Jews under Tsars and Communists: The Four Questions
"Russia and the Jewish Question explores how perceptions of Jews in late Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union shaped the regimes' policies toward them. It traces the evolving and changing nature of popular and official beliefs about the purported nature of Jews from the late 18th century t...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
London [England]
Bloomsbury Academic
2022
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| In: | Year: 2021 |
| Edition: | First edition |
| Series/Journal: | Russian Shorts
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| Further subjects: | B
Jews (Russia)
History
B Communism and Judaism History |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Erscheint auch als: 9781350129153 |
| Summary: | "Russia and the Jewish Question explores how perceptions of Jews in late Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union shaped the regimes' policies toward them. It traces the evolving and changing nature of popular and official beliefs about the purported nature of Jews from the late 18th century to the end of the 20th century. Robert Weinberg's examination of the 'Jewish Question' (and by extension anti-Semitism) provides a fruitful way to investigate why and how social, economic, political, and cultural developments in Russia from the time of Catherine the Great led to prejudices and the discriminatory treatment of Russian and Soviet Jews. Weinberg reveals that the 'Jewish Question' -- and by that we mean the sum total of attitudes and perceptions of Jews that reflects the belief that Jews posed a challenge, if not a direct, existential threat, to the well-being of Russians -- emerged at the end of the 18th century when the partitions of Poland made hundreds of thousands of Jews subjects of the Russian crown. Tsarina Elizabeth had expelled Jews from the empire in the 1740s, and tsars and statesmen from the time of Catherine the Great found themselves developing policies to address the presence of Jews, whose numbers grew to almost five million by the turn of the 20th century. The author argues that the phrase itself implies the singular nature of Jews as a group of people whose religion, culture, and occupational make-up prevent them from fitting into the Christian societies in which they lived. He goes on to explain that while the 'Jewish Question' is rooted in the fact that Jews adhered to a religion deemed corrupt and dangerous, it acquired other characteristics as European societies underwent intellectual, political, social, and economic changes from the late 17th century onward. In particular, debates about rights of citizenship, the impact of industrialization, the emergence of the nation-state, and the proliferation of new political ideologies and movements have contributed to the changing nature of the 'Jewish Question'. Its content may have not remained static, but its purpose consistently questions whether or not Jews pose a threat to the stability and well-being of the Christian societies in which they live and this, in a specifically Russian context, is what Robert Weinberg examines here so expertly."-- |
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| Item Description: | Includes index |
| ISBN: | 1350129194 |
| Access: | Abstract freely available; full-text restricted to individual document purchasers |
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5040/9781350129191 |