The Jewish Identity in
Pre-Revolutionary Russia
And Its Impact on Russian Culture
Abstract
This paper focuses simply on what the title says: the Jewish identity in pre-Revolutionary Russia and its impact on Russian culture. It begins with a background of the rise of Judaism in Russia and how and where exactly it evolved. It discusses the anti-Semitism from the time that Judaism arose in Russia to the time of the 1917 Revolution, and how the Jews were oppressed and looked down upon. At the same time, however, it argues the fact that despite all of the cruelty and lack of liberty that the Russian Jews had to face for hundreds of years, they were still able to develop their culture and to impact Russian culture in general. Besides for giving the historical background of the Russian Jews, this paper discusses the ways that the Russian Jews developed their culture and impacted the rest of Russias culture through language, literature, theatre, art, and music.

Although the nationally proclaimed religion of imperialistic Russia was Russian Orthodoxy, other religions existed among the people. One of these religions was Judaism, a religion that went through centuries of national, cultural, and religious oppression that made it difficult, indeed almost impossible, to maintain a Jewish identity in Russia. It was difficult for people in general, not only the Jews, to express themselves freely and to establish traditions varying from those assigned by the Russian government due to fear. However, it was even harder for the Jews, and even against cruel and overwhelming odds, most of the Russian Jews did remain Jewish and did maintain some forms of national identity. This can be seen in certain aspects of their culture, such as literature, theatre, art, and music.
Although we know that Judaism did not always exist in Russia, the past is uncertain due to the scarcity of historical material. This is why several different theories and legends have been formed about the evolution of Judaism in Russia. One of these legends, which arose through ancient Greek writings, is that Jewish communities began growing in the Greek colonies along the north shore of the Black Sea from the 4^th through the 1^st century BCE. The most famous of the early Russian Jewish groups were the Khazars, who adopted Judaism in the 8^th century and lived in the southern portion of Russia, near what is Crimea today. They brought rabbis from western Asia, and Jews from the Khazar Empire were probably brought to Kiev by Sviatopolk, though few Jews may have been there earlier (Pinkus 4). In 988, Prince Vladimir of Kiev chose Greek Orthodox Christianity as the religion, and the emerging Russian civilization was intolerant of any other faith (Chesler 14). Much of this is due to the fact that Russias early religious leaders came from Byzantium, who had laws forbidding the practice of Judaism. Still, Jews became successful businessmen. They were important to the economic life of Kiev and in the trade relations of the princedom with Central and Western Europe (Pinkus 5).
Although Jews were so important in Kiev, they had little effect in Moscow when Kievan Russia changed to Muscovite Russia. Some historians say that Judaism was brought to Moscow by a Kievan Jew named Zecharia, who settled in Novgorod and spread religious propaganda. He formed a sect known as the Judaizers, which formed in the Russian Church and began to spread its ideas to Moscow. Several sects like this one were formed, but the leaders of the Moscow Church turned the people away from them. In the 16^th century, the rulers of Russia followed a severely anti-Jewish policy. Jews were often robbed of their possessions and forced to leave the Russian empire. When Ivan IV conquered certain areas, he forced the Jews to convert to Christianity, and if they refused, they would be drowned. In the first half of the 18^th century, several expulsion decrees were asserted and Jews were formally banished from Russia unless they adopted Christianity. By the time of Catherine the Great (1741-1762), anti-Jewish prejudice was deeply rooted in the thinking of the Russian people (Chesler 17). Most of them had been massacred or had fled to Poland. However, Catherine obtained some Polish areas to the Russian Empire and many of the Jews suddenly found themselves within the Russian Empire, in which they were restricted to certain areas called Pale of Settlement. With the reign of Nicholas I, who believed that there was no room for different people (20), several pieces of legislation were passed about the Jews, and the short period between the first anti-Semitic outbreaks in 1881 and the 1917 October Revolution witnessed the most far-reaching changes in the history of Russian Jewry up to that time (Pinkus 22). The legislation displayed excessive anti-Jewish policies in the twenty-five years from 1881-1905 (23). Many of these policies established restrictions for the Jews in Russia, including restrictions regarding important jobs, such as practicing law, participating in the local authorities and in the military service, living among non-Jews, and education. In 1887, a policy of quotas was established for the number of Jews allowed in schools, if any Jews were allowed at all.
According to Evan Chesler, the Church has been the prime source of anti-Semitic teaching throughout Russian history (21). Still, there were several other reasons for the anti-Semitism: people were taught that the Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, jealousy and hatred of Jewish businessmen would arise when others had to buy clothes and food from Jews when non-Jews did not have enough money, and Jews lived apart from others and followed Jewish religious customs. On both sides there was a lack of knowledge of the other group, which resulted in feelings of distrust and suspicion of the unknown (Chesler 21). In addition, Jews were often blamed for Russias problems and the people were encouraged to consider the Jews their enemies (25). The tsar himself would donate much money for the publication of anti-Semitic books and pamphlets that were widely read.
