What do you think?
Rate this book
Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism
Recovering the history of the revolutionary Jewish tradition
Jewish radicals manned the barricades on the avenues of Petrograd and the alleys of the Warsaw ghetto; they were in the vanguard of those resisting Franco and the Nazis. They originated in Yiddishland, a vast expanse of Eastern Europe that, before the Holocaust, ran from the Baltic Sea to the western edge of Russia and incorporated hundreds of Jewish communities with a combined population of some 11 million people. Within this territory, revolutionaries arose from the Jewish misery of Eastern and Central Europe; they were raised in the fear of God and taught to respect religious tradition, but were caught up in the great current of revolutionary utopian thinking. Socialists, Communists, Bundists, Zionists, Trotskyists, manual workers and intellectuals, they embodied the multifarious activity and radicalism of a Jewish working class that glimpsed the Messiah in the folds of the red flag.
Today, the world from which they came has disappeared, dismantled and destroyed by the Nazi genocide. After this irremediable break, there remain only survivors, and the work of memory for red Yiddishland. This book traces the struggles of these militants, their singular trajectories, their oscillation between great hope and doubt, their lost illusions—a red and Jewish gaze on the history of the twentieth century.
Jewish radicals manned the barricades on the avenues of Petrograd and the alleys of the Warsaw ghetto; they were in the vanguard of those resisting Franco and the Nazis. They originated in Yiddishland, a vast expanse of Eastern Europe that, before the Holocaust, ran from the Baltic Sea to the western edge of Russia and incorporated hundreds of Jewish communities with a combined population of some 11 million people. Within this territory, revolutionaries arose from the Jewish misery of Eastern and Central Europe; they were raised in the fear of God and taught to respect religious tradition, but were caught up in the great current of revolutionary utopian thinking. Socialists, Communists, Bundists, Zionists, Trotskyists, manual workers and intellectuals, they embodied the multifarious activity and radicalism of a Jewish working class that glimpsed the Messiah in the folds of the red flag.
Today, the world from which they came has disappeared, dismantled and destroyed by the Nazi genocide. After this irremediable break, there remain only survivors, and the work of memory for red Yiddishland. This book traces the struggles of these militants, their singular trajectories, their oscillation between great hope and doubt, their lost illusions—a red and Jewish gaze on the history of the twentieth century.
304 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2009
113 people are currently reading
2107 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
February 5, 2017
Knowing the context of this book is important to understanding its frame of reference: it was written by a pair of socialists in France in the 1980s. The new Verso edition is the first time the book has been translated into English, and it makes a fascinating read for me, a leftist Jew. The book is largely segmented by chapter, and although by paying careful attention you can trace the stories of specific individuals from the 1910s to the 1960s, it still reads best as a set of case studies.
These include the stories of three groups of leftist Jews before the Second World War, Poale Zion (the socialist Zionist group), the Bund (the anti-Zionist Jewish worker's organization), and the communists and socialists, mostly Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. They also include the Russian Revolution, and the changes that wracked both the Jews in the Soviet Union over the subsequent three decades and the Jews of eastern Europe. Of course, Revolutionary Yiddishland also makes sure to include the essential tales of the Jews who helped fight the Spanish Civil War, and participated in the anti-Nazi resistances in France, Poland, and elsewhere.
Accompanying all of these stories are true gems, amazing anecdotes about, for example, the Yiddish athletes who attended the anti-fascist Olympics in Barcelona in 1936, and then immediately joined the Spanish athletes on the barricades when Franco threw his putsch.
The book also makes an important point of recentering the focus of Jewish studies on the Jewish working class of eastern Europe, which far outnumbered the bourgeois Jews throughout Europe. The true story of the Jews of Europe, from the streets of St. Petersburg to the barricades of Barcelona to the mountains of the Alsace to the concentration camps of Poland, is the story of revolutionary Jewish workers, and Revolutionary Yiddishland tells that story.
These include the stories of three groups of leftist Jews before the Second World War, Poale Zion (the socialist Zionist group), the Bund (the anti-Zionist Jewish worker's organization), and the communists and socialists, mostly Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. They also include the Russian Revolution, and the changes that wracked both the Jews in the Soviet Union over the subsequent three decades and the Jews of eastern Europe. Of course, Revolutionary Yiddishland also makes sure to include the essential tales of the Jews who helped fight the Spanish Civil War, and participated in the anti-Nazi resistances in France, Poland, and elsewhere.
