Jews and The Russian Revolution
June 26, 2006 10:45 AM Subscribe
Jews and The Russian Revolution: "More often than not, we picture nineteenth-century Russian Jews as residents of hermetically Jewish shtetls, small hamlets saturated with tradition and authenticity. After the Revolution of 1917 perceptions dramatically reversed, as Jews suddenly appeared as consummate insiders in the young Soviet state. How are we to
make sense of these disparate impressions, stemming from two adjacent historical periods?" [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 (44 comments total)
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One the one hand Russians Jews are thought of as quintessential outsiders: "We are accustomed to thinking of Jews in imperial Russia as the least integrated of all the European Jewish communities, as quintessential outsiders and scapegoats for a regime that eventually collapsed in 1917 under the weight of its own backwardness. It is a view powerfully reinforced by the memories of more than two million emigrants fleeing pogroms and poverty, canonized in the paintings of Marc Chagall and the popular stories of Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem.
On the other hand, they are thought of as consummate insiders : "After the Revolution of 1917 perceptions dramatically reversed, as Jews suddenly appeared as consummate insiders in the young Soviet state. They were extraordinarily visible in the upper echelons of the Communist Party, the Red Army, and the Cheka (the security apparatus that eventually became the KGB), achieving a level of integration within institutions of state power unmatched in any country at any time before or since (apart, of course, from ancient and modern Israel). In the 1920s and 1930s, Jews were a much-noted presence across virtually the entire white-collar sector of Soviet society, as journalists, physicians, scientists, academics, writers, engineers, economists, NEPmen, entertainers, and more.
Comparing the outsider and insider versions of the Russian Jewish story, Nathans stumbles upon a dilemma. He writes:"How are we to make sense of these disparate impressions, stemming from two adjacent historical periods. Was the Russian Revolution responsible for transforming the Jews, overnight as it were, from quintessential outsiders to consummate insiders?"
Yuri Slezkine, author of the Jewish Century offers an explanation for the inability of historians to bridge the outsider and insider images of the Russian Jews in an interview with Australia's ABC National Radio:
"So many history texts about Soviet Jews talk about Jews at the time of the revolution, particularly about the pogroms, about martyrdom and victimisation, and then talk about the persecution of Hebrew, other things that were indeed very important. And then Jews seem to disappear (because) .. people who rebel against Judaism, who eagerly embrace, in this case, the Russian national canon, are seen as no longer Jewish" According to American scholars, "Jews participating in Soviet life, did not seem Jewish anymore... By claiming that people such as Trotsky and Lazar Kaganovich and other Soviet revolutionaries of Jewish background were not really Jewish, you do not have to deal with the question of Jewish participation in the revolution."
posted by gregb1007 at 10:48 AM on June 26, 2006