Bintel Brief: do I go back to Russia and help my brothers in their struggle?

[jadelennox]

Context: Apparently The Forward has translated and republished some of the original letters from their turn-of-the-century Yiddish advice column. They're amazing. No date on this one.

Content note: historical language used to describe a seizure (respectful, just dated), tsarist police violence.

Worthy Editor,

I am a working man from Bialystok, and there I belonged to the “Bund.” Later, I came to Minsk where I joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries. What convinced me to join was the following: In Minsk there had been a Bundist demonstration which was attacked by the police. They beat up the demonstrators brutally, and arrested many of them. The prisoners were lashed and many got sick. One worker from Dvinsk was sentenced to fifty lashes, which caused him to develop epilepsy. In the middle of his work he would suddenly fall down in a fit.

When we, his co-workers, saw this, it aroused in us a desire for revenge against Czar Nicholas and his tyrannical police force. But a convention of the “Bund” at that time declared a policy against revenge, so many of our former “Bund” members joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In the meantime, war was declared against Japan, and since I was a reservist, I began to get mail from home advising me to flee to America. I allowed myself to be talked into it and left.

I have been here for two years now, and life is not bad. I work in a jewelry store, for good wages. But my heart will not remain silent within me over the blood of the pogroms that took place in Bialystok, where I left old parents and a sister with three small children. I haven’t heard from them since the pogrom and don’t know if they’re alive. But since they lived in the Piaskes where the Jewish defense group was located, it’s possible they are alive.

Now I ask your advice. I cannot make up my mind whether to fulfill my duty to my parents and sister and bring them to America, if I hear from them, or to go back to Russia and help my brothers in their struggle. If I had known what was going to happen there, I would not have gone to America. I myself had urged that one should not leave for America but stay and fight in Russia till we would be victorious. Now I feel like a liar and a coward. I agitated my friends, placed them in danger of the soldiers’ guns. And I myself ran away.—Respectfully, M.G.

--

If the writer had asked us the question before leaving Russia, we would not have advised him to leave the revolutionary battlefield. But since he is already here and speaks of his two duties, we would like to tell him that the Assistance Movement in America has attained such a position that anyone who wants to be useful will be able to do enough here. He should bring his parents and sister here, and become active in the local movement.

Comments

[jadelennox]

This one made me want to go full Tumblr on the tags.

#All Tzarist Cops Are Bastards

#I love this LW

#But not as much as I love the columnist

#I love early twentieth century bundists

(My grandmother was from Dvinsk, too, heh.)

[ambyr]

There's actually a graphic novel interpretation of many of the bintel brief letters--I have a copy, but I haven't read it. Maybe this will be my inspiration.

[jadelennox]

Ooh, I might seek it out.

The Forverts wasn't part of my childhood, but I think it was part of my dad's (and so my grandparents', I guess). Not in an important way, like, it wasn't formative or anything, but he read it if it was around, in Yiddish or English.

I know intellectually how leftist the paper was but it's amazing to see how incredibly radical the advice tends to be.

[neotoma]

What's the title of the graphic novel? That sounds like an interesting read!

[ambyr]

It’s called A Bintel Brief: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18144588

[minoanmiss]

OMG this is splendid and edifying.