The Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party of the Zionist trend (Zionism was a political movement aimed at uniting the Jewish people in their historical homeland). The first Poale Zion (Hebrew: “Workers of Zion”) group was formed in 1900–1901 in Yekaterinoslav by Jewish publicists Ber Borochov and Shimon Dobin. In 1901–1903, groups of “Zionist Socialists Poale Zion” appeared in other cities of the Jewish pale of settlement (Warsaw, Vilna, Vitebsk, Dvinsk, Odessa, etc.). Members of these groups advocated the class struggle of the Jewish proletariat within the framework of international social democracy and, unlike the Bund, considered it necessary to concentrate the Jewish population on a certain territory. However, they had different views of where the Jewish state should be established. Thus, in 1904–1906, members of the Poale Zion circles who allowed the creation of a Jewish state not only in Palestine, organized the Zionist-Socialist Labor Party, the Socialist Jewish Labor Party, the Jewish Territorialist Labor Party.

In August 1905, at a conference in Zurich, the Poale Zionists who supported the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine announced the creation of the Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party (JSDLP). In February 1906, at the All-Russian Congress, the Party’s name was approved – the JSDLP Poale Zion. The Party’s program was based on the ideas of Ber Borochov. The minimum program included the struggle for the creation of the Jewish territorial autonomy in Palestine and its democratic organization; the maximum program was all about the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship and the socialization of production means. Party members actively participated in the Revolution of 1905–1907: they were members of coalition strike committees, self-defense groups. The Poale Zionist organizations consisted mainly of proletarians and artisans. In the middle of 1906, the Party reached 16 thousand people in membership, but after the defeat of the Revolution, it sharply decreased.