Folkspartei

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Folkspartei

The Folkspartei (yidishe folkspartei, 'Jewish People's Party, folkist party) was founded after the 1905 pogrom

Pogrom

A pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by the killing and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers....
s in the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
by Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow was a Jewish historian, writer and activist....
and Israel Efrojkin. The party took part to several elections in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is 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 Enclave and exclave, to the north....
and Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest....
in the 1920s and 1930s and did not survive the Shoah

Shoah

Headline text Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning "disaster" or "conflagration". "The Shoa" or, with the addition of "Ha" , HaShoah is commonly used to refer to the Holocaust....
.

According to the historian Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow was a Jewish historian, writer and activist....
(1860-1941), Jew

Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
s are a nation

Nation

A nation is a cultural and social community. In as much as most members never meet each other, yet feel a common bond, it may be considered an imagined community....
on the spiritual and intellectual level and should strive towards their national and cultural autonomy in the diaspora

Jewish diaspora

The Jewish diaspora , the presence of Jews outside of the Land of Israel, is a result of the expulsion or emigration of Jews from Israel and religious conversion to Judaism....
(galuth).

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The Folkspartei (yidishe folkspartei, 'Jewish People's Party, folkist party) was founded after the 1905 pogrom

Pogrom

Russian Empire

File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
by Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow was a Jewish historian, writer and activist....
and Israel Efrojkin. The party took part to several elections in Poland

Poland

Lithuania

Shoah

Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow was a Jewish historian, writer and activist....
(1860-1941), Jew

Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
s are a nation

Nation

Jewish diaspora

The Jewish diaspora , the presence of Jews outside of the Land of Israel, is a result of the expulsion or emigration of Jews from Israel and religious conversion to Judaism....
(galuth). He said, "How then should Jewish autonomy assert itself? It must, of course, be in full agreement with the character of the Jewish national idea. Jewry, as a spiritual or cultural nation, cannot in the Diaspora seek territorial or political separatism, but only a social or a national-cultural autonomy."

Close to the Bund

General Jewish Labor Union

The General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, in Yiddish the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland , generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labor Bund, was a Jewish political party in several European countries operating predominantly between the 1890s and the 1930s with remnants o...
for the emphasis on Yiddish and its culture, it differed from that party by its middle class, craftsmen and intellectual base, but also because of its ideological options. According to Dubnov, assimilation

Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation is when an individual or individuals adopts some or all aspects of a dominant culture . Cultural assimilation is a process of socialization....
was not a natural phenomenon and the Jewish political struggle should be centered on a Jewish autonomy based upon community, language and education, and not upon class struggle

Class struggle

Class struggle is the active expression of class conflict looked at from any kind of socialism perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, leading ideologists of communism, wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
as advocated by Bundist theorists. It was a liberal party in economic matters, committed to political democracy and secularism.

Folkspartei in Poland
Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is 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 Enclave and exclave, to the north....

A local organization and a newspaper, Warszawer Togblat (The Warsaw Daily), was set up in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the Capital and World's largest cities of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains....
in 1916 in order to contend for the municipal elections (under German occupation), where they gained 4 seats, including Nojech (Noah) Prylucki, one of the founders of the party's newspaper, later renamed as 'Der Moment'.

The party split in 1927 between the Warsaw branch, led by Prylucki, and the Vilnius (then a part of Poland) branch, led by Dr. Tsemach Szabad, less hostile to Zionism than the Warsaw branch but more Yiddish-centered. After the split the party seems to have declined, with an attempt to revitalize it in Warsaw in 1935. At the 1936 Jewish community elections in Warsaw, the Folkspartei only got 1 seat out of 50, while the Bund got 15.

In the 1922-27 Polish Parliament

Polish parliament

Polish parliament is an expression referring to the historical Sejm walny. It implies chaos and general disorder, and that no real decision can be reached during sessions....
(Sejm) there was 1 Folkist MP out of 35 Jewish MPs (25 Zionists, but no Bundist).

Folkspartei in Lithuania
Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest....

Lawyer and banker Shmuel Landoi (Landau), later municipal councillor in Ponevezh (Lit. Panevežys

Panevežys

Paneve?ys is the fifth largest List of cities in Lithuania in Lithuania. It occupies 50 square kilometers with more than 115,000 inhabitants....
), was elected (or rather succeeded elected MP N. Friedman, a nonpartisan lawyer, after his death) for the Folkspartei on a common Jewish electoral list (with the Zionist parties and Agudat Israel

Agudat Israel

Agudat Israel began as the original political party representing Haredi Judaism in Israel. It was the umbrella party for almost all Haredi Jews in Israel, and before that in the British Mandate of Palestine....
) at the first elected Lituanian Parliament (Seimas

Seimas

The Seimas is the Lithuanian parliament. It has 141 members that are elected for a four-year term. About half of the members of this legislative body are elected in individual constituencies , and the other half are elected by nationwide vote according to proportional representation....
) in 1920 when there were 6 Jewish parties deputies out of 112. Vilnius (Yiddish: Vilna), where Jews formed the majority of the population, was incorporated into Poland in 1922-1939, and also sent at least one Folkist to the Polish Parliament (Sejm

Sejm

The Sejm is the lower house of the Poland parliament.Before the 20th century, the term "Sejm" referred to the entire three-Chambers of parliament Polish parliament, comprising the lower house , the upper house and the monarch....
), Zemach Shabad (Szabad)(1864-1935).

The next elections (1922) were rigged against the Polish and Jewish minorities, but the Seimas was dissolved and another Folkist, E.Finkelstein, was elected in 1923 on a national minorities bloc. In 1926 a coup d'état took place in Lithuania and the parliament was dissolved in 1927.

The Folkist newspaper in interwar Lithuania was the 'Folksblat', published in Kaunas

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second largest city in Lithuania and a Temporary capital of Lithuania. It is served by the freeways European route E67 and A1 highway ....
.

Folkspartei

See also

Sources