Transatlantic Russian Jewishness: Ideological Voyages of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 9781644693643

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Transatlantic Russian Jewishness Ideological Voyages of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy Series Editor Maxim D. Shrayer (Boston College) Editorial Board Karel Berkhoff (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies) Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary University of London) Brian Horowitz (Tulane University) Luba Jurgenson (Universite Paris IV—Sorbonne) Roman Katsman (Bar-Ilan University) Dov-Ber Kerler (Indiana University) Vladimir Khazan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Alice Nakhimovsky (Colgate University) Antony Polonsky (Brandeis University) Jonathan D. Sarna (Brandeis University) David Shneer (University of Colorado at Boulder) Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto) Leona Toker (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Mark Tolts (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Transatlantic Russian Jewishness Ideological Voyages of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Gennady ESTRAIKH

BOSTON 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ėstraĭkh, G. (Gennadiĭ), author. Title: Transatlantic Russian Jewishness : ideological voyages of the Yiddish daily Forverts in the first half of the twentieth century / Gennady Estraikh. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2020. | Series: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and their legacy | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2020009932 (print) | LCCN 2020009933 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644693636 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644693643 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Forṿerṭs (New York, N.Y.) | Yiddish newspapers--New York (State)--New York--History--20th century. | Jews--New York (State)--New York--Newspapers. | Jews--New York (State)--New York--Intellectual life. | Socialism and Judaism--United States. | Jewish socialists--United States. Classification: LCC PN4885.Y54 E88 2020 (print) | LCC PN4885.Y54 (ebook) | DDC 839/.13309--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009932 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009933 Copyright © 2020 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 9781644692974 hardback ISBN 9781644692981 paperback ISBN 9781644692998 ebook PDF ISBN 9781644693001 ePub Cover design by Ivan Grave On the cover: Abraham Cahan during one of his cross-Atlantic trips (undated). From the Archive of the Forward Association, New York. Book design by PHi Business Solutions Ltd. Published by Academic Studies Press 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

1

Introduction5 Chapter 1. World War I The Collapse of the Socialist International The Anti-Russian Syndrome The Zimmerwald Conference The Phantom of Internationalism The Effect of the Wartime Debates

15 15 20 33 39 46

Chapter 2. The 1917 Revolutions Russia Can Be Loved Joys and Problems The Bolshevik Revolution The Split

53 53 61 67 78

Chapter 3. Cultural Debates A Letter from Waco Advocates of Yiddish Education Cahan’s Summing Up

93 93 105 113

Chapter 4. Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts In the Vortex of Revolution Between Two Internationals Communists’ Most Hated Menshevik The Moscow Trial of 1931

119 119 128 136 145

Chapter 5. The Outpost in Berlin The Bureau Jacob Lestschinsky David Bergelson The End of Yiddish Berlin

150 150 155 166 172

Chapter 6. Jews on the Land Palestine or Crimea? Zalman Wendroff ’s Accounts Abraham Cahan’s Soviet Journey Sholem Asch—An Unwanted Guest

178 178 185 193 199

Chapter 7. Between Hate and Hope 213 Challenges of the Time 213 The Stalin Constitution 222 Birobidzhan237 Chapter 8. World War II Exit from Europe The Soviet Delegation Back to the Tradition

249 249 259 271

Epilogue283 Bibliography295 Index338

Preface and Acknowledgements

It was my lucky day in February 1989, when at the ceremony of opening the Solomon Mikhoels Jewish Center in Moscow, which was perceived then as an important event of the perestroika period, I met Harold Ostroff, general manager of the Forward Association. This was the moment when the New York Yiddish newspaper Forverts (Forward) entered in my life, though as a staffer of the Moscow Yiddish literary monthly Sovetish Heymland I already knew something about this newspaper. To make a long story short, later in the same year, in November, my first article appeared on the pages of the Forverts. In May 1990 I came to New York as a guest of the Forverts and the Workmen’s Circle. At the time, they were still vibrant organizations, with a relatively strong constituency of Socialist-minded, mostly elderly, immigrant and American-born Yiddish speakers. It was memorable to meet Mordechai Shtrigler, the editor-in-chief, and Yosl (Joseph) Mlotek, the associate editor, in whose section of the newspaper my pieces first appeared. Although, historically, the editor-in-chief defined the strategy for the venerable newspaper, Ostroff or one of his predecessors had changed the balance of power. In any case, when I came to New York, Ostroff, who cut an impressive and likable figure, occupied the most spacious office and it was clearly he who made principal decisions concerning current and perspective functioning of the Forverts. 1990 was a turning point year, when the Forward Association decided to launch an English-language newspaper. The idea was that the English outlet would attract enough readers to make profit and provide a stable financial basis also for the Yiddish newspaper, whose circulation had been declining for years. As it happened, this was a gamble which had a fatal flaw: instead of becoming profitable, the

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English Forward failed to find a sustainable readership and, year after year, ruined the finances of the Forward Association. Clearly, both the fateful decision and its realization were incongruous with the strategic acumen, historically characteristic of the Forverts. This was the juncture in the history of the newspaper at which I started my quarter-of-a-century-long sideline career of working as a Forverts journalist, writing from Moscow, then from Oxford, and finally doing it in New York. Gradually and apparently logically I developed fascination with the history of this remarkable periodical, whose first issue came out in April 1897. After getting a job at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University, in 2003, I could and would spend uncountable hours reading microfilms at the university library and the YIVO library. Life became easier when digitized copies of the Forverts began to appear in jpress.org.il. An additional impulse came from the conference called “Abraham Cahan and His Forverts,” which I was encouraged to organize at our department in April 2007. My good friend from the time of working for the Sovetish Heymland, Boris Sandler, who became editor of the Forverts in 1998, encouraged me to write articles dealing with personalities and events in the history of the newspaper. With time, more and more people, many of them once household names but totally unknown now, populated the landscape of my research. Pages of the Forverts carry unique information on a broad, almost infinite, range of themes for research by social, intellectual, and cultural historians, literary scholars, political scientists, linguists, and students in other fields. The book that follows this preface focuses on the first half of the twentieth century, the “Russian years” of the Forverts, when Abraham Cahan, a towering personality of the time, stood at the helm of the newspaper, from 1903 until his death in 1951. It is hardly surprising that, given my Soviet background, I kept comparing the Russian Imperial and the Soviet waves of Jewish immigrations. This is a separate theme, which this book does not undertake, leaving it to other scholars to do a comparative study. Still, it is worthwhile to mention that the Forverts contains a trove of material that can be used for analyzing the enormous difference in virtually every aspect of the cultural, ideological, and organizational structures of the two “Russian” waves. My modest hope is that Transatlantic Russian Jewishness will encourage more people (with a good knowledge of Yiddish) to turn to studying this rich cultural layer of American immigrant life.

Preface and Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Eugene Shvidler, who generously supported the production of this book. My friends and colleagues in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies made 53 Washington Square South a nice, stimulating place to work. The research for this book involved several archives and libraries. I am particularly indebted to the staff of the Center of Jewish History, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the HSE University (Moscow) Basic Research Program. Hasia Diner has been playing an invaluable role in giving me guidance in the landscape of American history. There are many friends and colleagues who helped me in various ways over the years (my sincere apologies to everybody whom I have forgotten to mention): David Engel, Mikhail Krutikov, Michael Matlin, Mikhail Mitsel, Deborah Moore, Graham Nelson, Sam Norich, Chana Pollack, Marsha L. Rozenblit, Boris Sandler, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Lyudmila Sholokhova. My special thanks to Igor Nemirovsky, Maxim Shrayer, and Ekaterina Yanduganova for encouraging me to publish this book at Academic Studies Press. Most probably, this book would not have been written if my parents, Nesya and Yakov, like many other people of their generation, used Yiddish as a secret language—to hide something from their children. Lucky for me, they did not do this. Rather, they inadvertently equipped me with the essential tool for this kind of research. This may sound trite, but my wife Elena’s contribution was really enormous. In addition to her help as an experienced university librarian, she has been tolerating my actual or virtual (at the writing desk) absence.

3

Introduction

This book has been written, first and foremost, with the objective to contribute to understanding of how the American Yiddish-speaking press, and more specifically the Forverts (Forward), historically far and away the most successful Yiddish newspaper, reflected and influenced ideological transformation of its writers and readers in the first half of the twentieth century. Started in April 1897, the same year when the nationalist Zionism and the Marxist anti-nationalist Bund emerged as organized political movements, the Forverts had the primal impact on shaping and transforming the worldview of hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their offspring. Initially a forum for Socialism, internationalism, secularism, and anti-Zionism, the newspaper over the years changed its agenda in virtually all domains of its political and cultural ideology. The word “transatlantic” in the title of this book is not a new theoretical term. Rather, it is an attempt to categorize the split worldview of Yiddish-speaking immigrants. During the period under analysis, the constituency of the newspaper was indeed transatlantic: new and old arrivals from the Russian Empire and, to a smaller extent, from Austria-Hungary and Romania. Of the over one million respondents of the 1910 US Census of Population who claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue, about eighty percent came from Russia.1 Events in the “old country” remained one of the central topics, and often the central topic, covered by the Forverts. Moreover, the immigrant newspaper would alter its ideological stripes in the response to the situation in Russia and, later, the Soviet Union. This explains why many pages of this book are focused on the newspaper’s reaction to the situation in the “old country.” 1 Ira Rosenswaike, “The Utilization of Census Mother Tongue Data in American Jewish Population Analysis,” Jewish Social Studies 33, nos. 2–3 (1971): 141–159.

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The tone-setters in the Forverts belonged to the social class of intelligentsia, creators and consumers of secular high culture, whose education and ambitions carved them a distinct place in Russia’s society in general and among Russian Jews in particular. The continuing economic development of imperial Russia, and the pre-1880s state policy of “civilizing” Jewish subjects through luring them into general education were preparing ever larger numbers of Jews to give up their traditional ways and live a life culturally compatible with that of the urban mainstream population. At the same time, Jewish products of the “civilizing” modernization often failed to find a satisfying place and purpose in the country that had reared them for integration, but also imposed humiliatingly low glass ceilings, and tolerated or failed to prevent acts of anti-Jewish violence, described in Russian and then in other languages as “pogroms.” For all that, a new stratum of people, with one leg in traditional society and the other in the non-Jewish world, had arisen in Russia. Not only intellectuals steeped in Russian, Polish or German culture belonged to this stratum. The same or nearby social space was populated by “semi-intelligentsia” (poluintelligenty in Russian / halb-inteligentn in Yiddish). This snobby tag described the “haphazardly educated” autodidacts, many of them renegade Talmudic students. Yet secularized “conscious” or “enlightened” workers (soznatel´nye rabochie / bavustzinike arbeter) formed the most populous group of modernized Russian Jews. They dominated Jewish civil societal space, sandwiched between the traditional Jewish and general Russian societies. This space—distinct in its lifestyle, social organization, values, and behavior—was an important recruiting ground for diverse political and cultural movements and groupings. Its inhabitants were known, in Yiddish, as khevrelayt, meaning “members” of associations, organizations, and so forth. Judging by the level of literacy among Jews arriving in America, people from the modernized groups played a more salient role among the immigrants than among those who stayed in Russia.2 Not only were they more receptive to radical ideas, but also more mobile. Some of them had to leave Russia fleeing persecutions and oppression, though economic reasons for emigration prevailed. Socialist ideas appealed to many Yiddish-speaking arrivals. Tony Michels distinguishes three periods in the development of the Socialist 2 Simon Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States: Background and Structure,” Perspectives in American History 9 (1975): 113–116.

Introduction

movement among European Jewish immigrants. The first, dating from 1880 to 1900, witnessed the arrival of relatively few people who gravitated to Socialism. For the most part, they were intellectuals, directly or tangentially associated with radical circles in Russia. More commonly, however, immigrants originally encountered Socialist ideologies in the United States, where “a popular Jewish labor movement arose . . . almost ten years before the birth of its counterpart in Russia and fifteen years before the Russian Jewish workers’ movement grew into a significant force.” Thousands of people involved in the Russian movement, often carrying the experience of the 1905 revolution, came to America during the second period of transatlantic Jewish Socialism, between 1900 and 1914. The third period, between the end of World War I and the introduction of the restrictions for immigration from Europe in 1924, brought across the ocean observers and participants of the revolutionary events of 1917 and the ensuing civil war.3 While we can only surmise that, judging by the census returns, about eighty percent of Forverts readers originated from the Russian Empire, we know for sure that the percentage of Russian-born was even higher among the staff writers. Furthermore, the majority of them came from one particular area in the empire—Lite, or the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which approximately comprised the territories of contemporary Lithuania, Belarus, and some areas of Poland and Latvia. This is hardly surprising giving the fact that, in the nineteenth century, Lite was a major source of Jewish immigrants from Russia.4 In addition, Lithuanian Jews, or Litvaks, as Polish and other co-religionists called them, dominated Jewish publishing also in the “old home.”5 Significantly, the geography that Jews had in their heads often did not fit contemporary maps. Thus, the poet Morris Winchevsky (1855–1932), who was born in Lithuania, founded in London the Socialist Yiddish newspaper, naming it Dos poylishe yidl (Polish Jew). In 1929, the Yiddish writer David Bergelson (1884–1952) portrayed retrospectively the first wave of Russian-Jewish emigrants settling in the United States. Alongside impoverished, hungry and jobless people, that 3 Tony Michels, “Toward a History of American Jews and the Russian Revolutionary Movement,” in A Century of Transnationalism: Immigrants and Their Homeland Connections, ed. Nancy L. Green and Roger Waldinger (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 185–187. 4 Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 80–81. 5 Gennady Estraikh, In Harness: Yiddish Writers’ Romance with Communism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 19–20.

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wave, according to Bergelson’s somewhat sarcastic description, contained criminals and young men who were unwilling to serve in the Russian army. There came also Jewish Socialists and a-kind-of-Socialists (sotsi­ alistlekh), many of them speakers of the sabesdiker loshn, a sub-dialect of the Lithuanian Yiddish, which sounded lispy and therefore funny to other Yiddish speakers’ ears. They, speakers of this Yiddish variety, appeared at the forefront of the American Jewish masses, they preached “physiological Socialism, cosmopolitanism, and linguistic anarchism.”6 This half-satirical description of pioneers of Jewish Socialism in the United States reflects, first of all, Bergelson’s desire to taunt one of the most prominent pioneers— the “Litvak” Abraham, or Abe, Cahan, a divisive figure, who had many detractors, but also many more fervent admirers. Abraham Cahan (1860–1951), one of the founders of the Forverts and its editor for nearly fifty years, received education at the Vilna Teachers’ Institute, which trained Russian-speaking instructors for Jewish state-run schools and, like many educational institutions of the time, served likewise as a hotbed of radicalism. In 1882, Cahan immigrated to the United States to avoid questioning or even imprisonment for his links with the Socialist movement, which was illegal in Russia. In New York City, he mastered English remarkably quickly, successfully integrated into political circles, and gained recognition as a talented author of English and Yiddish prose and journalism. His 1896 novella Yekl, A Tale of the New York Ghetto, its 1975 film adaptation Hester Street, and his 1917 novel The Rise of David Levinsky remain in active use, even if primarily as teaching and research materials. Under the stewardship of Cahan, the Forverts became the most flourishing Yiddish newspaper in the world, combining Socialist pieces with sensationalist ones, and featuring numerous didactic articles, which urged readers to stay “progressive,” particularly in their pursuit of Americanization. In his editorial that marked the sixth anniversary of the daily, Cahan explained his strategy of deviating from the traditional pattern of other Socialist newspapers, which tended to be redolent of dry, professional periodicals.7 Pronounced changes began to become manifest in 1903, when Cahan, who defined in great measure the nature of the ideology of the Forverts, or Forvertsism (as it was sometimes called), finally returned to 6 David Bergelson, “Bletlekh (kimat oytobiografye),” Oyfkum 5 (1929): 2–6. 7 Abraham Cahan, “Forvertizmus,” Forverts, April 21, 1903, 4.

Introduction

the editorship after several hiatuses. 1903 also was the year of the Kishinev pogrom, which shook the Jewish world. A man of huge ambitions, Cahan was determined to transcend the relatively narrow circle of committed Socialists, and run a newspaper championing Socialism to a mass readership across the political spectrum. The Forverts was not a party organ and could go its own way, or—to use a Yiddish idiom—makhn shabes far zikh, or “make Sabbath for itself.” Moreover, with its clout of the biggest Socialist newspaper in the United States, the Forverts was active and influential as a builder and modifier of the labor movement in country. Among other things (notably choosing a style accessible to the audience composed by and large of scantily educated speakers of different Yiddish dialects), Cahan’s strategy implied the application to the covered events the populist-cum-nationalist criteria: “is it good or bad for the Jews?” This was only partially a purely pragmatic turn. To all appearances, Cahan sincerely assumed that an alloy of Socialism and mild nationalism was what the Jewish masses needed. Besides, he simply did not believe that proletarian internationalism existed in reality rather than in Marxist theory of future social change. The first chapter of this book focuses on the discussions initiated and hosted by the newspaper during World War I. The issue at stake, namely Socialists’ stand on patriotism, was a neuralgic topic for Socialists. The war put to a difficult test Marx’s idea that proletarians did not have homelands: that they were, by the nature of their enslaved role in society, internationalists and their loyalties gravitated to other proletarians first and last. Wartime developments and debates contributed to making Jewish nationalism—in the form of anti-assimilationism and cross-class ethnic solidarity—more pronounced in the ideology of the Forverts. Cahan dismissed arguments of those who tried to safeguard the purity of the Marxist dogma. Patriotic articles of the Forverts infuriated the future Communist leader Leon Trotsky, who lived in New York in the early months of 1917, and caused his acrimonious break with the newspaper. Paradoxically, as time went on Moyshe Olgin (1878–1939) and Max Goldfarb (1886–1937), the two Forverts journalists who supported Cahan’s stand particularly strongly, turned Communists and worked in the Communist International, or Comintern, whose ideology was built on the premise of proletarian internationalism. The year 1917 brought two revolutions, which changed drastically the way the newspaper told its readers to see the world. Russia, dismissed previously as a barbaric country, emerged as a beacon of progress. This was

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a sigh of relief for many in the Forverts constituency, who loved Russian culture, but loathed the autocratic czarist regime and therefore sided with Germany during World War I. Although the Forverts advocated for gradual and peaceful transition from capitalism to Socialism, it gave a qualified welcome to the Bolshevik revolution. For about five years, the coverage was sympathetic, with a hope that the Soviet regime would turn to democratic forms of governance. In September 1921, the Forverts, and the American Socialist movement in general, faced a serious crisis when the Jewish Socialist Federation, a constituent of the Socialist Party, jumped on the Communists’ bandwagon. Among the rebels were five Forverts journalists. One of them, Olgin, later edited the Communist daily Frayhayt (also spelled German-style as Freiheit, Freedom). From that moment on, as Chapter 2 shows, the Forverts fought on two anti-Communist fronts, the domestic one and the Soviet one. Although Cahan edited a Yiddish newspaper, wrote prolifically in this language, and claimed love for his mother tongue, he did not regard preservation of Yiddish as worthy of high priority. In his vision of Americanization of his readers and their children, English should become their language for all domains of life. He found irrational and even harmful activities led by Yiddishists, who put Yiddish in the center of modern Jewish nation building. Chapter 3 describes debates about Yiddish schooling in the United States, most notably the schools established by the Workmen’s Circle, a Socialist-leaning mutual-aid society. Cahan and a number of Forverts writers resisted the endeavors of educators and activists to pass their knowledge of Yiddish and Yiddish culture to the younger generation. However, facing dissatisfaction from the Workmen’s Circle, whose membership formed the core readership of the newspaper, Cahan reluctantly curtailed the anti-Yiddishist campaign. Among the scores of staff writers and regular contributors, Raphael Abramovitch (1880–1963), a prominent figure in the circles of Russian Socialist emigration, played an oversized role in highlighting the political course of the newspaper. Chapter 4 follows his career as a Forverts journalist in the 1920s–1950s. Cahan, whose dictatorial style of editorship was often unendurable, demonstrated remarkable patience and deference to Abramovitch, even when the latter’s articles deviated from the general line set by the editor. The two men’s opinions diverged regarding Soviet politics, Zionism, and Socialism, but they managed, nevertheless, to preserve a working and friendly relationship. Directly or indirectly, the Forverts acted

Introduction

as a sponsor of Socialists and Socialist organizations. For such a political luftmensh as Abramovitch, the salary paid by the newspaper was his main lifeline. In addition, he had a big audience for his thoughtful analytical essays and (usually wrong) predictions. Thanks to the Forverts, he earned a reputation in the American Socialist and liberal circles, which helped him enormously when he settled in New York in 1940. His escape from Europe, facilitated by the Forverts-linked Jewish Labor Committee, brought to an end the peripatetic phase in his life that began when he left Soviet Russia, making Berlin and then Paris his home. Berlin of the Weimar period had a sizable population of Eastern European intellectuals, some of whom worked as correspondents of American Yiddish newspapers. The Forverts kept a bureau in Berlin (Chapter 5), headed by the demographer and statistician Jacob Lestschinsky (1876–1966). For several years, the bureau boasted among its journalists the writer David Bergelson (before he turned to Communism), the poet and essayist David Eynhorn (1886–1973), and the philologist Max Weinreich (1894–1969). Weinreich later directed the Yiddish Scientific Institute, known as YIVO, with headquarters in Vilna and, from 1940, in New York, but continued to write for the Forverts and, like Abramovitch, to live, at least partially, off its salary. The newspaper had also other Berlinbased contributors, such as the Marxist theoreticians Karl Kautsky (1854– 1938) and Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932), and the Jewish historian Simon Dubnov (1860–1941). According to Cahan, who visited the German capital on many occasions, the city did not function as an incubator of ideas related to Jews, but made an impact as “the Jewish world’s main marketplace of ideas.” Cahan likewise assigned great importance to using Berlin as a communication hub, especially given the political barriers established in Eastern and Central Europe after the continent’s postwar remapping.8 Berlin housed the offices of the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee, and the ORT, established in Alexander II’s Russia as Association for Promotion of Skilled Trades, and rebranded as World ORT in 1921. Both organizations were active in Jewish colonization projects in the Soviet Union. Jewish agricultural colonies in Crimea and in southern areas of Ukraine had singular appeal for American sponsors. Chapter 6 describes the reflection of this campaign in the pages of the Forverts, particularly 8 Abraham Cahan, “Ir farshport tsu forn in Varshe, Vilne, Kovne, Rige oder Keshenev,” Forverts, August 27, 1921, 6.

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in articles by Zalman Wendroff (1877–1971), the Moscow correspondent of the newspaper. Numerous representatives of the Forverts visited the Soviet Union and monitored the situation in Jewish agricultural settlements. Soviet journeys of Cahan, in 1927, and the star novelist Sholem Asch (1880–1957), in 1928, had received strongest attention in the press. Even when the general editorial line of the newspaper became anti-Soviet, colonization would be praised as a positive development, a more promising transformation of Jewish life than the Zionist project in Palestine. Veteran members of the Bund, such as Baruch Charney Vladeck (1886–1938), the business manager of the Forverts and a man well connected in New York politics, and Bentzion Hoffman (1874–1954), or Tsivion, as he usually bylined his columns (spelled also Zivion; he also used the byline B. Rozman), had consistently dismissed the idea of a Jewish state as a panacea for the ills of Jewish life. They disagreed with Cahan, who in the mid-1920s revealed his sympathies to Labor Zionism. The 1930s brought disappointments and challenges. The economic crisis decreased the profitability of the newspaper, and it had to turn to its funds accumulated during the “fat” 1920s. Even more dramatic were the ideological changes in the American Socialist movement. The Socialist Party membership had suffered a deep decline and a new split along “radical” and “right-wing” lines. In the internal affairs of the Forverts, analyzed in Chapter 7, the split led to an irreparable break in relations between Cahan, a major figure among the “right-wingers,” and Vladeck, who tended to align with left-of-center political groupings. (Their relations had become so poisonous that Cahan did not even attend Vladeck’s funeral.) For his part, Cahan saw light in Franklin D. Roosevelt and made headlines by proclaiming that the president “should be a Socialist, if anybody is entitled to membership in our party he is.”9 The anti-Sovietism of the newspaper grew markedly stronger in the 1930s, although many readers and some writers still cherished a hope of democratic transformation of the Soviet regime. The August 1939 Soviet-German Pact, which divided Poland in the inaugural phase of World War II, produced a shocking effect on the Forverts constituency. If earlier only some authors had the tenacity to equate Nazism and Communism, now this idea dominated the newspaper’s output. In June 1941, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the newspaper laid 9 Seymour M. Lipset and Gary W. Marks, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), 210.

Introduction

out its position and followed it till the end of the war: its sympathies lay with the Soviet people and the Red Army, but not with the Stalinist regime. In the meantime, the 1940s, analyzed in Chapter 8, saw the newspaper’s noticeable warming to religion—a transformation that puzzled and troubled the old readership of the newspaper. Some of them, who remembered the Forverts as it was in the days of their youth, wrote letters protesting the changes. It seems that the concurrent pro-Israel stance of the newspaper did not irritate the vast majority of readers. By the mid-1950s, the “transatlantic Russianism” of the Forverts was becoming a thing of the past. First of all, its readership already included a significant number of American-born or -reared people, many of them former students of supplementary Yiddish schools run by the Workmen’s Circle or other organizations. Hillel Rogoff (1882–1971), who replaced Cahan as editor-in-chief in 1951, was eight years old when his parents brought him to America. Second, Russian Jews were much less represented among Yiddish-speaking immigrants who came to America in the 1920s–1950s. Polish Jews increasingly dominated the pages of the Forverts. Readers developed a taste for stories and novels by the Polish-born Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991), ultimately a Nobel Prize winner, though many considered his writings less significant than those of his brother, Israel Joshua Singer (1893–1944). While the clout carried by the newspaper was weakening with the declining circulation, its indirect influence remained tangible in American Jewish society, most notably in the second and even third generation of Jewish immigrants, who grew up in the cultural and ideological climate that reigned among hundreds of thousands of Forverts readers. This book, however, does not trace the generational ideological and cultural change in the segment of the American Jewish population formed by Yiddish-speaking immigrants. Rather, it focuses on the changes of the immigrants’ vision of the world, above all of those immigrants whose ideological voyages began before, or even long before, World War I and continued through the tumultuous decades of the twentieth century.

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Chapter 1

World War I

The Collapse of the Socialist International In 1912, the year when the Jewish (in fact Yiddish-language) Socialist Federation, or JSF, was formed at a convention held in Patterson, New Jersey, the Socialist Party of America allowed foreign-language federations to act as autonomous subsections whose members simultaneously belonged to the broader Socialist community of party card-carriers.1 The federative structure of the party was not to all members’ liking. Thus Morris Hillquit, a prominent figure in the Socialist Party, serving as its international secretary until 1913, disapproved of this decision, although it opened a new way to increase its membership.2 This was the time when Socialism was rising in the United States. In 1911, American voters had elected some 450 Socialist officials, including 56 mayors, 305 aldermen and city councilmen, and one congressman, Victor Berger. After the 1914 election, Meyer London would join him as the second Socialist congressman. Both Berger and London were European-born Jewish immigrants. The 1912 election, in which Eugene V. Debs, the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, had received over 900,000 votes, marked the apogee of the Socialist movement in America. By then, the Socialist Party’s membership had grown to 118,000.3 The Forverts, 1 Jacob Sholem Hertz, Di yidishe sotsialistishe bavegung in Amerike (New York: Der Veker, 1954), 143; Tony Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 172. 2 Irwin Yellowitz, “Morris Hillquit: American Socialism and Jewish Concerns,” American Jewish History 68, no. 2 (1978): 165–166. 3 James Chace, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 182–183, 238–239; Jonathan Frankel, Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 222.

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then a fifteen-year-old daily, identified itself with the JSF, though, as we will see later in this chapter, it was not always a temperate comradeship. The Forward Association, formed to act as the independent non-profit publisher of the Forverts, was composed of about 150 members (their number doubled in the 1920s), representing trade unions and other labor movement organizations. On October 26, 1912, the newspaper offices moved into a new home at 173–175 East Broadway. The ten-story Forward Building towered far above its neighbors and formed an easily recognized landmark. The second floor had an auditorium with a siting capacity of a thousand, which would be used for mass events of various kinds, receptions, concerts, and literary evenings. The printing equipment, installed in the basement, could easily produce the circulation of that period: 132,000 copies daily, and 150,000 copies on Sundays.4 For the older generation of Jewish socialists, who came to America in the 1880s and 1890s, Germany had a symbolic importance as the heart of Socialism. Tellingly, the façade of the Forward Building, designated a New York City Historic Landmark in 1986, still features carved bas-relief portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Ferdinand Lassalle. One more portrait, whose identity remains under question, has been identified as Wilhelm Liebknecht, Karl Liebknecht, or August Bebel. The title itself of the newspaper emulated that of the Berlin-based central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Vorwärts, established in 1891. The word forverts, with a tinge of foreignness in Yiddish, had entered the language usage as part of the German-derived socialist terminology, including the term of address genose, from the German Genosse, or “comrade.” Bundists formed the core of the JSF. Following the defeat of the 1905 revolution in Russia and subsequent heavy-handed suppression of the labor movement by the czarist government, the emigrant wave brought hundreds of members of the Bund, a 1897-established Jewish constituent of the Russian Socialist movement. In 1906 the Bund had a sufficient membership in the United States to hold a national convention with nearly hundred delegates.5 Many of them hoped that the JSF would become an American version of their party in Russia. Especially as in Russia their party occupied a similar subsidiary place in the Socialist movement: in 1912, the same 4 “Forward in Its New Home: Socialist Daily Newspaper Formally Opens Its Ten-Story Building,” The New York Times, October 27, 1912, 15. 5 Frank Wolff, “Revolutionary Identity and Migration: The Commemorative Transnationalism of Bundist Culture,” East European Jewish Affairs 43, no. 3 (2013): 322.

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year when the JSF was founded, the Bund became a federated part of the Menshevik party, which emerged as a product of the 1903 fratricidal split in the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. Both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks aimed at overthrow of the czarist regime and destruction of capitalism, but had radically diverged views on how to build a revolutionary party. The Mensheviks, led by Julius Martov, hitherto a close friend of the Bolskevik leader Vladimir Lenin (Ulyanov), favored a large, loosely formed democratic party of the Western European type, whereas Lenin sought to be in command of a tightly organized, strictly disciplined, and obedient party of full-time revolutionaries. In America, Bundists soon realized that the local Socialist movement lacked the main programmatic ingredient of the Bund, which was its struggle for national rights. In the environment of the United States, Yiddish, then the main language of Jewish Socialists in the USA, and Yiddish culture gave virtually the only large reason for creating the JSF, using other language federations established in the Socialist Party as the template.6 Autonomy was a delicate matter for Bundists, because it had a smack of nationalism, which was always a red line for the Bund. Still, in the 1900s, the party gradually adopted Austro-Marxist ideas of non-territorial national autonomy, and in 1912 included cultural autonomy in its program. In the 1910s, the Bund in Russia regarded Jewish cultural activities, particularly in Yiddish, as a sphere devoid of nationalism, though other, non-cultural forms of ethnic separation would be deemed ideologically inappropriate. Membership in the JSF was not available to people associated with Zionist Socialist groups. Jacob Benjamin (Yankev) Salutsky (later known as J. B. S. Hardman), the Vilna-born Secretary General of the JSF, explained in 1918: The Socialist organization of the Jewish workers could never agree to the extreme nationalism of the Poale Zion [Labor Zionist] movement, and a nationalism which in their case eliminates any tinge of Socialism in their every-day activities. We, of the Socialist Party, could never find common ground for work, anxious as we are to avoid party strife and dissention in the ranks of organized labor.7 6 Hertz Burgin, Di geshikhte fun der yidisher arbeter-bavegung in Amerike, Rusland un England (New York: Fareynikte yidishe geverkshaftn, 1954), 717–18; Tsivion, Far fuftsik yor: geklibene shrift (New York: Elias Laub Publishing Co., 1948), 157–61. 7 Jack Ross, The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History (Herndon: Potomac Books, 2015), 122.

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In terms of the Socialist Party’s pecking order, the JSF had a higher hierarchical status and as such purported to exert control over the Forverts. However, the newspaper never acted as an organ of the federation. In fact, relations with the JSF were far from being harmonious. Abraham Cahan looked down at the leading figures of the JSF and from time to time censured them, feeling empowered by his influence as editor-in-chief of the world’s largest Yiddish—and America’s largest Socialist—periodical.8 By 1912 the English-language socialist daily New York Call had reached its peak circulation of 32,000, or less than a quarter of the Forverts circulation.9 From the perspective of over three decades in America, Cahan believed that the leaders of the JSF were callow, hotheaded, and wrongly understood Socialist goals in the United States. Although the JSF was the third largest Socialist federation, after the Finnish and German ones, it failed to attract a broad stratum of Yiddishspeaking immigrants. Salutsky, who came to America in 1909 with a reputation of a seasoned Bundist, found it painful to make peace with the fact that even many of his comrades had chosen not to join the federation. According to the veteran Socialist Benjamin Feigenbaum, “in America not even the Bundists long[ed] for Bundism.”10 Small as the JSF was—less than 2,000 members in 1913, about 5,000 in 1915, and 6,000 in 1916—its activists comforted themselves with the thought that they played a vital role as an incubator, powerhouse, and network for activists.11 Belonging to the broad, worldwide Socialist movement was an important element of the JSF members’ ideological outlook. They were proud to see themselves as a constituent part of the Socialist (or Second) International, which, since its establishment in Paris in July 1889, had functioned as an alliance of Socialist parties that by 1914 boasted a total membership of over two million people and 811 representatives in European parliaments. The See, for example, Hertz, Di yidishe sotsialistishe bavegung in Amerike, 142–144. Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement 1897–1912 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 252. 10 Benjamin Feigenbaum, “Jewishness and the Socialist Movement in America,” in Building the Future: Jewish Immigrant Intellectuals and the Making of Tsukunft, ed. Steven Cassedy (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000), 217. 11 Yankev Salutsky, “Di federatsye un der Bund,” Der yidisher sotsialist, January 30, 1914, 5; “Boyt di vokhnblat fun der yidisher sotsialistisher federatsye,” Forverts, September 6, 1915, 4; Max Goldfarb, “Di yidishe sotsialistishe federatsye: ir plats in der yidisher arbeter-bavegung,” Forverts, April 30, 1916, 5; Charles Leinenweber, “The Class and Ethnic Bases of New York City Socialism, 1904–1915,” Labor History 22, no. 1 (1981): 51. On Salutsky, see Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts, 173–174. 8 9

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German and French social democrats formed particularly strong parliamentary factions—over one-fourth of seats in the German Reichstag and over one-sixth of seats in the French Chambers of Deputies.12 The war, which went down in history as World War I, left the Socialist parties without this international network. The final session of the International Socialist Bureau held at Brussels on July 29, 1914 and its strongly worded call to intensify efforts against the war became, in effect, the last sigh of the Socialist International. Moreover, the famous final phrase of Marx and Engels’s 1848 Communist Manifesto, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”—it appeared on the front page of every Forverts issue: Arbeter fun ale lender, fareynikt aykh—turned into an empty slogan on August 4, 1914, when social democratic deputies in Germany and France voted for war credits and by that vote aligned themselves with their bellicose governments. This and similar manifestations of Socialists’ flag-waving in Belgium, Great Britain, and Austria-Hungary had undermined one more postulate of the Manifesto: “The workers have no fatherland.”13 In mid-September 1914, leaders of the Socialist Party of America sent a cable to Western European Socialist party officials urging them to “exert every influence on their respective governments to have warring countries accept mediation by the United States.” It was all to no avail.14 The belatedness of the entry of the United States into the war allowed members of the Socialist Party to be forthright in supporting a pacifist viewpoint or in expressing partial sympathy without risking censorship from their leadership or the government. Thus, Salutsky dismissed unqualifiedly the party leadership’s pacifist slogans. In unison with the majority of his comrades, he expected that the war, for all its attendant horror, would bring revolutionary transformations in such countries as Russia and Germany.15 As immigrants from Russia, members of the JSF had serious grievances against the Russian regime and could not convince themselves to be neutral

12 Max Goldfarb, “Di trayb-koykhes fun der milkhome,” in Di milkhome, ire urzakhn un oyszikhtn (New York: The Jewish Socialist Federation, 1914), 36–37. 13 On the ambiguous theoretical legacy left by Marx on nationalism-related questions, see, for example, Shlomo Avineri, “Marxism and Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History 26, nos. 3–4 (1991): 637–657. 14 Alexander Trachtenberg, ed., American Labor Year Book, 1917–18 (New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1918), 11. 15 Yankev Salutsky, “Der internatsional in krig,” in Di milkhome, ire urzakhn un oyszikhtn (New York: The Jewish Socialist Federation, 1914), 43–47.

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in their emotions, even if people at the party’s commanding heights claimed impartiality and expected the same from them. Hillquit, who was closely linked with Yiddish-speaking Socialists, strove to prevent the party and its voting constituency from being fractured by war-related debates. He advocated a policy of “watchful waiting,” hoping that “the shattered International” would resurrect once the war came to an end.16 Popular at that time was the notion that internationalism was inherent to capitalist society and only consequently to the Socialist movement. Following this logic, international links would unquestionably reappear with the restoration of peace, creating a framework for the revival of Socialist internationalism.17 On May 1, 1915, the Chicago-based newspaper The American Socialist featured Hillquit’s article entitled “The ‘Collapse’ of the International.” Its Yiddish translation, which came out in the bilingual English-Yiddish monthly The Ladies’ Garment Worker, the organ of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), carried a headline in the form of a question: “Had the International collapsed?” Hillquit, an old friend of Cahan and one-time lawyer for the ILGWU, gave his answer to this question: he had no worries about the “soul” of Socialism, but doubted whether its “form”—the Socialist International—would survive the war.18

The Anti-Russian Syndrome The Forverts always contained a considerable amount of material about Russia, her culture, politics, and history, as well as translations of works by Russian writers. An admirer of Leo Tolstoy and the Moscow Art Theater and, generally, a person thoroughly steeped in Russian culture, Cahan spoke Russian at home, with his wife Anna, an alumna of a Russian gymnasium, and would often test job applicants, speaking to them in Russian. He believed that an adult Jewish person who left the Romanovs’ empire without knowing the language could not be categorized as a member of 16 Brian Lloyd, Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890–1922 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 325–326. 17 See, for example, M. Baranoff, “Farbaygeyendik,” Forverts, November 25, 1915, 4; Jacob Milch, Sotsializm, milkhome un natsionalizm (New York: Max N. Maisel, 1916), 71–75. 18 Morris Hillquit, “The ‘Collapse’ of the International,” The American Socialist, May 1, 1915, 3; idem, “Iz der internatsional gefaln?,” The Ladies’ Garment Worker, June 1915, 26–28.

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intelligentsia.19 At the same time, he remained a categorical opponent of the Russian autocracy and all its manifestations in society. As one of his literary characters intimates, “I love the Russian people as much as I ever did. . . . I don’t think the Russians themselves are capable of loving their people as I do. But it can’t be helped. There is an impassable chasm between us.”20 Following the outbreak of the war, the Forverts, whose writers combined their background in Russian culture with an ideological rootedness in German Socialism, paid special attention to the situation in the German Social Democratic Party and approved of its patriotic stand. The Forverts coverage presented Russia as a backward and benighted country, whereas Germany, whose Socialists played a visible political role and Jews enjoyed legal equality, appeared as a place of honor in the Western civilization. In fact, this pattern had been formed before the war. The newspaper described the anti-Jewish policy of the Russian imperial regime and followed exceptionally closely the blood libel case of the Kiev Jewish resident Mendel Beilis, whose fate consumed the world’s attention. From the very beginning, the Forverts described Beilis as a “Jewish martyr” and emphasized that his 1913 trial was also a trial of the entire Jewish nation, a trial organized by the anti-Semitic czarist regime and supported by the most sinister elements of the Russian population, including the Russian ultra-nationalist movement known as the Black Hundreds. To bring the argument home, the newspaper assumed that the Black Hundreds might have murdered the boy in order to instigate a large-scale pogrom. An editorial called the civilized world to send a fleet of military ships to the shores of Russia and thus to force the czarist government to stop the prosecution.21 In the fall of 1913, Moyshe—or Moissaye—Olgin (Novomiski), then an Eastern European correspondent of the Forverts, came to Kiev to write reports about the trial. Olgin was not a newcomer to Kiev. In the late 1890s he studied there at the university’s law school and was active in Jewish radical circles.22 Early, in an article published on March 2, 1913 and entitled “What Is the Meaning of Being ‘Politically Kosher’ and What One Has to Suffer 19 David Shub, Fun di amolike yorn: bletlekh zikhroynes (New York: CYCO, 1970), 728, 915. 20 Abraham Cahan, The White Terror and the Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia (New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1905), 416. 21 “Beylis beste eydes feln,” Forverts, October 9, 1913, 1; “Der blut-bilbl fun Kiev,” ibid., 4; “Oyf der stsene un hinter der stsene fun dem Beylis-protses,” ibid., 6. 22 Estraikh, In Harness, 10.

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because of this in Fonye-Land,” he derided Russia (fonye is a derogatory term for a Russian person) as a police state. Olgin’s articles would arrive to New York by mail, so they represented a delayed, analytical response to the events that played out in Kiev. In the meantime, the newspaper covered the trial using other sources of information. In October and November 1913, front pages of Forverts issues often carried reports based on telegrams of unspecified authorship. In addition, the Forverts published in installments the full text of the prosecution’s indictment against Beilis, while Benjamin Feigenbaum enlightened the readers about the history of blood libel. A Forverts reader’s wife informed the editors that her husband had become obsessed with the blood libel Beilis affair to the point where “every time he finishes reading something in the newspaper about the bloodthirsty trial he gets so upset, so nervous, that he sometimes shows signs of madness.”23 An editorial article compared the Beilis trial with the Dreyfus trial in France in 1894, contending that the Beilis trial could have much more serious repercussions. For one thing, the Jewish population of Russia was much more numerous and the nature of the accusations was different, representing Jews as bloodthirsty fanatics. According to the newspaper analysis, the heroic participation of Jews in the revolutionary struggle against the Romanov tyranny was one of the main reasons for the Beilis affair.24 It was, as well, suggested that the Beilis affair was a reaction to the bill introduced in the Duma (Russian Parliament) by those deputies who advocated the abolition of the Pale of Jewish Settlement, the large but still limited part of the country where most of the Russian Jews had legal right to reside. Very soon the Beilis trial would be compared with the Leo Frank trial in Atlanta, Georgia. Frank was accused of murdering a thirteen-year-old girl in April 1913. However, initially information about the Frank affair warranted a mention on the margins of the detailed coverage of the Kiev case. To satisfy the readers’ interest, the Forverts allocated up to a half of the newspaper space to Beilis-related material, including interviews with his relatives in America, and articles lifted from Warsaw Yiddish newspapers. The leitmotif of Olgin’s and, generally, Forverts articles was the following: Russia had two faces—the dark, medieval one, and the progressive one. The progressive and partly even the conservative sectors of Russian society opposed the Beilis trial. The proletarian circles formed the strongest 23 Harvey R. Greenberg and Rima R. Greenberg, “‘A Bintel Brief ’: The Editor as Compleat Therapist,” Psychiatric Quarterly 52, no. 3 (1980): 227. 24 “Oyf der stsene un hinter der stsene fun dem Beylis-protses.”

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opposition. Olgin mentioned strikes and rallies which the Bund and other Socialist parties had organized in such cities and towns as Warsaw, Vilna, St. Petersburg, Minsk, Grodno, Kovno, Brest, Bobruisk, Slonim, and Smorgon. The Jewish community was also divided into the traditional bourgeois sector and the proletarian sector. The former was full of passive fear, while the latter showed ready to fight.25 “Consolidation” appeared as a key word in many articles. The Forverts wrote about consolidation of Socialists, of Jewish and non-Jewish proletarians and intellectuals, of modern and traditional Jews. Non-Jewish workers joined non-Jewish ones in the protests. On the first day of the trial, Kiev gymnasuims went on strike although, due to numerus clausus, they could not have more than five percent of Jewish students. During the Jewish holidays, Kiev synagogues were full to the brim with Jews, including those young people, students who usually did not attend religious service. The verdict of “not guilty” issued by the trial jury was received with huge relief, though at the same time as a fly in the ointment. “Victory and defeat!” was the refrain of the poem, “The Beilis Verdict,” published in the Forverts on November 11, the next day after the end of the trial. “Beilis is free but Jews are guilty,” wrote the poet Morris Rosenfeld. Indeed, the verdict reflected the jury’s belief in blood libel and implied that a ritual murder did take place in March 1911 at the Kiev brick factory, where Beilis worked, though it was not he who had perpetrated the crime. Still, the newspaper was happy that the jury, at least, had exonerated the innocent person and saw the verdict as a sign of progress in Russian society. Cahan praised the Russian peasants, who made up the majority of the jury members. Echoing the Russian populists’ idealization of the peasantry, he wrote that village dwellers were more honest and decent than urbanites and generally had friendly relations with their Jewish neighbors. According to Cahan, peasants rather reluctantly participated in pogroms, led by instigators who usually came from towns. He referred to “hundreds of examples” of cases when peasants later asked Jews to forgive them for acting as pogromists.26 In 1914, Cahan portrayed Russian peasants as a naïve and primitive people. Characterizing Russia as a feeble military power, he repeated the old anecdote of Peter the Great’s times, stating that recruits, mostly illiterate peasants, had to have a wisp of straw round their left legs and a wisp of hay 25 “Olgin shraybt vayter vegn Beylis-protses,” Forverts, October 28, 1913, 5. 26 Abraham Cahan, “Di Beylis-dzhuri un der rusisher antisemitizm,” Forverts, November 13, 1913, 4.

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round their right legs, because they could not understand “Left! Right!,” but reacted to “Hay! Straw!”27 On August 7, 1914, Cahan pleaded to “all civilized people” to “sympathize with Germany. Every victory she attains over Russia is a source of joy.” On December 10, 1914, he asserted that Russia’s defeat would become the catalyst for bringing down the Romanov autocracy, whereas Germany’s defeat was fraught with danger for Social Democracy: “If Russia should defeat Germany the labor movement would suffer, and German militarism would only then become a mighty force, because all Germans will back the army to the hilt to ward off Russian despotism.”28 Apart from the general ideological assessment of the situation, position of Forverts journalists reflected the mood that dominated the Jewish immigrant masses. (Some other immigrant groups also pinned their hopes on a defeat of their home country government. For instance, the Irish in the United States were definitely anti-British.)29 The Yiddish press had derived an instructive lesson from the fiasco of Louis E. Miller (Bandes), editor of the daily Varhayt (or Wahrheit, Truth). Miller, a cofounder of the Forverts, left it in 1905, following a bitter conflict with Cahan, and launched the Varhayt as an intensely competing Socialist newspaper. He had been resolute in his support for the Triple  Entente alliance of France, Britain, and Russia, claiming that Germany’s defeat would weaken France’s strategic dependence on Russia and, at the same time, strengthen democracy in Europe. This kind of reasoning was, however, against the grain of American Jews, particularly of Austria-Hungarian extraction, whose loyalty to the Emperor Franz Joseph “had reached mythic proportions, summed up in the word Kaisertreu.”30 Thousands of protesters would come to the rallies in front of the Varhayt’s editorial offices, organized by the Galician Farband (Alliance), which—ironically—Miller had helped to establish. During three months, the Varhayt lost 30,000 or, according to other sources, 50,000 readers. As a result of this crisis, Miller was forced to resign as editor-inchief on November 24, 1914, and in January 1915 he left the newspaper all 27 Joseph Chaikin, Yidishe bleter in Amerike: a tsushtayer tsu der 75 yoriker geshikhte fun der yidisher prese in di Fareynikte Shtatn un Kanade (New York: M. Sh. Shklarski, 1946), 245. 28 As quoted in Joseph Rappaport, “Jewish Immigrants and World War I: A Study of American Yiddish Press Reactions” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1951), 90. 29 Melech Epstein, Profiles of Eleven (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), 208–209. 30 John D. Klier, “Why Were Russian Jews not Kaisertreu?,” Ab Imperio 4 (2003): 42.

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together. The new editor, Itsik (Isidor) Gonikman, repositioned the newspaper, deriding the fonye-land or pogrom-medine (pogrom country).31 In the meantime, the Forverts kept publishing photos of Jewish soldiers who distinguished themselves in action and were decorated with the St. George’s Cross, Russia’s highest military honor, although the editors realized the incongruity of placing such images next to articles which lamented the plight of Russian and Austria-Hungarian Jews subjected to hostile or even barbaric treatment by the imperial army.32 In Russia, military censors often did not permit newspapers to write about Jewish recipients of the St. George’s Cross and, generally, about Jewish soldiers’ bravery, but allowed to print tawdry stories about Jews evading military service and Jewish treachery in the war zones.33 Ironically, Abraham Liessin, editor of the Socialist journal Tsukunft (Future), then owned by the Forward Association, also did not believe in the patriotism and bravery of Russian-Jewish soldiers. He argued that pacifism had been inherent to diasporic Jews, who at all times inclined to intellectual and spiritual rather than military bravery, hence: Speaking between us (we know that our enemies don’t understand Yiddish), we can reveal the truth: all the Jewish battlefield bravery venerated nowadays in newspapers is, in really, a result of our limitless cowardice. The Jew in the trenches is shaking in his boots, afraid of not being able to do his duty, and therefore he behaves so nervously heroic. And behind the pomp surrounding the glamorous rows of Jewish holders of the St. George’s Cross we still see the scared eyes of our victimized people—a people that has been scattered over the world for two thousand years.34

In its July 1916 issue the Tsukunft published Abraham Reisen’s story “The Four Heroes” (“Di fir heldn”). Reisen, a leading Yiddish writer of the

31 Chaikin, Yidishe bleter in Amerike, 220–225; Rappaport, “Jewish Immigrants and World War I,” 99–100; Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 422; Charles A. Madison, Jewish Publishing in America: The Impact of Jewish Writing on American Culture (New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1976), 124; Gil Ribak, Gentile New York: The Images of Non-Jews among Jewish Immigrants (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 135. 32 “Dos bild un der artikl ibern bild oyf dize peydzsh,” Forverts, July 25, 1915, 4. 33 Melissa K. Stockdale, “United in Gratitude: Honoring Soldiers and Defining the Nation in Russia’s Great War,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, no. 3 (2006): 475–476. 34 Abraham Liessin, “Tsum nayem yor!,” Tsukunft, January 1916, 1–4.

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time, praised the soldiers who had been court-martialed and executed for refusing to fight in the war.35

Abraham Cahan’s 1915 Trip to Europe The Fourth Estate, the New York weekly  “for advertisers and newspaper makers,” came to the conclusion that “since the war the Jewish papers have passed through a crisis which was thought to be very serious, but only served to prove their firmness and stability.”36 The firmest example of this was the Forverts. On April 23, 1915 Cahan returned from Europe, where for two months he had traveled under the aegis of the German Military Press Agency, Kriegspresseamt. The net effect of Cahan’s journey and, generally, his newspaper’s coverage of the war could be quantified in terms of the Forverts’s circulation, which soared from 176,124 in January 1915 to 200,267 in the beginning of April.37 Readers followed Cahan’s trip by reading his cables and articles, which described the anti-Jewish atrocities wrought by the Russian army even during a relative lull in the bloodshed—he returned to New York before the main pogrom period concurrent with the Russian retreat, from April to October 1915.38 His reports, several of which appeared also in the daily New York Globe, complimented various aspects of Germany’s “civilized culture” and pilloried Russia’s “barbarism.” The trope of a war between the German civilization and the Russian barbarism recurred in the American Yiddish press.39 On March 9, Cahan reported in a telegram names and places of residence of Jewish women, tormented to death by “cruel, half-wild Cossacks.”40 One of the victims, a mother of a two-day-old child, died after being raped numerous times. Several women committed suicide. Lest be accused of sloth, two days later Cahan sent a new list of victims, murdered by “wild, 35 Abraham Reisen, “Di fir heldn,” Tsukunft, July 1916, 561–562. 36 “The Jewish Press in 1916,” The Fourth Estate, January 13, 1917, 11. 37 The 1915 circulation of 196,079 is listed in Mordechai Soltes, “The Yiddish Press: An Americanizing Agency,” American Jewish Yearbook 26 (1924–1925): 335. 38 See Eric Lohr, “1915 and the War Pogrom Paradigm in the Russian Empire,” in AntiJewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History, ed. Jonathan DekelChen et al., (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 42. 39 See, for example, Ribak, Gentile New York, 135. 40 Abraham Cahan, “Kozakn farpeynikn yidishe froyen tsum toyt,” Forverts, March 10, 1915, 1.

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bloodthirsty czarist Cossacks,” who chopped women and old people.41 In a short article, entitled “To While Away the Time, Cossacks Hang Jews,” Cahan mentioned that he was deeply affected by what he had seen in Europe: “before the trip I already was a supporter of Germany, but now my position is reinforced a thousand-fold.”42 On March 16, Cahan wrote a long article, “A Pogrom rather than a War,” which began with the following paragraph: I just returned to Berlin from a trip to Łódź and several other Polish towns, which are now in German hands. It was a very eventful trip. I found myself in the heart of the territory, where a short time ago the Russian barbarism raged, but now it is breathing freely under the German control. First of all, I went to Łódź to ascertain the facts about pogroms. Then I visited a few other towns that had suffered severely during the pogroms, conducted in a characteristically Russian style. I spoke with many families, whose fathers had been hanged, and whose mothers and daughters had been raped by soldiers and officers. The details are horrible and loathsome. Many pages in my notebook are covered with names of victims. Every name represents a separate horrific story or episode and fills my heart with pain and wrath. 43

Around the same time, Cahan wrote an article entitled “Jews Were Flogged to Death, Burnt Alive, Shot, Stabbed, and Chopped” (published on April 11). He concentrated, particularly, on the tragic events that played out in the town of Rejowiec in Lublin Province: When the Russians returned to the town following the Austrians’ retreat, they first of all arrested 87 Jews. Later they liberated 32 of them, but Cossacks executed all the others by shooting or hanging. Then the commanding Russian officer gave an order to burn down all Jews-owned houses in the town, and Cossacks, of course, fulfilled his order. In many cases they would set on fire a house with people still inside it. As a result, a significant part of the population was burnt alive. Cossacks would not let people to leave the houses and save their lives. Instead, they would either shoot the Jews at

41 Abraham Cahan, “Nokh nemen fun yidishe karbones in Poylishe shtetlekh,” Forverts, March 12, 1915, 1. 42 Abraham Cahan, “Kozakn hengen yidn als a tsayt-fartrayb,” Forverts, March 16, 1915, 1. 43 In the newspaper, the article came out much later: Abraham Cahan, “Nit milkhome nor pogrom,” Forverts, April 10, 1915, 6.

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the footstep of their house or force them to return into the blaze and perish there.44

Until the end of April 1915, the Forverts featured Cahan’s articles with blood-curdling titles, such as “Blindfolded Rabbis Were Led to Gallows in Radom” (April 13), “Jews Were Tied to Poles and Buried Alive” (April 14), and “Women Were Forced to Bring Ropes for Hanging Their Husbands” (April 17). In all descriptions of anti-Jewish atrocities, Cossacks figure as principal or only marauders, rapists, and murderers. According to John Klier, the historian of anti-Jewish violence in imperial Russia, Cossacks symbolized the pogroms, particularly the “military” ones (by contrast with pre-1905 “spontaneous” pogrom and “political” pogroms of 1905–1914), when mobile Cossack units became the main executors of orders given by the heavily anti-Semitic top army commanders, who treated Jews as badly as the Russian subjects of German extraction, or often even worse than the Germans.45 Significantly, by focusing on Cossacks, Cahan and other writers shied away from blaming anti-Jewish violence on all Russians, though Cossacks belonged of course to the Russian nation. The wartime memoirs of Moyshe Dembovski, a military doctor at a Cossack division, portray his comrades-in-arms very differently from the stereotypically wild and bloodthirsty Cossacks.46 In March 1916, the Forverts wrote about an American Jewish physician of Russian extraction who voluntarily returned to his home country and enlisted there as a military doctor at a Cossack unit.47 On the other hand, the Jewish writer, anthropologist, and political activist S. Ansky (Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport) observed that most frontline Jewish doctors associated themselves with

44 Abraham Cahan, “Yidn farshmisn tsum toyt, farbrent lebedikerheyt, geshosn, geshtokhn un gehongen,” Forverts, April 6, 1915, 6. 45 John Klier, ”Kazaki i pogromy: Chem otlichalis´ ‘voennye’ pogromy?,” in Mirovoi krizis 1914–1920 godov i sud´by vostochnoevropeiskogo evreistva, ed. Oleg V. Budnitskii et al. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005), 47–70. On Cossacks’ atrocities, see also, for example, Tracey H. Norrell, “Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbia, and Other Ostjuden under German Occupation, 1915–1918” (PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2010), 60–61, 90, 125. 46 M. Dembovski, Mit di kozakn iber Bukovine un Galitsyen (Vilkaviškis: n.p., 1923). 47 Mendel Osherowitch, “Nekhanye der Bronzviler vert a kozakisher ofitsir in Rusland,” Forverts, May 28, 1916, 6.

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Russian troops and were uninterested in the plight of the local Jewish population, especially in Galicia.48 Documentary and fictional descriptions of wartime pogroms often emphasize hostility of the Polish population towards Jews. In the words of Yankel Yanover, the protagonist of Sholem Aleichem’s series of stories “Tales of 1001 Nights”: “Poles did not take any direct part in the pogroms. Why would I, God forbid, wrongfully accuse them? Poles only showed where the Jew was hiding. In other words, they maintained command [over the situations], while Cossacks did their job. . . .”49 Like American Yiddish writers (notably, Lamed Shapiro, whose 1918 story “The Jewish Government” received great critical acclaim), Sholem Aleichem—who came to New York at the end of 1914—most probably used newspapers reports as source material for his “Tales of 1001 Nights” (first published in 1915) set in the Polish town of Kraśnik.50 An “auxiliary role” of the Polish population was also one of the leitmotifs in the Forverts coverage of the massacres and expulsions.51 Thus, Cahan’s article “A Pogrom rather than a War” has a subtitle: “Cossacks and Poles in Galicia Turn the War Zone into a Pogrom Zone.” The introductory lead of the article “Blindfolded Rabbis Were Led to Gallows in Radom” narrates laconically about a “happy end” episode: “At first, they were tortured during the whole night in order to force them to confess to the crimes with which the Poles charged them. However, [the prospect of being hanged on] the gallows did not scare them, and the Russian commander had to let them go at the last moment.” As the war raged on, many Jewish commentators pointed a finger at the Poles as culprits in violence against Jews.52 Such publications resonated with and reinforced the dominant opinion of American Jews that independence of Poland did not bode well for 48 S. Ansky, The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey through the Jewish Pale of Settlement during World War I (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), 73, 81–82. 49 Sholem Aleichem, Ale verk. Mayses un fantazyes (New York: Folksfond, 1917), 201. 50 See, for example, Esther Frank, An Analysis of Four Short Stories by Lamed Shapiro (New York: YIVO, 1978); David G. Roskies, “The Pogrom Poem and the Literature of Destruction,” Notre Dame English Journal 11, no. 2 (1979): 95. 51 For Polish anti-Semitism of that time, see Alexander V. Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity, and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005), 65–71. 52 Gil Ribak, “Between Germany and Russia: The Images of Poles and the Ensuing Cultural Trajectories among Yiddish and Hebrew Writers between 1863 and World War I,” Polin 28 (2015): 238–239.

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Jews.53 The future of Jews looked better under the control of Germany, especially as the Kaiser’s government pledged to bring order and equality to the conquered territories. In that vein, Cahan suggested that the population of Poland had “nothing but praise of the Kaiser’s forces” and claimed that, for the first time in his life, he “saw Poles and Jews carrying on their daily tasks in the presence of soldiers without uneasiness, and these were the German soldiers.”54 Cahan maintained that the wartime treatment of Jews had illuminated, on the one hand, the barbarism of Russian autocracy and, on the other hand, the excellence of the Kaiser’s (with a Social-Democratic majority in the Reichstag) Germany. On May 1, 1915, he told the audience of many thousands Jewish Socialists and trade-unionists who had assembled at Carnegie Hall on the occasion of the international proletarian day: It is preposterous to think of the Russians being successful in their campaign and reaching Berlin. They are a thousand years behind the times and practically negligible. The French and the English are the only ones Germany has to fear. To illustrate German and Russian rule, I can mention a visit to the town of Ostrowo. [Ostrów Wielkopolski in Poland after World War I.] It is right on the frontier, a German town whose inhabitants speak Polish. It is a fine up-to-date town with all the evidences of modern comfort and cultivation. From there I stepped over the border. When you have gone as far as about twenty city blocks, you are in the region of indescribable backwardness, a region so filthy and unsanitary that there is not a place where you or I could sleep or eat. Yet, exactly the same race of people is living in comfort and cleanliness only a short distance away in Ostrowo. . . . There is just one reason why the German Socialists joined the conflict and are with the Kaiser, whom normally they are against. It is because, they said, “If we start at this time to make trouble for our country, we are only playing into the hands of savage Russia.” They do not believe that there would have been a war if Russia had not been involved. At least, they would not have supported it. But if Russia was a country up with modern civilization, as France and Germany are, there would have been no trouble.55

53 For a contemporaneous treatment of Polish-Jewish relations, see, for example, The Jews in the Eastern War Zone (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1916), 41–65. 54 “Finds Poles Happy under German Rule: Abraham Cahan Praises the Kaiser’s Forces after a Trip to the War Zone,” The New York Times, February 12, 1915, 4. 55 Ibid.

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In fact, not all German Socialists were unanimous in supporting the war. On July 30, 1915, the newspaper reported that hundreds of German antiwar Socialists, including several members of the Reichstag, published an open letter lamenting the leadership of the party for championing the militarist policy of government. Judging by the editorial comment, the Forverts opposed this dissent in the ranks of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Readers learned that a much larger number of party members had not signed the letter, knowing that the majority of Belgian, French, and British Socialists advocated continuation of the war until full victory over Germany. The editorial comment explained that such a victory would facilitate “a triumph of Russian despotism.”56 The Forverts used some products of Germany’s propaganda machine, which paid much attention to influencing the state of mind among American Jews. Dr.  Isaac Straus, a member of the German information bureau that began to operate in New York in October 1914, was responsible for contacts with the Jewish press and also represented in New York the Committee for the Liberation of the Russian Jews, formed by German Zionists at the beginning of the war. Another member of the bureau, Dr. Samuel M. Melamed, who later played a visible role in American Jewish journalism, translated the distributed material into Yiddish. On February 13, 1915, the Forverts published a digest of Melamed’s interview with the German ambassador, Count Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff. The ambassador expressed the opinion that the war should speed up the democratization of German society and facilitate its full purification from anti-Semitism. Bernstorff mentioned the presence of around two hundred Jewish officers in the German army as a sign of successful overcoming anti-Semitic prejudices even among the conservative commissioned ranks. He also referred to the friendly relations between the Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Jewish shipping magnate Albert Ballin, whose company’s fleet brought to America tens of thousands of European Jews.57 Sergei (Serguis) Syromiatnikoff, the Russian counterpart of the German propagandists, tried to exhort the American public to change their mind about Russia:

56 “An ofener briv fun 700 daytshe sotsialistn,” Forverts, July 30, 1915, 4. 57 Gennady Estraikh, “Viewing World War I from across the Ocean: The New York Yiddish Daily ‘Forverts’ on the Plight of East European Jews,” Jews and Slavs 23 (2013): 378–379.

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there are three social forces in the United States that desire to degrade Russia in the eyes of the American public . . . : (1) Russian revolutionaries, with their American protectors . . . ; (2) American Germans, obliged to help their fatherland in the war against Russia, in accordance with the principle once a German subject always a German subject, and (3) the American Jews, who are trying to help their brothers in Russia. . . . I have to speak about the American Jews. Russia has about 6,000,000 of their brothers, who cannot and do not like to leave our country, which some of them are cursing. The Russian Jews here in the United States are dreaming about returning to Russia, from which a great part of them have emigrated because of fear of military service, compulsory upon every Russian citizen. They want to improve the fate of the Jews in Russia, but is slandering Russia, her government and her ruler a practical method to improve the status of the Jews in Russia? In my opinion it is the best way to imperil the situation of the Jews in Russia, because it only means putting new wood to the fire of the numerous anti-Semites in Russia and weakening the power of the Russian liberals, who are struggling for a just solution of the Jewish question in Russia.58

It seems that Syromiatnikoff ’s letter, published in the American press, hardly had any discernible impact on the Jewish public opinion, especially that of Jewish Socialists.59 At the same time, nostalgic feelings colored some of the publications. For instance, the poet Morris Winchevsky, a veteran of Jewish Socialist literature and journalism, was sorry that the classic Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem died (on May 13, 1916) in “a foreign land,” in New York, rather than in Russia, where “your grave is close to your heder [elementary religious school] and your coffin is made of the same kind of wood as was once used for your cradle.”60

58 Sergius N. Syromiatnikoff, “Russian and American Public Opinion,” New York Tribune, November 24, 1915, 10. See also Viktoriia I. Zhuravleva, Ponimanie Rossii v SShA: obrazy i mify (Moscow: RGGU, 2012), 1005. 59 See, for example, “Nikolays mapole in Amerike,” Varhayt, November 24, 1915, 4. 60 “Stopt morgn fun der arbet—kumt tsu Sholem Aleykhems levaye: Sholem Aleykhems kerper vet shpeter opgefirt vern nokh Rusland,” Forverts, May 14, 1916, 1; Morris Winchevsky, “Sholem Aleikhem: zayn uftu, zayn toyt un zayn levaye,” Forverts, May 23, 1916, 5.

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The Zimmerwald Conference The 1915 Independence Day issue of the Forverts informed its readers that a group of Russian Socialists and some of their German peers were making attempts to split up the international Socialist movement by creating a new Socialist International and thus unite exclusively those Socialists who “had not become nationalistically inclined during the ongoing war.”61 In August 1915, The Ladies’ Garment Worker noted that the “only rumors about peace that one can hear nowadays in Europe and America emanate primarily from Socialist and [trade-union] organized workers.”62 In an article published in the Tsukunft, Benjamin Feigenbaum, a veteran Marxist radical and crusader against all signs of Jewish nationalism, wrote about attempts of some European Socialists to disconnect their internationalist ideology with loyalty to their countries, characterizing these attempts as “the birth pangs of a new International.”63 Indeed, on September 15, 1915, a group of Socialists representing European parties, factions, and groupings assembled in Zimmerwald, a little village outside Berne, Switzerland. Among the Russian delegates were the Bolsheviks Vladimir Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev, the Mensheviks Julius Martov and Pavel Akselrod, and Leon Trotsky. At the time, the latter headed a separate group known under the name of its Parisian periodical Nashe delo (Our Course). The conference called for “peace without annexations” and thus opposed the patriotic trend in the Socialist parties in the belligerent countries. At the same time, many people perceived the antiwar stance of the Zimmerwald conference as essentially favoring Germany, which by that time had made substantial territorial gains in Europe and could benefit from ending the war at that point.64 It took the Forverts almost a month to publish preliminary information about the conference. The newspaper emphasized somewhat mawkishly the “absolute friendship which dominated the debates between participants who represented combatant countries. They trusted each other like

61 “In der sotsialistisher velt,” Forverts, July 4, 1915, 3. 62 “Sotsialistishe fridns-klangen,” The Ladies’ Garment Worker, August 1915, 35. 63 Benjamin Feigenboim, “Di geburts-veyenishn fun a nayem internatsional,” Tsukunft, September 1915, 793–797. 64 Olga Hess Gankin and Harold Henry Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War: The Origin of the Third International (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1940), 617–618, 621–622.

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friends do.”65 The truth was that virtually the day after the conference ended eight of its participants formed a splinter group, which became known as “Zimmerwald Left.” Led by Lenin, they united behind the slogan “transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war.” The Zimmerwald conference, and then, in April 1916, a second conference, or the “Second Zimmerwald,” in Kienthal, also near Berne, formed what was tagged the “internationalist” strain in the Socialist movement, while the Zimmerwald Left became the embryo of the future Third (Communist) International, or Comintern. In fact, the term “Third International” had already emerged in the discourse around the conference, although its initiators made a point in stressing that they remained loyal to the existing International. However, those who spoke and wrote about the Third International certainly meant this as a replacement for the previous one. The tendency to discard the Second International and form a third one was mentioned, for instance, in an article written for the Tsukunft by Vladimir Kossovski (Nokhem Mendl Levinson), one of the founders of the Bund and, by 1915, one of the five members of the Bund’s Foreign Committee. Kossovski did not go to the conference, feeling that it “could bring nothing good.”66 However, he took part in the “Second Zimmerwald.” Characteristically, Kossovski had problems mailing his text to New York, because the French military censorship had imposed a ban on all reports about the anti-war Socialist gathering.67 An old adversary of Lenin, Kossovski emphasized that the Bolshevik leader was “a principled divider [tseshpalter], inclined to use surgical operations as a universal healing aid for all conflicts in the labor movement,” and that he tended to see a traitor in anyone who “disagreed with his Torah.” According to Kossovski, Lenin was determined to render irrelevant any opposition and to use adventurous methods of struggle.68 While the famous Socialists of Western Europe lent their backing to their countries’ military efforts, Lenin, who denounced such Socialists as apologists for the bourgeois-imperialist war and betrayers of the proletariat, came out at that time to prominence as an intriguing figure whose influence transcended Bolshevik circles. Moreover, Bolshevism, a product of the essentially internal 1903 Bolshevik-Menshevik schism in the Russian Social Democratic 65 66 67 68

“In der sotsialistisher velt,” Forverts, October 11, 1915, 2. Gregor Aronson et al., eds., Di geshikhte fun Bund, vol. 3 (New York: Unzer Tsait, 1966), 23. See also L. [Julius] Martov, “Di ayzerne frantsoyzishe tsenzur,” Forverts, April 4, 1916, 2. Vladimir Kossovski, “Der tsveyter tsi der driter internatsional?: ayndrukn fun der konferents in Tsimervald,” Tsukunft, February 1916, 173–176.

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Workers Party, for the first time emerged from the radical margins of the Socialist movement as an ideology capable of becoming a force in the international arena, notably among those Socialists who longed for return to international solidarity. 69 In October 1915, American Socialists welcomed a guest, Alexandra Kollontai, a veteran of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. An offspring of a Russian aristocratic family, she had gained a reputation as a prolific writer and lecturer on social and sexual questions from a Socialist and feminist point of view. Kollontai had recently broken with the Mensheviks and joined Lenin’s Bolshevik faction, being attracted by its unequivocal anti-war stand. Ludwig Lore, editor of the New York newspaper Volkszeitung, and several other members of the German Socialist Federation invited her to come to America as an agitator against the prowar spirit among its members. Karl Liebknecht, one of the leaders of the leftwing, anti-war faction of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, had suggested that the American German Socialists invite Kollontai, an accomplished polyglot. Indeed, she spoke to sundry language audiences, giving over 120 lectures during her four-month sojourn in the United States.70 Lenin instructed her not to waste time on those people who were “afraid even of the Zimmerwald manifesto,” and to pay attention only to those who were “to the left of the Zimmerwald manifesto.”71 Clearly, Cahan did not belong to Kollontai’s target group. Still, he met her at the apartment of the Mensheviks Sergei and Anna Ingerman. It seems that none but Russian-speaking Socialists took part in the meeting. Morris Hillquit, whom Lenin regarded with distaste after the August 1907 congress of the Socialist International (he found Hillquit’s remarks about Chinese and other Asian workers racist), was also present. Known in his pre-American youth as Moyshe Hillkowitz, Hillquit studied in Riga, his hometown, at a Russian gymnasium. Cahan met Lenin only once, in Cracow in 1912, and found the Bolshevik leader pleasant to talk to.72 Now he was not impressed

69 See, for example, Stanley W. Page, “Lenin’s Assumption of International Proletarian Leadership,” The Journal of Modern History 26, no. 3 (1954): 233–245. 70 Cathy Porter, Alexandra Kollontai: The Lonely Struggle of the Woman Who Defied Lenin (New York: The Dial Press, 1980), 225–234. 71 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, 572. 72 Abraham Cahan, Bleter fun mayn lebn, vol. 5 (New York: Forward, 1931), 130–132.

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by the arguments of Kollontai, who represented Lenin’s group, and dismissed the Zimmerwald program as “utopian.”73 At first, the JSF also remained largely indifferent to the resolutions of the conference in Switzerland. Soon, however, the mood changed. In November 1915, the JSF’s Executive Committee approved of the political strategy drawn up at the Zimmerwald conference, seeing it as the return to the principles of class struggle and internationalism. The two members of the committee who turned down endorsing the Zimmerwald conference were representatives of the Forverts.74 One of them, the labor editor of the newspaper, was known in Russia as the Bundist David Lipets, but he appeared in New York in the summer of 1913, carrying the name of Max Goldfarb, “with the title of ‘Dr.’ suddenly and mysteriously affixed before his name.”75 He might have received this degree in economic science from the Université libre in Brussels, whereas his detractors gossiped that it was just part of his pseudonym.76 Like Goldfarb, the second representative of the Forverts, Olgin, was a 1914 Bundist arrival from Europe.77 By the time the JSF’s National Executive Committee discussed the issue of Zimmerwald, the conference manifesto had already received backing not only from the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, but even from the German Socialist Federation, notwithstanding the fact that in Germany itself the Social Democratic Party opposed it.78 The American labor reformer William English Walling, whose 1908 book Russia’s Message: The True World Import of the Revolution contained interviews with Russian revolutionaries and described Lenin as “perhaps the most popular leader in Russia,” wrote in The New York Times: The Socialist advocates of an immediate peace on the basis of a German victory have succeeded in reconstructing “the International.” In the middle 73 Gennady Estraikh, “American Yiddish Socialists at the Wartime Crossroads: Patriotism and Nationalism versus Proletarian Internationalism,” in World War I and the Jews: Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East, and America, ed. Marsha L. Rozenblit and Jonathan Karp (New York: Berghahn, 2017), 285–286. 74 A. Litvak, “Far vos ikh bin far Tsimervald,” Di naye velt, December 10, 1915, 4–5; Hertz, Di yidishe sotsialistishe bavegung in Amerike, 159–160. 75 David P. Hornstein, Arthur Ewert: A Life for the Comintern (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 67. 76 Cf. “Dr. M. Goldfarb Will Return to Work in Russia,” Advance, May 18, 1917, 1–2; “Editorial Notes,” The American Jewish Chronicle, August 31, 1917, 443. 77 See “Genose Olgin in Amerike,” Der yidisher sotsialist, December 1, 1914, 1. 78 “Tsimervald un Yapan,” Di naye velt, November 26, 1915, 1–2.

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of September they held an international conference at Zimmerwald in Switzerland—and this conference has had an immediate and complete success in the Socialist world. . . . The Executive Committee of the American Socialist Party has now endorsed the conference and the party press shows— without exception—that sentiment is overwhelmingly in favor of the Zimmerwald program.79

Nonetheless, not all Socialists backed the Zimmerwald Left, which aimed at an immediate creation of a new International equipped with Lenin’s world revolutionary strategy. In fact, the Executive Committee of the JSF stressed in its resolution that it supported the Zimmerwald manifesto, but considered the International Socialist Commission established at the Zimmerwald conference as a temporary body rather than an alternative to the existing International. Likewise, the JSF distanced itself from the Socialist Propaganda League, initiated by a group of members of the Socialist Party of America who called for the collaboration of European and American revolutionary Socialists to form a Third International.80 In general, the majority of American Socialists countered both the current bloodshed and the idea of waging a local or worldwide revolutionary war.81 Cahan, convinced that his life “was inextricably linked with the destinies of the more than two million Jews who landed in the United States between 1881 and 1924,”82 tended to reflect the mood of his readership and in principle opposed the war and American participation in it. At the same time, he fought shy of subscribing to any antiwar strategy that showed signs of being impractical, could harm the unity of the Socialist movement, or could lead to Russia’s victory. Significantly, Cahan’s disagreement with the decision of the party’s National Executive Committee could not be qualified as an act of serious disobedience. According to Arthur Le Sueur, then a major figure in the Socialist Party, neither the Zimmerwald conference nor the party’s endorsement were “official.” He explained:

79 William English Walling, “Socialist Attitude Toward Peace at Any Price,” The New York Times, November 14 ,1915 (Sunday Magazine), 19. 80 Hertz, Di yidishe sotsialistishe bavegung in Amerike, 159–160; Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York: The Viking Press, 1957), 68–69. 81 Lloyd, Left Out, 21. 82 Gerald Sorin, “Tradition and Change: American Jewish Socialists as Agents of Acculturation,” American Jewish History 79, no. 1 (1989): 39.

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The best that can be said for the endorsement is that it demonstrated that at least three members of the National Executive Committee stood for principles of Internationalism as against Nationalism, which has apparently destroyed the high idealism of the International movement . . . . The endorsement was never meant to bind the Party in the United States, but was intended to bring to the fore for discussion, the questions in Militarism, and Nationalism . . . .83

Here and in other publications of that time the term “nationalism” usually encompassed both “love of country” and “love of nation.” In fact, the synonymous usage of “patriotism” and “nationalism” was rather characteristic of the literature, scholarly and popular, through the entire twentieth century.84 On November 24, 1915, a few days before the meeting of the JSF’s National Executive Committee, the Forverts featured Cahan’s article entitled “What Can Socialists Do Now Concerning the Horrible War?” He emphasized that only three of the five members of highest executive organ of the party voted for endorsing the ideological platform of Zimmerwald. He considered this platform harmful on the grounds that it brought dangerous discord, exacerbating the deepening ideological rift between those who advocated the primacy of revolutionary means of struggle for Socialism and others, including Cahan, who prescribed reformist means. As a practical man, Cahan deemed the conference in Switzerland not simply distractive, but also pointless, since it could not stop the bloodshed. He compared the effectiveness of the Zimmerwald program to the ability of prayer to stop a fire. Rather, he maintained that nothing meaningful could be done before the end of the hostilities. Only Russia’s military defeat in the war could create conditions for the long-awaited overthrow of the Russian monarchy: “In this war, I am on the side of Germany, because Russia is a dark despotic power, while England and France support this bloodthirsty beast. I am sure that the Germans’ victory would bring happiness to my people, to Jews, and be a victory for progress in general.” He asked: Would it be better, for instance, if German Socialists began to sabotage their country’s war efforts and, as a result, allow the army of the Russian czar Nicholas II to occupy Germany? And he answered: No, it would be a terrible blow 83 Arthur Le Sueur, “The Zimmerwald Conference and Its Endorsement by the Party N.E.C.,” The American Socialist, November 27, 1915, 3. 84 Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1.

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to progress. Whether the Socialists like it or not, the war demanded that citizens think first of all about defending their countries. Therefore, it was unfair to claim that the Socialists of France, Germany, Austria, and Belgium had betrayed the principles of class struggle.85 Cahan believed that the Zimmerwald conference deviated from Marxism and demonstrated anarchist tendencies, rushing to simplistic conclusions redolent of what had happened a quarter of a century earlier, when American anarchists (Cahan himself was in their ranks in the 1880s) accused the Socialists of not demanding an immediate revolution. He strongly opposed the Zimmerwald call for preserving the pre-war borders by preventing “enforced incorporation either of wholly or partly occupied countries.”86 In particular, he did not see any sound reason for keeping the Russian borders intact. On December 10, 1914 the Forverts made known its editor’s conviction “that it would be fortunate for all Europe and for the whole Jewish population if Germany would take all of Poland and also Lithuania from Russia.”87 Cahan reckoned that the historical Duchy of Courland, incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1795, culturally belonged to Germany. Although he certainly could not make the same argument for the territory of the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania, or Lite in the Jewish mental map, he maintained nevertheless that the population of these areas had much better prospects under German rule.88

The Phantom of Internationalism In his often-cited February 1915 article “Democracy Versus the MeltingPot,” Horace M. Kallen noted that Americanization had liberated rather than suppressed nationality.89 Cahan’s Americanization is a good case in point. In 1890, Cahan wrote: “The only Jewish question we recognize is the question of how to prevent such ‘Jewish Questions’ from arising” in

85 Abraham Cahan, “Vos kenen sotsialistn itst ton vegn der shreklekher milkhome?,” Forverts, November 24, 1915, 4. 86 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, 332. 87 Quoted in Morris U. Schappes, “World War I and the Jewish Masses (1914–1917),” Jewish Life, February 1955, 17. 88 Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 467. 89 Tim Prchal and Tony Trigilio, eds., Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870–1930 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 302.

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the United States.90 Still, in 1891 he tried to raise the Jewish question during the Second International’s Congress in Brussels. The Congress, however, decided that “the question proposed by the delegation of the groups of American socialists of the Jewish language has no place here, and passes to the order of the day.” It instructed “the workers of the Jewish language” to fight for emancipation by uniting with their countries’ workers and Socialist parties.91 It was easier to formulate such a resolution than to stay immune to Jewish problems. Following the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, dogmatic Socialists diagnosed Jewish nationalism in the Forverts articles sympathetic toward the victims. Cahan retorted that such hypertrophied internationalism betrayed the malaise associated with Jewish life in the diaspora, which made Jews accustomed to subjection.92 Around the same time, Shmuel Peskin, an influential Socialist activist and journalist, wrote in the Forverts that the Kishinev pogrom and, earlier, the Dreyfus case, made irrelevant the slogan, which used to appear as a banner at conventions: “We are Yiddishspeaking Socialists rather than Jewish Socialists.” Peskin called on Jewish Socialists not to be ashamed to advocate preservation of the Jewish nation and its language and culture.93 The Mendel Beilis and Leo Frank cases made the Forverts even less “ashamed” of its constituency’s primordial ancestry. The Cahan-led Forverts cultivated an idiosyncratic outlook, or Forvertism, which combined commitment to both Socialism and Jewishness and often applied an ethnocentric yardstick to American and international events.94 By the beginning of World War I, this combined commitment was more common in Europe than in America, where many Jewish Socialists,

90 Tony Michels, “‘Speaking to Moyshe’: The Early Socialist Yiddish Press and Its Readers,” Jewish History 14, no. 1 (2000): 58. 91 Ezra Mendelsohn, “The Jewish Socialist Movement and the Second International, 1889–1914: The Struggle for Recognition,” Jewish Social Studies 26, no. 3 (1964): 133–134. 92 Abraham Cahan, “Vos heyst ‘nit-internatsional’,” Forverts, July 30, 1903, 4. 93 Shmuel Peskin, “Vi fun yidish-shprekhndike sotsialistn vern mir yidishe sotsialistn,” Forverts, June 3, 1903, 4; idem, “Muzn mir zayn yidn, oder mir kenen oykh veln blaybn yidn?,” Forverts, June 12, 1903, 4. See also Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 61, and Zalman Libin’s story “A Yiddish-speaking Socialist,” in Shining and Shadow: An Anthology of Early Yiddish Stories from the Lower East Side, ed. Albert Waldinger (Selingsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2006), 70–74. 94 See, for example, Tsevi Hirsh Margoshes, Der “forvertizm” (New York: n.p., 1922).

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particularly of the older generation, did not find this outlook supportable.95 Among them was M. Baranoff (Moyshe Gormidor), who in his youth studied at the St. Petersburg University and was active in the Populist movement. In emigration, he turned to Socialism and cut his teeth in journalism as an active contributor to the early Yiddish Socialist press in England, although he wrote his articles in Russian. When he came to America in 1895, he also initially wrote in Russian, but eventually developed a fine Yiddish journalistic style. His column “In Passing” (“Farbaygeyendik”) was especially popular with the intellectual segment of Forverts readers. Baranoff wrote for the Forverts on the side of his successful dentist practice and did not depend financially on his journalistic honoraria. On Friday, which was traditionally a dentists’ day off in New York, the Baranoff apartment would turn into a salon for Russian-speaking intellectuals, with Cahan and his wife among its regulars.96 Notwithstanding their friendly relations—the Baranoffs were practically the only family visited by the Cahans, Cahan often challenged Baranoff ’s judgments. While one of Baranoff ’s stipulations always was that everything he wrote must be printed without change, his articles from time to time were studded with editor’s footnotes, or podkoves (“horseshoes”), explaining that Baranoff was speaking for himself alone.97 In 1911, Baranoff sharply criticized Cahan’s “nationalist,” meaning positive, attitude to celebrating Passover, and for a while severed his relations with the Forverts and with Cahan. In October 1914, the Forverts featured several polemical articles by Baranoff and Cahan. The former, who described himself as “almost the only Jew who did not beseech God to help Germans capture Paris, jump [across the English Channel] into London, and parade through Warsaw,” was filled with indignation at ethnocentrists: How can our Jewish patriots feel unashamed of manifesting their egotism? Let the whole world end up lying in ruins, as long as [the Russian czar] Nicholas is punished for the Kishinev pogrom; let France be trampled down, England destroyed, Belgium turned into a province of Germany, and Serbia,

95 See, for example, Leon Elbe [Bassein], “Di naye vintn oyf der yidisher sotsialistisher gas,” Varhayt, March 22, 1914, 6. 96 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 425. The Forverts advertised (for example, on March 11, 1920, 3) Baranoff ’s dental office at 9–10 West 110 Street. 97 “Dr. Baranoff, Noted Jewish Socialist Writers, is Dead,” The New Leader, November 29, 1924, 3.

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Montenegro, and Albania become Austrian provinces—let all these things happen for one purpose only: to take revenge on the Russian czar.

Although Cahan belonged to the same generation of Russian Jewish radicals as Baranoff, he did not share his unconditional internationalism. He retorted: Every nation cares about itself, but only Jews are supposed to care about other people rather than about themselves. All people, apart from Jews, are allowed to be national egotists. We, however, must forget the Kishinev massacre and the Beilis trial and worry only about non-Jews—about Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania.98

In the atmosphere of the war, the Forverts featured “national egoistic” articles, echoing concurrent debates both in the Socialist and the general American press. While Socialist ideologists were trying to identify the roots of patriotism shown by people in various walks of life, American politicians and journalists argued about ethnic nationalism and identity, linking it to the question of foreign-born Americans’ patriotic loyalty in the context of the military preparedness campaign.99 There were also other reasons why Jewish nationalism had garnered the attention of Cahan and other American Socialist ideologues. First of all, many Jewish immigrants, such as readers of the Forverts, showed clear signs of deep Jewish national feelings. Der tog (Day), launched in New York in November 1914 as a non-partisan liberal daily favoring Jewish diasporic and territorial nation building, already had a circulation of 76,000 in 1915.100 Secondly, the Jewish Socialist landscape in America had changed following the arrival of hundreds of nationally conscious Bundists, who had left Russia following the defeat of the 1905 revolution. In addition to creating the Bolshevik-Menshevik divide in the ranks of Russia’s social democrats, the results of the 1903 congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party had defined the Bund’s attitude to the national question. From this point on, the precedence of primordial

98 Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 87–88. 99 R. Craig Nation, War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the Origins of the Communist International (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), 106–112; Leslie J. Vaughan, “Cosmopolitanism, Ethnicity and American Identity: Randolph Bourne’s ‘Trans-National America,” Journal of American Studies 25, no. 3 (1991): 448. 100 Soltes, “The Yiddish Press: An Americanizing Agency,” 335.

