Socialist Jewish Labor Party

Socialist Jewish Labor Party 

(SERP; also Seimovtsy), a petit bourgeois nationalist organization in Russia. SERP was formed in April 1906 through the merger of the literary group Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance), which arose in 1903 and espoused both Zionism and Narodnichestvo (Populism), and groups that had split off from the Poale Zion party. In 1906, SERP had from 12,000 to 13,000 members. Operating primarily in the Ukraine and Byelorussia, it advocated extraterritorial Jewish national autonomy and the formation of self-governmental bodies headed by the All-Russian Jewish Seim. It opposed Marxism and the RSDLP.

In the spring of 1917, SERP united with the Zionist Socialist Labor Party to form the United Jewish Socialist Labor Party, or Ob”edinentsy. After the October Revolution of 1917, SERP took an anti-Soviet position. In the spring of 1919 some members of the newly formed United Jewish Socialist Labor Party chose to support Soviet power and joined the left Bundists, together with whom they joined the CP(B) of the Ukraine in August 1919. The other party members joined the Bund in 1920.