Blackwell Reference Online

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The Jewish Bund, known in full as the General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia (Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland), was a mass movement of Jewish workers that played an essential role in the birth of the Russian revolutionary movement. A secular organization, it opposed tsarism and capitalism, and fought both to remedy universal inequality and to defend Jewish cultural and political rights. With 30,000 active members on the eve of the Russian Revolution of 1905 , the Bund comprised one of the largest socialist organizations in the Russian empire. As a founding organization of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP), the Bund saw its mission as strengthening and promoting the RSDWP by bringing its message to the Jewish working class. However, as the views of the Bund and the RSDWP's dominant Iskra faction diverged irreconcilably on party structure, the status of Jews, the role of workers, and the relationship of theory to practice, the Bund established itself as an independent party, cooperating with others where possible to advance social democracy and revolution. After folding in Russia in 1921, it found renewed vibrancy in Poland, but was forced by World War II to marshal all of its resources for armed resistance to the Holocaust. The Bund was founded in October of 1897 by a coalition of Jewish activist-intellectuals ... log in or subscribe to read full text