General Jewish Labour Bund
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party initially formed in the Russian Empire and active between 1897 and 1920. A member of the Bund was called a Bundist. Between 1898 and 1903, the Bund was an autonomous part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, but left after the Second Congress.
In 1917, the Bund organizations in Poland seceded from the Russian Bund and created a new Polish General Jewish Labour Bund which continued to operate in Poland in the years between the two world wars. The majority faction of the Russian Bund was dissolved in 1921 and incorporated into the Communist Party. Other remnants of the Bund endured in various countries.
Founding
During the mid-to-late 19th century eastern Europe, Jewish politics was shifting away from the oligarchic politics of the kehilla, and religious conflict towards secular mass politics. Additionally, Jewish political thought expanded to include more general issues beyond Jewish issues alone, being joined by concerns of broader issues such as class issues and economics, as well as political rights and civil rights. This shift was joined by an increased assertiveness from Jewish politics.The "General Jewish Labour Bund in Russia and Poland" was founded in Vilna on 7 October 1897. The name was inspired by the General German Workers' Association. The Bund sought to unite all Jewish workers in the Russian Empire into a united socialist party, and also to ally itself with the wider Russian social democratic movement to achieve a democratic and socialist Russia. The Russian Empire then included Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine and most of present-day Poland, areas where the majority of the world's Jews then lived. They hoped to see the Jews achieve a legal minority status in Russia. Of all Jewish political parties of the time, the Bund was the most progressive regarding gender equality, with women making up more than one-third of all members.
The Bund actively campaigned against antisemitism. It defended Jewish civil and cultural rights and rejected assimilation. However, the close promotion of Jewish sectional interests and support for the concept of Jewish national unity was prevented by the Bund's socialist universalism. The Bund avoided any automatic solidarity with Jews of the middle and upper classes and generally rejected political cooperation with Jewish groups that held religious, Zionist or conservative views. Even the anthem of the Bund, known as "the oath", written in 1902 by S. Ansky, contained no explicit reference to Jews or Jewish suffering.
At the heart of the vision of the future of the Bund was the idea that there is no contradiction between the national aspect on the one hand and the socialist aspect on the other, as a strictly secular organization, the Bund renounced the Holy Land and the sacred language and chose to speak Yiddish.
After Kremer and Kossovsky were arrested, a new party leadership emerged. A new central committee was set up under the leadership of Dovid Kats. Other key figures in the new party leadership were Leon Goldman, Pavel Rozental and Zeldov. The 2nd Bund conference was held in September 1898. The 3rd Bund conference was held in Kovno in December 1899. John Mill had returned from exile to attend the conference, at which he argued that the Bund should advocate for Jewish national rights. However, Mill's line did not win support from the other conference delegates. The 3rd conference affirmed that the Bund only struggled for civil, not national, rights.
In 1901, the word "Lithuania" was added to the name of the party.
The Bund's membership grew to 900 in Łódź and 1,200 in Warsaw in the fall of 1904.
During the period of 1903–1904, the Bund was harshly affected by Czarist state repression. Between June 1903 and July 1904, 4,467 Bundists were arrested and jailed.
In its early years, the Bund had remarkable success, gaining an estimated 30,000 members in 1903 and an estimated 40,000 supporters in 1906, making it the largest socialist group in the Russian Empire.
As part of the Russian Social Democracy
Given the Bund's secular and socialist perspective, it opposed what it viewed as the reactionary nature of traditional Jewish life in Russia. Created before the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the Bund was a founding collective member at the RSDLP's first congress in Minsk in March 1898. Three out of nine delegates at the Minsk congress were from the Bund, and one of three members of the first RSDLP Central Committee was a Bundist. For the next 5 years, the Bund was recognized as the sole representative of the Jewish workers in the RSDLP, although many Russian socialists of Jewish descent, especially outside of the Pale of Settlement, joined the RSDLP directly. As of 1907, Jewish membership in the RSDLP was roughly 11,900.At the RSDLP's second congress in Brussels and London in August 1903, the Bund's autonomous position within the RSDLP was rejected, with both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks voting against, and the Bund's representatives left the Congress, the first of many splits in the Russian social democratic movement in the years to come. The five representatives of the Bund at this Congress were Vladimir Kossowsky, Arkadi Kremer, Mikhail Liber, Vladimir Medem and Noah Portnoy.
