Was there a Bundist movement among the Jews of Austria-Hungary in the late 19th/early 20th century?

by GucciMaine
hannahstohelit

Is this Jews-of-Austria-Hungary weekend? If so I love it :)

Not only was there a Bundist movement in Austria-Hungary, the movement actually chose Vienna as the base of some of its operations (such as its newspaper when Czarist Russia became too hot to hold Bundist leaders. The location was ideal as, unlike a country farther west (like Switzerland), Austria-Hungary shared a border with Russia and therefore it was easy to smuggle illegal political literature and personal correspondence too sensitive for the mail across the border. They mostly began to arrive in 1910/1911, as Austro-Hungarian strife with Russia led to an increased tolerance for Russian revolutionaries within Austria-Hungary; in fact, Vienna served as the location of the Bund's ninth annual conference in 1912.

However, most "Bundists" in Austria-Hungary were actually part of a different organization, the Jewish Social Democratic Party (ZPS or ZPSD) of Galicia, which had been established by a group of Jewish socialists in 1905, influenced by the revolutionaries in Russia and angry that their previous organization, the Polish Social Democratic Party (PPSD), was suppressing Jews. In an Austria-Hungary in which social divides were generally by ethnicity, with Jews fitting into no other category but "Jewish," they now wanted their own party, rather than be forced to subsume themselves under the Polish equivalent. At their founding, they had about 2000 members throughout Galicia; by 1906, there were 2800; by 1908, there were 3500. While the ZPS was not officially a part of the Bund, the two organizations cooperated, with the Bund sending over literature from Russia and ZPS assisting in the Bund's smuggling operations over the Russian/Austro-Hungarian border. ZPS was soon often called the "Galician Bund."

By 1910, there were 4200 members throughout Galicia, but the organization had stagnated. Soon, it was controversially attempting to bolster its numbers by incorporating the Jewish Section of the PPSD, which had stayed behind when ZPS had broken off, and allying itself with PPSD. It also incorporated the Bukovina Bund, an equivalent Jewish Socialist organization in Bukovina, which led to ZPS renaming itself in 1913 the Jewish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Bukovina (at this point, it had 4500 members including 800 in Bukovina). Disagreements over the alliance with PPSD as well as the economic downturn in 1912 led to a reduction in membership of ZPS. It was then severely affected by WWI, but bounced back thereafter with a return to a 4000+ member population in 1920.

As you can tell, the movement was not necessarily large; but it definitely existed. And despite the fact that ZPS was technically a different organization than the Bund, they were in concert in both theoretical and practical senses.

Sources:

Jacobs, "Written out of History: Bundists in Vienna and the Variety of Jewish Experiences in the Austrian First Republic"

Kuhn, "The Jewish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and the Bund"