ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 6 ( 2017/2 ) |
BEYOND THE PALE: THE JEWISH ENCOUNTER WITH LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA, By Ayse Dietrich*, Published by: University of California Press,
California. Written by Benjamin Nathans, Year of Publishing: 2004. Subject
Area: History of the Jews in Late
Imperial Russia. Book Type: History, Jewish Studies. Total Number of Pages:
424. ISBN: 9780520242326, $34.95, Paperback.
The book Beyond the Pale[1]: the Jewish
Encounter with Late Imperial Russia, consists of List of Maps, Illustrations, and
Tables, Acknowledgements, List of Abbreviations, Introduction, four Chapters, a
Conclusion, Bibliography and Index.
The discrimination and anti-Semitic beliefs and attitudes
that were directed against Russia’s Jews began very early in the history of
Russia and continued till 1917. The negative connotations about the Jews in
Russian literature can be traced back to the 12th century chronicle
called the Tale of Bygone Years, to
the story of Vladimir’s choosing Orthodox Christianity. “According to the
chronicle, Vladimir sent representatives to investigate all the options
available to the Rus. The tale explains that Vladimir and his advisers
considered Judaism unacceptable because they found it inexplicable that the God
of the Jews, if He were truly powerful and favored His people, would have
allowed them to be deprived of a country of their own”.[2]
The Jews have long been treated as outsiders undeserving
of a place within Russian society. In 1791, Catherine II (the Great) authorized
the creation of the “Pale of Settlement”[3],
an area in the western part of the Empire where her Jewish subjects would be reside,
by law. Jews were forbidden to live within 50 kilometers of the Pale’s western
border.
In the 19th century the government was a major
actor in fomenting a wave of pogroms which were then followed by a series of
decrees limiting Jewish access to secondary and higher education, barring them
from government service, denying them the right to vote in zemstvo[4] or city
duma elections, and discriminating against them in a numerous other ways. Stricter
restrictions on where Jews were allowed to reside forced thousands from their
homes.
In the Introduction, “The Russian-Jewish Encounter”, the
author starts with the sentence “When I was a little girl, the world was
divided into two parts; namely, Polotzk, the place where I lived, and a strange
land called Russia”, an excerpt taken from Mary Antin’s autobiography, The Promised Land, Chapter I “Within the
Pale” which show how Russian society was divided and how the Jewish community
was marginalized.
The author states that his book documents the encounter between
Jews and Russians, the factors in Jewish integration into
Russian society, and the role of individuals, social groups, and the imperial
state in this process. He argues that Jewish integration into Russian society
began well before the Revolution of 1917, and that its origins were evident
before the Bolsheviks altered the course of Russian history.
He dates the formal
beginning of contact between the Russians and the Jews formally with the
Russian annexation of eastern Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. This
act resulted in the Romanovs unwittingly gaining some half a million Jewish
subjects. However, this event marked the beginning only of tsarist administration of
the Jews. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, with the
growing pressures from the center and during the Russification policy, that Jews
began to speak and read Russian, to migrate to the empire’s Russian regions,
and to become a part of Russia’s social order. Not until the 1860s did the term
“Russian Jew” (russkii evrei) become commonplace,
and by the end of the nineteenth century the Jews became the most important
subject of nationalities policy.
Part I, “The Problem
of Emancipation under the Old Regime”, includes two chapters: “1-Jews and the
Imperial Social Hierarchy”, and “2-The Genesis of Selective Integration”.
