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1 Russian Jewry's Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 Russian Jewry’s Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 Mihaly Kalman Jewish Studies Program Central European University 2016, Winter Term 2 credits Office hours: by appointment Course description This course introduces students to the history of Soviet Jewry between World War One and the fall of the Soviet Union, with a particular emphasis on the Jewish experience of the World War One and the Russian Civil War. The Jews of Tsarist Russia – the largest Jewish community at the time – were subject to mandatory draft, deportations, violence and pogroms throughout the tumultuous years of World War One and the Russian Civil War. At the same time, Zionist political hopes were boosted by the British government’s promise to establish a “national home” in Palestine, Jewish Communists rose to some of the most prominent roles in the fledgling Soviet state, and the slogans of Jewish political and cultural autonomism carried the day. The emancipation of Jews in 1917 brought about an unprecedented flurry of Jewish political, literary, and social activity, while Soviet Jewish authorities attempted to define an idiosyncratic course of development for the Jews of the Soviet state. From the persecution of Judaism and Zionism, through the development of Yiddish culture and education, to postwar official antisemitism we get a glimpse into the flourishment and tribulations of Jewish life in the Soviet Union. Through primary sources and secondary works, this course will examine the tectonic changes Russian Jewry underwent during the years of crisis in 1914-1921, and in the following seven decades. The course will also serve to introduce students to the history nationalities question of the multiethnic Soviet state, and the vexed relationship between internationalism and Jewishness. Learning Outcomes The course provides a thorough overview of Soviet Jewish history. Along with primary sources such as literary works, memoirs, and historical documents students are expected to read a number of scholarly works. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify principal themes, organizations, and figures of Soviet Jewish history, and will have a sense of the major periods of Soviet history. Using the “Jewish question” as a test case, we will contemplate how the modern state engaged in categorizing, transferring, and transforming her population. The course will also engage with other broader themes such as minority politics and policies, national rights, multiethnic states, genocide, and migration, and the interaction between nationalism and Communism, thereby providing students with an outline of concepts and questions applicable to other geographic areas and historical periods. Students will be able to interpret primary documents, relate them to scholarly works, and critically assess historiographies. A mandatory research paper will develop an ability to find, select, and evaluate sources, and formulate historical arguments. Requirements - Regular, informed participation (20%) - Weekly response papers: not more than one single-spaced page addressing a topic of particular interest in the readings, due by 5PM on the day before the class, to be pre-circulated (20%) - Book review: write a review (750-1000 words) of a book on the syllabus or one that is related to the class (10%) - Presentation: form pairs and prepare a 15-minute introduction for a class discussion based on the readings (10%) - One research paper (12-15 pp.), using primary sources, with an abstract due on Week 8 (10% + 30%) Week 1: War, Spy Mania, and Deportations Lohr, Eric. “The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportation, Hostages, and Violence during World War I.” Russian Review 60, no. 3 (2001): 404-419 S.An-Ski. The Enemy at his Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement during World War I, 63-74, 153-187. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. Edited by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Metropolitan Books – H. Holt and Co., 2003 The American Jewish Committee. The Jews in the Eastern War Zone, 36-39, 44-56, 61-83. New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1916 +++ (optional readings) Zavadivker, Polly. “Blood and Ink: Russian and Soviet Jewish Chroniclers of Catastrophe from World War I to World II,” 54-128. PhD Diss., UC Santa Cruz, 2013 Zipperstein, Steven. “The Politics of Relief: The Transformation of Jewish Communal Life During the First World War.” In The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914-1921 , edited by Jonathan Frankel, 22-40. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 Week 2: Jews and the Russian Revolutions Budnitskii, Oleg. “The Jews and Revolution: Russian Perspectives, 1881–1918.” East European Jewish Affairs 38, no. 3 (2008): 321- 334 1 Frankel, Jonathan. “The Paradoxical Politics of Marginality: Thoughts on the Jewish Situation during the Years 1914-1921.” In Crisis, Revolution and Russian Jews , edited by Jonathan Frankel, 131-154. