Baruch Charney Vladeck (Yiddish: ברוך טשאַרני וולאַדעק; born Baruch Nachman Charney; January 13, 1886 – October 30, 1938) was a Belarusian-born Jewish American labor leader, journalist and politician who was general manager of The Jewish Daily Forward from 1918 until his death in 1938. He was a member of the New York City Board of Aldermen and later the New York City Council, serving as the first majority leader of that body from January to September 1938. He was also a co-founder of the American Labor Party, serving as its leader on the City Council during his tenure.
Life in the Russian Empire
Baruch Charney was born January 13, 1886, in Dukor, a small village near Minsk, in what is now Belarus. His parents were Zev Volf and Brokhe Tsharni (née Hurwitz). His father, a fervent Lubavitcher Hasid, died in 1889, leaving his mother a widow with five sons (he was the fourth) and a daughter.Leyb Vaserman, "Niger, Shmuel,” in Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, vol. 6, cols. 190–210 (New York, 1965)YIVO Encyclopedia Entry Two of his brothers also achieved renown: literary critic Shmuel Niger and Yiddish poet Daniel Charney. Baruch was self-taught, preparing for his gymnasium exams on his own. He studied Jewish and secular sciences.
Baruch Charney was first drawn to the revolutionary movement for the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy in the early 1900s. After the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, he joined Poale Zion, a Marxist–Zionist group, and began teaching in one of their schools. He was arrested in January 1904 for conducting a radical study circle for young workers,Zvi Gitelman, The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003; pg. 184. although according to his children his offense was merely recommending Tolstoy to someone at the library. He spent eight months in jail,"Vladeck, Practical Leader, Socialist Idealist, Dead at 52," The New Leader [New York], vol. 21, no. 45 (November 5, 1938), pg. 8. during which he met older, more radical socialists belonging to the General Jewish Labour Bund, and was converted to their cause. After the Bund posted his bail in September, he formally joined the group and became an organizer.
1905 Revolution
During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Charney was sent by the Bund to lead a workers' march into urban Minsk. While crossing an open plain, they were attacked by Cossacks, one of whom slashed Charney's face with a sword. Now hunted by the police in Minsk, the Bund sent Charney on a party mission to Vilna, where he earned a reputation as a skilled orator and came to be known as "the Second Lassalle". Charney was arrested a second time in 1905, but was released a few months later following the Tsar's October Manifesto and its subsequent amnesties.
Charney was sent next to Poland, narrowly avoiding capture in Lublin before suffering his third arrest in Łódź. It was during this time that he adopted the pseudonym "Vladeck" as a nom de guerre. Baruch Charney would use this as his surname for the rest of his life.
In 1907, Vladeck was named as a Bund delegate to the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in London, representing the Vitebsk district under the pseudonym "Broches". During the Congress, he met Vladimir Lenin, who deeply impressed him. Vladeck would be the only Bundist to support Lenin on policy and in his bid for the Central Committee.
The reforms brought about by the 1905 Revolution did not last, and by 1907 the Bund faced pogroms and repression. Seeing further arrest as inevitable, Vladeck decided that emigration to the United States was his most realistic option. In 1908 he left Europe for North America, landing at Ellis Island on Thanksgiving Day, soon after which he began to immerse himself in the study of American history and culture.
Life in America
In America, Vladeck made use of his previous experience as a public speaker, traveling extensively for four years (sponsored by the Jewish Agitation Bureau) and giving public lectures on a variety of social, political, and economic topics. The socialist Jewish Daily Forward affectionately dubbed him "the Young Lassalle", echoing his earlier moniker. During this time, Vladeck's idealistic perception of America would be tempered by encounters with Jim Crow racism in the South and violent strikebreaking in Philadelphia.
Vladeck joined the staff of The Forward in 1912 as manager of its Philadelphia branch, while also studying at the Teachers' College of the University of Pennsylvania. He became a naturalized citizen in 1915 and made his first run for public office the same year, campaigning unsuccessfully for Judge of the Philadelphia Orphans' Court on the Socialist ticket.
In 1916, Forward editor Abraham Cahan invited Vladeck to New York to become city manager of the paper. By this point, he was an active member of the Socialist Party and its Yiddish-language affiliate, the Jewish Socialist Federation. During that year's elections, he became an important ally of Meyer London, a fellow Jewish emigrant from the Russian Empire, and aided him in his re-election campaign. Vladeck himself ran for State Senate, coming in third place with 20 percent of the vote. When the Russian Revolution broke out a few months later, he celebrated the downfall of the Tsardom with the rest of the Forward staff, but decided that America had become his home and chose not to return.
