Evrei i russkaia revoliutsiia: Materialy i issledovaniia by O. V. s> Budnitskii (review)

Abstract

542 SEER, 79, 3, 200 I maintains a proper perspectivethroughout so that he places his special study in itscorrectcontext. He neverclaimsthatfrontpropagandahad considerable results.Warsarenot won bypropagandabut by the balanceof powerbetween the belligerents. One could well argue that in such a prolonged war as 19I4-1 9I8 the diplomacy which brought in more and more belligerentson the Entente side was of far greater importance than any propaganda. The other context which the author keeps in mind is the political and military weaknessof the Monarchy and the causes and course of its dissolution.These causes have been so much debated since I9I8 and have so often been obfuscated that the author's formulation, clear and precise, is well worth quoting in full: 'The "primary reason" was internal. During the war the Austro-Hungarian authorities lost the battle for hearts and minds to those who believed in new statesand formsof government.Not only did the Empire fail to propagate its own raison d'etre sufficiently.Even if it had done so, the evidence suggeststhatitsown propagandawouldhave been whollyinadequate and ill-matchedto deal with the many unresolvedpolitical and nationalissues from the pre-war period. These issues festered increasingly during he war, exacerbatedby warwearinessand the criticalfood situation.They formedthe essentialdomesticbasiswhich enabled outside forces,the "secondaryreason" to contributeto the Monarchy'sdissolution [. . .] these outside influenceshad the effectof spurringon domestic nationalistsso thatthey made crucialmoves away from the Empire at an opportune moment, when it was clear that the war was lost [ ...] the undermining of Austria-Hungary depended on a consistent interaction between internal and external factors but the decisive ones were domestic' (p. 443). A more severecriticthan thepresentreviewercould complainthatthe book is too long for the limited nature of the subjectand the argument.The details which abound in the bookwhetherabout conditionson the Italianfrontor the activitiesof Benes are worth having and from such well-founded sources. Dr Cornwall's book, because of its exhaustive examination of the evidence and itscarefulconclusionsfillsa gap in theliteraturein a mannerwhich willensure that it will not be soon superseded. London TREVOR VAUGHAN THOMAS Budnitskii, 0. V. (ed. and comp.). Evrei i russkaiarevoliutsiia. Materiay i issledovaniia. Seriia 'Sovremennye issledovaniia'.The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Gishrei Tarbut Association. Gesharim, Moscow and Jerusalem, I999. 480 pp. Notes. Tables. Figures. Bibliographical references.Illustrations.Index. Priceunknown. THERE are few trickiersubjectsin Russian historythan the role ofJews in the October Revolution and its aftermath (the only more sensitive topic that comes to mind is the role of the most prominent Jewish oligarchs in the Russian Federation during the i990s). The extremely readable and useful compendium under review has already been the subject of a long discussion in Otechestvennaia istoriia (2, 2000, pp. 89-12 I), where, inter alia,it was suggested that the October Revolution should reallybe referredto as the rossiiskaia, not REVIEWS 543 russkaia, revoliutsiia, so great was the input of the inorodtsy (laterto be known as the natsional'nye men'shinstva). Objection was likewise taken to the title of Oleg Budnitskii's in many ways excellent introductory survey, V chuzhom piru pokhmel'e, which suggeststhat theJews had to 'carrythe can' or 'takethe rap' for someone else's (presumably the Russians') sins and mistakes. The only other seriouscriticismsof the volume are that apart from one contributionit completely ignores all the abundant relevant material available only in Yiddish and Hebrew, and that the contents cover a much broader area and longer time-spanthan its title might suggest. Aftertwointroductoryarticlescomes S. G. Svatikov'saccount (pp. 33-142), evidently written during World War I, of the part played by Jews in the Russian revolutionarymovement from the baptized Decembrist G. A. Peretts up to the late I88os. The name index, compiled by V. E. Kel'ner, gives one some idea of the numberofJewish dissidentswho went abroadfortheirhigher education, who studied medicine, who committed suicide, who converted to Christianity,who eventuallyemigratedand/or who became police informers. This is followed by Svatikov'sgrippingaccount (pp. I63-2 I 2) of the careerof P. I. Rachkovskii,the Polish convert to Orthodoxy who was the Paris-based head of the foreign branch of the Russian secret service from i 885 to I902, and of hisloyal FrenchassistantHenri Bint,who spiltalot of beansto Svatikov after the February Revolution and handed over many of his...