Due to this strong sense of anti-Semitism, serious threats to the existence of Jews in Russia came about. These were known as the pogroms, which were armed attacks on the Jewish section of a town, in which people were injured or killed and homes and businesses were looted. In The Russian Jewry Reader, Evan R. Chesler states: There is little doubt that these pogroms were planned by the government (27). A semi-official body that had a significant role in organizing pogroms was the Sacred Society, which was founded on March 12, 1882 and which included the Minister of Interior, Ignatov, and his deputy in charge of internal affairs, General Chervonin. The first wave of these disturbances began on April 15, 1881 in Elizavetgrad and spread rapidly to other towns in the region. In 1881 alone, there were pogroms in 215 places. In approximately twenty-five years of pogroms, well over one thousand people were murdered and thousands of people were wounded. These horrifying events were the result of systematic incitement against the Jewish population, whether on anti-Semitic lines, or for considerations deemed sufficient by the authorities, or both (Pinkus 30). Basically, they were usually caused by the blame for a tragedy, such as famine, or when the government would announce the beginning of a campaign to rid Russia of undesirables, since that is what the government referred to them as (Chesler 27). It is true that the Russian Jew felt the brutality with all his senses. He was the object of a thousand years of prejudice in Russia, and he understood well the causes of the pogrom (34).
The pogroms were atrocities, but the greatest suffering was caused by the mass expulsions of the Jewish population (Pinkus 30). It was a frequent occurrence in the lives of Russian Jews to be evicted from places where they were banned to inhabit for whatever reason. On March 29, 1891, approximately 30,000 Jews living in Moscow were rounded up and expelled under a decree of Alexander III in order to eliminate Jews from the capital city. During World War I, the Jews were falsely accused of spying and of collaborating with the enemy; this was the time that the most severe expulsions were carried out and many of the Jews were executed. After the pogroms and the expulsions, several Russian Jews realized that something had to be done to stop the oppression of the government and the aggression of their Gentile neighbors. Several of these Jews found themselves involved in various revolutionary groups, all devoted to bringing about change in Russia.
Despite all of these horrible events that coerced the Russian Jews, there was an extraordinary development of Jewish culture in Russia towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. First of all, before 1917, when Jews had little opportunity to educate themselves in Russian culture and to be accepted into Russian society, Yiddish was widely used and became extremely popular among the Jews. This is the language that was established by the Jewish working class, and according to the 1897 census, more than 97% of all Jews in Russia considered Yiddish to be their mother tongue (Pinkus 36).
Going along with language, the most striking advancement was the blossoming of Jewish literature in the three languages of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian. Many of the writers were bilingual and trilingual: Bialik, Perets, and Shneur all wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish, Shimon Frug in Russian and Yiddish, and the historian Shimon Dubov wrote in all three languages. The poetry of Bialik was a national inspiration, with its combination of lyric poetry and the spirit of the ancient prophets of Israel (Pinkus 38). Sholem Aleichem is another Russian Jewish writer who wrote about several issues that Russian Jews had to face. He wrote of the feelings of the Jews, especially in his tales of Tevye, the poor Russian Jew. In one of the tales, he speaks of the pogrom. He actually refers to it with almost a startling humor, which is the way that some people had to refer to it in order to overcome their fear. This fear, which was widely dispersed among the Jews, prevented them from doing many things, but not from developing their own culture.
Babel is another famous Russian Jewish writer of the time who provided an idea of how the Jews felt and who provided an example of how the Jews impacted Russian culture. However, he did not produce original work in Yiddish, like many of the bi- and trilingual writers. He could only write in Russian, but he also translated and edited Yiddish literature. He was acclaimed as the first Jewish writer to write from within Russian literature and to give the Jewish milieu color and depth (Sicher 178). This does not mean that he was the only Jewish writer to write in Russian, rather that he was different from the others. Actually, a tradition of Jews writing in Russian dates back to the growth of the Russian press in the 1860s. However, he had little in common with many of the pre-Revolutionary Jewish littérateurs who wrote in Russian, either in social origin (his father dealt in agricultural machinery) or in outlook (177). Like Sholem Aleichem, Babel offered a description of how Russian Jews felt during and after the pogroms. After the pogroms and the failure to be accepted in Russian society the assimilated Jewish intellectual in Babels Gedali returns nostalgically to the Jewish shtetl only to find it ruined, doomed, just as the life had gone out of the changing old Jews in Bialiks Upon My Return (168). Bialiks city of Slaughter and other poems on the pogroms inspired Babels generation with a flame of defiance. This is seen in Babels First Love, in which the ten-year-old narrator imagines that he is a member of a Jewish self-defense group during a pogrom. Another popular issue among Russian Jews is the Jewish question. This was one of Babels deep interests, and can be seen in most of his stories. However, it is particularly evident in the first story known to us, Old Shloyme, published in Kiev in 1913. Several other cultural issues of Judaism in Russia was touched upon by Babel, as well as by several other Russian Jewish writers.
