below the level of education denoted by attendance
at gymnasia, Bund members are classified either as having had a traditional
education in the primary and secondary schools of the Jewish community, or
as having had no formal education in the Jewish communities or in Russian
institutions.10
Detailed breakdown of the leaders according to level of their positions and
educational attainment is presented in Table II. Here the sample is divided
TABLE II. Academic Attainment and Leadership Position

(percentages)
1897-1906 1907-1917
No %of No % of
Top 2nd Post Total Top 2nd Post Total
Higher
education 70 32 36 46 70 52 39 46
Traditional
education 14 32 36 28 13 17 34 28
No formal
education 16 35 28 26 17 30 26 25
Total 100% 99% 100% 100% 100% 99% 99% 99%
between all those who belonged to the Bund during the period 1897-1906,
and all who belonged during the period 1907-1917. Between the two periods,
no change occurred in the percentages of the total membership having differ-
ent degrees of academic attainment. But from 1907-1917, members with
higher education increased their share of second echelon positions from 32
to 52 per cent while those with traditional Jewish schooling declined in their
share of these positions from 32 to 17 per cent, and those with no formal
education had their share reduced from 35 to 30 per cent. This shift occurred
in conjunction with a drastic reduction in the number of top and second
echelon positions, by almost half in each case (from 43 persons holding top
positions in the first period to 23 in the second; from 40 holding second
echelon positions in the first period to 23 in the second).
The change in educational composition of the second echelon in the period
1907-1917 reflects a greater turnover of leaders at this level compared to the
rigid continuity of top leadership. Among the 23 top leaders serving in this
period, all but five had served at the same level before 1907 and two of
these had served in second echelon posts; moreover, none of these top leaders
19
It should be pointed out, however, that private tutoring and self-education were
commonly relied on in place of formal school attendance. Persons who taught them-
selves were called autodidacten.
were newcomers (a tie Bund, a/f /Saving joined"" 6ef6re 1407. By contrast,
among the 23 second echelon leaders only eight had held leadership posts
before: three at the top and five in the second echelon. And of the remaining
fifteen who had not held posts previously, seven had joined the Bund after
1907. Second echelon leaders with higher education include six of the eight
who had held Bund posts before 1907, four of the seven newcomers and two
who had been members without holding posts before 1907.
Apart from the disruption of local organization which the political reaction
brought about, the fluidity and heterogeneity of leadership at the second
echelon also reflects the difference in tasks at this level from those which top
leaders had to perform. At the second echelon, higher education was less
necessary since the duties consisted of practical activities on a smaller scale
in response to local opportunities and needs. This work required intimate
contact and mutual trust between leaders and workers, more than it required
theoretical knowledge.
These data on leadership composition exhibit organizational characteristics
which affected the Bund's adjustment to the new conditions it faced. First,
the preponderance of Russian-educated persons at the top leadership level
ensured the continuity of the Bund's commitment to the Russian revolutionary
movement as a class struggle. After the Revolution of 1905 these leaders were
as ready to engage in the Bund's re-entry into the Russian Social Democratic
Labor Party as they had been willing to leave it in 1903. They effected uni-
fication in 1906 on virtually the same conditions which the RSDLP had
refused to grant three years before. Second, the participation of persons
without higher education even at the top levels of the Bund hierarchy denotes
a linkage between intellectuals and workers based on mutual dependence,
common sharing of organizational tasks and a sense of common destiny in
the quest of equal national rights for Jews.
Organizational Roles and Primordial Ties

It was this solidarity which gave organizational stability to the Bund after
1906. Commitment to remain in the organization and continue to work was
based on the practical activities which made participation personally worth-
while. Further analysis of the composition of Bund leadership shows that the
nature of these activities cross-cut the effects of education in determining the
strength of a leader's commitment.
The importance of this factor became apparent in the changing conditions
of party work. After the Revolution of 1905, the government relaxed re-
strictions on union activity, on the formation of parties and the publication
of newspapers. The extent of these freedoms, however, was subject to arbitrary
interpretation by the authorities, and Bund leaders disagreed on how much
reliance to place on "legal work". Many who for over a decade had been
professional revolutionaries would not lend tacit support to the Tsarist regime
THE JEWISH BUND 347
by limiting themselves to such activity, and many of these persons — among

