Abstract

The Bund, which was set up in 1897 and the leading Jewish worker organization in Tsarist Russia, was also a member organization of the Russian Social-Democratic Party and had played an outstanding role in its foundation in 1898. At the Second Party Congress, which was held in Brussels and London in July-August 1903, strong disagreements between the Party and the Bund in organizational matters resulted in the latter’s dramatic withdrawal from the Party. In the present paper, the author examines those disagreements through a systematic analysis of the Congress debated. An introductory section briefly reviews the situation of the Jews in Tsarist Russia, the growth of the Jewish labour movement, and the strained relations between the Bund and the Party, which from 1900 on was dominated by the Iskraites, i.e. Lenin and his collaborators. This is followed by a record of the debated in abridged form and a short presentation of the most distinguished spokesmen of the opposite camps, notably Julius Martov from the Iskra group and the 23-year-old Mark Liber from the Bund.