Esther Frumkin (; 1880 – 8 June 1943), born Malkhe Khaye Lifshitz and also known as Mariya Yakovlevna Frumkina, was a Belarusian Bundist revolutionary and publicist and Soviet politician who served as leader of the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, and later of the Yevsektsiya in the Soviet Union. An ardent proponent of the Yiddish language, her political position on Jewish assimilation satisfied neither traditional Jews nor the Soviet leaders. Education and family background Khaye Malke Lifshitz was born in 1880 in the city of Minsk, then part of the Russian Empire. A grandfather was a rabbi, as was her first husband. After a second marriage, she was known as Esther Wichmann. Frumkin's father, Meyer Yankev Lifshitz, was well educated in both secular and classical Jewish studies. He wrote both poetry and prose. Basya, her mother, had family connections that included the Katzenellenbogens and Romms of Vilnius. Both were important families, known for their education, their position within the official Jewish community of Vilnius, and their successful business endeavors. Among other things, Tsvi-Hirsh Katzenellenbogen (1795–1868) supported Jewish social life and artistic talent through the salon he held in his home. One of his more important guests was Avrom Dov-Ber Lebensohn (1794–1878), whose poetry written in Hebrew played a role in the revival of it as a modern language. The Romms' publishing house printed books of all genres, in Yiddish as well as Hebrew, and without discriminating among the various religious factions of the time. Esther was educated at home until the age of 11, studying Hebrew, the Talmud, and texts associated with both the maskilim and Zionist movements of her time. She then attended the gymnasium in Minsk, and went on to study philology and Russian literature at the Pedagogical University in Saint Petersburg. There she came into contact with revolutionary circles, and became familiar with Marxist theory. Professional career Frumkin began publishing in 1900, when she was twenty. Before joining the Bund, she was a social democrat. For the Bund she edited various periodicals. In 1910 she published On the Questions of the Yiddish Folkschul, a discussion of pedagogical issues, especially those associated with language instruction. In part an argument in support of the Bund's demand for national-cultural autonomy, it advocated the establishment of secular elementary schools for the children of the Jewish working class with the teaching to be in Yiddish. In the 1920s,