them Arkady Kremer, a leading founder of the Bund — left or changed then-
relation to the organization at this point. But the reaction which came after
1906 aggravated the problem for the members who remained. When strikes
and demonstrations were no longer possible, and every manifestation of
opposition to the government and to the employers was severely repressed,
what activities could sustain unity and hope for the mass of the membership?
Here precedents in ideology and practice became significant. Ideologically,
the aspiration to secure equal "national" rights for Jews in a democratic
society had become as important an objective as the economic freedom of
the proletariat. The legitimacy of this aspiration had, if anything, been re-
inforced by the Bund's reunification with the RSDLP and the tacit acceptance
by that Party of the Bund's freedom to pursue its own program within the
Party's framework. The identification of national cultural autonomy with
political goals entertained by the RSDLP was also reinforced by the Bund's
development of a revolutionary literature in the Yiddish language which was
rapidly coming to symbolize the cultural unity of Jews in the Pale of
Settlement.
At this juncture in the Bund's history — which historians of the Bund
were later to recognize as dividing its dynamic phase of political ascendancy
from its later role as an agent in the development of Yiddish culture — the
double-edged significance of Yiddish itself became apparent. On one hand it
was a powerful vehicle for revolutionary mobilization of the Jewish masses
but on the other hand it now appeared as the medium of a cultural renaissance,
giving substance to the claim to national cultural autonomy through a range
of activities which could be pursued at less hazard than strikes and demon-
strations.
The precedent set by practical activities equipped the Bund to implement
its goal of cultural autonomy in the face of political restrictions. If academic
attainment had set limits on members' opportunity to serve in formal leader-
ship positions, only outright illiteracy could preclude other types of work.
The guidance of circles devoted to reading revolutionary literature, the
training of agitators for mass work, the building and maintaining of illegal
libraries could readily be undertaken by persons who had not been educated
in Russian gymnasia or universities. Bund members who engaged in these
"educational" activities at some time during their period of active participation
constituted at least one-fifth of the sample before 1907; after 1907 they
amounted to at least one-fourth. In addition to these "educational" activities,
a much larger portion of the membership engaged in journalistic, literary or
theoretical writing in the form of books, pamphlets, and articles for Bund
journals. Persons in this "literary" role, of whom almost one-third were also
engaged in "educational" activities, always constituted more than half of the
sample at any time between 1897 and 1917.
These "educational" and "literary" activities were of central importance in

building the Bund as a mass party, and many persons holding formal leader-
ship positions also performed such roles. But the strength of organizational
commitment varied according to the way these roles were related to the
primordial ties of the Jewish community. An "educational" role required
personal contact with Jewish workers and created close linkage with the
traditional community milieu; in a "literary" role, communication was more
impersonal and more likely to partake of a broader cultural orientation. This
difference in the primordial significance of roles was reinforced by differences
in academic attainment. Traditional Jewish schooling meant less exposure
to secular culture and the currents of modern thought than did attendance at
Russian gymnasia and universities. Thus for a person with traditional Jewish
schooling and an "educational" role, primordial ties and sentiments would
be more salient than for a person with higher education and a "literary" role.
The impact of these characteristics on organizational commitment can be
demonstrated by reference to persons who left the Bund between 1897 and
1917. These totaled 59, or 38% of our entire sample. Table III shows the
TABLE III. Incidence of Leaving the Bund, by Academic Attainment

and Organizational Role
(Per cent of each category who left)
Academic Organizational Role

Attainment Top Leaders Educational Role Literary Role All Others
Higher
education 33 27 35 62
Traditional
education 0 10 32 50
incidence of leaving the Bund as a proportion of all members in our sample

having various combinations of organizational role and academic attainment.
Persons with a strong primordial orientation (traditional schooling and/or an
"educational" role) were least likely to leave. Regardless of his organizational
role, traditional schooling had the greater effect on keeping one in; regardless
of one's academic attainment, an "educational" role had the greatest effect on
retention. Difference in academic attainment had its greatest effect among
top leaders and its least effect among those in "literary" roles. And the
greatest incidence of leaving occurred among those who were not top leaders
and did not perform either an "educational" or a "literary" role.
These findings show how primordial ties supported organizational solidarity
in the period of crisis. The Bund remained intact because what the members
were doing was consistent with their traditional way of hie, and because
cultural aspirations were as valid as revolutionary political goals. When
political goals seemed less attainable, and radical change less imminent,
THE JEWISH BUND 349
interests of longer standing again became important. "Educational" activities

attracted Jewish workers with an interest in learning. Circles were formed
again — not by intellectuals as in the pre-Bund period but by Bundists who
only a few years earlier had been too young for active leadership but had
joined in their 'teens. There was even a re-emergence of the tension between
the motives of personal advancement and those of political commitment which
the Bund pioneers had experienced in the early nineties.
The Bund and the Culture Movement

