ABSTRACT
The open hostility of Russian society, and the lukewarm attitude of the socialist movement to the pogroms, cast severe doubts on Jewish efforts to assimilate, to absorb Russian culture and participate fully in the revolutionary cause, temporarily undermining the prestige of internationalism. Professor Frankel deals extensively with the paradox of the Bund, which brought the concept of a general Russian revolution into the heartland of the Jewish world and yet was the first Jewish party to adopt the idea of national autonomy. The nationalist wing of the Bund led by John Mill and Vladimir Kossovsky was committed to the idea of a modern Jewish nation, as developed by Zhitlovsky, which was worldwide in scope, socialist and secular in content, Yiddish-speaking in form. In contrast to Russia and Palestine, Jewish politics in America remained, then, a seasonal phenomenon, the politics of philanthropy rather than national and social liberation.