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Jewish ties over general revolutionary sentiment became constant in the Bund’s ideological stand.101 Also inescapable was the fact that the Labor Zionist movement, whose members belonged to the 1913-established Jewish National Workers’ Alliance rather than the JSF, had been growing exponentially since the beginning of the war.102 On July 3, 1915, following the Zionist convention held in Boston, the Forverts published an editorial, entitled “If Jews Would Have Got the Land of Israel,” with almost poetic introductory lines describing the war as a period in world history which could be compared with “a summer storm pouring down and hailing on the one side of the street, while golden beams of sun rays become already visible on the other side of the street.” In less poetic words, the editorialist admitted that the war might bring the realization of sundry national dreams and, therefore, the Forverts was ready to assume a slightly more conciliatory stance towards the Zionist project. Nonetheless, the editors remained skeptical about a Jewish state as a solution for all Jews, the vast majority of whom would live scattered all over the world. According to the Yiddish saying, Jews preferred to rest in their graves among Jews, but to make a living among non-Jews (in keyver zol men lign tsvishn yidn, ober khayune zol men makhn tsvishn goyim). This meant Jewish workers could not give up their fight for equality and brotherhood in the countries of their residence.103 In his article published on July 20, 1915 as part of a series of opinion pieces by Forverts authors, Cahan addressed the issues of internationalism and nationalism, lumping together patriotism with ethnic loyalty. He maintained that it was natural for every progressive, civilized man to be both a nationalist and an assimilationist. Even if people dressed similarly, listened to the same operas, and read the same scholarly literature, they continued to be more devoted to their own countries. To be an internationalist did not mean to have exactly the same feelings for every person and nation. He sarcastically reminded his readers that “the Socialist Party does not demand it from us.” At the same time, he admitted that some Jewish Socialists, notably older ones, used to, and sometimes still, harbored extreme views, 101 Charles E. Woodhouse and Henry J. Tobias, “Primordial Ties and Political Process in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: The Case of the Jewish Bund,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 8, no. 3 (1966): 342. 102 See, for example, Mark A. Raider, The Emergence of American Zionism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 41. 103 “Ven yidn zoln krign Eretz-yisroyel,” Forverts, July 3, 1915, 3.

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suppressing in themselves any trait of specific sentiments towards Jews.104 He certainly meant such veterans as Benjamin Feigenbaum, who was born in Warsaw into a prominent Hasidic family, but in his early twenties turned to Socialism, becoming known as a purist Marxist, or—as Cahan repeatedly labeled him—“a fanatic.”105 Feigenbaum admitted, apparently with pride, that people usually meant him as the intransient embodiment of the “oldtimer Socialist-cosmopolite.”106 Years ago, as a newly inducted Socialist, Cahan, too, “believed literally” in his “sacred duty to love all equally.”107 Apparently reflecting the prevailing Bundist ethos of the time, Kossovski advanced the opinion that patriotism got along with internationalism as a logical concomitant of the principle of national self-determination. This view did not stop him and other members of the Bund’s Foreign Committee from endorsing the Zimmerwald antiwar manifesto.108 The prominent Bundist A. Litvak (party and pen name of Khayim Yankl Helfand), who became active in the JSF after arriving early in 1915 in New York to handle the affairs of the Bund’s Central Committee,109 welcomed the Zimmerwald manifesto, concluding that it could unite all Socialists in the belligerent countries in their fight for peace. At the same time, he stressed, one could not count, for instance, on French Socialists joining this drive so long as their German counterparts persist in backing their government’s military campaign. Still, Litvak and others pictured a response to the Zimmerwald manifesto in the form of a worldwide awakening of class conscience and the anti-war solidarity of Socialist parties and groups. He mentioned inter alia one more merit of Zimmerwald: it was the best answer to Cahan’s refusal to admit that internationalism had a strong foothold among Jewish Socialists.110 Advocates of Zimmerwald emerged also among Forverts journalists, notably Benjamin Feigenbaum and Hertz Burgin, a

104 Abraham Cahan, “Natsionalizmus,” Forverts, July 20, 1915, 4–5. 105 See, for example, Benjamin Feigenbaum, “Natsion un klas,” Forverts, January 10, 1916, 5; Abraham Cahan, “Vos heyst fanatiker?,” Forverts, January 17, 1916, 5. 106 Benjamin Feigenbaum, “Natsionalizmus und patriotizmus,” Forverts, August 5, 1917, 4. 107 Abraham Cahan, The Education of Abraham Cahan (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969), 146. 108 Aronson et al., Di geshikhte fun Bund, 26, 28. 109 Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 512. 110 A. Litvak, “Far vos ikh bin far Tsimervald”; idem, “Notitsn,” Di naye velt, December 24, 1915, 4.

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later alumnus of the same Vilna-based Jewish Teachers Training Institute, from which Cahan graduated in 1881. In three articles published in the last days of 1915, Cahan vented his view on internationalism. First of all, he did not see how German and Russian Socialists could internationally cooperate as equal partners. In Russia, an agrarian country, Socialists’ influence was miniscule and they simply lacked any leverage to force the government to stop the war, whereas German Socialists represented a strong force and could seriously affect their country’s ability to fight with Russia. More significantly, the experience of the war brought him to the conclusion that internationalism was an article of faith, sought but hardly present at all among Socialists. This meant there was no reason to mourn for something that, in actuality, never existed. Cahan ridiculed such Marxist purists as Feigenbaum, who kept arguing that internationalism had already become an integral part of the Socialist outlook, and compared him to those adherents of Hasidism who persisted in their faith in miracle-making rebbes even if their “miracles” had never really happened. In other words, Feigenbaum and Socialists of his kind had replanted their fanaticism from Hasidism to Marxism and devoutly revered every word of the great Socialist thinker. As for Cahan, he professed to have an immense intellectual and political respect for Marx, but he judged him as a human being who, for all his genius, was fallible. Cahan, who prided himself on his independent thinking, disagreed with Marx’ views on Jews and stressed that he was not ready to “put in pawn” his brains to anyone, even to Marx.111 Cahan accepted Baranoff ’s argument that internationalism had become part and parcel of contemporary economic, cultural, and academic life, but he stuck to his guns, rejecting the Zimmerwald’s postulate of the precedence of internationalism over nationalism in the outlook of contemporary Socialists and, generally, workers. He went even further in arguing that proletarians would not in the foreseeable future be able to immunize themselves from national feelings.112

111 Abraham Cahan, “Der internatsional,” Forverts, December 27, 1915, 5; idem, “Far vos ken nokh nit zayn keyn emeser internatsional?,” Forverts, December 29, 1915, 5; idem, “Iz di gantse milkhome a trik?,” Forverts, December 31, 1915, 5. 112 Abraham Cahan, “Genose Baranovs internatsional,” Forverts, March 2, 1916, 4. See also M. Baranoff, “Der internatsional—far dem krig, yetst un nokh dem krig,” Forverts, February 25, 1916, 5.

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The Effect of the Wartime Debates Jay Winter discerns three central effects of World War I on Jewish life: first, the “centripetal movement” of millions of Jews caused by being drafted into or volunteering for the belligerent armies; second, the “centrifugal movement” of other millions of Jews turned by the war into refugees; and third, the transformation of the states in the remapped Europe “into more invasive, centralized and authoritarian entities.”113 In addition to the above, the war engendered far-reaching changes in the international Socialist movement, including its Jewish constituents. Cahan, a towering—and for many people, also sinister—figure in the American Jewish labor movement, demonstrated his perspicacity by predicting the destructive effect of Zimmerwald on the Socialist movement. Conceived in order to create a new ideological and organizational foundation for Socialist unity, the conference had instead opened the door to a schism whose consequences would dominate the political landscape in the coming decades of the twentieth century.114 It took some time to consolidate the American supporters of the Zimmerwald left. Finally, on February 17, 1917, the International Conference of Socialist Organizations and Groups convened in New York and issued a resolution characterizing the Zimmerwald movement as “the embryo of the Third International.” Despite its grand name, the conference however was a rather small gathering, representing almost exclusively some Eastern European Socialist groups, but neither the JSF nor any other Jewish Socialist body participated in it.115 The internationalist ideas of Zimmerwald galvanized many Russianlanguage (some of them Jewish) Socialists who coalesced around their New York daily Novyi mir (New World). The Forverts characterized the Novyi mir as “the only Russian daily Socialist organ in America, which conducts highly valuable work among Russian workers . . . . Such organ is vitally needed for the [Socialist] movement in general, but particularly for the Jewish movement, because the Jewish workers have uniquely frequent and close contacts with the Russian workers.”116 In mid-January 1917, Leon Trotsky set his foot in New York and joined the editorial board of the newspaper. During his short, less than three-month-long sojourn he published 113 Jay Winter, “The Great War and Jewish Memory,” European Judaism 48, no. 1 (2015): 6. 114 Nation, War on War, 91. 115 Draper, The Roots of American Communism, 82–83. 116 “Helft breklen Nikolays aynflus in Amerike,” Forverts, October 9, 1915, 6.

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articles (translated from Russian) in the Forverts and the Tsukunft, established friendly relations with several Forverts writers, including Goldfarb and Olgin. Sholem Asch—a regular Forverts and Tsukunft contributor, whose Yiddish literary career was on an upward curve—acted as a guarantor of Trotsky’s debt, and, in the end, had to pay when Trotsky departed from New York without completing the payments on the furniture he had purchased for his Bronx apartment.117 The collaboration of Trotsky, known as a vociferous advocate of the Zimmerwald-style “internationalism,” with the blatantly pro-German Yiddish newspaper raised the eyebrows of many who interpreted it as a proof of his ties with Russia’s enemies.118 The Forverts columnist Tsivion was acquainted with Trotsky from the time of the 1905 revolution in Russia, and later met with him in Switzerland and in New York. He found it “ridiculous to assert” that Trotsky was “in the play of the German government.”119 In domestic politics, the Forverts contended that if the American radicals’ efforts to fight against a war declaration “were to be of no avail and if war should break out, and if the country were under the threat of attack, then the Socialists would take up arms and stand shoulder to shoulder with non-Socialist citizens in the fight against the enemy, as they are now doing in Germany, Austria, and France.”120 The Forverts demonstrated a similar stand in March 1917, as the American press discussed the rumors of a treaty between Germany, Mexico, and Japan. The newspaper made clear its patriotic fervor and appealed to Socialists of the United States to be ready to defend their country. Baruch Charney wrote—with Cahan’s approval, but contrary to the pacifist stand of the Socialist Party’s leaders— that if Mexico were really going to attack the country then every Socialist, every citizen, and every resident of the country would fight to protect the American Republic.121 Charney, city editor of the Forverts at the time, was 117 Frederic C. Giffin, “Leon Trotsky in New York City,” New York History 9, no. 4 (1968): 400. Olgin translated into English the book by Leon Trotsky, Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904–1917 (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1918). 118 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 449–451, 473–474; Richard B. Spence, “Hidden Agendas: Spies, Lies and Intrigue Surrounding Trotsky’s American Visit of January–April 1917,” Revolutionary Russia 21, no. 1 (2008): 33–55. 119 “Leon Trotzky, Leader in Russian Upheaval, Preached Peace Here,” The New York Times, November 9, 1917, 2. 120 As quoted in Rappaport, Jewish Immigrants and World War I, 193. 121 “Der barikht vegn Daytshlands plan zikh tsu fareynikn mit Yapan un Meksike,” Forverts, March 2, 1917, 1. In April 1917, an emergency convention of the Socialist Party

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better known under his Bundist pseudonym Vladeck and acclaimed as the “second Lassalle.” Trotsky found patriotic sentiment shown by the Yiddish Socialist daily inacceptable. He insisted that only military industrialists could benefit from America’s participation in the war against Germany. As a result, Trotsky announced his break with the Forverts. His showdown with Cahan turned into a fiery encounter. “He rushed into the editorial rooms, straight into Cahan’s office. Angry shouts were soon heard, the loud voices of Cahan and Trotsky mingling together. Several minutes later, Trotsky stormed out and left without saying good-buy to anybody.”122 His letter, written on March 8, 1917, announced his decision to sever his links with the newspaper.123 In his memoirs, Trotsky characterized the Forverts (which he, not knowing Yiddish, could not read) as “a newspaper with the stale odor of sentimentally philistine socialism, almost ready for the most perfidious betrayals.”124 For all its patriotic zeal, the Forverts was conspicuously absent when in March 1917 the other New York Yiddish dailies established the Jewish League of American Patriots, which planned to enlist the moral and physical support of American Jews in the events of war.125 The position of the Forverts reflected and reinforced the dominant view among the Jewish Socialists that they had to guard their separate identity. In particular, they dropped their participation in the American Jewish Committee, dominated by German-American Jews, and formed the National Workmen’s Committee on Jewish Rights in the Belligerent Lands (Goldfarb was its Secretary).126 Tension also existed within the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee (JDC), which had in its structure the People’s Relief Committee for the Jewish War Sufferers, formed by Socialist groups, including Labor Zionists. Sholem Asch, who coined the name of the committee (Folks-hilfs-komitet, in Yiddish) and played a major role in it, proclaimed its “unalterable opposition to the war.” See Horace B. Davis, Nationalism and Socialism (New York: New York University Press, 1967), 180. 122 Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 337; idem, Jewish Labor in U.S.A., 1914–1952: An Industrial, Political and Cultural History of the Jewish Labor Movement (New York: Ktav, 1969), 76. See also Ian D. Thatcher, “Leon Trotsky in New York City,” Historical Research 69, no. 169 (1996): 175–176. 123 Tony Michels, “The Russian Revolution in New York, 1917–19,” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 4 (2017): 964. 124 Leon Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007), 275–276. 125 “Jewish Newspaper Men Band to Help Country,” The Fourth Estate, March 31, 1917, 29. 126 See Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts, 176–177.

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never belonged to any political grouping, but was closely linked with the Forverts.127 The Forward Association and other Socialist organization had representatives in the governing board of the committee. In general, the Forverts proved to be less ideologically rigid in the issues of humanitarian relief. Following the USA’s entrance into the war on April 6, 1917, Cahan would face allegations of acting “for the cause of the Kaiser” as an agent recruited by German Socialist Philipp Scheidemann when the latter spent some time in New York in 1913. The truth was that a wholly different kind of recruitment took place in 1913: Scheidemann, who was not Jewish, in December 1913 began to write for the Forverts as its Berlin correspondent. The newspaper was proud to have among its contributors this major German politician, who had been elected as the head of the Social-Democratic faction in the Reichstag, replacing the deceased August Babel.128 Cahan dismissed the accusation of his collaboration with German authorities as “an absurd and clumsy fabrication from beginning to end,” but admitted that during his 1915 trip he “received courteous treatment on the part of German officials.”129 Characteristically, Hillquit, known for his pacifist stance, faced similar accusations of acting in concert with Scheidemann, “betraying the Socialist movement to German militarism.”130 In the meantime, the danger of being closed threatened all newspapers and journals, which had revealed pro-German sympathies, especially when the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917 gave the Postmaster General the power to suspend or revoke the financially crucial second-class mailing privilege. By mid-September 1917, more than hundred periodicals were under Post Office investigation. At the beginning of October 1917, Cahan had to defend his newspaper. He could not deny undeniable: that the Forverts agitated against America’s participation in the war. Yet, he insisted, this stand of the newspaper only reflected the editors’ cleaving to the doctrine of defensive wars and did not mean that the newspaper supported Germany or was disloyal to the United States. Indeed, on the eve of the first registration day 127 Baruch Zuckerman, “Undzer role in der relif-arbet,” in Yidish-natsionaler arbeterfarband, 1910–1946: geshikhte un dergreykhungen (New York: Jewish National Workers Alliance, 1946), 209–210. 128 “Genose Shaydeman shraybt artiklen farn ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, December 27, 1913, 6. 129 “Cahan Calls Charge He Aided Germans a Clumsy Calumny,” New York Tribune, September 12, 1917, 5. 130 Zosa Szajkowski, “The Jews and New York City’s Mayoral Election of 1917,” Jewish Social Studies 32, no. 4 (1970): 289–290.

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for the draft on June 5, 1917 Cahan stated: “The paper I represent preaches faithful and loyal citizenship . . . every man between the ages of twenty-one and thirty must do his duty tomorrow.”131 In the end, the newspaper survived the threat of being close. This happened thanks to the intercession of such influential figures as the head of the American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers and the chairman of the American Jewish Committee Louis Marshall.132 Nonetheless, until the end of the war (in fact, until November 24, 1918, although an armistice was signed on November 11) all news items and special articles dealing with the subject of war would be translated into English in order to obtain permission of the Postmaster General. Such materials carried an accompanying note that their “true translation” had been “filed with the postmaster at New York . . . as required by the act of Congress approved Oct. 6th, 1917, known as the ‘Trading with the Enemy Act’.” Commenting on this “compromise,” Cahan said that “since thinking and having your own opinion without expressing it has not yet been considered unlawful, we will just print war news without comment.”133 Censorship incurred additional expenses (a translator, a typist, and a notary public had been added to the staff) and often interrupted the normal rhythm of the newspaper’s production and distribution. Cahan expanded the role of proofreaders, giving them an instruction to delete any word or phrase that could be construed as non-patriotic. At the same time, all these tribulations had a silver lining, because the image of a newspaper victimized by the capitalist state appealed to Socialist-minded readers.134 In 1918, the Forward Association took over the Chicago Yiddish daily Arbeter velt (Workers’ World) and, from January 1, 1919, began printing the Chicago edition of the Forverts, which—judging by the journal Advertising & Selling 131 Christopher M. Sterba, Good Americans: Italian and Jewish Immigrants during the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 61. 132 “Editor Defends Forward: Abraham Cahan Says His Paper Has Been Loyal to America,” The New York Times, October 8, 1917, 18; Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 523. 133 “‘Day’ and ‘Forward’ Censored” and “‘Forward’ to Print War News Only,” The American Jewish Chronicle, October 19, 1917, 706. 134 Baruch Vladeck, ed., “Forverts” almanakh 1935 (New York: Forward, 1935), 319; S. Rabinovitsh, “A tsimer in ‘Forverts’ vu m’arbet af misteyks,” Forverts, April 25, 1937, section 2, 12; Lucy S. Dawidowicz, “Louis Marshal and The Jewish Daily Forward: An Episode in Wartime Censorship (1917–1918),” in For Max Weinreich on his Seventeenth Birthday—Studies in Jewish Languages, Literature and Society  (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), 31–43.

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(July 5, 1919, 53)—increased its circulation from the initial 12,500 to 29,640 six months later.135 The journalist team of the newspaper had become stronger than before the war. Many of the staff writers and regular contributors were excellently educated people. Thus, Tsivion, who carried a doctoral degree, studied at universities in Germany and Switzerland. Olgin, who started his tertiary education in Kiev and continued it in Heidelberg, earned a PhD at Columbia University in 1918. His timely dissertation, “The Soul of the Russian Revolution,” came out in book form in 1917. Tsivion, himself an intellectual heavyweight of the Forverts (the trade-unionist Gus Tyler, who in the early 1930s worked on the Forverts, recalled that Tsivion “was very highbrow, a pince-nez personality”),136 characterized Olgin as “one of the best educated writers among us.”137 Olgin’s recognized expertise in Russian affairs helped him to enter the world of American academia. In September 1919, he was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research, founded that year by a group of Fabian Socialists. He would teach there also in 1921 and the 1930s.138 Isaac Hourwich, a statistician and essayist, also hold a PhD from Columbia University. Such journalists as Baranoff and Burgin were people with an impressive intellectual baggage, though they could not finish their higher educational studies, being expelled on the grounds of their revolutionary activity. Critics welcomed Cahan’s English novel The Rise of David Levinsky, published in 1917, as a new classic literary work. The growing intellectual potential of the Yiddish press did not go unnoticed: From a purely intellectual point of view the Yiddish press in this country is much above the American press. We find in the Yiddish press not only all the news of the day but articles of an academic character which presume both the intelligence and the education of the reader. The modern Yiddish journalist is no longer identical with the Yiddish court-reporter of days gone by. The men who write on the editorial page of the Yiddish press are mostly

135 See also Gennady Estraikh, “Tsvey yidishe tog-tsaytungen in Shikage,” Forverts, January 8, 2016, 10. 136 Gus Tyler, “Looking Back at ‘The Forward’,” New York Magazine, May 1, 1972, 43. 137 Tsivion, Far fuftsik yor, 335. 138 “Research School to Open,” The New York Times, September 30, 1919, 20; Judith Friedlander, A Light in Dark Times: The New School for Social Research and Its University in Exile (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 58, 181.

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university-trained men and in many cases men of high intellectuality and literary perfection.139

By the end of the war, the Forverts had established itself more firmly in the general Yiddish-speaking community rather than only in Socialist circles. According to Cahan’s model of a Socialist and people’s newspaper, Jewish interests could prevail over doctrinaire views of contemporary politics. The editor and other journalists realized that the climate of the war had changed their readers: they were clearly leaning towards nationalistic orientations. At the same time, Cahan urged Socialists to restrain their Jewish nationalism, because he worried that some of them had turned into chauvinists. He failed to define clearly the distinction between nationalism and chauvinism, but this did not stop him from stressing that a Jewish chauvinist and a Polish pogromist belonged to the essentially same dangerous category of people.140

139 “The Yiddish Stage and the Yiddish Press,” The American Jewish Chronicle, August 30, 1918, 396. 140 Abraham Cahan, “Natsionalizm un shovinizm,” Forverts, July 10, 1920, 8–9.

Chapter 2

The 1917 Revolutions

Russia Can Be Loved On March 15, 1917 (March 2, Julian calendar), Czar Nicholas II, whose incapable rule contributed to bringing the country to a dangerous impasse, abdicated the throne in favor of his younger brother, Grand Duke Michael. On the next day, when Michael announced that he did not desire to accept the crown, the Romanov dynasty ended after over three centuries of rule. Russia became a de facto republic with the newly formed Provisional Government, chaired by Prince Georgy Lvov, a liberal politician. One week after the abdication, the American government was the first to extend diplomatic recognition of the new Russian regime.1 Four years earlier, the Forverts marked the 300 years of the Romanov dynasty by two caustic editorial articles: “Nicholas’s Pedigree” (February 25), and “Russia’s Good-for-nothing Czars and Czarinas” (February 26). Readers learned, or refreshed in their memory, that Russian nobles, or boiare elected the founder of the dynasty, Michael (two Michaels bookended the Romanov era), because they sought to have a weak person on the throne, and that, due to dynastic marriages, the family had gradually denigrated into Germans. The topic of the Romanovs’ pedigree was further developed in an article that had arrived from Russia. Published on March 22 under the title “The Romanovs: 300 Bloody Years,” it explained to readers that the Romanovs always acted against the interests of the masses. Even Peter the Great, the reformer of Russia in the eighteenth century, appeared as a pathological murderer, who did not spare his own son and strengthened 1 Peter G. Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917–1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 9.

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the system of peasant serfdom. Paul I, officially Peter’s great-grandson, was probably a child from a love affair of his mother Catherine (later Catherine II), born a German princess. Thus, Paul, a psychopath, and his worthless descendants did not inherit Michael’s bloodline. “Hand in hand with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Romanov dynasty has for three hundred years never stopped building a great big wall around Russia in order to shield the country from sun, warmness and happiness.” But, the anonymous author observed, there were forces ready to ruin this wall. The collapse of the Russian autocracy triggered a euphoric reaction in Jewish immigrant circles. The New York Tribune reported: The East Side was dazed at first. Slowly the importance of the news became clearer. And then occurred unusual scenes. Men embraced one another in the streets. Women cried and laughed for happiness. Thousands gathered in Seward Park [across the street from the Forward Building] to read the bulletins of the Yiddish dailies.2

Ber Borochov, one of the founders of the Labor Zionist movement, wrote in the Varhayt, the main outlet for his journalism over the war years, that the Russian revolution was “the happiest event in our national [Jewish] history in the last fifty years.” Without explaining which event of a comparable significance happened half a century earlier, he focused on the kind of freedom and equality that Russian Jews now possessed. He drew parallel with the type of emancipation implemented in revolutionary France, where Jews were “denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals,” and emphasized that now it was crucial to achieve the state’s recognition of Jewish national rights, which had to compliment the civil rights gained thanks to the revolution.3 The Forverts was less circumspect in expressing its enthusiasm: “The sun has finally gone up over dark Russia.” The editorial published on March 19 insisted that the newspaper never made a secret of its “warm feelings and brotherly love” toward the Russian people, though it hated the tyranny of the empire’s autocratic regime.4 Now Cahan could exclaim: “We no longer distinguish between the Russian government and the Russian people; both

2 See Howard Morley Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (New York: Knopf, 1992), 241. 3 Ber Borochov, “Di rusishe revolutsye un undzer tsukunft,” Varhayt, March 23, 1917, 4. 4 “Mir bagrisn di naye rusishe regirung,” Forverts, May 19, 1917, 1.

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are one in soul and spirit: we now love both.”5 There is no question that the editor’s words reflected the reality of his circles’ empathy toward the “old home.” The title of Vladeck’s article, “My Body Is in America, My Heart Is in Russia,” paraphrased the poetic line, “My heart is in the East, and I am in the farthest reaches of the West,” by Judah Halevi, the foremost Hebrew poet of his generation in medieval Spain. Vladeck wrote that he himself was surprised to realize that, for all his success in integrating in American society, Russia, “that great wonderful land, which was so cursed and which is now so blessed,” still retained a very important place in his heart, head, and soul.6 The next year, Olgin wrote in a lyrical vein: Russia! We did not even realize how bonded to you we had become. You were a wrathful stepmother to us, but despite your angry words and your cruel treatment we could feel the warms of your motherly heart. . . . Russia! A long distance separates us from you, but we feel being close to you any way. Your pain gnaws at us. Your misfortune makes us feel torment. At the same time we want to sing with you a song about a free soul, a song about a bright future [for Russia].7

A few days after receiving the news about the revolutionary events in Russia’s capital city of Petrograd, as St. Petersburg was known from 1914 until 1924, Cahan informed readers that he and his colleagues could not turn their thoughts from the events in Russia. They remained in an emotional daze, being overwhelmed with the idea that the dream of their entire life had materialized.8 In July, he still spoke an emotion-filled language, welcoming the Russian ambassador Boris Bakhmeteff: “Our hearts are throbbing with devotion to the red flag of Russian emancipation and to the national tricolor of Free Russia.” The pronoun “our” referred to “Russian Jews” who, Cahan suggested, never had been “among the shirkers in the crusade for democracy.”9 On March 20, the Forverts invited its readers to come in the evening to the Madison Square Garden, which was situated then at Madison Square 5 Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 15–16. 6 Baruch Vladeck, “Mayn harts iz in Amerika, mayn neshome iz in Rusland,” Forverts, March 27, 1917, 3; see also Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts, 218. 7 Moyshe Olgin, “Rusland, mayn kranke un dokh mekhtike tayere Rusland,” Forverts, July 20, 1918, 4. 8 Abraham Cahan, “Di rusishe revolutsye fun noyentn un fun vaytn,” Forverts, March 24, 1917, 10. 9 “Russia’s Mission Met Here with Cry for Peace,” New York Tribune, July 8, 1917, 1.

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itself, “to celebrate Russia’s freedom.” Notwithstanding that short notice, the auditorium was filled to its utmost capacity. The Forverts reported twenty thousand celebrants, while The New York Times gave a more realistic figure of ten thousand people in the building with a capacity of eight thousand, and an overflow meeting of at least one thousand in the corner of Madison Square. The New York Tribune wrote that hundreds of policemen tried to disperse five thousand people who wanted to join the celebration, but then allowed them to stay at the square. A band played “The Marseillaise” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A panel of Socialists, chaired by Morris Hillquit, hailed the revolution for bringing long-awaited freedom to Russia. It was an unprecedented tenor for a rally of Jewish Socialists, who never before praised the Russian state. In his address, Cahan paraphrased the leitmotif of the March 19 editorial: now Jewish Socialists could embrace both the Russian people and the Russian government. Joseph D. Cannon, a noted Socialist and trade unionist, said that the “house of Rockefeller and the house of Morgan” would fall down, as had the house of Romanov. The list of speakers included Vladeck and Goldfarb. Some of the orators predicted that the next revolution would take place in Germany.10 On March 21, the Forverts cited Scheidemann’s article in the Berlin Vorwärts, describing Germany as “the last stronghold of reaction.”11 Russia rather than Germany had emerged as the brightly shining lodestar for the world of Socialism. Later in the year, Tsivion, educated at German-language universities and reputedly “in love with German culture,” would write about “barbaric, bloodthirsty Germans who must be wiped from the face of the earth so humanity may live in peace.”12 Woodrow Wilson’s “War Message” to Congress, delivered on April 2, 1917, four days before the Congress’s war resolution, lambasted Russia’s autocracy: Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate 10 “Der Forverts ruft aykh haynt in Medison Skver Garden tsu fayern Ruslands frayhayt,” Forverts, March 20, 1917, 1; “Der prekhtiker, der unfargeslekher miting in Medison Skver Garden,” Forverts, March 21, 1917, 1; “10,000 Jews Here Laud Revolution,” The New York Times, March 21, 1917, 3; “Crowd of 12,000 Cheers Mention of ‘Free Russia’,” New York Tribune, March 21, 1917, 4. 11 “Daytshland iz itst di letste festung fun reaktsye, zogt Shaydeman,” Forverts, March 21, 1917, 1. 12 Ribak, Gentile New York, 161.

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relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace.13

Many people were so galvanized that they began to think about returning to Russia. A. Litwin (Shmuel Hurwitz), a notable Labor Zionist polemist whose articles often appeared in the Forverts, wrote: It seemed that the entire Hester Street and East Broadway, with all their editorial offices, stalls, stores, and pushcarts were moments close to rising up in the air, and—the entire East Side, together with Harlem, Bronx, and Brownsville, would become empty, and wild grass would reclaim [the areas], back to what they used to be fifty years ago, before the arrival of the first Lithuanian Jew.

Ultimately, people had reigned their emotions in. Litwin predicted that the number of Jewish returnees to Russia would not exceed several thousand. Some of them would have ideological motivations, whereas the others would leave as they had failed to put down roots in the new land. Apart from them, Jewish immigrants would choose to stay in America, motivated by their own success and their children’s integration into local life. Litwin also mentioned immigrants’ attachment to the graves, as if he alluded to Sholem Asch’s 1911 novella To America, in which a grave of the younger son in the protagonists’ family forged a link between them and the new country.14 In all, about ten thousand people, mainly ethnic Russians and Jews, had moved from America to Russia by August 1917, when the Russian government, wary of getting too many radicals among the re-emigrants, had introduced strict rules for repatriation.15 In the meantime, the Forverts analyzed possible consequences of Russia’s democratization. Prince Lvov’s statement—that the Provisional 13 “Overthrow of Autocracy,” The Official Bulletin, June 21, 1917, 7. 14 A. Litwin, “Ver fort yetst tsurik keyn Rusland?,” Forverts, May 4, 1917, 4. Cf. Mikhail Krutikov, Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 125. 15 Sergei V. Listikov, SShA i revoliutsionnaia Rossiia v 1917 godu: k voprosu ob al´ternativakh amerikanskoi politiki ot Fevralia k Oktiabriu (Moscow: Nauka, 2006), 322, 329.

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Government considered non-territorial autonomy as a method of resolving national questions in the multiethnic country—galvanized Russian Jewish political parties. They hoped that their demands for greater political and cultural autonomy would be met in the democratic state. Tsivion, who as early as 1901 espoused the idea of cultural autonomy,16 emphasized that, in contrast to German Jews, Russian Jews sought to attain equality as a nation rather than a religious group. He explained that American Socialist circles had been shunning the topic of Jewish national rights lest it led to confrontation with opponents of all forms of national separation. Many Socialists believed that also in Russia the issue of building any autonomous organizational structures lacked urgency after her Provisional Government had abolished the Pale of Jewish Settlement. Therefore, Jews, being able to migrate all over the country, would quickly assimilate. Tsivion, however, had doubts about this way of solving the Jewish question. He referred to the experience of the United States, where Jewish immigrants had concentrated in main urban centers and formed strong Jewish communities, rather than assimilated through integration into the mainstream. As for rapid assimilation of Jews who would choose to stay in their hometowns, or shtetls, amidst such ethnic groups as Ukrainians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, the likelihood of this happening was, according to Tsivion, particularly low because Jews always had been even more reluctant to merge with them than with ethnic Russians.17 Olgin tried to explain why “Russian Jews” demanded autonomy in the “old country,” whereas “immigrant Jews” “quietly assimilated” in the United States. He saw the answer in the different patterns of Jewish life: in Russia it had roots many centuries deep, and Jews did not want to discard their national identity, whereas immigrants (“fearful escapees,” in Olgin’s description) were uprooted people striving to become Americans and, as a result, being little interested in the preservation and enhancement of Jewish culture.18 Goldfarb looked into his crystal ball of the future of Russian Jews. He surmised that the revolution had created a congenial environment for uniting various cohorts of Jewish Socialists into one international movement and referred to an initiative to convene a conference with such an agenda 16 Tsivion, Far fuftsik yor, 141–142. 17 Tsivion, “Di natsionale frage in dem frayen Rusland,” Forverts, April 15, 1917, 2. 18 Moyshe Olgin, “Tsu vos darfn di yidn fun Rusland natsionale rekht?,” Forverts, March 29, 1917, 4.

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in August 1914, but the war aborted this plan. Goldfarb predicted that the Jewish population in post-imperial Russia would more or less follow the American model of moving into the apparel industry, when millions of peasants in democratic and prosperous Russia would turn into eager consumers of ready-made clothing.19 An echo of this idea, which apparently was in the air at the time, can be found in the Russian-American Industrial Corporation (1922–1925), with Vladimir I. Lenin, Fiorello H. La Guardia and Eugene V. Debs among its shareholders. The RAIC aimed at giving succor to the Soviet government in developing the textile and clothing industry. The former Bundist Sidney Hillman, who headed the trade union Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and knew Goldfarb very well, acted as president of the RAIC.20 Following the Provisional Government’s proclamation of amnesty for all political offenders, Goldfarb joined the stream of returnees to Russia. Moreover, in the first post-revolutionary months such people could return to Russia at the expense of the government. In May, still in New York, Goldfarb described the departure to Russia of scores of political immigrants. He did not see any people crying, which contrasted in his memory with tearful faces of those who had to leave Russia. Goldfarb divided the political immigrants in two categories: some of them left more in Russia than they found in America; others left a lot in Russia, but also found a lot in America. The formers usually had no problems with deciding to go back to Russia. They were the first who came to the Russian consulate, whose staff was particularly happy to help former political offenders.21 It remains unclear, how Goldfarb categorized himself on the scale of “losses” and “finds.” His life in czarist Russia was full of challenges: he aligned himself with the Bund in 1902 in his hometown of Berdichev and came to the USA having endured two imprisonments in Russia. His other experiences included organization of the first Jewish tailors’ union in Paris. As a delegate of the Bund, he took part in the biggest pre-1917 congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, convened in London in 1907. He worked for the Bund in several towns of Russia and stood (without 19 Max Goldfarb, “Di yidishe arbeter-bavegung fun beyde zaytn yam,” Forverts, April 17, 1917, 5. 20 Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 279; Steve Fraser, “The ‘New Unionism’ and the ‘New Economic Policy’,” in Work, Community, and Power: The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900–1925, ed. James E. Cronin and Carmen Sirianni (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 173–196. 21 Max Goldfarb, “Di yidishe revolutsionern, vos forn avek,” Forverts, May 15, 1917, 3.

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success) for the State Duma in 1912. Repatriation to Russia in 1917 cut short Goldfarb’s success, or “finds,” as a budding major public figure in American Jewish life. In less than three years after arriving from Europe with a smattering of English at best, he occupied a prominent place in the Jewish labor movement. A week before his departure, he, among several notables, including the 27th American President William Howard Taft, the banker and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, the congressman Meyer London, and the already acclaimed writer Sholem Asch, addressed (in Russian) six hundred men and women “well-known in the Jewish communal life of the city.” It was a fundraising banquet at the Hotel Astor, organized by the American Jewish Friends of Free Russia to celebrate the emancipation of the Russian people from the yoke of czarism and the liberation of the Russia Jews.22 Clearly, Goldfarb was by far not a failure in America, but, as a person of action, he sought to be in the thick of things in revolutionary Russia. He explained that he was optimistic about the future of the Russian republic, although he did not believe the time was “ripe for the accomplishment of Socialistic ideals in Russia.”23 He stressed that he did not belong to followers of Lenin and did not share his views on the stated aims and prospects of the Russian revolution.24 On May 24, a day before Goldfarb’s departure, scores of notables in the American Jewish labor movement assembled in the café Monopole, at the corner of Second Avenue and Ninth Street. This hub of social life of Jewish radical intellectuals served as the venue for the farewell banquet that lasted till 2 o’clock in the morning. The banquet paid tribute to three Bundists returning to Russia: A. Litvak and Shachno Epstein, editor of the weekly Glaykhhayt (Equality) of the Ladies Waist- and Dressmakers Union, were going to depart soon after Goldfarb. Apart from Baruch Vladeck, the toastmaster of the event, there were present other Forverts people, including Abraham Cahan, Tsivion, Moyshe Olgin, Sholem Asch, Benjamin Feigenbaum, Hertz Burgin, Mendel Osherowitch, and Abraham Reisen. Among the guests were people from several periodicals, as well as from the JSF, unions, and other labor organizations. Such notables as the assemblyman William Feigenbaum, the judge Jacob Panken, and Morris Winchevsky, widely held as the “grandfather of Jewish proletarian poetry,” 22 “Jewish Emancipation Banquet,” The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, May 18, 1917, 40. 23 “Dr. M. Goldfarb Will Return to Russia.” 24 Max Goldfarb, “Der letster oyfshtand in Petrograd,” Forverts, May 7, 1917, 1.

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were also in attendance.25 Winchevsky, who left the Forverts in 1905 following a feud with Cahan, rejoined the newspaper in 1916.26

Joys and Problems Goldfarb went back with a Russian passport in his real name, David Lipets, alongside two other Jewish Socialists. One of them, Boris Reinstein, would occupy various posts in the Comintern and the Soviet diplomatic service. The other one, David Davidovich, more known under the name of David Lvovich, became soon one of the leaders of the international Jewish philanthropic organization ORT (an acronym for the Russian name of the Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia, later rebranded as World ORT, Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). All three of them spent some time in Stockholm, as the capital of Sweden, which stayed neutral in World War I, had been chosen to host an international Socialist conference. Some of the organizers even saw it as the third Zimmerwald conference.27 Lipets represented the Socialist Party of America, Reinstein—the Socialist Labor Party of America, whereas Lvovich spoke for Jewish Socialists-Territorialists. By the end of June, Herman Bernstein, a prominent journalist, who was briefly the first editor of Der tog, reported from Stockholm that Goldfarb and his fellow travelers would arrive in Kristiania (renamed Oslo in 1924) on the S.S. Oscar II.28 Bernstein, the toastmaster at the emancipation banquet a month earlier, knew Goldfarb very well. This could be one of the reasons why Lipets-Goldfarb’s mission attracted special attention in the American press. Above all, he was linked with the Socialist Party and the Forverts, whose name recognition was much better than that of the groupings represented by Reinstein and Lvovich. Goldfarb’s cable portrayed Stockholm as a “city full of spies and reporters. Thousands of Russian political immigrants from all corners of the world are passing Stockholm on their way to Russia.”29

25 “A hartsiker ‘zay-gezunt’ tsu genose dr. Maks Goldfarb,” Forverts, May 25, 1917, 1. 26 Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 42. 27 See David Stevenson, The First World War and International Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 157. 28 Herman Bernstein, “Our New York Letter,” The Jewish Exponent, June 22, 1917, 6. 29 Max Goldfarb, “Es vert likhtiker,” Forverts, June 23, 1923, 1.

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Like other Allied governments, the American administration looked with suspicion at the initiative of organizing a Socialist conference, seeing in it a pro-German tilt and a conduit to signing a separate peace between Russia and Germany. As a result, the Secretary of State of the United States denied passports to Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, and (the Rand School of Social Science’s Director of Education) Algernon Lee, but such people as Goldfarb, who had Russian travel documents, could act as surrogate delegates. Cahan described it the following way: Dr. Goldfarb has never been given credentials as delegate of the Socialist Party, nor has he ever been officially authorized in any other way to act as a fullfledged delegate representing the Socialist Party. He is not an American, but a Russian citizen, having lived in this country during the war, during which time he was connected with our paper in a prominent capacity. In Russia he was conspicuously connected with the celebrated Jewish revolutionary organization known as the Bund and was one of its most gifted spokesmen. After the outbreak of the revolution in Russia the executive committee of the Bund cabled to him summoning him to return to Petrograd and to resume his old duties under the new regime. Thereupon we made arrangement with Dr. Goldfarb to act as our chief correspondent for Russia. It was then that Morris Hillquit, learning of his projected trip to Russia, had a conversation with him in which he asked him to convey his regards to the delegates of the Stockholm conference and to familiarize them with the American situation. All of us have the highest regard for Dr. Goldfarb and place implicit confidence in him.30

The Belgian Socialist Camille Huysmans, one of the organizers of the Stockholm conference, stated that he had in his possession Goldfarb’s credentials, which were “adequate in form and signed by Morris Hillquit.”31 Thus, Goldfarb participated in the meetings that took place in Stockholm and spoke there “in the names of Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger and the whole American Socialist party.”32 In all, it seems that American Socialist leaders sought to avoid liability under the Logan Act of 1799, which prohibited unauthorized American citizens to negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. Goldfarb commented on his status 30 “Dr. Goldfarb not a Socialist Delegate,” New York Tribune, June 21, 1917, 2. 31 “Gaffney to Fight Britain in Sweden,” The New York Times, June 24, 1917, 3. 32 “Goldfarb Insists Worker Here Are Opposed to Law,” New York Tribune, June 22, 1921, 4.

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at the conference: “When anybody like myself has been a member of the Socialist party [of America] three years or more, he is entitled to speak in the party’s name anywhere, irrespective of his citizenship, but merely by virtue of his party citizenship.”33 In the end, the attempt to have a representative conference failed. In his study of the history of the Stockholm conference, David Kirby comes to conclusion that instead of being “the great reunion of the parties sundered by the war,” “it became the final resting-place of the Second International.”34 Goldfarb, after a short stay in Stockholm, went to Russia. His reports from Moscow and other places appeared in the Forverts with a delay of several months. He, in the meantime, found himself thrust into the vortex of political life. The Bund selected him as its (unsuccessful) candidate from the Mogilev Province in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, purported to give the country a new government and to lay a path to democratic development of the post-imperial society.35 He wrote about recently established tailors’ trade unions in Ukraine and Belorussia, seeing in them, apparently, embryos of what might evolve into an American-style apparel industry and its labor force.36 It seems that the Stockholm failure gave satisfaction to Cahan as he distrusted the Zimmerwald stream in the Socialist movement, which revealed itself as the dominant force in the attempts to convene the conference. Judging by the articles published in the Forverts in May–July 1917, some of the journalists, notably Feigenbaum, Burgin, and Rogoff, were Zimmerwaldists in the sense that they believed in the internationalism of Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party, which categorically rejected proletarians’ nationalism and patriotism. Tsivion, likewise, considered proletarian internationalism as a reality, though he diagnosed that during the war it fell ill, as did much of the mankind. Still, he assumed, it would 33 “Socialist from U.S. in Sweden Lacks Passport,” New York Tribune, June 20, 1917, 2. 34 David Kirby, “International Socialism and the Question of Peace: The Stockholm Conference of 1917,” The Historical Journal 25, no. 3 (1982): 716. 35 “Genose Goldfarb kandidat far der grindungs farzamlung,” Forverts, August 27, 1917, 1; Vladimir S. Sobkin and Tatiana A. Klimova, “Lev Vygotskii mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii,” Natsional´nyi psikhologicheskii zhurnal 3 (2016): 30; see also Goldfarb’s articles in the Forverts: “A briv fun Moskve,” December 2, 1917, 2; “Vi di rusishe poyerim gibn zikh op mit politishe[r] arbet, December 5, 1917, 3; “Far vos der ‘Bund’ iz far a yidishn kongres in Rusland,” December 6, 1917, 3. 36 Max Goldfarb, “Vos far a role di shnayder shpiln in itstikn Rusland,” Forverts, December 30, 1917, 5.

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ultimately get its strength back.37 At the same time, Tsivion’s recognition of the fact that internationalism did not deprive proletarians from national and patriotic feelings placed him, as well as Olgin, Vladeck, and several other Forverts writers, in more or less the same camp with Cahan. However, whereas Cahan spoke about nationalism and patriotism of the working class, he also kept repeating that Marx’s internationalism never existed and, therefore, the Zimmerwald ideas were fundamentally wrong.38 While the international Socialist movement remained in disarray, American Socialists had a reason to celebrate a victory on the domestic front: the November 1917 elections in the USA brought unprecedented and never-to-be-repeated results for the Socialist Party. Hillquit failed to become Mayor of New York City, but gained over twenty percent of the votes. The Socialist Party won its greatest number of seats in the New York State Assembly: its representation increased from two to ten. Abraham I. Shiplacoff, re-elected as assemblyman, used to work as labor editor of the Forverts in 1914–1915 and was succeeded in this position by Goldfarb. William M. Feigenbaum, Benjamin Feigenbaum’s son reared on Socialist thought, was one of the new assemblymen. In the 1920s, his articles would appear in the Sunday English-language section of the Forverts. Eight Socialists became members of the New York Board of Aldermen (City Council), including the Manager of the Forverts Adolf Held and Baruch Charney Vladeck, who would replace Held in this position next year. The Socialist Jacob Panken, who occasionally wrote for the Forverts, was elected as a New York municipal judge, serving in this capacity from 1918 to 1928.39 In this buoyant atmosphere, American Bundists celebrated the twentieth jubilee of their party. On November 24, 1917, over three thousand people, dressed in their best, came to the New Star Casino, a venue often patronized by radical groups, to manifest their loyalty to the movement, which the majority of them had joined in Russia. Cahan, Panken, Olgin, Salutsky, and Winchevsky were among the speakers.40 At the same time, 37 Tsivion, “Fun fintsternish tsu likht,” Forverts, May 1, 1917, 6. 38 Abraham Cahan, “Sakh-haklen fun der debate,” Forverts, July 15, 1917, 5; idem, “Vos heyst eygentlekh internatsional?,” Forverts, July 23, 1917, 3. 39 Elbert Aidline, “Jewish Assemblymen of New York,” The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, November 2, 1917, 716; Abraham Cahan, “Endlekh hot zikh undzer partey fest avekgeshtelt oyfn politishn bodn fun Nyu York, shtot un steyt,” Forverts, November 8, 1917, 4; Britt P. Tevis, “‘The People’s Judge’: Jacob Panken, Yiddish Socialism, and American Law,” American Journal of Legal History 59, no. 1 (1029): 31–70. 40 “A yontevdiker tog ba bundistn,” Forverts, November 25, 1917, 8.

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a cloud darkened their sunny picture: Zionists, the arch-opponents of the Bund, received a powerful boost with the British Foreign Minister Balfour’s letter, which went down in history as the Balfour Declaration. The letter, dated November 2, 1917, announced the British government’s commitment to use its best endeavors for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. A. Litwin understood this step as a political maneuver aimed at creating a Jewish buffer between Europe and the Arabs, who, in Litwin’s prejudiced view, would “probably never became civilized people in the European manner,” because their Islamic culture did not create an environment for progress. According to Litwin, the new prospects in building a Jewish state proved that Bundist theoreticians were mistaken in thinking that neither European governments nor Jewish capitalists would be interested in the Zionist project.41 The Bundist contingent of the Forverts reacted to the Balfour Declaration in a starkly different way. On November 17, 1917, Tsivion was glad to observe that, against the backdrop of the revolutionary events in Russian, the news about the positive attitude of Britain to the Zionist project did not particularly excite the American Jewish masses.42 Olgin, apparently being busy with writing about Russia, turned his attention to Zionism only in the beginning of 1918. His thinking ran against the grain of those who held to the theory that the status of Jews would improve if they become a nation empowered by having an own state. By way of example, he pointed to Italian immigrants whose status in America remained inferior to the status of stateless Jews. Similarly, Chinese immigrants had a lower status than that of Irish immigrants. In Olgin’s opinion, this issue was all together irrelevant to the conditions of Jewish life in post-imperial Russia, where Jews had become fully equal citizens regardless. As for the cultural influence of the Hebrew-speaking state, it could not be significant. For one thing, the vast majority of diasporic Jews spoke Yiddish or other languages. In America, the audience for the Hebrew press was comparatively measly.43 In general, he opined that a Jewish state could not play a notable positive role in the life of the world Jewry. Instead it could bring additional complications: first, anti-Semites would argue that Jews of their country 41 A. Litwin, “Di naye oyszikhtn far dem tsienizm,” Forverts, November 24, 1917, 3. 42 B. Rozman, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, November 17, 1917, 3. 43 Olgin was essentially right. See Michael Gary Brown, “All, All Alone: The Hebrew Press in America from 1914 to 1924,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59, no. 2 (1969): 139–178.

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should move to the new state, and, second, fundraising and other activities of Zionists would make the Jewish state a permanent freeloader (kest-kind) for all Jewish communities.44 Tsivion, who was less categorical in his judgments, commented that he concurred with Olgin’s argumentation, especially as it reflected the stock Bundist position on Zionism. Nonetheless, he was not ready to see the emergence of a Jewish state as a harmful enterprise.45 The same idea of pointlessness rather than harmfulness of a Jewish state appeared as the central argument in Tsivion’s earlier article on the future of Palestine. He did not believe that the Zionist project could engender harm to local Arabs. This conviction was rooted in his reading of history: in modern times Jews never had caused serious problems for other national groups. Another historical reference, to Liberia, illustrated his thought that its establishment in 1821 failed to improve life of African-Americans in the United States. Tsivion had no doubts that the Jewish republic in Palestine would be much nicer and more influential than Liberia, because the cultural level of Jews surpassed by far that of the people who had settled in the new African state. Even then, he did not believe the new state’s impact on Jewish life in other countries could be substantial enough to warrant the effort.46 In the meantime, the Russian revolution revived the hopes of Jewish Territorialists, or quasi-Zionists who dreamt about creating Jewish territorial enclaves or even a Jewish state. Their ideological construct had two essential differences from the Zionist visions: first, the Territorialists were skeptical about Palestine as a suitable site for the realization of their program; second, they were Ashkenazi-centered and viewed Yiddish rather than Hebrew as the primary language of the modern Jewish nation. In the wake of the Russian revolution, Chaim Zhitlowsky, a foremost proponent of non-Zionist Jewish nation building, proffered a plan of establishing a Jewish republic in the Odessa region, whereas Israel Zangwill, the popular British novelist and front figure in the Territorialist movement, spoke about Siberia as a potential place for forming a Jewish territory.47 A. Litwin fully 44 Moyshe Olgin, “Der tsienizm ken nit leyzn di yidishe frage,” Forverts, January 13, 1918, 3; idem, “Palestina—dos eybike yidishe kest-kind,” Forverts, January 15, 1918, 5. 45 Tsivion, “Tsayt notitsn,” Forverts, January 16, 1918, 5. 46 Tsivion, “A yidishe republik in Palestine,” Forverts, May 2, 1917, 2. 47 Abraham Golomb, A halber yorhundert yidishe dertsiyung (Rio de Janeiro: Monte Skopus, 1957), 89–90; Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain and the Russian Revolution (London: Routledge, 1992), 173.

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agreed with Zangwill, and recalled an old, abandoned project of Jewish colonization in Siberia. But even more than that, he assumed that modernized Russia would allow to develop in its territory a number of Jewish enclaves, both in the former Pale of Jewish Settlement, notably Belorussia, and in the areas, where Jews previously did not have right to settle, for instance close to the city of Nizhny Novgorod, famous for its annual trade fair.48 In a way, albeit with different geographical parameters, Litwin’s vision came true in the 1920s, under the Bolsheviks (this will be discussed later in the book).

The Bolshevik revolution November 1917 happened to be an eventful month. Soon after the Balfour Declaration came a consequential change in Russia. The coup that brought Lenin and his Bolsheviks to power perplexed Cahan and his circle. There were no ecstatic editorials or mass rallies at Madison Square Garden. As its first reaction, the newspaper published an editorial—“A Revolution or a Mutiny?”— which suggested that only time would define the meaning of the event: should the Bolsheviks succeed in maintaining power, it would go into history as a revolution. Otherwise it would be labeled as a mutiny.49 Baranoff came to conclusion that the scale of the uprising was too big for a mutiny, though he did not see it as a new revolution either. In his eyes, it was a continuation of the revolution, a new phase that followed its first, nonviolent “political” phase, which had fulfilled the task of burying the old system. Now the time came for social transformation, when the heritage of the old system should be divided. Violence would be an unavoidable part of this process, and Baranoff was not sure if the Bolsheviks could get through this phase of the revolution without completely ruining the country and its economy.50 Feigenbaum, who also shared with readers his understanding of the events in Russia, did not see the Socialists’ fight for the heritage of the Russian Empire as a disheartening development. The same thing happened during all bourgeois revolutions. He noted that “all of us” shared the same goal with the Bolsheviks, so the main question was whether they were able to stay in power.51 48 A. Litwin, “Vegn a yidishe[r] teritorye in Rusland,” Forverts, August 26, 1917, 2. 49 “A revolutsye oder a bunt?,” Forverts, November 10, 1917, 6. 50 M. Baranoff, “Di revolutsionere drame in Rusland,” Forverts, November 19, 1917, 5. 51 Benjamin Feigenbaum, “Gedanken vegn di bolsheviki-revolutsyon,” Forverts, November 20, 1917, 5; idem, “Di revolutsyon fun di bolshevikes,” Forverts, November 27, 1917, 4.

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Few people in the United States had a clear grasp what the Bolsheviks wished to achieve and who their leaders were, especially as the American and, generally, international press faced problems with getting reliable information directly from Soviet Russia.52 As a result, newspapers were full of fallacious information. Thus, although The New York Times was considered to be a publication that had means for securing news, it nevertheless in the two years from November 1917 to November 1919 no less than ninety-one times stated “that the Soviets were nearing the rope’s end, or actually had reached it.”53 The Forverts was in a better position than the vast majority of American newspapers. Many of its contributors and not a few of its readers were insiders of the Russian revolutionary movement. Olgin gained the reputation of a recognized (in Cahan’s words, “the best-qualified”)54 expert on the Russian revolution, and his articles appeared in the mainstream press. In addition, the Forverts had its own representative in the very heart of revolutionary Russia: Baruch Charney Vladeck’s elder brother Shmuel Niger, who used as his pseudonym the Latin equivalent for his Polish-derived surname Charney, meaning “black.” (At the time of his illegal activity in Russia, Baruch Charney used also the pseudonym Shvarts, “black” in Yiddish.)55 Niger’s real forte laid in Yiddish literary history and criticism, but he fulfilled successfully also the role of a watchful observer of the events in the Russian capital. From March 30, his telegrams sent from Petrograd began to figure, often daily, on front pages of the newspaper, though the Yiddish press of that time usually considered telegraph expensive for news reporting.56 The general American press, including The 52 Dimitri von Mohrenschidt, “The Early American Observers of the Russian Revolution, 1917–1921,” Russian Review 3, no. 1 (1943): 69–74; Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 33–34; Hanno Hardt, “Reading the Russian Revolution: International Communication Research and the Journalism of Lippmann and Merz,” Mass Communication and Society 5, no. 1 (2002): 25–39. 53 Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, A Test of the News, A Supplement to The New Republic, August 4, 1920, 10. 54 Abraham Cahan, “A vikhtiker bukh fun undzer genose Olgin,” Forverts, December 5, 1917, 4. 55 John Herling, “Baruch Charney Vladeck,” The American Jewish Year Book 41 (1939– 1940): 83. 56 According to the Yiddish press historian Joseph Chaikin, the first cable was sent to Forverts by its Paris-based correspondent Abraham Frumkin, who in 1908 broke the news of Grigory Gershuni’s death. Cables were relatively often sent in 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, covered by Abraham Cahan (Forverts), Jacob Fishman (Der morgn-zhurnal), and Reuben Fink (Der tog). See Chaikin, Yidishe bleter in Amerike, 311–312.

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New York Times, reproduced some of his dispatches.57 The Forverts valued Niger’s cables as the unique source of information with a special emphasis on the situation in the labor movement of revolutionary Russia.58 Olgin praised the Menshivik faction of the Russian revolutionary movement and faulted Lenin for attempting to implement a utopian program, which could not be realized in Russia, because her economic and social structures were not ready to lay a foundation for a Socialist state.59 Using (like many English-language publications of the time) the Russian plural forms Mensheviki and Bolsheviki, he wrote: “The Mensheviki were more realistic, the Bolsheviki more dogmatic. . . . The Mensheviki appealed to political wisdom, to cautious deliberation, to a broad view. The Bolsheviki had one goal in mind: an armed insurrection.”60 In his political portrait of Lenin, written for The New York Times, Olgin contended that the Bolshevik leader’s “tactics, seemingly extreme,” were “in reality weakening the strength of democratic Russia.” Lenin was a man who saw “life only from the angle of his own ideas,” could not “acquiesce in the cooperation of revolutionary Socialists with representatives of other parties,” and lived “in an imaginary world in which he mistake [mistook] the creations of his mind for realities.”61 Olgin continued to praise the Provisional Government’s program of reforms as a more realistic approach to Russia’s woes. In particular, he questioned the ability of Lenin’s government to find a way out from the war without compromising the country’s territorial integrity. He also felt that the Bolsheviks’ nationalization program would further weaken the nation. Cahan strongly believed that Socialism had to be established through gradualist, evolutionary reforms rather than revolutionary uprisings. He belonged to those social democrats who championed the developing of Socialist forms of economic, political, and social life inside the capitalist system, and thus bringing closer the moment when society got ready to advance to Socialism, preferably through such democratic forms as elections. Opposition to the overthrow of capitalism, advocated by Daniel De Leon, the leader of the Socialist Labor Party, was one of the reasons for the 57 See, for example, “Turn Statue into Shells,” The New York Times, May 3, 1917, 7; “Strikes Are Widespread,” The New York Times, June 3, 1917, 2. 58 “Vos tut zikh in Rusland?,” Forverts, May 6, 1917, 6. 59 Moyshe Olgin, “Lenins program,” Forverts, November 18, 1917, 9. 60 Moissaye J. Olgin, The Soul of the Russian Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1917), 376. 61 Idem, “Bolsheviki’s Chief,” The New York Times, December 2, 1917, 21.

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anti-DeLeonist stance of the Forverts in the early years of its existence. Two decades later, the same anti-violence motif ran through his article written for the Harper’s Magazine after the March 1917 revolution: “The Russian revolution was a thrilling surprise to the world no less by the smallness of its cost in human life than by the immensity of its success. But then the one is intimately connected with the other.”62 Although Cahan cherished his friendship with both Karl Kautsky and Edward Bernstein, he was certainly more drawn to Bernstein’s revisions of Marxism—his theory of “evolutionary Socialism.” In 1938, writing an article in memory of Kautsky, Cahan recalled that during his 1912 visit to Berlin he realized that the German Socialists were divided into the followers of Bernstein and the orthodox Marxists. Significantly, trade unionists tended to belong to the former group, whereas theorists, detached from the realities of workers’ life, were in the latter group.63 Cahan chose his ideological directions as a proudly practical person, therefore the Mensheviks, who espoused Bernstein’s gradualist way to Socialism and defied Lenin’s revolutionary rush, were much nearer to Cahan than the Bolsheviks. Still, one of Niger’s telegrams, about the Bolshevik government’s decision to erect a monument to Karl Marx in Moscow, led Cahan to announce (in his article, entitled “It’s Happened at Last!”), his “affection and enthusiasm” for the Bolsheviks. The First of May festival was combined in Moscow with the celebration of Karl Marx’s hundredth birthday. It was the Socialist government of Russia that celebrated the two events. A national holiday was made of it. Workingmen marched through the streets, and with them the ministers and all other officials now residing in Moscow. Ah; what a joy it would have been for us comrades of New York to participate in that pageant! Truly, it reads like a story of the coming of the Messiah. How, then, can one bear the Bolsheviki a grudge? How can one experience anything like a hostile feeling against them? . . . When the Bolsheviks had brought about revolution, the present writer was one of those who criticized them adversely. He acclaimed as well as

62 Abraham Cahan, “Landmarks of the Russian Revolution,” Harper’s Magazine, June 1917, 47. 63 Abraham Cahan, “Perzenlekhe erinerungen vegn Karl Kautski,” Forverts, October 22, 1938, 8.

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criticized them, in fact. But since then there have been so many changes; so many great events have taken place. . . . Is it not about time for all of us to cast off our former bitterness and venom? Is it not about time to clear our hearts of all factional pique, fix our mind’s eye upon the monument to Karl Marx as it stands in Moscow and wish our victorious comrades in Russia further success and happiness?64

It would be too simplistic to attribute Cahan’s embrace of the Soviet government, after six months of procrastination, exclusively to the appearance of the Marx monument in Moscow. Especially as on May 1, 1918 only the foundation stone of the monument was laid in Moscow (even a decade later, when Cahan visited Moscow, he found there only a pedestal “with the appropriate inscription”).65 Embrace of Lenin’s government by the American labor movement was part of the zeitgeist of the early post-revolutionary years. In May 1918, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which was closely associated with the Forverts, also declared that its members will follow the struggle of their brothers in Russia with intense interest and sympathy, not only because many are linked to them by ties of kinship and sentiment, but also because the fate of the first great working class republic in the world cannot but be a matter of prime concern to the organized and progressive workers of all countries.66

The Forverts editorial published on May 24, 1918 sheds more light on the logic of backing the Bolsheviks. It was written in response to information that anti-Bolshevik groups of Russian emigrants—monarchists, liberals, and Socialists—had joined their efforts in an attempt to persuade the American government to endorse a project of forming a Russian military contingent and sending it to the Siberia. The Forverts was particularly disheartened to find in this coalition some Mensheviks. The editorialist called on all Socialists, including those who were unhappy with some aspects of 64 Abraham Cahan, “Derlebt!,” Forverts, May 17, 1918, 4; Philip S. Foner, The Bolshevik Revolution: Its Impact on American Radicals, Liberals, and Labor (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 95–96. 65 Abraham Cahan, “Picturesque Kiev,” Forverts, December 18, 1927, English section, 2. The Marx statue, designed by the sculptor Lev Kerbel, was unveiled as late as October 1961. 66 Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1982), 53.

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the Bolsheviks’ politics, to refrain from denouncing Lenin’s government. Although a Menshevik government might be better for Russia, the revolution had more at stake than choosing between the two main currents in Russian social democracy, for the reason that the Bolshevik government’s failure might open the way to restoration of bourgeois rule.67 In February 1918, when the German armies broke the ceasefire with Russia and began an all-out advance on the Eastern Front, forcing the Soviet government to sign a humiliating peace treaty known as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Olgin, in his role of “a noted anti-Bolshevik intellectual,” suggested the following program of action: (1) German militarism must be crushed. (2) Russia must wake up to offer vigorous resistance to the invading Germans. (4) Russia must remain a democratic country. (4) America must move from her benevolent neutrality to active interference in the present Russian crisis.68At the same time, Olgin already realized that: The masses gave their support to the Bolsheviki. Kerensky was wrong, because he tried to swim against the current. Lenine [sic!] was right, because he expressed in terms of ideal aspiration the uncontrollable popular sentiments that spread among the masses. Lenine became the leader because he allowed himself to be led by the people.

Olgin hailed the Bolsheviks for finding “a theoretical foundation for all the elemental movements that were shaking the country.” They denounced the war as imperialistic because the masses did not want to fight. They backed the peasants’ illegal seizing of land and rendered it legal by declaring the land to be property of the people. They urged the workers to assume control over production, and nationalized the banks. “The country was disintegrating, numerous portions of Russia proclaiming their independence; the Bolsheviki approved of it on the principle of self-determination of each nationality in the world.”69 Thus, the Bolsheviks became increasingly favored, particularly among Jewish Socialists who were thrilled to see in Lenin’s government a great number of Jewish politicians, such as Trotsky, who emerged as a real revolutionary hero. In 1918, Olgin collected, translated from Russian into English, and provided with biography and explanatory notes a collection of Trotsky’s essays, entitled Our Revolution. He met 67 “Der kamf kegn der rusisher regirung,” Forverts, May 25, 1918, 6. See also “Russians Here Plan to Raise an Army,” The New York Times, May 24, 1918, 5. 68 “What Are We Going to Do About Russia?,” New York Tribune, June 16, 1918, 7. 69 Moissaye J. Olgin, “Who Killed Russia?,” New York Tribune, March 7, 1918, 8.

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Trotsky in 1907 at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, and then in Copenhagen at the International Socialist Congress in 1910, and once again during Trotsky’s New York sojourn in 1917. His portrayal of the leading Bolshevik was sympathetic: He is tall, strong, angular; his appearance as well as his speech gives the impression of boldness and vigor. His voice is a high tenor ringing with mettle. And even in his quiet moments he resembles a compressed spring. He is always on the aggressive. He is full of passion—that white-heated, vibrating mental passion that characterizes the intellectual Jews. On the platform, as well as in private life, he bears an air of peculiar importance, an indefinable something that says very distinctly, “Here is a man who knows his value and feels himself chosen for superior aims.” Yet Leon Trotzky is not imposing. He is modest. He is detached. Back in the depths of his dark eyes there is a lingering sadness.70

It is highly improbable that Cahan considered Trotsky a “modest” person. The man who was “always on the aggressive” earned his dislike after their confrontation in 1917. Despite this, in November 1917 he characterized Trotsky relatively inoffensively as “an honest man, though a misguided radical,”71 and four years later admitted Trotsky’s organizational abilities, arguing that the former political emigrant had acquitted himself well as a statesman and that his ministry became exemplary in the otherwise inept Soviet government. Skeptical about Russians’ ability to create an effective modern economy, Cahan contended that Lenin might have avoided the serious economic quandaries if he had in his cabinet a few other such people as Trotsky or, alternatively, Americans or Germans.72 In 1920, the Yiddish journalist Moyshe Katz, one of the returnees to Russia in the summer of 1917, wrote (by then back in New York) three articles on Trotsky, portraying him in a positive light, but he did not forget to mention that Trotsky’s chutzpah became even more apparent than it was before his rise to the leadership.73 70 Idem, “Who Is Trotzky?,” New York Tribune, March 4, 1918, 8. 71 “Leon Trotzky, Leader in Russian Upheaval, Preached Peace Here.” 72 Abraham Cahan, “Far vos hot zikh Lenins plan nit ayngegebn?,” Forverts, October 26, 1926, 4. 73 Moyshe Katz, “Trotski un zayn armey,” Forverts, March 4, 1920, 6–7; idem, “Trotski un di royte armey,” Forverts, March 6, 1920, 2; idem, “Trotski in politishn lebn,” Forverts, March 11, 1920, 8.

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It seems that in the spring of 1918, Cahan tacitly accepted the Bolshevik revolution as a fait accompli. He might believe that the established regime was propitious for both Socialism and Jews. No doubt, the state of AmericanSoviet relations also played an important role. Although the USA did not recognize Lenin’s government, its ambassador stayed in Russia for a year after the Bolshevik revolution. The Bolsheviks even opened the door for cooperation with Allies, asking them to help protect the north of the country from the German and Finnish troops. Soon, however, the invasion of Allied troop in the areas of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk changed its objectives, becoming a direct intervention in Russia’s internal affairs.74 In mid-year 1918, Cahan could see gaps between the words and deeds of the Bolsheviks, but stressed that, this notwithstanding, his newspaper’s “sympathy for the standing Socialist, people’s government in Russia” remained “absolutely strong.”75 In December 1918, when Cahan went to Europe to cover the Paris Peace Conference, representatives of the American Jewish establishment, who avoided any contact with Bolsheviks and were actively engaged in anti-Bolshevik propaganda, warned people against Cahan, deeming his newspaper pro-Soviet.76 In an attempt to counter the topic of purported Jewish dominance among the Bolsheviks and their American supporters, Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish Committee, declared: “Everything that real Bolshevism stands for is to the Jew detestable.”77 The newspaper’s romance with the Bolshevik revolution was essentially a “love from afar.” Concurrently, the Forverts resisted the radicalization on their own turf, in the Socialist Party. Olgin, Tsivion, and, apparently, the majority of the Forverts journalists welcomed the expulsion from the party of those members who sought to import Bolshevik methods into American Socialism.78 But it did not stop the same journalists from sympathizing with the Bolsheviks’ actions undertaken in Russia. At the time, Cahan’s Bolshevik sympathies were stronger than those of Olgin’s and Tsivion’s. 74 Robert L. Willett, Russian Sideshow: America’s Undeclared War, 1918–1920 (Dulles, Va.: Brassey’s, 2005), 6–8; Michael Emery, On the Front Lines: Following America’s Foreign Correspondents across the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C.: The American University Press, 1995), 31. 75 Abraham Cahan, “Etlekhe notitsn,” Forverts, July 3, 1918, 4. 76 Zosa Szajkowski, Jews, Wars, and Communism, vol. 2 (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1974), 193. 77 Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 47. 78 Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts, 224–225.

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This was one of the motivating factors why Cahan chose Hillel Rogoff, who shared his view on Soviet Russia, to act as editor during his long European journey that began in December 1918.79 For their part, Olgin and Tsivion began to uncover for themselves positive sides of the new regime in Russia. Speaking in New York, at Cooper Union, in January 1919, Olgin—still an opponent of the Bolsheviks, calling himself a Menshevik—suggested that the best way to rehabilitate Russia would be to renew commercial intercourse with it.” He also said that on coming to power the Bolsheviks “adopted a clever policy” and “were the only ones who introduced order out of the chaos.”80 In 1919, Tsivion’s pamphlet, entitled What Is Bolshevism?, came out under the imprint of the JSF. Tsivion explained that the Bolsheviks advocated a revolutionary route to Socialism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and admitted that the Bolsheviks were “those Socialists in Russia who had understood the needs of Russia’s people, who were consistent in their Socialist, revolutionary agitation and propaganda, and who had correctly evaluated the driving forces for the Russian revolution and knew how to use them for the people.” As he saw it, Bolshevism was a method, a practical variety of Socialism, rather than a theory. It was the Socialism of today and as such it contrasted with the messianic Socialism of tomorrow, of waiting when capitalism would be ripe for revolution.81 Although Tsivion admitted that the Bolsheviks did not practice democracy, he was ready to rationalize it, arguing that a determined minority rather than broad masses of the population formed the organized force in all revolutions. The contemporary bourgeois democracy had few traits of real democracy, therefore even the soviets, the counsels elected by factory workers, though not truly democratic (“an industrial democracy rather than a political one”), were an improvement compared with democratic institutions of bourgeois society.82 In April and May 1919, the newspaper published, in a series of articles, materials of a discussion on “Bolshevism: Is Bolshevism a Blessing or a Disaster?” The discussants were John Reed, who then still belonged to the Socialist Party but was an ardent advocate of Bolshevism, and Henry L. 79 Mendel Osherowitch, Di geshikhte fun “Forverts,” 242. A copy of this unpublished manuscript is preserved at YIVO Archives, The Papers of Mendel Osherowitch, RG 725, box 9, file 3.15. 80 “Plea for Economic Aid to the Russians,” The New York Times, January 20, 1919, 6. 81 Tsivion, Voz iz bolshevism? (New York: Jewish Socialist Federation, 1919), 10, 11, 16. 82 Ibid., 17, 66, 69, 73, 74.

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Slobodin, a former major figure in the Socialist Labor Party. When Moyshe Katz came back to the USA in 1920, he realized that the Forverts was the only American Yiddish newspaper, which did not hesitate to manifest its sympathy to the Bolshevik revolution.83 In the same year, Olgin’s Yiddish translation of John Reed’s euphoric first-hand portrayal of the Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World, came out under the Forverts imprint. In his introduction to the volume, Vladeck wrote: “Like a pious Jew hopes for the Messiah, so we hoped for [the social revolution]. Now it is here.” And he added: “Whether it has unfolded as we wanted or expected, is another question. But it came, the true social revolution, which we studied in all our holy texts by all our rebbes.”84 With his penchant for historical and Biblical references, Vladeck pointed out that the leaders of the American Revolution and even Moses himself had, like the Bolsheviks, employed extreme methods at times. A person with literary inclinations (Cahan regarded his writings with contempt), he wrote in 1920 a play about Moses, exploring the analogy between the ancient Hebrew prophet and such modern revolutionaries as Lenin.85 In 1920, Cahan regularly wrote pro-Soviet articles. In his understanding of the events taking place in Russia, Lenin and Trotsky succeeded because they “understood the Russian people.” Learning from this lesson, American Socialists also should tap into the needs of the American people if they sought to replicate the success of the Bolsheviks. Cahan believed that no praise could be too high for Lenin’s historical deeds, and his and Trotsky’s bravery, energy, and moral steadfastness.86 In reaction to Bertrand Russell’s articles (reprinted in the Forverts on August 4 and 8, 1920), which reflected the British philosopher’s critical impression of his trip to Soviet Russia, Cahan—and later Tsivion—contended that it was wrong to denounce the Bolshevik regime for not having Socialism in Russia. They called for patience, arguing that Socialism could not emerge overnight. Although Cahan saw many reasons for carping at Soviet Russia, in his eyes it remained “the most precious gem that the civilized mankind” had at 83 Paul Novick, Moyshe Kats bukh (New York: Moyshe Kats bukh komitet, 1963), 326. 84 Tony Michels, “The Russian Revolution and the American Left: A Long View from the Twenty-First Century,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 14, no. 3 (2017): 17–18. 85 Franklin L. Jonas, The Early Life and Career of B. Charney Vladeck, 1886–1921: The Emergence of an Important Spokesman. Ph. D. dissertation (New York University: New York, 1972), 132, 178. 86 Abraham Cahan, “Itstike shtimung fun dem Amerikaner folk,” Forverts, May 21, 1920, 4.

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that moment. Many faults of the regime were, according to Cahan, associated with the danger that surrounded the emerging Socialist society, therefore it was naive to expect too much niceties from people engaged in bitter trench fighting. As for the numerous discrepancies between the Marxist theory and the Bolshevik practice, Cahan confessed his readiness to admit that life could reveal some mistakes of theoretical writings. In general, the man who throughout the war castigated the Russians as savages now suggested all Socialists to take hats off to show respect to the Russian people, who for the first time in human history were building a just society.87 At the same time, like many Socialists, Cahan found troubling the lack of democracy in Soviet Russia. Three years after the revolution, he still hoped that, after constructing the foundation for Socialism, the authoritarian methods of ruling the country would disappear as a thing of the revolutionary past. In his view, the need for such methods was limited to societies whose masses obey only under coercion, otherwise they would not toil for enriching the ruling strata. Cahan disagreed with those who posited that the human nature itself would not allow Communists to enact democratic forms of government. He referred to the conclusions of the popular British Socialist Henry N. Brailsford, who went as far as to claim that the Soviet educational system would produce a generation able to overcome individualistic, selfish features of human character.88 Cahan saw education also as a cure to the predilection—particularly among peasants—to own private property, above all in society built on the basis of collective, cooperative forms of ownership.89 References to Brainsford and earlier to Russell illustrate the fact that the Forverts had problems with getting original material from Soviet Russia. In the end of 1918, Niger left Moscow for Vilna, which became the capital of the short-lived Soviet Lithuanian (and then Soviet Lithuanian-Belorussian) Republic. His life was in danger in the days of anti-Jewish violence, which followed the capture of the city by Polish troops in April 1919. In October 87 Abraham Cahan, “Khisroynes fun Sovet-Rusland: kritikn fun sonim un kritikn fun fraynd,” Forverts, July 31, 1920, 4; Tsivion, “Bertrand Rusel un der bolshevism,” Forverts, August 25, 1920, 3. In the mid-1920s, Russell wrote articles for the English section of the Forverts—see Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, and Peter Köllner, A Fresh Look at Empiricism (London: Routledge, 1996), 43–45. 88 Abraham Cahan, “Veln di bolshevikes umkern Rusland tsum folk?,” Forverts, December 9, 1920, 6. 89 Abraham Cahan, “Iz di libe tsu privat-eygntum geferlekher vi Vrangel oder Denikin?,” Forverts, December 24, 1920, 6–7.

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1919 he arrived in New York and for several months wrote for the Forverts, but then, following a strife with Cahan, decamped to Der tog and did not leave it until his death in 1955. After sending a few articles for the Forverts, Goldfarb also did not pursue his journalistic career. His life hung by a thread during the January 1919 pogrom in his hometown of Berdichev, where he served as the mayor and the head of the local Jewish community.90

The Split In fact, Dr. Max Goldfarb had vanished in Russia. He reclaimed his real name, David Lipets, but a couple of years later changed it again, turning into a Soviet functionary David Petrovsky. He did what many Bundists did back then—joined the Bolshevik party, and made an improbable career, rising to the position of the head of all of the Red Army officer training schools. His acquaintance with Trotsky, now People’s Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs, just possibly facilitated his rapid promotion.91 In his new capacity, Goldfarb received in his office Benjamin Schlesinger, manager of the Forverts in 1907–1912, who in 1914 returned to the presidency of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (he was first elected in 1903). Among the framed photographs, exhibited in the luxury office of the New York editor turned Soviet functionary, Schlesinger was happy to see a photograph taken before Goldfarb’s departure from New York: Goldfarb stood there together with Cahan, Schlesinger, and Hillman. In 1907–1912 Schlesinger was the business manager of the Forverts and from time to time wrote articles for the newspaper. On his return he described his meeting with the old friend as follows: From my very first steps I knew that I was going to visit the person who occupied a high-rank position. A Red Army soldier with a rifle on his shoulder stopped me and demanded to show him my pass. When he carefully examined the pass with my name in it he instantly took me to the door of Petrovsky’s apartment. The soldier had been advised in advance that 90 Efim I. Melamed and Gennady Estraikh, “O pogrome v Berdicheve: novonaidennaia zapiska D. Lipetsa 1919 g.,” Arkhiv evreiskoi istorii 8 (2016): 156–176; Joshua Meyers, “A Portrait of Transition: From the Bund to Bolshevism in the Russian Revolution,” Jewish Social Studies 24, no. 2 (2019): 107–134. 91 Hornstein, Arthur Ewert, 67–68; Aino Kuusinen, Gospod´ nizvergaet svoikh angelov: vospominaniia, 1919–1965 (Petrozavodsk: Kareliia, 1991), 47. See also “Leaders of Bolshevism,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 11, 1919, B9.

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comrade Schlesinger would arrive at this time. If it had not been the case, I would have had to go through a couple of procedures before being allowed to see Petrovsky. The soldier should in this case inform Petrovsky of the visitor’s name and wait for his order to let this person in or not. I rang the electric bell. The door opened in no time and I could see Goldfarb’s thin figure in a military uniform. We hugged each other with not a single word uttered. Our feelings were stronger than words. He took me to a beautifully furnished living room, moved an expensive soft armchair closer to me and immediately called someone and instructed to bring us some tea and cigarettes. He reassured me that although the cigarettes were with paper mouthpieces, they were no worse than the most expensive American ones, such as Philip Morris. We started talking, but we kept interrupting each other. He was eager to hear news from America and I was desperate to find out what had happened in his life. He won this short competition and I had no choice but to tell him in detail about all those who stayed in New York. . . . Only after I answered all his questions like an “obedient soldier,” I got a chance to discuss the things I was interested in, to speak about the current situation in Russia and also about its hopes and perspectives. I asked him the following question, “In America we are more or less aware of the difficulties Russia is experiencing at the moment, but almost all the information is fed to us by professional journalists—the people who come to your country, see what is going on and then describe their conclusions and impressions to us, whereas I would like to hear from an “insider,” from one of those who is directly involved in the struggle, what the real state of affairs is and how he or she sees the situation. You, Max Goldfarb, belong to this group of people, as you are at the forefront of the movement, and I am asking you as a close person to tell us how you understand the situation in Russia, how you understand the struggle, which has been attracting the attention of the whole world for the last three years.92

The answer to this question was published in the Forverts twice: first in the article by Schlesinger and two days later, in more detail, as Goldfarb’s separate article brought to New York by Schlesinger. Written in a quasi-epic style, Goldfarb’s piece addressed to American workers:

92 Benjamin Schlesinger, “A bazukh ba Maks Goldfarb in Moskve,” Forverts, November 11, 1920, 6.

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A general organized strike against the capitalist world is taking place at the moment. The strike is not led by a conventional trade union. No, the strikers have seized the political power in one of the biggest countries in the world. This big country is rich in people, natural resources, and fire of [revolutionary] struggle. But it was ruined first by the czars and then by a terrible war. The capitalist world is fighting with Russia like any owner fights with their strikers: it uses gangsters and spreads false rumors. It is trying everything to bring to starvation the country, which was courageous enough to launch a struggle for the beautiful ideals of the best children of the mankind. It is difficult to describe all the hardships we are going through. Gangsters, whom you know far too well from your experience of strike actions, always seem to be real gentlemen, compared to the bands of [head of the Polish state] Józef  Piłsudski, [head of the Ukrainian state] Symon Petliura, [the White Army generals] Anton Denikin and baron Pyotr Vrangel, and others. As for hunger, you are familiar with its taste . . . I am not going to lecture you, but I would still like to point out that our achievements would have been much more impressive if our friends had not allowed our enemies to actively fight against us. And you have to realize, that it takes long for peoples to wake up from sleep, but this day will come eventually . . . Khaver Schlesinger [Petrovsky used the Communist khaver and not the Socialist genose] would like me to give you practical advice as to how you can help the Russian revolution. I won’t do it. If there is a will, everything will sort itself out.93

Schlesinger was bent on meeting Lenin, and Samuel Agursky, a returnee from America who became one of the heads of the Bolshevik party’s Jewish sections (and made fun of Goldfarb’s desire to join the Soviet establishment rather than to deal with Jewish affairs),94 set the meeting up and accompanied him to Lenin’s office in the Kremlin. Schlesinger spent a couple of hours with Lenin. They spoke, apparently, in English, because Schlesinger, who was a teenager when he emigrated from a Lithuanian shtetl to America to find better opportunities, had only a smattering of Russian. The American guest was charmed by his host and promised him to 93 “An artikl fun Maks Goldfarb tsugeshikt fun Rusland,” Forverts, November 13, 1920, 3. 94 Zvi Y. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 19171930 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 324.

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assist in providing equipment for garment factories in Russia. Lenin bombarded him with questions about the situation in the United States. It came as a surprise to him that Hillquit, being foreign born, could not qualify to become president of the United States. Lenin apparently heard about the Forverts and read a few times The Call, the organ of the Socialist Party of America. He spoke about problems of restructuring the economy of Russia, but reassured the American visitor that the tendency was promising and that it would soon be possible to abolish money in the country. Schlesinger came back to America convinced that the Soviet government was “a true protector of the Jews” and therefore Russia had become “the best and safest place for the Jews in Eastern Europe.”95 For all that, he summed up the experience of his five-week-long sojourn with the remark that he felt relieved leaving Russia and her suffocating atmosphere of oppression.96 He did not, in the end, provide any equipment for Russia. Daniel Charney, the younger brother of Shmuel Niger and Baruch Vladeck, lived after the revolution in Moscow and described in his memoirs, saturated with anecdotes, a parade of cadets mustered at the Red Square. David Petrovsky was the parade inspector. Aleksei Brusilov, the former czarist general and a hero of the war, also came to the Red Square. (In 1908, he was appointed to command a corps in the Warsaw Military District, and while in this position called for the “complete exclusion of Jews from army ranks.”)97 Charney, whom Petrovsky had invited to the ceremony, was stunned to see how Brusilov, who joined the Red Army in 1920, dismounted from his white horse in deference to Petrovsky’s higher military rank. This took place before the eyes of one more guest, Olgin, who came to Russia as a representative of the Forverts.98 On his last evening in New York, Olgin’s friends held a seeing-off banquet, similar to that a day before Goldfarb’s departure, at the Strunsky Restaurant on Second 95 “Found Tenderness in Comrade Lenin,” The New York Times, November 7, 1920, 18; Benjamin Schlesinger, “Vos Lenin hot geentfert af mayne fragn,” Forverts, November 15, 1920, 5; Daniel Charney, A yortsendlik aza, 1914–1924: memuarn (New York: CYCO, 1943), 291. 96 Filene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 172. 97 Semion Goldin, “The ‘Jewish Question’ in the Tsarist Army in the Early Twentieth Century,” in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews, ed. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 75. 98 Charney, A yortsendlik aza, 292–93; Daniel Soyer, “Soviet Travel and Making of an American Jewish Communist: Moissaye Olgin’s Trip to Russia in 1920–1921,” American Communist History 4, no. 1 (2005): 1–20.

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Avenue. Café Monopole was not available anymore; on April 16, 1918, the Forverts reported its closure. Once again Vladeck acted as the toastmaster, and many people were the same as in May 1917, including Cahan, Reisen, Tsivion, Rogoff, and Feigenbaum.99 Charney certainly exaggerated the importance of the episode at the Red Square, contending that the grandeur of his friend, Lipets-GoldfarbPetrovsky, “awakened in Olgin the ‘passion’ [yeytser hore] towards Bolshevism.”100 A formidably well-educated and experienced person, Olgin needed much more tangible motives for changing his ideological convictions. In his own account of the event, neither Brusilov nor the white horse warranted a mention. Instead, he focused on Trotsky, the really central figure at the parade, which was, in fact, part of the commissioning ceremony for young cadets turned Red Army officers.101 In addition to his friend’s meteoric career rise, Olgin could be impressed by many other developments in Soviet Russia, particularly in Moscow. Thanks to the new status of the Soviet capital and its linked job opportunities, Moscow began to emerge as a new Jewish cultural center, whereas in previous years the city played a minor role in Jewish life. In the summer of 1918 Moscow-based Yiddish writers and artists established an organization for mutual professional and material help—the Moscow Circle of Yiddish Writers and Artists (MCYWA). Charney was its cofounder and cochairman. Many cultural activists came to Moscow from Kiev, where Olgin once began his revolutionary activities. In 1920, Marc Chagall, a member of the MCYWA, began his fruitful collaboration with the Yiddish theatre led by Aleksandr Granovskii.102 Thousands of Bundists and Jewish Socialist of other hues turned to Communism. In the commotion of the revolution, coupled—in the case of Olgin and his like—with emigration, Communism restored their cultural and ideological “wholeness.” Olgin was overjoyed to see four Bundists-turned-Communists as ministers (“people’s commissars”) in the government of the Belorussian republic.103

99 “Hartsiker for-gezunt banket far genose Olgin,” Forverts, March 23, 1920, 8. 100 Charney, A yortsendlik aza, 293; Soyer, “Soviet Travel and Making of an American Jewish Communist,” 17. 101 Moyshe Olgin, “A parad fun royte soldatn in Moskve,” Forverts, June 2, 1921, 4. 102 Gennady Estraikh, “Yiddish Literary Life in Soviet Moscow, 1918–1924,” Jews in Eastern Europe 2 (2000): 25–55. 103 Moyshe Olgin, “In Minsk,” Forverts, July 31, 1921, 6.

