Top to bottom: the Jewish Military Section's, the Poalei-Tsion's, and the Vitebsk Jewish Section's Di royte armey
Two Dovids
In February 1949, the Soviet secret police reported that Dovid Isaakovich Volkenshtein, a Jewish writer, translator, and literary critic, made the following remark to a small circle of acquaintances after the arrest of his fellow litterateur, Dovid Hofshteyn: “Hofshteyn has always been a misfortune for Jewish writers […] Ever since the rise of the Jewish state in Palestine, he has become obsessed with thoughts about it. When he was arrested, I was convinced that he would bring about inconveniences upon many people who are honest and have no relation to Zionism and nationalism.”[1]
Hofshteyn, a famed poet of the “lyrical triumvirate of the Kiev Group [of Yiddish poets]”[2] in the interwar period, was the first member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to be arrested, in September 1948. He was executed on the Night of the Murdered Poets on August 12, 1952.[3] Both him and Volkenshtein were members of the Jewish Section of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine,[4] and both were investigated during World War Two as members of a purportedly “Trotskyite” or “Jewish nationalist” circle of Yiddish writers, Boi (Struggle).[5] However, the two Dovids' literary careers crossed path already during the Russian Civil War, three decades before Volkenshtein’s ex post facto denouncement of Hofshteyn.
Interrogated barely a month before his execution in 1952, David Hofshteyn recalled that his first article about the Red Army was an obituary for his cousin, Asher Shvartsman, published in 1919 in Di royte armey (The Red Army). At the time, Hofshteyn was writing for the United Jewish Communist Party’s (Fareynikte’s) Kyiv-based Naye tsayt (New Time), which – after a party merger in 1919 – merged with the Bund’s Folkstsaytung (People’s Newspaper) and was renamed Komunistishe fon (Communist Banner), the organ of the newly-formed Jewish Communist Union in Ukraine (Komfarband).[6]
Between at least June 18 and July 27, 1919, Komunistishe fon published a special issue every week, titled Di royte armey. It is quite certain, therefore, that this was the publication referred to by Hofshteyn during his last interrogation. Although no further issues of this periodical could be identified in collections of libraries and archives, if Hofshteyn’s memory served him well, there must have been more issues published, as his cousin died in August 1919.[7]
Around the same time, in July 1919, the Komfarband’s Main Committee asked the Jewish Section of the Department for International Propaganda under the Political Directorate of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR (Evvoensek or Jewish Military Section) to petition the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs that one Evsei-Dovid Itskovich Volkenshtein, a veteran in his late twenties demobilized on account of health issues, be exempted from the draft, so that he can continue working at Di royte armey.[8] That is to say, in mid-1919 Hofshteyn and Volkenshtein were both – at least in part – in the employ of the Komfarband’s Di royte armey.
However, the Kiev Komfarband was far from the only organization to publish a Yiddish Red Army newspaper titled Di royte armey. In fact, at least six such publications appeared between 1919-1924.[9]
Six Red Armies
The Jewish Military Section – comprised mainly of Jewish Communists – stood in direct competition with the Central Military Department established by the Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Poalei-Tsion). Although both organizations intended to mobilize Jews to the ranks of the Red Army, the Poalei-Tsion favored establishing separate Jewish units. Despite gaining the support of the both the Politburo and Trotsky, Poalei-Tsion’s efforts to set up Jewish military units were oftentimes obstructed by local authorities.[10] In addition, the Jewish self-defense paramilitary organizations soon began siphoning off manpower from the Red Army’s potential draft pool, as able-bodied Jewish men in Ukraine and Belarus in particular preferred defending their hometowns to enlisting in the Red Army.[11]
The first Di royte armey, in fact, was published neither by Poalei-Tsion’s Central Military Department nor by the Jewish Military Section, but by Komfarband's Minsk City Committee. Between May 17 and June 24, 1919, at least three issues were published, as an attachment to Shtern (Star), the journal of Komfarband’s Northwestern District and Minsk City Committee. The main tenor of the journal extolled the virtues of the Red Army in fighting capitalism and imperialism and defending the revolution, while also holding up the prospect of taking revenge on “Polish and other bands” for pogroms.[12]
