Ber Dov Berochov (1881-1917) was a Marxist Zionist and one of the founders of the Labour Zionist movement. He was born in the town of Zolotonshi , Ukraine, under the Russian Empire. As an adult he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party but was expelled for his Zionist beliefs. Subsequently, he helped form the Poale Zion party and devoted his life to promoting the party in Russia, Europe, and America.

Borochov became highly influential in the Zionist movement for developing a theory of migration to Palestine which united Zionism with the Marxism which was popular among young east European Jews of the day. Borochov argued that the Jews of Europe were structured according to an inverted class pyramid where few Jews occupied the productive layers of society as workers. The Jews would overcome their oppression in eastern Europe by spontaneous migration to Palestine, where they would form a proletarian basis in order to carry out Marxist class struggle.

Borochov's ideas were influential in the convincing Jewish youth from Europe to move to Palestine, but Borochov's theories remained most influential in Eastern Europe, where they formed the basis of the Left Poale Zion movement which was active in Poland during the interwar years. Indeed, Borochov's vision of class struggle in Palestine was widely viewed as untenable by the 1910s, with Jewish migrants to Palestine struggling to establish an economic foothold and with interclass cooperation seemingly necessary, and his theories dimmed in popularity there. Borochov, for years an advocate for a doctrinaire Marxist Zionism, himself seemed to repudiate his former vision of class struggle in Palestine in speeches towards the end of his life, but Borochov's Left Poale Zion followers continued to vigorously advocate class struggle both in Palestine and eastern Europe, supporting the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

The Poale Zion movement split into left and right factions which have evolved into the modern Israeli Labour Party and Meretz. The Left Poale Zion movement in Europe was ultimately destroyed by World War II.

External links

• Ber Borochov Internet Archive