The Tragedy of a Generation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe, by Joshua M. Karlip

Abstract

The Tragedy of a Generation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe, by Joshua M. Karlip. Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, 2013. xii, 378 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). Among the dizzying array of political ideologies that circulated among Russian and Eastern European Jews in the early years of the twentieth-century, diaspora nationalism is often overshadowed by the more influential ideologies of Zionism and Marxism. Recent works by Simon Rabinovitch, Kenneth Moss, Adam Rovner and others have sought to correct this imbalance, by turning our attention as well to the diaspora nationalists, Territorialists, and others who sought Jewish national autonomy outside of Palestine. In this, his first book, Joshua Karlip tells the tragic story of a trio of diaspora nationalists--Elias Tcherikower, Yisroel Efroikin, and Zelig Hirsh Kalmanovitch--each of whose career and ideological trajectories followed a similar path from idealism to despair. All three were born in the 1880s in the western provinces of Russia, to which Jewish residence was largely restricted. Tcherikower and Efroikin came from middle-class families, whereas Kalmanovitch had more modest roots. Yet all three managed to receive university educations, a difficult feat given restrictions on Jewish movement and quotas against Jewish students. In the university environment of the Russian fin-de-siecle and immediate aftermath of the 1905 revolution, all three became active in political opposition to the tsarist regime--Tcherikower as a Menshevik, Efroikin in the Jewish Socialist Labor Party (SERP), and Kalmanovitch as a Socialist Zionist. Within a few years, though, they became disillusioned with the possibilities of parliamentary politics in Russia, and instead turned to cultural activity, believing that a return to Jewish traditions, particularly as manifested in secular Yiddish culture, could help save Russian Jewry. Tcherikower first became involved with the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia and then moved to the United States to write for the Yiddish press; Efroikin put his faith in the cooperative movement in Russia; and Kalmanovitch became co-editor of the influential Kletskin press. By the time war broke out, all three were united in their belief in secular Jewish cultural autonomy. Like most Russian Jews, they greeted the fall of the tsar and the February Revolution of 1917 with euphoria, convinced that Jewish cultural autonomy was about to be fulfilled, only to be crestfallen with the Bolshevik takeover. They were once again disappointed when the pogroms destroyed any hopes for Jewish autonomy in Ukraine. Tcherikower now devoted himself to collecting documentation of the pogroms that plagued the region, encompassing a massive archive of testimonies. Efroikin, too, despaired of the shrinking opportunities for autonomy in the new states of Europe, and advocated for the establishment of a type of world Jewish congress. …