Accompanying all of these stories are true gems, amazing anecdotes about, for example, the Yiddish athletes who attended the anti-fascist Olympics in Barcelona in 1936, and then immediately joined the Spanish athletes on the barricades when Franco threw his putsch.
The book also makes an important point of recentering the focus of Jewish studies on the Jewish working class of eastern Europe, which far outnumbered the bourgeois Jews throughout Europe. The true story of the Jews of Europe, from the streets of St. Petersburg to the barricades of Barcelona to the mountains of the Alsace to the concentration camps of Poland, is the story of revolutionary Jewish workers, and Revolutionary Yiddishland tells that story.
December 17, 2021
Every jew should read this. Bourgeois zionism is not our heritage nor destiny.
Read
September 26, 2016A heartbreaking account of the Eastern European Jews who began the twentieth century smarting under the repression of Czarist and similar authorities - but knew deep down that with socialism to unite and inspire them, things must surely get better. Right? It's perhaps for the best that this was written in 1983 in France, a time and place which mean it can occasionally come across a little dry and earnest, because otherwise the temptation would surely have been to turn it into the blackest of black comedies - or else simply abandon the project in despair. An emotion to which the conclusion, at least, seems understandably prone: "The Yiddishland revolutionary is the archetypally tragic character of our history. He or she paid double tribute to the horrors of the century.[...]The human community from which these men and women came is destroyed; the great utopia that set them in movement turned into a demoniacal farce." So these are the stories of the poor bastards who started out dealing with Cossacks and pogroms and ostracism from the more conservative among their own people; travelled to Spain's Civil War only to be betrayed there and imprisoned in France; survived or dodged the Holocaust that took their friends and family; saw Stalin make a mockery of everything they'd fought for (and kill plenty more of them into the bargain); and, finally making it to the Promised Land, realised even that haven was in turn tainted and belaboured compared to its visionary version. Oh, and as the new foreword reminds the reader - even these few anomalous survivors of those various hecatombs have since been claimed by the greatest mass-murderer of the lot, Time.
In part, the book is a simple act of reminding us how much of the Twentieth Century's ghastliness was funnelled on to one particularly luckless demographic; there's a lot here where you read it and think 'Oh yeah, of course...', despite never having considered the pieces in quite that combination before. For instance: I was aware of the Communists obliged to make shameful pivots regarding Nazism after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (it's part of why I could never really get into Pete Seeger), but the thought that some of them would have been Jews obliged by the Party line to start sticking up for Hitler... Or then there's the depressingly familiar period in which the Communists are describing social democrats as the real enemy, each side prepared to denounce each other to the authorities, expelling anyone who questions terrible decisions, while all the time fascism rises in the background, chuckling at their oh-so-precious narcissism of small differences. But there was plenty that was entirely new to me too; I had no idea that anti-Semitism in Poland before the Nazis arrived had been quite so organised, nor about the abortive 1920s attempt at a Soviet Jewish territory, Birobidzhan, on the border with Manchuria.
That's the big picture stuff, but there's plenty of more personal and specific detail too. The early chapters in particular are scrupulous in distinguishing three main currents of revolutionary Yiddishland thought: the Communists, or course, but also the Bundists and left Poale Zion, disagreeing on much but united by their (in retrospect, heartbreaking) optimism about a more rational future. I think my favourite individual story must be that of one Shlomo Strauss, captured and posing as Ukrainian, being selected by the SS as an especially fine Aryan specimen and taken back to Austria to be taught a trade; the wonders of Nazi racial 'science', eh? But there are plenty more like him. For instance, consider the discussion of the number of Jews in the French Resistance; as the authors note, in some ways it was a much easier decision for them than for the French gentiles, because the Jews were in the unusual position that joining the Resistance would on balance likely lengthen rather than abbreviate their life expectancy. But they were largely omitted from the subsequent patriotic accounts - and worst of all, the women doing the dangerous, vital 'Travail allemand' (sleeping with the enemy to garner information they passed back to the Resistance) were precisely the ones who ended up with shaved heads come Liberation as the frustrated masses expiated their own cowardice. But the sheer guts that must have taken, for Jewish women most of all! Conversely, the bare-faced cheek of the USSR demanding Polish refugees pay a quarter of their meagre salary back to the NKVD to cover the cost of their own surveillance!
