Jews in the City: Major Perspectives in the Study of Jewish History in the Russian Empire

Abstract

The paper examines the historiography of Jewish history in the Russian Empire, which can be stratified not only chronologically but also thematically. Within Jewish studies, the history of the Russian Empire for a long time occupied a distinct place, with the lachrymose conception serving as the dominant framework that reduced this history to a narrative of restrictions and persecution. As a result, Jewish history in the Russian Empire was effectively homogenized and set in contrast to Jewish history in other European countries. However, the Baltic lands and the Caucasus, Belarusian and Lithuanian territories within the empire all differed substantially in their socioeconomic conditions, as did the Jewish communities that inhabited these regions. Given these particularities, a promising approach is to examine the history of Ukrainian Jews through the lens of individual researchers’ scholarly interests and agendas. The present study analyzes the historiographical process with the aim to identify distinct periods on the basis of such criteria as social context, researchers’ agency, and prevailing scholarly fashions. Across the long span from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, the paper locates several key moments, described as historiographical situations. The attention given to authors whose books have become landmarks in Jewish studies, from Simon Dubnow to John Klier, reflects in part a personalist approach, but more importantly an emphasis on the significance of the context in which these authors worked. The paper concludes that studies of Jewish history have operated at varying spatial scales. Early on, authors tended to choose the macro level, fitting the heterogeneous Jewish population of the empire into typological models. A macro-regional approach persisted as researchers tackled the phenomenon of Ashkenazi Jewry as a component of the history of Central and Eastern Europe. At the local level, cities were the primary nexus of scholarly interest. The city was, however, too complex a space to be reduced to a common denominator, and while the first half of the twentieth century saw researchers focus on mythologized images of the shtetl, the final third of the twentieth century brought growing interest in large urban centers – a research field whose potential has not been exhausted to this day.