A History of Zionism (55 page)

The process of growing up, the transition from youth movement to life in the kibbutzim, took years, and it was not an easy transition. The dream of establishing a spiritual family, nomadic in character, aiming at the redemption of the individual and preaching messianic ideas, faded. There were no new ready-made ideals to replace the old ones and the adjustment to a life of poverty took its toll. The shomrim were isolated; they were criticised for their élitism, for dissociating themselves from the working-class and its real, day-to-day problems. They were attacked, above all, for the lack of any real Jewish content in their cultural life. For their part, they found not a great deal to admire in the way of life of those who had preceded them on the road to Palestine. There was also the traditional antagonism between Russian and Polish Jewry. Initially the members of Hashomer Hatzair were drawn to the philosophy of A.A. Gordon and the ideas of Hapoel Hatzair, and Gordon, for his part, was attracted by the sincerity and idealism of the young pioneers from Galicia, and the great emphasis they put on the self-education of the individual. But from the beginning the shomrim had certain reservations and these became more pronounced in the course of time. There was for their taste too much of Tolstoy and vegetarianism in Gordon’s teaching. His concept of Socialism and building a new Socialist society in Palestine seemed to them, on further reflection, about as nebulous and impractical as their own which they were in the process of discarding.

Gradually they moved away from Hapoel Hatzair, without, however, entering the orbit of another political party. After the early poetic period (as one of them put it), there came a philosophical interlude, an attempt to see themselves and the world around them in a more objective light; they were searching for a new world view without the help of an ideological compass. The first kibbutz (Bet Alfa) was founded during that period, but there were also major setbacks. Many left the movement during those years and not a few returned to Europe. Those who remained established new kibbutzim such as Mishmar Ha’emeq, Merhavia, Gan Shmuel and Ein Shemer. In 1927 the first five kibbutzim, with a total membership of less than three hundred, joined forces in a countrywide association, the Kibbutz Artzi. In their kibbutzim they developed by trial and error a specific way of life far more down to earth than the exaltation of the early days. Their educational ideas, adjusted to Palestinian realities, continued to play an important part in their activities, and the youth movement in the diaspora, out of which Hashomer Hatzair had developed, served as the reservoir from which the kibbutzim in Palestine gained fresh support every year. It was the policy of the Hashomer Hatzair to found new kibbutzim rather than concentrate on a few very big ones. The optimal size for a kibbutz was thought at the time to be fewer than one hundred members.

The radicalism which had manifested itself earlier on in the belief in a spiritual revolution found new expression in politics as the movement embraced left-wing revolutionary Socialism. Emphasising the necessity for greater militancy, they disagreed with the orientation of the other Socialist groups in Palestine towards the Second Socialist International. In 1927 the Galician Hashomer Hatzair, under the leadership of Mordehai Oren, adopted a new policy which seemed to most critics of the movement to lead it away from Zionism towards the Third Communist International. But these ideological searches and struggles belong to a later period. What emerged at this stage was that the insistence of the kibbutzim of the Hashomer Hatzair on a common political platform shared by all their members set them apart from all other settlements. Such internal unity strengthened Hashomer Hatzair, but at the same time it effectively prevented close collaboration with other kibbutz movements, for the other collective settlements did not concern themselves with the personal views of their members. In later years Hashomer Hatzair became a political party, but its politics were neither unique nor particularly successful. In retrospect its main achievement remained the collective settlements and their specific structure and style. Out of the small nucleus of enthusiasts in upper Betania, with their dreams of self-realisation and a spiritual revolution, there developed within five decades a network of more than seventy kibbutzim with more than thirty thousand men, women and children, communities different in some important respects from all other known societies.

As the First World War ended, the Jewish working class, and its political parties concentrated in eastern Europe, faced new problems and challenges. The revolutions of 1917, the emergence of independent Poland and other new states, and the demands for national-cultural autonomy, created a new situation. While the Bolsheviks were opposed in principle to Zionism in every shape and form, as well as to the existence of Jewish non-Zionist left-wing groups, however close to them ideologically, the ‘Jewish question’ was not one of their most urgent preoccupations, either during the civil war or the years of
NEP
. Poale Zion in Russia, which had always been more orthodox Marxist in inspiration than its sister parties elsewhere, faced a difficult dilemma: its members were eager to be part of the great wave of the future and to join the Third Communist International, and were quite willing to dissociate themselves publicly from the World Zionist Organisation. Borokhov, after all, had for many years advocated a boycott of the Zionist congress, even though he regarded himself as a Zionist and continued to pay the shekel. But this would not have been enough for the Communists. Poale Zion was expected to reject the Balfour Declaration as well, issued after all by one of the major imperialist powers. Ultimately they would have had to disavow Zionism altogether and to dissolve their own organisation.

