Book
Архив еврейской истории
The 11th volume of the Archive opens a thematic section devoted to the history of the "Western", Baltic and Polish Jews who "moved" to
the Soviet Union in 1939-1940. It includes the memoirs and letters of
the "chronicler" of the Latvian division, political worker Ruvin Amdur; the autobiography, letters and diaries of Boris Tanis, a young man
raised in Jewish traditions, but who sought to join
a new life; the "Palestinian protocols" of 1943, containing memories of Jewish children from Poland who escaped from the USSR together
with the army of General Vladislav Anders. The "Research" section includes a criminal history of Jewish life in the 1820s; the history of
the confused life of a former Zionist, cadet, anarchist, left SR
and, finally, the Bolshevik Grigory Besedovsky, who became one of the
first Soviet non-returnee diplomats; new results of the search for the missing archive of the Kiev Institute of Jewish
proletarian culture. The collection contains letters from anarchist Saul Yanovsky and prominent figure of the Poalei Zion party Mark Yarblum to Peter Kropotkin; letters From Semyon Dubnov to colleagues in the " Jewish
old times"; correspondence of the head of "agro-joint" Joseph Rosen
with the musician David Shor and his son – the historian of philosophy,
translator and art critic Evsey Shor. The collection
includes an index of the contents of the previous 10 volumes of the "Archive
Jewish history». The materials published in the book are extracted from the
archives of Riga, Moscow, Jerusalem, Kiev, as well as from personal archives.
The publication includes an autobiography, a diary and letters from a young man from a former Pale of Settlement. Boris Tanis was born in 1923 into a Jewish family in Western Ukraine. After the partition of Poland, he took Soviet citizenship and, as a soldier of the Red Army, went through World War II. Boris Tanis’ diary, written in the wake of his return home to the Rivne region in 1945–1946, reflects the thoughts and feelings of a Soviet soldier who lost his family during the Holocaust. Having enthusiastically adopted the ideals of the Soviet regime, after the end of the war Boris Tanis goes to Central Asia, where he manages to make a career as an official in the construction sector. Published ego-documents may be of interest to historians of the Second World War, researchers of Jewish and Soviet history, and specialists in the history of emotions. Documents are provided with an introduction and comments.
Analysis of materials published in the volume
In September 1939, masses of Jewish refugees poured into Soviet territory to escape Nazi anti-Semitism. However, the provision of such a numerous group of immigrants was problematic for the Soviet authorities. In the end, tens of thousands of the refugees were deported to the interior of the USSR in June 1940. However, with the outbreak of the Great Patriotic war, they were amnestied and allowed to enroll in the Polish armed forces, known as the Anders` army. Thus, about 6,000 amnestied Jewish refugees were enlisted into the army. After the evacuation of Anders` army from the Soviet Union, the collection of evidence on life experience in the USSR had began among the members of the Polish army. The “Palestinian protocols” is a separate group of such testimonies. This is the earliest available source on the history of Polish Jews in the USSR. The publication contains two testimonies from the “Palestinian protocols” collection.
The proceedings of the III International Scientific Conference of Young Orientalists, which was held at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies in November 2015, cover different aspects of the development of the countries of Northeast Asia and their cooperation with Russia. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the current state and prospects of political, military and economic development of China, Japan, Mongolia, North and South Korea in various fields in the context of the current military and political situation in the world and main regional economic trends. Some issues of cultural, social and historical development of Russia's Far Eastern neighbors are also explored.
Based on extensive collection of interviews with Soviet, mostly - Ukrainian, - Jews born before the World War II, the essay examines the problem of religious observance and attitudes to it before and after the war concentrating on the circumcision, the first rite of passage, primal in Judaism and exceedingly dangerous during the Holocaust.
