Published in Russian. The publication is based on the "Introduction" from the book: Benjamin Nathans. Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. (Studies on the History of Society and Culture, number 45). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002.
I gratefully acknowledge the help of two anonymous reviewers of Ab Imperio whose insightful comments helped me considerably to improve this paper. Ukrainian names in the body text are rendered in their Library of Congress Ukrainian transliteration. In cases where there is an established English (or Russian) form for a name, it is bracketed following the Ukrainian version. The spelling in the footnotes does not follow LC Ukrainian transliteration except in cases where the publishers provide their own spelling.
My thanks to the editors of Ab Imperio for inviting me to submit a contribution in response to Dennis Eoffe’s essay. Bibliographical references within quoted texts have been adjusted to the journal’s standards.
For help in writing this article I am grateful to the Otdel Iudaiki of the Vernadskii National Library of Ukraine, especially to Irina Sergeeva and Anna Abramovna Ryvkina, and to Diana and Vadim Dzuba, in Kiev. Invaluable help was also given me by the staff of the Iavornits’kii Historical Museum, especially Valentina Ivanovna Lazebnik, and by Aleksandr Bystrakov and Aleksandr Krivobok, in Dnipropetrovs’k.
I would like to thank Bill Rosenberg, Todd Endelman, Valerie Kivelson, and Bob Greene for their comments and criticisms on earlier drafts of this essay. Financial support for my research has been provided by the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Social Science Research Council, and the University of Michigan (especially the Frankel Center for the Judaic Studies).
Dennis Eoffe in his reply answers the questions of Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath and attempts to summarise the controversy retaining his own opinion. Published in Russian.