Russian Socialist Federation
Encyclopedia
The 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. Elements of the Russian Socialist Federation became key components of both the Communist Party of America and the rival Communist Labor Party of America as "Russian Federations" within these organizations. Following the unification of these two groups in 1921, the resulting unified Russian Communist Federation gradually evolved into the so-called Russian Bureau of the Communist Party, USA.
, a large number of members and active supporters of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party
and the Bolshevik
and Menshevik
wings of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party elected to follow the course of political emigration to America. These politically-minded individuals sought to form a political organization within the so-called "Russian colony" in America, with the initial intent of assisting the revolutionary movement in Russia which was working to overthrow the Tsarist regime of Nikolai Romanov
. To this end, various branches of Russian-speaking revolutionary socialists
began to be formed in those areas of the country with a significant emigré population. The national organization uniting these local groups was known as the Russian Socialist Federation.
The Russian Socialist Federation maintained its own daily newspaper called Novyi Mir (New World), published in New York. This paper was for a time edited by Nikolai Bukharin
, later one of the top leaders of Soviet Russia
after the Russian Revolution of 1917
. Contributors included Leon Trotsky
, who wrote for the paper during his brief interlude in New York City from his arrival in the city in the first days of 1917 until his departure on March 27, 1917. The paper's office was located "in a dingy hole at the rear of the cellar" at 77 St. Mark's Place.
in May 1915, with party records indicating that the group had an average of 113 dues-paying members in its first year of affiliation.
government headed by V.I. Lenin exerted an enormous impact on the emigré community in the United States. A political party which touted just 11,000 members in May 1917 had effectively seized control of a great state, demonstrating to many adherents of socialism that a slow process of building a political organization and winning the support of a majority of the population was not strictly necessary.
In the words of historian Theodore Draper
:
Only a few months before the leader of the Red Army
himself, Leon Trotsky, had been among the Russian emigré community as a journalist in New York City, writing for the newspaper of the Russian Federation. Now he sat next to Lenin at the head of a dramatic revolution of world-historical importance. The speed and proximity of the transformation was shocking and its impact electrifying.
Efforts to construct a unified revolutionary organization proceeded apace. The Marxists of the Russian Socialist Federation attempted to join with its populist
and anarchist
comrades in a unified organization through a convention of the United Russian parties held in New York City from February 1 to 4, 1918. Socialist Gregory Weinstein — editor of Novyi Mir and later a founding member of the Communist Labor Party of America — was elected chairman of the session. The gathering sent a cable to the Council of People's Commissars in Moscow
sending greetings to revolutionary Russia and indicating that they were "ready to organize Revolutionary Legions for Russia."
The Russian Federation was also instrumental in the formation of the American Bolshevik Bureau of Information early in 1918, uniting with four other Russian groups as well as the English-speaking Socialist Propaganda League
. Nicholas Hourwich represented the Russian Federation on this body, being joined by Soviet Russian representative Ludwig Martens
as the delegate of the "New York Section of Russian Bolsheviki" and S.J. Rutgers of the Socialist Propaganda League. The Bureau, which served as a forerunner of the official Russian Soviet Government Bureau, was headed by Louis C. Fraina
.
The Russian Socialist Federation held its 4th National Convention in New York City from September 28 through October 2, 1918. The gathering elected future Communist Party of America stalwarts Oscar Tyverovsky was elected Secretary of the Russian Federation and Alexander Stoklitsky as "Translator-Secretary," a functionary of the national Socialist Party of America with an office at party headquarters in Chicago.
The gathering also determined to convene a gathering of the various language groups associated with the former Russian empire — Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Polish, in addition to the Russian — in order "to effect unity of action of all Russian Federations and organizations by one united center." This unification of various language federations under the aegis of the Russian Socialist Federation was soon to have repercussions, accelerating development of a split of the Socialist Party between its revolutionary Left Wing and the electorally-oriented individuals who had long dominated the party apparatus.
A programatic document called the Left Wing Manifesto
, written by a committee in New York and thoroughly revised by Louis Fraina, began to be circulated among locals and branches of the Socialist Party for their approval. A new weekly publication called The Revolutionary Age
, edited in Boston by Louis Fraina, was established to advance the Left Wing cause. In April 1919, the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party of Local New York established yet another weekly newspaper called The New York Communist.
The foreign language federations of the Socialist Labor Party, led in the first place by the Russian Federation, were among the leaders of this drive to "capture" the Socialist Party for revolutionary socialism. Language branches of the unified "Russian Federations" often delivered their votes en bloc for slates of candidates in each of the Socialist Party's five regional electoral districts, allowing the candidates approved by the Left Wing to garner sufficient votes for election to a majority of the 15 seats on the NEC.
