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The Jewish Century
This masterwork of interpretative history begins with a bold declaration: The Modern Age is the Jewish Age--and we are all, to varying degrees, Jews.
The assertion is, of course, metaphorical. But it underscores Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis. Not only have Jews adapted better than many other groups to living in the modern world, they have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere.
Slezkine argues that the Jews were, in effect, among the world's first free agents. They traditionally belonged to a social and anthropological category known as "service nomads," an outsider group specializing in the delivery of goods and services. Their role, Slezkine argues, was part of a broader division of human labor between what he calls Mercurians-entrepreneurial minorities--and Apollonians--food-producing majorities.
Since the dawning of the Modern Age, Mercurians have taken center stage. In fact, Slezkine argues, modernity is all about Apollonians becoming Mercurians--urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. Since no group has been more adept at Mercurianism than the Jews, he contends, these exemplary ancients are now model moderns.
The book concentrates on the drama of the Russian Jews, including émigrés and their offspring in America, Palestine, and the Soviet Union. But Slezkine has as much to say about the many faces of modernity--nationalism, socialism, capitalism, and liberalism--as he does about Jewry. Marxism and Freudianism, for example, sprang largely from the Jewish predicament, Slezkine notes, and both Soviet Bolshevism and American liberalism were affected in fundamental ways by the Jewish exodus from the Pale of Settlement.
Rich in its insight, sweeping in its chronology, and fearless in its analysis, this sure-to-be-controversial work is an important contribution not only to Jewish and Russian history but to the history of Europe and America as well.
The assertion is, of course, metaphorical. But it underscores Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis. Not only have Jews adapted better than many other groups to living in the modern world, they have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere.
Slezkine argues that the Jews were, in effect, among the world's first free agents. They traditionally belonged to a social and anthropological category known as "service nomads," an outsider group specializing in the delivery of goods and services. Their role, Slezkine argues, was part of a broader division of human labor between what he calls Mercurians-entrepreneurial minorities--and Apollonians--food-producing majorities.
Since the dawning of the Modern Age, Mercurians have taken center stage. In fact, Slezkine argues, modernity is all about Apollonians becoming Mercurians--urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. Since no group has been more adept at Mercurianism than the Jews, he contends, these exemplary ancients are now model moderns.
The book concentrates on the drama of the Russian Jews, including émigrés and their offspring in America, Palestine, and the Soviet Union. But Slezkine has as much to say about the many faces of modernity--nationalism, socialism, capitalism, and liberalism--as he does about Jewry. Marxism and Freudianism, for example, sprang largely from the Jewish predicament, Slezkine notes, and both Soviet Bolshevism and American liberalism were affected in fundamental ways by the Jewish exodus from the Pale of Settlement.
Rich in its insight, sweeping in its chronology, and fearless in its analysis, this sure-to-be-controversial work is an important contribution not only to Jewish and Russian history but to the history of Europe and America as well.
456 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Yuri Slezkine
10 books95 followersYuri Lvovich Slezkine (Russian: Ю́рий Льво́вич Слёзкин Yúriy L'vóvich Slyózkin; born February 7, 1956) is a Russian-born American historian, writer, and translator.
He is a professor of Russian history, sovietologist and Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is best known as the author of the book The Jewish Century (2004) and The House of Government: A Saga of The Russian Revolution (2017).
He is a professor of Russian history, sovietologist and Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is best known as the author of the book The Jewish Century (2004) and The House of Government: A Saga of The Russian Revolution (2017).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
September 16, 2019
Читал в два захода, поэтому вот.
По-настоящему интересная и очень литературоцентричная этнография, какой, я подозреваю, мало на любом языке. Они это называют «толковательной историей» или как-то, но суть не в названии. Слёзкин, конечно, с самого начала прав: ХХ век — век еврейский, недаром он начинался с самого знакового еврея в мировой литературе — Леопольда Блума, и недаром в Дублине. У Слёзкина очень хорошие страницы там про Джойса (Пруста и Кафку заодно, нам просто это не так интересно). Ну и я подозреваю, что если Юрия Слёзкина наложить на Деклана Кайберда, можно будет прийти к некоторым очень занимательным выводам относительно чудовищного явления «национального»: они оба рассматривают его несколько с разных сторон, отчего возникает любопытный стереоэффект. На досуге, может, и займусь.
Куски о России здесь у него, меж тем, совершенно замечательные, это следует сказать отдельно. Вот для примера:
The Russian intelligentsia was a community of more or less unattached intellectuals trained to be urban moderns in a rural empire; raised to be “foreigners at home” (as Herzen put it); suspended between the state and the peasants (whom they called “the people”); sustained by transcendental values revealed in sacred texts; devoted to book learning as a key to virtuous living; committed to personal righteousness as a condition for universal redemption; imbued with a sense of chosenness and martyrdom; and bound together by common rites and readings into fraternal “circles.” They were, in other words, Puritans possessed by the spirit of socialism, Mercurians of recent Apollonian descent, the wandering Jews of Russian society. Homeless and disembodied, they were the People of the Book prophesying the end of history, chosen to bring it about, and martyred for both the prophesy and the chosenness. In this “ghetto of divine election,” as the poetess Marina Tsvetaeva put it, “every poet is a Yid.”
Там, в общем, примерно все, что пытливому антропологу нужно знать о т.н. "русской интеллигенции" и ее генезисе.
Дочитываю "Еврейское столетие" Слезкина (и не устану его рекомендовать; на русский эту книгу, кстати, переводил Сергей Ильин), и там убийственная однострочная характеристика излюбленной книги советской оттепельной (преимущественно столичной) интеллигенции, которая (интеллигенция) жива до сих пор вне зависимости от возраста и опознается по любви к этой книге. Да, речь про "Дорогу уходит в даль" Александры Бруштейн: "An engaging collection of literary clichés from the late nineteenth century..." Ну и дальше: "В ней есть всё, кроме, собственно, евреев..."
По-настоящему интересная и очень литературоцентричная этнография, какой, я подозреваю, мало на любом языке. Они это называют «толковательной историей» или как-то, но суть не в названии. Слёзкин, конечно, с самого начала прав: ХХ век — век еврейский, недаром он начинался с самого знакового еврея в мировой литературе — Леопольда Блума, и недаром в Дублине. У Слёзкина очень хорошие страницы там про Джойса (Пруста и Кафку заодно, нам просто это не так интересно). Ну и я подозреваю, что если Юрия Слёзкина наложить на Деклана Кайберда, можно будет прийти к некоторым очень занимательным выводам относительно чудовищного явления «национального»: они оба рассматривают его несколько с разных сторон, отчего возникает любопытный стереоэффект. На досуге, может, и займусь.
Куски о России здесь у него, меж тем, совершенно замечательные, это следует сказать отдельно. Вот для примера:
The Russian intelligentsia was a community of more or less unattached intellectuals trained to be urban moderns in a rural empire; raised to be “foreigners at home” (as Herzen put it); suspended between the state and the peasants (whom they called “the people”); sustained by transcendental values revealed in sacred texts; devoted to book learning as a key to virtuous living; committed to personal righteousness as a condition for universal redemption; imbued with a sense of chosenness and martyrdom; and bound together by common rites and readings into fraternal “circles.” They were, in other words, Puritans possessed by the spirit of socialism, Mercurians of recent Apollonian descent, the wandering Jews of Russian society. Homeless and disembodied, they were the People of the Book prophesying the end of history, chosen to bring it about, and martyred for both the prophesy and the chosenness. In this “ghetto of divine election,” as the poetess Marina Tsvetaeva put it, “every poet is a Yid.”
