The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power

346 Pages·2017·2.417 MB·English

by  Andrew Sloin

THE JEWISH REVOLUTION IN
BELORUSSIA
THE MODERN JEWISH EXPERIENCE
Deborah Dash Moore and Marsha L. Rozenblit, editors
Paula Hyman, founding coeditor
A Helen B. Schwartz Book
Published with the support of the Helen B. Schwartz Fund for
New Scholarship in Jewish Studies of the Robert A. and
Sandra B. Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University
T H E J E W I S H
R E V O L U T I O N I N
B E L O R U S S I A
Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power
Andrew Sloin
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2017 by Andrew Sloin
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes
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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sloin, Andrew, author.
Title: The Jewish revolution in Belorussia : economy, race, and Bolshevik
power / Andrew Sloin.
Description: Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, [2017] |
Series: The modern Jewish experience | Revised version of the author’s
thesis (Ph. D., University of Chicago, Department of History, 2009). |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016045764 (print) | LCCN 2016046922 (ebook) | ISBN
9780253024510 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253024664 (pbk. : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780253024633 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Belarus—History—20th century. | Jews—Belarus—Social
conditions—20th century. | Jews—Belarus—Economic conditions—20th
century. | Jewish communists—Belarus—Biography. | Nationalism and
communism—Belarus. | Belarus—Ethnic relations.
Classification: LCC DS135.B38 S59 2017 (print) | LCC DS135.B38 (ebook) | DDC
947.8/004924009041—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045764
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
CONTENTS
vii 55
Acknowledgments 2. Speculators, Swindlers,
and Other Jews: Regulating
xi
Trade in Revolutionary
White Russia
Notes on Transliteration,
Translation, and Names 83
1
3. Jewish Proletarians and Proletarian
Jews: The Emancipation of Labor in
Introduction
NEP Society
19
115
Part I—Revolution
Part III—Political Culture and
21
Nationality
117
1. Making Jews Bolsheviks
53
4. From Bolshevik Haskole to
Cultural Revolution: Abram Beilin
Part II—Capital and Labor and the Jewish Revolution
147 238
5. Bundism and the Nationalities Conclusion
Question
249
179
Appendix: Tables
Part IV—The Politics of Crisis
253
181
Notes
6. The Politics of Crisis: Economy,
303
Ethnicity, and Trotskyism
209
Selected Bibliography
319
7. Antisemitism and the Stalin
Revolution Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While writing is a solitary process, books are the fruits of collaboration.
This work has benefitted since its inception from the support, critiques, assis-
tance, and guidance of colleagues, friends, family, and institutions.
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude, first and foremost, to my phenom-
enal dissertation committee at the University of Chicago—Leora Auslander,
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Moishe Postone, and the late Richard Hellie—who guided
the original version of this project through numerous twists and turns. Each
generously offered their time, knowledge, and remarkable intellectual insights.
Not only did they devote their considerable talents to this project, they treated
me with great personal warmth and collegiality from the outset, for which I am
eternally grateful. Their voices, ideas, and lingering questions remained with
me through the process of revising that work into the present book. Collectively,
they taught me how to read, think, and argue like a critical historian.
Numerous institutions and foundations have provided generous support
to this project. I would like to thank the Fulbright-Hayes Program, the CUNY-
PSC Research Foundation, the Committee on Jewish Studies at the Univer-
sity of Chicago, the Fuerstenberg Fellowship founders, the Erich Cochrane
Research Fellowship, the Foreign Language and Area Studies program of the
Department of Education, and the Nevzlin Foundation for support for vari-
ous stages of this project. I am particularly thankful to the Frankel Institute
for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, which provided
a fellowship and an inspiring intellectual atmosphere during the early stages
of revisions. I am likewise deeply grateful to Indiana University Press and to
Acknowledgments vii
Deborah Dash Moore, Marsha Rozenblit, and Dee Mortensen for their
enthusiastic support of this project from the start. Their guidance and sugges-
tions, as well as feedback from Jeffrey Veidlinger and an anonymous reader,
made this work significantly stronger. I am also thankful for the generous sup-
port provided by the Borns Jewish Studies Program and the Helen B. Schwartz
Fund at Indiana University during the final stages of book preparation.
I had the good fortune to have been a member of two supportive history
departments while writing this book. I am thankful for kind support from de-
partment conveners at Earlham College, including Carol Hunter, Tom Hamm,
