To the Question of the Place and Role of the Bund in the Processes of the First Russian Revolution

Abstract

The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (General Jewish Labor Bund) played an extremely important role in the history of the First Russian Revolution in the processes of politicizing the small-town mass of “the Jewish Pale” of the Russian Empire. In 1905, the Bund managed to organize and bring to the streets of Russian cities in the European part of Russia almost one million army of the Jewish poor, which according to the ideology of the Bund, was to play the role of a social enzyme in the processes of national self-liberation of the Russian Jews. Since the demand for national cultural autonomy for Jews was determined by the depth of democratic transformations in the Russian Empire, the revolutionary nature of the Bund’s national policy met the criteria of the policy of the Russian Social-Democracy (RSDLP) aimed at strengthening the revolutionary processes in the country. The policy of “inflating” the Russian revolution on the “Jewish street” allowed the Bund to take a special place in the ranks of the RSDLP, whose leaders could no longer ignore the demands of this major political organization of the Jewish proletariat. The Revolution of 1905–1907 proved to be years of serious tests on the strength of the Party structures and organizations of the Bund. For the first time in the history of Russian Jewry, thanks to the Bund’s fighting detachments, it was possible to avoid many cruel Jewish pogroms.