Polemics in the Pale: The Jewish National Question as a Proxy Debate in Revolutionary Russian Politics

Date: 2025-01-01

Creator: Michael Sherman Gordon

Access: Open access

Polemics in the Pale: The Jewish National Question as a Proxy Debate in Revolutionary Russian Politics examines the Bolshevik Party's debates over the Jewish National Question. This thesis tracks the evolution of the arguments surrounding Jewish national status through the Bolsheviks' break with the Jewish Labor Bund at the 1903 RSDLP Congress, the Soviet Union's schemes to create Jewish agricultural colonies in Ukraine, and the Soviet decision to establish the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan in Siberia. Ultimately, Polemics in the Pale argues that the Bolshevik main interest in discussing the Jewish national question was not to find a genuine theoretical conception of the nation compatible with Social Democracy but instead was to utilize it as a cipher for more pressing political issues: party organization and state-building.