In the 19th volume of the annual “Tirosh. Jewish, Slavic & Oriental Studies”, we are presenting articles by young scholars from Belarus, Israel, France, Poland and Russia, who work in the fields of History, Biblical and Religious Studies, Cultural and Literary Studies, as well as ethnographers and anthropologists. The content of the current issue bespeaks the importance of the topics where Jewish Studies meet Slavic and Oriental Studies: classical Jewish texts; contacts, interplay and collisions between Jewish, Christian and Islamic cultures; Jewish fiction and non-fiction in the 19-20 centuries; history of the Eastern-European Jewry in the modern period, and the Jewish identity today and in historical perspective.
A collection of articles “Object – Symbol – Sign in the Slavic and Jewish Cultural Tradition” includes the papers of international conference held in Moscow on 5–7 December 2018. The book includes 17 articles by scholars from Russia and the Republic of Belarus, who devoted their research to the analysis of the subject code in the texts of the book and oral tradition. The attention of authors is focused on the role of the object / item / artifact in the rites and rituals, the secondary use of ritual attributes; such topics as subject and symbol in the language of culture were highlighted, as well as the image of the object / objects in the oral narratives (family heirlooms, local symbols and brands, etc.), and an object / artefact as a carrier of cultural information.
The chapter examines Russian Jews’ participation in Russian political parties as a consequence of their integration into Russian society, and the role of the Jews in various political parties in late XIX – early XX centuries, from social-democrats to cadets.
In this day, the antisemitic topos of "Judeo-Bolshevism" haunts political arguments. Paradoxically, after the October Revolution, mostly Jewish voices expressed shock of the rise of Jews in the Soviet apparatus. That there did in fact exist a kind of elective affinity between Jews and the new state in the first years after the revolution does not go back to ideology, as is often implied. The social structure was decisive: The Bolsheviks needed officials who were literate, and the Jews had to see to their livelihood between 1918 and 1921, when private enterprise was outlawed. It is also wrong to say the share of Jews in the secret police was especially high in these years, and that the Jewish contingent exacted revenge on its former tormenters. The statistics on perpertrators and victims take the wind of such assertions.
The article constitutes a part of author’s studies on regions and mental geography of the Russian empire. The military actions within own territory normally produce a dramatic and long impact on the spatial imaginations. The Crimean war with its center in newly incorporated New Russia has helped to include this region to the mental maps as the Russian space. The article shows the new symbolic geography formation. It also analyses the efforts of propaganda aimed at maintaining the imperial durability. A special attention is paid to the state militia. The citizen soldiers – nobles and law classes representatives – had the unique opportunity to visit a number of regions. For the inhabitants of Central Russia the border with Little Russia was essential. The perception of Jews has demonstrated xenophobia long before pogroms. Although the authorities had enough reasons to be afraid of separatism, the final conclusion was that the imperial construction is rather healthy. As a result of such a conclusion an elaboration of this construction hasn’t become a part of common program of reforms in Russia. The author used unpublished documents, in particular those preserved in Kiev. The publication in well-known American journal with world-wide distribution has made the article accessible for many readers.
The article constitutes a part of author’s studies on regions and mental geography of the Russian empire. The military actions within own territory normally produce a dramatic and long impact on the spatial imaginations. The Crimean war with its center in newly incorporated New Russia has helped to include this region to the mental maps as the Russian space. The article shows the new symbolic geography formation. It also analyses the efforts of propaganda aimed at maintaining the imperial durability. A special attention is paid to the state militia. The citizen soldiers – nobles and law classes representatives – had the unique opportunity to visit a number of regions. For the inhabitants of Central Russia the border with Little Russia was essential. The perception of Jews has demonstrated xenophobia long before pogroms. Although the authorities had enough reasons to be afraid of separatism, the final conclusion was that the imperial construction is rather healthy. As a result of such a conclusion an elaboration of this construction hasn’t become a part of common program of reforms in Russia. The author used unpublished documents, in particular those preserved in Kiev. The article is a part of the most significant recent international project on the Crimean war. The English translation of the article is published in USA.