I could continue. I already have, and doubtless will again, when talking tipsily to people who express the least interest in the topic. But this really is a fascinating, harrowing study into "The death of the belief that history is governed by reason".
(Netgalley ARC)
Correspondences to Jerusalem, because they seem to arise in every book I finish while reading Jerusalem: I'm not sure I even need to spell this one out, do I?
In part, the book is a simple act of reminding us how much of the Twentieth Century's ghastliness was funnelled on to one particularly luckless demographic; there's a lot here where you read it and think 'Oh yeah, of course...', despite never having considered the pieces in quite that combination before. For instance: I was aware of the Communists obliged to make shameful pivots regarding Nazism after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (it's part of why I could never really get into Pete Seeger), but the thought that some of them would have been Jews obliged by the Party line to start sticking up for Hitler... Or then there's the depressingly familiar period in which the Communists are describing social democrats as the real enemy, each side prepared to denounce each other to the authorities, expelling anyone who questions terrible decisions, while all the time fascism rises in the background, chuckling at their oh-so-precious narcissism of small differences. But there was plenty that was entirely new to me too; I had no idea that anti-Semitism in Poland before the Nazis arrived had been quite so organised, nor about the abortive 1920s attempt at a Soviet Jewish territory, Birobidzhan, on the border with Manchuria.
That's the big picture stuff, but there's plenty of more personal and specific detail too. The early chapters in particular are scrupulous in distinguishing three main currents of revolutionary Yiddishland thought: the Communists, or course, but also the Bundists and left Poale Zion, disagreeing on much but united by their (in retrospect, heartbreaking) optimism about a more rational future. I think my favourite individual story must be that of one Shlomo Strauss, captured and posing as Ukrainian, being selected by the SS as an especially fine Aryan specimen and taken back to Austria to be taught a trade; the wonders of Nazi racial 'science', eh? But there are plenty more like him. For instance, consider the discussion of the number of Jews in the French Resistance; as the authors note, in some ways it was a much easier decision for them than for the French gentiles, because the Jews were in the unusual position that joining the Resistance would on balance likely lengthen rather than abbreviate their life expectancy. But they were largely omitted from the subsequent patriotic accounts - and worst of all, the women doing the dangerous, vital 'Travail allemand' (sleeping with the enemy to garner information they passed back to the Resistance) were precisely the ones who ended up with shaved heads come Liberation as the frustrated masses expiated their own cowardice. But the sheer guts that must have taken, for Jewish women most of all! Conversely, the bare-faced cheek of the USSR demanding Polish refugees pay a quarter of their meagre salary back to the NKVD to cover the cost of their own surveillance!
I could continue. I already have, and doubtless will again, when talking tipsily to people who express the least interest in the topic. But this really is a fascinating, harrowing study into "The death of the belief that history is governed by reason".
(Netgalley ARC)
Correspondences to Jerusalem, because they seem to arise in every book I finish while reading Jerusalem: I'm not sure I even need to spell this one out, do I?
August 17, 2018
Amazing Foucaultian genealogical history of leftist Jewish organizing. Honest about the authors politics and investments in telling this history for current organizing lessons. Yet didn’t practice a purity politics of history. Only quibble was that chapters’ internal organization was rambling and I think lost in translation from the French. Powerful and depressing and will be resonating for a long time.
August 20, 2024
Extremely dense and hard to get through, but so grateful for this book and the lineages of Jewish anti fascism and resistance to Zionism that has existed since the advent of Zionism itself. So much of this history has been hidden and stolen from us.
December 27, 2020
I really loved reading this book! I’ll admit it took me a while to get into but once I was able to really devote time and energy to it, it was great. It was super powerful and exciting to read about radical Jewish resistors, communists, and militants who worked to keep fascism at bay in “Yiddishland”. My family history stems from these groups of Jewish people, but I was never taught their history in school so I’m super glad for books like this that let me learn more.
