References: "Communism" - Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol 5, Pg 91 (2nd Ed)

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Original can be found in the following link (Page 93 in the PDF, page 91 in the Encyclopedia. Yes, I read, copied and pasted the content with the formatting edited in the forum. None of the content itself was modified. - 3bdushakur):

https://ketab3.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/encyclopaedia-judaica-v-05-coh-doz.pdf

COMMUNISM

The international revolutionary Marxist movement that evolved under *Lenin’s leadership from the Bolshevik faction (created in 1903 in the Russian Social Democratic Party) to become the ruling party of Russia after the October Revolution in 1917 and created the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. The Communist movement and ideology played an important part in Jewish life, particularly in the 1920s, 1930s, and during and after World War II. Violent polemics raged between Jewish Communists and Zionists in all countries until the disenchantment with the anti-Jewish policies of *Stalin in his last years and, after his death, with the antisemitic quality of the treatment of Jews and Jewish life in the U.S.S.R., as well as the increasingly violent anti-Israel stand of Moscow in the Arab-Israel conflict.

Individual Jews played an important role in the early stages of Bolshevism and the Soviet regime. These Jews were mostly confirmed assimilationists who adopted their party’s concept of the total disappearance of Jewish identity under advanced capitalism and socialism. They thus opposed the existence of separate Jewish workers’ movements, particularly the *Bund and Socialist Zionism. The great attraction of communism among Russian, and later also Western, Jewry emerged only with the establishment of the Soviet regime in Russia. The mere fact that during the civil war in Russia following the October 1917 Revolution the counterrevolutionary forces were violently antisemitic, shedding Jewish blood in pogroms on an unprecedented scale, drove the bulk of Russian Jewish youth into the ranks of the Bolshevik regime. During Lenin’s rule, the NEP (“new economic policy”), and the years preced- ing Stalin’s personal dictatorship and the great purges of the 1930s, a dichotomy of Jewish life evolved in the Soviet Union and was greatly attractive to both assimilationist and secular Yiddish-oriented Jews outside Russia. On the one hand, Russian Jews enjoyed the opportunities of immense geographical and social mobility, leaving behind the townlets of the *Pale of Settlement and occupying many responsible positions in all branches of the party and state machinery at the central and local seats of power. On the other, a secular educational and cultural network in Yiddish and an economic and administrative framework of Jewish life, including agricultural settlement and Jewish local and regional “Soviets,” were officially established and fostered, culminating in the mid-1930s in the creation of the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East (*Birobidzhan). Many Jews the world over therefore regarded the Soviet concept of the solution to the “Jewish question” as an intrinsic positive approach with the main options open for various Jewish trends – assimilation or preservation of Jewish (secular) identity and even Jewish territorialism and embryonic Jewish statehood.

During this period the position of world Jewry markedly deteriorated because of the severe economic and political crises in Palestine and the growing trend of oppressive antisemitism in the rest of Eastern Europe, Nazi and fascist influence in Central and Western Europe, and the economic crisis in the United States. Communism and support of the Soviet Union thus seemed to many Jews to be the only alternative, and Communist trends became widespread in virtually all Jewish communities. In some countries Jews became the leading element in the legal and illegal Communist parties and in some cases were even instructed by the Communist International to change their Jewish-sounding names and pose as non-Jews, in order not to confirm right-wing propaganda that presented Communism as an alien, Jewish conspiracy (e.g., the Polish slogan against “Żydo-Komuna” and the Nazi reiteration against “Jewish Bolshevism,” etc.). Initially, the Stalin-*Trotsky controversy did not affect the attraction of Communism to Jews, though a number of intellectual Jewish Communists tended more toward Trotsky’s consistent internationalism than to Stalin’s concept of building “Socialism in one country” and subjecting the interests of the international working class to the changing tactical interests of the Soviet Union. The facts about the gradual liquidation of the Yiddish cultural and educational network and the stifling of the Birobidzhan experiment in the late 1930s did not immediately reach the Jewish public outside the Soviet Union. In addition, only a minority of Jewish Communists condemned the Comintern-directed policy at the end of the 1930s that branded any form of non-Communist Socialism as “social fascism” and the main enemy of the revolution, while simultaneously seeking cooperation with German Nazism. Even the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 was a shock to only a minority of Jewish Communists (except confirmed oppositionists, mainly of the Trotskyite “Fourth International”). When World War II broke out in 1939, most Jewish Communists defended the Soviet anti-Western-flavored neutrality. But from June 1941, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and the Communists in occupied Europe excelled in anti-Nazi resistance, and particularly after the war, when the Soviet Union actively supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, Jewish Communists the world over achieved the highest degree of inner contentment and intellectual harmony in the whole history of the Communist movement.

