Language federation
Encyclopedia
Language Federations were formed in the late 19th and early 20th century by immigrants to the United States
, primarily from Eastern
and Southern Europe
, who shared a commitment to some form of socialist politics. Some of these groups joined the Socialist Labor Party of America
; later, many joined the Socialist Party
and then later joined one of the precursors of the Communist Party
; a number of federations also remained in the Socialist Party. The Russian
and Finnish
federations were particularly important in the early years of the Communist Party.
and West Coast
s and Midwest.
Each Language Federation arose at different times, as members of those national, ethnic or religious groups arrived in the United States. In addition, they typically sprung up at the grassroots level, affiliating with other local groups to form national federations before attaching themselves to political parties. They often resisted attempts by the parties to which they were affiliated to bring them into line with the aims or platform of the group as a whole; indeed, at some points the various Language Federations made up such a large portion of socialist groups as to make top-down dictation of a uniform policy very difficult.
The SPA had a vexed relation with Language Federations: while it began recognizing them in the first decade of the 20th century and incorporating them within the party in the decade that followed, the party had often veered in the direction of nativism
, particularly in the case of exclusion of Asian
workers, but also directed against Eastern and Southern European immigrants. The SPA often appeared as if it did not know what to make of these foreign-language organizations and let them develop more or less independently. Even so, they grew exponentially during World War I
and made up roughly half the SPA by 1918.
The Executive Committee of the SPA formally expelled seven of these Language Federations in May, 1919 when it became clear that they favored the left wing in the impending split within the party. The expelled federations formed the bulk of the membership of the new Communist Party of America led by Charles Ruthenberg
and Louis Fraina; the Communist Labor Party
, created later, appealed more to American-born workers. Not all federations aligned with Ruthenburg, however, in the factional infighting within the CPUSA in the years that followed: the German
and Yiddish language
federations, for example, were identified with the more conservative faction led by Ludwig Lore
until he was expelled from the party.
The CPUSA, then named the Workers Party, tried in 1924 to disband the federations and reorganize the party on the cell structure that the Bolshevik
s had employed, on directives from the Comintern
. The party met with resistance, however, particularly from the Finnish Federation, whose members feared losing what influence they had if they were submerged within a larger English-speaking organization. While the party succeeded in "Bolshevizing" the federations, it may have lost fifty percent or more of these members in the process.
Although the SPA went into decline in the 1920s, it still drew a large part of its base from the foreign-born in these years. The old Language Federations within the SPA nearly all disappeared, however, by the early 1930s.
Arising first in Boston, Massachusetts and Minnesota
as benevolent organizations, the federation affiliated with the SPA around 1907. During its affiliation with the SPA it established its own Workers' College in Minnesota, published three newspapers, and divided the federation into three regional districts, with differing political outlooks. A power struggle soon ensued, with the national SPA intervening on the side of the conservative Eastern District. The Western and Central District branches were barred from establishing a rival federation, but Central District militants succeeded in taking control of the Workers College.
In 1919 the Federation split: a large number of Finnish
members joined the CPUSA, representing nearly half of the members of the party at one point in the 1920s and maintaining a separate organizational presence within it, in the form of Finnish Workers' Clubs, until 1941. The Finnish Federation remained the largest foreign language federation within the SPA throughout the 1920s.
socialists
made up so much of the early socialist groups that no steps were taken to organize a separate German language grouping either outside or within the SPA until 1912. That group drew heavily on organizations in New York
and New Jersey
. Those chapters split to join the CPUSA in 1919.
political groups first appeared in the 1890s and affiliated with both the SLP and the SPA in the following decade. Some federations affiliated with the SLP later migrated to the Industrial Workers of the World
. Most ended up with the SPA; relatively few left to join the CPUSA.
federation was formed as part of the SLP in 1902, but split from it the following year. The majority of the federation's members were syndicalist
and remained unaligned with either party, while a minority affiliated with the SPA in 1910. Most of those members remained with the SPA in 1919, although the New York City
branch joined the CPUSA. There were apparently never enough Italian-speaking members within the CPUSA to constitute a separate Federation. Italian-speaking garment workers in New York City also maintained their own locals within the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
, both when they were aligned with the SPA and under Communist leadership in the 1920s.
