Search Results

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 50 items for :

  • All: Poalei Zion Archive x
  • Search level: All x
Clear All
Poalei Zion Archive

The Poalei Zion Archive, held by the Russian Centre of Conservation and Study of Records for Modern History (formerly the Central Party archive) in Moscow, is now available for the first time in convenient, fully indexed microfiche format from IDC Publishers. We offer this archive collection on microfiche together with an electronic guide in two languages. This archive material, which has been inaccessible for the last 70 years (being assigned to the category of secret documents), is now available for research.

Poalei Zion (Labour Zionism) in Russia and the USSR
Poalei Zion was one of the organizations in the worldwide Zionist movement which, unlike the others, made active use of the slogans of Socialism. The Poalei Zion groups emerged in Russia in 1890 as clandestine organizations, were legalized following the revolution of 1917, and were active in the USSR until 1928 when the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) arrested many members of these organizations. Their basic goal was to create a Jewish national state and to move Jews from all over the world to Palestine. In order to fulfil the emigrants' political aims, the Jewish Social-Democratic (from 1923, “Communist”) Labour Party of Poalei Zion organized a vast network of Jewish Poalei-Zionist clubs, libraries, schools, trade unions, cooperatives and cultural centres, and published numerous newspapers, journals, brochures and books in the printing houses of Moscow, Petrograd, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa and Berdichev.

Hidden archive collection
The Poalei Zion documents now in the Central Party Archive were received from the Archive of Revolution and Foreign Policy in the 1930s, and from the Kiev Provincial Historical Archive in the 1940s. Part of the material came directly from the KGB Archive in Lubianka in recent years. The NKVD confiscated the documents of Poalei Zion for use as evidence in the 1920s, when many members of this organization were arrested.
For years, fond 272 "Poalei Zion organizations in the USSR (1917-1928)" was not processed and the documents were kept simply in unordered piles. Only in 1987 were the documents completely systematized in 758 files and described in three inventories (opisi). However, even then the fond did not enter scholarly circulation, since it was still assigned to the category of secret documents. Only since 1990 have researchers been able to study the documents of Poalei Zion.

Various historical materials
The Archive of Poalei Zion sheds light on various issues of social history: the emigration of the Jewish population of various countries to Palestine and the activities of various Jewish parties and organizations.
• It includes the documents of Jewish political parties and organizations such as the Jewish Social-Democratic (from 1923, 'Communist') Labour Party of Poalei Zion (Russian abbreviation: ESDRP - EKRP Poalei Zion); the Jewish Communist Party of Poalei Zion (EKP Poalei Zion); the United Jewish Socialist Labour Party; the Jewish Party of Socialist-Territorialists; the Jewish Socialist (from 1923, “Communist”) Union of Working Youth (Ugend Poalei Zion) affiliated with the first two parties listed above; the Central Jewish Club, and also of the Palestine Labour Foundation, etc.
• The archive includes works and correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement, among them two Israeli presidents (born in Eastern Europe) Ben Gurion and Ben Zvi; B. Borokhov, the ideologist of Russian Zionism; as well as by other figures active in the Palestine movement.
• The archive contains a large collection of national and local newspapers and journals, which now have great rarity value.
• In addition to political literature, there are also works of creative artistic writing, for instance a collection of poetry by the well-known poet David Hofstein, with illustrations by Marc Chagall (1922).
• Volumes or other collections of documents located in the central state archives of the USSR; works prepared for publication in 1926-1927, including Iz istorii Evreiskoi kommunisticheskoi rabochei partii (From the History of the Jewish Communist Labour Party), and O poalei-tsionistskoi mysli za 20 let (On Poalei-Zionist Thought over 20 Years).
• Special sheets of signatures have been preserved, as have postage stamps, lottery tickets and receipt books showing specific sums received from organizations and individuals.

Most of the material (55-60%) is in Yiddish, 20-25% in Russian, and 15-20% in Hebrew. There are several documents in either German, French, Arabic, Ukrainian or Polish. The Yiddish documents have been annotated and the annotations are attached to the corresponding materials. There are no Poalei Zion documents from before 1917 in RTsKhIDNI.

