Jewish socialists in Galicia and Marxist debates over the national question before World War I

Abstract

The policies of the Polish Social Democratic Party were an obstacle to social democrats who sought to organise the Jewish working class in Galicia during the first decade of the 20th Century. Over a period they developed an organisational and programmatic perspective for mobilising Jewish workers. There were several competing Marxist analyses of the national and Jewish question in eastern Europe at the time. Apart from the Polish Social Democratic Partys approach, the General Austrian Party, the Polish social democrats of Congress Poland, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as well as the Bund had distinctive positions on these questions. The Jewish militants in Galicia eventually adopted a Bundist orientation. Political circumstances in Galicia, the success of the Bundist model in Russia and, initially at least, the hope that it could be reconciled with continuing membership of the Austrian Party were important factors in this choice.