With organizational commitment thus compounded of political and cultural
aspirations, it was possible for the Bund to cope with the dilemma of legal
versus illegal work without undergoing the factional splits which had divided
Mensheviks and Bolsheviks on the same issue. The compromise that devel-
oped gave rise to a variety of organized cultural activities which served as
"fronts" for the revolutionary unity of the Jewish working class. In cities
and towns of the Pale societies were formed for music, drama, lectures, lan-
guage instruction, adult education and literary readings. Although these
groups were officially nonpartisan; it could be said of most of them as it was
for Harp, a musical dramatic society founded at Lodz in 1908, "Behind this
legal cultural union, the Bund stood illegally." u Only Bundists won positions
as officers; and for a time the organization revived the "mass work" of the
revolutionary movement. But the government was suspicious; meetings were
frequently raided and the police finally closed down the Harp.
Similar experiences were repeated where Bundists participated in cultural
activities which other groups had started. After a Central Yiddish Literary
Society was founded in St. Petersburg in 1908, a division was founded in
Warsaw in which Bundists became so conspicuously active that the state closed
it down in 1911, arresting a large number of the Society's members. A Polish
organization, the Society to Spread Education, was founded in 1906 and had
a Jewish section led partly by Polish democrats, assimilated Jews and Bund-
ists; but by 1910 the librarian, a Bundist, had been arrested for keeping
illegal literature and other Bundists had been dismissed from the Society as a
result of dissension between them and other members.12
The promotion of cultural activities was a widespread phenomenon among
the Jews and held intrinsic interest for those who took part. Even the young
Jewish writers who lived and worked in Vilno, concentrating their attention
on the life of the workers and using this as a literary theme, exemplified the
creation of Yiddish literature as well as the application of art to politics. The
use of Yiddish as a medium for cultural development had begun before the
11
J. S. Hertz, G. Aronson, et al., Di Geshikhte fun Bund [The History of the Bund]
(New York, 1962), H, p. 557.
12
Ibid.
creation of the Bund and had gained new impetus with the rising power of
the Jewish workers.
In line with this growth of interest in Yiddish culture the Bund sought to
have Yiddish recognized as the national language of the Jewish people. The
prospects for achieving this by political means, however, were very poor.
While the Third Duma (1907-1912) had under consideration measures rec-
ognizing the right of national minorities to use their own language in schools,
courts and local administration, no such right was being entertained in the
case of Yiddish. Although fighting hard for this right, the Bund was too small
a group to be effective. In the elections for the Fourth Duma in 1912, the
Bund urged that if there were a choice between two Jewish candidates,
support should be given to the one who would fight for the rights of Yiddish
if elected.
The lack of unanimity among Jews concerning the importance of Yiddish
meant that the cause of making it a national language really had to be fought
for in Jewish society but outside the ranks of the Bund. Yiddish had tra-
ditionally been regarded as the "mother tongue", a popular vernacular lacking
the sacredness which elevated Hebrew to higher prestige among the learned
Jews. Already, therefore this objective had raised an issue of more than
merely political importance. The first debates on this had occurred at two
conferences on the language problem held by Jewish intellectuals, one at
Czernowicz in 1908, and another at Kovno in 1909. Each of these conferences
revealed patterns of conflict and difference which had been aggravated by
the general political reaction. Under these conditions the Jewish community
turned inward to make explicit the ways in which Jewish culture could be
defined and developed.
Primordial Consciousness and Political Dispersion
Turning inward brought on the same crisis of cultural identity that had been
prompted by revolutionary activity three decades earlier. This crisis rose
anew because conditions between 1906 and 1917 came to resemble those
obtaining before Jewish political parties were formed. In the late '80's and
early '90's, the aims of Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement
had not been formulated collectively; intellectuals and workers had identified
themselves individually with the movement in response to personal pre-
dilections and immediate opportunities. The justification of revolutionary
activity and the search for effective strategy had produced a variety of ideo-
logical formulations. Martov's call in 1895 for "full equal rights" and his
exhortation of the workers to fight for their own cause; the Zionist solution
advanced in the same period and the socialist programs of the Jewish Social
Democratic groups — all opened up a range of alternative paths to a better
THE JEWISH BUND 351
future. For the leaders of the Bund, as well as for Jews who became active in
the RSDLP or the Zionist movement, the choice of programs for change had
not become constricted until a definite ideology or political solution had been
adopted as an organizational program.
Once organizations had been formed, ideological commitments became
crystallized in response to a competitive political arena. As the program of
a party, one's ideological commitment became less subject to dispute —
except within the social milieu created by the organization. Internal debates
over policy centered on the needs and interests of that segment of the Jewish
community which served as a social base for recruitment and support. In the
period of their rapid rise, therefore, the parties can be said to have split and
fragmented the Jewish community as a whole; yet the main problem was not
the disunity of the community but rather the internal unity of each separate
organization.
After 1906, with the attenuation of organizational strength which accom-
panied the political reaction, conditions again gave rise to a preoccupation
with the ties which bound the Jewish community as a whole. Politically, this
response was evident in the anxiety of the Bund to cement the unity of
socialist parties which had previously been competitive during their rise to
power. All the efforts of Bundist leaders to solidify the ranks of the socialist
revolutionary movement — from the reunification of the Bund with the
RSDLP in 1906, to the futile efforts to heal the breach between Mensheviks
and Bolsheviks over the issue of "legal" versus "illegal" activity in 1908, to
the later effort in 1912 to create a single bloc of socialist parties in Poland to
strengthen their representation in the Duma — testified to the felt need for
unity on a broader basis than the membership of any single party.
Just as the Bund sought to create this unity among socialist parties, Jewish
or non-Jewish, in the interests of the class struggle, so did Bund leaders feel
obliged to make contact with non-Bundist segments of the Jewish community
in the interests of national cultural autonomy.
In the circumstances of political retrenchment, efforts to strengthen Jewish
cultural unity could attract segments of the community who had no stake in
the class struggle or whose interests might even be threatened by it. To dis-
count support from any quarter in the cause of cultural autonomy would be
inconsistent with the Bund's program to secure this right for all Jews; yet to
rely on the cultural activities of non-Bund groups as a medium for promoting
the class struggle among Jewish workers was hardly a realistic political
strategy. The Bund was now caught in the toils of its role as an agent of
modernization in the Jewish community.
Conflict of Cultural and Political Aims

