The Jews in Poland and Russia

Antony Polonsky provides a comprehensive survey of the history - socio-political, economic, and religious - of the Jewish communities of eastern Europe from 1750, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the dominant political unit, to the present. Until the Second World War, this area was the heartland of the Jewish world: almost all the major movements which have characterized that world in recent times had their origins here, and it was home to the majority of the world's Jews. Nearly three and a half million lived in Poland alone, while nearly three million more lived in the Soviet Union.

Although the majority of the Jews of Europe and the United States, and most of the Jews of Israel, originated from these lands, the history of their Jewish communities is not well known. Rather, it is the subject of mythologizing and stereotypes that fail both to bring out the specific features of the Jewish civilization which emerged here and to illustrate what was lost in the passage across the Channel and the Atlantic. Jewish life in these parts, though often poor materially, was marked by a high degree of spiritual and ideological intensity and creativity. Antony Polonsky recreates this lost world—brutally cut down by the Holocaust and less brutally but still seriously damaged by the Soviet attempt to destroy Jewish culture—in a way that avoids both sentimentalism and the simplification of the the east European Jewish experience into a story of persecution and martyrdom. Wherever possible, the unfolding of history is illustrated by contemporary Jewish writings to show how Jews felt and reacted to the complex and difficult situations in which they found themselves.

It is an important story whose relevance reaches far beyond the Jewish world or the bounds of east-central Europe. Polonsky establishes the context with a review of Jewish life in Poland and Lithuania down to the mid-eighteenth century, describing the towns and shtetls where the Jews lived, the institutions they developed, and their participation in the economy. He also considers their religious and intellectual life, including the emergence of hasidism, and the growth of opposition to it.

He then describes government attempts to integrate and transform the Jews in the period from 1764 to 1881 and the Jewish response to these efforts. He considers the impact of modernization and the beginnings of the Haskalah movement, and looks at developments in each area in turn: the problems of emancipation, acculturation, and assimilation in Prussian and Austrian Poland; the politics of integration in the Kingdom of Poland; and the failure of forced integration in the tsarist empire.

The third part of the book considers the deterioration of the position of the Jews in the period from 1881 to 1914 and the new Jewish politics that led to the development of new movements: Zionism, socialism, autonomism, the emergence of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, Jewish urbanization, and the rise of Jewish mass culture. Galicia, Prussian Poland, the Kingdom of Poland, and the tsarist empire are all treated individually, as are the main towns.

The final part deals with the twentieth century. Starting from the First World War and the establishment of the Soviet Union, it deals in turn with Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union up to the Second World War. It then reviews Polish—Jewish relations during the Second World War and examines the Soviet record and the Holocaust. The final chapters deal with the Jews in the Soviet Union and in Poland since 1945, concluding with an epilogue on the Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia since the collapse of communism.

List of Maps
List of Tables
Note on Transliteration
Note on Place Names
Maps

General Introduction

I   Jewish Life in Poland–Lithuanian to 1750
Introduction
1 Jews and Christians in Early Modern Poland–Lithuania
2 The Structure of Jewish Autonomous Institutions
3 Jewish Places: Royal Towns and Noble Towns
4 Jews in Economic Life
5 Religious and Spiritual Life
Conclusion
Appendix: The Polish-Lithuanian Background

II Attempts to Transform and Integrate the Jews, and the Jewish Response, 1750–1880
Introduction
1 The Last Years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
2 The Jews in the Prussian Partition of Poland, 1772–1870
3 The Jews in Galicia to the mid-1870s
4 The Jews in the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Poland, 1807–1881
5 The Jews in the Tsarist Empire, 1772–1825
6 Nicholas I and the Jews of Russia, 1825–1855
7 The Reign of Alexander II, 1855–1881

 

Glossary
Bibliography
Index

'Masterful . . . In Polonsky's erudite and eminently clear treatment, the rich forest of eastern European Jewish civilization that has become obscured not only by trees, but also by debris of scholarly twigs, re-emerges in its full lushness. Polonsky is a member of an endangered species of scholars, an old-school generalist master of his field and its many languages, who is interested in presenting the comprehensive big picture, in language so elegant that it is quaint, and has all but vanished from academic writing in English. What is particularly impressive about Polonsky's ambitious treatment of his vast and complex subject is his skill at synthesizing the works of myriad scholars without using a single demeaning word. Polonsky culls and gleans from the massive body of specialized studies, gracefully taking the best and leaving the rest. Even more refreshing, as is evident in this first of a projected, encyclopedic three-volume history that will culminate with the beginning of this millennium and consist of some 2,000 pages, Polonsky is not offering yet another ideplogically driven “grand narrative” of the kind favoured by many of the greatest Jewish historians of earlier generations . . . [he] overcomes the daunting complexity inherent in his subject . . . he avoids scholarly polemics in order to present as sober, balanced, and accurate a picture as possible . . . Judging from this superb first volume, the next two cannot appear too soon. The Judaic studies academy will long be in Polonsky's debt for this sweeping work, one destined to be the authoritative classic in its field for the foreseeable future.'  
Allan Nadler, Forward