Representing the Jewish Revolution: Hopes, Fears, and Divisions

What did it mean to be Jewish in the revolution of 1917, and which groups could represent the complex reality of Jewish hopes, fears, and divisions in that year?

In my last post, I tried to make the case that representation of complex and diverse in History teaching is worthwhile but extremely complicated and carries a serious risk of both homogenising groups and misrepresenting many individuals’ and groups’ experiences of the past.

In this post, I’ll make the case that a rounded representation of complex and diverse groups from the past is nevertheless possible, but only if we embrace their inherent complexity and diversity. Using the example of Russia’s Jews during the 1917 revolution, I’ll try and demonstrate how this can be done by accepting and highlighting a group’s inherent divisions, as well as their common aspirations and anxieties.

Perhaps surprisingly, Trotsky, our main protagonist last time out, doesn't feature here - and neither do any of his non-Jewish-socialist-party comrades. This is a story about the other Jewish revolutionaries; those who entered politics through specifically Jewish parties and defined their politics specifically as Jewish (albeit in a variety of ways). Focusing on these people and their parties reveals some rather surprising things about not just the diversity within, but also the political divisions and tensions amongst, Russia's Jews. 

I’ll also introduce some lesson resources I use to teach Year 12 students about Jewish politics in the 1917 revolution, links to which can be found here.

 

In Context

By the time the revolution of 1917 had overthrown Tsar Nicholas II and the autocratic system of Tsarist rule in Russia, Jews had faced well over a century of discrimination in the country. Revolution, on the surface, appeared to redress past injustices, wiping away discrimination based on ethnicity and religion. In reality, however, as the continuation of pogroms and antisemitic outbursts in 1917 revealed, the situation of Russian Jews remained precarious.

Nevertheless, opportunities for Jews to engage in politics were expanded enormously by the revolution. On the left, socialist groups including the Bund and Poalei Tsion (Workers of Zion) were able to legally and openly agitate and organise amongst workers for the first time, while to their right groups such as the General Zionists could advocate for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and the liberal Jewish National Group could support the cause of a constitutional state (a Rechtsstaat).

The picture, in fact, revealed not only the aspirations of Jews, but also their inherent divisions – something detailed recently in Michael Hickey’s excellent chapter on Jews to the Wiley Companion to the Russian Revolution. These divisions ran along several axes. One was a more-or-less traditional left-right political spectrum, with socialists to the left and liberals and non-socialist national and religious groups further to the right. Another concerned the question of Zionism.

Today a hugely contentious and often oversimplified political concept, Zionism was equally contentious and subject to oversimplifications during the Russian Revolution. Broadly, it can be seen as the advocation of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine (today’s Palestine/Israel and some bordering areas). In principle, supporting or opposing Zionism involved a calculation as to whether Jews would be better advanced and protected by segregating from wider society or integrating into it. However, Zionism itself had many inflections, and was adopted by Jewish groups of varying political persuasions. This means we are probably better to speak of Zionisms, in the plural, than a singular Zionist creed in 1917.

On the left, the Marxist-Zionist Poalei Tsion (Workers of Zion), envisioned a Jewish homeland organised on socialist principles. To the centre and right, other Zionists including the General Zionists (Russia’s largest Zionist organisation in 1917) advocated for a non-socialist homeland.

Zionism also had its Jewish opponents. As I pointed out in my last post, many Jewish socialists including Leon Trotsky vehemently rejected Zionism, arguing that the focus on a Jewish national homeland in Palestine was a distraction from the aim of workers’ liberation and power. While Trotsky (who played down his Jewishness without ever entirely denying it) was not part of a specifically Jewish political organisation, some specifically Jewish parties did themselves reject Zionism, notable amongst them the Bund.

The picture seems complex – and that’s because it was. But it also makes good sense to instruct students in some of the intricacies and controversies of Russian Jewish politics. Firstly, it provides a helpful reminder that Jews were not a homogeneous group in Russia’s past; those who were politically active and had distinctly Jewish participation identities in politics held a wide range of different opinions.

Secondly, highlighting the importance and controversies of Zionism in 1917 helps reveal some of the trajectories of Jewish politics and political self-representation in later periods of Soviet history. These include, notably, the doomed Soviet experiment to create an alternative and anti-Zionist Jewish homeland in eastern Siberia, Birobidzhan, in the late 1920s and 1930s (something I’ll discuss in a later post) and the antisemitic and anti-Zionist late-Stalinist purges focused on the Doctors Plot of 1952-3. Without understanding Zionism and its role in Russian and Soviet Jewish politics, neither of these later developments really make sense.

For the remainder of this post, I’ll run through the lesson I have taught to Year 12 students on Jewish politics in 1917.

 

Substantive Concepts and Vocabulary

Before teaching this lesson, students should be aware of the following vocabulary and concepts.

• Jews/Jewish
• Revolution
• Political Party
• Socialism
• Marxism
• Liberalism
• Zionism
• Antisemitism
• Pogrom
• Pale of Settlement

 

Lesson Outline

1. Students are asked to read a brief outline of the changing circumstances of Russian Jews on the eve of 1917, noting especially the changes to the Pale of Settlement, including its de-facto and then formal abolition and the rise of military-led pogroms after 1914.
2. From this, students are invited to consider what hopes, aspirations, and fears Russian Jews might have in 1917.
3. Students are then introduced to five different Jewish parties, representing different strands of Jewish political thought – Poalei Tsion, the Bund, the OESRP, the Jewish National Group, and the General Zionists (planning this provided an interesting illustration of the limitations of using groups to represent a diverse people – this range of parties, although extensive, is only a section of all the Jewish parties in Russia in 1917; it would have been impossible to represent the full range in one lesson!)
4. Using information cards for each party, students are first asked to make general observations about them, their commonalities, their differences.
5. Students are then asked to place cards onto a spectrum along two political axes separating different Jewish parties – one socialist to liberal, the other integrate (i.e. anti-Zionist) to segregate (i.e. pro-Zionist). They are asked again for their observations regarding what united and divided Jewish political parties.

 

Further Reading

Michael C. Hickey, “The Jews in the Revolution” in Daniel T. Orlovsky (ed.), A Companion to the Russian Revolution, Wiley Blackwell (2020), pp. 377-388.