General Jewish Labour Bund in Belarus

The Belarusian chapter of the General Jewish Labour Bund was among political parties forming the government and parliament of the Belarusian People's Republic gaining independence in 1918.

Members of the Bund became members of the Parliament. Bund member Mojżesz Gutman even became a Minister without portfolio in the Government of the newly created republic and drafted its constitution. The Bund left later the government bodies of the BNR.

Contrarily to the attitude of the Communist party in Ukraine and Russia proper, the Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Lithuania and Belorussia agreed to integrate in its ranks the local Bund, renamed Belarusian Kombund in April 1920 after the Twelfth Conference of the Bund on April 12–19, 1920 in Gomel, into an autonomous Jewish Communist Party, thus not forcing individual members either to join directly the party or through the Yevsektsiya. They even demanded the Yevsektsiya to be dissolved into the Kombund. This seems however to have been a mere agreement on paper that was never implemented, a manoeuver by the Communists to attract support from Bundists as the Bund was more powerful than them in the Belarusian cities.[1]

In 1921, at its Thirteenth Conference of the still "General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia", i.e. then in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, a majority of the Bundist delegates decided to dissolve the party, and part of its membership joined the R.C.P.(B.) on the basis of the rules of admission,[2] while the minority formed the Social Democratic Bund.

In West Belarus, that was part of interwar Poland, the remnants of the party finally merged into the Polish Bund, while many activists chose to join the Polish Communist Party.

References

  1. ↑ Levin, Nora (1990). The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917: Paradox of Survival. New York: New York University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-8147-5051-3. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
  2. ↑ explanatory note to Lenin, Vladimir I. (April 19 – May 6, 1920). "To Members of the Politbureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.)". Marxists Internet Archive. Lenin Internet Archive (2003). Retrieved 2009-11-10., from documents archived at the Central Party Archives, Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.C., C.P.S.TJ.
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