Up to this point Bund leaders had assumed that their championship of
national autonomy would draw general support from the Jewish community
because such a policy would be of equal benefit to all of its members. But in
the attempt to define the basis of Jewish cultural unity, contentious discussions
arose between Bund leaders who were promoting cultural unity for political
reasons, and Jewish intellectuals whose interest in cultural development re-
flected a greater commitment to traditional values.
First, there was strong opposition to the idea that Yiddish should be
declared the "national language" of the Jewish people. At the Czernowicz
language conference in 1908, this opposition was expressed by a well-organ-
ized group of delegates who did not want to see the Hebrew language displaced
from its traditional importance. This opposition was provoked because the
adoption of Yiddish as a national language implied a threat to traditional
Jewish culture. This threat lay in the Bund's perception that cultural autonomy
could not be achieved on the basis of Jewish isolation. The Bundists' commit-
ment to a Marxian ideology of class struggle and the creation of a socialist
society had led them to recognize that cultural autonomy would have to be
compatible with political and economic assimilation of the Jews to Russian
society. Increased involvement in the industrial economy and a democratic
political order based on equal civil rights and self-government could mean
nothing less.
From this standpoint the champions of Yiddish as a national Jewish lan-
guage were prone to glorify it because, in the future which they envisioned,
this language would be the single medium of cultural unity most compatible
with the new social order. Yiddish, moreover, was the language of the poor,
who were viewed as the base of a socialist state. To the more orthodox and
traditionalistic Jews who were opposed to Yiddish, its adoption as a national
language thus posed a threat of assimilation and secularization; but to its
champions this appeared as a means of preventing assimilation by cultivating
a distinctive cultural life that would be compatible with civic integration into
Russian society.
Despite opposition, the Czernowicz conference adopted a resolution that
Yiddish be recognized as a national language of the Jewish people, and that
each member of the conference be free to use Hebrew according to his
personal convictions. But the compromising mood of the conference did not
satisfy the most politically oriented Bund leaders, who clearly saw that the
movement for Yiddish cultural development threatened to embarrass the
political class struggle by emphasizing Jewish unity across class lines.13
This possibility was quite obvious to Bundists who reported the proceedings
of the second conference on language held at Kovno in 1909. Of 120 dele-
gates, only 25 to 30 are characterized as "social activists"; the rest were
wealthy persons and bourgeoisie who stressed the "aesthetic" rather than the
political aspects of culture. At best, the four Bund delegates succeeded only in
3 Ibid., p. 550.
THE JEWISH BUND 353
using the conference as a sounding board for championing the need to spread
enlightenment among the Jewish workers; a resolution to make this the central
task of the conference drew only eight supporting votes.14
Meanwhile, on the political front, Bundist leaders faced the task of re-
building their organization amid competitive pressures now being brought to
bear through the medium of the culture movement. Reporting on these devel-
opments in September, 1909, the journal Voice of the Bund pointed out that
"our democratic intelligentsia... are putting forth all efforts to place then-
national stamp on the culture movement. The Zionists are doing the same
and the bourgeois intelligentsia in general. . . . In the struggle of ideas taking
place our opinions concerning these questions must be placed on the scale,
if we do not wish the workers to fall under other points of view. . .".15 At
the Eighth Conference of the Bund in 1910, leaders asserted that Jewish
Social Democrats should lead the struggle against assimilation as well as
against the partisans of Hebrew who were opposed to Yiddish; that efforts
should be made to re-form the traditional institution of Jewish local govern-
ment — the kahal — but now on a secular basis, replacing the rabbinical and
clerical oligarchy with leaders who stood at the head of the mass movement.
Political work should not be confined to existing organizations but illegal or
politically neutral unions should be formed wherever possible.
The best weapons against the threat posed by other parties through the
medium of the culture movement appeared to be the local organizations of
workers who were willing to renew the economic struggle at every opportunity.
The incentive for this was furnished, ironically enough, by the treatment of
Jewish workers in communities where industrialization was most advanced.
In 1912, at the Ninth Conference of the Bund, it was pointed out that al-
though they had been employed by Jewish owners of small shops in handicraft
production, Jewish workers in Warsaw were now being excluded from em-
ployment in Jewish-owned factories using machine production.18
By 1917, although it had been recovering its position of leadership in the
Jewish labor movement to some extent, especially in Poland and more rapidly
since 1912, the Bund had not regained the organizational strength in the
Jewish community that it had held before 1906. The Bund, moreover, had
long since ceased to be the predominant if not the sole source of political
public opinion in Jewish communities. Ironically, its competitors gained their
voice by the very method which the Bund had pioneered — the use of polit-
ical literature published in Yiddish.
The Cultural Impact of Political Cleavage

