The present book is an impressive scholarly work that gives an erudite account of the modernization processes of Byelorussian Jewry under the changing conditions of new political realities. Studies of Soviet Jewry have made serious progress in the past 30 years, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the one hand, new historical sources to which Western scholars previously had no access have become available, and, on the other hand, Russian research on Jewish history has become an integral part of the international research community, thus enriching it with new methodology from studies of Russian Jewry. Arkadii Zel’tser’s research concentrates on the history of the Jewish population of Vitebsk and its surroundings, making this book a combination of Jewish history and regional studies – a new conceptual approach to the history of Jews in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the author provides a comparative analysis of the history of Soviet Jewry at the local, republican, and state levels (P. 6). Previous research on Soviet Jewish history lacked an objective approach and focused mainly on the poor fate of Soviet Jews under Soviet rule. The social, economic, and political transformation of the Soviet province during the 1920s–1930s positively influenced provincial Jews and helped them to successfully integrate into the new Soviet multinational community. Thus, many of them saw in Soviet power the only opportunity to realize their hopes for a better life. This rapid integration process destroyed traditional Jewish communities and led to their disappearance as ethnic-religious subgroups.
The chronological frame of the present research is the period between 1917 and 1941. This period of twenty years is sufficient for an investigation of the first visible results of Soviet power reforms in the Jewish communities and their process of transformation from Jewish shtetels to modern Soviet towns. During World War II, all remnants of traditional Jewish life in Byelorussia were wiped out, including the Jews themselves, but with the 1945 victory came a new era in the history of Byelorussian Jewry.
Zel’tser’s bibliographical records are very impressive. He made broad use of archival materials from local Byelorussian and Israeli archives, press publications in Yiddish, Russian, and Byelorussian, including letters and recollections of members of Bund, Poalei Tzion, Tzeirei Tzion, and other national parties and movements (Pp. 428-430).
The book is composed of eight chapters: five chronological and three subject chapters. The first chapter, “From Rise to Apathy (March 1917 – Summer 1918),” analyzes the most critical period of strengthening of Soviet power in the provinces. In traditional Soviet historiography this period is described as the “triumphant movement of Soviet power,” but everyday reality contradicts the official version and can be characterized instead as the destroyed hopes and unrealized expectations at the hands of the new political regime. Bolshevik political agitation gave rise to fruitless hopes for quick social and political changes based on the idealistic philosophy of a just social order (P. 17). While the Jewish population of Vitebsk and its surrounding towns and villages avoided pogroms on the part of the non-Jewish population, the newly organized and publicly reorganized Jewish political and religious parties and movements had difficulties in defining their exact goals and ways of working with their community members. This situation of social instability did not result in the rise of any kind of activity on the part of local Jews who preferred to wait for better times.
In the second chapter, “The Years of War Communism,” Zel’tser thoroughly describes the transition of Jewish political parties and organizations from complete rejection by and confrontation with Soviet power to cooperation with and support of the Bolsheviks. These specific details are very important in providing a way to trace the process of recognition of the new power among the Jewish population. Increasing activity of Jewish political parties and movements and their cooperation with Soviet bodies had practical realization in the economic support of Jewish educational and community structures and led to the strengthening of their position on the “Jewish street” (Pp. 42-43).
The New Economic Policy (NEP) stimulated further political and social changes and deepened the gaps between different social groups within Soviet society (addressed in the third chapter, “NEP, the Economy, and Social Status”). The main characteristic of the Jewish population was its nonproletarian character: only a small proportion of them can be defined as proletarians or peasants. Jews were for the most part city dwellers, and thus belonged to independent or semiproletarian elements. This ambivalent position influenced their social status as taxpayers and deprived them of basic civil rights such as freedom of movement, voting, membership in voluntary organizations, free choice of occupation, and study opportunities. Prosperous Jews in Vitebsk and other places became the subjects of arbitrary property confiscation: the best city buildings that often served the Jewish community’s needs were nationalized by the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus without compensation. Cooperative organizations that became popular among the non-Jewish population had no impact on the Jews, who continued to see in cooperative organizations a substitute for Jewish community assistance services. The Vitebsk cell of Yevsektsia tried to recruit Jews for productive cooperative activity by granting them loans on favorable conditions, providing cheap medical and law services, legislating exemption from educational fees, and so forth (Pp. 102-104). During these years (1921–1929), the process of social migration increased dramatically. The social importance of small towns with extensive Jewish populations declined in comparison with Vitebsk, to say nothing of Minsk, Moscow, or Leningrad. Jews had greater mobility than other ethnic groups, and big cities provided broader opportunities and expectations.
The fourth chapter, “National Policy in the 1920s,” deals with different approaches to national policy on the part of Jewish political organizations and their influence on the ordinary Jewish population. In Byelorussia, Soviet national policy strove to comply with the special needs of a quite numerous Jewish population. Inside the Bolshevik party was a strong controversy between supporters of the official party line and Yevsektsia activists, most of whom were former Bund members. Yevsektsia aimed at full autonomy on religious and cadre policy, recruitment of new party activists among the local Jewish population, and the gradual transformation of traditional synagogues into educational institutions for the Jewish population (Pp. 125-126). Yevsektsia also intended to control Jewish local and international organizations that spread their activities to Byelorussia (Joint and others) and participated in the distribution of food and material supplies for the needy Jewish population. Bolsheviks, together with Yevsektsia, had rivalries with different Zionist organizations such as Poalei Tzion, Hashomer Hatzair, and ha-Halutz. Jewish immigration to Palestine became close to zero.
