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6 | The Worldwide Jewish Nation Vladimir Davidovich Medem V. medem, “Vsemirnaia evreiskaia natsiia,” in Teoreticheskie i prakitcheskie voprosy evreiskoi zhizni (st. Petersburg: trud, 1911), 90–105. As a leading ideologist of the Jewish labor Bund, Vladimir medem (1879–1923) was one of the key figures responsible for guiding the largest and most important Jewish socialist movement in the russian empire and independent Poland toward a platform for national-cultural Jewish autonomy. medem grew up in a Christian family in the town of libau, his parents having converted to lutheranism. As a university student in kiev, medem joined first the russian social democratic workers’ Party, then its Jewish section, the Bund. medem became a leading figure in Jewish socialist politics in the russian empire, spending time both in prison and in exile, and eventually was one of the more important leaders of the Bund in independent Poland. the Bund began as an effort by Jewish marxists to integrate the russian empire’s Jewish workers into the Polish and russian revolutionary movements. Although it later became a proponent of cultural Yiddishism, the movement remained continually opposed to “bourgeois nationalism,” which it equated with Zionism. the Bund crept toward becoming a national movement, but it never fully resolved the difference between nationalism, which it opposed, and the demand for national-cultural rights, which it came over time to support. medem’s oeuvre encapsulates many of the tensions inherent in the development of Jewish socialism in the russian empire. he was personally opposed to all forms of nationalism and at the same time resistant to all efforts by russian and Polish social democrats to delegitimize any kind of separate Jewish socialist movement. medem—unlike Zhitlowsky—did not grow up in a deeply Jewish environment; however, he was cognizant of the fact that Jewish workers were unlikely to join a movement that did not seek to protect their national rights. medem was responsible for developing the Bund’s “neutralism” in his 1904 essay “the national Question and social-democracy,” when he argued that the Jewish workers’ movement should stay neutral in the fight between assimilationists and nationalists, as both served the ends of the bourgeoisie. more important, to medem, was defending the Jews against national oppression by others. with the 106 | s o C i A l i s m A n d J e w i s h P e o P l e h o o d Bund’s plunging popularity following the failed 1905–7 revolution, however, and the broad efforts by all Jewish parties to reorganize the russian Jewish community, medem actively debated with dubnov and others the nature of Jewish nationality and nationalism, shifting toward the idea of a cultural yet avowedly secular nationality (medem later dismissed his publications in nonpartisan journals during this period, especially 1908–9, as written only due to financial necessity). in the essay below, published in the volume Theoretical and Practical Questions of Jewish Life—a collaborative effort by a number of socialist, autonomist, liberal, and Zionist thinkers, which appeared in 1911—medem questioned the idea of a unified Jewish nation, a cherished assumption of the Jewish national movements and an idea at the very heart of Judaism. where others sought to determine how Jewish unity might be preserved in the absence of religion, medem simply decided that such a thing was impossible: with secularization, there can be no “worldwide Jewish nation.” Yet at the same time medem did not oppose seeing the Jews in national terms nor building the foundation for a secular Jewish nation in eastern europe. he opposed treating the different Jewish communities of the world as a unified nation, either politically or institutionally. in the context of an increasingly transnational Jewish political life, he dissented in favor of localism. medem became one of the earliest and most influential leaders of the independent Polish Bund, founded during world war i, when much of Poland was under german occupation. once again medem edged the party toward acknowledging the Jewish public’s desire for autonomy and continuity, while providing a response to the growing popularity of Zionism. medem became a proponent of doikayt (“hereness”), drawing a clear distinction between the Jewish socialists, who sought to improve the life of Jews in Poland and elsewhere, here and now, and the supposedly utopian program of the Zionists. written in 1911, the following essay in some ways offers a bridge between neutralism and doikayt. medem here continues to promote neutralism through his third way between assimilation and...

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