The relatively abrupt disenchantment began in the late 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, when Soviet policy toward the State of Israel gradually reversed from support to hostility and the anti-*Cosmopolitan campaign, the *Slanský Trials in Czechoslovakia, and the *Doctors’ Plot in Moscow revealed the antisemitic character of the Soviet regime in Stalin’s last years. The disclosures, in 1956–57, of the brutal liquidation of all Jewish institutions and the judicial murder of most Yiddish writers and artists in the “black years” (1948–53), the growing Soviet-Arab cooperation against Israel, and the anti-Jewish policy of the Khrushchev and post-Khrushchev period, which culminated in the violent “anti-Zionist” and anti-Israel campaign after the *Six-Day War and the Leningrad Trial of 1970, rendered Jewish disenchantment with Soviet-style Communism almost complete. The *New Left groups that emerged in the later 1960s and enjoyed heavy support from Jewish youth, particularly in the U.S., France, and Germany, were not Soviet-oriented. [Binyamin Eliav]

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Bolshevik Theory (1903–1917)

The Bolshevik attitude to basic questions concerning the Jews was formulated in as early as 1903, with the emergence of the Bolshevik faction during the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party in Brussels and London. The Bolshevik faction (which in 1912–13 became the Bolshevik Party) contained a number of Jews who were active mainly in the field of organization and propaganda (rather than in theory and ideology, as was the case with the Jewish Mensheviks). They included such people as Maxim *Litvinov (Wallach), M. Liadov (Mandelshtam), Grigori Shklovsky, A. Soltz, S. Gusev (Drabkin), Grigori *Zinoviev (Radomyslsky), Lev *Kamenev (Rosenfeld), Rozaliya *Zemliachka (Zalkind), Helena Rozmirovich, Yemeli *Yaroslavsky (Gubelman), Serafima Gopner, G. Sokolnikov, I. Piatnitsky, Jacob *Sverdlov, M. Vladimirov, P. Zalutsky, A. Lozovsky, Y. Yaklovlev (Epstein), Lazar *Kaganovich, D. Shvartsman, and Simon *Dimanstein. Their number grew rapidly between the Russian revolutions of February and October 1917, when various groups and individuals joined the Bolsheviks; prominent among the new adherents were *Trotsky, M. Uritsky, M. Volodarsky, J. Steklov, Adolf Joffe, David Riazanov (Goldendach), Yuri *Larin, and Karl *Radek (Sobelsohn). Most of the Jews active in Bolshevik ranks before 1917 were assimilationist intellectuals. Few Jewish workers in Russia belonged to the Bolsheviks, and propaganda material designed to recruit Jewish members was restricted to a single Yiddish pamphlet, a short report on the Third (Bolshevik) Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party (April–May 1905), which contained a special introduction by Lenin addressed “To the Jewish Workers.”

It was, indeed, Lenin, the ideological, political, and organizational leader of Bolshevism, who also determined the party’s policy toward the Jews. In the period 1900–06, Lenin expressed himself on three Jewish topics: antisemitism, Jewish nationalism versus assimilation, and the relationship between the Bund and the Social Democratic Party. From its very beginnings, Russian Marxism under the leadership of Plekhanov had rejected both the anti-Jewish tendencies in Russian populism and the evasive attitude of the Second International toward the struggle against antisemitism (Brus- sels Congress, 1891). On the subject of antisemitism, Lenin’s attitude was at all times consistent; not only did he take a definitive stand against it, but, unlike Plekhanov, he was free of any personal prejudice against Jews and would never indulge in any anti-Jewish remarks, in public or in private. This held true in spite of the many bitter arguments he had with Jewish opponents in the revolutionary movement. Although generally relying on Marx on questions of fundamental importance, Lenin did not resort to Marx’s famous essay “On the Jewish Question” when dealing with Jewish affairs, because of its anti-Jewish implications. He rejected outright any suggestion that the Bolsheviks should ignore anti-Jewish policy and propaganda in czarist Russia, let alone make use of its popular appeal. Lenin regarded the czarist anti-Jewish hate campaign as a diversionary maneuver, an integral part of the demagogic campaign against “the aliens” conducted by henchmen of the czarist regime. He believed that the Jewish worker suffered no less than the Russian under capitalism and the czarist government (Iskra, No. 1, December 1900). Later (1905) he went even further, pointing out that Jewish workers suffered from a special form of discrimination by being deprived of even elementary civil rights. Antisemitism was designed to serve the social interests of the ruling classes, although there were also workers who had been incited. As antisemitism was clearly against the interests of the revolution, the fight against it was an integral part of the struggle against czarism and had to be conducted with “proletarian solidarity and a scientific ideology.” Lenin regarded the pogroms of 1905–06 as part of the campaign against the revolution and called for the creation of a militia and for armed self-defense as the only means of combating the rioters. He also waged a special press campaign against the pogrom in Bialystok. Nevertheless, Lenin lacked a proper appreciation of the intensity of the Russian antisemitic tradition, the complexity of the factors underlying it, and the special role that it played in the political and social life of the country.

