The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in 1919 at the request of... more The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in 1919 at the request of F. Rosenblatt, the representative of the Joint Distribution Committee in Siberia. The author of the document, Avrom Kirzhnits, was a well-known journalist, bibliographer, and historian of the labor movement. The memorandum provides a detailed historical survey of projects for the resettlement of Jews to Siberia from the beginning of the 19th century. It also presents a variety of socio-political polemics around the topic of Jewish migration from the Pale of Jewish Settlement to beyond the Urals, including those surrounding the “Brutskus plan” proposed in August 1915. An introductory essay to the document presents the biography of Avrom Kirzhnits and explains the historical context in which the document appeared. The subsequent fate of the “Kirzhnits plan” and its author demonstrate a certain continuity between the idea to create a “center for Jewish immigration” in Siberia and the later...
State Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide, 2020
The paper deals with the Russian émigrés’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land after the Second World War.... more The paper deals with the Russian émigrés’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land after the Second World War. The author analyzes the phenomenon of the restoration of group pilgrimages as a process of reinventing the pilgrimage tradition first developed mainly in the peasant milieu at the turn of the twentieth century. The annual trips from France organized by Bishop Methodian Kulman served as the basis for the new pilgrimage movement and the formation of a new community of “co-pilgrims”, uniting Russian Orthodox emigrants from all over the world. Perceived as a romantic ideal, the old peasant pilgrimage to Palestine became a source of new meanings for pilgrims in the second half of the 20th century. The author explores the process of gradual ritualization and formalization of the trips; the reconstruction of the Russian mental map of the Holy Land; the use of the pilgrimage as a way to cope with longing for the lost homeland and seeking authenticity by reproducing institutions of the past. The...
The paper deals with the issue of organization of pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Russ... more The paper deals with the issue of organization of pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Holy Land (Israel and Jordan) during the Cold War Era. The author argues that a number of foreign policy factors (primarily the struggle for Russian property and the tension of Soviet-Israeli relations) led to the opening of the opportunity to make Orthodox pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land. The paper provides evidence that the Soviet government considered the possibility of regular dispatch of groups of Soviet pilgrims from among the “clergy and laity” already in 1956, whereas in reality the first group went only in 1964. Archpriest Mikhail Zernov's project on the restoration of pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land that has not been analyzed before is introduced into academic circulation. The author examines the specifics of the composition of the pilgrim groups, and a description of pilgrims' activit...
The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in
1919 at the request of... more The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in 1919 at the request of F. Rosenblatt, the representative of the Joint Distribution Committee in Siberia. The author of the document, Avrom Kirzhnits, was a well-known journalist, bibliographer, and historian of the labor movement. The memorandum provides a detailed historical survey of projects for the resettlement of Jews to Siberia from the beginning of the 19th century. It also presents a variety of socio-political polemics around the topic of Jewish migration from the Pale of Jewish Settlement to beyond the Urals, including those surrounding the “Brutskus plan” proposed in August 1915. An introductory essay to the document presents the biography of Avrom Kirzhnits and explains the historical context in which the document appeared. The subsequent fate of the “Kirzhnits plan” and its author demonstrate a certain continuity between the idea to create a “center for Jewish immigration” in Siberia and the later Soviet project for the establishment of Jewish autonomy in Birobidzhan.
ЕВРЕИ РОССИИ, ЕВРОПЫ И БЛИЖНЕГО ВОСТОКА: ИСТОРИЯ, КУЛЬТУРА И СЛОВЕСНОСТЬ, 2019
The article deals with the representation of Jewish-related topics in the Orthodox eparchial peri... more The article deals with the representation of Jewish-related topics in the Orthodox eparchial periodicals of Siberian provinces (Tobolsk, Omsk, Tomsk and Irkutsk) during the First World War. This period was marked by the general growth the in anti-Semitic sentiments in Siberian society, which resulted in the 1916 Jewish pogrom in Krasnoyarsk. The author considers the official Orthodox press as one of the sources for the shaping of public opinion about Jews in Siberia. The article discusses the intensification of anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Siberian eparchial bulletins in 1916-1917, which, according to the author, was due to the fact that a part of the Orthodox clergy had become involved in the Black Hundred movement in the region and used the Jewish topic in their fight for the influence on the Russian press market.
