Raphael Abramovich

Raphael Abramovitch Rein (1880–1963), best known as Raphael Abramovitch, was a Russian socialist, a member of the General Jewish Workers' Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (Bund), and a leader of the Menshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (RSDRP).

Abramovitch emigrated from Soviet Russia in 1920, landing in Berlin, where he was a co-founder of the long-running Menshevik journal Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (The Socialist Courier). After 1940, with the rise of fascism in Europe, he made his way to the United States, where he lived his final years.

Raphael Abramovich Rein was born in Daugavpils in 1880. As a student at Riga Polytechnic he became involved in revolutionary politics and became a convinced Marxist.

In 1901 he joined the Bund and the RSDRP. When the Bund withdrew from the RSDRP in 1903, Abramovich maintained contact with Menshevik leaders Martov and Fyodor Dan. The Bund and the Mensheviks eventually patched up their differences, and Abramovich became a member of the Menshevik party. He edited the Social-Democratic journals Evreiskii Rabochii (Jewish Workers) and Nashe Slovo (Our Word). In 1905 Abramovich became a member of the Central Committee of the Bund. During the abortive Revolution of 1905, he represented the Bund in the St. Petersburg Soviet. In 1907 he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the second Duma. He attended the conferences of the Bund and the RSDRP in 1906 and 1907. In 1911 he narrowly escaped arrest and fled abroad, mostly living in Germany and France.

In 1914 he at first sided with the Internationalist wing of the Menshevik party, which opposed the First World War, but he was not as radically anti-war as Martov. After the February Revolution of 1917, Abramovich returned to Russia. He became a member of the Central Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. For a while he became a qualified Revolutionary Defencist, siding with Mensheviks like Dan and Tsereteli against Martov. While Martov's Menshevik Internationalists opposed the war altogether, the Revolutionary Defencists supported a limited war effort in defence of the Revolution. However, they opposed territorial or financial war aims and rejected the unqualified pro-war stance of 'Social Patriots' like the aged Plekhanov and A.N. Potresov.

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