Strangers and Rebels

Abstract

It is well known that both absolutely and proportionately there were far fewer Jewish Bolshevik intelligenty than Mensheviks, Bundists and PoaleiZionists. Poalei-Zionists and Bundists were all—or nearly all (Zerubavel, 1967: 352–65)—Jews. But, judging from the list of participants in the 1907 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (R.S.D.L.P.) congress, about 23 per cent of the Menshevik leadership and only ii per cent of the Bolshevik leadership was Jewish. Moving up the echelons in the latter two parties, Jewish representation increased but the ratio of Jewish Mensheviks to Bolsheviks remained about the same—two to one. Thus, two of the seven top Bolsheviks and five of the eight top Mensheviks in the period 1903–7 were Jews (Lane, 1969: 28, 44).¹