Born in the Ukraine, Ber Borochov was educated in a Russian high
school. A good student, he was attracted by the revolutionary
socialist trends of the time. Like most Jewish high school
graduates, he was denied the chance to study at a Russian
university. He was largely self-educated and spoke several languages.
In 1901, his interests in Jewish problems led him to establish the
Zionist Socialist Workers Union. Active in Jewish self-defense, the
organization was opposed by both the Russian Social Democrats and
some of the Zionist leaders who disapproved of the combination of
Zionism and socialism.
During the controversy about the possibility of settling
Jews in Uganda, Borochov joined with Menahem Ussishkin in opposing any
territory other than Eretz Yisrael. At the Seventh
Zionist Congress(1905), Borochov led a faction of the Poalei Zion delegates who
opposed the Uganda option. At the Eighth Zionist Congress, two years
later, he was instrumental in the withdrawal of Russian Poalei Zion
from the Zionist
Organization. From then until the beginning of
World War I, he publicized the aims of the World Union of Poalei
Zion in Western and Central Europe.
In 1914, Ber Borochov arrived in the United States, where he was the
spokesman for the American Poalei Zion and for the World and
American Jewish Congress movements. When the Russian Revolution
began, he returned to Russia and helped formulate the demands of the
Jewish people for the postwar world order. He was intensely involved
in public activities leading up to the October Revolution. In August
1917, he addressed the Russian Poalei Zion Conference and called for
socialist settlement in Eretz Yisrael.
Borochov was on a speaking tour on behalf of Poalei Zion when he
contracted pneumonia and died in Kiev. In 1963, his remains were
reinterred in the cemetery at Kibbutz Kinneret, alongside the other
founders of Socialist Zionism.
A scholar of the Jewish people's history, economic structure,
language and culture, Borochovwho was largely self-educatedwas
a brilliant analyst whose main theoretical contribution was the
synthesis of class struggle and nationalism at a time when Marxist
theory rejected all nationalismparticularly Jewish nationalism. He
viewed the mass migration of Jews as the inevitable expression of
the inner drive of the Jewish proletariat to solve the problems
created by living in the Diaspora. He argued that only pioneering
efforts in Eretz Yisrael could prevent the continuation of the Diaspora.
His outlook was universal at a time when others were dogmatic and
parochial. He sought to determine the hidden roots of the Jewish
problem which, he said, stemmed from the fact that the Jewish people
were divorced from their homeland. His astute analysis of the
effects of the Diaspora on the Jewish people included the effects of
assimilation, dividing Jewish strength, and ultimately intensifying
tension between Jews and non-Jews.
While aware of the threats of anti-Semitism, Borochov did not see
anti-Semitism as the basis or motivation of Zionism. Rather, he saw
the Diaspora as an aberration which made Jews economically inferior
and politically helpless. He saw auto-emancipation or
self-liberation as the only way to solve the Jewish problem.
Specifically, by following the path of socialist internationalism,
Jews would find their way out of the Diaspora.
For Borochov, Zionism and socialism were interrelated. He argued
that they served the same purpose: to make Jewish life productive
again. The first step was to enable Jewish migration to go to a new
territory in Eretz Yisrael. He considered the Jewish worker as the
pioneer of the Jewish future.
Borochov began writing in 1902 at the height of the Uganda debate.
His political work concerned topics ranging from the role of the
Jewish labor movement to the social implications of mass Jewish
migration. He was also a contributor to the Russian Jewish
Encyclopedia and compiled a bibliography of 400 years of Yiddish research.
Pedagogic Center, The Department for Jewish Zionist
Education, The Jewish Agency for Israel, (c)
1997-2005, Director: Dr. Motti Friedman, Webmaster:
Esther Carciente. Picture courtesy of: Zionism
and Israel Information Center