The outgoing National Executive Committee, dominated by older and more cautious adherents of the Socialist Party's traditional electoral approach to the winning of state power, were not about to surrender without a fight, however. A cry of election fraud was raised, culminating with the June 1919 suspension of seven of the party's language federations and the annulment of the 1919 election pending the decision of an August 1919 Emergency National Convention
of the 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...
from 1915 until the split of the national organization into rival socialist and communist organizations in the summer of 1919. Elements of the Russian Socialist Federation became key components of both the Communist Party of America and the rival Communist Labor Party of America as "Russian Federations" within these organizations. Following the unification of these two groups in 1921, the resulting unified Russian Communist Federation gradually evolved into the so-called Russian Bureau of the Communist Party, USA.
Early years
Following the failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905Russian 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...
, a large number of members and active supporters of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
and 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....
and Menshevik
Menshevik
The Mensheviks were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The dispute originated at the Second Congress of that party, ostensibly over minor issues...
wings of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party elected to follow the course of political emigration to America. These politically-minded individuals sought to form a political organization within the so-called "Russian colony" in America, with the initial intent of assisting the revolutionary movement in Russia which was working to overthrow the Tsarist regime of Nikolai Romanov
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
. To this end, various branches of Russian-speaking revolutionary socialists
Revolutionary socialism
The term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution by mass movements of the working class, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...
began to be formed in those areas of the country with a significant emigré population. The national organization uniting these local groups was known as the Russian Socialist Federation.
The Russian Socialist Federation maintained its own daily newspaper called Novyi Mir (New World), published in New York. This paper was for a time edited by Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
, later one of the top leaders of Soviet Russia
Soviet Russia
Soviet Russia usually refers to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. It may also denote:* Soviet Russia , magazine of the Friends of Soviet Russia in the United States...
after the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
. Contributors included Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, who wrote for the paper during his brief interlude in New York City from his arrival in the city in the first days of 1917 until his departure on March 27, 1917. The paper's office was located "in a dingy hole at the rear of the cellar" at 77 St. Mark's Place.
Admission to the Socialist Party of America
The "Federation of Russian Branches" was admitted to the Socialist Party of AmericaSocialist 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...
in May 1915, with party records indicating that the group had an average of 113 dues-paying members in its first year of affiliation.
Impact of the Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1917, marking the downfall of the tsarist state and its replacement by a revolutionary MarxistMarxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
government headed by V.I. Lenin exerted an enormous impact on the emigré community in the United States. A political party which touted just 11,000 members in May 1917 had effectively seized control of a great state, demonstrating to many adherents of socialism that a slow process of building a political organization and winning the support of a majority of the population was not strictly necessary.
In the words of historian Theodore Draper
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books which he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair...
:
"The supreme lesson seemed to be that a small party could seize power if only it had enough revolutionary zeal and purity of doctrine. No revolutionary group could guarantee numbers, but zeal and doctrine could be had for the asking. Such was the infinitely optimistic horizon that the Bolshevik revolution appeared to open up."
Only a few months before the leader of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
himself, Leon Trotsky, had been among the Russian emigré community as a journalist in New York City, writing for the newspaper of the Russian Federation. Now he sat next to Lenin at the head of a dramatic revolution of world-historical importance. The speed and proximity of the transformation was shocking and its impact electrifying.
Efforts to construct a unified revolutionary organization proceeded apace. The Marxists of the Russian Socialist Federation attempted to join with its populist
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
and anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
comrades in a unified organization through a convention of the United Russian parties held in New York City from February 1 to 4, 1918. Socialist Gregory Weinstein — editor of Novyi Mir and later a founding member of the Communist Labor Party of America — was elected chairman of the session. The gathering sent a cable to the Council of People's Commissars in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
sending greetings to revolutionary Russia and indicating that they were "ready to organize Revolutionary Legions for Russia."
The Russian Federation was also instrumental in the formation of the American Bolshevik Bureau of Information early in 1918, uniting with four other Russian groups as well as the English-speaking Socialist Propaganda League
Socialist Propaganda League
The Socialist Propaganda League was a tiny socialist group active in London from circa 1911 to 1951.The League was formed as a result of an early dispute in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and of the optimistic belief of the Party’s founder members that the socialist revolution was near...
. Nicholas Hourwich represented the Russian Federation on this body, being joined by Soviet Russian representative Ludwig Martens
Ludwig Martens
Ludwig Christian Alexander Karl Martens was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and engineer.-Early years:...
as the delegate of the "New York Section of Russian Bolsheviki" and S.J. Rutgers of the Socialist Propaganda League. The Bureau, which served as a forerunner of the official Russian Soviet Government Bureau, was headed by Louis C. Fraina
Louis C. Fraina
Louis C. Fraina was a founding member of the American Communist Party in 1919. After running afoul of the Communist International in 1921 over the alleged misappropriation of funds, Fraina left the organized radical movement, emerging in 1930 as a left wing public intellectual by the name of Lewis...
.
The Russian Socialist Federation held its 4th National Convention in New York City from September 28 through October 2, 1918. The gathering elected future Communist Party of America stalwarts Oscar Tyverovsky was elected Secretary of the Russian Federation and Alexander Stoklitsky as "Translator-Secretary," a functionary of the national Socialist Party of America with an office at party headquarters in Chicago.