The appearance of Yiddish periodicals is an index of modernization in the
14
Ibid., pp. 551-2.
15
Cited in Hertz and Aronson, p. 554.
<« Ibid., p. 588.
Jewish community of the Russian empire. A popular press, like that emerging
in Western Europe and America more than a century earlier, broadened the
common awareness of social and political issues — in fact, made these issues
"public" in the modern sense.
This development was fostered by revolutionary activity. Between 1894
and 1900, fifteen periodicals had been started, thirteen of which were spon-
sored by the Bund.17 By 1915, when all Yiddish publications were suppressed
by the government, a total of 261 Yiddish journals had been started, 54 of
which had been sponsored by the Bund. The rest, however, represented the
whole spectrum of political opinion and more. From 1907 on, out of 148
newly-started Yiddish periodicals, 82 were conservative and "bourgeois". And
paralleling the culture movement, there were periodicals devoted to topics of
general community interest: humor, trade, art, literature, youth, family life,
the woman's world, health, and local gossip.
Thus the popular press, like the Yiddish culture movement, increased
communication between segments of the Jewish community whose political
interests were at variance with the proletarian, socialist revolutionary move-
ment led by the Bund. What had started as a class-based movement to win
political power had been transformed by 1917 into a movement for cultural
consciousness within the Jewish community as a whole, while the political
unity of that community was becoming fragmented. The cultural means
initially employed to mount a revolution — the use of Yiddish and the publi-
cation of periodical literature — now served to dissipate the unity required if
the Jewish people were to constitute a politically effective minority. The
movement to promote primordial consciousness served to make political
differences more explicit than before, and this divisive effect was aggravated
by what these political differences implied about the validity of the primordial
sentiments associated with traditional Jewish life.
Two issues divided the Jewish community: (1) the secularization of civic
life, as represented in part by the controversy over Yiddish and Hebrew; (2)
class antagonisms between Jewish employers and Jewish workers. Class
struggle and secularization meant defiance of the traditional way of hie. This
was also true of Zionism; despite its retention of Hebrew, the movement
harbored secular elements, and it renounced an age-old pattern of compliant
accommodation to the host society. To be a proletarian revolutionary, to be a
partisan of Yiddish culture, to favor secularization of civic life in Russia or
the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine or elsewhere —
all these had become different ways of being Jewish.
The spirit in which these causes were promoted is significant. The means
of promoting them was political: through the formation of organizations for
17
A. Kirzhnits, Di Yiddishe Prese in der Gevezener Ruslendisher Imperie (1823-1916)
[The Yiddish Press in the Former Russian Empire (1823-1916)] (Moscow-Karkov-Minsk,
1930).
THE JEWISH BUND 355
collective action, for exercising power of a sort that did not lie in the deference
accorded by the young to their elders, by the unlettered to the learned, by the
less religious to the more devout, or by the poor to the wealthy; nor was this
new power like that which had been used by leaders of the Jewish community
in their dealings with the Gentiles: through bribery or guile, begging or
manipulation — the traditional ways of coping with a majority which had all
the means of coercion on its own side. Instead, these new organizations were
formed and activated as a challenge to the coercive power on which the
domination of Gentile society had been based.
So portentous was this departure from tradition that even the word organi-
zatsiya inspired an attitude of awe in the Jewish community which is hard to
understand in societies where party politics, pressure groups and voluntary
associations of a Gesellschajt type are a normal part of civic life. Correspond-
ingly the members of Jewish political organizations, in a manner consistent
with Jewish tradition, perceived these organizations as instruments of destiny,
holding out new promise of a better life to come. There was moreover a
strong sense among the members that the organization had a total claim on
their personal lives. Whether Bundist or Zionist, many repeatedly referred to
the organization as their only real "home". In social terms, this could only
mean that fellow-members stood in a relationship of solidarity with each other
that displaced their solidarity with other members of the Jewish community
who did not belong to the organization. Thus the impact of politics as a form
of collective activity — inspired by primordial sentiments supporting the prom-
ise of a new destiny — was to have a lasting effect on the self-image of
those who partook of political activity, and on the mutual feelings of those
who differed in their political persuasions.18
These consequences of political activity and organizational involvement
exhibit processes by which ethnic identity may be transformed under the
impact of modernization. These processes must now be related to the larger
problem of national civic integration. If we treat the history of the Bund as a
"crucial experiment" in the application of our model, what evidence is there
that transformations of identity occurring within a minority community are
consequential for the role of that minority in the building of a state?
Three Divergent Outcomes