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Upon Olgin’s return to New York, thousands of people feted him at Manhattan’s Star Casino Hall. During the event, chaired by Vladeck, attendees heard from Olgin that the economic situation in Russia was dire, but the bulk of the population supported the Communist Party, which conducted its affairs in a democratic manner, being in direct touch with workers in factories and farmers in villages.104 In his numerous nationwide lectures he expressed the opinion that the Bolsheviks would hang on to power for a long time, but predicted that in the near future they would be compelled to invite in the government some other Socialist parties.105 John Spargo, a leading figure in the Socialist Party before leaving it in 1917, wrote that “[s]ince his return from a visit to Soviet Russia, recently, Mr. Olgin, in articles contributed to Forward, the great Jewish daily newspaper of New York, and in lectures at the Rand School [of Social Science, established by adherents of the Socialist Party] and elsewhere, has glorified the Bolshevist regime and defended it against its critics.” Olgin described the tragedy of intellectuals in post-revolutionary Russia, but also blamed them for turning “away from the new” and not recognizing the revolution. “He [the intellectual] turned his back upon the course of history, and only hunger has driven him to fit himself in the present order. But in his heart, he is hostile to it.”106 Clearly, he was fascinated by the idea of developing proletarian art and literature.107 In 1927 he would publish a novel, Havrila and Yoel, conceived as a model proletarian prose work in Yiddish.108 In a parable, written in 1922, Olgin described his vision of the situation created by the world war and the revolution: We were all childish a few years ago. Our life was flowing peacefully, like murmuring water. Even our struggle was easy, like a game. We spoke about “mankind,” but each of us worked in a separate corner. We called to reconstruct the world, but the world stood around us like a strong, built

104 “Olgin oyfgenumen mit groys bagaysterung fun toyznter mentshn,” Forverts, April 11, 1921, 1, 8. 105 “Tells why Soviet Controls Russia: Dr. Olgin Speaks before the Beacon Society,” Boston Daily Globe, January 8, 1922, 6. 106 John Spargo, “Intellectual Workers in Soviet Russia,” The New York Times, July 3, 1921, 33. 107 Moyshe Olgin, “Rusishe arbeter viln bashafn zeyer eygene kunst,” Forverts, August 14, 1921, 6. 108 See Estraikh, In Harness, 92–93.

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of steel, castle. It seemed that generations would go and the castle would continue to stand on its foundation. Suddenly the devil of destruction played a trick on us. With one push of his shoulder he turned upside down the whole world. He scattered far and wide the remnants of the huge foundation and buried our peaceful life in heaps of rubbish and dirt. Now the devil is looking at us with bitter derision in his eyes: well, give a try, build a new edifice. For the first time in the short period of several thousand years of human history, the moment has come to consolidate the mankind. Not tribes, each set in its forest or dessert; not nations, each confined to its national prison; not alliances of nations, brought together to conquer other alliances. Rather, one great, uniform, voluntarily united mankind of the people who populate the entire surface of the earth.109

Still, it remains unknown if Olgin’s trip was a turning point in his decision to join those members of the JSF, who in September 1921 left the Socialist Party. As Cahan wrote in 1920: Journeys of foreign Socialists to Soviet Russia often had unpredictable results: people skeptical about the Bolsheviks could return enamored of their success, whereas enthusiasts of the revolution could be disillusioned with the realities of Soviet life, especially with suppression of all other political movements and with ineffective methods of running the economy.110

Whatever the case, Tsivion left unmentioned Olgin’s Soviet sojourn, from August or September 1920 to February 1921, as a factor in his one-time close colleague’s turn to Communism.111 A week after the explosive conference (convened on the premises of the Forverts) that led to the split, Cahan returned from Europe and purged five rebels from the newspaper staff: Moyshe Olgin, Pesakh (Paul) Novick, Tsivion, Hillel Rogoff, and Liliput (Gabriel Hirsh Kretshmer). They were among those who staged a dramatic insurrection, voting for disaffiliation of the JSF from the Socialist Party. In a moment, their reputation as comrades vanished. They became renegades. In the event, some of the members of the JSF, who decided to break with the party and to swear allegiance to the revolutionary course, took cue from 109 Moyshe Olgin, Fun mayn tog-bukh: geshtaltn un stsenes, fartseykhnt in Amerike un sovet-Rusland (New York: Frayhayt, 1926), 152. 110 Abraham Cahan, “Mit vos fardinen di bolshevikes simpatye?,” Forverts, September 8, 1920, 4, 5. 111 Tsivion, Far fuftsik yor, 335–44.

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Russia, but initially did not jump on the local Communists’ bandwagon. In Novick’s words, they fought shy of accepting “the cursed 21 conditions” of Comintern membership and joining the American Communists.112 Not all of them agreed that it was right to transplant Bolshevism in the United States. As Rogoff recalled a decade later, a quest for ideological purity constituted the main thrust of their desire to leave the party. For instance, the rebels did not like Meyer London’s and Morris Hillquit’s readiness to accept backing of their candidacies from liberal groupings and individuals.113 Cultural questions played an important role for intellectuals.114 Many of them were long ago unhappy with Cahan’s recipe of journalism, which mixed Socialism with sensationalism. They also were vexed by his spurning of attempts to pass Yiddish to the younger generation, seeing in them a symptom of the chauvinistic view of the Jews as a Chosen People.115 Thus, paradoxically, Cahan contributed to swelling the ranks of the Yiddish Communist movement in the United States, because some people defected to the Communist camp when they grew disillusioned with Cahan’s brand of Socialism, which stridently preached Americanization and paid little attention to Jewish nation-building. The Communists, on the other hand, asserted that their ideology and its practical implementation in the Soviet Union provided the only feasible answer to contemporary Jewish problems of culture and national identity.116 Personal grievances were involved too. An undated (most likely c. 1920) “letter of the twenty” in the archival collection of the Forverts staff writer Mendel Osherowitch was a collective protest addressed to Cahan. The writers (the copy does not contain their names) went—or planned to go—into revolt, complaining about the high-handed

112 Gennady Estraikh, “Paul Novick, a Standard-Bearer of Yiddish Communism,” in A Vanished Ideology: Essays on the Jewish Communist Movement in the English-Speaking World in the Twentieth Century, ed. Matthew B. Hoffman and Henry F. Srebrnik (Albany: State University Press of New York, 2016), 78. 113 Hillel Rogoff, “Vi filn zikh dortn di amolike erlekhe sotsialistn?,” Forverts, August 29, 1935, 6. 114 See, in particular, Paul Buhle, “Jews and American Communism: The Cultural Question,” Radical History Review (Spring 1980): 9–33. 115 Cahan, “Natsionalizm and shovinizm,” 8, 9. 116 William Zukerman, “Fundamentale fragn,” Fraye arbeter shtime, October 15, 1926, 2; idem, “Vegn di yidishe komunistn in Amerike,” Fraye arbeter shtime, November 26, 1926, 3; Moyshe Olgin, Ab. Cahan: Ver iz er? Vemen fartret er? (New York: Yidbyuro, 1935), 26; Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York, 219–234.

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attitude of the editor, suggesting that he had publicly offended virtually all members of the staff.117 Rogoff, Tsivion, and Liliput ultimately rejoined the Forverts, which after the split identified itself with the Jewish Socialist Farband, formed as a Socialist Party-affiliated substitute of the JSF.118 The journalist, prose writer, and translator Lilliput, would return to the Forverts more than a decade later, in 1932. Rogoff returned within a few months, but, in August 1922, Baranoff still mentioned Rogoff ’s “former and, to a minor extent, present-day friends in Moscow.” Baranoff was harsh about such people, writing that it remained “the greatest secret” for him “how a civilized and a cultural man, whose body is in a good shape and spirit is clean, who is educated and is in his right mind—how this person can’t feel repulsion for such a bane as the Soviet government.”119 Tsivion’s romance with the Comintern did not last long. In 1923 he published a pamphlet entitled Communists Who Have Devoured Communism, in which he shared his understanding of the reasons behind the 1921 split and motives for his break with the Communist circles. He reflected on his decision to leave the Socialist Party, which by then had “lost its revolutionary spirit,” as an attempt to “find a place for his soul.” He justified the split, but admitted that it led to “unintended consequences.” Most disappointing for him was to end up in the ranks of a party in subservient relations with Moscow. 120 It was the second major discord between Tsivion and the Forverts. In 1909, soon after his arrival in New York and joining the Forverts, he was fired for showing solidarity with several writers who were on loggerhead with Cahan and Schlesinger, then the manager of the newspaper, and renewed his employment with the Forverts in 1916.121 In 1923, Tsivion’s return was announced in the Forverts on November 13, when the newspaper published Cahan’s letter to the prodigal journalist, dated October 29, and the latter’s reply written two days later. Cahan explained that he came to the decision of inviting Tsivion to return to the Forverts after reading the pamphlet and learning the results of Vladeck’s 117 “The Letter of the Twenty,” YIVO Archives, The Papers of Mendel Osherowitch, RG 725, box 1, file 49. 118 Draper, The Roots of American Communism, 332–333. 119 M. Baranoff, “Genose Rogof in dem itstikn moment,” Forverts, August 22, 1922, 4. 120 Bentzion Hoffman (Tsivion), Komunistn vos hobn oyfgegesn dem komunizm (New York: Levant, 1923), 3–5, 30–32. 121 Chaim Kazdan, “Dos lebn un shafn fun B. Tsivion,” in Tsivion, Far fuftsik yor, xxv–xxvi.

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meeting with Tsivion. These brought him to the conclusion that their ideological differences had become rather insignificant. Besides, the general situation in the Socialist movement demanded consolidation. “The American Socialist movement is sick and weak, very weak. Therefore, all Socialists whose heads remain free from the wild Communist madness have to work together for the Socialist ideal.” He also emphasized the importance of the Forverts and its role in creating a spiritual content in the hearts of many thousands Jews, who had liberated themselves from religion, but needed a replacement for the Sabbath festivity and other “moments of idealist warmness in their hearts.”122 Tsivion re-joined the Forverts and worked as its columnist until his death in 1954, though he often outspokenly differentiated himself from the editor’s views. Olgin and Novick did not return, but rather entered the ranks of the Communist Party and became central figures in its Yiddish-language circles. From April 1922, Olgin and Shachno Epstein—who was among the founders of the JSF in 1912, returned to Russia in 1917, and resurfaced in New York in 1921—edited the new Yiddish daily, Frayhayt, which soon became a mouthpiece of Communism.123 Novick, who lived in America in 1913–1917 and wrote for the JSF’s weekly Naye velt (New World), spent three years in Russia working there as a journalist on Bundist newspapers. After the September 1921 split, he for a couple of years worked as a staff writer of the Chicago daily Yidisher kuryer (Jewish Courier) and then moved to Frayhayt.124 As the main forum of American Yiddish-speaking Communists, the Frayhayt habituated its readers to thinking about the Soviet Union as the paragon of social justice and economic fairness. The Forverts, on the other hand, took on the Comintern and its American outposts, but continued to lend its increasingly lukewarm support to the Soviet government. In fact, the newspaper had been consistently excoriated the Comintern since its establishment in 1919. Eduard Bernstein, who diagnosed Bolshevism as a peculiar variety of socialist-like thinking rather than a form of Socialism, wrote in the Forverts that leaders of the Comintern 122 “Tsvey briv,” Forverts, November 13, 1923, 5; Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts, 248–249. 123 In the 1930s, Epstein served as a Soviet spy. See Vladimir V. Pozniakov, Sovetskaia razvedka v Amerike, 1919–1941 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2015), 524–525. 124 “Genose Novik, mitarbeter fun ‘Lebnsfragn’ nekhtn ongekumen in Nyuyork,” Forverts, October 7, 1920, 10; Estraikh, “Paul Novick, a Standard-Bearer of Yiddish Communism,” 77–100.

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were determined “to create a centralized dictatorial organization, which would grasp control over Socialist parties of all countries.”125 The illusional, or delusional, demarcation line between the Comintern and the Kremlin reflected the atmosphere in American Jewish Socialist circles. This demarcation was present also in the worldview of Socialists in other countries. For instance, David Ben-Gurion, then General Secretary of the Histadrut, the Zionist Labor Federation in Palestine, stated in 1923: “Russia and the Comintern are not the same thing.”126  David Shub, the journalist who nursed a visceral hatred of Bolshevism (he authored one of the first biographies of Lenin that went on to be translated into many languages) and joined the Forverts staff only in 1924, when the newspaper had entered its anti-Bolshevik phase, commented on this ideological cognitive dissonance: A part of American Socialists, during a certain time even the majority of American Socialists, tried to draw a demarcation line between the Comintern (Communist International) and the Soviet government. They condemned the Comintern, but the Soviet government they regarded as a labor government and did not want to criticize it openly. . . . For a couple of years after the split, the Forverts and the Tsukunft . . . also had this attitude to Soviet Russia. As late as 1923, both the Forverts and the Tsukunft published pro-Soviet articles and reports from Russia.127

Along with many Socialists, Cahan was keen to give the Soviet regime the benefit of the doubt, with a hope that it would eventually overcome the militancy of the Comintern’s world conquering ideology and revitalize as a Socialist democracy. National equality as a cornerstone of the Bolsheviks’ official program and the unprecedented scale of Jewish national building in the country appealed to the Forverts constituency of readership. As for the writers of the Forverts, they represented a gamut of views on Soviet Russia. Some of them continued to sympathize with the Soviet regime. A case in point is Hertz Burgin who subsequently moved to the Communist camp. The relations between the Forverts and the Soviet regime developed in two radically distinct directions. While ideologists of the Jewish sections of 125 Eduard Bernstein, “Edvard Bernshteyn iber di shtraytn un shpaltungen in der daytsher sotsial-demokratye,” Forverts, November 14, 1920, 3. 126 Anita Shapira, “Labour Zionism and the October Revolution,” Journal of Contemporary History 24, no. 4 (1989): 634. 127 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 612.

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the Soviet Communist Party treated the New York paper as a major enemy, a modus vivendi had been established with other, often more influential constituents of the Soviet apparatus, which valued the significant contribution of the Forverts milieu toward the fundraising campaigns to help Soviet Jews. Indeed, the newspaper continued to give aid to relief operations in the Soviet Union and, generally, activities of the JDC and, from the early 1920s, of the ORT, especially as both organizations always tried to keep a wide berth to the Communist movement. At the same time, the Forverts would shun anything that had even a tenuous link with the American or international Communist movement. In September 1921, upon his return from Europe to the ruins of the Jewish segment of the American Socialist movement, Cahan told in an interview to a Socialist periodical that in Berlin he met officials of the Soviet government, and I discussed matters with them for long and weary hours. They know all about the Forward in Moscow, and they know that no matter how we differ with the Communist leaders in theory, the Forward is the friend and staunch supporter of Soviet Russia, and it will continue to be.128

In December 1921 he praised the Soviet government for retreating from extreme nationalization and centralization by introducing the New Economic Policy, which—he argued—made the Bolsheviks, who previously had swollen heads, less arrogant and, as a result, more bearable. He maintained that Lenin and people around him earned respect by their courage and determination, and—most important—by doing something rather than theorizing ad nauseam if Russia’s conditions agreed with the Marxist dogma. Cahan emphasized that Marxist laws of social development differed from the basic laws of physics and mathematics. The Marxist theory could serve only as the lodestar, but it did not generate enough light to see details. So, while the Mensheviks indulged themselves in theoretical discussing, Lenin, himself one of the most knowledgeable Marxists, and other Bolsheviks “took the bull by the horns.” Cahan’s fired back to Menshevik critics of Soviet Russia: “You have to blame yourselves for spending the critical days in theorizing and, as a consequence, missing the historic opportunity that you had. It’s your fault that you did not have the temperament, energy and courage that Lenin and Trotsky possessed.” Cahan admitted 128 “Cahan Says the Forward Supports the Party,” New York Call, September 11, 1921, 1, 6.

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that Lenin’s experiment had failed, leading to reintroduction of capitalist forms of economy. Yet, he disapproved of the Schadenfreude of critics of Soviet Russia, and listed what he saw as the critical determinants of the failure: the civil war, the international economic blockade, and “the inability of the Russians to work systematically and effectively.” Still, the establishment of the Comintern, also a contributing factor to the fiasco, was purely Lenin’s fault.129 He argued—and apparently believed—that the Comintern was “an absolute failure” and that it was “a joke. Lenin would like to get rid of it if he could.”130 In the early 1920s, the Forverts participated in the activities of the JDC aimed at helping Soviet Jews, but railed against the agencies established in the United States by Soviet representatives and their local adherents. While the USA officially boycotted the Bolshevik government, these agencies—as well as the JDC131—made attempts to act as surrogate diplomatic channels. In the beginning of 1918, John Reed was appointed Soviet Russia’s consul general at New York City, but he never functioned in this capacity.132 In 1919, in America reappeared Ludwig Martens, a German-born Russian revolutionary, who in March 1917 left New York along with Trotsky. The American authorities soon closed his “embassy” and deported Martens to Russia. In the fall of 1920, the leadership of Soviet Jewish Communists attacked Max Pine, a major trade-unionist and one of the founders of the Forverts, whose 1920 trip to Russia laid the foundation for contacts between the JDC and the Soviet government. Pine called for helping Russia, though his skeptical view on Bolshevism had only reinforced following his personal contacts with Soviet activists. He compared Soviet-sympathizing Socialists to a rabbi, who refused a distressed woman to give a personal audience, but asked the warden to assure the woman that her runaway husband would certainly return to her. However, after she left, the warden (Pine) told other 129 Abraham Cahan, “Di makht fun sovet-Rusland: ir gaystiker kraft un ir tsukunft,” Forverts, December 6, 1921, 4; idem, “Di gegnvart un di tsukunft fun sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, December 7, 1921, 5. 130 “Cahan Says the Forward Supports the Party.” 131 Jonathan Dekel-Chen, “An Unlikely Triangle: Philanthropists, Commissars, and American Statesmanship Meet in Soviet Crimea, 1922–37,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 3 (2003): 353–376. 132 “John Reed Named Consul General to New York by Bolsheviki,” The Evening Call, January 30, 1918, 1, 3; Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), 46.

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Jews that, in contrast with the rabbi, he had a chance to see the woman, that is, the Soviet regime, and knew that her man, here a metonym for freedom, could not return to her.133 On November 24, 1920, the Forverts published “A Letter of the Jewish Commissariat of Russia to the Jewish Workers in America.” Following the statement that Russia and the United Stated belonged to different worlds— while in Russia people were free, workers in America continued to be subjected to political and economic suppression—the Soviet functionaries revealed their disappointment with Pine. According to them, he behaved as a go-between, ready to cooperate with the Jewish bourgeoisie and clergy, rather than as a representative of the American Jewish proletariat. They urged the workers to organize their relief operations directly (in other words, in direct contact with the Jewish Commissariat), rather than through intermediate organizations.134 Pine ridiculed the authors of the letter, explaining that the JDC had a wide social basis and its relief operations addressed all Jews rather that only those of them who were liked by the Communists. Pine’s reply contained ad hominem attacks on some of the letter signatories. Moyshe Rafes, a distinguished Bundist turned Communist, appeared as a mercantile person, while Shachno Epstein, known to many in America, was characterized as a man who was nice and mild, but had no weight in the circles of Jewish functionaries.135 Pine was among the initiators of establishing in Soviet Russia the Jewish Public Committee for Assisting the Victims of Pogroms (abbreviated as Yidgezkom in Yiddish or Evobshchestkom in Russian) with the mission of functioning as the main intermediate organization between the JDC and Soviet authorities. The Forverts published scores of articles and short notes, praising various aspects of the Yidgezkom’s work, particularly with orphans.136 However, when the office, opened in New York by the Yidgezkom, began developing independent operations, the JDC viewed it as an impediment to relief operations. Above all as people who staffed the office were linked to local Communists and the Yidgezkom’s journal Oyfboy 133 Mendel Osherowitsh, “Af keyver-oves fun dray fun undzere farshtorbene—Vladimir Medem, Meir London un Maks Payn,” Forverts, July 7, 1938, 10. 134 “A briv fun yidishn komisariat fun Rusland tsu yidishe arbeter in Amerike,” Forverts, November 24, 1920, 3. 135 “Maks Payns entfer,” Forverts, November 25, 1920, 3. 136 See, for example, “Yidgezkom bazorgt itst 149.347 kinder in 1609 kinder-anshtaltn,” Forverts, July 3, 1922, 2.

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(Reconstruction, 1922–1924), published in New York, had an openly pro-Soviet character.137 Similarly, the Forverts attacked another outgrowth of Martens mission, the Friends of Soviet Russia, which was established in August 1921 and began publishing its biweekly Soviet Russia in January 1922. The Forverts accused the organization of irregularity in handling funds and of using them for Communist activities rather than for aiding Soviet citizens.138 In 1924, following the closing down of Yidgezkom in Russia, its American counterpart transformed into the Communist-controlled ICOR, Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia, which became a thorn in the eyes of the Forverts as a front for Communist activities.139

137 “New Soviet Agent to Carry Relief,” The New York Times, March 2, 1921, 10; “Accuses Dubrowsky of Hindering Relief,” The New York Times, February 12, 1922, 18; Michael Beizer, Relief in Time of Need: Russian Jewry and the Joint, 1914–24 (Bloomomgton, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015), 97–137. Later Dubrowsky cut his links with the Communist movement—see Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 838–839. 138 Roger N. Baldwin et al., “Report of the Investigating Committee of Five,” Soviet Russia, November 1, 1922, 238–41. 139 See, for example, “Der emes vegn ‘Ikor’,” Forverts, May 25, 1928, 6.

Chapter 3

Cultural Debates

A Letter from Waco On July 15, 1921, the Forverts published an article by Tsivion, who was then in Europe. In his dispatch sent from Warsaw, Tsivion wrote: Every person who is more or less interested in Jewish life in Ukraine, Belorussia, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, certainly has heard about the Jewish Kultur-Lige [Cultural League]. . . . The Kultur-Lige was established in April 1918 and, in a rather short period of time, spread its activity over the whole territory of Ukraine. The Kultur-Lige had concentrated around itself a whole range of strong groups of Jewish radical intelligentsia, who sought to organize the Jewish masses and develop Yiddish culture. . . . Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to see the work of the KulturLige in Ukraine at first hand. I learned about the organization only from a number of written and published reports, as well as thanks to personal communications with central figures of the Kultur-Lige whom I met in Warsaw.1

Indeed, Warsaw saw the arrival of an organized group of the KulturLige’s high-ranking activists of the organization, which by that time lost its operational independence in the territory under Soviet control. Moyshe Katz, whose articles continued to appear in the Forverts in 1920, described how the idea of establishing such an organization was for the first time broached by Yiddish activists, assembled together at the Kiev apartment

1 Tsivion, “Der yidisher kultur-lig in Eyrope,” Forverts, July 15, 1921, 3.

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of the Yiddish writer David Bergelson.2 The initiative to create a league for Yiddish culture belonged to Zelig Melamed, whose friend, Shmuel Niger, became the first head of the Vilna Kultur-Lige, while Daniel Charney represented the league in Moscow.3 Jacob Lestschinsky, then one of the editors of the Kiev daily Naye tsayt (New Time), was one of the builders of the league in Kiev. Organizations modeling on the Kiev prototype mushroomed in many places, but none of the leagues would develop the same scope of activities and supra-political status. Some of the leagues survived till the end of the 1930s, but in such cities as Berlin and New York their existence was brief or even ephemeral. In Berlin, Lestschinsky and Bergelson were central figures in the abortive attempt to maintain the local league, while Niger tried but failed to achieve a better result in New York.4 The example of educational and cultural activities of the Kultur-Lige did not go unnoticed among readers of the Forverts. In November 1921, the newspaper published a letter of a longtime reader who shared his frustration about the lukewarm support that his lansdsmanshaft (organization of people from the same community in Eastern or Central Europe) had for the Kultur-Lige, formed in his hometown of Wilkomir (Ukmergė in contemporary Lithuania). He was particularly disappointed that even members of the mutual aid society Workmen’s Circle, or Arbeter Ring in Yiddish, voted for earmarking only a small amount of money for sponsoring the Kultur-Lige. In its commentary, the Forverts agreed that it was wrong, especially for the members of the Workmen’s Circle, to ignore the needs of the league, which “progressive and intelligent young Jews” had established with participation of the Bund.5 2 “A vikhtike serye artiklen in ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, February 10, 1920, 4; Moyshe Katz, “Vos di yidishe arbeter tuen in Rusland tsu farshpreytn bildung,” Forverts, September 12, 1920, 9. 3 Shmuel Niger, “Kultur-lige,” Di vokh: a vokhnshrift far literatur un kunst, January 8, 1919, 23–25; Zelig Melamed, “Bergelson der gezelshaftler,” Literarishe bleter, September 13, 1929, 728; Chaim Kazdan, Fun heyder un “shkoles” biz tsisho: dos ruslendishe yidntum in gerangl far shul, shprakh, kultur (Mexico: n.p., 1956), 436. See also Gennady Estraikh, “The Yiddish Kultur-Lige,” in Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation, ed. Irena R. Makaryk and Virlana Tkacz (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2010), 197–217; idem, “The Kultur-Lige in Warsaw: A Stopover in the Yiddishists’ Journey between Kiev and Paris,” in The Jewish Metropolis: Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday of Professor Antony Polonsky, ed. Glenn Dynner and François Guesnet (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 323–346. 4 Shmuel Niger, “Der hoypt-tsil fun der kultur-lige,” Dos naye lebn 5 (1923): 1–4. 5 “A bintl briv,” Forverts, November 17, 1921, 5.

Cultural Debates

In the labor movement, the Forverts sustained exceptionally strong, symbiotic relationship with the Workmen’s Circle, which kept its offices in the Forward building at East Broadway and most of whose members were devoted readers of the Forverts. One of them, Minnie Goldstein, explained: “Every minute that I could tear myself away I would take to the Forward, as a fish takes to water.”6 Like the Forverts, the Workmen’s Circle was not directly associated with the Socialist Party, and preferred to describe itself as a non-partisan, non-political fraternal order of workers with a radical— or socially active—outlook. Although the Workmen’s Circle acted primarily as an economic support group, it also paid much attention to cultural and intellectual enrichment of its members, whereas ideological infightings made dubious its claim to being non-partisan and non-political. Early in its existence, the Workmen’s Circle limited its educational programs for the young by establishing Sunday schools, whose Englishlanguage classes had no Jewish content in their curriculum. Unsuccessful were attempts—particularly after the 1908 international conference in Czernowitz that became the rallying point for advocates of Yiddish as a national Jewish language7—to urge upon members of the Workmen’s Circle to start developing Yiddish-language education. The majority of them considered everything specifically Jewish as nationalistic and everything traditional as religious, or the things that they as Socialists should avoid or oppose. Leaders of the Workmen’s Circle and editors of the Forverts believed that Americanization was a strategy with a sound ideological (internationalist) and practical rationale, and emboldened their constituency to abandon “obsolete” forms of Jewish life.8 The default assumption was that the world was moving in the direction of universal secularity. Yiddish could not be dropped immediately, but was not deemed worthwhile for preservation. Four main factors contributed to the change in the attitude of the Workmen’s Circle membership to Yiddish. First, parents were keen for their children to learn Yiddish, because they harbored concerns about the growing intra-family cultural estrangement. Second, in the wake of the 1905 revolution’s failure, hundreds of Jewish Socialists, notably Bundists, 6 Jocelyn Cohen and Daniel Soyer, eds., My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 31. 7 See, for example, Joshua A. Fishman, “Attracting a Following to High-Culture Functions for a Language of Everyday Life: The Role of the Tshernovits Language Conference in the ‘Rise of Yiddish’,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 24 (1980): 43–73. 8 Harry Garfinkle, “Ideological Elements in the Development of the American Yiddish School Movement” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1954), 131–132.

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left Russia and settled in the United States, reinforcing and transforming the Jewish constituent of the American socialist movement. They formed a large chunk of the new membership of the Workmen’s Circle. Moreover, for six years, 1905–1911, the entire membership voluntarily paid a 3 per cent quarterly tax collected for helping the Bund in Russia.9 By then, the precedence of primordial Jewish ties over general revolutionary sentiment became constant in the Bund’s ideological stand.10 Third, in June 1910, the organizational conference of the Jewish National Workers Alliance—the Labor Zionist analog of the Workmen’s Circle—accepted a resolution that called for establishing Yiddish schools, which would become known as National Radical ones, and this idea began to materialize several months later.11 Around the same time, the issue of passing Yiddish to the younger generation began to be discussed in the American Jewish press.12 Fourth, leaders of the Workmen’s Circle saw some of their members sending their children to the Talmud Torah or the National Radical Schools, and they therefore realized that their control and patronage were crucial insofar as they wanted to educate a generation of socially conscious people who would look at life more or less though their ideological and cultural prism.13 Finally, in 1917 the Workmen’s Circle allocated $1,000 for an afternoon Yiddish school in New York, and beginning from 1918 the membership fee included a levy to subsidize these type schools.14 By 1921, New York only had five schools: in Bronx, Harlem, downtown Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Brownsville.15 Similar schools emerged in other places. Although the members were not ideologically cohesive and many people found the organization attractive as a provider of insurance benefits rather than a civil society body with public objectives, the issue of schools propelled the Workmen’s Circle out of its role as a purely fraternal organization into that Nathaniel Zalowitz, “The Past of the Workmen’s Circle and Its Future,” Forverts, February 14, 1926, English section, 3. 10 Woodhouse and Tobias, “Primordial Ties and Political Process in Pre-Revolutionary Russia,” 342. 11 Chaikin, Yidishe bleter in Amerike, 354–357. 12 See, for example, the editorial “Yidish oder nit yidish?,” Varhayt, April 30, 1910, 6, and the ensuing debate in May issues of the newspaper: “Darf men reydn mit kinder yidish?,” Varhayt, May 3, 1910, 5, May 4, 1910, 5, and May 5, 1910, 5. 13 Garfinkle, “Ideological Elements in the Development of the American Yiddish School Movement,” 133. 14 Chaikin, Yidishe bleter in Amerike, 360. 15 “Tsu ale yidishe radicale eltern,” Forverts, July 3, 1921, 10. 9

Cultural Debates

of a movement preoccupied with the future of Jewish life in America.16 Yiddish schools in Poland and the Soviet Union helped the educators in America view themselves as part of a worldwide movement.17 The authors of the 1927 program of the Workmen’s Circle schools strove for preservation of Eastern European Jewish diasporic identity by the way of uniting the Jewish child of America with the millions of Jews who live, struggle, enjoy and create culture in their own language. . . . It aims to create spiritual bonds between the children and the older generation in America. The child must therefore know the Yiddish language . . . as supplementary to the language of the land. Our school desires to identify the children with the history of their origin, not only because Jewish history is an interesting chapter in the history of mankind, but also because it is closer, more intimate to us, and because it is our history. . . . Ignorance of our past will make it impossible to understand our present and if we fail to understand the Jew of today, we shall be unable to work for his future.18

In March 1930, about 5,000 members bolted to found the International Workers Order, a Communist alternative to the progenitor organization, with an alternative network of Yiddish schools. Itche Goldberg, a leftwing educator and editor, explained later: the Jewish consciousness led us naturally to the Soviet Union. There was Romania, antisemitic; Poland, which was antisemitic. Suddenly we saw how Jewish culture was developing in the Soviet Union. It was really breathtaking. You had the feeling that both the national problem was solved and the social problem was solved. This was no small thing. It was overpowering and we were young.19

Still, the majority, over seventy-two thousand, retained their membership with the Workmen’s Circle, being often at the same time members of 16 Judah J. Shapiro, The Friendly Society: A History of the Workmen’s Circle (New York: Media Judaica, 1970), 103–104. 17 Hannah Kliger and Rakhmiel Peltz, “The Secular Yiddish School in the United States in Sociohistorical Perspective: Language School or Culture School?,” Linguistics and Education 2 (1990): 7. 18 See David Rudavsky, “Jewish Education in New York City since 1918” (PhD diss., New York University, School of education, 1945), 231. 19 Naomi Prawer Kadar, Raising Secular Jews: Yiddish Schools and Their Periodicals for American Children, 1917–1950 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2017), 129.

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Socialist-leaning trade unions, notably the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.20 This also meant that only a minority of readers switched to reading the Frayhayt, whereas the majority remained loyal to the Forverts. In 1930, on the occasion of Cahan seventeenth birthday, Der fraynd (The Friend), the journal of the Workmen’s Circle, wrote blithely: Abraham Cahan has many friends in the labor movement. He also has many opponents. His is one of those natures that cannot confine themselves within the limits of a particular program and act always in accordance with a rigid formula. He never stands still, but keeps on seeking, searching, probing, and has always striven to adapt the Jewish Daily Forward to the constantly changing conditions and times. . . . He is one of the best friends the Workmen’s Circle has ever had. And we do not take it unkindly at all that he does not approve of everything that takes place among us. For his attitude toward us is always as sympathetic and friendly as possible.21

Language and educational politics were the issues that had developed into sticking points between Cahan and the Workmen’s Circle. Paradoxically, the Forverts editor and many people in his cultural-cum-ideological circle of Yiddish literati had an ambivalent attitude to the language of their writings and its prospects in the United States. Among the topics under hot discussion was whether Yiddish schools, including the schools under the Circle’s patronage, facilitated or hindered reaching the goals of the Jewish Socialist movement. Cahan never disguised his distaste for Yiddishists, or people who defied the notion that Yiddish had an expiration date. Instead, they considered Yiddish and Yiddish culture as the principal elements guaranteeing preservation and further development of modern Jewish nation. In 1916, when Olgin faulted the American banker and philanthropist Jacob H. Schiff for advocating assimilation and disparaging Yiddish as “not a modern language, if a real language at all,” an editorial comment stated disagreement with Olgin’s inclusion of Yiddish and Yiddish culture into 20 Maximilian Hurwitz, The Workmen’s Circle: Its History, Ideals, Organization and Institutions (New York: The Workmen’s Circle, 1936), 74, 111; Shapiro, The Friendly Society, 126. 21 “Abraham Cahan Seventy Years Young,” Der fraynd, August 1930, 2 (the Englishlanguage section). Cahan never became a member of the Workmen’s Circle—see Shapiro, The Friendly Society, 126.

Cultural Debates

his characterization of modern Jewishness.22 The newspaper’s satirist Yakov Adler, writing under the pseudonyms B. Kovner and Khoyzkls Eynikl, would make fun of Yiddishism and Yiddishists.23 In April 1920, an article describing the achievements of Workmen’s Circle schools—it was written by Yakov Levin, a pioneering teacher, textbooks author, and curriculum developer—came out with an editorial explanation that Socialists were disputing over two conflicting agendas for teaching Yiddish: to facilitate intergenerational communication or to disseminate Yiddish culture.24 In July 1920, Cahan characterized the movement for Yiddish schools in the United States as a form of raw nationalism, or chauvinism.25 At the end of 1922, an editorial comment informed the readers that the newspaper opposed Yiddishists—described as “impractical people”—on almost everything. “We reckon that they create a gap between written Yiddish and spoken Yiddish. We reckon that they try to construct an artificial language which is not Yiddish anymore.” Welcoming though the Yiddishist idea of reforming the spelling, the comment scoffed at the suggestion to emancipate Yiddish from German by writing, for instance, bakvem (“comfortable”) rather than bekvem, arguing that it was important to model the Yiddish spelling on the German “original,” bequem.26 While it is hard to overestimate Cahan’s pioneering role as a language planner and mentor of beginner writers, especially in the early years of Yiddish letters in America, his language-planning endeavors brought him to increasingly using a trivial language as way of pandering to little-educated readers.27 He instructed his staff that, if they wanted “the public to read this newspaper and to assimilate Socialism,” they should write in a colloquial language, “in terms of what they see and feel.”28 He would mark 22 Moyshe Olgin, “Dzsheykob Shif un di yidn frage,” Forverts, May 23, 1916, 6. See also “Schiff Attacks Use of Yiddish,” Jewish Advocate, May 25, 1916, 1; Naomi Wiener Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1999), 220. 23 See, for example, Khoyzkls Eynikl, “Der ‘yidishist’,” Forverts, June 6, 1920, 5; B. Kovner, “Mame-loshn,” Forverts, July 13, 1920, 3; idem, “Ikh un der ‘yidishist’,” Forverts, April 9, 1922, 5. 24 Yakov Levin, “Tsum tsuzamenfor fun di arbeter ring shuln,” Forverts, April 30, 1920, 5. 25 Cahan, “Natsionalizm un shovinizm,” 8. 26 “Notitsn fun ‘Forverts’ redaktsye: enderungen in yidishe speling,” Forverts, December 29, 1922, 5. 27 Jacob Magidoff, Der shpigl fun der ist sayd (New York: J. Magidoff, 1923), 22–28. 28 “The Career of Abraham Cahan: How He Built Up the Most Successful Yiddish Newspaper in the World,” The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, August 2, 1912, 366.

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expressions and words that he thought were impenetrable to the average newspaper reader, subsequently taking it up with the author of the text. The story goes that he took a writer, whose style displeased him, to the window of his office and pointed to a middle-aged woman in a shawl passing by: “This is your reader. She has to understand you.”29 Significantly, he matured ideologically under the influence of the Russian Populist movement, with its program of “going to people” in order to educate them, and thus compel the masses, most notably peasants, to seek, and fight for, progressive transformation of society.30 In 1922, the Forverts announced a search for novice journalists, explaining that the candidates should be able to write in “a smooth, light, clear, and confident” manner, avoiding “Yiddishism,” or various linguistic “tricks,” such as using “half-Yiddish words, iced with Hebrew and tinted with Turkish pepper.”31 Cahan, who emigrated from Russia to America at the age of twenty-one and made a name for himself in English-language literature and journalism, was candid that he had “no interest in Yiddish as such” and “would just as lief write to Jews in English as in Yiddish.”32 Following the introduction of the Immigration Act of 1924, which discontinued the mass immigration of European Jews, Cahan gave an assignment to Harry (Hertz) Lang, a journalist with a good grasp of the American immigrant scene, to write a series of articles on the future of Yiddish and, generally, Jewish life in the United States. Lang came to conclusion that a new social and cultural setting, and a new type of Jews had emerged from the process of Americanization of Yiddish-speaking immigrants. The changes included a decline of Yiddish as a spoken language, a dramatic social restructuring (the younger generation tended to belong to non-proletarian strata of the population), and a strengthening religiosity of children who came from secular immigrant families. Lang contended that it would be wrong to define advocates of the Yiddish school movement as simply Kulturtreger, culture bearers. Rather, they were people who sought effectively to hinder the process of cultural integration, and preferred to keep immigrants and their offspring in isolated ghettos. He believed, however, that 29 Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 88. 30 Magidoff, Der shpigl fun der ist sayd, 17–18. 31 “Notitsn fun der ‚Forverts‘ redaktsye: naye kreftn,” Forverts, December 6, 1922, 4. 32 Joseph Schrank, “My Ambitions at 21 and What Became of Them: Abraham Cahan,” The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, September 8, 1922, 386.

Cultural Debates

Yiddishism with its schools and seminaries constitutes a weak instrument for restraining the stream of life which must flow into the melting-pot. It constitutes a weak force to counteract the “Americanization” of the Jewish masses. We are destined to abandon our immigrant modes of life, our Yiddish and everything that goes with it.33

At the same time, ironically, Cahan never tired to praise one of the Yiddishists—Max Weinreich, director of the Vilna-based YIVO. On March 6, 1929, the Forverts announced on its front page that on that day Weinreich was to arrive to New York as a guest of the American chapter of the YIVO. He was characterized as “one of the best-learned Jews in the Eastern Europe” (eyner fun di gelerntste yidn in ist-eyrope), who began to write for the Forverts, when Cahan invited him following the two men’s encounter in Vilna in 1919. The editorial article complimented Weinreich’s style: “Although Dr. Weinreich usually writes about literature and scholarship, he is considered to be one of the most popular contributors. His language is clear and it is pleasure to read his Yiddish (zayn yidish iz geshmak tsu lezn).34 The Bundist leader Vladimir Medem observed that Cahan’s attitude to the language remained to him a psychological enigma.35 In his answer to Medem, Cahan explained that his love of Yiddish did not affect his opinion that Yiddish education of American children could be detrimental to their career prospects, because a Yiddish accent was a barrier to the entry into some professions and social circles.36 Accent was an important issue for Cahan and he reflected on this in his literary work, most notably in The Rise

33 Harry Lang, “Vos vet zayn mit yidn in Amerike, oyb es veln nit araynkumen naye imigrantn?,” Forverts, December 14, 1924, section 2, 1; “Sees Demise of Yiddishism,” The American Israelite, January 29, 1925, 7. See also Lang’s articles: “In Amerike vert geshafn a nayer sort yid,” Forverts, December 14, 1924, section 2, 1; “Vos prominente amerikaner yidn denken vegn der tsukunft fun yidishkayt in Amerike,” Forverts, December 28, 1924, section 2, 1; “Zey shteyen noent tsu di yidishe masn—vos denken zey vegn der tsukunft fun yidn in Amerike,” Forverts, January 11, 1925, section 2, 1. 34 “Dr. M. Vaynraykh, eyropeisher mitarbeter fun ‘Forverts’, kumt haynt on keyn Amerike,” Forverts, March 6, 1929, 1, 10. 35 Vladimir Medem, “Di shtelung fun sotsialistn tsu tsionizm,” Forverts, May 11, 1921, 4. 36 Abraham Cahan, “Zionizm, yidishizm un nokh a por izmen,” Forverts, June 1, 1921, 5; idem, “Yidish un yidishizm,” Forverts, June 2, 1921, 5; see also Deborah Dash More, At Home in American: Second Generation New York Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 100, 104, 105.

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of David Levinsky.37 It was also a theme for Forverts articles and readers’ comments.38 Clearly, for Cahan, Eastern European heritage did not carry paramount value. Rather, he saw it as his mission to help Jewish immigrants, or at least their children, to forge a post-immigrant identity and become an integral part of the English-speaking American Jewish community. Observing that Yiddishism formed a domain of activities, which attracted cultural figures from various camps, including pro-Soviet activists, he apparently worried about the influence of Communists wielded through Yiddish culture and education. In fact, the Yiddish Cultural Society, established in New York in 1930, had among its members such popular non-Communist, albeit left-leaning, writers as Joseph Opatoshu, H. Leivick, and David Pinski. Chaim Zhitlovsky, the figurehead among American Yiddishists, and the literary critic Shmuel Niger played principal roles in this organization, whose program echoed the program of the Kultur-Lige.39 The October 1930 issue of Der fraynd featured an article entitled “Grievances and Joys of Our Schools,” by Philip Geliebter, Educational Director of the Workmen’s Circle. By now, the organization had a hundred schools, attended by about 6,000 children. The author pointed out the salient difference between the secular Yiddish schools in the USA and Poland: Polish Jewish school children usually came from a more or less traditional background, whereas the majority of their American counterparts were, in Geliebter’s words, “Jewish goyim.” Furthermore, in Poland they studied at Yiddish day schools, whereas American children spent the bulk of the day at general public schools, having only from four to seven hours a week of afternoon classes in Yiddish. Geliebter complained about lack of attention paid by the Yiddish press to the schools.40 In a few months, however, prob-

37 Hana Wirth-Nesher, Call It English: The Languages of Jewish American Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 1–31. 38 See, for example, Nedda Joseph, “Would You Marry an Accent?,” Forverts, May 12, 1929, English page; “Gentile Woman who ‘Married an Accent’ Has Never Regretted It,” Forverts, June 16, 1929, English page. 39 See, for example, “Meet Here to Foster Yiddish Culture,” The New York Times, March 29, 1930, 9; “Revival of Yiddish Aim of Convention,” The New York Times, March 30, 1930, 3; Eric L. Goldstein, “The Struggle over Yiddish in Postimmigrant America,” in 1929: Mapping the Jewish World, ed. Hasia R. Diner and Gennady Estraikh (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 139–154. 40 Philip Geliebter, “Tsores un nakhes fun undzere shuln,” Der fraynd, October 1930, 5–8.

Cultural Debates

lems of Yiddish school would emerge as one of the central topics in the Forverts output. The immediate event, or more of a non-event, that set off the divisive debate in the press was the publication of a letter in the February 1931 issue of Der fraynd. Sam Gelber of Waco, Texas, shared his impression from attending a lecture by the popular and highly respected Yiddish poet H. Leivick. In 1929, Leivick cut his links with the Communist circles and, as a result, the local Branch 242 of the Workmen’s Circle could invite him a guest speaker. Gelber left the lecture highly impressed, which made it even more painful for him to realize that only a minority of the about seventy-five people in the audience could understand fully the poet. This experience induced him to write the letter, in which he suggested that English should supplant Yiddish as the language of the Workmen’s Circle meetings and documentation. He also criticized the Workmen’s Circle schools: I don’t believe in Yiddish schools and in Young Circle Clubs [by then, clubs of this kind had been established in many places, including Waco]. I don’t see any future for them. Only a small number of our children who study Yiddish continue to use it, while the vast majority of them forget the language very soon. We don’t need separate clubs for the youth. We need young people in our branches, to talk with them in their language, to have joy with them, to laugh with them, to dance with them their kind of dances, and perhaps to feel younger next to them!41

Cahan reacted to this letter by an article, “Jewish Immigrants and Their American Children,” published in two installments in the Forverts.42 He asserted that by writing it he parted the curtains of the opaque battle within the circles of Jewish Socialist activists. Most of all, he brought under examination the assumption that Yiddish schools could narrow the cultural gap between immigrant parents and their American-reared children, and agreed with Gelber that the parents had to advance linguistically and culturally toward their children. He confirmed his negative attitude to the

41 Sam Gelber, “Undzer tsukunft ligt in der shprakh fun undzere amerikaner kinder,” Der fraynd, February 1931, 27; see also “National Directory of Young Circle Clubs,” Der fraynd, January 1930, 5. 42 Abraham Cahan, “Yidishe imigrantn un zeyere amerikaner kinder,” Forverts, February 21 and 28, 1931, 4.

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notion of “Yiddish culture,”43 characterizing it as an inapplicable Eastern European construct. In general, he considered Yiddishists’ ideas not only utopian, particularly in the American context, but also harmful, hindering the parents’ integration into American life, the life of their children. Focusing on the language proper, Cahan had a go at the newfangled product of Yiddish language planning, the “bookish Yiddish,” which, he claimed, had many “raw” elements and was oversaturated with Hebrew and Aramaic words and phrases understandable only to a small minority of men and, given the gender differences in traditional Jewish education, incomprehensible to virtually all women. Nonetheless, he proclaimed, American afternoon schools had chosen the artificial “bookish Yiddish” as the medium of instruction, instead of using the vernacular of their students’ parents, the heymishe muter-shprakh, idiomatic mother tongue (Cahan often called it yidisher yidish), of the works by Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, and Abraham Reisen. Cahan made fun of the teachers’ purism, their insistence of avoiding Americanisms, even those that had been around for many decades. In his opinion, such words as korner (“street corner”), butsher stor (“butcher store”), and kendi (“candy”) were more natural for American Yiddish than the corresponding Slavicisms rog, yatke, and tsukerke. He wrote: Yiddish is dear to me as it is my mother tongue. This language is not one iota less precious to me than to a hot Yiddishist. Yet, it is not the mother tongue of the American-born children. I have a feeling that someone humiliates a thing that is sacred to me as a memory of my mother, when I hear how such children twist their tongues speaking a pripetshik Yiddish,44 which they cannot fully understand, and pronounce it as if they have a potato lodged in their mouths. . . .

As early as 1907, Cahan argued that the Yiddish of the Eastern European journalism and literature was “not at all the Yiddish to which we are accustomed here,” in America. The changes in the language reflected the fact that “the Jewish masses in Russia today are not at all what they used to be. They are quite educated.” Moreover, Jews in Russia began to treat Yiddish “as a finished, cultured language for cultured people.” That was “the 43 A similar attitude shaped the editorial footnote to Yakov Levin, “Tsum tsuzamenfor fun di Arbeter Ring shuln,” Forverts, April 30, 1920, 5. 44 Mark Warshawsky’s song “Oyfn pripetshik” (“On the cooking stove”) was a staple of music classes in Yiddish schools.

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new stage in the life of Yiddish.” In America, however, the majority of readers were not competent in this high language. Therefore, and because such people as Cahan saw Yiddish, first and foremost, as “a popularization tool,” it was important to use this language in its raw state, which a little-educated person could understand without any effort. In Cahan’s words: “To avoid polishing, developing, cultivating—this is our aim.”45 In February 1931, Cahan announced that his two-part article “Jewish Immigrants and Their American Children” signaled the opening of a discussion about Yiddish schools. At the same time, he warned that, giving the limitation of newspaper space and predicting a significant influx of articles and letters, contributions by members of the Workmen’s Circle would be prioritized for publication.

Advocates of Yiddish Education Cahan’s article jolted many people in the American Jewish labor movement and demonstrated the limits of his sway. The first response published in the newspaper came from Nathan Chanin, President of the Workmen’s Circle.46 He categorically disagreed with Cahan’s broadside on the afternoon school. Chanin asked: What did Cahan define as the heymishe muter-shprakh? Did he mean by this the language spoken in his home city of Vilna thirty or forty years ago? In this case, Cahan simply ignored the fact that Yiddish, like any language, had been changing during these years. According to Chanin, it was redolent of praising Alexander Pushkin’s language as the only genuine form of contemporary Russian or else to recognize only the language of Russian peasants rather than the language of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. (References to Russian literary works and personalities were common in the pages of the Forverts.) Chanin surmised that Cahan knew very little about the situation on the ground, in the schools, and based his opinion on hearsays. Actually, the vast majority of teachers spoke and taught the language of such writers as Asch and Reisen, whose works were part of the curricula. Chanin made no secret of his doubts that pupils of afternoon schools could attain fluency in Yiddish. At the same time, he was certain that 45 Abraham Cahan, “How Should Yiddish Be Written?,” in Building the Future: Jewish Immigrant Intellectuals and the Making of Tsukunft, ed. Steven Cassedy (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 2000), 153–160. 46 Nathan Chanin, “Vegn yidisher dertsiyung in Amerike,” Forverts, March 7, 1931, 4.

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teachers had success in instilling a love and respect for Yiddish and, generally, Eastern European Jewish cultural values. While an immigrant mother’s broken English might sound laughable to her children, they would not laugh hearing her Yiddish. The fact that Yiddish lately appeared on curricula of religious schools (Talmud Torahs) exemplified to Chanin the positive impact of secular Yiddish education. Many Talmud Torahs even used textbooks written for Workmen’s Circle schools. In large part, Chanin repeated his arguments of 1925, when he was Secretary General of the Jewish Socialist Farband. At that time, he responded to the criticism of Yiddish schools by Meyer London, who was three times—in 1914, 1916, and 1920—elected to the Congress of the United States from the Lower East Side in New York, and served as the legal advisor of the Workmen’s Circle.47 Chanin sarcastically invited Cahan to show an example of Americanization by changing the language of the Forverts from Yiddish to English. More seriously, he praised the newspaper for being a bulwark against complete assimilation. Concerning the role of schools in the process of integration into American society, Chanin wrote: In your talks and articles, you, Comrade Cahan, keep arguing that we “must Americanize ourselves.” What is the meaning of the word “Americanize”? When our children attend the Workmen’s Circle school, are they not Americanized? And when they loiter near a candy store, sing, whistle or dance on [the then popular songs] “Red Hot Mama” or “You Are Driving Me Crazy,” are they already Americanized? We don’t have to worry about the Americanization of our children. We often think that our children are too much Americanized, and that the Jewish immigrant children embrace tawdry elements of American life stronger than the American children whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. In our schools, we are also Americanizing the children. However, we teach them to love the America of [the Socialist leader Eugene V.] Debs and Lincoln, the America of idealism.

The children’s writer Jacob Kreplak, who worked as the managing secretary of the Socialist monthly Tsukunft, expressed a clear opposition to Cahan’s view on Yiddish education.48 Although the Forward Association owned the journal, it did not mean that the voices of the two periodicals, 47 Shapiro, The Friendly Society, 153–154. 48 Jacob Kreplak, “Tsulib vos zaynen neytik yidishe shuln?,” Forverts, March 10, 1931, 4.

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Forverts and Tsukunft, always sounded in unison. It is known that Cahan, disliking the monthly and its editor Abraham Liessin, tried several times to have the Association close the Tsukunft.49 As vice-chairman of the Workmen’s Circle’s Educational Committee, Kreplak knew firsthand the matter of Yiddish education. He maintained that multilingualism was beneficial to children’s development: students of Yiddish schools usually throve in all public school subjects, including English. (Most probably, he referred to a small survey whose results appeared in the August 1930 issue of the Tsukunft.)50 Yiddish classes were particularly important for radical circles, where the language gap between parents and children grew broader than among more traditional segments of the American Jewish immigrant population. Significantly, children educated at Yiddish schools looked differently at the world. Kreplak quoted an alumnus of a Workmen’s Circle school, who said at a recent reception: “The thing is not only that I was taught how to read and write from right to left. . . . The school gave me a worldview, a national and Socialist ideal. It made me internally happy.” While Kreplak welcomed the establishment of Young Circle Clubs, he had misgivings about them, because “raspberry does not grow on an old apple tree.” Joseph Baskin, Executive Secretary of the Workmen’s Circle and editor of Der fraynd, also countered Cahan’s arguments. He saw the desire to learn English and discard Yiddish as a form of mayofes, or servility before the powers that be.51 He contended that parents had the right to introduce their children into the world of their linguistic and cultural heritage. Above all, Yiddish schools saved their children from indoctrination with religious beliefs. Baskin repeated the assertion that Cahan’s ridicule of the Yiddish practiced in the schools was based on hearsays (he alluded to the gossipers Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky—stock characters from Nikolay Gogol’s The Government Inspector) rather than on reality. At the same time, the Workmen’s Circle did not boycott English. Thus, the Rand School of Social Science lecturer Esther Friedman, who ran for the New York State Senate as

49 Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 96. 50 David E. Fishman, “From Yidishism to American Judaism: The Impact of American Yiddish Schools on Their Students,” in Imagining the American Jewish Community, ed. Jack Wertheimer (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2007), 273. 51 Cf. Chone Shmeruk, “Mayofes: A Window on Polish-Jewish Relations,” Polin 10 (1997): 273–286.

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a Socialist candidate in 1918, gave talks in English to many branches of the Workmen’s Circle throughout the country. According to H. Siegal, Chairman of the Workmen’s Circle’s Central School Board in Philadelphia, Yiddish schools rectified the mistake made by the immigrants who came to American at the turn of the twentieth century.52 Neglect of education of their children led to losing them entirely to Jewish life or making their Jewishness rather eclectic. He gave an example to hammer his point home: a woman whom he knew would light candles on Friday evening, but the next morning she would go to a non-Jewish butcher store to buy pork chops. Or after eating a ham sandwich she would not drink milk, following the Jewish dietary law of not mixing dairy and meat. Siegal believed that Cahan, who had done so much for Yiddish, was misinformed as to the situation in the schools. Siegel’s two children attended a Yiddish school, which did not preclude their becoming bona fide Americans. Benjamin Gebiner, the current Secretary General of the Jewish Socialist Farband, repeated the argument that Cahan simply did not know the reality of Yiddish schools. Gebiner, on the other hand, had been practicing as a teacher for nine years, and vouched that the language spoken at Workmen’s Circle’s schools did not differ from the language of Forverts writers, such as the short story writer Zalman (Solomon) Libin and the poet Mani Leyb (Brahinsky). Not only Americanisms were present in the Yiddish teachers’ vocabulary (ofis, kar, trobl, kemp, star, kendi, miting, ayz-krim, and so forth), but a special commission, formed at the Workmen’s Circle, had been discussing a list of loanwords recommended for active use in teaching. Still, he emphasized, it was paramount to preserve the Eastern European cultural legacy rather than to consign it to the dustbin of history.53 Tsivion was an early stout supporter of Yiddish education and took part in establishing the pioneering Workmen’s Circle school in Harlem. At the same time, he never embraced Yiddishism. Worse still, he confessed, Yiddish was not really dear to him. He continued to detect in himself residues of his youth snobbish—intellectual and assimilationist—attitude towards Yiddish. For all that, he contended that the quantitatively significant presence of Yiddish speakers among American Jews made Yiddish schools worthy of aid. Especially as, even without the mass immigration, 52 H. Siegel, “Vos di yidishe shuln tuen oyf far undzere kinder,” Forverts, March 16, 1931, 3. 53 Benjamin Gebiner, “Derneentern di yidishe shuln tsu di eltern?,” Forverts, March 23, 1931, 3.

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thousands of Jews continued to arrive from Europe.54 A couple of years earlier, during a public debate about the future of Yiddish, Tsivion painted a futurist vision of technological progress as a facilitator of the language’s survival: planes and radio would link New York, Vilna, and other places with a high concentration of Yiddish speakers.55 He had no doubts that teaching children in English would give good results. However, no campaign for English-language education had so far generated anything close to the enthusiasm of Workmen’s Circle members for Yiddish education. Tsivion, like some other advocates of Yiddish schools, hoped that such schools could outcompete the Talmud Torahs and help keep “a distance between us and the kippah.”56 Cahan’s inclination to tolerate religious schools deeply troubled A. Litvak, who was preoccupied with Jewish secular education and was a stalwart proponent of Yiddish as the language of modern Jewish nation. He maintained that religious schools led children back, to a somewhat modernized heder, which meant a drastic departure from Socialist ideals of education. A. Litvak also found it ironical that Cahan advocated an Americanized version of Yiddish. He recalled that once, answering Litvak’s question why the language of the Forverts became less Americanized, Cahan explained that he sought to make his newspaper intelligible to readers in Poland.57 On March 15, 1931, the Workmen’s Circle’s Central School Board organized a mass meeting in New York, which turned into an angry anti-Cahan rally. Speakers accused the editor of betraying Socialist ideas, of being ashamed of Yiddish, and of devoting forty years of his life to struggle against Yiddish literature.58 True, Chanin, in his column of Der veker (Alarm), the journal of the Jewish Socialist Farband, hurried to dismiss these accusations, arguing that one could not have doubts about Cahan’s commitment to Socialism.59

Tsivion, “Ven vet yidish untergeyn in Amerike,” Forverts, March 31, 1931, 4. Paul Dembitzer, “A vort vegn tsukunft fun Yiddish in Amerike,” Forverts, April 7, 1931, 5. Tsivion, “Ven vet yidish untergeyn in Amerike.” A. Litvak, “Tsu der debate vegn yidish un yidishe shuln in Amerike,” Forverts, April 9, 1931, 4, 8. 58 “Miting vegn der shul-debate in ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, March 18, 1931, 3. 59 Nathan Chanin, “Farbaygeyendik,” Der veker, April 1, 1931, 4. 54 55 56 57

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Critics of Yiddish Education Cahan also received a flattering remark disguised as a reproach for not becoming a spiritual leader of the immigrant community. Sh. Kleit, a teacher at a Yiddish school in Newark, wrote: I often think about the time forty years ago when you, Comrade [Cahan], started building the colossal—spacious and solid—edifice of the general labor movement, trade unions, the Workmen’s Circle, and the press. Yet, one thing you forgot to do. You did not create a Socialist religion, which would unite the parents and their children. You, dear Comrade Cahan, could play the role of our great spiritual leader, similar to the Jewish spiritual leaders in the old days. It was your duty to keep our language seaworthy in the ocean of foreign languages and cultures. The Forverts and the Workmen’s Circle should and could become our Jewish Socialist castle—the castle of our Socialist life.60

As if in reply to this peculiar criticism, Ben-Zion Maimon, the Washington correspondent of the Forverts, pointed out that the Workmen’s Circle was not a religious sect, and its members had no obligation to believe in the same God and pray from the same prayer book. Nor was it a party with a rigid set of political beliefs. Rather, Maimon argued, the Workmen’s Circle had a collective—American Jewish Socialist—opinion about key issues of life. This groupthink clashed with the opinion of the vast majority of Yiddish teachers, who were essentially nationalists and whose linguistic purism made a rapprochement between the parents and children problematic. As a result of studying a “pure Yiddish” children realized (if they had really managed to learn Yiddish) that their mothers and fathers could not speak properly both languages, English and Yiddish. Ironically, many parents were ashamed of their Yiddish and asked to invite for them Englishspeaking lecturers whom they sometimes could not fully understand, whereas “fanatic teachers” insisted on inviting Yiddish-speaking lecturers for their students, notwithstanding the fact that the students had difficulties with comprehending idiomatic Yiddish. Maimon contended that Yiddish schools created obstacles for establishing close relations between Jewish and non-Jewish children. He did not see any reason in teaching Socialism in Yiddish since this could be done 60 Sh. Keit, “Yidishe sotsialistn in der frage vegn yidish un english in Amerike,” Forverts, March 20, 1931, 5.

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more effectively in English. What’s more, he insisted, linguistic difference played a secondary role: Socialists speaking various languages, English, Italian, German or Yiddish, had much more in common than two Jews who belonged to opposing ideological camps. Maimon was under the impression that Yiddish school children often memorized postulates without understanding them properly. Thus, when he asked a girl student to explain him the meaning of the phrase “Sholem Aleichem is the Jewish Mark Twain,” which she cited in her presentation, the girl had no idea who either of the two people were.61 Abe Hirshkowitz, a labor movement activist and a contributor to the Yiddish press, considered wasteful any efforts to educate in America a new generation of Sholem Aleichem’s readers. He compared the Yiddish educators with the comic characters in Sholem Aleichem’s story “Fires” of his Kasrilevke series: the firemen who cannot fight the blaze because they come equipped with an unplugged—and therefore empty—barrel.62 Hirshkowitz referred to his own disheartening experience of sending his child to an afternoon Yiddish school. An ardent admirer of Meyer London, he quoted the Socialist leader saying at a convention of the Workmen’s Circle that the Yiddish schools, in his opinion, represented a competition between tallow candles with electric lamps (public schools). Yiddish was dear and even holy to Hirshkowitz, but, he asserted, it was the “garb” of his generation, not suitable for the youth, and ridiculed the Yiddishist fanaticism of the pedagogue Yakov Levin.63 Sol (Shabse) Bulgatch, who once chaired the New York branch of the Workmen’s Circle, maintained that the Workmen’s Circle invested too much energy and money in its schools, especially as only a small minority of its members sought such education for their children. He also believed that the schools pulled the Workmen’s Circle membership to their pre-immigrant past rather than led them forward. While he had nothing against helping Yiddish school, he did not see any reason why the Workmen’s Circle had to run such a burdensome educational network.64 61 Ben-Zvi [Maimon], “Yidishe dertsiyung in Amerike,” Forverts, March 21, 1931, 4. 62 See Sholom Aleichem, Inside Kasrilevke, translated from the Yiddish by Isidore Goldstick (New York: Schochen Books, 1965), 92–95. 63 Abe Hirshkowitz, “Undzer yidishe shprakh un undzere yidishe kinder,” Forverts, March 24, 1931, 4. See also Abe Hirshkowitz, Ot azoy lakht a shnayder (New York: n.p., 1947), 65. 64 Shabse Bulgatch, “Di yidishe shuln un der arbeter ring,” Forverts, March 30, 1931, 3.

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In contrasts to his brother Shmuel Niger, Baruch Vladeck, called by Lestschinsky “national assimilator or assimilated nationalist,” was lukewarm at best on the issue of Yiddish education in America.65 Above all, he did not see any promising results from the two-decades-long pedagogical endeavor. Most importantly for him, even the pupils, who could speak and write well in the language of their parents, did not think in Yiddish. He did not see a purpose of using the afternoon schools for cultivating respect to the parents. He presumed that the vast majority of children respected their parents any way, and that they remained Jewish even if they could not read works by Yiddish writers. These young Americans’ Jewishness was based on their attachment to the religion and traditions, their worries about the conditions for Jewish life in Eastern Europe, or other interests and anxieties. Despite difficult personal relations between Cahan and Vladeck,66 the latter defended the editor-in-chief from attacks of Yiddishists, reminding them Cahan’s remarkable contribution to the development of Yiddish literature and that thanks to him the Forverts had among its contributors such writers as Sholem Asch, Abraham Reisen, and Zalman Shneur. The main thesis of Vladeck’s article was that (as the title of his article said) “Yiddish does not fully define Yiddishkayt.” Who has the right to say that I. L. Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, Asch and Reisen form the living part of our culture, whereas the Bible and the Talmud, Yehuda Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol, the Vilna Gaon, Baal Shem Tov, Moses Mendelsohn and Simon Dubnov don’t belong to our Jewish culture? The person who decides to study the life of Jewish immigrants and, generally, Jewish life in America, will have to peruse not only Zalman Libin and Leon Kobrin, but also Abraham Cahan’s The Rise of David Levinsky, Ludwig Lewisohn’s Up Stream, and other works written in English.

Vladeck shared Cahan’s negative view on Yiddishists, especially those of them whom he defined as fanatical and narrow-minded “ersatz nationalists.” They made a painful impression on him by rejecting virtually the entire Jewish culture developed before them. In addition, contemporary writers were not to their liking either. To Vladeck, Yiddishists were more dangerous to Yiddish and Yiddish culture than assimilationists.67 The term 65 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Vladek der harmonye-mentsh,” in B. Vladek in der opshatsung fun zayne fraynd, ed. Yefim Yeshurin (New York: Forverts, 1936), 71. 66 See, for example, Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 354–355. 67 Baruch Vladeck, “Yidish iz nit di gantse yidishkayt,” Forverts, March 28, 1931, 4.

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“assimilationist” was applied in a pejorative sense to those who used English as their main language and shunned activities in the exclusively Jewish and Socialist realm.68 Alexander Kahn, a prominent figure in American Jewish life and the lawyer of the Forverts, would replace Vladeck as the newspaper’s manager following the latter’s death in 1938. In 1931, he was skeptical that artificial measures could seriously contribute to maintaining a language. Yiddishists were misled by the fact that some number of American-born children learned Yiddish and, therefore, felt compelled to expand this experiment. Nonetheless, of the about 120 thousand school-age children of Workmen’s Circle members only five or six thousands attended Yiddish schools. According to Kahn, these schools had been draining the Workmen’s Circle of money, which could be better used on English-language education, with a much higher number of students diverted from religious schooling.69

Cahan’s Summing Up Even if the counterarguments of advocates of Yiddish afternoon schooling of American children made an impression on Cahan, he was not a man easily put off his stride. This was especially true of his long-established attitude toward Yiddish and its role in public life. As early as 1898, he wrote about Yiddish periodicals as “preparatory schools from which the reader is sooner or later promoted to English newspapers.”70 At the end of 1920, the Forverts began publishing a self-learning English language course by Alexander Harkavy, the well-known lexicographer and author of text- and handbooks.71 Summing up the 1931 debate, Cahan insisted that the rationale for publishing a Yiddish newspaper was not the same as the rationale for giving children a Yiddish education. The Yiddish press served the existing readership, whereas Yiddish education of American children was irrational at best: all the Workmen’ Circle members sponsored schools attended by a very small minority of their children. He once again repeated his claim of loving Yiddish, but this sentiment did not force him to turn the newspaper 68 Shapiro, The Friendly Society, 96. 69 Alexander Kahn, “Di frage fun yidishe shuln in Amerike,” Forverts, April 1, 1931, 3. 70 Lori Jirousek-Falls, “Abraham Cahan and Jewish Immigrant Education: For Men and Women,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 26 (2007): 36. 71 “Lernt english durkhn ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, November 26, 1920, 1.

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under his editorship into an institution aimed at spreading and preserving Yiddish. It was first and foremost a forum for Socialist ideas. Cahan saw Yiddish schooling as some kind of ideological “madness” purveyed by well-organized activists and teachers. 72 He surmised that, apart from ideological motifs, the teachers protected the schools as the source of their income. Their weekly salaries of $45 were better than the salaries of young teachers working at public schools, though their workload was much less demanding. He wrote: Only those who use Socialism as a ground for Yiddishism can insist on teaching American-born children Socialism in Yiddish rather than in the language spoken by the children. As a rule, they are people who continue to live in their old country even after moving to America. To be precise, they live somewhere in the air, in the world of empty wisdoms, high above the hard land and the hard reality of life. The summer camps, where children are indoctrinated in Yiddishism, is another example of how Yiddishists are ready to sacrifice the interests of children for the sake of their sect’s interests.73

According to him, it was unsurprising that the Yiddishist variety of the language differed from the regular Yiddish, because—as a sect—Yiddishists needed their own parlance.74 He feared that the spirit of Yiddishism permeated the Workmen’s Circle and the Jewish Socialist Farband. Meanwhile, the majority of the parents did not want their children to study at Workmen’s Circle schools run by fanatical Yiddishists and instead often sent them to Talmud Torahs. As a result, the schools had become an obstacle for Socialist activities. While such people as London and Vladeck left their Bundism on the other side of the ocean, many Jewish Socialists carried on living as if they still were in their old country—in Russia circa 1905 or 1906—and effectively pulled their constituencies back to the bygone days.75 He repeated time and again that educators made a mistake by trying to transfer to America the experience of their colleagues in Eastern Europe, where Yiddish enjoyed a strong position. At the same time, he did not forget to note that even in Poland only five per cent of Jewish children attended 72 Abraham Cahan, “Der fundament un di gebayde,” Forverts, April 18, 1931, 4–5. 73 Abraham Cahan, “Vuhin firt di virklekhkayt?,” Forverts, April 21, 1931, 4. 74 Abraham Cahan, “Imigrantn-yidish un yidish far amerikaner geboyrene,” Forverts, April 22, 1931, 7. 75 Abraham Cahan, “Lomir kukn dem emes in di oygn,” Forverts, April 25, 1931, 4.

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Yiddish schools, while eighty-seven percent studied at Polish schools and eight per cent at Hebrew schools.76 For all that, his attitude to Yiddish practiced by teachers in the “old home” was more tolerant. In 1921, following his visit to Eastern Europe, he praised the enthusiasm of local Yiddish teachers, but indicated that they had thin support among the Jewish masses. Many parents were happy to send their children to a Yiddish primary school (folks-shul), seeing them as a modernized heder, but usually chose to give their children secondary education in the language of the country, even if the country were engulfed with anti-Semitism.77 Although the idea of teaching children mathematics in Yiddish seemed to him strange, his view altered after visiting a Yiddish school in Minsk in 1927, during his trip to the Soviet Union (see Chapter 6): I found it curious to hear how geometry was being explained in mame-loshn [the mother tongue]. But it went quite smoothly. . . . When I heard the words shkheynishe vinklen [adjacent angles], I wanted to smile. But five minutes later I thought to myself: How is shkheynishe any worse than smezhnye [in Russian] or “adjacent”? And I quickly became accustomed to the Yiddish words as a scientific language.78

Cahan answered those who questioned his Socialist credentials that for him Marxism was not an objective science with its theory of social evolution leading to revolution. (According to Melech Epstein, Cahan “was not strong in theory; his ideological baggage was rather light. Nor was he hampered by doctrinal restrictions.”)79 He believed that revolutions owed more to serendipity than to some historical regularity, and believed that events in Russia exemplified his argument.80 Small wonder then that doctrinaire Socialists did not consider him to be part of their ideological camp. It seems that Cahan always had in his Socialist outlook a maskilic (“enlightened”) ingredient, which was hardly surprising for a graduate from the Jewish Teachers’ Institute in Vilna, the successor of the Rabbinical Seminary, set up in 1847 by the Russian government as part of its program 76 Cahan, “Vuhin firt di virklekhkayt?” 77 Abraham Cahan, “Yidishe gimnazyes un yidishe folks-shuln,” Forverts, September 5, 1921, 3, 5. 78 Daniel Soyer, “Abraham Cahan’s Travels in Jewish Homelands: Palestine in 1925 and the Soviet Union in 1927,” in Yiddish and the Left, ed. Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2001), 71. 79 Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 52. 80 Cahan, “Imigrantn-yidish un yidish far amerikaner geboyrene.”

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which chimed with Jewish enlighteners’ drive for modernization and harmonization. His program of Americanization has many features, which can be described as neo-maskilic ones. Like the maskilim of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, he saw Yiddish as a provisional, one-generation-long linguistic medium for modernization rather than a core constituent of the modern Jewish nation. In this context, any serious language and culture planning efforts appeared counterproductive to progress. Importantly, language was only one of the aspects of the social vision of Cahan’s Forverts. The younger generation should be forward-looking, shedding the traits considered apparently as relics of the shtetl and an impediment to integration into American society: Too many of our young Jewish man and women are morbid, too many of them pity themselves, too many dwell constantly upon their troubles, real or fancied. That self-pity mars the character of many Jews and makes them disliked. We should look forward, not inward. We should regard our troubles, our sorrows, our persecution, but shouldn’t let them swamp up. We should get the whine out of our characters and our literature.81

In February 1931, Cahan extolled the new type of rabbis that one could see in Jewish neighborhoods of American cities: A young fellow, of an intellectual appearance, with a shaved face, and dressed like a man about town. Together with other pairs, he is dancing with a stylish attired young woman in the grill restaurant of a hotel. Can you imagine telling your father that this man is a rabbi?82

Importantly, this young fellow is not a reform rabbi (many, if not the majority, of the Forverts writers and readers had aversion to everything associated with the reform stream in Judaism), but an American-educated orthodox one. He preaches in English, choosing a semi-philosophical and semi-secular topic, dropping a Biblical or Talmudic reference in his speech. Parents and children go together to such synagogues, and very often they do this in response to preference of their children, who feel themselves uncomfortable in an old-fashioned, “ghetto style” synagogue with a Yiddish-speaking rabbi, wearing long side-curls and beards. According to 81 “Anite Brenner Wins First Prize in Contest,” Forverts, June 21, 1925, English section. 82 For the role of moden dancing in Cahan’s life and oeuvre, see Sonia Gollance, “‘A valtz from the land of valtzes!’: Dance as a Form of Americanization in Abraham Cahan’s Fiction,” Dance Chronicle 41, no. 3 (2018): 393–417.

Cultural Debates

Cahan, many young people had realized that it was pointless to hide their Jewishness, because it did not improve the Christian Americans’ attitude to them any way. Hence the change of the young Jews’ self-definition: instead of claiming that they were Americans rather than Jews, they began to define themselves as “American Jews” and as such they joined synagogues or—a relatively new form of communal life—Jewish centers.83 Clearly, this development pleased Cahan. At the same time, Cahan had a conflicting agenda: as the editor he was interested in attracting more readers, whereas linguistic “harmonization” of American Jews led to a detrimental effect on his newspaper. Meanwhile, some of the thousands of the supplement Yiddish school graduates did become readers of the Forverts. Above all, he could see that his stinging strictures on Yiddish schools did not find real traction among Jewish immigrants. Parents demonstrated their demand for secular Yiddish education: although the number of students at Jewish weekday schools dropped significantly over the depression years, Yiddish schools showed an increase in their enrollment.84 A new period in Yiddish education began in 1931, when all non-Communist school organizations drew closer to one another, and “managed to establish themselves, a little weakened numerically, but in a stronger position qualitatively.”85 In 1933, all the New York non-Communist mitshuls, or high schools, participated in a symposium on “National and Social Problems of Jews,” chaired by Max Weinreich who spent the 1932–1933 academic year as a visiting scholar at Yale University. At least three of the twelve student speakers were children of Yiddish writers: H. Leivick’s son Daniel, Ephraim Auerbach’s son Hershl, and Joseph Opatoshu’s son David. (The latter was considered as a promising Yiddish writer, but he ultimately turned to acting, first in Yiddish and then in English.) Lily Solovioff, one of the students, spoke on the failure of assimilation to reduce anti-Semitism.86In 1935, the newspaper wrote about former students of Workmen’s Circle schools who had built successful careers in various walks of life, but 83 Abraham Cahan, “Enderungen in dem religyezn lebn fun undzere yidishe imigrantn in Amerike,” Forverts, February 14, 1931, 4. 84 Noah Nardi, “A Survey of Jewish Day Schools in America,” Jewish Education 16, no. 1(1944): 14. 85 Yudel Mark, “Changes in the Yiddish School,” Jewish Education 19, no. 1 (1947): 32–33. 86 “Amerikaner geboyrene yungelayt haltn op a farzamlung oyf yidish vegn aktuele yidishe fragn,” Unzer ekspres, July 2, 1933, 7.

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at the same time remained devoted to Yiddish and Yiddish culture.87 In a sharp contradiction to Cahan’s 1931 statements, a 1935 Forverts article by Zalman Yefroykin, a leading educationalist in the Workmen’s Circle, described Yiddish as “the strongest cultural and national factor in our days.”88 Clearly, such materials catered to the Workmen’s Circle readership, though the real impact of the schools was little visible in the general landscape of American Jewish life. In 1932, Harry Lang wrote about “a mountain” or “a sea” that divided the Yiddish-speaking immigrants, even those who had successfully integrated into local society, from their offspring.89 By the end of the 1930s, the annual budget of the sixty schools with 8,000 pupils amounted to $350,000, or over $6,000,000 in perchasing power of 2020. However, the Forverts, whose daily circulation stood at the time at about 133,000 (over 150,000 on Saturday and Sunday) and was approximately 25,000 less than in the early 1930s, did not describe it as waste of money by out-of-touch idealistic, doctrinaire fantasists. Quite the opposite, the Forverts editorial, published on March 4, 1939, eulogized the school movement activists who worked “in very difficult, unfavorable conditions, in the hard landscape of America, where foreign cultures are being fused in her huge, powerful melting pot.”90

87 “Vos hert zikh in Arbeter Ring, ” Forverts, June 1, 1935, 10. 88 Zalman Yefroykin, “Di dertsiyung vos yidishe kinder krign in di Arbeter Ring shuln,” Forverts, December 8, 1935, section 2, 8. 89 Harry Lang, “In der velt fun amerikaner ‘yahudim’,” Forverts, October 22, 1932, 4. 90 “Der tsvantsik-yoriker yubiley fun di arbeter-ring shuln,” Forverts, March 4, 1939, 8. See also “20 yor arbeter ring shuln,” Forverts, February 25, 1939, 7.

Chapter 4

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

In the Vortex of Revolution In October 1923, the Forverts proudly announced that it had representatives in all key cities of Europe.1 While the newspaper had routinely published articles by occasional or more or less regular European contributors, its cohort of foreign correspondents grew mostly after World War I, notably thanks to Abraham Cahan’s recruiting efforts. In December 1918, Cahan went to Europe as the only representative of the Jewish press among the over fifty American journalists who covered the Paris Peace Conference. During his journey that lasted till October 1919, he made arrangement with several intellectuals, laying a foundation for a potent correspondent network. On February 10, 1920, the Forward Association opened a separate bank account for paying foreign journalists.2 In the same year, the newspaper began allocating whole pages to “Letters of our European correspondents.” Raphael Abramovitch would become one the most important Europe-based contributors. Born Raphael Rein in Dvinsk, then in Russia, and later Daugavpils in Latvia, he recalled his years of growing up in a moderately traditional 1 “Notitsn fun ‘Forverts’ redaktsye: di groyse arbet vos genose Ab. Kahan hot geton far dem ‘Forverts’ in Eyrope,” Forverts, October 10, 1923, 4. 2 Minutes of the Forward Association’s meetings, 1920, 234. Archive of the Forward Association.

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merchant family that paid much attention to giving their children general education: I grew up in a well-off [balebatisher] family of a timber merchant. My father [Abram] was not a man of wealth [gvir], but food, clothing, and a possibility to study never constituted a problem for me. . . . We knew that “poor people” lived in our town, and “had pity” on them. However, only many years later we—sons and daughters of the well-off classes—had a chance to meet socially and politically with children of poor people in the ranks of the Bund.3

Until the age of thirteen Raphael attended a heder, Jewish elementary religious school, and, at the same time, prepared with private tutors for Russian school examinations, which opened him the door to real, or trade, schools in Ponevezh (Panevėžys in Lithuanian), and Libava (Liepāja in Latvian). Graduates of real schools could apply to polytechnic institutes rather than to universities, and in 1898 he became a student of the Riga Polytechnic Institute, the oldest educational institution of this kind in the Russian Empire. In 1901, he joined the Bund, which was hardly surprising given the institute’s reputation for being a hotbed of revolutionary activities. As a radical, he used a range of pseudonyms (Dimant, Abram, Molkiel, and Baron), but ultimately fixed his choice on Abramovitch (also Abramovich, Abramowitsh, Abramovič, Abramowitz, and Abramowicz), which was his Russian patronymic, but pronounced with a shift of stress from the second syllable to the third. Apparently, this name sounded appropriately Jewish for his work in a Jewish Socialist party.4 In 1902, after being expelled from the institute for radical activity, he moved to St. Petersburg, where his parents had settled by that time. He toyed with an idea of compiling a Jewish encyclopedic dictionary, but this project came to naught when the historian and journalist Saul Ginsburg disapproved of the dictionary’s sample chapter (many years later Abramovitch would edit Di algemeyne entsiklopedye, or The General Encyclopedia in Yiddish).5 Abramovitch eventually left Russia and lived in Belgium and 3 Raphael Abramovitch, “Hakdome,” in L. Berman, In loyf fun yorn (New York: Unzer tsayt, 1945), xiv. 4 Cf. Albert O. Hirschman, “Grenzübertritte: Orte und Ideen eines Lebenslaufes,” Leviathan 23, no. 2 (1995): 268. 5 See Rapahel Abramovitch, “Ven Berlin iz geven a yidishe shtot,” Forverts, January 9, 1949, section 2, 4; Barry Trachtenberg, “From Edification to Commemoration: Di Algemeyne Entsiklopedye, the Holocaust and the Changing Mission of Yiddish Scholarship,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5, no. 3 (2006): 285–300. Ginsburg edited the Yiddish daily

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

Switzerland. In 1904, after being sent by the party to work in Russia, he stayed in Minsk and then in Warsaw, where police arrested him and kept locked up for several months. In mid-1906, his intellectual and political promise was recognized when the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party coopted him, still a young man, as a representative of the Bund.6 In November 1907, Abramovitch boarded SS Philadelphia on his way to America. During this six-month-long American stint, until May 1908, he came to like “the remarkable country, the remarkable people, the young, somewhat primitive and naïve but at the same time such a rich civilization of the ‘New World’.”7 The Bund leadership had chosen him, held as a master of political oratory, to raise funds for the ten-year-old party. He used at the time the pseudonym M. Abramovits and gave talks on “The social aspirations of Russia’s Jewry.”8 He met many American Jewish Socialists along the way. Cahan valued him as “a highly developed and sympathetic Socialist, a tactful, clever, and cultural person.”9 His trip was part of extensive fundraising campaigns conducted in the United States. In 1906, up to half of money used by Bund organizations came from American donors.10 Although Cahan never belonged to the Bundist movement and found it nationally sterile, numerous links connected him with the Bund. Both the leadership of the party, established in Vilna, and the staff of the Forverts were predominantly Litvaks and, thus, had much in common culturally. Above all, Cahan, an adherent of Marxist Socialism and, in 1890, one of the founders of the vociferous Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, relished his role of the middleman between revolutionary heroes from Russia and

6

7 8 9 10

Fraynd (Friend), launched in 1903 in St. Petersburg. In the 1930s, following Ginsburg’s emigration to the USA, his articles on historical topics appeared in Forverts. Baruch Vladeck, “R. Abramovitsh vert haynt fiftsik yor,” Forverts, July 21, 1930, 3; Grigori Aronson, “Demokratishe sotsialistn ern R. Abramovitsh tsu zayn 60-yerikhn yubileum,” Forverts, November 24, 1940, 3, 8. Dates and other details differ in various biographical renditions. Raphael Abramovitch, “Mayne ershte 20 yor in Bund,” Forverts, January 23, 1939, 3. See, for example, advertisements in Forverts January 2, 1908, 2, and February 4, 1908, 2. Elias Shulman and Simon Weber, Leksikon fun “Forverts” shrayber (New York: Forverts, n.d.), 1. Tony Michels, “Exporting Yiddish Socialism: New York’s Role in the Russian Jewish Workers’ Movement,” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 1 (2009): 19–20.

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Socialists of America.11 In financial terms, though, Abramovitch’s American tour turned out to be a failure, which was a direct result of the concurrent financial crisis, known as the 1907 Banker’s Panic. In April 1907, under the burden of economic problems, the Forverts declared itself temporary insolvent.12 From New York Abramovitch went to Davos, in the Swiss Alps, where his wife healed her lung decease, and together they returned to Russia. Following his arrest in Vilna in 1910, exile to Vologda in northwestern Russia, and escape from the country in 1911, Abramovitch again became an émigré in Western Europe. During World War I, he lived in Switzerland and joined there the leftward wing of the Mensheviks—the “internationalists,” who approved of the resolutions of the 1915 anti-war Zimmerwald Socialist conference. He once again appeared in Russia in, to borrow Stefan Zweig’s words, one of the Sternstunden der Menschheit (the title of his 1927 book describing the “stellar moments for humanity”), when scores of Socialists, most notably Lenin, crossed Germany in “sealed trains.”13 John Reed, the American chronicler of the revolution, recorded Abramovitch’s reaction to the Bolsheviks coup: “What is taking place now in Petrograd is a monstrous calamity!” Abramovitch played a prominent role in Petrograd and then in Moscow, turned into the capital of Soviet Russia in March 1918, holding memberships on two central committees—of the Bund and the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, and worked at Soviet state institutions.14 By then, the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party united the Mensheviks, who favored a more open and democratic policy than that of the Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks, previously also a faction in the same party, began to call themselves soon after the revolution. When the Twelfth conference of the Bund, whose delegates converged in Moscow in April 1920, ruled to cut links with the Menshevik party and form the Communist-oriented Kombund, Abramovitch became a leading member of the Social-Democratic Bund, established as 11 See Saul Ginsburg, “Vos tsarishe shpionen flegn barikhtn tsu der Peterburger geheympolitsay vegn ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, March 29, 1931, section 2, 3; Ronald Sanders, The Downtown Jews: Portraits of an Immigrant Generation (New York: Dover Publications, 1987), 333–334. 12 Raphael Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes: di geshikhte fun a dor (New York: Arbeterring, 1944), vol. 1, 313–314; Sanders, The Downtown Jews, 384. 13 Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, vol. 1, 10–24; Anatolii V. Smolin, “Torneo-doroga v Rossiiu,” Noveishaia istoriia Rossii 2 (2015): 19–53. 14 John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (New York: Penguin, 1977), 103.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

a Menshevik-oriented alternative. He argued that, ideologically, they, a minority, preserved the “old Bund” rather than formed a rump party.15 In the event, the Social-Democratic Bund was not destined to survive in the hostile environment of Soviet Russia. While the Mensheviks did not discard revolution as a means of social progress, they disagreed with Lenin’s revolutionary strategy. Abramovitch was scathing in his critique of indecisiveness of non-Bolshevik Socialists. Tsivion, who knew Abramovicth (in 1907 both participated in the London congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party), quoted his article in the Petrograd Bundist newspaper Di arbeter-shtime (Workers’ Voice, edited by Abramovitch), which admitted that “our [social-]democracy is wary of coming to power! . . . Our democracy is too strong to be in a bourgeois coalition, but it is too weak to be in charge.” This explained the “logic” of the success of the Bolsheviks, who were not afraid to take “responsibility for everything; for the war, the hunger, and so on.”16 Such people as Abramovitch belonged to the most Westernized group of Russian Marxists and did not follow Leninists on their totalitarian, “Asiatic” path to Socialism. (“Bolshevism, like everything Russian, is partly Asiatic in character,” wrote Bertrand Russell in 1920.)17 In 1920, Abramovitch remonstrated to Trotsky’s arguments for the militarization of the labor force: “One cannot build a planned economy the way the Egyptian Pharaohs once erected pyramids.”18 He would repeat that, instead of a proletarian revolution, the Bolsheviks followed their utopian vision and organized an uprising of peasants drafted in the czarist army during World War I.19 Olgin, who during his 1920–1921 trip to Russia had long conversation with his old friend Abramovitch, summed up the main disagreements 15 Sarah Brener, “Bundist Abramovitsh in Berlin,” Forverts, December 19, 1920, 3; Grigori Aronson, “Vi Refoel Abramovitsh iz avek fun bolshevistishn Rusland un zayn groyse tetikayt in oysland,” Forverts, December 1, 1940, section 2, 3. 16 Tsivion, “Di bolshevikes ibershatsn zeyere eygene kreftn,” Forverts, December 27, 1917, 4. 17 Bertrand Russell, Bolshevism: Practice and Theory (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 115. 18 Ladis K. D. Kristof, “The Geopolitical Image of the Fatherland: The Case of Russia,” The Western Political Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1967): 944, 949. 19 See, in particular, Raphael Abramovitch, “Menshevikes un bolshevikes,” Forverts, April 30, 1922, 8–9.; idem, Wandlungen der bolschewistischen Diktatur (Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1931); Aronson, “Vi Refoel Abramovitsh iz avek fun bolshevistishn Rusland un zayn groyse tetikayt in oysland”; Raphael Abramovitch, The Soviet Revolution, 1917–1939 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), 89.