September 8, 2022
A very moving tapestry of Marxian movements in the Pale of Settlement from the revolutionary interwar years through to the death of Stalin. Any book covering Jewish history in this period, you know it's not going to have a happy end but the twist here is that these people, betrayed by the parties that claimed to represent their ideals, wind up in Israel where they are forced to accept the existence of a state whose formation they had always opposed. This thread runs throughout the book, that the majority of politically active Yiddish speakers were actually anti-Zionist and the book also makes the point that the majority of Zionists were anti-Yiddish culture. It's not all black-and-white of course.
Others have taken this book to task for its unfortunate subtitle. This is in no way a comprehensive history of Jewish Radicalism. Anarchism is briefly mentioned in the chapter on the Spanish Civil War, and even less in the section about the Russian Revolution or the Russian Civil War. Especially grievous is the complete absence of the Makhno movement. Surely there were Yiddish speakers there.
However, this book is mainly about putting into context the interviews the authors made of radicals who were living in Israel in the 1980s. For Yiddish-speaking anarchists, one would have to interview radicals in New York City and London. It is also easy to imagine that many people who learned about this project did not want to be interviewed. They would not want their activist past to draw attention from Israeli authorities. After surviving Nazis and Stalinist purges, their paranoia might be well-founded. Who knows what creepy spooks might be lurking in Tel Aviv?
This book is a good sampler, I think, of subjects that are probably better addressed in more in-depth works. Jews in the Spanish Civil War is the subject of the excellent Schalom Libertad! : Juden im spanischen Bürgerkrieg and there are many works out there about Jewish history in Russia and the Soviet Union. Conflicts and cooperation between Jewish and Arab workers in British Palestine has also seen a few studies.
From the introduction, I got the impression that the authors returned to their French publisher with reams of interview transcriptions and then were told to junk most of that and give a lot of context instead. I would like to see a new edition with the full text of the interviews, surely in the intervening 40 years since the first edition there is no one living who would be endangered by any more detail. It's the snippets of the interviews that really give this book its life. There are quite a few anecdotes here that are just incredible, and often bring a whole situation to small point where everything seems clear.
The authors are sympathetic to Marxism but view Stalin and his era with clear vision. Trotsky and Lenin however could have stood some more criticism here. For me, the most egregious moment is when they off-handedly state that Romania and Israel have a good relationship which is quite a way to gloss over 'communist' Romania's ploy of charging thousands for Jewish exit visas to Israel that Zionist organizations were happy to pay, making Jews Romania's number one export in the 1980s. "A good relationship" between two criminal enterprises.
There was so much injustice during that wicked time and the people the authors interviewed were just caught up trying to make things better. This book turned the flame up on the angry coals in me. I would recommend it, just with the caveats I explained in this review.
Others have taken this book to task for its unfortunate subtitle. This is in no way a comprehensive history of Jewish Radicalism. Anarchism is briefly mentioned in the chapter on the Spanish Civil War, and even less in the section about the Russian Revolution or the Russian Civil War. Especially grievous is the complete absence of the Makhno movement. Surely there were Yiddish speakers there.
However, this book is mainly about putting into context the interviews the authors made of radicals who were living in Israel in the 1980s. For Yiddish-speaking anarchists, one would have to interview radicals in New York City and London. It is also easy to imagine that many people who learned about this project did not want to be interviewed. They would not want their activist past to draw attention from Israeli authorities. After surviving Nazis and Stalinist purges, their paranoia might be well-founded. Who knows what creepy spooks might be lurking in Tel Aviv?
This book is a good sampler, I think, of subjects that are probably better addressed in more in-depth works. Jews in the Spanish Civil War is the subject of the excellent Schalom Libertad! : Juden im spanischen Bürgerkrieg and there are many works out there about Jewish history in Russia and the Soviet Union. Conflicts and cooperation between Jewish and Arab workers in British Palestine has also seen a few studies.
From the introduction, I got the impression that the authors returned to their French publisher with reams of interview transcriptions and then were told to junk most of that and give a lot of context instead. I would like to see a new edition with the full text of the interviews, surely in the intervening 40 years since the first edition there is no one living who would be endangered by any more detail. It's the snippets of the interviews that really give this book its life. There are quite a few anecdotes here that are just incredible, and often bring a whole situation to small point where everything seems clear.