RTsKhIDNI
The Russian Centre of Conservation and Study of Records for Modern History, Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia I izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii, or RTsKhIDNI), founded in October 1991, is the custodian of the extensive archival collections of the former Central Party archive. From 1920 until 1991 the Central Party Archive existed as an integral part of the scholarly research centre of the Russian Communist Party, which was known as the Institute of Marxism-Leninism (Institut Marksizma-Leninizma) in Moscow.
The centre possesses the richest collection of documents and materials on the social and political history of Russia and many countries in Europe, Asia and America. It contains more than 1.6 million files, 9,300 photos and 28,000 feet of film. Here are to be found the documents of various political parties, (both social-democratic and communist), and international organizations, the correspondence of well-known political figures, and historical evidence of the French revolution of the eighteenth century, the 1848 revolutions in Europe and the First, Second and Third Internationals.

This collection includes the sections:
Correspondence of Central Committee ESDRP with Regional Organizations
Documents on the History of ESDRP - Periodicals and Serials published by ESDRP
Jewish Communist Party of Poalei Zion, the United Jewish Socailist Labour Party
Jewish Social-Democratic Labour Party ESDRP
Sections of Central Committee of ESDRP: Military, Financial, Cultural, ...
Poalei Zion Archive
Documents, papers, correspondence, political literature, newspapers, journals, periodicals, serials, sheets of signatures, lottery tickets, postage stamps, receipt books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and publications relating to the activities of various Jewish political parties and organizations, and also concerning Jewish emigration to Palestine. Includes the correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement (such as Ben Gurion, Ben Zvi, and B. Borokhov), as well as works of creative writing (e.g, poetry by David Hofstein with illustrations by Marc Chagall).

This collection is also included in the Poalei Zion Archive collection.
Poalei Zion Archive
Documents, papers, correspondence, political literature, newspapers, journals, periodicals, serials, sheets of signatures, lottery tickets, postage stamps, receipt books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and publications relating to the activities of various Jewish political parties and organizations, and also concerning Jewish emigration to Palestine. Includes the correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement (such as Ben Gurion, Ben Zvi, and B. Borokhov), as well as works of creative writing (e.g, poetry by David Hofstein with illustrations by Marc Chagall).

This collection is also included in the Poalei Zion Archive collection.
Poalei Zion Archive
Documents, papers, correspondence, political literature, newspapers, journals, periodicals, serials, sheets of signatures, lottery tickets, postage stamps, receipt books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and publications relating to the activities of various Jewish political parties and organizations, and also concerning Jewish emigration to Palestine. Includes the correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement (such as Ben Gurion, Ben Zvi, and B. Borokhov), as well as works of creative writing (e.g, poetry by David Hofstein with illustrations by Marc Chagall).

This collection is also included in the Poalei Zion Archive collection.
Poalei Zion Archive
Documents, papers, correspondence, political literature, newspapers, journals, periodicals, serials, sheets of signatures, lottery tickets, postage stamps, receipt books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and publications relating to the activities of various Jewish political parties and organizations, and also concerning Jewish emigration to Palestine. Includes the correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement (such as Ben Gurion, Ben Zvi, and B. Borokhov), as well as works of creative writing (e.g, poetry by David Hofstein with illustrations by Marc Chagall).

This collection is also included in the Poalei Zion Archive collection.
Poalei Zion Archive
Documents, papers, correspondence, political literature, newspapers, journals, periodicals, serials, sheets of signatures, lottery tickets, postage stamps, receipt books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and publications relating to the activities of various Jewish political parties and organizations, and also concerning Jewish emigration to Palestine. Includes the correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement (such as Ben Gurion, Ben Zvi, and B. Borokhov), as well as works of creative writing (e.g, poetry by David Hofstein with illustrations by Marc Chagall).

This collection is also included in the Poalei Zion Archive collection.
Bund Archive
Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), Moscow

The Bund (Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland) was a Jewish political party espousing social democratic ideology as well as cultural Yiddishism and Jewish national autonomy. The Bund archive, held by the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (formerly Central Party Archive) in Moscow contains records and printed materials from the "Bund archive abroad", as well as records of local Bundist organizations from the period 1874-1926. This previously inaccessible collection is now available for research in a convenient, fully indexed microfiche format from IDC Publishers.

