ABSTRACT
Although the basic stance of Jewish communities in 1905 was defensive, their reaction to the resurgence of antisemitic activism after 1881, and to the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, greatly complicated the issue in many locales. The readiest and best prepared defense came at the hands of the Jewish revolutionary parties, which simultaneously pursued their own offensive political agendas. By 1900, several specifically Jewish revolutionary parties and groups had begun to emerge, and the first of them, the Jewish Bund, by then had a sizeable membership among Jewish workers and radical youth and the respect of parts of the wider Russian-Jewish community. The Bund’s novelty and distinction was not limited to its dual European and Jewish legacy. For the first time in the modern history of Jews, the Bund not only challenged, but broke through the social barrier that had always elevated and separated the Jewish religious and educated elite from the great majority of Jewish workers and small traders.
