Moisei Rafes

Moisei Rafes[a] (3 November 1883 – 1942) was a prominent Jewish politician of the Ukrainian People's Republic as the Bundist representative.

[1] Rafes was a member of the Central Council of Ukraine and the Petrograd Soviet, as well as an unsuccessful candidate for the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly.

When tensions within the Bund heightened, due to the pro-Bolshevik leaning of a part of the leadership, Moisei Rafes was the leader of the centrist wing of the Bund, while Mikhail Liber and Benjamin Kheifetz led the rightists.

[4] However, Rafes led the scissionist Kombund group in Kiev in February 1919, later joined by similar groups in Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov and Poltava, but the Kombund lasted only till May 1919, when it merged into the Komfarband.

After the refusal of the Soviet authorities to authorize the formation of a distinct Jewish Communist Party, Rafes, like other former Bundists Esther Frumkin, Alexander Chemerinsky and Rakhmiel Veinshtain, finally joined the upper echelons of the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party (CPSU).