The Bolshevik attitude toward the collective identity of the Jews and their future was theoretically part of their general views on the national question. Lenin did not consider nationalism a constructive and stable social factor. His approach to it was conditional and pragmatic, subordinate to the interests of the class struggle. At the beginning of 1903 he voiced the opinion that the Social Democratic Party was not required to provide positive solutions to national problems, such as the granting of independence, federation, or autonomy, except in a few special cases, and that it should confine itself to combating discrimination and russification of the non-Russian nationalities. The vague formula contained in the platform of the Social Democratic Party on the “right of nations to self- determination” was regarded as a mere slogan, designed to facilitate the organizational and political consolidation of the workers in the common fight against czarism and capitalism, irrespective of their national origin. Furthermore, this “right to self-determination” applied to nationalities having a territorial basis and did not refer to the Jews.

Lenin knew little of the history, culture, and life of the Jews. His view on the Jewish problem was of a casual nature and was not derived from any study or analysis of his own; this was one of the reasons for the shifts in his attitude within a single year. In February 1903 (in the article “Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an Independent Political Party?”) he spoke of a Jewish “national culture,” a view predicated upon the recognition of the Jews as a national entity, and said that it could not be foretold whether or not the Jews of Russia would assimilate. But in as early as October of that year (in the article “The Position of the Bund in the Party”) he voiced categorical opposition to the view that the Jews are a nation and expressed the conviction that their assimilation is a desirable and necessary development.

He based himself on a truncated quotation from the writings of Karl Kautsky, the Marxist theoretician, accepting the view that the Jews lack the two characteristics of a nationality: a common territory and a common language (presuming that Yiddish was not a language). The decisive motive behind Lenin’s view, however, was the overriding role of the party in his conception of the political struggle and his determination to base the party on absolute organizational centralism. The Bund’s demand for a federative structure of the party, in which the Bund would be “the sole representative” of the Jewish proletariat, was regarded by Lenin as counter to his revolutionary strategy. Even so, he did not regard this difference with the Bund as closed to compromise. In 1905–06, when the emphasis in the internal struggle raging in the Russian Social Democratic Party passed from matters of organization to tactical questions and the Bund’s stand on certain important points proved to be close to that of the Bolsheviks, Lenin did not hesitate to do everything possible to facilitate the return of the Jewish organization to the party fold (the Bund left the Social Democratic Party in 1903). That the Bund had put even greater stress upon its demand for Jewish cultural autonomy at its sixth convention proved to be no deterrent.

Several leading members of a short-lived non-Leninist group of Bolsheviks, which came into existence in 1908, developed their own approach to Jewish questions. Thus, A. Lunacharsky, in dealing with religion, found that the Bible, and particularly the Prophets, contained revolutionary elements and that there was a link between the Old Testament and the new “Religion of Labor,” the latter being, in his opinion, an essential part of socialism. The existence of the Jewish people and the contribution it had made to humanity were of vital importance (Religiya i Sotsiyalizm, pt. 1, 1908). Maxim *Gorky, in his condemnation of antisemitism, did not confine himself to its economic, social, and legal aspects, and his struggle against it was not motivated by mere utilitarian political considerations. His positive remarks on Zionism, first made in 1902, were reprinted in 1906, at a time when he had already joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks. He acknowledged the contribution of Jewish ethics and regarded “the creative power of the Jewish people” as a force that would be of help in establishing “the Law of Socialism” among mankind. These individ- ual stands on the Jews taken by Lunacharsky and Gorky had a direct bearing on the attitude they were to adopt on Jewish questions, especially on Jewish culture, at a later stage, when the Bolsheviks had already come to power in Russia.

After the 1905 revolution, when there were nationalist stirrings in Russia, Lenin came to appreciate the importance of the national question and its possible use in the struggle against the czarist regime. In addition to the slogan of “the right of nations to self-determination, including separation,” he also recognized the need to make concrete and positive proposals on the solution of national questions, based mainly on the concept of territorial autonomy. Lenin was ready to advocate the creation of autonomous districts based on a homogeneous national (i.e., ethnic and linguistic) composition, even on a minute scale. Such districts, he assumed, would seek to establish contacts of various kinds with members of the same nationality in other parts of Russia, or even in other parts of the world (“Critical Notes on the National Question,” 1913). The pogroms and the *Beilis blood libel led Lenin to conclude that “in recent years the persecution of Jews has reached unprecedented proportions” and that “no other nation in Russia suffers as much oppression and persecution as does the Jewish nationality.”