workers of various nationalities also took part in those federations, Jewish workers also formed groups known as Arbeiterrings ("Workmen's Circles") in major cities in the late 19th century. More formal parties, however, tended to fragment, both on ideological grounds and on the distinction between newly arrived "greenhorns" with Bundist politics and the more assimilated immigrants from earlier decades. The Bundist tendency eventually prevailed after thousands of Jewish socialists fled Poland and Russian in the aftermath of the failed 1905 Revolution
. The Jewish Federation within the SPA–not formally established until 1912–grew rapidly, publishing its own weekly newspaper. It split in 1919, with significant numbers of members remaining with the SPA.
Federation within the CPUSA, with a high proportion of forestry workers, was the third largest within the party in 1921.
Socialist Federation, founded in 1905, grew rapidly with an influx of members who had come to the United States to escape repression after the 1905 Revolution. The organization suffered splits, however, when anarchist and more strictly nationalist elements left and lost nearly half its members when it affiliated with the SPA in 1914. It published a number of weekly newspapers and a monthly journal while affiliated with the SPA. The SPA suspended the Federation in 1919, when a large number of members left for the CPUSA, where the Lithuanian Federation was one of the largest constituents.
Socialists in America was formed as an emigre group, dedicated to making revolution in Poland
, rather than the United States. It merged with the Polish Section of the Socialist Party in 1913. It published a daily newspaper in Chicago
and two weekly newspapers. It formally disaffiliated from the SPA in 1916, although a minority remained with the party. A few hundred members joined the CPUSA.
A formal Russian
Federation within the SPA was not created until 1917. It claimed more than 5,000 members in 1919, and largely went over to the CPUSA that year. It lost a number of members to deportation in the Palmer Raids
that followed.
as late as the 1920s. Much of the SPA's Scandinavia
n Federation went over to the CPUSA in 1919.
Socialist Federation, founded in Chicago in 1904, remained an autonomous organization until 1913, when it affiliated with the SPA. It continued to grow after affiliation, publishing several newspapers and maintaining more than twenty chapters.
and Slovenian
members, affiliated with the SPA in 1910. The Slovenian members generally remained with the SPA after the split, while many Croat members went over to the CPUSA.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, primarily from Eastern
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
and Southern Europe
Southern Europe
The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...
, who shared a commitment to some form of socialist politics. Some of these groups joined the Socialist Labor Party of America
Socialist Labor Party of America
The Socialist Labor Party of America , established in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party, is the oldest socialist political party in the United States and the second oldest socialist party in the world. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of America, the party changed its name in 1877 and has...
; later, many joined the Socialist Party
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
and then later joined one of the precursors of the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
; a number of federations also remained in the Socialist Party. The Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
federations were particularly important in the early years of the Communist Party.
Historical overview
The Language Federations also served as an important cultural resource for immigrants, allowing them to maintain contact with political developments in their homelands and providing a gathering place for strangers in a strange land. Many groups had their own halls for dances and social gatherings which still exist, in name if not in function, in America's largest cities of the EastEast Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
and West Coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
s and Midwest.
Each Language Federation arose at different times, as members of those national, ethnic or religious groups arrived in the United States. In addition, they typically sprung up at the grassroots level, affiliating with other local groups to form national federations before attaching themselves to political parties. They often resisted attempts by the parties to which they were affiliated to bring them into line with the aims or platform of the group as a whole; indeed, at some points the various Language Federations made up such a large portion of socialist groups as to make top-down dictation of a uniform policy very difficult.
The SPA had a vexed relation with Language Federations: while it began recognizing them in the first decade of the 20th century and incorporating them within the party in the decade that followed, the party had often veered in the direction of nativism
Nativism
Nativism may refer to:* Nativism or political nativism, a term used by scholars to refer to ethnocentric beliefs relating to immigration and nationalism; antiforeignism...