At first blush the case of the Bund might seem inappropriate for illuminat-
18
In this respect the Bund exhibits a suggestive parallel to other Russian revolutionary
groups (Land and Freedom, People's Will) analyzed by Vladimir C. Nahirny, in "Some
Observations on Ideological Groups", American Journal of Sociology, LXVII (January,
1962), pp. 397-405. Nahirny shows how the bonds formed by common ideological com-
mitment differ from those denoted as Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft. But while ideologi-
cal commitment involves a thoroughgoing fusion of personal ties with abstract beliefs,
it may be difficult to separate the effects of ideology alone from the effects of prior
cultural experience in a minority group. A further comparison of the Russian groups
with the Bund and other Jewish parties would be well worth while.
ing this larger problem. The fate of the Jews in Russia, as well as of those
minorities which did have a traditional territorial base, was settled by the rise
of the Bolsheviks as the single legitimate party in control of the state. Yet
within the borders of the former Tsarist empire — in Russia, in the Ukraine,
and in Poland — the post-Revolutionary role of the Bund took three markedly
different directions, each determined in part by the political environment
but also determined by the precedents set in the Bund's pre-Revolutionary
history.
The three political environments differed according to the nature of the
Bund's relationship to (1) the political system of the dominant majority, i.e.
the society beyond the Jewish community, and (2) the Jewish community,
particularly those segments of it not composed of Bund members. These
relationships were systematically interdependent, and each was characterized
by factors which affected the Jewish minority's political strength.
When its status in the movement had been at issue in its relations with
other parties, as with the Polish Socialists in the late '90's and with Iskra in
1903, the Bund had staked its future on a program of national cultural
autonomy for Jews even at the risk of losing support from other revolutionary
parties. When it had sought to achieve its political ends through legitimate
activities after 1906, it promoted the secularization of Jewish communal life
and the development of Yiddish culture (in the language of the working
classes), and these policies drew opposition from the more traditionalistic
segments of the Jewish community. After the Revolution, both of these
patterns were repeated but now under new conditions. In all three places, the
Jews had been granted equal civil rights and initially the Bund enjoyed a
legitimate status in the political community.
In Russia, the Provisional Government on April 4, 1917 decreed full and
equal rights for the Jewish population in Russia. By October, governmental
power had been seized by the Bolsheviks, and other parties faced the choice
of joining them or holding out for a share of power on terms more consonant
with their own principles. Many Jewish socialists chose the latter course. By
1920 the Bund was split into a Social Democratic wing which refused to join
the Bolsheviks and a Communist wing which attempted to affiliate as an auton-
omous organization. This course, reminiscent of the battle with Iskra in 1903,
resulted in a decision by the Comintern to liquidate the Bund as an indepen-
dent party in Russia.
In the Ukraine, before the establishment of Soviet control in 1920, cultural
autonomy for minorities was for a time legally authorized. In January 1918
the Central Rada provided for their representation in the form of elected
assemblies, thus placing the Bund in competition with other groups for a
share of the Jewish vote. Here the choice of cultural policies became crucial.
The Jewish socialists, including the Bund, sponsored a Culture League for
promoting the development of Yiddish culture as other such societies had
THE JEWISH BUND 357
done before the Revolution. As before, this raised the issue of Hebrew or
Yiddish as a national language, and the issue of secular or religious com-
munity government. In the November 1918 elections to the Jewish National
Assembly, these issues split the middle classes from the socialists; they polled
little more than a third of the total vote and failed to win a place in the
Assembly's executive body.
These contrasting outcomes — organizational extinction as the result of
inter-party competition, at one extreme, and loss of minority community
support due to cultural cleavage at the other — can be compared with the
Bund's experience in Poland where a more stable adjustment occurred. Poland
won national independence in 1918. In 1919 a treaty with the Allied and
Associated Powers guaranteed equal treatment for all minorities.
The Bund's position ranged from a legal to a semi-legal one in inter-war
Poland with anti-Semitism an ever-present fact of life. With strong support
from the Jewish working classes, the Bund in Poland by the mid-twenties had
created Yiddish educational institutions and Jewish cooperatives; it sponsored
numerous periodical publications; it was supported by a socialist artisan
society boasting a large number of local branches and several thousand
members; it participated in national elections and regularly sponsored can-
didates and secured their election to city councils and Jewish community
boards.
This strong political implementation of the Bund's original goal of national
cultural autonomy remained in effect until the Nazi invasion of Poland in
1939. This modus vivendi with Polish society rested on the strength of the
organized working class in a capitalistic economic system.
Comparative Implications
For the comparative analysis of ethnic transformation certain variables can

