Yevsektsiya

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Expand Russian A Yevsektsiya<ref>Also romanized Evsektsiya.</ref> (Template:Lang-rus; Template:Langx) was the ethnically Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party and its main institutions. These sections were established in fall of 1918 with consent of Vladimir Lenin to carry Party ideology and Marxist-Leninist atheism to the Soviet Jewish masses.<ref name="Pipes">Pipes, Richard, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, New York: Vintage Books, Random House Inc., 1995, Template:ISBN, page 363</ref> The Yevsektsiya published a Yiddish periodical, der Emes.<ref name=Shindler /> According to Walter Kolarz, the Yevsektsiya inside the League of Militant Godless, "had a total of 40,000 Jewish members in 1929, the year when the anti-religious campaign was at its peak. These 'Jewish sections' were much despised by the bulk of Russia's Jewry. Their members were regarded with as much contempt as the Jewish renegades who turned persecutors of the own brethren in the Middle Ages."<ref> Walter Kolarz (1966), Religion in the Soviet Union, St Martins Press. New York City. p. 374.</ref>

Mission

The Yevsektsiya sought to draw Jewish workers into the revolutionary organisations; chairman Semyon Dimanstein, at the first conference in October 1918, pointed out that, "when the October revolution came, the Jewish workers had remained totally passive ... and a large part of them were even against the revolution. The revolution did not reach the Jewish street. Everything remained as before".<ref>Gilboa, Jehoshua A. A Language Silenced: The Suppression of Hebrew Literature and Culture in the Soviet Union. Rutherford [N.J.]: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982. p. 282</ref>

History

The Yevsektsiya remained fairly isolated from both the Jewish intelligentsia and working class.<ref name=Shindler>Template:Cite book</ref> The sections were staffed mostly by Jewish ex-members of the Bund, which eventually joined the Soviet Communist Party as the Kombund in 1921,<ref name="Pipes"/> and the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party.<ref name = "levin" />

Former elements of the Bund and Faraynigte were historically hostile to Zionism. As they later joined Yevsektsiya, they deemed Russian Zionist organisations to be counter-revolutionary, and critiqued them. Delegates to a Zionist congress in March 1919 complained about administrative harassment of their activities - not from government agencies, but from Jewish communists.<ref name = "levin" /> At the Yevsektsiya's second conference in July 1919, it demanded that the Zionist organizations be dissolved.<ref name = "levin">Template:Cite book</ref> After an appeal from the Zionists, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree in that the Zionist organisation was not counter-revolutionary and its activities should not be disrupted.<ref name=Shindler /> The campaign continued, however. In 1920, the first All-Russian Zionist Congress was disrupted by members of the Cheka and a female representative of the Yevsektsiya.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> At its third conference in July 1921, the Yevsektsiya demanded the "total liquidation" of Zionism.<ref name = "levin" />

According to Richard Pipes, "in time, every Jewish cultural and social organization came under assault".<ref name="Pipes"/> The section in Rostov-on-Don persecuted local Jewish leaders, both Zionist and religious, and especially the sixth Chabad rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn<ref>https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Rostov-on-Don "With the establishment of Soviet authority, the local Yevsektsiia in the 1920s promoted the closure of Jewish institutions; it also persecuted Zionist and religious leaders, above all, Yosef Yitsḥak Shneerson."</ref>

The Yevsektsiya attempted to use its influence to cut off state funds to Habima Theatre, branding it counter-revolutionary.<ref name=Shindler /> The theatre left Russia to go on tour in 1926, before settling in Mandatory Palestine in 1928 to become Israel's national theatre.<ref name="commentarymagazine.com">Politzer, Heinz (August 1948). "Habimah in New York: A Great Theater Enters a New Period". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 2017-03-06.</ref>

Dissolution

The Yevsektsia were disbanded as no longer needed in 1929. Many leading members were murdered during the Great Purge of the late 1930s, including Chairman Dimanstein.<ref name="Pipes" /> Executed in 1938, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955, two years after the death of Joseph Stalin.

See also

• History of the Jews in Russia
• Communist Party of the Soviet Union
• Bolsheviks
• Birobidzhan
• Komzet
• Jewish Communist Party (Poalei Zion)<ref>Leon, A., "The Jewish Question" 1970, Pathfinder Press, New York, p. 1 - 26</ref><ref>Trotsky, L., "The Russian Revolution," 1959, Doubleday, New York</ref>
• Bundism
• Central Bureau of the Lithuanian Sections of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)

Further reading

• Gitelman, Zvi. Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, Princeton, 1972.
• Dubnow, Simon. History of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the earliest times until the present day in three volumes, updated by author in 1938.
• Дубнов, Семён Маркович. Новейшая история еврейского народа (1789—1914) в 3х томах. (С эпилогом 1938 г.). Иерусалим-Москва, Мосты культуры, 2002. (in Russian)
• Костырченко, Геннадий. Тайная политика Сталина. Власть и антисемитизм. Москва, 2001.
• Евреи в Советской России (1917—1967). Иерусалим, Библиотека-Алия, 1975. (in Russian)

External links

• Revolution and Emancipation, The Yevsektsii at Beyond the Pale exhibition