Там, в общем, примерно все, что пытливому антропологу нужно знать о т.н. "русской интеллигенции" и ее генезисе.
Дочитываю "Еврейское столетие" Слезкина (и не устану его рекомендовать; на русский эту книгу, кстати, переводил Сергей Ильин), и там убийственная однострочная характеристика излюбленной книги советской оттепельной (преимущественно столичной) интеллигенции, которая (интеллигенция) жива до сих пор вне зависимости от возраста и опознается по любви к этой книге. Да, речь про "Дорогу уходит в даль" Александры Бруштейн: "An engaging collection of literary clichés from the late nineteenth century..." Ну и дальше: "В ней есть всё, кроме, собственно, евреев..."
June 25, 2010
This book was assigned to me as part of my graduate work in History, in a class on Eastern Europe. I was the only person in the class who liked it. The others felt that it made an argument with poor substantiation, that it essentialized the Jewish identity, and even that it bordered on being a racist evaluation of Jewishness. They had their points, but I still appreciated it, if only for trying to make an argument broader than simply counting the number of angels dancing on the pin of history.
Slezkine himself does have an odd relationship to Jewishness and identity, which surely informs this book. He grew up in Russia at a time when being "Russian" made one superior in the eyes of the State to being a "Jew" (and Russian passports indicated ethnicity, with Jewishness defined as an "ethnicity"). He learned in adulthood that his maternal grandmother was Jewish - making him Jewish also, albeit without ever having realized. This book appears to be at least partly a product of his attempts to figure out what that meant.
His argument becomes, then, that "everyone is Jewish," as a result of the profound effect which Jewish culture has had on the dominant culture of globalization since the French Revolution. What used to be characteristic of the isolated and half-assimilated groups of wanderers and outcasts in European society has become the norm: including acquisitiveness, alienation from the environment, independence, entrepreneurship, anomie, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism. He uses the interesting figure of Hermes as the symbol for what he calls "service nomadism," which he says is now the norm in modern culture. Although some of the traits he links to Jewishness appear to be negative, he believes that the conversion of humanity to Jewishness is ultimately its redemption, and portrays the shift as essentially positive. Even "[t:]he rise of the Holocaust as a transcendental concept has led to the emergence of the Jews as the Chosen People for the new age." The one risk he identifies in this transcendental Jewishness is that the original may become tainted and impossible to identify amidst a sea of non-Jewish Jews.
I can understand my colleagues' misgivings, but ultimately what I appreciate about this book is that it challenges assumptions and "safe" dry academic viewpoints. Slezkine's value may not so much lie in being right, but in how he makes people think in order to figure out that he's wrong.
Slezkine himself does have an odd relationship to Jewishness and identity, which surely informs this book. He grew up in Russia at a time when being "Russian" made one superior in the eyes of the State to being a "Jew" (and Russian passports indicated ethnicity, with Jewishness defined as an "ethnicity"). He learned in adulthood that his maternal grandmother was Jewish - making him Jewish also, albeit without ever having realized. This book appears to be at least partly a product of his attempts to figure out what that meant.
His argument becomes, then, that "everyone is Jewish," as a result of the profound effect which Jewish culture has had on the dominant culture of globalization since the French Revolution. What used to be characteristic of the isolated and half-assimilated groups of wanderers and outcasts in European society has become the norm: including acquisitiveness, alienation from the environment, independence, entrepreneurship, anomie, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism. He uses the interesting figure of Hermes as the symbol for what he calls "service nomadism," which he says is now the norm in modern culture. Although some of the traits he links to Jewishness appear to be negative, he believes that the conversion of humanity to Jewishness is ultimately its redemption, and portrays the shift as essentially positive. Even "[t:]he rise of the Holocaust as a transcendental concept has led to the emergence of the Jews as the Chosen People for the new age." The one risk he identifies in this transcendental Jewishness is that the original may become tainted and impossible to identify amidst a sea of non-Jewish Jews.
I can understand my colleagues' misgivings, but ultimately what I appreciate about this book is that it challenges assumptions and "safe" dry academic viewpoints. Slezkine's value may not so much lie in being right, but in how he makes people think in order to figure out that he's wrong.
May 18, 2024
This profound, absorbing history is a narrative masterpiece. It's thoroughly researched and loaded with factual information, all highlighted and discussed against a background of moral questioning, political exposition and out-and-out story telling.
This is also a history of the Soviet Union - which the book frames as the first great, modern, doomed Jewish state - told through the eyes of the Jews who built it, died for it, died by it, and then abandoned it. It is an essential read not only for students of the Jewish people, but for socialists as well.
For those seeking to deepen their understanding of the historical antagonism between socialist internationalism and zionist nationalism this book will be especially welcome.
Slezkine avoids entirely the idiotic "clash of civilisations" rhetoric which so many liberal historians indulge in, and instead tells the story of Soviet Jewry through their own eyes, shining a light on their triumphs as well as the crimes committed against them - and the crimes committed by them.
It's left me with a lot to think about, especially on the subjects of modernity, revolution, communism, messianism, state building, nationalism and, of course, Jewishness!
This is also a history of the Soviet Union - which the book frames as the first great, modern, doomed Jewish state - told through the eyes of the Jews who built it, died for it, died by it, and then abandoned it. It is an essential read not only for students of the Jewish people, but for socialists as well.
For those seeking to deepen their understanding of the historical antagonism between socialist internationalism and zionist nationalism this book will be especially welcome.
Slezkine avoids entirely the idiotic "clash of civilisations" rhetoric which so many liberal historians indulge in, and instead tells the story of Soviet Jewry through their own eyes, shining a light on their triumphs as well as the crimes committed against them - and the crimes committed by them.
It's left me with a lot to think about, especially on the subjects of modernity, revolution, communism, messianism, state building, nationalism and, of course, Jewishness!
March 26, 2021
'Modernisation is about everyone becoming mobile, urban, literate... intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible [i.e., unrooted].... it is about pursuing wealth for the sake of wealth and learning for the sake of wealth.... [It is about] dismantling inherited [aristocratic, organic] privilege with acquired [individualistic, autonomous] privilege. It is about dismantling social estates and...families for the sake of individuals. Modernization is, in other words, about everyone becoming Jewish.' (i.)
See insightful review in Ch2, appendix 1 of 2013 Kindle edition of MacDonald, 'The Culture of Critique'.
See insightful review in Ch2, appendix 1 of 2013 Kindle edition of MacDonald, 'The Culture of Critique'.
December 20, 2012
A frank, often over-decoratively written, clear-headed book about the fate of the Jews in Russia and the fate of Russia at the hands of the Jews. The mythology is childish, but the knowledge is extremely good, and the writing is often witty and laff-out-loud. Slezkine's translations of Russian poems and diaries are worth the price of admission - and Slevkine's restraint in letting his evidence speak for itself, and not driving home with a hammer and sickle the ironies of history he outlines, is heroic. (An example of what he refrains from doing).
Here is a poem by a Jewish Bolshevik, named Svetlov (ne Sheinkman). As a little Jewish boy in Ekaterinoslav,he used to be frightened of his rabbi’s morbid tales – but not anymore:
Now I wear a leather jacket,
Now I’m tall – and the rabbi is small.
….…[When the old rabbi dies under the collapsed wall of his synagogue.”
The red flag overhead,
The flashing bayonet,
The armored car.
This was the dawn o fthe holy day
The Bolshevik was born.
,…
I stand before my Republic,
I have come from the distant South.
I have placed all my weakness – truly –
Under arrest.
The cycles of history keep rollking along - I note the fearful reactions of the fellow-graduate students of one of the earlier reviewers of this book, who all agreed that it is "too essentialist." They are living the Soviet life but without the NKVD - out of choice. That's our country! As Slevkine says here, uppermiddleclass Jewish kids went to USSR universities in the 30s and came out - communists. Whereas uppermiddleclass Jewish kids who went to USA universities at the same time came out - communists.
Here is a poem by a Jewish Bolshevik, named Svetlov (ne Sheinkman). As a little Jewish boy in Ekaterinoslav,he used to be frightened of his rabbi’s morbid tales – but not anymore:
Now I wear a leather jacket,
Now I’m tall – and the rabbi is small.
….…[When the old rabbi dies under the collapsed wall of his synagogue.”
The red flag overhead,
The flashing bayonet,
The armored car.
This was the dawn o fthe holy day
The Bolshevik was born.
,…
I stand before my Republic,
I have come from the distant South.
I have placed all my weakness – truly –
Under arrest.
The cycles of history keep rollking along - I note the fearful reactions of the fellow-graduate students of one of the earlier reviewers of this book, who all agreed that it is "too essentialist." They are living the Soviet life but without the NKVD - out of choice. That's our country! As Slevkine says here, uppermiddleclass Jewish kids went to USSR universities in the 30s and came out - communists. Whereas uppermiddleclass Jewish kids who went to USA universities at the same time came out - communists.
June 30, 2019
Tried to read it but couldn't finish ...really wasn't much information when you boil everything down. There were a lot of statistics and analogies to Hermes & Prometheus. The author tries to prove the thesis that the modern century is cultural embodiment of the Jews. I think this is a difficult thing to prove. It would have helped if he included more history and less statistics.
August 1, 2021
Another Russian-not-really-Russian writer with whom I have no ethical problems reading and reflecting upon and whose opinions about history and society interest me.
Юрий Слезкин (Yuri Slezkine) is a Russian (Soviet)-born Jewish American historian, writer, and translator, and he has never even had citizenship of modern Russia. He originally trained as an interpreter in the Moscow State University (МГУ), and his first trip outside the Soviet Union was in the late 1970s, when he worked as a translator in Mozambique. He returned to Moscow to serve as a translator of Portuguese, and spent 1982 in Lisbon and then emigrated to the U.S. the next year. He earned a PhD from the University of Texas, Austin, and today he is a professor of Russian history, sovietologist and Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He writes in English originally, but, of course, his books are dedicated mostly to Russian/Soviet history. I have read his “Дом правительства. Сага о русской революции” last year and found it quite interesting, albeit oversaturated with various information (a large part of it should have better be in some other books). I read his books in Russian translation because it is much easier regarding Russian names, titles, quotes, etc., which often become unrecognizable in English translation and overall lose important nuances, in my opinion. Юрий Слезкин translates his books into Russian from English himself.
This book, which has been widely read and discussed in Russia in a recent couple of years, was actually written much earlier (2004) than “Дом правительства. Сага о русской революции” (2017), but it was translated and published in Russian only very recently, in the same year with “Дом правительства” (2019), obviously because of the huge popularity of “Дом правительства.” Otherwise, it would have probably stayed unnoticed there.
“Эра Меркурия” is dedicated to Jews, as you can understand from the title. However, I would say that both the title and the first chapter of the book are misleading. About 80% of the book is dedicated to a very specific and very narrow phenomenon: Russian and, mostly, Soviet Jews. This overfocusing is an integral part of a bigger problem, the author’s conviction that Russia and, especially, the Soviet Union were the most powerful and important centers of “true Jewishness” (“Никакой другой народ не был таким советским, и никакой другой народ не проявлял такой готовности к отказу от своего языка, обрядов и традиционных мест прож��вания. Никакой другой народ, иначе говоря, не был столь меркурианским (сплошь голова и никакого тела) или столь революционным (сплошь молодость и никакой традиции).”). It looks like two other central “Jewish places in the world” that the author is ever discussing, the U.S. and Israel, are purposefully dwarfed and pushed to the back seats of history: the respective information is much weaker in quantity and quality and often looks ridiculous overall, as if the respected and diligent historian did not even want to waste much of his precious time and effort on these topics.
The approach he uses in “Эра Меркурия” is similar to “Дом правительства,” although the final book looks more compact and better structured than “Дом правительства.” He has some big “umbrella idea” (Bolsheviks as a quasi-religious millenarian sect in “Дом правительства” and Jews as the most prominent and exemplary “mercurian” ethnonational social group in “Эра Меркурия”), and then he adds tons of very interesting information (both factual and deliberately hand-picked in order to “fit” his “umbrella idea” as much as possible), tons of some strange quotes, comparisons, and reflections, sometimes tiresomely repetitive and/or extremely mind-boggling, and always very specific and subjective conclusions that, in my opinion, are not even “historical” in the scientific sense (I never agreed with his key conclusions in “Дом правительства,” and his conclusions in “Эра Меркурия” look even more artificial and disagreeable with me).
His key theory for this book, “mercurianism,” is very interesting per se, and I would gladly read a book dedicated to it in a wider context, even understanding all the obvious far-fetched argumentation and deficiencies. However, he uses this theory only as an introduction and convenient instrument for the following discussion about Jews, more specifically — Soviet Jews, while you understand perfectly that this “mercurianism” (if we accept this theory as a working social construct) is realized VERY differently with other ethnonational social groups (we cannot seriously compare Jews, Gypsies, Russian Germans, American Chinese, etc., right? at least, not by those key specific characteristic Юрий Слезкин distinguishes himself). Moreover, even Jews themselves were VERY different social groups in different societies and in different time periods. When you understand that he manipulates facts and ideas in order to show Russian/Soviet Jews as the key, even archetypal “mercurian” nation, you lose half of the respect to this theory, because Russia in the 20th century and, most of all, the Soviet Union were as idiosyncratic societies as ever possible, and the path of Jews as a nation was also a pretty marginal one there (at least, definitely not “exemplary”).