ГОСУДАРСТВО, РЕЛИГИЯ, ЦЕРКОВЬ В РОССИИ И ЗА РУБЕЖОМ , 2018
The paper offers a micro-history study of the case of insulting the Orthodox priest Aleksey Orlov... more The paper offers a micro-history study of the case of insulting the Orthodox priest Aleksey Orlov by the Jewish merchants Isai and Leonty Prezman and Moise Haimovich in Tomsk, 1858-1863. The paper draws upon the archival sources from the State Historical Archive of the Omsk Region. It explores the materials of the trial, the correspondence between the Governor-General of Western Siberia and the Tomsk Civil Governor, copies of the Senate’s decisions, numerous petitions of the defendants and their relatives. The author studies the patterns of interaction between the Jewish minority and the secular and Orthodox authorities at different levels, as well as the various groups of the Siberian society. The study reveals special features specific to Siberia and to regional mentality of the Siberian Jews.
ВЕСТНИК ПЕРМСКОГО УНИВЕРСИТЕТА. СЕРИЯ: ИСТОРИЯ , 2018
The article examines the experience of interfaith interaction between Jews and the surrounding no... more The article examines the experience of interfaith interaction between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish population in Western Siberia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The author analyzes various types of interaction between Jews and Siberians (peasants, Orthodox clergy, philistines, etc.), concentrating on conflict situations. One of the important and obvious factors of a comparatively low level of interfaith conflicts with the participation of Jews was the scarcity of the Jewish population in the Siberian region, as well as a significant degree of their acculturation, such as proficiency in Russian, behavioral attitudes, and appearance. However, as the experience of interaction between Jews and the surrounding population in other regions of the Russian Empire shows, these factors were not decisive. Specificity of interethnic interaction in Siberia was largely determined by a special attitude of Siberians towards religion as to an ethical code (the case of the denunciation of the petty bourgeois Drozdov, Tomsk, 1874), while the area of interconfessional conflicts was probably not a priority for the Siberian church hierarchs (the case on the insult of the Orthodox priest by the Jewish "merchant sons" Preysman and Haimovich). The author states that social and economic conflicts involving Jews in Siberia did not lead to the activation of religious sentiments typical for the European regions. It means that neither the blood libel, nor other religious accusations, nor the folklore narratives about Jews were popular in Siberia. A significant part of Siberian Jews appeared there as the result of the "forced integration" (this term is introduced by the author for the first time for the research use) into the imperial society and was represented by exiles, agricultural settlers, and soldiers. Siberian Jews fit into the social matrix, assimilating special value and behavioral attitudes, corporate ethics, etc. The analysis of the sources showed that, given the weak relevance of interconfessional conflicts, the main stereotypes of the perception of Jews as an ethnic and confessional minority were built on the socio-economic characteristics of the activities of some representatives of the Jewish diaspora in Siberia. For a Siberian, the negative image of a Jew was not related to his religious and cultural differences from non-Jews, but to specific illegal activities: smuggling, counterfeiting, cheating, pimping, operations with stolen gold, etc. These stereotypes were actualized in conflict situations between Siberians and Jews.
The article discusses the motif of "blood libel" in relation to the Jews of the Smolensk region i... more The article discusses the motif of "blood libel" in relation to the Jews of the Smolensk region in the 18th - early 20th centuries. Drawing on archival sources and literature, I examine the mechanism of actualization and functioning of ethnic stereotypes, particularly the myth about the ritual use of Christian blood by the Jews over a two-century period. I argue that the notion of blood libel had emerged in the region under consideration at least 80 years before the masses of Jewish population appeared in the Russian empire. The perceptions of Smolensk region dwellers about the blood libel, in my opinion, were akin to a formal reception of a widespread Catholic stereotype that could be borrowed from the neighboring Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita); they retained their appeal in the region throughout the entire period of imperial rule in Russia.
