DOVID ZASLAVSKI (DAVID IOSIFOVICH ZASLAVSKII)

DOVID ZASLAVSKI (DAVID IOSIFOVICH ZASLAVSKII) (December 31, 1879-late March 1965)

            He was born in Kiev.  His father, an employee of the Zaitsev sugar factory, was a follower of the Jewish Enlightenment and spoke Russian at home with his children.  He even hired a teacher to instruct his son in Hebrew, but the lad made little progress here.  He nonetheless became interested in Russian Jewish literature and Jewish history.  When he was a pupil in the first class in high school, he was taken for a socialist.  As a student at Kiev University, he took an active part in the Jewish student organization which had been founded (autumn 1899) by Zionist and socialist students together.  He stayed with the organization when it later drew closer to the Bund; it was transformed initially into the “group of intellectual Jews” and later into the Bundist group “Frayhayt” (Freedom).  During the student disturbances of 1901 in Kiev, he was expelled from the university.  From 1903 he was active in the local organization of the Bund, and at the same time he began literary activities for the Kiev Russian newspaper Otkliki (Repercussions).  He worked very intensively, 1905-1906, in the movement, was a member of the Vilna, Riga, and Odessa committee of the Bund, wrote proclamation for the central committee, of which he was a kind of council-member in 1905, took part in Bundist meetings and conferences, and was a celebrated agitator at meetings and conventions.  He was arrested on several occasions and spent time in prison in Vilna and Kiev.  He wrote articles and features for the Vilna daily Folkstsaytung (People’s newspaper) and other Bundist serials.  He was a member of the editorial board of the Bundist Russian-language Nasha tribuna (Our tribune) in Vilna and Kovno, and he wrote for it as well as for Nashe slovo (Our word) in Kovno (using his party pseudonym, Filip Bogrov), and also press notices and reviews.  In 1907 he withdrew from practical party activity and devoted himself entirely to writing.  He was a regular contributor to the Russian Kievskie vesti (Kievan news); later, beginning from 1909, he was writing for the great liberal daily, Kievskaia mysl’ (Kievan idea), and in 1912 (also using the pen name Homunkulus) for the radical Den’ (Day) in St. Petersburg where he settled at this time.  At the same time, he wrote for the Bundist publications, Di tsayt (The times) in St. Petersburg (1912) and Evreiskie vesti (Jewish news) in St. Petersburg (1916).  That year he was coopted by the central committee of the Bund and was very active in the party’s work in St. Petersburg.  With the outbreak of the February Revolution (1917), he was the representative of the Bund in the Petrograd Soviet and co-editor of the Bundist Arbayter shtime (Workers’ voice).  At the tenth conference of the Bund in April 1917, he was elected onto the central committee of the party.  As representative for the Bund, he was vice-chairman of the Organization Bureau for Convening a Jewish Conference in Russia and a representative of the Bund on the organizing committee of the conference of democratic Jewish communities in Russia (1918).  He wrote a great deal in Petrograd for Arbayter shtime and Golos bunda (Voice of the Bund) (1917-1918), as well as other Bundist publications in the country.  When the Bolsheviks later strengthened themselves within the government (1918), Zaslavski became an extreme anti-Bolshevik.  He left for Kiev, where he edited Di yidishe kooperatsye (Jewish cooperation), the Russian collection Na evreiskiia temy (On a Jewish theme), and others.  When the Bolsheviks in 1919-1920 definitively took control over Kiev, he published a letter in Yiddish in Komunistishe fon (Communist banner) and in Russian in Kommunist (Communist), in which he renounced his political activity until that point in time.  In 1921 he moved to Moscow, from there back to St. Petersburg, where he engaged entirely in literary work, primarily on topics concerning the history of the revolutionary labor movement.  He published articles and monographs in Soviet journals, in Evreiskaia letopis’ (Jewish annals), and in separate publications as well.  He was a member of the Jewish historical ethnographic society and chairman of the commission to study the history of the Jewish labor movement.  In 1925 he published a letter in Pravda (Truth) in Moscow, in which he made common cause politically with the Communist Party, and from that point he became a bitter, sarcastic, and unbridled Soviet feuilletonist and journalist widely known across the borders of Soviet Russia.  He initially published his feature pieces in Leningrad Communist newspapers, later (in 1926) becoming a contributor to Izvestia (News) in Moscow and from 1928 a regular contributor to Pravda.  During the war against Hitler, he was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow.  He also wrote articles for the Moscow Yiddish newspapers Emes (Truth) and Eynikeyt (Unity) and for Frayhayt (Freedom) in New York.  In 1945 he received a Soviet medal.  One of his last, ugly attacks was against Boris Pasternak for his novel Doctor Zhivago (1958).  Among his pseudonyms: A. Lyutov, D. Osipov, P. Lipis, A Kleyn Mentshele, and the like.

            His books and longer journal articles in Yiddish include: Dzhuzepe garibaldi (Giuseppe Garibaldi) (Vilna: Di velt, 1906), 25 pp.; Bay di bregn fun temze (By the shores of the Thames [River]), a letter from the conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party in London (with A. Litvak, using the pen name Bogrov) (Vilna, 1907), 213 pp.; Farshvekhte reynikeytn, an entfer di rabonim (Dishonored Torah scrolls, an answer to the rabbis) (translated from Russian by Max Weinreich) (St. Petersburg, 1917), 8 pp.; “Dostoyevski un di yidn” (Dostoevsky and the Jews), in Sh. Ts. Zetser’s Dos vort (The word) 4 (1922); “Materyaln tsu der geshikhte fun der kiyever organizatsye fun ‘bund’” (Materials on the history of the Kiev organization of the Bund), Royter pinkes (Red records) (Warsaw) 1 (1922); 15 yor ratnfarband un di yidishe masn (Fifteen years of the Soviet Union and the Jewish masses) (Moscow, 1932), 24 pp.; Di yidn in ratnfarband (The Jewish in the Soviet Union) (Moscow, 1933), 47 pp.; Der daytsher fashizm brengt knekhtshaft di felker (German fascism brings slavery to the peoples) (Moscow, 1941), 32 pp.  He wrote numerous books and pamphlets in Russian on such topics as: the history of Jews in Ukraine, Birobidzhan, aroused religious zealots, Poles in Kiev in 1920 (written in 1922), Zubatov and Manye Vilbushevich (Moscow, 1923), M. F. Dragomanov—a critical-biographical study (Kiev, 1924), A. Y. Zhelyabov (Moscow, 1924), Ferdinand Lassalle (Leningrad, 1925), the knight of the Black Hundreds V. Shulgin (1925), chronicle of the February Revolution, the Civil War in the United States in North America (in 1861-1865), Taras Shevchenko, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Stepniak-Kravtchinsky, the face of Hitler’s army, and the fight for peace.  He died in New York.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; V. Medem, Mayn lebn (My life), vol. 2 (New York, 1923), p. 132; Kh. L. Poznanski, Memuarn fun a bundist (Memoirs of a Bundist) (Warsaw, 1938), pp. 125-31; Rabbi Y. Kh. Metusuv, An entfer af an entfer (An answer to an answer) (Chernigov, 1917), 15 pp.; “Baloynt mitarbeter fun redaktsye pravda” (Rewarded contributor to the editorial board of Pravda), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (September 25, 1945); “A yontef fun der sovetisher prese” (A holiday at the Soviet press), Eynikeyt (September 27, 1945); D. Tsharni (Daniel Charney), in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (November 29, 1948); Kh. Grinberg, Bleter fun a tog-bukh (Pages from a diary) (New York, 1954), pp. 300-8.

Aleksander Pomerants