New York City Board of Aldermen
Following America's entry into World War I in 1917, the Socialist Party's anti-war stance won it many new votes in ethnic strongholds such as Milwaukee and New York from conservative German-Americans who also opposed the war. That year, the Socialist Party of New York fielded a full ticket for the State Senate, State Assembly, and Board of Aldermen, with Vladeck chosen to run in the Board's 56th district representing the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Campaigning in both Yiddish and English, Vladeck drew heavy crowds and would ultimately win the election against Democratic-Republican fusion candidate Harry Heyman by a margin of 779 votes out of 4,825 cast.
The Socialists elected seven alderman to the 70-member board, and as a result most of their measures aimed at government reform, municipal ownership, and workers' rights were defeated by the Tammany majority. They were also subjected to vitriol and even threats of lynching for their opposition to the war and the Espionage Act. Vladeck, for his part, won some concessions from the board, such as free hospitalization for city workers and free lunches for poor schoolchidren. Partly under his influence, the seven Socialists broke from the party to endorse the purchase of Liberty Bonds in 1918.
Vladeck was re-elected in 1919 and in 1920 was chosen to lead the Socialists on the board. During his second term he fought for public housing and housing regulations, issues he would develop a lifelong passion for. He finally lost re-election in 1921 after the Socialist Party splintered, his district was gerrymandered, and the Republicans and Democrats fielded another fusion candidate.
Forward manager and Socialist functionary
Vladeck became general manager of The Jewish Daily Forward in August 1918, charged with the organization's day-to-day operation. He would hold the position until his death twenty years later. During his tenure, he introduced a group insurance plan for all Forward employees and an English-language page to expand the paper's appeal. He also convinced the Forward Association to sponsor WEVD, a radio station set up by the Socialist Party in memoriam of its recently deceased leader Eugene V. Debs.
Despite his earlier patronage of Vladeck, Forward editor Abraham Cahan came to harbor a deep resentment towards his subordinate for reasons that were not entirely clear. Biographer Melech Epstein posits that Vladeck's poeticism clashed with Cahan's realism, and that his rapid rise in political popularity made Cahan jealous. As early as 1914 or 1915, Cahan wrote to Jacob Benjamin Salutsky, Vladeck's colleague at the Jewish Socialist Federation, claiming that Vladeck was unreliable. After Vladeck became general manager of The Forward, his increased contact with foreign correspondents and writers gave the impression to some that he, not Cahan, was the real boss of the paper, fueling Cahan's jealousy.
The situation between the two men was worsened by several ideological conflicts over the years. In 1925, Cahan traveled to Mandatory Palestine at the invitation of the Histadrut and returned a committed Zionist. Vladeck, meanwhile, had been an anti-Zionist since his days in the Bund. He met the 1917 Balfour Declaration with indifference; while he had no issue with giving Jews and Arabs equal rights in Palestine, he opposed any special status or privileges for Jews over Arabs. When Cahan began to lobby for a Jewish state, Vladeck rebuked him as follows:
Another point of contention came with the Socialist Party's many internal conflicts. Vladeck had always been a member of the party's right wing, fighting against attempts by the Communists to hijack the party and the broader labor movement. However, at the party's 1932 convention, he joined the militants in their attempt to depose Morris Hillquit, who they saw as complacent, as national chairman of the party in favor of an "American face" (namely Milwaukee mayor Daniel Hoan, although previous presidential candidate Norman Thomas was also proposed). Hillquit would narrowly secure re-election, and Cahan, who had supported him, "virtually excommunicated" Vladeck for his role in the ordeal, although ultimately did not fire him.
Vladeck returned to the electoral arena in 1930, one year into the Great Depression, with a run for Congress in New York's 8th district, covering the southern half of Brooklyn. He lost to incumbent Democrat Patrick J. Carley but polled an impressive 17 percent of the vote, giving hope to some in the party that an electoral comeback was on the horizon. Vladeck made two more Congressional runs in 1932 and 1934, as well as a run for Brooklyn Borough President in 1933, but did not match his previous success. By 1936, he had grown sick of what he perceived as Norman Thomas's divisive influence on the party, and tendered his resignation in search of a new political home.
Organizing the Jewish Labor Committee
Throughout his life Vladeck was dedicated to improving the lives of Jewish refugees around the world, and by the 1930s he had established himself as a leading humanitarian. He belonged to a number of like-minded groups, such as the Joint Distribution Committee (and one of its predecessors, the People's Relief Committee), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and the American ORT Federation (of which he served as president from 1932). He was also involved in several domestic Jewish organizations, including the Workmen's Circle, the Jewish Socialist Verband (which had split off from the Jewish Socialist Federation), the American Jewish Committee, and the Yiddish Scientific Institute. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Vladeck saw him as a threat both to Jews and labor, and resolved to use his standing to organize American resistance to the Nazi regime.
Vladeck laid the groundwork for the Jewish Labor Committee in 1933, bringing together Jewish trade unionists (especially the garment trades), socialists, and kindred groups and individuals opposed to the Nazis. Together, they successfully convinced the American Federation of Labor to support a national boycott of German goods at the federation's 1933 convention.