The authors are sympathetic to Marxism but view Stalin and his era with clear vision. Trotsky and Lenin however could have stood some more criticism here. For me, the most egregious moment is when they off-handedly state that Romania and Israel have a good relationship which is quite a way to gloss over 'communist' Romania's ploy of charging thousands for Jewish exit visas to Israel that Zionist organizations were happy to pay, making Jews Romania's number one export in the 1980s. "A good relationship" between two criminal enterprises.
There was so much injustice during that wicked time and the people the authors interviewed were just caught up trying to make things better. This book turned the flame up on the angry coals in me. I would recommend it, just with the caveats I explained in this review.
May 2, 2019
Oral histories of a lost world, including tales of exceptional revolutionary precociousness (13 y/o’s leading strikes!)
February 3, 2017
The heart-wrenching tale of Yiddishland where a largely working class Jewish proletariat existed. Yiddishland was located in Eastern Europe in the Pale of Settlement west of Russia. In the twentieth century Yiddish culture was virtually decimated. This was due to a variety of forces and circumstance but mostly and obviously to that of Hitler and the fascist Nazi regime. The book contains some great insight into the USSR and the role it had in the trajectories of jewish revolutionary action through the century, from the agricultural state of Crimea to the Birobidzhan experiment, the role of Yiddish communist, Bundist and left Poale Zion Revolutionaries in the International Brigades (Spanish Civil War), various roles, liquidations and life under soviet rule, as well as post-war emigration to Israel and it's conflict and contradictions. An insightful work, for anyone interested in Soviet Russia / 'Stalinism', WWII, Zionism, twentieth-century European history in general. I would recommend reading this with a basic - intermediate understanding of the World War's and the tumultuous inter-war period.
February 4, 2018
Excellent book. Even though decades old, the material is as relevant today as it ever was or will be. Read it, learn, weep...
April 26, 2025
An oral history of Jewish radical leftism in Europe during the 20th century. This book... I wish I could talk to my grandpa, who was a Jewish Ukrainian communist himself. This is the culture, the mindset, I want to draw on and connect to. A quiet yearning.
July 26, 2022
v mixed, wish it was more of the people speaking rather than the authors, it was interesting to see their perspectives, it's such a shame that the jewish nation in eastern europe no longer exists, it seemed so culturally interesting, plus yiddish is a beautiful language.
poale zion members shouldnt have been in this at all i think.
authors are hilariously anti-stalin at points lol, they really grasp at straws because of their bias. the last 2 chapters (esp the last one) are baaad
poale zion members shouldnt have been in this at all i think.
authors are hilariously anti-stalin at points lol, they really grasp at straws because of their bias. the last 2 chapters (esp the last one) are baaad
December 26, 2018
A valuable history of revolutionary Jewish History. 4 stars because the level of citation leaves a lot to be desired and chapters are overly long without and section breaks.
August 12, 2019
An excellent history of the radical leftist Jewish movements of Europe, told through extensive interviews with the people who lived those histories.
May 31, 2020
A readable oral history of Yiddishland with trotskyist sympathies.
February 19, 2021
A very useful overview of the revolutionary currents of Yiddishland from 1910s-1940s and a reflection of Zionism and the reality of the modern Israeli state
August 2, 2022
ס'איז געװען אַ באַנגער
December 13, 2023
a great outline of these times - above all else a reflection on 'what went wrong'. the authors' bent is clear: trotskyist, anti-zionist, but that doesn't detract from the vibrant tales of those interviewed for the project. i wish there were more of these rather than the writing inbetween, which to my understanding was the authors' original intention, but couldn't get this published, which is a shame. despite this, it's a great book on the subject.
May 30, 2025
a teshuva for the zionist teleology often taught as the primary arc of jewish intellectual / social / political history in 20th century eastern europe. offers a place to situate oneself in a jewish legacy of solidarity, and holds up remarkably (tragically?) well for having been published 50 years ago. unfortunately loses a star for presenting war / battle as animating the historical narrative, which for me was a disappointing overemphasis on violence.