be abstracted from the Jewish experience in Russia which might be observed
in other cases where the quickening of primordial attachments is precipitated
by political change.
(1) Minority ambivalence toward modernization. Exposure to moderni-
zation, combined with an opportunity to escape low social status and re-
strictions on mobility, evokes a dual response. As eagerly as minority members
avail themselves of a new way of life, through language, dress, learning, art,
occupation and forms of government, they also attempt to revive and express
in modern forms the cultural traditions uniquely their own. This tendency is
evident today in such areas as India, Africa and Southeast Asia.19 The ex-
19
The implications for national civic integration of this interest in tradition are set
forth in McKim Marriott, "Cultural Policy in the New States", in Clifford Geertz, ed.,
Old Societies and New States (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 27-56.
perience of the Jews in Russia shows how this ambivalence can affect the
political power of a minority when this power depends on the unity of the
social base from which a minority party must draw its support.
The Bund aimed at cultural autonomy for the Jewish people but also fought
for a social order in which Jews would have political and economic equality
with the Russians. This program provoked opposition from Jews who feared
assimilation and who defined the threat to traditional culture in religious
terms. They opposed the elevation of Yiddish over Hebrew as a "national"
language and opposed the secularization of local community government. The
religious aspect loomed large because in many other respects the cultural
traditions of the Jews had equipped them well for modernization. Literacy
and respect for learning, plus experience in urban commercial pursuits rather
than in agriculture, made the assimilation of individuals so easily possible
that religious difference was inordinately symbolic of Jewish identity.
Since the Bund identified itself with the working classes, the opposition it
drew from middle-class Jews on economic grounds could be reinforced by
religious and cultural traditionalism on their part. This suggests that the
unity of a minority party's social base depends in turn on its social homo-
geneity. Where it had to appeal to an economically heterogeneous social base
(which included middle-class Jews in the Ukraine), the Bund's commitment to
modernization hampered political effectiveness. But where support was forth-
coming from an economically homogeneous base (such as the Jewish working
class in Poland), a commitment to modernization not only was compatible
with the workers' economic interests but also enabled the Bund to develop a
modus vivendi with the national political community. On the basis of this
strength, the Bund could implement cultural autonomy in practical forms of
control over schools, cooperatives, and the election of political representatives,
thus setting limits to the diffuseness of blocked aspirations which might
seriously have impeded national civic integration.
(2) Organizational transformation. This phenomenon is generic to voluntary
associations and to established institutions. It has occurred in trade unions,
religious sects, reform groups and governmental bureaucracies as well as in
political parties. Transformation takes the form of change in organizational
tasks or policies, in membership composition or in characteristics of the social
base. The significance of this for the transformation of ethnic ties lies in the
party's control of social relations.
When a party serves as a link between members of a minority group, their
identification with the party's cause may alter their relationships to each
other so that traditional criteria of status and deference are displaced by
ideological bonds. In the Bund, differences in academic attainment cut across
differences in formal levels of leadership responsibility, to effect solidarity
between workers and intellectuals. At the same time, competition between
parties based in the same social class but differing in ethnic composition can
THE JEWISH BUND 359
heighten the sense of ethnic identity. This occurred in the Bund's disputes
with the Polish Socialist Party and with lskra. And competition between
parties based in the same minority but differing in class interests or in ideol-
ogy and program can provide new channels for old antagonisms or encourage
antagonisms in new terms among members of the minority, as occurred with
the Bund's commitment to modernization.
In all of these ways the political party can transform the relations not only
among members of the minority but between them and the larger society. But
organizational transformation can play a key role in this process, as the
party adapts to its environment. Like other radical parties, the Bund faced
the challenge of adjusting to environmental changes which it could not
control. After 1906 when the leaders perceived a change for the worse in the
prospects for political success, some were disillusioned and their energies
spent; but others devoted themselves to cultural activities as a way of sus-
taining hope and preserving unity. Sponsorship of cultural activities was
consistent with the Bund's commitment to the goal of national cultural auton-
omy; this commitment had resulted from the Bund's dependence on a
traditionally-oriented Jewish working class which served as its social base.
(3) Continuity of traditional forms. The range of possible directions which
organizational transformation may take — whether from a modernizing to
a tradition-preserving role, or from a political role to a cultural role —
depends on the repertoire of responses available to the party's leadership and
the repertoire of capacities and inclinations on the part of the rank and file.
In the case of the Bund, primordial sentiments and forms of community
activity associated with these lent themselves readily to transmutation into
modern forms of expression and collective work. Traditional emphasis on
literacy and learning made it possible for a community press to flourish and
for political mobilization to be carried out through study circles, libraries and
creative artistic endeavors. Under the impetus of the revolutionary movement
the Yiddish language became a means of modernizing the outlook and aspira-
tions of Jewish workers; as a journalistic medium it served to make explicit
the political and cultural cleavages within the Jewish community.
(4) Composition of party leadership. Biographical data on the leaders'
education, formal responsibilities, specialized roles and continuity of service
reveal the structure of the Bund and processes of organizational change.
Leaders functioned to mediate between the Jewish working class whose
education and background had been confined to the "little tradition" of then-
own community, and the Russian revolutionaries who applied the "great
tradition" of Western European Enlightenment in Russian society.
Top leaders, educated in Russian gymnasia and universities, also spoke
Yiddish and many had received traditional Jewish schooling. Persons who
were self-educated or had only the traditional Jewish schooling held leadership
responsibilities equal to those of the highly-educated. Although higher educa-
tion was more predominant among top leaders than among those of the second
echelon, the organization broke significantly with the traditional pattern of
stratification in the Jewish community. At the same time primordial sentiments
— as against a purely secular, non-traditional commitment to political ideol-
ogy — sustained a commitment to the organization during the crisis of dis-
illusionment after 1906. Those who left the Bund in that period were less
"primordially-oriented" than those who remained active.
In the comparative study of nation-building today, the European experience