In Chapter I, the
author first explains how the Jews involuntarily migrated from West and Central
Europe to Russia and became subjects of the Empire; why the Jews came to Poland
and the Ottoman Empire, but not Russia. He then describes how Russia came to
the Jews at the end of the eighteenth century by expanding its territory
westward and annexing large portions of Poland between 1772 and 1795 where the
Jews had achieved a degree of political and social autonomy. Chapter I also highlights
the status of the Jews in the Empire after the annexation of the territory; the
European style top-down status of social estates (soslovie) which only
began to emerge at the end of the eighteenth century with the partitions of
Poland under an autocratic system; the registration of the newly acquired Jewish
subjects as urban residents and the privileges granted to “useful” Jews and their
restriction to living in the western and southern borderlands, away from the
Russian interior. The author also examines Nicholas’s intention to break down
Jewish autonomy through state-sponsored “merging”(sliianie); the trauma related
to the imposition of the draft, riots and attacks on kahal authorities;
the result of the military draft that weakened internal Jewish authority; and the
establishment of the Pale of Permanent Jewish Settlement[5] in
1835 by Nicholas that formalized the restrictions on Jewish residence. The
chapter then goes on to discuss Kiselev’s Committee for the Determination of
Measures for the Fundamental Transformation of the Jews in Russia (1840-1863);
the abolishment of Kahal in 1844 and the effects of the state-sponsored
schools; Gintsburg’s achievement of obtaining rights for the Jewish community
and adapting them to the surrounding society; and the emergence of wealthy
Jewish entrepreneurs and their effects on economic policies.
Chapter II describes
the abolishment of Nicholas’s conscription policy; the issue of gradual integration
during the Great Reforms of Alexander II; the rights Jewish merchants and other
select groups within the Jewish population such as students, retired soldiers,
writers and artisans gained through the Jewish merchants’ petitions; the
reforms in the Jewish community introduced during the Great Reforms, and the
social vocabulary used to denote the integration of estates.
Part II, “The Jews of
St. Petersburg”, includes three chapters: “3-Language, Ethnicity, and Urban
Space”, “4-Conflict and Community”, “5-The Geography of Jewish Politics”.
Chapter III examines
the situation of Jews who settled in the Russian interior, learned Russian and
adapted to Russian ways of life. The author discusses how the largest Jewish
community moved outside the Pale to St. Petersburg, to the “Window on Russia”, by
taking advantage of the residential privileges offered by the policy of
selective integration; and how they became the most influential Jewish
community in Russia proper. He then discusses the meaning of “native language”
and its relation to ethnicity. The author describes how the Jews who came to St.
Petersburg as genuinely certified artisans or merchants, or in other approved
categories, who were engaged in pursuits considered “useful”, often found
themselves unable to make a living in their stated professions and therefore
turned to different occupations, particularly petty trade. By doing so they lost
their legal right to reside outside the Pale and were subject to expulsion.
This chapter also describes family and gender roles, especially women within
the Jewish community, and the assimilation seen in linguistic practices and the
adoption of Russian as a native language. There is also a discussion of the
emerging Jewish elite who gained prominence as self-appointed mediators for
Russian Jews, and who sought to assert their authority throughout the Pale by
domination Jewish communal institutions in the capital.
In Chapter IV, the
author describes the new image of the Jew (plutocracy) as modern, cosmopolitan,
and very successful urban professions during the Great Reforms; their apparent
self-distancing from less prosperous Jews that was a mystery to Jews in the
Pale and to non-Jews; and their relations with the state authorities. The Jews who
fit this new image resided in St. Petersburg and seem to have mixed very little
with the city’s predominantly Russian population on a social level. In the city
that was regarded as the “window on Russia” the Jews remained spectators. The
author goes on to discuss the struggle to build communal institutions and a synagogue
in St. Petersburg, an effort garnered intense official scrutiny by the tsarist
government. He also examines the social and religious tensions present at all
social levels of the city’s Jewish population, and how St. Petersburg’s Jewish
elites became the self-appointed leaders of Russian Jewry as a whole.
In Chapter V, the
author examines how Odessa became the first center of an emerging
Russian-Jewish culture, displacing St. Petersburg, and the geography of Jewish
life. He continues by discussing the results of the selective integration that
produced wealth and (secular) learning among St. Petersburg’s Jews, but was
ultimately intended to achieve their active participation in, and integration into
Russian society. This is followed by the controversies related to the Vilna
Commission and military service, the period of inertia in official Jewish
policy during the selective integration; and the origins of the pogroms of
1881–82 triggered by the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. The author claims
that the pogroms’ effects have not been reexamined; and he criticizes contemporary
descriptions of the pogrom as “spontaneous” rather than consciously manipulated
antipathies in certain sectors of the population.
Part III, “Jews, Russians, and the Imperial University”, includes two
chapters: “6-The University as Melting Pot?”, and “7- A Silent Pogrom”.
