Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History

Abstract

For many centuries Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world: right up to the Second World War, the area was home to over 40 per cent of the world's Jews. Yet the history of their Jewish communities is not well known. This book recreates this lost world, beginning with Jewish economic, cultural and religious life, including the emergence of hasidism. By the late eighteenth century, other factors had come into play: with the onset of modernization there were government attempts to integrate and transform the Jews, and the stirrings of Enlightenment led to the growth of the Haskalah movement. The book looks at developments in each area in turn: the problems of emancipation, acculturation, and assimilation in Prussian and Austrian Poland; the politics of integration in the Kingdom of Poland; and the failure of forced integration in the tsarist empire. It shows how the deterioration in the position of the Jews between 1881 and 1914 encouraged a range of new movements as well as the emergence of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. It also examines Jewish urbanization and the rise of Jewish mass culture. The final part, starting from the First World War and the establishment of the Soviet Union, looks in turn at Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union up to the Second World War. It reviews Polish–Jewish relations during the war and examines the Soviet record in relation to the Holocaust. The final chapters deal with the Jews in the Soviet Union and in Poland since 1945, concluding with an epilogue on the Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia since the collapse of communism.