Jews in European socialist and anarchist parties

From the second half of the nineteenth century onward, Jewish intellectuals and activists played a significant role in the socialist, social-democratic, communist, and anarchist movements of Europe, drawn by ideals of equality and emancipation that contrasted with the social exclusion and persecution to which they were subjected. In the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire and in Poland, the Bund (General Union of Jewish Workers, founded in 1897) defended a socialism combining class struggle with Yiddish cultural autonomy, in tension with Zionism. Figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotski, and later Emma Goldman in the anarchist world, left a lasting mark on the history of the revolutionary left. This visibility was exploited by far-right antisemitism, which forged the myth of "Judeo-Bolshevism" assimilating Jews to a worldwide revolutionary conspiracy. The historical reality was more nuanced: while many Jews were drawn to these commitments, the majority were not revolutionary, and many Jewish activists maintained a conflicted relationship with tradition.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan