Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855. byMichael StanislawskiReview by: John D. KlierSlavic Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp. 297-298Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2497850 .

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Reviews 297

decline of up to 20 percent in certain gubernii were artificially established to provide a more equitable basis for the eventual billeting of troops. The author's approach appears plausible, but his conclusions would have been more convincing without the careless mistakes in arithmetic found in tables 4, 5, and 8. Anisimov also contends that state agents were successful in tracking down peasants who had hidden to avoid being counted or who had fled to other regions; threats and harsh punishments quickly increased the aggregate returns. By 1728 the original count had increased by nearly 16 percent.

State policy also takes precedence over autonomous factors in Anisimov's interpre- tation of the impact of the reform. Whereas V Kliuchevskii viewed the consolidation of diverse categories of peasants into a single group of taxpayers as a reflection of their previous impoverishment, Anisimov points to the growth of the army. By conscripting successively larger numbers of slaves (kholopy) the regime eroded the basis from which this stratum had originally been recruited, paving the way for the uniform obligation of capitation.

Before attempting to summarize the effect of capitation, Anisimov cautions against relying on the prejudiced views of the statesmen who came to power after the Petrine reform. Reports of large arrears in the state's revenues, for example, are exaggerated; they are probably the result of incomplete returns. He also criticizes the view that the tax burden increased twofold or more. After studying both local estate records and the state budget, Anisimov concludes that the abolition of special taxes in effect before the reform benefited the peasantry by reducing the aggregate tax burden to one-third in some areas. Capitation did worsen the peasants' lot, but the national increase was only 16 percent.

Although at times the wealth of detail obscures his analysis, Anisimov is to be complimented for an important work that incorporates considerable original scholarship in its persuasive interpretation of a significant aspect of Russian history.

ROBERT D. GIVENS Cornell College

TSAR NICHOLAS I AND THE JEWS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF JEWISH SO- CIETY IN RUSSIA, 1825-1855. By Michael Stanislawski. Philadelphia, Pa.: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983. xvi, 246 pp. $18.95.

The history of the Jews in Russia has been in a virtual state of suspended animation for almost fifty years. Students of Jewish History in the USSR have been forced to rely on very few sources. The Holocaust carried off generations of scholars and many of the archives. The most widely cited treatment in English, Simon Dubnow's History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, is almost seventy-five years old. Thus it is a particular pleasure to welcome Michael Stanislawski's study, which carefully reevaluates old legends and assumptions, and makes imaginative use of the few accessible archives remaining (the collection of the YIVO Institute in New York, and the Shaul Ginzburg archive in Jeru- salem). The work would be valuable, however, if for no other reason than it demonstrates, in contrast to common assumptions, that the Jewish question was not of central concern to the government of Nicholas I, and that the treatment of the Jews was not an anomaly within the context of Russian law and policy.

The government of Nicholas I introduced two major innovations in the Russian treat- ment of the Jews: recruitment into the army and a state-sponsored system of primary, secondary, and advanced schools. Stanislawski explores the unexpected and unintended consequences of these policies, which produced a radical transformation of Russian Jewish society.

The decision to conscript Jews for military service was consistent with a similar program for declasse Polish nobles in the western provinces. At the same time, however,

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298 Slavic Review

th-e regime recognized an opportunity to convert Jews to Christianity in the army, espe- cially the children who were drafted into the so-called Cantonist regiments. Ironically, the Jewish community assisted this process by offering underage boys as recruits in lieu of young men with families. The demand for recruits pushed the communal leadership to extremes; it led to the hiring of recruitment khappers (kidnappers) and to the drafting of Jews who had no passports. Such actions accomplished what centuries of religious per- secution had failed to do: the destruction of the solidarity which had been the hallmark of the Jewish community.

Reviewing the introduction of the state schools for Jews, Stanislawski refutes the common belief that S. S. Uvarov, the minister of public enlightenment, planned to use them to convert Jews to Christianity. Rather, following Western models, he hoped to raise the Jews to the moral, intellectual, and political level of Russians.

Prior to the school reform, the Russian Haskalah, or Jewish enlightenment move- ment, was shallowly rooted and widely dispersed. No sharp delineation was as yet apparent between traditionalism and enlightenment. The school reform changed the Haskalah in Russia from an amorphous body of ideas into a movement and an ideology. Russian maskilim, as the proponents of Haskalah were called, rallied to the schools as teachers and administrators and thus received the government's seal of approval. The school system served as the seedbed of the modern Russian Jewish intelligentsia.

Not that this intelligentsia was all of one mind. Stanislawski catalogs sharp division over the validity of Jewish tradition, the language to be bused to spread enlightenment, and attitudes toward the Russian state. Moreover, the maskilim, who cooperated with the government and depended upon it for support, provoked a reaction. From the "anti- Haskalah" sprang Russian Jewish "Orthodoxy" as a self-conscious traditionalist society, battling the maskilim on their own terms.

Stanislawski also lays to rest many of the legends surrounding the participation of the German maskil Max Lilienthal in the school reform.

The social and cultural transformations upon which Stanislawski concentrates are supplemented with examinations of the nature and extent of accompanying economic shifts within the Jewish community, which also had important implications for the history of Russian Jewry.

The author touches on one problem which is left unresolved. He assumes a "sub- stratum of [Christian] anti-Jewish animus" in the minds of all Russian officials. Stanis- lawski quite properly rejects the idea that this animus was the motive force for all Russian mistreatment of the Jews (in striking contrast to the arguments of Simon Dubnow). Yet the casualness of this assumption reminds us that the nature and topography of this anti- Jewish animus, which cannot be simply regarded as equivalent to the traditions of the West, still lacks proper attention and study.

Stanislawski's study is an indispensable starting point for the study of the fate of Russian Jewry in the reign of Nicholas I.

JOHN D. KLIER Fort Hays State University

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS: WOMEN OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA IN NINE- TEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA. By Barbara Alpern Engel. Cambridge, London, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. x, 230 pp. $29.95.

Barbara Engel has written a book useful to students of Russian history as well as women's studies. In lean, crisp prose she retells the story of the Russian intelligentsia from the period of Nicholas I to the assassination of Alexander II, with particular emphasis on the 1860s and 1870s. She focuses primarily on the experiences of women involved in the

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