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Primordial Ties and Political Process in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: the Case of the Jewish Bund*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Charles E. Woodhouse  and
Henry J. Tobias
Charles E. Woodhouse
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
Henry J. Tobias
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
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Extract

A major problem in the civic integration of new states is the quickening of “primordial attachments” based on ties of blood, race, language, region, religion or custom. These attachments give rise to separatist, irredentist or factional groupings whose claims to recognition and autonomy cut across the claims of civic unity based on a common national territory.

Type
Civic Identity
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , April 1966 , pp. 331 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1966

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References

1 Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States”, in Geertz, Clifford, ed., Old Societies and New States (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 105–157Google Scholar; Shils, Edward, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties”, British Journal of Sociology, VIII (June, 1957), pp. 130–145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Geertz, p. 108.

3 Kopelson, T. M., “Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie kontsa 80-kh godov” [The Jewish Workers’ Movement at the End of the ’Eighties and the Beginning of the ’Nineties], Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie sredi evreev [The Revolutionary Movement Among the Jews] (Moscow, 1930), I, 71Google Scholar.

4 Martov, L., Di Naie Epokhe in der Yiddisher Arbeiter Bevegung [The New Epoch in the Jewish Labor Movement] (Geneva, 1900), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

5 Tobias, Henry J., “The Origins and Evolution of the Jewish Bund until 1901” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1957), pp. 26–30Google Scholar.

6 These arguments appeared in a number of Polish and Yiddish newspapers from 1893 to 1898. They are summarized in Tobias, pp. 88–101.

7 “Di Oislendishe Organizatsie fun ‘Bund’” [The Foreign Organization of the Bund], Franz Kurski: Gezamelte Shriften [Franz Kurski: Selected Essays[ (New York, 1952), p. 214Google Scholar. Kurski was a significant figure in the Bund for decades and became its chief bibliographer.

8 Tobias, Henry J., “The Bund and Lenin Until 1903”, The Russian Review, 20 (October, 1961), pp. 344–357CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 The sample consists of 154 persons who were active in the Bund between 1897 and the March Revolution of 1917. The major sources for the biographies were: Doires Bundisten [Generations of Bundists], Hertz, J. S., ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Leksikon fun der Yiddisher Literatur, Prese, un Filologie [Lexicon of Yiddish Literature, Press, and Philology], 4 vols., Raizen, Zalman, ed. (Vilno 1928–1929)Google Scholar; Leksikon fun der Naier Yiddisher Literatur [Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature], Niger, Samuel and Shatski, Jacob, eds. (New York, 1956–), 5 volsGoogle Scholar. to date. In addition, many individual volumes of autobiography and memoirs have been used. These materials provide data on the better known members of the Bund. The works include a large proportion of the top leaders and a smaller representation of second echelon leaders. To verify the coverage afforded by the biographies, an independent check was made in historical accounts of the composition of the Central Committee, and delegates to Conferences and Congresses. We believe that our sample includes all members of the Central Committee and approximately two-thirds of the delegates to Conferences. Of 140 persons who attended Conferences and Congresses, as well as serving on the Central Committee, we have 70 biographies in the sample. A previous analysis of Bund leadership based on these data is presented in Tobias, Henry J. and Woodhouse, Charles E., “The Leadership of the Jewish Bund” (paper presented at Yivo Research Conference on Jewish Participation in Movements Devoted to the Cause of Social Progress, New York, September 1964)Google Scholar.

10 It should be pointed out, however, that private tutoring and self-education were commonly relied on in place of formal school attendance. Persons who taught themselves were called autodidacten.

11 Hertz, J. S., Aronson, G., et al., Di Geshikhte fun Bund [The History of the Bund] (New York, 1962), II, p. 557Google Scholar.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. 550.

14 Ibid., pp. 551–2.

15 Cited in Hertz and Aronson, p. 554.

16 Ibid., p. 588.

17 Kirzhnits, A., Di Yiddishe Prese in der Gevezener Ruslendisher Imperie (1823–1916) [The Yiddish Press in the Former Russian Empire (1823–1916)] (Moscow-Karkov-Minsk, 1930)Google Scholar.

18 In this respect the Bund exhibits a suggestive parallel to other Russian revolutionary groups (Land and Freedom, People's Will) analyzed by Nahirny, Vladimir C., in “Some Observations on Ideological Groups”, American Journal of Sociology, LXVII (January, 1962), pp. 397–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nahirny shows how the bonds formed by common ideological commitment differ from those denoted as Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft. But while ideological commitment involves a thoroughgoing fusion of personal ties with abstract beliefs, it may be difficult to separate the effects of ideology alone from the effects of prior cultural experience in a minority group. A further comparison of the Russian groups with the Bund and other Jewish parties would be well worth while.

19 The implications for national civic integration of this interest in tradition are set forth in Marriott, McKim, “Cultural Policy in the New States”, in Geertz, Clifford, ed., Old Societies and New States (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 27–56Google Scholar.

20 Bendix, Reinhard, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1964)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1963)Google Scholar.