Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Czarist Russia, 1892--1914
Joshua D. ZimmermanFounded in 1892 by descendants of Polish nobility and polonized Jews from Warsaw, the PPS saw its leading mission as the formation of a united ethnic front against the imperial Russian rulers. It advocated the break-up of Russia and the formation of a breakaway federal republic of the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukranian nations as successor nations to the old 18th century Polish Commonwealth. As part of this plan the PPS saw the Jews as potential recruits to the Polish nation who would be polonized through linguistic, cultural and civic assimilation. For the PPS the Polish proletariat consisted of Christian and Jewish workers.
The Jewish Labor Bund, however, instead declared that Jews were a nation distinct from Poles and Russians and advocated a distinctive national program within Jewish socialism. Between 1893 and 1905 and between 1907 and 1914 Zimmerman shows how and why the Bund underwent a major ideological transformation, moving from initially advocating equal civil rights for Jews and unification with the Russian socialist movement to endorsing the principle of Jewish national autonomy.