Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii

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СКАЧАТЬ Group did not, however, agitate for autonomy from the Russian Empire. The group's influence was most easily defined in terms of the personalities of their leaders, such as Vinaver, G. B. Sliozberg, and Gruzenberg (in as much as the latter was any kind of party politician).

      In both Russia and Ukraine, the Jewish population was fragmented. A local Jewish Congress which took place in Kiev May 9–11, 1917, quickly degenerated, in the words of one participant, “into an occasion of constant contention and strife among the Russian Jews.” The breakers of the peace turned out to be members of the Bund, who were clearly in the minority. On the second day of the conference, a rabbi from Berdichev asked all present to stand in honor of the Torah. The Bund members refused. The scandal shocked the writer S. A. An-sky, who claimed that the Torah “is not only a religious symbol, but also a symbol of Jewish culture, which has persisted for centuries.” It was in honor of this culture that everyone had been asked to stand. The incident ended there, though the Bund members nonetheless left the conference on the final day, with its leader, M. G. Rafes, calling the remaining attendees the “black and blue Jewish bloc.”⁵⁵

      Disputes between members of differing political tendencies would continue until the last days of the Provisional Government. Several days before the Bolshevik coup, M. L. Goldshtein (representing the Jewish People's Group) gave a series of reservedly patriotic speeches in the Council of the Russian Republic, which were met with withering criticism from N. Baru (Poalei Zion) and G. M. Erlikh (Bund). One author's account of this soon-to-be-defunct organ of power sadly noted that “only the Jews found it necessary to use the Council of the Republic for the settling of scores between each other.”⁵⁶

      Thus it is impossible to speak of any kind of united Jewish politics. The politicized sections of Jewish society were torn by the same contradictions present in Russian society. Any hope of creating a kind of all-Jewish party that would put forth a united political program proved to be illusory. The political differences, and corresponding social and culture differences, proved to be too great.⁵⁷

      Elections in Jewish communities, including those for delegates to the All-Russian Jewish Congress and the Russian Constituent Assembly showed the following preferences. On the local level, ten gubernia elections in Ukraine had the following breakdown: Zionists (36 percent), the Bund (14.4 percent), Ahdut (10 percent), the United Jewish Socialist Workers' Party (OESRP, 8.2 percent), Poalei Zion (6.3 percent), the Folkspartei (3 percent), the Jewish People's Group (1 percent) with all other local organizations comprising the remaining 20 percent. In the elections to the Jewish Congress, the results demonstrated even greater support for the Zionists, who won 60 percent of the positions, whereas socialist parties won 25 percent, with religious parties winning 12 percent.⁵⁸ In Petrograd and the surrounding areas in January of 1918, only one-third of eligible voters participated. The Zionists' successes were impressive, with eight races won, while the Bund, the Jewish People's Group, Orthodox parties, and the Folkspartei won one race each.⁵⁹

      Elections to the Constituent Assembly were even more indicative. The Jewish National Bloc, which included Zionist and religious parties, received 417,215 votes out of the 498,198 total cast for Jewish parties. The other parties did not fare as well (the Bund received 31,123 and Poalei Zion 20,538, with 29,332 votes going to other socialist parties). In Minsk, the National Bloc received 65,046 votes, whereas other parties managed only 11,064; in Kiev the results were 24,790 for the National Bloc versus 12,471 for the Bund and Menshevik coalition.⁶⁰ From the National Bloc list the following members were elected to the Constituent Assembly: The Zionists Iu. D. Brutskus, A. M. Goldstein, the Moscow rabbi Ia. I. Maze, V. I. Temkin, D. M. Kogan-Bernshtein, N. S. Syrkin, and O. O. Gruzenberg, who at the time was close with Zionist circles. D. V. Lvovich was elected from the party list of the SRs and OESRP, along with the Bundist G. I. Lure, who was chosen from the party list of the Bund and the RSDRP (SDs). A number of Jews were also elected to the Assembly from other parties (for the most part the socialist parties). The Secretary of the Constituent Assembly for the one day of its existence was the Socialist Revolutionary M. V. Vishniak.⁶¹

