Autobiographical Jewish Childhood In The Russian Empire: Structural Analysis And Classification

Abstract

This paper discusses the Jewish experience of childhood in the Russian Empire in the 19th century, based on an analytic reading of autobiographies. These autobiographical sources give access to the internal perspective of experience. They allow us to analyze presumptions about childhood absorbed by the autobiographers as children from their socio-cultural environment. Using structural analysis, the authors of this paper distinguish two different types of childhood narrative, type A and type B, which correspond to premodern and modern discourses. These two types are delineated by several parameters, including the position and role of parents and siblings in the narrative, the position of the child, the general attitude toward childhood, social identification in childhood, etc. The authors argue that the two types of childhood narrative coexisted throughout the 19th century, although type B started to dominate childhood discourse beginning in the late 19th century. The findings presented in this paper shed a new light on the process of modernization among Jews in the Russian Empire and the way it affected childhood discourse and practices. Moreover, this paper contributes to historical understanding of the roots of contemporary child psychology as well as to examination of the influence culture of childhood has on the development of personality.