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009 Schapiro, Leonard. “The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement.” Slavonic and East European Review 40, no. 94 (December 1961): 148-167 Slezkine, Yuri. The Jewish Century, 105-203. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004 +++ Gerrits, André. “Anti-Semitism and Anti-Communism: The Myth of 'Judeo-Communism’ in Eastern Europe.” East European Jewish Affairs 25, no. 1 (1995): 49-72 Hickey, Michael. “Revolution on the Jewish Street: Smolensk, 1917.” Journal of Social History 31, no. 4 (1998): 823-850 Rabinovitch, Simon. “Russian Jewry Goes to the Polls: An Analysis of Jewish Voting in the All-Russian Constituent Assembly Elections of 1917.” East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 2 (2009): 205-225 Riga, Liliana. “Ethnonationalism, Assimilation, and the Social Worlds of the Jewish Bolsheviks in Fin de Siècle Tsarist Russia.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, no. 4 (2006): 762-797 Week 3: Jewish Autonomism in Russia and Ukraine Abramson, Henry. A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1921, 33-109. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999 Rabinovitch, Simon. Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia, 167-248. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014 Revutsky, Abraham. Wrenching Times in Ukraine: Memoirs of a Jewish Minister, 59-93. Translated by Sam Revusky and Moishe Kantorowicz. St. John's, NL: Yksuver Publishing, 1998 +++ Beizer, Mikhail. “The Petrograd Jewish Obshchina (Kehilla) in 1917.” Jews and Jewish Topics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 10 (1993): 5-29 Frankel, Jonathan. “The Dilemmas of Jewish National Autonomism: The Case of Ukraine, 1917-1920.” In Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective , edited by Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyj, 263-279. Edmonton, AB: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1990 Goldelman, Salomon. Jewish National Autonomy in Ukraine, 1917-1920, 53-87. Translated by Michael Luchkovich. Chicago: Ukrainian Research and Information Institute, 1968 Week 4: Jews and the Army in War and Civil War Babel', Isaak. The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 208-212, 227-237, 331-335. Translated by Peter Constantine. New York: Norton, 2002 Budnitskii, Oleg. “The 'Jewish Battalions' in the Red Army.” In Revolution, Repression and Revival: the Soviet Jewish Experience , edited by Zvi Gitelman and Yaacov Ro'i, 15-35. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007 Petrovsky-Shtern, Yohanan. Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917: Drafted into Modernity, 239-268. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009 Sanborn, Joshua A. Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925, 74-96, 114-131. Northern Illinois University Press: DeKalb, 2003 +++ Goldin, Semion. “The 'Jewish Question' in the Tsarist Army in the Early Twentieth Century.” In The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews , edited by Ezra Mendelsohn and Stefani Hoffman, 70-76. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008 Mintz, Matityahu. “The Recruitment of Jews for Ukrainian National Units in 1917, as Reflected in the Minutes of the Provisional Jewish National Council.” Jews and Jewish Topics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 12 (1990): 5-21 Week 5: Pogroms: Theory Bergmann, Werner. “Pogroms.” In International Handbook of Violence Research , edited by Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan, 2 vols. Vol. 1, 351-367. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003 Brass, Paul R. “Introduction: Discourses of Ethnicity, Communalism and Violence.” In Riots and Pogroms , edited by Paul R. Brass, 1-55. London: Macmillan, 1996 Engel, David. “What's in a Pogrom? European Jews in the Age of Violence.” In Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History , edited by Israel Bartal, Jonatahan L. Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt and Natan M. Meir, 19-37. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010 Klier, John D. “The Pogrom Paradigm in Russian History.” In Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History , edited by John D. Klier, 13-38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 +++ 2 Buldakov, Vladimir P. “Freedom, Shortages, Violence: The Origins of the 'Revolutionary Anti-Jewish Pogrom' in Russia, 1917- 1918.” In Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History , edited by Israel Bartal, et.al., 74-94. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011 Gergel, Nakhum. “The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918-1921.” YIVO Annual of Jewish Studies 6 (1951): 237-252 Week 6: Pogroms: Sources and Scholarship Budnitskii, Oleg. Russian Jews between the Reds and the Whites, 123-275. Translated by Timothy J. Portice. Philadephia:
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