Jewish fearless speech: towards a definition of Soviet Jewish nonconformism

ABSTRACT

The article proposes a model for analyzing the utterances of Jewish nonconformism in the late-Soviet Russian literature, based on Michel Foucault’s theory of fearless speech and Eric Gans’ theory of the origins of culture. The utterances of nonconformism transform an asymmetrical conflict into symmetrical nonvictimary relations, in which a new, supposedly real identity of a figure is revealed and mobilized for protest. These new relations are based on mutual recodification of different discursive configurations – political, moral, social, aesthetical, metaphysical, or mystical. The discussion will focus on the selected novels of Fridrikh Gorenshtein, Felix Roziner, and, in greater detail, David Shrayer-Petrov.     

Banishing the past: The German avant-garde and Nazi art

How do radical changes in cultural policy affect artistic reputations? Nazi policy to control memory—through the stigmatization of artists and the confiscation of their art—was less than fully successful for two main reasons: (1) Refugees and the German need for foreign exchange carried many pieces into the international market, where they escaped destruction from bombing raids; and (2) in post-war Germany a considerable effort was made not only to connect with a “broken” tradition but also to locate victims and to salvage as much of their work and reputations as possible. Allied efforts to banish Nazi-approved art from the collective memory have been far more successful. Many works that survive still rest in repositories not open to the public and, while work by a few Nazi favorites are still in demand, public commemoration remains politically controversial. Whether the reputation of an artist survives such sharp breaks in the political culture depends not only on the physical preservation of prior work but also on decisions as to who merits a place in the archives accessible to posterity.     

The election of Jewish deputies in Vilna in 1818: government projects and Jewish claims

This article focuses on the election of the so-called deputies of the Jewish people in Vil'na (Vilnius) in 1818. At the time, the Russian government perceived Jewish society as a “state within a state” with its own secret government. Russian rule tried to legalise and control that imagined government or to neutralise and repress it. The Jewish elite used these mental constructs of the Russian ruling circles and positioned themselves as the holders of the “Jewish rule,” demanding the usual prerogatives of nobility.     

The agricultural ethics of biofuels: climate ethics and mitigation arguments

An environmental, climate mitigation rationale for research and development (R&D) on liquid transportation fuels derived from plants emerged among many scientists and engineers during the last decade. However, between 2006 and 2010, this climate ethic for pursuing biofuel became politically entangled and conceptually confused with rationales for encouraging greater use of plant-based ethanol that were both unconnected to climate ethics and potentially in conflict with the value-commitments providing a mitigation-oriented reason to promote and develop new and expanded sources of biofuel. I argue that the conceptual construct of technological trajectories provides a fecund approach to the ethical evaluation of R&D strategies in the case of plant-based liquid transportation fuels. The idea of a trajectory has a current use in the literature of science studies and aptly summarizes a number of themes that are critical to the evaluation of tools and techniques whose future shape, design, applications and potential consequences are necessarily somewhat speculative. In the case of biofuels, it is the imagined future trajectory that provides the basis for resistance to an emerging technology, rather than the present-day technical capabilities and the unexpected consequences of biofuel development.     

The literary development of Yekhiel Shraybman: a Jewish writer in Soviet clothing

This article examines the literary career of the last Bessarabian Yiddish writer of his generation Yekhiel Shraybman (1913–2005). His loss is still deeply felt by the Moldovan Jewish community as his life and writings embraced the country’s historic Jewish past. As his literary career was launched and developed in the Soviet Union his work, aesthetics and politics were affected by “Sovietisation,” a requirement of the Communist Party’s standards in relation to literature. Yet behind the ambivalent glamour of the title “Soviet writer,” he managed to remain a Jewish writer and leave behind a printed memory of his home shtetl, Rashkov.     

Oradea,Romania: a living Jewish memorial

Oradea, once possessing the most active and important Jewish community in Hungary (the biggest in number, after Budapest), and then in Romania, is nowadays a true, silent witness of the immense impact of Jewish culture, in almost all aspects of society, and especially architecture. There is an important Jewish legacy to protect and to pass on to the heirs, in memory, of those approximately 25,000 Jews from Oradea who were exterminated in Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. The article highlights the history and heritage of the Oradea Jews, from the beginning to the present day.     

The Jewish vote: Time to grow up

The electoral significance of Jewish voters in Great Britain has long been recognised by politicians. Yet demonstrations of Jewish voting potential are discouraged by Jewish leaders. After 1945 an upwardly mobile but still working‐class Jewish electorate became disenchanted with the Labour Party. Conservative politicians were quick to exploit this alienation. In the 1960s and 1970s Jewish voters became substantially middle class and also substantially Conservative in outlook. At the same time, far from being totally assimilated within British political culture, Jewish voters in Britain are capable of independent political behaviour, sometimes in marked contrast to national or regional trends.