Repression
The Russian Empire had the largest Jewish population in the world. The census of 1897 enumerated more than five million. In its dealings with the Jews, the Tsarist regime combined strict segregation and sharp discrimination with fiscal exploitation and contemptuous treatment. The laws of 1791 and 1835 confined Russian Jews to fifteen provinces in the western part of the Russian Empire, called the Pale of Settlement (Cherta osedlosti). These territories are now found in the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, Belorussia and Poland. The unceasing repression stemmed from the regime’s extreme Judeophobia. Laws enacted in May 1882, following the wave of pogroms that swept through the Ukraine and Russia in 1881, further restricted Jewish residency and employment rights. Between 1881 and 1914 nearly two million Russian Jews, seeking better economic opportunities and freedom from persecution, emigrated.

The Bund
Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland was a Jewish political party espousing social democratic ideology as well as cultural Yiddishism and Jewish national autonomy. It was founded as a clandestine revolutionary organization in Vilna (now Vilnius in Lithuania) on October 7, 1897. It was dedicated to the overthrow of the Tsarist regime in the Russian Empire and the defence of the Jewish proletariat. The Bund demanded national-cultural autonomy (with Yiddish as its national language) for the Jews, insofar as they constituted a distinct nation and not just a separate religious group. This demand was combined with a belief that the Jews would find their redemption not in the ancient world of Palestine, but rather in Eastern Europe, in the lands where they had been rooted for so long. In contrast to the Poalei Zion movement, the Bund rejected Zionist ideology. Central to its beliefs was the struggle for the national rights of Jews wherever they lived, including the recognition of Yiddish as a national language.

Russia
The Bund joined the Rossiiskaia sotsial-demokarticheskai rabochaia pariia (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDRP)) as an autonomous organization on several occasions: 1898-1903, 1906-1917. In the 1905 revolution, the Bund led Jewish workers in street battles and on the barricades, forming armed self-defense groups to fight anti-Semitic pogroms in Odessa, Zhitomir and elsewhere. Shortly afterwards the revolution legalized the Bund’s activities, allowing the organization to function openly for the first time.The membership of the Bund in Russia grew constantly. By the time of the October Revolution in 1917 it numbered some 40,000 members resident in 400 localities. However, the assumption of absolute power by the Bolsheviks spelled doom for the Bund in Russia. Some members joined the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, whilst others transferred to the Jewish Social-Democratic Labour Party (Poalei Zion and renamed as the Jewish Communist Labour Party in 1923). The Soviet government disbanded the Social Democratic fraction of the Bund in 1921, as a result of which many leaders of the Bund emigrated to Western Europe. The Russian period in the Bund’s history came to a close.

Federation
Following the dissolution of the Bund in Russia, Poland became the centre of its activity as an independent political party (1919-1948). Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had autonomous Bund parties. Bundist groups continued to be active in various countries, including Israel, England, France, Argentina and the USA. In the post-war years the Bund (now known as the International Jewish Labour Bund) established itself as a loose federation of national Bundist organizations in several countries, with its centre in the United States. Many Bundist immigrants continued to adhere to the principles through activism within labour and socialist organizations.

Bund Archive
The archive of the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland ("Russian Bund") consists of records and printed matter from "Bund archive abroad" and records of local Bundist organizations. The Bund archive was founded in 1899 in Geneva to facilitate the collection and preservation of vital organizational records, mainly of the Zagranichnyi komitet (Abroad Committee) and printed matter (leaflets, journals, etc). The choice of place was necessitated by harsh political conditions in Russia where, due to political repression, the Bund remained underground. In 1919 the Bund Archive was transferred to Berlin where it established a headquarters in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) building. Once again, unfavourable political conditions prevented the archives from being moved to Poland, which by then had become the centre of the Bund movement.

The largest part of the Bund collection held in RGASPI was bought during the period 1924-1927. At the end of 1924 N.S. Angarskii (a representative from the Lenin Institute) and ISTPART (Istoriko-Partiinaia Komissia, which gathered documents concerning the history of the communist and socialist movements in Russia), began negotiations with one of the holders, Franz Kurskii, of the "Bund archives abroad" and representatives of the Polish Bund in order to buy the Bund’s archive and library. Some documents were copied under F. Kurskii’s supervision. However, the documents were not just retyped. Remarks about and explanations of unclear passages were made, nicknames were replaced by original names and data was checked. In certain cases, the text even had to be "decoded" and "deciphered". Additionally, the Lenin Institute obtained a portion of printed and hectographic Bund materials. This collection was held first at the Lenin Institute and then in the Central Party archive, where the documents were disclosed and catalogued in two inventories (opisi). The other part of the collection was received from the Revolution Museum in Leningrad and deals with the history of the Bund in Bolshevik Russia.

