This last period of work at YIVO as part of my second Irene Kronhill Pletka Fellowship, I was given the task of cataloging, a standard one for archival interns. Specifically, I was to record the titles, authors, and publication years for 5 large boxes labeled \u201cCommunist Pamphlets,\u201d containing 330 folders and roughly 800 individual pamphlets. These pamphlets were published from 1899 to 1986 by various Communist and broader left-wing organizations. The majority, however, were published between 1940 and 1965, hardly the apex of the radical American left. Certainly an abnormal amount of pamphlets\u00a0 were in Yiddish or reflecting Jewish matters, but all topics were considered. All tendencies were represented: Stalinists, Black Nationalists, Trotskyists, the Worker\u2019s Circle, their splinter the International Workers Order, Spartacists, Progressives, Labor Activists, 1940s patriotic Communists, free speech fighters, and more all received at least some representation. While almost all of the pamphlets were published in America, thinkers from every inhabited content were represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What organization could have collected such a great multitude of pamphlets over many decades and organized them by author, without great regard to topic or faction. It was clearly not YIVO. If they had created the collection it would have already been processed by them, and I would be out of a job. Whoever it was was careful, collecting duplicates of many pamphlets Who are these mysterious archivists, my exalted predecessors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon asking around at the YIVO office, I received an answer. These boxes were part of the collection of the International Jewish Labor Bund, who donated their extensive archival collections to YIVO in 1992. Their Jewish Labor and Political Archives stretch from 1870 to 1992, and contain 3.5 million pages, stretching over 720 feet of documents. While the Bund is back in the spotlight thanks to Molly Crabapple\u2019s new book Here Where We Live is Our Country<\/em>, few realize that it stubbornly refused to die after the war, with successor groups continuing on in Israel, the United States, Argentina, France, and all around the world. One descendant is even still active in Melbourne! Its American successor must have collected these documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But why? While these organizations existed as cultural and social groups, their political activity was severely curtailed after the genocide of most of the Bundists. The collection of various left wing groups periodicals smacks of opposition research, but in truth there was no opposition possible between a semi-organized group of refugees marooned in a new twentieth century completely alien to what had come before it, and the resurgent American left of the 60s and 70s, or even the downtrodden American left before then. Nor did their beliefs of national-cultural autonomy make sense with the more pluralistic environment of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In truth, I do not know why the Bund collected these materials. Perhaps they did imagine a comeback, one where it would be useful to know what other left wing organizations were doing. Perhaps they wished to understand the place of Jews within American left wing politics. Maybe it was just a way of learning about this new landscape they found themselves marooned in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have another theory as well, a more self indulgent one. The Bund collected these documents, created this incredible archive of the American left at a pivotal moment, simply because it was all they knew how to do. The naysayers may cry out that the progress of history has gone past, that these bundists had no place in the postwar world of nation states. This may be true. However, these bundists stubbornly refused to die when they were supposed to, continuing on the work of preserving Jewish left culture long after it \u201cmade sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That often seems to be the story of Yiddishism as a whole. Not many Jews speak Yiddish these days, and Jewish politics seem to revolve around Israel, not the diaspora. The Jews that speak Yiddish are mostly Haredim, hardly interested in the secular cultural nationalism we espouse. There are very few people that I can speak to in Yiddish, very few people to read what I attempt to write in the language. Despite that, we continue onwards, stubbornly disobedient of the proclamation that the era of Yiddish is over, that we must comfortably settle into English or Hebrew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I sit at YIVO during my fellowship hours, organizing these pamphlets, navigating the space of its too small office, and I feel that I am part of a grand tradition of historical disobedience. Someone long ago organized these pamphlets into boxes, not necessarily knowing why, only that they must. Today, I learn Yiddish. I am often asked why, and I give weak answers: I like the community, it connects me to a Jewish past, there are many books to read in the language, it is useful for historical research. All of these are true, though some only kick the can down the road (Why do I want that community? Why do I want to study that history?). My only answer is because I feel like I must. Perhaps that is what my anonymous predecessor in the Bund archives would\u2019ve answered as well.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This last period of work at YIVO as part of my second Irene Kronhill Pletka Fellowship, I was given the task of cataloging, a standard one for archival interns. Specifically, I was to record the titles, authors, and publication years for 5 large boxes labeled \u201cCommunist Pamphlets,\u201d containing 330 folders and roughly 800 individual pamphlets. 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