Éditions de l'Échappée publishes a reissue of Henri Minczeles' book on the
history of the Bund, published in 1995 and which remains an essential referencein the French language. It is to be commended a real editorial work whichrestores by the addition of photographic documents and reviewed notes, aremarkable work at the height of the importance of the work. ---- If the entirebook takes us back to almost fifty years of a still relatively unknown politicalexperience, the first two parts, dealing with the period prior to the creation ofthe Bund and its first years of existence are particularly interesting in thatthey sound particularly contemporary.The questions of specific oppressions, of multiple and intersecting identityaffiliations, of their place in the class struggle, did not appear a few yearsago, because of intersectional theories, but they have been going through thissocialist movement since its origins.Created underground in 1897, Der Algemayner Yiddisher arbeiter-Bund in Russlandun Poyln, the General Union of Jewish Workers of Russia and Poland, the Bund forshort, was the first Jewish, socialist, Marxist and secular party. The line ofaction is summed up by Arkadi Kremer, one of the delegates of the constituentcongress of the Bund: "A general union of all socialist organizations will set asits goal not only the struggle for Russian demands in general, but also to defendthe specific interests of Jewish workers, and above all the fight against alldiscriminatory laws. For Jewish workers are oppressed both as workers and as Jews. »After just over twenty years of Jewish socialist activism, the Bund represents anorganizational turning point. It is located mainly in the Zone of Residence - aregion of about one million square kilometers stretching from the Baltic Sea tothe Black Sea in which the Jewish populations have been under house arrest since1791. He opts for the progressive adhesion to the Marxism and for the need tomilitate in the language of these Jewish populations, Yiddish.The national question was at the heart of the work of the third and fourthcongresses where contradictory points of view were opposed. Some congressmenpointed to the risk that the national question would finally divert "theattention of the Jewish proletariat from its class interests" and become "anobstacle to the active solidarity of the masses".A median, autonomous position was adopted, opposed both to nationalism ("anexacerbated national feeling that risks obscuring the class consciousness of theJewish proletariat and leading it to chauvinism") and assimilation ("How the canJewish workers express their class consciousness if not in their mother tongue?").Finally, the question of Zionism, even on the left, united the Bundists, whooverwhelmingly rejected it altogether. The declaration emanating from the FourthCongress is without appeal, considering: "Zionism as a reaction of the bourgeoisclass against anti-Semitism and the abnormal situation of the Jewish people.Political Zionism setting up as its goal the creation of a territory for theJewish people cannot claim to resolve the Jewish question [...] nor to satisfythe people as a whole. Whether in economic (funds) or political (Bundistsections) organizations, the Zionists must not be admitted. »The work, although dense, takes us into the history of an original socialistmovement that developed a Jewish identity promoting the Yiddish language as thelanguage of the emancipation of the Jewish proletariat and at the same time beingextremely cosmopolitan and internationalist.An original socialist path that took part in the great revolutionary events andresistance to fascism in the first half of the twentieth century.David (UCL Chambery)Henri Minczeles, General History of the Bund. A Jewish revolutionary movement,L'Échappée editions, 2022, 22 euros.https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Minczeles-Histoire-generale-du-Bund-un-mouvement-revolutionnaire-juif_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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