, particularly in the case of exclusion of Asian
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
workers, but also directed against Eastern and Southern European immigrants. The SPA often appeared as if it did not know what to make of these foreign-language organizations and let them develop more or less independently. Even so, they grew exponentially during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and made up roughly half the SPA by 1918.
The Executive Committee of the SPA formally expelled seven of these Language Federations in May, 1919 when it became clear that they favored the left wing in the impending split within the party. The expelled federations formed the bulk of the membership of the new Communist Party of America led by Charles Ruthenberg
Charles Ruthenberg
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician and a founder and long-time head of the Communist Party USA .-Biography:Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882 in Cleveland, Ohio...
and Louis Fraina; the Communist Labor Party
Communist Labor Party
The Communist Labor Party of America was one of the organizational predecessors of the Communist Party USA. The group was established at the end of August 1919 following a three-way split of the Socialist Party of America...
, created later, appealed more to American-born workers. Not all federations aligned with Ruthenburg, however, in the factional infighting within the CPUSA in the years that followed: the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Yiddish language
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
federations, for example, were identified with the more conservative faction led by Ludwig Lore
Ludwig Lore
Ludwig Lore was an American socialist newspaper editor and politician, best remembered for his tenure as editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung and role as a factional leader in the early American communist movement...
until he was expelled from the party.
The CPUSA, then named the Workers Party, tried in 1924 to disband the federations and reorganize the party on the cell structure that the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s had employed, on directives from the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
. The party met with resistance, however, particularly from the Finnish Federation, whose members feared losing what influence they had if they were submerged within a larger English-speaking organization. While the party succeeded in "Bolshevizing" the federations, it may have lost fifty percent or more of these members in the process.
Although the SPA went into decline in the 1920s, it still drew a large part of its base from the foreign-born in these years. The old Language Federations within the SPA nearly all disappeared, however, by the early 1930s.
List of American language federations
The following groups formed the most significant Language Federations:Finnish Federations
- Main article: Finnish Socialist FederationFinnish Socialist FederationThe Finnish Socialist Federation was a language federation of the Socialist Party of America which united Finnish language-speaking immigrants in the United States in a national organization designed to conduct propaganda and education for socialism among their community.-Early Finnish socialist...
.
Arising first in Boston, Massachusetts and Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
as benevolent organizations, the federation affiliated with the SPA around 1907. During its affiliation with the SPA it established its own Workers' College in Minnesota, published three newspapers, and divided the federation into three regional districts, with differing political outlooks. A power struggle soon ensued, with the national SPA intervening on the side of the conservative Eastern District. The Western and Central District branches were barred from establishing a rival federation, but Central District militants succeeded in taking control of the Workers College.
In 1919 the Federation split: a large number of Finnish
Finnish American
Finnish Americans are Americans of Finnish descent, who currently number about 700,000.-History:Some Finns, like the ancestors of John Morton, came to the Swedish colony of New Sweden, that existed in mid-17th century....
members joined the CPUSA, representing nearly half of the members of the party at one point in the 1920s and maintaining a separate organizational presence within it, in the form of Finnish Workers' Clubs, until 1941. The Finnish Federation remained the largest foreign language federation within the SPA throughout the 1920s.
German Federations
German-speakingGerman American
German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group...
socialists
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
made up so much of the early socialist groups that no steps were taken to organize a separate German language grouping either outside or within the SPA until 1912. That group drew heavily on organizations in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. Those chapters split to join the CPUSA in 1919.
Hungarian Federations
Hungarian languageHungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
political groups first appeared in the 1890s and affiliated with both the SLP and the SPA in the following decade. Some federations affiliated with the SLP later migrated to the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
. Most ended up with the SPA; relatively few left to join the CPUSA.
Italian Federations
A socialist Italian languageItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
federation was formed as part of the SLP in 1902, but split from it the following year. The majority of the federation's members were syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
and remained unaligned with either party, while a minority affiliated with the SPA in 1910. Most of those members remained with the SPA in 1919, although the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
branch joined the CPUSA. There were apparently never enough Italian-speaking members within the CPUSA to constitute a separate Federation. Italian-speaking garment workers in New York City also maintained their own locals within the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s...
