National Communism in the Soviet Union, 1918-28

The Jewish Communist Workers' Party, the Poale Zion, provides a unique perspective on the question of how Marxism and the early Soviet Union dealt with issues of nationalism. According to Bolshevik ideology, when anti-Semitism disappeared in the new Socialist society, Jews would assimilate. In reality, such assimilation would be a very long, slow process. The Poale Zion supported the socialist struggle against oppression and exploitation of classes and nations, but it called for the formation of