A Double Burden, a Double Cross”: Andrei Sobol as a Russian-Jewish Writer 9781618117120

Citation preview

“A Double Burden, a Double Cross” Andrei Sobol as a Russian-Jewish Writer

Jews

of

Russia & Eastern Europe

and

Their Legacy

Series Editor Maxim D. Shrayer—Boston College Editorial Board Karel Berkhoff—NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Jeremy Hicks—Queen Mary University of London Brian Horowitz—Tulane University Luba Jurgenson—Universite ParisIV—Sorbonne Roman Katsman—Bar-Ilan University Dov-Ber Kerler—Indiana University Vladimir Khazan—Hebrew University of Jerusalem Alice Nakhimovsky—Colgate University Antony Polonsky—Brandeis University Jonathan D. Sarna—Brandeis University David Shneer—University of Colorado at Boulder Anna Shternshis—University of Toronto Leona Toker—Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mark Tolts—Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“A Double Burden, a Double Cross” Andrei Sobol

as a Russian-Jewish Writer Vladimir Kha z an

Boston 2017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Khazan, Vladimir, author. Title: "A double burden, a double cross" : Andrei Sobol as a Russian-Jewish writer / Vladimir Khazan. Description: Boston, MA : Academic Studies Press, 2017. | Series: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and their legacy | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017043780 (print) | LCCN 2017046557 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618117120 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618117113 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Sobol', Andrei, 1888-1926--Criticism and interpretation. | Russian literature--Jewish authors--20th century--History and criticism. | Jews in literature. Classification: LCC PG3476.S577 (ebook) | LCC PG3476.S577 Z69 2017 (print) | DDC 891.73/42--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043780

© Academic Studies Press, 2017 All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-61811-711-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-61811-712-0 (electronic)

Cover design by Ivan Grave.

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2017 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA P: (617)782-6290 F: (857)241-3149 [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents List of Illustrations

6

Preface

7

List of Abbreviations

22

Part I. “…And, Apparently, a Very Good Jew”: Sobol as a Russian-Jewish Literary Critic and Journalist I.1 Baal-Makhshoves and Andrei Sobol: Two Views on the Purpose and Objectives of Russian-Jewish Literature

24

I.2 The Context and Subtext of Sobol’s Open Letter to D. Merezhkovsky

31

I.3 A Battle that Never Happened (Sobol’s Unpublished Open Letter to Ivan Bunin)

46

Part II. Andrei Sobol and Evreiskii Mir

54

Part III. Overcoming the Myth: Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Works III.1. Between Literature and Politics: Sobol’s Novel Pyl’

69

III.2. Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Short Stories

85

III.3. The Fate of Sobol’s Book Evrei

109

Part IV. Sobol’s Translation of Wandering Stars

114

Part V. Andrei Sobol and the Jewish Theater Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

135 143 147 164 174

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Andrei Sobol in 1911

8

Figure 2. Andrei Sobol’s parents: father Moisei-Yitzhak (1870) and mother Mina (1891)

14

Figure 3. Andrei Sobol’s parents: father Moisei-Yitzhak (1885) and mother Mina (1915)

15

Figure 4. Andrei Sobol and his brothers

16

Figure 5. Andrei Sobol in Cavi di Lavagne

17

Figure 6. Rakhil Bakhmutskaia (Dvinsk, left—1911, right—1908)

18

Figure 7. Rakhil Bakhmutskaia with Mark Sobol on her hands (March 1918)

19

Figure 8. Andrei Sobol—commissar of the Provisional Government (August 1917)

20

Figure 9. Andrei Sobol in 1925

21

Figure 10. Andrei Sobol’s grave at the Novodevich’e cemetery

21

Figure 11. Lower row: Leib Iaffe and Pinkhas Rutenberg; upper row: unidentified person and Andrei Sobol (village Taininskaia, near Moscow, summer of 1918

105

Preface

If a history of Russian-Jewish literature in the twentieth century (or, at least, a history of its authors and texts) were ever to be written, it would reveal a number of puzzling lacunae. One such lacuna is Andrei Sobol, a truly significant writer who, paradoxically, has not received due scholarly attention. This can easily be demonstrated by the fact that Sobol’s name goes virtually unmentioned in some of the most representative and authoritative studies dealing with the Russian-Jewish literary discourse (see, for instance, Nakhimovsky, 1992; Kornblatt, 1992; Sicher, 1995; Katz, 2008; Murav, 2011, et al.); even the seemingly most comprehensive recent work—a fourvolume collective monograph titled Yehudei Rusya ba-Mea ha-Esrim [Russian Jews in the Twentieth Century], which was published in Hebrew in 2014—passes over him in silence. This is not to say that Sobol, as a Russian-Jewish writer, has been completely forgotten; in fact, several authors have touched on this subject. These range from the well-known contemporary critic Vasily L’vov-Rogachevskii, who discussed him briefly in his book Russko-evreiskaia literatura [Russian-Jewish literature] (L’vovRogachevskii, 1922: 160–61), to several modern scholars: Rytman, 1993; Prat, 1996; Prat, 2000; Gantseva, 2001; Geizer, 2001; Hetényi, 2006; Hetényi, 2008 (according to the index, pp. 196–200; 279–81 in particular); in addition to those, see our own works: Khazan, 2005a; Khazan, 2008a; Khazan, 2014; Khazan, 2015. Nevertheless, we still lack a comprehensive and exhaustive account of Sobol’s public, literary, and artistic activities as a purely Russian-Jewish phenomenon—either in the form of a biographical description or as an analysis within the framework of cultural studies. It is this scholarly gap that has prompted me to write this book. —7—

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

In reality, the problem lies not in the lack of a complete study of the Russian-Jewish element of Sobol’s literary legacy, so much as in the failure, rather startling in itself, to identify this element on the part of many of his would-be interpreters. Sobol, in his literary works, touched on some of the sorest spots in Russian-Jewish relations, was braver than most in entering the “danger zones” of this relationship, showed a keen interest in the numerous manifestations of the Jewish spirit in Russian culture, worked as a translator and editor of Jewish Figure 1. Andrei Sobol in 1911 authors, engaged with Jewish theater in his capacity as a critic, and, finally, made an important contribution to the gallery of Jewish fictional “types,” thereby significantly enriching the Russian-Jewish literary stock—and yet, despite all this, it seems that neither his dauntless and unflinching civic stance nor the ideas and images that are expressed in his writing have yet been adequately perceived and analyzed by critics and scholars. Sobol’s impact on the Russian-Jewish press is both broad and diverse. Before the Revolution of 1917, his articles appeared in most of the key Russian-Jewish periodicals: Khronika Evreiskoi Zhizni [The Chronicle of Jewish Life], Evreiskaia Zhizn’ [Jewish Life], Novyi Put’ [New Way], Novyi Voskhod [New Sunrise], and Evreiskaia Nedelia [The Jewish Week]; after the Revolution, he wrote for the single-issue newspaper Evreistvo i Palestina [The Jews and Palestine] (Moscow, 1918), and for the Safrut collections (1918, 1922; edited by Leib Iaffe, a well-known Jewish poet, journalist, and public figure). He also edited an anthology entitled Evreiskii Mir [The Jewish World] (1918; originally, at least six issues were projected, but the Bolsheviks banned it after the first issue). During the Civil War, he —8—

Preface

wrote for the Odessa-based anti-Bolshevik newspaper Evreiskaia Mysl’ [Jewish Thought]. All in all, Sobol’s numerous contributions— to Russian-Jewish literature; to the social, intellectual, and spiritual life of Russian Jews in the 1910s and the first half of the 20s; and, more broadly, to the national-cultural identity of Russian Jewry— are varied and highly significant. And yet, when one reads certain studies dealing with the history of Russian-Jewish literature in the twentieth century, one gets the distinct impression that such a writer was never a part of this literature. The response to Sobol’s oeuvre in general, and to the “RussianJewish” component thereof in particular, tends to be characterized by a peculiar sloppiness, an unwillingness not only to go into details, but even to attain even a cursory understanding of some of the most basic aspects of these works. This negligent attitude is typical of even the most authoritative critics. Here is just one illustrative example. In the collection Evreiskii mir [Jewish World], which was compiled by the Union of Russian Jews during World War II, Mark Slonim, who authored the article on Jews in Soviet literature, unequivocally relegated Sobol to the category of authors whose works “despite … the obvious assimilation into the Russian environment, are characterized by occasional infusions of Jewish themes and motifs” (Slonim, 2001 (1944): 156). Slonim also wrote: In his nervous, frantic works, one could sense that painful ambivalence, that mental imbalance of a dreamer and a visionary, which was commonly attributed to those consumptive Jewish youths who used to be the favorite protagonists of many a writer. Although Sobol wrote almost exclusively about the Russian intellectuals with their troubled conscience and about the “superfluous men” of the bohemian intelligentsia (the novel Pyl’ [Dust]), there are occasional passages that, both in terms of subject matter and in terms of interpretation, attest to his Jewish origins (ibid.).

Almost all the claims made in this quote are factually wrong, and they arouse a sharp feeling of protest that borders on bewilderment: by no means all of Sobol’s works can be characterized as the writings of a “consumptive Jewish youth”; the Jewish theme is far from marginal in his oeuvre, and the novel Pyl’ (1915), which —9—

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

depicts revolutionary terrorists and deals unflinchingly with the question of anti-Semitism in the revolutionary milieu, cannot in any way be described as a novel about the “bohemian intelligentsia”—if Slonim had actually bothered to read it, he would never have made such a claim. This entry is all the more puzzling in light of the fact that Sobol, both as a human being and as a writer, was much more closely connected to Jewry, had a far deeper and more nuanced view of the actual dramas, needs, and problems facing the Jews, than those latter-day critics who would presume to judge him with varying degrees of severity. Suffice it to say that, at different times in his life, he was interested in Zionism, and this was no mere “passing youthful fad”: he really shared his people’s millennial yearning to return to their ancestral homeland, and this conviction stayed with him in later years. In an article published in the single-issue Zionist newspaper Evreistvo i Palestina, appropriately titled Son tysiacheletii [The Dream of Millennia], he addressed this subject clearly and unambiguously: We sleep uneasily. The nightmares are ever at our bedside, both by night and by day; we often wake to the light of a candle stub; just as often, we wake to utter darkness; our life is harsh, and all our paths and roads are arduous. And yet, there are also healing dreams, wonderful dreams—and, if they come to us, I know one such golden dream. The dream of a millennium, the dream of yesterday, the dream of tomorrow—it is unchanging, eternal, and captivating. It is within the soul of the people, it is with me. Ask me not whether I believe in dreams—I see it with my own eyes. Oh, how poor—yet how rich—we are! (Sobol, 1918).

If we are to comprehensively analyze the subject of “Sobol and Jewry,” we must take account of a whole range of facts that are not merely understudied, but completely unknown. Thus, we know virtually nothing about Sobol’s activities in the Crimea during the Civil War, where he, together with Osip Mandelstam and the Yiddish-language poet and pamphleteer Elisha (Abram — 10 —

Preface

Moiseevich) Rodin (1888–1946), was a member of a Jewish literary circle named Unzer Winkl [Our Cozy Nook] in Feodosia. To the best of our knowledge, no details of these activities have survived, and the circle itself is very sparsely documented.1 Another rare bit of testimony can be gleaned from the Yiddish-language memoirs of the Jewish author Chayim Tamarkin, who writes that, in the early 1920s, Sobol was the head of a Moscow-based Jewish theater studio (named in honor of Sholem Aleichem), and was later succeeded in this position by the prominent Yiddish poet David Hofshtein (Tamarkin, 1985: 126–27, 130–32).2 Sobol’s biography contains many other such little-known and understudied facts. The very notion of “Russian-Jewish literature” is rife with ambiguities, contradictions, and vacillations, and, in the consensus of readers and critics alike, it does not refer to a fictional historicalliterary phenomenon. Its boundaries, content, forms, functions, and the like, cannot be easily defined. As is made abundantly clear by a large number of empirical facts, Russian-Jewish literature was a kind of cultural “experiment,” which, on the one hand, conformed to the general laws of artistic systems that operate within broader cultural contexts (“How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”), and, on the other hand, possessed its own unique attributes that have remained understudied and underexplored to the present day. In our opinion, the major source of all the ambiguity and vacillations surrounding the category of “the Russian-Jewish literary tradition” is not the extreme difficulty in selecting the right criteria and building an adequate model of its actual functioning, but, rather, the fact that most of the truly significant authors fit this category poorly, or not at all. This conclusion is borne out by a scrupulous historical analysis. The very attempt to combine the “Jewish” and the “Russian” elements into a single and cohesive whole inevitably results in a certain contradiction. In the actual practice of literary work, this contradiction leads to a state of liminality, and, in its most extreme manifestations, it can result in a rupture of this internal symbiosis. As a consequence, RussianJewish literature gives birth to a “multifocal” view, where the interpretation of the depicted phenomena largely depends on the — 11 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

line of sight and the reference point, and where the same artistic facts can be seen (and, ergo, interpreted) with both “Jewish” and “Russian” eyes. This is the reason why, for instance, the dialectics of Isaac Babel—a writer who was both “Russian” and “Jewish”— presuppose not a confrontational and mutually exclusive “either/ or” scenario but, rather, peaceful coexistence. In the words of Shimon Markish, one of the most serious students of RussianJewish literature, this points not to a “duality” but to a “duplication” (Markish, 1994: 165). The contradiction between the “Jewish” and the “Russian” elements—which, in the phenomenon discussed here, are both inseparable and “unmergeable”—is an extremely complex ethical, psychological, and cultural problem. The Hungarian scholar Zsuzsa Hetényi has already pointed out the dichotomy in statements made by Andrei Sobol and Lev Lunts, who described themselves as being torn apart by two elements—“Russianness” and “Jewishness”: both elements have equal rights, and both coexist within the soul of the Russian Jew, who is unable to reconcile them, yet simultaneously unwilling to prefer one over the other (Hetényi, 2006: 71–2). Undoubtedly, there exist Russian-Jewish writers who fully belong to this category and never leave its boundaries (at least, the externally drawn ones). One such writer is Semyon Iushkevich. But there is a curious tendency: the more homogenous any given Russian-Jewish writer is, the harder he tries to obey the unwritten rules and commandments of his “native” element at the expense of the universal one; the narrower his creative horizon becomes, and the stronger the possibility of him turning into a mere ethnographic painter who is doomed to be a “prisoner of time” as a substitute for the loftier role of a “hostage of eternity.” This type of writer has been aptly defined by the Soviet critic Abram Lezhnev as a “Jewish author under Russian literature,” and this definition was obviously formulated with Iushkevich in mind. In Lezhnev’s view, Iushkevich is of interest primarily as an “ethnographer, a chronicler of mundane details,” and not as an “artist.” Comparing Iushkevich to Babel, Lezhnev adds that only under the latter’s pen does “the everyday life of Odessa acquire artistic value” (Lezhnev, 1927: 125). — 12 —

Preface

The indeterminacy of the boundaries of the “Russian-Jewish” sphere (or, at least, the elasticity and mobility of those boundaries) and the relative ease with which one can enter this space and then just as easily leave it, turning one’s attention to other issues that are far removed from Jewish concerns—these features are so blatant and obvious that they can easily be perceived by a casual glance, with no need for detailed study. Take, for instance, the case of Valentin Parnakh, a translator, dancer, and one of the pioneers of Russian jazz, who wrote the heart-rending poem “Vyslannye” [The Expelled] (1915–1920), dealing with the plight of the many thousands of Jewish expellees from the near-front zones during World War I, and who even intended at one point to settle in Palestine. Despite this, he cannot in any way be characterized as a Russian-Jewish writer. And yet, he did author an article about Jews in Russian literature, which betrays a depth of knowledge and which, moreover, was written from the point of view of a RussianJewish writer (Parnakh, 1926). This fact once stunned Aleksandr Bacherac, a Russian critic of Jewish origin and a close acquaintance of Parnakh: he simply refused to believe that Parnakh could have authored such an article, and even assumed that the author must have been a different person named Parnakh.3 Setting aside for the nonce the theoretical aspect of this problem and leaving it out of the discussion, in this book we would like to focus our attention on a specific historical and literary phenomenon: the artistic career and oeuvre of the Russian-Jewish writer Andrei Sobol. Yisrael (Iulii; as a child, he was known under the nickname “Iusia”) Moiseevich Sobol (Sobel) was born in Saratov on August 1 (Old-Style July 20), 1887—this is the date entered into the registry book of the Jewish community of Saratov4 and into the case file of the Military District court of Wilno that convicted Sobol in 1906 for his revolutionary activities. The source of another date that crops up in reference works—May 25 (13), 1888 (see, for instance, Grigor’iants, 1971: 993; Kazak, 1988: 713; Karpov, 1998: 372; also, Karpov, 2005: 374, and others)—is unclear. In his autobiographies—or, as the critic Dmitry Gorbov termed them, his “breakneck itineraries” — 13 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

Figure 2. Andrei Sobol’s parents: father Moisei-Yitzhak (1870) and mother Mina (1891)

(Gorbov, 1926: 197)—Sobol does indeed refer to 1888 as his year of birth. However, he was also convinced that his date of birth was January 22; see his letter to Rakhil Bakhmutskaia, his bride-to-be at that time (sent from the Caucasus front on January 31, 1917): Richichik, I’ve completely forgotten to tell you: I received your telegram yesterday. Thank you, darling! Believe it or not, I’d forgotten that it was my birthday. And now you’ve reminded me of it. [...] Actually, [January] 22 was the day I moved from Sarık[amış] to Erzurum.5

Sobol’s mother, Mina Sergeevna (Sigizmundovna) (née Berman; 1866–1927), who had an affinity for acting and performed at an amateur theater, gave birth to him at the age of twenty-two. Iulii’s oldest brother, Solomon (Monya), had been born three years earlier, in 1884—at that time, the mother was barely past her eighteenth year. Her second son, Leib (Lev; nicknamed “Liolia” by his family), was born on October 18, 1885. After the birth of Iulii, on August 19, 1892, she gave birth to another son—Yitzhak, whose name would later be changed to “Volodia.”A few days after the birth of the — 14 —

Preface

Figure 3. Andrei Sobol’s parents: father Moisei-Yitzhak (1885) and mother Mina (1915)

last son, on August 22, 1892, the Sobol family—a young, 26–year old woman and her four sons—was dealt a fatal blow: the head of the family, Moisei-Yitzhak Zelmanovich (Solomonovich) Sobol (b. 1859), succumbed to the cholera epidemic that was raging at the time, leaving his widow virtually penniless. The older children were taken in by their aunts, the father’s sisters, whereas Iulii and Yitzhak (Volodia) stayed with their mother, who took them to the town of Shavli (nowadays known as Šiauliai) in the Kovno Governorate, where she had some relatives. Undoubtedly, the disorderly nature of Sobol’s future life owed much to this early trauma of losing the family breadwinner. In Shavli, where Iulii attended a free Jewish public school, the Sobol family eked out a meager existence that was truly intolerable. The mother—apparently, a woman of little worldly wisdom and life experience—was crushed even further by the loss of her breadwinning husband, and proved totally unable to cope with the challenges that had befallen her. Berta Faivush, who had known her since childhood, would later recall her as a person of unstable temperament: — 15 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

[...] She would smoke cigarettes, sing songs, and laugh a lot, even though their life at the time was far from cheerful (Faivush, 1928: 135).

Sobol never received any systematic education, and displayed all the characteristics of an autodidact. Later, when filling out various forms, he would always write in the “Education” box: “homeschooling” and “ext[ernal] student at the University of Berne.” However, like a typical member of the Russian intelligentsia, a parvenu of humble origins, Sobol was “indiscriminately well-read” (to use B. Pasternak’s pithy phrase), and this quality would manifest itself in various ways in his future career—both as a journalist and as a writer. At the age of sixteen, Sobol fell in with the revolutionary movement. Like many of his contemporaries, he had been shaped by lofty revolutionary ideals and took an inner vow of renunciation of the “old world.” After joining the socialist Zionists, he adopted the nickname “Rachmiel” (this fact can be gleaned from police documents) and began to engage in revolutionary agitation in Wilno, Kovno, Marjampol (Marijampolė), Orsha, and Chereya (a small town in the Mogilev Governorate).6 Later, when recalling this period of his life, Sobol wrote: Figure 4. Andrei Sobol and his brothers

I travelled between Jewish towns and shtetls, filling the ears of very pretty girls with tales of the French Revolution, “explaining” the ideas of Engels, quoting from the works of [W. J.] Bloss [sic] (Sobol, 1922a: 38).

— 16 —

Preface

In the morning of the New Year, 1906, the young agitator was arrested, and then held in custody for six months in various prisons—in Grodno, Wilno, and Smolensk. On July 5, 1906, Sobol was convicted by the Military District Court at Wilno on the basis of Part 1 of Article 101, “for the possession of arms with the aim of procuring funds for an unidentified criminal organization whose goal is armed rebellion against the sovereign power,” and sentenced to four years of hard labor. During the trial, Sobol did not admit guilt and refused to give any explanations. Nor did he plea for pardon. The sentence took effect on September 18, 1906 (Baum, 1927). After the sentencing and the discharge of various legal formalities, Sobol was subjected to the familiar routine that had been honed to perfection by the police apparatus: he was dressed in a prisoner’s jacket, stripped of his civil rights, and sent to the Siberian wilderness—a land where, as he would later put it in one of his newspaper articles, “some of the wolves were softer and more squeamish that the men” (Sobol, 1919/1920). He began his long trek through the circles of the hell of the tsarist penal labor system: the Alexander Central (a jail near Irkutsk); the Amur Cart Road (“Kolesukha”), which would be described in many of his texts; and, finally, the Zerentuy Penitentiary (Gorny Zerentuy). In the end, Sobol did Figure 5. Andrei Sobol in Cavi di Lavagne manage to win a reprieve: after coming down with tuberculosis, he was examined by a medical committee, which sent him to Barguzin in August 1908. He escaped from that settlement, and managed to reach western Europe in early 1909. There, being — 17 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

under constant surveillance by the Foreign Department of the Russian secret police and moving from place to place (Bern—Paris— Cavi di Lavagne (a small seaside town in Italy), he drew close to SR (Socialist Revolutionary) circles (I. I. Fondaminskii, the Paris salon of Mikhail and Maria Tsetlin, P. M. Rutenberg, K. K. PamfilovaZilberberg, etc.). His political inclinations pushed him toward the proactive, terrorist wing of the movement (B. V. Savinkov), and even further leftward—toward the group of Free Socialists of Е. D. Nikitina-Akinfieva and her husband, A. P. Bessel-Vinogradov.

Figure 6. Rakhil Bakhmutskaia (Dvinsk, left—1911, right—1908)

In April 1912, at Easter, Sobol traveled to the French Alps, where, in the town of Saint Joseph de Revière, he met his future wife, Rakhil’ (Raisa) Saulovna Bakhmutskaia (1893–1979), who was at the time a student at the University of Grenoble. Their marriage would produce a son, Mark Sobol (1918–1999), who would go on to become a well-known Soviet poet. Sobol’s numerous extramarital affairs would prove fatal to his family life: his first marriage would — 18 —

Preface

end in divorce; later, he would marry Beba Markovna Levik (1896– 1964), and they would also have a son, Shura (b. 1920). However, all this still lay in the future. Let us now return to Sobol’s European exile. After the outbreak of World War I, he had no desire to stay in the relatively peaceful Italian Riviera and chose to return to Russia. An “unwanted patriot,”7 he loved his homeland with a fervor that could be the envy of many a Russian. Without ever becoming “emancipated” from his Jewishness, he came to regard Russia as his patria, in the truest sense of the word. Sobol’s patriotism was both practical and proactive: after returning from Europe Figure 7. Rakhil Bakhmutskaia with Mark and settling in Moscow, he made every Sobol on her hands effort to be assigned to combat duty on (March 1918) the front lines. In November 1916, he finally succeeded: with the aid of forged documents (let us not forget that, as an escaped convict, he could not legally reside in Russia), he enlisted in one of the units of the “AllRussian Zemstvo Union”—the Seventh Field Medical-Nutritional Detachment—and was promptly dispatched to the Caucasus Front. It was there that news of the February revolution reached him. With indefatigable energy, Sobol tried to find a place for himself in the social transformations that, for a brief historical moment, seemed to open up new perspectives for the country. With the help of his acquaintance, Boris Savinkov, who served as Director of the Ministry of War and Deputy War Minister in the Provisional Government, he managed to be given the job of Assistant Military Commissar of the Twelfth Army, whose staff was quartered in Riga. In this role, despite his considerable willpower, strength of spirit, and personal courage, he became a witness to (and narrowly avoided becoming a tragic victim of) the demoralization and disintegration of the army. Sobol adamantly refused to accept the October revolution and began voicing his rejection of the nascent regime from its earliest days. His decisive opposition to Soviet power was expressed — 19 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

Figure 8. Andrei Sobol—commissar of the Provisional Government (August 1917)

primarily through journalistic work, and he wrote for the SR dailies (Volia naroda [The People’s Will], Vlast’ naroda [The People’s Power], Zemlia i volia [Land and Liberty]) that managed to survive for a brief time under the Bolsheviks. It was persecution by the new authorities that forced him to leave Moscow in the second half of September 1918 and flee to the south of Russia—to Kiev, Kharkov, the Crimea, and finally to Odessa, which was then a rallying point for the bulk of anti-Bolshevik military forces and civilians, who had to decide whether to stay in Soviet Russia or leave it forever. Sobol refused to countenance the possibility of emigrating to the West, having rejected this option decisively after his European exile. However, during his stay in Odessa his anti-Bolshevik views reached such a fever pitch that he was arrested by the local Cheka in February 1921 and spent half a year in jail. If not for the intercession of his friends (Мikhail Osorgin, Boris Zaitsev, and other Moscow-based writers), who pleaded on his behalf before the “powers that be,” he may not have extricated himself from this sticky situation. After his return to Moscow in early September 1921, Sobol experienced a kind of political “rebirth.” Without renouncing in — 20 —

Preface

Figure 9. Andrei Sobol in 1925

any way his subversive and rebellious attitude and his love of truth, he nonetheless underwent a complex inner “break” and joined the ranks of Soviet writers. During the 1920s, some of the Russian literati effected a similar reconciliation with the Soviet regime. After having initially rejected it, they were gradually forced to accommodate it and begin to serve it—whether out of genuine starry-eyed belief, because of their harsh and complicated life conditions, or for some other reasons (both external and internal). The process of accommodation invariably took a heavy toll on them. This dramatic dilemma was further exacerbated, becoming virtually insoluble for individuals like Sobol, who were honorable, incorruptible, and sincere. In the end, Sobol paid the ultimate price for his newfound servility and his transformation from an erstwhile staunch anti-Bolshevik into one of the secretaries of the Writers’ Union of Russia. On the night of June 7, 1926, he took his own life with a gun. This suicide occurred in the center of Moscow, on Tverskoy Boulevard, near the Timiriazev Monument. Figure 10. Andrei Sobol’s grave at the Novodevich’e cemetery — 21 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

As stated above, out of all the possible directions and trajectories that could serve as a basis for the study of Sobol’s life, fate, and literary legacy, in this book we have chosen to focus our attention on one aspect which, in our opinion, has remained woefully understudied—and, in a certain sense, completely unknown; namely, his status as a Russian-Jewish journalist, writer, editor, and translator. In part I (“…And, Apparently, a Very Good Jew”), Sobol is analyzed as a Russian-Jewish publicist, journalist, and literary critic, and as one of the “ringleaders” of the debates of the fin de siècle; Part II (“Andrei Sobol and Evreiskii Mir”) tells the story of the Russian-Jewish anthology Evreiskii Mir, which was edited by Sobol and E. Loiter; Part III (“Overcoming the Myth: Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Works”) presents Sobol as a RussianJewish writer; Part IV (Andrei Sobol’s Wandering Stars) examines his translations from Yiddish; and, finally, Part V deals with the subject of Andrei Sobol and the Jewish Theater.

List of Abbreviations BShAl—Beit Sholem Aleichem (Jerusalem) CZA—Central Zionist Archives (Jerusalem) GA RF—Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow] IMLI—Institut mirovoi literatury [Gorky Institute of World Literature, Moscow] IRLI—Institut russkoi literatury (Pushkinskii Dom) [Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), St. Petersburg] NLI—National Library of Israel (Jerusalem) RGALI—Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva [Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow] RGB—Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka [Russian State Library, Moscow] — 22 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

As stated above, out of all the possible directions and trajectories that could serve as a basis for the study of Sobol’s life, fate, and literary legacy, in this book we have chosen to focus our attention on one aspect which, in our opinion, has remained woefully understudied—and, in a certain sense, completely unknown; namely, his status as a Russian-Jewish journalist, writer, editor, and translator. In part I (“…And, Apparently, a Very Good Jew”), Sobol is analyzed as a Russian-Jewish publicist, journalist, and literary critic, and as one of the “ringleaders” of the debates of the fin de siècle; Part II (“Andrei Sobol and Evreiskii Mir”) tells the story of the Russian-Jewish anthology Evreiskii Mir, which was edited by Sobol and E. Loiter; Part III (“Overcoming the Myth: Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Works”) presents Sobol as a RussianJewish writer; Part IV (Andrei Sobol’s Wandering Stars) examines his translations from Yiddish; and, finally, Part V deals with the subject of Andrei Sobol and the Jewish Theater.

List of Abbreviations BShAl—Beit Sholem Aleichem (Jerusalem) CZA—Central Zionist Archives (Jerusalem) GA RF—Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow] IMLI—Institut mirovoi literatury [Gorky Institute of World Literature, Moscow] IRLI—Institut russkoi literatury (Pushkinskii Dom) [Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), St. Petersburg] NLI—National Library of Israel (Jerusalem) RGALI—Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva [Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow] RGB—Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka [Russian State Library, Moscow] — 22 —

I.1

B aa l -M a k hshoves a nd A ndr e i S obol : T wo V iews on t he P ur pose a nd O bj ect i ves of R ussi a n -J ew ish L i t e r at ur e

Sobol’s relationship with the Russian-Jewish press began as early as 1905, when his short story Na poroge [On the Threshold] was published in Khronika Evreiskoi Zhizni [The Chronicle of Jewish Life], and his contribution to this press is both broad and diverse. After his return from European exile, the St. Petersburg weeklies Evreiskaia Nedelia [The Jewish Week], Evreiskaia Zhizn’ [Jewish Life], and Novyi Put’ [The New Way] published a string of short stories by him: Moi sumashedshie [My Madmen] (1915), Staraia istoriia [An Old Story] (1915), Moisei i Magomet [Moses and Muhammad] (1916), Nechaianno [Accidentally] (1916), Rasskazy v pis’makh [Epistolary Tales] (1916), and Vskol’z’ [Casually] (1916). On November 8, 1915, Evreiskaia Nedelia ran Sobol’s article Russkie belletristy i evrei na voine [Russian Writers and Jews in the War], where he analyzed the depiction of the Jewish soldier in Russian literature and passed his own verdict on this phenomenon, with a modicum of independence and fearlessness. Sobol insisted that, when the cannons begin to roar, the writers should rather fall silent than write on subjects which they know mostly from hearsay. He wrote: The Russian writer can perceive the blood-red glare that has stolen over the world only through his tiny window. There is no fury, grief, or pain, but only triteness, clichés, and the ceaseless beating of drums. All the works dealing with the war are written with these same drumsticks. The living words that ought to be used when describing great and mysterious things (for is this World War not a mystery?) are replaced with artifice and crudity, mellifluousness and mawkishness, mushy sentimentality and bloodlust, falsity and stilted grandiloquence (Sobol, 1915c: 46). — 24 —

I.1 Baa l-Ma khshoves a nd A ndrei Sobol

He singled out Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Kuprin, Boris Zaitsev, Vladimir Korolenko, and Ivan Bunin as the only authors who had not succumbed to the jingoistic frenzy sweeping over the country. As for all the others, they had morphed into an indistinguishable mass where the line between artists and craftsmen, talents and hacks, has vanished. They are all sitting on the same drum, eagerly embracing those unsavory types—the halfpenny scribblers from weeklies such as Vsemirnaia Panorama and Sinii Zhurnal—whom they used to shun before the war. Their erstwhile speechlessness has now given way to a single cry: “Hurray!” (ibid.).

Sobol then goes on to address another problem—the Jew fighting in the war. His verdict is unequivocal: Russian writers have never been able to depict Jews adequately. They could approach this subject in one of two ways: either through malevolence, hatred, and libel (Krestovskii—Tamara Bendavid, Markevich, the hacks from Novoe Vremia), or through mawkish benevolence and cloying sentimentality (Machtet, Staniukovich in Isaika, and others). Even as great an author as Chekhov has been unable to strike the right note. Even Maxim Gorky—the author of Kozhemiakin and Detstvo, the paragon of compassion for one’s fellow man—has fallen short of the mark; in his short story Kain and Artem, he cannot approach the Jew in the same way he approaches the rest of the characters of his otherwise deeply truthful works. The only fortunate exception is Korolenko’s short story Yom Kippur, where the authenticity of the artistic design and execution has managed to outshine the triteness (ibid.: 46–7).

In Sobol’s view, the depiction of the Jewish soldier in works by Russian authors is clichéd, comic, and far removed from reality. In essence, none of these authors have dealt with the actual issues; instead, they have pushed to the fore the comic figure of the black-haired (or redhaired), black-eyed little Jew in a soldier’s long overcoat. This figure is constantly jumping about, gesticulating, and calling upon God to protect him; occasionally he exhibits ridiculous cowardice, — 25 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

and is always chatting and prattling; this prattle never ceases, no matter the setting—on the battlefield, in the field hospitals, in the snowdrifts of the Oltu road, in the French Foreign Legion... And where, oh where is that tragic and horrifying split in our reality, when the Jewish soldier sees the enemy in the same way as does the Russian soldier, yet also hears the news of Jewish refugees being shipped like so much cargo from Kovno to Poltava and back to Kovno, the news of Jewish hostages (ibid.: 48).

In his Russian-Jewish journalism, Sobol proved himself a fairly sharp polemicist. His spat with the prominent Jewish critic BaalMakhshoves (also known as Baal-Makhshavot; the pen name of Yisrael Isidor Eliashev; 1873–1924) is of particular interest in this regard. In his regular literary column Listki [The Sheets] in the weekly Evreiskaia Zhizn’, Baal-Makhshoves reviewed Sobol’s novel Pyl’ [Dust] and his collection Rasskazy [Short Stories], which were published almost simultaneously by the Severnye Dni publishing house in 1915. In the words of the redoubtable critic: Andrei Sobol is a Jew—and, apparently, a very good Jew, whose heart aches for every injury that has been done to us, whose soul cries out against the atmosphere of lawlessness that surrounds us, whose eyes are peeled for the sight of those miserable Jews who, blinded by their dogmatism, are trying to stamp out the last feeble spark of Jewishness within themselves (Baal-Makhshoves, 1916а: 21).

Despite this promising beginning, Baal-Makhshoves then goes on to subject the author to scathing criticism. In his view, Sobol is too much under the sway of Russian writers. At one time, he may have consciously broken himself in an attempt to blend with the Russian soul at the expense of his Jewish one. For this reason, all his fictional efforts lack the aroma of something uniquely his own (ibid.).

These words are followed by even harsher invective: The Jewish characters in Sobol’s works (see Pyl’ and his short stories Chelovek s prozvishchami [A Man with Nicknames] and Mendel-“Ivan”) are reminiscent of those that can be found in Russian stories about pathetic Jews. His Jews, like the Jews in those tales, — 26 —

I.1 Baa l-Ma khshoves a nd A ndrei Sobol

lack the very quality that endows even the most pathetic Jew with a certain vitality—namely, his racial intellectualism (ibid.: 22).

This was no mild rebuke: essentially, Baal-Makhshoves accuses this Jewish writer of mimicking the simplistic method of depicting Jews that is common in Russian literature, thereby trying to adapt himself to the mental landscape of Russian readers; in other words, Sobol has chosen to ape familiar models, reproducing them in a “Jewish” guise. Apart from Sobol, the article also mentions Semyon Iushkevich, David Aizman, and Osip Dymov. In the critic’s view, all of them unconsciously cater to the tastes and expectations of the Russian audience: They either descend into cheap ethnography or paint their Jew in the colors of some Ivan or Stepan (ibid.).

This accusation leads inexorably to the claim that Jewish authors writing in Russian could never be considered part of Jewish literature, since they know virtually nothing about the Jewish world, judge it superficially, and are unable to grasp the unparalleled complexity of Jewish life—“none of them have succeeded in capturing the true inner pathos (or the true complexity) of even the most pathetic Jew” (ibid.). And if that is the case, then, in the pitiless conclusion of Baal-Makhshoves, the figure of the Jew in works by Russian-Jewish authors appears even more humiliated than in the articles penned by Мikhail Menshikov for Novoe Vremia (ibid.: 22–3). Amusingly, while a major Jewish critic condemned the talented Sobol as an apostate from national ideals, the radical right accused him of the opposite sin: Jewish nationalism. The critic N. N. Wentzel, who wrote for the anti-Semitic Novoe Vremia1 (which was described as “a pogromist newspaper” in Sobol’s novel Pyl’) and signed his articles “V. Iu. B,” claimed—contra Baal-Makhshoves—that the protagonists of Jewish authors tend to be endowed with a noble soul, a willingness to aid others in need, the loftiest idealism, the capacity for self-sacrifice, etc. All these positive attributes are so exaggerated that the Russian characters, by contrast, seem rude, vulgar, and sunken “in the mire of petty concerns and base lusts.” Mr. Andrei Sobol should also be assigned — 27 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

to this category of writers, with the sole possible difference that in his short stories [this refers to the collection Rasskazy, which was also reviewed by Baal-Makhshoves] this authorial double standard, tying the morality of the characters to their ethnicity, is even more pronounced (Wentzel 1915).

Thus, the critic from Novoe Vremia judged the distribution of light and shadow in the works of Sobol—and other Jewish authors of his stripe—in a manner opposite to that suggested by Baal-Makhshoves; he also claimed that these works fairly reek of the “idealization of the author’s own tribe,” and that their attitude “toward the Russian reality is, essentially, a calumny against the Russian man—who, in actuality, is utterly unlike the dumb brute depicted in these works.” Railing against the supposed antipathy with which Sobol draws his Russian characters (and, conversely, the supposed sympathy that suffuses his Jewish characters), Wentzel, who presumed to unmask a “conspiracy against the Russian people” that festered in the ranks of Jewish authors, commented on Sobol’s short story Pesn’ Pesnei [Song of Songs] in the following way: Mr. Sobol [...] inadvertently gives us the key to understanding the psychology of Jewish authors. In one of his stories, a Jewish girl speaks with disgust of a young man who kissed her. Even though he had “wonderful blue eyes” and a head “held proudly high,” this man possessed one fatal flaw: he was a Russian. However, when this same girl meets a red-haired, freckled Jewish boy, whose eyes are “tiny, seemingly half-blind,” she addresses him with words from the Song of Songs: “Mendel, your eyes are doves, your lips are flowers” (ibid.).

Obviously, there was no point in replying to such “critical remarks,” tainted as they were with anti-Semitic prejudice and the desire to substitute inane accusations for objective facts. By contrast, Baal-Makhshoves’s criticism did provide some ground for fruitful discussion. Sobol’s riposte to the venerable critic, which appeared in the weekly Novyi Put’, was a mixture of perplexity and acerbity— however, such sentiments are to be expected in heated debates. Besides, his response is notable for its utter lack of that timidity in the face of authority which might have been expected from — 28 —

I.1 Baa l-Ma khshoves a nd A ndrei Sobol

a young writer. Replying to Baal-Makhshoves’s rebuke about the lack of Jewish pathos in works written by him and his colleagues, Sobol wrote: Let us suppose for a moment that it is so, and that the artist’s sole task is recapturing this pathos. But what does it consist of? Where is it expressed, and how are we to interpret this term? Mr. Baal-Makhshoves is silent on this subject. And yet his bill of excommunication against Russian-Jewish writers is drawn entirely on the basis of this presumed “pathos.” He condemns us without specifying our sin; he exhorts us to be virtuous, but does not say where this virtue lies. The references to Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, and others prove nothing in themselves, since, while referring to these authors, Mr. Baal-Makhshoves still fails to describe that mysterious pathos which, in his opinion, is the basis of all art (Sobol, 1916c: 13–4).

After pointing out the fundamental weakness of his opponent’s accusations and defining it as the demand to depict the Jewish world in rosy colors, Sobol then launches his counteroffensive: The question of artistic creation from the point of view of politics and behavior. Truly, a sight to see! After all, this is the same old, stale song about rosy hues, about the vaunted “national art,” where idealization is always preferred to truth; where the artist is blamed for every negative character that he creates, whereas every positive character, no matter how inauthentic, is hailed as a genuine manifestation of national consciousness and national loyalty; where the authors who depict such sickly-sweet types are lauded as true artists and receive perfect marks for good behavior. Similar accusations were leveled against Iushkevich, while Ben-Ami, Ryvkin, and others were praised for the same reasons (ibid.: 14).

The one element of Sobol’s individual poetics that BaalMakhshoves clearly failed to appreciate—indeed, the element that may have precipitated the polemic in the first place—was the peculiar type of protagonist that Sobol tried to develop: a “loser” protagonist, a “schlemiel” who fails to march in lockstep with the others, lags behind the rest of society, and constantly gets into farcical and unpleasant situations. Moreover, he is no “good soldier — 29 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

Švejk”—i.e. a character who tends to evoke good-natured laughter, or, at the least, a sympathetic smile; rather, Sobol’s “reduced” and “defective” protagonists (and, as his art evolved, these attributes became ever more insistent, vivid, and pronounced) are depicted in dramatic terms, albeit with unfailing authorial sympathy. This type of protagonist lacks an obligatory ethnic affiliation; at any rate, this affiliation does not determine his fate. Rather, the crucial factor in Sobol’s stories is the single theme that dominates his entire oeuvre: the theme of the harsh challenges facing the “half-formed” man, who is, in a sense, the offspring of Melusine—that half-woman, half-snake of medieval legend, whose marriage to Raymond produced ten crippled sons. This, then, was the reason why Sobol could not bear Baal-Makhshoves’s rebuke and hastened to defend his position: the character type that he tried to cultivate in his fiction was well-known to him from real life—indeed, his primary source of inspiration was his own personality, with his tendency to constantly get entangled in all kinds of half-comic, half-dramatic incidents and events. In his debate with Baal-Makhshoves, Sobol was defending the character type that he had uncovered in the surrounding reality, a character who not only suffers from life’s imperfections to a much greater extent than do other people, but is also often completely unprepared to face them—a kind of twentieth-century incarnation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Underground Man.” At the same time, Sobol also felt that it was crucial to point out the reactionary tendency to paint the Jew in idealized, mellifluous hues— irrespective of whether such depictions issued from the ranks of sympathetic Russian Judeophiles or from his own, Jewish camp. Nevertheless, we should note that, as is often the case in “debates about ideas,” it is impossible to determine who was “right:” BaalMakhshoves spoke of the distinctiveness of Jewish life, which could never be reproduced within Russian models and paradigms—and he was right in his own way. Yet Sobol also had a point: on the one hand, he realized that “pure” Jewish life could not exist within the Russian reality; on the other hand, as a practicing artist, he grasped the peculiar interplay of the “Russian” and the “Jewish” elements, and the extremely complex cultural syntheses between them. — 30 —

I.2

T he C on t e xt a nd S ubt e xt of S obol’ s O pe n L et te r to D. M e r e zhkovsk y

The fact that Sobol’s authorial stance was not limited to the depiction of pathetic and wimpy Jewish types is proven by his Otkrytoe pis’mo [Open Letter], whose addressee was Dmitry Merezhkovsky— a prominent novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. In it, Sobol made clear his attitude toward the phenomenon that was aptly defined by another “good Jew,” the well-known defense attorney O. O. Gruzenberg (the “Jewish solicitor” who defended Menahem Mendel Beilis against “blood libel” and managed to save many other unfortunates who were menaced by the sword of justice), as “programmatic Judeophilia.” In his recollections of Maxim Gorky, Gruzenberg wrote: At first, I refrained from touching on the Jewish question, which weighed heavily on the conscience of the Russian intelligentsia at the time. Could my reluctance possibly stem from the desire to avoid arousing latent Judeophobia? Of course not: this was not the line taken by Maxim Gorky. No, I was afraid of something else: protestations of Judeophilia. Whether out of pride, or for some other reason, I have always despised programmatic Judeophilia, regarding it as an even greater affront to me than Judeophobia. What kind of man is a Judeophobe? He is either a slovenly idiot who cannot bother to analyze his prejudice in depth; or else a spiteful person who hates all people equally, and has decided to channel his spite along the path of least resistance. By contrast, an officious Judeophile is always trouble: he speaks of the Jews as though he were a member of the Society for the Humane Treatment of Animals. When I met such a person, I would cut off his stream of mellifluous eloquence with the following careless remark: should we bother talking of such trifles? A nation is not a slattern who is in need of professional sympathy; all a nation needs is that other nations reckon with it, and that those other — 31 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

nations know that the slightest pinprick aimed at our nation will be met with a mighty slap (Gruzenberg, 1938: 185–86).

Gruzenberg was not alone in thinking thus. A similar position was articulated by the abovementioned Baal-Makhshoves (BaalMakhshoves, 1916),2 whereas David Vygodskii, a university student who would go on to become a prominent translator and critic, wrote the following in his review of the literary collection Shchit [Shield] (Мoscow, 1915): “From time to time—more and more often!—Russian writers are compelled by circumstances to remind their compatriots of some basic, incontestable truths.” These words, which open Maxim Gorky’s article, could serve as an epigraph to the collection as a whole. It contains nothing but basic, incontestable truths. This statement should not be construed as criticism on my part—after all, what new and surprising things could possibly be written on such a trivial and well-trodden subject? Each of the authors addresses the subject from his own point of view, yet all of them arrive at the same conclusion: “Jews are no different from other human beings, and—like all other human beings—the Jews must be free.” I find it odd that such a seemingly simple statement needs to be derived from a lengthy series of premises and arguments. The authors turn this self-evident truth into a theorem with a two hundred–page-long proof—a theorem which, obviously, will not convince anyone who has not already accepted it as an axiom (Vygodskii, 1915: 11–2).

Sobol could easily have undersigned these words. His Otkrytoe pis’mo D. Merezhkovskomu [Open Letter to D. Merezhkovsky], which was a response to the latter’s essay Evreiskii vopros kak russkii [The Jewish Question as a Russian One], appeared in the magazine Otechestvo [Motherland], which was published by Zinovy Grzhebin. Merezhkovsky’s essay appeared in print several times: its first publication was in the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti [Russian News] (1915, n 68, March 25, p. 2); later, an abridged version was published in Zhurnal Zhurnalov (1915, n 7, p. 18); it was also included in the literary-artistic almanac V tylu [Home Front] (Petrograd, 1915, pp. 109–11) and in the abovementioned collection Schit, which went through three editions (1915–16). The extensive publication — 32 —

I. 2 Sobol ’s Open Let ter to D. Merezhkovsky

history testifies to the importance that was attached to this essay by the author, the editors, and the “implicit readers” to whom it was addressed. Undoubtedly, a segment of the Russian intelligentsia was receptive to the ideas conveyed by Merezhkovsky in this text, and the subsequent outpouring of gratitude to the Russian writer and philosopher on the part of the “Jewish street” is easy to understand. In the public sphere, there was only a single discordant voice that marred the harmony of the Russian-Jewish chorus, whose members were singing in unison and celebrating a heartfelt reconciliation between the two peoples. This dissenting note was sounded by Andrei Sobol. Let us briefly recapitulate the basic message of Merezhkovsky’s essay. It speaks of the attitude of the “small peoples,” which are constituent members of the Russian Empire, toward their “large” motherland. I would like to think of Russia, of Russia alone, and of nothing and nobody else. The question of the existence of all the tribes and languages that are in Russia (as Pushkin said: “all the languages [peoples] that are in it”) is the question of the existence of Russia herself. I would like to ask all these tribes and peoples: how would you prefer to be—with Russia or without her? If you prefer to be without her, why are you asking us for help? And if you would rather be with her, then, at this dreadful time, you should forget about yourselves, and think only of Russia— because, should Russia cease to exist, all of you will also cease to exist. Her salvation is your salvation; her demise is your demise. I would like to tell you that there is no Jewish question, no Polish question, no Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, etc. question. There is only the Russian question (Merezhkovsky, 1915).

With regard to the Jews, their demands and grievances, Merezhkovsky voiced the view of the honorable and healthy segment of the Russian intelligentsia, whose members condemned anti-Semitism: What do the Jews ask of us? That we express moral outrage, and proclaim anti-Semitism a despicable phenomenon? But this proclamation has been issued long ago; this outrage is so powerful and simple that it is almost impossible for us to discuss — 33 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

it calmly and reasonably; we can only shout along with the Jews. And so we do (ibid.).

However, he realized that mere shouting would be ineffective, and that some active measures needed to be taken to combat the syndrome of anti-Semitism and the “Black Hundreds,” the spy hysteria, the inane suspicions, the insane slander, and the incessant persecution of the Jews—all the phenomena that had become an integral part of Russian state policy. Merezhkovsky went on to write: However, shouting alone will achieve little. And this realization— that shouting is not enough, and yet we have nothing else left— saps our spirit and drains our strength. It is hard, painful, and shameful... (ibid.).

On the face of it, there was no reason to argue with Merezhkovsky, who raised his voice in defense of the disenfranchised and downtrodden Jewish minority. Sobol, who belonged to that category of Jews who would never dream of existing without Russia or outside it, did not really argue with Merezhkovsky so much as supplement the latter’s argument with some additional points that were indispensable in his opinion. In this way, Merezhkovsky’s stance was made even more decisive and unambiguous. Sobol drew little comfort from abstract “Judeophile” consolations, such as a certain scene from Fyodor Sologub’s short story Svet vechernii [Evening Light] (1915). In the abovementioned article Russkie belletristy i evrei na voine, which was composed some time after his response to Merezhkovsky, Sobol asked a rhetorical question: where is the bitterness of the reality that Russian writers attempt to depict by invoking the figure of the Jewish soldier in the war? He then reached a depressing conclusion: there is no bitterness at all. And whenever this bitter reality hits us over the head (often fatally!), the writer comes to us and consoles us: “You should pay it no heed. Believe me, Sarah, all this will pass, the Russian people will sort everything out... Sarah, you should believe in them, too. Sit down, and we’ll have a heart-to-heart chat” (F. Sologub, Evening Light) (Sobol, 1915c: 48).3 — 34 —

I. 2 Sobol ’s Open Let ter to D. Merezhkovsky

The anemia and lack of artistic (let alone real and social) power of such consolations were far too obvious to deceive the observer. Sobol, who took a maximalist stance on the question of the effectiveness of such consolatory passages, essentially rejected the few sentiments that dominated the attitude toward Jews among the better part of the Russian intelligentsia—namely, Christian shame for one’s humiliated “brothers in humanity,” pity, and compassion, which were based on the commandment that “there is neither Greek nor Jew.” The primary thesis of his argument against Merezhkovsky is this. The national question cannot be solved through charity given to the weak by the strong; ultimately, rights and disenfranchisement belong not to the sphere of private pity but to the realm of natural law that is reflected in state laws: “a nation cannot live on alms” (Sobol, 1915a: 3). Judeophilia, which is most often based on pity, leads to a feeling of self-congratulatory idealism on the part of the giver and the recipient alike. This idealism is the blind faith in those “pretty words” and “pretty legends” on which the Jews have gorged themselves for far too long, and which have been fed to them by Russian society (ibid.). The subsequent sobering disillusionment requires us to take a long, hard look at the surrounding reality and give an answer to the question: what will happen next? Sobol writes: “Yes, our disenfranchisement is a fact, but we need to know—and you need to tell us: what what would take the place of this disenfranchisement? And we will no longer be satisfied with subtle hints” (ibid.). The Open Letter infers that its author connected the future of the Jews neither with the feeling of heartwarming pity on the part of other nations nor with appeals to the “good Christians” (undoubtedly, these things are noble, yet they are also unreliable, especially in their mass-based manifestations); rather, he phrased the issues facing his people in the form of clear and unflinching questions, which he then posed to Merezhkovsky: [...] Do not be afraid to shout. Do not hide; say your piece, and you will have a response. An honest voice will receive an honest response, and, if you have not received such a response, we have our own reasons: no one has yet tried to argue with us. [...] Let — 35 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

“everything” be said: this will lead to the disappearance of the numerous “pretty words” and “pretty legends” on which we have gorged ourselves for far too long, and which have been fed to us by Russian society [...] Let the argument break out, and may it be decisive and fearless. The truth can be arrived at only through argument (ibid.).

As is clear from the text of the Open Letter, Sobol disputed Merezhkovsky’s interpretation of the Jewish question as a purely “Russian” one. In other words, he resisted the latter’s attempt to solve it through “an internal debate among the Slavs”; rather, he advocated for a “decisive and fearless” dialogue between the Jews and the Russians, which would require both sides to call things by their proper names. In order to appreciate fully the remarkable and “discordant” quality of this position, we should recall that by far the most common and dominant sentiment among the Jewish intelligentsia at the time was gratitude for such sincere (or ostentatious yet seemingly sincere) expressions of Judeophilia— indeed, the outpourings of gratitude by Jews were almost ubiquitous. Thus, the following quote by the prominent historian Shimon Dubnov, written in reference to the abovementioned Shchit almanac (which was compiled by progressive Russian intellectuals giving voice to Jewish interests), can be seen as representative of virtually the entire “Jewish street:” If we look at the way the “Russian question regarding the Jews” has been framed by writers such as Andreev, Gorky, Sologub, and by public figures such as Maliantovich, we can see, emerging from the other end, the same painful feeling of the “unthinkability” of the ongoing disenfranchisement of the Jews, of its incompatibility with conscience and reason, which has reached an unprecedented fever pitch among the active members of Jewish society. For the first time in thirty years, representatives of the Russian intelligentsia have given us such inspired words as those that were written in L. Andreev’s recent article Pervaia Stupen’—a veritable manifesto of outraged conscience. For the first time, these circles have begun to talk about the moral suffering endured by the best men of Russia as a result of anti-Jewish persecution, about the need to get rid of this “mark of barbarity,” this “mark of Cain,” to absolve themselves of moral complicity — 36 —

I. 2 Sobol ’s Open Let ter to D. Merezhkovsky

in the harrowing of the Jewish Abel. This mindset is made even more explicit in the presentation given by Maliantovich, whose felicitous definition of the “accursed” Jewish question as “the Russian question regarding the Jews” frames it as a question of Russian culture—or, rather, a question of Russian cultivation and cultural sensitivity, a problem of public conscience. The solution of this “Russian question” regarding the elimination of Jewish suffering is, indeed, the first and most basic step. Without taking this step, Russia cannot ascend to the next stage of civic and political liberty (Dubnov, 1915: 9–10).

While it is hard to imagine Sobol disagreeing with the basic thrust of this quote,4 his high-strung, excitable and restless temperament, coupled with his stubborn refusal to accept commonsense everyday compromises, led to his demand to move beyond this “first step”— or, at the very least, not to be satisfied and enamored with the fruits of “philo-Semitic sentimentalism,” which, in his opinion, might lead to serious national aberrations and misconceptions. To cast this notion into sharper relief, we can say that the very title of “friend to the Jews” was, for Sobol, a sign of something fundamentally unnatural. Incidentally, this sentiment was shared by others at the time, such as the abovementioned Oscar Gruzenberg; thus, in a letter to his friend and correspondent, the writer Vladimir Korolenko, dating from September 25, 1916, Gruzenberg referred to Gorky’s Society for the Protection of the Jews as “the Society for the Protection of Animals of Jewish Origin,”5 thereby ironically enriching the concept of “programmatic Judeophilia.” Here, surprisingly, we can see a point of agreement between a famous lawyer, who was a fearless defender of Jewish interests, and a relatively little-known and unpopular author, for whom these interests were the subject of intense scrutiny and deep soul-searching. This unpremeditated agreement between them manifested itself primarily in their common rejection of the sentiment of affected gratitude toward those who were not calling for the excision of the “Jewish tumor in Russia” (Vladimir Jabotinsky). However, Sobol seems to have gone even further. In late 1914—early 1915, the writers Leonid Andreev, Maxim Gorky, and Fyodor Sologub, who suffered from pangs of conscience for the — 37 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

disenfranchisement of the Jews (which they defined as a “mark of unbearable shame” on the Russian people), compiled the Anketa ob antisemitizme [Questionnaire on anti-Semitism]. Gorky’s report on this questionnaire, which was published in the January 1915 issue of the magazine Letopis’ [Annals], aroused a mixed response in Jewish society. For example, the Zionist weekly Rassvet [Dawn], in its review of the Russian press, expressed doubts concerning the possibility of solving the “Jewish question” through questionnaires (see: Evrei, 1915; Evrei, 1915а). While acknowledging the noble motives of the authors of the questionnaire, the journalists from Rassvet had little faith in its likelihood of success. In their second review, they wrote: Collecting opinions on anti-Semitism, liberalism, conservatism, and other similar “convictions” (or tastes) may be interesting but completely pointless. Such questions are not resolved by a majority vote, and a statistical compilation of “opinions” or “personal observations” gives us no grounds for specific conclusions, one way or the other. It does not matter whether ninety-nine out of one hundred respondents deem anti-Semitism a negative phenomenon, while one respondent sees it in a positive light; or whether the reverse is true. In either case, this information will be of no use to politicians or public activists. Such questionnaires tend to be used by new political or social groups, whose members do not know exactly where to start (Evrei, 1915а: 26).

However, the authors of the questionnaire regarded their “plebiscite” on Jewry as a launching pad for a new form of struggle for democratic equality for the Jews “who served (and still serve) their country, its culture and liberty, just as diligently and earnestly as do the best men of Russia, both past and present.” What more could be asked for? Liberal Russian writers, feeling the pain of the downtrodden Jews and “expressing their usual impetuous concern for the traditional struggle against anti-Semitism” (Gornfeld, 1923: 178), have come to their defense, while simultaneously defending justice, humanism, legality, and social rights. We can readily sympathize with the journalist Shmi from Novyi Voskod [New Dawn] (this was the pen name of M. L. Trivus, who played an active role in compiling the questionnaire), who, in a fit of justified emotional — 38 —

I. 2 Sobol ’s Open Let ter to D. Merezhkovsky

elation, referred to these “philo-Semitically”-minded authors as “sensitive people.” After this appropriate outpouring of emotion, he went on to describe a scene that he had personally witnessed: One scene in particular has stayed with me. Among the people present at the gathering there was one well-known political activist, a brilliant orator. He spoke with his customary eloquence and outward persuasion, asserting that the projects for the “active defense of Jewish equality” drawn up by the organizers, while wonderful on paper, were ill-timed. “Let us put our sentiments on hold till the end of the war.” In the meantime, he offered to set up a Russian charitable society which would aid Jews who had suffered as a result of the war. No sooner had the orator polished off his last sentence than the agitated Maxim Gorky raised his voice in protest. He was shaking all over: “No! I cannot... I cannot be a party to your charitable society... How could I possibly approach a scorned, devastated soul, toss it a few kopecks, and call this a “charitable donation”?! This is impossible... No!” These excited, halting words, shining with the brilliance of the speaker’s soul, immediately eclipsed the impression left by the orator’s eloquent speech (Shmi, 1915).

Sobol—who, as we have seen, made no secret of his skepticism regarding the starry-eyed schemes concocted by philo-Semites with the aim of solving the problem of anti-Semitism among the intelligentsia—greeted this questionnaire with a great deal of distrust. Incidentally, Gorky wrote that the target audience of the questionnaire were “scientists and men of letters”; however, because of a misunderstanding it was first published in a St. Petersburg paper, and then reprinted in numerous provincial outlets. This unintended effect made a mess of the writers’ noble intentions, and the questionnaire ended up reflecting reality, rather than the “experimental” picture that they meant to show. In his article Anketa ob antisemizme, Sobol took it upon himself to perform a critical analysis of the abovementioned report by Gorky. His response cannot in any way be construed as an expression of schadenfreude, since a Jew who is genuinely troubled by antiSemitism would never gloat over responses such as the following, which were among those quoted in Gorky’s report (and quoted in turn in Sobol’s response to the report): — 39 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

A certain lady advised the questioners to “hang a million Russian citizens of the Jewish faith each day; in this way, the country will be rid of Jews in ten to fifteen days.” Such an arithmetical answer! [This comment allows us to appreciate Sobol’s bitter irony.] A teacher named G. Shch. proclaims: “But wait a second: if they want a repeat of 19156 [sic], let them do their worst. We— the people’s teachers—will make the people rise up. We shall rid ourselves of the German disease—and of the Jewish disease, too, while we’re at it” (Sobol, 1915: 9).

This is followed by more of the same. It bears repeating that Sobol’s analysis contained no hint of schadenfreude at the project initiated by the Russian authors, but neither did it contain any trace of obsequiousness or diplomatic servility. Another article by Sobol, published in the Odessa-based Evreiskaia Mysl’ [Jewish Thought] in the early 1920s,7 is even more explicit and decisive, and its tone borders on furious denunciation. It was titled Tot, kto poluchaet poshchechiny [He Who Gets Slapped] (the title of L. Andreev’s best-known play), and was aimed at the Jews themselves. In it, Sobol seems to anticipate the famous collection Rossia i evrei [Russia and the Jews], which would be published in Berlin in 1924. This was a kind of “admission of guilt” issued by prominent Jewish public figures (I. M. Bikerman, G. A. Landau, I. O. Levin, D. O. Linskii, V. S. Mandel, D. S. Pasmanik, and others), all of whom expressed deep regret for the Jews who participated in the Russian Revolution. Sobol had written his article long before the phenomenon of “repentant Jews” crystallized and acquired public resonance. This makes his foresight—and his willingness to combat this phenomenon by any means necessary—all the more remarkable. Even after the revolutionary upheavals that had radically altered the Russian landscape, Sobol still thought that the Jews were not yet completely free of fear and of the shameful need to apologize for their very existence. Thus, he writes in the article Tot, kto poluchaet poshchechiny: Over and over again, we see the same old fear of criticism, the same old complaints, sobs, and timid excuses. When we were disenfranchised, we offered excuses; when we were — 40 —

I. 2 Sobol ’s Open Let ter to D. Merezhkovsky

downtrodden, we were afraid to formulate a clear and honest definition of ourselves and of the others; we were even afraid to say that the world was divided into “ourselves” and “others.” Now that we have become free, we still offer excuses; now that we have become free, we are still afraid, and hasten to proclaim: “Our Bolsheviks are not our children; they are our bastard offspring!” Shaking and trembling all over, we shout: “Forgive us! For God’s sake, forgive us!” In the same way, we used to shout and beg the previous overlords of Russia to forgive us for our “nihilists,” and later on—for our “revolutionaries.” And, filled with trepidation, we await the hangman’s noose and the sword of vengeance and retribution.

He then goes on to say: Just as in the good old czarist times, at the slightest revolutionary incident we rushed to trumpet our conservative credentials, invoking our Orthodox and petit bourgeois brethren from the countless shtetls, who supposedly cherished the autocracy, so today we hasten to profess our allegiance and political antiBolshevik rectitude, down to compiling lists of Jewish antiBolsheviks. But how could such a method of rehabilitation be acceptable? And besides, who has decided and decreed that we must rehabilitate ourselves? We, the whole people? We, the entire nation? How can we find the necessary courage to look the Russian public squarely in the eye and tell them to their face: “You bear a greater responsibility for this than do we.” And where, oh where, is our proud and firm reply: “Allow us, then, to have our own ‘bad apples.’”

This last sentence is virtually identical to a well-known tirade from Vladimir Jabotinsky’s article Vmesto apologii [In Lieu of an Apology] (1911): We have nothing to apologize for. We are a nation like all other nations; we have no aspiration to be better. As one of the first preconditions for our equality, we demand to be granted the right to have our own villains, just like any other nation (Jabotinsky, 1913: 141). — 41 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

In order to explore the question of Sobol’s national selfidentification further, let us assume that Jabotinsky’s implicit presence can also be felt in his Rasskazy v pis’makh [Epistolary Tales], which were published in the Russian-Jewish weekly Novyi Put’. By way of example, we would point to a single episode from these epistolary novellas, where P. Dizer, a prominent Jewish author, writes to the journalist Ben-Hillel, a friend of his youth. His first letter is written in a moment of despair, following his rejection by Russian literatury world; whereas the second is composed after a change of fortune, when he is at the height of his success. In the first letter, Dizer says repeatedly that he is an “outsider” in Russian literature: “You are right—I’m an outsider. And because of this, people do not always tell me the truth to my face, yet they always whisper behind my back: ‘this is no place for him’” ; “I have regained my sight, and can now see: this new temple was not made for me, and the prayers here are sung in a language foreign to me—and what can I offer you by way of greeting, since you all consider me an outsider?—at the same time, the denizens of the old temple are trying to pull the floor from under my feet and casting stones at my niche, into which I have poured all my soul”). He also expresses regret over the fact that Dizer “used to mock [Ben-Hillel] for [his] ‘patois literature’” and “was angry with [him] because of [his] departure into the tiny sphere of ‘some Jewish press’—a move that seemed unforgivable” to me at the time” (Sobol, 1916e, n 29: 27–8). In the second story, where his entire system of values has made a “U-turn,” the word outsider appears in a very different context: “All of your ruminations regarding the “duality” of my situation, your epithet “outsider”— all of this is beside the point.” This time, the departure from Russian journalism is interpreted very differently: My dear, you have been marinating in your “press” for too long a time, and are unwilling to look past the end of your nose. Such a pity: you will wither away there. You had better strike out along a new, broader path. After all, there is still time, and it’s not too hard for you. Your departure from Russian journalism was a big mistake, but you can still correct it (ibid., n 30: 21–2).

— 42 —

I. 2 Sobol ’s Open Let ter to D. Merezhkovsky

Obviously, this story gives us the generalized portraits of an assimilated Jew who is a Russian writer and a Jewish journalist who has devoted himself to the interests of his nation. And yet, we have good reason to assume that this text by Sobol is based on Vladimir Jabotinsky’s well-known article О evreiakh v russkoi literature (1908), which was included in his book Fel’etony [Satires] together with Vmesto apologii. This connection can be traced not only through individual lexical correspondences, but also through the whole message of Jabotinsky’s text, which might be regarded as the impulse that led Sobol to develop his theme of national desertion (the word “deserter” appears several times in Jabotinsky’s article; cf. the title of the first article—The Deserters and the Masters—from his Four Articles on the “Chirikov Incident”).8 To complete the picture, we should note that Sobol’s Epistolary Tales, which are full of biting satire aimed at the spiritual “refugees” who leave their native culture and defect to the other cultural camp, inevitably acquire a self-conscious, meta-textual dimension with regards to the author’s own artistic fate. In the first letter, which has been quoted above, the narrator admits in his confession to Ben-Hillel that his consciousness seems to be split in two—a Jewish consciousness, which feels proper love and affinity for the national world, and the consciousness of a Russian author, who is writing a “novel about the decline of the nobility” and working fervently on a play titled The World to Come, in which he intends to “depict the new Russia, the Russia of the future, the Russia of Christ” (ibid., n 29: 26). Sobol’s protagonist, P. Dizer, who bears more than a passing resemblance to his creator, informs us that he has read this play in the “Society for Unadorned Art,”9 and—shortsighted fool that I am!—I failed to notice the uncomprehending shrugs, the ironically downcast eyes; once again I was deaf to the offensive remarks that are inevitable nowadays: “What has he gotten himself into? What business does he have with the ‘Russia of Christ’? Such a Slavophile!” (ibid.).

This episode may be based on a similarly painful incident in Sobol’s own life. In fact, he may have alluded to just such an incident in a letter to his friend, Vladimir Lidin, from January 22, 1917: — 43 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

Should you attend the Circle [i.e,. a session of Sreda]—give my regards to the table where I once committed an unparalleled folly: I wished to be sincere, just for an instant (Pis’ma Sobolia Lidinu, 2012).

We do not know for certain which “unparalleled folly” Sobol actually committed by wishing to be “sincere for an instant,” and therefore we should avoid making any definite statements on the possible connection between this private admission and the Jewish “shortsighted fool” from his story, who fails to notice the reaction of the Russian writers to his “Slavophilia.” Nevertheless, the implicit analogy is hard to miss. It is equally hard to miss the fact that, in his correspondence with Vladimir Lidin, who was of Jewish origin (his real name was Gomberg; 1894–1979), Sobol very rarely touches on Jewish matters, and makes virtually no mention of his activities as a Russian-Jewish writer. This reticence becomes all the more puzzling when we look at the Russian and the Russian-Jewish literary events in which he participated simultaneously: when writing to Lidin, he discusses the first kind of events at great length, while passing over the events of the second type in silence. Undoubtedly, he made a conscious choice to exclude the Russian-Jewish topic from this epistolary dialogue, and was searching for a more suitable interlocutor with whom he could discuss this subject.10 At first glance, it may seem that the mutual impenetrability of different modes of cultural-national existence is likely to lead to inner conflict. And yet the available evidence indicates that Sobol did not feel any such moral or psychological discomfort, and that he managed to combine these two spheres, so far removed from each other, into a single, organic whole—rather like a bilingual person who is equally proficient in both languages, and can switch seamlessly between them in conversation. If we now go back to the point that Sobol made in his Open Letter to D. Merezhkovsky— namely, that “national questions cannot be solved with idealistic ratiocination or idealistic impulses”—we should note that this was no impulsive or passing sentiment, but rather a deeply held conviction, a coherent stance—and a kind of “holistic worldview.” — 44 —

I. 2 Sobol ’s Open Let ter to D. Merezhkovsky

In later years, he would frequently reaffirm the basic tenet of his Open Letter. Thus, his essay Tridtsat’ [Thirty], which dealt with the massacres of the Jews during the Civil War and was published in the Odessa-based Zionist weekly Evreiskaia Mysl’, relates the story of a group of Russians who raised their voices in defense of the Jews who were the victims of horrific pogroms (Sobol, 1919). As in the case of Merezhkovsky, this charitable action did not lead to any feelings of gratitude on the part of Sobol; rather, his response was sarcastic, bordering on a furious jeremiad. History repeated itself; on the face of it, the basic thrust of the essay should have been different; the Jewish author was supposed to be duly gratified by the fact that, after much bloodshed, noble Russians had finally taken notice of Jewish suffering and deigned to issue a belated condemnation of the atrocities. But no, Sobol’s text is utterly devoid of any feelings of gratification or sentimental delight; on the contrary, it veritably crackles with insolent outrage at Russia’s national shame: why have they kept quiet until now? Why did they fail to take action and prevent the massacres? Here, too, we can see Sobol’s uncompromising stance that “a nation cannot live on alms”—expressed not within an abstract journalistic debate, but rather in the context of real human tragedy; and not in the form of a request for belated charity, but rather as a legitimate demand issued by one nation to another, as the only possible precondition for their equal coexistence.

I.3

A B at t l e t h at N eve r H a ppe ne d (S obol’ s U npubl ishe d O pe n L et te r to I. B unin )

The city of Odessa, where Sobol wrote his essay Tridtsat’, was also the scene of another episode that has already drawn scholarly attention. On the basis of materials from the family archive (namely, the galley proofs of Sobol’s Otkrytoe pis’mo [Open Letter] to I. Bunin, which was supposed to be published in the Odessa-based Iuzhnoe Slovo [The Southern Word] in November 1919, but was removed from the typesetting shop at the last moment, at Bunin’s request), S. Khlavna has uncovered the reasons for Sobol’s abortive attack on the prominent Russian author Bunin, and the circumstances of this attack. In brief, the story is as follows. The October 9, 1919 issue of the newspaper Svobodnaia Rech’ [Free Speech], which was published in Rostov-on-Don, carried an appeal titled K evreiskoi intelligentsii [To the Jewish Intelligentsia] by the writer Ivan Nazhivin, who was known as a “popular monarchist.” The author of the article asserted that he had never been an anti-Semitic, and had never “raised his voice against Jewry”; to the contrary, he had diligently studied the history of the Jewish people, being “struck by the vividness and the peculiarly tragic beauty of their history”; this gave him reason to hope that the Jewish intelligentsia “would be willing to hear him out calmly and seriously” (Nazhivin, 1919a). 11 In his article, Ivan Nazhivin defended the right of Russia for the Russians, out of reverence (as he termed it) for the “sacred element” of the people’s feelings. In his view, Russians have been willing to tolerate “you Jews,” believing that the antiJewish pogroms that besmirch Russia’s honor were instigated by the government and carried out by its agents. However, he went on to write: — 46 —

I. 3 A Bat t le t hat Never Happened

Now that we have fully savored these liberties, we need to admit to ourselves that this was an error. Now that the Old Regime has disappeared, and there is nobody left to blame, anti-Jewish hatred has flared up as never before, and the pogroms have reached an unprecedented fury (ibid.).

The basic thrust of Nazhivin’s article is summed up in the following appeal to the Jewish masses: Get out of all the places where you are visible; be silent; hide away; sacrifice yourselves for our nation and for the Russia in which you live; leave her in peace (ibid.).

Should the Jews fail to heed his advice, he warned them of the dire fate that awaited them—and he made it abundantly clear just what this fate might be. This Russian writer offered to replace the local anti-Jewish pogroms with a total pogrom—that is, a physical expulsion of the Jews from Russia. In order to solve all the problems facing Russian civil society in one fell swoop, Nazhivin deemed it necessary to redefine all the Jews as subjects of Palestine (let us not forget that such a state did not exist in those days!) and deport them there forthwith.12 At the same time and in the same place (fall 1919, Rostov-onDon), Nazhivin published a book entitled Chto zhe nam delat’? [What Should We Do, Then?]. It was suffused with monarchist fervor and a kind of longing for a “strong hand”—the vanished state order. It cannot, in good conscience, be described as a maliciously antiJewish work—in fact, some of its passages betrayed a sympathy for the Jews. Nevertheless, Nazhivin ultimately claimed that the Jews were foreigners and “aliens” in Russia, and this status determined their treatment by the Russian people. The book contains an episode related to Bunin: Sometime later, when I was already in Odessa, I met I. A. Bunin, one of our greatest artists and most serious writers. We began to reminisce about the past. “Nowadays, it is impossible to imagine the extremes that we went to!...” said Ivan Alekseevich, “I can still recall the rush of joy that I felt when news of Stolypin’s assassination reached — 47 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

my village. Why, I started running up and down the terrace, squealing with glee!...” “And now you would no longer run and squeal?” “No, I would not! We were so frivolous in those days, my dear fellow, so frivolous!..” (Nazhivin, 1919: 33).

This meeting, in which the two interlocutors touched on the Jewish question (among other matters), was also recorded by Bunin’s side (an entry in Vera Nikolaevna Bunina’s diary dated December 30, 1918 / January 12, 1919): “Nazhivin went on: “presently, I try to combat anti-Semitism wherever I go, but the task is arduous. There are pogroms in many places.” [...] Then we talked of how the Jews fail to grasp that the Kremlin is ours, that it is our history—not theirs—which is contained therein; that they will never feel it the way we do” (Ustami Buninykh, 1977–1982, I: 205).

Another entry in the same diary (August 24 / September 6, 1919) attests to the complete acceptance of Nazhivin’s book by the Bunins: [...] I have just read Nazhivin’s Chto zhe nam delat’? [...] He knows the people and the peasantry. For the first time, I could feel the full extent of the horror brought about by the Revolution, feel it with my whole body (ibid.: 312).

The newspaper Iuzhnoe slovo, which was edited by D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky and published with the active involvement of Ivan Bunin, gave a standing ovation to Nazhivin’s book. Vladimir Lazurskii’s review, which appeared in that paper, repeatedly linked the names of Nazhivin and Bunin: Ivan Nazhivin’s recently-published book Chto zhe nam delat’? proves that a writer of peasant stock and an author of Bunin’s stature can arrive at the same conclusions. [...] And now he [Nazhivin] has begun to speak with a bitterness and a disgust that are similar to those of Bunin. It is time for us to concur with authors such as Bunin and Nazhivin and admit, openly and honestly, that, because of our political inexperience, we have gotten ahead of ourselves and done a lot of stupid things (Lazurskii, 1919). — 48 —

I. 3 A Bat t le t hat Never Happened

By contrast, the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia rejected Nazhivin’s work outright. And, since Bunin had come out in defense of this author, he, too, drew some of the critics’ fire. The same Vera Nikolaevna wrote in her diary on November 23 / December 6, 1919: These days, Jan has had a falling out with Mirskii and Pavel Iushkevich over his support for Nazhivin. However, Jan has countered their accusations with wit and panache (Ustami Buninykh, 1977–1982, I: 320).

Nazhivin’s book was mercilessly picked apart by the journalist I. M. Vasilevskii (Ne-Bukva), who wrote for the Odessa-based Sovremennoe slovo [The Modern Word]. His feuilleton, titled Lysaia dusha [Bald Soul], adopted a fairly combative and boisterous tone: In these momentous and decisive days, only a man whose soul is haunted, sagging, wrinkled, and utterly bald could exhort us to be meek and modest, and call upon us to seek shelter under the snug wool hat of the czarist policeman (Vasilevskii, 1919).

Vasilevskii continued his relentless attacks on Nazhivin—which ricocheted toward Bunin, too—even after his emigration: writing in the Paris-based Poslednie Novosti [The Latest News] about the general rightward trend in Russian literature, he brought up Bunin’s defense of Nazhivin, among other episodes (Vasilevskii, 1921).13 Nowadays, when we know Vasilevskii’s own convoluted political biography (he could easily shed his old ideological trappings and adopt new ones; in the end, he returned to the Soviet Union and fell victim to the Purges), this combativeness may seem to be mere theatrics. However, at that time, Bunin was genuinely hurt by the affront done to his colleague, and he sharply rebuked Vasilevskii for the latter’s insolent attempt to teach a Russian author “good manners” in his own home (Bunin, 1919).14 Later, when both Bunin and Nazhivin were émigrés, this episode came up in one of their conversations. Nazhivin left the following recollection about the exchange: Incidentally, he told me of the ordeal that I—and later he—had had to undergo in Odessa because he had the temerity to defend — 49 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

me and our patriotic speeches. How they sneered at us, how they tormented us! “The Jews are a force to be reckoned with,” he told me with conviction, “a terrible force.” (Nazhivin, 1922: 33–4).15

Bunin’s irascible temper, which obviously got the better of him, led him to assert in his defense of Nazhivin that Ne-Bukva was similar to the pre-Revolutionary critic V. Burenin, who was considered an embodiment of social reaction. This was clearly an exaggeration, and it is no accident that Boris Valbe, one of the authors of the Odesskiy Listok [The Odessa Sheet] hastened to respond to it: As for Bunin—I, like many other admirers of this amazing literary talent, am truly sickened to see him in this role, to which he is so ill-suited. Obviously, Bunin is no reactionary or anti-Semite. I regard this as a self-evident truth, because I know his works so well. It is a simple case of a major literary figure getting into an unpleasant situation, putting his foot in his mouth, and making mistake after mistake (Valbe, 1919).

It was Bunin’s overly zealous defense of Nazhivin (incidentally, let us note that he would later sever all ties with Nazhivin, who was drifting closer and closer to the radical right) that drove Sobol to pen a response—which, as mentioned earlier, was a hair’s width away from being published in Iuzhnoe Slovo. His Open Letter to Ivan Alekseevich Bunin begins as follows: When Svobodnaia Rech’ printed Nazhivin’s now-infamous article, in which the author (a former socialist, Tolstoyan, etc.) proposed to redefine the Jews as foreigners—and, as such, to forcefully cut them off from Russia, to deny them the opportunity to take part in Russian state-building—I shrugged this article off with total indifference. It did not shock or offend me, because it told me a simple truth in simple words—namely, that yet another Russian author proved unable to look past the vulgar perception of the Jewish Qahal and Jewish malevolence; that yet another member of the Russian intelligentsia had been carried off by the dark wave of hatred, which reduced him to the level of the petit-bourgeois who regards Shulgin as an exemplary political thinker and worships Purishkevich as a veritable prophet. — 50 —

I. 3 A Bat t le t hat Never Happened

Sobol then goes on to say that, now that Bunin has taken Nazhivin under his wing, Then I can no longer pass over such things in silence, then my mind and soul are roused to action, demanding an answer to at least one perplexing question: “Who is Ivan Bunin’s protégé? Is Bunin defending Nazhivin the writer, whose reputation has been unjustly besmirched? Or is he simply protecting a fellow traveler who shares his social views and has nothing to do with literature?”

Sobol’s response—a cry of bewilderment and protest—was not framed as a sociopolitical, legal, or moral document. Rather, he redefined this issue as a question of literature—since, for him (as for any other Russian writer), literature was a place where politics and morality, legality and conscience, existed in an inseparable union. He addressed Bunin in the following way: I will not adopt the posture of the Grand Inquisitor and interrogate you: “What dost thou believe in?” However, I do have the ability, and the right, to demand that Ivan Bunin—a major Russian writer, who knows better than anyone else the importance of using words carefully in these dark and dreadful times, when human conscience has fallen apart and the human soul has disintegrated—speak frankly and openly.

Sobol’s “demand” that Bunin speak “frankly and openly,” which stemmed from the former’s worry over the possible misuse of the latter’s words by his legions of Russian “fans,” was formulated in the following passage (for reasons unknown to us, it was omitted from Salomeya Khlavna’s edition of Sobol’s Open Letter): Your defense of Nazhivin is, at the same time, an attack. However, whether defending or attacking, you leave a lot of spots too exposed. Sooner or later, a notorious segment of the press, which has recently monopolized the notion of “loving Russia,” will seize upon these vulnerable spots for its own purposes, trumpeting to the whole world that... I assume that you, too, are well aware of what comes after this “that.” — 51 —

Pa r t I . “… A n d , A p p a r e n t l y, a Ve r y G o o d J e w ”

An experienced polemicist, Sobol saved the most biting sections of his letter for last, and, after gradually ratcheting up the rhetorical tension, he finally let loose the following tirade (in Khlavna’s edition, it, too, is quoted only in part): I am a Jew. As a Jew, I’ve never been afraid of the transformations undergone by so-called “progressive” Russian authors and public figures—both past and present. Whenever Paul addressed Saul I wouldn’t wring my hands in frustration. And so I didn’t wring my hands this time, either, when a very small Paul—Nazhivin— shed his old garments and was transformed on the pages of Svobodnaia Rech’. I won’t wring them even if a much bigger Paul follows in the footsteps of this one. However, I am not only a Jew but also a Russian man of letters, and, when I see the prominent Russian writer Ivan Bunin chiding the authors of articles about Nazhivin, whose ethnicity is wellknown to him, with the words, “Don’t you dare swear at Tom in his own home,” I want—nay, dare, and am entitled—to pose the following question to Ivan Alekseevich Bunin: “Ivan Alekseevich, what would you have me do, as a Russian writer and a Jew?” Odessa, November 9

Sobol never received a response to his question about “a Russian writer and a Jew.” However, the very fact that this question was posed, without the slightest hint of fear or reverence for authority, raises this fleeting yet remarkably interesting episode of Russian-Jewish relations far above the level of an isolated incident and endows it with a measure of public resonance. Apart from everything else, it gives us additional information regarding the firmness of Sobol’s stance on the “Jewish question.” In general, it should be noted that, in his literary works, critical reviews, and journalistic articles, Sobol emerged as a fearless and combative polemicist, and as a tireless seeker of truth and justice. These qualities, which were inherent in his nature, manifested themselves in those journalistic debates where he straightforwardly defended Jewish national honor and dignity. The legitimate demand to be recognized as equals to all other nations formed the bedrock of his “ideology of nationhood.” — 52 —

I. 3 A Bat t le t hat Never Happened

Sobol’s sword-like journalistic pen would, on occasion, prove to be much sharper than those of many of his colleagues, including recognized experts. Even the most cursory overview of his contributions to the abovementioned turbulent debates touching on the “Jewish question” indicates that, in terms of his public persona, fearlessness, and unwillingness to compromise, Sobol was one of the most brilliant figures in the world of Jewish journalism in the 1910s.

Part II Andrei Sobol

and

Evreiskii Mir

The Evreiskii Mir [Jewish World] anthology was published in Moscow in the late summer to early autumn of 1918. It was edited by Sobol and Efraim Barukhovich Loiter (1889–1963), a prominent figure in the field of Jewish theater, a playwright, producer, and drama teacher.1 The editorial office of Evreiskii Mir was located on 10 Bolshoi Gnezdnikovskii Lane, in the famous former Nirnzee House.2 The book was printed at the nearby Cinema print shop, on 29 Tverskaia Street. Only the first out of five projected issues was published (five is a conservative estimate—this is the number of issues for which a subscription was announced);3 the second issue (let alone any subsequent ones) failed to get off the presses, although its table of contents had been publicized in advance. When selecting a title for their anthology, the editors copied the heading of a magazine that had been published back in 1909– 1911. It was edited by G. M. Portugalov, and among its contributors were some prominent Jewish figures: S. A. An-sky (Rappoport), A. I. Braudo, S. M. Dubnov, M. B. Ratner, L. A. Sev, M. M. Vinaver, and others. In both creative and publishing terms, Evreiskii Mir was a major Jewish undertaking for Sobol. He bears no responsibility for the fact that it came to a halt after the first issue, when external circumstances forced the editors to abandon this project for good. Evreiskii Mir was constructed along the same stylistic and compositional lines that guided the editors of the three Safrut anthologies (Moscow, 1918; three issues were published).4 Both of these projects were going on simultaneously, and we may assume that their creators were in close contact and maintained a professional partnership. Sobol had become acquainted with the future editor of the Safrut anthologies, Leib (Lev Borisovich) Iaffe (1876–1948)5— a Jewish poet, translator, publisher, social and Zionist activist—and with his wife, Frida Veniaminovna (née Kaplan; 1891–1982), back in the 1910s, following his return to Russia from European exile. The Iaffes would later come to occupy a prominent place in his — 55 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

life—both as close friends (their names are frequently mentioned in Sobol’s correspondence with his wife), and by virtue of Leib Iaffe’s position as editor of the weekly Evreiskaia Zhizn’, to which Sobol frequently contributed. After his emigration to Palestine in 1919, Leib Iaffe seemed to vanish from the Russian cultural landscape. His last, brief appearance in post-Revolutionary Russia was as a poet in Vasily L’vovRogachevskii’s book Russian-Jewish Literature (L’vov-Rogachevskii, 1922: 127–28; see also a review of this book by Arkady Gornfeld, where Iaffe is mentioned in a less complimentary context (Gornfeld, 1923: 184)). Only those who were involved in the Russian-Jewish literary dialogue of the fin de siècle (or, at least, observed it closely) could possibly appreciate the cultural contribution made by this man. Iaffe was one of the architects of the relationship between the Russian and the Jewish artistic intelligentsia and the author of several major Russian-language magazine and book projects, in which Jewish literature was able to collaborate on an equal footing with major Russian authors whose role was that of translators. In addition to the abovementioned Safrut anthologies, let us also recall the special double issue of the weekly Evreiskaia Zhizn’, dedicated to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hayim Nahman Bialik’s poetic career (1916, n 14/15, April 3),6 the anthology titled By the Rivers of Babylon (1917), and the book The Jewish Anthology: a Collection of Young Hebrew Verse (1918; 2nd edition: 1921; 3rd edition: 1922; the first edition was published in Moscow, whereas the latter two came out in Berlin)—at the behest of Iaffe, the job of co-editing this book was given to Vladislav Khodasevich (the foreword was written by Mikhail Gershenzon7). Undoubtedly, this experience proved invaluable to Sobol, who, as was said earlier, was in constant contact with Iaffe. One of the reviews of the Jewish Anthology edited by Iaffe and Khodasevich stated: In all previous collections [of a Russian-Jewish nature] we were dealing primarily with materials grouped in accordance with one specific task. There, we could find only those works of Jewish poetry (and of poetry in general) that were based on the motifs of grief over loss and hope for the future. Now, for the first time — 56 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

in the history of Russian-Jewish translated literature, we see a collection compiled with complete objectivity (Gurfinkel, 1919, n 19: 26).

This enabled the reviewer to reach the following conclusion: From now on, the forms created by the new Jewish poetry will become supranational, and their fundamental essence will merge with the broader currents of global lyric poetry (ibid.).

Later on, this view underwent a slight adjustment: Obviously, we are not talking of excluding the national aspect—it remains in full force, since it predetermines the creative acts and the distinctive features of the artistic personality. Nevertheless, this moment is no longer perceived by the personality as the sole means of comprehending the world; it is pushed down somewhere deep inside, into the realm of the unconscious, and we can trace the history of the soul through a succession of inspired images (ibid.: 28).

This reviewer appears to have grasped the guiding intention of the anthology’s primary begetter, Lev Iaffe: to demonstrate the high artistic level of contemporary Jewish poetry. The goal that he pursued by undertaking this project (and the others mentioned above) was to prove the Zionists’ adherence to the highest achievements of world culture. Iaffe’s work—his attempts to synthesize Russian and Jewish traditions and undertake practical steps to facilitate Russian-Jewish dialogue—contained a clearly articulated call to “de-provincialize” this cultural synthesis and to “Europeanize” it. At the same time, we must keep in mind that Iaffe, who wrote poetry in Russian, identified Russian culture as part and parcel of the spiritual heritage of an enlightened Jew (maskil) with a European education. Following Iaffe’s example, Sobol called upon outstanding Russian poets to translate Jewish verse: the Evreiskii Mir anthology that he published features translations of David Einhorn’s poems by Jurgis Baltrušaitis8 and Vladislav Khodasevich,9 as well as a translation of Girsh Rosenblatt’s poem The Fishermen’s Song by Valery Bryusov. The project was put on a sound footing, both financially and otherwise. Undoubtedly, the translators could — 57 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

readily appreciate the extra income at a time of chronic food shortages. We have no idea where Sobol and Loiter procured the necessary funds to launch this series (that is, which philanthropist financed the project), and Sobol’s letters from this time period shed no further light on the subject. However, the very fact that the editors of Evreiskii Mir were able to take the project off the ground, if only partially, is a testament to their considerable organizational skills. Apparently, the publication of the book was a fairly expensive affair: it had 319 pages, with a decorative cover (by the artist G. Zuckerman) and headpieces (by the artist M. Zaligson). Further evidence of these organizational skills—garnished with a dollop of artistic ability—can be gleaned from the surviving correspondence between Sobol, the authors, and the translators. While working on Evreiskii Mir, Sobol had to channel all his creative energies into this book. For example, he informed Bakhmutskaia in a letter dated April 10 (23): The job of editing the anthology takes up a lot of my time. As of today, the premises (on Bolshoi Gnezdnikov[skii Lane]) are already open, and I will be there every day from 2 to 3. There will be receptions, explanations, etc. Correcting the manuscripts, translations, etc, eats up a great deal of time, and yet I don’t want to give it up, since it’s so interesting and profitable. Soon I’ll be getting to work on a story for the anthology. The deadline is the Sunday after next—i.e. 11 days from now. This will give me 600 rubles!10

As for Sobol’s correspondence with both potential and actual contributors, his first such letter, dated March 15, 1918, was sent to Abram Borisovich Derman (1880–1952), a critic and a historian of literature and theater. It said: To: the honorable Mr. Derman (please pardon my ignorance of your name and patronymic). The Evreiskii Mir publishing house is preparing to issue an anthology that will be devoted exclusively to literature and the arts. The anthology will come out in late April (O[ld] S[tyle]). On behalf of the editorial team, I am forwarding the following request to you: could you possibly send us an article on (contemporary) Russian-Jewish literature? The desired length is 1 pr[inter’s] sheet. — 58 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

Should you agree to this request, we would very much like to receive the manuscript as soon as possible. I shall be very pleased if you agree. Awaiting your response. Please accept my sincere respect. Andrei Sobol P. S. My address is: 9 Tverskoy Boul[evard], apt. 35. Andrei Mikhailovich Sobol You should also inform us of your desired fee. The editorial team will pay for the manuscript immediately upon receiving it.11

Derman agreed to this request, but his article was not included in the first issue, possibly due to lack of space. However, its title did appear in the outline of the second issue (see below). In a letter dated April 14 (27), 1918, Sobol asked the well-known poet Valery Iakovlevich Bryusov (1873–1924) to translate some poetry for the anthology: To: the honorable Valery Yakovlevich. On behalf of the editorial team of the Evreiskii Mir anthologies, I am forwarding the following request to you: Would you agree to translate the attached poem, which was written by a young Jewish poet? I would be overjoyed if you agreed. The translation needs to be submitted by Ap[ril] 21–23 (O[ld] S[tyle]). The proposed fee is 1 r[uble] per line of verse. This fee will be transferred to you immediately by the office. Might you also be persuaded to translate a few additional poems? In that case, I will send them to you after Easter. Awaiting your response. Please accept my sincere respect, Andrei Sobol My address: Andrei Mikhail[ovich] Sobol, 9 Tverskoy Boul[evard], apt. 35.

This letter was accompanied by Sobol’s handwritten interlinear gloss of Girsh Rosenblatt’s Yiddish poem The Fishermen’s Song, with the following explanatory note: “The meter is the same throughout; all the lines rhyme throughout; the first and the fourth lines end with the same word.”12 After receiving no reply from Bryusov, Sobol wrote to him once again (this letter was written on an official form of the Evreiskii Mir publishing house): — 59 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

To: the honorable Valery Yakovlevich. You still have not replied to me regarding the Jewish poem which I’d sent to you for translation. Please be so kind as to inform me of the state of affairs. We are in a real hurry, and we need to publish the book as soon as possible. Eagerly awaiting your response. Please accept my sincere respect. A. Sobol The addr[ess:] 9 Tverskoy Boul[evard], apt. 35.13

In the end, Bryusov did take part in the first volume of Evreiskii Mir—his translation was published under the title Fishermen. In addition to translated poetry, the anthology also included original Russian-language works by the following Jewish poets: Amari (Mikhail Tsetlin), Sofia Dubnova-Erlich, Abram Efros, Ilya Ehrenburg, Iosif Krom,14 Konstantin Lipskerov, Nathan Vengrov. The prose section included works by the following Jewish authors: David Ignatov, Zusman Segalovich (his short story Zolotye pavliny [The Golden Peacocks] was translated by Sobol himself), Lamed Shapiro, and Itzhak Meir Weisenberg. In addition, the anthology also contained: a Jewish folklore text entitled The Terrifying and Amazing Tale of the Four-Gated Tower in the City of Rome, which had been transcribed by S. An-sky; Sholem Aleichem’s letters to the Jewish cultural figures Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky and S. Shriro, as well as several articles: On the Works of Weisenberg by Shmuel Niger, Alad[d]in’s Lamp by Abram Efros (written in connection with the publication of Semyon An-sky’s book The Popular Jewish Artistic Heritage15), and On the National Genius in Jewish Music by Aleksandr Krein. Sobol’ own literary contribution to Evreiskii Mir was the short story Tikhoe techenie. Following the announcement of the publication of Evreiskii Mir in the Odessa weekly Evreiskaia Mysl’,16 this newspaper also published a review of the anthology by David Talnikov, who noted that the texts contained therein paint a broad canvas of the development of Jewish life during the past century. Apparently, this anthology is equally targeted at those Russian readers who are unfamiliar with the problems and attitudes of present-day Jewry (it includes Jewish poems translated by Vas. [sic] Bryusov, J. Baltrušaitis, and Vl. Khodasevich)— — 60 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

indeed, these texts may be just as relevant for the Russian public as they are for the Jews. But will they reach this public? (Talnikov, 1919: 14).

When we recall the time period and circumstances under which Evreiskii Mir was compiled and published, the reviewer’s question might appear to be a rhetorical one. Nevertheless, Sobol, who was busy working on the second issue, evidently had no time for such doubts. The table of contents of the projected second issue was printed in the first one as an advertisement, and it looked as follows: Z. Segalovich. A cycle of poems, with a foreword by Andrei Sobol, trans[lated] by Nikolai Ashukin, J. Baltrušaitis, Valery Bryusov, S. Rubanovich, Vladislav Khodasevich. L. Shapiro. In the Dead City. A short story. Trans[lated] by Andrei Sobol, with a foreword by S. Niger. D. Bergelson. A short story. Trans[lated] by R. Gintzberg. H. Nomberg. In One Room—a short story. The Fugleman— a novella. Trans[lated] by Y. Zhirkova, with a forew[ord] by S. Niger. Abram Cahan. Yekl—a novel. Trans[lated] by V. Kashevich. D. Charny. A short story. Poems by: Nathan Vengrov, Miriam-Tamar Barth, S. DubnovaErlich, I. Krom, O. Mandelstam, S. Rubanovich, M. Tumpovskaia, I. Ehrenburg, Abram Efros. E. B. Loiter. The Right to Life—a play in 4 [acts]. Georgii Chulkov. The Sentinel—a short story. Articles: V. [sic] Bryullova-Shaskolskaia — In Memoriam M. B. Ratner. — S. Dubnov — The Jews in the Years of the First Revolution — 1905–1906. — Ch. Zhitlovsky — The Book of Job — a Poem of Jewish Free Thought. — D. Zaslavskii — The Revolution and the Jewish Intelligentsia. — V. Kantorovich — At the Crucible of Jewry. — Aleksandr Krein — The Forking Paths of Jewish Music. — Privatdozent М. B. Lazerson — The Socialist Theory of Assimilation and Jewish Reality. — Dr. A. Mukdoni — On Jewish Theater. — S. Zinberg — National and Popular Literature. — I. Ehrenburg — The French Poet André Spire. Additionally, this issue will also include the articles that have not been published in the first one: A. Derman — The Organic and the Inorganic in Jewish Literature. — Ch. Zhitlovsky — Jewish — 61 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

Culture and Jewish Language. — B. Makovskii — The Outcomes and Perspectives of Jewish Theater. — I. Engel — On Jewish Music.

Some epistolary materials related to the unpublished issues of Evreiskii Mir have survived. These indicate that Sobol aimed at increasing the share of non-Jewish authors in the anthology—not merely by asking prominent Russian poets to translate Jewish verse, but also by publishing original texts by Russian writers. With this goal in mind, he contacted numerous authors who were willing to send him their works—whether fictional, journalistic, or scientific— on Jewish matters. Thus, in a letter dated July 28, 1918 to his good acquaintance, the prominent writer Ivan Alekseyevich Novikov (1877–1959), he wrote: My dear Ivan Alekseevich, I have insisted that our anthology be open to non-Jewish writers. For the second iss[ue], I would like to obtain that story of yours which we have discussed. Now, if I were the sole member of the editorial team, I would send this story to the typesetter without hesitation, but the existence of a second editor introduces certain complications, since he needs to read the story in advance. If you have no objections to this “state of affairs,” please be so kind as to pay a visit to our office on any day (except for Saturday and Sun[day]), from 2 to 3 [pm]. Do not be angered by the fact that I have not dropped by. Unfortunately, we have no servants, and now I’m a kind of “Mädchen für alles”17 —I iron, clean, cook, do the laundry, and come to Moscow for two hours every day.18 I am quite exhausted, there is no money, no nanny—in short, life is wonderful! As soon as we hire some serving staff, I’ll be able to take a deep breath and call on you. As for you, you should pay a visit to our editorial office without delay. Our address is: 37 Tverskoy (above the BOM), the entrance is from Ma[ly] Gnezdnik[ovskii]—near the theat[er] of the fi[lmmaker(?), film cameraman(?)] Drankov.19 So long for now, I wish you all the best. Give my regards to Olga Maksimovna. A. Sobol20

Novikov—who, at the time, apparently had only the vaguest outline of the story that he intended to write—tried not to commit — 62 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

himself to any firm deadlines. In his reply, dated August 6, he wrote to Sobol: Dear Iulii Mikhailovich, I have received your letter—thank you! It fell into my hands just as I was about to leave: we are all heading into the country. As for how long—who can say? As long as we manage to stay there. Therefore, I will be unable to pay you a visit before my departure. I am not at all bothered by the fact that the manuscript will be read by a second person—this is par for the course in editorial teams. However, there is another thing that does bother me a great deal, namely: that the story will require a lot of time and effort as I try to recreate the everyday life of the ancient Hebrews, and my prospects of success in this endeavor are far from stellar. Besides, at the moment I’m utterly exhausted... Therefore, I cannot promise to deliver the story in time for the second issue. Should the story actually write itself, then, obviously, I will gladly send it to you, without thereby committing myself to any tight schedule—i.e., with no obligation to submit it for the 2nd (or even the 3rd) issue. I hope that you will not grumble at me for such a reply. We venture off into the unknown, with no idea of what might await us in the village. I will visit Moscow from time to time, if circumstances permit. O[lga] M[aksimovna] sends you her regards. I give you a firm handshake. Ivan Novikov21

On the same day that he sent the letter to Novikov, Sobol also mailed a reminder to Petrograd, to Akim Lvovich Volynskii (his real name was Hayim Leibovich Flexer; 1861–1925), a literary and ballet critic, a historian and theoretician of art. This letter was written on official Evreiskii Mir publishing house stationery, and it read as follows: To: the honorable Akim Lvovich. I would humbly remind you of our telephone conversation regarding the Evreiskii Mir anth[ology]. The thing is, I would really like to have your article for the 2nd issue, if it is at all possible. The printing of the 2nd issue will commence on August 15 (O[ld] S[tyle]), so we can wait for your article till September — 63 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

1 (also O[ld] S[tyle]). Thus, if you could send it in by September 1, I would really appreciate it. In the first issue, we would like to provide a preview of the next few volumes, so please inform us of the title of your article—and do it as quickly as possible, since the entire issue is already prepared, and only the last page has been delayed. Awaiting your response. Please accept my sincere respect. Andrei Sobol 9 Tverskoy Boul[evard] apt. 35, addressed to me.22

The fact that Volynskii’s name is missing from the preview points to one of two possibilities: either he never replied to Sobol’s letter, or else his reply was delayed (he may have also refused). On August 16/29, Sobol wrote to his close friend Nikolai Sergeevich Ashukin (1890–1972), a critic, poet, and literary historian (his name is mentioned in the preview of the second issue, as one of the translators of Zusman Segalovich’s poems; the letter was written on official Evreiskii Mir stationery): Dear Nikolai, There is a problem with the typesetter, and the issue cannot go into print yet. Therefore, I’ve been unable to go over the poems. In the next days, I will peruse them, make my selections, and send some to you—obviously, with a translation, an “image,” etc. There is no special “Jewish” form of versification—I’m not familiar with the situation in Hebrew—we have the same iambic feet, trochees, etc. In a word, see for yourself, and you’ll understand. I envy you: I’m at the end of my rope, there are no servants, so I clean, wash, cook, and have no time left for writing. Obviously, the world as a whole does not feel this loss, but I do. I’d like to pay my respects to Sukhotin.23 He has completely forgotten me. Hopefully, you won’t forget me; write to me sometime. If the iss[ue] comes out soon, I’ll see to it that you receive an advance. Sending you kisses, and wishing you good health and high spirits. Best wishes from Rika [Bakhmutskaia]. Andrei24 — 64 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

On September 2, 1918, the author, translator, and literary critic Georgii Chulkov (1879–1939) wrote to Sobol regarding changes to his original plan (evidently, this changed version is reflected in the reference to “The Sentinel—a short story” in the published prospectus): Dear Iulii Mikhailovich, You were so kind as to extend me an invitation to participate in the Jewish anthology. In case you’ve forgotten, I offered you a small article, but... Today I dreamed up a wonderful plot (I “dreamed” it literally, rather than metaphorically), and I’d like to give you a short story on the subject of this dream. I think it will be a perfect fit for your anthology. Do you agree? Shaking your hand and wishing you all the best. Cordially yours, Georgii Chulkov25

In his attempt to solicit contributions for Evreiskii Mir, Sobol also wrote to two famous authors who had left Moscow and were presently in Odessa: Ivan Bunin and Aleksei Tolstoy. The latter’s reply to this offer reached Sobol about mid-September 1918 (see: Perepiska Tolstogo, 1989, I: 276). By that time, Sobol had gone into hiding from the Bolsheviks in fear of imminent arrest, and he was forced to abandon his publishing project. Let us note that Sobol did not sever his ties with Lev Iaffe after the latter’s emigration to Palestine (there, in the early 1920s, Iaffe served as editor of the major Jewish daily Ha’aretz). This is proved by the existence of the following letter from Sobol, dated March 10, 1922, which has been preserved in Iaffe’s archive: Dear Lev Borisovich, You seem to have completely forgotten me, yet I still remember you. Yesterday, I visited Rakhil’ Grigor’evna,26 and she told me that you’re still alive and well, and that you have a son.27 All these years, I’ve heard nothing about you. This is hardly surprising: in those same years I’ve been tossed hither and thither, like a leaf in a storm, and now I’m finally back in Moscow. I’ve been through a lot. Had my fair share of grief. Life has been unkind to me, and there have been profound changes. — 65 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

However, I’m like a roly-poly toy: whenever life lays me low, I’m back on my feet in no time. I came here about four months ago, after a serious illness that had lasted for half a year.28 Now I’m fit as a fiddle. In all these years, I haven’t written much. I’ve brought with me two novellas and a play; the novellas will be published any day now,29 and the play will be staged at Korsch’s Theater.30 Presently, I’m in no mood to write about myself in great detail. Now, should you and Frida Ven[iaminovna]31 reply to me—then I’ll write to you for real. For now, I’d just like to send you this brief missive, say hello, and tell you that I still remember and love you, like in the good old days. Your letter will give me great joy. I’d really like to know everything about you, Frida Ven[iaminovna], and the girls. Tamochka32 should be grown up by now. I’ll be awaiting your response with great impatience. You will not disappoint me, will you? I send you all big hugs. Give my regards to everybody (and to your son, too!) Yours, Andrei P.S. As a good Jew, I hasten to add a request. Here’s the crux of the matter, my dear Lev Borisovich. Last year, the New York-based J[ewish] paper Die Zeit published a translation of my novel Pyl’ without asking for my permission and without informing me.33 I learned of this (about 4 months ago) and wrote to them, asking them to pay me, at least a little. True, we haven’t signed the Convention,34 but this newspaper is run by D. Pinsky, a writer. He should know how hard it is for writers to make a living these days, and be sympathetic to their plight. I hoped that they would respond. But they maintain a stubborn silence. And this brings me to my request to you, dear Lev Bor[isovich]: write to them; try to shame them, and they may pay me yet. If they are unwilling to pay in cash—let them donate the sum to АRA,35 and I’ll receive it here in the form of food aid. If you don’t find it too difficult, please do this for me. I’ll be very grateful to you. So I’ll be waiting for a letter from you. Hugs, Andrei36

It is known that Iaffe replied to Sobol on April 24, 1922, but we have been unable to locate the original of this letter. It was translated into Hebrew from a copy preserved in the Iaffe family archive, — 66 —

Pa r t I I . A n d r e i S o b o l a n d Ev r e i s k i i M i r

and then published in a book edited by Iaffe’s son, Benyamin. In his reply, Iaffe wrote that, immediately upon receiving the letter, he had sent the relevant request to New York, where it would be forwarded to Pinsky.37 He went on to write that he had mailed a letter to London, with a request to send a food package to Sobol (Jaffe, 1968: 67–8). Despite the fact that, as a result of unfavorable historical circumstances (the October revolution, the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship, the subsequent persecution of dissidents, etc.), the Evreiskii Mir anthology turned out to be extremely shortlived, with only one issue (out of several projected) being published, it nevertheless represents a fascinating phenomenon in the history of Russian-Jewish cultural ties, and it must be recognized as an integral part of the Russian-Jewish “library.” The fact that this anthology was initiated and prepared for publication by our protagonist (who solicited potential authors, corresponded with them, selected materials, translated and edited the texts, and performed other tasks) underscores the significance of his contribution to the development of Russian-Jewish relations. However, the Russian-Jewish Sobol was not just a journalist, polemicist, editor, and publisher: he was also an original writer whose works have yet to be properly read and evaluated. A certain segment of his oeuvre engages directly with Jewish themes, images, plots, and frames of reference. Making a broad generalization, we might say that Sobol wrote numerous literary texts which embody the Jewish “image of the world.” Let us now take a look at these texts.

III.1

B et w e e n L i t e r at ur e a nd P ol i t ics : S obol’ s N ove l P y l’

In 1915, following his illegal return from European exile, Sobol settled in Moscow, where he would reside until his departure for the Caucasus Front. During his stay there, he frequented one of the most popular haunts of the Moscow artistic intelligentsia— the literary gatherings held by Sergei Georgievich Kara-Murza (1876–1956), a lawyer, theater scholar, and bibliophile who ran a fashionable literary salon. On Tuesdays, the Moscow literati would gather in his apartment in the building of the Rossiia insurance company (6 Sretenskii Lane, apt. 68). Each visitor would be offered an album where he could leave a comment. After one of his visits, Sobol left the following inscription: For too long, the Jewish people have lived on legends, oblivious to the fact that legends have a habit of turning into history. Their path lies in leaving the legends behind and getting closer to real life, overcoming the myth and writing the True Story of how the people took control of their own fate (Adaskina, 2013: 158-59).

If we were to try to isolate the major “substrate” of Sobol’s Russian-Jewish literary legacy, we might define it as the desire to overcome the “legends” which had been the lifeblood of the Jewish people and which had been instrumental to the way they were perceived by other nations; and, correspondingly, the desire to approximate that “true story,” regardless of how uncomfortable or unusual it might seem. One of his most decisive attempts to get to the core of this “truth” was the novel Pyl’ [Dust] (it was first serialized in a magazine in 1915,1 and then came out in book form in 1916 and 1917). From the esthetic point of view, this novel hardly counts among Sobol’s most mature works; nevertheless, the issues raised by this text make it particularly significant. — 69 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

The plot of this novel, which was originally titled Evrei [Jews], is as follows: a group of four revolutionary terrorists (three Jews— Aleksandr, the novel’s protagonist and narrator; Boris, and Esther— and a Russian named Akim) have returned to Russia after a period of exile and are plotting to commit an act of revenge against a highranking official. This plotline is the central pivot around which all of the novel’s events, thoughts, speeches, and actions revolve. The text comprised by a string of short scenes that flit by in a quick, almost cinematic succession. The writing style—with its terse descriptions, fragmentary dialogues, and dynamic rhythm—is meant to underscore the tense energy of the plot. However, the essence of the novel does not lie in its plot, but rather in the range of issues condensed by Sobol into the text: (1) The Jews and the Russian revolution; (2) When the Jews, who are “the other” to Russia, spill their own blood and that of others—is this a noble act or an unpardonable sin? (3) Do the Jews have the right to interfere in the social, political, and national life of a country that is “alien” to them? The novel contains one episode that does not serve any major plot purpose, and is introduced solely in order to explain why Bergman, a veteran revolutionary who is crucial to the novel’s conceptual framework, becomes disillusioned with the revolutionary struggle. When Bergman learns that a fellow Jew has turned out to be a police informer, he experiences such profound despair that he decides to “balance” the traitorous Jew with a heroic one in order to “wash off” the stain. With this in mind, he begins to plot a revolutionary act of unparalleled virtue and nobility (the novel never tells us just what this act might be; however, the sense of importance enables us to conclude that he is planning an attempt on the life of one of the Russia’s top leaders—possibly even the Emperor himself). In the end, this plan remains unrealized—not for want of courage, or because of outside circumstances, but because Bergman himself decides to call it off at the last moment. His decision is motivated by the realization that he, as an “alien” being, has no right to intervene in the course of Russian history: no matter which way the needle of the political compass might point, no matter what his contribution — 70 —

I I I .1. B e t we e n L i t e r a t u r e a n d Po l i t i c s : P y l ’

to the struggle for liberty might be, he, a Jew, will always remain a pariah in the eyes of the “Motherland” that he desires to save. This conclusion leads Bergman to abandon the cause to which he had devoted his life. The critical reception of Pyl’ was almost universally negative, and Vasily Rozanov, writing in his Mimoletnoe [Fleeting], went so far as to interpret the novel as a pro-revolutionary “advertisement” (in an entry from March 13, 1915): Imagine a whole body of literature—novels, short stories—that consists entirely of speeches, whispers, “upraised voices, chants, and orations”—about cutesy little bombs, about how they “closely monitored the official’s comings and goings,” how that woman, Esther, filled the “shells” with explosives... Let us set literature aside, and look at it solely as an advertisement... Sure, literature is all well and good, but the author can never avoid the advertising aspect of his craft. “They read it, express interest, discuss it.” Now tell me: How can we possibly avert a “revolution” in Russia, when it is so heavily advertised? It is inevitable, in the same way that commerce is “inevitable”— thanks to copious advertising.” (Pyl’ in Russ[kaia] Mysl’) (Rozanov, 1994: 27–8).

The annotated Knizhnaia Letopis’ [Annals of the Book World] of the Novaia Zhizn’ [New Life] almanac carried the following review: Back when it was serialized in Russ[kaia] Mysl’, this novel aroused much discussion and seemed to be promoted as a major literary phenomenon. However, now that it has been published in whole, we see that it does not live up to expectations: its literary merits fall short of the social value it might have as a cry of protest against the abnormal treatment of the Jews. It seems that the author knows how to write, yet his protesting pathos far outstrips his literary skills—and, on occasion, overwhelms them completely.2

Speaking of the novel’s controversial central idea—the bacterium of anti-Semitism penetrating the ranks of the revolutionaries—the reviewer from Russkie Zapiski [Russian Notes] (he was the prominent critic A. G. Gornfeld) wrote: — 71 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

Pyl’ is an ephemeral work, utterly lacking in any lasting, let alone eternal, themes; it is not a novel, but a trivial feuilleton (Gornfeld, 1915: 333).

Nevertheless, this “trivial feuilleton” had considerable public resonance: it was closely read and discussed in great detail, particularly in revolutionary circles. The social democrat A. (B.) E. Mandelberg referred to the novel in a letter dated November 23, 1915 to L. G. Deitsch in the USA, comparing the ideological substrate of Pyl’ to the impression made by the socialist revolutionary P. M. Rutenberg: You should not treat Rutenberg as an enemy to be avoided [...] I’ve had numerous discussions with him, and we’ve grown quite close. It seems to me that his orientation corresponds rather well to a growing trend in our socialist world—a trend that I have termed “anti-Semitism turned inside out.” Have you read Sobol’s Pyl’? This is the exact same thing. These types are particularly common in the ranks of the Soc[ialist] Rev[olutionaries]. And we need to fight them.3

The critical response to Sobol’s novel contained many truthful, accurate, and objective points. Viacheslav Polonskii wrote: Mr. Sobol’s novel is one of the products of the painful experience of the post-Revolutionary period. It is confined to a particular historical moment, and is of interest primarily as an indication of the moods and mindsets of certain activists who have become detached from reality (Polonskii, 1915: 390).

While this novel is certainly not among Sobol’s better works, and should never be defended on the grounds of its literary merit, we must nonetheless point out several aspects that take on additional significance when we look at the author’s evolution as a whole. Sobol’s debut as a novelist was a tribute to contemporary literary fashions, which were dominated by certain stylistic clichés associated with authors such as Stanisław Przybyszewski. Pyl’ clearly imitates his abrupt and jerky style. However, Sobol’s primary models and sources of inspiration are, undoubtedly, the — 72 —

I I I .1. B e t we e n L i t e r a t u r e a n d Po l i t i c s : P y l ’

novels The Pale Horse (1909) and What Never Happened (1911–13) by Boris Savinkov (V. Ropshin). This obvious parallel was not lost on the critics—indeed, all of them seem to have characterized Sobol’s novel as a “poor man’s imitation” of Savinkov’s works. They also repeatedly remarked that, whereas Savinkov’s prose was dominated by the question of the morality of political violence and political terror, Sobol’s novel focused squarely on the Jewish issue. In any case, the aura of scandal surrounding Savinkov’s novels undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of Pyl’, which had grown in their shadow. At the same time, Pyl’ turned out to be far more timely than its predecessors: the Jewish question, which had been pushed to the fore by World War I, greatly magnified the public resonance of Sobol’s novel. In those days, the status of the Jews became a pressing concern that greatly exercised the minds of the Russian intelligentsia. Highlighting the Jewish question as the dominant theme in Pyl’, a critic noted: this novel is remarkable for its unflinching depiction and interpretation of the national question in the revolution. In essence, the national problem is the author’s sole concern. For him, the revolution, with all its painful twists and turns, as well as the lives of the émigrés, with their tragic fall from grace and their perverted sense of the power and spirit of political exile—all this is merely the backdrop for the collision of national elements within the revolution; in particular, the backdrop for the tragedy of the Jewish people in the vortex of political passions (Ozhigov, 1916: 150).

The abovementioned Viacheslav Polonskii also wrote of the “tragedy of Jewry” in Pyl’, even though he assumed that this motif was merely “an accidental afterthought” to the novel and therefore not an integral part of its range of themes (Polonskii, 1915: 391). For the critics, the very notion of the “tragedy of Jewry” had a very specific meaning that encompassed a slew of familiar connotations: anti-Semitism, persecution, pogroms, libel, legal discrimination, etc. In their opinion, Sobol’s sole original contribution to this traditional complex of themes lay in his pessimistic view of the outcome of the — 73 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

participation of Jews in the revolutionary movement: despite their self-sacrifice in service to the revolution, despite all their sufferings and aspirations, the Jews still were, and would always be, perceived by the public consciousness as Jews—that is, as a persecuted and oppressed nation, the titular “dust.” And even the revolutionary milieu itself was suffused with anti-Semitism—in this respect, it differed little from any other social group. Because of this hopeless situation, the novel supposedly exuded a profound sense of disappointment, social apathy, and anemia. I. M. Frenkel, who wrote under the pseudonym A. Lavretskii, was one critic who recognized the problem of anti-Semitism as an important component of Pyl’ yet refused to reduce the whole novel to this single issue. While acknowledging the author’s intention to uncover the existence of Judeophobia in the social environment where it is least expected—namely, among the “new people” who wish to turn the world upside-down—Lavretskii-Frenkel nevertheless admonished as follows: …it is doubtful whether the anti-Semitism of these “former people” of the revolution [the decayed milieu of the Parisbased revolutionaries] can serve as a sufficient basis for Sobol’s sweeping generalizations (Lavretskii, 1916: 39).

This critic, whose work in the Russian-Jewish press may have enhanced his ability to grasp the subtle emotional overtones of Sobol’s novel, interpreted the author’s ideological emphases in the following way: The tragedy of the Jew from the intelligentsia, who thinks—and often feels—in Russian, and yet is forced, because of the vagaries of fate, to relinquish all the things that he holds dear, that have facilitated his spiritual growth and become part of him—this is a worthy subject, equally at home in both Russian and Jewish literature; this is the Jewish content that can be packed into a Russian word (ibid.: 38).

However, another Russian-Jewish critic, Solomon Gurevich, failed to detect any such nuances in the novel. Having read only the first, January issue of Russkaia Mysl’ [Russian Thought], where — 74 —

I I I .1. B e t we e n L i t e r a t u r e a n d Po l i t i c s : P y l ’

Pyl’ began to be serialized, and unwilling to wait for the following issues, he immediately asked numerous questions: “Does Sobol paint an accurate picture of émigré life? Does it offer the correct distribution of light and shadow? Are some colors too vivid, while others are too muted to create a contrast?” He then went on to answer them himself: Sobol’s novel gives us a distorted—or, at the very least, onesided—view of the fate of the Jewish intelligentsia in the last years. The text creates the impression that this intelligentsia underwent a total moral bankruptcy after the revolution. And if certain groups of intellectuals have survived, they have done so only by completely renouncing “radicalism and party politics” in favor of the philosophy of “our own blood and soil” (Gurevich, 1915: 40–1).

The critic then offered his own view of the political development of the Jewish intelligentsia: In the post-Revolutionary period, the whole spectrum of the Russian intelligentsia underwent a kind of transvaluation of values. Many of the existing instruments had to be “liquidated” from the inventory. Apart from a few isolated groups, this “liquidation” took place within the framework of an orderly succession—in favor of a broader and more consistent application of democratic principles, and in the direction of a more realistic utilization of the independent activities of the masses. The Jewish partisan intelligentsia, more than any other, betrayed the democratic principles. Compared to the non-Jewish intelligentsia, it had a greater propensity to reduce these principles to mere Platonic declarations and evinced a greater contempt for the independent actions of the Jewish masses. For this reason, it had to experience the process of liquidation in a much more painful form, which brought it to the brink of a veritable “crisis of ideas.” It was this process of liquidation, this crisis of ideas, that led the Jewish partisan intelligentsia to that array of ideas and sentiments that is referred to as a “national mood” (ibid.: 41).

Ignorant of the author’s perspective as a whole, the critic refrained from drawing any final conclusions, postponing them until the publication of the entire text of the novel: — 75 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

It may be that the author will abandon the pointless invective of his party comrades, and find more serious and substantial motives for the national regeneration of his characters. Depending on the nature of these motives, the very nationalism of the protagonists of Pyl’ may yet acquire a more serious and principled justification (ibid.: 42).

A review by Sofia Zarechnaia offers a different—and, in our view, more accurate—take on the novel’s ideological framework. She wrote: Andrei Sobol’s approach to Jewry is rather peculiar. He occupies a unique place in the gallery of authors writing about Jews. Sholem Asch paints the life of patriarchal Jewish communities in sweet and lovely hues. Iushkevich regales us with furious denunciations of the Jewish bourgeoisie. As for Andrei Sobol, his chosen protagonist is a member of the intelligentsia—a person cut off from his roots, estranged from the religion and way of life of his forefathers, who has been unable to find shelter in the bosom of a foreign culture (Zarechnaia, 1916).

A. Nevskii (a pseudonym; the writer’s real identity is unknown) wrote a lengthy review of Pyl’ that took up three issues of the weekly Evreiskaia Zhizn’. In this critic’s view, the true drama of the Jews, as depicted by Sobol, lies in their groundlessness. Sooner or later, every Jew is bound to feel this lack of a firm footing—all it takes is a little outside push. In Sobol’s novel, this push is derived from the twists and turns of the terrorists’ revolutionary struggle. In general, though, it may arise from any personal or social circumstances. This push may come either from the outside or from the inside— the distinction is meaningless. The Jew’s mental landscape has been prepared in advance, and the inner crisis is bound to break out sooner or later. The description of these inevitable pushes, which knock the Jews off the beaten track, is the essence of this novel (Nevskii, 1915, n 2: 9).

For Sobol, the “Jewish tragedy,” which forms the conceptual pivot of Pyl’, lay in the tearing of the fabric which used to preserve the national cohesion of the “children of Israel”—a phenomenon that he defined elsewhere, in an essay on the great Jewish poet — 76 —

I I I .1. B e t we e n L i t e r a t u r e a n d Po l i t i c s : P y l ’

H. N. Bialik, as otherness toward the other and partial othering of one’s kind (Sobol, 1916: 29). The thing that was foremost on Sobol’s mind was the drama of the Jewish people’s alienation from their ancient laws, faith, language, ethical and cultural norms, and the like—the very things that had turned them into an indivisible community and enabled them to trace their descent to a single national root despite their geographical dispersion. In his view, this unifying sense of a common “seed” and spirit was shared even by the estranged members of the tribe. Thus, Sobol’s short story Mendel-“Ivan” was based on a true incident that one of the inmates of the Alexander Central told him about during his stay there. Of course, the motif of “the Jews and the Prison System” was hardly unheard of in Russian literature. Suffice it to recall the works of Aleksei Svirsky,4 who had first-hand experience of prison life—see, for instance, his short story Desiatyi [The Tenth],5 which describes how Jewish inmates had their cell cleaned for prayer before Passover. However, Sobol’s Mendel is a very unusual character in the Jewish context: as one of the “Ivans,” or prison bosses, he is depicted as an extremely cruel, half-bestial figure. Feeling himself a stranger among his own kind, realizing that it would not be easy for him to shed the burden of “Jewishness” and cross the gulf separating him from the real “Ivans,” Mendel tries to demonstrate his own validity and worth to himself and to others. In this way, his goal is not merely to win the acceptance of the most hardened criminals, who strike fear into the hearts of the other inmates, but also to become truly equal to them. Mendel’s “initiation” is similar to the one that would later be undergone by Liutov, the protagonist of Isaac Babel’s story Moi pervyi gus’ [My First Goose] (from his collection Konarmiia [Red Cavalry] (1926)). However, Mendel’s victim is not an animal, but rather a fellow inmate—and, moreover, a Jew: ...Pouring boiling water in the kitchen, he suddenly pounced on an elderly Jew standing out in front and began to scream: “Why are you pushing, you filthy Jewish mug?!” He pushed the old man. The man tottered and accidentally scalded Mendel with the water. Mendel let out a yelp, swung the

— 77 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

heavy kettle with all his strength, and brought it down on the old man’s head. The old man was taken out of the kitchen, half-dead. As he was being carried along, all the inmates jumped out of their cells, dropped their cups, and ran toward the kitchen. Mendel heard them stamping about and came out onto the porch. They surrounded him. Mendel said nothing; he merely looked at them all and spat. The convicts milled about the porch for a short while, blew off some steam, and went away, without lifting a finger. In the back rows, someone whispered: “An ‘Ivan’ couldn’t care less for another man’s life” (Sobol, 1915b: 76).

However, Mendel’s attempt to prove his lack of “Jewish spinelessness” by “walking all over” a fellow prisoner ends up costing him dearly. Like Babel’s Liutov, whose heart, “stained with bloodshed, grated and brimmed over” (Babel, 1960: 77), Mendel cannot find peace: When Mendel got back to his cell, he was beside himself. He paced from window to window, touched the panes, drew some peculiar patterns on the glass, counted the bars. All this time, he dearly wished to look at the old man, to learn how he’s been doing. The convicts were called to lunch. Mendel sat down at a table, scooped up a spoonful, and froze, spoon in hand. He never noticed Chaly looking at him and smirking. Chaly nudged his neighbors with his knees—first one, then the other—leaned over to Mendel, and shouted into his ear: “Mendel, where’s the spoon?” Kuzmichev gave out a squeal, sputtering. Voskoboinikov, who was carefully chewing his mouthful, smiled condescendingly. Winking, sneering playfully, Kuzmichev spoke in a snide tone: “Now look at him, my fellows! When a Christian roughs up a fellow Christian—that’s fine and dandy, all in a day’s work. But now that this Jew has struck another Jew for the first time, he is weeping and shaking all over” (Sobol, 1915b: 76–7; italics mine. — V. Kh.).

We cannot rule out the possibility that Babel’s description of the meal taking place after the “rite of initiation” in Moi pervyi — 78 —

I I I .1. B e t we e n L i t e r a t u r e a n d Po l i t i c s : P y l ’

gus’ is consciously modeled on the corresponding scene in Sobol’s text. This can be seen most clearly in the lexical correspondences between the relevant passages, which are here marked in italics: The Cossacks in the yard were already sitting around their cauldron. They sat motionless, stiff as heathen priests at a sacrifice, and had not looked at the goose. “The lad’s all right,” one of them said, winking and scooping up the cabbage soup with his spoon. The Cossacks commenced their supper with all the elegance and restraint of peasants who respect one another. And I wiped the sword with sand, went out at the gate; and came in again, depressed. […] “Hey, you,” suddenly said Surovkov, an older Cossack. “Sit down and feed with us till your goose is done.” He produced a spare spoon from his boot and handed it to me (Babel, 1960: 76).6

While there may indeed be a certain intertextual link between these fragments by Sobol and Babel, an examination of their semantics reveals not so much a unity as a sensitive divergence: whereas Babel’s Cossacks acknowledge the Jew Liutov as one of their own (if only for a brief period), Sobol’s convicts continue to treat the Jew Mendel as “other” despite the latter’s persistent attempts to prove his own worth. Conversely, despite Mendel’s alienation from his own kind, there remains some thin, almost invisible thread that connects him to the Jewry; and even he, a hardened apostate, is unable to sever this link: the last scene, where Mendel disappears from the stage, seems to point to a kind of “epiphany” undergone by the protagonist. Following a revolt by the inmates against the “Ivans,” who had usurped all power, Mendel, already on the brink of death, cries out: “A general cell... Take me to a general cell...” He was carried along the corridor. All the while, until they reached the hospital, he was croaking: “To a general cell... oh-oh-oh... A cell... where... there are... more Jews... oh-oh-oh!..— and he tried desperately to get up” (Sobol, 1915b: 119). — 79 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

The first version of this story, which was published in the Energia collection (edited by A. V. Amfiteatrov), had an even more radical ending: the Jews buried Mendel in accordance with ancient Jewish law, thereby seeming to assert the impossibility of breaking away from the national body—even in the most extreme cases of apostasy. Sobol later removed this scene considering it to be too blatant and straightforward, but his original artistic design is still quite illuminating. In Pyl’, national alienation is precipitated by social upheavals. And yet, contra V. Polonskii, Sobol did not “yoke” the Jewish problem to the revolution; rather, the reverse appears to be true: he tied the revolution to the Jewish problem. In this respect, it is hard to fault Zarechnaia for her general conclusion, according to which Pyl’ is, at heart, the tale of “the tragic spiritual groundlessness of the Jewish intelligentsia.” In her view, Andrei Sobol does not admire or denounce, unlike Sholem Asch or Iushkevich. Jewishness, for him, is a kind of illness. His novel is almost lyrical; it hints at the author’s personal ambitions. He approaches the soul of the modern Jewish intelligentsia with a surgeon’s scalpel, and his incisive and penetrating analysis mercilessly exposes all the painful nooks and crannies of this soul (Zarechnaia, 1916).

Obviously, this interpretation made no claims regarding the novel’s artistic merit (or lack thereof). However, it did point to the necessity of reading the text through the prism of lyricism, which was crucial to Sobol’s oeuvre in general and to this novel in particular. As for the purely literary value of Pyl’, we are inclined to agree with A. Lavretskii-Frenkel, who wrote: Strictly speaking, we are not dealing with a novel at all; the novelistic situation is only barely sketched. Rather, what we have here is an authorial confession of mental breakdown (Lavretskii, 1916: 39).7

And yet this critic also indicated that Sobol’s lyricism, for all its poignancy, was insufficient for the generalizations that he intended to make. In order to get such generalizations across, — 80 —

I I I .1. B e t we e n L i t e r a t u r e a n d Po l i t i c s : P y l ’

one needs to have an objective epic work, objective images and character types. Otherwise, private moods and sensations, which may seem perfectly adequate and artistically true to the artist himself, are generalized into a tiresome monologue which, in this case, takes up 182 pages (ibid.: 38).

While we are in general agreement with Lavretskii-Frenkel and all the others who have pointed out the obvious flaws and missteps of the young and inexperienced novelist, we must nevertheless point out that Sobol’s “mental breakdown” was not merely the product of inexperience, the inability to craft a novelistic framework or an epic narrative, or the like; rather, it also stemmed from the immensity of the task which he had set himself: solving the problem of RussianJewish dualism. In his external, everyday life, Sobol did manage to accommodate this contradiction, as he was able able to exist within it as a real “Russian Jew”: on the one hand, he remained a nationally-minded Jew; on the other hand, he was also a Russian patriot—and, moreover, a true patriot, whose conviction was not confined to pretty words. However, from an existential point of view, because of his ardent loathing of compromise and his Candide-like straightforward stubbornness, he could not avoid hearing the twin siren calls of the Russian and the Jewish worlds—diametrically opposed to each other, yet equally attractive. At the end of the novel, following his return to Russia, the protagonist/narrator— a Jewish terrorist and outlaw who has sacrificed his Jewishness on the altar of the revolutionary Moloch, a figure intimately linked to the author’s lyrical and autobiographical self (this last point hardly needs proof)—admits in despair: I cannot bear the ringing of bells, I hate it. It lied to me when, having crossed the border, I heard it for the first time after a long absence. It lies to me even now, as do the fields beyond the city, the fir trees on the river bank, the snowdrifts in the ravines. All this is alien to me. I have nothing that I can call my own. Like dust, I lie on the ground, waiting for the next gust of wind to blow me away. It will not ask me whether I want to be blown upon it. The dust is never asked its opinion—it is simply chased away (Sobol, 1916d: 185). — 81 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

In this fragment, the actual Russian land, which he has finally been able to reach, is sharply contrasted with the land that he used to dream about in his Paris days: ...The brighter and clearer the days are here [in Paris], the stronger the painful yearning to get there, where the snow—our snow— melts in the ravines, where the rooks are hopping about, where, on winter evenings, one can see the ruddy glow of the silent sky beyond the distant grove (ibid.: 23).

We can only wonder why L’vov-Rogachevskii8—an experienced and earnest critic—interpreted this final scene in a manner utterly opposed to what Sobol had actually written: The Jewish revolutionary returns to Russia and breaks down in tears—because of the tolling of church bells. He feels himself a tiny part of a greater whole. The wailing tocsin of the global conflagration has made people feel their blood ties to the land with an intensity and urgency unheard of before. Some have embraced this kinship with joy; others have recoiled in fear; but for many this feeling has been an unexpected discovery (L’vov-Rogachevskii, 1916: 164–65).9

Sobol seems to engage in a “thought experiment” where the protagonist’s attempt to combine the Russian and the Jew within himself (or, to use the categories of the author’s consciousness, the attempt to create a unitary protagonist out of the “binary opposition” of Russian and Jew) leads to his utter (self)-destruction, transforming him into nothingness, into dust. This also leads us to consider a more general problem: the destructive potential of any attempt to go against the principle of “single authority,” according to which one must wholly belong either to the synagogue or to the church, but not to both. Obviously, Sobol’s Pyl’ is burdened with a number of additional motifs, but its primary artistic message, foremost in the author’s mind, is the failure of the attempt to reconcile the two extremes—Russian patriotism and Jewish roots— within the national identity of a single Jew. The fact that even L’vov-Rogachevskii—a critic otherwise well-disposed toward Russian-Jewish literature—gave such a reception to the novel — 82 —

I I I .1. B e t we e n L i t e r a t u r e a n d Po l i t i c s : P y l ’

lends further credence to Sobol’s pessimistic conclusion. Six years later, L’vov-Rogachevskii published an entire book on the subject of Russian-Jewish literature (L’vov-Rogachevskii, 1922), which featured a slightly revised version of his review of Pyl’ as one of the chapters (Chapter XIII. Conclusion). Seeming to embrace the Soviet “newspeak” and ignoring Sobol’s profound anguish, which lay at the core of the novel, he wrote: Speaking of the hysterical suspiciousness of his persecuted and hectored protagonists, he [Sobol] exhibits the same pathological suspiciousness. He overemphasizes the inner turmoil of the Jewish intelligentsia. Their tragedy does not lie in their selfperception as foreigners, as windblown specks of dust, but rather in their disconnect from the collective, from the soil, from the homeland, from the great brotherhood of the oppressed of all nations—a disconnect that grows in proportion to the increase in social atomization. In this respect, they are similar to their Russian counterparts (L’vov-Rogachevskii, 1922: 161).

To reiterate: a study of the available biographical materials indicates that, for Sobol himself, the question of national identity did not impinge on the connection between the Russian and the Jewish elements, and it most certainly never became an insoluble, dramatic contradiction for him. However, we are not talking here of Sobol the person and his self-perception—which, important though it is as a source of artistic generalizations, never exceeds the boundaries of his private existence—but rather of Sobol the artist, and of the text as an artistic category. From this point of view, Pyl’ is a novel that depicts the drama of groundlessness as arising from simultaneously belonging to two mutually exclusive poles, a variation on the classic line from Aleksei K. Tolstoy’s poem, “No warrior of two camps but just a random guest,” which has here been modified to fit the specific conceptual framework. To a certain extent, this gives us the key to understanding the creative logic of the novelist, who made an honest—and somewhat courageous—attempt to analyze a complex moral, social, and even partially political problem, although it obviously does not explain (or, if you will, excuse) his artistic missteps, which have — 83 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

been exhaustively—and largely accurately—catalogued by the aforementioned A. Lavretskii-Frenkel: If Mr. Sobol had been more interested in purely artistic challenges, he would not have ignored this subject—so tempting for an artist!—and would have tried to develop it more thoroughly. However, Mr. Sobol felt no need to create a work of art; he just had to pour out his inner torment. The novel was written to satisfy this basic spiritual need, which is why it assumed such a pseudo-impressionistic form. His halting speech, which lacks the transitions necessary to create a coherent whole, is a far cry from true impressionism. True impressionism merely reaffirms the work’s artistic coherence and seamlessness through a strict economy of the artistic devices—and, ipso facto, of the reader’s attention. By contrast, pseudo-impression, which leaves gaps between the disparate elements of the narrative, merely exhausts the reader’s attention, unfairly requiring him to fill in the gaps left by the artist. Mr. Sobol’s novel is an example of such pseudoimpressionism, even though his short stories reveal an artist who is capable of crafting impressionistic texts that are both reverential and coherent (Lavretskii, 1916: 39–40).

Despite not being an unmitigated triumph, Pyl’ undoubtedly became a literary event for its time, marking an important milestone in the writer’s artistic evolution: among his contemporaries, Sobol became known as “the author of a sensational novel.”10 The second edition of Pyl’ came out in the first half of October 1917. A Yiddish version of the novel was printed in New York, in the Yiddish-language newspaper Die Zeit. Later, as a result of changes in historical circumstances and shifts in the public mood, Pyl’ ceased to be a sensational and widely read novel, and became a half-forgotten historical and literary fact. However, despite having passed into literary history, Pyl’ has retained its link with one of the cardinal problems of the RussianJewish literary discourse—the opposition between “rootedness” and “groundlessness.” In this respect, the spiritual quest of Sobol the author, which had had such a dramatic impact on his own artistic fate, has not lost its relevance through the years. — 84 —

III.2

J ew ish T he mes , M ot ifs , a nd I mages in S obol’ s S hort S tor ies

Sobol’s short story Tikhoe techenie [The Quiet Current] is a vivid refutation of the common view that Jews can only be portnye or latutniki11 [tailors], moneylenders, sales agents, or shopkeepers.12 Its protagonists are, to use the words of one of them, “not quite the typical Jewish family” (Sobol, 1927–28, I: 50)—hunters and fishermen, Siberians of the Mosaic faith. Tikhoe techenie seems to be a kind of response to the words of the critic A. G. Gornfeld, who, as mentioned before, reviewed Sobol’s book Rasskazy (1915) and wrote that the latter’s wimpy and pathetic Jewish protagonists are always unfortunate stepchildren of fate. Occasionally, their complaints are touching, yet they never seem to be able to build their lives for themselves and in their own way. A sort of inner powerlessness can be deduced from this limited outlook, this blindness to life, this monotonous lyricism (Gornfeld, 1915: 334).

The story revolves around Moisei Davydovich Fefer, a Siberian Jewish merchant, and his six children—five sons and a daughter— all of whom live in a village in the taiga. (There are two additional sons: one of them fled his parents’ home, became a circus strongman under the name of Grigorii Buriatin, and is currently far away in Russia; the second son, Monia, who appears in the story, resides in Irkutsk.) The father and his sons are tall, strong men, and are so at odds with the common Jewish stereotype that one of the characters remarks, in a fit of open admiration, “One could never tell that you are Jews. Actually, you look like real people” (Sobol, 1927–28, I: 41). Monia tells us the following about his father and brothers: — 85 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

My grandfather hails from Russia, but my father was born here, which makes him a full-blooded Siberian. He has been everywhere: in Qiqihar, in Kyakhta; he has even paid a visit to the Honghuzi, beyond the Lesser Khingan. He’s such a vigorous man. And his strength is amazing. He can ride for seven days without dismounting. When he was younger, he used to go hunting bears on his own, take my word for it. He’s an excellent shot. He remembers that he’s a Jew only during the winter, and then only on Sabbath—and at Passover, too. At all other times, he is utterly oblivious to his Jewishness, or so it seems to me. It’s odd, isn’t it? After all, we’re so used to religious fanaticism. And all my brothers have taken after him: hunters, muscles, horses, you know how it goes (ibid.: 50).

The powerful, athletic protagonists of Tikhoe techenie hark back to the literary tradition of the “muscular Jew.” Zalman Shneur wrote of Jewish foresters, woodcutters, and raftsmen who were able—and willing—to defend themselves with their mighty fists whenever the occasion arose. Another example is the liverant (horse trader) Aron Getz from Aleksandr Kipen’s short story Liverant, who, in addition to his prodigious physical strength, is also marked by an unwillingness to bear insults in silence. In one episode, he refuses to make way for a traveling clerk on the road. The clerk then strikes him on the face—an action that he soon comes to regret: Unhurriedly, calmly, and silently, Getz gave him a sound thrashing with his whip; he also mauled the coachman who had leaped from his seat to aid the clerk. Only later, as he was settling back into his carriage, he said in a dark, deep, rasping voice: “Don’t make fools of yourselves, you sons of bitches!... Such charlatans!...” (Kipen, 1910: 81).

Monia, who is close to the revolutionary movement, believes this type should be emulated by the whole “Jewish mass”—they must become “strong and powerful, assimilate into their environment, or disappear for good” (Sobol, 1927–28, I: 51). The story’s dramatic events are set into motion when Monia brings two exiled revolutionaries—the Jew Shuster and the Russian Suslikov—into Moisei Davydovich’s home. Both of them are attracted to Musia, Fefer’s daughter, who prefers the dry, acerbic, — 86 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

and indifferent Shuster over the lively and outgoing Suslikov. Her growing intimacy with her chosen suitor leads to a noisy showdown with her father, after which Shuster is shown the door. Then Chaim, Moisei Davydovich’s eldest son, tries in vain to get his father to calm down: “Father, sit down! Father, I ask you to be quiet and to see reason. Father, would you prefer her to be with that Russian? Father, we must be happy that she has chosen this one and not the other one…” (ibid.: 60).

