The status of Russian Jewry has long been a subject of intense
international interest. The collapse of the Soviet empire resulted
in unprecedented access to historical records and has shed new
light on the history of the Jewish people within Russia. Central to
this history are the early years of the twentieth century, leading
up to the Revolution of 1917.
At the turn of the century, Jewish liberals in Russia were pursuing
traditional strategies aimed at bolstering the position of their
people. Among these were the dissemination of propaganda aimed at
enlightening Russian society about the plight of its Jews and the
establishment of a legal defense bureau. During the Revolution of
1905, these same liberals stepped up their efforts, aggressively
mobilizing and politicizing Russian Jewry and lobbying for legal
emancipation in Parliament.
After Stolypin's coup d'tat in 1907 and in the years preceding
Bolshevik victory, Jewish forces radically changed their focus,
opting not just to lobby non-Jewish institutions on the behalf of
Jewish interests but to modernize the Jewish community itself. This
shift to an inward-looking, organic activism had as its goal the
integration of Jews into a modernizing Russian society and economy.
As this revisionist history convincingly argues, Jewish political
activists, contrary to general perceptions of the era, were
therefore significant players in transforming and modernizing
Jewish society during the Tsarist era.
General
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