Salo W. Baron
The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets.
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1976. First printing of second edition, revised and enlarged. 0025073001 xvii/468 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.75" x 9.75", is bound in dark green cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Volume is in fine condition, with firm binding, clean and bright pages. Dust jacket, with price of $14.95 on front flap, shows minor loss at top edges.
"The only solution to the Jewish question in Russia is that one~third should emigrate, one~third become Christianized and one~third should perish." The Russian official who made this statement in 1890 mirrored his country's reaction to the Jewish community from the time of the Khazar empire. These anti-Semitic sentiments have persisted to the present day. The history of the Russian Jews is, in part, a paradigm of the forms repression by state and society can take: forcible conversion, military conscription with little regard to age (an almost certain death sentence for the small boys who were included), pauperization, occupational and geographical restriction, bloody pogroms, and recent Marxian attempts to "denationalize" and assimilate Jewish culture. It is also, as Salo Baron points out in his comprehensive new book, the history of an heroic and relatively successful struggle to preserve Jewish cultural and religious identity in the face of nearly total opposition. Professor Baron chronicles the fate of the Jews under successive tsars, showing how changing rulers affected the community. Alexander I's recognition of Jewish loyalty during the Napoleonic war gave way to the propagation of anti~Semitic literature under Nicholas I. This was in turn followed by the liberalism of the second Alexander, then pogroms and May Laws during the reign of Alexander III. The author investigates conditions within the Jewish community during these periods, providing information on trends in population, economics, education, religious activities, and intellectual life. He demonstrates how Russia often suffered as a nation by restricting Jewish participation in national affairs. Has the life of the Russian Jew materially changed in recent years? Professor Baron gives evidence of anti-Semitism in the Stalinist era and following the Nazi terror. And he asserts that it remains today. He concludes his study with a thoughtful and not unpromising prognosis for the future of the Jews in Russia, depending on the emergence of the "reason" which the present government insists is its sole guide."