, both when they were aligned with the SPA and under Communist leadership in the 1920s.
Jewish Federations
While JewishAmerican Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...
workers of various nationalities also took part in those federations, Jewish workers also formed groups known as Arbeiterrings ("Workmen's Circles") in major cities in the late 19th century. More formal parties, however, tended to fragment, both on ideological grounds and on the distinction between newly arrived "greenhorns" with Bundist politics and the more assimilated immigrants from earlier decades. The Bundist tendency eventually prevailed after thousands of Jewish socialists fled Poland and Russian in the aftermath of the failed 1905 Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
. The Jewish Federation within the SPA–not formally established until 1912–grew rapidly, publishing its own weekly newspaper. It split in 1919, with significant numbers of members remaining with the SPA.
Latvian Federation
The LatvianLatvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
Federation within the CPUSA, with a high proportion of forestry workers, was the third largest within the party in 1921.
Lithuanian Federation
The LithuanianLithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
Socialist Federation, founded in 1905, grew rapidly with an influx of members who had come to the United States to escape repression after the 1905 Revolution. The organization suffered splits, however, when anarchist and more strictly nationalist elements left and lost nearly half its members when it affiliated with the SPA in 1914. It published a number of weekly newspapers and a monthly journal while affiliated with the SPA. The SPA suspended the Federation in 1919, when a large number of members left for the CPUSA, where the Lithuanian Federation was one of the largest constituents.
Polish Federations
The Alliance of PolishPolish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
Socialists in America was formed as an emigre group, dedicated to making revolution in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, rather than the United States. It merged with the Polish Section of the Socialist Party in 1913. It published a daily newspaper in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and two weekly newspapers. It formally disaffiliated from the SPA in 1916, although a minority remained with the party. A few hundred members joined the CPUSA.
Russian Federations
- Main article: Russian Socialist FederationRussian Socialist FederationThe Russian Socialist Federation was a semi-autonomous American political organization which was part of the Socialist Party of America from 1915 until the split of the national organization into rival socialist and communist organizations in the summer of 1919...
.
A formal Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
Federation within the SPA was not created until 1917. It claimed more than 5,000 members in 1919, and largely went over to the CPUSA that year. It lost a number of members to deportation in the Palmer Raids
Palmer Raids
The Palmer Raids were attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer...
that followed.
Scandinavian Federations
The SLP had an early Danish affiliate, although this organization appears to have disappeared in factional infighting in 1899. The SLP continued to publish in SwedishSwedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
as late as the 1920s. Much of the SPA's Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
n Federation went over to the CPUSA in 1919.
Slovak Federation
The SlovakSlovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
Socialist Federation, founded in Chicago in 1904, remained an autonomous organization until 1913, when it affiliated with the SPA. It continued to grow after affiliation, publishing several newspapers and maintaining more than twenty chapters.
South Slavic Federation
This federation, which consisted mostly of CroatCroats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...
and Slovenian
Slovenian Americans
Slovene Americans or Slovenian Americans are citizens of the United States of Slovene descent.- History :The first Slovenes in the United States were missionary priests. Two of the earliest such missionaries were Fr. Anton Kappus and Fr. Frederick Baraga . In the 1730s some Slovenes settled in...
members, affiliated with the SPA in 1910. The Slovenian members generally remained with the SPA after the split, while many Croat members went over to the CPUSA.
See also
- Non-English press of the Socialist Party of AmericaNon-English press of the Socialist Party of AmericaFor a number of decades after its establishment in August 1901, the Socialist Party of America produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in an array different languages...
—Annotated list of Socialist Party publications — official, subsidized, or inspired — in languages other than English. - Non-English press of the Communist Party USANon-English press of the Communist Party USADuring the nine decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in at least 25 different languages...
—Annotated list of Communist Party publications — official, subsidized, or inspired — in languages other than English.
External links
- Auvo Kostiainen, The Finns and the Crisis Over 'Bolshevization' in the Worker's Party, 1924-25.
- Foreign Language Federations (1890s–1930) Early American Marxism website. Retrieved February 2, 2010.