Published 2011-01-17
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Abstract
Alessandro Cifariello
Jews and “living space” during the reign of Tsar Alexander II
This is the first of a series of papers written in Italian, English, and Russian, devoted to the publication of material not included in the Author’s 2009 dissertation entitled Judeophobia and the Anti-Nihilistic Novel in Russia at the End of the 19th Century. Taking as a point of departure works by leading scholars, such as Israel Bartal, Cesare G. De Michelis, Jonathan Frankel, John D. Klier, Dan Miron, Benjamin Nathans, Laura Salmon, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, and Yuri Slezkine, this article aims at offering some new perspectives on the Pale of Settlement and on the history and culture of Russian Jewry during the reign of Alexander II. It highlights the laws and reforms concerning Russian Jews implemented by the Tsar’s government, and their fallout on Russian culture. The Author analyzes Jewish geography, urban space, history, legislation, reforms, society, cultural convergences and differences in the Pale of Settlement. The paper concludes with information about the 1881-1882 Russian pogroms and about how certain Jewish inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement then emigrated towards Central and Western Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. The paper discusses the commonplace of a separate Jewish space in the Pale envisaged in some late 19th and early 20th Century Yiddish literature, and describes the multicultural universe made up of several nationalities, one of which was in fact Russian Jewry, struggling for its rights and for full emancipation.