August 1, 2021
There aren’t words to express the loss contained in this account of pre-Holocaust Red Yiddishland. It is beyond heartbreaking, but it also recovers a history nearly erased by genocide and Zionist revisionism. Jews rock!!!!
January 19, 2024
This is a deeply fascinating analysis of the stories and contradictions in three radical Jewish movements: the Bund, Jewish communist movements in Eastern Europe, and left Poale Zion. The language is a little stilted (I don't know if that's a Marxist-writers-issue or a translation issue) but there are details and histories in here that I haven't found anywhere else.
August 31, 2022
"...we also have to take into account the effects of the integration of Jews into a modern society which, with all its bureaucratic and Stalinist deformations remains 'open' in terms of the evolution of its general social and demographic currents. This is a self-evident truth rejected only by certain Jewish zealots who are quite prepared to say that the greatest danger that threatens Jews today is not the action of the combined forces of anti-Semitism across the world, but rather 'assimilation'. In this sense, their 'historical' perspective can only be the building of new ghettos, spiritual and otherwise, in the USSR and elsewhere, satellite ghettos around the militarist and paranoid super-ghetto that is the state of Israel."
October 16, 2022
Lots of great historical information with a questionable methodology. There were times in the book it felt their argument was overshadowed by a strawman fallacy; they seemed to choose particular interviews in order to support their own thesis. Overall, worth reading though.
December 2, 2025
A lot of great information in here. The writing felt stilted and the structure of the book didn’t make total sense to me, but maybe it was just the translation.
January 14, 2023
The book does a decent job at directly counter-acting mainstream narratives on European Jewry: that they were a weak, humiliated people who suffered in silence until empowered by the establishment of the Zionist entity.
Otherwise, lots of weaknesses. For one, the author doesn't shy away from conveying their anti-Stalinist bias. It shapes the chronology of the book's events, and it also shapes the negative sentiment expressed towards Jewish life in the USSR. I would have taken it if it weren't for his faulty historical sourcing. The few sources used were eyewitness testimonies, all of whom ended up in occupied Palestine. None of the eyewitnesses were Bundists or Poale Zion militants or whathaveyou who ended up elsewhere (America, France, England, South Africa, etc.) All the eyewitnesses were lukewarm about Zionism at best, completely having accepted it for the most part (which the author runs into lengthy rationalisations of in the last chapter titled "I am Tired of Defeats"). How is this in any way reliable? Speaking of Palestinians as "Arabs," and painting involvement with Egyptian and Syrian communists as similarly being involved with "Arabs" was symptomatic of a complete lack of critical engagement with Zionist racism towards different Middle Eastern peoples. Add onto that him flat-out stating his stance of settlers being rooted residents of the land of Palestine...clearly he didn't do enough research on settlement in occupied Palestine and the strong links that settlers maintain abroad. Once again, it undermines the quality of the book.
All in all, it's a solid attempt at reconstructing Yiddish leftism in Europe, and I would hesitantly recommend the book solely because there is not much literarure that redresses static, pretty ahistorical and Zionist-led narratives of Jewish resistance movements in modern Europe, particularly during the Shoah.
Otherwise, lots of weaknesses. For one, the author doesn't shy away from conveying their anti-Stalinist bias. It shapes the chronology of the book's events, and it also shapes the negative sentiment expressed towards Jewish life in the USSR. I would have taken it if it weren't for his faulty historical sourcing. The few sources used were eyewitness testimonies, all of whom ended up in occupied Palestine. None of the eyewitnesses were Bundists or Poale Zion militants or whathaveyou who ended up elsewhere (America, France, England, South Africa, etc.) All the eyewitnesses were lukewarm about Zionism at best, completely having accepted it for the most part (which the author runs into lengthy rationalisations of in the last chapter titled "I am Tired of Defeats"). How is this in any way reliable? Speaking of Palestinians as "Arabs," and painting involvement with Egyptian and Syrian communists as similarly being involved with "Arabs" was symptomatic of a complete lack of critical engagement with Zionist racism towards different Middle Eastern peoples. Add onto that him flat-out stating his stance of settlers being rooted residents of the land of Palestine...clearly he didn't do enough research on settlement in occupied Palestine and the strong links that settlers maintain abroad. Once again, it undermines the quality of the book.
