Isaac Nachman Steinberg
Encyclopedia
Isaac Nachman Steinberg was a lawyer, revolutionary, politician, a leader of the Jewish Territorialist
Territorialism
Territorialism, also known as Statism , was a Jewish political movement calling for creation of a sufficiently large and compact Jewish territory , not necessarily in the Land of Israel and not necessarily fully autonomous.-Development of territorialism:Before 1905 some Zionist leaders took...

 movement and writer in Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....

 and in exile.

Early life and first exile

Steinberg was born in Dvinsk, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 (today Daugavpils
Daugavpils
Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. Daugavpils literally means "Daugava Castle". With a population of over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, which is located some...

, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

) into a family of Jewish merchants. He was raised in a traditional religious home. In 1906, Steinberg entered Moscow University, where he studied law. He joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (also known as SR or Eser) and was exiled for his activism. He then moved to Germany and completed his education at the University of Heidelberg.

Return to Russia, career of Narkom and second exile

In 1910, Steinberg returned to Russia and worked as a lawyer. From December 1917 to March 1918, he was People's Commissar (Narkom) of Justice in Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

's government during 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' short-lived coalition with the left wing of the SR
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...

. Steinberg resigned his post in protest against the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, mediated by South African Andrik Fuller, at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, headed by Germany, marking Russia's exit from World War I.While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year,...

 and campaigned against the Bolsheviks. In 1923, having been warned that he was in danger of assassination, he again moved to Germany and took his young family with him.

Freeland League

After the Nazis came to power
Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...

 in 1933, Steinberg, his wife and three children settled in London. There, he was one of co-founders of the Freeland League, which attempted to find a safe haven for European Jews fleeing the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

.

The League selected the Kimberley region of Western Australia
Kimberley region of Western Australia
The Kimberley is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northern part of Western Australia, bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami Deserts, and on the east by the Northern Territory.The region...

 as a place to purchase agricultural land where 75,000 Jewish refugees
Jewish refugees
In the course of history, Jewish populations have been expelled or ostracised by various local authorities and have sought asylum from antisemitism numerous times...

 from Europe could be resettled. This effort became known as the Kimberley Plan
Kimberley Plan
The Kimberley Plan, or Kimberley Scheme, was a failed plan by the Freeland League to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe before and during the Holocaust....

, or Kimberley Scheme. Steinberg based his campaign on the officially declared need to populate northern Australia. On 23 May 1939 he arrived in Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

 and by early 1940 gained substantial public support, but also encountered opposition.

Steinberg left Australia in June 1943 to rejoin his family in Canada. On 15 July 1944 he was informed by the Australian Prime Minister John Curtin
John Curtin
John Joseph Curtin , Australian politician, served as the 14th Prime Minister of Australia. Labor under Curtin formed a minority government in 1941 after the crossbench consisting of two independent MPs crossed the floor in the House of Representatives, bringing down the Coalition minority...

 that the Australian government would not "depart from the long-established policy in regard to alien settlement in Australia" and could not "entertain the proposal for a group settlement of the exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League".

Steinberg continued his efforts in spite of setbacks. In 1946, the Freeland League started negotiations with the Surinamese and Netherlands governments about the possible resettlement of 30,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe in the Saramacca district of Surinam. In August 1948, the Surinamese parliament decided 'to suspend the discussions until the complete clarification of the international situation'. The negotiations were never resumed.

Steinberg was a prolific Yiddish writer, editor and prominent cultural activist, who played an important role in the development of the Yiddishist movement . Steinberg was an Orthodox Jew; It's rumored that during his short tenure as Commisar of Justice he refused to work on the Sabbath
Sabbath
Sabbath in Christianity is a weekly day of rest or religious observance, derived from the Biblical Sabbath.Seventh-day Sabbath observance, i.e. resting from labor from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, is practiced by seventh-day Sabbatarians...

, much to Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

's dismay.

Isaac Steinberg died in New York in 1957. His son was the distinguished art historian Leo Steinberg
Leo Steinberg
Leo Steinberg was an American art critic and art historian and a naturalized citizen of the U.S.-Life:Steinberg was born in Moscow, Russia and grew up in Berlin, Germany. He was the son of Isaac Nachman Steinberg. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art...