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between the left Mensheviks (Abramovitch was one of them) and the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks tutted about many traits of the Soviet regime. Essentially, they wanted to see the soviets (councils), rather than the Communist Party, as the dominant force in the nascent Socialist country. Their desired model included, inter alia, independent trade unions, and private small-sized businesses such as artisan workshops. Yet, finally Olgin came to conclusion that the program of the Bolshevik regime was of secondary importance for the Mensheviks. Much more important was that they simply loathed the Bolsheviks personally.20 For his part, Abramovitch initially did not rule out the possibility of gradual democratization of the Communist regime. Also, as he later felt compelled to explain, he and many other Mensheviks were simply at a loss how to behave in the historically unprecedented situation: a Socialist party acting as an opposition to a Socialist government.21 Lenin’s government, however, was less hesitant how to treat Abramovitch and his ilk. He was arrested several times and once, in the second half of 1918, spent nearly four months in detention facing the peril of being executed during the Red Terror, unleashed by the Bolsheviks after the August 1918 assassination attempt on Lenin.22 Since November 1920, Abramovitch had lived in Berlin, following the decision of the Communist Party’s Politburo to allow him and, most importantly, Julius Martov, a towering figure among the Mensheviks, to go to Halle as invited guest delegates at a congress of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, USPD). The fact that the Politburo permitted them to emigrate from Russia has two interpretations. Some sources ascribe it to benevolence of Lenin, who sought to succor his old friend turned a political foe. By letting Martov (who suffered from tuberculosis of the throat and was to die in April 1923) to leave the country, “Lenin-the-humanist” effectively protected him from imminent imprisonment, and gave him a chance to receive assistance from German and Swiss doctors. Four decades later, in the post-Stalinist trend of “going back to Lenin,” this rendition of history inspired Emmanuil Kazakevich, a Soviet Yiddish writer who reinvented

20 Moyshe Olgin, “Vos viln di menshevikes in Rusland?,” Forverts, June 3, 1921, 5. 21 Abramovitch, “Menshevikes un bolshevikes.” 22 Idem, In tsvey revolutsyes, vol. 1, 236–262.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

himself as a successful Russian-language novelist, to write a story, “Enemies,” fictionalizing the events which led to Martov’s departure.23 The other version of the Politburo’s acquiescence is of a less romantic nature: Lenin did not want to have Martov in Russia. Likewise, he considered important to please the USPD, whose representatives happened to be in Moscow at that time among foreign delegates of the Second Congress of the Comintern, and were aware about Martov and Abramovitch’s request for the travel permission. Abramovitch, who knew Lenin rather well, found it out of character for him to be sentimental to an old friend-turned-opponent, and was therefore inclined to the version that the Bolshevik leader simply preferred to avoid a scandal harmful to the reputation of his government.24 In the end, the two Mensheviks crossed the border carrying rather anomalous travel documents: Soviet passports stamped “travelling on the behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party.”25 Invitation to go to Halle was, in reality, an excuse to leave Russia, at least for the time being, and act as the Foreign Delegation of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. Before and after the revolution, many political groupings had foreign delegations, which functioned outside Russia representing their comrades who conducted their activities illegally or semi-legally. According to Abramovitch, over the winter of 1919–1920 he began to broach the idea of his and Martov’s trip, intended to induce and help European Socialists to form a new International. This International should unite the groupings that remained unhappy with both the 1919-established Comintern and the Second Socialist International that had partly restructured itself after the end of World War I. A number of centrist Socialist parties, including the Mensheviks, found themselves in the organizational void between the two poles. Abramovitch fully realized that the Mensheviks were numerically weak compared with other European Socialist parties, but it did not stop him from 23 See, for example, Maxim D. Shrayer, ed., An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), 651–664. 24 Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, vol. 2, 340, 341, 345. 25 André Liebich, From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 153. The Abramovitches remained Soviet citizens till 1932, when their citizenship was revoked—see Yuri Felshtinsky, K istorii nashei zakrytosti: zakonodatel´nye osnovy sovetskoi immigratsionnoi i emigratsionnoi politiki (London: Overseas Publications Exchange, 1988), 164.

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being convinced that he and his party fellows, enriched with the experience of participating in two revolutions in Russia, could be instrumental in establishing a new form of international Socialist cooperation. His comrades on the Central Committee of the Bund (before its Communist/non-Communist split in April 1920) lent credence to this idea or, as Abramovitch mused later, they—who would soon act as straight-down-the-line Communists— simply had the intention to save him from persecution in Soviet Russia and, with this in mind, even released funds for his project. (By the time when he arrived in Berlin, this amount of cash, in czarist rubles, had lost its value almost completely.) Abramovitch’s understanding of the situation in Russia fed his conviction that the Communists could not hold power for long and, for that reason, he was planning to spend abroad a relatively short period of time, perhaps only several months. Nonetheless, he preferred his wife and children to accompany him, lest he should fear that his critique of the Soviet regime might lead to retribution to his family.26 As a result of the red tape in issuing passports and visas to all Abramovitches, they came to Germany in November, already after the Halle congress. In a way, Abramovitch was right predicting radical changes in Russia. Four months after his departure abroad, Lenin announced introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP). However, this program, which rescued Russia from a devastating economic crisis, did not entail democratization of the political system. On the contrary, the trigger of implementing the NEP—the March 1921 anti-Bolshevik rebellion of the garrison in Kronstadt, the naval base of the Baltic Fleet just outside Petrograd—made stronger the Bolsheviks’ resolve to suppress opposition of any form. Lenin did not mince words in explaining his stand: “The place for Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, avowed or in non-party guise, is not at a non-Party conference but in prison (or on foreign journals, side by side with the white guards; we were glad to let Martov go abroad).”27 One of the “foreign journals,” the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (Socialist Courier), launched in February 1921 as an organ of the Foreign Delegation, became known as a source of reliable information about Soviet Russia. The journal also played

26 Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, vol. 2, 341, 346–347. 27 Vladimir I. Lenin, Selected Works: July 1918 to March 1923 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 611. See also Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, vol. 2, 351.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

the role of an organizational center for Menshevik groups in emigration, and energized the underground Menshevik activity in Russia.28 The years 1921–1922 saw the creation of numerous ties between Germany and Soviet Russia, with an intensive business and cultural traffic between Moscow and Berlin. As early as 1920, Berlin housed a publishing outlet of the Comintern and, from 1921, its Bureau for Information and Statistics; from 1924 the Comintern published in Berlin its Germanlanguage journal Inprekorr. Émigré and Soviet literary circles hobnobbed there more often than in any other city where the Russian emigration was concentrated.29 To provide for himself and his family, Abramovitch found employment at the Berlin-based Soviet Bureau of Foreign Science and Technology, headed by Nikolai Fedorovsky, a prominent scholar and veteran revolutionary. In June 1921, when Lenin learned about it, he angrily ordered to fire the émigré Menshevik.30 Abramovitch also worked as an editor at the Berlin publishing house Wostok (East) that produced books in Yiddish and Russian. The Wostok’s owner, Abram Mutnik, was a former Bundist who had distanced himself from political activities. In 1923, Abramovitch, in coauthorship with Abraham Menes, a Bundist comrade, published Leyenbukh tsu der geshikhte fun Yisroel, a reader on the history of ancient Israel.31 Yet, the Forverts would become the main regular outlet for his writings and, apparently, the most important source of his income. Initially, however, Abramovitch seemed too anti-Soviet for Cahan who in mid-1921 was ready even to justify the suppression of the Mensheviks by the Bolsheviks: “It’s a question of life or death for Soviet Russia. The entire capitalist world tries to obliterate her. So, it’s not the time for sympathy to idealists from another camp.”32 28 Evgenii A. Elfimov, “Men´shevistskii zhurnal ‘Sotsialisticheskii vestnik’ v pervye gody emigrantskogo sushchestvovaniia,” in Kul´tura rossiiskogo zarubezh´ia, ed. A. V. Kvakin and E. A. Shulepova (Moscow: Russian Institute of Culturology, 1995), 190–195. 29 See John Willett, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917–1933 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 72; G. M. Adibekov, E. N. Shakhnazarova, and K. K. Shirinia, Organizatsionnaia struktura Kominterna, 1919–1943 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997), 30, 77, 87; Olga Demidova, Metamorfozy v izgnanii: Literaturnyi byt russkogo zarubezh´ia (St. Petersburg: Giperion 2003), 25, 32. 30 Vladimir I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 52 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1970), 263, 438. 31 Abramovitch, “Ven Berlin iz geven a yidishe shtot”; Maria Kühn-Ludewig, Jiddische Bücher aus Berlin (1918–1936):  Titel, Personen, Verlage (Nümbrecht: Kirsch-Verlag, 2006), 204–207. 32 Cahan, “Zionizm, yidishizm un nokh a por izmen.”

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Between Two Internationals After the end of World War I, the Romanisches Café, situated near the Kurfürstendamm, became the adopted home for Berlin’s bohemians, including Yiddish litterateurs, who settled in the German capital.33 American Yiddish journalists and writers also frequented the café. For many of them Berlin was a transit station on their way to or from other European destinations. The Jewish literary critic Bal-Makhshoves (Isidor Eliashev), a regular patron of the café, noted that some of them behaved almost entirely as Americans, and compared their Americanization with the glazing-and-baking process of porcelain manufacturing.34 In July and August 1921, when Cahan, who certainly belonged to the “glazed” cohort, spent several weeks in Berlin, he visited the Romanisches Café and—without mentioning it by name—gave a recognizable description of the bohemian hub.35 It was at the Romanisches Café where Cahan met with Abramovitch. By that time, the latter was one of the leading figures in the International Working Group of Socialist Parties, or the Vienna International, formed in February 1921 as a centrist coalition of Socialist parties which remained unaffiliated to the other two Internationals. From a vantage point of three decades later, Abramovitch described his 1921 encounter with Cahan: We met in the famous Romanisches Café—the Café Royal [the social hub of New York Yiddish bohemians] of Berlin of that time. We embraced and kissed each other, as we always did on meeting. Yet at the very moment when he released me from his grip he informed me, before a word had even come out of my mouth: “But you can’t write for the Forverts.” I was then very far from having any plans about writing in general and for the Forverts in particular. . . . Nonetheless, Cahan’s “warning” that I would not be allowed to write for the Forverts awoke my interest and I asked him: “Why?” He answered: “Because our [political] line differs completely from yours.” We started arguing. I was equipped with facts about the terror, which increasingly took hold of Russia, about the horrific hunger that ravaged the 33 Gennady Estraikh, “Yiddish on the Spree,” in Yiddish in Weimar Berlin: At the Crossroads of Diaspora Politics and Culture, ed. Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), 9–14. 34 Bal-Makhshoves, “Gest,” Der morgn-zhurnal, October 22, 1922, 5. 35 Gennady Estraikh, “The Berlin Bureau of the New York Forverts,” in Yiddish in Weimar Berlin: At the Crossroads of Diaspora Politics and Culture, ed. Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2010), 145.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

country. . . . Suddenly, Cahan raised his hands, plugged his ears, and shouted: “Don’t destroy my illusions! I don’t care to listen!”36

While writing this, Abramovitch either forgot or preferred not to remember that after arriving in Berlin he did think about writing for the Forverts, especially as earlier, still in Moscow, he heard from Dr. Frank Rosenblatt, the then director of the JDC, that Cahan sought to recruit him as a contributor. In addition, Cahan sent him $200 to Berlin, and Abramovitch interpreted it as a confirmation of the previous oral invitation. In a letter to Cahan, dated November 24, 1920, he presented a program of articles on various aspects of Soviet—and Soviet Jewish—life, which he planned to collect into a book down the line. Writing about his wife and children, he confined to Cahan that he brought them to Germany to give them a chance to recover from the hardship of life in Moscow. He emphasized, though, that he was going to return to Russia not later than in six months and, therefore, could commit himself to writing for the Forverts only during this period of time.37 Either way, Abramovitch’s contributions began to appear in the Forverts. On February 15, 1922, an editorial informed readers that the newspaper was going to start publishing informative but essentially anti-Soviet articles by Abramovitch and that the editors had commissioned pro-Soviet articles by other authors in order to form a balanced picture of the situation in Russia.38 On February 17, 1922, a day before the publication of the first article by Abramovitch, an editorial warned that the new author’s slant on Soviet Russia differed significantly from that of the Forverts: “The Bolsheviks deserve to be forgiven for many things. They have been standing at the helm during a very difficult period. The whole world united against them and only an iron hand of discipline could help the skipper to save his ship from a disaster.” Abramovitch, on the other hand, was determined to inform readers about the position of his party. He appealed to Cahan: “I reckon that your newspaper will gain from publishing at least once an authentic presentation of the Menshevik policy.”39 Earlier, on January 16, 1922, Cahan wrote to Jacob Lestschinsky, head of the 36 Raphael Abramovitch, “Oyfn keyver fun fraynd un lerer,” Forverts, September 5, 1951, 4. See also Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 103. 37 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 35. 38 “A kritik un an entfer,” Forverts, February 15, 1922, 4. 39 “Notitsn fun ‘Forverts’ redaktsye: artiklen fun R. Abramovitsh,” Forverts, February 17, 1922, 4.

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newspaper’s Berlin bureau, asking him to coax Abramovitch into writing essays about his Bundist past instead of critical observations of the Soviet regime.40 However, they could not deviate him from his course. Abramovitch’s first article, on “The Classes in Soviet Russia,” with a podkove, or disclaimer, came out not in March, as he stated in his memoir, but on February 18, 1922, and was followed by two more analytical insights into the situation in Russia: “The New Class of Bureaucrats of the Soviet Government” (February 23), and “The Red Army” (February 27). Abramovitch compelled readers to open their eyes to the fact that the society built by the Bolsheviks had little in common with the ideals of Socialism, and that Lenin’s physical decline reinforced the Kremlin’s stooping to “a despotic-military, non-Socialist, anti-democratic, alien-capitalist tyranny (Bonapartism!).” Stalin, he predicted, “would not have problems with shedding blood.”41 Abramovitch essentially referred to the two sources, which, according to Marx and Engels, could bring the form of counter-revolution that they called Bonapartism: the discontent of the peasantry and the rising power of the military.42 The Forverts continued to feature Abramovitch’s opinionated pieces. The well-informed American Jewish journalist and historian Melech Epstein referred to Abramovitch’s articles as “the forerunners of a drastic shift from pro-Sovietism” of the Forverts.43 On March 2, 1922, for instance, his article focused on capitalist countries’ readiness to keep more or less friendly relations with Soviet Russia. From his vantage point, the capitalist world simply sought to turn Russia into its colony by making her dependent on international trade. He worried, however, that the Bolsheviks would ultimately misuse international economic links for reinforcing their national-militarist regime and becoming a grave threat to the entire world.44 Abramovitch took also part in Jewish life of Berlin. In December 1920, the Forverts reported that Abramovitch lectured for Berlin Jewish (apparently Eastern European) workers. He spoke about the inability of the Jewish working class to conduct an independent “Jewish policy,” although the 40 Estraikh, “The Berlin Bureau of the New York Forverts,” 153. 41 Raphael Abramovitch, ‘Ver farnemt dervayle Lenins plats?’, Forverts, August 13, 1922, 2. 42 Cf. David Lockwood, “Rival Napoleons? Stalinism and Bonaportism,” War & Society 20, no. 2 (2002): 53–69. 43 Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, 103. 44 Raphael Abramovitch, “Far vos di gantse velt vert frayndlekh tsu sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, March 2, 1922, 4–5.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

Labor Zionists and other nationalist groupings tried to do it. The reason for this was that, despite its significant presence in such cities as Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, and Vilna, the Jewish proletariat was weak to play a big role in Russia’s life. It became even weaker after the revolution, when its main Jewish labor centers remained outside Russia’s new borders. As typically urban dwellers, Jews suffered economically more in the industrially ruined country. While educated people could find jobs in the state apparatus and nationalized economy, other Jews often had no choice but to engage themselves in illegal trade operations.45 Two years later, the Forverts published a digest of Abramovitch’s Tsukunft article, in which he gave his due to the Soviet regime for treating Jews as equal citizens and protecting them from pogromists. At the same time, he blamed the Bolsheviks for inciting various segments of the population against each other, and thus creating the atmosphere for violence. He reminded readers that the economic turmoil of the first post-revolutionary years had left the majority of Russia’s Jews without any source of income. The NEP had improved the situation for many Jews, but also provided additional fodder for anti-Semitism, because in many places Jews became dangerously prominent in the Soviet administration and in the private economy.46 The decision of the Tenth Convention of the Socialist Party of America, held in Cleveland on April 29 and 30 and May 1, 1922, to join the Vienna International elevated Abramovitch’s status at the newspaper. The Forverts underscored, referring to Abramovitch’s analysis of the results of the Berlin conference that brought together representatives of the three Internationals, that the creators of the Vienna International did not see it as an alternative organization. Rather, they tried to bridge differences between the opposing Internationals, and thereby, first, restore unity of the Socialist movement and, second, secure some space for Socialists in Soviet society.47 In the end, the conference failed to find a unifying common ground, but Cahan, Abramovitch, and many other Socialists clung to the hope that Socialist parties could once again unite under the same umbrella.48 It did 45 Brener, “Bundist Abramovitsh in Berlin.” 46 Raphael Abramovitch, “Vos hot der bolshevizm geton far di yidn?,” Forverts, December 20, 1922, 4. 47 See, for example, Raphael Abramovitch, “Di Berliner konferents fun di sotsialistishe internatsionaln,” Forverts, May 2, 1922, 5. 48 “Di sotsialistishe partey, der Viner internatsional un sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, May 2, 1922, 4; Abramovitch, “Di Berliner konferents fun di sotsialistishe internatsionaln.”

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not stop Abramovitch, though, from condemning Lenin’s government. In December 1922, in The Hague, during a conference of the International Federation of Trade Unions, he—portrayed by the Dutch Socialist daily Het Volk as a “slender figure with an emaciated face and glowing eyes”—“settled scores with the rulers of the Soviet Republic in a way they will not easy forget.”49 At the same time, Abramovitch protested when the Forverts characterized him as an “enemy [faynd] of Soviet Russia.” He preferred to consider himself as an “opponent” (kegner) who expressed the opinion of those Mensheviks who did not admit that, notwithstanding the Bolsheviks victory, Lenin’s strategy was right for Russia.50 Differences of opinion did not affect the personal relations of Cahan with Abramovitch. Judging by Abramovitch’s letter to Cahan, dated April 13, 1923, he around that time received the editor’s invitation to write for the newspaper on a systematic basis.51 Clearly, the way back, to Russia, was closed. In the summer of 1923, as Cahan once again visited Berlin, he had dinner at the Abramovitches’ apartment. Karl Kautsky and his wife Luise were among the guests. According to Cahan, the whole atmosphere of the dinner was typically German, apart from tea served to those of the quests who did not want to drink coffee. While Abramovitch knew German very well from his student years in Riga and the years spent in emigration, Cahan could speak, so he tells us, only a “tormented German” (tsoresdiker daytsh), or apparently the “almost German” Yiddish.52 By the time of Cahan’s 1923 sojourn in Berlin, the illusions of all-embracing Socialist unity had come crumbling down. He realized that the time had come for him to admit the failure of the Bolshevik “experiment” and to draw a clear line between Socialism and Communism. The Comintern increasingly angered Cahan, he considered it responsible for the disarray in the Socialist movement. In May 1923, at a soul-searching convention of the Socialist Party, now numbering merely 12,474, Cahan laid out his new vision of Bolshevism:

49 Bruno Naarden, Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia: Perception and Prejudice, 1848–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 504. 50 Raphael Abramovitch, “Abramovitsh, der bundistisher firer, debatirt mitn ‘Forverts’ vegn di bolshevikes,” Forverts, April 24, 1922, 5. 51 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 35. 52 Abraham Cahan, “An interesanter oylem tsugast in a privat-hoyz,” Forverts, July 29, 1923, 2.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

We have been flirting with Soviet Russia long enough. Somehow, at first we all felt that there was a man, Lenin, who was willing to make a great trial of communism. We thought it worthwhile to give a chance to the revolutionists and see how they would work it out. Trotzky is a great big, bombastic windbag, but still he’s sincere. We have given them their chance, but they have failed. . . . I know that communism has failed because I have been studying their official organs. I am Russian and read Russian. . . . We now see that Lenin . . . is down physically because he is down morally, and I’m sorry to say it because I like the man. . . . We have got to quit flirting with the Soviets.53

In an article entitled “The Agony of the Socialist Party of America,” the Moscow daily Izvestiia noted that Cahan, “the American Scheidemann” (readers were supposed to remember Philipp Scheidemann’s “betrayal” during World War I), had become one of the top figures in the “rump” of the Socialist Party of America, and could “justify and conduct the renegade policy of extreme opportunism and chauvinism.” The Izvestiia correspondent stressed that it was Cahan’s speech that persuaded the convention to flout the offer of American Communists to form a united proletarian front.54 Meanwhile, also in May 1923, during a congress in Hamburg, the two non-Communist Internationals amalgamated into the Labor and Socialist International, though often still referred to as Second International. This amalgamation could be seen as a defeat of the Mensheviks and other centrist Socialist groupings, which ultimately resolved to make peace with the followers of those interpreters of Marxism (notably Eduard Bernstein) who rejected a revolution through force as a way to Socialism.55 The Yiddish poet and essayist David Eynhorn, who was present at the Hamburg congress as a Forverts correspondent, characterized it as a “funeral of the Vienna International.” In his metaphoric rendition, “the weak body of pure Socialism was given a burial—with a hope that its soul would enter the healthy organism of the Second International and save it from all its sins.”56 53 “Tells Socialists They are a Failure,” New York Times, May 20, 1923, E1. See also Abraham Cahan, “Undzer konvenshon un undzer bavegung in dizn moment,” Forverts, May 24, 1923, 4. 54 A. Ianina, “Agoniia sotsialisticheskoi partii Ameriki,” Izvestiia, June 20, 1920, 2–3. 55 Naarden, Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia, 502–503. 56 David Eynhorn, “Stsenes un bilder in zal un oyfn gas,” Forverts, June 5, 1923, 3.

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The congress adopted, even if somewhat reluctantly, a resolution on Russia, based on Abramovitch’s draft, which called “the world’s workers to combat with all their strength all endeavors by the imperialist powers to intervene in the home affairs of Russia or to cause a fresh civil war in that country.” At the same time, it supported the “demands of the Russian Socialists reminding the Soviet Government of its working class-origin”: (1) “the immediate cessation of the persecution of Socialists and workers of different opinions,” and release of imprisoned and exiled Socialists; (2) “complete abandonment of the system of terrorist party dictatorship and the adoption of a regime of political freedom and democratic self-government of the people”.57 This compromise resolution satisfied Socialists who, like Cahan and Abramovitch, had rather opposing views on Soviet Russia. Disagreements between the two men remained in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike Abramovitch, Cahan and other American Jewish Socialists initially could not bring themselves to admitting that veteran revolutionaries, sometimes people they knew and trusted, were vicious towards their Socialist adversaries. Forverts journalists remembered the former New York dwellers Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, and several other top and middle ranking officials in the Soviet administration as their neighbors, interlocutors, or simply friends. As time went by, the reasons for discords between Cahan and Abramovitch had changed, topsy-turvy: the former adopted a tough anti-Soviet line, whereas the latter continued to cherish hopes about the Soviet leaders— that they would sooner or later turn to more democratic forms of governing.58 In other words, Cahan’s rapid shift to the right troubled Abramovitch who chose, reluctantly, to identify himself with the Right Socialists, represented by the Forverts, mainly because the Left Socialists tended to align with Communists. Their positions had a common denominator, which can be described as—to borrow Tony Michels’s definition—“anti-Bolshevism from the Left, in defense of socialism.”59 An implacable attitude to Bolshevism found expression among rightwing Mensheviks. One of them, Shmuel (Semen) Portugeis, best known as 57 Sarah Brener, “Di debatn vegn Rusland baym internatsionaln kongres in Hamburg,” Forverts, June 11, 1923, 5; Resolutions of the Labour and Socialist Congress Held at Hamburg, May 21st to 25th 1923 (Vienna: The Secretariat of the Labour and Socialist International, 1923), 14. 58 Hillel Rogoff, Der gayst fun “Forverts” (New York: Forverts, 1954), 204–205. See also Gennady Estraikh, “The Stalin Constitution on Trial in the Yiddish Daily ‘Forverts’, 1936–1937,” Aschkenas 24, no. 1 (2014): 81–100. 59 Michels, “The Russian Revolution and the American Left,” 18.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

Stepan Ivanovich, had left the party and formed a separate organization of staunch anti-Communist Socialists. In the early 1920s, he lived in Berlin (later he moved to Paris) when he began to write articles for Yiddish periodicals, first the journal Der veker, a sister title of the Forverts, and then for the Forverts proper. Although Portugeis grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family in Kishinev, his articles had to be translated from Russian or, after he turned to writing in Yiddish, heavily edited stylistically. Still, it was worthwhile to invest time in working with his writings, because Portugeis was popular among Forverts readers. Cahan also asserted that Portugeis’s 1922 book Piat´ let bol´shevizma (Five Years of Bolshevism) opened his eyes to the dictatorial complexion of the Bolshevik regime.60 The newspaper’s view on the Soviet state began to change particularly dramatically as late as 1928, when the Kremlin stopped advocating cooperation with Social Democracy. That change became even more noticeable after the Palestine Arab anti-Jewish riots in August 1929. News about and around these events precipitated departure of many readers and writers from the Communist Yiddish press when it followed the Comintern’s instructions and praised the Arab side.61 In May 1930, Cahan launched a debate on what kind of Socialism best suited the contemporary world. In his article “The Socialism Once Upon a Time and Today,” he condemned the Bolshevik-style militant, “revolutionary” Socialism and confirmed his preference for the revisionist interpretation of Marxism, especially Bernstein’s assertion that Socialism was attainable through gradual reforms from within a capitalist system.62 Abramovitch, however, characterized Cahan’s treatment of Marxism as a caricature of the theory, whose core principles, he contended, remained applicable to the reality of the twentieth century. In particular, he defended “revolutionary Socialism,” arguing that it should not necessarily entail a program of a direct preparation of an uprising.63 While Cahan’s common sense often clashed with Marxist postulates, Abramovitch was adamant

60 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 614–615, 717, 950–951. For an analysis of Portugeis’s criticism of the Soviet regime, see Aleksei Kara-Murza, “Pervyi sovetolog russkoi emigratsii: Semen Osipovich Portugeis,” Polis 1 (2006): 122–140. 61 See, for example, Gennady Estraikh, “Zalman Wendroff: The ‘Forverts’ Man in Moscow,” in Jiddistik heute = Yiddish Studies Today = Leket, ed. Marion Aptroot et al. (Dusseldorf: Dusseldorf University Press, 2012), 520. 62 Abraham Cahan, “Der sotsializm amol un haynt,” Forverts, May 25, 1930, 4–5. 63 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der lebn iz a nayer, ober di alte sotsialistishe printsipn blaybn,” Forverts, August 3, 1930, section 1, 3, and section 2, 11.

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that he did not have this problem.64 For all the differences between Cahan and Abramovitch, their opinion exchange continued in the coming years in a polite manner, and with reassurances of respect and regard. Different understandings of Bolshevism and Marxism were not the only issues that defined conceptual fault-lines between the two ideologues. Abramovitch had an aversion to the nationalist component of the Forverts politics and disagreed, for instance, with Cahan’s approach to the case of Sholom Schwartzbard, whose assassination, in May 1926, of Symon Petliura, the Ukrainian leader during the great wave of bloody pogroms in 1919 and 1920, became very salient in the Jewish and non-Jewish public discourse, provoking “a violent discussion” also in the ranks of the Labor and Socialist International.65 The Mensheviks decided to distance themselves from this act of revenge, seeing it as a deleterious manifestation of Jewish nationalism. Cahan, on the other hand, explained (in a letter written on November 19, 1926) that deep in his heart he agreed with Abramovitch, but could not publish his anti-Schwartzbard article, because it would anger his readership, who heeded Petliura’s assassin as a national hero.66

Communists’ Most Hated Menshevik It seems that of all the Mensheviks living abroad, the Communists most loathed Abramovitch and made him a habitual target of their vicious vitriol.67 Fedor Dan, the official head of the Foreign Delegation, focused on editing the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik and dealing with internal affairs of their Menshevik group, whereas Abramovitch served as the Mensheviks’ 64 See, for example, Raphael Abramovitch, “Nokh a mol vegn grintlekhe un nit-grintlekhe revolutsyes: an entfer tsu genose Ab. Kahan,” and Abraham Cahan, “Nokh etlekhe verter fun Ab. Kahan,” Forverts, January 29, 1933, section 2, 1. See also Cahan, “Der internatsional”; idem, “Far vos ken nokh nit zayn keyn emeser internatsional?” 65 David Engel, ed., The Assasination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Scholem Schwarzbard, 1916–1927: A Selection of Documents (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 285. 66 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 36; Zosa Szajkowski, “A Reappraisal of Symon Petliura and Ukrainian-Jewish Relations, 1917– 1921: A Rebuttal,” Jewish Socialist Studies 31, no. 3 (1969): 204; Men´sheviki v emigratsii: protokoly Zagranichnoi Delegatsii RSDRP, 1922-1951 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010), part 1, 243. 67 Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2000), 313; Mikhail Vaiskopf, Pisatel´ Stalin (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001), 264–266.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

“minister of foreign affairs,”68 which made him more visible and, hence, more exposed to attack. At the same time, it raised his stature among opponents of Communism. Clearly, the Forverts was proud to have him, a personage with strong name recognition, as its salaried feature writer. Abramovitch’s weekly wage amounted to $65 a week in 1929 and, with the exchange rate of the time, exceeded an average salary of a full German university professor.69 On January 14, 1925 Abramovitch came to the United States as a guest of the Jewish Socialist Farband and the Forverts, whose representatives welcomed him on his arrival at the New York docks. Among those who came to meet him were several functionaries of the Workmen’s Circle, including two members of the Dvinsker Bund Branch 75.70 The idea was that Abramovitch’s authoritative voice could reinforce the position of the Farband, which had shrunk by that time to a few hundred members.71 In fact, the Socialist Party had lost the majority of its members. Although Cahan conceded by 1923 that the Socialists failed to become a major force in American political life, the Forverts remained loyal to the party and subsidized it by contributing $500 to the national office each month.72 Olgin, now a Communist editor, did not come to meet Abramovitch, his one-time close friend and party-fellow. During his 1920–1921 trip to Russia Olgin spent considerable time with Abramovitch and, after learning about his friend’s financial situation, gave him $200 to help him resettle in Germany. Later, when this story came to light, Olgin reacted furiously. The suggestion that he might have helped a prominent anti-Bolshevik, and done so on the basis of a common background in the Bund, could have called into serious question his Communist credentials. In response, he claimed that Abramovitch had bamboozled him into thinking that he 68 Raphael Abramovitch, “Di zibn yor ven der demokratisher sotsializm hot geblit in ale hoypt-lender fun Eyrope,” Forverts, February 13, 1949, section 1, 6, and section 2, 3. 69 In his letter dated December 7, 1929, Cahan promised to raise Abramavitch’s salary to $75. YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 37. Cf. Christian Maus, Der ordentliche Professor und sein Gehalt: Die Rechtsstellung der juristischen Ordinarien an den Universitäten Berlin und Bonn zwischen 1810 und 1945 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Einkommensverhältnisse (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2012), 227. 70 “Gen. R. Abramovitsh, barimter sotsialistisher firer, dertseylt zeyer interesante zakhn vegn Rusland,” Forverts, January 15, 1925, 1, 3. 71 Nathan Chanin, “Di grindung fun Yidishn Sotsialistishn Farband,” in 10 yor sotsialistishe arbet (New York: Veker, 1931), 19. 72 Arthur Liebman, Jews and the Left (New York: Willey, 1979), 333.

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rendered assistance to an old comrade to go to Germany temporarily on a technical mission for the Soviet government.73 Olgin generally distanced himself from previous political statements and affiliations. Thus, in 1915 he ridiculed the Zimmerwald Conference for its practical impotence, but in his capacity as the leading political and cultural pundit among Yiddish-speaking American Communists, made a volte-face and wrote, “Weak was the voice of Zimmerwald. But it was [the voice of] truth. It showed the right way to peace. It indicated the only consistent direction to the future.”74 By the same token, he wrote the pamphlet Trotskyism: Counter-revolution in Disguise and other pieces, purging himself retroactively of the transgression of having admiration for Trotsky. Olgin’s January 1925 “welcoming” article, entitled “The Spitted-Out Abramovitch,” hit out at the guest viciously and ad hominem: Abramovitch is a swearer with a grimace on his angry, twisted face. Hatred almost chokes him when he speaks about the revolution and Communism. In his eyes one can see a fire of a maniac who cannot control himself. Abramovitch’s Menshevism is hysterical. . . . Clearly, something has been gnawing him and ripping him in two. What is it? It is the gravest mistake in his life. . . . He let the Russian proletarian revolution spit him out. . . .

In Olgin’s version of the story, during his visit to Soviet Russia he found his former friend overwhelmed with envy seeing how other radicals had become big-name figures in the Soviet government and enjoyed the trappings of power. Abramovitch, on the other hand, lived in a humble dwelling, getting a food ration, and carrying firewood on the sixth floor. According to Olgin, Abramovitch had betrayed Socialism and spoke as a member of a bourgeois liberal party. Therefore, in America he would “pirouette around the festering wound that spreads stink in the Jewish proletarian street. The name of this repulsive wound is Forverts, which is going to use him as a speaker who will tell everyone that this wound exudes a nice aroma.”75 The Jewish bureau of the Communist Party organized a 73 Soyer, “Soviet Travel and the Making of an American Jewish Communist,” 15–17. 74 Hertz, Di yidishe sotsialistishe bavegung in Amerike, 204. See also Moyshe Olgin, “Mir torn nit zayn keyn rikhter ibern arbeter-klas fun Eyrope,” Forverts, December 20, 1915, 5. 75 Moyshe Olgin, “Der oysgeshpigener Abramovitsh,” Frayhayt, January 17, 1925, 4.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

mock trial of Abramovitch. Olgin played the prosecutor at this theatralized event with a rapt audience of three thousand people at Manhattan’s Central Opera House.76 In the meantime, the Communists formed special “battle units” for provoking scandals during Abramovitch’s lectures. At times, but not always, they succeeded in doing it.77 On March 15, in the Garrick Theater in Chicago, twenty persons got hurt during the tussles, and at least as many were seized by the police (and released later). Finally, after two hours of fighting with the crowd, the scores of policemen deployed to quell the riot had subdued the malcontents and gave Abramovitch a chance to talk.78 Judging by the Pravda article entitled “Abramovitch Is Touring America,” Moscow condoned or even encouraged such acts of violence.79 The Moscow Yiddish daily Der emes (Truth) called Abramovitch the “well-known mudthrower” (bavuster shmuts-varfer) and based its article, “Abramovitch’s Defeat in America,” on a material from the New York Frayhayt, which put the blame for physical assault on anti-Soviet Socialists.80 In an article published in the Izvestiia, Olgin wrote gloatingly that his former friend, “was pale, angry, and dismayed, when he was rushing about the podium,” unable to start his lecture, and that on February 1, 1925 the Lenin memorial rally (marking the first anniversary of the Bolshevik leader’s death) at the fully packed Madison Square Garden showed the broad support of the Communist Party.81 The Communists’ campaign had taken such alarming forms, that, at the end of March, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a demand to the Workers (Communist) Party’s national executive committee to clarify its position on “breaking up opponents’ meetings in view of the party’s own demands for free speech.”82 America was not the only place where Abramovitch faced challenging audiences. Two years afterwards, in 76 Tony Michels, “The Abramovitch Campaign and What It Tells Us about American Communism,” American Communist History 15, no. 3 (2016): 286. 77 “Gen. Abramovitsh makht a groysn hit in Bronzvil,” Forverts, January 25, 1925, 1; Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 649. 78 “Police Rout Rioting Reds in Loop Theater: Foe of Soviets Here to Rap Moscow Acts,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 16, 1925, 1. 79 “Abramovich gastroliruet v Amerike,” Pravda, February 14, 1925, 2. 80 “Abramovitshes mapole in Amerike,” Der emes, February 10, 1925, 3–4. See also B. Rubin, “Der Abramovitsh-miting—a demonstratsye far sovet-Rusland,” Frayhayt, January 20, 1925, 2. 81 Moyshe Olgin, “‘Turne’ g-na Abramovicha v Soed. Shtaty,” Izvestiia, March 3, 1925, 2. 82 “Say Workers’ Party Denies Free Speech,” The Washington Post, March 27, 1925, 3.

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March 1927, Communists kept interrupting his presentation at the Sholem Aleichem Club of Berlin-based Yiddish literati, which invited him to participate in debates on the February 1917 Revolution and its influence on Russia’s Jews. Alexander Khashin (Zvi Averbukh), who led the Communist faction of the Labor Zionist movement in post-revolutionary Ukraine and later lived in Berlin, delivered a haranguing response. After the first round, on March 13, the debate was reconvened on March 26, with only invited people in attendance.83 In all, Abramovitch’s American whirlwind tour was a success, attracting about twenty-five thousand people to over sixty meetings. On April 19, 1925, three thousand persons stood and cheered at Carnegie Hall when Abramovitch began his farewell speech. “It is extremely gratifying,” he said, “to note that progressively-minded thinkers in America are beginning to see that the Soviet Government is but a despotism masquerading in the clothing of a champion of the masses of the people.” Cahan and Vladeck also spoke. Nathan Chanin, Secretary of the Jewish Socialist Farband and a Bundist in his youth, presided at the rally. He announced that the total amount contributed at meetings throughout the country during Abramovitch’s tour was $14,000, which would be used for the support of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party.84 Clearly, the slogan suggested by the leading Communist Alexander Bittelman—“Not a cent for the agent of imperialism and counter-revolution!”—did not fall on fertile ground.85 Some money came from selling Abramovitch’s Yiddish pamphlet The Terror against the Socialist Parties in Russia and Georgia (Der teror kegn sotsialistn in Rusland un Gruzye), published in March 1922 under the imprint of the Jewish Socialist Farband. The pamphlet carried a note that all the proceeds from this publication would go to help imprisoned and exiled Socialists in Russia. In 1928, Abramovitch faced withering criticism of a non-Communist émigré, also a Berlin resident. Isaac Nachman Steinberg, an observant Jew-cum-radical (later the leader of the Jewish Territorialist movement), belonged to the leftward wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and 83 “Doklad Abramovicha,” Rul´, March 16, 1927, 5; “Khronika,” Rul´, March 25, 1927, 4. From the end of the 1920s till his arrest during the Stalinist purges, Khashin worked as a Yiddish journalist in Moscow. He was executed in September 1938. 84 “Soviet Denounced by Big Crowd Here: Farewell Demonstration for Rafael Abramowitch of Russian Social Democrats,” The New York Times, April 20, 1925, 31. 85 Alexander Bittelman, “Der sheliekh fun kontr-revolutsye,” Frayhayt, January 26, 1925, 5.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

served as the People’s Commissar (Minister) of Justice in Lenin’s cabinet—a coalition government in the early months after the revolution. With his assistance the Political Red Cross took shape in Soviet Russia, and after emigrating from Russia he continued to campaign on behalf of political prisoners. Following his failure to raise significant funds in the United States, he pointed the finger at Abramovitch and Cahan, arguing that they did not want to aid his party comrades and were interested in raising money only for Mensheviks and right Social Revolutionaries.86 His grievance had merit: Abramovitch’s telegram, sent on February 28, 1928, at the time of Steinberg’s American visit, informed Cahan that “Steinberg’s group” was “very small,” “without any influence . . . in Russia or Europe,” “struggling against our Socialist International,” and as such was “not worthy any support.” Abramovitch recommended: “without being directly hostile don’t support in no way his collections.”87 Forverts readers learned from him that the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party was a weak grouping, which—along with the Polish Bund—did not join the Socialist International, but formed the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Parties, known also as the “Paris Bureau.”88 In January 1930, when Abramovitch came again to America as a “distinguished guest of the Jewish Socialist movement in America—. . . noted publicist, orator and executive member of the Socialist International,” he once more had to bear the brunt of the Communists’ verbal and written onslaught.89 In a letter to The New York Times, Abramovitch wrote that the pro-Soviet camp draw a parallel “between my criticism of the Soviet regime and the attacks on the Soviet government by ‘White Guards, priests and rabbis.’ This is the same accusation that was hurled against me when I 86 Yishayahu Klinov, “Ab. Kahan, Abramovitsh un d’’r Shteynberg,” Haynt, December 23, 1928, 6. See also Mikhail Krutikov, “Isaac Nahman Steinberg: From Anti-Communist Revolutionary to Anti-Zionist Territorialism,” Jews in Eastern Europe 1–2 (1999): 5–24; Maria Cristina Galmarini, “Defending the Rights of Gulag Prisoners: The Story of the Political Red Cross, 1918–38,” The Russian Review 71, no. 1 (2012): 12. 87 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 36. Even before receiving this piece of advice, the Forverts published a friendly article about Steinberg: Mendel Osherowitch, “A geshprekh mit dr. Y. N. Shteynberg, dem gevezenem yustitsminister in der sovyet-regirung,” Forverts, December 30, 1927, 5. See also Isaac Nachman Steinberg, Mit eyn fus in Amerike (Mexico: Yidisher kultur-tsenter, 1951). 88 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der inerlekher kamf in dem Poylishn ‘Bund’,” Forverts, December 30, 1928, 3. 89 This text appeared on the next day after his arrival, under Abramovitch’s photo in Forverts, January 12, 1930, section 3, 19.

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visited America five years ago and has been repeated by Bolshevik apologists for the past twelve years.”90 The Pravda reported protests of American Communists against Abramovitch’s lectures, though it seems that this time there were no scenes of violence.91 Abramovitch carried the message that the Soviet Union was moving toward a “showdown” and that the “severity of the Soviet terror . . . dims the terror of the Thermidorian period of the French Revolution.”92 Forverts readers learned that Abramovitch had received a letter sent from Moscow on February 12 by the illegal Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, which described the wave of terror unleashed by the Soviet authorities.93 The New York Times publicized Abramovitch’s criticism of the Soviet farm collectivization drive as a “historic tragedy affecting tens of millions of people.” He stressed that “dull and stubborn Stalin will stop at nothing. No cruelty will prevent him from continuing.” As a result, the country was “being converted into a real hell not merely for the ex-bourgeois, but likewise for the peasant.”94 Presumably, he had got access to The New York Times through Joseph Shaplen, who represented the newspaper in Berlin in the 1920s and later was close to Cahan’s circle of right-wing Socialists. In the coming years, Abramovitch would write about Stalin’s “general line,” established in the winter of 1928–1929 and resulted in achieving industrialization by dooming millions of peasants to hunger and suffering.95 His articles constantly paid much attention to the relation between the Soviet regime and the peasantry. He argued that, following the introduction of the NEP, Russia turned into a peasants’ country with a new, developing form of capitalism, a country whose social and political problems gave rise, inter

90 Raphael Abramovitch, “Unemployment in Russia: Mr. Abramovitch Reiterates Statements Denied by Friends of Soviet,” The New York Times, March 16, 1930, E5; “Hold Unemployment Absent in Russia,” The New York Times, March 7, 1930, 3. 91 B. Vil´son, “Burnye dni,” Pravda, March 2, 1930, 2. 92 “Sees Soviet Russia Facing ‘Showdown’: Socialist Leader Says Stalin Must Swing to the Right or Meet Disaster,” The New York Times, January 12, 1930, 33. 93 “Geheymer document fun Moskve dekt oyf Stalins blut bod in shtet un derfer iber gants Rusland,” Forverts, March 7, 1930, 1, 10. 94 Raphael Abramovitch, “‘Drive to the Left’ in Russia Seen as Menace to Country: Stalin, It Is Declared, Has for His Objective the Extermination of the Peasant,” The New York Times, February 9, 1930, E5. 95 See, for example, Raphael Abramovitch, “Stalin,” Forverts, March 6, 1949, section 2, 3; idem, “Di koleltivizatsye,” Forverts, March 20, 1949, section 2, 3.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

alia, to anti-Semitism.96 On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the revolution, he stressed the importance of applying democratic methods to finding a compromise with the peasant class.97 This theme became particularly topical during his 1930 visit, following the publication, on March 2, of Stalin’s article “Dizzy with Success,” in which the dictator tried to mollify the peasants by admitting the harm done due to the “excesses” of collectivization and signaling a temporary halt of the process. The Forverts digest of this article came out on March 3 under the title “Stalin Is Afraid of the Peasants and Orders Communists to Slow Down.”98 Abramovitch based his analysis on the report prepared for the Labor and Socialist International by a special committee of inquiry, of which he was chairman. Through the prism of his understanding of the situation, he hyperbolized that “99 per cent of the Russian people” opposed the Soviet regime “founded on force and violence” and unable to “exist without terror.” It is hardly surprising that amid the Depression, the fulcrum of his lectures became unemployment, which, according to his assertion, affected millions of Soviet workers and peasants. He pointed out that while the Soviet Union by that time had a system of unemployment benefits (which would be abolished in October 1930, when the Soviet government declared achievement of full employment and closed labor exchanges), only a faction of the workers could avail themselves of it. “The rest are permitted to starve, and if they protest they meet with brutal handling by the government.”99 On March 12, 1930, over two thousand people assembled in Beethoven Hall, Manhattan, to see and listen to two formidable debaters: Abramovitch and the Jewish political thinker Chaim Zhitlowsky, who found some elements of the Soviet system appealing. The theme of the debate, moderated by Abraham I. Shiplacoff, was: “Do Socialists of the entire world can and must back the Socialist experiment in Russia?” Zhitlowsky justified the revolutionary violence (capitalism is a cancer which could be treated only by surgical procedure) and valorized the Soviet system, including the collectivization of farmers. He admitted that the system worked very poorly, but 96 Raphael Abramovitch, “Farvos vakst der antisemitizm in sovet-Rusland?” Forverts, April 17, 1927, 6–7. 97 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der sakh-hakl fun di tsen yor bolshevistishe[r] revolutsye,” Forverts, November 8, 1927, 3. 98 “Stalin hot moyre far di poyerim; heyst komunistn geyn pamelekh,” Forverts, March 3, 1930, 1. 99 “Jobless in Russia Meet Red Bayonets,” The New York Times, March 6, 1930, 10.

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did not see the root of the problem in the Bolsheviks’ mismanagement. In his view, one had to factor in that the Bolsheviks inherited a ruined country and, likewise, had been facing resistance and sabotage of counterrevolutionary intellectuals. Therefore, he maintained, it was important to help Soviet Russia, especially as the Labor and Socialist International, an organized movement of millions of people, was able to do it. Moreover, the LSI should admit the Comintern as a left wing of its organization and negotiate with Moscow mutually acceptable conditions for cooperation. Abramovitch rejected this stand as a misinformed and utopian one. He posited that in Russia, whose society and economy were unprepared to take path to Communism, Bolsheviks could implement their regime only through terror and dictatorship, which made any compromise with the LSI impossible. He characterized the collectivization as a counter-revolution, which had brought the eventual change of the Soviet regime into a totalitarian one.100 By the very end of his 1930 sojourn, Abramovitch faced the distinguished Zionist ideologist Shmaryahu Levin. Their public debate on Zionism took place at the Stuyvesant High School in New York. Judging by Harry Lang’s account, Abramovitch dismissed the Zionist project as a utopia that was even less realizable than the Soviet utopia of five-year plans, because the Soviet Union at least had natural resources. He described emigration from Eastern Europe to Palestine as a jump from the nineteenth century to as far back as the sixteenth century, whereas emigration to America relocated Jews to the twentieth century. Let alone, he argued, that Socialism rather than a state in Palestine had potential to solve problems for all Jews.101 Earlier, in the second half of the 1920s, he did not make a secret of his disagreement with Cahan’s turn, to the “perfectly vulgar” support of the Zionist project.102 On September 17, 1928, Abramovitch wrote to Cahan: 100 Harry Lang, “Di debate vegn Rusland tsvishn R. Abramovitsh and Dr. Zhitlovski,” Forverts, March 18, 1930, 3; Raphael Abramovitch, “Der umgliklekher yor in der geshikhte fun di hayntike doyres,” Forverts, March 27, 1949, section 2, 3. 101 Harry Lang, “Di tsionizm-debate tsvishn R. Abramovitsh un dr. Shmaryahu Levin,” Forverts, April 29, 1930, 2, 5. 102 André Liebich, From the Other Shore, 221. See also Yaakov N. Goldstein, ed., Jewish Socialists in the United States: The Cahan Debate, 1925–1926 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998). During Abramovitch’s 1930 visit, Cahan reiterated his sympathies with the Palestinian project: Abraham Cahan, “Mayn batsiyung tsum tsionizm,” Forverts, March 30, 1930, 7.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

“I am sure you already have no doubt . . . that I am not a bitter or fanatical opponent of Palestine. . . . Yet, I reckon that the Forverts doesn’t have to promote the Labor Zionism.”103 Two decades afterwards, he would emphasize that he rejected the political methods of Zionism rather than the idea itself of building a Jewish state.104 Summing up the results of the 1930 trip, Cahan stressed that Abramovitch’s “personal magnetism” made its “spectacular success” possible, which meant that funds had been raised for the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik. According to Cahan, Abramovitch’s name was “one of the brightest in our movement both in America and Europe.”105 By contrast, his name remained one of the darkest in the Soviet political discourse. In June 1930, during the Sixteenth Congress of Soviet Communists, Stalin referred to the denigration by Abramovitch and other enemies as a sign that the party had chosen the right strategy.106 In his turn, Abramovitch declared that the Sixteenth congress evidenced Stalin’s rise to dictatorship and sarcastically commented on the timing of its convening: before the harvest which could reveal a downside of the collectivization.107 In event, the harvest of 1930 happened to be the biggest in seventeen years. Severe problems, including what would be named the Holodomor in Ukraine, or the famine, mainly man-made, that resulted in the death of millions by starvation, developed later.

The Moscow Trial of 1931 In 1931, the propaganda machinery of the American Communist Party published a pamphlet entitled The Workmen’s Circle Helps Organize a War against the Soviet Union: The Role of Abramovitch and the Workmen’s Circle in the Intervention Conspiracies against the Proletarian Fatherland, which inter alia accused Abramovitch, “the leader of Russian Socialists in emigration,” of visiting illegally the Soviet Union in 1928 in order to deliver 103 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 36. 104 Raphael Abramovitch, “Dos yidishe folk in der nayer epokhe,” Forverts, May 8, 1949, 6. 105 Abraham Cahan, “Tsu dem toast-mayster un gest fun dem gezegnungs-banket lekoved genose R. Abramovitsh,” April 26, 1930. YIVO Archive. The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 36. 106 Josef Stalin, “Politicheskii otchet Tsentral´nogo Komiteta XVI s´´ezdu VKP(b),” Pravda, June 29, 1930, 4. 107 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der kongres fun der komunistisher partey hot gutgeheysn Stalins politik, vayl Stalin hot azoy geheysn,” Forverts, July 24, 1930, 5.

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instructions and money to the Socialist underground.108 This was part of a broad campaign conducted by the Communists to discredit the Mensheviks in the Soviet Union and abroad. As early as 1923, the Communist Party’s Politburo resolved to liquidate the Mensheviks as an organized opposition and thus to extinguish the Communists’ paranoid fear of, in Lenin’s words, “being surrounded by Menshevik and semi-Menshevik spies.”109 In his article “Today the Socialists Are Being Suppressed in Russia Just Like under the Czar,” Abramovitch described in detail the mechanism of the liquidation, which combined a variety of methods, including blackmail and violence.110 In 1930, notwithstanding repression, small Menshevik groups operated illegally in a number of Soviet cities. They had contacts with Berlin, providing information for the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik. In the late 1920s, two émigré Mensheviks, Mikhail Bronshtein and Eva Broido, volunteered to go to Russia, but were arrested soon after entering the country. Like many other Mensheviks, Bronshtein and Broido were convinced that the Soviet regime could evolutionize into a democratic Socialist system and that work among the proletariat was essential for achieving this transformation.111 Clearly, information that they received in Berlin did not protect them from a fundamental misjudgment of the real situation. Thus, Abramovitch believed that oppositional groups in the Communist Party might be ready to cooperate with the Mensheviks in an attempt to implement democratic reforms.112 In the beginning of 1931, the Soviet authorities staged a trial of fourteen people (six of them were Jewish),113 accused of being members of an illegal Menshevik center. In truth, though, only one of the defendants could still have been regarded at the time as a Menshevik. All the others left the 108 Der arbeter-ring helft organizirn milkhome kegn sovetn-Rusland: di rol fun Abramovitshn un dem arbeter-ring in di interventsye-farshverungen kegn proletarishn foterland (New York: International Workers Order, 1931), 3. 109 Vladimir I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 54 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1975), 134. 110 Raphael Abramovitch, “Sotsialistn vern itst unterdrikt in Rusland punkt vi farn tsar,” Forverts, December 9, 1923, section 2, 1. See also Dmitrii B. Pavlov, Bol´shevistskaia diktatura protiv sotsialistov i anarkhistov, 1917–seredina 1950-kh godov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 79–83; Viktor V. Nikulin, “Bol´sheviki i nebol´sheviki: iuridicheskie aspekty podavleniia inakomysliia v Sovetskoi Rossii (1920-e gody),” Vestnik Tambovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 84 (2010): 306–307; Viktor Savchenko, “Odesskie men´sheviki v ‘krasnom podpol´e’,” Iugo-Zapad. Odessika 14 (2012): 163. 111 Raphael Abramovitch, “Di ongeklagte zaynen zikh moyde,” Forverts, April 3, 1949, section 1, 8, and section 2, 3. 112 Abramovitch, “Di zibn yor ven der demokratisher sotsializm hot geblit in ale hoyptlender fun Eyrope.” 113 “Charge Six Jews with Plot against the Soviet,” Bnai Brith Messenger, March 6, 1931, 1.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

Menshevik party many years ago and served loyally the Soviet government. The Menshevik trial formed part of a series of show-trials that began in 1928. They pinned the alleged sabotage on various counter-revolutionary groups, making them responsible for the regime’s economic failures.114 The grotesque script of the prosecution story assigned a key role to Abramovitch’s fabricated mission to the Soviet Union, in July 1928, when he allegedly provided local Menshevik operatives with money and instructions for subversive activity leading to an uprising coupled with a foreign intervention. (Ironically, on March 1, 1931, which was the first day of the Moscow trial, the Forverts published Abramovitch’s article, criticizing those right-wing émigré Russian Socialists who advocated for a much more aggressive anti-Soviet strategy. Abramovitch considered it naïve and impractical to expect an anti-Communist uprising in Russia.)115 This was not the first fabricated accusation against Abramovitch. In 1930, during the staged trial of a group of Soviet economists and engineers, accused of forming an illegal party (Prompartiia, or Industrial Party) with the aim of wrecking the Soviet industry, Abramovitch figured as a person who promised his assistance in case of a coup d’état. Despite ample and convincing evidence that Abramovitch did not visit the Soviet Union, this tale formed a “basis” for the persecution case in 1931.116 Taking their lead from the prosecution, Soviet newspapers scoffed at Abramovitch’s affidavit taken by a German notary, confirming witnesses’ statements that Abramovitch spent the entire July in the Mecklenburg Lake District and then, in August, participated in 114 Israel Getzler, Nikolai Sukhanov: Chronicler of the Russian Revolution (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave, 2002), 159–160. 115 Raphael Abramovitch, “Vi azoy di rusishe sotsial-demokratn batrakhtn di bolshevikes un di shtelung tsu zey,” Forverts, March 1, 1931, section 2, 4. The second part of this article came out as “Der shtandpunkt fun di rusishe sotsial-demokratn,” Forverts, March 18, 1931, 7. See also Lazar Fagelman, “Der nayer Moskver bilbl-protses—dizn mol kegn di nobelste frayhayt-kemfer,” Forverts, March 4, 1931, 5. 116 “Men´shevistskie soiuzniki Ramzinykh,” Izvestiia, December 3, 1930, 1; “Jews in Danger if Anti-Soviet Plot Succeeded, Professor Says,” The Sentinel, December 15, 1930, 29; “Mensheviki Call Their Chief a Liar: Outbursts in Moscow Trial are Aroused by Abramovitch Denial of Stories from Exile,” The New York Times, March 5, 1931, 11; Friedrich Adler et al., The Moscow Trial and the Labour and Socialist International (London: Labour Party, 1931); Valerii N. Uimanov, “Protsess ‘Soiuznogo biuro men´shevikov’ i sud´ba men´shevika M. A. Valerianova-Brounshteina,” Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 355 (2012): 78. See also, for example, “Zametaiut sledy,” Izvestiia, March 4, 1931, 4; “Vstrechi i besedy s Abramovichem,” Izvestiia, March 6, 1931, 4; Alter L. Litvin, ed., Men´shevistskii protsess 1931 goda (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), vol. 1, 149, 159, 172–174.

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the Third Congress of the Labor and Socialist International in Brussels.117 An editorial in Der emes ridiculed the affidavit as an “extreme villainy and hilarity” which had revealed the desperation of “the agents of the world imperialism, the Second International and the Russian Menshevism.”118 There were also other fictitious stories featuring Abramovitch as a protagonist. Thus, the Soviet propaganda claimed that the timing of his 1930 trip to the USA was not accidental. The facts—that around that time the leading Labor Zionist Menachem Ussishkin toured the United States, and the American Congress established a committee, commonly known as the Fish Committee, to investigate Communist activities in the USA— were interpreted as a jointly orchestrated effort by the Labor and Socialist International and American imperialists to launch an intervention against the Soviet Union.119 In large part, the Menshevik trial was a trial of the LSI. The Soviet press wrote about putting “into the pillory of history . . . the entire social-fascist International.”120 The alleged Menshevik conspirators were accused of receiving money not only from Abramovitch and other members of the Foreign Delegation but also, albeit indirectly, from such European Socialists as Karl Kautsky, Leon Blum, Emile Vandervelde, and Rudolf Hilferding.121 The Berlin bureau of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency stated, with a reference to the Menshevik circles, that the trial was made to intensify anti-Jewish feeling in Russia, by accentuating the large proportion of Jews among the accused. Even Der emes published caricatures of the defendants in which it emphasized their Jewish features. A cartoon featured Abramovitch wearing a tallit, while Cahan appeared with a big hooked nose, singing the Bundist anthem with Abramovitch.122 In truth, though, the Soviet authorities did not practice anti-Semitism at that time, and the caricatures published in the Moscow Yiddish paper reflected the phenomenon noted by the Jewish cultural historian Eddy Portnoy: Jewish artists active in the Communist 117 “Sovet-ongeklagte gibn tsu az zey bakemfn regirung zint 1928,” Forverts, March 4, 1931, 1. 118 “Di shvue funem tsveytn internatsional,” Der emes, March 5, 1931, 1. 119 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Vilde konkurents fun di yidishe teler-leker in Moskve,” Forverts, March 8, 1931, section 2, 1. 120 Getzler, Nikolai Sukhanov, 163. 121 “3 Sovet-ongeklagte dertseyln vilde geshikhtes vegn sotsialistn,” Forverts, March 3, 1931, 1. 122 “Anti-Jewish Tendencies in Moscow Trial Alleged by Mensheviks in Berlin,” JTA Daily News Bulletin, March 16, 1931, 5.

Raphael Abramovitch’s Menshevik Voice in the Forverts

movement, both in America and the Soviet Union, did not feel uncomfortable using traditional anti-Semitic cliché images in their cartoons.123 In Berlin, Abramovitch sued the German Communist newspapers Rote Fahne and Abend for defamation, claiming that their coverage was based on false information about his alleged 1928 illegal mission. Otto Landsberg, Minister of Justice in the first democratically elected government of Germany in 1919, represented Abramovitch as his lawyer, while Fritz Löwenthal, a Communist member of Reichstag, represented the newspapers. Löwenthal’s line of defense was that Abramovitch certainly visited the Soviet Union, even if it did not happen in July or August 1928. The denouement vindicated Abramovitch: both newspapers were made to pay a fine and publish the court decision. On February 20, 1932, Soviet authorities cancelled Abramovitch’s, his wife’s and son’s passports. They were among the thirty-seven people (including Leo Trotsky) deprived of Soviet citizenship. Up to this time, Abramovitch never had any problems with renewing his passport, which he kept as a symbol of his belonging to Russia, although he could apply for a so-called Nansen passport, issued by the League of Nations to stateless refugees.124

123 Edward A. Portnoy, “The Creation of a Jewish Cartoon Space in the New York and Warsaw Yiddish Press, 1884–1939” (PhD diss., Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2008), 54. 124 Raphael Abramovitch, “Nokhveyenishn funem menshevistishn protses in Moskve,” Forverts, April 17, 1949, section 1, 3, and section 2, 3.

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Chapter 5

The Outpost in Berlin

The Bureau By the time Abraham Cahan came to Berlin in the summer of 1921, the Forverts already had there a bureau headed by Nahman Shifrin, who initially joined the newspaper staff as a reporter based in Copenhagen, where—due to Denmark’s neutrality during World War I—many newspapers kept their desks. In 1921 or even earlier, in the second half of 1920, Shifrin moved to Berlin, which after the war became a stronghold of Jewish intellectual immigration.1 In his article entitled “Save Yourself the Trouble of Travelling to Warsaw, Vilna, Kaunas, Riga or Kishinev,” Cahan argued that, for Jews, Berlin was “in a sense, the most significant city in the world.”2 Morrell Heald, the historian of American journalism, explains that American reporters had weighty reasons to regard Berlin as “the liveliest and most interesting European assignment.” Likewise, the city “served as a center for news of the Soviet Union, the most disturbing phenomenon of the decade.”3 For a brief period of time, Berlin’s Yiddish book production became the biggest in the world with the exception of Warsaw. In 1921–1923, German, predominantly Berlin-based, publishers put out 126 Yiddish books, or fourteen percent of all Yiddish book titles produced in all countries. In terms of printer’s sheets, the German Yiddish book production

1 See Estraikh, “Yiddish on the Spree,” 1–27. 2 Cahan, “Ir farshport tsu forn in Varshe, Vilne, Kovne, Rige oder Keshenev.” 3 Morrell Heald, Transatlantic Vistas: American Journalists in Europe, 1900–1940 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), 64.

The Outpost in Berlin

made up about forty percent of the worldwide bulk, because in other countries publishers often printed booklets.4 The establishment of the Forverts bureau in German capital was part of the general infrastructure building, which was characteristic of the 1920s, the heyday of the Yiddish press. In 1922, Baruch Vladeck was proud to inform readers that their newspaper employed thousands of people and that no other newspaper in the United States had the same number of offices over the country.5 Prestige and influence building, rather than pure business practicality, motivated the Forward Association to invest money in the outpost in Berlin. It also was a way of paying due tribute to German Social Democracy, which had shaped the outlook of the older generation of American Jewish Socialists.6 Competence and experience were the characteristics necessary for the position of the bureau’s head. To all appearances, Shifrin’s background and performance failed to satisfy the demanding editor. Jacob Lestschinsky, a seasoned journalist, scholar, and Socialist, clearly matched Cahan’s requirements better than Shifrin, who went to own in Berlin large photo agencies and, after 1933, established in Palestine a business of the same kind.7 Thanks to Jurgis Baltrušaitis, a Russian-language symbolist poet appointed as the Lithuanian ambassador to Moscow, Lestschinsky did not belong to the category of stateless refugees. Rather, he held a passport of one of the new independent countries. A whole group of intellectuals, such as the historian Simon Dubnov and the writer David Bergelson, who had similarly gained Lithuanian citizenship, lived in Berlin over the Weimar period, though none of them had any connection to the Lithuanian state.8 A recent arrival in Berlin, Lestschinsky, in Cahan’s words, “had made name for himself as a researcher of pogroms in Ukraine.”9 On September 2, 1921, the Forverts came out with an announcement of the forthcoming 4 Salomon Adler-Rudel, Ostjuden in Deutschland, 1880–1940: zugleich eine Geschichte der Organisationen, die sie betreuten (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1959), 108; Glenn S. Levine, “Yiddish Publishing in Berlin and the Crisis in Eastern European Jewish Culture, 1919– 1924,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 42 (1997): 85–108. 5 Baruch Vladeck, “A por interesante zakhn vegn Forverts als biznes,” Forverts, April 23, 1922, section 3, 2. 6 See Estraikh, “The Berlin Bureau of the New York Forverts,” 141–162. 7 Ruth Oren and Guy Raz, Zoltan Kluger, Chief Photographer, 1933–1958 (Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum, 2008), 18–23. 8 Estraikh, “The Berlin Bureau of the New York Forverts,” 142. 9 Cahan, “Ir farshport tsu forn in Varshe, Vilne, Kovne, Rige oder Keshenev.”

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publication of Lestschinsky’s three articles containing “masses of extremely important statistics, facts and episodes, summing up the carnage in Ukraine” in the years of the civil war that raged there after the Bolshevik revolution. In reality, Elias Tcherikower, also a Jewish activist in post-1917 Ukraine, was the main historian of that period of violence and the principal founder of the Eastern Jewish Historical Archive, established in Berlin to preserve and publish the pogrom documents.10 Tcherikower and Lestschinsky had many things in common, including their lack of university qualification and, as a result, inability to take up a mainstream academic post. In 1930, Cahan recalled how he interviewed Lestschinsky for job. This took place at a small hotel, situated not far from the Bahnhof Friedrichstraße in Berlin.11 Earlier they met at the Romanisches Café, the same café where Cahan during this visit met with Abramovitch. In Jewish writers’ portrayals the café sometimes emerges as an almost all-Jewish place, albeit the “Jewish café” occupied only a few of over one hundred tables in that nerve center of Berlin bohemian life. “Each [Jewish] group had its own table; there were the ‘Yiddishists’, ‘Zionists’, ‘Bundists’ and so on, all arguing among themselves from table to table.”12 The place, notorious for its poor food and run-down interior, was known as the rakhmonishes (or rakhmones) café, “Café of Pity.” This Yiddish-derived name mirrored the depressive vibe among the café’s frequenters, many of them dragged out a pitiful existence. Like in other bohemian café societies, Jewish literati— uprooted, wandering people—bivouacked among their colleagues. Often they had nowhere else to go or were fed up with being alone.13 Tsivion wrote that cafés had different functions in Berlin and Paris: “in Paris people go to a café to eat and to entertain themselves, whereas in Berlin people live in cafés. Cafés are Berliners’ second homes, perhaps even the most important ones.”14 Cafes served as the main meeting places for Berlin producers of Yiddish journalism. In the virtual absence of mass 10 See, for example, Joshua M. Karlip, “Between Martyrology and Historiography: Elias Tcherikower and the Making of a Pogrom Historian,” East European Jewish Affairs 38. 3 (2008), 257–80. 11 Abraham Cahan’s letter to Jacob Lestschinsky, May 10, 1930. YIVO Archive, Collection RG 339, box 1, folder 16. 12 Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox (New York: Fred Jordan Books, 1978), 21. 13 Cf. Steve Bradshaw, Café Society: Bohemian Life from Swift to Bob Dylan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), 3; Shachar Pinsker, Literary Passports: The Making of Modern Hebrew Fiction in Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 121–124. 14 Tsivion, “In der literarisher kibetsarnye fun Berlin,” Forverts, July 29, 1921, 3.

The Outpost in Berlin

activities, which in other places antagonized Jewish intellectuals, the same table in a Berlin café accommodated journalists writing for ideologically rivaling Yiddish periodicals, although political and aesthetic views would cool friendship in some cases, eroding the circle’s intramural solidarity.15 Yiddish-speaking intellectuals who fled civil war-stricken Russia formed a pool for Berlin-based writers, who were happy to get a journalistic income paid in hard currency. Some writers would publish in newspapers their stories and novels, but to make ends meet they often meshed literature and journalism. The Yiddish writer cannot earn a living with his poems that nobody reads, with his stories that nobody purchases, with his plays that are usually staged without paying any royalties. . . . Whether he wants it or not, he has to divide his life in two parts: he is a poet in literary circles and a journalist in the press. He lives, so to speak, in two domains, in holiness and in commonness. It has always been like this: a writer is an artist and an artisan.16

Full- and part-time “journalist-cum-artisans” formed the core group among Eastern European Jewish intellectuals in Berlin. Failure in establishing and securing links with a foreign newspaper could make Yiddish literati’s life miserable, especially as their chances to draw income from writing for local publications were very limited in the city that never had a Yiddish daily. Although over thirty Yiddish periodicals started publication in Weimar Berlin, the majority of them came out as ephemeral house journals of locally based relief organizations and political groups.17 The couple of weeklies that targeted the general reader went out of print soon after their appearance on the newsstands. Committed Yiddish readers could get Warsaw Yiddish dailies, which would arrive in Berlin with a one-day delay.18 In the beginning of August 1921, Cahan had a chance to see at the Romanisches Café a bevy of Jewish notables who lived in Berlin or visited 15 Zishe Weinper, “David Bergelson,” Oyfkum 22 (1930): 18–19; Yeshayahu Klinov, “A briv tsu Daniel Tsharni,” in Daniel Tsharni-bukh, ed. Moyshe Shalit (Paris: A. B. Tsertta, 1939), 166–167. 16 Moyshe Gross, “Tsi meg a yidisher shrayber zayn a zhurnalist?,” Oyfkum 6–7 (1928): 15. 17 See, in particular, Yudl Anilovitsh, “5 yor yidishe prese (1926–1930): statistishe sakhaklen,” YIVO Bleter 2, nos. 1–2 (1931): 105. 18 Kurt R. Grossmann, Michael Wurmbrand: The Man and His Work (New York: Philological Library, 1956), 17.

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it. Among them were Max Weinreich, then a young student of Yiddish philology, and David Eynhorn, an established Yiddish writer. From 1920, Weinreich’s articles, usually signed Sarah Brener (the origin of this feminine pseudonym is uncertain), regularly appeared in the Forverts. A successful story-getter, he tended to concentrate on events in Berlin and, generally, German life, most notably on high-profile criminal cases, though in 1922 he also covered the Genoa Conference, convened to discuss monetary economics of the post-war world, and in 1923 reported from the Thirteenth Zionist Congress in Carlsbad, and the inaugural congress of the Labor and Socialist International in Hamburg. In one of his articles, he quoted Goethe’s Faust—“In me there are two souls, alas, and their / Division tears my life in two”—as a simile explaining his interest in both the “beautiful past” pictured in old books and the contemporary life.19 On November 10, 1922, the Forverts enthusiastically welcomed Eynhorn as a new contributor.20 Eynhorn and Weinreich soon left Berlin, but their relocation did not interrupt their collaboration with the Forverts. Paris became the main place of Eynhorn’s residence, while Weinreich settled in Vilna, where he built the renowned academic center—the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO.21 In the early 1920s, the Forverts published articles by two other Berlinbased contributors: Yitshak Eliezer Leyzerovitch, a career journalist, and Yitshak Charlash, a Bundist activist and educator. Leyzerovitsh’s correspondences came out under the byline of Abi-Ver (“anybody”), while Charlash’s pseudonym was Ben-Baruch (“Baruch’s son”). As the bureau head, Lestschinsky likewise dealt with those who did a spot of writing for the newspaper. On January 31, 1923, Dubnov noted in his diary that Lestschinsky came to him on behalf of Cahan, and invited him to write several essays for the literary department of the newspaper. Dubnov could not turn down the financially lucrative offer of 25 dollars, or one million German marks, per article. Later on, Cahan lost interest in Dubnov’s contributions, deeming them abstruse for his readers, and only some of them appeared in the newspaper. Still, it would not stop Cahan from paying Dubnov a visit, as he did on July 15, 1931, when he came to the historian

19 Sarah Brener, “Genose Baranov, antlayt mir ayer revolver,” Forverts, October 14, 1923, section 2, 4. 20 “Notitsn fun ‘Forverts’ redaktsye,” Forverts, November 10, 1922, 6. 21 See Cecile E. Kuznits, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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together with Alexander Harkavy, a Yiddish lexicographer and Forverts contributor.22 The Forverts also published articles by the Social Democratic theoreticians and politicians Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein was widely respected among Eastern European Jewish emigrants, many of whom were able to settle in Germany thanks to the Socialist veteran’s reference letters and other forms of generous support. For Bernstein, it became vital to author articles for the Forverts when in 1928 he retired from political life and subsequently lost his Reichstag salary, a major source of his income.23 It is not entirely clear in what way the correspondents subordinated to Lestschinsky, when he, from December 1, 1921, began to function as the head of the Berlin bureau. Most likely, Lestschinsky facilitated organizational and financial links between the main office in New York and the journalists, rather than directly was in charge of them. In his numerous letters to Lestschinsky, Cahan, a hand-on editor, instructed his Berlin representative how to overcome various teething problems of running the bureau. The directives included nuances of the newspaper’s political stand, attitude to other correspondents and contributors, and financial details of royalties, communication fees, and so forth. 24

Jacob Lestschinsky A native of the Kiev province, Lestschinsky spent there the first two decades of his life. Like in many similar life stories of shtetl-born intellectuals, Lestschinsky’s break with religious traditions began when winds of modernity brought secular Hebrew books to his Ukrainian-Jewish corner of the Pale of Jewish Settlement. In 1896 he moved to Odessa, where, in his words, he “for the first time realized that apart from the Talmud there was another kind of scholarship.” In 1901 he attended lectures at the University of Bern and, by and by, underwent a political awakening. Initially, Lestschinsky was ready to forgo Yiddish for the sake of the ideal of restoring Hebrew 22 Simon (Semen) Dubnov, Kniga zhizni: materialy dlia istorii moego vremeni (Jerusalem: Gesharim, 2004), 533, 585, 642–643. 23 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der mentsh un sotsialist,” in N. Chanin (New York: N. Chanin Jubilee Committee, 1946), 110–11. On Eduard Bernstein’s and Karl Kautski’s attitude to Forverts see Jack Jacobs, On Socialists and “the Jewish Question” after Marx (New York: New York University Press 1992), 26–28, 67, 194. 24 YIVO Archive, Collection RG 339, box 1, folders 15 and 16.

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as a living language, but later he turned into a committed Yiddishist. His Marxist analysis, Der yidisher arbeter in Rusland (The Jewish Worker in Russia), became an ideological corner stone of the Zionist Socialist Workers Party, whose program called for a territorial solution of Jewish problems by establishing a Yiddish-speaking state outside Palestine. After the 1917 revolution, he was one of the leading figures in the Kultur-Lige, a supra-partisan network of Yiddish cultural organizations, whose coordination center, called the Central Committee, was based in Kiev (see p. 93-94). In 1918, Jacob Lestschinsky published in Warsaw a pamphlet entitled Our National Demands. His plan of post-imperial Russia’s federal composition pictured a society whose citizens were entitled to become members of ethnic communal structures, whose representatives participated in all decision-making and executive institutions of the state. Reflecting the belief that religious sentiments would atrophy in a modern egalitarian world, Lestschinsky envisioned an essentially secular Jewish community governed by a democratically elected assembly controling predominantly the cultural domain of national life—educational network, publishing, libraries, theatres and museums. By 1921, Lestschinsky was known as an insightful analyst of Jewish economic, social, and cultural life, and an experienced Yiddish newspaperman—he was one of the editors of the daily Naye tsayt, published in Kiev in 1917–1919.25 All this fed his ambitions to try his hand at establishing a newspaper in the German capital. However, Lestschinsky shelved this plan following Cahan’s arrival in Berlin and their meeting that radically altered the trajectory of his life. As the head of the Forverts bureau, he was in the spotlight of German authorities. On November 11, 1923, the Forverts front page featured the following telegram: “Berlin, November 10. My husband, Jacob Lestschinsky, had been arrested for sending to Forverts details about the anti-Jewish pogrom in Berlin. Mrs. Lestschinsky.” The editors immediately informed the readership that they had contacted the leaders of German Social Democrats, asking them to intervene of behalf of Lestschinsky. Next day the paper brought the news of his release from prison. However, the commandant of Berlin ordered to re-arrest him. Lestschinsky found himself in the infamous Moabit Prison, charged with defaming Germany in his descriptions of the unrest in Berlin. On November 14, the Forverts wrote 25 See Gennady Estraikh, “Jacob Lestschinsky: A Yiddishist Dreamer and Social Scientist,” Science in Context 20, no. 2 (2007): 215–237.

The Outpost in Berlin

that the Berlin Vorwärts, the central organ of German Social Democrats, hold the authorities responsible for clampdown on journalistic freedom. On November 15, Lestschinsky could send a telegram, informing the editors that he had been let out after spending six days in a cell. According to him, his release was a result of the pressure piled upon the government by the Social Democrats and the Foreign Press Association (Verein der Ausländischen Presse). Lestschinsky also praised the head of the American desk at the German Foreign Office, who did his best to persuade the top brass that it was counterproductive to keep in prison the representative of such an influential newspaper.26 Although contemporary chroniclers wrote about the Jewish targets of the Berlin riots and lootings (of the 207 looted shops, 61 were Jewishowned), some of them, including the German writer and essayst Alfred Döblin, downplayed the importance of the anti-Semitic side of the violence.27 On December 1, 1923, the Forverts published an article entitled “The Forverts Correspondent Portrays in Detail the Pogrom in Berlin” and signed by “our special correspondent B. Keiter.” To all appearances, Lestschinsky wrote this piece, but after the arrest he was wary of using his real name for describing the unrest, which he saw as fallout from the effects of the severe economic crisis in Germany. The deteriorating conditions of life created a pre-pogrom atmosphere, which Lestschinsky, a survivor of Ukrainian pogroms, could detect when the price of a standard loaf of bread jumped from 25 billion marks of Saturday, November 3, to 140 billion marks on Monday, November 5. In the meantime, vitriol against the Jews was mounting against the backdrop of the rumor mill about unscrupulous Jewish speculators as the chief culprits of hyperinflation. Earlier, on Sunday, Lestschinsky shared his worries over the situation with Sholem Asch, who happened to be in Berlin. He reckoned that the German fascists 26 “‘Forverts’-korespondent arestirt in Berlin far keyblen nayes vegn pogrom,” Forverts, November 11, 1923, 1; “Leshtshinski bafrayt un vider arestirt farn pogrom barikht,” Forverts, November 12, 1923, 1; “Berliner ‘Forverts’ protestirt kegn arrest fun Leshtshinski un tsenzur oyf yidishe nayes,” Forverts, November 14, 1923, 1; “Berliner ‘Forverts’-korespondent, Yakov Leshtshinski, vert bafrayt,” Forverts, November 16, 1923, 1; Jacob Lestschinsky, “‘Forverts’-korespondent fun Berlin, Yakov Leshtshinski, shraybt far vos men hot im arestirt,” Forverts, January 7, 1924, 2. 27 David Clay Large, “‘Out with the Ostjuden’: The Scheunenviertel Riots in Berlin, November 1923,” in Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History, ed. Christhard Hoffmann, Werner Bergmann, and Helmut Walser Smith (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press: 2002), 123–40.

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would not miss the opportunity to organize anti-Jewish pogroms and that the authorities might be interested in giving the population a chance to vent its frustration. Asch, who frequently visited the city, was convinced that “Germany is not Ukraine” and ridiculed Lestschinsky’s foreboding as an overreaction of a Ukrainian Jew.28 In his article, published on January 7, 1923, Lestschinsky clarified that the real cause of his incarceration was the following “interventionist comment” in his telegram sent to the Forverts on November 7, 1923: “If American Jews do not intrude, it will put in danger all Eastern European Jews in Berlin.” As a result, the authorities accused him of ultimately inviting a foreign government to intrude in the internal affairs of Germany. In addition, one of his previous telegrams contained a similar passionate phrase, quoting a Jew who had fled Munich, being terrified by the atmosphere in the city (a Nazi putsch would take place there on November 9). Lestschinsky maintained that he reflected the grim reality of life in Germany, where inflation reached its climax in mid-November 1923, and “never accepted the tactics of denying that we [Jews] had profiteers and currency speculators, and that, indeed, a bunch of them were immigrant Jews, who deserved only one befitting definition: criminals!” Yet, he was dismayed by the police’s behavior, when it not only turned a blind eye to thug violence against Jewish immigrants, but obviously sympathized with the attackers. He was adamant that his reports did not exaggerate the scale of the violence: while he mentioned several wounded and humiliated (forced to undress) Jews, he did not draw direct parallels between the Berlin events and the Ukrainian pogroms. Echoing Asch’s argument, he exclaimed: “At the end of the day, it is Berlin, not Kiev or Proskurov!” (In February 1919, one of the worst Jewish massacres of the Civil War period took place in the town of Proskurov, renamed Khmelnitsky in 1954.) All in all, Lestschinsky drew two lessons from his November 1923 experience: first, the American Jewry did not have to hesitate to voice their concern about the situation in Europe; second, it was important to blame only the real culprits rather than to mar the whole population.29 Although events in Germany remained inside the scope of Lestschinsky’s journalistic and scholarly attention, the former Russian 28 B. Keiter, “Der ‘Forverts’-korespondent shildert di eyntslhaytn fun dem pogrom in Berlin,” Forverts, December 1, 1923, 3. 29 Lestschinsky, “‘Forverts’-korespondent fun Berlin, Yakov Leshtshinski, shraybt far vos men hot im arestirt.”

The Outpost in Berlin

Empire continued to be the central topic for his Forverts articles. In fact, the American Yiddish press began to keep a watchful eye on the political events in Germany only in the 1930s, whereas Soviet Russia and its projects of Jewish colonization were the craze of the 1920s.30 No doubt, this focus of attention reflected the outlook of both writers and readers of the Yiddish press, which remained essentially immigrant outlets. In a letter to Cahan, on April 9, 1924, Lestschinsky admitted that Germany was “badly covered” by the journalists who lived in the country. Yet, the Berlin journalist community continued to recycle newspaper reports and rumors from the world’s first Communist state. The Forverts had correspondents in several Soviet cities, and Lestschinsky was partly responsible for contacts with them, including those authors who did not want to reveal their names. In 1934, Bergelson, then already a Soviet writer, ridiculed the Forverts and other foreign newspapers for publishing “anonymous letters ‘with pure truth’ about the Bolsheviks.”31 Apart from unnamed amateur reporting, the paper regularly published articles with bylines: Leyb Yakhnovitsh from Odessa and A. Kiever (Dov-Ber Slutski, Lestschinsky’s old friend from the days of their youth) from Kiev. Both literati also contributed to Soviet Yiddish periodicals, and Yakhnovitsh even edited the Odessa newspaper Komunistishe shtim (Communist Voice). Against a grim backdrop of hunger and, generally, economic hardship in the country, their articles tended nevertheless to create a positive image of the Soviet regime. Thus, in April 1922, Slutski reported that Kiev Jews gravitated to the Communist authorities, while Yakhnovitch emphasized that it would be wrong to hold the Soviet government responsible for the hunger, because its roots lied in the czarist politics and the devastation brought by the civil war.32 Still, some of the articles were simply graphically shocking. Thus, Slutski wrote about cannibalism in Ukraine during the famine period.33 Following Shmuel Niger’s relocation from Moscow to Vilna, the Forverts did not have an own correspondent based in the Soviet capital and

30 Charles Cutter, “The American Yiddish Daily Press Reaction to the Rise of Nazism, 1930–1933” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 1979), 245. 31 David Bergelson, Birobidzhaner (Moscow: Emes, 1934), 95. 32 Leyb Yakhnovitsh, “Ershter briv fun Odes fun dem nayem ‘Forverts’ korespondent,” Forverts, April 2, 1922, 10; A. Kiever, “Erev peysekh in Kiev,” Forverst, April 19, 1922, 4. 33 A. Kiever, “Men hot gegesn mentshn-fleysh in Ukraine,” Forverts, January 18, 1923, 3.

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published, sporadically, pieces by several authors. On November 27, 1920, Shachno Epstein’s article portrayed the Red Army. And did it poetically: Who did count their number? They have spread from one side of the country to the other. In heat and cold, one detachment after another; the ground shakes under their feet. The sky looks at them in wonder. Who are they, these new people dressed in gray? They are the new heroes, the builders of the new life!34

Epstein wrote it as editor-in-chief of the Moscow Yiddish daily Der emes, but soon, in the summer of 1921, the newspaper had a new editor, Moyshe Litvakov, while Epstein was on his way to America, where he used to live in 1906–1917. He went on a Comintern mission, to help shape a Jewish segment in the local Communist circles.35 The relation between the Forverts and Der emes would become sour. In April 1922, Der emes already wrote about “The Struggle against Forverts.” Shmuel Agursky, the author of the article, likewise came to America as a Comintern agent. His far-fetched prognostication was that the days of the Forverts’s dominance were numbered, because the new, revolutionary newspaper, Frayhayt, would outcompete it.36 Now and then, the Forverts printed articles written by Samson Koldofsky (also Koldovsky), a journalist and labor activist who in the early 1920s represented the JDC in Russia. In 1922, he reported the Soviet authorities’ prompt reaction to an anti-Semitic incident in Moscow.37 A couple of articles came out as “letters from Moscow” by Adolf (Gai)-Menshoi, born Levin, who from 1913 to 1918 was an active member of the Socialist Party. For over a year, until July 1918, he edited the New York Russian newspaper Novyi mir, and then went to Russia, where he occupied positions in the Comintern and the Soviet diplomatic service.38 From 1923 to 1936, the 34 Shachno Epstein, “Bilder fun der royter armey,” Forverts, November 27, 1920, 3. 35 Gennady Estraikh, Evreiskaia literaturnaia zhizn´ Moskvy, 1917–1991 (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii universitet, 2015), 57. 36 “Der kamf kegn ‘Forverts’,” Der emes, April 4, 1922, 2. 37 See Gennady Estraikh, “Simulating Justice: The Blood Libel Case in Moscow, April 1922,” in Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond: New Histories of an Old Accusation, ed. Eugene M. Avrutin, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, and Robert Weinberg (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017), 204–218. 38 See, for example, A. Menshoi, “A briv fun Moskve tsum ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, September 16, 1920, 4; idem, “A briv fun Moskve tsum ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, November 30, 1920,

The Outpost in Berlin

Forverts published articles by Zalman Wendroff, whose peripatetic youth included a job in Yiddish journalism in New York, and, as a result, he was known in American journalist circles.39 Several articles came from under the pen of the veteran of the revolutionary movement, writer and anthropologist Vladimir Tan-Bogoraz. Cahan and Bogoraz met in 1899, in New York, and since then remained friends. On December 24, 1921, Cahan reminded Lestschinsky about his request to find Tan-Bogoraz’s address. He was not sure if his friend lived at the time in Moscow or Petrograd. Tan-Bogoraz’s two articles had been well received and Cahan was keen to get more material of the same kind, which described life in Russia. He also sought a way to send his friend a food parcel.40 In one of the two articles published in 1921, Tan-Bogoraz wrote from Petrograd: New York is a realm in this world, on Earth, whereas our Russia, the Russia of today, is a realm somewhere over Earth. A deep gulf separates the two realms and even in a dream it is hard to jump over this gulf. Only the light of our great hope unites the two disparate shores.41

Situated between the two shores, Berlin provided a good vantage point for following the events in Russia. In 1925 Lestschinsky published in Berlin, under his own imprint, the pamphlet The Truth about the Jews in Russia.42 Under this sensational title, Lestschinsky analyzed the material that appeared in the Soviet Yiddish press. He found numerous pieces of Soviet journalism showing the decline of the shtetl. Despite his anti-Communism, Lestschinsky was happy to read articles exemplifying “the two bright spots on the dark sky of the Russian-Jewish life:” first, proletarization—several thousand people became factory workers and had a reasonably good life; second, several thousand families turned to farming. However, the flow

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4. See also Aleksei G. Tepliakov, “Nonkonformizm sredi konformistov: modeli povedeniia v sovetskoi zhurnalistike 1920–1930-kh gg.,” Gumanitarnye nauki v Sibiri 23, no. 2 (2016): 84–85. See Estraikh, “Zalman Wendroff: The ‘Forverts’ Man in Moscow.” Several of his stories, turned into English by the British translator Hannah Berman, came out in the Jewish Advocate, for example, “The Great Winning” (July 6, 1916, 6), “For One Minute” (July 27, 1916, 6), and “Not Destined” (June 14, 1917, 6). YIVO Archive, Collection RG 339, box 1, folder 15. Vladimir Tan-Bogoraz, “Di naye Rusland,” Forverts, November 26, 1921, 8. See also Abraham Cahan, “Mayn bagegenish mit Tan-Bogoraz,” Forverts, April 17, 1949, section 2, 3. Jacob Lestschinsky, Der emes vegn di yidn in Rusland (Berlin: J. Lestschinsky, 1925).