All in all, it's a solid attempt at reconstructing Yiddish leftism in Europe, and I would hesitantly recommend the book solely because there is not much literarure that redresses static, pretty ahistorical and Zionist-led narratives of Jewish resistance movements in modern Europe, particularly during the Shoah.
July 4, 2021
So first off, this book assumes a lot of background knowledge. Second, this book is centered around interviews with revolutionaries from three specific yiddishland movements: Bundists, Poale Zionists, and Communists; all living in Israel at the time of the interviews. There are no anarchists interviewed and if you are uncomfortable with criticism of Stalin then you'll have a hard time.
Personally I loved this book and plan on reading it again and sharing with others. I have no qualms with the frank discussion of the USSR under Stalin from the perspective of Jewish Revolutionaries and part of what drew me to this book was a desire to find something to help orient myself among the black-or-white "Stalin was a mentsch!" and "Stalin was as bad as Hitler!" perspectives that don't feel historically grounded. I have not been dissapointed on that end. I did not feel it was too harsh at any point and would encourage anyone who feels pained to defend Stalin from this book to take a deep breath and explore the discomfort and nuance of historical reality in all its dialectical messiness.
The interview exerpts are framed with a great deal of historical context (which can be a bit of a slog in the beginning if that isn't your cup of tea) and in such a way that they complement each other and create a fuller picture than had they just been presented in a question-answer format one at a time. My one strong criticism is how poorly formatted the quotes are: the font is way way too small and a pain to read. There are many better ways to format quotes that are not so uncomfortable.
Personally I loved this book and plan on reading it again and sharing with others. I have no qualms with the frank discussion of the USSR under Stalin from the perspective of Jewish Revolutionaries and part of what drew me to this book was a desire to find something to help orient myself among the black-or-white "Stalin was a mentsch!" and "Stalin was as bad as Hitler!" perspectives that don't feel historically grounded. I have not been dissapointed on that end. I did not feel it was too harsh at any point and would encourage anyone who feels pained to defend Stalin from this book to take a deep breath and explore the discomfort and nuance of historical reality in all its dialectical messiness.
The interview exerpts are framed with a great deal of historical context (which can be a bit of a slog in the beginning if that isn't your cup of tea) and in such a way that they complement each other and create a fuller picture than had they just been presented in a question-answer format one at a time. My one strong criticism is how poorly formatted the quotes are: the font is way way too small and a pain to read. There are many better ways to format quotes that are not so uncomfortable.
July 2, 2018
Despite once being spoken by over 9 million people, Yiddish – the language of the working class Jews of Europe – is now a dead language. Lost with it is a rich cultural and political history comprised of genuine heroism, bitter antagonisms and simple every day struggles.
Historians often view all past events as being part of the inevitable tide that have led us to the present reality. But what of the alternative worlds? The ones that very nearly existed but were thwarted by chance or by tragedy? What of the worlds that existed in the hopes and dreams of those millions of individuals crushed beneath the wheels of history?
The story of Revolutionary Yiddishland (1983, republished in English in 2016 by Verso), the great Jewish nation of Europe erased by genocide, is an essential and deeply moving history for anyone interested in the roots the socialist tradition.
Socialists and non socialists alike will find themselves enriched by learning the lost history of the Bund, the Poale Zion, Communists and dissidents, as well as reading the testimonies of the Jewish, socialist heroes that offered their lives to the struggle against fascism in Spain and then again in the resistance against Nazism.
When faced with the spectre of anti-semitism, it’s not enough to simply shrug your shoulders and dismiss it. Every socialist should take the time to educate themselves on the proud history of the Jewish people who’s blood, sweat and tears have fuelled the struggle to build a better world.
Historians often view all past events as being part of the inevitable tide that have led us to the present reality. But what of the alternative worlds? The ones that very nearly existed but were thwarted by chance or by tragedy? What of the worlds that existed in the hopes and dreams of those millions of individuals crushed beneath the wheels of history?
The story of Revolutionary Yiddishland (1983, republished in English in 2016 by Verso), the great Jewish nation of Europe erased by genocide, is an essential and deeply moving history for anyone interested in the roots the socialist tradition.
