(Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire have
turned Justice Mute)

Naji Alloush

Marxism and the Jewish Question

Translated from the Arabic by Muhammad Abu Nasr

Lenin and the Jewish Question

<< Marx and the Jewish Question

Jewish political activities developed considerably after Marx. The end of the nineteenth century witnessed the first Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897, it also was a period when Jewish political parties emerged. One of these parties, the General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, commonly known as the Jewish Bund, was also founded in 1897. In March of 1898 it joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, but at the second congress of the RSDLP, the Bund demanded to be recognized by the party as the sole representative of the Jewish workers in Russia. It also pressed the RSDLP to accept acceptance of the principle of the division of the party organization along national lines. When its request was rejected, the Bundists split from RSDLP.

The Bundists returned to the RSDLP after its fourth congress, held in 1906 in Stockholm - the so-called unity congress. There were three representatives of the Bund at the congress. The Bund also took part in the fifth congress of the party that convened in London in May of 1907.

The struggle between Lenin's party and the Bundists remained intense, despite their occasional membership in the same party. The reasons for the struggle were many and this is not the place to enumerate them all. But the most important reasons for the struggle were their differences over the question of nationalities.

The struggle remained inflamed until the Bund dissolved its organizations in 1921, a part of it joining the Soviet Communist Party afterward. Yet many of those who joined the Communist Party were affected by purges of accused saboteurs.(24)

So just what is the essence of the difference between Lenin and the Bund and other Jewish and non-Jewish parties concerning the question of nationalities?

The Bund and other parties raised the slogan of cultural-national autonomy. Lenin raised the slogan of "the right of nations to self-determination." At first glance it may appear that there is little difference between these slogans, but with a knowledge of their content the great difference between them becomes apparent. Cultural-national autonomy aims at the establishment of cultural-national units that represent nationalities and various national groups within the framework of one state. The nation or national group would not have one organization, but rather as many organizations as there were concentrations of members of that nationality. Thus, the Jews in Moscow would study in Yiddish, for example, while the Armenians there would study in Armenian, and so forth. Wherever there were Jews, it would be obligatory for the state to guarantee that they should study in their language and so forth. As to the other slogan, the slogan for the right of nations to self-determination, it aims at the liberation of all oppressed nationalities and the establishment of fraternal relations between the nations for the sake of their liberation. Lenin called for freedom of self-determination and emphasized the right to secession in order for that to become the path to the federation of nations, so that a voluntary, free federation could be attained. Lenin called for the right to secession, yet he opposed secession. He supported the right of oppressed nations to build their national entities, yet he resisted any bigoted, narrow nationalist spirit. Lenin placed the cause of the socialist revolution above the cause of national democratic revolution, but he wanted them to be merged together so that the latter would not stand as an obstacle in the way of the former.

We might summarize the reasons for Lenin's resistance to the slogan of cultural-national autonomy as follows:

If Lenin denied the possibility of realizing such a slogan with respect to nationalities whose existence he recognized, it would be probable that he would deny it with respect to groups that he did not regard as a nation, i.e., the Jews.

Lenin said, "The Jews in the civilised world are not a nation, they have in the main become assimilated, say Karl Kautsky and Otto Bauer. The Jews in Galicia and in Russia are not a nation; unfortunately (through no fault of their own but through that of the Purishkeviches), they are still a caste here. Such is the incontrovertible judgement of people who are undoubtedly familiar with the history of Jewry and take the above-cited facts into consideration."(29)

Thus the Jews were not a nation in Lenin's view. In the west they were a group that was becoming assimilated, and in Russia and Galicia a caste. Thus, the right of self-determination - for which Lenin fought - was a right that did not apply to the Jews.

From the beginning, Lenin was not convinced of the idea of a "Jewish nationality" and attacked calls for it. He wrote in Iskra, the central organ of the party in 1903: "the idea of a Jewish 'nationality' is definitely reactionary not only when expounded by its consistent advocates (the Zionists), but likewise on the lips of those who try to combine it with the ideas of Social-Democracy (the Bundists). The idea of a Jewish nationality runs counter to the interests of the Jewish proletariat, for it fosters among them, directly or indirectly, a spirit hostile to assimilation, the spirit of the 'ghetto'."(30)

Lenin always insisted that, "a nation must have a territory on which to develop, and, in our time at least, until a world confederation has extended this basis, a nation must have a common language."(31) Neither of these factors applied to the Jews.

