The spring and summer of 1917 saw the formation of religious parties that often acted as a united front, demanding in their platforms that Saturday be a non-working day and funding for community institutions; and also an eight hour workday, the right for workers to strike, freedom of religion, rights to religious education, and land reform according to the SR platform. One such party appeared in the summer of 1917 after the merger of a number of Moscow and Petrograd groups under the name Ahdut (Unity). The same moniker was adopted somewhat later by Jewish religious groups in Ukraine. Such groups considered themselves to be representative of the religious majority of Russian Jewry, “the true people, silent and scattered” in the words of one of the founders of the party Netsakh Israel.51
Among the socialist parties, the largest, most influential and most involved in Russian politics was the Bund, which had 33,700 members in December of 1917. The Bund's politics fell largely along Menshevik lines. In terms of Jewish policy, the Bund opposed the “romanticized utopia” of the Zionists and the “clerical aiders and abettors” of the bourgeoisie, and declared the language of the Jewish working masses to be Yiddish rather than Hebrew.
In 1917, the Bund took a fiercely anti-Bolshevik stance. Soon after the February Revolution, the Bund newsletter Arbeiter Shtime declared Leninism to be a disease that was weakening the revolution.52 They would later depict Lenin as an anarcho-syndicalist, mocking his slogan for the immediate realization of the socialist revolution.53
In May of 1917, the Jewish Socialist Workers' Party (SERP) and the Zionist-Socialists (Zionist-Socialist Workers' Party) combined, creating the United Jewish Socialist Workers' Party (OESP), or, in Yiddish, Fareynikte. The party had a significant influence in Ukraine. They were close to the SRs, whom they later joined in a bloc during the parliamentary elections. SERP's founder, Kh. O. Zhitlovskii, had been one of the founders of the Social Revolutionaries, as well as the ideological protégé of its leader, V. M. Chernov. The new party collaborated with the Mensheviks in the organized labor movement.
Poalei Zion, with its idiosyncratic ideology a hybrid of Marxism and Zionism, was more proletarian in character. Though the party had only 2,500 members on the eve of the February Revolution, by the summer of 1917 its membership had grown to between 12,000 and 16,000. Politically, they were close to the Menshevik-Internationalists. Some members of the party sympathized with the Bolsheviks, but the Zionist roots of their platform presented an insurmountable obstacle to a full merger. As in the Bund, there was no unanimity with regard to policy concerning the war. In the Ukraine they supported the Central Rada.
Dubnov's Folkspartei, which was comprised mostly of Jewish intellectuals, was a “party for those who don't belong to any party,” as a contemporary once wittily remarked.54
The final major participants, though they did not enjoy widespread support among the Jewish working masses, were the “Jewish Kadets.” They advocated full civil rights for all Jews, as well as the maintenance of religious and educational rights, including the use of Yiddish and Hebrew as languages for instruction, and the preservation of the religious character of most Jewish schools. This Jewish People's Group did not, however, agitate for autonomy from the Russian Empire. The group's influence was most easily defined in terms of the personalities of their leaders, such as Vinaver, G. B. Sliozberg, and Gruzenberg (in as much as the latter was any kind of party politician).
In both Russia and Ukraine, the Jewish population was fragmented. A local Jewish Congress which took place in Kiev May 9–11, 1917, quickly degenerated, in the words of one participant, “into an occasion of constant contention and strife among the Russian Jews.” The breakers of the peace turned out to be members of the Bund, who were clearly in the minority. On the second day of the conference, a rabbi from Berdichev asked all present to stand in honor of the Torah. The Bund members refused. The scandal shocked the writer S. A. An-sky, who claimed that the Torah “is not only a religious symbol, but also a symbol of Jewish culture, which has persisted for centuries.” It was in honor of this culture that everyone had been asked to stand. The incident ended there, though the Bund members nonetheless left the conference on the final day, with its leader, M. G. Rafes, calling the remaining attendees the “black and blue Jewish bloc.”55
Disputes between members of differing political tendencies would continue until the last days of the Provisional Government. Several days before the Bolshevik coup, M. L. Goldshtein (representing the Jewish People's Group) gave a series of reservedly patriotic speeches in the Council of the Russian Republic, which were met with withering criticism from N. Baru (Poalei Zion) and G. M. Erlikh (Bund). One author's account of this soon-to-be-defunct organ of power sadly noted that “only the Jews found it necessary to use the Council of the Republic for the settling of scores between each other.”56
Thus it is impossible to speak of any kind of united Jewish politics. The politicized sections of Jewish society were torn by the same contradictions present in Russian society. Any hope of creating a kind of all-Jewish party that would put forth a united political program proved to be illusory. The political differences, and corresponding social and culture differences, proved to be too great.57
Elections in Jewish communities, including those for delegates to the All-Russian Jewish Congress and the Russian Constituent Assembly showed the following preferences. On the local level, ten gubernia elections in Ukraine had the following breakdown: Zionists (36 percent), the Bund (14.4 percent), Ahdut (10 percent), the United Jewish Socialist Workers' Party (OESRP, 8.2 percent), Poalei Zion (6.3 percent), the Folkspartei (3 percent), the Jewish People's Group (1 percent) with all other local organizations comprising the remaining 20 percent. In the elections to the Jewish Congress, the results demonstrated even greater support for the Zionists, who won 60 percent of the positions, whereas socialist parties won 25 percent, with religious parties winning 12 percent.58 In Petrograd and the surrounding areas in January of 1918, only one-third of eligible voters participated. The Zionists' successes were impressive, with eight races won, while the Bund, the Jewish People's Group, Orthodox parties, and the Folkspartei won one race each.59
Elections to the Constituent Assembly were even more indicative. The Jewish National Bloc, which included Zionist and religious parties, received 417,215 votes out of the 498,198 total cast for Jewish parties. The other parties did not fare as well (the Bund received 31,123 and Poalei Zion 20,538, with 29,332 votes going to other socialist parties). In Minsk, the National Bloc received 65,046 votes, whereas other parties managed only 11,064; in Kiev the results were 24,790 for the National Bloc versus 12,471 for the Bund and Menshevik coalition.60 From the National Bloc list the following members were elected to the Constituent Assembly: The Zionists Iu. D. Brutskus, A. M. Goldstein, the Moscow rabbi Ia. I. Maze, V. I. Temkin, D. M. Kogan-Bernshtein, N. S. Syrkin, and O. O. Gruzenberg, who at the time was close with Zionist circles. D. V. Lvovich was elected from the party list of the SRs and OESRP, along with the Bundist G. I. Lure, who was chosen from the party list of the Bund and the RSDRP (SDs). A number of Jews were also elected to the Assembly from other parties (for the most part the socialist parties). The Secretary of the Constituent Assembly for the one day of its existence was the Socialist Revolutionary M. V. Vishniak.61
The overwhelming majority of Jewish voters voted for Jewish parties. Determining the number of Jews who voted for Russian political parties, and which parties they voted for, is a difficult task. How many Jews followed the plea of Vinaver, who asked them to vote for the People's Freedom Party (Kadets), “Not one Jewish vote should be thrown away in this struggle for culture and order against anarchy and backwardness”? How many instead voted for the Bolsheviks, who promised a quick end to the war, but who Vinaver and his allies had identified as forces of this same anarchy? Unfortunately, we may never know the