The Poalei-Tsion also appears to have published a short-lived Di royte armey in Minsk. In August 1919, the party’s Central Military Department alerted the Minsk Military District Military Commissariat that since the party’s printing press had been evacuated from Minsk, the Department was unable to publish its Di royte armey, and also requested that printing paper be brought to Minsk from Smolensk by military transport.[13]
In Kyiv, in June-July 1919, the Jewish Military Section’s Di royte armey was also struggling to take off. In a letter to the Publication Department of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs the editors complained that the publishing of the journal is hindered by the lack of Jewish typesetters at Komunistishe fon, and asked professionals with experience in Yiddish typesetting to be commanded to Komunistishe fon.[14] In addition, they requested that printing paper be provided to the journal.[15]
Distribution also posed difficulties: the Jewish Military Section asked the department head of Krasnaia Armiia (Red Army, the main Russian-language Red Army periodical) to distribute copies of Di royte armey, and also liaised with the Literature Supply Department of the Political Directorate of the Revolutionary Military Soviet of the USSR to take up the task of distributing the journal.[16] Copies of Di royte armey were then sent to local branches of the Jewish Military Section and of its constituent parties by the thousands – one Komfarband branch, for example, reported to have received 3,500 copies in one delivery.[17]
Notably, the Revolutionary Military Soviet was also at least kept informed about the distribution of Poalei-Tsion’s Di royte armey. For instance, in August 1919, Poalei-Tsion’s Central Military Department informed the Revolutionary Military Soviet that instructors carrying Di royte armey issues and other propaganda materials were dispatched to various localities.[18]
The Jewish Military Section’s Di royte armey advocated mobilizing Jews to the Red Army as a means of bringing the revolution to victory and cementing its achievements, and derided the concept of Jewish particularism. A programmatic article opined as follows: “It is ridiculous to think that it is possible to form special Jewish [military] organizations whose sole task would be to fight the pogroms, and which would be ‘neutral’ in the grandiose struggle raging between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie […] It would be impossible to sit on two chairs […] The only way for the Jewish toiling masses to conduct a real fight against the pogroms is to join the INTERNATIONAL RED ARMY. It is not national self-defense that can prevent pogroms but the international army of the proletariat fights for such conditions under which pogroms will be impossible.”[19] A few weeks later, the same author warned against vengefulness, exhorting Jews to “fight against counterrevolution but not the unconscious masses who still follow the reaction.”[20]
The Poalei-Tsion’s Di royte armey, in contrast, lionized the purportedly newfound heroism of Jewish workers fighting for both universal and particular Jewish goals. As one of the first articles extolled: “we do not recognize the Jewish soldier-coward, we see the heroic-brave warrior. […] Hand in hand with the Russian worker he throws himself into the fight for Socialism. We see in the Socialist avant-garde not scattered individuals, but entire armies, entire Jewish units.”[21] Despite managing to launch a standalone publication, Poalei-Tsion’s Central Military Department ended up publishing only two issues of its Di royte armey – in July 1919 and January 1920.
After the Civil War
Moshe Erem (Kazarnovskii), was a member of Poalei-Tsion’s Central Committee, and went on to become a member of the first Knesset – and then of four more, until 1969.[22] Attending the party’s 4th All-Russian Party Congress in September 1919, Kazarnovskii waxed eloquent of the mobilizational work carried out by the Central Military Department, underscoring the significance of Di royte armey in agitating among Jews to join the Red Army.[23] Speaking at Poalei-Tsion April 1920 congress, Lev Iakovlevich Berlinraut called for restarting the publication of Di royte armey, whose second (and last) issue appeared in January 1920.[24] While this proposal does not seem to have materialized, the Jewish Section of the Communist Party published at least two periodicals under the same title.
