Jewish section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Socialists viewed nations as ephemeral creations of the capitalist order, and expected them to disappear with the advent of socialism. Vladimir Lenin pointed approvingly to European Jews, who, in his view, had already begun assimilating into the nations among whom they lived. In 1913 Joseph Stalin argued that since Jews lacked a common territory, language, and economy, they did not constitute a nation.