Left-wing Zionism had been based on the assumption that the Jewish question was insoluble in capitalist society. The rise of Bolshevism created an entirely new situation. The new régime, internationalist in character, formally abolished all forms of discrimination against minorities, promised to change the social structure of the Jewish masses, to find productive work for them, and did not preclude some form of cultural-national autonomy. The end of antisemitism seemed in sight, and, if so, it must have appeared utterly pointless to leave a Socialist country for one which was as yet far from reaching this advanced stage in its political-social development. Discussing these problems, the Poale Zion parties split on the following lines: the Palestinian Poale Zion had long given up orthodox Borokhovism, and joining the Communist International was completely out of the question. The Russian Poale Zion, having shed its ‘reformist ballast’, entered into direct negotiations with the Comintern which lasted for a year and caused further dissension in its ranks. Some of its members (the
JKP
-
Jiddishe Kommunistische Partei
) were willing to jettison Zionism altogether, while others advocated a Communist-Zionist synthesis.
JKP
ultimately joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, via the Jewish section of the Communist Party (
Yevsektsia
), which had been established when Stalin was Commissar for Nationalities to deal with the specific problems of non-assimilated Jewish Communists. The Yevsektsia continued to exist for a number of years, but most of its leading figures disappeared in the purges of the 1930s.

That part of Poale Zion which preferred not to surrender its independence survived in the Soviet Union till 1928 when, a small and shrinking group which gave the authorities little concern, it was finally dissolved. Its leading members gradually emigrated to Palestine. Men such as Erem, Abramovich, Nir, Yitzhaki and Zerubavel, had been leaders of some influence in eastern Europe, but in Palestine they were generals without an army. Their doctrinaire approach both to ideological issues and to day-to-day political problems, their opposition to agricultural settlement, the fact that they preferred Yiddish to Hebrew, limited their political appeal from the start. There was something touching in their devotion to their party, their unceasing efforts to promote their old ideas in an inauspicious environment, their internal squabbles on abstruse points of Marxism-Borokhovism, their passionate debates on the ‘correct approach’ to events in far-away countries on which they could not possibly have any influence. They were forever discussing revolutionary strategy and proletarian unity, debating whether or not to establish a popular front at a time when their ‘mass basis’ numbered a few hundred. The views of Hashomer Hatzair were often equally abstruse, but it had a youth movement and its agricultural settlements to fall back on, and it became in a real sense part of the Palestinian scene, whereas Poale Zion, figuratively speaking, had left Russia but had never really arrived in Eretz Israel. Like the Mensheviks in exile, they gradually faded away, the vanishing remnant of a proud Socialist tradition.
*

It would be unjust to interpret the surrender of the majority of the Russian Poale Zion as a manifestation of weakness, or a special ideological susceptibility to the appeal of Bolshevism. Other Jewish parties did not behave differently. The attraction of linking their future to that of a far bigger and more powerful movement must have been overwhelming to many Jewish Socialists, the alternative being total isolation, growing police repression, searches, economic and political sanctions, and ultimately arrest. For the Zionists, according to Soviet doctrine, were not just nationalist deviationists, but ‘objectively’ agents of British imperialism, even if they gave full support to Soviet foreign policy. The anti-Zionist Bund abdicated even earlier than Poale Zion; in April 1920 it decided to change its name to Communist Bund, and to modify its ideological platform. In less than a year it took the last fateful step and joined the Yevsektsia. Even non-Marxist groups such as the zs (Zionists-Socialists) were strongly attracted by the dynamic character of the young Soviet régime: ‘We were spellbound by the daring of the Bolsheviks who were resolved to translate their ideas into reality’, one of them wrote many years later.
*

