Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews and Ukrainians, 1919-1945 by Shimon s> Redlich (review)

Abstract

770 SEER, 82, 3, 2004 Power during the Civil War in Siberia (I9I8-1920): Dilemmas of Kolchak's "WarAnti-Communism"' (Canadian Slavonic Papers,29, I987, i) is placed in chapterseventeen:theWhiteMovement, theDemocratic Counter-Revolution and the Emigration because the key word is 'White'; the same author's 'SiberianAtamanshchina: Warlordismand the Russian Civil War' in V. Brovkin 'scollection TheBolsheviks inRussian Society: theRevolution andCivilWars (New Haven, CT, 1997) appears in chapter twenty-three:the National Minorities and Regional Affairs under the subdivision 'Siberia', although it could be argued that both studies addressrelatedissues of the civil war'seasternfront. Once again, a check with the index is essential. Sometimes, however, the index, which only covers authors, cannot help. The Arrangement of the Bibliography lists the 'Kronstadt Uprising' as a subdivision of chapter eighteen: Popular Hostility to Soviet Rule. This is where such studies as P. Avrich's Kronstadt I92I (Princeton, NJ, 1970) can be located. However, I. Getzler'sKronstadt I9I7-2I.: TheFateofa Soviet Democracy (Cambridge, I983), appears in chapter twenty-three: National Minorities and Regional Affairs under the subdivision'EuropeanRussianRegions', because it covers a longer timescale than the I92 I revolt. This is not a major criticism of Smele's work. Should the article by M. Volacich on the 'CurzonLine and TerritorialChanges in EasternEurope' in Belorussian Review,I956, be placed in chapter twenty-three under the subdivision 'Poland and the Soviet-Polish War' rather than 'Belorussia'? Should M. Hickey's 'Revolution on the Jewish Street: Smolensk, 1917' (ournal ofSocialHistory,3I, 1998, 4) be placed in the subdivision 'Belorussia' ratherthan 'Jews'?Such issuescan never be resolved. Readersjust need to be awarethat they should explore this extraordinaryworkfullyand look beyond the firstcategorythat catches theireye. School ofHistory G. R. SWAIN University oftheWest ofEngland Redlich, Shimon. Together andApartin Brzezany:Poles,Jews and Ukrainians, I9I9-I945. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indiana, 2002. iXX+ 202 pp. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. [22.95. SINCE the original publication in English in 2002, Shimon Redlich's Together andApartinBrzezany: Poles,JewsandUkrainians, 19I9-I945 hasbeentranslated into both Polish and Ukrainian. The attention that this book has received in certain intellectualcirclesin Poland and the Ukraine is a manifestationof the recently emerged and increasing nostalgia in the region for its multi-ethnic and multi-culturalpast. The book itself is written in the nostalgic mode for thispast and the readercan quicklyrecognize that the author'smain aim is to 'revive' (in symbolic terms) the lost multi-ethnic and multi-culturalworld of the pre-Ig39 Brzezany. The author's own personal recollections of his childhood in Brzezany,where the authorwas born in I935, are also conveyed in a nostalgicmode. The autobiographical,intimatenarrativesof chapterone and of the preludes to chaptersthree, four, five and six constitute a powerful REVIEWS 77I presence in the book, and place it somehow between the genreof conventional history and memoir writings. In fact, the book can be read on two different levels; firstlyas the micro-historicalstudy of a town, a genre which has been gaining, in recentyears, an increasingpopularityamong historiansof Central and EastEuropeanJewish studies;and secondlyas the studyof memory about a place of birth as narratedby its former inhabitants.Redlich's study of how one remembers one's own place of birth and childhood encapsulates the micro-historyof Brzezany. The author weaves this micro-history from published and unpublished memoirs, secondary literatureand his own fifty interviews conducted in the I990S with mostly formerinhabitantsof Brzezany.The majorshortcomingof this micro-historylies in the fact that no major archival materials inform it. However, its strength lies in the multi-vocal description of life in pre-war Brzezany. The relations between the local Poles, Jews and Ukrainians are presentednot only fromthe point of view ofJewish survivorsof the Holocaust, including Redlich himself, but also ethnic Poles who, like the few remaining Jews of Brzezany,left the town immediatelyafterthe Second WorldWar,and the Ukrainians,who were the only ethnic community that remained in post1945 Brzezany. Redlich succeeds in giving almost equal voice to the representativesof all three ethnic communities and their distinctivepoints of view about theirown collective life and theirneighbours.At the same time he neither loses his criticalperspective on the historyof the region and its multiethnic relations nor ignores the particularlydifficultand precariousposition of the Jewish minority vis-A-visthe majority groups...