In Chapter VI, the author is interested in
the issues related to the influx of Jews into secular higher education; the
reasons for the success of Jewish students in the imperial university, and the
important consequences of the role of the Enlightenment in the Russian–Jewish
encounter. He then compares the open, egalitarian and secular student
atmosphere in Russia with their counterparts in Central Europe where there was
a requirement to take a Christian oath. He also introduces the reasons for the
Jewish educational system that produced high literacy levels among both men and
women that were higher than those of the Russian Orthodox and Catholics; the
sources of finance to obtain higher education and the distribution of funds;
the type of Russification policy that was pursued by the state; and the special
values and cultural norms that the government wanted Jewish students to adopt; and
the self-organized Jewish student associations which first
appeared in 1881. He also talks about the student demonstrations in cities
across Russia between 1899 and 1905; the students’ self-perception that developed
under the influence of the Russian intelligentsia and the collective identity
of Russian-Jewish students in the aftermath of the failed 1905 revolution.
In Chapter VII, the author examines the
assimilation of the Jews into Russian society through secular education, as
well as the controversies and Judeophobism against the influx of Jews into
Russia’s institutions of higher education. He discusses the arguments made
against the Jews – that they have a negative moral influence on their Christian
counterparts; that they support the revolutionary movement, and that a large
Jewish presence in higher education threatened balance of power. This is
followed by sections on the decisions taken in 1877 not to extend the
privileges of university graduates, and the pogroms in 1881; the effect of ethnically
based quotas introduced by the government targeting Jews and Poles; the
activities of a broad network of Jewish student organizations across European
Russia; and the impact an anti-Semitic play performed at St. Petersburg
University had on relations between Russian and Jewish students.
Part IV, “In the Court of Gentiles”, includes two chapters: “8-The
Judicial Reform and Jewish Citizenship”, and “9- Ethnicity and Civil Society:
The Russian Legal Profession”.
In the Chapter VIII, the author talks about
impact of judicial reforms on relations between Jews and Russians which broke
with the tradition of official discrimination against Jews, pointing out that Jewish
lawyers were leading advocates during integration in the 80s. The author
emphasizes three areas that were reshaped by the introduction of juridical
categories and norms: “the attempt to create a usable narrative of the
Russian-Jewish past, the struggle for emancipation, and the search for new Jewish
identity in a reformed multinational state”. This chapter also deals with the
problems of the historiography of the narrative legal history of Russian Jewry,
and examines the status of Jewish lawyers and their freedom within their
profession. He concludes with a discussion of the controversies surrounding the
issue of restrictions on the admission of Jews to the bar that emerged from
within the profession itself.
The Conclusion, “The Russian-Jewish Encounter in Comparative Perspective”, examines
the problem of Jewish emancipation and integration in late imperial Russia by
comparing it to two contemporary phenomena: the experience of other European Jews,
and the experience of other minorities in the Russian Empire. It highlights the
stratification of Russian Jewry that resulted from half a century of selective
integration, and suggests how the Russian–Jewish encounter in the
decades
before the Revolution of 1917 set the stage for the significant role Jews would
play in early Soviet society.
This book is about the struggle of the Jewish community and their selective
integration into Russian society in late imperial Russia, their accomplishments
in obtaining their rights, and their adaptation to the surrounding society,
culture and place.
The theme of the Jewish presence in the capital and their appearance in
literary works and memoirs supports his arguments very well. This is an comprehensive, readable and highly recommended
book for researchers and academicians examining the issue of the Jews who lived
in the last decades of the Russian Empire.
[1]Pale of Settlement (Cherta
postoyannoy yevreyskoy osedlosti) - a
restricted area where Jews were permitted to live.
[2]Martin, J., (2007 ) Medieval
Russia, 980-1584, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks, Cambridge, pp.7.
[3]Abolished
formally only in 1917.
[4]Rural self-government.
[5]First
enacted by Catherine II.
*Ayse Dietrich - Professor, Part-time, at Middle East Technical University, Department of History. Editor and the founder of the International Journal of Russian Studies. e-mail: editor@ijors.net, dayse@metu.edu.tr, dietrichayse@yahoo.com
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