The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794-1881 by Steven J. ZippersteinReview by: John D. KlierThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 291-292Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4209509 .

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REVIEWS 29I

unappealing either to impatient raznochintsy bent on overturning the social order in pursuit of immediate justice or to a conservative autocracy frightened by its opponents' radicalism. Increasingly worried that mass revolution would destroy the bases for civilized development in Russia, liberals ultimately came to defend the stability and limited liberty provided by the existing regime. Though Offord concludes that this choice deprived the liberals of further influence among the intelligentsia, he contends that they none the less had managed to inject humane values into Russian political discourse.

Along with his format, Offord's narrow Anglo-centric definition of liberal- ism prevents him from offering a more sophisticated and persuasive analysis of mid-nineteenth-century Russian liberalism, if liberalism it be. Rather than explaining the crucial difference in the attitudes of English and Russian liberals toward the state, for example, he criticizes the latter for inconsistency in defending individualist values. By blaming the liberals' lack of success largely on the absence of a bourgeoisie, a proper forum for political discourse, and an autocrat willing to surrender absolute power, he ignores Russian political, cultural, and social realities and their effect on liberal ideas. For in the Russian context, liberal values and objectives clearly were politically revolutionary, culturally alien, and socially beneficial primarily to the members of the newly emerging educated elite who espoused them. Russian liberals thus faced an agonizing dilemma. On the one hand, non-revolutionary means were unlikely to effect a transition from the autocratic to a liberal political regime. Liberals, therefore, opposed the state in principle as well as in practice and sought to limit its power. On the other hand, the social configuration of tsarist Russia forced liberals to rely on state power to impose their views on the rest of society. This perhaps irresolvable dilemma profoundly shaped Russian liberalism and helps explain its weaknesses as well as its unique characteristics. But, though failing to explore adequately the dilemma that confronted his five liberals, Offord's informative discussion of their ideas on literature, history, and social change should prove useful to scholars interested in nineteenth-century Russian intellectual and literary history. Williams College WILLIAM G. WAGNER Williamstown, Mass.

Zipperstein, StevenJ. The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, i794-i88i. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, I985. ix + 2I2 pp. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $32.50.

To any student of Russian Jewry the need for this study of Odessa Jewry is self-evident, the only regret being that I 88 I serves as the terminal point. By the mid-nineteenth century Odessa was a vital commercial centre of the Empire, 'the Russian Chicago'. With a third of its population Jewish, it was also a centre forJewish artists, activists, and ideologues. Its frontier-style modernity made it a very different entity from other cities of thejewish Pale of Settlement, where the 'dust of generations' lay heavily. Steven Zipperstein's study explores those elements which made Odessa unique and, ultimately, 'the

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292 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

discordant, individualistic modern metropolis' that would soon replace the self-containedJewish centres of Eastern Europe.

Odessa's greatest significance for Russian Jewry was its dynamic, non- traditional character. Jews of radically different backgrounds found them- selves thrown together in an environment devoid of communal discipline or the customary network ofJewish social institutions. As such institutions were created, innovation was an inevitable ingredient. Odessa's fluid and open society tended to contaminate Jewish life: by the I830s, even piousJews were to be seen in the city's celebrated opera house. The policies of the Russian administration, intent on developing the southern steppe, ensured greater economic and political freedom than elsewhere in theJewish Pale.

Odessa's open nature led many Jews to integrate change into their lives without a process of conscious choice or the intellectual agonizing that attended modernization in other Jewish centres. Zipperstein's work is especially useful for its identification and differentiation between the 'Enlight- ened', for whom cultural change was a conscious act with a specific set of objectives, and the 'Assimilated', for whom change was unaccompanied by internal reflection. As Zipperstein demonstrates, it was the disenchantment of Odessa Jewish intellectuals with the observable results of mindless assimila- tion, as well as the unsatisfactory response of Gentile society, which led to a re-examination in Odessa of the basic tenets of Haskallah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement, long before the pogroms of i88I called them into question elsewhere in the Pale.

Zipperstein emphasizes the divisions that still separated Jews and Gentiles in Odessa even after the process of cultural assimilation was well advanced. In so doing, he neglects the important role of Odessa as the archetype of an integrated Jewish-Gentile community in Russia. Odessa's municipal govern- ment was always heavily influenced by Jews, to say nothing of the city's economic life. The local press, both private and semi-official, served as a vehicle for communal politics and debates. It was filled with articles by rival partisans during the triennial elections for the Odessa state rabbi. The impact of the state tax on kosher meat became a local issue in I862 when it had a marked effect on the price and supply of the city's meat. A campaign in the local press in i88o led the Russian authorities to revoke the contract of the local tax-farmer of the meat tax. The newspaper Novorossiyskiy telegraf was probably the first in the Empire to fluctuate between Judeophilia and Antisemitism in its editorial policies in an effort to boost circulation. Not for nothing did Russian publicists claim that 'Odessa wakes, eats, drinks, and lives at the behest of theJews.' ThisJewish-Gentile symbiosis deserves a fuller consideration.

None the less, Zipperstein's book is a welcome addition to studies of Russian urban history in general, and of the social and cultural history of Russian Jewry in particular. Department of History JOHN D. KLIER Fort Hays State University, Kansas

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