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of people moving to factories and agricultural colonies was but a trickle compared to the masses of destitute Jewish dwellers of Soviet towns. Lestschinsky believed that only success of the still incipient reforms and, generally, economic rebirth of Russia could eventually improve conditions of their life. He had reservations about the priority of agricultural colonization, which—from a Marxist point of view—could be seen as a deviation from the Socialist and industrial future. Even so, he found appealing some sides of the Soviet Jewish colonization, such as its state-sponsored character, its approximation to a grassroots movement, and its contribution to a new territorial concentration of the Jewish population.43 Lestschinsky observed with approval the change taking place in the attitude of Communist establishment towards peasants, especially as a couple of years after turning its “face to the countryside” the Communists also turned its “face to the shtetl.”44 The new turn led to a radical revamping of the Jewish Communists’ program, making it, at least in Lestschinsky’s view, suddenly similar to the program of the Dubnovian liberal Folkspartey (People’s Party), which—in contrast to Socialists who usually dismissed the shtetl as an anachronism of the dark feudal past—saw traditional Jewish communities as the foundation for building modern Jewish life. The artisan and petty trader emerged in the new program as part of the toiling masses rather than bourgeois and parasitic elements. The new course found its reflection in the Soviet Yiddish press: previously it was full of fierce attacks on traditional forms of Jewish life, such as religious holidays, rituals, and schools; now it wrote about various issues of economic and social transformation. As a result, the ideological schism between the Jewish Socialists and the Soviet Jewish Communists had narrowed, because the latter “had discarded three quarters of their outrageous misdeeds and criminal mistakes.” Lestschinsky insisted that all these misdeeds and mistakes of the Communists did not discredit the Socialist movement, which never claimed that its ideals could be put into practice in “half-wild agrarian countries.” Advocating steadfastly productivization of the Jewish population and considering merchants as one of the worst kind of Jews, Lestschinsky was unhappy with the social stratification of Soviet Jews, and not only because almost a half of them still “earned a living or a dying” by merchandising. Even among Jewish members of Soviet trade unions, only a third belonged 43 Idem, “A meynung vegn der yidisher kolonizatsye in Rusland,” Forverts, November 7, 1926, section 2, 4. 44 See also Gennady Estraikh, “The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s,” Polin 17 (2004): 197–212.

The Outpost in Berlin

to industrial workers, while the others were people in professional, managerial, or administrative positions of state-run organizations, institutions, and enterprises. Lestschinsky worried that this social structure created a strong foundation for the widespread anti-Semitism, which became a conspicuous phenomenon of Soviet reality. Indeed, in November 1926, Mikhail Kalinin, Chairman of the All-Union Executive Committee and thus the titular head of the Soviet state, admitted publicly that “the Soviet intelligentsia is perhaps more anti-Semitic today than it was under czarism.” The Soviet press revealed widespread anti-Semitism among industrial workers as well.45 In January 1927, during a conference of Leningrad Communists, Nikolai Bukharin spoke about numerous episodes of anti-Semitism also among members of the party. Lestschinky shared with the Forverts readers his analysis of the situation.46 Significantly, he did not place the blame on Stalin’s government. Rather, he saw objective reasons for the anti-Jewish feeling in the place and role of the Jews after the revolution. Migration changed the territorial distribution of the Jews, who tended to move from shtetls to cities, where pogroms were less likely to happen and more job opportunities were available. Thus, they were already in situ when the NEP gave the green light for private enterprises. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish urbanites moved to villages, fleeing the hunger and deprivation of the military communism. By the time when the nonJews bestirred themselves or returned to the cities, the stores had often been overtaken by more expeditious and desperate Jewish tradesmen, who “spent many years of training in the ‘commerce heders’” of their shtetls and were hard to compete with. In the mid-1920s, Jews owned ninety-three percent of tobacconist stores, eighty-nine percent of haberdasheries, and eighty-seven percent of wood stores in Kiev; seventy-five percent of pharmacies, forty-eight percent of apparel and shoe stores, and thirty-five percent of haberdasheries in Moscow. For local residents, it was a new occurrence, because both Moscow and Kiev were located outside the Pale of Jewish Settlement. Jewish stores entered the picture in other places, where hardly any Jews resided before the war and revolution, and, in Lestschinsky’s words, “brought with them anti-Semitism.” The younger generation of Jews, in the meantime, 45 William Korey, “The Origins and Development of Soviet Anti-Semitism: An Analysis,” Slavic Review 31, no. 1 (1972): 113–115. 46 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Far vos der antisemitizm farshpreyt zikh itst in Rusland,” Forverts, March 22, 1922, 5.

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occupied positions in the state and party apparatus, provoking discontent among non-Jewish Communists. Lestschinsky appreciated the attempts of the authorities to suppress anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, he worried that the simmering discontent of the masses could one day become uncontrollable and take violent forms. In his analysis of incoming information, Lestschinsky warned of weakening of the Jewish proletariat, whose cream had changed its social position: many former proletarians had emerged as Soviet apparatchiks or used the opportunities of the NEP to turn themselves into businessmen and self-employed artisans.47 Lestschinsky questioned the figures of the 1926 Soviet census. He contended that the published returns did not reflect the true reality of Jewish life in Ukraine, because the number of traders was too low, and the number of workers was too high. Lestschinsky presumed that many Ukrainian Jews falsified their occupational status. As a result, Jewish petty traders passed themselves off as workers in order to evade onerous tax penalties, whereas genuine workers moonlighted as petty traders in order to generate extra income. In other words, while the census presented a picture of an ever-growing Jewish working class and a shrinking number of traders, Lestschinsky maintained that in fact this perception was based on widespread misrepresentation of social identity. He belied the Soviet claim that, based on a comparison of the 1926 Soviet census and the 1897 Imperial Russian census, the numbers of Jewish workers in Soviet Ukraine exceeded pre-revolutionary levels. If anything, he argued, the position of the Jewish worker in Soviet Ukraine had weakened since the end of the nineteenth century, while the percentage of Jewish petty traders had not significantly decreased.48 Time and again Lestschinsky wrote about paradoxes of Soviet Jewish life. On the one hand, revolution brought a lot of hardship. Yet he did not forget that while the Provisional government had decreed civic equality for Russia’s Jews in March 1917, it were the Bolsheviks who had secured the Jews’ national equality.49 His weighty 1940 volume devoted to the Soviet Jewry would praise some components of the Soviet “laboratory for all 47 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Vuhin zaynen ahingekumen di yidishe arbeter in Rusland?” Der veker, April 12, 1924, 9–11. 48 Deborah Yalen, “‘On the Social-Economic Front’: The Polemics of Shtetl Research during the Stalin Revolution,” Science in Contact 20, no. 2 (2007): 240. 49 See, for example, Jacob Lestschinsky, “Wandlungen im Leben der Juden Sowjetrusslands,” Menorah 1–2 (1932): 48.

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[available] methods of solving the Jewish problem” and particularly the results of Soviet Jewish colonization projects in the Crimea and Ukraine. He laid the blame on the Jews rather than the government for “taking the line of least resistance . . . , which in the Soviet Union meant to become white collars and intellectuals.” He admitted that it was the best choice for Jewish individuals, but their personal success in Soviet society did not contribute to the general Jewish course of preserving and developing the Jewish nation. Moreover, by bettering themselves and holding numerous visible positions in public life Jews made a nuisance of themselves and thus provoked more envy and hatred.50 In September 1926, Lestschinsky received a letter from Cahan, which revealed the editor’s satisfaction with the victory of Joseph Stalin and his group over the “wild, bloodthirsty tactic and rhetoric of Zinoviev and Trotsky.”51 In the mid-1920s, Stalin was widely regarded as a reasonably authoritarian and more practical than utopian leader. Lestschinsky also welcomed Stalin’s victory over Zinoviev.52 Cahan, in his turn, praised Stalin’s victory as a promising augury for improving the Soviet government’s relationship with the West and, generally, bringing normality to the much-suffered country. Grigory Zinoviev, who gained much international notoriety for his role of Chairman of the Comintern’s Executive, was removed from the Party’s headship. In November 1926, during the Seventh Plenum of the Comintern, he lost his chairmanship, being replaced by the reputedly more liberal Nikolai Bukharin (who in 1916–1917 coedited the New York newspaper Novyi mir; some people remembered him singing Yiddish songs, which he had learned in Switzerland from the Bundist A. Litvak).53 Trotsky, a vociferous opponent of Stalin, was also shoved into the background. Some foreign observers held that all the Jews of the world had

50 Jacob Lestschinsky, Dos sovetishe yidntum: zayn fargangenhayt un kegnvart (New York: Yidisher kemfer, 1941); see, in particular, 10, 168–169. 51 See Estraikh, “The Berlin Bureau of the New York Forverts,” 152. 52 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Vi lebt zikh itst di yidn in Rusland?,” Forverts, September 26, 1926, section 2, 1–2. 53 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 467–468. During World War I, Bukharin used a passport of a Jew, because at that time travelling was easier for a Russian revolutionary with a “non-national” image—see Harold Shukman, War or Revolution: Russian Jews and Conscription in Britain (London: Vallentien Mitchell, 2006), 51.

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to rejoice the downscaling of such previously visible figures as Zinoviev and Trotsky, because their ubiquitousness generated anti-Semitic feelings.54

David Bergelson Among the Forverts materials critical of Soviet Jewish Communists were essays by David Bergelson, who settled in Berlin in the second half of 1921. By that time, Bergelson was known in Yiddish literary circles as an accomplished writer whose prose appealed to intellectual readers. Along with Lestschinsky and a score of activists, now in Berlin, he was active in Kiev during the short-lived period of Ukraine’s independence and later worked for several months in Moscow, in Soviet Jewish cultural institutions. It was a measurement of the esteem in which Bergelson was held that, in a 1922 Forverts advertisement celebrating twenty-five years since the founding of the newspaper, his name, printed in boldface, appeared among such leading contributors as Sholem Asch, Yona Rosenfeld, Vladimir Medem, and three Berlin-based authors of stature: David Eynhorn, Eduard Bernstein, and Karl Kautsky.55 In his Forverts articles, Bergelson reviled Soviet Jewish Communists, comparing them—particularly Moyshe Litvakov, also a former Kiev activists and now the cantankerous editor of the Moscow Der emes—with “wild Cossacks” and with leaseholders who failed to cultivate the “parcel” allotted to them by the Kremlin.56 In the autumn of 1922, Bergelson sought to travel to Russia as a Forverts correspondent, but this idea elicited a negative response form Cahan, who wrote to Lestschinsky, on December 1, 1922, that the “expenses for such journey would be too high considering the actual significance of it in the current moment.” In general, Bergelson had problems with establishing a rapport with Cahan.57 He did not play a prominent role in the newspaper’s literary section and, to add insult to injury, Israel Joshua Singer, whom he knew in Kiev and Moscow as a 54 See, for example, Donald Day, “Stalin Batters Red Utopia of Lenin’s Dreams,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 25, 1927, 8. 55 Bikher-velt 2 (1922): 223–224. 56 David Bergelson, “Yidishe komunistn in Rusland bashlisn, az es iz shoyn mer nito keyn yidn oyf der velt,” Forverts, March 4, 1923, 12; idem, “Yidishe komunistn fun Rusland makhn vider pogromen oyfn yidishn gas,” Forverts, December 15, 1923, 4. 57 See, in particular, Ellen Kellman, “Uneasy Patronage: Bergelson’s Years at Forverts,” in David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism, ed. Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), 183–204.

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literary apprentice, eclipsed him in the Forverts prominence. Ironically, Singer’s successful career at the Forverts began with publication of a story that had been rejected by Bergelson’s literary circle.58 Bergelson’s modernist prose was not to the liking of Cahan. He criticized Bergelson’s novel Opgang (Descent/Departing), which he compared with “a room packed with people and smoke-filled. You can see that there are people [in the room], but it is very hard to detect them.”59 In his letter written to Cahan on May 21, 1924, Bergelson made it clear that he, a seasoned “eminent writer” (ongezeener shrayber), did not want to put up with that kind of attitude to his literary production. He found himself in a deeply dispiriting situation because the stories he submitted to the Forverts remained unpublished for months. He complained that, apart from creating serious financial difficulties for him, the snubbing of his writings gave rise to a crisis in his creativity.60 In 1926—a turning point in Bergelson’s life—he concluded that America was one of the places where highbrow Yiddish writers had virtually no readers outside the circles of educated proletarians.61 It echoed the conclusion he had reached in consequence of his experience before moving to Berlin, when he became convinced that modernist literature in Yiddish had failed to attract a viable readership and that only in the long term would native speakers of Yiddish be unavoidably compelled to turn to quality literature.62 As an article of faith, analogous to the Marxists’ belief in the dialectical inevitability of social transformation from capitalism to Socialism, many Jewish intellectuals of Yiddishist convictions believed in the inevitability of society’s dramatic cultural ascent. In America, many such believers, including literati belonging to the cream of Yiddish letters, grouped around such forums as the Communist newspaper Frayhayt. Bergelson’s recantation in 1926, when he severed his relations with the Forverts and started writing for its archrival, Frayhayt, and other Communist periodicals, created waves in Yiddish literary circles. In his letter of resignation to Cahan, dated May 1, 1926, Bergelson was at pains to play down ideological reasons for his break with Forverts. On the contrary, 58 Gennady Estraikh, “The Old and the New Together: David Bergelson’s and Israel Joshua Singer’s Portraits of Moscow Circa 1926–27,” Prooftexts 26 (2006), 53–78. 59 Abraham Cahan, “A nayer roman fun Dovid Bergelson,” Forverts, February 4, 1923, 15. 60 Bergelson’s letters to Cahan are preserved in YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, MK 498, reel 3, folder 54. 61 Benjamin Jacob Bialostotzky, “Vegn Olgin-Bergelson taynes,” Oyfkum 1 (1926): 5. 62 See Estraikh, In Harness, 35–36.

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he spoke of his constant frustration at the fact that some of his stories and articles were not published in the newspaper. Hence his decision “to find another newspaper, whose spirit corresponds better with the work I write and will write.” Like in the majority cases of such reorientation, it is hard to distinguish the decisive component in the confluence of ideology, hubris, and peer influence that urged him to join the ranks of those intellectuals who considered the Soviet Union to be the epitome of a new civilization. Bergelson’s article “His Kosher Lips,” printed in Frayhayt on May 22, 1926, condemned anti-Sovietism of Raphael Abramovitch, and thus signaled the change of his allegiance.63 Abramovitch and Bergelson reciprocally disliked each other. In a letter written on July 8, 1926, Abramovitch reminded Cahan that he had shared with him his misgivings about this “creature” (nefesh), arguing that such a person had nothing to do at a Socialist paper. He placed Bergelson into the category of semi-intelligentsia who were neither European nor American. They were people with an “Asian logic and Asian moral,” which even Cahan, “a good manager and a successful editor,” could not detect. Their moral of buyers and sellers was from the anecdote, popular among Lithuanian Jews. A teacher asks a pupil: “Your father gave as a loan 3 roubles and then 5 roubles. How much money must the borrower pay back to your father?” “10 roubles.” “You have problems with math,” says the teacher. “I know math well, but you don’t know my father,” answers the pupil.64 In other words, in Abramovitch’s eyes, Bergelson was an offputting representative of the greedy Jewish bourgeoisie. In the same vein, Cahan, who, under Abramovitch’s influence or otherwise, also developed a personal dislike for Bergelson, delivered ad hominem attack on him, arguing that the writer’s “real” motives for reorientation were mercenary: malicious rumor had it that the writer sought to cash in on the opportunities created in Russia’s NEP environment by establishing a publishing business or continuing his family tradition of timber trading. Interestingly, speculations in the Soviet literary circles gave a different explanation to Bergelson’s jumping on the Soviet bandwagon: the writer left the Forverts realizing that the newspaper was ready to “spit him out.”65 63 David Bergelson, “Zayne koshere leftsn,” Frayhayt, May 22, 1926, 4. 64 Raphael Abramovitch to Abraham Cahan, July 8, 1926, YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 37. 65 Kellman, “Uneasy Patronage,” 194; Gennady Estraikh, “David Bergelson in and on America,” in David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism, ed. Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), 209.

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The whole “Bergelson affair” made Cahan livid, though (as he wrote to Lestschinsky on June 1, 1926) it did not come as a complete surprise, because he had detected Bergelson’s Communist sympathies as early as 1923. In her analysis of the relationship between Cahan and Bergelson, Ellen Kellman came to the conclusion that “from start Bergelson mistrusted Cahan, who in turn viewed publishing Bergelson’s work largely as a literary mitsve (good deed).”66 When Lestschinsky informed Cahan that other American newspapers had approached Bergelson with offers to leave the Forverts and write for them instead, Cahan replied that Bergelson was not “a jewel” worth to fight for.67 Following Bergelson’s resignation he wrote to Lestschinsky: I think you will recall my telling you that . . . I felt that he was making plans to return to Russia. . . . I also noticed that certain stories of his were heading in the same direction—laying a foundation for “subjugation” to the Bolsheviks. . . . many of his stories and other pieces in our possession remained unpublished, all for the same reason: they are not literature, but propaganda.68

At the same time, Cahan appreciated his talent: I believe that, in essence, his work is more important than Sholem Asch’s, but Asch’s is juicy, poetic, dramatic, and his style is lighter and more pleasant. He is, therefore, very popular. Bergelson lacks these qualities, and he is not popular. . . . Now that everything he writes is pervaded by propaganda in order to find favor with Soviet Russia, he has no value as a belletrist. He has sold his birthright for a pot of lentils, so to speak.69

Interestingly, on January 12, 1927 editors of the Frayhayt spoke about another possible defector from Cahan. Joseph Opatoshu, who wrote for Der tog, informed them that I. J. Singer, who had just returned to Warsaw from a journalistic trip to the Soviet Union, was toying with the idea of moving to the Communist newspaper. According to the minutes of the meeting, Melech Epstein, then the editor-in-chief, recommended that Singer be employed as the newspaper’s Polish correspondent and also as a story writer. The conditions of his employment should be “the same as 66 67 68 69

Kellman, “Uneasy Patronage,” 192. Ibid., 193–194. Ibid., 194. Ibid., 195.

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with Bergelson.”70 In the end, however, this defection never materialized and Singer continued to work for the Forverts as its Warsaw correspondent, using the byline G. Kuper. On February 29, 1928, an editorial note in the Forverts praised his “literary feuilletons,” which revealed a talent of “a writer made of a more precious material than copper (kuper in Yiddish).”71 And three weeks later, Singer published a completely different version of his relations with the Frayhayt: it was the Frayhayt’s initiative to invite him, but he did not accept the offer.72 In 1926, at the height of the NEP, both Bergelson and Singer visited the Soviet Union and shared their impressions with readers of the Frayhayt and the Forverts correspondingly. Singer was not afraid to be critical of dark sides of Soviet life, but—ironically—his three-dimensional critical portrayal ended up being more sympathetic than Bergelson’s two-dimensional panegyric, overloaded with hyperboles and metaphors. Singer populated his portrayal of Moscow by ordinary people, while Bergelson introduced his reader to a string of screwball workaholics. Bergelson presented Moscow as a City of the Sun, whose dwellers trusted that nobody was following them. They moved about in liberty; they looked around freely; they almost flied. Known for his penchant for horological allegories, Bergelson described Moscow as a city with a quickened economic and societal pulse, a city whose “invisible clock” was one hour fast. Better yet, the Moscow population never grew old; a Moscow Communist felt he was “four times sixteen” rather than sixty-four years old. In general, everything reminded Bergelson of the perfection of a Stradivarius violin. An amateur fiddler, he heard magic melodies when he saw how people worked in Moscow. The Soviet system made each citizen feel involved in all industrial projects and filled each occupation with romance, be it construction work, accountancy, or driving a tram. It was hard for Bergelson to discover darker sides of Moscow and, generally, of Soviet life, though he mentioned, inter alia, waifs in the streets as well as errors emanating from the capital. It was his decision not to be objective. In an article written on the eve of his Soviet trip, Bergelson clarified his reason for acting as a Soviet apologist: he did it “in the name of the new life that we have to allow to come into bloom, belles-lettres in Russia 70 Estraikh, In Harness, 72. 71 “Notitsn fun der ‘Forverts’ redaktsye,” Forverts, February 29, 1928, 8. 72 “A perzenlekhe derklerung fun undzer mitarbeter Y. Y. Zinger,” Forverts, March 23, 1928, 5.

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fold their fighting arms.” He ends his Moscow article by identifying a serious fault in Soviet Moscow, but—he taunted his anti-Soviet colleagues—he did so only for the sake of satisfying their desire to see disadvantages in the Communist system. In any event, Bergelson did have to admit that housing conditions plagued the vast majority of Moscow residents. Still, he believed that he did not have to act against his conscience when he explained to the reader that Soviet urbanites did not feel cooped up in their overcrowded communal (shared) apartments, often with one family per room. Bergelson emphasized that Soviet people preferred to be at their workplaces and, therefore, spent little time at home anyway.73 It seems that, for all his enthusiasm, Bergelson later thought about returning to the Forverts. In any case, Mendel Osherowitch, a veteran Forverts journalist, spoke on his behalf with Cahan. These negotiations took place during Bergelson’s American sojourn in 1928–1929, but brought no results. In the end of 1930, Lestschinsky, too, tried to persuade Cahan to renew Bergelson’s contract with the Forverts. However, negotiations went nowhere. Cahan firmly ruled out any possibility of renewing a contractual agreement with the prodigal writer, though he was ready to publish his works and pay him honorariums. In order to re-establish Bergelson-Forverts relations, Cahan wanted to get from Bergelson a letter, albeit not a repentant one. “The only thing that I expect from him is an attitude of a well-behaved, respectful person.” At the same time, he again reiterated that the Forverts circulation was not the reason why he would deal with Bergelson. “Being myself deeply interested in literature, I always had ambitions to have in the Forverts all talented writers, regardless of the size of their readership.”74 Clearly, Bergelson did not write to Cahan. He also did not want to settle in America. Most probably, he felt superfluous there, facing competition with such well-established prose writers as Sholem Asch and Joseph Opatoshu.75 At first, fellow literati did not brand Bergelson an outcast following his political re-affiliation. Bergelson’s postcards sent to Leshschinsky in 1929 and 1930 show that they remained close friends.76 A gregarious man, Bergelson continued to be the toast of the Romanisches Café in Berlin. A 73 Gennady Estraikh, “The Old and the New Together.” 74 Estraikh, “David Bergelson in and on America,” 212–213. 75 Harriet Murav, David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeleness and Futurity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019), 241. 76 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Jacob Lestschinsky, RG 339, box 1, folder 7.

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Yiddish journalist, also a habitué of the café, portrayed Bergelson as its balmusef, or cantor officiating only at the additional service on Sabbaths or holidays.77 Indeed, Bergelson, often absent from the city, was not a reliable person for “regular services.” Ultimately, his friendship with Lestschinsky, which began in Kiev, came to an end.78 In September 1929, Bergelson, understandably, was not invited to the banquet thrown in Cahan’s honor by the “Jewish Berlin,” when the sixtynine-year-old Forverts editor and his wife spent some time in Berlin on their way to Palestine. Following the toasts by representatives of Jewish organizations, the local Jewish community, Socialist leaders, and Yiddish writers, Cahan spoke about the international role of America Jews, who, he emphasized, were not stereotypical money-minded people. Rather, they were generous souls ready to succour their brothers and sisters all over the world. Cahan also praised the American variety of Socialism, which—compared to European socialism—was “less romantic and more practical.”79

The End of Yiddish Berlin Like all Yiddish periodicals, the Forverts paid attention to the growing menace of Nazism and condemned the anti-Jewish pronouncements and violence in Germany, but there was an element of wishful thinking in what they wrote. It was based on their conviction that the Social Democrats would prevent Hitler’s party from coming to power. As late as February 23, 1933, the newspaper published Lestschinsky’s article “Hitler Will Break His Head against the Iron Wall of the United German Workers” and was happy to report, a week later, that—again, according to Lestschinsky—the Nazis did not gain support among factory workers, whose Communist contingent signalled readiness to form a united front with the Socialist counterparts.80 77 For the climate of the Romanisches Café, see Israel Rubin’s five vignettes “Bay di tishlekh fun romanishn kafe,” Literarishe bleter, January 10, 1930, 28; January 17, 1930, 53–45; February 14, 1930, 127–128; March 21, 1930, 222–223; April 4, 1930, 262–263. 78 Lev Bergelson, “Memories of My Father: The Early Years,” in David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism, ed. Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), 85. 79 “Ab. Kahan hot geshprekhn mit vikhtike sotsialistishe firer in Eyrope,” Forverts, September 11, 1929, 9. 80 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Hitler vet brekhn dem kop on der ayzerner vant fun di fareynikte daytshe arbeter,” Forverts, February 23, 1933, 4; idem, “Vos di daytshe yidn hobn durkhgelebt in di ershte vokhn fun Hitlers hershaft,” Forverts, March 1, 1933, 5.

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As late as March 2, 1933, several days before the elections which would bring the Nazis into power, Cahan wrote: “It is clear as daylight that in Italy a Mussolini is possible, but in country as highly cultivated and industrialized as Germany it is not.”81 It seems that Abramovitch was less hopeful in his analysis. While in February 1932 he penned an article entitled “German Workers Are Ready to Use Weapons to Defend the Republic from the Hitlerists,” on June 20, 1932 he wrote to Cahan, that his optimism had evaporated and that Germany faced “a period of heavy reaction, which could lead to fascism like in Italy or Hungary.82 At the end of 1932, he did not believe that Kurt von Schleicher’s government, “the last card of German non-fascist reaction,” could find a solution to the crisis. In November 1932, an American Socialist came to Berlin and met there with Abramovitch (“a tired, gray-haired, little man”), who shared with the guest his frustration with German Social Democracy, which—he maintained—had lost its Socialist energy and was closer to liberalism than to a Marxist party.83 In December 1932, Cahan, a proponent of non-violent—“natural and uncontrived”—transformations of societies, chafed at Abramovitch’s idea of using “non-democratic and non-parliamentary methods” for keeping Germany on the democratic track.84 In the meantime, the situation in Germany was deteriorating. In the beginning of 1933, the Foreign Delegation of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, by that time a heavily Jewish fraternity of like-minded ideologues, started making preparation for leaving the country. Fedor Dan, the then head of the Delegation (seven years afterwards, Abramovitch would be elected as its chairman), moved to Paris where the Mensheviks had numerous friends among the Socialists. The Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden (Aid Association of German Jews) and the Berlin office of the JDC 81 Abraham Brumberg, “Towards the Final Solution: Perceptions of Hitler and Nazism in the US Left-of-Center Yiddish Press, 1930–1939,” in  Why Didn’t the Press Shout?:  American & International Journalism During the Holocaust, ed. Robert M. Shapiro (New York: Yeshiva University Press/KTAV, 2003), 23. 82 Raphael Abramovitch, “Daytshe arbeter zaynen greyt mit vafn tsu farteydikn di republic kegn di Hitleristn,” Forverts, February 22, 1932, 3; YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 37. 83 Abraham Plotkin, An American in Hitler’s Berlin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 7, 11. 84 Raphael Abramovitch, “Di sotsialistishe bavegung in Eyrope gefint zikh in a nayer merkvirdiker lage,” Forverts, December 18, 1932, section 2, 2; Abraham Cahan, “Grintlekhe un nit-grintlekhe revolutsyes: natirlekhe un fabritsirte,” Forverts, December 25, 1932, section 2, 1.

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assisted financially in organizing their relocation. As a result, in May 1933 the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik could renew its publication as a Paris-based periodical.85 Abramovitch wrote later: When the Nazis began to rise in Germany, the only people in socialist circles who fully understood the nature and future course of the Nazis were— strange to say—the Russian Mensheviks who were refugees in Germany. . . . This writer [Abramovitch] went to Zurich, from Berlin, to attend the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Socialist International in March 1933, a few days after the Reichstag fire. After giving a detailed report on the situation in Germany, he ended his speech with the words of the Good Soldier Schweik, the hero of the famous Czech novel [by Jaroslav Hašek]: “And so, my friends, we shall meet again at 6 p.m., after the Second World War.” The German comrades, however, stubbornly refused to understand the meaning of what was happening before their eyes. They considered the Nazis to be a temporary boil, a kind of mass psychosis which had taken possession of the Germans as a result of inflation and economic crisis, and they thought that a wise and careful policy would enable them to overcome the Nazi infection. So they were not disposed to act with determination, to take revolutionary steps, to adopt the radical measures which the Russian Mensheviks advised them to take.86

In March 1933, Abramovitch wrote to Friedrich Adler, SecretaryGeneral of Labor and Socialist International, that the attitude of the SDP [Social Democratic Party] gives rise to the worst fears. One of our friends in Berlin writes us that, in that city, one has the impression of total perplexity and helplessness by the party, which has neither the courage to face illegality nor the possibility for compromise solutions. The comrade contends that one is prepared to rather be passively murdered than to fight.87 85 Raphael Abramovitch, “Ikh antloyf fun Hitlern,” Forverts, July 24, 1949, section 2, 3; idem, “Baym geyn fun eyn goles in a tsveytn,” Forverts, July 31, 1949, section 2, 3 and 8; idem, “Iber nakht iz Pariz gevorn der tsenter fun yidishe kultur-mentsn un eyropeishe sotsialistn,” Forverts, August 7, 1949, section 2, 3. 86 Abramovitch, The Soviet Revolution, 375–376. 87 Gerd-Rainer Horn, “European Socialists Respond to Fascism: The Drive towards Unity, Radicalization and Strategic Innovation in Austria, Belgium, France and Spain, 1933–1936” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1992), 84.

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On March 11, the police arrested Lestschinsky. It is not clear if they had some specific scores to settle with Lestschinsky or the name of his newspaper, which sounded too similar to Vorwärts, the organ of the German Social Democratic Party, placed him in a precarious spot. Some other Yiddish journalist could carry on working in Berlin. Daniel Charney, known for his extreme sociability and therefore titled as “the Yiddish ambassador to Berlin,” even attended several receptions thrown by the Nazi leaders for foreign journalist colony. Charney claimed that the Nazis simply did not realize that the New York daily newspaper The Day, which he represented in Berlin, was, in fact, the Yiddish Der tog. On the other hand, a few “undisguised” Yiddish journalists lived in Berlin and remained members of the Foreign Press Association after 1933.88 Under the pressure of the American State Department, Lestschinsky was released after four days in prison, getting an order to leave Germany within two weeks.89 By that time, Abramovitch was already in Paris and from there he reported to Cahan on March 20, 1933: With a lot of effort, I managed to get away from Germany before it was too late. I tried to stay there as long as it was possible, but at some moment I had received a tip-off which immediately forced me to “make a move.” Otherwise, I could have stayed in Germany for an indefinite amount of time and ended up in a concentration camp. In addition, there was a very unpleasant prospect: I found out that the Hitlerists had a plan to put on “trial” the “traitorous” links between the German Social Democrats and the “Jewish” Second International. In such a “trial,” I would have been a very “convenient” figure for the Nazis: a Jew, a Russian, a correspondent of a Yiddish newspaper, and a member of the Socialist International’s Bureau, who always had friendly relations with leading German Social Democrats.90

Now he felt an urge to make known his thoughts about the tragic mistakes of the German Social Democrats, but could not get a place for such material on the pages of the Forverts. In a detailed letter to Abramovitch, 88 Estraikh, “The Berlin Bureau of the New York Forverts,” 158. 89 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Forverst-korespondent Leshtsinski dertseylt vi azoy di hitleristn hobn im arestirt,” Forverts, April 13, 1933, 4; Yeshayahu Klinov, “Di ‘zibete melukhe’ firt milkhome mitn ‘dritn raykh’: vi azoy arbetn un lebn itst yidish-oyslendishe zhurnalistn in Berlin,” Haynt, July 23, 1933, 9–10. 90 Raphael Abramovitch to Abraham Cahan, March 20, 1933, YIVI Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 37; Estraikh, “The Berlin Bureau of the New York Forverts,” 157–158.

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dated April 18, 1933, Cahan explained that his decision stemmed, partly, from his reluctance to lambaste the party that had been suffering from persecution, but above all it had to do with the situation in the Socialist Party. Cahan, who, as well as the majority of Socialists of the Forverts milieu, belonged to the rigidly anti-Communist “Old Guard,” was wary that Abramovitch’s analysis might embolden the more radical “Militants” in their drive for cooperation with the Comintern.91 Therefore Cahan preferred to glorify the Social Democrats and blame the Communists.”92 In return, Abramovitch halted sending articles to the Forverts. In August 1933, they met in Paris at a conference of the Labor and Socialist International. Like many other participants, Cahan disagreed with Abramovitch’s contention in his speech that the Social Democrats should have to take up arms against the Nazis or, failing that, at least organize an effective underground network.93 By the time of the conference their relations were at the lowest point. In the end, however, a compromise healed the breach between the two: Abramovitch stopped insisting on publishing his article that chastised German Social Democrats, while Cahan allowed him to write on this topic in a less caustic way. Abramovitch would later praise the “gentleman’s style” in which Cahan handled their discord.94 Apart from respect for one another, the two men had strong reasons to seek a compromise. Cahan highly valued the role of the Labor and Socialist International and certainly did not want to break with Abramovitch, a respected figure in the organization. Abramovitch, on the other hand, also sought to preserve his link with the Forverts, which became the anchor in his life. The newspaper paid him salary, subsidized the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, served as an outlet for his political journalism, and made him a figure of renown in the American Socialist movement. Significantly, American friends informed Abramovitch that Cahan’s position was so impregnable that it was pointless to challenge him. The veteran Bundist Jonah A. Viliatzer wrote that

91 Abraham Cahan to Raphael Abramovitch, April 18, 1933, R. Abramovič Papers, correspondence, folder 3, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. 92 See, for example, Abraham Cahan, “Der kamf fun di daytshe sotsial-demokratn tsu rateven di republik,” Forverts, April 23, 1933, section 2, 1. 93 Raphael Abramovitch, “Ven es iz gekumen di sreyfe oyfn daytshn raykhstag,” Forverts, July 17, 1949, section 2, 3; idem, “Historishe teg in internatsionaln sotsializm,” Forverts, September 4, 1949, 6, section 2, 3. 94 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der kamf in sotsialistishn internatsional gegen di daytshe sotsial-demokratn,” Forverts, September 11, 1949, section 2, 3.

The Outpost in Berlin

even those Forverts journalists and other Jewish Socialists who agreed with Abramovitch would not dare to make their position known.95 In a long letter dated April 26, 1934 Cahan explained to Abramovitch that the Forverts opened its pages only to such debates, which “created an atmosphere [shtimung] for our point of view, for our stand.” The newspaper was ready to show hospitality to those people whom the editors respected, even if they held a distinct ideological perspective. However, the editors’ hospitality had its limits. Cahan once again focused on the problem that bothered him mostly at that time: pro-Soviet sympathies of American Socialists, especially young intellectuals. He considered his newspaper as a stronghold of right-wing Socialism and, therefore, could not print any material that would be grist to the mill of the left-wingers.96 In the 1930s, Abramovitch’s Forverts articles touched on various themes, but most often discussed problems of the international Socialist movement and the situation in the Soviet Union. In 1935, he returned to the painful issue of Soviet persecutions against the surviving Socialists. The assassination of Sergei Kirov, the influential head of the Leningrad Communist party organization, in December 1934, interrupted the relative lull in repression. Hundreds of Socialists, who already had spent many years in prison and exile, once again found themselves incarcerated. Among them were Martov’s relatives: his brother Sergei Zederbaum-Ezhov and his nephew Andrei Kranikhfeld, leader of the Social Democratic Youth League.97

95 Jonah A. Viliatzer to Raphael Abramovitch, July 28, 1933, R. Abramovič Papers, correspondence, folder 2, International institute of Social History, Amsterdam. 96 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 38. 97 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der terror kegn sotsialistn in sovet-Rusland hot zikh di letste tsayt zeyer farshtarkt,” Forverts, December 7, 1935, 14.

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Chapter 6

Jews on the Land

Palestine or Crimea? On September 10, 1925, the Forverts informed its readers about the forthcoming conference in Philadelphia convened under the aegis of the JDC and its three constituent organizations: the American Jewish Relief Committee, the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War, and the People’s Relief Committee for Sufferers from the War. It had been scheduled for September 12 and 13, to take place at the recently opened Benjamin Franklin Hotel (known from the mid-1980s as the Ben Franklin House), with participation of over 1,000 delegates and guests: communal leaders, philanthropists, and social workers. The key item on the conference agenda concerned allocation of fifteen million dollars, which was the target amount for the fundraising campaign aimed to sponsor Jewish colonization in the Soviet Union and Palestine. The Forverts leading article focused on the colonization in Russia as “the most important Jewish campaign originated in America.” It stressed that each American Jew should consider it a privilege to contribute to the new undertaking, supported by the Soviet government. In August 1924, the Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land appeared as a structural branch of the Soviet government.1 From January 1925, that committee, known also by its Russian abbreviation KOMZET, had a sibling body—the Association for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land, or OZET. The OZET, with a veneer of a non-governmental organization, acted primarily as an interface with those foreign individuals and organizations, 1 “Di konferents vegn der yidisher kolonizatsye in Rusland,” Forverts, September 10, 1925, 4.

Jews on the Land

notably the JDC, which felt uncomfortable dealing directly with the Kremlin. The initiative of convening the Philadelphia conference came from David A. Brown, a high-ranking functionary of the JDC who toured Russia in 1925. Brown travelled to Jewish colonies in Ukraine, Crimea, and Belorussia in company with the JDC representative Joseph Rosen, the Forverts correspondent Zalman Wendroff, who was fluent in English and apparently played the role of an interpreter, and the agronomist Samuil Lubarsky.2 Not long before the conference, the Chicago Jewish weekly Sentinel published an English version of Wendroff ’s travelogue, first printed in the Forverts.3 This version of the travelogue appeared in other newspapers, so the conference delegates could learn that Soviet Jewish intellectuals saw “in the colonization not only an economic necessity, but also a political, cultural, national, and even a physical advantage,” and believed that colonization would improve the economic status not only of the settlers, but also that of those who remained in towns and cities. In addition, it would help resist assimilation and transform a large number of Jews into productive toilers. Productivization, an old fixation of Jewish intellectuals, should strengthen the government’s opposition to anti-Semitism and solve many other problems. Wendroff stressed, though, that the vast majority of the Jews looked at the issue of colonization in a completely different way, without high thinking. “With them it is a question of bread—just bread. They will think of other matters when they have enough bread.”4 The (non-Jewish) veteran revolutionary Pyotr Smidovich, who headed the KOMZET (a district center in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region has carried his name since 1934), welcomed the Philadelphia conference and stated that “the Soviet government never doubted the soundness of the plan to transfer a considerable part of the Jewish population in Soviet Russia to agricultural work.” However, the government could not supply the large sums of money required for implementing this plan. Therefore, the KOMZET reckoned greatly on support of foreign Jewish organizations

2 On Lubarsky, see Michael Beizer, “Samuil Lubarsky: Portrait of an Outstanding Agronomist,” East European Jewish Affairs 34, no. 1 (2004): 91–103. 3 Zalman Wendroff, “A Visit to the Jewish Colonies in Russia,” The Sentinel, August 21, 1925, 20, and September 4, 1925, 5, 30. 4 Wendroff, “A Visit to the Jewish Colonies in Russia,” The Sentinel, September 4, 1925, 30.

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and promised them “full freedom of action.”5 The Forverts called its readers to help raise significant amounts of money to facilitate the realization of the unprecedented, challenging project. It emphasized that although the territories, allocated for Jewish colonization in the Soviet Union, did not form one continuous area, they could nevertheless provide place for a meaningful concentration of Jews, especially as these areas included Jewish colonies established in the nineteenth century, or were situated close to towns with a Jewish population.6 On the eve of the conference, the delegates who represented the People’s Relief Committee, which coordinated aid efforts of labor organizations and was closely associated with the Forverts, conducted a meeting chaired by Alexander Kahn, an acclaimed labor lawyer. The labor delegates had determined their strategic goal of earmarking one third of the general funds for relief operations in Russia. The Labor Zionist faction insisted on using the term “relief operations” rather than such phrasing as “saving the Jewish people.” Kahn remarked that he was happy with this terminology, though, he stressed, it was a relief operation more significant than organizing a soup kitchen: 9.5 million dollars had already been channeled to Russia since the winter of 1921, when the JDC got the green light from the Soviet government to work there.7 The conference became an hour of glory for the Moscow-born agricultural scientist Dr. Joseph Rosen. As a student he became involved in illegal radical circles, which resulted in fleeing Russia and completing his education in Germany and America. The turn of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a group of Jewish agronomists, attracted to this occupation by the opportunity to respond professionally to the needs of the population and, at the same time, realize ideas of various progressive movements. Popular was the concept of agriculture as a way to physical and moral regeneration of Eastern European Jews. Rosen’s involvement in the JDC’s relief operations began thanks to his essentially random encounter with

5 “Smidovitch Wishes Philadelphia Conference Success,” The American Israelite, September 17, 1925, 7. 6 “Di konferents vegn der yidisher kolonizatsye in Rusland.” 7 “Groyse relif konferents efnt zikh haynt in Filadelfye,” Forverts, September 12, 1925, 1, 16; “Arbeter-delegatn af relif-konferents in Filadelfye bashlisn tsu arbetn farn 15 milyon drayv,” Forverts, September 13, 1925, 1, 12.

Jews on the Land

the banker Felix M. Warburg, the JDC chairman, who in September 1921 invited him to go on a mission to Russia.8 In the broad press Rosen’s name emerged in 1922, though agricultural specialists new him much earlier thanks to the “Rosen rye,” cultivated by many farmers in the United States. In the Jewish circles, some people remembered him as a former director of the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School in Woodbine, New Jersey, established as part of the efforts to develop farming among Jewish immigrants. In the early 1920s, his name recognition gained from the press coverage of his work as the representative of the JDC whose expertise helped save thousands of lives in the hunger-stricken areas of Russia. From that time on, the Forverts regularly published articles about and by Rosen, a “slim Jew with salt-and-pepper grey hair and modest eyes, full of expression,” as Vladeck portrayed him after their first meeting in New York.9 In large part, Rosen’s report on the conditions and prospects for the Jewish colonization in Russia defined the 1925 conference discussions and decisions. Following Rosen’s report, the American businessmen and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald pledged one million dollars for Soviet colonization, while Warburg pledged a matching donation. (In 1926, a Jewish colony carrying Rosenwald’s name appeared on the map of Crimea.)10 Steven Wisse, the leader of the Zionist group, tried to change the mood of the conference. He spoke in English, but from time to time exclaimed in Yiddish: “Ikh hob moyre!” (I am afraid!). He insisted that colonization would make stronger anti-Semitism in Russia, where the non-Jewish population also needed land. The Forverts sarcastically commented that it was funny to hear such an argument from a representative of Zionists, who had land-related problems with the Arabs. Louis Marshall, in his turn, chastened the Zionists for their selfishness: while non-Zionists had been raising money for Palestine, Zionists invariably repudiated projects pointed at helping Jews outside Palestine. At the conference, however, Zionists built a minority among the delegates and could not block the resolutions about directing five million 8

“Dr. Yoysef Rozen, der ekspert, velkher firt on di arbet fun ‘Dzshoynt’ far yidisher kolonizatsye in Rusland,” Forverts, November 27, 1926, 5. 9 Baruch Vladeck, “Er hot a ‘skim’ tsu makhn az Rusland zol keyn mol nit visn fun hunger,” Forverts, September 14, 1922, 3. See also “Interesanter report vegn dem ‘Dzshoynt’s arbet in Rusland,” Forverts, September 21, 1922, 3. See also Dana G. Dalrymple, “Joseph Rosen and Early Russian Studies of American Agriculture,” Agricultural History 38, no. 3 (1964): 157–160. 10 “Rosenwald Honored for Aid to Russian Jews,” The Sentinel, August 20, 1926, 24.

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dollars to relief programs in the Soviet Union.11 The American Jewish press, with the notable exception of the Frayhayt, welcomed the adoption of the “harmony resolution.” The Communist newspaper saw the compromise decision of sponsoring both colonization projects as a capitulation to Zionism. The Forverts, by contrast, saw it as a defeat of the Zionists, because the conference had shown them that “their hopes and dreams were unjust and untrue.”12 Cahan did not participate in the conference, for he left America in July and stayed abroad till the end of the year. He went first to Marseilles to represent, along with Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, and Jacob Panken, the Socialist Party at a congress of the Labor and Socialist International. By that time, many Socialist ideologists had changed their attitude to Zionism, finding attractive the idea of “positive colonial policy” in general and of the Labor Zionists’ plan in particular. This plan suggested using trade unions and cooperatives to extend control over the economy of Palestine. Through this prism, Jewish settlers fulfilled the mission of emissaries of Socialism in the backward Orient.13 From Marseilles, Cahan went to Palestine, although previously, in the words of one of his 1921 articles, the place did not appeal to him “as a land for Jews.” Worse yet, Zionism “stank through-and-through with dangerous chauvinism.”14 Four years later, “Jerusalem the eternal city, the Western Wall, a relic of the Temple—all these spoke to his heart and inner being. It was as if a dam within him had burst, and all the Jewish content stored deep in his heart gushed out.”15 This trip signified an alteration of the newspaper’s course: it continued to be critical of most basic tenets of the Zionist ideology, but moderated its views on Labor Zionist projects in Palestine.16 During the three and half weeks of his stay in Palestine, Cahan tried, inter alia, to understand why the agricultural communes, or kibbutzim, endured there, whereas failure after failure followed all the similar projects 11 “Kolonizatsye-plan fun Dzhoynt ongenumen af relif-konferents; Rozenvald git a milyon,” Forverts, September 14, 1925, 1, 8. 12 “Results of Philadelphia Conference Commented on in Jewish Press,” The American Israelite, September 24, 1925, 1. See also Hasia R. Diner, Julius Rosenwald: Reparing the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 140. 13 Paul Kelemen, “In the Name of Socialism: Zionism and European Social Democracy in the Inter-War Years,” International Review of Social History 41, no. 3 (1996): 334–339. 14 Abraham Cahan, “Far vos a sotsialist ken nit zayn keyn tsienist,” Forverts, May 5, 1921, 4. 15 Goldstein, Jewish Socialists in the United States, 25. 16 Ibid., 55–56.

Jews on the Land

run by the Am Olam back-do-the-soil movement, which brought him to America in 1882 (though Cahan himself stayed in New York and did not participate directly in any of the agricultural-cum-social endeavors).17 According to him, the main cause of the difference was “the special property psychology” formed on kibbutzim: their members had the feeling of common property, and did not seek their own personal benefit. “They work, develop the land, augment its value and significance. And will they now let it go to the devil?”18 Tsivion, who took part in the hot discussion triggered by Cahan’s travel notes, agreed with him that among kibbutzim members, “‘mine’ and ‘thine’ have given place to ‘ours’.” But he viewed this phenomenon through less rosy spectacles: a kibbutz formed a primitive society, and in a society of this kind it was “an easy and simple matter to live in a commune.” He had his own explanation for its endurance: “were it not for the constant assistance of the Zionist organization the communes would have disappeared.”19 It seems, however, that Cahan, who was deeply impressed by the colonies’ Socialist spirit, preferred another, romantic-nationalist explanation—that the ideal of building a Jewish country fired the settlers’ energies and helped them survive all pain.20 The 1925 trip brought Cahan to the conclusion that Palestine had “grown in popularity everywhere.” Where formerly its appeal was to Zionists alone it is now almost universal. It is true that it is appeal to the imagination and sympathies rather than to the sense of concrete possibilities but nevertheless it is widespread and keen. There seems to be a feeling that active and large-scale sympathy might bring encouraging surprises, creating a multitude of unforeseen opportunities and converting the impossible into a living source of hope.

He recognized, though, that the situation differed for the Bundists in Poland and did not see “anything unnatural in this,” because their hostility to the Zionists was “due primarily, if not exclusively, to local causes,” to the 17 The  Am Olam  ("Eternal People") was a late nineteenth-century movement among Russian Jews to establish agricultural colonies in America. 18 Abraham Cahan, “Lights and Shades of Commune Life in Palestine,” Forverts, November 19, 1926, English section, 2. 19 “Leading Jewish Writers of Europe and America Debate the Palestine Question,” Forverts, February 28, 1926, English section, 2. 20 Abraham Cahan, “The Color of Life in the Palestine Communes,” Forverts, December 4, 1925, 2. See also Soyer, “Abraham Cahan’s Travels in Jewish Homelands,” 67.

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conflict which the two parties had “on political questions that have absolutely no bearing upon the question of Palestine.” The trip did not make him convinced that the Zionist project had a bright future, but he was happy to find in Palestine “many beautiful things” and did not make a secret of “the admiration and sympathy” that had “invaded his heart.”21 Tsivion, who appreciated Cahan’s emotional reaction to visiting Palestine, called the reader’s attention to an important point. He believed that a sharp line of demarcation separated Palestine from the Land of Israel. While the Land of Israel was for him—and for Cahan—“a bit of romance,” the fairyland of their childhood, “the Holy Land of the sages and Prophets of Israel,” Palestine was “a small, insignificant country, under the yoke of England, inhabited by a backward and impoverished Asiatic people.” He understood why Cahan could not remain emotionally buttoned up, but disagreed with his decision to air his feelings in public and, thus, causing misinterpretations in the Zionist and anti-Zionist circles: the former exaggerated his “Zionism,” whereas the latter denounced him as a sellout.22 In 1936, Vladeck wrote after visiting Palestine: “The Torah which I learned in Cheder, the little Talmud that I learned in the Yeshivah, suddenly returned to my memory as if I had learned it all only yesterday.” It seems also that he had a warm feeling from finding there his old teacher (rebbe) and hearing from him: “If you come to see your old teacher after forty years, you must be religious, because heretics have no memory.”23 However, in 1925, he, in a similar way to Tsivion, wrote that, although “Cahan’s charming descriptive articles” reflected the “‘romance’ between Cahan and Miss Zion” which “did not go beyond a few compliments,” they, nevertheless, made the position of the newspaper “somewhat entangled.” And he warned that one had to be “extremely careful to avoid ‘entangling alliances.’” Two movements now terrorize Jewish life: Communism and Zionism; both are ready to sacrifice the Jewish people on the altar of their fanaticism. Let us formulate the question: Palestine also or Palestine only? Cahan has only said, thus far, Palestine also. Let us beware of saying: Palestine only!24

21 Abraham Cahan, “What the Jews of the World See in the Zionist Movement,” Forverts, November 25, 1925, English section, 2. 22 “Leading Jewish Writers of Europe and America Debate the Palestine Question.” 23 John Herling, “Baruch Charney Vladeck,” 91. 24 “Leading Jewish Writers of Europe and America Debate the Palestine Question.”

Jews on the Land

Lestschinsky, who took part in the debate, wrote, under the title “It Is a Sin for Non-Zionist to Aid Zionist Cause,” that Palestine was “small in area, impoverished, backward,” and simply could not “be made to support more than an insignificant population.” It is the duty of every Jewish socialist to combat this movement in Jewry which spreads false hopes among the Jewish masses, diverts their attention from the problems of daily life and fills their minds and hearts with vain, illusory notions. Under these conditions it is more than wrong-headed, nay, criminal, for a non-Zionist to aid the Zionist cause.25

In the 1920s, Zionism appeared to Lestschinsky as a project even shakier and more pernicious than Communism. He compared Zionists with followers of the seventeenth-century “false messiah” Shabbatai Zvi. Being ready to accept the Zionists’ commitment to building Jewish life in Palestine, Lestschinsky disagreed with those radicals who undermined Jewish life in Diaspora. He wrote: we see how the Zionism keeps ruining the Jewish soul, how it deprives the Jewish masses of their feelings of citizenship, of having birthrights to the country of their residence, and of equality with the surrounding population. We see how the Zionism does not allow the Jewish masses to concentrate their thoughts on local economic, political, and cultural issues and problems. Instead, it exhilarates them with illusions and promises, which can intoxicate but cannot produce results.26

Zalman Wendroff’s Accounts The Soviet colonization project resonated with a broad cross-section of people. Moyshe Katz, who left the Forverts to join the Communist circles, reported in a memorandum written in September 1926 for the Soviet Foreign Office: “no other campaign of the Soviet government has made such an exceptionally good impression there [in the United States] as does the land settlement of Jews.”27 On August 26, 1926, the Forverts informed 25 Jacob Lestschinsky, “It Is a Sin for Non-Zionist to Aid Zionist Cause,” Forverts, March 7, 1926, English section, 2. 26 Estraikh, “Jacob Lestschinsky,” 225. 27 See Gennady Estraikh, “Arcadian Dreams of David Bergelson and His Berlin Circle,” Studia Rosenthaliana 41 (2009): 156.

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readers that it would print six articles by Zalman Wendroff and that they were of a political nature, describing Soviet Jewish colonization from the vantage point of the Communist Party’s Jewish Sections. The editorial note emphasized that the articles would appear in their original form, despite the fact that the Forverts had very little in common with the Communists. From Wendroff ’s 1957 interview given to the Paris Communist Yiddish newspaper Naye prese (New Press), we know that he began to work for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) in 1922, and soon afterwards was invited to write for the New York Yiddish press, first for Der tog and later for the Forverts. He wrote intermittently also for other non-Soviet Yiddish newspapers, most notably the Warsaw daily Moment. Soviet officials, notably at the People’s Commissariat of International Affairs, were mindful of projecting a positive image of Soviet society, so they allowed, and even encouraged, Wendroff to do this. Had this not been the case, his cooperation with foreign newspapers, especially with the Forverts, the archrival of the Frayhayt, simply could not have continued for over a decade.28 By the end of 1924, Wendroff decided—or was told to—leave the JTA. In an open letter published in Der emes, he explained that he did not want to work for an agency that tended to distribute biased information about the Soviet Union. Der emes, however, pointed out in its comment that he did not stop writing for to the Forverts, which was “not better, if not worse than the JTA.”29 In his unique role as a Soviet Yiddish writer working for the foreign press, Wendroff was known among his fellow literati as “Dollar” or “Dollar Correspondent.” In a society where foreign-currency salaries were few and far between, he enjoyed a relatively lavish lifestyle. According to his grandson, His status as foreign correspondent, receptions at Foreign Minister Litvinov’s and the National Business Committee . . . , getting paid in foreign currency, owning a one-family apartment in the center of Moscow—all these were almost unheard of in those times. Sporting a suit “bespoke” at a London tailor’s under his fur-lined coat, swinging a cane, he always looked elegant, smart and capable.30

On March 30, 1923, Cahan wrote one of his numerous instructions to Lestschinsky, sharing his thoughts concerning the material sent by their 28 Estraikh, “Zalman Wendroff,” 512. 29 “A briv in redaktsye,” Der emes, December 28, 1924, 4. 30 Estraikh, “Zalman Wendroff,” 523.

Jews on the Land

local correspondents in the Soviet Union. Skeptical about their trustworthiness, he asked Lestschinsky to instruct them to shun political topics and concentrate on describing mundane details of everyday life in various localities.31 Wendroff, who soon remained the newspaper’s only Soviet correspondent, was happy to oblige. Let alone that it was his forte to be an entertaining writer with a good eye for colorful details. Vladeck admitted in his letter to Wendroff (dated December 14, 1923) that he himself was far from agreeing with everything that we assume here. The attitude that people have here is determined by their feeling rather than thinking. And feeling, as you know, can be a very treacherous thing. Yet I can assure you that, on the tenth floor [of the Forverts building, where Cahan’s and Vladeck’s offices were situated], the attitude to you is very favorable. . . . You are already perceived as one of us and we hope that, with God’s help, you’ll stay with us. The only thing—let’s ask the Almighty to get you eventually more freedom in choosing topics.

No doubt, Vladeck’s mentionings of God were just figures of speech rather than a sign that his old teacher was right about his religiosity. In a letter to Cahan on September 27, 1926, Wendroff summed up his first three and a half years of working for the Forverts, mentioning that only a small number of his articles dealt directly with political issues: As for “politics,” I avoid it as much as it can be avoided. No domain or facet of Soviet life escapes contact with current politics. Therefore, one has to touch on politics while discussing any topic, particularly if the objective is to give clear descriptions, rather than photos, of events and scenes from life. The thing that you call “propaganda” is, in fact, a specific point of view, which is absolutely required. One can’t write from Russia in a different way. I have to tell you that getting Soviet newspapers in New York and reading them there can’t give a comprehensive understanding of Soviet reality. Only a person who lives here can understand the meaning of this or that newspaper article. In all, I can tell you that writing from Soviet Russia for the Forverts is harder than you can imagine it. Many topics are interesting, but they will not find a place in the pages of the Forverts. Other issues can’t be properly discussed. You always have to 31 Ibid., 513–514.

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appreciate the problems, which your Soviet-based contributors encounter in their work.32

For all that, the newspaper was ready to print Wendroff ’s “political” descriptions of the colonization drive. Some of the articles would appear also in the English-language press. Thus, in September 1924, the American Israelite published his piece entitled “The Growth of the Soil” (an allusion to the eponymous title of Kurt Hamsun’s then-popular novel), in which Wendroff praised the “movement toward the soil” for becoming “the growth of the soil that it deserves to be” and providing “the basis for Jewish adjustment to new economic conditions in Eastern Europe.”33 He wrote that “the revolution played a grim joke: on the one hand it offered the Jews complete political and cultural freedom, and on the other—complete economic ruin.”34 In 1926, the Forverts featured a series of Wendroff ’s articles on colonization. The first one, published on August 30, 1926, introduced the reader to the background of the project aimed at turning tens of thousands of Jews to farming. Wendroff disagreed with those who described the colonization drive as a bluff created by the Jewish Communists. In reality, the campaign grew out of a grassroots initiative. He emphasized that there was no real competition between the colonization drives in the Soviet Union and Palestine, because Soviet Jews usually lacked money—over 10,000 rubles— needed for resettling in Palestine. Indeed, in October 1925, Cahan spoke in Jaffa to passengers of the Soviet vessel Lenin, which had brought 361 Jewish emigrants from Odessa. To be allowed to disembark, each of them had to have a sizable amount of money.35 At the same time, even the payment of 300 rubles collected for moving to a farming settlement in Ukraine or Crimea was a hurdle for a third of potential colonists, so their contribution should be reduced. According to Wendroff, Palestine could get a sufficient number of migrants from such countries as Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia, and Zionists leaders were certainly well aware of it. However, they realized that the Soviet colonization project could lighten their political heft and, most importantly, 32 Ibid., 515. 33 Zalman Vendroff [Wendroff], “The Growth of the Soil,” The American Israelite, September 4, 1924, 1. 34 Zalman Wendroff, “The Jews in Soviet Russia,” The American Israelite, June 17, 1926, 1. 35 Abraham Cahan, “Ab. Kahan bashraybt dos onkumen fun a shif keyn Yafo mit yidishe imigrantn fun sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, October 6, 1925, 1, 12.

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affect their fund-raising efforts. Wendroff also mentioned other, non-Zionist opponents of Soviet Jewish colonization, who contended, for instance, that it was neither fair nor safe to move to the land that belonged historically to non-Jewish peasants. Anti-Bolshevik Socialists worried that success of colonization would enhance the influence of Jewish Communists, while nationalists maintained that it would speed up the fading of the traditional patterns of Jewish life. Skeptics predicted that the campaign was doomed to fail anyway because the betterment in economic conditions in urban habitats would result in a dearth of people lured to farming.36 In his second article, Wendroff addressed some arguments of the opponents and skeptics. He dismissed speculation that Soviet rule could founder, triggering a massacre of Jewish colonists by Ukrainian peasants. Let alone that, theoretically at least, shtetl dwellers were hardly better protected than the colonists. Wendroff insisted that the Yiddish language and Jewish traditions were not declining in the newly established colonies. Rather, they had a better chance of survival in the colonies, with their exclusively Jewish population, than in multi-ethnic towns. Significantly, Sabbath still continued to be observed in all colonies. Wendroff ridiculed those who defined support of Soviet Jewish colonization as “un-American” activity, and reminded readers that no one called into question the patriotism of those American capitalists who had made significant investments in the USSR.37 Wendroff listed some organizational problems of colonization. The colonies did not get enough houses, which was one of the reasons why some of the colonists either returned to their shtetls or moved elsewhere. The situation often depended on the form chosen for the farming collective: the commune proved to be a less practical form of collectivization than the cooperative.38 Classified as toilers, the avant-garde, and, therefore, beneficiaries of society, colonists had to do everything themselves; they were not allowed to hire other peasants, even during the harvesting period. Status uplift played a crucial role in the colonization campaign: Jews bracketed together as bourgeois and as such disfranchised (meaning variously 36 Zalman Wendroff, “Vi es halt mit der yidisher kolonizatsye in Rusland,” Forverts, August 30, 1926, 2, 5. 37 Zalman Wendroff, “Vayterdike argumentn far un kegn yidisher kolonizatsye in sovetRusland,” Forverts, September 1, 1926, 7. 38 Zalman Wendroff, “Felern un grayzn in der kolonizatsyons-arbet in Rusland,” Forverts, September 3, 1926, 7.

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disadvantaged) citizens moved to colonies to find solutions for their economic as well as social problems.39 A separate article focused on the November 1926 OZET conference in Moscow, which imbued many people with the belief that the Soviet government sought to build Jewish statehood. In fact, Mikhail Kalinin, the titular head of the Soviet state, spoke about some aspects of Soviet Jewish life, including promising perspectives of colonization, though he did not spell out the word “republic.” Still, Kalinin henceforth became a household name among American Jews.40 For many Soviet Jews, he became “their Jewish prophet as well as their Soviet Little Father. His pronouncements inspired in some of the Jewish intelligentsia a spirit of ‘going into the people’, like the one that moved the Russian liberal intelligentsia a generation before the Revolution.”41 The delegates formed two groups of interpreters of Kalinin’s speech. Some of them contended that he essentially spoke about a Jewish republic in Crimea, whereas their counterparts—who ultimately silenced the enthusiasts of Jewish territorial nation building in the Soviet state— insisted on excluding the word “republic” from the discourse on Soviet Jewry. 42 Some journalists of the Forverts found Wendroff ’s portrayal of colonization misleading. According to Stepan Ivanovich, the Soviet regime had deprived many Jews of their right to live in places more civilized than colonies, where people faced unnecessary suffering. Ivanovich ridiculed the desire of Bolsheviks (and numerous Jewish ideologists) to improve the Jewish nation, making it healthier through farming.43 Vladeck, however, forcefully disagreed with Ivanovich, arguing that his disapproval of the

39 Zalman Wendroff, “Yidishe kolonyes azoy vi zey zaynen un vi es shteln zey for undzere kritiker,” Forverts, September 6, 1926, 2,5; idem, “Itstike lage in der yidisher shtetl in Rusland,” Forverts, September 8, 1926, 9; idem, “Yidn geyen oyf erd-arbet, vayl zey viln broyt un birger-rekht,” Forverts, September 15, 1926, 7. 40 For a panegyric to Kalinin, see, for example, S. Dingal, “Tsen yor president,” Der tog, April 25, 1929, 5. 41 Ben Zion Goldberg, The Jewish Problem in the Soviet Union: Analysis and Solution (New York: Crown Publishers, 1961), 253. 42 Zalman Wendroff, “A ‘yidishe republik’ oder nit key ‘yidishe republik’,” Forverts, December 17, 1926, 4, 7. 43 Stepan Ivanovich, “Iz take kolonozatsye di rikhtike hilf far yidn in Rusland?,” Forverts, November 4, 1926, 4, and November 5, 1926, 4.

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colonies was purely political and ignored the facts that proved without doubt the success of the Soviet Jewish agricultural project.44 In his letter, dated December 11, 1926, Wendroff hailed Vladeck’s article and stressed that, indeed, he regarded the Soviet colonization drive as one of the greatest events in Jewish history. Three days later, on December 14, Wendroff once again wrote to Vladeck, who by that time had arrived in Berlin. He reassured Vladeck that he would get a visa for him to enter the Soviet Union and that there was no need to worry about the functionaries of Soviet Jewish organizations, who in the reality were “not such bandits” as the foreign press represents them. He wrote: “I am sure that you, like many other visitors, will leave our country with a much better opinion about it than you had before your trip, even if your opinion always was quite positive. The air of Soviet Russia has this effect on people.” In effect, Vladeck, at that time, did not go to Russia, but met in Berlin with representatives of Soviet Communists and their opponents, émigré anti-Communists.45 In 1929, the Chicago Daily Tribune, which was invariably in the forefront of anti-Communist ranks of the American press, published articles by Mark Rasumny, a Yiddish journalist from Riga (and from 1940 a Soviet author), who was allowed to visit the Soviet Union. An editorial introduction explained the newspaper’s methodology of gathering information about the Soviet Union: In order that our readers may have at least a measure of news from Russia accurately and impartially presented, we have abandoned our bureau in soviet Russia. For most of the news that American correspondents can obtain in Russia is contemptuously, and rightly so, described as handouts. . . . Unwilling to export at our expense propaganda for the soviet news agency throughout the world, we have adopted our present plan of covering Russia. From time to time we have been able to send our agents through Russia and reproduce exclusively the actual conditions in that country. This procedure may reduce our volume of news from Russia, but the quality is reliable.46

The Forverts, which certainly had qualms about Wendroff ’s material based on “handouts,” would also send its “agents through Russia.” In 1926, 44 Baruch Vladeck, “Faktn vegn der yidisher kolonizatsye in Rusland,” Forverts, November 17, 1926, 5. 45 Baruch Vladeck, “Vladek tsurik fun Eyrope,” Forverts, January 5, 1927, 8. 46 “Covering Russia,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 14, 1929, 12.

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the arrival from Warsaw of the writers Israel Joshua Singer and Hersh David Nomberg made Wendroff vexed. In his letters to Cahan written on September 27 and November 7, 1926, he railed against this practice. He felt mistreated seeing that the visiting writers went to Ukraine and Belorussia, whereas Cahan had refused his request to send him additional money for traveling to locations across the country. Around that time, Wendroff began to worry about the status of his association with the Forverts. In his letter to Vladeck on December 11, 1926, he complained that his articles stopped appearing in the newspaper and reminded Vladeck that he began to write for the Forverts not because he was fishing for the job, but after accepting an offer from Lestschinsky. So, he wanted some sense of certainty about his situation. On March 1, 1927, the Forverts published editorial notes, showing deference to Wendroff: Wendroff is a talented journalist. Indeed, his dispatches and descriptions of contemporary life in the Soviet republic contain colorful pictures and give account of interesting events. Although he lives in Moscow, his correspondence transcends topics of the Russian capital. From time to time he also visits other cities and regions, writing from there for the Forverts. Some time ago, for instance, we published an interesting series of his articles describing spas of the Caucasus and his six long articles about Jewish colonies in Soviet Russia. In the near future, Mr. Wendroff will visit Jewish towns in Soviet Russia and write for us from there. However, Russia is a vast country. Her contemporary life is full of peculiarities and new hues. It provides enough fascinating material for numerous journalistic reflections. Therefore, we did not miss any chance to send a talented writer to Russia. Such occasions happened when Mr. D. Nomberg spent several weeks there and, later, when another gifted writer, [I. J. Singer], made a similar journey.

The same note informed the readers that the newspaper was open to various kinds of materials about the Soviet Union, though it would not publish explicit pro-Soviet or anti-Soviet propaganda.47

47 “Notitsn fun der ‘Forverts’ redaktsye,” Forverts, March 1, 1927, 2.

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Abraham Cahan’s Soviet journey Daniel Soyer, whose research analyzes American Yiddish writers’ trips to the Soviet Union, writes that “[f]rom the mid-1920s on, a visit to the Jewish agricultural colonies in Ukraine and Crimea was practically mandatory for political conscious Jewish tourists.”48 During his 1927 Soviet trip, Cahan also did not avoid this “mandatory” destination. Rosen repeatedly urged him to do it and promised to help him with obtaining a visa, notwithstanding his notoriety as one of the “most inveterate opponents of the USSR,” as the OZET’s periodical Tribuna evreiskoi sovetskoi obshchestvennosti (Tribune of the Jewish Soviet Public) characterized him in its first issue of 1927. The Moscow Der emes “welcomed” him as the editor of the “strikebreaker newspaper” that still carried the slogan “Workers of all countries, unite,” which made it a “brothel with a mezuzah.”49 The New Leader explained that, as “the spearhead in the journalistic end of the fight to eliminate Communist influence in the needle trades unions,” Cahan made up his mind to go to Russia “only after he felt confident that fight had been successfully ended with the defeat of the Communist factions.”50 Rosen kept the promise: the Cahans (his wife accompanied him) could enter Russia and did not face any obstacles in moving around the country and communicating with people. They also did not have problems with extending their stay to three months when Cahan realized that the initial plan to spend in Russia only one month did not allow him “to make a thoroughgoing study of the present regime.” A Forverts editorial extolled Cahan’s expertise in the subject, arguing that by the virtue of his “thorough knowledge of the Russian language and literature” and “a profound sympathy for the Russian masses,” no American journalist was “better qualified to understand and interpret Soviet Russia than Abraham Cahan.”51 Lestschinsky wrote from Berlin, where the Cahans obtained the visas and on July 3, took a train to Moscow via Warsaw, that a broad range of people,

48 Daniel Soyer, “Back to the Future: American Jews visit the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 3 (2000): 141. 49 Soyer, “Abraham Cahan’s Travels in Jewish Homelands,” 69. 50 “Abraham Cahan in Moscow: Trip Surprises Socialist World,” The New Leader, July 9, 1927, 1. 51 “Cahan on Russia,” Forverts, October 23, 1927, English section, 1.

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notably German Socialists and Russian Socialist emigrants, saw Cahan’s Soviet trip as an “event of the highest significance.”52 We do not know who were Rosen’s influential contacts in the Soviet apparatus. One of them could be Lipets-Goldfarb-Petrovsky, who by that time was removed from his position in the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs. Probably, he was seen as a protégé of Trotsky, whose confrontation with Stalin’s group became increasingly pronounced. Even so, he was deemed reliable enough to work at the Comintern. The former Bund leader Moyshe Rafes, who occupied a prominent position in the Comintern, might recommend him for the job. Petrovsky, with papers under the name of A. J. (or D.) Bennett, arrived in England in spring 1924 and replaced another Moscow representative there, arrested in 1922. He also spent some time in France looking after the local Communists, and, generally, traveled all over Europe under various other names. On January 12, 1927 BennettPetrovsky was appointed as the head of the British Landersecretariat, a structural section of the Comintern’s Executive Committee. That same year, on July 8, he became the head of the British-American Landersecretariat, which was in charge of the Communist movement in Great Britain, Ireland, the USA, India, South Africa, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Dutch Indonesia. In February 1928, Petrovsky was elected as a candidate member of the Presidium of the Comintern’s Executive Committee. With this post he reached the peak in his career, which ultimately ended with his arrest and execution in 1937. During Cahan’s visit they met on several occasions.53 Judging by Cahan’s travelogue, serialized in the newspaper in Yiddish and partially in English, he shunned contacts with Soviet Yiddish writers. Encounters with Soviet colleagues left little trace also in Hersh David Nomberg’s and Israel Joshua Singer’s comprehensive travel accounts, serialized in the Forverts in 1927 and later published in book form.54 Singer even did not mention if he had a chance to see his erstwhile bosom friend the poet Peretz Markish, who moved from Poland to the Soviet Union not long ago.

52 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Ab. Kahan, Forverts-redaktor, iz nekhtn opgeforn fun Berlin keyn sovetn-Rusland,” Forverts, July 4, 1927, 1. 53 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 718–719; Gennady Estraikh, “Mnogolikii David Lipets: evrei v russkoi revoliutsii,” Arkhiv evreiskoi istorii 7 (2012): 225–241. 54 Israel Joshua Singer, Nay-Rusland (Vilna: Boris Kletskin, 1928); Hersh David Nomberg, Mayn rayze iber Rusland (Warsaw: Kultur-Lige, 1928).

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Cahan had a chance to communicate with a broad range of people in various places of the country and was convinced that he “succeeded in getting an insight into the inner life of Russia’s teeming population.” Especially as it “was not hard,” because “Russians are a talkative people.” He saw them as people that suffered under the Bolshevik regime, which was “much more interested in the Socialist program of the more or less distant future than the immediate needs of the masses” and was “prepared to let 140,000,000 Russian men and women suffer now, in order that the ruling group, the Bolsheviks, might be enabled to carry out their ambitious program at some future time.” Cahan saw “long queues of hungry, weary people outside the cooperative stores waiting for an opportunity to buy flour, sugar, leather and other necessaries.” Seeing the lack of basic things, which workers and farmers enjoyed in America and Western Europe, he came to conclusion that life in Soviet Russia was drab. At the same time, he praised the Bolsheviks for tackling the rent problem in the cities “in a manner to arouse the utmost admiration. A man pays rent in proportion to his monthly earnings, and workers who earn small wages pay as little as a rouble a month for the same room or rooms for which another would have to pay fifty times as much.” He was pleasantly surprised to see that “people often criticized the government—not only at meeting of workers called for that purpose but also on the street and in cafes.” More than once when he heard a strong disapproval of the regime he even suspected that the person who indulged in criticism so freely was a secret police agent. All the same, his experience of travelling in Russia confirmed his conviction that this essentially peasant country was a wrong site for building a Socialist society, because the economic condition presented “an insuperable barrier to the creation of a Socialist State:” This is the essence of the Marxian position with regard to Russia, and when you are in Russia you realize that Marx was right after all. . . . Notwithstanding the attacks upon the Socialists by the Bolsheviks the Socialists of the world wish them success. Should, however, the Bolshevik experiment be crowned with success it will be a direct refutation of Marxian theory. . . . Russia is fundamentally a different kind of country from the capitalist countries where Marx expected the Social Revolution. Not only the backwardness of the masses stands in the way of the realization of our ideal,

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but the whole structure of Russian society is such that it is futile to expect a real Socialist State in the near future. The spirit of the Russian despotism . . . pervades the atmosphere. Czarism is dead, but despotism still lives in Russia in the kind of Socialism which is in the process of formation. It sounds like an absurd contradiction, yet it is a fact. Only in Russia is Czarist despotism possible as the foundation of a Socialist commonwealth.55

Nonetheless, Jewish colonies made a strong impression on him, and he praised both foreign and Soviet organizations for achieving really remarkable results. He even found warm words for the Jewish Sections of the Soviet Communist Party, which in the early post-revolutionary years “exceeded the parent body in ruthlessness” and “was guilty of frightful crimes against the Jewish population of Russia.” However, all this was “a thing of the past.” The Jewish Communists were “doing everything possible for the Jewish masses under present conditions.” The veteran Bolshevik Shimen (Semen) Dimanshtein, who led the Jewish Commissariat and Jewish Sections of the Communist Party in the early Soviet years, and now chaired the OZET’s Central Board, appeared in Cahan’s narrative as “a zealous worker for the Jewish people.”56 After visiting colonies, Cahan wrote that when he “saw conditions with my own eyes, heard the pitiful tales from the lips of the colonists themselves,” his “heart was filled with great sympathy for the colonization work. If every American Jew could see the colonies there would then be no difficulty in getting the necessary funds for continuing and expanding the work.”57 He realized that the Jews who flocked to the new colonies sought “not so much an easy or comfortable living as a haven of refuge, an escape from the chaos which encompasses them. . . . In the pre-revolutionary days these people would have mocked at the idea of becoming Jewish ‘peasants’—with the peasants’ circumscribed outlook on life as well as limited opportunities. They preferred to engage in trade and commerce in the small towns.” The revolution brought a radical shake-up in their life. “Perhaps more than any other group the Jews were deprived of their customary way of earning a 55 Abraham Cahan, “My Impressions of Soviet Russia,” Forverts, October 30, 1927, English section, 2. 56 Abraham Cahan, “How Jews Make a Living in Russia,” Forverts, November 27, 1927, English section, 2–3. 57 Abraham Cahan, “Jewish Colonization in Soviet Russia a Success,” Forverts, November 6, 1927, English section, 2.

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livelihood.” Consequently, colonization gave them a unique chance to carve for themselves a niche in the new economy.58 Cahan visited several old colonies, trying to take the measure of the situation in such Jewish communities. One of the colonies, Seydemenukha (“quiet field” in Hebrew), was established in 1807, but in 1927 it was renamed Kalinindorf (“Kalinin-village”). That same year, it became the center of a Jewish national district, one of the five districts of this kind finally established in Ukraine and Crimea. Cahan found that older residents of Kalinindorf were “red hot” Lubavitcher Hasidim. In general, the colonists were “as a rule, stalwart men” who looked and behaved like peasants, but not like the Russian peasants, rather like the German colonists. In fact, the Germans lived peacefully as neighbors of the Jews and were fluent in Yiddish.59 The Jewish colonies of Crimea made “a better impression outwardly” than the old colonies and the new colonies built near the old ones. Cahan also liked that the government turned Crimea in a mass resort for ordinary people.60 When he visited the colony of Rosenwald, he felt that the decision to give the name of an American millionaire to a Crimean settlement was “somewhat incongruous for the Soviet government.” However, he was particularly disappointed with the failure to organize cooperative farming. It hardly needs to be pointed out that theoretically cooperatives are very desirable. But . . . the farmer cooperatives fell to pieces. The farmers were not devoted toward one another. They fell out among themselves. Everyone suspected his neighbor. Everyone regarded the other farmer as a shirker. No one wanted to do his own share of work, waiting for the next man to do it. Public spirited citizens were few and far between. The most curious thing in this connection is the fact that the moment the cooperatives were abandoned the individual farmers displayed genuine friendliness and hospitality toward their neighbors.

Still, Cahan emphasized, this failure “should not be interpreted to mean that human nature and the cooperative system are incompatible.” Thus, Zionist cooperatives were doing well in Crimea. He visited one of 58 Abraham Cahan, “Are Jewish Colonies a Success?,” Forverts, May 8, 1928, English section, 2–3. 59 Abraham Cahan, “The Century-Old Kherson Colonies,” Forverts, May 13, 1928, English section, 2. 60 Abraham Cahan, “Vacationing in Crimea,” Forverts, May 27, 1928, English section, 2.

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the Zionist settlements, Tel Hai, where “Hebrew is spoken in the colony. The children know no other language except Hebrew. . . . The colonists are passionately devoted to one another. Just such devotion as I had found in the communistic colonies in Palestine.” He went to one more colony run by Zionists, and found an admirable state of affair there. It surprised him to see pigs in these Jewish villages. “At first this seemed a bit queer, what does a Jewish farmer want with pigs. After the practical aspect of the subject was explained to me I became reconciled to the sight of the pigs.”61 A former member of the Tel Hai commune reminisced later how their pig-breeders had been awarded the first prize at the all-Crimean agricultural exhibition, where their unusually larger and fecund Yorkshire pigs, presented to them by the JDC, became an object of general attention. Tel-Hai was the largest Crimean commune created by the Halutz (Pioneer) Zionist youth organization whose activities were tolerated by Soviet authorities in the 1920s.62 Later these communes were transformed into “normal” Soviet Jewish settlements, and their Zionist names would be changed too. Thus, Tel-Hai, whose name commemorated the founder of the Halutz movement, Joseph Trumpeldor, who met with tragic death while defending the Galilee settlement of Tel-Hai in 1920, received the more appropriate name Oktyabr, or October, honoring the October 1917 revolution.63 On November 1, 1928, the Tribuna evreiskoi sovetskoi obshchestvennosti wrote that a twenty-yearold graduate from an agricultural college was responsible for breeding pigs in Oktyabr, and that—reflecting the difficult Soviet-British relations of the time—he gave his pigs names of English lords. Foreign guests usually did not miss out on visiting Tel-Hai. In 1926, Bergelson tried to persuade the young people to take part in the Soviet colonization project rather than to stack “ticks that wink[ed] at Zion.” Although the halutzim had achieved impressive agricultural results, Bergelson’s pen was charged with bile when he wrote about these “children of bourgeoisie,” for whom Crimea was only a staging post so that they were not interested in helping the new Soviet Jewish colonies. Singer’s report about the halutzim completely contradicted Bergelson’s portrayal: Tel Hai, Singer thought, was the best Crimean Jewish agricultural settlement he had seen. Amusingly, 61 Abraham Cahan, “The Rosenwald Colony,” Forverts, June 3, 1928, English section, 2. 62 See Ziva Galili, “The Soviet Experience of Zionism: Importing Soviet Political Culture to Palestine,” Journal of Israeli History 24, no. 1 (2005): 1–33. 63 See A. Deman, “Merderishe onfaln oyf yidishe kolonistn in Palestine,” Forverts, April 14, 1920, 3.

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Singer was particularly impressed by the halutzim’s achievements in pig breeding.64 Cahan also found impressive some aspects of Soviet life, but he did not have any illusion that the whole communist system was wrong and the dictatorship of the proletariat was “as bad as if it were a dictatorship of the aristocracy”. Upon his return to New York, he characterized the Soviet leadership as “a bunch of fanatics,” who were “in a dream, a phantasmagoria,” though—he contended—they, especially such “a sensible man” as Stalin, might “mean well.”65

Sholem Asch—An Unwanted Guest On May 9, 1928, Moscow saw the arrival of Sholem Asch, by then the most laureled Yiddish writer, whose works appeared in print and on stage in many countries, both in original and in translations.66 Kornei Chukovskii, a close friend of Vladimir Jabotinsky in their Odessa youth and later an influential Soviet man-of-letters, wrote before World War I: “Sholem Asch is best known to us. To me he seems a magician, an enchanted person. I am happy to reread a thousand times his ‘poem of Jewish life in Poland,’ The Shtetl.”67 An avid globetrotter, Asch became an American citizen in 1920, but he frequented Poland where he was born in 1880, and spent substantial amounts of time in France. Not long before his trip to the Soviet Union, the Association of Yiddish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw elected him as their honorary president. A distinguished and pretty affluent writer, he derived income from various sources, notably as a salaried contributor to the Forverts. In his civic activity, Asch played a visible role in the JDC, which sponsored, through its Agro-Joint affiliate, numerous projects in the Soviet Union.68 Asch did not belong to any political movement, though ideals of social justice remained invariably dear to him. According to Shloyme 64 Estraikh, In Harness, 87–88. 65 “Soviet Government Condemned by Cahan: Jewish Daily Forward Editor on Return from Russia Says the Leaders are Visionaries,” The New York Times, November 19, 1927, 17. 66 “Gekumen keyn Moskve Sholem Ash,” Der emes, May 10, 1928, 4. 67 Evgeniia A. Ivanova, Chukovskii i Zhabotinskii: istoriia vzaimootnoshenii v tekstakh i kommentariiakh (Moscow: Mosty kul´tury, 2005), 115. 68 These projects are analysed in Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen, Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

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Rosenfeld, his long-time literary secretary, Asch was a man of moods and “could be a Bundist in the morning and a Zionist in the evening.”69 His political oscillations colored his attitude to the Soviet Union and, viceversa, Soviet ideologists’ attitude to him. The Russian writer Vladimir Lidin (Gomberg) later recalled that when he met Asch in Moscow, the foreign guest cut an impressive figure: “a fairly handsome, if portly, self-assured middle-aged man, well-known in many countries and even famous in some of them. Although he made his first steps in literature in Poland, a real recognition came to him in Russia.” Lidin was a young man when he read, in a Russian translation, “the prose-poem The Shtetl by Sholem Asch, which came out in the [St. Petersburg] Shipovnik Publishing House. . . . His play God of Vengeance entered the repertoire of many theatres in Russia, and one of Sholem Asch’s plays was staged at the [St. Petersburg] Komissarzhevskaya Theatre.”70 A particular success enjoyed Max Reinhardt’s staging of God of Vengeance in Berlin, in 1910, with Rudolph Schildkraut starring as the owner of the brothel Yekl Shapshovitsh, whose family is central in the play. In 1923, Schildkraut directed God of Vengeance as a Broadway production, which caused a widely publicized scandal following the indictment of the troupe for showing a play “which would tend to the corruption of the morals of youth or others.”71 Socialists and even Communists received the play rather differently. Thus, when Schildkraut once again put on the play, this time in Yiddish, Shachno Epstein, then the coeditor of the Frayhayt, wrote that the play had clearly demonstrated that Asch’s creativity had reached a new level, characterized by renouncing “the idealization of the moss-covered past.”72 On the eve of his Soviet trip, Asch met with Solomon Mikhoels and Benjamin Zuskin, the two leading actors of the Moscow Yiddish Theater, which was on a tour in Germany. (Soon, following the decision of Alexander Granovsky, the troupe’s founding director, to stay abroad, Mikhoels would 69 Shloyme Rosenfeld, Sholem Ash fun der noent (Miami: Shoulzon, 1958), 75. 70 Vladimir G. Lidin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3 (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1974), 489. 71 Ben Siegel, The Controversial Sholem Asch: An Introduction to His Fiction (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976), 38–40; Harley Erdman, “Jewish Anxiety in ‘Days of Judgement’: Community Conflict, Antisemitism, and the God of Vengeance Obscenity Case,” Theatre Survey 40, no. 1 (1999): 51–74. 72 Shachno Epstein, ‘“Gots nekome’ un undzere naye gots straptshes,” Frayhayt, January 13, 1925, 3.

