Russian Jews in exile from Bolshevik Russia: the case of Lev Shestov as an example of Russian‐Jewish existential compromise

Lev Shestov (born Leib Jehuda Shvartsman in Kiev in 1866) was a product of his times and entangled cultural roots. His destiny became closely related to the Russian Diaspora in Europe (he fled Bolshevik Russia in 1920). He was also linked to the local (especially French and German) intellectual life. However, being a Jew made Shestov stand out from the purely Russian emigration, for although he connected himself first and foremost with Russian culture, he could not be integrated without reservations into the purely Russian Diaspora. On the other hand mapping him in relation to the diverse Russian‐Jewish émigré milieu in Europe is not a straightforward task because his attitude to his Jewish roots was rather ambivalent. The case of self‐identification, in varying degrees, was similarly ambiguous with many Russian Jews who left Russia after the revolution. Shestov’s activities in emigration were diverse. Apart from teaching he published regularly in the outlets of the émigré press as well as in major French literary journals and gave lectures in Germany (in particular, addressing such different audiences as the Union of Russian Jews and the Nietzschean Society). In brief, his way of coping with the experience of exile was to become a multicultural conductor of sorts. This article aims to analyse Shestov’s life path in the framework of the Russian‐Jewish Diaspora in Europe at the time in the context of both cultural and ethnic repudiation and appropriation. This in turn should shed some new light on the cultural life of this Diaspora.     

“Three serpents with tongues and eyes of flame”: the 1905 pogroms in Russian‐Jewish literature

Despite the fact that the 1881/82 pogroms had a much greater effect on Jewish thinking, representing a watershed in the Jewish strategy of assimilation, the 1905 pogroms were much more widely mirrored in literature. The Silver Age period of Russian literature had a great impact on new stylistic strategies that were capable of depicting the horror and avoiding the sentimental, documentary or didactic extremities. The following article discusses what new ways were found by S. An‐sky, David Aizman, Aleksandr Kipen and Semion Yushkevich to express in the language of art the incomprehensible.     

Battling balfour: ‘White Diplomacy’, the Russian Orthodox Church and the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine1

ARCHITECTS OF YIDDISHISM AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. A STUDY IN JEWISH CULTURAL HISTORY, BY EMANUEL S. Goldsmith. Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and London, Associated University Presses, 1976. 309 pp. Illus. Bibl. Index. US $15.00, £7.50.     

From the enclave to hierarchy – and on to tyranny: the micro‐political organisation of a consultant’s group

No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

George Orwell, the concluding lines of Animal farm.     

Reflections on Strangeness in Context: The Case of Russian–Jewish Immigrants in the Kibbutz

This article elucidates and elaborates upon the contextualized meaning of strangeness and the experience of being a stranger. Our empirical study of strangeness embarks simultaneously from the three leading theories of the stranger—as cultural reader (Schuetz 1944), as demarcator of social boundaries (Simmel 1950), and as trespasser of social categories (Bauman 1990, 1991)—and at the same time criticizes these theories for artificially divesting strangeness of social context. Our thesis about strangeness-in-context is grounded in in-depth interviews we conducted with Jewish–Russian immigrants (twenty-one university students) who have lived in kibbutzim. Our assumption is that the kibbutz as a communal home is a suitable case study to illuminate the manyfold dimensions of strangeness, as it intensifies the tension between insiders and outsiders. In explicating the immigrant's sense of strangeness we claim the local context of the kibbutz interacts with the Israeli national definition of the immigrant as a homecomer.     

From Russian to Ukrainian Eurasianism: the new ‘historical’ friends and enemies

Eurasianism is a popular creed in post-Soviet Russia. Its supporters believe Russia is a unique blend of Slavic and non-Slavic, mostly Muslim Turkic people. With the rise of Russian nationalism, Muslims were transformed into enemies. It has been a different story in Ukraine, where Russians – ‘the old brothers’ – became an alien force and Turkic people an acceptable minority. This trend has held for the last 20 years regardless of all vacillations in Ukrainian political/cultural development.     

