Moisei Rafes (1920, 1923) on the Bund in Ukraine

Moisei Rafes presents a similar view of the heterogeneous origins of the CP(B)U in his Outline of the History of the “Bund.” He argues that the Bund in Kyiv had “no doubts, no indecision” about its duty to sup­port the Central Rada in its conflict with the Provisional Government in Petrograd (Rafes 1923, 258).

As Rafes tells the story, Skoropadskyi’s rule radicalized the population, crystallizing the emergence of a left wing in the Bund. The Bund’s national program, which, like the Central Rada’s, focused on cultural rights and national autonomy, was attacked in the Bolshevik newspaper Iskra (Spark). The Bolsheviks, who claimed that they alone could satisfy the national desires of the population, in June 1919 created Jewish sections

Repressed Memory 15 within their party and the commissariats for war, social security, internal affairs, and popular enlightenment. Even as the Bund’s right wing fought against Soviet power, its left wing tried to enter into an agreement with the RCP(B) through the Comintern. The two indigenous Ukrainian com­munist groups (the UKP, or Ukrainian Communist Party, and the Borot- bists) attempted to do the same. However, these bids were rejected. Jewish communists were told to master the Russian language, the lack of which “prevents communication in the general-proletarian milieu [sredoi] and holds back access to proletarian culture” (ibid., 300). On 1 March 1919, the Communist Bund of Ukraine fused with the CP(B)U. Ukrainians and Jews who entered the Bolshevik party were required to make an act of atonement for their previous political errors, deny the importance of their cultural identity and renounce their earlier support for national-cultural autonomy. Rafes made such an act of atonement at the end of his Dva goda revoliutsii na Ukraine (Two Years of Revolution in Ukraine, 1920).