Lenin was placing the Jewish question in the framework of the proletarian movement, and he supported the organizational unity of the proletariat. The solution that he proposed to the Jews, and for the Jewish question, stemmed from his position on the national question. For that reason he wrote a draft resolution for the Third Congress of the Party in 1903 in which he said the following:

"The Congress voices its desire for, and firm conviction of, the need for complete and closest unity of the Jewish and Russian working-class movement in Russia, unity not only in principle but also in organisation, and resolves to take all measures in order to acquaint the Jewish proletariat in detail both with this resolution of the Congress and with the general attitude of the Russian Social-Democrats towards every national movement."(32)

When this draft resolution was not presented to the Congress, it was presented as an addendum to Martov's draft concerning the same issue, which did not differ from it in content.(33)

Therefore Lenin emphasized the struggle against the nationalist tendencies of the Bund and accused the Bundists, saying that they ". . . will now grasp at the Zionist idea of a Jewish "nation", now resort to demagogy and scurrilities."(34)

Lenin was keenly concerned with the issue of anti-Semitism. He once wrote, "Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews."(35) He believed that it ". . . is striking ever deeper root among the propertied classes."(36) As Lenin believed that the unity of the Jewish and non-Jewish proletariat was "especially necessary," this was not only so that the proletariat could attain its final goal as quickly as possible, but it was especially necessary also "for an successful struggle against anti-Semitism, this despicable attempt of the government ad the exploiting classes to exacerbate racial particularism and national enmity."(37)

Lenin stressed his resistance to anti-Semitism. He did not regard this struggle as the task of the Jewish proletariat alone, "rather all the Russian proletariat must participate to one extent or another in this civil war that the government is arranging."(38) Therefore the preparedness of the "best part of the Jewish bourgeois and intellectuals" "to resist he anti-Semitic gangs" is not enough, by itself, to confront the problem. This is because the "chief way . . ." in his view "to combat anti-Semitism, as in general to combat the reactionary forces, is the revolutionary enlightenment of the popular masses, and the organization of their vanguard element: the proletariat."(39)

In spite of his stern opposition to anti-Semitism, he believed that "the Zionist movement represents a greater direct threat to the growth of the class organization of the proletariat than does anti-Semitism."(40) This is a point of view is that Marxists in general and Arab ones in particular certainly do not subscribe to. That Zionism is more dangerous for the proletariat than anti-Semitism is, is a very important point of view, one deserving of close attention. It if has been effaced in the past decades as a result of attempts to efface proletarian revolutionary consciousness, and because of the tragedies that anti-Semitism caused during the Second World War, I believe that it is necessary to present it and discuss it today. . . . For Zionism has proved that it poses dangers for world peace, for socialism, and for the proletariat like the danger posed by anti-Semitism.

There are two points that should be noted in this connection.

  • First: Lenin used the expression "the Jewish nation" three times at least in the sense of a nation, even though he basically denied the existence of this nation. He presented that in the course of his opposition to the slogan of cultural-national autonomy. In the first instance he says, "The same applies to the most oppressed and persecuted nation - the Jews."(41) Here he speaks about the existence of reactionary elements and other, progressive elements in every national culture, with respect to all peoples, and he made the Jews a nation just like other nations. The second time where Lenin referred to a Jewish nation was where he wrote "no nationality in Russia is so oppressed and persecuted as the Jewish."(42) In the third instance, Lenin refers to the Jewish workers as a nation as follows: "The Jewish workers, as a disfranchised nationality, not only suffer general economic and political oppression, but they also suffer under the yoke which deprives them of elementary civic rights."(43)

    The Jews here are a "nation" and a "nationality." This conflicts with the content of all his articles and polemics.

  • Second: Lenin included the autonomy of Jewish workers in the program of the Party: "'Autonomy' under the Rules adopted in 1898 provides the Jewish working-class movement with all it needs: propaganda and agitation in Yiddish, its own literature and congresses, the right to advance separate demands to supplement a single general Social-Democratic programme and to satisfy local needs and requirements arising out of the special features of Jewish life."(44) Lenin alluded to this on several occasions. But does that contradict the general line proposed by Lenin? No, not at all. It is a clear and consistent line, for the unity of the proletariat against splitting it on national lines, for the assimilation that is in accord with the direction history is moving, against national isolationism, and for the inclusion of the Jews; and against Zionism in all its forms, and not only the bourgeois but the proletarian as well, as represented by the Bund.