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become the head of the theatre. The role of Yekl Shapshovitsh was Mikhoels’s first significant piece of work in his acting career.)73 They met during a dinner at the Berlin apartment of David Bergelson. Zuskin described this meeting: “We met, got into conversation with him. Asch said literary the following: ‘. . . No, I don’t like your theater. It’s not a Jewish theater. You make fun, mock at everything Jewish, everything that is dear to me,’ and so on in the same vein. We parted very coldly.”74 David Eynhorn, who lived in Paris but paid occasional visits to Berlin, heard Bergelson talking to Asch not long before the latter went to Russia. Conceivably, this could be the same dinner with Mikhoels and Zuskin among the guests. Asch asked Bergelson, who visited the Soviet Union in 1926, what he should anticipate from meeting Moyshe Litvakov and other pundits of Soviet Yiddish culture. Bergelson, Asch’s old friend or rather a rival, told him a coarse parable about a ritual allegedly practiced at the Persian shah’s court: a person accused of committing an offence would be brought to a room full of gifts of nature and invited to choose any fruit available. The poor devil did not know that the selected fruit would be forced into his body through the anus. Bergelson joked that he was relatively lucky, because his choice had fallen on a pomegranate, but he had preordered a pumpkin for Asch.75 In fact, Bergelson detailed his experience of being subjected to a peculiar act of affable welcoming, which came combined with public humiliation. He even joked that on the eve of his first public event in Moscow he spent some time before mirror, swearing at himself in order to be ready for the inevitable grilling.76 This mixed hospitality reflected, first, the profound sense of alienation between Soviet and non-Soviet intellectuals, and, second, the inferiority complex widespread among Soviet Yiddish writers and critics, who insisted time and again that they, rather their foreign counterparts, had achieved success in creating literature of high quality. Moyshe Litvakov, editor-in-chief of Der emes, insisted that Soviet literary circle ought to impose its hegemony upon the entire domain of Yiddish literature. 73 Moisei Belen´kii, “Zhizn´ i tvorchestvo Sholoma Asha,” in Sholom Ash [Sholem Asch], Liudi i bogi: izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1966), 6. 74 Vladislav V. Ivanov, GOSET: politika i iskusstvo, 1919–1928 (Moscow: GOSET, 2007), 104–106, 149, 376. 75 “Dovid Eynhorn vegn der geshikhte mit Sholem Ash in Moskve,“ Forverts, June 23, 1928, 3. 76 Gennady Estraikh, “David Bergelson: From Fellow Traveller to Soviet Classic,” Slavic Almanach 7, no. 10 (2001): 204.

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The number of literary works or even their “formally assessed quality” did not play, according to him, a crucial role in order to fulfill this task. Instead, Litvakov believed that “a new manner, new style, new direction” were the factors that would “ultimately bring the quantity and the quality.”77 Asch came to Moscow as an official guest rather than as a tourist. His colleagues on the Forverts usually did not get the red-carpet treatment and had to be satisfied with arranging their trips through one of the agencies linked with the Soviet state-run Agency Intourist—the travel bureau of the New York-based Amalgamated Bank, whose advertisements published in the newspaper (for instance, on May 1, 1928) hailed the trips as inexpensive, “affordable to everyone,” opportunities to see Soviet Russia. Asch’s elite status was a result of the recommendation of Maxim Gorky, who himself returned to the Soviet Union in May 1928, thus responding to Stalin’s invitation and bringing to an end the period of his life in emigration. A photo of Gorky and Asch standing in Red Square in Moscow appeared in print scores of times, confirming the words of the American Yiddish poet Aron Glantz-Leyeles that Asch “always knew, where and with whom to be photographed.”78 A bond of longstanding friendship or, better yet, mutual respect, linked Asch and Gorky. In 1918, when the press circulated the rumor of Gorky’s death, Asch wrote a recollection of their meeting, which took place in December 1907, when Asch went to Capri, the then place of Gorky’s residence.79 Earlier, in April 1906, when Gorky came to New York, Morris Hillquit and Abraham Cahan welcomed him at the port. Before, during and after Gorky’s American trip, the Forverts run numerous articles on Gorky.80 In 1922, the newspaper published an interview, which Gorky, who sojourned in Berlin, gave to Asch. Gorky blamed Jewish Bolsheviks— “irresponsible striplings, rather than all of them”—on “defiling sacred places of the Russian people.” This interview elicited a mixed reaction: Zionists 77 Moyshe Litvakov, In umru (Moscow: Emes, 1926), 27. 78 Aaron Glanz-Leyeles, “Maksim Gorki un Sholem Ash,” Inzikh 5, no. 2 (1936): 61. 79 Sholem Asch, “Maksim Gorki,” Forverts, July 30, 1918, 5. See also “Maksim Gorki geshtorbn,” Forverts, July 27, 1918, 1. It seems that Asch’s article wrongly dates the year of their first meeting as 1906. Cf. Мikhail Agursky and Margarita Shklovskaia, Iz literaturnogo naslediia: Gor´kii i evreiskii vopros (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986), 14, 124–125. 80 See, for example, Agursky and Shklovskaia, Iz literaturnogo naslediia, 451–456; Steven Cassedy, To the Other Shore: The Russian Jewish Intellectuals Who Came to America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 139–140.

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agreed with Gorky, while Jewish Communists charged him with harboring anti-Semitic prejudices.81 The stir caused by the interview did not affect the relationship between Asch and Gorky. Significantly, Asch came as a guest of Soviet Russian writers rather than his Yiddish colleagues, whose ideological pundits, most notably Litvakov, disapproved of the “bourgeois novelist.” In particular, they castigated him for writing an open letter to Marshal Józef Piłsudski, whose coming to power in Poland, in May 1926, had earned Moscow’s opprobrium of being a reactionary coup d’état. Asch, on the contrary, characterized Piłsudski as “the only contemporary Polish hero, who personifies the honorary aspirations and typical traits of the Polish nation.”82 At the same time, Litvakov and other Communist functionaries working in the relatively narrow domain of Jewish cultural, propagandist, and administrative activities, were keenly aware that they had to take into consideration the opinion of more influential circles in the Soviet apparatus as well as of cultural figures in favor with the Kremlin. In 1928, Tribuna evreiskoi sovetskoi obshchestvennosti (no. 11, p. 25) published a note entitled “Sholem Asch’s oeuvre in Russian” reporting that the combined state and joint-stock publishing house “Zemlia i Fabrika” (Land and Factory), which was supervised by Gorky, signed a contract with Asch to produce eight volumes of his writings.83 Ultimately only four volumes came out, which, after all, still contrasted strikingly with the lack of Soviet book editions of Asch’s works in Yiddish.84 The Forverts featured a report describing episodes of Asch’s Moscow sojourn. The report appeared as an anonymous “letter from Moscow” and was almost undoubtedly authored by Zalman Wendroff.85 He wrote that local Jewish communist ideologists initially were not sure how to treat the guest: 81 For an analysis of this interview and its associated events, see Agursky and Shklovskaia, Iz literaturnogo naslediia, 303–312. 82 Sholem Asch, “An ofener briv tsu marshal Pilsudski,” Haynt, October 22, 1926, 5. 83 Viktor E. Kel´ner, Ocherki po istorii russko-evreiskogo knizhnogo dela vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX v. (St. Petersburg: Rossiskaia natsional´naia biblioteka, 2003), 225. 84 The volumes that came out were the following: vol. 2, Mot´ka-vor (Motke the Thief, 1929); vol. 3, Diadia Mozes (Uncle Moses, 1929); vol. 5, Put´ k sebe (The Way to Oneself, 1930); vol. 7, Mat´ (The Mother, 1929 and 1930)—see Viktor E. Kel´ner and Dmitri A. Elyashevich, eds., Literatura o evreiakh na russkom iazyke, 1890–1947 (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 1995), 448. 85 “Vos es hot pasirt mit Sholem Ashn in Moskve,” Forverts, June 5, 1928, 5.

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on the one hand, Sholem Asch is the great or even the greatest contemporary Yiddish writers; on the other hand, he is a conspicuous nationalist. . . . As a result, none of the Yiddish litterateurs came to meet Asch at the railway station. He was welcomed there by a representative of VOKS, or AllUnion Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. There was also a representative of the All-Russian Writers’ Association, and some of Asch’s friends and acquaintances came, but not even one of the Yiddish writers showed up.

Ideologically related writers received a strikingly different welcome in Moscow. For instance, in six months after the lukewarm reception of Asch, a commission established to celebrate the visit of Abraham Reisen, who at that time collaborated with the Communist Frayhayt, included representatives from the Moscow City Council, Moscow Department of People’s Education, central bureaus of the Jewish Sections of Communist Party and the Young Communist League, People’s Commissariat of Education, Jewish sectors at the Communist University of the Peoples of the West and the Pedagogical Faculty of the Second Moscow State University, Jewish Scientific Society, societies of Friends of Jewish Theatre and Friends of Jewish Music, Moscow Jewish club Communist, OZET, ORT, newspaper Der emes, bureau of Moscow worker correspondents, Moscow and Russian associations of proletarian writers, Federation of Soviet writers’ associations (including All-Russian Writers’ Association), Yiddish schools in Marina Roshcha (Moscow neighbourhood) and Malakhovka (Moscow outskirt), Young Pioneers Club No. 2, Central Jewish Library, and two predominantly Jewish artisanal cooperatives.86 This list, which conspicuously excludes religious bodies, illustrates the organizational structure of contemporaneous Jewish life in Moscow. Wendroff wrote that, in spite of the coolness of the “official” reception, Asch was well received even by the “extreme left” writers. Right on the next day following his arrival, Yiddish writers of all hues and tendencies, from the most left ones to the most traditional ones, began to stream to his hotel. The meetings were very cordial. Notwithstanding their extreme leftiness, the young writers still regard Asch as their teacher in

86 “Tsu der bagegenish fun Avrom Reyzen,” Der emes, November 30, 1928, 1; “Avrom Reyzen gekumen keyn Moskve: di bagegenish afn vokzal,” Der emes, December 8, 1928, 1.

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literature. Each of them considered it their duty—and honor—to bring him their works. . . .

The governing body of the OZET found a way of putting the guest to good use, by inviting him to take part in the drawing ceremony of OZET’s first lottery, which took place on May 12 and 13 in the building of the Moscow Yiddish Theater. This troupe, still on a European tour, performed Asch’s plays in its early period, when it was based in Petrograd. Soon after moving to Moscow, the young theater marked the III Congress of the Communist International (June 1921) with staging God of Vengeance for its delegates. The much-talked-of play remained in the troupe’s repertoire in several coming years. Thus, in March 1924 it was shown to members of the Moscow Jewish club Communist.87 In Moscow, in the foyer of the theater, filled by workers and OZET activists from Moscow and other towns, the ceremonial part of the drawing began with a speech delivered by Nikolai Semashko, the People’s Commissar of Public Health, who “emphasized the role played by the Soviet public in providing aid to Jewish toilers.”88 Asch, who also addressed the audience, said inter alia: Abroad, people hear tall stories that the Soviet regime is infected with antiSemitism. It is for the first time in my life that I face a Jewish event whose participants are both Jews and non-Jews. In noble travails of toil, Jews have formed bonds with other peoples, and this is the best safeguard for work and peace among all peoples.89

Asch’s words made a strong impression on Wendroff, who informed his readers that numerous invited guests from various corners of the Soviet Union, including a representative of a military garrison stationed in the town of Bryansk, cheered the Yiddish writer “with loud applause, which pleasantly affected him. In contrast with many foreign visitors, he did not make a declaration of love to Communism or the Soviet Union. At the same time, he spoke very enthusiastically about Jewish colonization [in the Soviet Union].”

87 “Meldung,” Der emes, March 20, 1924, 4. 88 “Pervyi den´ tirazha loterei OZET,” Izvestiia, May 13, 1928, 4; “Rozygrysh OZETloterei,” Izvestiia, May 15, 1928, 4. 89 Y. S-m, “Der tirazh fun der gezerd-loterey,” Der emes, May 13, 1928, 4.

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On that intense day, the main winning tickets were drawn: a threeroom house/apartment in any area of the USSR; forty-five Soviet bonds of the 1926 issue; two trips to the United Sates; two full equipment sets for an artisanal workshop; a new farmstead in a Jewish agricultural settlement. Other prizes included typewriters, volumes of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, holidays in Crimea and Caucasus, and trips to Jewish agricultural colonies in Ukraine and Crimea. Pupils of the Marina Roshcha Yiddish school were pulling winning numbers from the lottery drum. Some days later it became known that, while the winning ticket for a three-room house/apartment remained unsold, both American trips had winners: a person called Rabinovich who worked at the Moscow office of the shipping agency Sovtorgflot, and a twelve-year-old Russian girl from the Ukrainian town of Kremenchug. One of artisanal workshop sets went to a resident of the town of Ganja in Azerbaijan.90 Wendroff wrote in his report about other events of Asch’s Moscow sojourn: The next day, Russian writers gave a reception in honor of Asch. Well-known Russian writers, such as Leonid Leonov, Boris Pilnyak, Efim Zozulya, Aleksei Svirskii, Abram Efros and Alexander Iakovlev, warmly welcomed him in the Herzen House [on Tverskoi Boulevard], where the club of the All-Russian Writers’ Association is situated. . . . Everything went wonderful—the dinner and the speeches. I think that Asch made a mistake deciding to speak “in Russian.” Let alone that this had a rather tangential relation to the Russian language. In reality, he spoke a mixture of Russian, Polish and Yiddish, inserting words from English and French. It was Asch’s Esperanto, with his peculiar accent and one-of-a-kind grammar. If I were him, I would rather speak in Yiddish, with an interpreter. Nonetheless, it was a minor thing. At the end of the day, this kind of “Russian,” spoken by a “foreign” writer, had its charm. Not to mention that everyone could understand what he wanted to say.

Lidin also mentioned the idiosyncrasy of Asch’s Russian, but he hurried to stress that “it was a speech of a deeply moved and excited person, so no one paid attention where he placed the stress or whether he used syntactic rules correctly.” Lidin remembered that the guest became 90 “Ver hot gevunen a rayze keyn Amerike,” Der emes, May 18, 1928, 4; “A rayze keyn Amerike,” Der emes, May 20, 1928, 4; “Di groyse gevinsn in der ‘gezerd-loterey’,” Der emes, June 6, 1928, 4.

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particularly emotional when the prominent Soviet journalist Mikhail Koltsov (Fridlyand) presented him copies of the recently published Russian editions of Asch’s books.91 On May 15, the OZET sponsored a tea party reception to honor the unwanted guest, thrust upon them by Gorky. It was conducted entirely in Yiddish in the foyer of the Yiddish theater, and on the face of it everything seemed to be going smoothly, at least in the beginning. The opening welcome came from the chairman of the OZET’s Central Board Shimen Dimanshtein. The poets Aron Kushnirov and Izi Kharik, the prose writer Shmuel Godiner, and the critics Isaac Nusinov and Yekhezkel Dobrushin spoke about Asch’s literary work. In its report on the event, Der emes noted that Asch reproached those who failed to support the Soviet Jewish colonization and that the audience thunderously applauded his story of visiting the Moscow Jewish pioneer (Soviet scout) club. The newspaper wrote that the foreign literary celebrity praised the club for training the teenagers how to deal with guns, seeing in it a sign that “the Soviet state will never expire.” Yet, Asch later indicated that his words had been wrongly interpreted: he admired the teenagers’ readiness to defend the Jewish population.92 What the Moscow newspaper failed to mention was that the reception ended with a scandal, which had nothing to do with the real or alleged misquoting of Asch’s words about Jewish pioneers. The impetus for the scandal occurred in the middle of the event, when Asch lost his temper, though (according to Boris Smolar, the Moscow correspondent of the JTA) he tried to put himself in the mood of “listening, watching and being silent” and, at first, he really did not show any reaction to the speeches of Soviet functionaries. Dimanshtein’s statement that writers should use Yiddish as “a means rather than an aim in itself ” might faze him, but he swallowed the words. When the turn came for Yiddish writers and critics to make their contribution to the speeches part of the reception, those who knew Asch well enough realized, seeing the crooked smile spreading across his face, that every address added fuel to his growing anger and that he was getting less and less able to contain himself.93 91 Lidin, Sobranie sochinenii, 490–491. Gorky wrote that Asch spoke Russian “very badly” (preskverno)—see Agursky and Shklovskaia, Iz literaturnogo naslediia, 126. 92 “A glezl tey lekoved Sholem Ashn,” Der emes, May 17, 1928, 4; “Tsum intsident Litvakov-Sholem Ash,” Haynt, May 27, 1928, 3. 93 Boris Smolar, “Der skandal oyfn banket fun Sholem Ashn in Moskve,” Haynt, May 22, 1928, 3.

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Among the about two hundred people at the tea party in Asch’s honor was Wendroff, who described the event for the Forverts: Certainly, no other Yiddish writer received such a reception. Among those present at the banquet were all who happened to be in Moscow at the time— Yiddish litterateurs and journalists, Jewish scholars and, generally, the crème de la crème among Soviet Jewish activists, from people profoundly steeped in [Jewish] tradition to the most prominent Jewish Communists, who were somehow associated with the Jewish colonization or Yiddish literature. It already has become an established tradition that an important guest must be first of all somewhat “put in order.” An honor of this kind is in store only for those who are deemed friendly to the Soviet Union and the work conducted among its Jewish population. As for enemies, there is no communication with them at all. Welcome guests receive great homage, but also a dressing down for actions incongruous with Communist views. This happened to Sholem Asch too. People listed his high creative accomplishments, hailed to heaven his great talent. . . . At the same time, the speakers voiced their grievances about his nationalist “deviations” and his statements made in the capacity of a civic activist, and so on. I have to say that the bitter pills were wrapped in gold leaves: everything was said in a friendly manner and exceedingly politely, without attacking him personally. Some of the speeches, for instance the one by the poet Aron Kushnirov, were truly hearty and moving, though a couple of times Kushnirov did not miss the opportunity to ‘throw the  truth’  into Asch’s face—in the way he understood it. Asch did not have a habit of listening to such speeches of welcome. It was clear that he took much to heart the critical remarks that sounded particularly harsh. Still, everything went peacefully until Litvakov took the floor. By the way, Litvakov was scheduled to be the last speaker before Asch’s responding speech. Litvakov is able to have a dig at someone regardless whether the person deserves it or not. Yet his criticism, I think, was not sharper than what has been said by the previous speakers.

All the same, according to Boris Smolar, Litvakov’s words were sharp enough to infuriate Asch. For instance, he said: “Asch is really a talented writer, but his problem is that he rates his talent even higher than other people do it.” The guest of honor’s anger turned into rage when Litvakov

Jews on the Land

mentioned Asch’s open letter to Piłsudski. Wendroff chronicled this moment in his “anonymous letter”: [W]hen Litvakov touched on Asch’s letter to Piłsudski and added that in Poland it apparently did not make such a strong impression as it did here, in Soviet Russia, Asch jumped up from his seat, banged his fist on the table and shouted out: “Either Litvakov stops talking immediately, or I am going to leave this hall!” . . . I am skipping the details of this unpleasant incident. I’ll state only the following: this could evolve into a huge public scandal if the chair [of the reception], Rachmiel Weinshtein, and—astonishingly—Litvakov, known for his biting character, did not show restraint.

Boris Smolar praised Aaron Weinshtein, formerly a prominent Bundist (a.k.a. Rachmiel) and now one of the major figures in the OZET, who managed to somewhat pacify Asch and, generally, to lower the temperature of the conflict. (According to Asch’s account of the events on that day, Weinshtein and Dimanshtein accompanied him on his way to the hotel and assured him that Litvakov behaved “not in accordance with the party line.”)94 Litvakov discontinued his talk, noting that he would not like to aggravate further his clash with the guest. He promised, nevertheless, to use Der emes for explaining his opinion on Asch’s writings. In his concluding remark to the audience, Asch, who was never shy of controversy, stressed that he had nothing to do with Communism and did not see any validity in the theory of class struggle. He considered the unity of the Jewish nation as the theoretical foundation for his creative work. To rub it in, he thereupon explained the aim of his Soviet trip: “Russia did not interest me before the emergence of Jewish colonies. Now, when you are building a new life on land, I want to have a look at what is happening here. But, mind you, I am interested in the Jewish life that is being constructed here, and not in the issues of class transformation.” Hersh Smolar (no relation to Boris Smolar), soon to be sent to Poland as a Comintern agent, also remembered and described the Asch-Litvakov clash. In the late 1920s, Smolar periodically took part in meetings of the Central Bureau of the Party’s Jewish Sections, headed by Alexander Chemerisky. Among the bureau’s members was Maria Frumkin, formerly 94 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Sholem Ash zogt, Litvakov hot gehapt a portsye fun zayne khaveyrim komunistn far baleydikn im,” Forverts, June 18, 1928, 1.

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a prominent Bund leader, widely known as Comrade Esther, and now rector of the Comintern’s Communist University for the Peoples of the West, where at the Yiddish department Smolar then studied. The Central Bureau had discussed the issue of Sholem Asch twice. First— how to welcome him. Chemerisky and Esther emphasized the semi-official nature of Sholem Asch’s visit (Maxim Gorky initiated his invitation) and the imperative of showing tact and even friendship to him, notwithstanding all the ideological problems associated with his writings and our disagreements with his political views. . . . Litvakov got the assignment to treat Sholem Asch in a delicate manner, though the bureau members knew very well that Litvakov felt himself in his element when he had a chance to get even with his ideological opponent or a writer, whose work and views were not to his liking. . . . The second meeting of the Central Bureau left an imprint in my memory as the stormiest one. Chemerisky, who was hard of hearing, generally spoke loudly. During that meeting, his attitude to the scandal and possible repercussions found its expression in such a shouting stream of words that everyone prepared to hear him putting a motion to expel Litvakov from the bureau. However, this did not happen. Then Esther spoke and, while she was doing it, Litvakov was a sorry sight.95

On May 20, Der emes reported that Asch had left Moscow for a trip to Jewish colonies. The trip lasted two weeks during which he visited colonies in Crimea as well as in the Kherson and Krivoy Rog districts of Ukraine. Although it happened to be a bad harvest year in the European south of the USSR, the guest came back to Moscow carrying a positive impression from what he had seen. The colonists with whom he spoke appeared satisfied with their conditions of life under the Soviet government and thanked the state and the foreign sponsors for the help they had provided. Asch promised to inform American Jews that every cent, invested by them into the Soviet projects, had been used for good causes. He expressed hope that the Jewish colonization would impede assimilation and facilitate preservation of Yiddish. He also visited several shtetls, where he found Jews who vegetated in misery being ill-equipped to find a place in the new order.96 95 Hersh Smolyar, Fun ineveynik (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Peretz, 1978), 288–290. 96 “A shmues mit Sholem Ashn vegn zayn rayze ibern ratnfarband,” Der emes, June 12, 1928, 3.

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Upon his return to Moscow, Asch spoke about his skirmish with Litvakov. The Tribuna evreiskoi sovetskoi obshchestvennosti cited his words: “I have to make a statement. I am truly very sorry about the incident during the evening reception given by OZET before my leaving for colonies. . . . Partly it had to do with my spirited temper, but in some measure the other part of the conflict precipitated it.”97 Later, already in Berlin and talking with Lestschinsky, Asch countered that he was misquoted and felt sorry for the incident caused by Litvakov’s provocation.98 By the end of June 10, Asch departed from Moscow.99 The first half of the day, which was Sunday, he spent with Gorky. They went together to the Red Square (where the memorable photograph was taken) to see a sports parade. The Moscow evening newspaper, Vecherniaia Moskva, wrote that Asch was overwhelmed by the event and, yielding to the emotion he felt, said that by the end of his Soviet sojourn he turned into an “almost hundred-percent Communist.”100 On his way to Paris Asch made a stop in Warsaw and shared there his impressions with Israel Joshua Singer. Asch did not forget his quarreling with Litvakov and spoke about the Moscow editor as the only person who treated him badly during his Soviet trip. In general, however, he was happy to see the success of Jewish settlements, established and developed with the help of the JDC. The settlers’ life remained difficult, but they had roofs above their heads and, though it did not appear as a land of plenty, they did not suffer hunger. At the same time, Asch spotted things that did not sit well with him. He found it disheartening to see the breakdown of the Jewish cultural environment, though many elements of it—most notably the shtetl and synagogues—endured under the new regime. At the same time, he doubted that hundreds of Yiddish-medium Soviet schools could pose a serious obstacle for assimilation.101

97 “Sholom Ash o evreiskikh koloniiakh v Krymu i na Ukraine,” Tribuna sovetskoi evreiskoi obshchestvennosti 11 (1928): 9–12. 98 Lestschinsky, “Sholem Ash zogt, Litvakov hot gehapt a portsye fun zayne khaveyrim komunistn far baleydikn im.” 99 “Sholem Ash opgeforn,” Der emes, May 12, 1928, 1. 100 A. Rubinshteyn, “Gorki un Sholem Ash,” Sovetish heymland 3 (1962): 114. Mikhail Vostryshev, Moskva stalinskaia: bol´shaia illiustrirovannaia letopis´ (Moscow: Algoritm, 2008), 253. 101 G. Kuper [I. J. Singer], “Vos Sholem Ash dertseylt vegn Sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, July 5, 1928, 3.

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Both opponents of the Soviet regime and its advocates scoffed at Asch’s observations of and comments on Jewish life in the USSR. The Frayhayt wrote that Asch was a person with two tongues; he used one of them in the USSR and another one when he left the country.102 Commentators of the opposing camp dismissed his bifurcated vision of the Soviet Jewish establishment as a combination of dogmatic Communists, epitomized by Litvakov, and essentially reasonable state functionaries and intellectuals.103 Still, in the 1920s, many foreign observers, among them not a few Forverts writers, believed in existence of such a dreamed-of Soviet country. In Paris, Asch once again saw Mikhoels and Zuskin—their theater came to perform in the French capital. In Zuskin’s words, he “declared his love for us, told us that he benefited a lot from his trip to the USSR, that it turned him into our friend, and so on. At his villa outside Paris he arranged a tea party in honor of his ‘dear Moscow guests’.”104 Two years after his trip, Asch encountered Lidin, who came to Paris, and invited him to his house in Bellevue, near Paris. Apparently, this old aristocratic house was the same venue where Asch entertained Mikhoels and Zuskin. Lidin recalled Asch’s words: “Oh, Moscow was always hospitable to me . . . after Moscow, I feel bored everywhere else.” And by the end of their encounter he told his guest that he hoped to see him “again, most probably in Moscow . . ., where he left a part of his heart.”105 Nonetheless, it did not mean (even if Asch really said these words) that he tilted towards Communism. In 1929, he wrote addressing Communists, that we, [Western] Jewish writers and artists, form an undisciplined element. The best way to deal with us is to expel us from your ranks, like Moscow has already done it. You can see yourselves that this untamed milieu does not produce anything good for you. You will only maim our souls. (Have a look, for instance, at Moscow, at what have happened there with Yiddish literature.)106

102 “Ashs tsvey tsinger,” Frayhayt, July 11, 1928, 3. 103 See, for example, Bentsiyon Katz, “Sholem Ashs ayndrukn fun Sovet-Rusland,” Haynt, July 1, 1928, 4. 104 Ivanov, GOSET, 376–377. 105 Lidin, Sobranie sochinenii, 492–493. 106 Nakhman Mayzel, “Der oyfshtand funem kinstler,” Haynt, November 8, 1929, 7.

Chapter 7

Between Hate and Hope

Challenges of the Time By the end of the 1920s, the contents of the Forverts, now an essentially anti-Soviet tribune, reflected the contemporary political and ideological picture of the world, which increasingly lacked half-tints, turning often to black and white only. In the Jewish sector of ideological confrontations, the situation changed particularly dramatically after the Palestine Arab anti-Jewish riots in August 1929. During the week of riots from August 23 to 29, some 133 Jews were killed and even more injured. The reaction of Forverts writers was mixed. Cahan went to Palestine and reported his impressions in telegrams and articles written in a style similar to his 1915 reports about the Cossacks atrocities. Articles by a number of Forverts contributors were written in the same vein. Nathaniel Zalowitz, editor of the English section, disagreed with those who blamed the Jews in Palestine of aiding and abetting imperialism. According to him, “peaceful infiltration” was “quite another thing from aggression. The Jews came to build up the country, not to exploit it.”1 On the other hand, Tsivion contended that the clashes made people even more skeptical about Zionism.2 Lestschinsky argued, that the acts of violence (spurred, as he underlined, also by provocative actions of Jewish extremists) had deprived Palestine from the image of a safe home for ingathering the Jewry.3 Vladeck urged “to be sober about Palestine.” 1 Nathaniel Zalowitz, “Palestine Jews Are not Imperialists,” Forverts, September 22, 1929, English section, 1. 2 Tsivion, “Tsayt notitsn,” Forverts, September 25, 1929, 8. 3 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Redt klore diburim!,” Veker, November 16, 1929, 6–9; idem, “Men kon zikh filn fray in goles, un golesdik in Erets-Yisroel,” Naye folkstsayting, April 11, 1930, 5, and April 18, 1930, 5.

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He expressed his skepticism about Cahan’s statements that, apart from a small group of bandits, the bulk of the Arabs liked the Jews. He insisted on finding a compromise agreement with the Arabs, defining the parameters of what and how Jews could build in Palestine. Otherwise the permanent danger of a catastrophic outcome could render futile all the attempts of the local Jewish community and its supporters. Moreover, he added, it was not fair to direct to a place with an uncertain future, Palesttine, fifty percent of the funds raised by American Jews—resulting in thirty times more money per each Palestinian Jew than per a Jew in Russia, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania. He was annoyed with Cahan’s praise of the Zionist pioneers, halutzim, without mentioning the heroic work or even martyrdom of the Jewish Socialists in Poland. In the theoretical part of his article, Vladeck revealed himself as a critic of Karl Marx’s idea that the national revolution should precede the social one and that Marxists should promote nations’ struggle for self-determination.4 This was a clear rebuke of the Comintern’s interpretation of the events which praised the Palestinian Arabs’ struggle for national liberation from the British imperialists and their Zionist partners. The riots in Palestine took place against the backdrop of the Stalinist overhaul of the Soviet and Comintern machinery. The year 1929, which was the dividing line between the relatively liberal 1920s and the Stalinist totalitarian 1930s, or—in Stalin’s own words—“the year of the great break with the past,” introduced an intransigent policy toward the Socialist movement, and this policy remained in force until the Popular Front period, from 1935 to 1939. News about and around the events in Palestine, sometimes referred to as the Hebron Massacre or Hebron Pogrom, precipitated a mass departure of readers and writers from the Frayhayt. They were outraged with the Comintern’s—and the Frayhayt’s—pro-Arab portrayal of the riots. Four decades later, Paul Novick recalled that in the months of August and September 1929, all American Jewish Communist “organizations were in a crisis in connection with the unrest in Palestine at that time. We came into a head-on collision with the Jewish community” and “paid dearly for our stand, having lost a great many of our readers and having weakened our mass base.”5 In this climate, the Forverts became the most vehemently 4 Baruch Vladeck, “Lomir zayn nikhter vegn Palestine,” Forverts, November 16, 1929, 6, 8. 5 Gennady Estraikh, “Professing Leninist Yiddishkayt: The Decline of American Yiddish Communism,” American Jewish History 96, no. 1 (2010): 55.

Between Hate and Hope

outspoken Yiddish anti-Communist paper in the USA, though sporadically some aspects of Soviet life received a neutral coverage.6 Litvakov also kept his nose down the wind and, in particular, used the new political climate for revisiting the scandal between him and Asch that played out at the tea party on May 15, 1928. In his retrospective description of the event, the Moscow Yiddish literary elite “tried and condemned Sholem Asch. They unmasked this literary prince of the middle and petite bourgeoisie, and declared him a literary bankrupt.”7 Litvakov’s article ran on July 3, 1929, whereas in the September issue of the Yiddish literary journal Di royte velt (Red World) the poet Leyb Kvitko categorized Asch as an “enemy of the working class.”8 Earlier, at the end of 1928, Kvitko’s colleague Itsik Fefer wrote that the time came when, given the “right-wing danger” posed to the state and the party, it became necessary to re-examine the attitude of Yiddish cultural circles to foreign guests. Thus, he could not understand why a book by the “Forverts-nik” Asch featured in the plans of the Kiev Yiddish publishing house Kultur-Lige.9 Fefer’s criticism took effect and this book disappeared from the plan. For all that, the inertia of the “liberal” 1920s lingered in Soviet cultural life, notably in book production. In 1930 the Leningrad publishing house Kniga (Book) brought out a Russian translation of Cahan’s novel The Rise of David Levinsky, titled in Russian Kar´era Levinskogo. Moreover, its translator, Julius Martov’s brother Sergei Zederbaum-Ezhov, was an open critic of the Soviet regime. That same year, the Moscow publishing house “Puchina” (Sea’s Abyss) issued a Russian translation of Israel Joshua Singer’s novel Shtol un ayzn (Steel and Iron), titled in Russian as Iosif Lerner. In the early 1930s, Asch continued to irritate Soviet ideologists, particularly when, in 1930, PEN clubs of France, Great Britain, and Austria celebrated his 50th birthday. The British and Argentinean PEN clubs elected him an honorary member, while the Yiddish PEN club made him its honorary president in 1932.10 In an interview to the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse Asch spoke about his dream that the International PEN Club 6

Simon Weber. Transcript of an interview. William E. Wiener Oral History Library of the American Jewish Committee. New York Public Library Oral Histories, box 229, no. 6 (1984), 1–32. 7 Moyshe Litvakov, “A klap in tish un a lek dem shtivl,” Der emes, July 3, 1929, 3. 8 Leyb Kvitko, “Derklerung,” Di royte velt 9 (1929): 195. 9 Itsik Fefer, “In atake,” Prolit 8–9 (1928): 62–65. 10 John L. De Forest, My Hours with Sholem Asch (Stamford: n.p., 1995), 106; Roman Roček, Glanz und Elend des P.E.N.: Biographie eines literarischen Clubs (Vienna:

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would unite “equal literatures, without any divisions into ‘big’ and ‘little’ cultures.”11 By contrast, the International Conference of Revolutionary Writers, convened in November 1930 in Kharkiv, then Soviet Ukraine’s capital, characterized the International PEN Club as an “association of prosperous bourgeois writers.”12 Asch’s 1931 novel Moscow caused additional irritation. In the words of Isaac Deutscher, then a Polish Communist, this piece of prose attacked “the revolutionary ideology on behalf of petty bourgeois humanism, which reduced revolution to terror.”13 In the Soviet Union, Asch’s name became particularly odious in 1932, when the Polish government decorated him with the order of Polonia Restituta. Fefer ridiculed Asch in one of his poetic caricatures, describing him as a lackey of Adolf Hitler.14 The atmosphere of increasing hostility affected Wendroff position, too. He realized it after receiving a clear signal that his job was on the line. In his letter on January 24, 1930, Wendroff informed Vladeck, who probably was already aware of it, that about two months earlier the Moscow JTA correspondent Boris Smolar had received the following telegram from his New York-based colleague I. Parsky: forward consulted me regarding moscow correspondent asked whether you or i could serve stop willing pay more than day [that is, the newspaper Der tog] stop cable me whether possible for you or arrange with other foreign correspondent even other language under pseudonym until i arrive moscow to substitute you stop [The JTA’s founder and director Jacob] landau unobjecting

Smolar, whose reply was short, “none but wendroff will be tolerated here,” shared this information with Wendroff. Feeling aggrieved at these behind-the-scenes preparations, Wendroff wrote to Cahan that he had miscalculated, expecting a non-Soviet journalist to “do a better job” in reflecting “the whole truth about Soviet Russia, in the spirit of the ‘experts’

11 12 13 14

Böhlau, 2000), 89; Rachel Potter, “Modernist Rights: International PEN 1921–1936,” Critical Quarterly 55, no. 2 (2013): 74. Sholem Asch, “Ein Völkerbund des Geistes’, Neue Freie Presse,” June 25, 1928, 4. A. N. Dubovikov et al., eds., Iz istorii mezhdunarodnogo ob´´edineniia revoliutsionnykh pisatelei (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 52. Isaac Deutscher, “Fashizm v evreiskoi literature (tvorchestvo Sholoma Asha),” Literatura mirovoi revoliutsii 7 (1931): 100. Itsik Fefer, Fayln af mayln (Kiev: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo natsional´nykh menshostei URSR, 1935), 165–168.

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seated in Berlin and Paris.” He pointed to impossibility of defying Soviet censors without being banned from the country (quoted from a copy attached to Wendroff ’s letter to Vladeck on January 24, 1930): To begin with, I very much doubt that a special correspondent of the Forverts will be tolerated here in the first place. You have to remember that the Forverts is known as a partisan newspaper rather than a capitalist one, a forum for an ideologically antagonistic camp, which makes it in our eyes worse than a “capitalist newspaper.” I can write for you only because I always have kept my pen clean during the past thirty years of my journalistic and literary career. I write objectively and as a friend of the Soviet country. If a person dares in his writings to be hostile to the Soviet power, he will not be tolerated here. In this sense, no foreign passport can provide full protection. Here people are not ashamed to expel journalists who were more important than Parsky and represented bigger newspapers than the Forverts. You might think about having two correspondents—me and another one. However, I don’t like this combination either. No one would accept it, because no other foreign newspaper has more than one correspondent in Moscow.

On March 20, 1930, after not receiving a response of any kind from Cahan, Wendroff wrote again to Vladeck: the newspaper has changed its attitude to Russia. No doubt, the Forverts has never harbored particular sympathies toward Soviet Russia, but it previously had the virtue of finding some space for “nice words” about us. In any case, there was a place in the Forverts for objective portrayals of Soviet reality. From the very beginning, my work for your newspaper was based on the condition that I would report about life in Soviet Russia, describing it in the way I saw it rather than how you saw, or would like to see, it. . . . When editors did not agree with my “pro-Soviet” pieces, they published their commentaries or expressed their opposing opinion in their editorial articles. However, during the last six months hardly any of my articles, regardless of contents, have appeared in the newspaper. You simply don’t want to print them, because they would weaken your anti-Soviet propaganda campaign, which is being rigidly conducted by the whole [anti-Soviet] foreign press, including your newspaper.

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After the rupture with the Forverts, Wendroff continued to write for other foreign newspapers. His last traceable publication in the Warsaw Moment came out on June 3, 1933. At that time, he still worked for the JTA. Linton Wells, an American journalist based in Moscow in the early 1930s, included in his autobiographic book a photo taken in November 1933, during a meeting of foreign journalists with Mikhail Kalinin. Wendroff was also there, representing the JTA.15 The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs praised him as a reliable person, whose journalism represented “maximum friendly information.” As a result, he could pose as a more or less independent journalist and, generally, maintain good relations with the JTA, deterring the agency from sending to Moscow a foreign correspondent.16 Little is known about Wendroff ’s contact with the visiting writers and activists. He certainly helped Cahan during the latter’s 1927 visit, and in November 1928 arranged a pass for the leading figure in the American Jewish labor movement, Nathan Chanin, giving him the privilege of standing on the Red Square’s tribune for foreign guests during the parade celebrating the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.17 Mendel Osherovitsh, who came to Moscow as a tourist in 1932, went to see his “friend” whose name is not mentioned in his travelogue, later published in book form under the title How People Live in Soviet Russia. The reader learns, however, that Osherovitsh’s friend lived on Frunze Street, so most probably he visited Wendroff, also a resident of this street.18 We don’t know if Harry Lang and his wife Lucy Robins Lang, an anarchist and labor activist, met with Wendroff in 1933. They travelled in the Soviet Union on a visa issued by the Soviet embassy in Berlin thanks to the intervention of Senator William Borah, who campaigned for the USA’s recognition of the Soviet Union and therefore was highly valued by Moscow’s policy makers. Lang’s firsthand harrowing account of the devastating famine in Ukraine,

15 Linton Wells, Blood on the Moon (Boston and New York: Houghton Miffflin Co., 1937), 344–345. 16 V. V. Aldoshin, Iu. V. Ivanov, and V. M. Semenov, Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniia: gody nepriznaniia, 1927–1933 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi Fond “Demokratiia,” 2002), 697–698. 17 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 1970: 719, 767–768. 18 Mendel Osherowitch, Vi mentshn lebn in Sovet Rusland: ayndrukn fun a rayze (New York: n.p., 1933), 12–13.

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published in the Forverts and then relayed in the English-language press, shocked the American public.19 Meanwhile, America’s entry into the economic crisis severely affected the finances of the Forverts, with a thirty-five percent drop in income between 1929 and 1936, and contributed to the decline from its late-1920s record daily circulation of 275,000 to 170,000 in the late 1930s. Nonetheless, by cutting the editorial staff ’s wages in the 1930s and using the reserve fund of approximately three million dollars accumulated in the 1920s, the Forward Association could run its operations with an annual budget of nearly two million dollars. Its New York City printing shop produced city-specific issues containing news sections and advertisements that targeted readers in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Newark, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. Although the Chicago office found itself in financial straits in 1932 and became a burden on the entire enterprise, the Chicago shop continued printing special issues for Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Los Angeles.20 In addition to financial strains, the Great Depression, coupled with the political situation in Europe, drove the entire international Socialist movement, including the newspaper, into an intense ideological crisis. According to Abramovitch, the crisis “had significantly augmented the prestige of the Soviet Union in [various strata of] society in contrast with the capitalist world. Compared with ideas of democracy, events of 1933–1934 [in Germany and Austria] made much stronger the moral, political, and ideological position of the Russian Bolshevik dictatorship.” And, as a result, “despair overwhelmed many democratic Socialists in 1934–1935.”21 In the United States, it led to the split of the 15,000 members of the Socialist Party into two factions: the Old Guard, who cherished the traditions of European 19 Lucy Fox Robins Lang, Tomorrow is Beautiful (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 260– 275; Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 803–804; Dana G. Dalrymple, “The Soviet Famine of 1932–1934,” Soviet Studies 15, no. 3 (1964): 255, 262; Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl, eds., The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of the 1932–1933 in Ukraine (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2012), 117–134. 20 Baruch Vladeck, “Der Forverts durkh di krizis-yorn,” Forverts, April 25, 1937, 2; Chaikin, Yidishe bleter in Amerike, 295; Brian Dolber, Media and Culture in the U.S. Jewish Labor Movement: Sweating for Democracy in the Interwar Era (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 121. 21 Raphael Abramovitch, “A yubiley oder a yortsayt? Tsu dem tsvantsikstn yortog fun der bolshevistisher revolutsye,” Forverts, November 24, 1937, 3, 8.

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Social Democratic parties, and the younger, typically American-born, militants who sought a way out in cooperation with Communists. Cahan’s resolute anti-Communism found a reflection in his introduction to the 1934 book Socialism, Fascism, Communism, edited by Joseph Shaplen and David Shub. Vladeck’s resignation in mid-summer 1935 threw open to public view the controversy that had been raging between him and the editor. Cahan leaned to the rights, Vladeck to the left. There were also personal grudges between them. Ultimately, Vladeck decided to withdrew his resignation, but their relations remained so tense that in October 1938, when Vladeck died struck by a heart attack at the age of fifty-two, Cahan found an excuse not to come to his funeral, attended by thousands of people, including Herbert Lehman, governor of New York, and Fiorello H. LaGuardia, mayor of New York. The latter ordered flags on all municipal building lowered half-staff.22 In late May 1936, during a convention in Cleveland, the Old Guard seceded to form the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), which incorporated a third of the party membership, much of the labor support, and such institutions as the Forverts and The New Leader, its ideological satellite journal. (In 1924, when the Forverts launched its Sunday English section, it explained that the new section would not pay much attention to “the matters of a Socialist propaganda character,” because they were covered by The New Leader.)23 Later that same year, the SDF became associated with the new pro-Rooseveltian American Labor Party, and on June 4, 1936, the Forward Association officially recognized the SDF “as its party,” confirming the newspaper’s intransigent rejection of any form of cooperation between Socialists and Communists.24 In other words, the Old Guard rejected the appeal of the Communist International’s Seventh World Congress in July 1935. That final international gathering of the Comintern, convened as clash with Germany and Japan was imminent, called for a broad People’s 22 “Vladeck’s Resignation,” Bnai Brith Messenger, July 12, 1935, 4; Phineas J. Biron, “Strictly Confidential,” American Israelite, July 18, 1935, 4; Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 871; Arthur Aryeh Goren, “Sacred and Secular: The Place of Public Funerals in the Immigrant Life of American Jews,” Jewish History 8, no. 1–2 (1994): 294–295. 23 “What Do We Want an English Page for?,” Forverts, November 16, 1924, 3. 24 Abraham Cahan, “Forverts asosieyshon onerkent di sotsial-demokratishe federatsye als ir partey,” Forverts, June 10, 1936, 6; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. III: The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–1936 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 561–562; Beth S. Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 134.

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Front, or Popular Front, coalition of all anti-fascist and anti-imperialist organizations and parties. The Polish Bund also dismissed the idea of a Popular Front, but Cahan nevertheless saw it as a party that was ideologically against the grain of his vintage of Socialism. Thus, in 1931, still in pre-Popular Frond period, he accused the Polish Kultur-Lige, an organization under the Bund’s control, of producing “translations of Bolshevik writers.” Although several books by Soviet authors did appear under the Kultur-Lige imprint, Cahan’s attack simply reflected his and his circle’s general negative attitude to the Polish Bund, which—according to Cahan—“was closer to Communism than to Socialism.”25 Hillel Rogoff described in his memoirs an episode, illustrating the collision between Cahan and the Bund. At the end of 1931 and the beginning of 1932, Rogoff spent a few months in Poland. He was once invited to a dinner with a score of leading members of the Polish Bund. They wanted to talk about the grievances that the Forverts had to the Bund and the Bund had to the Forverts. Their conversation lasted for several hours and ended after midnight. In the morning Rogoff wrote a long article about the discussion and sent it to the Forverts. When he came back to New York, Leon Gorlieb, the editorial secretary, told him that of the dozens of correspondences that Rogoff had sent during his trip only one did not see light of day—it was the article about his conversation with the Bundist representatives. Cahan’s attitude toward the Bund was then so negative that he even did see any purpose in starting a new debate with them.26 In June 1935, in the climate of the Popular Front, Paris housed the grandiose international Congress in Defense of Culture. Many Yiddish literati found an inspiration in this event. Soon, in August 1935, a group of intellectuals who came to Vilna to participate in the congress that marked the tenth anniversary of the YIVO, announced the founding of a movement called Yiddish Culture Front, determined to protect Yiddish culture.27 The initiators of the new movement sought to protect Yiddish culture not only from Fascism, but also from other factors, which contributed to the 25 S. Kan, “Ab. Kahan vegn ‘Kultur-Lige’ un ‘Vokhnshrift’,” Vokhnshrift far literatur, kunst un kultur, November 6, 1931, 5; Ab. Kahan un der “Bund” in Poyln (New York: Bundisher Klub, 1932), 11. See also Jacobs, On Socialists and “the Jewish Question” after Marx, 28–29. 26 Gennady Estraikh, “The Bund and Ab. Cahan,” Yiddish/Modern Jewish Studies 15, no. 3 (2008): 98–99. 27 Nakhman Mayzel, Geven amol a lebn (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun poylishe yidn, 1951), 372–380.

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erosion of Yiddish culture. Thus, they were worried that even the so-called young modern cultures, such as the Lithuanian and Latvian, began to distract the younger Jewish generation from Yiddish culture.28 A congress of the new movement could not be convened in Poland, where it was seen as a Communist ploy. Therefore, it took place in Paris, on September 17–21, 1937, with 104 delegates representing hundreds of organizations and institutions from over twenty countries. The American delegation of eleven people, including Moyshe Olgin, Joseph Opatoshu and H. Leivick, had been elected at the First National Yiddish Culture Conference, convened in New York.29 Yiddishists, with Chaim Zhitlowsky (absent at the conference due to his poor health condition) as the recognized authority among them, were the most enthusiastic supporters of the new undertaking. The Forverts, however, boycotted the events in New York and Paris, seeing them as a conduit for Soviet and, generally, Communist influence. On August 13, 1937, the newspaper published a statement signed by twenty-six writers and journalists, mainly but not only contributors to the Forverts. Thus, the poet and essayist Jacob Glatstein, who wrote for Der morgn-zhurnal, put his name next to Mendel Osherowitch, Liliput, Israel Joshua Singer, David Shub, and Nathan Chanin. They listed wrongdoings of Communists, including their glorification of Arabs’ violence in Palestine.30A week afterwards, an editorial described Zhitlovsky’s involvement as “sour cream to ‘whiten’ the Communist borscht” of the congress. It emphasized that Communists always remained Communists, with or without the Popular Front. Moreover, “scratch a Communist and you find a terrorist.”31

The Stalin Constitution In June 1936, the publication of a draft of the new constitution (later known as the Stalin Constitution) kindled up excitement in the minds of many observers of Soviet life and policy. Some of them interpreted comments of Soviet officials as signs of Joseph Stalin’s intention to shed certain totalitarian features of his regime by guaranteeing individual freedom and universal 28 Idem, Oyf undzer kultur-front: problemen fun literatur un kultur-shafn (Warsaw: Literarishe bleter,1936), 168–169. 29 “Yiddish Conference Elects Delegates to Paris Conference,” Jewish Advocate, September 17, 1937, 11. 30 “Derklerung vegn dem kultur-kongres,” Forverts, August 13, 1937, 2, 5. 31 “Vegn dem kultur-kongres,” Forverts, August 20, 1937, 4.

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suffrage. On June 26, 1936, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Alexander Troyanovsky, addressed the Chicago Bar Association, explaining that his country was assuming a democratic form of government. That same day, Vladimir Romm, the Washington correspondent for the Moscow daily Izvestiia, gave a talk at the University of Chicago, asserting that the Soviet government intended to develop the country equitably to benefit the entire population.32 The Soviet embassy reported to Moscow that the American press carried notably favorable coverage of the suggested constitution.33 However, this public relations success (certainly exaggerated by Soviet analysts) did not last long. It almost evaporated when it had become clear that the Soviet regime simulated rather than introduced democratization. The scope of the Forverts discussion on the constitution had no parallels in the entire American press. Staff writers and readers focused on the issue of a single-party system and its compatibility with democracy, because the constitution allotted space for only one political party, namely, the Communist Party. On the day the draft appeared in Moscow newspapers, the Forverts published an editorial entitled “Soviet Constitution Gives More Freedom.” Its readers learned that, in contrast with the opening statement of the acting 1924 constitution, the new text did not describe the world as divided into two camps, that of capitalism and that of Socialism. The editorial emphasized that, as per the new constitution, Socialism had already won out in the Soviet Union, which meant state ownership of all industrial enterprises, transport, trade, natural resources, and finances, while collective farms, or kolkhozes, had introduced a new form of Socialist property. The draft guaranteed a broad array of civil rights, including freedom of assembly and speech, and forbade arresting people without the sanction of the court or a procurator. Furthemore, it stipulated that all citizens could vote by secret ballot in local and national elections.34 The “victory of Socialism” was a reflection of Stalin’s doctrine of “Socialism in one 32 “Dictatorship Temporary, Says Soviet Envoy Who Sees Russians Turning to Democracy,” The New York Times, June 27, 1935, 1. Four months later, Romm, a scion of a famous family of Jewish printers and publishers in Vilna, was recalled to Moscow, arrested, forced to appear as a witness at a show trial, and, in March 1937, executed: see, for example, Alan B. Spitzer, “John Dewey, the ‘Trial’ of Leon Trotsky and the Search for Historical Truth,” History and Theory 29, no. 1 (1990): 16–37. 33 Andrei N. Medushevskii, “Kak Stalinu udalos´ obmanut´ Zapad: priniatie Konstitutsii 1936 goda s pozitsii politicheskogo piara,” Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost´ 3 (2016): 122–137. 34 “Sovet-konstitutsye git mer frayhayt,” Forverts, June 12, 1936, 1, 9.

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country,” which adjusted the Marxist prophecy of worldwide proletarian revolution to a proclamation that the destination had already been reached. Whereas the editorial derived its source material from telegraphic reports, the article published on June 15, 1936 reflected the writer’s reading of the actual draft of the constitution.35 Gabriel Hirsh Kretshmer, who wrote under the Swiftian pseudonym Liliput, zeroed in on the issue of the one-party system. Like many other observers, he initially believed that this framework would nevertheless permit some forms of quasi-democratic competition between candidates who represented the party and various state-approved organizations. He also gave his approval to the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, the election (rather than appointment) of judges, the protection of individually working artisans and farmers, and the legal disappearance of the lishentsy, or disenfranchised “socially alien elements” of society. The lattermost was an important issue for Soviet Jews whose communities possessed a singularly high proportion of lishentsy.36 Lilliput found it heartening to read Stalin’s words at the May 1935 reception in the Kremlin, when the Soviet leader raised a toast to “the health of all Bolsheviks, members of the Party, and those outside the Party.”37 However, Lilliput did not rush to conclusions about a radical turn in Soviet politics because, he maintained, the reality could differ significantly from the constitutional stipulations. On June 16, Cahan discussed “Bewildering Changes in Stalin’s Programs for Russia and for Abroad” in his article by that name.38 He placed the new constitution in the international context of the time, namely, against the backdrop of Soviet-French relations and Stalin’s desire to demonstrate his regime’s compatibility with Western democracies. The danger of Hitler’s aggression determined Stalin’s decision to sign a treaty with the Socialist government of France and to recalibrate the tactics of the Comintern by forming Popular Fronts with Socialists. Cahan referred to Ferdinand Lassalle who, in his 1862 speech On the Essence of Constitutions, underlined that written constitutional guarantees would always fail to be binding on 35 Liliput, “Naye konstitutsye vos sovet-Rusland vet hayor onnemen,” Forverts, June 15, 1936, 3, 6. 36 See Elise Kimerling, “Civil Rights and Social Policy in Soviet Russia, 1918–1936,” Russian Review 41, no. 1 (1982): 44; Estraikh, “The Soviet Shtetl,” 197–212. 37 See also Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 2007), 607–608. 38 Abraham Cahan, “Shtoynende enderungen in Stalins programen far Rusland un far oysland,” Forverts, June 16, 1936, 4, 8.

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authoritarian regimes.39 Therefore Stalin’s constitution was merely a bluff by the Soviet dictator, redolent of bluffs made by Hitler. To Cahan, the presence of only one party spelled tyranny. “One party as a guarantor of freedom is equivalent to a pair of scissors with one blade, a balancing scale with one pan, or a piano with one key.” The draft of the constitution appeared in the newspaper on June 25, 1936.40 The slightly edited full text of the translation had been taken from the Moscow Yiddish daily Der emes. Earlier, on June 17, the Forverts announced that, given the strong interest in the new Soviet constitution, it invited readers to discuss the pros and cons, and promised to publish opinions of various hues. The only stipulation was that letters be limited to less than 1,200 words.41 From June 22 through September 5, about eighty letters (only three of which were written by women) found a place in the section “Opinions about the New Soviet Russian Constitution: A Free Debate.” True, there remains an unanswerable question concerning such letter publications: how accurately the editors reproduced the original texts, and how the published texts compared to the entire pool of incoming letters?

Pros Approximately half of the letter-writers approved of the constitution, enthusiastically or with reservations. In fact, the very first letter, published on June 22, 1936, three days before the Forverts printed the draft, called on readers to have confidence in Soviet Communists. Its author, Isidor Rudner, and several other authors of letters praising the constitution introduced themselves as belonging to Communist circles. Yet, the majority of supporters of Soviet politics claimed that they did not espouse Communism. Rather, they either asserted that the Soviet regime was taking a heartening step toward democracy or did not regard democracy as the principal yardstick for progress. Many letters brought up the futility of democracy, which they opined had been definitively proven by its surrender to fascism in Germany and Austria. The reaction to Harry Lang’s account of his trip to the Soviet Union showed that pro-Soviet sympathies remained strong in the Socialist circles. 39 Ferdinand Lassalle, Über Verfassungswesen: Rede am 16. April 1862 in Berlin (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1993). 40 “Di gantse naye sovetishe konstitutsye,” Forverts, June 25, 1936, 8–9. 41 “Notitsn fun der ‘Forverts’ redaktsye,” Forverts, June 17, 1936, 6.

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Lang’s articles about his observations began to appear in the Forverts on November 25, 1933, eight days after the USA’s diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. Cahan purposefully postponed the publication until after the announcement of the government, being wary that otherwise this could be interpreted as the newspaper’s disagreement with President Roosevelt’s decision. In introducing Lang’s critical report, the editor wrote that he hoped that it would provide a convincing answer to the rosy accounts of those travelers who, in Cahan’s words, saw Russia through the eyes of the guides provided by the Soviet secret police. Lang’s report about a devastating famine, especially in Ukraine, became widely read in April 1935, when it appeared translated into English in the New York Journal, whose publisher, William Randolph Hearst, sought to use these revealations to attack Roosevelt’s policy. Lung’s wife, Lucy Robins Lang, herself a prominent labor activist, recalled: Hell broke loose. . . . Harry was held responsible for all the ideas that William Randolph Hearst had ever expressed. Reliable informants reported that Harry was likely to be assassinated, and friends in the garment worker’s union escorted him to and from the office. . . . Harry was expelled from the Socialist party, and he was nearly fired from the Forward. Indeed, if Abraham Cahan had not stated that he would resign if Harry were dismissed, the end of the story might have been different.42

Meanwhile, in May 1935, Cahan faced an angry audience at the 35th annual convention of the Workmen’s Circle. The delegated booed him for publishing Lang’s anti-Soviet articles.43 Now, in 1936, speculating about the reasons for the introduction of a new constitution, many Forverts readers referred to the international political situation, particularly the growing danger of military conflicts with Germany and Japan. Thus, Nathan Hershkowitch of Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY (whose letter appeared in print on August 10, 1936) hoped that the necessity of establishing friendly relations with the democratic West would radically change the political and social situation in the Soviet Union. Sam Proshansky of the Bronx, NY (July 25), who had been a Forverts 42 Lucy Robins Lang, Tomorrow Is Beautiful (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), 274–275. See also James E. Mace, “The Politics of Famine: American Government and Press Response to the Ukrainian Famine, 1932–1933,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 3, no. 1 (1988): 85; Soyer, “Abraham Cahan’s Travels in Jewish Homelands,” 75–76. 43 “Workmen’s Circle Convention Boos Cahan,” Jewish Advocate, May 10, 1935, 5.

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reader for thirty-five years, saw a wholly different reason for what he saw as liberalization of the Soviet regime. To him, Soviet citizens of the young generation were fully devoted to Communism, therefore the state did not face an existential threat, and Stalin could magically transform himself from a dictator into a “normal socialist leader.” The letters of the Bronx-based Bundist Isidor Markman (August 15) and the “hundred-percent Socialist” Itke Berenstein (Chicago, August 19) expressed a similar opinion. William Goldman (Brooklyn, July 29) pointed out that most Russians initially did not welcome Lenin’s revolution, “the greatest event in world history,” and that its results had to be protected through the use of violence.44 Some readers surmised that, even two decades after the revolution, anti-Soviet opposition lingered on, therefore lack of democracy was more the fault of the population the regime worked with than of the Communists own shortcomings. Gedalia Rabinowitz (Brooklyn, August 1) asserted that at least ninety percent of the Soviet population, particularly the peasants, remained anti-Communist and that only a single-party regime with a strong grip on power could safeguard Socialism. E. Geller (Bronx, July 6) had been reading the Forverts for twenty-five years despite being a member of the Communist Party. Unsurprisingly, he disagreed with the newspaper’s ideological bent, and argued that most Forverts readers distrusted its politics. Even so, he drew pleasure from reading its non-ideological material. Geller extolled the single-party system as a deterrent from the Soviet Union becoming a bourgeois republic akin to the United States. Aaron Kuritzky (Brooklyn, July 13), another Forverts reader for twenty-five years who disliked the politics of the newspaper but liked its writers, commended the Soviet Union for incorporating much more Socialism than countries with multi-party systems, such as the United States and Great Britain. Sh. Fine (Cincinnati, July 27) had modest expectations: he would be happy to see the realization of even a small measure of the democracy promised in the constitution because, per the adage that if you give people an inch they will take a mile, minor transformations should lead to further liberalization of Soviet society. Anni Goldberg (Brooklyn, July 10), who described herself as a one-time card-carrying member of the Socialist 44 In June, Moyshe Olgin, editor of the Morgn-Frayhayt, also trotted out the argument that previously the hostility of peasants toward the Soviet regime made it dangerous to practice universal suffrage, but that the situation became different thanks to the social and economic achievements of the Soviet state. See his article, Moyshe Olgin, “Di naye konstitutsye funem sovetn-farband,” Morgn-Frayhayt, June 14, 1936, 5.

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Party turned non-party-affiliated radical, suggested that readers adopt a realist approach for measuring the success of the Soviet regime. She insisted that the Bolsheviks deserved praise for carrying the burden of a difficult mission, namely, to enact Socialist transformations in a backward country. Fenni Achtung (Bronx, July 27), who had been reading the Forverts since arriving in the United States in 1923, expressed a similar attitude. Abraham Trupp (Philadelphia, July 20) considered Russia to be an essentially Asian country. He recalled heated discussions among Socialist prisoners in Russia in the early 1900s. Like other Bundist and Menshevik political inmates, Trupp rejected the assumption that Socialism could be successfully introduced in a non-industrial country. By contrast, their Bolshevik opponents contended that Russia needed Asiatic, even barbaric, forms of revolutionary transformation. At the time of his writing, however, Trupp was ready to admit that Lenin, “an Asian man with the psychology of Genghis Khan,” had proven to be the most suitable leader for Russia. He opined that Stalin, who hailed from the nation of Georgia, also knew how to build the Soviet nation from divergent ethnic components. Jacob Gitter (Malden, CT; August 23) assumed that Lenin’s strategy for dealting with Russians was based on his understanding that they were former slaves. Stalin followed suit, though with greater cruelty.45 A reader from Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, who indicated only his surname, Kremer (July 6), maintained that the constitution was ideal for the current time period, and that it convincingly demonstrated the progress, which had taken place in the country, including the pioneering experience of successfully liquidating capitalism. Kremer explained that he clung to a belief that a true Socialist system was emerging in the Soviet Union. He felt that otherwise, without such belief, he would have to give up hope that Socialism could be instituted at all. Cahan’s criticism of Stalin’s intentions disappointed David Friedman (New York City, July 3). He urged readers to welcome Stalin’s response to the demands of the masses. Friedman thought highly of the country that gave the world Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Nekrasov, and Vladimir Korolenko, writers “who so beautifully described the life of Russian people,” and expected it to serve as an attractive model for polities 45 Among the stereotypes that became widespread in the United States were those of the allegedly Asiatic features of Soviet society, which already had occupied a central place in the discourse about Russia—see Elena Lapteva, Amerikanskoe rossievedenie: stereotipy i mify (Ekaterinburg: Ural´skii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2004), 49–54.

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whose reactionary systems still did not allow the worker to be happy. Leon Dailey (Youngstown, OH; July 4) also protested again Cahan’s criticism and, in general, the newspaper’s unshakable anti-Sovietism. Whereas Dailey admitted that the tendency of Soviet propaganda to overpraise Stalin might irk the American public, he contended that Soviet citizens had sound reasons to admire their leader. Most importantly, Stalin had suppressed all reactionary groups and avoided making the mistakes of German Socialists, who had failed to stop Hitler from ascending to power. A writer who gave only the surname Sheifer (Los Angeles, August 13), complained that the Forverts replicated the William Randolph Hearst– esque image of Stalin as a monster who ate children for breakfast. A member of the Socialist movement since the end of the nineteenth century, Sheifer concluded that something was “rotten with the Forverts,” which showed symptoms of a serious ideological illness. Israel Shagaloff (South Bend, IN; August 17) compared the attitude of the Forverts toward the Soviet Union with the proverbial mother-in-law/daughter-in-law hostility. A. Leon Kuper (Estill, SC; July 8) found in the new constitution “a light in the darkness of the contemporary world.” He denounced rhetorical assaults on the Soviet Union characterizing them as semi-religious rituals aimed at screening people from the reality of unprecedented social and economic achievements. Kuper did not see any problems with a single-party system and believed that the composition of the bicameral Soviet (cosmetic) parliament, or Supreme Soviet, would depend on the voters. Aaron Shifman (Los Angeles, July 27) compared the Soviet leadership’s strategy of not allowing political party competition with Charles Lindbergh’s decision to fly above the clouds during his May 1927 non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Additional parties, contended Shifman, could create dangerous obstacles (“clouds”) on the way to Socialism. To Louis Spiro (Chelsea, MA; July 13) the new constitution was “one of the most beautiful documents in all human history,” which would facilitate the building of a true Socialist society. As inadequate as the one-party system looked, it created an insurmountable hurdle for monarchists and other counter-revolutionaries. Spiro scoffed at M. Winograd’s idea (June 26)46 of bringing Soviet citizens to the United States to show them the advantages of democracy. He pondered sarcastically whether Winograd had in mind 46 Presumably, Morris Nathan Winograd, who edited the art section in Sunday issues of the Forverts.

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to show them places associated with Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, the victims of the Haymarket riot, the prison where the American Socialist leader Eugene Debs had lost his health, and many other examples of political suppression. The only element of the constitution that Spiro disliked was the article which guaranteed Soviet citizens’ right to receive payment for their work in accordance with its quality and quantity. From his vantage point, unequal payment might result in creating a rich, “aristocratic” stratum of workers and, ultimately, in the revival of capitalism. The letter, signed with the initials L. P. (July 29), carped at American democracy, particularly at trade unions, which, he asserted, protected only some “privileged workers” and did not care about the masses. Eliyahu Moskovitz (Shamokin, PA; July 17) had no doubt that the constitution would be realized in the Soviet Union, whose leaders had displayed an exceptional solicitude regarding the Jewish population. Although Jewish issues usually played a subsidiary role in the letters to the editor, the outlook of pro-Soviet sympathizers certainly was influenced by their recognition of the betterment of Jewish life during the Soviet period. Such people viewed prominent positions that Jews occupied in the Soviet government, armed forces, sciences, and culture as a contrast to tangible anti-Semitism in the United States.47 Significantly, around that time the Soviet propaganda sought to spotlight the difference between the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union and in the west, especially in Nazi Germany. On November 30, 1936, the Pravda reproduced Viacheslav Molotov’s speech of the new constitution, in which he, then Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (or effectively Prime Minister), cited Stalin’s comment circa 1931 on anti-Semitism. Now, five years after being formulated for an interview to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and widely published abroad, Soviet citizens also learned that “anti-Semitism, like any form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.” In the Soviet Union, however, “brotherly feelings for the Jewish people” defined the attitudes toward anti-Semites who could be severely punished, up to death penalty.48

47 Cf. Isser Ginsburg, “Der antisemitizm in Amerike,“ Forverts, June 7, 1941, 8; Leonard Dinnerstein, “Anti-Semitism in Crisis Times in the United States: The 1920s and 1930s,” in Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis, ed. Sander L. Gilman and Steven T. Katz (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 213–218. 48 “Rech´ tov. V. M. Molotova o novoi Konstitutsii,” Pravda, November 30, 1936, 2–3.

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Cons Less diverse were the arguments mounted by the readers who considered the new constitution to be a sham. As a rule, they cited article 126 of the draft, which defined the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) as “the leading core of all organizations of the working people, both public and state.” H. Weiner (Bronx, July 8) belied the idea of freedom in society whose citizens could not form a political party. Sol Herschderfer (Newark, August 6), after having read the Soviet constitution, recounted a joke to describe his impression of it: A young Jew complained to the rabbi that his father-in-law kept him hungry and thus did not enable him to continue his Talmudic studies. This made the father-in-law angry: “[This is] slander against me! Is it bad to have fish for breakfast, chicken for lunch, and blintzes for supper?” His son-in-law retorted: “It’s not bad, but I never get it from you.”

The critics of the constitution did not spare sarcastic comments. For instance, M. Meyers (Brooklyn, July 3) and the aforementioned M. Winograd (June 26) asked whether the publication of the “herald of freedom” meant that so far there had been no freedom under the Bolsheviks. Meyers called the constitution a purim-shpil (a comic play performed on Purim, a joyous Jewish holiday) and pointed to the fact that Hitler and Mussolini had also allowed their citizens to have constitutions. Readers wrote about the shocking aspects of Stalinist totalitarianism, which erased liberty and free speech, terrorized and liquidated political foes. A. Rudasch (Washington, D.C.; August 6) took to task those who illustrated the deficiencies of American democracy by referring to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti and to certain other cases. He noted that American Socialists and Communists could freely publish their newspapers and distribute them via discounted second-class mail. In the Soviet Union, by contrast, tens of thousands of innocent people were executed in the wake of the assassination of the Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov in December 1934, and thousands of Socialists, anarchists, and other ideological opponents of the Soviet regime were thrown into prison camps. He believed that American democracy provided actual freedom, whereas the Soviet constitution pledged a degree of freedom only to obedient citizens. A recent immigrant from Poland identified only as “A. Heymisher,” meaning in Yiddish “a homegrown/intimate person” (New York City,

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August 10), wrote about the loss of citizens’ rights under the Soviet regime. He brought up the names of imprisoned and exiled Mensheviks, such as Isidore Ramishvili, Fedor Cherevanin (Lipkin), Boris Ber, and Andrei Kranikhfeld. Bronx dweller Isaac Vitebski (July 10) disagreed with any attempts to categorize a country that imprisons its political opponents as being Socialist. He added that even the notion of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was a misleading definition for the rule of Stalin’s clique. A veteran of the Socialist movement, Hillel Blum (Cleveland, July 13), remarked that democracy did not stand a chance of developing under dictatorship. According to Ab. Lasoff (Bronx, July 13), the new constitution codified an underhanded form of democracy. Brooklynite P. Kurski (August 15) drew a direct parallel between Communism and dictatorship. In his view, any constitution would be irrelevant in an environment that relied on the idolatry of Lenin’s mummy and the total adoration of Stalin, who had acquired a godlike status. Mikhl Kipnis (Long Island, NY; July 4) described the Soviet period as a string of experiments that resulted in spreading fear, hunger, need, and desperation. Soviet people had been living with a padlock on their mouths, and it was hard to expect a dictatorship to share its power with the population. Baruch Aaron Popka (Havervill, MA; July 8) characterized the constitution as a worthless document composed with the sole purpose of misleading the international community. Guarantees of freedom of religious worship had little substance after eighteen years of the suppression of religious life, contrary to the fact that the previous Soviet constitution had also purported to ensure freedom of conscience. Osher Bibichkov (Norfolk, CT; July 23) was twenty-three when he emigrated from Russia, leaving behind his parents and siblings. In 1931, he spent five weeks with his family back home and returned to the United States with a broken heart, aghast to watch the social experiments in the Soviet Union. The former Communist P. Tennenholtz (Long Island, August 6) went to Russia in 1921, but returned a year later, being utterly disillusioned with what he called the “barbarism” of Soviet life. He did not believe that any constitution could improve the situation. In the wake of the Moscow show trial in August 1936, in which sixteen leading Communists, including Lenin’s close associates Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, were sentenced to death, Cleveland resident Hillel Blum (whose previous letter appeared in the Forverts on July 13) wrote his second letter, published on September 5, in which he opined that the constitution had become extraneous against the backdrop of the trial and its repelling

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impact. For thinkers such as Blum, the submissive behavior of the seasoned revolutionaries and their readiness to confess to the most improbable crimes revealed the menacing traits of the Soviet regime.49 The Forverts’s staff writers joined their voices to snipe at the new constitution. Vladeck’s criticism was not particularly harsh. He had just returned from the Soviet Union, where he traveled for five weeks as a customer of the Intourist agency but paid little attention to sightseeing. Rather, he tried to understand whether to categorize the transformations of the former Russian Empire as successes or failures. He found that the vast majority of ordinary Soviet citizens had been brainwashed into total loyalty towards the regime. People usually took as normal that they could not play any political role and merely did what they were told to do. During his press conference, Vladeck spoke about the attitude of Soviet citizens to the constitution. The trip gave him a feeling that the masses were more preoccupied by such issues as the price of butter and shoes than the constitution. The only categories of the population who might benefit from changes in the constitution were the lishentsy, such as former traders, clergy, and déclassé people known as luftmentshn. Since many Jews belonged to these categories, they welcomed it.50 Among the Forverts authors who made known their opinion was Saul Ginsburg, a historian and Yiddish-journalism veteran, who left the Soviet Union as late as 1930. Ginsburg alerted readers to the fact that the constitution made legal the work of individual farmers and artisans, provided that they did not employ the labor of others. Thus, full-tilt efforts notwithstanding, the Bolsheviks had failed to herd everyone into collective farms and other forms of cooperatives. Otherwise, Ginsburg opined, the draft contained no radically new pieces of legislation. The innovations in the draft, such as the possibility for the Soviet republics to become fully independent states, had little practical significance. In general, the notion of law,

49 Der morgn-zhurnal compared the Soviet government with a well-behaved cow that, at the very last moment, when the milk bucket was full, kicked it. The reasons for such trials remained open to speculations of whether they reflected the “Asiatic” nature of Soviet leaders or whether the regime needed scapegoats to justify the failures of the Soviet economy. See Boris Feldshteyn, “Di klole iber sovet-Rusland,” Der morgnzhurnal, August 17, 1936, 6–7. 50 Liliput, “Vos Vladek dertseylt vegn Palestine, Rusland un Poyln,“ Forverts, September 22, 1936, 3.

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Ginsburg concluded, was meaningless in the Soviet Union where the Party exercised unchecked power.51 Ginsburg had first-hand knowledge of Soviet life and could offer sagacious observations about it, whereas long-time immigrant Socialists, notably Mensheviks, tended to delude themselves into seeing events in the Soviet Union through the prism of their outdated understanding of what was happening in the country. Stepan Ivanovich-Portugeis, who invariably remained rabidly anti-Communist and denied the validity of the Bolshevik Revolution, could not, and had not, bought into the idea that the new constitution heralded any positive changes. Even so, Stalin’s constitutional bluff made the writer jubilant. Ivanovich-Portugeis’s construal of the events of the Bolshevik revolution stemmed from his conviction that the Bolshevik era was nearing its end and that the constitution reflected the regime’s fear of a popular uprising against its rule.52 Raphael Abramovitch paid much attention to the constitution draft, especially to the system of soviets, designated as the elective organs of the revolutionary masses. The soviets first emerged during the 1905 revolution and became widespread in 1917. Abramovitch, a one-time member of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, considered himself well qualified to address this issue. The 1936 blueprint for the constitution gave him a measure of hope that the regime was ready to introduce elements of democratic choice. He contended that every Socialist would be happy to endorse the entire text of the constitution with the exception of several portions, most notably the article stipulating the dominant role of the Party, which rendered the entire document virtually worthless. The main problem, Abramovitch concluded, was the implementation of constitutional rights.53 He assumed, though, that Stalin felt an increasing pressure to allow some forms of elections to rejuvenate the system.54 The veteran Menshevik paid special attention to the transformation of the soviets. During the first two decades after the revolution, local members of the soviets were elected in what was called an open vote, by a show of 51 Saul Ginsburg, “A genoye derklerung vegn ale vikhtike punktn in der nayer konstitutsye fun sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, July 5, 1936, section 2, 1. 52 Stepan Ivanovich, “Vos di naye konstitutsye zogt tsu un vos m’ken fun ir dervartn,“ Forverts, July 19, 1936, 4. 53 Raphael Abramovitch, “Di naye sovetishe konstitutsye un di frage fun emeser frayhayt,” Forverts, July 12, 1936, section 2, 1, 5. 54 Raphael Abramovitch, “Tsi vet Stalins naye konstitutsye gebn epes dem rusishn folk,” Forverts, July 16, 1936, 8.

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hands, during meetings at factories and other collectives rather than among the general population. In the new constitution, the soviets replicated municipal councils in Western European countries and, as a result, had little in common with the original legislative organs of proletarian power. By applying the principle that there is no bad news that does not contain some good, Abramovitch argued that in some cases, the revised constitutional norms might help citizens to protect themselves against arbitrary or unjust authorities, as happened during collectivization period, when Stalin’s March 1930 article “Dizzy with Success” gave the peasantry a weapon against over-zealous officials who had forced them to join kolkhozes.55 Ultimately, the earlier hopes for at least some electoral competition were dashed when, in December 1936, the Soviet leadership made public their decision to permit only uncontested candidates, thus resorting to election by acclamatory vote.56 Abramovitch ridiculed the theatricality of the Eighth Extraordinary All-Union Congress of Soviets, whose delegates unanimously approved of the constitution on December 5, 1936. Delegates were singing and shouting hurrahs, and speeches had little to do with the constitution, the conclusive text of which was discussed by a commission behind closed doors. Stalin, who chaired the commission, reported the final (mainly stylistic) amendments, which were accepted without any discussion. The constitution provided a legal veneer for the system that Abramovitch described as “Fascist Socialism” or “Bolshevik Fascism.”57 The Forverts dismissed the first Soviet elections held under the new constitution on December 12, 1937, referring to them as a “tragicomedy.”58 According to the social thinker Will Herberg, by that time, “Socialism had long since fulfilled its original function of creating a spirit of solidarity and co-operation among the [American] Jewish workers, and it no longer bore any real relation to the actualities of the labor movement.”59 Another contemporary observer, the historian and economist Bernard D. Weinryb, 55 Cf. Karen Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 177. 56 Cf. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 284. 57 Raphael Abramovitch, “Rusishe sotsialistn hobn geshikt a briv mit fragn tsu Stalinen,” Forverts, January 11, 1937, 7–8. 58 “Di hayntike valn in sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, December 12, 1937, 6; “Tsikave bilder un stsenes fun der elekshon-komedye in sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, December 14, 1937, 2. 59 Will Herberg, “Jewish Labor Movement in the United States: World War I to the Present,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 6, no. 1 (1952): 54.

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came to conclusion that Cahan had followed the changes in Jewish immigrant circles and “turned the paper from socialist into a general Jewish daily, in which some space was devoted to Jewish labor questions.”60 Nonetheless, judging by the published epistles, the politically active core of the readership belonged to Socialists of various types. By publishing letters which reflected a wide spectrum of political opinions, Cahan emphasized that, through its “constructive journalism,”61 the Forverts tried to consolidate its own, American-mainstream–centered “popular front” of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Indeed, the discussion of the constitution indicated the success of the newspaper in transcending the ideological boundaries that divided the Yiddish-speaking readership. Clearly, Communist faithfuls and sympathizers formed a segment of its readers. Notwithstanding the general anti-Soviet direction of the newspaper, it also published relatively neutral travel notes, reports, and press overviews that carried rich material on the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Forverts claimed to be the most reliable source of information about the Communist country.62 Olgin had to admit that some Forverts writers did present objective pictures of Soviet life.63 The significant number of readers who welcomed the new Soviet constitution reflected the atmosphere of the 1930s, known also as the Red Decade, when, against the backdrop of economic depression and fascism, Communism appealed to thousands of Americans. The Communist Party grew from 25,000 in 1933 to twice that in 1936.64 In addition to thousands card-carrying Yiddish-speaking American Communists, the circles of Yiddish-speaking Communist sympathizers boasted approximately 40,000 people in mid-1930s.65 Cahan diagnosed “a general tendency representing partly genuine opinion or personal interest and partly a fad, which enhances

60 Bernard D. Weinryb, “The Adaptation of Jewish Labor Groups to American Life,” Jewish Social Studies 8, no. 4 (1946): 227. 61 This term was used in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s congratulations message marking Forverts’s 40th anniversary: “Jewish Newspaper Marks 40th Year,” The New York Times, April 25, 1937, 20. 62 See, for example, “Oyb ir vilt visn dem emes vegn sovet Rusland must ir lezn dem ‘Forverts’,” Forverts, October 14, 1932, 4. 63 Olgin, Ab. Kahan: Ver iz er? Vemen fartret er?, 40. 64 Dorothy Healey and Maurice Isserman, California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 59. 65 Gennady Estraikh, “The Yiddish-language Communist Press,” in Dark Times, Dire Decisions: Jews and Communism, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Dan Diner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 70.

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the effect of the Communist or semi-Communist appeal.”66 On December 29, 1937, he was happy to share with Abramovitch his relief at decline of pro-Soviet sympathies among American Socialists, because the show trials and purges opened the eyes of many of them to the evil nature of Stalinism. “No words can characterize Stalin’s actions. All the most horrific epithets don’t apply to them. A monster has captured the Russian revolution.”67

Birobidzhan In April 1937, several American Jewish newspapers informed their readers that the Soviet envoy Alexander Troyanovsky denied the rumors circulated about the Soviet government’s decision to liquidate the Birobidzhan project. He pointed out that Article 22 of the new constitution made the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) an integral part of the elaborate territorial patchwork shaping the Soviet Union.68 Troyanovsky did not try to mislead the American public. The JAR, established under this name in May 1934, remained on the administrative map of the Soviet Union (and is still present on the map of contemporary Russia). Nonetheless, the year 1937 bookended the period of its building as a territorial unit with a claimed potential to evolve into a significant center of Jewish life, perhaps even a Jewish republic. Many office-holders in the Birobidzhan administration and local intellectuals vanished during the mass “purges” beginning from the end of 1936, but mainly in 1937, the year when the terror was at its height.69 Soviet authorities closed access to the region for foreigners, whereas previously visitors and migrants used to come to Birobidzhan from many countries. The story of Birobidzhan began in March 1928, when the Soviet government unveiled the plan of moving the principal site for Soviet Jewish 66 Abraham Cahan, ed., Hear the Other Side: A Symposium of Democratic Socialist Opinion (New York: n.p., 1934), 10. 67 YIVO Archive, The Papers of Abraham Cahan, RG 1139, box 2, folder 38. 68 See, for example, “Biro-Bidjan’s Plan Lives, Says Envoy, Answering Rumor,” The American Israelite, April 1, 1937, 1; “Liquidation of Birobidjan Plans Denied by Soviet,” The Southern Israelite, April 2, 1937, 1. 69 Elias Tobenkin, “Biro-Bodjan Heads Held as Plotters,” The New York Times, March 7, 1937, 7; Robert Weinberg, “Purge and Politics in the Periphery: Birobidzhan in 1937,” Slavic Review 52, no. 1 (1993): 26; Henry F. Srebrnik, Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist movement, 1924–1951 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 124.

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nation building: from Crimea to the lightly populated area on the border with China in the Far East of Russia. Early information about this plan appeared in the press in January 1928.70 The two local rivers, Bira and Bidzhan (or Bidjan), gave the name, initially a hyphenated one, to the target territory for Jewish migration. In 1931, Birobidzhan became the name of the newly built region’s central town with a population of 12,000 by 1936, but foreign publications continued to apply the word to the entire region. Characteristically, several protagonists of the novel Red Fields, a Jewish colonization saga written by the American Yiddish writer Peretz Hirschbein and serialized in Der tog in 1933, ultimately left their Crimean colony for Birobidzhan, which looked to them—and apparently to Hirschbein who in 1928 and 1929 spent many months among Crimean colonists—as a promising place. They decided that in Birobidzhan they could build the Socialist nation “on the right basis,” whereas in Crimea it “started in the middle,” because Jews brought to the colonies their old life-style. In the words of one the saga’s heroes: “There we’ll have Communism from the very beginning! The rest will be achieved by itself. . . . With no other population to mix with they will become a nation!”71 In his March 1928 articles, Wendroff made similar arguments in favor of Birobidzhan. He doubted that its distant location was a serious disadvantage. At the end of the day, Jews went to Paraguay, Uruguay, Cuba, and Mexico, where they had to learn a foreign language and, generally, accommodate themselves to local culture. Although the Far Eastern conditions were harsher than in Crimea, the area was not short of water, its land was more fertile, and there was a good chance to build “a purely Jewish settlement.”72 The articles published in December 1928 issues of the Forverts revealed a less enthusiastic response. Tsivion disliked the plan from its inception: too distant from the European part of the country, too cold, and too alien. As a result, Jews would get a cold Palestine in addition to the existing hot Palestine. Reading descriptions of the Far Eastern area allocated for Jewish colonization, Tsivion came to conclusion that at least fifty or sixty years of 70 “Sovetn-regirung planevet a yidish land in Sibir,” Forverts, January 25, 1928, 1. 71 Gennady Estraikh, “From ‘Green Fields’ to ‘Red Fields’: Peretz Hirschbein’s Soviet Sojourn, 1928–1929,” Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe 1 (56) (2006): 72, 79. 72 Zalman Wendroff, “Tsukunftike yidishe kolonizatsye in Sibir,” Forverts, March 21, 1928, 9; idem, “Vos far a gegnt iz Biro-Bidzhan, in Sibir, un tsi iz er gut far yidishe[r] kolonizatsye?,” Forverts, March 29, 1928, 9, 11.

Between Hate and Hope

hard work were needed to develop this area for agricultural and industrial use, which made this project rather irrelevant. He commented with irony that he would rather become a Zionist if he believed that the Zionist plan could be realized in fifty or sixty years. Nevertheless, he confirmed that the Birobidzhan plan had gained approval among former Territorialists, who once, when Tsivion was young, were his counterparts in heated political debates.73 David Shub also berated the Birobidzhan plan. He questioned the validity of the conclusions drawn by the 1927 Soviet expedition under the leadership of the agronomist Boris Bruk, which found the area suitable for settling 100,000 people during a short period of time. Shub, however, referred to much smaller projections made by other experts.74 Joseph Rosen, the head of the JDC’s operation in the Soviet Union, was careful in his language, but did not hide his puzzlement about Moscow’s decision. First of all, he had doubts that the distant area was suitable for Jewish colonization. Above all, the existing colonization projects in the European part of the country were far from being completed.75 Nathan Chanin, who in 1928 travelled in Russia, reported that risk-averse experts and activists avoided speaking out about it, but some of them told him that they considered the campaign an irresponsible, needless diversion from colonization in Ukraine and Crimea, and that Jews were afraid to participate in the resettling. 76 Wendroff ’s piece on Birobidzhan appeared accompanied by an editorial note: “We print this article of our Moscow correspondent without any changes, as we do with all his reports. Our attitude to his opinion is a different question.” Wendroff tried to demonstrate his neutral position, arguing that it was too early to speak about both building a republic and rejecting this plan. To him, the majority of naysayers of the Birobidzhan project were simply opponents of Soviet Jewish colonization in all its forms. He agreed that the first news from Birobidzhan were far from being reassuring. The pioneering groups of settlers began to arrive in the area in May 1928 and by the time, when Wendroff wrote his article, about forty percent of them 73 Tsivion, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, December 8, 1928, 3. 74 David Shub, “Vi halt es fort mit di meglekhkaytn fun yidisher kolonizatsye in BiroBidzhan?,” Forverts, December 19, 1928, 2, 5. 75 B. Livitin, “Dr. Rozen dertseylt vegn di naye plener fun fargresern yidishe kolonizatsye in sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, December 29, 1928, 5. 76 Nathan Chanin, “Genose Khanin dertseylt vos yidn in Rusland redn vegn BiroBidzhan,” Forverts, January 8, 1929, 2, 4.

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returned home, challenged by the climate induced disasters and difficult life conditions. However, he stressed, this was a normal retention rate for any colonization, including the recent experience of the Jewish migration to Crimea, where the conditions were less severe.77 In his next article Wendroff stressed that, notwithstanding the hardship to which they were exposed, the majority of the settlers stayed put. They recognized that the climate was harsh but healthy, the land was hard for farming, but fruitful, and the non-Jewish local people were friendly to them.78 After this short spell of discussion, the Forverts showed only cursory interest in Birobidzhan, giving sustained attention to the colonies in Ukraine and Crimea. In June 1930, Tsivion came to the conclusion that the Birobidzhan “dream” apparently had vanished.79 In December 1932, the newspaper wrote about “the great failure of the Jewish colonization in Birobidzhan” and proudly reminded readers that the Forverts was the only Yiddish newspaper in America, which from early on stood strongly against this campaign.80 This stand did not change in 1933, when many activists in the West had concluded that the task of finding safe places for Jewish refugees from Germany did not allow them to be too choosy, especially as governments in Europe and other parts of the world were ready to admit only a trickle of Jewish immigrants. Thousands of socially and economically deprived Jews from Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia saw emigration as the only solution to their plight. In 1930, Lestschinsky went on a trip to Poland and documented his impressions in a number of newspaper and journal articles. He singled out three calamitous manifestations of the critical state of Jewish life in Poland: the epidemic of suicides; abandoned children; and fainting from hunger in public places.81 He noted the appalling physical, spiritual, and moral conditions of the “social junk” that formed about an eighth of the Polish Jewry.