Other cultural establishments that brought about a consciousness of Jewish identity in Russia were the theatre, art, and music. In spite of the veto of 1883 on the establishment of a Jewish theatre, a professional Jewish theatre began to develop. Productions of original stage plays were made by Sholem Aleichem, Asch, Pinsky, Perets, Hieshkeim, Nomberg, Vaitor, and others.
Because historically, the Jews had no figurative tradition in art, until the mid 1800s there were almost no names of outstanding Jewish painters, let alone Russian Jewish painters. However, during the second half of the nineteenth century, an increasing number of young Jews joined to take a place in the official world of art. The beginning of the movement dates back to 1863 with a group of wandering artists, and begins the part played by Jewish painters in Russian art, quite democratic and oppositional by nature. Russian Jewish painters developed the chief tendencies of the Russian art culture assimilated by them, and acted as creators and bearers of its most precious values (Goromstock 29). This can be seen in the landscapes of I.I. Levitan, in the sculptures of M.M. Antokolsky, and in the stage designs of Lev Samoylovich Baskt. Like all Jewish painters of that time…they arrived in the capital from small provincial towns, in high reverence for Russian art and culture, aspiring to assimilate from it all that they saw as best progressive and revolutionary ( 27). Also, Russian Jewish painters enhanced art with new stylistic forms through the means of the Jewish assessment of the world. This can be seen in the art work of Marc Chagall, who has had a great importance for the world, not only for Russian art. His first works, in 1908-1909, were pictures of Vitebsk, his hometown, and included its old decrepit huts, boarded fences, and bearded Jews in the streets. But in the world of these pictures logical connections are replaced by ties of fantasy and poetic metaphor: the body of a dead man lies surrounded by funeral candles in the middle of the street, a fiddler seated on a roof plays a funeral melody over him, a green horse floats by, and in the womb of a blue cow we perceive an unborn lamb (28). He presented an absurdity of Jewish life in outlying parts of Russia and the alienism of the Jewish people in this world. Through the oppositional energy stimulated by the Russian Jewish artists, some believe that they encouraged more radical and revolutionary tendencies.
The decades before the 1917 Revolution also created a favorable situation for the development of Jewish music in Russia. Some of the famous figures, among the expansion of Jewish culture in music were N. Rimsky-Korsakov, V. Stasov, and Y. Engel. Although not all of the figures were even Jewish, it was believed by these men that the Jews had a special talent in music. In 1908, the Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music was established, which had about 389 active members throughout Russia, held about 150 concerts and lectures per year, published a large amount of music, and collected folk music. In addition, famous schools of performance were commanded by Jewish musicians developed in pre-Revolutionary Russia, such as the L. Auer school of violin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the P. Stolyarsky school of violin in Odessa, and the K. Davidov school of cello in St. Petersburg (Braun 68). Music is one of the most important developments of Russian Jewish culture. It was original, it brought out extremely talented Russian Jews, and it encouraged the blossoming of Jewish identity in Russia. However, this natural expansion was brutally interrupted by the October Revolution of 1917, as was the development of art, theatre, and literature.
Whether the Jews actually partook in revolutionary groups or not, they did not like the tsar, and they wanted a drastic change. Therefore, most of them welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 and, again, the October Revolution. However, they did not know that the Revolution would hinder the development of the Russian Jewish culture. Nevertheless, the expansion of Jewish national culture in pre-Revolutionary Russia was astonishing. Under extreme circumstances of fear, oppression, inequity, intolerance, pogroms, expulsions, and poverty, the national culture developed and flourished in an incredible way.


Bibliography
Braun, Joachim. Jews in Soviet Music. Jews in Soviet Culture. Ed. Jack Miller. New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1984. 65-106.

Chesler, Evan R., ed. The Russian Jewry Reader. New York: Behrman House, 1974.

Goromstock, Igor. Jews in Soviet Art. Jews in Soviet Culture. Ed. Jack Miller. New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1984. 23-30.

Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Sicher, Efraim. The Jewishness of Babel. Jews in Soviet Culture. Ed. Jack Miller. New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1984. 167-183.
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