Jøder og kommunister 1917-1945

Resumé

In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable part of Russian Jews in Copenhagen were Bundists, i.e. members of Der algemayner yidisher arbeter bund. Bund in Russia formed part of the Russian Social-Democratic Party and consisted of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Communism was officially established in Denmark in 1918 as Socialistisk Arbejderparti (Socialist Workers’ Party) and in 1919 as Venstresocialistisk Parti (Left-Socialist Party). The latter became Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (Communist Party of Denmark, DKP). In Russia, the Mensheviks and Bund opposed the Bolsheviks’ idea that Russia was to go through a socialist revolution. In their perspective, it was a bourgeois, democratic one that was needed. Bundists in Copenhagen leaned more to the Bolshevik tendency than to the Menshevik, and DKP had many members among Russian Jews. Through Comintern, DKP had many relations with Russia. The culture of Danish-Russian Communist Jews had Yiddish as its central and common term. Many of them adhered to the Bundist program of language: the future language of the Jews ought to be Yiddish and not Hebrew, which the Zionists preferred. The Bundist kind of nationalism based on Yiddish probably made many of the Russian Jews in Copenhagen adherers. In 1924, IKOR (Idishe kolonizatsije organizatsije in Rusland) was founded and it had a local organization in Copenhagen. It was established with the purpose of collecting money for the Russian program for making Jews peasants in Biro Bidzhan in Eastern Russia. In Copenhagen, IKOR collected money, but it was also a social organization with Yiddish theater. Beside IKOR, there was a group called Jødisk Arbejder Kulturforening (Jewish Workers’ Culture Association). They also initiated Yiddish plays in Copenhagen. The two groups were the core of Jewish Communism in Denmark and are central to this article.