Borochov, Ber

(1881–1917)

   Ukrainian founder of labour Zionism. Borochov grew up in the Ukraine and at the age of nineteen joined the Russian Social Democratic Party. He left it a year later and set up a Jewish Socialist Workers Union. In 1906, at a conference in Poltava, he was instrumental in launching an independent party within the Zionist organization, the Jewish Workers’ Socialist Democratic Party (Poale Zion). He elaborated its ideological basis - a synthesis between Marxist principles and Jewish nationalism - in the series of articles ‘Our Platform’. In the following year, he helped to set up the World Union of Poale Zion.

   Borochov contended that neither reform in eastern Europe nor migration to Western countries would provide a basic remedy for the Jewish problem. Only by a free and independent existence in their own country could they become a productive nation. ‘Our ultimate aim is socialism. Our immediate aim is Zionism. The class struggle is the means to achieve both aims.’ With the outbreak of World War I, Borochov moved to the United States. He continued to promote Zionist socialism, and was also active in the American Jewish Congress. After the February 1917 revolution in Russia, he returned to his native land and at the end of that year died in Kiev at the early age of thirty- six. His remains were later brought to Israel and reinterred at the kibbutz of Kinneret.