Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia

Studies on the History of Society and Culture

by 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.

Genres: History, Russia, Judaism, Religion, 19th Century, European History, Russian History

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Rebecca Stuhr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won't be able to do this book justice, but essentially Beyond the Pale describes the Jewish community that left the restricted area of the Russian Pale and went to St. Petersburg. Part of this story is the changing circumstances of Jews in Russia. The Jewish population expanded considerably at the time of Catherine the Great after she annexed Poland and other Baltic countries, which were home to much of Europe's Jewish population. This annexation led to official concern for the integration of Jews into Russian life. Nathans makes the point that this concern was not unique to the Jewish minority population in Russia--integration was always an imperial goal, but it was more overt and much more pronounced. Education and conscription seemed to be avenues to integration. Russia's draconian conscription policy of 25 years of service took many young Jews away from their families. At the end of the 25 year period, if you were still alive, you could move out of the Pale and into St. Petersburg. Special privileges to leave the restricted Jewish area (as large as the country of France) were also given to certain artisans, professionals, and to students. But Imperial Russia was never satisfied with the results of their policies over a hundred years of trying: quotas were tightened, loosened, and tightened again. Officials could not decide, for instance, if the Jews were a bad influence on Russians--turning them away from Christianity and toward Nihilism, or if Russians were a bad influence on the Jews--turning them into revolutionaries. In addition, popular and official beliefs were that the Jewish migrants to St. Petersburg were viewed as too successful; they were taking all the places in the professions; they had more babies than Russians; and they were invading the schools. Nathans looks at census documents, the shift of primary languages among the Jewish population and other details of acculturation; he explores the verifiable and mythological stories of the various ways some of the population attempted to circumvent the quotas and restrictions; compares Russia's policy toward its Jewish population with the policies of Europe. In many ways, Russia lagged far behind Europe both in its policies and its modernization. But it also has the sad legacy of anticipating the virulent anti-semitism that spread through Europe as the century turned. As with any excellent book, Nathans, by describing a particular opens the readers eyes to other similar instances perhaps closer to home, teaching a broader lesson in history. Nathan shows how Russia, though seeking to acculturate its Jewish population, could not resist continuing to single them out through laws of quotas and restrictions, thereby, creating a clearly defined "other," ripe for scape-goating and vilification.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book accepts that Jonathan Frankel is mostly correct in Prophecy and Politics; indeed, the Russian Jewish story is one that almost seems to skip the “liberal, reconciliatory, assimilationist” stage between the traditionalist’s “goyim are bad guys” and the desperate turn to Zionism, socialism and emigration. However, argues Nathans, as much as Frankel is mostly correct, there is a sliver of another story to tell as well.
Using documents that were buried under Soviet control, Nathans argues that there was much more to the Jewish/Russian political and social encounter than just the socialists, revolutionaries and the Zionists. In fact, plenty of Russia’s Jews in the 1860s-1900s did integrate into Russian society, by obtaining permission to settle beyond the Pale. Nathans terms this “selective integration,” in contrast to the more complete integration to which Central European Jews aspired as part of their “emancipatory contract.” This was not emancipation by any stretch.
At the end of the day, Frankel tells the story that mattered more, but Nathans’s book is a lot more fun to read and it is a very important additional perspective.

[Jindřich Zapletal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a social history of pre-revolutionary Russian Jewry with emphasis on acculturation. It offers comparative perspectives with Jewish experience outside of the Russian empire and with other minorities inside Russian empire. I greatly appreciated the turn away from the teleological reading of the story (it ended up in a massacre, so it had to be all wrong from the start) and from the reductionist view of the Russian system (all autocracies have oppression as their only function). The author put a great amount of scholarship into the book, and the reading that I did on the side corroborates his points neatly.

I was not in love with the structure of the book. The author follows a number of acculturation paths, e.g., the merchant path (very heavily tilted towards St. Petersburg as opposed to Odessa), education path, the law practice path, to a lesser extent the Cantonist path. There is also the time axis with various interfering events, and certain key personalities. These things are combined in a way that I had to separate and reorganize later.

The reader must be familiar with the history of Russia of 19th century in a considerable detail. The author spends very little time on this; at the same time, it is quite difficult to make sense of the Jewish story without the Russian context.