April 4: Emancipation in Russia

The Provisional Government in Russia headed by Prince George Lvoff, with Alexander Kerensky as Minister of Justice, proclaimed full religious freedom and the abolition of all discriminatory laws on this date in 1917, three weeks after the abdication of the tsar. This completed the emancipation of Russian Jews (close to 20 percent of the world Jewish population), which the new government had proclaimed on March 17th. Kerensky (whose birth father was Jewish) would become President in July, but his refusal to withdraw Russia from World War I and his clash with General Lavr Kornilov, the commander of the armed forces, led him to rely upon the Bolshevik-led soviets to defend his government. The Bolsheviks’ leader, V.I. Lenin, issued his revolutionary denunciation of the Provisional Government, the “April Theses,” also on this date in 1917. The Bolsheviks would overthrow Kerensky in the October Revolution. This brought an end to efforts by Russian Jews to organize a representative body to the all-Russian Constituent Assembly, which the Bolsheviks dispersed by force in January, 1918. Within three years, Zionist parties and the Jewish Bund would be outlawed and driven underground, even while Communist-approved secular Yiddish culture flowered.

Russia is “passing from the first stage of the revolution — which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organization of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie — to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasant.” — V.I. Lenin