Back to the future? From pragmatic approaches in the social sciences to the development of the patchwork theory

The debate on the function of the social sciences in complex societies, and more generally of the role of knowledge, leads necessarily to a discussion on pragmatism. The gap between theoretical approaches and empirical research still exists and has even widened, in part as a result of the use and abuse of social science knowledge in politics and by the media. However, the academic system is equally to blame for this. Mutual ignorance and scholastic fights are barriers against openness, creative and imaginary thinking. The structures and the practices of the academic system reinforce this trend. Pragmatism aims at overcoming these cleavages by looking at commonalities between different approaches rather than by disputing their validity. It aims at a comprehensive understanding of the process of knowledge production and at the productive use of results. Defining itself in this tradition, the patchwork theory goes beyond the traditional pragmatic approaches: it catches part of the reality of social phenomena from a certain perspective that allows for an overview without having the full picture. Methodologicall, the approach guided by patchwork theory emphasizes the relevance of stakeholders’ knowledge and citizen science, and calls for public participation and democratic access to the production and use of knowledge in a discursive manner.     

Parental involvement in the development of a culture‐based school curriculum

This study focuses on parental involvement in Sámi schools when developing a culturally sensitive school curriculum. The research recognizes a number of competing and complementary interests that play a role when constructing structures and policies in curriculum development. Two Sámi schools in Sweden with 115 pupils, their parents and 27 teachers were included in a longitudinal three‐year study. Interviews, school visits, videotapes and document analysis were used to gather information. The results indicate the invisible existence of culture‐based school practice and curriculum texts. The lack of contact among homes, schools and community culture was obvious. Parents and teachers expressed an interest in developing a culture‐based local curriculum through a process of reflecting on and creating an education incorporating the past, the present and the future. The study showed that parents, pupils and teachers experienced increased awareness in culture‐based schoolwork. The study pointed to a desire for cooperation between home and school in the development of a culture‐based school curriculum and a school practice supported by a culturally responsible teacher.     

In search of a lost people: Jews in present‐day Ukrainian historiography

A Relationship on Two Levels. Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization. An Uneasy Alliance. New York: Praeger, 1980. vii + 289pp. £15.25.

The Soviet ‘Black Book’ on the Holocaust. Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg (comp. and eds.), Chernaya kniga (The Black Book), annotated and indexed by Mark Kipnis and Hayah Lifshits. Jerusalem: Tarbut Publishers, 1980. xx‐vii + 547pp. Illus. Name Index. Place Index.

A Valuable Account of Jewish Heroism. Reuben Ainsztein, The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. New York: Holocaust Library, 1979. 238pp. Bibl. $4.95.

The Reality of National Bolshevism. Mikhail Agursky, Ideologiya natsional‐bolshevizma (The Ideology of National Bolshevism). Introduction by Leonard Schapiro. Paris: YMCA Press, 1980. 321pp. Notes. Bibliography.

Communist Zionism in the USSR. Baruch Gurevitz, National Communism in the Soviet Union, 1918–28. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1980. xiii+ 121pp.     

Poetics of place and the transformation of the Russian Jewish American self in Lara Vapnyar’s The Scent of Pine and Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s Panic in a Suitcase

ABSTRACT

In The Scent of Pine and Panic in a Suitcase, Russian Jewish American authors Lara Vapnyar and Yelena Akhtiorskaya explore the interiority of the immigrant self in various stages of the immigrant journey from the former Soviet Union to the United States and back. Both novels display a general trend in this literature to move away from the prescribed paradigms of Jewish American immigrant self-understanding, and toward a more private sense of the immigrant self, a movement away from the familiar confines of immigrant urban enclaves and toward a poetics of place that expands the modalities in which post-Soviet Jewish characters interact with US American space.     