Well, it’s an interesting subject for discussion, and I understand that I am not a historian and, therefore, have not much right for robust criticism; anyway, all these observations did not make the book look “stupid” or “superficial” for me (it is rather very “skewed” and “biased,” I suppose, but almost all great scientific explorations are biased in their concentration on some aspects and ignoring others). You just have to understand that you will read here not about all the “mercurian” nations (as you can imagine based on the first chapter) and even not about all the Jews and their recent history all over the world; no, it will be a book about Russian/Soviet Jews, and most of all — about another favorite idea of the author, Jews as the key beneficiaries and thus creators of the Soviet state, its ideological foundation and its social elite. Again, there are many very intelligent and interesting observations here — but also a lot of bullshit, in my opinion. (The most ridiculous part of it is when the author tries to reconcile this idea with the fact of huge anti-Semitism and apparent anti-Jewish politics in the USSR and claims that “Евреи не были «задавлены и унижены в гораздо большей мере, чем все остальное население», но они действительно дали советской власти «и политических лидеров, и дипломатов, и военачальников, и хозяев экономики» и могли бы дать еще больше, если бы официально провозглашенные принципы меритократии и равноправия должным образом соблюдались. Иными словами, евреи не были задавлены в большей мере, чем остальное население, но они ощущали себя более униженными по причине их более высокого и более уязвимого положения в советском обществе.” In Russian, there is an exact formula for such deductions: “ну, договорился…”)
I also found completely inadequate most of the author’s opinions about American Jews and, especially, about Israel, and there are a lot of quite outrageous reflections about them, superficial and reproachful for a serious historian (I felt that representing Freudism as an antithesis to Marxism/Communism and as “the religion of modern capitalism” is especially shameful for a historian). His comments about the Holocaust are revolting and frivolous, and I did not expect to read something like this in a book of a Jewish author, not to mention “a historian.” However, as I already said, most of the book is about very different things, in essence — about the creation and development of the Soviet state (and there are many overlappings with “Дом правительства” here, of course).
Also, the author has an unhealthy inclination to repeat the same metaphors all over again and again (“халат Галины Аполлоновны,” “нос Свана,” “Тевье-молочник и его дочери,” etc.), which makes the reading quite irritating sometimes, but this is irrelevant comparing to other, more essential problems with the key ideas of the book and some arguments offered there.
Therefore, it’s an interesting from many points of view book, but I wouldn’t recommend it as some educational material if you do not know much about Jews but want to learn more (there is a high risk of falling behind the author’s biases). I would eagerly encourage reading it for those people who can understand and accept its subjective nature, form their own opinion, and discuss this book and its ideas from an independent critical point of view, appreciating all the cool sides of it but also rejecting indignantly all the obvious manipulations/bullshit. I believe it can be an excellent trigger for many very intelligent, illuminative, and incredibly interesting discussions about various historical and sociocultural aspects.
Overall, I did not have an impression of a well-thought theory of Soviet Jews as an exemplary “mercurian nation” (it just does not make much sense if you try to analyze deeply any of the key arguments), although both the discussions about “mercurian nations” and about Soviet Jews as a very specific historical phenomenon here are worthy and deserve attention.
Юрий Слезкин (Yuri Slezkine) is a Russian (Soviet)-born Jewish American historian, writer, and translator, and he has never even had citizenship of modern Russia. He originally trained as an interpreter in the Moscow State University (МГУ), and his first trip outside the Soviet Union was in the late 1970s, when he worked as a translator in Mozambique. He returned to Moscow to serve as a translator of Portuguese, and spent 1982 in Lisbon and then emigrated to the U.S. the next year. He earned a PhD from the University of Texas, Austin, and today he is a professor of Russian history, sovietologist and Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He writes in English originally, but, of course, his books are dedicated mostly to Russian/Soviet history. I have read his “Дом правительства. Сага о русской революции” last year and found it quite interesting, albeit oversaturated with various information (a large part of it should have better be in some other books). I read his books in Russian translation because it is much easier regarding Russian names, titles, quotes, etc., which often become unrecognizable in English translation and overall lose important nuances, in my opinion. Юрий Слезкин translates his books into Russian from English himself.
This book, which has been widely read and discussed in Russia in a recent couple of years, was actually written much earlier (2004) than “Дом правительства. Сага о русской революции” (2017), but it was translated and published in Russian only very recently, in the same year with “Дом правительства” (2019), obviously because of the huge popularity of “Дом правительства.” Otherwise, it would have probably stayed unnoticed there.
“Эра Меркурия” is dedicated to Jews, as you can understand from the title. However, I would say that both the title and the first chapter of the book are misleading. About 80% of the book is dedicated to a very specific and very narrow phenomenon: Russian and, mostly, Soviet Jews. This overfocusing is an integral part of a bigger problem, the author’s conviction that Russia and, especially, the Soviet Union were the most powerful and important centers of “true Jewishness” (“Никакой другой народ не был таким советским, и никакой другой народ не проявлял такой готовности к отказу от своего языка, обрядов и традиционных мест прож��вания. Никакой другой народ, иначе говоря, не был столь меркурианским (сплошь голова и никакого тела) или столь революционным (сплошь молодость и никакой традиции).”). It looks like two other central “Jewish places in the world” that the author is ever discussing, the U.S. and Israel, are purposefully dwarfed and pushed to the back seats of history: the respective information is much weaker in quantity and quality and often looks ridiculous overall, as if the respected and diligent historian did not even want to waste much of his precious time and effort on these topics.
The approach he uses in “Эра Меркурия” is similar to “Дом правительства,” although the final book looks more compact and better structured than “Дом правительства.” He has some big “umbrella idea” (Bolsheviks as a quasi-religious millenarian sect in “Дом правительства” and Jews as the most prominent and exemplary “mercurian” ethnonational social group in “Эра Меркурия”), and then he adds tons of very interesting information (both factual and deliberately hand-picked in order to “fit” his “umbrella idea” as much as possible), tons of some strange quotes, comparisons, and reflections, sometimes tiresomely repetitive and/or extremely mind-boggling, and always very specific and subjective conclusions that, in my opinion, are not even “historical” in the scientific sense (I never agreed with his key conclusions in “Дом правительства,” and his conclusions in “Эра Меркурия” look even more artificial and disagreeable with me).
His key theory for this book, “mercurianism,” is very interesting per se, and I would gladly read a book dedicated to it in a wider context, even understanding all the obvious far-fetched argumentation and deficiencies. However, he uses this theory only as an introduction and convenient instrument for the following discussion about Jews, more specifically — Soviet Jews, while you understand perfectly that this “mercurianism” (if we accept this theory as a working social construct) is realized VERY differently with other ethnonational social groups (we cannot seriously compare Jews, Gypsies, Russian Germans, American Chinese, etc., right? at least, not by those key specific characteristic Юрий Слезкин distinguishes himself). Moreover, even Jews themselves were VERY different social groups in different societies and in different time periods. When you understand that he manipulates facts and ideas in order to show Russian/Soviet Jews as the key, even archetypal “mercurian” nation, you lose half of the respect to this theory, because Russia in the 20th century and, most of all, the Soviet Union were as idiosyncratic societies as ever possible, and the path of Jews as a nation was also a pretty marginal one there (at least, definitely not “exemplary”).
Well, it’s an interesting subject for discussion, and I understand that I am not a historian and, therefore, have not much right for robust criticism; anyway, all these observations did not make the book look “stupid” or “superficial” for me (it is rather very “skewed” and “biased,” I suppose, but almost all great scientific explorations are biased in their concentration on some aspects and ignoring others). You just have to understand that you will read here not about all the “mercurian” nations (as you can imagine based on the first chapter) and even not about all the Jews and their recent history all over the world; no, it will be a book about Russian/Soviet Jews, and most of all — about another favorite idea of the author, Jews as the key beneficiaries and thus creators of the Soviet state, its ideological foundation and its social elite. Again, there are many very intelligent and interesting observations here — but also a lot of bullshit, in my opinion. (The most ridiculous part of it is when the author tries to reconcile this idea with the fact of huge anti-Semitism and apparent anti-Jewish politics in the USSR and claims that “Евреи не были «задавлены и унижены в гораздо большей мере, чем все остальное население», но они действительно дали советской власти «и политических лидеров, и дипломатов, и военачальников, и хозяев экономики» и могли бы дать еще больше, если бы официально провозглашенные принципы меритократии и равноправия должным образом соблюдались. Иными словами, евреи не были задавлены в большей мере, чем остальное население, но они ощущали себя более униженными по причине их более высокого и более уязвимого положения в советском обществе.” In Russian, there is an exact formula for such deductions: “ну, договорился…”)
I also found completely inadequate most of the author’s opinions about American Jews and, especially, about Israel, and there are a lot of quite outrageous reflections about them, superficial and reproachful for a serious historian (I felt that representing Freudism as an antithesis to Marxism/Communism and as “the religion of modern capitalism” is especially shameful for a historian). His comments about the Holocaust are revolting and frivolous, and I did not expect to read something like this in a book of a Jewish author, not to mention “a historian.” However, as I already said, most of the book is about very different things, in essence — about the creation and development of the Soviet state (and there are many overlappings with “Дом правительства” here, of course).
Also, the author has an unhealthy inclination to repeat the same metaphors all over again and again (“халат Галины Аполлоновны,” “нос Свана,” “Тевье-молочник и его дочери,” etc.), which makes the reading quite irritating sometimes, but this is irrelevant comparing to other, more essential problems with the key ideas of the book and some arguments offered there.
Therefore, it’s an interesting from many points of view book, but I wouldn’t recommend it as some educational material if you do not know much about Jews but want to learn more (there is a high risk of falling behind the author’s biases). I would eagerly encourage reading it for those people who can understand and accept its subjective nature, form their own opinion, and discuss this book and its ideas from an independent critical point of view, appreciating all the cool sides of it but also rejecting indignantly all the obvious manipulations/bullshit. I believe it can be an excellent trigger for many very intelligent, illuminative, and incredibly interesting discussions about various historical and sociocultural aspects.
Overall, I did not have an impression of a well-thought theory of Soviet Jews as an exemplary “mercurian nation” (it just does not make much sense if you try to analyze deeply any of the key arguments), although both the discussions about “mercurian nations” and about Soviet Jews as a very specific historical phenomenon here are worthy and deserve attention.
February 16, 2020
Slezkine's central thesis - that the world can be divided into tribes of stable, agricultural, dominant Apollonians and mobile, entrepreneurial Mercurian minorities - is generally compelling. His specific analysis of Russian and Soviet culture is particularly interesting, as he explains how the Russian and Ukrainian Apollonians and the Jewish (and, in the 19th century, German) Mercurians defined themselves in opposition to the other group: i.e., since the Russians saw themselves as masculine landowners, they saw the Jews as effeminate cosmopolitans, and the Jews, in turn, reinterpreted those stereotypes to cast the Russians as ignorant peasants and themselves as intelligent and cultured.
What is most interesting is how these stereotypes changed with the Soviet condemnation of Antisemitism: Russian authors sought to recast existing stereotypes in a more positive light, and Socialist realism novels abound with sly and effeminate Jewish commissars who are to be admired for their knowledge of Marx and Lenin despite their unpleasant personal characteristics. Jewish authors, however, often reversed the stereotypes entirely, as with Isaac Babel's rough, masculine gangster-hero, Benya Krik. In this sense, I'm grateful to Slezkine for clarifying my thinking on Jewish stereotypes in Soviet culture.
The book as a whole is very well-researched and is an excellent source of statistics on Jewish life in the 20th century. However, I found Slezkine's style to be quite painful to read. He tries too hard to force his data to fit the Apollonian-Mercurian dichotomy that he establishes and is clearly trying to make what could have been a useful academic text into a more accessible "pop" history book. I cringed constantly while reading it... and yet I have reread it twice and think of it often as I continue to learn about Soviet Jewish life and literature. Ultimately, I recommend The Jewish Century to anyone interested in Jewish or Soviet history, but would advise them to read with a grain of salt and a heavy dose of patience.
What is most interesting is how these stereotypes changed with the Soviet condemnation of Antisemitism: Russian authors sought to recast existing stereotypes in a more positive light, and Socialist realism novels abound with sly and effeminate Jewish commissars who are to be admired for their knowledge of Marx and Lenin despite their unpleasant personal characteristics. Jewish authors, however, often reversed the stereotypes entirely, as with Isaac Babel's rough, masculine gangster-hero, Benya Krik. In this sense, I'm grateful to Slezkine for clarifying my thinking on Jewish stereotypes in Soviet culture.
The book as a whole is very well-researched and is an excellent source of statistics on Jewish life in the 20th century. However, I found Slezkine's style to be quite painful to read. He tries too hard to force his data to fit the Apollonian-Mercurian dichotomy that he establishes and is clearly trying to make what could have been a useful academic text into a more accessible "pop" history book. I cringed constantly while reading it... and yet I have reread it twice and think of it often as I continue to learn about Soviet Jewish life and literature. Ultimately, I recommend The Jewish Century to anyone interested in Jewish or Soviet history, but would advise them to read with a grain of salt and a heavy dose of patience.
November 9, 2010
Not as systematic or grounded as I had hoped and expected, but plenty of fruitful speculation. More of "intellectual riffing" around a few historical themes than actual history, although the section on the transition in the Soviet State from philo-semitism to anti-semitism is quite detailed.
Jews, for Yuri Slezkine and with good reason, are Mercurians, innately modern, native inhabitants of the world-city. Their marriage to the soviet state is forgotten history, and yet a hinge of the twentieth century. On the other hand, an American, with post-Cold war American concerns, wonders more about their place in America. Their influence is, I think, substantial and traceable; they have made America more Jewish, and this romance is probably a marriage for life, different from the messy divorce in Russia.
Slezkine leaves us with this:
"All radical attempts to remake humankind are ultimately assaults on the family, and all of them either fail or dissimulate... Not vision of justice-as-equality can accommodate the human family however constituted, and no human existence involving men, women, and children can abide the abolition of the distinction between kin and nonkin."
Jews, for Yuri Slezkine and with good reason, are Mercurians, innately modern, native inhabitants of the world-city. Their marriage to the soviet state is forgotten history, and yet a hinge of the twentieth century. On the other hand, an American, with post-Cold war American concerns, wonders more about their place in America. Their influence is, I think, substantial and traceable; they have made America more Jewish, and this romance is probably a marriage for life, different from the messy divorce in Russia.