supplies a useful framework for analysis and prediction. The transition from
feudalism to modern forms of statehood has involved the extension of citizen-
ship to social strata not previously sharing in the exercise of power. This
development has entailed a variety of social movements with different out-
comes according to the legacies of tradition which supplied these movements
with their purpose and set the limits of their development.20 Insofar as the
quickening of primordial sentiments affects the civic integration of new states,
the Jewish experience in Russia may show that these movements also have
their analogue in the European past.
Yet our preoccupation with contemporary conditions in the new states and
with past developments in Europe should not obscure the ethnic transforma-
tions still underway in the modernized countries of the West. Between the
current "Negro revolt" in the United States, and the Jewish movement in
pre-Revolutionary Russia, and minority movements in the new states, there
may well be more parallels than the comparative study of history has yet
made clear.
CHARLES E. WOODHOUSE
and
HENRY J. TOBIAS
University of New Mexico
20
Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York, John Wiley & Sons,
1964); Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books,
1963).

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PRIMORDIAL TIES AND POLITICAL PROCESS

A major problem in the civic integration of new states is the quickening of

scene of a revolutionary movement against an indigenous regime. The cultural

Zionist movement grew in pre-Revolutionary Russia under circumstances of

The Jews in the Russian Empire

strong tendency to regard men in universal terms rather than in terms of

Jewish Intellectuals and the Revolutionary Tradition

participate in secular occupations, and certainly not in occupations which

Jewish Revolutionaries and the Jewish Community

Cultural Identity and Organizational Formation (1890-1897)

At this juncture the Jewish intellectuals found themselves in a situation

movement in order to relieve their special disabilities as an oppressed minority,

Workers and Intellectuals

The Role of Organization

Primordial Ties and Organizational Autonomy (1898-1906)

internally, and the organizational response was an attempt to preserve the

The Ideological Response

The Organizational Response

Political Retrenchment through Cultural Activities

Up to the period of reaction which followed the Revolution of 1905 the

TABLE I. Leaders of the Bund by Periods

1897-1900 1901-04 1905-06 1907-10 1911-17

Leadership and Educational Background

TABLE II. Academic Attainment and Leadership Position

Total 100% 99% 100% 100% 100% 99% 99% 99%

Organizational Roles and Primordial Ties

by limiting themselves to such activity, and many of these persons — among

These "educational" and "literary" activities were of central importance in

TABLE III. Incidence of Leaving the Bund, by Academic Attainment

Academic Organizational Role

incidence of leaving the Bund as a proportion of all members in our sample

interests of longer standing again became important. "Educational" activities

The Bund and the Culture Movement

Primordial Consciousness and Political Dispersion

Conflict of Cultural and Political Aims

The Cultural Impact of Political Cleavage

Three Divergent Outcomes

For the comparative analysis of ethnic transformation certain variables can

In the comparative study of nation-building today, the European experience

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