POLSKA PARTIA SOCJALISTYCZNA: PROLETARIAT (PPS ProletariatPolish Socialist Party: Proletariat) was founded in July 1900 by the Secessionists, a group of PPS activists who separated from the foreign section of the Lwów branch of the party in May 1900. The Secessionists, led by Ludwik Kulczycki (1866-1941), were openly critical of the structure of the parent organization, as well as the way it formulated its political objectives and the means it proposed to fight the oppressive Tsarist state. PPS Proletariat, active until 1908 and sometimes referred to as Proletariat III, was most influential during the revolution of 1905-7. Even then, however, it was the weakest Socialist party in the Congress Kingdom of Poland. Its members published a number of articles that dealt with the General Jewish Workers’ Alliance in Lithuania, the Bund in Poland and Russia, and what was known as the ‘Jewish question’.

Here we shall consider how the views expressed by the leadership of PPS Proletariat relate to the political objectives of the Bund, its status, and the impact it had on the Socialist labour movement within the Congress Kingdom of Poland in the Tsarist Empire. Alongside many statements on the Bund itself, the press of the PPS Proletariat was responsible for formulating the party's position on the Jewish question in general, which was perceived as a combination of political, economic, and social factors that made up the fabric of the Jewish community in the Congress Kingdom and the Russian Empire (especially as these related to Jewish labourers and tradesmen). The political position of PPS Proletariat on the Bund and the Jewish question is contrasted with the views held by the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (PPS: Polish Socialist Party) and the Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy (SDKPiL: the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania), as well as with those expressed by the Rosiiskaya Sotsial-Demokraticheskaya i Rabochaya Partia (RSDRP: Russian Social Democratic and Workers’ Party).

The period covered in this study begins with 1900, the year in which the Jewish Socialist workers’ movement was first referred to in Proletariat, and ends with 1906, when the last essay on this subject appeared in Proletariusz [The proletarian]. The present paper is principally based on the source material in the three press organs of the party: Proletariat (1900-14), Do boju [To battle] (1904-15), and Proletariusz (1905-19).