The Jewish Century

Russian author Yuri Slezkine - a Berkeley professor who is half Jewish - has written a superb book about the life of the Jews during the 20th century. He calls the 20th century a Jewish century, since many of the needed attributes to triumph in contemporary society - brains more than brawn, to put it succinctly - have for centuries been the province of the Jews. He calls the Jews Mercurians - people dealing in urban professions, like commerce, medicine, teaching, later science - who live along side the Apollonians, who mostly live off the land. In many parts of the world Mercurians have lived with Apollonians, who usually viewed them suspiciously, says Slezkine, but in Europe, the only Mercurians were the Jews, and therefore they soon become the Other (add to that that in the Apollonian's sacred book Jews are considered to be the murderers of their God, and the issue of anti-Semitism can be understood better). By the 19th century, after Jews became emancipated, it was clear that Jews have few choices: assimilation to Christian society (many did that, even converting to Christianity), fight for the establishment of a revolutionary government that would make religion obsolete (also the choice of many Jews, especially in the first half of the 20th century), or seek a national homeland for the Jews, preferably in their ancestral territory, where they would became Apollonians. The later choice was Zionism, which originally seem the most eccentric of choices, the least likely to succeed, but which after the Holocaust became the triumphant one. A very fine book that does not shy away from some very controversial topics (like the role of Jews in the Russian Revolution and their prominent presence in the early Soviet government, until Stalin became mistrustful of them, once the State of Israel was founded, and their loyalty to the Soviet Union became doubtful to the dictator).

This is a truly compelling, exceptional book. It covers a lot of ground, starting with the evolution of the Jewish people into the world's most successful "moderns," "cosmopolitans," and capitalists (or pre-current equivalents of). The author thus illustrates why the 20th century is "the Jewish century." I believe, however, that the most fasinating subject matter covered in the book is the unmistakeable and undeniable Jewish imprint on the USSR. Being both Jewish and native to the former Soviet Union, I found the story told by Yuri Slezkine to be refreshing, explosive, truthful, terrible, and empowering all at once. This is not a history of Soviet Jewry from the (typically) Zionist perspective of perpetual victomhood, nor is it, of course, an anti-semitic fairy-tale about the rape of Russia by the usual suspects. It is, rather, a full account of extensive Jewish participation in the Communist revolutionary underground, post-revolutionary Soviet government, the Soviet military, the police state, the propaganda machine, the cultural life, the massive assimilation, the loyalty and patriotism, the unparalleled achievements, the resentment, the disallusionment, the anti-Communist opposition, the agitation, and the bitter divorce. Slezkine shows that more then any other group, Jews were the true Soviets, most loyal, most integrated, most assimilated, and, eventually, among the most bitter, and arguably, most betrayed. The extremely well written narative includes numorous statistics, great quotations, and the Babel-esque emotion of the stuggle between the Russian and the Jewish identities. Having read this book, I believe that it is the best source for serious students of the Russian-Jewish legacy, and an absolute must-read for Soviet Jewish emigres like myself - this is a history of our people, and our country. The legacy of our forefathers is too rich and too important to ever forget, or be ignorant of.

There are many serious flaws in this book, not the least that Slezkine does not mention the larger intellectual context which non-Jews created. Marx was influenced by Hegel and Ricardo, and his domatism was not Talmudist but a characteristic of all true believers. Slezkine does not confront the romantic wanderfogel concepts which were so important to both fascism and Zionism. Etc. Moreover, Slezkine's use of literary symbolism and analogies is confusing, and he does not confront the fact that Yiddish literature was clawingly sentimental and mediocre. Still, faults notwithstanding, this is a superb book, indispensable on Marxism and the entire Soviet experience and valuable on the Jews in the U.S. and the nature of Israel. It is surely the most interesting book have read in ages, and there is so much that is right withit that its flaws do not detract from its value.

Slezkine, a professor of history at Berkeley who came to America from the Soviet Union in 1982, restores the dignity of Jews, after decades of being portrayed solely as passive victims of history, by showing how Jews, qua Jews, were among the most dynamic actors in the central events of the 20th Century. You simply cannot understand the main events of European history of the last century without reading Slezkine' brilliant book. Slezkine's interest is in the tragic ironies of history and he empathetically allows us to enter into the mindsets of hundreds of individuals as they made decisions that, well, seemed like a good idea at the time. We've all read enormous amounts about two Jewish migrations -- one to America and one to the Holy Land -- but Slezkine vividly documents the forgotten third Jewish great migration, the one his grandmother made, from the towns of the Pale of Settlement in the Polish and Ukrainian lands to Moscow and the other great cities of Russia/Soviet Union. For at least two decades after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, this migration appeared to the more worldly Jews around the globe as the most successful of the three migrations. Jews, untainted by any association with the Czarist regime and showing the most enthusiasm for the new Bolshevik regime of any ethnic group, flourished in the Soviet Union even more than in America, where anti-Semitism channeled most of the Jewish immigrants' genius into meritocratic fields like entrepreneurial business and science, rather than into politics, the military, or the more comfortable parts of the corporate world. In 19th Century Europe, secularizing Jews believed they were hated because of nationalism and capitalism. Nationalism proposed that every nation should have a territorial state, an idea the small minority of Jews who were active Zionists embraced. But most of the new Jewish intelligentsia of Eastern Europe felt that the solution to the Jews' lack of a nation-state in a world obsessed with nationalism was the elimination of nationalism and its replacement by internationalism, which communism promised. Moreover, Jewish intellectuals also believed they were hated because of the Jews' tremendous talent for capitalism, which communism likewise promised to abolish. Finally, many young secular Jews were in rebellion against their capitalist, religious, and particularist parents or grandparents, and communism promised them a final victory over their ancestors and all they stood for. By no means was the Bolshevik Revolution a Jewish plot, but under the new anti-anti-Semitic Bolshevik regime, Jews rapidly became important military leaders, commissars, factory managers, propagandists, secret policemen, and Gulag wardens. Jews did better under the Bolsheviks than the members of any other ethnic group. This success helps explain the otherwise inexplicable loyalty of so many American Jews to Stalin's regime even through the Stalin-Hitler pact and Stalin's anti-Semitic purges after WWII.