The Split within the Poale Zion’s Left Wing: Two Versions of Jewish National Communism

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Date
2017
Authors
Hirik, Serhiy
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Abstract
The organizations of the Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Poale Zion) in Ukraine and Belarus have experienced two major splits during the revolutionary events of the 1917–1920. The first of them was a classical form of the division into a left and a right wings. In 1917, the left one was formed although it did not become a separate party then. In 1919, the leaders of the Poale Zion’s right wing, who were sympathetic to the authority of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, had moved to Kamianets-Podilskyi and later to Tarnów in Poland together with the leaders of the Directorate of Ukraine. Unlike them, the representatives of the party’s left wing remained on the territory controlled by the Red Army. These groups received the status of a Soviet party. Thereby their activity in Soviet Ukraine and Belarus became legal. In 1919, the second split took place. The left wing of the JSDWP(PZ) was divided into two groups both considering themselves as leftist. The first one was the Jewish Communist Party (Poale Zion). In 1922, it has merged with the Bolsheviks. The other group has changed its name to the Jewish Communist Workers’ Party (Poale Zion) in 1923 and operated until 1928. These two parties had major ideological distinctions. We trace them in our paper basing on archival sources and the press published by these groups, as well as the documents of the Bolsheviks and some of Ukrainian national communist parties.
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Keywords
Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Poale Zion), Poale Zion’s, Soviet party, Jewish Communist Party (Poale Zion), Jewish Communist Workers’ Party (Poale Zion), article
Citation
Hirik S. The Split within the Poale Zion’s Left Wing: Two Versions of Jewish National Communism / Serhiy Hirik // Judaica Ukrainica : Annual Journal of Jewish Studies. - 2017. - Vol. 6. - P. 35-50. - https://doi.org/10.14653/ju.2017.04
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https://doi.org/10.14653/ju.2017.04
 https://ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/handle/123456789/34322
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Volume 6 (2017)