The Russian Revolution and the Emancipation of the Jews: reflections in the literature

Abstract

The struggle for Emancipation mobilized the European Jewish masses throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Russia, this struggle converged with the social upheaval that mobilized the entire population and found its maximum expression in the revolutions of 1917, which resulted in the fall of the tsarist regime and the establishment of the Soviet Union. In the process, the Jews created the Bund, representative of workers, with a clearly socialist worldview, which played a prominent role in the creation of the Social Democratic Labor Party, later the Communist Party. Paradoxically, the Jews continued to face the secular Russian anti-Semitism, even after the success of the Revolution. Involvement with revolutionary activity and expectations regarding the situation that could result from the new regime found space for reflection in the literature produced at the time by Jewish writers.