Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry

Olga Litvak teaches European and Jewish history at Princeton University. Born in Soviet Russia and educated in the United States, she is a New Yorker by conviction.

• ContentsA Note on TransliterationAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Literary Response to Conscription and the Persistence of Enlightenment in Russian-Jewish Culture1. Stepchildren of the Tsar: Jewish Cantonists and the Official Origins of Russian Jewry2. Great Expectations: The Beginnings of Cantonist Literature and the Emancipation of Russian-Jewish Consciousness3. The Romance of Enlightenment: Gender and the Critique of Embourgeoisement in the Recruitment Novels of I. M. Dik, Grigorii Bogrov, and J. L. Gordon4. Return of the Native: The Nicholaevan Universe of Sh. J. Abramovich and the Enlightenment Origins of Russian-Jewish Populism5. Dead Children of the Hebrew Renaissance: The Conscription Story as Nationalist Myth6. The Writing of Conscription History and the Making of the Russian-Jewish DiasporaConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

"Russian Jews were first conscripted into the Imperial Russian army during the reign of Nicholas I in an effort to integrate them into the population of the Russian Empire. Conscripted minors were to serve, in practical terms, for life. Although this system was abandoned by his successor, the conscription experience remained traumatic in the popular memory and gave rise to a large and continuing literature that often depicted Jewish soldiers as heroes. This book traces the conscription theme in novels and stories by some of the best-known Russian Jewish writers such as Osip Rabinovich, Judah-Leib Gordon, and Mendele Mokher Seforim, as well as by relatively unknown writers."—Joseph Haberer, Book Editor, SHOFAR, Summer 2008 Volume 26, No. 4". . . [A] valuable scholarly work . . . Recommended."—Choice". . . this is a valuable, theoretically sophisticated contribution to both Russian and Jewish history. Litvak has convincingly shown that what Russian Jews came to know about conscription was a literary, and highly polemical, construction that helped shaped how Jews came to understand and remember their collective plight in tsarist Russia.Vol. 68.1 Jan. 2009"—Charters Wynn, University of Texas at Austin"Litvak has written an imaginative, path-breaking study that contributes immeasurably to the study of modern Jewish history and culture, Imperial Russian history, and theoretical discussions regarding the intersection between literature, history, and memory."—Religious Studies Review"Olga Litvak has written an incisive, thought-provoking, and critical account of the emergence in late imperial Russia of a new Jewish literary discourse in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Vol. 81.2 June 2009"—Eli Lederhendler, Hebrew University of Jerusalem