Copyright by Inna Shtakser 2007 The Dissertation Committee for Inna Shtakser certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Structure of feeling and radical identity among working-class Jewish youth during the 1905 revolution Committee: _________________________________ Joan Neuberger, Supervisor _________________________________ Charters Wynn _________________________________ David Crew _________________________________ Peter Jelavich _________________________________ John Downing Structure of feeling and radical identity among working-class Jewish youth during the 1905 revolution by Inna Shtakser, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2007 For my late parents, Bella and Vladimir Shtakser Acknowledgments I want to thank my graduate advisor, Joan Neuberger, who was the best reader anybody could hope for. Anything that is good about this dissertation owes much to her critical insights, patience and encouragement. Members of my dissertation committee, Charters Wynn and Peter Jelavich, were always ready to assist with helpful suggestions, and I am very grateful. I also thank my other committee members, David Crew and John Downing, who read this dissertation and commented on it. Obviously, though, any shortcomings of this work are my own. My dissertation research was funded by the History department of the University of Texas at Austin. I am also indebted to Don Arthur, the University’s Slavic bibliographer, and Wendy Nesmith, the head of interlibrary loan services in Perry Castaneda Library for their unflagging assistance. This dissertation could not have been written without the dedicated work and the incredible helpfulness of the stuff of Gosudarstennyi arkhiv rossiiskoj federatsii (GARF), especially Nina Ivanovna Abdullaeva. I also thank Irina Bersneva for her constant support and friendship. I additionally want to thank Prof. Michael Confino from Tel-Aviv University, whose mentoring was invaluable for my intellectual development and who is always ready to provide guidance and emotional support. I thank Dr. Ofer Binder for his friendship as well as his criticism. Obviously I owe a debt to many more friends and colleagues, too numerous to mention, who imparted advice and encouragement. You know who you are. Please do not think you were forgotten. Thank you. Last but not least, I want to thank my wonderful aunts and uncles, Irit and Garry Tenenboim and Lili and Lev Roitburd. Our family went through some difficult times in these last years and there was no way that I would have managed to stay in Austin and work on this dissertation without their incredibly generous help with whatever was necessary. I’m very proud to be a member of such a family. The dates that I use in this dissertation are the ones used in the documents. This is important because many of the documents refer to the Julian calendar—abandoned by the Bolsheviks in 1918—rather than the Gregorian calendar used in the rest of Europe. Before 1900, a Julian-calendar date was twelve days before its corresponding Gregorian- calendar date. Beginning in 1900, a Julian date was thirteen days before its corresponding Gregorian date. I use the Russian names of cities and villages because most of my documents are in Russian. Using several names for each place would make the text unreadable, and as all the nationalities in question are currently politically independent, I feel that the previously prevalent fears of Russian linguistic imperialism are no longer justified. All of the translations in this work are mine. My transliterations drop the Library of Congress system’s soft and hard signs to better meet the contemporary reader’s expectations. v Structure of feeling and radical identity among working-class Jewish youth during the 1905 revolution Publication No. Inna Shtakser, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2007 Supervisor: Joan Neuberger This dissertation “’Structure of Feeling’ and Radical Identity among Working-Class Jewish Youth during the 1905 Revolution” examines the emotional aspects of revolutionary experience during a critical turning point in both Russian and Jewish history. Most studies of radicalization construe the process as an intellectual or analytical one. I argue that radicalization involved an emotional transformation, which enabled many young revolutionaries to develop a new ‘structure of feeling’, defined by Raymond Williams as an intangible awareness that allows us to recognize someone belonging to our cultural group, as opposed to a well-versed stranger. The key elements of this new structure of feeling were an activist attitude towards reality and a prioritization of feelings demanding action over others. Uncovering the links between feeling, idea, and activism holds a special significance in the context of modern Jewish history. When pogroms swept through Jewish communities during 1905-6, young Jews who had fled years earlier, often after bitter conflicts with their families and a difficult rejection of traditions, returned to protect their communities. Never expecting to return or be accepted back, they arrived with new identities forged in radical study circles and revolutionary experience as activist, self-assertive Jews. The self-assertion that led them away earlier proved them more effective leaders than traditional Jewish communal authorities. Their intellectual and emotional experiences in self-education, secularization, and political vi activism meant creating a new social status within the Jewish community legitimating a new Jewish identity as working-class Jewish revolutionary. vii Table of Contents Introduction – p. 1 1. The Road to Revolutionary Identity – p. 38: What Were They Striving For? – p. 38 What Were They Leaving? – The Community and the Family – p. 47 2. Students and Apprentices: Radicalization – p. 69: Students Find Their Way to the Revolution – p. 69 What Revolutionary Politics Meant to the Students – p. 77 The Apprentices and Their Way to the Revolution – p. 82 What Revolutionary Politics Meant to the Apprentices – p. 91 3. The Emotional Experience of Politicization – p. 99: 4. Identity Forged in Revolution – p. 125: Jewish Workers and the Revolutionary Movement – p. 125 Working-Class Women and the Revolutionary Movement – p. 132 Education and Revolutionary Culture – p. 135 Internal Tensions within Revolutionary Milieu – p. 139 Jewish Soldiers and the Revolutionary Movement – p. 153 The Semi-Intelligentsia and the Revolutionary Movement – p. 158 viii 5. The Emotional Experience of Revolutionary Activism – p. 170: Creation of Emotional Community and the Worker-Intelligentsia Conflict – p. 170 Family, Jewish Community and Education – p. 180 6. The Pogroms of 1905-6: The Self-Defense Units as an Emotional Experience – p. 189: The Emotional Experience of Self-Defense – p. 193 Conclusion – p. 222 Bibliography – p. 226 Vita – p. 233 ix Introduction This work focuses on the Jewish working-class revolutionary youth who rebelled against both class- and ethnicity-based discrimination during the 1905 revolution. When pogroms swept through Pale of Settlement towns and shtetls in 1905- 6, starting immediately after the Manifesto was published, young Jews who had earlier left the Jewish community, often after bitter conflicts with their families, returned to protect their homes. They returned with new identities, forged in radical study circles and revolutionary experience, as activist, self-assertive Jews. This dissertation seeks to explain their journey. The 1905 Revolution was the first mass upheaval against the regime in which people from multiple classes and ethnic groups participated. Different population groups joined together to express their specific grievances against the political establishment. Liberals demanded civil rights and parliamentary representation, non-Russian national organizations demanded equality for their languages and cultures, peasants demanded land and the workers demanded better working conditions and a right for representation both by labor unions and by their representatives in parliament. The tsar, frightened and confused by the unexpected popular outburst, agreed in his October 1905 Manifesto to parliamentary representation and a wide variety of civil rights including partial legalization of labor unions. But then, after satisfying the more moderate parts of the revolutionary movement, he began an onslaught against the revolutionaries who were not 1 satisfied with the Manifesto. Since most of the army proved willing to obey the government, the revolution was defeated. From the bloody repression of the workers’ uprising in Moscow in December 1905 to the June the 3rd 1907 dismantling of the allegedly too radical parliament (duma) by the tsar, so the 1905 revolution was gradually defeated. But it provided the empire’s population with some political experience and an enhanced sense of power and dignity. Although the 1905 revolution was a turning point in the lives of many workers,1 radically changing their views of themselves and of their environment, I do not focus on the external events of this revolution or even on revolutionary politics as such. My work deal with the emotional aspect of the revolutionary experience. I treat emotions as constructed and learned reactions such as moral outrage, joy, and pride in asserting a newly emerging personal and communal dignity. While