The collection
The archive of the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland, held by RGASPI (fond 271), consists of records and printed materials from "Bund archive abroad," as well as records of local Bundist organizations from the period 1874-1926. The first part (opis’ 1) covers predominantly the pre-Revolutionary period of the Bund’s history from 1894-1917. The majority of records from opis’ 2 date from 1917-1921 and deal with the history of the Bund in Bolshevik Russia. The records within the collection are catalogued thematically and chronologically.

The archival collection contains documents on the following topics:
• History of Jews in Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, the Ukraine); Anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia; pogroms, Yiddish culture.
• Jewish Labour movement in the Russian Empire: before the rise of Bund; Bund in Russia 1897-1923 (including records of the Bund Foreign Committee in Geneva, 1898-1919; of the Central Bureau of Bundist Groups Abroad, and of Bund cells in the Tsarist army).
• Russian revolutionary parties: Narodnaia Volia, Rossiiskaia Sotsial-Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia (RSDRP); The Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR); Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia; Jews in Russian revolutionary parties, biographies.
• Jewish political movements (Zionism, Poalei Zion, Zionist-Socialists, Territorialists, Folkists, religious groups, biographies).
• International socialist movement: Socialist International, Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), socialist parties in Germany, Great Britain, France and other European countries, biographies; correspondence of prominent leaders of socialist movements such as K. Kautsky, A. Bebel, L. Trotsky, A. Plekhanov.
• Bundist publications range from leaflets and pamphlets to complete runs of periodicals. Included are illegal propaganda pamphlets and periodicals from the Bund’s earliest period, which were published abroad and subsequently smuggled into Russia as well as proclamations and brochures printed in clandestine printing shops inside Russia.
• The collection also includes photographs, posters, minutes, reports, correspondence, financial ledgers, manuscripts and biographical materials.

RGASPI
The Russian State Archive of Social and Economic History (RGASPI; formerly Centre for the Preservation and Study of the Archives of Contemporary History, a.k.a. RTsKhIDNI) is the keeper of the former Central Party Archive. RGASPI possesses the richest collection of documents and materials concerning the social and political history of Russia and many countries of Europe, Asia and America. Its holdings consist of more than 1.6 million files, 9,300 photographs and 8,600 metres of film. It also houses the documents of different political parties, social democratic, communist, and international organizations; the correspondence of well-known political figures; historical evidence of the French Revolution of the eighteenth century and the 1848 revolutions in Europe; Communist Union; and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd International.
Author:

Umigdal (Tower and Stockade), 300 Chovevei Zion, 155, 218 Christian Arabs, 302, 304 Christians, 26, 32, 33, 35, 38, 45, 50, 59, 81, 90, 114, 116, 129, 236, 290, 301n.640, 306, 308, 348 Clauß, Ludwig Ferdinand, 100, 101 Cnaani, David, 184, 187, 191 Cohen, Arthur, 74 Collectivity, 176, 201, 247n.426, 362

In: Arthur Ruppin and the Production of Pre-Israeli Culture

. Section Mem. Yad Tabenkin Archives. Jan. 25, 1956. 10-11/4/5. Ha’moatzah Ha’shishit Shel Mifleget Achdut Ha’avoda Poalei Tzion [Heb. ‘The sixth council of the Achdut Ha’avoda Poalei Zion party’]. Yad Ya’ari MAPAM Archives—YY YY. Jan. 8, 1956 (6) 62.90. YY. Jan. 18, 1956 (6) 62.90. YY. Jan. 6, 1956. 90

-Frauenschaft 48 NSDAP 47, 53-54, 56, 88, 132 Nürnberg War Trial 414 O Oath of the Soviet Doctor 107, 137, 412 Olympic Games (Moscow, 1980) 116- 117, 170, 174-175 Ostpolitik XIII P Pale of Settlement 16, 19 PASOK 236-237, 259-260 Pimpfe 49 Poalei Zion Party 21 Poland 16, 19, 23-24 Politburo 115, 143, 159 PPI

In: Cold War in Psychiatry