The new immigrants who came to Palestine with the third immigration wave had the choice of two workers’ organisations, Hapoel Hatzair and Poale Zion. But these parties had been founded by a previous generation of pioneers, and their continued existence did not now necessarily make much sense. Even some of the prewar immigrants, such as Berl Katznelson, had found it impossible to range themselves with one of these groups against the other. After the war, the move to establish a United Socialist Party received a fresh impetus, and it was towards this end that a new group, the Labour Union (Ahdut Ha’avoda), was set up at a meeting in Petah Tiqva in spring 1919. This new body was meant to be a trade union confederation into which the existing groups were to merge, but as Hapoel Hatzair refused to join, it soon turned into a political party. By that time the ideological differences between the two parties had dwindled into insignificance. Like its adversary, it advocated a pragmatic constructivism. The fact that it continued to belong to the Socialist International, whereas its rival refrained from joining any international organisation, was hardly an issue of decisive importance. Hapoel Hatzair, unlike the Labour Union, did not regard the Jewish workers as a proletariat with interests rigidly opposed to those of other classes, but as an active force in building the national home on the basis of social justice.

There certainly was a difference in personality and character if one compares the leadership of the two parties. The leading people in Ahdut Ha’avoda tended to be tougher, more aggressive and radical, in both their Socialism and their nationalism. Hapoel Hatzair was more inclined towards moderation, averse to pathos, less politically minded.
†
It was opposed to a merger because it was afraid that the prospective united movement would soon be dominated by the Labour Union, with its strong political ambitions. No one was more emphatic in his opposition than old A.A. Gordon. But Hapoel Hatzair had to pay a heavy price for preventing ‘union at any cost’. To compete with its rivals in the struggle for influence, it had willy-nilly to become just another political party, to copy and to duplicate the activities of the other side, and to a large extent it lost its specific character. The two groups competed in establishing trade unions, with some seamstresses and shoemakers belonging to Hapoel Hatzair unions, others joining Ahdut Ha’avoda. Some frequented the canteen run by one group, others preferred the food (or the ideology) of the other. Previously, Hapoel Hatzair had not been interested in the organisation of urban workers, but the competition with Ahdut Ha’avoda drew it into this new sphere of activity.

Above all, they competed for the allegiance of the new arrivals from eastern Europe. Zeire Zion was the strongest youth movement in eastern Europe at the time. Previously it had been closely linked with Hapoel Hatzair, which hoped for their adherence after their arrival in Palestine. But these expectations were only partly fulfilled, many members of Zeire Zion joining Ahdut. The polemics between the two groups proceeded not only on a literary level: they competed for every newcomer, and there were unedifying scenes in Jaffa harbour. Whenever a new ship anchored, representatives of the rival factions tried to enlist new members on the spot, like porters quarrelling over the baggage of tourists. The young Zionists, newly arrived from eastern Europe, were baffled, and then shocked and dismayed. This state of affairs affected Hapoel Hatzair even more than its rivals, for it had regarded itself as the conscience of the labour movement, not as just another party engaging in political strife. It did not want to waste its time working out new programmes and platforms. Its aim and
raison d’êitre
was to be the guardian of the basic values of the movement, which were put in jeopardy at a time of mass immigration.

Hapoel Hatzair had been influential among the agricultural workers; in the town it had only a limited following. On the other hand, it was supported by numerous writers, teachers and other intellectuals. Politically, such backing was insignificant, but it enhanced the prestige of the movement. While Ahdut Ha’avoda attracted more members in Palestine, Hapoel Hatzair, together with its supporters abroad, had the stronger faction at the Zionist congresses. In 1921 one of its members, Yosef Sprinzak, was elected to the Zionist executive, the first time that a member of one of the labour groups entered the top rank of the world movement. As the bitter struggle between the two parties continued, it gradually dawned on their members that the duplication of effort in almost every field was wasteful and counter-productive. The establishment of rival trade unions, in particular, was clearly self-defeating. In July 1920 an all-party commission was set up to explore the possibility of establishing united trade unions to take over all non-political activities such as the consumers union, the sick fund and the employment exchanges. In December 1920, after much discussion, the General Federation of Jewish Labour (Histadrut) was founded. Of the 87 delegates elected by the votes of 4,433 members to the council, Ahdut Ha’avoda had 37, Hapoel Hatzair 26, Hashomer Hatzair 16, and the left Poale Zion 6.