During this period two trade unions, the Union of Bristle-Makers and the Union of Tanners, were affiliated to the Bund. In its report to the 1903 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party congress, the Bund claimed to have district organizations in Vilna, Kovno, Grodno, Białystok, Dvinsk, Minsk, Vitebsk, Warsaw, Łódź, Siedlce, Płock, Suwałki, Mariampol, Gomel, Mogilev, Zhytomyr, Berdichev, Odessa, Nizhyn, Bila Tserkva, Podolian Governorate, Lutsk, Volhynian Governorate, as well as the districts of the Union of Bristle-Makers; Nevel, Kreslavka, Vilkovyshki, Kalvaria, Vladislavovo, Verzhbolovo, Vystinets,, Trostyan, Knyszyn, and the districts of the Union of Tanners; Smorgon, Oshmyany, Krynki, Zabludovo,, etc.
Per Vladimir Akimov's account of the history of social democracy 1897–1903, there were 14 local committees of Bund – Warsaw, Łódź, Belostok, Grodno, Vilna, Dvisnk, Kovno, Vitebsk, Minsk, Gomel, Mogilev, Berdichev, Zhitomir, Riga. Per Akimov's account the local committees had six types of councils; trade councils, revolutionary groups, propaganda councils, councils for intellectuals, discussion groups for intellectuals and agitators' councils. The Bristle-Makers Union and Tanners Union had committee status. Bund had organizations that weren't full-fledged committees in Pinsk, Sedlice, Petrokov, Płock, Brest-Litovsk, Vilkomir, Priluki, Rezhitsa, Kiev, Odessa, Bobruisk, and many smaller townships.
4th conference
The 4th Bund conference was held in Białystok in April 1901. The main topic of debate of the 4th Bund conference was the expansion of the Bund into Ukraine and building alliances with existing Jewish labour groups there. The 4th conference reversed the line of the 3rd conference and adopted a line of demanding Jewish national autonomy.5th conference
The fifth conference of the Bund met in Zürich in June 1903. Thirty delegates took part in the proceedings, representing the major city branches of the party and the Foreign Committee. Two issues dominated the debates; the upcoming congress of the RSDLP and the national question. During the discussions, there was a division between the older guard of the Foreign Committee and the younger generation represented by Medem, Liber and Raphael Abramovitch. The younger group wanted to stress the Jewish national character of the party. No compromise could be reached, and no resolution was adopted on the national question.1905 Revolution and its aftermath
In February 1905, by a decision of the 6th Bund conference held in Dvinsk, a Polish District Committee was formed; gathering the local party branches in the areas of Congress Poland.In the Polish areas of the Russian empire, the Bund was a leading force in the 1905 Revolution. At that time, the organization probably reached the height of its influence. It called for an improvement in living standards, a more democratic political system and the introduction of equal rights for Jews. At least in the early stages of the first Russian Revolution, the armed groups of the "Bund" were likely the strongest revolutionary force in Western Russia. During the following years, the Bund went into a period of decay. The party tried to concentrate on labour activism around 1909–1910 and led strikes in ten cities. The strikes resulted in a deepened backlash for the party, and as of 1910 there were legal Bundist trade unions in only four cities, Białystok, Vilnius, Riga and Łódź. Total membership in Bundist unions was around 1,500. At the time of the eighth party conference only nine local branches were represented with a combined membership of 609.
The Bund formally rejoined the RSDLP when all of its faction reunited at the Fourth Congress in Stockholm in April 1906, with the support of the Mensheviks, but the RSDLP remained fractured along ideological and ethnic lines. The Bund generally sided with the party's Menshevik faction led by Julius Martov and against the Bolshevik faction led by Vladimir Lenin during the factional struggles in the run-up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The 7th Bund conference was held in Lemberg 28 August – 8 September 1906. The main topic for debate was the relation with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. At the time, the Bund had 33,890 members and 274 functioning local organizations.
After the RSDLP finally split in 1912, the Bund became a federated part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party .