Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- List of Maps
- List of Tables
- Note on Transliteration
- Note on Place Names
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 The Position of the Jews in the Tsarist Empire, 1881–1905
- 2 Revolution and Reaction, 1904–1914
- 3 The Kingdom of Poland, 1881–1914
- 4 Galicia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 5 Prussian Poland, 1848–1914
- 6 Jewish Spaces: Shtetls and Towns in the Nineteenth Century
- 7 Modern Jewish Literature in the Tsarist Empire and Galicia
- 8 Jewish Religious Life from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to 1914
- 9 Women in Jewish Eastern Europe
- 10 The Rise of Jewish Mass Culture: Press, Literature, Theatre
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Jewish Spaces: Shtetls and Towns in the Nineteenth Century
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- List of Maps
- List of Tables
- Note on Transliteration
- Note on Place Names
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 The Position of the Jews in the Tsarist Empire, 1881–1905
- 2 Revolution and Reaction, 1904–1914
- 3 The Kingdom of Poland, 1881–1914
- 4 Galicia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 5 Prussian Poland, 1848–1914
- 6 Jewish Spaces: Shtetls and Towns in the Nineteenth Century
- 7 Modern Jewish Literature in the Tsarist Empire and Galicia
- 8 Jewish Religious Life from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to 1914
- 9 Women in Jewish Eastern Europe
- 10 The Rise of Jewish Mass Culture: Press, Literature, Theatre
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I had been accustomed for a long time to Lithuania, an ancient land, with ancient cities and villages; the dust of generations lay upon it, and the worry of old age was like a visible shadow—it was a land that looked backwards … That northern country was one in which beginnings were no longer made; men could only continue what the anonymous and forgotten past had begun. In every respect this rich, young southern country was the antithesis of the northern country of my birth … Here, where the generations had not preempted everything, man could still write his name into something.
SHMARYA LEVIN on his move to Odessa in 1898 The Arena, New York, 1932IN LOOKING AT the history of the Jews in the former Polish lands from around 1350 to 1914, the first two volumes of this book concentrate on a number of issues. The attempts of the government of the Polish–Lithuanian Com - monwealth and those which succeeded it to transform the Jews into citizens or, in the case of the tsarist empire, into useful subjects, and the Jewish responses were examined. This was followed by an account of the deterioration, after 1881–2, in the situation of the Jews in the tsarist empire, the home of the largest Jewish community in the world, under the impact of both the rejection by the tsarist government of the policy of integration which it had previously pursued, and the growing intensity of the revolutionary crisis. The Jewish response to the new situation in the tsarist empire and the character of the ‘new Jewish politics’ which arose there, with its stress on peoplehood or ethnicity rather than religion as the marker for Jewish identity in the modern world, was then analysed. This was followed by a description of the impact of the new Jewish politics on the other parts of partitioned Poland–Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, Galicia, and Prussian Poland.
These developments were most pronounced in the large towns of the area, in Odessa, Vilna, Kiev, and St Petersburg in the tsarist empire, in Warsaw and Łódź in the Kingdom of Poland, in Kraków and Lviv in Galicia, and in Poznań in Prussian Poland.
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- The Jews in Poland and RussiaVolume II: 1881 to 1914, pp. 162 - 211Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2010