The gathering also determined to convene a gathering of the various language groups associated with the former Russian empire — Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Polish, in addition to the Russian — in order "to effect unity of action of all Russian Federations and organizations by one united center." This unification of various language federations under the aegis of the Russian Socialist Federation was soon to have repercussions, accelerating development of a split of the Socialist Party between its revolutionary Left Wing and the electorally-oriented individuals who had long dominated the party apparatus.
The split of 1919
During the first two months of 1919 a concrete Left Wing Section established itself within the ranks of the Socialist Party of America (SPA). Inspired by the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and disgruntled over the largely ineffectual Socialist Party electoral campaign of 1918, this group began to unite around the February 1919 elections of members of the 15 member National Executive Committee which governed the SPA.A programatic document called the Left Wing Manifesto
Left Wing Manifesto
The Left Wing Manifesto is the name rather confusingly bestowed upon two distinct programmatic documents of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party during the factional war in the Socialist Party of America of 1919...
, written by a committee in New York and thoroughly revised by Louis Fraina, began to be circulated among locals and branches of the Socialist Party for their approval. A new weekly publication called The Revolutionary Age
Revolutionary Age
The Revolutionary Age was an American radical newspaper edited by Louis C. Fraina and published from November 1918 until August 1919. Originally the publication of Local Boston, Socialist Party, the paper evolved into the de facto national organ of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party which...
, edited in Boston by Louis Fraina, was established to advance the Left Wing cause. In April 1919, the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party of Local New York established yet another weekly newspaper called The New York Communist.
The foreign language federations of the Socialist Labor Party, led in the first place by the Russian Federation, were among the leaders of this drive to "capture" the Socialist Party for revolutionary socialism. Language branches of the unified "Russian Federations" often delivered their votes en bloc for slates of candidates in each of the Socialist Party's five regional electoral districts, allowing the candidates approved by the Left Wing to garner sufficient votes for election to a majority of the 15 seats on the NEC.
The outgoing National Executive Committee, dominated by older and more cautious adherents of the Socialist Party's traditional electoral approach to the winning of state power, were not about to surrender without a fight, however. A cry of election fraud was raised, culminating with the June 1919 suspension of seven of the party's language federations and the annulment of the 1919 election pending the decision of an August 1919 Emergency National Convention
1919 Emergency National Convention
The 1919 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America was held in Chicago from August 30 to September 5, 1919. It was a seminal gathering in the history of American radicalism, marked by the bolting of the party's organized left wing to establish the Communist Labor Party of...
of the party.
Prominent members
- George Ashkenuzi
- Nikolai BukharinNikolai BukharinNikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
- Jacob GolosJacob GolosJacob Golos, , was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary of ethnic Jewish heritage who became a secret police operative on behalf of the USSR in the United States...
- Nicholas Hourwich
- Abram JakiraAbram JakiraAbraham "Abram" Jakira was an American socialist political activist, newspaper editor, and Communist Party functionary. He is best remembered as one of the early Communist Party's factional leaders of the 1920s.-Early years:...
- Michael Mislig
- V. Rich
- Alexander Stoklitsky
- Oscar Tyverovsky
- Gregory Weinstein
- J. Wilenkin
Further reading
- Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism. New York: Viking Press, 1957.
- Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia. New York: Viking Press, 1960.
- R.W. Finch, "Report on the 4th Convention of the Russian Socialist Federation: New York City — Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, 1918." Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.
- Nicholas I. Hourwich, "The Communist Party of America: Report to the 5th Convention of the Federation of Russian Branches, August 26, 1919," Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2004.
- Russian Socialist Federation, "Bylaws of the Federation of Russian Branches of the Communist Party of America." Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2004.
- Russian Socialist Federation, "Minutes of the 4th Convention of the Russian Socialist Federation: New York City — Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, 1918." Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.
- Archibald E. StevensonArchibald E. StevensonArchibald E. Stevenson was an American attorney and legislative researcher. Stevenson is best remembered for his work as Assistant Counsel of the Lusk Committee of the New York State Senate from 1919 to 1920, the activities of which led to a series of sensational raids and trials of self-professed...
, ed., Revolutionary Radicalism: Its History, Purpose and Tactics with an Exposition and Discussion of the Steps Being Taken and Required to Curb It, Being the Report of the Joint Legislative Committee Investigating Seditious Activities, Filed April 24, 1920, in the Senate of the State of New York: Part 1: Revolutionary and Subversive Movements Abroad and at Home, Volume 1. Albany: J.B. Lyon Company, 1920. —Also known as "Lusk Committee Report." - Oscar Tyverovsky, "Circular to All Branches of the Russian Federation of the Communist Party of America, circa September 15, 1919." Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2007.
External links
- Tim Davenport, "Russian Federations," Early American Marxism website, www.marxisthistory.org/