В сборнике: Евреи пограничья: Смоленщина Центр научных работников и преподавателей иудаики в вузах «Сэфер», Институт славяноведения Российской академии наук. Москва, 2018
В сборнике: Контакты и конфликты в славянской и еврейской культурной традиции Сборник статей. Центр научных работников и преподавателей иудаики в вузах «Сэфер», Институт славяноведения Российской академии наук., 2017
The paper analyzes various types of information about Jews in the Russian Empire in the 18th cent... more The paper analyzes various types of information about Jews in the Russian Empire in the 18th century (the main attention is paid to the period before the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). The author draws a wide range of both published and little-known archival materials. Several “zones of interaction” with the Jewish topics in the Russian society are considered: intellectual tradition, everyday practices and new forms of Russian imperial culture.
The article is devoted to one of the least investigated aspects of the Russian-Jewish mutual rela... more The article is devoted to one of the least investigated aspects of the Russian-Jewish mutual relations, i.e. to participation of Christian Jews in the Orthodox church life in the early Modern times Russian Empire. The author focuses on one figure, Vassily Krizhanovsky, a Jew who was baptized in 1716 and got name Vladimir Kalligraf as a monk. His biography is a unique source for study of such key issues as adaptation to and integration of neophytes of Jewish origin in the Russian socio-cultural environment, the Orthodox intellectuals’ and representatives of the state power perception of such neophytes.
Вестник РГГУ. История. Филология. Культурология. Востоковедение, 2017
В статье анализируется группа источников, освещающих этапы
биографии крещеного еврея из Салоников... more В статье анализируется группа источников, освещающих этапы биографии крещеного еврея из Салоников Ивана Павлова, приехавшего в Россию в 1753 г. За время пребывания в стране Павлов прибрел богатейший опыт по взаимодействию с государственным бюрократическим аппаратом, а также лично являлся на прием к императрице Елизавете. На основе архивных источников автор реконструирует один из возможных путей адаптации неофита еврейского происхождения в новой для него социокультурной среде. Статью сопровождает публикация прошения неофита на Высочайшее Имя, в котором излагается весьма нетривиальная биография просителя, претендующая на «послужной список», столь важный для обоснования получения государственной поддержки.
The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in 1919 at the request of... more The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in 1919 at the request of F. Rosenblatt, the representative of the Joint Distribution Committee in Siberia. The author of the document, Avrom Kirzhnits, was a well-known journalist, bibliographer, and historian of the labor movement. The memorandum provides a detailed historical survey of projects for the resettlement of Jews to Siberia from the beginning of the 19th century. It also presents a variety of socio-political polemics around the topic of Jewish migration from the Pale of Jewish Settlement to beyond the Urals, including those surrounding the “Brutskus plan” proposed in August 1915. An introductory essay to the document presents the biography of Avrom Kirzhnits and explains the historical context in which the document appeared. The subsequent fate of the “Kirzhnits plan” and its author demonstrate a certain continuity between the idea to create a “center for Jewish immigration” in Siberia and the later...
State Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide, 2020
The paper deals with the Russian émigrés’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land after the Second World War.... more The paper deals with the Russian émigrés’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land after the Second World War. The author analyzes the phenomenon of the restoration of group pilgrimages as a process of reinventing the pilgrimage tradition first developed mainly in the peasant milieu at the turn of the twentieth century. The annual trips from France organized by Bishop Methodian Kulman served as the basis for the new pilgrimage movement and the formation of a new community of “co-pilgrims”, uniting Russian Orthodox emigrants from all over the world. Perceived as a romantic ideal, the old peasant pilgrimage to Palestine became a source of new meanings for pilgrims in the second half of the 20th century. The author explores the process of gradual ritualization and formalization of the trips; the reconstruction of the Russian mental map of the Holy Land; the use of the pilgrimage as a way to cope with longing for the lost homeland and seeking authenticity by reproducing institutions of the past. The...
