SUMMARY:

This paper approaches the phenomenon of Jewish criminality in Odessa from the vantage point of the anthropology of violence, looking into how new perceptions of Jewish identity can be determined from the demarcation between “us” and “them,” the strategies of crossing boundaries between ethno-confessional groups, and the specificity of Jewish criminality.
The largely archaic Russian state could not regulate social processes on the micro-level of people’s every-day lives and affairs. Therefore Jews, as well as other ethnic groups in Odessa, engaged in processes of permanent self-organization. In the situation of anomic, rootless, “colonial” life in Odessa’s rapidly developing society, new strategies of social behavior and new patterns of socialization emerged daily, some of which violated the law. While official criminal statistics cannot be taken as an accurate representation of the actual involvement of an ethnic minority in criminal activities, it does suggest a degree of integration into “official” society by a minority group. Judging by this criterion, Odessa Jews had fairly intensive contacts with the official institutions of society (particularly given the open anti-Semitism of city officials). However, the main thrust of the Jewish interaction with larger society laid outside the institutional framework. Jews participated en mass in various activities that crossed all traditional lines and boundaries – legal as well as ethnic – in their quest for adaptation to the challenges of the day, and for greater security and prosperity. No traditional scenarios and certainly no legal regulations taught Jews and Russians in Odessa how to build personal and economic relationships across ethno-confessional boundaries. On the contrary, religion, traditions, and law reinforced segregation and separatism as well as mutual mistrust and hostility. People violating traditions and occasionally breaking the law entered uncharted waters, and their innovative sociability and frontier mentality challenged institutionalized social norms. In this respect, Odessa demonstrated a completely different pattern of Jewish criminality: neither a “traditional Jewish” way of illegal operations nor a “typical immigrant” urban model of uncompromising fight for control over certain territories. According to police files and newspaper accounts, Odessa Jews were engaged in all types of criminal activities and were quite prone to violence, including murder. In the situation of weak or inefficient state institutions and given the rootless nature of “colonial” life, social hierarchies and unofficial systems of authority were spontaneously constructed. Thus, Jewish criminality in Odessa was more than a manifestation of “social malady.” Its overrepresentation in public discourse (compared with official statistics) and certain patterns represented in thousands studied cases suggest that it was also a product of the conflict between the established institutions of the archaic state and the rapidly modernizing “colonial” (or “frontier”) enclave within the empire. Odessa Jews behaved and felt themselves to be different from Jews in other parts of Russia, finding their own roads to modernity, which were not always legal.