.

Political views

Steinberg's political views were essentially 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...

, although he defined himself as a Left Eser
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
In 1917, Russia the Socialist-Revolutionary Party split between those who supported the Provisional Government, established after the February Revolution, and those who supported the Bolsheviks who favoured a communist insurrection....

 or Left Narodnik
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"...

. Russian Left Esers
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
In 1917, Russia the Socialist-Revolutionary Party split between those who supported the Provisional Government, established after the February Revolution, and those who supported the Bolsheviks who favoured a communist insurrection....

 proposed a radically decentralized federation of worker syndicates
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...

, councils and cooperatives whose delegates are chosen by direct democracy and could be revoked at any moment.

Unlike many anarchists, Steinberg believed that it is possible and necessary to form a political party whose task would be the destruction of the state from within. He also noted, like some contemporary anarchists, that even an established syndicalist federation would not be completely free of elements or "crystals" of organized power. According to Steinberg, even a relatively free and stateless social system has to acknowledge the existence of some reminiscent government-like structures within itself, in order to decentralize or dismantle them and further "anarchize" the society. Steinberg viewed anarchism as an underlying principle, spirit, and drive of revolutionary socialism, rather than as a concrete political program with an ultimate goal. Therefore, he refrained from equating his syndicalist ideas with "anarchism", because such an equation, in his view, would have compromised the very subtle and perpetual nature of anarchist principles.

Steinberg was a leader of the Jewish Territorialist
Territorialism
Territorialism, also known as Statism , was a Jewish political movement calling for creation of a sufficiently large and compact Jewish territory , not necessarily in the Land of Israel and not necessarily fully autonomous.-Development of territorialism:Before 1905 some Zionist leaders took...

 movement. He worked hard to establish a Jewish self-managed territory, but did not support the idea of the Jewish nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...

 and was highly critical of Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 movement politics. After the establishment of the State of Israel, he supported the idea of creating a binational
Binational solution
The one-state solution and the similar binational solution are proposed approaches to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Proponents of a binational solution to the conflict advocate either a single state in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or a single state in Israel and the West...

 federation in Israel/Palestine and, at the same time, continued his efforts to establish a compact self-ruled Jewish settlement somewhere outside the Middle East.

Works

"Нравственный лик революции" ("Moral Face of the Revolution"), Berlin, 1923 זכרונות פֿון אַ פֿאָלקס־קאָמיסאַר ("Memoirs of People's Commissar"), Warsau, 1931
  • "Spiridonova: Revolutionary Terrorist". Translated and edited by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher. London, 1935. געלעבט און געחלומט אין אויסטראַליע ("Lived and dreamed in Australia"), Melburn, 1943
  • Australia: The Unpromised Land (London, 1948) מיט אײן פֿוס אין אַמעריקע: פּערזאָנען, געשעענישן און אידעען ("With one foot in America: People, Events and Ideas"), Mexico, 1951 אין קאַמף פֿאַר מענטש און ייִד ("In Struggle for Man and Jew"), Buenos Aires, 1952
  • In The Workshop Of The Revolution (1955)

See also

  • Territorialism
    Territorialism
    Territorialism, also known as Statism , was a Jewish political movement calling for creation of a sufficiently large and compact Jewish territory , not necessarily in the Land of Israel and not necessarily fully autonomous.-Development of territorialism:Before 1905 some Zionist leaders took...

  • Anarchism
    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...

  • Jewish Anarchism
    Jewish anarchism
    Jewish anarchism is a general term encompassing various expressions of anarchism within the Jewish community.- Secular Jewish Anarchism :Many people of Jewish origin, such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Martin Buber, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky, Murray Rothbard or David D. Friedman have...

  • 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...

  • Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
    Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
    In 1917, Russia the Socialist-Revolutionary Party split between those who supported the Provisional Government, established after the February Revolution, and those who supported the Bolsheviks who favoured a communist insurrection....


External links

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