The paper deals with the issue of organization of pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Russ... more The paper deals with the issue of organization of pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Holy Land (Israel and Jordan) during the Cold War Era. The author argues that a number of foreign policy factors (primarily the struggle for Russian property and the tension of Soviet-Israeli relations) led to the opening of the opportunity to make Orthodox pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land. The paper provides evidence that the Soviet government considered the possibility of regular dispatch of groups of Soviet pilgrims from among the “clergy and laity” already in 1956, whereas in reality the first group went only in 1964. Archpriest Mikhail Zernov's project on the restoration of pilgrimage trips from the USSR to the Holy Land that has not been analyzed before is introduced into academic circulation. The author examines the specifics of the composition of the pilgrim groups, and a description of pilgrims' activit...
The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in
1919 at the request of... more The memorandum “Siberia as a Center for Jewish Immigration” was written in 1919 at the request of F. Rosenblatt, the representative of the Joint Distribution Committee in Siberia. The author of the document, Avrom Kirzhnits, was a well-known journalist, bibliographer, and historian of the labor movement. The memorandum provides a detailed historical survey of projects for the resettlement of Jews to Siberia from the beginning of the 19th century. It also presents a variety of socio-political polemics around the topic of Jewish migration from the Pale of Jewish Settlement to beyond the Urals, including those surrounding the “Brutskus plan” proposed in August 1915. An introductory essay to the document presents the biography of Avrom Kirzhnits and explains the historical context in which the document appeared. The subsequent fate of the “Kirzhnits plan” and its author demonstrate a certain continuity between the idea to create a “center for Jewish immigration” in Siberia and the later Soviet project for the establishment of Jewish autonomy in Birobidzhan.
ЕВРЕИ РОССИИ, ЕВРОПЫ И БЛИЖНЕГО ВОСТОКА: ИСТОРИЯ, КУЛЬТУРА И СЛОВЕСНОСТЬ, 2019
The article deals with the representation of Jewish-related topics in the Orthodox eparchial peri... more The article deals with the representation of Jewish-related topics in the Orthodox eparchial periodicals of Siberian provinces (Tobolsk, Omsk, Tomsk and Irkutsk) during the First World War. This period was marked by the general growth the in anti-Semitic sentiments in Siberian society, which resulted in the 1916 Jewish pogrom in Krasnoyarsk. The author considers the official Orthodox press as one of the sources for the shaping of public opinion about Jews in Siberia. The article discusses the intensification of anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Siberian eparchial bulletins in 1916-1917, which, according to the author, was due to the fact that a part of the Orthodox clergy had become involved in the Black Hundred movement in the region and used the Jewish topic in their fight for the influence on the Russian press market.
ГОСУДАРСТВО, РЕЛИГИЯ, ЦЕРКОВЬ В РОССИИ И ЗА РУБЕЖОМ , 2018
The paper offers a micro-history study of the case of insulting the Orthodox priest Aleksey Orlov... more The paper offers a micro-history study of the case of insulting the Orthodox priest Aleksey Orlov by the Jewish merchants Isai and Leonty Prezman and Moise Haimovich in Tomsk, 1858-1863. The paper draws upon the archival sources from the State Historical Archive of the Omsk Region. It explores the materials of the trial, the correspondence between the Governor-General of Western Siberia and the Tomsk Civil Governor, copies of the Senate’s decisions, numerous petitions of the defendants and their relatives. The author studies the patterns of interaction between the Jewish minority and the secular and Orthodox authorities at different levels, as well as the various groups of the Siberian society. The study reveals special features specific to Siberia and to regional mentality of the Siberian Jews.
