How Jewish Were Jewish Communists?
How Jewish Were Jewish Communists?

Summary/Abstract: It has been argued that all the Polish “professional” revolutionaries at the turn of the 20th century – all, not just the Jews among them – formed not only a category but also a group tied by common values, relations, experiences, and a group identity. At the same time, those individuals of Jewish extraction who were active in the general, non-Jewish movement, did not feel that they formed a subgroup. While we may try to identify Jewish traits of the socialist leaders and devoted activists raised in assimilated Jewish families, we may not assume that they formed a Jewish group or were substantially Jewish just because they were Jewish by origin. In order to determine to what extent and in what sense they were Jewish, the following features of the Jewish leaders of Polish leftist parties of that era are analysed: assimilation together with the belief in its value; ‘Europeanism’; attitude to the Polish language; opposition to Jewish nationalism; idealism and highest ethical standards; identification with modernism and science; quasi-religious messianic Marxism. If some of these attributes are seen as Jewish, it is Jewishness of a highly paradoxical nature. Generally, the reasons for which some assimilated Jews became radical leftists and later communists were mostly social, had to do with their marginal status, but their involvement was significantly coloured by their Jewish heritage. While the leftist leaders who were Jewish by origin could have gone back to Jewish life, none of them did. However, some of their grandchildren or great-grandchildren did. This recent development makes it easier to include their ancestors into the annals of Jewish history.

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