      The overwhelming majority of Jewish voters voted for Jewish parties. Determining the number of Jews who voted for Russian political parties, and which parties they voted for, is a difficult task. How many Jews followed the plea of Vinaver, who asked them to vote for the People's Freedom Party (Kadets), “Not one Jewish vote should be thrown away in this struggle for culture and order against anarchy and backwardness”? How many instead voted for the Bolsheviks, who promised a quick end to the war, but who Vinaver and his allies had identified as forces of this same anarchy? Unfortunately, we may never know the answer.⁶²

      The overwhelming successes of the Zionists in numerous elections facilitated the publication on November 2, 1917, of a declaration by the British foreign minister, A. G. Balfour. Written in the form of a letter addressed to Lord L. Rothschild, the Balfour Declaration stated the intention of the British government to assist in the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The declaration was met with great optimism on the part of Russian Zionists. It seemed as if the centuries-old dream of the Jewish people was finally closer to becoming a reality. It is somewhat strange that in the future the Zionist parties in Russia were to play much less of a role in the lives of the Jews than the socialist ones. Gitelman attributes this change to the departure (both voluntary and forced) of many Zionists as a result of Soviet persecution.⁶³ This is quite true, but it is only part of the picture. Voting for the Zionists in 1917 was the same as voting for a dream. It would have been impossible for even 10 percent, let alone 100 percent, of the Jewish population to move to Palestine. People were forced by circumstances to live in the “here and now,” already under the conditions of early Sovietization, threatened by the violence that was to accompany the civil war. The Jewish socialist parties were more capable of addressing the threats of physical annihilation presented by the current day. The “Zionist project,” on the other hand, seemed unrealistic.

      Most Russians were unaware of the internal conflicts in the Jewish community. Leaders of the Jewish political parties or movements were well-known mostly among members of their own community. Those Jewish politicians who found success on the national stage beyond the Jewish political parties tended to identify according to class lines or social group. They often either completely ignored “Jewish” issues, or treated them as being of secondary importance (with some rare exceptions). Among the deputies of the Constituent Assembly, the number of Jews elected on the Soviet of Peasant Deputies list outnumbered those of all Jewish national organizations combined by a factor of four to one. In the Executive Committee of the All-Russia Soviet of Peasant Deputies, 20 percent of the members elected at the First All-Russian Congress of the Soviets of Peasant Deputies were Jewish.

      By our admittedly rough estimate, the Soviet elite at the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 could be said to comprise a little over 3,000 individuals.⁶⁴ This number includes members of the Constituent Assembly, members of the Provisional Central Election Committee, members of the Democratic Congress, members of the Council of the Russian Republic, and the Central Committees of the main Russian political parties. The period in question runs from the February Revolution until the establishment of one-party dictatorship in Soviet Russia in July of 1918. Of these 3,000 or so, nearly 300 were Jews of all political stripes and colors, from the anarchists and Bolsheviks on the left to right-wing Kadets.

      The central committees of nearly all of the significant political parties of Russia had members of Jewish origin, and in the Bolshevik and Social Revolutionary parties the leadership was anywhere from a quarter to a third Jewish. At the Sixth Congress of the RSDRP, there were six Jews among the twenty-one members of the Central Committee (Zinoviev, Trotsky, L. B. Kamenev, Ia. M. Sverdlov, G. Ia. Sokolnikov, and M. S. Uritsky). A. A. Ioffe was one of eight candidates for the Central Committee. The Central Committee of the Menshevik coalition was nearly 50 percent Jewish. Three of the sixty-seven members of the Kadet Central Committee elected at the Eighth Congress were Jewish, including Vinaver, who was elected second from the list, after V. I. Vernadskii. Nearly one-fifth of the membership of the first five Provisional Central Election Committees was Jewish.

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