ВЕСТНИК ПЕРМСКОГО УНИВЕРСИТЕТА. СЕРИЯ: ИСТОРИЯ , 2018
The article examines the experience of interfaith interaction between Jews and the surrounding no... more The article examines the experience of interfaith interaction between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish population in Western Siberia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The author analyzes various types of interaction between Jews and Siberians (peasants, Orthodox clergy, philistines, etc.), concentrating on conflict situations. One of the important and obvious factors of a comparatively low level of interfaith conflicts with the participation of Jews was the scarcity of the Jewish population in the Siberian region, as well as a significant degree of their acculturation, such as proficiency in Russian, behavioral attitudes, and appearance. However, as the experience of interaction between Jews and the surrounding population in other regions of the Russian Empire shows, these factors were not decisive. Specificity of interethnic interaction in Siberia was largely determined by a special attitude of Siberians towards religion as to an ethical code (the case of the denunciation of the petty bourgeois Drozdov, Tomsk, 1874), while the area of interconfessional conflicts was probably not a priority for the Siberian church hierarchs (the case on the insult of the Orthodox priest by the Jewish "merchant sons" Preysman and Haimovich). The author states that social and economic conflicts involving Jews in Siberia did not lead to the activation of religious sentiments typical for the European regions. It means that neither the blood libel, nor other religious accusations, nor the folklore narratives about Jews were popular in Siberia. A significant part of Siberian Jews appeared there as the result of the "forced integration" (this term is introduced by the author for the first time for the research use) into the imperial society and was represented by exiles, agricultural settlers, and soldiers. Siberian Jews fit into the social matrix, assimilating special value and behavioral attitudes, corporate ethics, etc. The analysis of the sources showed that, given the weak relevance of interconfessional conflicts, the main stereotypes of the perception of Jews as an ethnic and confessional minority were built on the socio-economic characteristics of the activities of some representatives of the Jewish diaspora in Siberia. For a Siberian, the negative image of a Jew was not related to his religious and cultural differences from non-Jews, but to specific illegal activities: smuggling, counterfeiting, cheating, pimping, operations with stolen gold, etc. These stereotypes were actualized in conflict situations between Siberians and Jews.
The article discusses the motif of "blood libel" in relation to the Jews of the Smolensk region i... more The article discusses the motif of "blood libel" in relation to the Jews of the Smolensk region in the 18th - early 20th centuries. Drawing on archival sources and literature, I examine the mechanism of actualization and functioning of ethnic stereotypes, particularly the myth about the ritual use of Christian blood by the Jews over a two-century period. I argue that the notion of blood libel had emerged in the region under consideration at least 80 years before the masses of Jewish population appeared in the Russian empire. The perceptions of Smolensk region dwellers about the blood libel, in my opinion, were akin to a formal reception of a widespread Catholic stereotype that could be borrowed from the neighboring Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita); they retained their appeal in the region throughout the entire period of imperial rule in Russia.
В сборнике: Евреи пограничья: Смоленщина Центр научных работников и преподавателей иудаики в вузах «Сэфер», Институт славяноведения Российской академии наук. Москва, 2018
В сборнике: Контакты и конфликты в славянской и еврейской культурной традиции Сборник статей. Центр научных работников и преподавателей иудаики в вузах «Сэфер», Институт славяноведения Российской академии наук., 2017
The paper analyzes various types of information about Jews in the Russian Empire in the 18th cent... more The paper analyzes various types of information about Jews in the Russian Empire in the 18th century (the main attention is paid to the period before the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). The author draws a wide range of both published and little-known archival materials. Several “zones of interaction” with the Jewish topics in the Russian society are considered: intellectual tradition, everyday practices and new forms of Russian imperial culture.
The article is devoted to one of the least investigated aspects of the Russian-Jewish mutual rela... more The article is devoted to one of the least investigated aspects of the Russian-Jewish mutual relations, i.e. to participation of Christian Jews in the Orthodox church life in the early Modern times Russian Empire. The author focuses on one figure, Vassily Krizhanovsky, a Jew who was baptized in 1716 and got name Vladimir Kalligraf as a monk. His biography is a unique source for study of such key issues as adaptation to and integration of neophytes of Jewish origin in the Russian socio-cultural environment, the Orthodox intellectuals’ and representatives of the state power perception of such neophytes.
