The Making of Jewish Revolutionaries in the Pale of Settlement: Community and Identity during the Russian Revolution and its Immediate Aftermath, ... Studies in the History of Social Movements)

by Inna Shtakser

This book examines the emotional aspects of revolutionary experience during a critical turning point in both Russian and Jewish history – the Revolution of 1905. Inna Shtakser argues that radicalization involved an emotional transformation that enabled many young Jewish revolutionaries to develop an activist stance towards reality and a prioritization of feelings demanding action over others. Uncovering the links between emotion and activism holds a special significance in the context of modern Jewish history. When pogroms swept through the Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement during 1905–07, young Jews who had fled their communities years earlier, often after bitter conflicts with their families, returned to protect them. Never expecting to 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 previously drove them away often made them more effective leaders than the traditional Jewish communal authorities.

Genres: Russia, Jewish

239 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

I am a historian and my main interest is a cultural history of social movements. I want to know how people decided to join such movements and how they change after becoming activists. I am especially interested in groups of people previously excluded from the political debates due to class, gender, educational impediments, etc. In fact, I am especially interested in groups previously excluded from the political debate due to more than one reason (class and ethnicity in the case of Russian Empire working-class Jews, for example). Geographically, I specialize in the Russian Empire, mostly in the area of contemporary Ukraine. My book, published in 2014, deals with politicization of working-class Jewish youth in the Russian Empire, and the book I work on at the moment deals with working-class anarchist groups in post-1905revolution Odessa. I studied in Tel-Aviv University and got my PhD from The University of Texas at Austin, where I also taught for a while. I also taught at Dalhousie University (Canada), at Tel-Aviv University, and even in India. At the moment I am a visiting assistant professor in Jewish Studies department of Tulane University (New Orleans).

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book looks at Jewish revolutionary working-class youth who encountered both class and ethnic discrimination during the 1905 Russian Revolution and how their self-organized resistance set the basis for fundamental changes in their identity both as Jews and as workers and students. Not a history of the uprising and its aftermath, ”Making of Jewish Revolutionaries in the Pale of Settlement” concentrates on how revolutionary ideology and activity created emotional changes. Inna Shtakser sees emotional change as more important than political change and she does a wonderful job in analyzing her sources and proving her point.

Whether it is successful as an academic text will be an issue for her peers—professional historians in her field, one of which I definitely am not. As a depiction of how working-class Jews changed the 1905 revolution and how it changed them, though, it is accessible to the interested layman and rewards close attention. While the passages that investigate and comment on the work of other historians can be daunting—the chances of a person who isn’t an academic having read most of them is slim. However these can be skimmed by the general reader who is interested in the substance of Shtakser’s research.

I know very little about the 1905 Revolution. There was Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”, Trostsky’s book “1905”, Lenin’s statement that “without the “dress rehearsal” of 1905, the victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible”, the disastrous defeat of the Russian Navy by the Japanese in 1904, soldiers firing into masses of unarmed workers and their families—essentially bits and pieces that showed 1905 was important but no real sense of it. Additionally I have long been interested in the development of revolutionary cadre, mainly seen through the prism of the mobilization of North Vietnam’s population from 1946 to 1975 in war against the French, Americans and South Vietnam.

Russia in 1905 was as different as different could be from Vietnam. It was a chaotic, poorly organized and unsuccessful revolt with little leadership or coherent demands—a situation that Shtakser describes very well. Added to all this uncertainty was all but officially sanctioned anti-Semitism in Russia with terrifying riots and pogroms and state sponsored segregation. The Pale of Settlement was the territory within the borders of czarist Russia Jews could legally live, although with severe restrictions on travel, occupation and association. So young Jewish workers and students had to overcome the adversity of their economic conditions which were wretched and the discrimination against them by the state, local government, school administrators and employers along with the always present fear of being targeted in deadly ethnic riots.

These Jewish activists also wanted to assert themselves against their elders in the Jewish community as well as the state. Through a combination of education which was risky even to attempt and often accomplished in self-education circles, organized by workers, apprentices and even students. The feeling of community, collective effort and a common goal was as important to the participants as the knowledge they received—and imparted. Shtakser makes it clear that they weren’t just passive recipients—to get an education a person needed to reach out to others, often not knowing who might be a police agent or who a paid informer. This is one of the most powerful and, to me, interesting parts of the book, the drive to assert one’s individual courage and commitment while ultimate success depended on the support of the group.

“Jewish Revolutionaries in the Pale of Settlement” is a book dense with ideas and beautifully written. While it has all the scholarly apparatus of an academic text (including an excellent bibliography, the first place I look in a book like this) Shtakser’s passion for her subject and the struggle she depicts really comes through. Highly recommended for those interested in how an unorganized and oppressed group of people became an effective part of a larger social movement.

A quick thank you to the always beleaguered and short on funds Michigan library system: this is an expensive book, typical of academic texts with the publishers subsidized in some part by the budgets of university libraries, the main customers. The Michigan eLibrary gives the ordinary reader access to libraries statewide, including several university libraries which is how I was able to borrow a copy.

[Orel Beilinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The strength of the book is in its scope. This book seeks to explain and explore a process, a journey, that is well known, well documented, but little explored: the making of revolutionaries in the Pale of Settlements, who fought against discrimination (class- and ethnicity- based). The book discusses question of emotions, identity, and the way the rebellious acts were perceived by the community, and perhaps more significantly, by the rebels themselves. Therefore, Shtakser's book is an important contribution to scholarship in the context of Late Imperial Russian/Jewish History as much as in the realm of the history of emotions, radical movements, and revolutions in general.

[Trudy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read for historians and for anybody who loves histoey. A novel take which illuminates the subjectivities, hopes and desires of young Jewish revolutionaries, and the cultural, political and religious context which framed their lives and mentalities. A valuable addition to the fields of social history and the history of ideas.

[Dimitrii Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather narrow archival source base (three collections from two Moscow archives) but closely read and telling the story rather well. Useful for history of emotions, in addition to smaller fields of Judaica and history of the Russian revolution.