On the semantics of the motif “three hares chasing each other in a circle” on Jewish monuments in Eastern Europe

“Three hares chasing each other in a circle” is one of the most common and peculiar motifs in the murals of Eastern European wooden synagogues. This motif was not an invention of Jewish craftsmen, but rather was borrowed and adapted by them from European art. In the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century this motif appears in various Ashkenazi ritual objects and on the tombstones of Eastern European Jews in the same region, and even in those places where there were painted synagogues. What is the reason for the appearance of this strange motif on Jewish monuments? On some monuments the motif of the “three hares” paradoxically replaces the “three overlapping fish” which are depicted as the zodiacal sign of the month Nisan. On the tombstones the image hints at the name of the deceased. But its central place in the composition of murals is evidence that this motif has an important universal meaning. This analysis of the motif shows that it became an integral part of an artistic tradition and that its semantics were determined within a well-defined geographical and chronological framework.     

Studying cognitive development in sociocultural context: The development of a practice‐based approach

This paper sketches the development of a research framework for analyzing the interplay between culture and cognitive development in cultural practices and the methodological tensions that gave rise to the framework. The framework consists of three components geared for analyzing intrinsic relations between culture and cognitive development. The first focuses on the analysis of individuals' goals as they take form in everyday practices. The second is concerned with the shifting relations between cognitive forms and cognitive functions in individuals' efforts to accomplish those goals. The third focuses on the appropriationandspecialization of forms structured in one practice to accomplish emergent goals in another. Applications and progressive refinements of the framework are discussed in analyses of practices of economic exchange in a remote group in Papua New Guinea, number play in middle and working class children in Brooklyn, New York, and candy selling in Northeastern Brazil.     

Using QSR‐NVivo to facilitate the development of a grounded theory project: an account of a worked example

This paper demonstrates how the software package QSR‐NVivo can be used to faciitate a grounded theory approach. Recent research evidence has questioned the methodological quality of many studies that claim to utilise grounded theory. This paper argues that qualitative data analysis software can be used to encourage good quality grounded theory research by facilitating many of the key processes and characteristics associated with this approach. To achieve this, the paper identifies a number of grounded theory characteristics, common to all revisions of the methodology. It then describes the development of a recent study, which examined how people successfully maintain long‐term physical activity behaviour change. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how different functions of QSR‐NVivo may be used in conjunction with the key grounded theory characteristics. In summary, QSR‐NVivo is a powerful tool that, if used appropriately, can facilitate many aspects of the grounded theory process from the design and early sampling procedures, through to the analysis of data, theoretical development and presentation of findings.     

From the eradication of illiteracy to workers' correspondents: Yiddish‐language mass movements in the Soviet Union

Varieties of Fascism

Native Fascism in the Successor States 1918–1945, Peter F. Sugar (ed.). Santa Barbara, California, ABC‐Clio Inc. 1971. iii + 166 pp. Index. (Twentieth Century Series, no. 4). $9.50, $4.50 paperback.

Hitler's Eastern Policies

Die Sowjetunion und Das Dritte Reich. Eine Dokumentierte Geschichte Der Deutsch‐Sowjetischen Beziehungen Von 1933 BIS 1941, by Philipp W. Fabry. Stuttgart, Seewald, 1971. 485 pp. Docs. Names Index.

Die Polnisch‐Deutschen Beziehungen 1933–1938, by Marian Wojcie‐chowski, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1971. xiii 583 pp. (Studien zur Geschichte Osteuropas XII).

A Jewish life in Poland and the USSR

Naftuley Derakhim Optwisting Pathscp, by Ester Rozental‐Shneyderman. Tel‐Aviv, Ha‐kibbutz Ha‐meuchad. Vol. I, 1970, 406 pp., vol. II, 1972, 400 pp.

Jewish culture and survival in the USSR

Tarbut Yehudit Bi‐Brit Ha‐Moatsot (Jewish Culture in the Soviet Union). Jerusalem, Cultural Department of the World Jewish Congress. 1972. 168 pp.

Persons and unpersons

Who Was Who in the USSR, compiled by the Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich. Metuchen, New Jersey, USA, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1972, xii + 677 pp. Index. $40, £20.00.