Jewish National Communist Parties and the Comintern: A Non-Mutual Association

Abstract

In this paper, the author has attempted to trace the evolution of the politics of the Jewish national communist parties (the left wing of Bund / the Communist Bund, the Jewish Social-Democratic Workers Party (Poale Zion) and its successors: The Jewish Communist Party (Poale Zion) and the The Jewish Communist Workers Party (Poale Zion)) toward the Comintern. At the same time the author presents an analysis of changes in the politics of the Third International toward these parties. The dependence of the ultimate fate of all of these parties on their allegiance to their original program objectives is demonstrated. The author shows that the readiness of the organization to reject features of its ideology helped it to be absorbed by the ruling party of Bolsheviks. In contrast, the strict position on the base postulates provided to the entire isolation after which the enforced liquidation of such political organization was only a matter of time.