In a bill on equal rights for nationalities that Lenin drafted for presentation to the Duma by the Bolshevik faction (1914), special emphasis was put on the lack of rights suffered by the Jews. He was not, however, consistent in the terms he employed with reference to the Jews; he frequently spoke of the Jewish “nationality” or “nation” (as for example in the above-mentioned bill) and nearly always in the context of the national question in Russia. In general, he held that “the process of national assimilation as furthered by capitalism is to be regarded as a great historical advance” and that “the proletariat also welcomes the assimilation of nations,” except “when this is based on force or on special privileges.” “Each nation consists of two nations,” and there are “two national cultures” in each national culture, including that of the Jews. He acknowledged the presence of “universal progressive qualities” in Jewish culture, such as that of “internationalism” and “the capacity to absorb the stream of contemporary progressive ideas” (the latter quality manifesting itself in the high percentage of Jews found in democratic and proletarian movements). In view of his general attitude on the Jewish question, the “progressive qualities” that he perceived in Jewish culture were of the kind that implied the impending assimilation of that culture to “international culture.” He did, however, admit that equality of national rights included the right to demand “the hiring of special teachers, at government expense, to teach the Jewish language, Jewish history, etc.” The debate on Jewish nationalism, linked with the question of “national cultural autonomy” as demanded by the Bund, increasingly became a part of the internal party struggle. Lenin held fast to the idea that national cultural autonomy would result in weakening the workers’ movement by dividing it according to the nationality of its members.

Similar views were also expressed by Stalin. In an essay published in 1913 under the title “The National Question and Social Democracy” (later known under the title “Marxism and the National Question”), which had Lenin’s approval and was devoted in large part to the Jews, Stalin gave a dogmatic definition of the concept of nationhood: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up, manifested in a common culture.” If even a single one of these characteristics is missing, there is no “nation.” On the basis of this definition, Stalin contended that the Jewish communities living in the various countries did not constitute one nation. Although every one of them might be described as possessing a common “national character,” they were to be regarded as “tribes” or “ethnic entities.” When the Pale of Settlement was abolished, the Jews of Russia would assimilate. There was no farming class among them and they existed only as a minority in various areas where the majority population belonged to a different nation. They are therefore to be classified as “national minorities,” serving the nations among which they live as industrialists, merchants, and pro- fessionals, and were bound to assimilate into these nations. It followed that the Bund’s program of “national autonomy” referred to a “nation whose future is denied and whose existence has still to be proven.”

Stalin, of course, also opposed Zionism. Unlike Lenin, he did not even have any modest positive proposals to make on the solution of national and cultural problems concerning the Jews. In accordance with the Bolshevik approach, he did, however, agree that the Marxist stand on national questions was not absolute, but rather “dialectic,” and depended on the specific circumstances of time and place. Another prominent Bolshevik, S. Shaumian, who generally opposed any positive suggestions about the national question, did in fact concede (in 1914) that under certain conditions it might be possible to accept “national cultural autonomy.” Only one leading Bolshevik, Helena Rozmirovich, is known to have favored such a solution at this stage in the history of the Bolshevik Party.

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Soviet Practice (1917–1939)

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The World Communist Movement

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IN THE UNITED STATES. In the United States, the Bolshevik Revolution led to factional disputes within the two main left-wing parties in existence in 1917, the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party, which had significant Jewish memberships, and also within the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Some of the more moderate Jewish socialist and labor leaders, such as A. Lessin, A. *Cahan, J.B. *Salutzky, B.Z. *Hoffman-Zivion, and H. Rogoff, temporarily sided with the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, in part because the alternative to Bolshevism was the violently antisemitic “white” counterrevolution, but soon adopted a firm anti-Communist stand. Other Jewish socialists threw their lot in permanently with the Communists. As a result of the first split in the Jewish Socialist Federation, a Jewish Federation of the Communist Party was founded under the leadership of A. Bittelman (October 1919). In 1921 the Jewish Socialist Federation seceded from the Socialist Party and a Jewish federation of the Communist-sponsored “Workers’ Party” came into being (1922). In the same year a Yiddish Communist newspaper, *Freiheit, made its appearance, edited by M. *Olgin and S. Epstein, two former members of the Bund. Certain socialist leaders who were steeped in Jewish culture, such as M. *Vinchevsky and K. *Marmor, also lent their support to Communism, largely because of their belief in the prospects of a national Yiddish culture developing in the Soviet Union. There was also considerable Communist influence in trade unions with large Jewish memberships.