At a session of the Jewish Section’s Central Bureau on January 12, 1924, the Bundist-turned-Communist luminary, Moyshe Rafes, called for Yiddish periodicals to conduct a systematic campaign in support of the impending draft, and to print a special Di royte armey issue with information on the Red Army.[25] Three months later, in April 1924, the Political Directorate of the Revolutionary-Military Soviet of the USSR indeed joined forces with the Main Political and Educational Committee of the People's Commissariat of Education of the USSR to publish two issues of Di royte armey in Moscow, edited by Rafes.[26] Writing a few years later, one of the participants of the January 1924 session praised Di royte armey as one of the Jewish Military Section’s most effective tools for mobilizing Jews to the Red Army.[27]
A month after Rafes’ call to renew the publication, on February 27, 1924, the Jewish Section of the Vitebsk Guberniia Revolutionary Committee also published a four-page one-time publication titled Di royte armey. Articles in this publication urged Jews to join the Red Army, compared it favorably to the Tsarist Army of yore, and printed upbeat reports on life in the barracks. Piece after piece emphasized that the Red Army does not mistreat – indeed, serves as the defender of – minorities in general and Jews in particular.[28]
Although unable to continue its publication despite the calls at the 1919 and 1920 congresses to do so, the Poalei-Tsionist Di royte armey remained a source of pride to the party – just as its counterpart did for Jewish Communists. Writing in 1927 in the last issue of Der proletarisher gedank (Proletarian Thought), the journal of the Poalei-Tsion Central Committee – just months prior to the liquidation of the party by the Soviet secret police – a member of the Committee proudly reminisced about the Poalei-Tsion’s Di royte armey and its role in drawing Jews to the Red Army ranks.[29]
Notes
[1] Spetspovidomlennia MGB USSR pro reahuvannia u zv’iazku z rozpuskom evreis’koi sektsii SRPU i areshtamy evreisk’kykh natsionalistiv,” Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB 3/4 (8/9) (1998): 43 [Special Report of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Regarding the Reactions to the Disbanding of the Jewish Section of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine and the Arrest of Jewish Nationalists]. On Volkenshteyn, see also: Efim Melamed, ”’Doneseniiami vnov’ zaverbovannogo agenta «Kant»…’ Evreiskie pisateli pod nadzorom spetssluzhb stalinskogo rezhima,” Arkhiv evreiskoi istorii 12 (2022): 23-128, passim [“Reports of the Re-Recruited Agent ‘Kant’…” Jewish Writers under Surveillance from the Secret Services of the Stalinist Regime]. In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, a Soviet secret agent reported that Volkenshtein had said of Israeli politics vis-à-vis Arab countries: “The entire conflict there is happening because Arabs do not want to free the capital of Israel – Jerusalem, and encroach upon native Jewish territories. In such a conflict every measure is good, since this is about the liberation of native land;” HDA SBU 2/2753/104 (accessed on February 15, 2023, through: https://zikaron.nadavfund.org.il/files/original/1182e036d7c8a6ac584509e67e30b39a.pdf).
[2] Sol Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature (Middle Village: Jonathan David, 1972), 203.
[3] Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, eds., Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, trans. Laura E. Wolfson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 42, 60.
[4] See minutes of a protocol of the Section from 1947, at which both Hofshteyn and Volkenshtein were present: “Dokumenty z arkhivnoi kryminal’noi spravy I. Kipnisa,” Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB 3/4 (8/9) (1998): 277-304 [Documents from the Archival Criminal File of Itsik Kipnis].
[5] See, e.g., Melamed, op. cit., 74.
[6] Rubenstein and Naumov, op. cit., 188-189.
[8] Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, heretofore: RGASPI) fond 271, opis’ 1, delo 112, list 60 (heretofore 271/1/112/60).
[9] Aside from Budnitskii’s publications (see below), the only works to mention (the Jewish Military Section’s) Di royte armey are: Tat’iana Sergeevna Lyzlova, Realizatsiia natsional’noi politiki Sovetskoi vlasti v otnoshenii evreiskogo naseleniia, 1917-1938 gg. (Na materialakh Smolenskoi oblasti) (CSc diss., Smolensk State University, 2004), 105 [The Implementation of the Nationalities Policies of the Soviet Government in Relation to the Jewish Population, 1917-1938 (Based on Materials from Smolensk Oblast)] and Arno Lustiger, Stalin and the Jews: The Red Book: the Tragedy of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the Soviet Jews, trans. Mary Beth Friedrich and Todd Bludeau (New York: Enigma, 2003), 44.
