JEWISH HERITAGE SOCIETY
JEWISH SCHOLARSHIP
IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AND THE USSR:
Past and Present

The beginning

The systematic research of East European Jewish history commenced at the end of the 19th century when prominent figures of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia started to promote the gathering, description and scholarly exploration of source materials of the Jewish past. The Russian-Jewish pioneers of Judaica considered their work as part of the search for a Jewish national identity. In the period between the 1880s and the 1910s numerous publications on Jewish history, ethnography, booklore, literature, legal status of the Jewish people, etc. appeared. Among them were works of S. Dubnov, Yu. Gessen, S. Tsinberg and others. Various Jewish scholarly and educational institutions such as the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among the Jews in Russia, and the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society in St. Petersburg with branches throughout the country, were established during those decades. An ethnographic expedition led by Jewish writer, ethnographer and folklorist S. An-sky was carried out in 1909 - 1914. Sponsored by Jewish philanthropist V. Ginzburg it explored the life, habits, ways and folklore of the traditional Jewish community in the Pale of Jewish Settlement. The expedition remains unmatched in the extensive territory covered and valuable material collected. There was a proliferation of publishing of a variety of scholarly periodicals devoted to Russian-Jewish history - "Evreiskaya Starina" (Jewish Past), "Voskhod" (The Dawn), etc. Professor S. Bershadsky initiated a comprehensive publication of the register of sources for Jewish history titled "Russko-evreiskii arkhiv" (Russian-Jewish Archive). It is a remarkable fact that most of the people involved in establishing Jewish studies in Russia were not professional scholars. They were socially responsible enthusiasts who made their efforts in the name of the preservation of Jewish historical continuity.

Years of decline

1917 became the turning point in the development of Jewish scholarship in Russia. The first decade after World War I and after the Revolution was marked by extremely hard conditions for scholarship and for scholars. Major scholarly institutions had to cancel their activities, publication of scholarly works and periodicals was interrupted. The community of Jewish scholars changed. Gradually, historians of the previous generation either emigrated (S. Dubnov) or interrupted their studies of Jewish history and switched to other topics (Yu. Gessen). A new generation of young historians had to combine research in Jewish history with the research of the "class struggle" (N. Buchbinder, I. Sosis). Some of those scholars, being activists of the Jewish Left, deliberately implanted a spirit of proletarian ideology into Jewish historiography (I. Liberberg). In the 1920s the new proletarian-minded Jewish scholarship obtained the Soviet regime's support. About the same time a number of pre-Revolutionary research institutions and periodicals renewed their activities. State Institutes of Jewish Proletarian Culture and Jewish People's Universities were founded in Kiev, Minsk, Leningrad, and Moscow. For a brief period the collection and publication of historical source material resumed too. Party approval determined a notorious ideologization of Jewish scholarship. As a result, achievements of the old historical school were deprecated as "bourgeois" and "nationalist". At a certain degree, Jewish scholarly activities continued until the very field of Jewish history was prohibited and development of Jewish studies in the USSR was interrupted for decades. Few Jewish historians survived Stalin's era - the period of purges of the 1930s - 1940s. Unique and valuable collections of historical source materials of Jewish history gathered by generations of scholars were scattered over the vast territory of the USSR during the years of anti-religious and anti-nationalist campaigns, World War II and the Holocaust. A part of those collections was destroyed, the other part was classified as "secret" and was hidden in state repositories until the fall of the communist regime in the 1990s.

Revival of Jewish scholarship

In the years of perestroika followed by democratic changes in the USSR there appeared and rapidly grew various Jewish organizations - cultural societies, schools, religious communities. Jewish scholarly institutions such as the Jewish Historical Society and Jewish University in Moscow, the Jewish Museum in Vilnius, etc. were established. Since 1989 a variety of scholarly conferences devoted to Russian-Jewish history have annually taken place in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. In recent years hundreds of new publications - articles, monographs, reference works - dealing with Jewish history and culture have been published in the CIS and the Baltics. "Secret" collections of state repositories, previously inaccessible, opened their doors for Jewish scholars. Several exhibitions of Jewish holdings in state archives, museums, and libraries uncovered previously hidden treasures of source material for Russian-Jewish history: An-sky's collection in St. Petersburg, Goldstein's collection in Lvov, extensive documentary collections in Moscow, to mention a few. Nevertheless, the majority of newly discovered collections are still uncataloged and unpublished. For the past decade Jewish communities of the former USSR gained many opportunities to explore their cultural heritage. However, because of the general scarcity of experts, many communal libraries, geniza materials in synagogues, family archives, etc. remain unknown. Needless to say, as a rule those materials are being neglected and stored in poor conditions.

In 1992 M. Grinberg and A. Kovelman, the founders of the Jewish University in Moscow, wrote in an editorial of the first issue of "Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta v Moskve" (quarterly of the Jewish University in Moscow): "The newly independent states of the former USSR are now experiencing a period of formation of numerous Jewish organizations (educational, scholarly, and public). The number of publications on Jewish topics is growing. But this process has a rather chaotic character. There are no coordinating centers, no reference works published regularly, besides, scholars are not communicating with each other." Activities of several Jewish institutions are now improving the situation. These are, first of all, Jewish universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg - centers of Jewish historical education, scholarship and publication. The Jewish Heritage Society is contributing to the integration of the separate efforts of Jewish research institutions and individual scholars through its programs.

 

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