When the October Socialist Revolution took place under Lenin's leadership, the Soviet state was reorganized in accordance with Lenin's slogan "the right of nations to self-determination." The Decree on Peace issued by Lenin was the first document to express this political orientation directly after the revolution. This declaration rejected forced annexations and supported the right of nations to self-determination.(45)

The [Soviet government, the] government of the workers and peasants, proclaimed on 15 November 1917 a Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, part of which read:

"The Council of People's Commissars has resolved to establish as a basis for its activity in the question of Nationalities, the following principles:

1. The equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia.

2. The right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state.

3. The abolition of any and all national and national-religious privileges and disabilities.

4. The free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia."(46)

The new policy represented the Leninist viewpoint on the national issue - the right of self-determination, which included the right to secession, even if that was not preferred. The secession of Finland at the beginning of December in the presence of Stalin and by a decree signed by Lenin and Stalin together is an excellent example of this policy.(47)

On 18 January 1918 six Communist Jews met and demanded the appointment of one of them, by the name of Dimanshtain, to be a commissar for the Jews. Two days later, a decree was issued naming him commissar. On 21 January the new commissar chaired a small general meeting attended by a number of members of the Bund and other parties. He was met with hostile shouts such as "bureaucrat of the Jews" and "overseer of the Jews." Dimanshtain said, among other things, "we, as internationalists, seek no special national demands; we are only seeking proletarian programs."

After 13 regional branches were set up their first congress was held on 20 October 1918, attended by 31 Communists, and 33 selected delegates. The congress issued a decree in which it said, "all the institutions that have been working in the Jewish sector, such as the communities and others, no longer have a place in our lives. . . . All these institutions and organizations are harming the basic interests of the broad Jewish masses that live in them, with their sweet songs about so-called Jewish democracy. The Jewish worker is relying on the victory of the proletariat in the October Revolution. He has taken authority in his own hands and declared a dictatorship of the proletariat within Jewish society."

In June 1919 a decree signed by Samuel Agursky and Stalin, the People's Commissar for Nationalities, dissolved Jewish religious organizations on the basis that they attracted enemies of the revolution and fostered a non-worker spirit.

Although the state adopted a policy of gathering Jews in areas in which they could form the majority, the official Jewish leaders became increasingly convinced that the Jews outside these areas would, sooner or later, assimilate.

Beginning with 1921 a Jewish Peoples' Assembly began to operate where Jewish groups were to be found. Yet the Jews who took part in the election of such committees only accounted for 14 percent of the total. In 1920 the Commissariat of the Jews was transformed into a department under the Commissariat of Nationalities.

[In 1922 International Press Correspondence, the official organ of the Third International, the Comintern, published a decision that had been taken by the International on the request presented by a Zionist Communist Party from Eastern Europe to join the Comintern. The Comintern leadership rejected the request on the grounds that the party was based on the supposed right of the Jews to establish a state and such a state could not be created except at the expense of some other nationality. On that basis the Comintern rejected the request and accused the party of being a petty-bourgeois party and not really Communist. The Comintern called on the militants in the Zionist party to join the ranks of the proletariat in their countries in order to struggle for socialist revolution.*]

Lenin's views on assimilation, on the one hand, and national liberation, on the other, are clear. Despite this clarity, steps were taken in his time toward separating the Jews from the Soviet societies of which they were integral parts or to establish forms of autonomy for them under Soviet rule, which were not in conformity with Lenin's philosophy. Lenin was clear: he was for assimilation when peoples are intermingling. He was for liberation when a people was being enslaved by another. Inasmuch as the Jews in Russia after the Revolution were not a people or a nationality, inasmuch as they did not have a defined political or social identity, it was necessary that the Leninist principle of assimilation be implemented with respect to them. This is what some Communists of Jewish origin sought to circumvent, as we shall see. Yet they failed, for reasons related to the Jews on the one hand, and for other reasons related to the Soviet system on the other.

But what happened with regard to the Jews after the October Revolution and during the Lenin period (1917-1924) can be explained on the basis of two factors.