As Zel’tser points out, it was difficult to realize the All-Union policy of korenization in Byelorussia. The Byelorussian language was given equal status to Russian provided that Polish and Yiddish were defined as the only important languages. Jews had the opportunity to obtain and continue their education in Yiddish or Byelorussian/Russian. As city dwellers, Jews preferred Russian to both Yiddish and Byelorussian and the Soviet party apparatus applied forceful measures to artificially increase the number of Jews in Jewish national primary and secondary schools by preventing them from entering Russian or Byelorussian educational institutions.
Soviet policy during the 1930s was far from homogeneous. Forced collectivization was accompanied by temporary easing in the cooperative sector of the city and in social policy. Soon after the murder of Sergei Kirov, the first wave of political repressions against “old Bolsheviks” followed, reaching its peak in 1937–1938. Total state control over Soviet citizens increased, the passportization campaign of 1933–1934 limited the free mobility of the population all over the countryside, and the vast peasant population was completely devoid of passports. The analysis and impact of these events on the Jewish population of Vitebsk and the provinces is the subject of the book’s fifth chapter, “New Order, Old Setting: From the Decline of NEP to the Beginning of World War II.” The Jewish population even in these years was characterized by high mobility with only one difference: during the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932), Jews migrated from provincial cities to large cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev; during the Second Five-Year Plan (1933–1937), the Jews moved within the territory of the same republic and the migration process was from small towns and villages to larger towns and republican centers. Collectivization did not influence the Jewish population but industrialization changed much of the social structure of the Jewish population of Vitebsk and Vitebskaia oblast. At that point more than 43 percent of Jews were defined as industrial workers, others worked in commerce, education, the state apparatus, medicine, and construction (Pp. 153-155). The price of forced industrialization resulted in a shortage of basic products and was followed by the increased social prestige of trade workers, who became highly respectable figures among the population because of their access to food and material resources. Social and economic policy was accompanied by political repressions against non-Bolshevik elements. Former members of Bund, Zionist parties, and religious authorities were considered potential spies or politically suspicious elements, and later practically all of them were repressed.
The sixth to eighth chapters of the book are devoted to general questions of national policy, religion, culture, and education, and the transformation of their place and influence in the new Soviet society. Byelorussia was a multinational republic with Byelorussian, Jewish, Polish, and Russian populations. Because of their traditional occupations and level of literacy, Jews took high positions in the formal Soviet hierarchy – a factor that led to the rise of anti-Semitism among the non-Jewish population. For their part, Jews saw Byelorussians and Poles as simpletons fit only for hard agricultural work. Use of the Yiddish and Byelorussian languages in the workplace also contributed to interethnic tensions.
State antireligious policy was not noticeable among Byelorussian Jews until 1927. In comparison with Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, Judaism was considered a lesser evil, and the new Soviet authorities were afraid of being accused of anti-Semitism on the international level. Emelian Iaroslavskii, chairman of the Antireligious Commission of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party and himself a Jew, pointed out that Judaism did not produce centralized structures to influence local Jewish communities. The planning of antireligious policy among Jews was transferred to Yevsektsia, which became responsible for atheist propaganda and agitation. In 1927, the Rabbinical Committee of the Soviet Union was dispersed and the rabbi of Lubavitch, Yosef-Yitzchak Schneerson, was first exiled to Kostroma and later driven outside the borders of the USSR. Existing religious communities were reorganized, and after that they resumed their activities under the strict surveillance and complete control of the Soviet authorities. As a result, instead of community interest, it was religion that became part of private family life as an important feature of national-religious self-identification.
The process of transition from traditional to Soviet education was not an easy task for the Jews of Byelorussia. They had to choose between two types of national culture (Hebrew or Yiddish) and two types of dominant republican culture (Byelorussian or Russian). Byelorussian Jews preferred to give up both national cultures in favor of Russian (Byelorussian was thought of as a primitive and artificially created language). This tendency resulted in a continuous decrease in the number of pupils and students in national Jewish educational institutions and their complete liquidation in summer 1938.
Soviet cultural policy aimed to build a new type of culture that was national in form and international (proletarian) in content. Surprisingly, Vitebsk became a center of intensive cultural activity, partly because of intelligentsia who left politically dangerous Moscow and Petrograd in the first months after the Bolshevik revolution and partly because of better access to food supplies. In Vitebsk, a symphony orchestra and numerous art organizations were organized. Famous artists such as Mark Chagall, El Lissitzky, Yehuda Pen, and Solomon Yudovin took part in city cultural activities and integrated national Jewish elements into the new Soviet culture (Pp. 304-311).
In conclusion, it should be added that Zel’tser’s book itself is based on intensive use and analysis of numerous primary and secondary sources. The only shortcoming of this comprehensive research and highly recommended book is its overly broad thematic perspective.