Socialists and non socialists alike will find themselves enriched by learning the lost history of the Bund, the Poale Zion, Communists and dissidents, as well as reading the testimonies of the Jewish, socialist heroes that offered their lives to the struggle against fascism in Spain and then again in the resistance against Nazism.
When faced with the spectre of anti-semitism, it’s not enough to simply shrug your shoulders and dismiss it. Every socialist should take the time to educate themselves on the proud history of the Jewish people who’s blood, sweat and tears have fuelled the struggle to build a better world.
November 18, 2018
The book tells the story of Jewish radical left wing currents through the personal recount of individual experiences who managed to survive the most dangerous time for Jewish people and ended up living in Israel. From showing the vast amount of Jews that volunteered to fight against Franco's fascist Spain to the plethora of understandings of radical left wing politics the writers show that Jews were committed to an international belief of a better world, even if some of the currents were more nationalistic (seeking a Jewish nation).
What I found profoundly unsettling is the move from internationalist revolution in Russia into a socialism in one country and how this move managed to alienate the progressive ideas of many original agitators and how similar this seems to the downward spiral of Israel and the absolute attrocities that are committed by that state today.
There's not enough criticism of what Israel became in my opinion, but considering the book was written in the 80s when there was still a left wing oppositional voice to the Zionist conservatism, it's understandable that they wouldn't have expected it could've got this bad.
Highly recommend to any left wing, secular or simply just non-conservative Jews if you want to know more about our proud history of left wing radicalism
What I found profoundly unsettling is the move from internationalist revolution in Russia into a socialism in one country and how this move managed to alienate the progressive ideas of many original agitators and how similar this seems to the downward spiral of Israel and the absolute attrocities that are committed by that state today.
There's not enough criticism of what Israel became in my opinion, but considering the book was written in the 80s when there was still a left wing oppositional voice to the Zionist conservatism, it's understandable that they wouldn't have expected it could've got this bad.
Highly recommend to any left wing, secular or simply just non-conservative Jews if you want to know more about our proud history of left wing radicalism
May 4, 2017
Man, I thought I was in for it when I was slogging through the first 10 or 20 pages. The introduction (and honestly a decent chunk of the content written by the book's two authors) is dense, difficult and, at least to me, seems poorly translated. Given that the original text was written in the early 80s, it's also somewhat dated.
I'm glad I pushed through though, because after the intro this book is mostly firsthand accounts, and I found them fascinating. The books subjects are all Jewish radicals who were active in early 20th century Europe, and who found their way to Israel later in life. The book offers really great and varied perspectives on the various Jewish political movements of that time period, on Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, on the role Jews played in the burgeoning USSR and on the ideology of modern-day Zionism. It also offered all sorts of really wonderful insight into the Yiddish culture that was blossoming at the same time as all this radicalism. Thinking about all of the Yiddish books that were being written, schools that were being opened, theater that was being staged, newspapers that were being published, etc, etc is totally inspiring to me, and heartbreaking given the total dead-end Yiddish culture was about to run into.
I'm glad I pushed through though, because after the intro this book is mostly firsthand accounts, and I found them fascinating. The books subjects are all Jewish radicals who were active in early 20th century Europe, and who found their way to Israel later in life. The book offers really great and varied perspectives on the various Jewish political movements of that time period, on Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, on the role Jews played in the burgeoning USSR and on the ideology of modern-day Zionism. It also offered all sorts of really wonderful insight into the Yiddish culture that was blossoming at the same time as all this radicalism. Thinking about all of the Yiddish books that were being written, schools that were being opened, theater that was being staged, newspapers that were being published, etc, etc is totally inspiring to me, and heartbreaking given the total dead-end Yiddish culture was about to run into.
June 8, 2021
One of the most fascinating history books I have ever read. The history of revolutionary Jewish groups in Eastern Europe and beyond is one that could easily be lost, which makes this book and its content even more important. A particular highlight of the book for me were the interviews and stories of different individuals involved in these revolutionary movements. The anti-Stalinist and anti-Zionist perspective of the authors also allows this text to transcend distorted ideas about the Soviet Union and Israel's relationship to these movements, permitting it to honestly and brutally present the history of these relationships, through the aforementioned voices of those involved in them.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews