It s a Long Story! Russian-Jewis

This is a course on Eastern European Jewry that will examine Jewish life in Russia from the Partitions of Poland in the late eighteenth century until the dawn of the twenty-first century.  As such, it will survey the complexities of Jewish life from the moment that they become a part of the Russian Empire until the disintegration of the Soviet Union two centuries later and into the tumultuous realities of post-Soviet space.  The course will have a special focus on the huge changes that East European Jews underwent during these years – a period of repeated wars and massive changes in policy, demography, culture and mass migration. Parts of the course will also be devoted to a survey of non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities in this huge space. Throughout the course we shall compare the history of Jews as a minority people in the multi-ethnic Russian and Soviet empires with the fate of other minority peoples.