Slezkine leaves us with this:
"All radical attempts to remake humankind are ultimately assaults on the family, and all of them either fail or dissimulate... Not vision of justice-as-equality can accommodate the human family however constituted, and no human existence involving men, women, and children can abide the abolition of the distinction between kin and nonkin."
August 9, 2013
A fascinating read. Among other themes, an interesting take on why Jews (or people of Jewish ancestry) were so overrepresented and successful in commerce, scientific and intellectual and art thought in late 19th - early 20th century in Europe.
July 1, 2008
The author Berkeley mentor, and just an incredible human being. I read it in manuscript form, and was blown away.
December 17, 2020
Really fascinating book. Great detail on the huge expulsion of Jewish influence across multiple professions in Europe and the the USA following the emancipation.
Having turned the world "Jewish" as he defines the development of Western humanity as a result of modernity, we then see that the result for the Jews is that on the one hand, they turn out to be the best Jews of all (from a secular point of view, dominating multipleEen professions way beyond their relative numbers in the population), but in many cases this leading to an even more problematic existence for Jews in the past 150 years. More antisemtism, more assimilation and the great destruction of the Shoah.
An important read!
Having turned the world "Jewish" as he defines the development of Western humanity as a result of modernity, we then see that the result for the Jews is that on the one hand, they turn out to be the best Jews of all (from a secular point of view, dominating multipleEen professions way beyond their relative numbers in the population), but in many cases this leading to an even more problematic existence for Jews in the past 150 years. More antisemtism, more assimilation and the great destruction of the Shoah.
An important read!
November 2, 2021
Исследование роли евреев в современном обществе - очень непростая тема. Книга для меня оказалось полной открытий и параллелей. Порой ее даже можно было назвать захватывающей. Много исторических фактов, попытка собрать картину в единое целое, для полноценного понимания книги нужно иметь немалый культурный багаж, я не дотянула по некоторым пунктам. Очень возможно, что потом я к этой книге вернусь потому что в стремлении понять историю армян в истории евреев можно най��и немало ключей.
January 4, 2020
Great book on historical journey of Jews. This is systematic overview that explores rise and fall of USSR and creation of contemporary Jews. Written based on facts and literature analysis. Felt a bit hard to to follow the thought, sometimes, but probably because I read Lithuanian translation.
February 11, 2023
bravo !
September 24, 2015
“The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the the twentieth century in particular, is the Jewish century. Modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible….It is about pursing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake…replacing inherited privilege with acquired privilege, and dismantling social estates for the benefit of individuals, nuclear families, and book-reading tribes (nations). Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish” (1).
So begins Yuri Slezkine's controversial and unorthodox history: THE JEWISH CENTURY. With his metaphorical assertion that we [modern men and women] are all Jews, he invites us on a mental reconceptualization of the world to better understand it (even if by so doing we are distorting some rather large variations in human experience. He notes that Jews have adapted to the modern world (from written record-keeping onward) better than many other groups. According to Slezkine, Jewish people have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere. First they became free agents—service nomads—an outsider group specializing in the delivery of goods or services. He generalizes the global division of labor with the following binary: Mercurians (entrepreneurial minorities) vs. Apollonians (food-producing majorities). Jews, "the exemplary ancients," are now the model moderns. The book concentrates on the drama of the Russian Jews—emigrating to America, Palestine, and Soviet Union cities. This is a fascinating, provocative though admittedly problematic work of history. Its assumptions and methods are unconventional, and yet, it proves to be a refreshingly interesting and successful exercise in approaching history in a more grand narrative way that has some fruitful results.
So begins Yuri Slezkine's controversial and unorthodox history: THE JEWISH CENTURY. With his metaphorical assertion that we [modern men and women] are all Jews, he invites us on a mental reconceptualization of the world to better understand it (even if by so doing we are distorting some rather large variations in human experience. He notes that Jews have adapted to the modern world (from written record-keeping onward) better than many other groups. According to Slezkine, Jewish people have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere. First they became free agents—service nomads—an outsider group specializing in the delivery of goods or services. He generalizes the global division of labor with the following binary: Mercurians (entrepreneurial minorities) vs. Apollonians (food-producing majorities). Jews, "the exemplary ancients," are now the model moderns. The book concentrates on the drama of the Russian Jews—emigrating to America, Palestine, and Soviet Union cities. This is a fascinating, provocative though admittedly problematic work of history. Its assumptions and methods are unconventional, and yet, it proves to be a refreshingly interesting and successful exercise in approaching history in a more grand narrative way that has some fruitful results.
December 4, 2007
The theory behind this book is outstanding.
Jews, through systematic discrimination were forced to enter into the new industries, ideas, and philosophies of the 20th century and thus become its leaders. As an ethnicity they heralded change and thus were persecuted for it.
The problem is that the book reads like a college text and the author overreaches in trying to tie all elements of Jewish history (especially Marxism) to this theory.
This theory academically reiterates the rightwing wall streeter's advice to the skinhead to lay off the anti-semitism in the movie "The Believer": "We're all Jews now"
Jews, through systematic discrimination were forced to enter into the new industries, ideas, and philosophies of the 20th century and thus become its leaders. As an ethnicity they heralded change and thus were persecuted for it.
The problem is that the book reads like a college text and the author overreaches in trying to tie all elements of Jewish history (especially Marxism) to this theory.
This theory academically reiterates the rightwing wall streeter's advice to the skinhead to lay off the anti-semitism in the movie "The Believer": "We're all Jews now"
February 5, 2012
"Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish."
This book has an amazing argument and I found it very fresh and provocative. It's a totally new and irreverent look at Jewish roles in the USSR, the US, and Israel...at the same time, it left me with a lot of respect for what those roles have been.
This book has an amazing argument and I found it very fresh and provocative. It's a totally new and irreverent look at Jewish roles in the USSR, the US, and Israel...at the same time, it left me with a lot of respect for what those roles have been.
May 22, 2020
Книга, пожалуй, смогла ответить на вопрос: откуда взялся антисемитизм. СпойлерАлерт: так карта легла. Плюс привычка детей дразнить белых ворон.
А еще из книги стало ясно, что прежних евреев уже нет. Остались израильтяне с галилами в Силикон Вади, толкиенисты в пейсах из Вильямсбурга и обычный народ со странными фамилиями
А еще из книги стало ясно, что прежних евреев уже нет. Остались израильтяне с галилами в Силикон Вади, толкиенисты в пейсах из Вильямсбурга и обычный народ со странными фамилиями
March 24, 2008
you want a conspiracy theory, take this!
provocative account of the role of jews in the 20th century that cannot be easily written off.
a bit to culturalist at times for me, but riveting nonetheless.
provocative account of the role of jews in the 20th century that cannot be easily written off.
a bit to culturalist at times for me, but riveting nonetheless.
October 9, 2019
This reading slices traditional Jewish life into perspectives that were known to me very vague. A must read one to ones who are in to the history of Jews.
August 2, 2022
Поразительно, сколько силы было в руке, которая делала этот 500-страничный текст.
И вроде бы в ней нет ничего нового: и нарратив, и факты давно известны. С другой стороны, так может судить читатель из 2022 года, а книга вышла в начале 2000-х годов, и тогда эта тема, такой взгляд на историю XX века, были в новинку.