77 Zalman Wendroff, “Vos hert zikh mit der yidisher kolonizatsye in Biro-Bidzhan?,” Forverts, December 27, 1928, 5–6. 78 Idem, “Vos di farblibene kolonistn dertseyln vegn Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, January 10, 1929, 5. 79 Tsivion, “Nokh a yidisher kholem farshvundn,” Forverts, June 30, 1930, 5. 80 “Der groyser durkhfal fun der yidisher kolonizatsye in Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, December 18, 1932, 4; “Fantazyes un faktn vegn Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, December 23, 1932, 4. 81 Jacob Lestschinsky, Crisis, Catastrophe and Survival: A Jewish Balance Sheet, 1914–1948 (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1948), 21.

Between Hate and Hope

All these widows, orphans, old people, homeless artisans, workers who have no hope to find a job, invalids [of the war], physical, mental, and moral cripples, old maids, half-idiotic young men, people uprooted by the war, simply impoverished people and runaways from villages, victims of violent or economic anti-Semitism—these whole social riff-raff floods from the town-center to the gutter, whose name is “market.” Not only it is a heavy burden for the whole Jewish community, but it is also a dangerous contagious nucleus, that attracts less healthy elements, pollutes the atmosphere in which the young generation grows, and contaminates the surrounding social elements with poison of market and venom of fair.82

His words reveal the tone of disparagement, amounting to contempt for the “non-productive” Polish Jews. Poland epitomized the pre- and early capitalist forms of Jewish life that such Socialists as Lestschinsky deeply hated. Even Soviet Russia appeared to Lestschinsky a better place than Poland. He distinguished three reasons why Poland did not follow the Russian politics toward Jews. First, Poland did not have territories for Jewish colonization and could not even consider such projects as Birobidzhan. Second, while tens of thousands of Jews in Russia had replaced the pre-revolutionary white-collar cadre, independent Poland did not have such a dearth of educated people. Third, thanks to the rapid industrialization in Russia jobs were created also for Jews, whereas chronic unemployment was characteristic of the Polish economy. Significantly, Russia sought to transform its Jewish population rather than to push it out. As for Poland, only emigration might partly solve the problem.83 Small wonder that an increasing number of people of various ideological persuasions turned their eyes to the Far East, especially as the Soviet government sent encouraging signals. In December 1933, the American press publicized Pyotr Smidovich’s words that “Russia was able to render a shelter for prosecuted Jews from Germany” and welcomed them to take part “in the construction of the Autonomous Republic in Birobidzhan.”84 The word “republic” figured in 82 Idem, “Di ekonomishe lage fun yidn in Poyln,” Virtshaft un lebn 4 (1930): 22. Lestschinsky published this article in four issues of the journal: 4 (1930): 12–32; 5 (1930): 12–37; 1 (1931): 1–17, and 2 (1931): 1–20. In 1931, this work came out in Berlin in book form. 83 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Vegn a konstruktivn plan far di poylishe yidn,” Di yidishe ekonomik 4–5 (1937): 129–148; 1–2 (1938): 1–17. 84 Alexander Ivanov, “Facing East: The World ORT Union and the Jewish Refugee Problem in Europe, 1933–38,” East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 3 (2009): 376.

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pronouncements of other Soviet representatives. The weekly newspaper of the Soviet Writers Union, Literaturnaia gazeta, reproduced the speech made by the Tajik poet Abulkasim Lakhuti, who headed the Soviet delegation to the international Congress in Defense of Culture, conducted in Paris in June 1935. Lakhuti said, inter alia, that the Jews, a stateless, pariah people in the czarist Russia, now had “their own republic—Birobidzhan, which is growing with a fantastic speed.”85 Speaking about the new constitution, Stalin explained that a union republic, or a constituent quasi-state in the Soviet Union (such as Ukraine, Georgia, or Belorussia), had to have at least one million people of the titular nation living in this territory. Although the criteria for an autonomous republic were less demanding, the JAR never had a substantial Jewish population for being elevated to the status of such a second-tier republic.86 In 1934, the ostensibly non-affiliated American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan (Ambijan) emerged effectively as a sister organization of the Communist-sponsored Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia (ICOR), founded in 1924. In Poland, where Communist activities were illegal, the shortlived organization Agro-Yid (established in June 1934 and closed by authorities in 1935) worked to stimulate resettlement to Birobidzhan. The Polish Ministry of the Interier prohibited distribution of the newspaper Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan Star), published in the JAR. The Agro-Yid’s chairman, Dr. Michael Suritz, was a relative of the former Bundist Jacob Suritz, the Soviet envoy to Germany in 1934–1937.87 In Britain, Lord Dudley Marley, deputy speaker of the House of Lords and chairman of the Committee for the Relief of Victims of German Fascism, graded Birobidzhan as “about the safest spot in the world.”88

85 Abulkasim Lakhuti, “Oktiabr´skoe voskresenie narrodov,” Literaturnaia gazeta, June 30, 1935, 4. 86 “Doklad tov. Stalina I. V. o proekte konstitutsii Soiza SSSR,” Izvestiia, November 26, 1936, 3. Cf. Hayim Greenberg, The Essential Hayim Greenberg: Essays and Addresses on Jewish Culture, Socialism, and Zionism (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2017), 120. 87 “Grindungs-farzamlung fun gezelshaft ‘Agroid’ far emigratsye keyn Biro-Bidzhan,” Haynt, June 10, 1934, 2; “Poland Bars Biro-Bidjan News,” The Sentinel, January 17, 1935, 13; Harry Schneiderman and Melvin M. Fagen, “Review of the Year 5695,” The American Jewish Year Book 37 (1935–1936): 208. 88 “Plans Made to Aid Jewish Settlers,” The New York Times, December 18, 1935. 32.

Between Hate and Hope

The Forverts dismissed the Birobidzhan drive. Harry Lang compared it with Sabbateanism, the Jewish messianic movement in the seventeenth century.89 Lestschinsky, who lived in Poland after his expulsion from Germany, described the upswing in Birobidzhan-related activities as a bluff that lured thousands people, including intellectuals of anti-Zionist, Yiddishist persuasions.90 In February 1935, Dr. Isidor (Isser) Ginsburg (educated at famed Lithuanian yeshivas and Cornell University), who tended to write highbrow pieces for the Forverts, turned his pen to Birobidzhan. He explained the reason for choosing this topic: previously the project was a domain of almost exclusively Communist activities and attention, but the situation had changed in the second half of 1934. Cleary, the May 1934 decision of the Soviet government to endow the territorial unit with the status of an autonomous region made a load of noise in the press.91 The Boston newspaper Jewish Advocate wrote around this time: “Today Biro-Bidjan has been accepted as the only other spot outside Palestine which, because of the state help offered by the government, can help in the salvaging of a great number of Jewish victims of the Fascist economic system in Central and Eastern Europe.”92 Ginsburg, however, did not see any reason to reckon that the Far Eastern territory would develop into something significant. The fact itself that the area remained scarcely populated indicated, at least to Ginsburg, that the place had serious deficiencies. But even if the colonization proved to be successful, it would not prevent assimilation, because the Yiddishism practiced in the Soviet Union could not consolidate and preserve the Jewish nation.93 In the last week of September 1935, the Forverts run Lestschinsky’s three articles fully devoted to the issue of Birobidzhan. The main framing question for this series was: Why did the Soviet regime want to preserve Jews as a nation and build a Jewish republic? Lestschinsky realized that Birobidzhan was not only a place, but also an idea, the meaning of which he could not deduce from Soviet leaders’ pronouncements. Nor could he find any economic or social rationale for this campaign. By the mid-1930s, 89 Harry Lang, “Ver farshpreyt di falshe barikhtn vegn Biro-Bidzhan?,” Forverts, April 2, 1935, 6. 90 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Der skandal mitn Biro-Bidzhan blof, velkher hot farumglikt fil yidishe familyes in Poyln,” Forverts, February 8, 1935, 6, 8. 91 Isser Ginsburg, “Di yidn vos zaynen bagaystert far Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, February 9, 1936, 10. 92 “Interest in the Biro-Bidjan Project,” Jewish Advocate, February 9, 1935, 4. 93 Ginsburg, “Di yidn vos zaynen bagaystert far Biro-Bidzhan.”

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each third Soviet Jew lived in one of the five biggest cities in the country: Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev, and Odessa, where they had employment, often in prestigious occupational domains. The five Jewish national districts in the European part of the country had a population of about 225–230,000 Jews, but the colonies could receive more settlers, especially as many young colonists had left for towns and cities. Thanks to the full equality of Jews in Soviet society and the successful efforts to bring them into the new economic mainstream, the number of Jewish déclassé, often called in Yiddish luftmentshn or people leaving “on air,” declined from about one million in the early 1920s to 150–200,000. Due to their age or other reasons, the remaining part of luftmentshn usually could not be trained to obtain the skills required for a gainful employment and, therefore, were not suitable for resettlement to Birobidzhan. Given the fact that people with professions—builders, smiths, carpenters, teachers, and so forth—rather than déclassé people were encouraged to move to Birobidzhan, it was clear that productivization of the Jewish population was not the aim for establishing the JAR. The relatively small number of people moving to Birobidzhan made also pointless the task of changing the structure of Soviet Jewry, which increasingly began to look as if it would become a nation of white-collar workers and doctors. In May 1934, Shimen Dimanshtein wrote in Der emes that it was an urgent task to reinforce strategically the Far Eastern area and therefore the government sought to settle “reliable” people along the border. Lestschinsky found it amusing to read that former shtetl dwellers were deemed reliable and suitable for defending Soviet borders and payed more attention to Dimanshtein’s referrence to Kalinin, who spoke about Birobidzhan as a factor in fighting nationalism. Lestschinsky praised Kalinin as the only Soviet leader whose pronouncements about Birobidzhan made any sense. Moreover, Lestschinsky interpreted Kalinin’s words as a key to his own peculiar understanding of a hidden agenda. He believed that the situation in Ukraine was the real reason for the government’s attempts to preserve the Jewish nation. In Kiev and other cities of Ukraine Jews made up a third of the population, whose assimilation into the Ukrainian majority would be against the will of Moscow, concerned with the Ukrainians’ nationalist potential.94 94 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Ken Biro-Bidzhan farbesern di lage fun di yidn in sovet-Rusland?,” Forverts, February 23, 1935, 9, 11; idem, “Velkhe rusishe yidn vil men shikn in BiroBidzhan?,” Forverts, February 26, 1935, 3, 8; idem, “Tsu vos darf di sovet-regirung, az yidn zoln forn keyn Biro-Bidzhan?,” Forverts, February 28, 1935, 6, 10.

Between Hate and Hope

More than a few historians might quibble with Lestschinsky’s theory. They usually see the cultural, social, and economic activities, which can be categorized as Socialist Jewish (Yiddish-speaking) nation building in Ukraine, as an attempt to protect the Ukrainian language and culture: Yiddish-speaking Jews were “less harmful” than Russian-speaking Jews. Another reason was to engage many educated Jews in the area of “Jewish works” (publishing, education, and so forth), and make “general positions” in Soviet Ukraine’s state and part apparatus more accessible to the titular nation.95 As early as December 1922, Grigory Zinoviev relayed to several American Communists Lenin’s words that bona fide Ukrainian workers and peasants rather than Jews should be preferred in positions of executive power in Ukraine.96 As for the main purpose of the Birobidzhan project, it can be described as an attempt to “normalize” Soviet Jews by establishing for them a constituent in the ethno-territorial patchwork of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In May 1936, a Forverts representative, Adolf Held, had a chance to visit Birobidzhan. In 1907–1912, Held was the news editor of the Forverts and then, until 1917, its business manager. The years 1920–1924 he spent in Berlin and Warsaw, working as the European Director of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), and after returning to New York served in two presidential roles—at the Forward Association and the Amalgamated Bank, founded in New York in 1923 by the trade union Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America as an attempt to build elements of Socialist economy inside a capitalist system. He travelled to Russia also—or even primarily—as a member of the American ORT’s Board of Directors. In March 1936, the Soviet authorities allowed the ORT to send to Birobidzhan a group of 200 people, consisting mainly of ORT schools graduates from Eastern Europe. The applicants were nationals of various countries, mostly Poland and Lithuania. ORT campaigns began to raise money in support of emigration to the Soviet Jewish autonomy.97 95 See, for example, George Liber, “Korenizatsiia: Restructuring Soviet Nationality Policy in the 1930s,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 14, no. 1 (1991): 15–23; Mordechai Altshuler, “Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in the Soviet Milieu in the Interwar Period,” in UkrainianJewish Relations in Historical Perspective, ed. Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyi (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1990), 295. 96 Gennady Estraikh, “Letter to the Editor,” East European Jewish Affairs 23, no. 1 (1993): 123. 97 “Plans Made to Aid Jewish Settlers.”

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In September 1936, the Forverts published a series of Held’s articles describing the situation in the JAR. He and his wife Lillian, one of the founders of the Milk and Egg League for New York’s Tubercular Poor, traveled via Japan and Vladivostok. In Birobidzhan, they lived in one of the twenty rooms built as the hotel section in the new railway station. They arrived on a day off, which was neither Saturday nor Sunday. From 1931, the Soviet calendar was structured in accordance with six-day weeks—the sixth day of each new-style week was a day off.98 As a result, the streets were filled with people, prevailingly young people, dressed poorly, but clean in appearance. Linguistically, the dominant language in the town was Russian, though Yiddish, predominantly its Ukrainian dialect saturated with Russianisms (“two Yiddish words with eighteen Russian ones”), was likewise heard in the streets. Held, who was seven years old when his parents brought him to America in 1892, could hardly speak Russian, but during the years of working with emigrants he learned to understand such Russified Yiddish.99 The Moscow Pravda reported the completion of the building of the Birobidzhan railway station twice—in January and October 1936.100 In any case, it was almost ready in May, but Gulag prisoners still worked at the site. The engineer in charge of the construction, also a prisoner, arrested on chargers of sabotage, happened to be Jewish. One day Held spoke with him, in Yiddish. The prisoner-cum-overseer was very circumspect in his words and preferred to question Held about the travails of American unemployed workers. Lagerniks, or inmates of the labor camps, worked in various places. In addition to the station, they were building a new movies theater. Held saw them also on his way from Vladivostok to Birobidzhan. He was not allowed to visit any of the camps, situated outside the town, so he saw them only from outside and evidently heard perfidious stories about the living conditions of the inmates. As a result, readers of his articles learned that the lagerniks were well-fed, had educational programs for illiterate people and vocational training for people without qualifications. In Held’s rosy picture, the camps had orchestras, theater troupes, and other entertainments.101 98 Cf. Eviatar Zerubavel, The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 41. 99 Adolph Held, “Mayn ershter tog in Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, September 8, 1936, 4–5. 100 “Vokzal v Birobidzhane,” Pravda, January 2, 1936, 1; “Novyi vokzal v Birobidzhane,” Pravda, October 21, 1936, 1. 101 Adolph Held, “Di ‘lagernikes’ vos boyen Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, September 20, 1936, section 2, 1.

Between Hate and Hope

Held had a long conversation with Joseph Liberberg, chairman of the Regional Executive Committee who came to Birobidzhan in 1934 from Kiev, where he headed the Institute of Proletarian Jewish Culture. Now the top Soviet official in the JAR, he made a nice impression on the guests. According to Lillian Held, “when one speaks with Liberberg, even the mud of Birobidzhan does not look so muddy.” In this conversation Held characterized Americans’ attitude to the Soviet Union as largely positive, which was particularly true for American Jews who remembered very well that the Bolsheviks’ Red Army protected their brethren during the civil war. Hitler’s coming to power made these sentiments more palpable. Held mentioned, though, that the destructive activities of American Communists angered people in the labor movement. Why did he raise this question? Perhaps he expected Liberberg to pass his concerns to the officials in the top echelons of Soviet power.102 In fact, three months later Liberberg would be thrown in prison charged with Trotskyism and in April 1937 executed. Held’s two concluding articles summed up his impressions. He saw as an exaggeration the idea that Jews had been resettled for acting as a shield in case of a military conflict in the Far East. At the end of the day, many more Jews lived along the western borders of the Soviet Union, but this fact was not interpreted in the context of protecting the borders. Various reasons were at play when people decided to move to Birobidzhan, come what may, but lack of job and social opportunities was the most common push factor for migration. He could not comment on the severity of the climate, because he visited the region in May, when the weather was agreeable. He did not see any traces of religious life, but attributed this fact to the age structure of the population—the vast majority of the fifteen thousand Jews, including several hundred foreigners, were young and secular. He found rather appalling their living conditions in the houses built without any kind of sanitation. But even such dwellings were in high demand. In all, he did not believe that the area was able to receive more than five or ten thousand people. Therefore, it was logical for the Soviet government to limit its quota for foreign immigrants to Birobidzhan to one thousand families.103 102 Adolph Held, “A geshprekh mit dem hoypt-firer fun Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, September 10, 1936, 7–8. 103 Adolph Held, “Entfer oyf fragn vos m’shtelt vegn Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, September 23, 1936, 6, 19; idem, “Vifl yidn kenen zikh bazetsn in Biro-Bidzhan?,” Forverts, September 25, 1936, 8. See also “Biro-Bidjan Has Possibilities, but . . . ,” Jewish Exponent, September 4, 1936, 6.

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During 1936, the Soviet propaganda machinery continued to promote Birobidzhan. Troyanovsky’s article praising the achievements of the JAR appeared in the American press.104 1936 saw the release of the talkie, Seekers of Happiness, featuring Jews who came from abroad to settle in Birobidzhan.105 In America, the film was shown under the title A Great Promise and faced ban (as “harmful propaganda”) in some parts of the country.106 The whole campaign, after all, was a futile waste of time. Less than 1,400 foreign individuals were permitted to move to the Jewish Autonomous Region between 1931 and 1936, and by the end of 1936, the Forverts quoted Dr. Rosen, who informed the newspaper that, “given the intricate international situation,” Soviet authorities did not allow foreign Jews to settle in Birobidzhan.107

104 Alexander A. Troyanovsky, “Whole Soviet Union Helps to Build Biro-Bidzhan,” Jewish Advocate, September 25, 1936, 11. 105 See J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 170–174; Jeffrey Veidlinger, The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 132–133. 106 Alfred Segal, “Plain Talk: Pinya Kopman,” The American Israelite, May 13, 1937, 1. 107 “Dr. Rozen shikt a briv tsum ‘Forverts’ vegn zayn rede iber Biro-Bidzhan,” Forverts, December 22, 1936, 4; Gennadii V. Kostyrchenko, Tainaia politika Stalina: Vlast´ i antisemitizm (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2001), 119–121.

Chapter 8

World War II

Exit from Europe The years 1938–1940 saw the migration of Forverts writers from Europe to America similar to that on the eve and during World War I. The first of the arrivals was Jacob Lestschinsky, though previously Cahan preferred to have him in Europe and a couple of times even vetoed other labor organizations’ suggestions to invite him to tour America as a lecturer.1 Yet in 1938, following Lestschinsky’s articles on the pogrom atmosphere in Poland, Warsaw authorities did not allow him and his wife and daughter to return from their summer vacation in Czechoslovakia. In November 1938, after spending a few months in Switzerland and France, the Lestschinskys, with the help of the Forverts, eventually arrived in New York. Simon Dubnov, who moved in 1933 from Berlin to Riga (where the Nazis would murder him in December 1941), envied his friend’s “little nest in a New York skyscraper.”2 In the event, the sixty-two-year-old scholar-cum-journalist could not rest on his laurels. The newspaper, whose interests he represented for almost two decades, did not provide him with a salaried job. As a result, he had to earn living from lecturing, writing for the press, including the Forverts, and publishing books. Characteristically, by that time people already deemed him a sympathizer of Zionism. In one of Cahan’s letters, explaining why the Forverts could not employ Lestschinsky, the editor wrote (on June 11, 1 See YIVO Archive. The Papers of Jacob Lestschinsky, RG 339, Folder 77, in particular the letter of September 15, 1931 from the Educational Department of the Workmen Circle. 2 Dubnov’s letter of May 4, 1939, published in Gennady Estraikh, “‘Oyb di velt-gazlonim veln zikh nit araynraysn in mayn kabinet’: Shimen Dubnovs briv tsu Yakov Leshtsinski,” Forverts, December 16, 2006, 17.

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1938): “Here you have enough friends and if someone has a chance to establish himself here, it’s such a person as you. Many parts of our and the Zionist movements require your participation.”3 Indeed, Lestschinsky mourned the end of the liberal epoch when people and capital could move freely from one country to another, allowing Jews to form populous diasporic communities. In the 1930s, however, the vagaries of Jewish life “reached the level when we, sometimes, could find ourselves in the position of outcasts and, sometimes, could be promised to get a separate country for creating there a national statehood.”4 Lestschinsky began to tilt towards the Labor Zionist camp, which he left in 1903, when he turned to Territorialism. In the meantime, his relations with the Polish Bund (his brother Josef, know under his pseudonym Khmurner, or “Gloomy,” was one of its leaders) became sour, because he believed and wrote that its program was irreconcilable with Jewish national interests. In 1935, the Bundist Club of New York published a pamphlet whose title defined the two sides of the conflict, Der “Forverts” un der bund (The Forverts and the Bund). Lestschinsky, who obviously took pleasure in analyzing the returns of the recent recount of the Polish Bund’s card-carrying members, set off the new round of old ideological debates. In his Forverts article, he pointed to the undeniable fact that the 7,000 members represented a tiny minority in a country, which boasted “between 300 and 350 thousand Jews belonging to the proletarian intelligentsia,” or the so-called “enlightened workers” (bavustzinike arbeter) who formed the core of any proletarian party. Lestschinsky trod on the Bund leaders’ pet corn and they immediately retaliated, pointing out that he arguably fudged the figures and that the real number of the party’s members was 12,000. Obviously, the amended statistics still did not present the party as a mass organization either and an open discussion of this vexing fact angered the Bund’s pundits. In his article, published in the Warsaw Bundist Naye folkstsaytung (New People’s Newspaper) and reprinted in the 1935 pamphlet, Henryk Erlich, a leader of the party (and Dubnov’s son-in-law), railed against the Forverts: Apart from the New York Forverts, no other newspaper in the whole international press is so right-wing, unprincipled, petty-bourgeois [farbalebatisht], and conservative. Such arbitrariness prevails only in this labor newspaper. There is no other labor newspaper but the New York 3 Estraikh, “Jacob Lestschinsky,” 231. 4 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Undzere oyfgabes un tsiln,” Di yidishe ekonomik 1 (1937): 1.

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Forverts, where malevolence of one person determines so strongly the kinds of articles that appear in it.

The “person” was, of course, Abraham Cahan. In the same year when the anti-Forverts pamphlet was brought out by the New York Bundists, their former comrade, the Frayhayt editor Moyshe Olgin, produced a pamphlet entitled Ab. Kahan: Ver is er? Vemen fartret er? (Ab. Cahan: Who Is He? Whom Does He Represent?). Although the Communist-vs-Bundist divide was usually very well defined, the both sides often had quite similar views on Cahan.5 The Bund was not the only target of Lestschinsky’s criticism and concern: he argued that the whole Jewish revolutionary movement was in crisis. In the Soviet Union it had simply perished, while in other countries it had lost its radicalism. Against this background, Palestine remained the only exciting place. One might disapprove of the excesses of Zionism, such as its linguistic monism and, generally, ignoring the interests of the Diasporic population. “Yet how can one vilify a movement that is from start to finish a freedom movement, which is imbued with social and national messianic ideals?”6 In 1942, Lestschinsky would write that “only deaf and spiritually poor people can in our time, not only in the Hitler years but, even earlier, in the Piłsudski years, remain Diaspora optimists.” He listed the dispiriting factors: sadness of Jewish life in Poland; failure of Jewish autonomy in Lithuania, Latvia, and—earlier—in Ukraine; anti-Semitism in the young Eastern European countries.7 It seems that he lost his faith in all formulas of successful multiethnic coexistence many years earlier, still in Berlin, and advocated a kind of neo-ghettoization: Ghetto and migration are the two pillars that have been sustaining Jewish national life in the Diaspora. The ghetto, which had geographically and socially delineated us and separated from the surrounding population, had also isolated us behaviorally and culturally from non-Jewish life, creating as a result the basis for our own historically developed forms of communal life. . . . The migration interrupted again and again the unavoidable processes of assimilation. Thanks to the migration, assimilation never damaged the roots of Jewish national life. Rather, assimilation was kept in such a minimal 5 Estraikh, “The Bund and Ab. Cahan,” 100. 6 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Erets-Yisroel un antisemitizm,” Dos naye vort, May 14, 1937, 6. 7 Idem, “Ben-Adir,” Der yidisher kemfer, December 4, 1942, 7–8.

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proportion that it could not endanger the cultural structures and forms of communal life, which had been historically accumulated and later preserved in the ghetto. However, capitalism ruined the ghetto, implemented new class structure in Jewish society, and created much more favorable conditions for both assimilation and national development. It also produced the Jewish homo economicus, who was rational and little interested in spiritual values. For all that, capitalism failed to bring these processes to any final results. It did not finish assimilation nor did it create a healthy economic and cultural basis for concentration of Jewish masses.8

In the second half of the 1930s, Lestschinsky would not have defend his earlier argument that Jewish social groups and classes, let alone individuals, gravitated more to the corresponding social groups and classes of the non-Jewish environment than to the remaining sectors of the Jewish nation, and therefore he could not see any, even tenuous grounds, to speak about Jewish economy.9 Around 1937 he changed his position and already saw, or decided to see, signs of Jewish economy, which found a reflection in the name of the journal, Di yidishe ekonomik (Jewish Economy), launched in 1937 as the publication of the YIVO’s Economic-Statistical Section, headed by Lestschinsky. Moreover, he suggested the Polish Jewish community to turn inwards, to their historically proven values, and introduce autarky, or closed economy, as the most powerful antidote to anti-Semitism. He called for radical social and professional restratification (ibershikhtung), a society-wide shift of professional aspirations, most notably expansion to menial and low-wage occupations, to developing agricultural production in every shtetl and, generally, becoming economically independent from their gentile neighbors. He hailed the halutzim for playing a revolutionary role in Jewish labor movement and advised to encourage Polish Jewish teenagers to spend their summer vacation working for Jewish farmers and becoming familiar with agricultural work.10 This was Lestschinsky’s response to the ongoing discussion around the issue of going “back to the ghetto,” which

8 Idem, “Ghetto un vanderung in yidishn lebn,” YIVO Bleter 5, no. 1 (1933): 1–6. 9 Idem, “Fun der redaktsye,” Ekonomishe shrift 2 (1932): 1–6 10 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Vegn a konstruktivn plan far di poylishe yidn,” Di yidishe ekonomik 3–4 (1938): 97–115.

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was echoed in Jacob Glatstein’s much-discussed 1938 poem “A gute nakht, velt” (“Good Night, World”).11 Wary of repeating the mistake of the July 1938 Evian Conference, with thirty-six Jewish delegations representing thirty-six disparate projects, Lestschinsky advocated for consolidating efforts in order to find one place, be it Australia or Alaska, wherein Jewish refugees could be directed for a colonization campaign. He stressed that the resettlers should have strong ideological commitments, otherwise—as the experience of Jewish colonization had shown—any campaign would end up in a failure.12 The Soviet-German Pact signed on August 23, 1939 produced a shocking effect. The Forverts editorial commentary came out on that day under the title “Stalin’s ‘Heil Hitler!’.” Lestschinsky called American Communists who “had heart, soul and conscience” to remember that Stalin was the person who had wiped out the cream of the Bolshevik party. He also urged readers of the Morgn-Frayhayt (as Frayhayt was renamed in June 1929) to think critically about the arguments posited by Moyshe Olgin, Moyshe Katz, and other journalists who tried to persuade their ideological constituency that the Soviet-German Pact was good for Polish Jews, since it ostensibly gave them security.13 In an article published a day before Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, Hillel Rogoff worried that the situation could become difficult for Soviet Jews. He referred to the economic, legal, and social vulnerability of Jews in other countries, which signed similar treaties with Germany. At the same time, he theorized, the new pact could, in a way, be beneficial for American Jews, helping them shed any illusions, which they might entertain about Communism.14 Indeed, there were disillusioned Communists and sympathizers. The newly established League Against Fascism and Dictatorship and its periodical Hofenung (Hope) represented the Yiddish-speaking defectors. Among them was Melech Epstein, a one-time editor of the Frayhayt, later a

11 See Anita Norich, Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Culture during the Holocaust (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 42–73. 12 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Zol men zukhn a sakh heymen far yidishe flikhtlinge oder bloyz eyn heym?,” Forverts, August 23, 1939, 4. 13 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Der Hitler-Stalin bund un di yidishe komunistn,” Forverts, August 30, 1939, 4. 14 Hillel Rogoff, “Der Hitler-Stalin bund un di yidn,” Forverts, August 31, 1939, 4.

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memoirist and historian of American Jewish labor movement.15 He recalled later that in 1939 Communists faced social isolation in the Jewish community: “No single group had ever met such a solid demonstration of animosity. The harm done was irreparable.”16 Moyshe Nadir (Isaac Reiss), the only significant writer who did not leave the Frayhayt in 1929, and even characterized the resigned colleagues as “shady Yiddish writers” and “dark traitors” of the working class, used a different language in 1939: “Now even a blind man can see that Communism and Nazism are of the same origin and seek to cut the throat of the democratic bloc.”17 Still, the majority of Communists and fellow travelers remained loyal to the pro-Soviet course. Some Socialists argued that, in order to compete better with the Communist movement, Socialist parties should espouse a more radical policy and thus appeal to people attracted to Communism by slogans of revolutionary transformation of society. Abramovitch countered this argument by suggesting his explanation of the strength of the Communist movement: it came not so much from the semi-religious dream shared by its members as from their illusion that this dream had already been realized in the Soviet Union.18 On the fourth day of the German-Polish war, which escalated into a European and world conflict, Sholem Asch wrote that he “felt sorry for Russia,” because he had a bad premonition that by signing the pact Stalin had surrendered Russia’s destiny to the bloodiest murderer in the history of mankind. Never before was Russia so isolated from the entire world, surrounded by “an iron wall of hatred.” Nonetheless, Asch contended, Soviet sympathizers did not have to blame themselves. It was Russia’s fault, not their sin.19 In his turn, Cahan returned to his newspaper’s “sin” committed during World War I. He expressed no contrition about his support of Germany 15 See “Melekh Epshteyn, gevezener redaktor fun ‘Frayhayt’, derklert far vos er farlozt di komunistishe partey,” Forverts, October 7, 1939, 1, 4; “Di virkung fun Stalins farrat oyf di komunistn in der provints,” Forverts, January 2, 1940, 3. 16 Melech Epstein, The Jews and Communism: The Story of Early Communist Victories and Ultimate Defeats in the Jewish Communisty, U.S.A., 1919–1941 (New York: Trade Union Sponsoring Committee, 1959), 233. 17 “Left-Wing Jews Turning Backs on Communist Groups,” Jewish Advocate, September 1, 1937, 7; Estraikh, In Harness, 98. 18 Raphael Abramovitch, “In vos ligt der koyekh fun komunizm?,” Forverts, May 2, 1944, 4. 19 Sholem Asch, “Vos badayt der sholem tsvishn Stalin un Hitler?,” Forverts, September 4, 1939, 6.

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in 1914–1917, explaining that his stand was determined, then, by two criteria: democracy and attitude to Jews. Now the situation was completely dissimilar.20 Following the Red Army’s invasion in Poland on September 17, 1939, Cahan rejected the Communists’ reasoning that by doing it the Soviet Union gave a safe shelter to a million Polish Jews. He saw the results of the Soviet involvement in a different light: one million Jews ended up in Soviet slavery, and Hitler had received from Stalin on the slaughter 2.5 million Jews.21 (In actual fact, with the annexation of the eastern half of Poland, the Soviet Jewish population increased by close to 1.5 million.) The newspaper published material on the situation in partitioned Poland. Baruch (in some sources Benjamin) Shefner, coeditor of the Warsaw Bundist newspaper Folks-tsaytung and president of the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Poland, fled to Vilna and sent several articles to the Forverts. He visited Bialystok, now a Soviet city, where thousands of Jewish refugees spent hours queuing at the five soup kitchens for a meager food allotment. A major center of textile industry, the city gave a bad impression even compared with its previous look that “reminded the faces of its chronically undernourished weavers and untimely aged women.” One of the placards, fixed to a wall of a Bialystok building and seen by Shefner, read “Down with the reptile traitors of the Polish Socialist Party and the Bund!”22 In 1941, Shefner reached New York after a difficult trip through Russia and Japan and landed there a job of a Forverts staff writer. Leib Spizman, a Yiddish writer and Labor Zionist leader, also came to New York via Russia and Japan. In his conversation with a Forverts journalist, he painted a dark picture of the travails the Polish Jews underwent in the hand of Soviet authorities. Speaking about mass expulsions of the Jews to eastern areas of the Soviet Union, he accentuated the fact that the deportees had not been

20 Abraham Cahan, “Der ‘Forverts’ in 1914 un der ‘Forverts’ in 1939,” Forverts, September 6, 1939, 4. 21 Abraham Cahan, “Veln tsvey blutike gengsters zikh tseteyn mit der velt? Iz dos meglekh?,” Forverts, September 19, 1939, 4. 22 B. Abramson [Baruch Shefner], “Forverts-korespondent bazukht Byalistok,” Forverts, February 21, 1940, 4; idem, “Byalistok iz gepakt mit yidishe flikhtlinge—vi azoy lebn zey?,” Forverts, February 22, 1940, 4. Shefner was in the group of forty writers who had “reached Vilna unharmed”—Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 42.

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sent to Birobidzhan.23 In fact, according to the Soviet press, there was a plan of resettling to the Jewish Autonomous Region at least 45,000 Jews from recently annexed territories by the end of 1942. The war made the realization of this plan impossible.24 In a brutal irony of the time, the expelled “unreliable” Jews had a much better chance to survive than those deemed reliable and, as a result, left in the areas rapidly occupied by the Nazis in 1941. In 1940, as the war engulfed France, the Jewish Labor Committee, an umbrella group of Jewish labor and fraternal organizations, helped to bring to America scores of political and cultural activists. Adolf Held replaced the deceased Baruch Vladeck, who initiated the establishment of the JLC in 1934, as its president. Among the rescued activists were David Eynhorn, Stepan Ivanovich, and Raphael Abramovitch. The latter acted as the figurehead of the “Raphael Abramovitch group,” which was the first to be evacuated. On September 6, 1940, Abramovitch, with his wife and daughter (his son, Mark Rein, who went to Spain to fight fascism during the civil war, was presumed kidnapped and murdered by Soviet agents in April 1937),25 and six of his political friends, reached New York from Lisbon, aboard the SS Excalibur of the American Export Lines.26 Abramovitch described the story of their escape from the Nazi-occupied France in a series of articles.27 In America, Abramovitch’s activity became “more Jewish” than in the 1920s and 1930s. He joined the Jewish Socialist Farband and the Workmen’s Circle. All the same, as David Shub wrote later, Abramovitch “never was a professional Jewish politician. Rather, his entire life he remained a proud national-spirited Jew, a sincere friend of the State of Israel, and—at the 23 Eliezer Levin, “Nokh eyntslhaytn vegn di poylishe yidn unter sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, December 22, 1940, section 2, 3, 5. 24 Boris Kotlerman, “Yiddish Schools in Birobidzhan, 1939–1941,” Jews in Eastern Europe 3 (2002): 109–114. 25 See, for example, memoirs of Willy Brandt (the German Chancellor in 1969–1974), Mark Rein’s friend during the Spanish civil war: Erinnerungen: mit den “Notizen zum Fall G.” (Berlin: Ullstein, 1994), 118–119. 26 Catherine Collomp, “The Jewish Labor Committee, American Labor, and the Rescue of European Socialists, 1934–1941,” International Labor and Working Class History 68 (2005): 124. 27 Raphael Abramovitch, “Genose Abramovitsh dertseylt vi er hot zikh aroysgeratevet fun Frankraykh,” Forverts, September 11, 1940, 2, 4; September 12, 1940, 3, 8; September 13, 1940, 3, 6; idem, “Di tragishe nakht ven Frankraykh hot zikh untergegebn,” Forverts, September 16, 1940, 3, 6; idem, “Abramovitsh shildert dem gelof nokh vizes aroystsuforn fun Frankraykh,” Forverts, September 20, 1940, 2, 3; “Abramovitsh shildert zayne letste teg in dem natsistishn Frankraykh,” Forverts, September 23, 1940, 2, 3.

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same time—an internationalist in the full sense of the word.”28 Abramovitch continued to write in the Forverts, expressing, according to Hillel Rogoff, “in the clearest and deepest way the stance of the newspaper in its attitude toward the problems and events of international politics.” In the end, he became less attached to the ideology of “revolutionary Socialism” and effectively accepted Cahan’s formula of “‘democratic Socialism’ with the stress on the word ‘democratic’.”29 In fact, Abramovitch’s ideological transformation took place earlier. In 1939, when he replaced Dan as the head of their Menshevik group, it already meant the victory of his “democratic” faction over Dan’s “revolutionary” one.30 In 1939, Shub, whose anti-Soviet stand never softened, wrote a pamphlet, Fascism and Communism: How Moscow Helped Fascism and Nazism to Be Born, which highlighted the essential parallels between “Stalin’s red fascism” and “Hitler’s brown fascism.”31 Abramovitch also saw clear parallels between Stalin and Hitler, however as early as 1936 he maintained that the Hitlerism loomed a greater threat for Russia and the entire mankind than the Stalinism. Politically and morally, the Soviet Union was similar to fascist Germany, but economically they differed significantly: Germany was a capitalist country, whereas Russia was—in Abramovitch’s view— the country, where the revolution had been going on. Therefore, should Germany or Japan attack the Soviet Union, Socialists had to help defend the revolution, and thus allow it to proceed and ultimately finish.32 One of the founders of the YIVO, and the head of its Social-Economic— and then Economic-Statistical—Section, Lestschinsky continued to work for this academic organization, whose headquarters relocated from Vilna to New York following the outbreak of World War II. Max Weinreich, director of the YIVO and a Forverts journalist at the same time, happened to be in Copenhagen on September 1, 1939. He did not return to Vilna and instead made his way to New York, arriving in March 1940.33 28 David Shub, “Refoel Abramovitsh-Reyn,” Forverts, April 13, 1963, 5. 29 Rogoff, Der gayst fun “Forverts,” 202, 208. 30 Shub, “Refoel Abramovitsh-Reyn,” 4. 31 David Shub, Fashizm un komunizm: vi azoy Moskve hot geholfn brengen fashizm un natsizm oyf der velt (New York: Veker, 1939). 32 Raphael Abramovitch, “Vos veln ton sotsialistn, oyb Daytshland oder Yapan zol onfaln oyf sovet-Rusland?,” Forverts, February 9, 1936, 6. 33 Max Weinreich, “Der yidisher visnshaftlekher institute (ivo) fun Vilne hot zikh ‘bazetst’ in Amerike biz di milkhome vet fariber,” Forverts, January 11, 1942, section 2, 4; Kalman Weiser, “Coming to America: Max Weinreich and the Emergence of YIVO’s

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The failure to appreciate the full dimension of the catastrophe is perceptible in Weinreich’s article “What Will Happen to Our Language after this War?,” published February 8, 1942. Weinreich drew parallel with the German occupation during World War I, when Yiddish significantly reinforced its positions in culture and education. Deducing from the old experience and reading available material on the situation in the ghettos, created in Polish cities and towns, he concluded that the Nazis even encouraged the Jewish administration to use Yiddish in schools. Moreover, he saw a silver lining in the events: the children of those Jews who had been deported to the ghettos from Germany and Czechoslovakia had to learn Yiddish. In other words, in the beginning of 1942, Weinreich, and the newspaper in general, did not fully grasp yet that the two German occupations were of an incomparable nature and of incomparable consequences.34 In 1944, Lestschinsky participated in the YIVO project of collecting and analyzing opinions about the November 1943 instruction to exclude registration of Jewishness in recording the origins of entrants, issued by Earl G. Harrison, then Commissioner of the United States’ Immigration and Naturalization Service. No doubt, this was an effort by the administration to make Jewish immigration “less visible” and to silence those who panicked that the country was overrun with Jews.35 However, people like Lestschinsky were incensed at this decision, because their model of the Diaspora life was based on the visibility and the vibrancy of Jewish communities. The nineteenth annual YIVO conference would become the source for the short article entitled “6,000,000 Jews Dead,” which appeared in The New York Times on January 8, 1945. The figure, ultimately canonized, was estimated “by Jacob Lestschinsky, exiled economist and newspaper man,” in an address at the conference.36 American Center,” in Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture, ed. Lara Rabinovitch, Shiri Goren, and Hannah S. Pressman (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 231–252. 34 Max Weinreich, “Vos vet zayn mit undzer yidisher shprakh nokh der itstiker milkhome?,” Forverts, February 8, 1942, 4. 35 Nathan Goldberg, Jacon Lest[s]chinsky, and Max Weinreich, The Classification of Jewish Immigrants and Its Implications (New York: YIVO, 1945). 36 “6,000,000 Jews Dead: Jacob Lestschinsky Estimates Reduction in Europe since ’39,” The New York Times, January 8, 1945, 17. In reality, Lestschinsky was not the first to suggest this estimate of wartime losses of Jewish lives—see, in particular, Joshua Rubenstein, “Il’ia Ehrenburg and the Holocaust in Soviet Press,” in Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering, ed. Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013), 51.

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The Soviet Delegation Abramovitch was good at analyzing the past and present, but his prognostications were often off the mark. On June 12, 1941, ten days before Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the Forverts published his article, which assured readers that both countries had no reasons to attack each other. Stalin would not confront Germany because of the weakness of his Red Army, while Hitler did not need to fight for energy and other resources—he already had enough of these in conquered Europe. Abramovitch brushed off an anti-Hitler alliance between Moscow and the West as nothing more than an illusion, and put his bet on Stalin’s alliance with Hitler, especially as their ideologies of nationalism and imperialism had become closely compatible.37 After the beginning of the “unlikely” war, he called for helping the Russian people, but to combine help with fighting Stalinism and Communism.38 Later he would start thinking about a possible political layout in post-war Europe. He predicted that, whether European Socialists wanted it or not, the United States would define, in large part, the shape of Europe.39 In his vision of the post-war world, the war would not make the Bolshevism stronger, whereas democratic Socialism had a better chance to shape societies in the belligerent countries.40 (In January 1942, Nathan Chanin would explain his vision of the outcome of the war: that its last shot “will be fired from free America—and from that shot the Stalin regime, too, will be shot to pieces.”41) The beginning of the German-Soviet war could not change the antipathetic attitude of the Forverts toward Soviet Jewish cultural figures. Responding to the meeting of Soviet Jewish writers and intellectuals, on August 24, 1941, and their appeal for unity with “Jewish brethrens all over

37 Raphail Abramovitch, “Hitlers Daytshland un Stalins Rusland,” Forverts, June 12, 1941, 3, 8. 38 Raphail Abramovitch, “Di milkhome tsvishn sovet-Rusland un Daytshland,” Forverts, June 27, 1941, 4. 39 Raphael Abramovitch, “Vos eyropeishe sotsialistn dervartn fun Amerike?,” Forverts, July 27, 1942, 3. 40 Idem, “Vet der bolshevizm vern shtarker nokh der milkhome?,” Forverts, May 13, 1944, 4. 41 “‘War on USSR’ Chanin Gets Permit to Tour Europe,” Daily Worker, April 27, 1945, 5; George Sirgiovanni, An Undercurrent of Suspicion: Anti-Communist and AntiSoviet Opinion in World War II America, PhD dissertation (New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 1988), 305.

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the world,” the Forverts published a sarcastic editorial entitled “A Photo with an Appeal and Salt on Jewish Wounds.” The editors asked their readers: How do you think? Is it really necessary to remind the Jews in America and the Jews in the British countries, the Jews in South America and the Jews in the Land of Israel, the Jews in all places where they are free, and the Jews who are in the ruined, pogrom-ridden countries—well, how do you think, do they have to be reminded to hate Hitler? Only contempt should be felt for the appeal of Moscow writers. It is helpful that the group also has sent its photo, so one can see who is who.42

The editorial attributed the “faces and names” in the photo to the following three categories: first, those individuals who served the Soviet secret police when it persecuted non-conformist Jews; second, those who welcomed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; third, the “Communist court poets.” In three days, Shefner, now a Forverts staff writer, developed further the topic of the “court writers,” mentioning such names as David Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Shachno Epstein, and Shmuel Godiner.43 (Godiner, a volunteer in the people’s militia formed to defend Moscow, was killed in action several months later.) The editorial and Shefner’s article set the tone for the war-time politics of the Forverts toward the Soviet Union: it hailed the heroic efforts of the Red Army, but continued to deplore the ideology and institutional components of Stalin’s tyranny. In particular, the newspaper remained skeptical about the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. The meeting and appeal of August 24, 1941 was one of the preludes to the establishment of the JAFC, a propaganda unit at the Soviet Information Bureau, the Soviet news agency. The appeal of Soviet Jewish intellectuals found a diametrically different response in the American Yiddish-speaking quarters which did not belong to the constituency of the Forverts. On September 11, 1941, Chaim Zhitlovsky initiated a meeting at the hotel Pennsylvania in the New York. Since 1936, Zhitlovsky had acted as an advocate of Soviet politics. He played a key role in the Yidishe Kultur Farband (YKUF, Yiddish Culture Association), established as a Popular Front organization following the international Yiddish Culture Congress, convened in Paris in September 1937. Zhitlovsky misinterpreted the Soviet doctrine of building a Socialist 42 “A fotografye mit an oyfruf un zalts oyf yidishe vundn,” Forverts, August 27, 1941, 4. 43 Baruch Shefner, “Di yidishe shrayber fun sovet-Rusland un zeyer oyfruf tsu di yidn fun der velt,” Forverts, August 30, 1941, 8.

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society in one country as a triumph of dear-to-him social-revolutionary ideas of bypassing in Russia the capitalist stage in the development of society. He praised the Birobidzhan and other Soviet territorial projects as the best way of modernizing the Jewish population.44 Despite rationalizing the Stalinist and, sometimes, even the Hitlerist regimes, Zhitlovsky condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and resigned from his position of the YKUF president. However, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, he immediately joined the ranks of ardent supporters of the Soviet Union.45 Following the September 1941 meeting, a new organization emerged on the American Jewish political landscape: the Committee of Jewish Writers, Artists and Scientists (CJWAS), headed by Zhitlovsky. Beginning from November 29, 1942, the committee published its periodical, called Eynikayt (Unity)—a namesake of the newspaper launched on June 17, 1942 by the JAFC. Moreover, many materials for the New York Eynikayt would be supplied by the JAFC. As for the American contributors, they predominantly belonged to the YKUF circles. Following Zhitlovsky’s death in May 1943, the CJWAS’s leadership had to be reshuffled. Still, it looked very impressive: Albert Einstein—honorary president, the best-selling Yiddish writer Sholem Asch—president, the known journalist on Der tog (and a son-inlaw of Sholem Aleichem) Ben-Zion Goldberg—chairman, the Jewish historian Raphael Mahler—vice-chairman. The secretary of the committee was Menashe Unger, a Yiddish journalist who wrote on Hasidism for Der tog and was a teacher at the School for Teachers and Higher Yiddish Education of the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order.46 The reaction to the formation of the JАFC exposed deep fissures in American Jewish community. The tragic destiny of the two leaders of the Polish Bund, Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, added fuel to the fire. Arrested after fleeing to the zone under Soviet control (there were rumors about their execution), they were freed in September 1941. Soviet authorities allowed them to establish contacts with Polish embassy and with Socialist circles,

44 For the Birobidzhan project in the later years, see, for example, Gennady Estraikh, “Birobidzhan in Khrushchev’s Thaw: The Soviet and the Western Outlook,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 18, no. 1 (2019): 56–74. 45 Yitshak Kharlash, “Zhitlovsky, Khaim,” Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literature, vol. 3 (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1960), 702–704. 46 “Sholem Ash derveylt prezident fun yidishn shrayber-komitet,” Eynikayt, June 1943, 3.

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and to sign on as correspondents of the Forverts. And then, less than three months later, they were arrested, and disappeared from view.47 On February 23, 1943, Maxim Litvinov, Soviet ambassador to the United States, informed William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, that Erlich and Alter had been convicted and executed as spies and subversive agents. It seems that Moscow decided that it was safe to release this information in the euphoria engendered by the victory at Stalingrad. Indeed, according to the historian Maurice Isserman, few people outside of New York City labor and liberal circles cared very much about the fate of two obscure Jewish Socialists. Important arbiters of liberal opinion—Roosevelt, [and the trade union leaders Sidney] Hillman, and [Philip] Murray—maintained silence on the case. Even those liberals most disturbed by the deaths were not prepared to allow their protest to disturb Soviet-American relations.48

However, in the Socialist circles, especially in its Jewish organizations, people were not afraid to express their outrage. Hillel Rogoff drew a parallel between the execution of the veteran Bundists as Nazi collaborators and persecutions based on false accusations of using the blood of Christian children to make matzah for Passover. He understood that the “mood of gratitude to the Soviet people for its heroic resistance” would not allow the governments of the democratic states to raise their voices in protest. But Socialists could not remain silent. “Of course, we will protest. Of course, we will condemn before the entire world the crime that has been committed.”49 During one of the numerous protests, organized by American Jewish Socialists, La Guardia, Mayor of New York, called them Sacco and Vanzetti of the USSR.50 In May 1943, during an annual convention of the Workmen’s Circle, David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies’ Garment 47 “Viktor Alter getoyt in sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, March 5, 1940, 1; “Erlikh un Alter, firer fun poylishn ‘Bund’, vider arestirt in Rusland,” Forverts, December 19, 1941, 1; Daniel Soyer, “Executed Bundists, Soviet Delegates, and the Wartime Jewish Popular Front in New York,” American Communist History 15, no. 3 (2016): 299–300. 48 Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You on?: The American Communist Party during the Second World War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 160. 49 Soyer, “Executed Bundists, Soviet Delegates, and the Wartime Jewish Popular Front in New York,” 305. 50 “Charges Answered by Soviet Embassy: Executed Polish Labor Leaders Were Spies, It Says,” The New York Times, March 4, 1943, 3; Isabelle Tombs, “Erlich and Alter, ‘The Sacco and Vanzetti of the USSR’: An Episode in the Wartime History of International Socialism,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 4 (1988), 531–549.

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Workers’ Union, likewise referred to the tragic destiny of the two leading Bundists and sided with the critics of Stalin’s regime arguing that, although the Soviet Union was an ally in the fight against Hitlerism, it would be wrong “to shout that by criticizing Stalin one also offends the Russian people.”51 Palliation of the outrage caused by the Erlich-Alter controversy could be one of the factors taken into the account by Soviet functionaries, when they decided to send a Jewish delegation to the United States. There is no question, however, that a much more important goal was at the forefront of their minds, namely, mobilization of Western public opinion for starting the Allies’ military operations in Europe and thus relieving the pressure on the Soviet troops. This mission, whose preparation began in March 1943, had no precedent. No Soviet Jewish cultural figures visited America in the entire interwar period. Bergelson’s American sojourn in 1928–1929 can be seen only as an approximation to a Soviet Jewish intellectual’s visit. Although Bergelson by then described himself as a Soviet writer, he was living in Berlin and held a Lithuanian passport. Judging by the available sources, the idea of inviting a Soviet delegation was first raised by Albert Einstein in a conversation with Maxim Litvinov who discussed it with Moscow. Initially, the JAFC suggested six people, but the Central Committee selected only two delegates: Solomon Mikhoels, the director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater and chairman of the JAFC, and Itsik Fefer, one the foremost Soviet Yiddish poets and a central figure in the JAFC.52 Shachno (Alexander) Epstein, secretary of the JAFC, who was wellknown in the American Jewish labor circles, was an apparent candidate for a role in such a delegation. In June 1928 he returned to the Soviet Union after a seven-year-long stint as an editor of the Frayhayt. Later he somehow combined two personas: of a Soviet Yiddish editor and literary critic, and of a Soviet spy. Benjamin Gitlow, a former leading American Communist, wrote about Epstein that he was “a coward who cringed in the presence of danger,” but the Soviet espionage service “nevertheless used him over and over again in dangerous situations, for his fear of that organization

51 Y. Fogel, “Rusland meg kritikirt vern punkt vi ale elays; komunistishe hetses torn nit farshtikn protestn, zogt Dubinsky bay arbeter ring konvenshon,” Forverts, May 4, 1943, 1, 8. 52 Shimon Redlich, War, the Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR (Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 74.

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surmounted all other fears.”53 It seems that his “second persona” made him unsuitable for the 1943 mission. The official invitation came from the CJWAS and the Jewish Council for War Help to Russia, which formed a joint national reception committee of the Soviet delegation: Albert Einstein, honorary chairman; the writers Sholem Asch, Lion Feuchtwanger, Upton Sinclair, Waldo Frank, and Peretz Hirschbein, the theater directors Morris Schwarz, Max Reinhard, and Paul Muni, the actress Molly Picon, the conductor Serge Kroussevitzky, the violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin, the singer Paul Robeson, B. Z. Goldberg and W. Edlin (Der tog), D. Mekler (Der morgn-zhurnal), Paul Novick, congress members Daniel Ellison, Adolph J. Sabath, Emanuel Celler, and Arthur George Klein, chairman of ICOR Charles Kunz, both chairmen of the World Jewish Congress—Stephen S. Wise and Nahum Goldmann, Baron Edward de Rothchild, and Eri Jabotinsky.54 Asch played a particularly visible role in the reception committee. Soviet ideologists warmed up to Asch following Cahan’s rejection of his novel The Nazarene. On reading the novel’s first chapters in March 1938, Cahan strongly advised Asch to destroy his “Christian” work. When Asch defiantly and much to Cahan’s fury did not follow this instruction and the novel, translated into English, became a bestseller in 1939, his prose pieces and essays vanished from the pages of the newspaper. It seems that Asch, who lived for the most part in Europe, either failed, or, in his larger-thanlife manner, was unwilling to detect the metamorphosis in the outlook of the Forverts’s editorial staff and to understand that his desire to explore common roots in Christianity and Judaism could not resonate with a considerable portion of the writers and readers. The Forverts launched a relentless smear campaign against the writer, accusing him of all mortal literary and ideological sins, including proselytizing. The columnist Chaim Lieberman went out of his way to pillory Asch. Previously a Labor Zionist secular activist and a pioneer of Yiddish education in the USA, Lieberman turned to religion after a tragedy in his family. When asked by a colleague how he, an educated person, could take seriously such things as the Shulchan Aruch, Leiberman replied that, according 53 Benjamin Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America (New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1948), 334. See also Vladimir V. Pozdniakov, Sovetskaia razvedka v Amerike, 1919–1941 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2015), 524–526; Estraikh, Evreiskaia literaturnaia zhizn´ Moskvy, 147. 54 “Shloyme Mikhoels un Itsik Fefer in Amerike,” Eynikayt (Kuibyshev), June 25, 1943, 8.

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to the Talmud, there was no significant difference between believing and striving to believe.55 In his 1939 pamphlet In the Valley of Death, he accused Christianity of being rooted in blood and loving blood.56 Ultimately, Asch appeared as a “friend of the Soviet Union” when he agreed to join the CJWAS and revealed himself as an advocate of the Soviet Union: “Every Red Army soldier who is now in the [battle] field is fighting for our God and for the Jewish people. . . . The only Jews in the world who have achieved equality are the Jews in the Soviet Union.”57 In 1942, Asch explained his grasp of Jewish life in the Soviet Union: The fact that, despite all the zigzags which the history and world experienced in the recent 24 years, the Soviet regime has treated the Jews in such an open and honorable manner, that the Soviet government has showed this attitude to the Jews is, no doubt, a result of the manifested, visible participation of Jews in the Russian revolution. Freedom was not conferred to Jews in the Soviet Union, the Jews did not receive it as a gift. Rather, they gained it thanks to their unyielding struggle during and for sake of the revolution. This made anti-Semitism impossible. . . . It disappeared as a reflection of the new attitude of Soviet peoples. . . .58

Although Asch was unhappy to see Fefer as one of the Soviet delegates, he restrained himself from trying to settle old scores with the author of spiteful pronouncements and poetic lines. He even invited the two delegates to his house in Stamford, where Fefer wrote warm lines dedicated to his hospitable colleague.59 It seems that Asch was able to step over a grudge. Thus, in the 1940s he actively contributed to the Morgn-Frayhayt, although Paul Novick, who had replaced deceased Olgin as its editor, had written many times about Asch’s ideological sins.60 55 Rogoff, Der gayst fun Forverts, 172; Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 914–915. 56 Chaim Lieberman, In tol fun toyt: gedanken vegn undzer tsayt and yidishn shikzal in ir (New York: n.p., 1939), 17. 57 Sholem Asch, “Far undzer got un farn yidishn folk,” Eynikayt (New York), November 29, 1942, 8. 58 Nakhman Mayzel, “A bagegenish un a shmues mit Sholem Ashn,” Yidishe kultur 6 (1942): 11–12. 59 “Itsik Fefers a lid,” in Pinkes far der forshung fun der yidisher literatur un prese, ed. Shlomo Kickel and Hyman B. Bass (New York: CYCO, 1965), 359–360. 60 It seems that Novick made attempts to replace Olgin even before the latter’s sudden death on November 22, 1939. See “Di yidishe komunistishe redl-firer, ver zaynen zey?,” Forverts, November 10, 1939, 2, 6; “M. Olgin, redaktor fun der ‘Frayhayt’,” Forverts, November 23, 1939, 1, 9.

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Small wonder then that Asch became a prime target of the Forverts ridicule for his role of the chaperone of the Soviet delegates. Tsivion concentrated his attention on the paradox of Asch’s readiness to forget Fefer’s vehement criticism. He reminded Asch that Fefer called his novel Moscow “a work of a fascist who looks at Moscow with the eyes of an interventionist.” He reprinted the full text of Fefer’s poem “Ash sha” (Asch, Shut Up!) from the Soviet poet’s 1935 collection Fayln af mayln (Arrows Aimed from Afar), in which the Asch appeared as a loyal servant of the capitalist reaction, including Hitler. Tsivion found an explanation to Asch’s forgiveness: “according to the teacher from Nazareth, if someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also, and if you want to be even more Christian, you kiss the hand that slapped you.” At the same time, Tsivion did not try to find Evangelical explanations to the involvement of Rabbi Stephen Wise, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, and other leading Zionists, most notably Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver and Mrs. David De Sola Pool (president of Hadassah). He knew that their enthusiastic welcome of the Soviet delegation reflected the new turn in Zionist politics. Disappointed with the British attitude to establishment of a Jewish state and with the American government’s reluctance to intervene on behalf of the Zionist movement, the Zionist leadership hoped that, in Tsivion’s words, “the salvation could come from Stalin.” In Tsivion’s analysis, the World Jewish Congress felt lost in the shadows of the American Jewish Congress, therefore the Soviet drive was an opportunity for such people as Goldmann and Wise to become visible in Jewish diplomacy.61 Yet, Tsivion maintained that “hatred to Hitler could not be the only cement for uniting Jews from the Soviet Union with Jews from America,” because hatred to Hitler united people of all nationalities regardless. Hence different motifs were necessary for creating a Soviet-American Jewish unity.62 Mendel Osherowitsh offered a sarcastic explanation why he had decided not to meet with the Soviet delegates: it would be against the traditions of Jewish hospitality to vex the guests by asking serious questions, which Mikhoels and Fefer evidently did not have a brief to discuss. Therefore, Osherowitsh based his article on second-hand information—an interview conducted by Dr. Judd L. (Yehuda-Leib) Teller, a prominent Jewish activist and a contributor to Der morgn-zhurnal. Teller (whose 1954 book Scapegoat 61 Tsivion, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, July 3, 1943, 6, 9. 62 Idem, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, July 17, 1943, 6.

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of Revolution would link Marxism with racism and anti-Semitism) tried to get replies to three questions: First, whether there were any perspectives of the Soviet Jewish participation in post-war international Jewish life? Second, whether the Soviet Jewish activists and the Soviet government had changed their attitude to Zionism and Palestine? Third, what was the status of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union? The Soviet delegates, however, brushed aside all these questions and suggested to concentrate exclusively on issues, which could facilitate the victory. In Fefer’s words, “when the house is on fire, one must extinguish the fire and only then the moment will come to think about installing doors and windows.” Switching from a poetic to a prosaic register, Fefer added: “People of various political currents have united in the fight against fascism. If we start discussing post-war problems now, we will once again return to the agenda which divides the Jews into endless number of factions.” Osherowitch, however, rejected such reasoning. Like other Forverts writers, he was not ready to embrace Soviet representatives’ suggestion to unite without discussing the principles of such a unity.63 A Forverts reporter went to the hotel Comador, where on July 11, 1943 Mikhoels and Fefer met with about two hundred Jewish writers and activists. Again, Fefer avoided answering any questions concerning the future cooperation between Soviet and non-Soviet Jews. He said: “Now, when we face such enemies as the fascists, it’s not the right time to think about tomorrow, about future. . . . The national responsibility of the Jewish people is to keep thinking about today.” As for Mikhoels, the Reporter ironically praised his oratorical skill, especially his skill of speaking for over an hour without saying anything that would stick in memory.64 Indeed, the Soviet delegates fed the audiences with florid language and fairytales, which made an impression that they treated their hosts without proper respect, as if the Americans did not deserve to have a serious conversation about Jewish life in the Soviet Union. Significantly, for the delegates, who were Soviet people through and through, America was synonymous with all dark sides of capitalist society. Fefer reflected his impressions in the poem “In der fremd” (“In an Alien Land”), written during his stay in Chicago: 63 Mendel Osherowitsh, “An intervyu mit der sovetisher delegatsye,” Forverts, July 8, 1943, 4, 6. 64 “Forverts”-reporter, “Vos s’iz forgekumen bay der bagegenish tsvishn yidishe shrayber un der yidish-sovetisher delegatsye,” Forverts, July 16, 1943, 4, 5.

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Af yene lipn—nit undzer shmeykhl. In yene moykhes—nit undzer seykhl, Nit undzer veyts in yene stoygn, Nit undzer flam in yene oygn, Nit undzer landish . . . Di zelber zun, di zelbe shtern, Nor epes andersh.65 Their lips carry a smile that is not ours. The brain in their heads is not ours. The wheat in their stacks is not ours, The flame in their eyes is not ours. The lily of the valley is not ours . . . The same sun, the same stars, But everything is different in some way.

Lazar Fagelman (in 1962–1968 he would edit the Forverts) concentrated on the abyss that divided the Soviet Jewish and the American Jewish worlds. Fagelman had no doubts that the ideological and cultural environments made a much more significant impact than the physical distance between the Soviet Union and the United States. Consequently, a chasm had grown between the two communities. An American Jew and a Soviet Jew (especially of the younger generations) began to speak essentially distinct languages, even if both were Yiddish speakers. “Now we have to understand that Soviet Jews differ from us: their habits, values and manners are dissimilar to ours; so is their view on life; they have a different attitude to people, to the world and to all political, economic and moral problems.” Fagelman welcomed the idea of unity between Soviet and American Jews, but did not believe it could be achieved by dispatching two delegates, who were unable to explain if their appeal for unity meant the destruction of the separation and the beginning of communication.66 In the Forverts assessment of the JAFC, it did not represent the Jewish population and, therefore, was not a credible organization. Tsivion defined the JAFC as a “dubious outfit” (makherayke).67 David Eynhorn, too, did not regard the two Soviet visitors as people who had any clout. In his opinion, it was not significant that one of them was an actor and the other one was a 65 Itsik Fefer, Lider, balades, poemes: oysderveylts (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1967), 191. 66 Lazar Fagelman, “Di sovetishe yidn un di amerikaner yidn,” Forverts, July 12, 1943, 4. 67 Tsivion, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, July 17, 1943, 6.

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poet. They could be “a chimneysweep and a bathhouse attendant, a rabbi and a rabbi’s wife.” Most importantly, Mikhoels and Fefer did not even represent themselves. Rather, the government dispatched them to America, and they should be treated as state functionaries. Eynhorn emphasized the unique ethnic character of the Jewish delegation’s mission. Characteristically, the Soviet government did not send representatives of any other Soviet peoples, for instance the Ukrainians, who also had millions of brethren in the United States. According to Eynhorn, the decision to send a Jewish delegation mirrored the mythological—and essentially anti-Semitic—images of the Jewish capitalist power, of the Jewish solidarity, and the Jewish dominance in the press, radio, and cinema.68 The trope of the pointlessness of the Soviet mission dominated Forverts articles of that time. Even the audience of 47,000 persons, who came on July 8, 1943 to the Polo Grounds in New York City to listen to the Soviet guests and their call to open a second front in Europe, did not make an impression on the Forverts journalist Shlomo Gradzenski. Indeed, while the Moscow newspapers Pravda and Izvestiia contended that it was the biggest pro-Soviet manifestation ever organized in the United States and mentioned with satisfaction that several speakers condemned the “Menshevik-Bundist” Forverts,69 to Gradzenski it was a five-hour-long “performance, which could provide a satirist with material for a whole book.” He again repeated that the two Yiddish culture personalities came as representatives of the Soviet state apparatus to cooperate with the local pro-Soviet activists (who— Gradzenski reminded—justified the execution of Alter and Ehrlich) and the Zionists.70 Reading publications that appeared during the Mikhoels-Fefer tour, as well as some articles and books that came out later, one can gain the impression that the Forverts was the only Jewish newspaper that rebuked the Soviet delegation. Mikhoels clearly meant the Forverts when he wrote about the “Trotskyist-Menshevik fascist crows,” who “croaked” because they were disappointed with the enthusiastic reception of the JAFC representatives.71 68 David Eynhorn, “Veys der oylem dem emes vegn der yidish-sovetisher delegatsye?” Forverts, July 17, 1943, 8. 69 See the articles entitled “Miting v N´iu-Iorke v chest´ Mikhoelsa i Fefera” in Izvestiia, July 15 and 16, 1943, 4, and Pravda, July 15, 1943, 4. 70 Shlomo Gradzenski, “Polo Graunds,” Forverts, July 24, 1943, 2. 71 Konstantin L. Rudnitskii, ed., Vospominaniia o Mikhoelse: stat´i, besedy, rechi (Moscow: Iskusstvo: 1964), 260.

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In fact, critical articles appeared also in other non-Communist Jewish periodicals, but in their criticism there was an undertone: whoever the delegates were, whatever their real place was in the propaganda machinery, still they embodied the struggling Soviet Union and its Jewry and, therefore, deserved to be welcomed.72 Such “buts” were not present in the criticism that appeared in the Forverts and such periodicals as Chicago Tribune, Reader’s Digest, and New York Journal American.73 There were not “buts” also in Mikhoels’s and Fefer’s narratives. The JTA brought from Moscow information that Fefer called “fascists” all American writers and activists who either criticized their delegation or simply kept a distance from them. In his list of the “fascists” he included Cahan, Rogoff, Dubinsky, Chanin, Eynhorn, Leivick, and Niger.74 Frederic Barghoorn, who served in the 1940s in the American Embassy in Moscow, described his impression of reading Mikhoels’s American travelogues and attending his public lecture in April 1944: In general, Mikhoels’ observations on America were a mixture of admiration and ridicule. . . . Mikhoels’ approach was that of a prominent Soviet intellectual hewing closely to the party line. The impressions he received of American life were certainly highly distorted. He followed the conventional Soviet political formula which selected and exaggerated the least appealing aspects of American life while overlooking and probably not understanding its major currents. . . . In one important respect his impressions were probably sincere and personal. He was not at all impressed by the impact of the war on the lives of Americans, and he indicated that they were not making sacrifices comparable to those experienced by the Soviet people.75

Even two decades later, when it is already was known that almost all leading members of the JAFC had been murdered during the last five years of Stalin’s tyranny, the American Yiddish periodicals struggled to find a universally acceptable definition for the perished Soviet cultural figures. The discussion became particularly hot when Alexander Pomerantz, a former 72 In this vein was written, for instance, Abraham Revutsky, “Farvos ikh bin far khavershaft un vos ikh dervart fun dem farn yidishn folk,” Der morgn-zhurnal, August 22, 1943, 6. 73 Solomon Mikhoels and Itsik Fefer, “Undzer rayze keyn Amerike,” Eynikayt, February 18, 1944, 2. 74 Lazar Fagelman, “Zey hobn antdekt ‘fashistn’ tsvishn amerikaner yidn,” Forverts, April 27, 1944, 4; Tsivion, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, April 29, 1944, 6. 75 Frederic C. Barghoorn, The Soviet Image of the United States: A Study in Distortion (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1950), 73–74.

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Communist, published a book whose title, Di sovetishe haruge-malkhes, alluded to the Mishnaic Ten Martyrs. Zalman Yefroykin, the Educational director of the Workmen’s Circle, argued in his Forverts article that it was a wrong definition, because the legendary Jewish martyrs had been executed for their ideological non-conformism, whereas the JAFC’s members were loyal to Stalin’s regime.76 The trope of Soviet Yiddish writers’ martyrdom would be accepted in the Forverts only in the second half of the 1970s. It had to do with a new turn in the Cold War politics toward Yiddish.77

Back to the Tradition In the end of 1938, upon coming to New York, Lestschinsky’s very first impression of America was favorable, even euphoric. However, soon his enchantment faded away, and he began to see American Jewish life as an unstable, makeshift construction. Ten weeks after disembarking in New York, he penned an article, entitled “American Jews,” that appeared in the Warsaw daily Haynt (Today). Lestschinsky acknowledged that it was too early for him, a “greenhorn,” to come to any far-reaching conclusions about the peculiarities of the American setting. Still, he reasoned, his hunch might be valuable because it was fresh. Lestschinsky was pleasantly surprised by Jewish storekeepers’ readiness to speak Yiddish, and he observed that generally New York Jews happily employed this language in public spaces, whereas in Warsaw, Jews preferred to speak Polish. It did not take him long to come to conclusion that Yiddish was hardly in better shape in New York. The same Jews who had no problems with publicly speaking Yiddish (often a broken one) usually preferred to converse in English at home. In Warsaw, however, Yiddish more often functioned as the language of family communication. In all, Lestschinsky came to conclusion that “the air of freedom was dangerous for Jewish culture” and that the Jewish façade of New York was misleading. Even the impressive ten-story Forverts building, which towered over its environs as the skyscraper of the Lower East Side, seemed to him a shaky construction. On the one hand, he could see clear similarities with the urban landscape of the Old Country: synagogues, stores selling religious paraphernalia, and so forth. Yet, it also, after a while, did not 76 Zalman Yefroykin, “Di umgekumene yidishe shrayber in sovet-Rusland,” Forverts, May 12, 1963, section 2, 5. 77 See Gennady Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War (Oxford: Legenda, 2008), 70.

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escape him that all this was not an organic part of local life but some kind of well-performed theater. In reality, religion had been marginalized, children grew up without knowing Jewish traditions, and, as a result, Jewish culture was losing its foundation. Every honest Jewish intellectual has to admit that modern Jewish culture has benefited a lot from Jewish orthodoxy—from its conservatism, its stubbornness, and its desperate clinging to each minor constituent of Jewish traditions. Jewish orthodoxy has provided consumers for the culture and continues to provide the vast majority of its producers, both in Yiddish and Hebrew.78

According to Lestschinsky’s article published in the New York Labor Zionist journal Der yidisher kemfer (Jewish Fighter), processes of what he called “denationalization rather than assimilation” were going on in New York and other cities. In other words, Jews were losing their Jewish traits and acquiring a new, American touch, but nevertheless they remained visible as Jews, and “stuck in gentiles’ throats like a bone.” Lestschinsky noticed the cultural abyss that had opened wide between the first and second generations of Jewish immigrants. He called it the “abyss between the present and the future.” Seeing how little in common the young generation had with their parents, he began to apprehend why so many people were attracted to moving back to the “religious ghetto.”79 Characteristically, by that time the nature of Workmen’s Cicrle schools had changed, while the spread of Yiddishism became less of an issue in the United States. In 1939, educators of the schools had to concede that their pupils usually hardly knew any Yiddish, which meant revamping of the curricula and methods of teaching.80 In addition, the majority would usually drop out before the graduation. Responding to the parents’ demands, the schools began to prepare boys for bar mitzvahs. In other words, the schools were by far not as Yiddish and secular as they used to be in the

78 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Amerikaner yidn,” Haynt, April 7, 1939, 5. Similar motifs were central in Lestschinsky’s book Vuhin geyen mir? (New York: Yidisher natsionaler arbeter-farband, 1944). 79 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Ershte ayndrukn fun Amerikaner yidntum,” Der yidisher kemfer, June 16, 1939, 8–9. 80 Shmuel Niger, In kamf far a nayer dertsiyung (New York: The Educational Department of the Workmen’s Circle, 1940), 131–132.

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1920s.81 Whereas the 1927 Workmen’s Circle school convention declared that its educational program rested “on three pillars: Jewishness, Socialism, and freethinking,” in 1937 the schools used the nationalist slogan “the Jewish child to the Jewish people,” first formulated by Chaim Zhitlovsly, who played an important role as an ideologist of Yiddish education.82 In a new attempt to protect its circles from the sway of Communists, the Forverts disaffiliated itself from the American Labor Party, which emerged in 1936 and served for a while as a political home for anti-Soviet members of the Socialist Party. Democracy and respect of freedom, even in a capitalist society, were preferable to the Soviet style of Socialism. In 1944, the newly formed Liberal Party of New York protected them from Communist influences. Clearly, Cahan and his ilk gravitated to the model of the British Labor party, though they were fully aware that their role in American political life was much smaller. Morris Hillquit’s death in October 1933 was, to Cahan, the watershed between the period, when he felt content as a member of the Socialist Party, and the period of its demise. In the fractious landscape of the feeble American Socialist movement, the Workmen’s Circle, with its 710 branches, formed the principal social base for the Forverts. Although the masthead of the newspaper continued to carry the slogans “Workers of all countries, unite” and “The liberation of the workers depends on the workers themselves,” the newspaper did not claim anymore that class-conscious, freethinking proletarians formed its main constituency.83 By the end of the 1930s, the policy of respecting the spiritual feelings of readers who fell somewhere in between observant and secular changed into a policy of catering to the observant. Meanwhile, the Forverts had altered its political stance, becoming more Rooseveltian than Socialist, and, as a result, religion was considered to be one of the “institutions indispensable to Americans.”84 Still, the newspaper did not begin 81 Solomon Simon, Der goyrl fun undzere yidishistishe shuln (New York: Fraye Arbeter Shtime, 1955), 11–14. 82 Weinryb, “The Adaptation of Jewish Labor Groups to American Life”: 233; see also Gershon Pludermacher, “Dr. Kh. Zhitlovski der foter fun der yidisher shul-bavegung in Amerike,” Literarishe bleter, May 24, 1935, 340. 83 Abraham Cahan, “Etlekhe notitsn vegn etlekhe inyonim,” Forverts, May 9, 1943, section 2, 1; idem, “Far vos sotsialistn in Amerike muzn itst hobn tsvey parteyen,” Forverts, January 7, 1945, 4; idem, “Sotsialistn hobn geredt vegn frayhayt, ober zeyer veynik,” Forverts, January 14, 1945, 4; 84 F. D. Roosevelt and C. Hutchins, State of the Union Addresses (New York: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 92.

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printing openly pro-religion articles, nor did it drop its Saturday or Jewish holiday issues out of religious observance. Rather, the choice of material increasingly took into consideration the interests and sensitivities of the traditional reader. Cahan admitted that a very significant number of American Jews did not stop being religious, or, “to be precise, more or less religious.” He maintained that in many cases national tradition rather than piety determined their behavior. Either way, the majority of American Jews kept kosher and almost universally circumcised their sons. He distilled his understanding of Jewishness: “A Jew remains a Jew even if he is an atheist. Nonetheless, he ceases being Jewish if he converts to any other creed.”85 Interestingly, a version of this definition would appear in the 1970 Israeli Law of Return.86 As early as March 1898, the Forverts article “Mixed Marriages” warned against such unions, because they were fine in theory, but then tended to end miserably.87 Nathaniel Zalowitz, editor of the English section of the Forverts in the 1920s, was quite certain that intermarriage was “decidedly bad for the individuals concerned” and was not “a good thing for the Jewish race.” His particular concern was not about seeing “ten Jewish cloak-andsuit salesmen marry shikses [a derogatory term for gentile girls]” but about the “intellectual and artistic classes” whose “drift into intermarriage” would result in “impoverishing the entire race.” Zalowitz’s bleak view on intermarriages had formed his belief that “in the majority of cases . . . the children of mix marriages grow up to hate and despise their Jewish parent, and incidentally the entire Jewish race.”88 In fact, during the years the newspaper gave place to argue also in support of ideas, which contradicted Zalowitz’s stand.89 The Forverts reported that the World War II brought to the American shore Jewish religious figures, including rebbes, or leaders of Hasidic

85 Abraham Cahan, Sholem Ashs nayer veg (New York: n.p., 1941), 4. 86 See, for example, Izhak Englard, “Law and Religion in Israel,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 35, no. 1 (1987): 195; Nahshon Perez, “Israel’s Law of Return: A Qualified Justification,” Modern Judaism 31, no. 1 (2011): 61. 87 “Gemishte heyratn,” Forverts, March 3, 1898, 2. 88 Nathaniel Zalowitz, “The Case against Intermarriage,” Forverts, May 16, 1926, English section, b. 89 Jessica Kirzane, “Ambivalent Attitudes toward Intermarriage in the Forverts, 1905– 1920,” Journal of Jewish Identities 8, no. 1 (2015): 23–47.

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sects.90 In 1940, the newspaper paid particular attention to the arrival in New York of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchok (or Joseph Isaac) Schneersohn. On March 20, 1940, the day after his disembarking, this news was a front-page feature, with a photo of the spiritual leader. The editorial article was entitled “Masses of Hasidim and Rabbis Came to Welcome the Lubavitch Rebbe on His Arrival.”91 Coincidentally, the same voyage of the S.S. Drottningholm brought to New York Max Weinreich, but his arrival was less prominently reported.92 Such an attention to the rebbe reflected the Forverts’s increasingly tolerant view on religion. In addition, the rebbe left the Soviet Union with a reputation of a strong and skillful fighter with the authorities.93 The Soviet press even described him as a participant, along with Trotsky, Zinoviev, and their followers, in the counter-revolutionary espionage network.94 Readers learned the details of the ceremonial welcoming of the rebbe, which included the recitation of the blessing Mechaye ha-metim (Revival of the Dead) by the popular cantor Samuel Kantoroff, and the singing of Chabad melodies by the Hasidim who came to the New York Harbor, while younger Hasidim expressed their exaltation with a celebratory dance called a rikudl.95 By the newspaper’s estimate, about 1,600 people stood at the pier. More people were waiting at the Greystone Hotel, at the corner of Broadway and 91st Street, the rebbe’s temporary home during the first six months following his immigration. An article with the headline “The Hotel on Broadway, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe Is Staying” was penned by William Reswick, a Ukrainian-born journalist who had graduated from the New York University Law School; later spent several years as head of the Associated Press bureau in Moscow (his 1952 book I Dreamt Revolution has been referred to in Soviet-related writings); and worked as a Forverts

90 Jacob Beller, “Tsulib der milkhome hobn in Amerike zikh geratevet barimte khsidishe rabeim,” Forverts, September 8, 1940, section 2, 2. 91 “Masn khsidim un rabonim bagegenen lyubavitsher rebe bam onkumen,” Forverts, March 20, 1940, 1. 92 For the history of the YIVO and the role of Max Weinreich in its establishment and operation, see Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture. 93 See, in particular, Fishman, “Preserving Tradition in the Land of Revolution,” 85–118. 94 Sh. Krochmal, “Yidishe nayes fun der gantser velt,” Forverts, July 31, 1935, 3. 95 For details of the rebbe’s arrival, see Bryan Mark Rigg, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Rescued the Lubavitcher Rebbe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 152–154.

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staff writer beginning in 1934. Reswick began his narrative on a nostalgic note: The atmosphere created following the recent arrival of the worldwide-known Lubavitch Rebbe is a rare phenomenon in the life of American Jews. It is something that recalls images of our Jewish environment of the past, full of things that were so beautiful and honorable in those unforgettable years—all these had revived virtually overnight on a street corner in the very heart of New York. Are there people among us, immigrants in America, who cannot recall scenes of commotion in a shtetl visited by the Zinkever, Lubavitcher or Chernobyl rebbe? Excitement would overwhelm every resident. People were building tents for communal repasts. Klezmorim welcomed the rebbe who was being paraded through the streets of the shtetl. The residents would rush to him to ask his blessing and to get their problems off their chests. Both the poor and the rich used to do it. Sometimes, but not exceptionally rarely, even landlords from surrounding estates would come in their elegant carriages to intimate to the rebbe their own aristocratic worries, asking him to give them his advice and blessing. Something of this kind is taking place at the New York Greystone Hotel.

Reswick’s two-minute-long audience with the rebbe made a strong impression on the seasoned journalist. He was so mesmerized by the rebbe’s “exceptionally pretty eyes,” which were looking at the visitor “with such tender goodness [tsertlekher gutskayt]” that Reswick almost lost his facility to speak and left the rebbe’s temporary residence in a state of enchantment.96 This was in stark contrast to the tone of the feature article “Hasidic Rabbis in New York and Their Shtiblekh,” published in the Forverts twelve years earlier, in which the author, B. Salant (no information about him is known), wrote with irony that at the time when Jews were involved in building skyscrapers—modern towers of Babel—some other Jews were moving the clock of history backward to the middle ages. He lamented the

96 William Reswick,“Hotel oyf Brodvey, vu der Libavitsher Rebe shteyt ayn,” Forverts, April 4, 1940, 6. See also “William Reswick, News Writer, 64: Former Reporter in Moscow Had Worked with Hoover, Baruch and Otto Kahn,” The New York Times, June 3, 1954, 27.

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appearance in New York of women with shaved heads and men with “wild forests” of hair on their faces.97 It seems that in the 1920s and even more so in the 1930s, the attitude to Hasidim had changed, with American Jews becoming more favorable toward them. This change could be a result of strengthened feelings of nostalgic affinity with the alte heym, Old Home, and with the arrival of larger numbers of immigrants from traditional Hasidic areas, as well as of several real Hasidic rebbes or their eyniklekh, offspring. In addition, a milder view on Hasidim could be a reaction to the process described by Lestschinsky as “denationalization rather than assimilation.”98 There were people who did not want to be part of this “pointless” transformation. In 1934 the Forverts wrote that Hasidic shtiblekh increasingly attracted American Jews who found the atmosphere of mainstream synagogues unsatisfying, devoid of authenticity. The “geographical affiliation” of Hasidic dynasties often did not play an important role in America. One could see Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Polish, Romanian, and Galician Jews praying and socializing in the same shtibl.99 Apparently, it was appealing to them that Hasidim tried to avoid any “Americanization” of the traditions. Thus, the Passover seder looked exactly as it did in the old country, vi got hot gebotn (“as God had ordained”).100 In the beginning of 1941, the Lubavitch yeshiva Tomchei Temimim was established at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. It carried, and still carries, the same name, meaning “supporters of the pure ones,” as the yeshiva founded in 1897 (coincidentally, in the same year as the founding of the Forverts) in the shtetl of Lubavitch by the fifth Rebbe Sholem Dovber Schneersohn. Under this same name, the yeshiva reestablished itself in Warsaw and then in Otwock, Poland. The Forverts journalist Haim Abraham Hurvitz, or H. Vital, as he signed his articles, visited the yeshiva in May 1941. By that time, New York was home to eighteen yeshivas with about seven thousand students. Five of these yeshivas had been established in the previous four years. Hurvitz, himself a former yeshiva student in 97 B. Salant, “Khsidishe rabeim in Nyu-york un zeyere khsidim-shtiblekh,” Forverts, June 10, 1928, section 2, 1. 98 Lestschinsky, “Ershte ayndrukn fun Amerikaner yidntum,” 8–9. 99 Charles Rodek, “Emes vegn di khsidishe rabeim un khsidishe ‘shtiblekh’ in Amerike,” Forverts, January 29, 1934, 3. 100 Idem, “Der hayntiker peysekh in Amerike iz ful mit tifshte gefiln un di raykhste kolirn,” Forverts, April 18, 1935, 3–4.

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Lite—the historic area where the shtetl of Lubavitch was situated and the Lithuanian dialect of Yiddish was spoken—explained that American yeshivas usually differed significantly from their Eastern European prototypes. Most importantly, traditional yeshivas functioned as full-time institutions of higher religious training and purposed to prepare new cadres of rabbis, whereas students who attended American yeshivas usually did so parttime, because they also studied at regular American schools. The Tomchei Temimim Yeshiva appeared to Hurvitz as an authentic recreation of traditional Eastern European yeshivas. Moreover, the students looked even “less modern” than their counterparts at such yeshivas as Slobodka and Telz in the Lite of Hurvitz’s youth. Thus, in Slobodka and Telz, it was considered acceptable to shave faces, but it was forbidden to do the same at 770 Eastern Parkway. At the time of Hurvitz’s visit, the yeshiva had fifty students. Initially, there were only twenty students. These were the Americans who studied at the Tomchei Temimim in Otwock and, thanks to their American citizenship, could leave the Polish territory occupied by the Germans in September 1939. Some other students managed to join them later, while fifty-five students remained stuck in Japan, waiting for travel documents, and thirty-eight students were on their way to Japan.101 Attention to the Lubavitch rebbe indicates a new, dual identity of the newspaper. On the one hand, its editors and journalists and many of its readers belonged to the cohort of lifelong Socialists, or at least leaned toward Socialism, deeming religion to be a retrograde form of Jewish allegiance. On the other hand, the newspaper strove to dominate America’s Yiddish readership, which increasingly turned or warmed to the tradition.102 The editorial response to readers’ letters reveals this stance. Thus, the newspaper advocated tolerance toward bar mitzvah ceremonies, even if the boys’ grandparents, readers of the Forverts, belonged to overly secular circles and therefore felt uncomfortable or humiliated participating in the rituals. In November 1942, Yakov Sklar, a Brooklyn-based reader, wrote in a letter to the Forverts: Grandfathers who immigrated here thirty or forty years ago and threw their prayer shawls and phylacteries in the ocean thinking that that would 101 H. Vital, “Der Lyubavitsher Rebe firt a groyse yeshive in Bruklin,” Forverts, 15 June 1941, section 2, 3–4. 102 Cf. Markus Krah, “Further Forward through the Past: Postwar American Jews Reconfigure the East European Tradition in Cultural Terms,” Shofar 35, no. 4 (2017): 111–131.

