Евреи в царской России. Сыны или пасынки? - страница 4

All of this fully applies to the life of Jews in Russia. They lived in Slavic lands from ancient times – from the era of Kievan Rus. We know the names of many Jews who were in one way or another connected with Muscovite Rus' and then with the Russian state during the fifteenth through seventeenth century. But the central act in the historical drama of the Jews in Russia starts with the glorious times of Peter the Great and especially Catherine II. After Russia's partitions of Poland, these lands, together with the former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, combined to create in the Russian Empire the largest Jewish community in the world. Since that time, the fate of the Jews and Russians on Russian territory became inseparable, interwoven in most intimate ways.

Jews in Russia had much to endure – including hard life in the ghetto, humiliation and persecution, and at times blood libels and horrifying pogroms. But at the same time the Jews provided Russia with many outstanding citizens and true sons of the fatherland – generals, poets, scientists and businessmen. Over the centuries a special Jewish-Russian intelligentsia culture was born, with its own unique «Jewish-Russian» cultural atmosphere. But the prominent role of many Jews in Russia did not prevent them from often being treated as second-class citizens, always at risk of being humiliated.

These are the issues Lev Berdnikov describes in his new book, trying to solve the eternal question: have Jews in Russia been its children or its stepchildren? The tragic dualism of Russian Jewry is suggested by the book's two epigraphs, by Saul Gruzenberg and Alexander Gorodnitskii, each of whom sees the fate of the Jews from his own point of view. Starting with the Jews of Muscovy, the author leads us down Russia's historical path, along which Jews left many significant marks but invariably found themselves in a kind of limbo, suspended between the roles of children and stepchildren.

Thus the Jewish doctor of Venice, Leon Mistro, was brought in to minister to Ivan Ill's ailing young son. Mistro treated the heir honestly and unselfishly, but the treatment was unsuccessful, and the unlucky healer was beheaded. He had been caught in the middle of a conspiracy: the heir had been poisoned and Leon tricked into trying to cure a non-existent disease. A similarly tragic fate befell another Jewish doctor – Stefan von Gaden, who was probably the best doctor at the tsar's court. He was accused of poisoning Tsar Fedor Alekseevich and killed after brutal torture.

Faithful sons thus shared the fate of hated stepchildren. But of course not all Jews experienced such unhappy endings. General Mikhail Grulev, for example, became one of Russia's most prominent military leaders and died peacefully at the age of 86. But he, as a Jew, had to endure a lot on the way to the heights of military glory. Equally difficult were the lives of the artist Moses Maimon, the writer Victor Nikitin, the folklorist Paul Shane, the famous photographer Konstantin Shapiro, all of which are described in this book.

To achieve success in any sphere of Russian life and prove that they could identify themselves as «true sons of Russia», Jews often had to make a very difficult step – to accept baptism. As the historian Simon Dubnov formulated this difficulty: «for Jews the only way to win the favor of the government was to bow before a Greek cross». Because of the laws limiting Jews to the Pale of Settlement and severe restrictions against living in large cities, getting a university education, taking part in professional activities, and so on, a baptismal certificate served as a ticket to the larger world and a better life.

Changing faith is always a very difficult and delicate process. It was especially difficult for Russian Jews because after conversion they almost invariably found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Their former coreligionists accused them of the greatest possible sin for a Jew, betraying their people; converts were considered dead and ritually mourned. Christians, on the other hand, looked on them with suspicion, considering their conversion fictitious and possibly even as a satanic way of destroying Eastern Orthodoxy from within. To prove their loyally baptized Jews sometimes endeavored to be «holier than the pope», trying to demonstrate their hatred for their former compatriots; such were branded with the contemptuous label «vykresty» (cf. «conversos» or «Marranos» in Spain). Some of these, like Johann Pfeferkorn and Jacob Brahman, and others who lived in different periods, played very sad role in Jewish life, e.g., slandering their fellow Jews and claiming the anti-Christian nature of the Talmud and other Jewish writings. And there were those like Paul Veinberg who mocked his fellow tribesmen in vicious caricatures, fueling Judeophobia in Russia.