History From Below: Molly Crabapple’s Here Where We Live Is Our Country

There is little new to say about Molly Crabapple’s wonderful history of the Jewish Bund, Here Where We Live is Our Country. Since its publication, the book has been widely celebrated by the Left, dismissed by the Right, and met with a mix of praise and accusations of naivety or idealism from liberal and centrist publications. 

The praise is well deserved. Crabapple writes so joyfully and tenderly about the Bund that a passive reading of the book feels almost heretical. The Bund was anti-Zionist, and Here Where We Live is Our Country is the kind of book that inspires people to continue the struggle against Zionism and genocide. 

As I read, I couldn’t help but reflect on what makes good historical writing. I have long held the view that an academic tone and a straightforward, seemingly unbiased telling of history are, frankly, a bad way to write, and an even worse way to engage with historical texts. First, the idea of telling an unbiased history is both naïve and impossible. If one subscribes to the notion that history is a set of facts and that a history book teaches or uncovers those facts, one is doomed to fall into the ruling-class narrative. That narrative promotes a record of great men, civilizations, and empires, in which everyday people are merely passive observers of the ever-turning wheel. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ordinary people are active participants in history, forging the path along which a “great man” or a “grand narrative” of civilization can later be divined. 

As a counter to the chronicle of great men and grand narratives, a different school of thought has emerged, first articulated by E.P. Thompson in the 1960s as “history from below.” But like most things, “history from below” existed long before Thompson popularized the term. Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England, C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins, and Peter Kropotkin’s The Great French Revolution are all excellent examples of history from below before the term was popularized.

It was the work of Howard Zinn that breathed new life into the form with his bestseller A People’s History of the United States. These seminal works gave readers a sense of empowerment, showing that working-class people are shaping the world we live in and that, no matter how much the ruling class wishes it were otherwise, history doesn’t just happen to people without their participation. This is where Crabapple’s book really shines. 

Crabapple weaves the narrative of the Bund with moments from her life as an activist. For Crabapple, the Bund has a personal element. Her great-grandfather, the impressionist painter and sculptor Samuel Rothbort, was a Bundist. It’s through Crabapple’s family lens that we are introduced to the Bundist ideas.  This was a movement of Jewish socialists who sought to build autonomy, dignity, and socialism within Europe. Establishing a philosophy of doikayt, Yiddish for “hereness,” Bundists did not believe a Jewish state would bring safety. Bundists saw Zionism as a capitulation to racism and the idea that Jews were foreigners who didn’t belong in Europe.As Crabapple expands the narrative, the reader sees her life as a journalist. We cut between complex historical narratives of the Russian Revolution and the Bundists as well as her time at Occupy Wall Street or her writing on Gaza. The intertwining creates a grand socialist narrative. 

The Bundists were not naïve, wide-eyed socialists living in a utopian fantasy, as their detractors would describe them. Crabapple lays out the Bundist program with precision and details how Bundists would manage the affairs of cities and town councils. The Bundists did not shy away from power but wielded it within a democratic tradition seeking tangible, day-to-day improvements for the working class. Bundists would put in practice an eight-hour workday in Vilna, Minsk, Grodno, and Białystok long before it became law, secure wage increases for workers, improve safety conditions, and establish mutual aid funds to help injured workers, all while protecting themselves within the framework of “national cultural autonomy.” This was a practical method of Jewish preservation and self-defense that did not rely on “nationalism.” This strategy had practical effects. In the extreme violence of anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia, Bundists were able to defend themselves. The Bund successfully armed self-defense militias and created a Jewish culture of mass resistance. The fact that the Bund could build anything under such harsh conditions is a testament to its practicality.

There is much to learn from the Bund and from the Bolshevik response to it. It’s nothing short of a tragedy that the Bolsheviks would go on to reject the Bund and its “national cultural autonomy.” Ultimately, Lenin viewed the Bundists as a separatist threat to the working class. Lenin wanted an organized party of professional revolutionaries while the Bund wanted to remain an autonomous entity within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. 

The Bolshevik reaction to the Bund is a cautionary example. Marginalized groups within the working class can maintain autonomy and apply cultural lenses to address issues affecting those communities. This is not a contradiction to solidarity but an asset to it. The Bund offered a real alternative to Zionism for Jewish people being persecuted in Russia, and support of the Bund within the revolution could very well have solidified Bundism as a viable alternative.

That viable alternative feels like a thesis in and of itself. Crabapple continuously invites the reader to imagine a new world. Here Where We Live Is Our Home is a thorn in the side of the ruling order; it is the history of anti-Zionist Jewish thought and movements. For so long, this has been an underarticulated history, known only to those willing to search it out. Now it is available to all of us. Reading it, I felt as if I were reading a first edition of Black Jacobins or The Making of the English Working Class. Like those great works of resistance literature, Crabapple’s book is destined to inspire action.

Lead image credit: (Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) Aufmarsch der jüdischen sozialistischenOrganisation 'Bund' am Maifeiertag (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)