David Rosenberg describes the history and legacy of the Bund
The Bund was a secular Jewish socialist movement created in Vilna (Vilnius) in 1897. Its name means “union” in Yiddish. It grew out of working class struggles against exploitation and oppression in Imperial Russia’s “Pale of Settlement”, where Jews were forced to live. The Bund fought in the wider uprisings against the Tsarist regime in 1905 and 1917.
It was born in the same year as the Zionist movement, which argued that Jews could only be free in their own nation state. The Bund rejected Zionism. It fought instead for a secure Jewish future by struggling for social justice, and for equality for all minorities, where they lived. it warned that a Jewish state would bring permanent bloody conflict in Palestine and would not solve antisemitism.
The Bund’s most creative phase was in inter-war Poland. In many Polish cities, including Warsaw, Jews comprised a third of the population. The Bund, supported by Polish socialists, led the struggle against antisemitism and the far right it. It created an incredible array of progressive institutions that helped it become the dominant Jewish political force in Poland by the end of the decade.
Under Nazi occupation it worked with communists and left wing-Zionists in the ghetto resistance. The Nazis murdered 90% of Poland’s Jews. The Bund and its historical achievements were decimated. But its ideas of progressive multiculturalism where Jews work with other minorities against oppression and for full equality and cultural freedom, and its critique of Zionism live on. To be a Bundist in 2023 means to be proud of that radical history and fight for a radical future.
