Abstract
Coming at a moment when Jewish political parties in Poland were engaged in an intense struggle for hegemony on the Jewish street, the communiqué addressed the many opponents of the Kultur-Lige's assertion that cultural work could be most effectively conducted outside the confines of party politics, outlining fundamental ideological differences that had isolated the umparteyish leadership and thwarted its efforts to re-establish the organization in Warsaw after the Bolshevik takeover of the Ukrainian Kultur-Lige in 1920. The story of the Kultur-Lige after its original group of leaders left Kiev in winter 1920–1 was one of stymied effort and ultimate disappointment. While ostensibly less successful than Bundism or Labour Zionism, kultur-ligizm (culture league-ism) was an important iteration of diaspora nationalism, spearheaded by a group of socialist Yiddishist intellectuals, some of whom had been early architects of diaspora nationalism. They believed that modern Jewish culture could be best nurtured by organizations that were supported by democratic states and allowed to operate autonomously. The present study examines their visionary creed in order to explicate the fateful decision they made to decamp from Kiev in 1921 with the intention of transplanting their thriving cultural organization outside revolutionary Russia. It investigates their attempt to establish a centre in Warsaw during the early 1920s and to guide the development of branches in several locations in Poland and western Europe, and considers the [End Page 459] failure of the Kultur-Lige in the context of the declining fortunes of diaspora nationalism in the period between the two world wars.