[10] The most comprehensive works on this topic are: Oleg Budnitsky, “The ‘Jewish Battalions’ in the Red Army,” in Revolution, Repression and Revival: the Soviet Jewish Experience, ed. Zvi Gitelman and Yaacov Ro'i (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 15-35; see also: idem, Rossiiskie evrei mezhdu krasnymi i belyimi (1917-1920) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005), 438-493 [Russian Jews between the Red and the Whites (1917-1920)]; in English: idem., Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012): 356-405. See also: Baruch Gurevitz, “An Attempt to Establish Separate Jewish Units in the Red Army during the Civil War,” Michael VI (1980): 86-101.
[11] Mihály Kálmán, “Hero Shtetls: Jewish Armed Self-Defense from the Pale to Palestine, 1917–1970,” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2017).
[12] Di royte armey (Minsk), attached to nos. 88, 103, and 118 (May 17, June 4, and June 24, 1919, respectively) of Shtern. On revenge, see, especially: Y. Veynshteyn, “Der yidisher royter-armeyer,” Di royte armey (attachment to Shtern) 103 (June 4, 1919): 3 [The Jewish Red Army Soldier]; Yekhiel Sholk, “Briv fun front,” Di royte armey (attachment to Shtern) 118 (June 24, 1919): 4 [Letter from the Front].
[13] Nacyjanal'nyj Arkhiu Respubliki Belarus' (National Archives of the Republic of Belarus) 1182/2/3/10.
[14] RGASPI 271/1/112/51.
[15] RGASPI 271/1/112/71.
[16] RGASPI 271/1/112/75.
[17] RGASPI 271/1/112/48.
[18] RGASPI 272/1/543/77.
[19] M. Ben-Aharon, “Ver vet bakemfn di pogromen?,” Di royte armey 1 (June 18, 1919, attached to Komunistishe fon): 2 [Who Will Fight the Pogroms?].
[20] M. Ben-Aharon, “Kamf ober nit keyn nekome?,” Di royte armey 3 (July 4, 1919, attached to Komunistishe fon): 1 [Fight but not Revenge].
[21] An alter soldat, “Der yidisher soldat,” Di royte armey 1 (July 30, 1919): 1 [The Jewish Soldier].
[22] David Tidhar, ’Entziqlopedyah le-chalutze ha-yishuv u-vonaw (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat rish’onim, 1950): 1955-1956 [Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel] (accessed on February 16, 2023, through: http://www.tidhar.tourolib.org/tidhar/view/4/1955).
[23] “IV vserossiiskii partiinii s’’ezd E.S.-D.R.P. (Poalei-Tsion): Vtoroi den’ (2 sentiabria 1919 g.)”, Bor’ba 1, nos. 9-12 (June 5, 1920): 38 [The 4th All-Russian Party Congress of the Jewish Socialist Democratic Worker’s Party (Poalei Tsion): Second Day (September 2, 1919)].
[24] “Parteirat (16-23 aprelia 1920 goda),” Bor’ba 1, nos. 9-12 (June 5, 1920): 17 [Party Congress (April 16-23, 1920)]; see original on RGASPI 272/1/543/159.
[25] RGASPI 445/1/133/145.
[26] Avrom Kirzhnits, Di yidishe prese in Ratnfarband (1917-1927) (Minsk: Vaysruslendishe bikher-kamer bay der vaysruslendisher melukhe-bibliyotek, 1928), 47 [The Jewish Press in the USSR (1917-1927)].
[27] Motl Naumovich Kiper, Tsen yor Oktyabr-revolutsye: di Oktyabr-revolutsye un di yidishe arbetndike fun Ukraine (Kyiv: Kultur-Lige, 1927), 25 [Ten-Year Anniversary of the October Revolution: The October Revolution and the Jewish Workers of Ukraine].
[28] Di royte armey (Vitebsk) (27 February 1924): 1-4 [The Red Army].
[29] Z. Vaysburd, “Di partey oyfn roytn front”, Der proletarisher gedank 49-50 (November 1927) 40-41 [The Party on the Red Front]; on Vaysburd, see: Efraim Vol’f, “Nevol’nye vstrechi,” Al’manakh ‘Evreiskaia starina’ 1(80) (2014) [Involuntary Encounters] (accessed on March 6, through https://berkovich-zametki.com/2014/Starina/Nomer1/EWolf1.php).
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