Many of the Yiddish schools founded by the *Workmen’s Circle were transferred to Communist sponsorship, and in 1929 Jewish Communists founded the International Workers’ Order. It is estimated that in the 1920s as much as 15% of the American Communist Party’s membership was Jewish, and the percentage of Jews among the Party leadership was undoubtedly higher. Unemployed or economically marginal Jews, especially in such professions as teaching and social work, and in the fur industry and some sectors of the garment trade, were powerfully attracted by Communist ideals and the widely propagandized achievements of Soviet Russia. Jewish membership fell off slightly as a result of Communist support of the Palestinian Arabs against Jews in the riots of 1929. During the Depression, Communist influence was again on the rise and could claim many sympathizers and “fellow travelers” among the American Jewish academic youth and intelligentsia. A further rise came in the mid-1930s, when the Nazis came to power in Germany and the Soviet Union adopted the Popular Front policy. It was at this time that the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (YIKUF) was founded by Communists in the United States. In the late 1930s the Moscow trials and the acceptance by the American Communist Party of the Soviet-Nazi rapprochement (1939–41) resulted again in a sharp drop in Communist influence among American Jews, which was only partly reversed by the events of World War II. Postwar revelations of Stalinist atrocities and systematic Soviet antisemitism permanently put an end to Communism as a serious force in American Jewish life. Fears that the trial and execution of the Communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage would tempt the anti-Communist right in the United States to adopt a platform of antisemitism proved unfounded. The list of Jews who played a prominent role in the leadership and factional infighting of the American Communist Party from its inception is a long one and includes such figures as Israel *Amter, Max *Bedacht, Benjamin *Gitlow, Jay *Lovestone, Jacob *Stachel, William Weinstone, and Alexander Trachtenberg. Many American Jewish authors and intellectuals, some of whom later publicly recanted, were active in editing Communist publications and spreading party propaganda in the 1920s, 1930s, and even later, among them Michael *Gold, Howard *Fast, and Bertram *Wolfe.

After World War II

Although the newly established Communist regimes of Eastern Europe after World War II followed the Soviet line on the Jewish question and the policy toward Israel, there existed some fundamental differences. Most of them permitted the Jews to establish countrywide frameworks for religious and cultural activities, primarily in Yiddish (see *Poland, *Romania, *Hungary, *Czechoslovakia, and *Bulgaria). But, as a rule, the recognition of the Jews as a national minority was not based upon their obligatory individual registration as members of the Jewish “nationality” on identity documents (as in the Soviet Union), and Jews were able to describe themselves either as Jews or as belonging to the respective majority people; in theory, at least, they had the option of national assimilation. Jewish cultural institutions, whose Soviet counterparts had been liquidated in Stalin’s time, continued to function, as, e.g., Yiddish theaters (in Poland and Romania), the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and a similar institute in Budapest. At one period or other, most of these countries permitted large numbers of Jews to migrate to Israel, in spite of the different Soviet policy in this respect.

Communist parties outside the Soviet bloc, including their Jewish sections and Jewish press, reflected the policy of the Soviet Union toward the Jews. In the last years of Stalin’s rule, when every trace of Jewish culture and Jewish institutions had been obliterated in the Soviet Union, they tried to obscure the truth of the situation and even defended the Soviet Union against attacks by Jewish leaders and organizations against the anti-Jewish policy of 1952–53. A radical change occurred after the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956, when Stalin’s crimes were for the first time revealed in the Soviet Union, although the anti-Jewish element in these crimes continued to be ignored and suppressed. The first shock came with the publication (in the New York Jewish Forward) of news of the judicial murder of 26 outstanding Soviet Jewish writers and poets on Aug. 12, 1952. A great stir was caused in the entire Jewish world by an editorial that appeared in the Warsaw Communist newspaper, Folkshtime, in April 1956 headlined “Our Sorrow and Our Comfort.” The article contained a detailed report of the process by which Jewish culture in the Soviet Union, its bearers, and institutions, had been liquidated, a process that had commenced in the 1930s and had reached its tragic culmination in the last years of Stalin’s life. The article expressed the hope that this process would be reversed and Jewish culture and cultural institutions would enter a period of revival.

A storm of indignation swept the Communist movement in the West, especially among Jewish Communists. In Canada, the veteran Communist leader J.B. Salsberg published a series of articles in the Communist press that contained a report on the meetings of a delegation of the Canadian Communist Party, headed by him, with Khrushchev in Moscow in 1957 at which the Soviet leader’s antisemitic inclinations had been clearly indicated. Salsberg seceded from the Communist Party, and many Jews and non-Jews followed his example. In Britain, another veteran Jewish Communist, Hyman *Levy, published a pamphlet entitled Jews and the National Question (1958), in which he denounced Soviet policy toward the Jews after an extensive visit to the Soviet Union and talks with Soviet leaders. He was promptly expelled from the party. In the United States, Howard Fast left the Communist Party under similar circumstances, stressing the Jewish aspect of his decision in The Naked God (1957); so did several members of the editorial staff of the Daily Worker (which thereupon turned into a weekly). In Latin America, sizable groups of Jews left the party and embarked upon the publication of their own organs (called, e.g., Mir Viln Lebn, “We Want to Live”) expressing their opposition to Soviet policy of forced assimilation of Jews and destruction of Jewish culture and institutions; eventually, most of them joined Zionist Socialist parties.

In non-Jewish Communist publications, such as L’Unità in Italy, and theoretical Communist journals in Britain, Australia, and other countries, the Soviet Union also received severe criticism of its discriminatory policy toward the Jews. In 1963, when Kichko’s antisemitic book was published in Kiev, almost the entire Communist press in the West joined in a sharp protest, and the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party found itself obliged to disassociate itself publicly from the book.

