Bundists under the Soviet Occupation
Bundists under the Soviet Occupation

The Case of Matwiej Bernstein

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to present – by examining the case of Matwiej Bernstein – the hostile policy of the Soviets (Bolsheviks) towards Jewish socialists (Bundists) in the USSR after 1939. The author’s intent is also to fill gaps in the study of Soviet policy towards groups that the Soviet political apparatus considered “counterrevolutionary elements” hostile to the political system of the USSR.The author discusses the fate of Matwiej Bernstein from the moment of his arrival in Vilna (1939), through his arrest by the NKVD (1941), imprisonment, interrogation, judgment, sentencing (under art. 58), deportation to the Gulag in the vicinity of Gorki (today Nizhny Novgorod), release from the Gulag (January 1942), voyage to Fergana (today in Uzbekistan), local activity in behalf of Bundists in the USSR (including the organization of illegal meetings of Jewish socialists under the enemy’s nose), re-arrest (October 1, 1943), release from prison (spring 1944), stay in Tashkent, and departure for Poland in the summer of 1946.

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