The Split Within Poale Zion’s Left Wing: Two Versions of Jewish National Communism

The organizations of the Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Poale-Zion) in Ukraine and Belarus experienced two major splits during the revolutionary events of the 1917-1920. The first of them was the classical form of the division into the left and the right wing. In 1917 the left wing of the party was formed but it was not the separate party then. In 1919 the leaders of the Poale Zion’s right wing, who were loyal to the authority of the Ukrainian People Republic, were moved to the Kamianets-Podilskyi and later to the Tarnów in Poland with the leaders of the Directorate of Ukraine. Unlike them, the representatives of the party’s left wing remained on the territory controlled by the Red Army. These groups received the status of the Soviet party. Thereby their legal activity in Soviet Ukraine and Belarus became possible.

In 1919 the second split had place. The left wing of the JSDWP(PZ) has divided into two groups both of which considered themselves as the leftist. The first one was the Jewish Communist Party (Poale Zion). It was merged with the Bolsheviks in 1922. The second one has changed its name to the Jewish Communist Workers’ Party (Poale Zion) in 1923 and has operated until 1928.

These two parties had the major ideological distinctions. We plan to trace them in our paper on the base of the archival sources and the press published by these groups as well as the documents of the Bolsheviks and some Ukrainian national communist parties.