General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland
אַלגעמײַנער ײדישער אַרבעטער בּונד אין פוילין |
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Founded | December 1917 |
Dissolved | 1948 |
Split from | General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia |
Ideology | Socialism |
Political position | Left wing |
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland (Yiddish: אַלגעמײַנער ײדישער אַרבעטער בּונד אין פוילין tr: Algemeyner yidisher arbeter bund in poyln, Polish: Ogólno-Żydowski Związek Robotniczy "Bund" w Polsce) was a Jewish socialist party in Poland which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, sought to combat antisemitism and was generally opposed to Zionism.
The Polish Bund emerged from the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia of the erstwhile Russian empire. The Bund had party structures established amongst the Jewish communities in the Polish areas of the Russian empire. When Poland fell under German occupation in 1914, contact between the Bundists in Poland and the party centre in St. Petersburg became difficult. In November 1914 the Bund Central Committee appointed a separate Committee of Bund Organizations in Poland to run the party in Poland. Theoretically the Bundists in Poland and Russia were members of the same party, but in practice the Polish Bundists operated as a party of their own. In December 1917 the split was formalized, as the Polish Bundists held a clandestine meeting in Lublin and reconstituted themselves as a separate political party.
In April 1920 the first convention of the Polish Bund was held, during which the merger of the Galician Jewish Social Democratic Party into the Bund was materialized. At the conference a dispute over whether the party should join the Communist International erupted. A majority resolution calling for the entry of the party into the Communist International was passed at the convention, but never implemented. As a result, the Polish Bund was divided, with around a quarter of the Polish Bund leaving the party to form the Communist Bund in 1922 (which subsequently merged into the Communist Party in 1923).