Вестник РГГУ. История. Филология. Культурология. Востоковедение, 2017
В статье анализируется группа источников, освещающих этапы
биографии крещеного еврея из Салоников... more В статье анализируется группа источников, освещающих этапы биографии крещеного еврея из Салоников Ивана Павлова, приехавшего в Россию в 1753 г. За время пребывания в стране Павлов прибрел богатейший опыт по взаимодействию с государственным бюрократическим аппаратом, а также лично являлся на прием к императрице Елизавете. На основе архивных источников автор реконструирует один из возможных путей адаптации неофита еврейского происхождения в новой для него социокультурной среде. Статью сопровождает публикация прошения неофита на Высочайшее Имя, в котором излагается весьма нетривиальная биография просителя, претендующая на «послужной список», столь важный для обоснования получения государственной поддержки.
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1919 at the request of F. Rosenblatt, the representative of the Joint Distribution
Committee in Siberia. The author of the document, Avrom Kirzhnits, was a well-known
journalist, bibliographer, and historian of the labor movement. The memorandum provides
a detailed historical survey of projects for the resettlement of Jews to Siberia from
the beginning of the 19th century. It also presents a variety of socio-political polemics
around the topic of Jewish migration from the Pale of Jewish Settlement to beyond the Urals, including those surrounding the “Brutskus plan” proposed in August 1915. An introductory essay to the document presents the biography of Avrom Kirzhnits and explains the historical context in which the document appeared. The subsequent fate of the “Kirzhnits plan” and its author demonstrate a certain continuity between the idea to create a “center for Jewish immigration” in Siberia and the later Soviet project for the establishment of Jewish autonomy in Birobidzhan.
биографии крещеного еврея из Салоников Ивана Павлова, приехавшего в Россию в 1753 г. За время пребывания в стране Павлов прибрел богатейший опыт по взаимодействию с государственным бюрократическим аппаратом, а также лично являлся на прием к императрице Елизавете. На основе архивных источников автор реконструирует один из возможных
путей адаптации неофита еврейского происхождения в новой для него социокультурной среде. Статью сопровождает публикация прошения неофита на Высочайшее Имя, в котором излагается весьма нетривиальная биография просителя, претендующая на «послужной список», столь важный для обоснования получения государственной поддержки.
1919 at the request of F. Rosenblatt, the representative of the Joint Distribution
Committee in Siberia. The author of the document, Avrom Kirzhnits, was a well-known
journalist, bibliographer, and historian of the labor movement. The memorandum provides
a detailed historical survey of projects for the resettlement of Jews to Siberia from
the beginning of the 19th century. It also presents a variety of socio-political polemics
around the topic of Jewish migration from the Pale of Jewish Settlement to beyond the Urals, including those surrounding the “Brutskus plan” proposed in August 1915. An introductory essay to the document presents the biography of Avrom Kirzhnits and explains the historical context in which the document appeared. The subsequent fate of the “Kirzhnits plan” and its author demonstrate a certain continuity between the idea to create a “center for Jewish immigration” in Siberia and the later Soviet project for the establishment of Jewish autonomy in Birobidzhan.
биографии крещеного еврея из Салоников Ивана Павлова, приехавшего в Россию в 1753 г. За время пребывания в стране Павлов прибрел богатейший опыт по взаимодействию с государственным бюрократическим аппаратом, а также лично являлся на прием к императрице Елизавете. На основе архивных источников автор реконструирует один из возможных
путей адаптации неофита еврейского происхождения в новой для него социокультурной среде. Статью сопровождает публикация прошения неофита на Высочайшее Имя, в котором излагается весьма нетривиальная биография просителя, претендующая на «послужной список», столь важный для обоснования получения государственной поддержки.