Far-reaching changes also took place after the Six-Day War (1967), when the Soviet Union launched a worldwide campaign against “international Zionism” marked by violently antisemitic overtones. The Communist Party in Israel (see below) split into a pro-Israel and pro-Arab faction (Maki and Rakaḥ , respectively); a similar split, which in most cases did not, however, extend to organizational separation but confined itself to differences of political attitude, also occurred in several Communist parties elsewhere. In New York, the Morning Freiheit adopted a stand akin to that of Maki (which considered that in the Six-Day War Israel defended its freedom and existence), while The Daily World followed the anti-Israel line. In France, L’Humanité took a sharp anti-Israel stand, and reasserted the old Communist call to the Jews to assimilate to their host nations (editorial published on March 26, 1970), while the Naye Prese, the Communist Yiddish daily in Paris, was much more moderate in its attitude toward Israel and continued to affirm the Jewish right to an independent national culture. The “Jewish crisis” in the international Communist camp was further exacerbated by the events that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and even more by the stringent antisemitic policy in Poland from March 1968, which was accompanied by what amounted to the expulsion of veteran Jewish Communists from the country. Adherence to the Communist Party and the affirmation of a positive Judaism of any kind had become mutually exclusive. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, Jewish affiliation virtually ended, as only diehards remained associated with the small political groupings that clung to the old ideology under altered names. [Moshe Mishkinsky]

IN EREẓ ISRAEL. A Communist group first appeared in Palestine during 1919, within the extreme left Mifleget Po’alim Soẓialistim (MPS), “Socialist Workers’ Party,” but it soon disintegrated. Under the British Mandate the Communist Party was outlawed. In 1921 the Palestine Communist Party was organized illegally, by a combination of extreme left splinter groups, and affiliated with the Comintern in 1924. Its entire history was a series of internal splits and secessions, as well as conflicts with Zionism and the British authorities. Its course was always clouded by alternating Jewish-Arab cooperation and friction within the Party.
From 1924 onward, on Comintern orders, efforts were made to “Arabize” the Party, the argument being that the country would always remain Arab, since Zionism was at best utopian, and at worst a servant to British imperialism. Jewish leaders were ousted, but attempts made to recruit Arabs proved largely unsuccessful; the richer Arabs were averse to Communism, while others, if at all politically minded, favored Arab nationalism. Although sympathy with the Russian October Revolution was widespread in the Palestine labor movement, during the 1920s only a splinter group of the *Gedud ha-Avodah broke with Zionism and eventually migrated to the Soviet Union. From 1936 to 1939 the Party openly supported the Arab revolt, including the anti-Jewish terrorism. Still, in 1939 the Party was quite isolated from the Arabs, while its support of the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement jolted the remaining Jewish members. From 1939 it operated in separate Jewish and Arab groups.

Further splits occurred over the Soviet Union’s support of a Jewish state in 1948, when some of the Arab members of the party were against the Soviet Union’s vote for partition. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Party reunited under the name of “Maki” (Miflagah Komunistit Yisre’elit- “Israel Communist Party”). It operated legally, but, as an anti-Zionist party in a Zionist state, its influence was negligible. Its following among Jews rose in the 1950s, when mass immigration caused economic hardship and when a leftist splinter group of *Mapam, led by Moshe *Sneh, joined Maki; but it dwindled again with the prosperity of the 1960s. Although the party always looked for support among Israel’s Arabs, it intensified its appeals to the Arabs in this period. In each election to the Knesset, Maki received greater support, proportionally, from Arabs than from Jews, e.g., in 1961 about half of Maki’s 42,111 votes came from Israel Arabs, who then constituted only a ninth of the population. Some of the Arabs voted Communist in response to Soviet support of Arab nationalism, while, for precisely the same reason, many Jews refrained from supporting the Party. Tensions on this point were the main cause of the rift in Maki, generally on Jewish-Arab lines, which occurred in the summer of 1965. The Arab-led faction formed the New Communist List (Reshimah Komunistit Ḥadashah, or Rakaḥ), with a more extreme anti-government attitude and complete obedience to Moscow.

At first the Soviet Union tended to endorse Maki and Rakaḥ , but after the 1967 Six-Day War it recognized Rakaḥ only. After the split Maki took a line increasingly independent of Moscow in all matters pertaining to Israel-Arab relations, reflecting the fundamental Jewish nationalism of its membership. This became more pronounced after the Six-Day War, when Maki openly criticized Moscow’s anti-Israel attitude and largely endorsed Israel government acts and policy. At its conference in 1968 Maki adopted a program which included not only pro-Israel plans but also, for the first time, a recognition that every Jew, even in a Socialist country, should be allowed to choose among assimilation, Jewish cultural life, or migration to Israel. Some Communist parties abroad, mainly in the West, but also that of Romania, continued to maintain “fraternal” relations with Maki, in spite of Moscow’s denunciations of Maki’s “chauvinism.”

