Poalei Tsion (Zion) Archive
Poalei Zion (Labor Zionism) in Russia and the USSR
Poalei Zion was one of the organizations in the worldwide Zionist movement which,
unlike the others, made active use of the slogans of socialism. The Poalei Zion
groups emerged in Russia in 1890 as clandestine organizations. They were legalized
following the revolution of 1917 and were active in the USSR until 1928 when
the NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) arrested many members of these organizations.
Their basic goal was to create a Jewish national state and to move Jews from
all over the world to Palestine. In order to fulfill the emigrants' political
aims, the Jewish Social-Democratic (from 1923 "Communist") Labor Party
of Poalei Zion organized a vast network of Jewish Poalei-Zionist clubs, libraries,
schools, trade unions, cooperatives and cultural centers, and published numerous
newspapers, journals, brochures and books in the printing houses of Moscow,
Petrograd, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa and Berdichev.
Hidden archive collection
The Poalei Zion documents now in the Russian Center of Conservation and Study
of Records for Modern History (formerly the Central Party Archive) in Moscow
were received from the Archive of Revolution and Foreign Policy in the 1930s
and from the Kiev Provincial Historical Archive in the 1940s. Part of the material
came in recent years directly from the KGB archive on Lubianka Square in Moscow.
The NKVD confiscated the documents of Poalei Zion for use as evidence in the
1920s, when many members of this organization were arrested.
For years, fond 272 "Poalei Zion organizations in the USSR (1917-1928)"
was not processed and the documents were kept simply in unordered piles. Only
in 1987 were the documents completely systematized in 758 files and described
in three inventories (opisi). However, even then the fond did not enter scholarly
circulation since its contents were still classified as secret documents. Only
since 1990 have researchers have been able to study the documents of Poalei
Zion.
Various historical materials
The Archive of Poalei Zion sheds light on various issues of social history:
the emigration of the Jewish population of various countries to Palestine and
the activities of
various Jewish parties and organization. The archive contains a wide variety
of materials:
- Documents of Jewish political parties and organizations such as the Jewish
Social-Democratic (from 1923, "Communist") Labor Party of Poalei
Zion (Russian
abbreviation: ESDRP-EKRP Poalei Zion); the Jewish Communist Party of Poalei
Zion (EKP Poalei Zion); the United Jewish Socialist (from 1923, Communist)
Union of Working Youth (Ugend Poalei Zion) affiliated with the two parties
listed above; the Central Jewish Club; and also of the Palestine Labor Foundation,
etc.
- Works and correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement,
among them two Israeli presidents (both born in Eastern Europe) Ben Gurion
and Ben Zvi; B. Borokhov, the ideologist of Russian Zionism; as well as by
other figures active in the Palestine movement.
- A large collection of national and local newspapers and journals, many of
which are now very rare.
- Works of creative artistic writing, such as a collection of poetry by the
well-known poet David Hofstein, with illustrations by Mark Chagall (1922).
- Volumes and other collections of documents located in the central state
archives of Russia; works prepared for publication in 1926-1927, including
Iz istorii
Evreiskoi kommunisticheskoi rabochei partii ("From the History of the
Jewish Communist Labor Party"), and O poalei-tsionistskoi mysli za 20
let ("On
Poalei-Zionist Thought over 20 Years").
- Special sheets of signatures have been preserved, as have postage stamps,
lottery tickets and receipt books showing specific sums received from organizations
and individuals.
Most of the material (55-60%) is in Yiddish, 20-25% in Russian, and 15-20%
in Hebrew. There are several documents in German, French, Arabic, Ukrainian,
and
Polish. The Yiddish-language documents have been annotated and the annotations
are attached to the corresponding materials. There are no Poalei Zion documents
from before 1917 in RTsKhIDNI.
A printed guide to the collection is also available in the Slavic Reading Room.
Scholars can consult the collection in the Microform Reading Room, located in
the
basement of Sterling Memorial Library.
Sterling
Library's hours of operation
LOCATION: SML, Microform (Non-Circulating)
CALL NUMBER: Fiche B3889
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