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"This story begins with Molly Crabapple's discovery of the art and ephemera left behind by her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort. Sam was a rough-and-tumble kid who worked at a tannery deep in the Pale of Settlement in 19th century Russia. As a young man he discovered that he was not just a laborer, but an artist--and soon after that, a revolutionary, enlisted in the strikes, street fights, and study groups of a new group of radicals sweeping the Pale: the Jewish Bund. Crabapple saw herself not just in her great-grandfather's career as an artist, but in his revolutionary inclinations. In the story of the Bund, she discovered a movement of artists, philosophers, working people, and street fighters with a thrilling utopian vision for the world. The founders of the Bund understood themselves as Jews--people with a special history of oppression--but also as part of an international movement that rejected all forms of ethnonationalism. They fought for this vision in parlors, cafes, battlefields and prison camps. Their ideas helped spark the Russian Revolution, which soon swept them aside. Their fighters battled pogromists in an age of nationalism and their leaders tangled with Zionists over the destiny of the Jewish people. Their last stand was in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, where they helped lead a doomed uprising, the heroic and tragic climax to their story. In retelling the epic history of the Bund and its extraordinary cast of characters during one of the most politically and culturally volatile periods in European history, Crabapple asks a critical question: did the Bund fail because of an unworkable dream of solidarity? Or did the world, in thrall to zero-sum nationalism, fail the Bund? This dynamic story is driven by that urgent question--and offers a new lens through which to see our contemporary struggles"-- Provided by publisher.
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