Although membership statistics were not publicized, the party would appear to have had close to 5,000 members in the 1950s and about 3,000 in the early 1960s. In 1961, according to the report of Maki’s congress, 74.3% were Jews and 25.7% Arabs; 83.8% had joined after 1948 and 27% after 1957, an indication of the rapid turnover among the rank and file. The leadership, which had changed often in pre-state days, remained fairly constant from 1948 until the 1965 rift. In the late 1960s the Jewish leaders of Maki were Shemuel Mikunis and Moshe *Sneh, while Meir Wilner and the Arabs Tawfiq Toubi and Emil Habibi headed Rakaḥ . All five were Knesset members at one time or another.

The party always stressed continuous, often strident, propaganda. Many joined the V (Victory) League after June 1941, and later, the various friendship societies with the Soviet Union, several of which were front organizations. The Party’s written propaganda increased before elections, and it maintained a continuous flow of newspapers and periodicals in Hebrew (Kol ha-Am (“Voice of the People”)), Arabic, French, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Yiddish. After the 1965 split, both Communist parties continued publishing in Hebrew and Arabic, with Maki publishing in other languages, to reach new Jewish immigrants. After winning just one seat in the 1969 Knesset elections, Maki was transformed into Moked under Meir *Pa’il in the early 1970s and effectively vanished from the political map. Rakaḥ changed its name to Ḥadash (Ḥazit Demokratitle-Shalomu-le-Shivyon,“Democratic Front for Peace and Equality”) before the 1977 Knesset elections, joined now by Jewish leftists, and was able to maintain a Knesset faction of 3–5 members into the 21st century as a nationalist Arab party, despite the disintegration of the Communist Bloc.

[3bdushakur]

Bibliography: R.L. Braham et al. (eds.), Jews in the Communist World 1945–1962 (1963), a bibliography; I. Shein (ed.), Bibliografye fun Oysgabes... (1963), 13–28; Gesher, 12 (Heb.; 1966), nos. 47–48; G. Aronson et al. (eds.), Russian Jewry 1917–1967 (1969); S.M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union (1951); B.Z. Goldberg, The Jewish Problem in the Soviet Union (1961); Yidishe Komunisten vegen der Yidn Frage in Ratenferband, 2 vols. (1958); A. Yarmolinsky, The Jews and Other Minor Nationalities under the Soviets (1928); A. Leon, The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation (1950); A. Bittelman, Program for Survival; the Communist Position on the Jewish Question (1947); E. Collotti, Die Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands 1918–1933 (1961), includes bibliography; L. Poliakov, De l’antisionisme à l’antisémitisme (1970); C. Sloves, in: The New Leader (Sep. 14, 1959); H. Levy, Jews and the National Question (1958); M.K. Dziewanowski, The Communist Party of Poland (1959), index, s.v. Bund and Jewish Problem; J. Kovacs, in: JSOS, 8 (1946), 146–70; E.R. Kutas, in: Journal of Central European Affairs (Jan. 1949), 377–89; M. Epstein, The Jew and Communism: The Story of Early Communist Victories and Ultimate Defeats in the Jewish Community, U.S.A. 1919–1941 (1959); S. Zacharias, PPR un Kamf un Boy (1952); idem, Di Komunistishe Bavegung Tsvishn der Yidisher Ar-betendike Befelkerung in Poyln (1954); idem, Menshen fun KPP (1964); R. Garaudy, Toute la vérité (1970); M. Jarblum, Soixante ans de probléme juif dans la théorie et la pratique du bolchévisme (1964); M. Dec- ter, in: Foreign Affairs (Jan. 1963). IN EREẓ ISRAEL: W.Z. Laqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East (19613), passim; N. List, in: Keshet, 5–9 (1963–67); G.Z. Yisre’eli (Laqueur), MPS–MAKI (Heb. 1953); H. Bazhuza, Ẓ e’adim Rishonim be-Netiv ha-Komunizm ha-Yisre’eli (1956); M.M. Czudnowski and J.M. Landau, The Israeli Com- munist Party and the Elections for the Fifth Knesset 1961 (1965); J.M. Landau, The Arabs in Israel: A Political Study (1969), passim.

[CumSavorer4385]

Did not read because the OP is a gay Jew.

[3bdushakur]

Did not read because the OP is a gay Jew.

You didn't read this because you can't. You are an animal, animals don't read.

[Certified MENSA Genius Brain (smart)]

Good to see we have someone to pick up for Babyshark in terms of posting huge swaths of copy and pasted text and links to videos nobody will click.

[3bdushakur]

Good to see we have someone to pick up for Babyshark in terms of posting huge swaths of copy and pasted text and links to videos nobody will click.