  • First. The assimilation that Lenin spoke of was basically voluntary assimilation, i.e., not assimilation imposed by force. It would not, therefore, have been in keeping with Leninist principles to impose the amalgamation of the Jews or any other group into the rest of society by force.
  • Second. After October, Bolshevik rule resorted to developing the nationalities that had been subject to the Russian Empire politically and culturally. In this climate, efforts were made to resurrect nearly extinct nationalities and to create republics and governments for different eastern peoples like the Tatars, Bashkirs, and Kirgiz. Stalin declared at the tenth congress of the party in 1921, "the Marxist party that believes in 'the deep-rootedness of nations and national languages' 'completely rejects the policy of national assimilation and merging of peoples, considering that to be a policy opposed to the people and opposed to the revolution'."(48) The Jews were among those groups to whom the new state tried to give an opportunity for national growth within the socialist state.

But were the Jews a nation?

Lenin had answered this question in the negative. Stalin too [had earlier] answered it in the negative. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to consider the Jews a nation and to give them the right that was given to other nations: the right to national existence within some borders of their own based on their disbursal into various different areas.

NOTES

24) Lenin, Fi al-qadiyah al-qawmiyah [Lenin, On the National Question] Arabic tr. By Ihsan Sarkis, Manshurat Dar Ibn al-Walid, 1958, 22-23.

25) Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question, (Oct. - Dec. 1913) in Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977, vol. 20, 23-24; 36.

26) Lenin, ibid., 28-29.

27) Lenin, ibid., 37.

28) Lenin, ibid., 44.

29) Lenin, ibid., 29.

30) Lenin, The Position of the Bund in the Party, 22 October 1903, in Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977, vol. 7., 100-101. See also: Baron, Salo Wittmayer, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets, New York: Macmillan, 1964, 205.

31) Lenin, (quoting Alfred Naquet) in The Position of the Bund in the Party, 22 October 1903, in Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977, vol. 7., 99.

32) Lenin, "Draft Resolutions not submitted to the Congress: Withdrawal of the Bund" in Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. July 17 (30)-August 10 (23) 1903, included in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 6, 1977. 477.

33) Lenin, Nusus hawl al-mas'alah al-Yahudiyah: mukhtarat jadidah, Beirut: Dar al-Tali`ah, 25.

34) Lenin, "Maximum brazenness and minimum logic," published in Iskra, 1 October 1903, included in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 7,1977, 63. See also Lenin, Nusus hawl al-mas'alah al-Yahudiyah: mukhtarat jadidah, Beirut: Dar al−Tali`ah, 25.

35) Lenin, "Speeches on gramophone records: No. 8, Anti-Jewish pogroms," made at the end of 1919, in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 29, 252. See also . See also Lenin, Nusus hawl al-mas'alah al-Yahudiyah: mukhtarat jadidah, Beirut: Dar al-Tali`ah, 70.

36) Lenin, "The National equality bill,"28 March 1914, in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 20, 172.

37) Lenin, "Draft resolution on the place of the Bund in the Party," June-July 1903, in in Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. July 17 (30)-August 10 (23) 1903, included in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 6, 1977, 468.

38) Lenin, "The gathering of forces by the reactionaries and our tasks" in Iskra, vol. 3, No. 41, 1 June 1903.

39) Ibid.

40) Ibid.

41) Lenin, "Critical remarks on the national question," October-December 1913, in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 20, 26.

42) Lenin, "The National equality bill," Put? Pravdy, No. 48, 28 March 1914, in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 20, 172.

43) Lenin, 'To the Jewish workers,' Yiddish pamphlet written end of May-beginning of June 1905, in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 8, 495.

44) Lenin, "Does the Jewish proletariat need an 'independent political party?'" Iskra, No. 34, 15 February 1903, in Lenin. Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 6, 332.

45) John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, New York: International Publishers, 1967, 127-130. The text of the Decree on Peace is also included in Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977, vol. 26, 249-253.

46) Quoted in John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, New York: International Publishers, 1967, 260, and in Innokentii Yul'evich Pisarev, The Population of the U.S.S.R.; a socio-economic survey, Moscow: Progress Publishers, [1962?], 62-63.

47) Ilyas Murqus, "Mas'alat al-qawmiyat fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati," Majallat Dirasat `Arabiyah ["The Nationalities issue in the Soviet Union" in the Journal of Arabic Studies], vol. 1, no. 5, 26.

48) Ilyas Murqus, "Mas'alat al-qawmiyat fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati," Majallat Dirasat `Arabiyah ["The Nationalities issue in the Soviet Union" in the Journal of Arabic Studies], vol. 1, no. 5, 26.