Jewish Disloyalty 1912 Duma Elections Portnoy

Vladimir Medem: The Life and Soul of a Legendary Jewish Socialist, by Samuel A. Portnoy. 1979

Zydokomuna: Fuzzy Boundary Between Jewish Socialists and Jewish Communists, and Between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Why 1912 Duma Elections Meant Jewish Disloyalty to Poland

This work covers the life of Vladimir Medem, from his beginnings as an educated, Russified Jew with minimal ties to Judaism. Medem became an avowed Marxist (p. 129), and believed that both rival Jewish factions–the assimilationists and the nationalists–were wrong. (p. 263). He became an ardent socialist, and associated with many named socialist (and later Communist) personages. Later, the Medem Sanitarium (near Warsaw) was named in his honor.

This memoir is not limited to biography and radical politics. It also provides a great deal of information about the Bund.

I now examine a few specific topics:

ANTICS WITH SEMANTICS: ZYDOKOMUNA UNDER DIFFERENT POLITICAL LABELS

The term “socialist”, as used by Vladimir Medem and editor Samuel A. Portnoy, is an amorphous one. It is obvious that these groups differed primarily in terms of personalities, priorities, tactics, perceived need or lack of need for a transitional industrial capitalist phase before the revolution, attitudes towards the specialness or non-specialness of Jewish concerns, etc. For want of a better name, I consider these socialist groups variously proto-Communist, pre-Communist, quasi-Communist, or Communist lite.

Consider the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Medem found an initial minimal difference between them, (quote) A more profound ideological differentiation evolved only later. At the point in time with which I am dealing, there was as yet no sign of a serious schism. (unquote). (p. 288).

Nor was there any sharp line between “Social Democrats”, “socialists”, and Communists. Many of the so-described socialists or Social Democrats (e. g, Feliks Dzierzhinsky and Adolf Warski) later became outright Communists. After the Russian Revolution, Medem professed disdain for the totalitarian aspects of Soviet Communism, and compared it with the totalitarian aspects of the Jacobins of the French Revolution (p. 279, 508), while his wife, Gina Medem, became pro-Soviet. (p. 498). According to Portnoy, the Bund also became pro-Soviet no later than about the time of the Russian Revolution. (p. 508).

PRO-RUSSIAN ORIENTATION OF ERSTWHILE POLISH JEWS

Within decades after the Partitions of Poland, the Jews of Russian-occupied eastern Poland had lost whatever affinity that once had for Poland. Editor Portnoy describes the Jewish mindset in the mid 19th century, (quote) This was the period of the sixties, the springtime of Alexander II’s reign. The attitude toward Jews was liberal, and Jewish society itself responded to it with a passionate urge to coalesce with the Russian people. The typical Jewish INTELLIGENT [member of the intelligentsia] considered himself a Russian. And what was there to bind him to Jewishness at the time? Religion? It had run its course. The idea of nationality? It had not yet emerged. So that people became, or at least desired to become, genuine Russians. Such was the nature of the whole environment. People wished to forget their Jewish origins. And in fact they gradually did proceed to forget. (unquote). (pp. 2-3).

In later decades of the 19th century, Jews commonly turned away from this pro-Russian orientation. They increasingly identified with Yiddishism (Bundism), Zionism, and political radicalism.

CHARACTERIZING POLES AND JEWS

Vladimir Medem considered “haughty pride” to be often seen among Poles. (p. 308). As for his fellow Jews, he had this impression when he visited, in 1904, a colony of eastern European Jews living in Amsterdam, (quote) The Jewish quarters are tremendously interesting; they represent a world apart. Typically Jewish, they are unkempt, noisy, all trading and shouting. I had the illusion of being somewhere in Vilno [Wilno, Vilnius]…(unquote). (p. 319).

IMPLICATIONS OF THE 1912 DUMA ELECTIONS: JEWISH DISLOYALTY TO POLAND. POLAND IS HARMED

According to the standard narrative, Roman Dmowski was the bad guy who, based on a whim, ordered the boycott of Jews because of the Duma elections of 1912. The truth is rather different.

Editor Portnoy identifies socialist Eugeniusz Jagiello as a member of the left-PPS (Polish Socialist Party). In addition, Portnoy describes the Polish Social Democratic Party (also known as the SDKPL or SDKPiL) as closer to the Bolsheviks, and the PPS as closer to the Mensheviks. (pp. 484-485).

Although neither Portnoy nor Medem elaborate further on this subject, the information they present is revealing. It helps the reader understand the implications of the election of Jagiello thanks to strong Jewish support, and the ensuing retaliatory Endek boycott of Jews, led by Roman Dmowski. The election of Jagiello not only meant that Poles were deprived of a representative in the Duma who would support Polish national interests: It also meant that Poles were now represented by a far-leftist quasi-Communist who, if anything, would go in the opposite direction of Polish national interests. Clearly, the Jewish vote was not a vote against a particular candidate or political party. It was a vote against Poland herself!