Not my objective (and not my problem). As the title states: "References"

I read it (and watch the videos), and posted it. Now I know what you don't, if you decide not to read it. So the jokes on whoever doesn't read.

The difference between me and your resident Christian is that I am Muslim, one. Two, I read and analyze the content. I don't just post ambiguous content or videos with misinformation (as is evident from BabySharks [BS] posts). When I present something, I present it with it's proof and evidence, and the added bonus of clowning on Marx and CumSavorer.

Imagine of all of mankind were as lazy as this, not to read even the tiny ammount that I write or share, then there would be no authors writing books. The issue here is that you people are lazy. Too lazy to read even the tiny ammount of text I posted (or of anything else) and this is why people like BS share faulty and downright erroneous content, because they don't read or verify or investigate, they just pull things from where ever they feel is correct.

You may not care about the thread, or the subject, which is up to you. But writing these things, reading and whatnot are not an issue for me. It isn't a chore and I enjoy it as practice writing for when I sit down to actually write something.

[CumSavorer4385]

Good to see we have someone to pick up for Babyshark in terms of posting huge swaths of copy and pasted text and links to videos nobody will click.

Not my objective (and not my problem). As the title states: "References"

I read it (and watch the videos), and posted it. Now I know what you don't, if you decide not to read it. So the jokes on whoever doesn't read.

The difference between me and your resident Christian is that I am Muslim, one. Two, I read and analyze the content. I don't just post ambiguous content or videos with misinformation (as is evident from BabySharks [BS] posts). When I present something, I present it with it's proof and evidence, and the added bonus of clowning on Marx and CumSavorer.

Shut up you faggot.

[3bdushakur]

Good to see we have someone to pick up for Babyshark in terms of posting huge swaths of copy and pasted text and links to videos nobody will click.

Not my objective (and not my problem). As the title states: "References"

I read it (and watch the videos), and posted it. Now I know what you don't, if you decide not to read it. So the jokes on whoever doesn't read.

The difference between me and your resident Christian is that I am Muslim, one. Two, I read and analyze the content. I don't just post ambiguous content or videos with misinformation (as is evident from BabySharks [BS] posts). When I present something, I present it with it's proof and evidence, and the added bonus of clowning on Marx and CumSavorer.

Shut up you faggot.

Would you look at that?

Just like a man can't be a woman, or a woman a man,

likewise, the stupid person is not intelligent, and the intelligent is not stupid.

And, the man is not an animal and the animal is not a man:

But, since you are an animal, like cattle (worse actually), let me make it clear:

Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Mooo

Moo Moo?

Moo! Moo Moo Moo.

[CumSavorer4385]

Good to see we have someone to pick up for Babyshark in terms of posting huge swaths of copy and pasted text and links to videos nobody will click.

Not my objective (and not my problem). As the title states: "References"

I read it (and watch the videos), and posted it. Now I know what you don't, if you decide not to read it. So the jokes on whoever doesn't read.

The difference between me and your resident Christian is that I am Muslim, one. Two, I read and analyze the content. I don't just post ambiguous content or videos with misinformation (as is evident from BabySharks [BS] posts). When I present something, I present it with it's proof and evidence, and the added bonus of clowning on Marx and CumSavorer.

Shut up you faggot.

Would you look at that?

Just like a man can't be a woman, or a woman a man,

likewise, the stupid person is not intelligent, and the intelligent is not stupid.

And, the man is not an animal and the animal is not a man:

But, since you are an animal, like cattle (worse actually), let me make it clear:

Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Mooo

Moo Moo?

Moo! Moo Moo Moo.

I did not read this gay shit you faggot.

[tora is a simp bitch for billionaires]

Moo! Moo Moo Moo.

huge meltdown

[3bdushakur]

Moo! Moo Moo Moo.

huge meltdown

Like an airplane, over your head

[3bdushakur]

Good to see we have someone to pick up for Babyshark in terms of posting huge swaths of copy and pasted text and links to videos nobody will click.

Not my objective (and not my problem). As the title states: "References"

I read it (and watch the videos), and posted it. Now I know what you don't, if you decide not to read it. So the jokes on whoever doesn't read.

The difference between me and your resident Christian is that I am Muslim, one. Two, I read and analyze the content. I don't just post ambiguous content or videos with misinformation (as is evident from BabySharks [BS] posts). When I present something, I present it with it's proof and evidence, and the added bonus of clowning on Marx and CumSavorer.

Shut up you faggot.

Would you look at that?

Just like a man can't be a woman, or a woman a man,

likewise, the stupid person is not intelligent, and the intelligent is not stupid.

And, the man is not an animal and the animal is not a man:

But, since you are an animal, like cattle (worse actually), let me make it clear:

Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Mooo

Moo Moo?

Moo! Moo Moo Moo.

I did not read this gay shit you faggot.

You can't

[Certified MENSA Genius Brain (smart)]

This guy is mooing like a cow now rofl