Начнём с главного достоинства книги, особенно для наших роковых времён. Слёзкин в книге об этнической истории выдерживает поразительную объективность и отстранённость. Я, будучи, сам озабоченным национальным вопросом, просто не верил при чтении, что можно быть настолько последовательным в взвешенности суждений. Это сам по себе — дар Божий или гигантская интеллектуальная работа. Прочтите её прямо сейчас, когда русофобия, украинофобия, юдофобия и все прочие ксенофобии стали абсолютно мейнстримными легитимными дискурсами, которые часто ещё и рядятся под что-то рефлексивное. Если бы Слёзкин не рассказывал бы о своих ейврейских предках, то я и вовсе бы подумал, что книгу написал даже не человек, а инопланетянин. Слишком не свойственный людям взгляд на вещи.
Книга представляет собой четыре изящных эссе. Первые три из них можно назвать условно вводными. Четвёртое — главным.
Слёзкин с размаху строит собственную теорию народов. Есть дескать меркурианцы (кочевники-посредники) и апполонийцы (жёстко привязанные к земле). Граница между меркурианцами сколь подвижна, столь и прозрачна . История евреев — это история меркурианцев, живущих среди апполонийцев. Современность — это время, когда апполонийцы массово захотели быть меркурианцами.
В общем-то, с такой концепцией можно спорить. И до середины книги она может казаться вымученной и излишней. Но начинается глава «Выбор Годл. Евреи и три Земли Обетованные», и мы оказываемся в пространстве завораживающей нон-фикшн семейной саги. Слёзкин берёт четырёх дочерей Тевье-молочника из знаменитой повести Шолом-Алейхема, и своё повествование о еврейском веке складывает из их судьбы, судьбы их детей и внуков.
Цейтл осталась с отцом. Её судьба — Холокост. Бейлка уехала в Америку — она метафорическая мать американского еврейства. Хава уехала в Палестину, и она станет меркурианской основательницей апполонического Израиля. А Годл отправиться за мужем в сибирскую ссылку.
И она со своей семьёй — главные персонажи. Все дискуссии о роли евреев в русской революции Слёзкин, сам внук Годл, резюмирует под занавес книги беспощадным вердиктом: миллионы евреев, поверивших в советский проект, в еврейской истории отсутствуют, они преданы забвению самими евреями. Внуки Бейлки и Хавы плачут по Цейтл и её детям, они забыли про исход евреев в коммунистическую Москву. Внуки Годл отреклись от её выбора, и назвали его неправильным. Русские не помнят о своих соседях-евреях.
Лично для меня это редкий пример, где форма меня восхищает больше содержания. У Слёзкина блестящий стиль, русская словесность на максималках, но имеет изъяны, которые подчёркивают достоинства. Страницы цитат из чужих книг и сухой статистики заставляют буквально вынырнуть из идеального текста.
В общем, очень хотелось бы, чтобы все книжки про национализм и смежные вопросы писал Юрий Слёзкин.
December 18, 2020
Первая книга Слёзкина понравилась, пожалуй, больше, чем "Дом правительства", хотя и она не вызвала восторга. Занимательно - вот, наверное, наиболее точное слово, передающее впечатление от прочтения.
Главная идея автора - это существование т.н. "аполлонийцев" и "меркурианцев" (терминологически автор отталкивается от ницшеанских "аполлонийцев" и "дионисийцев", но говорит, что это деление его не устраивает). Аполлонийцы - члены традиционного оседлого общества. Меркурианцы - инородцы, живущие в государствах аполлонийцев, но этнически и религиозно от них обособленные и занимающиеся другими делами (не производством и сельским хозяйством, а социальными контактами и обменом - торговля, кредит, коммуникации и т.п. Евреи, цыгане, джайны в индии, индусы в африке, греки и армяне в европе, левантийцы в южной америки и т.д.).
По мысли Слёзкина, 20 век - это век, когда глобальные ценности изменились: мир, бывший ранее в целом аполлонийским и лишь частично меркурианским, стал в целом меркурианским и лишь частично аполлонийским. И основная заслуга в этом у евреев - главных меркурианцев западного мира.
Автор чрезвычайно эрудирован и не лишён литературного таланта, но вот когда дело доходит до выстраивания исторических концепций, он скатывается в историософию и, как кажется, пытается превратить выдуманные им метафоры в подобие исторического закона. Например, деление на аполлонийцев и меркурианцев - это собственная (бесспорно, красивая) придумка автора, но ведь это не означает, что все нации и сообщества обязательно должны укладываться в эту дихотомию. Но нет, Слёзкин не признаёт третьего пути: ты или аполлониец, или меркурианец. Эта книга слишком литературна для научного труда и слишком научна для литературоведческого. Тем не менее, даже когда с автором не соглашаешься, он и его концепция не наскучивают, и это, пожалуй, главное.
В общем, самое интересное в этой книге - это сам автор и ход его мысли: как он блещет эрудицией, как переходит от анализа литературных произведений к историческим и статистическим выкладкам, а затем к психоанализу.
Главная идея автора - это существование т.н. "аполлонийцев" и "меркурианцев" (терминологически автор отталкивается от ницшеанских "аполлонийцев" и "дионисийцев", но говорит, что это деление его не устраивает). Аполлонийцы - члены традиционного оседлого общества. Меркурианцы - инородцы, живущие в государствах аполлонийцев, но этнически и религиозно от них обособленные и занимающиеся другими делами (не производством и сельским хозяйством, а социальными контактами и обменом - торговля, кредит, коммуникации и т.п. Евреи, цыгане, джайны в индии, индусы в африке, греки и армяне в европе, левантийцы в южной америки и т.д.).
По мысли Слёзкина, 20 век - это век, когда глобальные ценности изменились: мир, бывший ранее в целом аполлонийским и лишь частично меркурианским, стал в целом меркурианским и лишь частично аполлонийским. И основная заслуга в этом у евреев - главных меркурианцев западного мира.
Автор чрезвычайно эрудирован и не лишён литературного таланта, но вот когда дело доходит до выстраивания исторических концепций, он скатывается в историософию и, как кажется, пытается превратить выдуманные им метафоры в подобие исторического закона. Например, деление на аполлонийцев и меркурианцев - это собственная (бесспорно, красивая) придумка автора, но ведь это не означает, что все нации и сообщества обязательно должны укладываться в эту дихотомию. Но нет, Слёзкин не признаёт третьего пути: ты или аполлониец, или меркурианец. Эта книга слишком литературна для научного труда и слишком научна для литературоведческого. Тем не менее, даже когда с автором не соглашаешься, он и его концепция не наскучивают, и это, пожалуй, главное.
В общем, самое интересное в этой книге - это сам автор и ход его мысли: как он блещет эрудицией, как переходит от анализа литературных произведений к историческим и статистическим выкладкам, а затем к психоанализу.
September 16, 2020
Slezkine manages to present history in such poetic form. Haven't felt this high in a while from reading statistical accounts, anecdotes, correspondences.
