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In the Russian Empire of the 1870s and 1880s, while intellectuals and politicians furiously debated the "Jewish Question", more and more acculturating Jews, who dressed, spoke, and behaved like non-Jews, appeared in real life and in literature. This book examines stories about Jewish assimilation by ...

In the Russian Empire of the 1870s and 1880s, while intellectuals and politicians furiously debated the "Jewish Question", more and more acculturating Jews, who dressed, spoke, and behaved like non-Jews, appeared in real life and in literature. This book examines stories about Jewish assimilation by four authors: Grigory Bogrov, a Russian Jew; Eliza Orzeszkowa, a Polish Catholic; and Nikolai Leskov and Anton Chekhov, both Eastern Orthodox Russians. Safran introduces the English-language reader to works that were much discussed in their own time, and she situates Jewish and non-Jewish writers together in the context they shared.

For nineteenth-century writers and readers, successful fictional characters were "types", literary creations that both mirrored and influenced the trajectories of real lives. Stories about Jewish assimilators and converts often juxtaposed two contrasting types: the sincere reformer or true convert who has experienced a complete transformation, and the secret recidivist or false convert whose real loyalties will never change. As Safran shows, writers borrowed these types from many sources, including the novel of education produced by the Jewish enlightenment movement (the Haskalah), the political rhetoric of "Positivist" Polish nationalism, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Slavic folk beliefs.

Rewriting the Jew casts new light on the concept of type itself and on the question of whether literature can transfigure readers. The classic story of Jewish assimilation describes readers who redesign themselves after the model of fictional characters in secular texts. The writers studied here, though, examine attempts at Jewish self-transformation while wondering about thereformability of personality. In looking at their works, Safran relates the modern Eastern European Jewish experience to a fundamental question of aesthetics: Can art change us?

In 1991, the centrifugal forces of ethnic nationalism destroyed the Soviet Union. Religious and ethnic issues will be the defining principles of political life in East Europe, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia for the next decade. Yet when most Americans and Europeans read, for instance, of the ...

In 1991, the centrifugal forces of ethnic nationalism destroyed the Soviet Union. Religious and ethnic issues will be the defining principles of political life in East Europe, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia for the next decade. Yet when most Americans and Europeans read, for instance, of the Ossetians and Ingush, they have no idea who these peoples are or why they are fighting. This volume will provide a ready reference for students, researchers, and librarians who are trying to sort out the political and social struggles in that part of the world. Focusing on ethnolinguistic groups rather than peoples with purely religious orientations, Olson provides entries on over 450 ethnic groups, with appropriate cross-references. Each entry concludes with references, and the volume includes a selected bibliography of English-language titles. The volume also includes a chronology, several appendixes providing statistical information, and an appendix essay on Islam in Russia and the Soviet Union.

A surprising number of Jews lived, literally and figuratively, "beyond the Pale" of Jewish Settlement in tsarist Russia during the half-century before the Revolution of 1917. Thanks to the availability of long-closed Russian archives, along with a wide range of other sources, Benjamin Nathans ...

A surprising number of Jews lived, literally and figuratively, "beyond the Pale" of Jewish Settlement in tsarist Russia during the half-century before the Revolution of 1917. Thanks to the availability of long-closed Russian archives, along with a wide range of other sources, Benjamin Nathans reinterprets the history of the Russian-Jewish encounter.

In the wake of Russia's "Great Reforms," Nathans writes, a policy of selective integration stimulated social and geographic mobility among the empire's Jews. The reaction that culminated, toward the turn of the century, in ethnic restrictions on admission to universities, the professions, and other institutions of civil society reflected broad anxieties that Russians were being placed at a disadvantage in their own empire. Nathans's conclusions about the effects of selective integration and the Russian-Jewish encounter during this formative period will be of great interest to all students of modern Jewish and modern Russian history.

From its beginnings Russia has been a polyethnic society, and so has a long history of dealing with ethnic problems. From its imperial stage through the Soviet years it has experienced the pressures of ethnic assimilation and ethnic nationalism. In recent years, political liberalization and economic ...

From its beginnings Russia has been a polyethnic society, and so has a long history of dealing with ethnic problems. From its imperial stage through the Soviet years it has experienced the pressures of ethnic assimilation and ethnic nationalism. In recent years, political liberalization and economic turmoil have released pent-up nationalistic and separatist feelings which had lain dormant through the Communist regimes. This study presents an ethnic history of Russia, placing present-day turmoil in the context of Russian history. The authors analyze inter-ethnic relations in Russia and provide a detailed description of the key ethnic groups. They also look at the evolution of ethnic structure and the current ethnopolitical movements in different regions of Russia. Consequently, the study points the way to future inter-ethnic relations in Russia and, indeed, the future of the Russian Federation.