A Yevsektsiya (, a syllabic abbreviation for "Jewish Section" (). ; ) was the ethnically Jewish section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and its main institutions; it is also sometimes described as the Yiddish-language branch of the CPSU. The section was established in fall of 1918 with the consent of Vladimir Lenin to carry Party ideology and Marxist-Leninist atheism to the Soviet Jewish masses.Pipes, Richard, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, New York: Vintage Books, Random House Inc., 1995, , page 363 The Yevsektsiya published a Yiddish periodical, Der Emes.
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."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 Some members envisioned a broader role for the Yevsektsiya that included developing Soviet Yiddish culture and creating political institutions to serve the Yiddish-speaking population.
History The Yevsektsiya remained fairly isolated from both the Jewish intelligentsia and working class. The organization had up to 1,500 activists in about 70 units. The sections were staffed mostly by Jewish ex-members of the Bund, which eventually joined the Soviet Communist Party as the Kombund in 1921, and the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party.
Yevsektsiya activists differed over the future of Jewish culture. Some argued that Jewish culture would eventually disappear through assimilation and should not be artificially maintained; others supported providing secular Jewish culture while there remained demand for it, while a third group advocated the active development of a secular Soviet Yiddish culture.
During the first period of Soviet rule in Kyiv, from February to August 1919, administration of the city's Jewish community was transferred to the Yevsektsiya. The Yevsektsiya legally abolished traditional Jewish community organizations known as kehillas.
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. At the Yevsektsiya's second conference in July 1919, it demanded that the Zionist organizations be dissolved. After an appeal from the Zionists, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree stating that the Zionist organisation was not counter-revolutionary and its activities should not be disrupted. 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. At its third conference in July 1921, the Yevsektsiya demanded the "total liquidation" of Zionism.
Arrests followed: in September 1924 some 3,000 Zionists were arrested and exiled.
In the early 1920s, the Yevsektsiya regarded Judaism, Hebrew, and Zionism as manifestations of "bourgeois" Jewish culture and sought to suppress them.
According to Richard Pipes, "in time, every Jewish cultural and social organization came under assault". The section in Rostov-on-Don persecuted local Jewish leaders, Zionist and religious, especially the sixth Chabad Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.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."
In Minsk, the Yevsektsiya unsuccessfully attempted to establish a Soviet-aligned Jewish communal organization with a "Red" rabbi.
The Yevsektsiya also supervised Jewish subdivisions of local government education departments involved in the development of Soviet Yiddish-language schools.
The Yevsektsiya promoted Jewish artisans' cooperatives (artels) as a means of addressing impoverishment and also supported the establishment of Jewish agricultural colonies.
The Yevsektsiya attempted to use its influence to cut off state funds to Habima Theatre, branding it counter-revolutionary. The theatre left Russia to go on tour in 1926, before settling in Mandatory Palestine in 1928 to become Israel's national theatre.Politzer, Heinz (August 1948). "Habimah in New York: A Great Theater Enters a New Period". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 2017-03-06.
Leading figures included Esther Frumkin, a former General Jewish Labour Bund leader who remained in the Yevsektsiya until its dissolution and later served as rector of the Community University of the National Minorities of the West, and Moshe Litvakov, Yiddish write and editor of Der Emes, who with Frumkin edited an eight-volume Yiddish translation of Lenin's selected writings.
Dissolution In early 1930, the Yevsektsia was disbanded as it was no longer considered necessary. Many leading members were murdered during the Great Purge of the late 1930s. Chairman Dimanstein was arrested on 18 February 1938 and executed on 25 August 25 1938. Yevsektsiya leader Ester Frumkin was arrested and condemned to eight years in a forced labor camp for political prisoners in Kazakhstan, where she died on 8 June 1943. In 1941 former Central Bureau secretary Aleksandr Chemeriskii was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He died the following year in a prison camp.
See also History of the Jews in Russia Communist Party of the Soviet Union Bolsheviks Birobidzhan Komzet Jewish Communist Party (Poalei Zion)Leon, A., "The Jewish Question" 1970, Pathfinder Press, New York, p. 1 - 26Trotsky, L., "The Russian Revolution," 1959, Doubleday, New York Bundism Central Bureau of the Lithuanian Sections of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Notes
References
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) Horn, Dara (6 September 2019). "The Cool Kids: Self-mutilation as a Jewish cultural strategy and the sad history of the Yevsektsiya". Tablet.
External links Revolution and Emancipation, The Yevsektsii at Beyond the Pale exhibition