I would like to share a tiny line of flight from a passage in the text that I took. On page 177 one encounters the passage: "...but Leonard Schapiro is probably justified in generalizing (specially about the territory of the former pale) that anyone who has the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka stood a very good chance of finding himself confronted with and possibly shot by a Jewish investigator."
So I went on a google hunt for all things Schapiro, and came across an exchange between him and the Verso Books darling, Ernest Mandel. The exchange was in the letters section of NYRB In response to a review of a number of books by Schapiro titled "Communist Myths" from the April 17, 1980 issue.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1980...
It is not an iconic swap but exemplary of the kind of squabbles in the battle of ideas which took place among the intellectual elite. Now the participants are superficially a British political scientist (born in Glasgow died in London) and a Belgian Marxist economist (born in Frankfurt died in Brussels), on the pages of what is considered the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English, published in another continent from the one in which the authors are resident.
But Leonard Bertram Naman Schapiro (not quite Beilke's husband) Ernest Ezra Mandel (not quite Hodl's husband) and the referee (editor of NYRB) Robert Benjamin Silvers (very much from the Beilke line) are all from the same ethnic background. And they seem to best embody all the arguments, counter arguments, mistakes and rebuttals of the past century's dialectic.
I would like to share a tiny line of flight from a passage in the text that I took. On page 177 one encounters the passage: "...but Leonard Schapiro is probably justified in generalizing (specially about the territory of the former pale) that anyone who has the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka stood a very good chance of finding himself confronted with and possibly shot by a Jewish investigator."
So I went on a google hunt for all things Schapiro, and came across an exchange between him and the Verso Books darling, Ernest Mandel. The exchange was in the letters section of NYRB In response to a review of a number of books by Schapiro titled "Communist Myths" from the April 17, 1980 issue.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1980...
It is not an iconic swap but exemplary of the kind of squabbles in the battle of ideas which took place among the intellectual elite. Now the participants are superficially a British political scientist (born in Glasgow died in London) and a Belgian Marxist economist (born in Frankfurt died in Brussels), on the pages of what is considered the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English, published in another continent from the one in which the authors are resident.
But Leonard Bertram Naman Schapiro (not quite Beilke's husband) Ernest Ezra Mandel (not quite Hodl's husband) and the referee (editor of NYRB) Robert Benjamin Silvers (very much from the Beilke line) are all from the same ethnic background. And they seem to best embody all the arguments, counter arguments, mistakes and rebuttals of the past century's dialectic.
November 7, 2022
Очень качественная, емкая и последовательная компиляция истории поэтапного развития (в основном, в контексте интеграции и адаптации в широком смысле — ведь мы имеем в виду изначальную инаковость) еврейского общества, статистических данных, подборки литературных произведений и рефлексии, все это связывающей и приводящей к единому знаменателю.
«Нигде, согласно Горькому, в евреях не нуждались так отчаянно и не обращались с ними так плохо, как в России, где «расхлябанность» (обломовщина) была лелеемой национальной чертой, а переход «из болота восточной косности на широкие пути западноевропейской культуры» — беспрецедентно тяжкой мукой. Еврейская традиция, которая «запрещает... всякое праздное, не основанное на труде удовольствие», это «то самое, чего недостает нам, русским». Ибо «где-то в глубине души русского человека — все равно барин он или мужик — живет маленький и скверный бес пассивного анархизма, он внушает нам небрежное и безразличное отношение к труду, обществу, народу, к самим себе». И чем очевиднее тот факт, что «евреи больше европейцы, чем русские», и что еврей «как психический тип, культурно выше, красивее русского», тем сильнее негодуют покорные и самодовольные.»
«Нигде, согласно Горькому, в евреях не нуждались так отчаянно и не обращались с ними так плохо, как в России, где «расхлябанность» (обломовщина) была лелеемой национальной чертой, а переход «из болота восточной косности на широкие пути западноевропейской культуры» — беспрецедентно тяжкой мукой. Еврейская традиция, которая «запрещает... всякое праздное, не основанное на труде удовольствие», это «то самое, чего недостает нам, русским». Ибо «где-то в глубине души русского человека — все равно барин он или мужик — живет маленький и скверный бес пассивного анархизма, он внушает нам небрежное и безразличное отношение к труду, обществу, народу, к самим себе». И чем очевиднее тот факт, что «евреи больше европейцы, чем русские», и что еврей «как психический тип, культурно выше, красивее русского», тем сильнее негодуют покорные и самодовольные.»
December 14, 2017
Erg moeilijk om dit boek in een paar regels samen te vatten. De schrijver is zelf een Russiche Jood, die nu in de VS woont. Aan de hand van een metafoor (Apollonische mensen tegenover Mercurische mensen) legt hij uit wat de positie was van de Joden door de historie heen. Hij laat ook zien, dat heel veel andere bevolkingsgroepen eigenlijk in dezelfde positie zaten. O.a. de Armenen, de Libische christenen in b.v. Zuid-Amerika, de Chinezen in Azie. Daarna spitst hij het verhaal meer toe op de Joden en wel de grote groep die in de Pale of Settlement woonde. Zij hadden drie keuzes (die hij steeds nader uitlegt aan de hand van de keuzes van Tevjes dochters): naar Rusland en deel nemen aan de revolutie, naar Amerika en naar Palestina, later Israel. Hij werkt het goed uit, maar het is af en toe wel taai. Over het geheel genomen een goede geschiedenis van de Joden in de 20ste eeuw, waarbij dit keer de Holocaust maar een bijrol spelt.
May 20, 2020
I found this book quite fascinating. It was pretty well over my head, in intellectual and academic terms. However, it offered some very valuable insights into the Jewish experience of the last 150 years - and the fundamental insight that the entire world has become more "Jewish" in the last century, ie that "Jewish" qualities like entrepreneurship, flexibility and networking are now the norm in business, whereas they used to be more particular to the Jews. The author gets a little too deep into Russian literature for me, but that's really my fault for being an ignoramus.
January 12, 2023
Not the best book on the subject but interesting, specially if you are looking for more information on the intertwined Jewish and Russia/Soviet history. I’ve found the extensive discussions on literary works very boring, annoying and distracting, though.
Lots of data on Jewish over-representation that, obviously, can be used for good or for bad (celebration parallax at play here, lots of). The author has masterfully tried to eat his cake and have it...
In any case, very good discussion and explanations on the topic of Stalin’s antisemitic policies. Best I read on that particular subject.
Lots of data on Jewish over-representation that, obviously, can be used for good or for bad (celebration parallax at play here, lots of). The author has masterfully tried to eat his cake and have it...
In any case, very good discussion and explanations on the topic of Stalin’s antisemitic policies. Best I read on that particular subject.
September 15, 2023
Формально – книжка о судьбе европейского еврейства в XX веке и роли евреев в ключевых событиях столетия, фактически – попытка посмотреть на историю с точки зрения отношений двух типов народов — аполлонийцев и меркурианцев (к последним, собственно, Слёзкин и относит евреев). Обычно царапает любая классификация, когда её относят к живым, но этот нонфик показался очень любопытным.
October 20, 2020
Slezkine's book has the same excellence as the Jews he describes: "literate, articulate, intellectually intricate..." A must read for anyone who is interested in Jews or the modern world they did so much to create.
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