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free them from Judaism, now suddenly realize that their American-born grandchildren don’t know of any such tricks for evading their heritage. The grandchildren see their Christian classmates go to church on Sunday and wonder why they shouldn’t go to synagogue on Saturday. And if the grandchildren go to synagogue they must also know how to pray, so they end up going for religious instruction after school or on the weekends. Once they go for religious instruction, when they become thirteen years old the teachers tell them they must have a bar mitzvah. . . . I will tell you from my own life experience. I am also a grandfather, and my son, a physician, is far from being religious. My grandson, an Americanborn . . . became bar mitzvah three years ago. I felt that being in the synagogue together for the bar mitzvah helped bring the three generations closer, the synagogue brought us together. No birthday party or graduation party was able to accomplish what the synagogue during the bar mitzvah was able to accomplish.103

In 1942, the newspaper advised a reader, a convinced freethinker, to find a compromise between his personal convictions and traditional family obligations, such as attending bar mitzvah celebrations: Act according to your conscience, as your principles dictate. If you don’t want to participate in the [grandson’s bar mitzvah] ceremony in the synagogue at all, no one should force you to participate. . . . There are freethinkers who aren’t scared of a synagogue and do attend the bar mitzvahs of very close relatives. They merely stipulate that they should not receive an aliyah.104 . . . If you don’t want to be at the synagogue for the ceremony at all, you can still heartily celebrate at the party together with your family and the invited guests.105

Tsivion wrote about the bar mitzvah as a growingly popular fashion, which, he observed, usually reflected an attraction to essentially superficial forms of religiosity, similar to what he recently observed when he visited a 103 Gennady Estraikh and Zalman Newfield, “Grandfathers against Bar Mitzvahs: Secular Immigrant Jews Confront Religion in 1940s America,” Zutot 9 (2012): 82. There were also parents who themselves lost their faith during the Holocaust, but wanted their son to be part of a Jewish community. “So they sent him to synagogue alone. Even when he became bar mitzvah, when he was called to the Torah, they waited outside.” See Susan Jacobowitz, “The Conflict and Challenges of Traditional Judaism in Second Generation Texts,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 25 (2006): 41. 104 Aliyah—an honor of reading from the Torah or reciting a blessing over the reading. 105 Estraikh and Newfield, “Grandfathers against Bar Mitzvahs,” 77–78.

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journalist on a Saturday and found him sitting at his desk, smoking a cigarette, and writing an article about the necessity of keeping the Sabbath as a holy day. In general, Tsivion saw around himself a great number of Jewish intellectuals who turned to religion in some way or another. As a sign of this turn, in March 1944, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, a major authority in American Jewish Orthodox circles, appeared as an invited speaker at the YIVO, introduced by its director Max Weinreich.106 Berl Botwinik, a veteran Forverts writer, hailed the lecture as a historic event symbolizing a peace established between traditional and secular Socialist Jewry.107 Boris Smolar, editor-in-chief of the JTA and a regular Forverts contributor, was in the audience of three hundred people when Rabbi Soloveitchik delivered his YIVO lecture entitled “Secular Jewishness and Modern Jewish Religious Ideologies: How an Orthodox Jew (Gemoreh Yid) Sees It?” According to Smolar, the speaker focused on the question of what American-born Jews—who at that time, under the power of the tragic events in Europe, turned to their national roots—found appealing in the Jewish tradition. Soloveitchik’s conclusion was that secular Jewish culture, notably as articulated in the writings of modern Yiddish and Hebrew writers, usually did not resonate with young Jews (though some of them could relate to Sholem Aleichem’s writings), whereas many of them, including university students, were increasingly drawn to religion.108 Meanwhile, Isaac Bashevis Singer, born and raised in a rabbi’s family, ridiculed the new form of religiosity that he noticed among Jewish intellectuals—a religiosity of word rather than of deed, which, he believed, made their Jewishness similar to Christianity. Singer had no problem with cultural Jews, but he caricatured those who were religious only in words but ate pork and did not go to synagogue. In his Forverts articles, published under the pseudonyms of Yitskhok Varshavski and D. Segal, Singer returned many times to the issue of changes in American Jews’ religiosity. Time and again he mentioned Sholem Asch and the latter’s “Christian novels.”109 The breach between the Forverts and Asch remained unhealed. The 1943 106 Tsivion, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, April 8, 1944, 6. 107 See David E. Fishman, “Hakdome,” in Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, Droshes un ksovim (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2009), 22. 108 Boris Smolar, “Dem gantsn lebn hobn zey geveykht fun yidishkayt; itst zukhn zey tsu dergeyn dem ‘sod’ fun der eybiker yidisher ekzistents,” Forverts, April 2, 1944, section 2, 2. 109 Yitskhok Varshavski, “Zey rufn zikh religyeze yidn, ober zey zaynen nit frum,” Forverts, April 3, 1944, 2.

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publication of Asch’s novel The Apostle, featuring the life of Paul (the same year The Nazarene came out in Yiddish under the imprint of the MorgnFrayhayt), and of his 1945 essay One Destiny: An Epistle to the Christians provided new ammunition for criticism by his former colleagues. Chaim Lieberman applied to Asch the language of the apostle Paul’s detractors: Thomas Jefferson’s definition of Paul as the “first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus” and Ernest Renan’s “ugly Jew” (dos paskudne yidl).110 Summing up the 1944 debate about selecting the right kind of burial for a secular Jew, the newspaper gushed about the good-natured tone of the letters. The editorial comment was full of self-admiration, hailing the Forverts, its editor, and other members of the staff for creating a stable climate of tolerance among its readers, whereas three decades previously a civilized exchange of opinion between freethinkers and their opponents would have been impossible. The commentary explained that in those days, before the Forverts began to play an influential role in shaping the views of the public, both sides remained fanatical, full of hatred for one another. Nonetheless, the Forverts had succeeded in uprooting fanaticism among secular readers and, thanks to its respectful attitude toward “honestly pious Jews,” attracted religious readers to the newspaper.111 To a certain degree, it was the editors’ wishful thinking. Letters published in the newspaper reveal a lack of ideological harmony among its readership and, in particular, the older core readers’ frustration at seeing the Forverts increasingly targeting the religious segment of its constituency.112 Rabbi Shurin, who had been working for the Forverts since November 1944, maintained that his “hiring reflected the feeling of the founding editor, Abraham Cahan, that the newspaper needed to speak to the religious Jews who flooded the United States in the 30’s and 40’s.”113 Indeed, the same secular Jewish immigrants who were unhappy with the revival of religious life were also irritated by the innovations imposed on religious rituals. It is 110 Chaim Lieberman, “A briv tsu Sholem Ash,” Forverts, October 10, 1945, 2; idem, “Yidntum un kristntum,” Forverts, October 11, 1945, 2; idem, “Dos paskudne yidl,” Forverts, October 12, 1945, 2. 111 “A bintl briv,” Forverts, November 23, 1944, 5. 112 Gennady Estraikh, “A Mid-Twentieth-Century Quest for Jewish Authenticity: The Yiddish Daily Forverts’ Warming to Religion,” in Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades, ed. Eliyana R. Adler and Sheila E. Jelen (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 121–122. 113 Alex Mindin, “A Religious Voice in a Secular Forest,” The New York Times Magazine, November 28, 2004, 12.

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an obvious paradox: radicals on the scale of secular ideology, they remained conservatives in their attitude to Jewish traditions. Thus, David Shub wrote that in 1940, at the funeral of the historian Saul Ginsburg, he could not stand the modern nigun (tune) of El male rachamim (prayer for the dead) recited by a cantor with a shaved face.114 In 1945, Haim Abraham Hurvitz, aka H. Vital, stressed that young Orthodox Jews preferred traditional-style cantors to those who “sung like opera singers” and became a staple at retreats in the Catskills. During his research for the article on American cantors, Hurvitz found out that their status had risen of late, because their service began to be better paid and many of them received contracts with synagogues on an annual basis rather than only for the duration of holidays. He attributed this to the general rise in synagogue-goers and their soaring contributions to synagogue funds.115 I. B. Singer wrote that, outside Palestine where “Zionists saved five hundred thousand souls for the Jewish nation,” modern Jews, who, in his definition, did not believe that the Torah came from God and that the Talmud was holy, became an enigma both to Jews and non-Jews. Whereas the first generation of modern Jews, who grew up in a traditional environment, needed some theories to rationalize their secular Jewishness, the second generation usually had nothing to rationalize. He called Jews to accommodate themselves, linguistically and otherwise, to the new conditions of life.116

114 Shub, Fun di amolike yorn, 671. 115 H. Vital, “Der bester erev yontev vos di khazonim hobn ven es iz,” Forverts, August 27, 1945, 2. In fact, cantors’ salaries in Orthodox synagogues were traditionally high, in most cases higher than the salaries of rabbis—see Kimmy Caplan, “In God We Trust: Salaries and Income of American Orthodox Rabbis, 1881–1924,” American Jewish History 86, no. 1 (1998): 89–93, 104. 116 Yitskhok Varshavski, “Der moderner yid vert alts mer a velt-problem,” Forverts, October 9, 1944, 2; idem, “Di enderungen in dem lebn fun nit-frume yidn,” Forverts, October 14, 1944, 2; idem, “Di kultur fun modernem yid iz geboyt oyf pshores,” Forverts, October 23, 1944, 2.

Epilogue

In 1927, when the Forverts marked its thirty-year anniversary, William Feigenbaum wrote that it was more than a newspaper, more than an institution, “more than a building and presses and editors and delivery wagons.” Rather, it was “a powerful force for human betterment that has influenced the lives of millions for the better in countless, countless ways.”1 In April 1947, on the occasion of the Forverts’s half-century anniversary, Raphael Abramovitch stated in a similar vein that the Forverts was not only the biggest Yiddish daily, but also a unique institution that had succeeded in developing a distinctive milieu of hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jewish emigrants. Immigrants lived for decades in the space between the two worlds, American and Europe, using the Forverts as their “mother and father, guide and teacher, mentor and organizer, political and civic leader.” Characteristically, Abramovitch hardly mentioned the role played by the Forverts as a Socialist forum. Rather, he emphasized that, together with their readers, the “left, Socialist, radical, maskilic” intellectuals were navigating in the new environment, which nullified ninety percent of the reasons to be radicals. And that many years were needed for understanding the cultural and the democratic principles of American society, and learning how to operate in this system.2 Abramovitch himself had integrated into American life rather well. So well that Soviet propaganda continued to see him and his edited journal Sotsialisticheskii vestnik as a worthy target for attacks.3 In addition, Moscow 1 William M. Feigenbaum, “The Forward, Maker of Movements, Turns Thirty,” The New Leader, April 23, 1927, 4. 2 Raphael Abramovitch, “Der ‘Forverts’—a tsaytung un an institutsye,” Forverts, April 22, 1947, 3–4. 3 See, for example, Viktor Poltoratskii, “O russkikh emigrantakh v Parizhe,” Izvestiia, July 3, 1946, 3.

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propagandists vilified him as the “spiritual head” of the journal The New Leader, whose platform rested on the premise that the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state, could not change, except for the worse, and only the United States had the power to control this menace.4 The Moscow Eynikayt did not miss the chance to denounce Abramovitch as “an agent of the American imperialism.” In his peppery riposte, the veteran Socialist wrote that he was confounded to see the name of the author of the article, Zorakh (Zakhar) Grinberg. He remembered him as a person who belonged to the old revolutionary guard, the majority of whose representatives had vanished in Stalinist “purges.”5 Abramovitch could not know that Grinberg was arrested on December 27, 1947, two weeks after the publication of his Eynikayt article. His “confessions” were needed for fabricating a case that implicated the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in activities counter to state interests.6 On January 9, 1949, Harry Lang’s article reacted to the news reported by the US State Department’s radio station, Voice of America. This was the source from which the Forverts learned that Soviet authorities had closed the JAFC, though no information was available to clarify what had happened to its staff. Lang contended that the scarcity of information made the situation similar to the disappearance of Victor Alter and Henryk Erlich. He argued that, although the JAFC was a notorious institution of Soviet propaganda, its liquidation must be regretted, because it played, even if only in a minor way and outside its brief, the role of the only representative of Soviet Jews.7 Seven years later, in early 1956, following a fact-finding trip to the Soviet Union by Leo Crystal, a Forverts journalist, the newspaper was instrumental in making known the first details of the tragic end of the intellectuals who staffed the JAFC. Crystal, who had been working on the newspaper since 1943, managed, with the help of the Israeli embassy, to get access to some fragments of the truth about the destiny of the JAFC, thirteen of whose leading members, including the writers David Bergelson, 4 Sergei Kozel´skii, Pechat´ Ameriki (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel´, 1949), 139, 198; Charles Kadushin, The American Intellectual Elite (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 105, 113. 5 Raphael Abramovitch, “An entfer oyf a bilbl in der ‘Eynikayt’,” Forverts, March 2, 1948, 4. 6 See, for example, Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 303. 7 Harry Lang, “Di Moskver sensatsye un Amerikaner yidn,” Forverts, January 9, 1949, section 2, 1.

Epilogue

Itsik Fefer, David Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko, and Peretz Markish, perished being executed on August 12, 1952. During a stopover in Warsaw on his way back from Moscow, Crystal shared his findings with Hersh Smolar, editor of the Yiddish newspaper Folks-Shtime (People’s Voice), who decided, after obtaining consent of the top Polish functionaries, to disclose this information in his newspaper article. While American Jewish Communists initially rejected Crystal’s exposés as malicious anti-Soviet slander, the publication in the newspaper of Polish Communists forced them to concede that they were blind to the grim facts of Soviet reality. The revelation almost immediately weakened and altered Jewish circles of the Communist movement.8 This change did not improve the relations between the Forverts and the Morgn-Frayhayt, especially as the relations were personal, with numerous scores unsettled. Thus, Novick, editor of the Communist paper, attacked his one-time Bundist comrade Abramovitch, accusing him of being a sympathizer of Lavrentii Beria, chief of Soviet security apparatus. Nikita Khrushchev’s anti-Stalinist speech in February 1956 emphasized the role of Beria (arrested and executed in 1953) as the principal initiator and organizer of the mass terror. In Novick’s grotesque interpretation, Beria effectively acted on behalf and in the interests of such people as the “old and unrepentant warmonger” Abramovitch.9 In fact, Abramovitch hailed Beria’s decision to terminate the prosecution launched against the so-called “murderers in white smocks,” as the Soviet media dubbed the (mainly Jewish) physicians accused of espionage, and terrorist activities.10 In the fiercely fissiparous world of the New York Yiddish press, Novick had sworn enemies, particularly in the Forverts. One of them, Simon Weber, who joined the Forverts in 1939 (in 1970–1987 he edited the newspaper), was a colleague of Novick on the Morgn-Frayhayt in 1932–1937. In 1951, Weber’s role of a key witness during the trial, which resulted in liquidation of the Communist-affiliated International Workers Order, made him an object of particular scorn among his former comrades. His August 1957 article “Howard Fast Tells Why He Departed from the Communists” signaled the decisive break of the popular novelist Howard Fast with the See Gennady Estraikh, “Metamorphoses of Morgn-frayhayt,” in Yiddish and the Left, ed. Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2001), 144–166. 9 Paul Novick, “Mit velkhe elementn in Sovetn-farband un in oysland iz Berya geshtanen in farbindung?,” Morgn-Frayhayt, April 24, 1956, 2–3. See also Raphael Abramovitch, “Mentshn un politik: der sof fun Berya,” Forverts, December 22, 1953, 4–5. 10 Raphael Abramovitch, “Mentshn un politik: Berias mapole—farlust far der velt,” Forverts, July 14, 1953, 4–5. 8

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Communist circles. In this article, based on Weber’s two-day-long conversations with the writer, Novick appeared as a manipulative “twangy little Jew” (fonfevater yidl).11 In addition to staunch anti-Communism, the Forverts demonstrated its enthusiastic support for the Jewish state. Abramovitch stated that the establishment of Israel had made irrelevant the division of Socialists into Zionists and anti-Zionists.12 Characteristically, a year after Abraham Cahan’s death on August 31, 1951, the JTA reported that of $35,000 left by him to several Jewish organizations, $20,000 went to Israel.13 No doubt, support of Israel was not universal among the readers and even among the writers. In January 1954, Tsivion (he would die in October of the same year) wrote that he made mistakes in his life and that his worldview underwent changes, but he never betrayed his devotion to Socialism and his repudiation of nationalism. He did not believe that Socialism and nationalism could successfully coexist. Any attempt to blend them led to dominance of nationalism over Socialism. Once, people argued that Jewish nationalism could not do harm to others, because Jews did not have army and police. The establishment of Israel changed the situation. Tsivion was particularly outraged with the raid on the Arab village Qibya by Israeli troops in October 1953, and called on Socialists to voice their protest.14 Tsivion had a following among readers of the newspaper, usually holdovers from the old days, particularly those who were unhappy with its increasing sympathy to religion. D. Gitis, a member of the Workmen’s Circle and a one-time card-carrying Socialist, who began to read the Forverts in 1911, wrote from Los Angeles that his secularity did not stop him from respecting “honestly pious Jews” and even “dissident rabbis.” The Forverts was, in Gitis’s words, his Decalogue; he fully agreed with the newspaper’s views on Communism and Israel. Yet he could not say the same about some articles on religious themes, most notably by Chaim Lieberman

11 Estraikh, Yiddish in the Cold War, 30–31. See also Arthur J. Sabin, Red Scare in Court: New York versus the International Workers Order (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 159. 12 Raphael Abramovitch, “Dos yidishe folk in der nayer epokhe,” Forverts, May 8, 1949, section 2, 3. 13 “Abe Cahan Left $35,000 for Charity; $20,000 to Go to Israel,” JTA Daily News Bulletin, August 30, 1952, 4. 14 Tsivion, “Yidishe interesn,” Forverts, January 23, 1954, 6.

Epilogue

and Rabbi Aaron Ben-Zion Shurin.15 In his articles, some of them signed with the pseudonym A. B. Rutzon, Shurin put Jewish religious traditions into the context of contemporary events. To counterbalance Gitis’s criticism, the Forverts carried another letter in the same February 9, 1954 issue, by Yakov Ross of Bradley Beach, New Jersey, who had been reading the newspaper for nearly fifty years. Ross introduced himself as an old Bundist and a follower of the Forverts columnist Tsivion. He periodized the Forverts’s attitude to religion into three phases: negative, neutral, and (recently) positive. In his understanding, the murder of six million Jews and the establishment of Israel contributed to the rise of religiosity, and the Forverts, a “people’s newspaper,” had no choice but to reflect this change.16 Max Weinreich, writing under the pseudonym of P. Berman, reacted to two publications in the journal Commentary.17 These articles described and analyzed the recent developments in Jewish society, particularly following the increase in the suburban Jewish population. As a result, hundreds of new synagogues had been opened, and thousands of Jews had become members of Jewish centers, which combined educational, religious, and leisure time functions. In fact, migration to affluent neighborhoods also invigorated the migrants’ desire to be “more Jewish” than in the areas of compact settlement of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, where they “were Jewish” with or without any particular manifestation of their ethnic-cum-religious affiliation. Sarcastic about the religiosity of the Jewish centers’ members, Weinreich diagnosed that a half-hearted revival of Judaism was taking place.18 He punned on the Yiddish homonymous word tsenter, meaning both “center” and “tenth,” arguing that at such centers it was often difficult to find the tenth person for a minyan. Weinreich hoped that some Jews would ultimately switch their interest from playing cards at a Jewish center to reading Sholem Aleichem. He admitted, however, that secular Yiddishists were 15 D. Gitis, “Fun folk tsum folk: an alter lezer fun Forverts redt zikh arop fun hartsn,” Forverts, February 9, 1954, 6. 16 Yakov Ross, “Fun folk tsum folk: Der Forverts un dos religyese yidntum,” Forverts, February 9, 1954, 5. 17 Morris Friedman, “New Jewish Community in Formation,” Commentary 20 (1955): 36–47, and Nathan Glazer, “The Jewish Revival in America: Its Religious Side, Commentary 21 (1956): 17–24. 18 See Jeffrey S. Gurock, “Twentieth-Century American Orthodoxy’s Era of NonObservance, 1900–1960,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 9 (2000): 97.

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failing in competition with those who advocated for a “return to Jewishness” via religion. One of the main roots of this failure he saw in the respectability of religion in American society.19 In fact, East European traditional values remained resilient in Jewish communities all over the world. Thus, Glenn Dynner’s conclusion about the situation in interwar Poland can be applied to America as well: The “secularization” process was never a fait accompli. Alongside Zionist clubs, Bundist clubs, cafes, and cabarets, the many hasidic and nonhasidic Orthodox institutions continued to thrive. East European Jewish traditionalism may have contructed, but it also became more focused, dynamic, and assertive as a result of encounter with unprecedented forces.20

In 1949, the Yiddish poet and journalist Naftali Gross praised the Passover seder as a unifying occasion for religious and non-religious families.21 Around the same time, a Chicago-based reader’s suggestion to make the rituals and melodies of the Rosh Hashanah celebration “merrier” in order to compete better with Christmas decorations and carols, was met with revulsion by other readers.22 The turn to tradition found a reflection in the textbook College Yiddish, written by Max Weireich’s son Uriel and first published in 1949 under the imprint of YIVO (in 1959, Uriel Weinreich inaugurated the position of Professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Columbia University). In one of the lessons, he included the following text constructed as sentences in an exercise for translating into Yiddish: 1. My grandfather said that he learned to pray when he was going to kheyder. 2. When he came to the United States he noticed that not all Jews were pious. 3. He could not understand why. 4. For some time he himself prayed only on Saturdays. 5. Now he again prays three times a day. 6. On Yonkiper [Yom Kippur] I went with my grandfather to the synagogue. 7. I understood the prayers because I know a little Hebrew. 8. I wasn’t sure how to conduct 19 P. Berman, “Vi shtark iz der religyezer oyfbli ba Amerikaner yidn,” Forverts, February 4, 1956, 6. 20 Glenn Dynner, “Jewish Traditionalism in Eastern Europe: The Historiographical Gadfly,” Polin 29 (2017): 299. 21 Naftali Gross, “Peysekh, der yontev fun frayhayt,” Forverts, April 14, 1949, 2, 5. 22 Harry Block, “Di kristlekhe un yidishe yontoyvim,” Forverts, January 20, 1949, 5; Abraham Tsizevsky and Anna Goldberg, “Yidishe un kristlekhe yontoyvim,” Forverts, March 1, 1949, 3.

Epilogue

myself in a synagogue, but I did what everybody did. 9. I liked the old rabbi with the long white beard. . . . 13. Since he spoke in Yiddish, it was easy to understand almost everything. . . . 19. I am glad that I went to the synagogue and I am preparing to go again.23

Clearly, the author was eager to highlight the affinity of the American synagogue with the synagogue of the grandfather’s alte heym. Indeed, the same secular Jewish immigrants who were unhappy with the revival of religious life, often in a form of orthopraxy, were also irritated by the innovations imposed on religious rituals. Americanization and commercialization of Jewish holidays galled Forverts writers and readers. Boris Smolar grumbled that, whereas the majority of the Jews remain ignorant about Shavuot and Sukkot, ubiquitous advertising of such merchandise as wine and matzoth made Passover the most popular Jewish holiday in America, even among the sixty percent of the Jews who were not synagogue affiliated.24 Commercialization of Jewish and non-Jewish holidays began in the 1920s or even earlier. Berl Botwinik wrote sardonically in 1930 that Americans tended to seek pleasure rather than to seek God, and only advertisements reminded them that the holidays were coming up.25 David Eynhorn, a one-time Bundist, felt lonely in the suburb where he had moved after a decade spent in Manhattan’s East Side. Sitting at the locked doors of a local Reform synagogue, he paraphrased Abraham Goldfaden’s lines from the play Shulamith. In Eynhorn’s version it read: Shabes, yontev un rosh-khoydesh davn ikh far zikh aleyn; mayn harts iz der orn-koydesh, un der khazn—mayn geveyn.26 On the Sabbath, holiday, and beginning of a Jewish month I pray on my own; my heart is my Holy Ark, my lament is my cantor.

23 Uriel Weinreich, College Yiddish (New York: YIVO, 1949), 264–265. 24 Boris Smolar, “Peysekh in Amerike,” Forverts, August 13, 1952, 4 25 Led Pensil [Berl Botwinik], “Fregt men nokh di fir kashes in Amerike?,” Forverts, April 30, 1930, 4. 26 David Eynhorn, “Ba a farshlosener shul in a nayem gegnt: der krizis in der yidisher religye,” Forverts, April 12, 1952, 3.

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According to Shifra Kuperman, a student of Eynhorn’s life and oeuvre, “Eynhorn did not believe that Jewry could exist without the synagogue; accordingly, he fought against assimilation and called for preservation of Jewish traditions.”27 For Eynhorn, Asch embodied a treacherous trend in contemporary Jewish life. The poet feared that American Jews would replace “Moses’s Passover” with “Sholem Asch’s Passover.”28 At the same time, he found signs of degradation in the image and behavior of the contemporary Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy, particularly in the thousands of men shouting in front of Israel’s consulate in New York in February 1954, protesting against the conscription of Israeli women into military service. This kind of religiosity was as alien to him as Reform Judaism, if not more. He pined for bygone days in his native Belorussia, where pious old Jews sported beards similar to the ones worn by old Frenchmen or Americans of the Civil War era. 29 Isidor Ginsburg ridiculed Reform Judaism, which in the eyes of Ginsburg and his like embodied rabid assimilation behind the façade of observance. He saw the Reform constituency as a hypocritical group of people with only one annual Yom Kippur commitment: to enjoy a satisfying breakfast and then drive to a synagogue in order to spend some time there, usually at least thirty minutes, but certainly not longer than an hour. According to Ginsburg, they had two articles of belief, both negative ones: first, Jews should be considered as a religious group, not a nation; second, Jews could not be successful in establishing their own country.30 Jacob Lestschinsky found it ridiculous, even denigrating, to see or hear anecdotes about American modifications of Jewish rituals. To him, and many people with his background, religion, if practiced, had to be part and 27 Shifra Kuperman, “Eynhorn, Dovid,” The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 488. Cf. Abraham Goldfaden, Shulamis, oder bas-yerusholayim (London: R. Mazin & Co., 1904), 23. 28 David Eynhorn, “Peysekh-tseremonyes—zeyer emese badaytung,” Forverts, April 11, 1952, 4. 29 Idem, “Der geferlekher veg fun di ortodoksishe yidn,” Forverts, February 28, 1954, 4. See also “3,000 at Consulate Here Scream Protests at Draft of Israeli Women,” The New York Times, February 9, 1954, 1; “3,000 Orthodox Jews Protest at Consulate Here,” New York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1954, 1. 30 Isidor Ginsburg, “Kurtse bamerkungen,” Forverts, September 22, 1945, 2. As late as the 1970s, foreign-born Eastern European Jews tended to affiliate with Orthodox synagogues—see Bernard Lazerwitz and Michael Harrison, “American Jewish Denominations: A Social and Religious Profile,” American Sociological Review 44, no. 4 (1979): 659–660.

Epilogue

parcel of normal Jewish life. In other words, he was one of those freethinking “old-timers” who treasured the religion for its national cultural significance, but only in the form they understood to be an authentic expression of Jewish piety. He also was of the opinion that in America, religion should play a more important ethno-consolidating role than in Eastern Europe, where other factors kept Jews united, most notably social and economic discrimination, and a common language—Yiddish.31 He abhorred such modifications as a lunch break during Yom Kippur, when some people would leave synagogue to go home or to a restaurant, and he was unhappy to see an increasing number of Jewish homes decorated both for Chanukah and Christmas. At the same time, he believed that the establishment of Israel and the revival of Hebrew protected Chanukah from being fully replaced by Christmas. In addition, he diagnosed a radical change in American Jews’ perception of identity: while it was almost a non-issue for the first, “organically Jewish” immigrant generation, the second and third generations tended “to make an effort in order to be Jewish.”32 Zionism was becoming more and more appealing to Lestschinsky along the way, particularly after the establishment of the State of Israel.33 In 1947 he visited Jerusalem as a participant of the First World Congress of Jewish Studies. During the last two decades of his life Israel occupied the central place in his post-Holocaust models of Jewish life, shaping to reality his nation-building dreams. He welcomed emigration to Israel, or aliyah, as the most successful form of organized and purposive Jewish migration. While all other (“elemental” in his terminology) migrations did not “eliminate the breach of the Jewish community of fate and the estrangement resulting from the language and cultural disruption,” aliyah—he argued— aimed at “liquidation of those conditions which cause[d] this breach and estrangement of the children of one and the same people.”34 Clearly, Lestschinsky saw in Israel a direct continuation of the Diasporic Jewish civilization, whereas Diaspora meant, in his assessment of that time, anomaly in Jewish life, full of nation-destroying challenges: 31 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Eygnartikayt in Amerikaner religyezn yidishn lebn,” Forverts, December 18, 1949, section 2, 4. 32 Idem, “Yidishkayt—nusekh Amerike,” Forverts, January 1, 1950, section 2, 1. 33 Baruch Zuckerman, “Yakov Lestschinsky a ben-shmoynim,” Der yidishe kemfer, November 30, 1956, 13–14. 34 Jacob Lestschinsky, The Position of the Jewish People Today (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1952), 12–13.

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“Maximum freedom—minimum Jewishness! Maximum friendship of the alien surrounding—minimum cohesion among the own, Diasporic groups!”35 Hence the advantage of Zionism as “the chief factor in the halting of the internal tendency toward assimilation and in providing the spiritual strength and courage to resist the external obstacles and to return with pride to the Jewish sources and origins.”36 With good reason, he described his and other projects of Diasporic Jewish life as fusty ideologies, based on “the almost child-like faith in the steady advance of human progress and the impending triumph of Democracy throughout the world.”37 Although Yiddish remained the principal language of Lestschinsky’s writing and communication, he became little interested in its maintenance in the Diaspora, because his new, Israel-centered model of Jewish life favored Hebrew. At the same time, he regarded language assimilation as a crucial consolidating factor for Diasporic communities and justified the Zionists’ interest in accelerating processes of such assimilation. It was a pragmatic approach, because it was easier to deal with linguistically and culturally uniform communities.38 In his post-Holocaust vision, Diaspora had to build numerous umbilical links with Israel: most importantly, aliyah. Physical aliyah, which automatically develops into spiritual and cultural aliyah. Cultural aliyah through the Hebrew language and culture. Temporary aliyah—to send children to study at educational institutions in Israel. And even pure fundraising and political and economic support of Israel play a great national role in keeping the Diasporic groups close to Israel.39

In 1955 he wrote to the historian Mark Wischnitzer, a one-time member of his Berlin circle of friends and colleagues: I read a lot about the dangerous situation on the [Israeli] borders, but it does not make any impression on me. But when I read about a new novel, about a Hebrew book devoted to logic, about a Hebrew book on the history of 35 Idem, Dos natsionale ponem fun goles-yidntum (Buenos Aires: Poale Zion Hitahdut, 1955), v. 36 Lestschinsky, Crisis, Catastrophe and Survival, 107–108. 37 Jacob Lestschinsky, “Dubnow’s Autonomism and His ‘Letters on Old and New Judaism’,” in Simon Dubnow: The Man and His Work, ed. Aaron Steinberg (Paris: The French Section of the World Jewish Congress, 1963), 89. 38 Lestschinsky, Dos natsionale ponem fun goles-yidntun, 291. 39 Idem, 427.

Epilogue

philosophy, about a new poet, about a Yiddish poet who had already imbibed “the air of the Land of Israel,” my heart virtually jumps, so happy I am.40

In the beginning of 1959, after spending a few years in Miami Beach, he emigrated to Israel.41 In his study of the changes that occurred in American Jewish life in the post-World War II period, Eli Lederhendler asserts that it was the first, not the second, generation of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who “were primarily responsible for establishing the guiding parameters of Jewish ethnicity” in the United States.42 Baruch Vladeck spoke in 1934 about American Jews’ attempts “to assimilate themselves by going back on their tradition, on their culture, and on their very religion.”43 As a Marxist, he characterized this behavior as occurring exclusively among upper and middle class Jews. In reality, Jewish workers tended to act similarly, with many of them ultimately joining the middle class. Reclaiming tradition or what was considered to be authentically Jewish became one of the principal parameters of Yiddish-speaking immigrants’ behavior, and the shrinking world of the Forverts increasingly participated in this process, which persisted and intensified in the following years, though the newspaper never became a religious forum. In 1956, Hillel Rogoff, who stepped in as editor-in-chief following Cahan’s death, stressed that Cahan’s and other Forverts writers’ “tolerance” towards religion in most cases did not reflect a decline in the strength of their freethinking. Rather, it related to the streak of nationalism in their ideological makeup. Still, Rogoff admitted that the position of religion had become much stronger than it had been at the turn of the twentieth century. He listed three contributing factors: (1) many more children attended Jewish day schools; (2) introduction of a five-day week made keeping Shabbat much easier; (3) kosher food could be bought at numerous stores. Rogoff ’s article was a reply to the letter of Joseph Breslaw, a leading figure in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Breslaw wrote that 40 YIVO Archive. The Papers of Mark Wischnitzer. RG 767, Folder “Letters, 1922–55,” letter of April 27, 1955. 41 Yitshak Shmulevitsh, “Yankl Leshtsinski fort zikh bazetsn in Yisroel,” Forverts, January 29, 1959, 4. 42 Eli Lederhendler, New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950–1970 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 204. 43 Cited in Gerd Korman, “Ethnic Democracy and Its Ambiguities: The Case of Needle Trade Unions,” American Jewish History 75, no. 4 (1986): 415.

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Socialists used to see religion as an effective instrument in the hands of capitalists and wanted to know why the Forverts changed its stance. Rogoff explained the position of the newspaper: The Forverts has no special attitude to religion. It is not its task to preach religion or anti-religion. As a newspaper, the Forverts mirrors the life, events, and political currents in the Jewish street. Therefore, religion also finds a place in our newspaper. . . . Some of the Forverts writers are religiously inclined, whereas the others are anti-religiously inclined. Some of them are entirely freethinkers, but with sympathies to religious institutions. This is a sentiment, a kind of nostalgia, which they are unable to surrender to the past.44

In April 1963, the Forverts printed another letter from Ross, under the title used in 1956 for Gitlis’s letter. Indeed, this time Ross was in Gitlis’ camp, criticizing the newspaper’s “intolerant attitude to [politically] conscientious workers [bavustzinike arbeter], who had set the Forverts on its feet and continue to form the basis of its existence.” Ross was ready to countenance the careful and respectful selection of materials for “honestly pious Jews,” because he understood that otherwise they would stop reading the newspaper. However, he also felt that the newspaper did not show enough sensitivity to their old readers and essentially “pulled them to the synagogue” by propagating religion in its pages. Ross detected that following the death of Tsivion, who for many years wrote on current issues in Jewish life, the Forverts had lost the balance between secularity and religiosity. As a result, Lieberman’s apology for orthodoxy began to dominate the newspaper. For a while, Borekh Shefner became a secular voice in the newspaper, but Abraham Menes, who later stepped in, “saw beauty only in the past and praised Jewish orthodoxy.”45 In May 1990, when the author of this study took part (as a Soviet guest) in a Workmen’s Circle convention, one of its activists—a lifelong reader of the Forverts—described the paradigm of generational change as it affected his own family: “My father was a Socialist and freethinker, I am a liberal and belong to a Reform congregation, and my son is an Orthodox.” I could hear irony in his words, but no bitterness. 44 Hillel Rogoff, “Religye oyf der yidisher gas,” Forverts, November 24, 1956, 6. 45 Yakov Ross, “An alter Forverts leyener redt zikh arop fun hartsn,” Forverts, April 27, 1963, 3, 6.

Bibliography

“10,000 Jews Here Laud Revolution.” The New York Times, March 21, 1917, 3. “20 yor arbeter ring shuln.” Forverts, February 25, 1939, 7. “3 Sovet-ongeklagte dertseyln vilde geshikhtes vegn sotsialistn.” Forverts, March 3, 1931, 1. “3,000 at Consulate Here Scream Protests at Draft of Israeli Women.” The New York Times, February 9, 1954, 1. “3,000 Orthodox Jews Protest at Consulate Here.” New York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1954, 1. “6,000,000 Jews Dead: Jacob Lestschinsky Estimates Reduction in Europe since ’39.” The New York Times, January 8, 1945, 17. “A bintl briv.” Forverts, November 17, 1921, 5. “A bintl briv.” Forverts, November 23, 1944, 5. “A briv fun yidishn komisariat fun Rusland tsu yidishe arbeter in Amerike.” Forverts, November 24, 1920, 3. “A briv in redaktsye.” Der emes, December 28 ,1924, 4. “A fotografye mit an oyfruf un zalts oyf yidishe vundn.” Forverts, August 27, 1941, 4. “A glezl tey lekoved Sholem Ashn.” Der emes, May 17, 1928, 4. “A hartsiker ‘zay-gezunt’ tsu genose dr. Maks Goldfarb.” Forverts, May 25, 1917, 1. “A kritik un an entfer.” Forverts, February 15, 1922, 4. “A perzenlekhe derklerung fun undzer mitarbeter Y. Y. Zinger.” Forverts, March 23, 1928, 5. “A rayze keyn Amerike.” Der emes, May 20, 1928, 4. “A revolutsye oder a bunt?” Forverts, November 10, 1917, 6. “A shmues mit Sholem Ashn vegn zayn rayze ibern ratnfarband.” Der emes, June 12, 1928, 3. “A vikhtike serye artiklen in ‘Forverts’.” Forverts, February 10, 1920, 4. “A yontevdiker tog ba bundistn.” Forverts, November 25, 1917, 8. “Ab. Kahan hot geshprekhn mit vikhtike sotsialistishe firer in Eyrope.” Forverts, September 11, 1929, 9. Ab. Kahan un der “Bund” in Poyln. New York: Bundisher Klub, 1932. “Abe Cahan Left $35,000 for Charity; $20,000 to Go to Israel.” JTA Daily News Bulletin, August 30, 1952, 4.

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“Abraham Cahan in Moscow: Trip Surprises Socialist World.” The New Leader, July 9, 1927, 1. “Abraham Cahan Seventy Years Young.” Der fraynd, August 1930, 2, English-language section. “Abramovich gastroliruet v Amerike.” Pravda, February 14, 1925, 2. R[aphael] Abramovič Papers, International institute of Social History, Amsterdam. Abramovitch, Raphael, “Far vos di gantse velt vert frayndlekh tsu sovet-Rusland.” Forverts, March 2, 1922, 4–5. ———. “Abramovitsh, der bundistisher firer, debatirt mitn ‘Forverts’ vegn di bolshevikes.” Forverts, April 24, 1922, 5. ———. “Menshevikes un bolshevikes.” Forverts, April 30, 1922, 8–9. ———. “Di Berliner konferents fun di sotsialistishe internatsionaln.” Forverts, May 2, 1922, 5. ———. “Ver farnemt dervayle Lenins plats?” Forverts, August 13, 1922, 2. ———. “Vos hot der bolshevism geton far di yidn?” Forverts, December 20,1922, 4. ———. “Sotsialistn vern itst unterdrikt in Rusland punkt vi farn tsar” Forverts, December 9, 1923, section 2, 1. ———. “Farvos vakst der antisemitizm in sovet-Rusland?” Forverts, April 17, 1927, 6–7. ———. “Der sakh-hakl fun di tsen yor bolshevistishe[r] revolutsye.” Forverts, November 8, 1927, 3. ———.“Der inerlekher kamf in dem Poylishn ‘Bund’.” Forverts, December 30, 1928, 3. ———. “‘Drive to the Left’ in Russia Seen as Menace to Country: Stalin, It Is Declared, Has for His Objective the Extermination of the Peasant.” The New York Times, February 9, 1930, E5. ———. “Unemployment in Russia: Mr. Abramovitch Reiterates Statements Denied by Friends of Soviet.” The New York Times, March 16, 1930, E5. ———. “Der kongres fun der komunistisher partey hot gutgeheysn Stalins politik, vayl Stalin hot azoy geheysn.” Forverts, July 24, 1930, 5. ———. “Der lebn iz a nayer, ober di alte sotsialistishe printsipn blaybn.” Forverts, August 3, 1930, section 1, 3, and section 2, 11. ———. Wandlungen der bolschewistischen Diktatur. Berlin: J.H.W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1931. ———. “Vi azoy di rusishe sotsial-demokratn batrakhtn di bolshevikes un di shtelung tsu zey.” Forverts, March 1, 1931, section 2, 4. ———. “Der shtandpunkt fun di rusishe sotsial-demokratn.” Forverts, March 18, 1931, 7. ———. “Daytshe arbeter zaynen greyt mit vafn tsu farteydikn di republic kegn di Hitleristn.” Forverts, February 22, 1932, 3. ———. “Di sotsialistishe bavegung in Eyrope gefint zikh in a nayer merkvirdiker lage.” Forverts, December 18, 1932, section 2, 2. ———. “Nokh a mol vegn grintlekhe un nit-grintlekhe revolutsyes: an entfer tsu genose Ab. Kahan.” Forverts, January 29, 1933, section 2, 1. ———. “Der terror kegn sotsialistn in sovet-Rusland hot zikh di letste tsayt zeyer farshtarkt.” Forverts, December 7, 1935, 14.

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———. “Vos veln ton sotsialistn, oyb Daytshland oder Yapan zol onfaln oyf sovet-Rusland?” Forverts, February 9, 1936, 6. ———. “Di naye sovetishe konstitutsye un di frage fun emeser frayhayt.” Forverts, July 12, 1936, section 2, 1, 5. ———. “Tsi vet Stalins naye konstitutsye gebn epes dem rusishn folk.” Forverts, July 16, 1936, 8. ———. “Rusishe sotsialistn hobn geshikt a briv mit fragn tsu Stalinen.” Forverts, January 11, 1937, 7–8. ———. “A yubiley oder a yortsayt? Tsu dem tsvantsikstn yortog fun der bolshevistisher revolutsye.” Forverts, November 24, 1937, 3, 8. ———. “Mayne ershte 20 yor in Bund.” Forverts, January 23, 1939, 3. ———. “Genose Abramovitsh dertseylt vi er hot zikh aroysgeratevet fun Frankraykh.” Forverts, September 11, 1940, 2, 4; September 12, 1940, 3, 8; September 13, 1940, 3, 6. ———. “Di tragishe nakht ven Frankraykh hot zikh untergegebn.” Forverts, September 16, 1940, 3, 6. ———. “Abramovitsh shildert dem gelof nokh vizes aroystsuforn fun Frankraykh.” Forverts, September 20, 1940, 2, 3. ———.“Abramovitsh shildert zayne letste teg in dem natsistishn Frankraykh.” Forverts, September 23, 1940, 2, 3. ——— (as Raphail Abramovitch). “Hitlers Daytshland un Stalins Rusland.” Forverts, June 12, 1941, 3, 8. ——— (as Raphail Abramovitch). “Di milkhome tsvishn sovet-Rusland un Daytshland.” Forverts, June 27, 1941, 4. ———. “Vos eyropeishe sotsialistn dervartn fun Amerike?” Forverts, July 27, 1942, 3. ———. In tsvey revolutsyes: di geshikhte fun a dor. New York: Arbeter-ring, 1944. ———. “In vos ligt der koyekh fun komunizm?” Forverts, May 2, 1944, 4. ———. “Ver der bolshevizm vern shtarker nokh der milkhome?” Forverts, May 13, 1944, 4. ———. “Hakdome.” In L. Berman, In loyf fun yorn: zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter, x–xv. New York: Unzer tsayt, 1945. ———. “Der mentsh un sotsialist.” In N. Chanin, 108–113. New York: N. Chanin Jubilee Committee, 1946. ———. “Der ‘Forverts’—a tsaytung un an institutsye.” Forverts, April 22, 1947, 3–4. ———. “An entfer oyf a bilbl in der ‘Eynikayt’.” Forverts, March 2, 1948, 4. ———. “Ven Berlin iz geven a yidishe shtot.” Forverts, January 9, 1949, section 2, 4. ———. “Di zibn yor ven der demokratisher sotsializm hot geblit in ale hoypt-lender fun Eyrope.” Forverts, February 13, 1949, section 1, 6, and section 2, 3. ———. “Stalin.” Forverts, March 6, 1949, section 2, 3. ———. “Di koleltivizatsye.” Forverts, March 20, 1949, section 2, 3. ———. “Der umgliklekher yor in der geshikhte fun di hayntike doyres.” Forverts, March 27, 1949, section 2, 3.

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———. “Di ongeklagte zaynen zikh moyde.” Forverts, April 3, 1949, section 1, 8, and section 2, 3. ———. “Nokhveyenishn funem menshevistishn protses in Moskve.” Forverts, April 17, 1949, section 1, 3, and section 2, 3. ———. “Dos yidishe folk in der nayer epokhe.” Forverts, May 8, 1949, 6; section 2, 3. ———. “Ven es iz gekumen di sreyfe oyfn daytshn raykhstag.” Forverts, July 17, 1949, section 2, 3. ———. “Ikh antloyf fun Hitlern.” Forverts, July 24, 1949, section 2, 3. ———. “Baym geyn fun eyn goles in a tsveytn.” Forverts, July 31, 1949, section 2, 3 and 8. ———. “Iber nakht iz Pariz gevorn der tsenter fun yidishe kultur-mentsn un eyropeishe sotsialistn.” Forverts, August 7, 1949, section 2, 3. ———. “Historishe teg in internatsionaln sotsializm.” Forverts, September 4, 1949, 6, section 2, 3. ———. “Der kamf in sotsialistishn internatsional gegen di daytshe sotsial-demokratn.” Forverts, September 11, 1949, section 2, 3. ———. “Oyfn keyver fun fraynd un lerer.” Forverts, September 5, 1951, 4. ———. “Mentshn un politik: Berias mapole—farlust far der velt.” Forverts, July 14, 1953, 4–5. ———. “Mentshn un politik: der sof fun Berya.” Forverts, December 22, 1953, 4–5. ———. The Soviet Revolution, 1917–1939. London: Allen and Unwin, 1962. “Abramovitshes mapole in Amerike.” Der emes, February 10, 1925, 3–4. Abramson, B. [Baruch Shefner]. “Forverts-korespondent bazukht Byalistok.” Forverts, February 21, 1940, 4. ———. “Byalistok iz gepakt mit yidishe flikhtlinge—vi azoy lebn zey?” Forverts, February 22, 1940, 4. “Accuses Dubrowsky of Hindering Relief.” The New York Times, February 12, 1922, 18. Adibekov, G. M., E. N. Shakhnazarova, and K. K. Shirinia. Organizatsionnaia struktura Kominterna, 1919–1943. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997. Adler, Friedrich, et al. The Moscow Trial and the Labour and Socialist International. London: Labour Party, 1931. Adler-Rudel, Salomon. Ostjuden in Deutschland, 1880–1940: zugleich eine Geschichte der Organisationen, die sie betreuten. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1959. Agursky, Мikhail, and Margarita Shklovskaia. Iz literaturnogo naslediia: Gor´kii i evreiskii vopros. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986. Aidline, Elbert. “Jewish Assemblymen of New York.” The American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, November 2, 1917, 716. Aldoshin, V. V., Iu. V. Ivanov, and V. M. Semenov. Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnosheniia: gody nepriznaniia, 1927–1933. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi Fond “Demokratiia,” 2002. Altshuler, Mordechai. “Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in the Soviet Milieu in the Interwar Period.” In Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, edited by Howard Aster

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———. “Etlekhe notitsn.” Forverts, July 3, 1918, 4. ———. “Itstike shtimung fun dem Amerikaner folk.” Forverts, May 21, 1920, 4. ———. “Natsionalizm and shovinizm.” Forverts, July 10, 1920, 8–9. ———. “Khisroynes fun Sovet-Rusland: kritikn fun sonim un kritikn fun fraynd.” Forverts, July 31, 1920, 4. ———. “Mit vos fardinen di bolshevikes simpatye?” Forverts, September 8, 1920, 4, 5. ———. “Veln di bolshevikes umkern Rusland tsum folk?” Forverts, December 9, 1920, 6. ———. “Iz di libe tsu privat-eygntum geferlekher vi Vrangel oder Denikin?” Forverts, December 24, 1920, 6–7. ———. “Far vos a sotsialist ken nit zayn keyn tsienist.” Forverts, May 5, 1921, 4. ———. “Zionizm, yidishizm un nokh a por izmen.” Forverts, June 1, 1921, 5. ———. “Yidish un yidishizm.” Forverts, June 2, 1921, 5. ———. “Ir farshport tsu forn in Varshe, Vilne, Kovne, Rige oder Keshenev.” Forverts, August 27, 1921, 6. ———. “Yidishe gimnazyes un yidishe folks-shuln.” Forverts, September 5, 1921, 3, 5. ———. “Di makht fun sovet-Rusland: ir gaystiker kraft un ir tsukunft.” Forverts, December 6, 1921, 4. ———. “Di gegnvart un di tsukunft fun sovet-Rusland.” Forverts, December 7, 1921, 5. ———. “A nayer roman fun Dovid Bergelson.” Forverts, February 4, 1923, 15. ———. “Undzer konvenshon un undzer bavegung in dizn moment.” Forverts, May 24, 1923, 4. ———. “An interesanter oylem tsugast in a privat-hoyz.” Forverts, July 29, 1923, 2. ———. “Ab. Kahan bashraybt dos onkumen fun a shif keyn Yafo mit yidishe imigrantn fun sovet-Rusland.” Forverts, October 6, 1925, 1,12. ———. “What the Jews of the World See in the Zionist Movement.” Forverts, November 25, 1925, English section, 2. ———. “The Color of Life in the Palestine Communes.” Forverts, December 4, 1925, 2. ———. “Far vos hot zikh Lenins plan nit ayngegebn?” Forverts, October 26, 1926, 4. ———. “Lights and Shades of Commune Life in Palestine.” Forverts, November 19, 1926, English section, 2. ———. “My Impressions of Soviet Russia.” Forverts, October 30, 1927, English section, 2. ———. “Jewish Colonization in Soviet Russia a Success.” Forverts, November 6, 1927, English section, 2. ———. “How Jews Make a Living in Russia.” Forverts, November 27, 1927, English section, 2–3. ———. “Picturesque Kiev.” Forverts, December 18, 1927, English section, 2. ———. “Are Jewish Colonies a Success?” Forverts, May 8, 1928, English section, 2-3. ———. “The Century-Old Kherson Colonies.” Forverts, May 13, 1928, English section, 2. ———. “Vacationing in Crimea.” Forverts, May 27, 1928, English section, 2. ———. “The Rosenwald Colony.” Forverts, June 3, 1928, English section, 2. ———. “Mayn batsiyung tsum tsionizm.” Forverts, March 30, 1930, 7.

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337

Index 1905 Revolution, 7, 16, 28, 42, 47, 95, 234 1929 Arab Riots, 135, 213-214 Abend, 149 Abramovitch, Raphael, 10-11, 119-149, 152, 168, 173-177, 219, 234-235, 237, 254, 256-257, 259, 283-286 The Terror against the Socialist Parties in Russia and Georgia, 140 Adler, Friedrich, 174 Adler, Yakov, 99 Advertising & Selling, 50 Agursky, Samuel, 80, 160 Akselrod, Pavel, 33 aliyah, 279, 291-292 All-Russian Writers’ Association, 204, 206 Alter, Victor, 261-263, 269, 284 Am Olam, 183 Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 59, 98, 245 Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 59, 98, 245 American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan (Ambijan), 242 American Communist Party The Workmen’s Circle Helps Organize a War against the Soviet Union, 145 American Federation of Labor, 50, 262 American Israelite, 188 American Jewish Relief Committee, 178 American Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC), 11, 48, 89-91, 129, 160, 173, 178181, 198-199, 211, 239 American Labor Party, 220, 273 American Socialist, the, 20 Americanization, 8, 10, 39, 85, 95, 100-101, 106, 109, 116, 128, 277, 289 anarchism, 8, 39, 218, 231 Ansky, S., 28 antisemitism, 21, 28, 31-32, 65, 97, 115, 117, 131, 143, 148-149, 157, 160, 163-164, 166, 179, 181, 203, 205, 230, 241, 251252, 265, 267, 269 anti-Zionism, 5, 184, 243, 286 Arbeter velt, 50

Asch, Sholem, 12, 47-48, 60, 104-105, 112, 157-158, 166, 169, 171, 199-212, 215216, 254, 261, 264-266, 280-281, 290 The Apostle, 281 God of Vengeance, 200, 205 Moscow, 216, 266 The Nazarene, 264, 281 One Destiny: An Epistle to the Christians, 281 The Shtetl, 199-200 To America, 57 Auerbach, Ephraim, 117 Austria, 17, 215, 27, 39, 42, 47, 215, 219, 225 Austria-Hungary, 5, 19, 24-25 Baal Shem Tov, 112 Bakhmeteff, Boris, 55 Balfour Declaration, 65, 67 Ballin, Albert, 31 Bal-Makhshoves, 128 Baltrušaitis, Jurgis, 151 Baranoff, M. (Moyshe Gormidor), 41-42, 45, 51, 67, 86 Barghoorn, Frederic, 270 Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School, 181 Baskin, Joseph, 107 Bebel, August (Babel), 16, 49 Beilis trial, 21-23, 40, 42 Belgium, 19, 31, 39, 41, 62, 120 Belorussia, 63, 67, 77, 82, 93, 179, 192, 242, 290 Ben-Gurion, David, 88 Ber, Boris, 232 Bergelson, David, 7-8, 11, 94, 151, 159, 166172, 198, 201, 260, 263, 284 Opgang, 167 Berger, Victor, 15, 62, 182 Beria, Lavrentii, 285 Berlin, 11, 16, 27, 30, 49, 56, 70, 89, 94, 124, 126-132, 135, 137, 140, 142, 146, 148177, 191, 193, 200-202, 211, 217-218, 245, 249, 251, 263, 292 Bernstein, Eduard, 11, 70, 87, 133, 135, 155, 166

Bibliography

Bernstein, Herman, 61 Bernstorff, Johann-Heinrich, von, 31 Bialystok, 131, 255 Bible, 76, 112, 116 Birobidzhan, 237-247, 256, 261 Birobidzhaner shtern, 242 Bittelman, Alexander, 140 Black Hundreds, 21 blood libel, 21-23, 262 Blum, Hillel, 232-233 Blum, Leon, 148 Bolsheviks, 10, 17, 33-35, 42, 67-78, 80, 8384, 88-90, 122-127, 129-132, 135, 137, 139, 142, 144, 159, 164, 169, 189-190, 195-196, 202, 219, 221, 224, 228, 231, 233-235, 247, 253 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 130 Borah, William, 218 Borochov, Ber, 54 Botwinik, Berl, 280, 289 Brailsford, Henry N., 77 Breslaw, Joseph, 293-294 British Labor Party, 273 Broido, Eva, 146 Bronshtein, Mikhail, 146 Brown, David A., 179 Bruk, Boris, 239 Brusilov, Aleksei, 81-82 Bukharin, Nikolai, 134, 163, 165 Bulgatch, Sol, 111 Bund, 5, 12, 16-18, 23, 34, 36, 42-44, 48, 5960, 62-66, 78, 82, 87, 91, 94-96, 101, 114, 120-123, 126-127, 130, 137, 140-141, 148, 152, 154, 165, 176, 183, 194, 200, 209-210, 221, 227-228, 242, 250-251, 255, 261-263, 269, 285, 287-289 Bundist Club of New York Der “Forverts” un der bund, 250-251 Burgin, Hertz, 44, 51, 60, 63, 88 Cahan, Abraham, 8-13, 18, 20, 23-24, 26-30, 35, 37-52, 54-56, 60-64, 67-71, 73-78, 82, 84-86, 88-89, 98-110, 112-119, 121, 127-129, 131-137, 140-142, 144-145, 148, 150-156, 159, 161, 165-169, 171-173, 175-177, 182-184, 186-188, 192-197, 199, 202, 213-218, 220-221, 224-226, 228-229, 236, 249, 251, 254-255, 257, 264, 270, 273-274, 281, 286, 293 The Rise of David Levinsky, 8, 51, 101-102, 112, 215 Yekl, A Tale of the New York Ghetto, 8 Call, the, 81 Cannon, Joseph D., 56

Celler, Emanuel, 264 Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War, 178 Chagall, Marc, 82 Chaikin, Joseph, 68n56 Chanin, Nathan, 105-106, 109, 140, 218, 222, 239, 259, 270 Charlash, Yitshak, 154 Charney, Baruch (Vladeck), 12, 47-48, 55-56, 60, 64, 68, 76, 81-83, 86, 112-114, 140, 151, 181, 184, 187, 190-192, 213-214, 216-217, 220, 233, 256, 293 Charney, Daniel, 81-82, 94, 175 Chemerisky, Alexander, 209-210 Cherevanin, Fedor, 232 Chicago Daily Tribune, 191 Chicago Tribune, 270 Chicago, 20, 50, 87, 139, 179, 219, 223, 227, 267, 288 China, 35, 65, 238 Christianity, 117, 262, 264-266, 279-280, 288, 291 Chukovskii, Kornei, 199 Collectivization, 142-145, 235 Columbia University, 51, 288 Commentary, 287 Committee of Jewish Writers, Artists and Scientists (CJWAS), 261, 264-265 communism, 9-12, 34, 77, 80, 82-92, 97, 102-103, 117, 122, 124, 126, 132-149, 159-164, 166-167, 169-172, 176-177, 182, 184-186, 188-189, 191, 193-194, 196, 198-200, 203-205, 208-212, 214-216, 220-223, 225, 227, 231-232, 234, 236238, 242-243, 245, 247, 251, 253-255, 257, 259-260, 263, 270-271, 273, 285-286 Congress in Defense of Culture, 221, 242 Cossacks, 26-29, 166, 213 Crimea, 11, 165, 178-179, 181, 188, 190, 193, 197-198, 206, 210, 238-240 Crystal, Leo, 284-285 Czechoslovakia, 174, 249, 258 Dan, Fedor, 136, 173, 257 Davidovich, David, 61 De Leon, Daniel, 69 Debs, Eugene V., 15, 59, 106, 230 Dembovski, Moyshe, 28 Denikin, Anton, 80 Der emes, 139, 148, 160, 166, 186, 193, 201, 204, 207, 209-210, 225, 244 Der fraynd, 98, 102-103, 107 Der morgn-zhurnal, 68n56, 222, 233n49, 264, 266

339

340

Transatlantic Russian Jewishness

Der tog, 42, 61, 68n56, 78, 169, 175, 186, 216, 238, 261, 264 Der veker, 109, 135 Der yidisher kemfer, 272 Deutscher, Isaac, 216 Di arbiter-shtime, 123 Di yidishe ekonomik, 252 Diaspora, 25, 40, 42, 65, 97, 185, 250-251, 258, 291-292 Die royte velt, 215 Dimanshtein, Shimen, 196, 207, 209, 244 Döblin, Alfred, 157 Dobrushin, Yekhezkel, 207 Dos poylishe yidl, 7 Dostoevsky, Fedor, 105 Dreyfus trial, 22, 40 Dubinsky, Dadiv, 262, 270 Dubnov, Simon, 11, 112, 151, 154, 162, 249-250 Dynner, Glen, 288 Eastern Jewish Historical Archive, 152 Edlin, W., 264 Einstein, Albert, 261 Ellison, Daniel, 264 Engels, Friedrich, 16, 130 Epstein, Melech, 115, 130, 169, 253 Epstein, Shachno, 60, 87, 91, 160, 200, 260, 263 Erlich, Henryk, 250, 261-263, 284 Evian Conference, 253 Eynhorn, David, 11, 133, 154, 166, 201, 256, 268-270, 289-290 Eynikayt, 261, 284 Fagelman, Lazar, 268 fascism, 148, 157, 173, 221, 225, 235-236, 242-243, 256-257, 266-267, 269-270 Fast, Howard, 285-286 February Revolution, 53-67, 70 Fedorovsky, Nikolai, 127 Fefer, Itsik, 215-216, 263, 265-267, 269-270, 285 Fayln af mayln, 266 Feigenbaum, Benjamin, 18, 22, 33, 44-45, 60, 63-64, 67, 82 Feigenbaum, William, 60, 64, 283 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 264 Fink, Reuben, 68n56 First National Yiddish Culture Conference, 222 First World Congress of Jewish Studies, 291 Fish Committee, 148 Fishman, Jacob, 68n56 Folkspartey, 162

Folks-Shtime, 285 Folks-tsaytung, 255 Forverts, passim Fourth Estate, the, 26 France, 19, 22, 24, 30-31, 34, 38-39, 41, 44, 47, 54, 142, 194, 199, 206, 212, 215, 224, 249, 256, 290 Frank, Leo, 22, 40 Frank, Waldo, 264 Franz Joseph, 24 Frayhayt, 10, 87, 98, 139, 160, 167-170, 182, 186, 200, 204, 212, 214, 227n44, 251, 253-254, 263, 265, 281, 285 French Revolution, 54 Friends of Soviet Russia, 92 Frumkin, Abraham, 68n56 Frumkin, Maria, 209-210 Galician Farband, 24 Gelber, Sam, 103 Geliebter, Philip, 102 General Encyclopedia in Yiddish, the, 120 Germany, 6, 10-12, 16, 18-19, 21, 24, 26-28, 30-33, 35-36, 38-39, 41, 44-45, 47-49, 51, 53-54, 56, 58, 62, 70, 72-74, 90, 99, 111, 122, 124, 126-129, 132, 137-138, 147, 149-151, 154-159, 172-176, 180, 194, 197, 200, 219-220, 225-226, 229-230, 240-243, 253-254, 257-259, 261, 278 Gershuni, Grigory, 68n56 ghetto, 100, 116, 251-252, 258, 272 Ginsburg, Isidor, 243, 290 Ginsburg, Saul, 120, 233-234, 282 Gitlow, Benjamin, 263 Glantz-Leyeles, Aron, 202 Glatstein, Jacob, 222, 253 Glaykhhayt, 60 Godiner, Shmuel, 207, 260 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Faust, 154 Gogol, Nikolay The Government Inspector, 107 Goldberg, Ben-Zion, 261, 264 Goldberg, Itche, 97 Goldfaden, Abraham Shulamith, 289 Goldfarb, Max, 9, 36, 47-48, 56, 58-64, 78-82, 194 Goldmann, Nahum, 264, 266 Goldstein, Minnie, 95 Gompers, Samuel, 50 Gonikman, Itsik, 25 Gorky, Maxim, 202-203, 207, 210-211 Gorlieb, Leon, 221 Gradzenski, Shlomo, 269

Index

Granovskii, Aleksandr, 82, 200 Great Depression, 219 Green, William, 262 Grinberg, Zorakh, 284 Gross, Naftali, 288 Halevi, Judah, 55, 112 Halutz organization, 198 halutzim, 198-199, 214, 252 Hamsun, Kurt, 188 Harkavy, Alexander, 113, 155 Harper’s Magazine, 70 Harrison, Earl G., 258 Hašek, Jaroslav, 174 Hasidism, 44-45, 197, 261, 274-277, 288 Haymarket riot, 230 Haynt, 271 Heald, Morrell, 150 Hearst, William Randolph, 226, 229 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), 245 Hebrew, 55, 65-66, 100, 104, 115, 155, 197198, 272, 280, 288, 291-292 Hebron massacre, 214 heder, 32, 109, 115, 120, 163, 184, 288 Held, Adolf, 64, 245-247, 256 Held, Lillian, 246-247 Herberg, Will, 235 Hester Street, 8 Het Volk, 132 Hilferding, Rudolf, 148 Hillman, Sidney, 59, 78, 262 Hillquit, Morris, 15, 20, 35, 49, 56, 62, 64, 81, 85, 182, 202, 273 Hirschbein, Peretz, 238, 264 Red Fields, 238 Hirshkowitz, Abe, 111 Histadrut, 88 Hitler, Adolf, 172-173, 175, 216, 224-225, 229, 231, 247, 251, 253, 255, 257, 259-261, 263, 266 Hofenung, 253 Hoffman, Bentzion (Tsivion, Zivion), 12, 47, 51, 56, 58, 60, 63-66, 74-76, 82, 84, 86-87, 93, 108-109, 123, 152, 183-184, 213, 238240, 266, 268, 279-280, 286-287, 294 What is Bolshevism?, 75 Communists Who Have Devoured Communism, 86 Hofshteyn, David, 285 Holocaust, 279n103, 287, 291-292 Holodomor, 145, 218-219, 226 Hourwich, Isaac, 51 Hungary, 173 Hurvitz, Haim Abraham, 277-278, 282 Huysmans, Camille, 62

Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), 124-125 Ingerman, Anna, 35 Ingerman, Sergei, 35 Inperkorr, 127 Institute of Proletarian Jewish Culture, 247 International Conference of Revolutionary Writers, 216 International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), 20, 71, 78, 98, 262, 293 International Workers Order, 97, 285 International, 36-38, 125 Labor and Socialist, 133, 136, 141, 143144, 147-148, 154, 174-176, 182 Second (Socialist), 15-20, 33-37, 40, 63, 125, 128, 131, 133, 148, 175 Third (Comintern), 9, 34, 37, 46, 61, 85-88, 90, 125, 127-128, 131-132, 144, 160, 165, 176, 194, 205, 209, 214, 220, 224 Vienna, 128, 131, 133 internationalism, 5, 9, 20, 33-34, 36, 38-40, 42-47, 63-64, 95, 122, 257 Israel, 13, 256, 274, 284, 286-287, 290-293 Isserman, Maurice, 262 Italy, 65, 111, 173 Izvestiia, 133, 139, 223, 269 Jabotinsky, Eri, 264 Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 199 Jaffa, 188 Japan, 47, 194, 220, 226, 246, 255, 257, 278 Jefferson, Thomas, 281 Jerusalem, 182, 291 Jewish Advocate, 243 Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee ( JAFC), 259271, 284 Jewish Autonomous Region ( JAR), 179, 237, 242, 244, 246-248, 256 Jewish Council for War Help to Russia, 264 Jewish League of American Patriots, 48 Jewish National Workers’ Alliance, 43, 96 Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order, 261 Jewish Public Committee for Assisting the Victims of Pogroms (Yidgezkom, Evobshchestkom), 91-92 Jewish question, 32, 39-40, 58 Jewish Socialist Farband, 86, 106, 108-109, 114, 137, 140, 256 Jewish Socialist Federation, 10 Jewish Teachers Training Institute, 45, 115 Jewish Telegraphic Agency ( JTA), 148, 186, 207, 216, 218, 230, 270, 280, 286 Jewish Territorialist movement, 140

341

342

Transatlantic Russian Jewishness

Judaism Orthodox, 116, 272, 280, 282, 288, 290, 294 Reform, 116, 289-290, 294 Kahn, Alexander, 113, 180 Kalinin, Mikhail, 163, 190, 218, 244 Kallen, Horace M., 39 Kamenev, Lev, 232 Kantoroff, Samuel, 275 Katz, Moyshe, 73, 76, 93, 185, 253 Kaunas, 150 Kautsky, Karl, 11, 70, 132, 148, 155, 166 Kazakevich, Emmanuil, 124 Keiter, B., 157 Kellman, Ellen, 169 Kerensky, Alexander, 72 Kharik, Izi, 207 Kharkov, 216, 244 Khashin, Alexander, 140 Kherson, 210 Khrushchev, Nikita, 285 kibbutzim, 182-183 Kiever, A., 159 Kirby, David, 63 Kirov, Sergei, 177, 231 Kishinev pogrom, 9, 40-42 Kishinev, 135, 150 Klein, Arthur George, 264 Kleit, Sh., 110 Klier, John, 28 Kobrin, Leon, 112 Koldofsky, Samson, 160 kolkhozes, 233, 235 Kollontai, Alexandra, 35-36 Koltsov, Mikhail, 207 Kombund, 122 Komunistishe shtim, 159 KOMZET, 178-179 Korolenko, Vladimir, 228 Kossovski, Vladimir, 34, 44 Kranikhfeld, Andrei, 177, 232 Kreplak, Jacob, 106-107 Kriegspresseamt, 26 Krivoy Rog, 210 Kronstadt rebellion, 126 Kroussevitzky, Serge, 264 Kultur-Lige, 93-94, 102, 156, 215, 221 Kunz, Charles, 264 Kuperman, Shifra, 290 Kushnirov, Aron, 207-208 Kvitko, Leyb, 215, 285 La Guardia, Fiorello H., 59, 220, 262 Ladies’ Garment Worker, 20, 33 Lakhuti, Abulkasim, 242 Landau, Jacob, 216

Landsberg, Otto, 149 Lang, Harry, 100-101, 118, 144, 218, 225-226, 243, 284 Lang, Lucy Robins, 218, 226 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 16, 48, 224 On the Essence of Constitutions, 224 Latvia, 7, 58, 93, 119-120, 188, 222, 240, 251 Le Sueur, Arthur, 37-38 League Against Fascism and Dictatorship, 253 Lederhendler, Eli, 293 Lee, Algernon, 62 Lehman, Herbert, 220 Leivick, H., 102-103, 222, 270 Lenin, Vladimir, 17, 33-36, 59-60, 67, 69, 73, 76, 80-81, 88-90, 122, 124-127, 133, 139, 228 Lermontov, Mikhail, 228 Lestschinsky, Jacob, 11, 94, 112, 129-130, 151-152, 154-166, 169, 171-172, 175, 185-187, 192-193, 211, 213, 240-241, 243-244, 249-253, 257-258, 271-272, 277, 290-291 Der yidisher arbiter in Rusland, 156 Our National Demands, 156 The Truth about the Jews in Russia, 161 Lestschinsky, Josef, 250 Levin, Shmaryahu, 144 Levin, Yakov, 99, 111 Lewisohn, Ludwig Up Stream, 112 Leyb, Mani, 108 Leyzerovitch, Yitshak Eliezer, 154 Liberberg, Joseph, 247 Libin, Zalman, 108, 112 Lidin, Vladimir, 200, 206, 212 Lieberman, Chaim, 264-265, 281, 286-287, 294 In the Valley of Death, 265 Liebknecht, Karl, 16, 35 Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 16 Liessin, Abraham, 25, 107 Liliput (Gabriel Hirsh Kretshmer), 84, 86, 222, 224 Lincoln, Abraham, 106 Lipets, David, 36, 61, 78, 82, 194 Lite, 7, 39, 278 Literaturnaia gazeta, 242 Lithuania, 7-8, 39, 57-58, 77, 80, 93-94, 120, 151, 168, 188, 214, 222, 240, 243, 245, 251, 263, 277-278 Litvak, A. (Khayim Yankl Helfand), 44, 60, 109, 165 Litvakov, Moyshe, 160, 166, 201-203, 208212, 215

Index

Litvinov, Maxim, 186, 262-263 Litwin, A. (Shmuel Hurwitz), 57 London, 7, 41, 59, 123, 186 London, Meyer, 15, 60, 85, 106, 111, 114 Lore, Ludwig, 35 Löwenthal, Fritz, 149 Lubarsky, Samuil, 179 Lvov, Georgy, 53, 57 Mahler, Raphael, 261 Maimon, Ben-Zion, 110-111 Markish, Peretz, 194, 260, 285 Marley, Dudley, 242 Marshall, Louis, 50, 74, 181 Martens, Ludwig, 90, 92 Martov, Julius, 17, 33, 124-126, 177, 215 Marx, Karl, 5, 9, 11, 16-17, 19, 33, 39, 44-45, 63-64, 70-71, 77, 89, 115, 121, 123, 130, 133, 135-136, 156, 162, 167, 173, 195, 214, 224, 267, 293 Communist Manifesto, 19, 63 maskilim, 115-116, 283 Medem, Vladimir, 101, 166 Mekler, D., 264 Melamed, Samuel M., 31 Melamed, Zelig, 94 Mendelsohn, Moses, 112 Menes, Abraham, 294 Leyenbukh tsu der geshikhte fun Yisroel, 127 Mensheviks, 17, 33-35, 42, 69-72, 75, 89, 119, 122-127, 129, 132-134, 136, 138, 141, 146-148, 173-174, 228, 232, 234, 257, 269 Menshoi, Adolf (Gai), 160 Menuhin, Yehudi, 264 messianism, 70, 75-76, 185, 243, 251 Michels, Tony, 6, 134 Mikhoels, Solomon, 200-201, 212, 263, 266267, 269-270 Miller, Louis E., 24 Minsk, 23, 115, 121 Molotov, Viacheslav, 230 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 12, 253-254, 260-261 Moment, 186, 218 Morgn-Frayhayt, 227n44, 253, 265, 281, 285 Moscow Circle of Yiddish Writers and Artists (MCYWA), 82 Moscow trial, 145-149 Moscow Yiddish Theater, 200, 205 Moscow, 12, 20, 63, 70-71, 77, 81-82, 86, 89, 94, 122, 125, 127, 129, 133, 139-140, 142, 144, 147-148, 151, 159-161, 163, 166, 170-171, 180, 186, 190, 192-194, 199208, 210-212, 215-218, 223, 225, 232,

234, 239, 244, 246, 259-260, 262-263, 266, 269-270, 275, 283-284 Moses, 76, 290 Muni, Paul, 264 Murray, Philip, 262 Mussolini, Benito, 173, 231 Mutnik, Abram, 127 Nadir, Moyshe, 254 Nashe delo, 33 National Workmen’s Committee on Jewish Rights in the Belligerent Lands, 48 nationalism, 43 Naye folkstsaytung, 250 Naye prese, 186 Naye tsayt, 94, 156 Naye velt, 87 Nazism, 12, 158, 172-176, 230, 249, 254, 256258, 262 Nekrasov, Nikolai, 228 Neue Freie Presse, 215 New Economic Policy (NEP), 89, 126, 131, 142, 163-164, 168, 170 New Leader, the, 193, 220, 284 New York Call, 18 New York Globe, 26 New York Journal American, 270 New York Journal, 226 New York Times, the, 36-37, 56, 68-69, 141142, 258 New York Tribune, the, 54, 56 New York, 8-9, 11-12, 16, 22, 26, 29, 31-32, 34-36, 41-42, 44, 46-50, 59, 64, 70, 73-74, 78-79, 81, 83, 86-87, 89-92, 94, 96, 101102, 106-107, 109, 111, 117, 121, 128, 134, 137, 139, 144, 155, 160-161, 165, 175, 181, 183, 186-187, 199, 202, 216, 219-222, 228, 231, 245-246, 249-251, 255-257, 260-262, 269, 271-273, 275-277, 285, 290 Nicholas II, 38, 41, 53 Niger, Shmuel, 68-70, 77, 81, 94, 102, 112, 159, 270 Novick, Pesakh (Paul), 84-85, 87, 214, 264265, 285-286 Novyi mir, 46, 160, 165 numerus clausus, 23 Nusinov, Isaac, 207 October Revolution, 7, 10, 22, 54-55, 67-78, 82-84, 122, 125, 131, 138, 141, 143, 152, 156, 163, 188, 190, 196, 198, 218, 227, 234, 257, 265 Odessa, 66, 155, 159, 188, 199, 244

343

344

Transatlantic Russian Jewishness

Olgin, Moyshe, 9-10, 21-23, 36, 47, 51, 55, 58, 60, 64-66, 68-69, 72, 74-76, 81-84, 87, 98, 123-124, 137-138-139, 222, 227n44, 236, 251, 253, 265 Ab. Kahan: Ver is er? Vemen fartret er?, 251 Havrila and Yoel, 83 Trotskyism: Counter-revolution in Disguise, 138 Opatoshu, Joseph, 102, 117, 169, 171, 222 Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia (ICOR), 92, 242, 264 ORT, 11, 61, 89, 204, 245 Osherowitch, Mendel, 60, 85, 171, 222, 266267 How People Live in Soviet Russia, 218 Oyfboy, 91 OZET, 178, 190, 193, 196, 204-205, 207, 209, 211 Pale of Settlement, 22, 58, 67, 155, 163 Palestine, 12, 43, 65-66, 88, 135, 144-145, 151, 156, 172, 178, 181-185, 188, 198, 213-214, 222, 238, 243, 251, 260, 267, 282, 293 Panken, Jacob, 60, 64, 182 Paris Peace Conference, 68n56, 74, 119 Paris, 11, 18, 33, 41, 59, 68n56, 135, 141, 152, 154, 173-176, 186, 201, 211-212, 217, 221-222, 242, 260 Parsky, I., 216-217 Passover, 41, 262, 277, 288-290 Paul I, 54 People’s Relief Committee for the Jewish War Sufferers, 48, 178, 180 Peretz, I.L., 112 Peskin, Shmuel, 40 Peter the Great, 23, 53 Petliura, Symon, 80, 136 Petrovsky, David, 78-82, 194 Philadelphia conference, 178-179 Picon, Molly, 264 Piłsudski, Józef, 80, 203, 209, 251 Pine, Max, 90-91 Pinski, David, 102 Poale Zion, 17 pogroms, 6, 9, 21, 23, 25-29, 40-41, 52, 78, 91, 131, 136, 151-152, 156-158, 163, 214, 249, 260 Poland, 6-7, 12-13, 27-30, 39, 52, 68, 77, 80, 93, 97, 102, 109, 114-115, 141, 169, 183, 188, 194, 199-200, 203, 206, 209, 214, 216, 221-222, 231, 240-243, 245, 249255, 258, 261, 271, 277-278, 285, 288 Pomerantz, Alexander, 270-271

Di sovetishe haruge-malkhes, 271 Popular Front, 214, 221-222, 224, 236, 260 Portnoy, Eddy, 148 Portugeis, Shmuel (Stepan Ivanovich), 134135, 190, 234, 254, 256 Piat’ let bol’shevizma, 135 Pravda, 139, 142, 230, 246, 269 Prompartiia, 147 Proskurov pogrom, 158 Provisional Government (Russia), 53, 57-59, 69, 164 Pushkin, Alexander, 105, 228 Qibya massacre, 286 Rafes, Moyshe, 91, 194 Ramishvili, Isidore, 232 Rand School of Social Science, 62, 83, 107 Rasumny, Mark, 191 Reader’s Digest, 270 Reed, John, 75-76, 90, 122 Rein, Mark, 256 Reinhard, Max, 200, 264 Reinstein, Boris, 61 Reisen, Abraham, 25-26, 60, 82, 104-105, 112, 204 Renan, Ernest, 281 Reswick, William, 275-276 I Dreamt Revolution, 275 Riga, 35, 120, 132, 150, 191, 249 Robeson, Paul, 264 Rogoff, Hillel, 13, 63, 75, 82, 84-86, 221, 253, 257, 262, 270, 293-294 Romania, 5, 97, 188, 214, 240, 277 Romanisches Café, 128, 152-153, 171 Romanov dynasty, 20, 22, 24, 53-54, 56 Romanov, Michael, 53 Romm, Vladimir, 223 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 12, 220, 226, 262, 273 Rosen, Joseph, 179-181, 193, 239, 248 Rosenblatt, Frank, 129 Rosenfeld, Morris, 23 Rosenfeld, Shloyme, 199-200 Rosenfeld, Yona, 166 Rosenwald, Julius, 181, 197 Rote Fahne, 149 Rothchild, Edward, de, 264 Rudner, Isidor, 225 Russell, Bertrand, 76-77, 123 Russian Civil War, 7, 90, 152-153, 158-159, 247 Russian Orthodox Church, 54 Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, 17, 34-35, 42, 59, 121-123, 125, 140, 142, 173 Russian-American Industrial Corporation, 59

Index

Sabath, Adolph J., 264 Sacco, Nicola, 230-231, 262 Salant, B., 276 Salutsky, Jacob Benjamin ( J.B.S. Hardman), 17-19, 64 Saturday, 9, 87, 118, 172, 189, 246, 274, 279280, 288-289 Scheidemann, Philipp, 49, 133 Schiff, Jacob H., 60, 98 Schildkraut, Rudolph, 200 Schlesinger, Benjamin, 78-81, 86 Schneersohn, Sholem Dovber, 277 Schneersohn, Yosef Yitzchok (Lubavitcher Rebbe), 275-276, 278 Schwartz, Morris, 264 Schwartzbard, Sholom, 136 Seekers of Happiness, 248 Semashko, Nikolai, 205 Sentinel, 179 Shabbatai Zvi, 185, 243 Shapiro, Lamed, 29 Shaplen, Joseph, 142 Socialism, Fascism, Communism, 220 Shefner, Baruch, 255, 260, 294 Shifrin, Nahman, 150-151 Shiplacoff, Abraham I., 64, 143 Sholem Aleichem, 29, 32, 104, 111-112, 140, 261, 280, 287 shtetl, 58, 80, 116, 155, 161-163, 189, 210211, 244, 252, 276-278 Shub, David, 88, 220, 222, 239, 256-257, 282 Fascism and Communism, 257 Shulchan Aruch, 264 Shurin, Aaron Ben-Zion, 281, 287 Siegal, H., 108 Silver, Abba Hillel, 266 Sinclair, Upton, 264 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 13, 280, 282 Singer, Israel Joshua, 13, 166-167, 169-170, 192, 194, 198-199, 211, 215, 222 Slobodin, Henry L., 75-76 Ten Days That Shook the World, 76 Slobodka, 278 Smidovich, Pyotr, 179, 241 Smolar, Boris, 207-209, 216, 280, 289 Smolar, Hersh, 209-210, 285 Social Democratic Bund, 122-123 Social Democratic Party of Germany, 16, 21, 31, 35-36, 124, 174-175 socialism, 5-12, 15-21, 23-25, 30-52, 56, 58, 60-64, 67, 69-77, 81-90, 95-96, 98-99, 103, 106-111, 113-115, 120-126, 128, 130-148, 151, 154-156, 160, 162, 167-

168, 172-177, 182-183, 185, 189, 193, 195-196, 200, 214, 219-221, 223-232, 234-238, 241, 245, 254-257, 259-262, 273, 278, 280, 283-284, 286, 294 Socialist Labor Party of America, 61, 69, 76 Socialist Party of America, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 36-37, 43, 47, 61-64, 74-75, 81, 83-84, 86, 95, 131, 133, 137, 160, 176, 182, 219, 226, 273 Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, 121 Sola Pool, David, de, 266 Solomon ibn Gabirol, 112 Soloveitchik, Joseph Dov, 280 Solovioff, Lily, 117 Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 126, 136, 145-146, 174, 176, 283 Soviet Union, passim Soyer, Daniel, 193 Spain, 55, 256 Spargo, John, 83 Spizman, Leib, 255 St. Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad), 23, 41, 55, 62, 68, 120-123, 126, 161, 163, 177, 200, 205, 215, 231, 234, 244 Stalin Constitution, 222-237, 242 Stalin, Joseph, 13, 124, 130, 140n83, 142143, 145, 163, 165, 194, 199, 202, 214, 222-225, 227-232, 234-235, 237, 242, 253-255, 257, 259-261, 263, 266, 270271, 284-285 Stalingrad, 262 Steinberg, Isaac Nachman, 140-141 Straus, Isaac, 31 Suritz, Jacob, 242 Suritz, Michael, 242 Switzerland, 33, 36-38, 47, 51, 121-122, 124, 165, 249 Syromiatnikoff, Sergei, 31-32 Taft, William Howard, 60 Talmud Torah, 96, 106, 109, 114 Talmud, 6, 112, 116, 155, 184, 231, 265, 282 Tan-Bogoraz, Vladimir, 161 Tcherikower, Elias, 152 Tel Hai, 198 Teller, Judd L., 266-267 Scapegoat of Revolution, 266-267 Telz, 278 Tolstoy, Leo, 20, 105 Tomchei Temimim yeshiva, 277-278 trade unions, 16, 30, 33, 51, 56, 59, 63, 70, 80, 90, 98, 110, 124, 132, 162, 182, 230, 245, 262 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 72

345

346

Transatlantic Russian Jewishness

Tribuna evreiskoi sovetskoi obshchestvennosti, 193, 198, 203, 211 Trotsky, Leon, 9, 20, 33, 46-48, 72-73, 76, 78, 82, 89-90, 123, 134, 138, 149, 165-166, 194, 247, 269, 275 Our Revolution, 72 Troyanovsky, Alexander, 223, 237 Trumpeldor, Joseph, 198 Tsukunft, 25, 33-34, 47, 88, 106-107, 131 Turgenev, Ivan, 105 Twain, Mark, 111 Tyler, Gus, 51 Ukraine, 11, 58, 63, 80, 93, 136, 140, 145, 151-152, 155, 157-159, 164-166, 179, 188-189, 192-193, 197, 206, 210, 216, 218, 226, 239-240, 242, 244-246, 251, 269, 275, 277 Unger, Menashe, 261 United Kingdom, 19, 24, 38, 41, 65, 184, 194, 215, 227, 242 United States, passim Ussishkin, Menachem, 148 Vandervelde, Emile, 148 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 230-231, 262 Varhayt, 24, 54 Vecherniaia Moskva, 211 Viliatzer, Jonah A., 176-177 Vilna Gaon, 112 Vilna, 8, 11, 17, 23, 45, 77, 94, 101, 105, 109, 115, 121-122, 131, 150, 154, 159, 221, 223n32, 255, 257, Voice of America, 284 VOKS, 204 Volkszeitung, 35 Vorwärts, 16, 56, 157, 175 Vrangel, Pyotr, 80 Walling, William English, 36 Russia’s Message: The True World Import of the Revolution, 36 Warburg, Felix M., 181 Warsaw, 22-23, 41, 44, 81, 93, 121, 131, 150, 153, 156, 169-170, 186, 192-193, 199, 211, 218, 245, 249-250, 255, 271, 277, 285 Weber, Simon, 285 Weinreich, Max, 11, 101, 117, 154, 257-258, 275, 280, 287-288 Weinreich, Uriel College Yiddish, 288 Weinryb, Bernard D., 235-236 Weinshtein, Aaron, 209 Wells, Linton, 218

Wendroff, Zalman, 12, 161, 179, 186-192, 203-206, 208-209, 216-218, 238-240 Wilhelm II, 16, 31 Wilson, Woodrow, 56 Winchevsky, Morris, 7, 32, 60-61, 64 Winter, Jay, 46 Wischnitzer, Mark, 292-293 Wise, Stephen S., 264, 266 Wisse, Steven, 181 Workmen’s Circle, 10, 13, 94-99, 102-103, 105-111, 113-114, 117-118, 137, 145, 226, 256, 262, 271, 273, 286, 294 World War I, 7, 9-10, 13, 15, 19, 30, 40, 46, 61, 83, 119, 122-123, 125, 128, 133, 150, 165n53, 199, 249, 254, 258 World War II, 12, 174, 249, 257, 274, 293 Wostok (publishing house), 127 Yakhnovitsh, Leyb, 159 Yanover, Yankel, 29 Yefroykin, Zalman, 118, 271 yeshiva, 184, 243, 277-278 Yiddish Cultural Society, 102 Yiddish Culture Congress, 260 Yiddish Culture Front, 221 Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO), 11, 101, 154, 221, 252, 257-258, 280, 288 Yiddish, passim Yiddishists, 10, 98-99, 101-102, 104, 111-114, 152, 156, 167, 222, 243, 287 Yidishe Kultur Farband (YKUF), 260-261 Yidisher kuryer, 87 Young Circle Clubs, 103, 107 Zalowitz, Nathaniel, 213, 274 Zangwill, Israel, 66-67 Zederbaum-Ezhov, Sergei, 177, 215 Zhitlowsky, Chaim, 66, 102, 143, 222, 260261, 273 Zimmerwald Conference, 33-39, 44-47, 61, 63-64, 122, 138 Zinoviev, Grigory, 33, 165-166, 232, 245, 275 Zionism, 5, 10, 12, 17, 31, 43, 48, 54, 57, 6566, 88, 144-145, 152, 181-185, 188-189, 197-198, 200, 202-203, 213-214, 239, 243, 249-251, 266-267, 269, 282, 286, 288, 291-292 Zionist Congress, 154 Zionist Socialist Workers Party, 156 Zuskin, Benjamin, 200-201, 212 Zweig, Stefan Sternstunden der Menschheit, 122