and Randall and Alice Shrock, as well as for the friendship of colleagues, in-
cluding Elana Passman, Joanna Swanger, Joann Martin, Jonathan Diskin,
Joann Quinones, Vincent Punzo, and Jennifer Seely. I am likewise grateful to
Katherine Pence and Thomas Desch-Obi, my department chairs, and the en-
tire Baruch College History Department for their support and feedback dur-
ing the final stages of writing.
This work is a testament to the intellectual vigor of many brilliant teach-
ers I have encountered along the way, including Paul Mendes-Flohr, Wiliam
Sewell, Peter Novick, Menachem Brinker, Michael Geyer, Ronald Suny, Anna
Lisa Crone, Francis Randall, Jefferson Adams, and Elizabeth Boles. I owe par-
ticularly hardy thanks for the patience and guidance of numerous language
teachers, especially Howard Aronson, who first sparked my interest in Yid-
dish, and also Gerald Frakes, Dov Ber Kerler, Avrom Lichtenbaum, Valentina
Pichugin, Radislav Lapushin, and Rebekka Egger.
The ideas presented here have been tested, refined, and sharpened through
ongoing conversations with comrades from the Social Theory Workshop at
Chicago. While I learned a tremendous amount in the classroom, most of
what I understand about what I learned came from long, rigorous, sometimes
heated, and always productive conversations with Jason Dawsey, Mark Loef-
fler, Spencer Leonard, Timothy “Mac” James, Andrew Sartori, Robert Stern,
Aaron Hill, Parker Everett, Tom Dodman, Venus Bivar, and Elizabeth Heath. I
am also grateful for critiques and conversations shared with friends in the Rus-
sian and Soviet, Modern European, and Modern Jewish Studies Workshops,
including Oscar Sanchez—who pushed me to think more deeply about the
structure of Soviet economy—Ke-chin Hsia, Ben Zaijcek, Alan Barenberg,
Brian LaPierre, Kristy Ironside, Julia Fein, Andrey Shlyakhter, Andrew Janco,
Ari Joskowicz, Kati Vorros, Melissa Weininger, and Benjamin Sax.
My ideas about Russian, Soviet, and Jewish history benefited from con-
versations with and feedback from numerous scholars, including the late
Jonathan Frankel, Zvi Gitelman, Israel Bartal, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Steven
Zipperstein, Nancy Sinkoff, Jeffrey Veidlinger, Geoff Eley, Mikhail Krutikov,
viii Acknowledgments
Kiril Tomoff, Brian Horowitz, Anna Krylova, Tara Zahra, Elissa Bemporad,
Simon Rabinovitch, Steven Maddox, Brigid O’Keefe, Benjamin Lazier, Ben-
jamin Loring, Marcie Cowley, Zohar Weiman-Kelman, Brendan McGeever,
Michael Schlie, Dmitrii Belkin, and Boris Tarnopolsky.
The editors of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, and
two anonymous readers, provided thoughtful feedback on the article that be-
came chapter six of this book, and I am grateful for their kind permission to
republish a revised version here. Sam Johnson and the editors of East European
Jewish Affairs offered excellent feedback on chapter two and have also allowed
for republication. Michael Hickey, Golfo Alexopoulos, Kate Brown, Deborah
Yalen, Michael Schlie, and Roger Haydon provided tremendously useful feed-
back on conference versions or early iterations of several chapters. A special
thanks is also due to the librarians and archivists of the National Archive of
the Republic of Belarus, the State Archive of the Minsk Oblast, the National
Library of Belarus, the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg, the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research, and the National Library of Israel for kind as-
sistance. I am likewise grateful to the Belarusian State University in Minsk for
helping to arrange my research visa, and to Inna Gerasimova and the Jewish
Museum in Minsk for kind help at the outset of my research.
At moments when this project seemed insurmountable, friends and family
helped me through with emotional support, laughter, and love. Kevin Burn-
ham, Damian Hickey, Youngho Sohn, and Wyeth Friday kept me grounded
throughout. Jason Dawsey, Mark Loeffler, and Brendan McGeever read ver-
sions of multiple chapters, and their critical insights helped shape many ideas
in these pages. I am thankful for the continuing love and support from Char-
lie and Peggy Sloin, Allen and Sam Hadelman, Jordan, Debbie, Spencer, and
Ben Hadelman, Shira and David Zimbeck, and Martha and Cathy Heath.
My sisters Hilary and Felicia Sloin, and my nephew Elijah, have been rocks of
strength and encouragement.
While completing this project, I lost three individuals of great importance
to me. Richard Hellie, my original cochair, passed away during the final stages
of my dissertation; he was the first professor at Chicago to show confidence
in my abilities, and he offered continual encouragement, support, and insight
during many long conversations in his notoriously cluttered office. My father-
in-law, Robert Heath, passed unexpectedly during the writing of the book;
I miss his warmth, wisdom, and good humor. My mother, Susan Sloin, who
was always my biggest fan and whose sacrifices made my life of intellectual
pursuits a possibility, died in 2011 following a lengthy battle with cancer. She
would have been thrilled—and probably a bit shocked—to see this book in
print. It is to her memory that this work is dedicated.
Acknowledgments ix