Tikhoe techenie has some similarities to another work of fiction by Sobol, written and published a few years earlier—the novella Pesn’ Pesnei [Song of Songs].13 Its narrator and protagonist, Borukh Yitzkovich Mekhanik, is another example of an “ill-defined” Jew whose dissimilarity to the rest of the Jewish “tribe” is singled out for praise by the non-Jewish environment, in a manner similar to the Fefer family (“One could never tell that you are Jews. Actually, you look like real people”).14 As in Tikhoe techenie, the female protagonist of Pesn’ Pesnei, a Jewish girl named Ethel, the narrator’s sister, falls in love with the Bundist Mendele, an itinerant agitator against the prevailing social order, and becomes pregnant by him. Her actions run counter to the narrator’s wishes (as the elder brother, he has assumed the role of their late father). Sobol—himself a former Bundist and revolutionary agitator who had to pay for his activities with penal labor in Siberia—splits his own personality between the two male characters: on the one hand, he projects his past life onto Mendele; on the other hand, he also identifies with the narrator— a man suffering from an inner dissonance, permanently adrift, unable to fit in or find peace of mind even in foreign countries, where he had lived in his youth. We might say that the autobiographical element predominates in Sobol’s prose—of both the early and the later period. At the same time, the context of the Biblical Song of Songs informs both incarnations of the author’s contradictory “self” in the novella: Borukh reads the Song at various times in his life, thereby seeming to relate this ancient text to the very different circumstances of his own love story, which had gone nowhere, and — 87 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

to the love between Ethel and Mendele, which he desperately tries to resist. Pesn’ Pesnei was composed at the time when Sobol was reflecting on the dramatic events of the previous years of his life—his dalliance with revolutionary ideas, his arrest, penal labor, escape to Europe, and return to Russia. It seems that his decision to base the text on the Bible stemmed from a need to reinterpret the stages and events of his own life through the broader prism of eternal problems that do not go away with the passage of time. It is hard to believe that Sobol would later find it necessary to revise this novella—which was itself a kind of “reworking” of his personal fate “through a global prototype.” And yet, an obviously falsified version of his Pesn’ Pesnei—an anemic short story entitled О liubvi i starosti [On Love and Old Age]—was printed in the Leningrad-based Krasnaia Gazeta [Red Newspaper] (Sobol, 1926),15—the very same newspaper which, just a day earlier, had reported his suicide. Certainly, the history of Soviet literature offers plentiful examples of authors who had to conform to the prevailing “proletarian-agrarian” symbolic and stylistic paradigm, and refrain from writing on Jewish themes because of censorship (or for other reasons).16 Nevertheless, the blatant “Sovietization” of Sobol’s text is a particularly striking and fascinating case. We do not have reliable information concerning the identity of the person who went through the text and meticulously removed any and all references to the Jewry. Nevertheless, it is almost certain that this “vivisection” was carried out not by Sobol himself, but by one of his posthumous “well-wishers”—presumably, someone close to him. Furthermore, this “editor” almost certainly acted with the best of intentions, in accordance with the new historical imperative: presenting an author who has been ideologically reshaped, and who has cast aside the shackles of the “accursed past.” The editor’s task was made easier by the fact that Sobol himself could neither confirm nor deny this ideological transformation. Obviously, this was done in order to shield Sobol from the ire of the critics and appease the hostile reviewers of his work. For instance, shortly after his death, one critic, Iakov Shafir, published a review of the first two volumes of Sobol’s four-volume Complete — 88 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

Works. There he wrote that Sobol’s romantic revolutionaries were both misguided dreamers and, at the same time, Jewish nationalists (Shafir, 1926: 7–8). Also, it is no accident that, out of all the works written by this author, only Pesn’ Pesnei was singled out for such “bowdlerization”— after all, the symbolic connotations of this novella, which reaches back to a Biblical urtext (Shir ha-Shirim), are obvious. Compared to the original, this second edition of the novella underwent an impressive national metamorphosis. The change of title entailed the loss of the organic link with the Biblical text, which had served as the key archetype. In this way, Sobol’s poetic intonation was utterly ruined. Furthermore, the setting moved away from the Jewish shtetl, and the protagonist-narrator’s pedigree was radically altered: the new narrator in О liubvi i starosti successfully overcomes the problem of national origins. Without touching on other aspects of these puzzling and preposterous transformations, we must note that the new short story constructed on the ruins of Sobol’s novella is narratively linked with the last section of that novella, which depicts the arrival of the exiled Jew Mendele in the shtetl and the subsequent events. The short story denationalizes the protagonists: the Jewish girl Ethel is turned into the “neutral” Vera, whereas Mendele becomes merely the “red-haired boy.” In addition to all that, the Krasnaia Gazeta edition of the text is given a new ending, supposedly more fitting for a “Soviet” story: …The red-haired boy has been dead for many years: in 1916, practically on the eve of the Revolution, he died a heroic, brave, and beautiful death during a daring uprising by the convicts at the Central… (Sobol, 1926)

It is known that old songs are being constantly rewritten and updated to fit changing circumstances, and this episode is a good example of that. However, in this case the author of the “old song” bears no responsibility for the “update”; rather, it was foisted upon him, almost certainly against his will. Our hypothesis—that Sobol had nothing to do with the crude adaptation of his Pesn’ Pesnei to Soviet tastes and sensibilities (or, at the very least, that he had no direct authorial input into this — 89 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

adaptation)—might have remained a baseless supposition if not for a fortuitous discovery: a typewritten copy of the story O liubvi i starosti that has turned up in his family archive. On the first page, there is a remark written by an unfamiliar hand: “Dear Andrei! Look at the results. Do you consent to the publication of the story in this form?” The text itself is full of alterations made by the same hand. The document is dated “October 1925.” In other words, Sobol was well aware of the new “edition” of Pesn’ Pesnei, which was prepared while he was still alive. We do not know how he responded to this initiative. However, the fact that this text was not published in his lifetime, but only after his death (and rather hastily at that—on the day following his suicide), enables us to conclude that Sobol’s attitude toward this mutilated textual monstrosity was far from positive and approving. The subject of anti-Jewish pogroms occupies a prominent place in Sobol’s oeuvre. In 1925, when the poet and literary critic S. P. Lieberman—who was at the time an émigré living in Berlin— decided to publish a collection of Jewish texts through the old and venerable Ivan Ladyzhnikov Russian publishing house, he contacted Sobol, among others. The latter wrote in reply: I’ll try to send you my Jewish stories as soon as possible. However, in the last years I’ve written only two such tales—you can find one of them, Pogreb [The Cellar], in Oblomki [Wreckage].17 As for the rest—I don’t think they’ll be fitting now (cit.: Frezinskii, 2008: 327–28).

Ultimately, this Jewish collection never materialized, like many other projects dreamed up by S. P. Lieberman. David Puzik, the protagonist of Pogreb, is a thoroughly humiliated and oppressed person. He bears the weight of three crosses, a triple burden: he was a Jew; he had a monstrous wart on his nose, reaching down to his lip; and, finally, he had a ridiculous last name [puzik means “pot belly” in Russian]. He was regularly beaten because of the first cross, taunted for the second, tormented on account of the third (Sobol, 1927–28, II: 32–3). — 90 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

However, these misfortunes, coupled with the very fact of his birth, are not the sum total of Puzik’s earthly suffering. The civil strife in Russia forces him to abandon his settled way of life, making his already restless existence almost unbearable: From spring to autumn, Puzik flitted from town to town. As the sun rose, so did Puzik. He hastened to leave Golta: the Greens were approaching, the lilies were blooming in the woods, and Golta’s residents boarded up their windows; mothers seized their children, and the elderly wandered to and fro. As the fiery sun reached its zenith, Puzik made his way to the station through fields and garden plots: the gang leader Marusia was laying her paws on the pillows and synagogue candelabra. As the sun set, Puzik was busy fleeing from Voznesensk: Angel’s men invaded noisily on their rigs (ibid.: 33).

Desperately seeking a refuge from the bloody Russian nightmare that has engulfed him, the protagonist of Pogreb dreams of Palestine: And Puzik realizes that he needs Palestine, that he needs that tree—the Cedar of Lebanon. To lean against its trunk, to stretch his stiff wooden legs, to take a look at the sky—a Jewish sky!— and to fall into a childlike, blissful slumber by the tomb of Rachel, matriarch of the Jewish people: blessed be the Lord who sends sleep to weary eyes... [...] Truly, there must be some land where his simple and proud name—David Ben-Simon—will assume its rightful place under its ancient and rightful sky” (ibid.: 33–4).

It seems very likely that the ultimate fate of the protagonist of Ilya Ehrenburg’s novel The Stormy Life of Lasik Roitschwantz (1927)— meeting his end at the tomb of the matriarch Rachel—was inspired by this episode in Sobol’s story. This also helps to explain a striking similarity in the description of their deaths: Puzik’s “childlike, blissful slumber” vs. the “childlike smile upon the dead face” of Roitschwantz . Unlike Ehrenburg’s Lasik, Sobol’s Puzik fails to reach Palestine: his fate is less grotesque, yet more dependent on the vagaries of the merciless Russian reality. Circumstances force him into the — 91 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

company of Staff Captain Sineliuk and Attorney Veresov, both of whom, despite sharing his predicament (all three of them dream of getting out of Russia, and are hiding at night in the cellar of Korney Povilda, the owner of a safehouse who links the fugitives up with smugglers willing to ferry them to the other bank of the Dniester, across the border), loathe and despise him with every fiber of their being because he is a Jew—and, therefore, the primary cause of the revolutionary catastrophe that has befallen Russia.18 In the end, there is no place for him in the boat. Puzik, up to his neck in water, tries to pursue the departing men into the river and desperately grabs the side of the boat. The last thing he feels is the bottom slipping from under his feet, and then he sinks into “darkness, forever,” as if sinking into a gloomy cellar (ibid.: 38). We do not know exactly which second “Jewish tale” Sobol referred to in his letter to Lieberman. Anti-Jewish pogroms during the Civil War are depicted in the story Kogda tsvetet vishnia [When The Cherry Trees Blossom] (1925), where a band of cutthroats, on the orders of their leader, the dashing Dziuba, hang the Jews not on the cherry trees, but only “in the synagogue courtyard: for it was nearer to their God—and it would also save the cherry from polluting contact” (Sobol, 1930: 111). The Jews fled into the fields, the steppe, and everywhere they came upon an unbroken chain of rigs. Under the wheels, beneath the horses’ hooves, and under the carts were strewn young girls’ braids, sheitels—wigs worn by Jewish women from the day of their marriage on—resembling scalps, all soiled with manure; white, striped, gray skirts, torn in the struggle, lay soaking in horses’ urine. A wild cry of anguish uttered by hundreds of mouths, gaping from ear to ear in the dream of the loneliness of the steppes, slashed, tore through the heaven-made, pinkish blanket of flowers (ibid.: 112).

The atrocities committed by the pogromists were supposed to be a major element in Sobol’s novel Iudei [The Jews], on which he was working in 1923. The existence of this novel is known from several sources, even though it remained unfinished, and was ultimately lost—no written fragments are known to exist. And yet, the available evidence indicates that the novel must have existed in — 92 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

textual form, and was not merely a phantom. The literary chronicle of the magazine Rossiia [Russia] informed its readers that Sobol was working on the novel Iudei at the time: The novel encompasses the years 1919–1921. The wave of pogroms instigated by Denikin and Makhno has just washed over Ukraine. The Jewish towns are dying off; the old way of life is breaking down; a sweeping panorama of the social disintegration of the old Jewry—and of the creation of a new Jewry through conflict with the new Russian life—opens up before the reader. In the middle of it all stands the figure of a half-dreamer, half-wanderer (a Jew wandering through the Russian fields, dreaming of a new world of Jewish culture), who is killed by bandits. The novel includes numerous gruesome, bestial scenes, depictions of torture and murder: the via dolorosa of Russian Jewry. The primary motif of the novel is the duality of the Jews against the backdrop of our contemporary horrors, and the new dispersal of Jewry. The novel, which was read by the Moscow literati, has made a tremendous impression, and is a testament to the author’s outstanding new achievements.19

The same novel was mentioned in Sobol’s obituary, which was written by Piotr Pilskii: In 1923, Sobol became obsessed with writing a new novel. It was supposed to be titled Iudei, and dealt with the revolutionary period of 1919–1921. I do not know what became of it, but for some reason I am convinced that it must have remained unfinished. Sobol was not born to be a novelist. His fluttering, palpitating soul secretly craved new ways of self-expression and other forms of confession. Sobol should have composed long poems about love. It is no accident that he was always in love, fickle with his affections, filled with a dreamy yearning for women, for the tenderness of their caresses, for the storms of passion—as though he sought, and failed to find, the inspiration that would revive him (Pilskii, 1926).

If we now go back to Sobol’s letter to Lieberman and try to determine the identity of his second tale about Jews, we would venture to guess that he was referring to his short story Shchet [The Score], which depicts a pogrom in a Jewish shtetl during the Civil War. As in the abovementioned essay Tridtsat’, the massacre of the — 93 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

Jews is narrated in a coldly numerical and abstract way. Obviously, unlike the essay, where the number of victims is in the tens of thousands, the esthetic specificity of this story requires smaller figures. Nevertheless, it, too, foregrounds the quantitative aspect of the ongoing atrocity: the number of victims of the pogrom, which is constantly invoked by one of the characters, becomes the key motif of the tale: “Silence, Shaya, silence. I know the score.” The story consists of several interlinked scenes: the torture, robbery, and murders are set against the backdrop of a merry party going on in the apartment of the head of the post and telegraph office, which is located next to the home of Mendel Schmertz, who is being interrogated by two pogromists demanding to know where he has stashed away the money. The exhausted old man, already on the brink of death, replies: “I’ve given you a thousand. There’s no more,” and he closed his eyes: the gray eyebrows knitted together, as though drawing a final line. “Give him a taste of it,” Valitskii nodded to Evtushenko. Evtushenko drew a match in business-like silence, lit a cigar, pulled on it once or twice, gave a grunt, and pulled on it again. And when the tip reddened and widened, Evtushenko pinched the cigar with two fingers and leaned over Schmertz. Valitskii raised a hand. “Well, do you give it up? One… Two… Three…” The old man was silent. Ripping the collar of Schmertz’s shirt, Evtushenko stabbed the cigar into his hairy, gray-blue chest. The air filled with the smell of burned hair. The bed under Schmertz began to creak; his legs, bound with rope, shuddered and grew still; his gray eyebrows drew even closer. Holding on to his saber, Valitskii leaned over the old man. “Will you tell us, you bastard? Oh, the old devil, how tightly he clings to his coin! Will you tell us?” He bent toward Evtushenko, but was unable to keep his footing and reeled. The cigar slipped between Evtushenko’s fingers and fell upon the naked body. The cigar lay there, emitting smoke. The bluish smoke drifted along his face toward the eyebrows. — 94 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

“I’ll give, I’ll give it to you,” Basya shouted from the threshold; her gnarled fingers slid across the lintel as she tried to get up.— I know. I’ll give it to you. “She’s lying,” Evtushenko said without turning, “she’s just a servant.” “No. No,” Basya sputtered. “I’m his sister. Oh... oh, his sister.” “Servant,” Evtushenko insisted. “Sister,” her mouth spat out blood. “Servant. She is lying, that bitch. In her apron… Looks like…” The cigar was still smoking… (Sobol, 1925: 58-9).

The Soviet critics, who never had a great fondness for Sobol, treated this story rather disdainfully. Tikhon Churilin, who wrote for the magazine Ogoniok where it was first published (1923, n 35), called it a “piquant trifle,” noting its excessive length and claiming that it should have been simpler.20 Without engaging in belated polemics with this critic, we would like to note that Sobol’s story could have found another, more attentive and sympathetic reader. The Israeli archive of the Russian-Jewish émigré poet Dovid Knut (David Mironovich Fiksman; 1900–55) preserves a first draft of two stanzas from his poem “I Gaze out of My Window into the Depths” (from his book Vtoraia Kniga Stikhov, 1928), which did not make it into the final version. Undoubtedly, this poem by Knut— a native of Bessarabia whose family settled in Kishinev in 1903, and for whom, therefore, the Kishinev Pogrom was an actual childhood memory, and not merely a tragic historical event—depicts an antiJewish pogrom. However, this depiction is rather oblique, without the direct statements and explicit images that are traditionally invoked in descriptions of pogroms.21 The consistent use of “implicit semantics” enables us to make an educated guess as to why the poet chose to remove these two stanzas, which seem to “give the game away” and reveal the actual subject matter of the poem: I saw the fields by night grow wet and slick with gore; The bodies lay about, like petals red and gruesome. I felt the earth convulse, as in the days of yore; She tried to fit them all upon her muddy bosom. — 95 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

Their scream had rent the night—a harsh, inhuman cry. Asleep or wide awake, I heard it, ever swelling… That old man, burned alive, had been the last to die. His charred remains lay cold within his ransacked dwelling.

Obviously, this is far from certain, yet we can reasonably assume that the final two lines about the “old man” could be inspired by Mendel Shmertz from Sobol’s story—who is, indeed, the last to die, being “burned alive... within his ransacked dwelling.” Another, less likely possibility (which must nevertheless be mentioned) is that, in his letter to Lieberman, Sobol was referring to his earlier story Vstan’ i idi [Get Up and Go]. That story had first been published in L. Iaffe’s Safrut anthology (vol. 1, 1918), which was discussed in part II.22 Vstan’ i idi was created as a combination of two of Sobol’s earlier novellas—Nechaianno [Accidentally] (1916) and Staraia istoriia [An Old Story] (1915)—with the resulting textual “fusion” edited only lightly. Following the publication in Safrut, a Yiddish translation of the story (Shei oif on get) was printed in the Warsawbased Jewish daily Das Yiddishe Folk in the same year (1918).23 An expanded version of the tale was published posthumously under the title Pechal’nyi vesel’chak [A Sad Merry Fellow] (1927). As indicated in the printed version, the date of composition (or, rather, the date when certain scenes were expanded and deepened) was May 28, 1926. As we can see, the author was busy fiddling with this “recurring” text till the very last days of his life. Presumably, he did it for a good reason: Vstan’ i idi / Pechal’nyi vesel’chak held some peculiar significance for him. In 1922, a reworked and revised edition of Safrut was published in Berlin by the S. Zaltsman publishing house, which had relocated to the German capital.24 The Hungarian scholar Zsuzsa Hetényi, one of the few to have paid attention to this story by Sobol, claims that it was published not in the first, but in the second edition of Safrut—that is, in 1922 (Hetényi, 2006: 75; also: Hetényi, 2008: 197, 198). Correctly identifying its central theme—the theme of antiSemitism, which seeps into the most intimate and sacred spheres — 96 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

of human existence (friendship, love, family relations) and does its dirty, treacherous work—Hetényi shows how Sobol fearlessly accentuates and sharpens this theme. Judeophobia is not merely a tribute to age-old social prejudice, but a profound spiritual malady that infects everyone and everything. It is destructive in and of itself, and it knows no bounds: after penetrating all aspects of life, it easily severs the strongest human ties and bonds. The protagonist of this story is Aleksandr Gomelskii, also known as Iakov Baltsan, also known as Suraiskii—in addition to his stage name, Charles Oppenheimer, which he assumes for the single theatrical performance in which he participates for financial gain (such proliferation of names is common in Sobol’s works). He has converted to Christianity in order to be united with his beloved, a Christian woman. However, during a heated argument his wife throws the anti-Semitic slur “zhid” at him, and he finds this insult unbearable. After the resulting breakup, the protagonist begins to wander all over Europe (while we are never told this explicitly, we can easily deduce that his wanderings take place within the milieu of the political émigrés)—he shows up in Salonika, in Paris, and, finally, in Italy. Along the way, he acquires a donkey for a companion. He festoons the creature with garish ribbons and nicknames it “Comrade Mikhail.” As alluded to earlier, after arriving in Paris, the penniless Gomelskii-Baltsan-Suraiskii joins an itinerant Jewish theatrical troupe, which tours the country and stages a play entitled Mendel Beilis. The play deals with the famous “blood libel” trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis (1911–13), which had repercussions beyond the borders of Russia and drew worldwide publicity. At that trial, Beilis, a Jewish factory superintendent from Kiev, was accused of murdering the Christian boy Andrei Iushchinskii for ritual purposes. The protagonist of Vstan’ i idi, who is himself an apostate from the faith of his forefathers, plays the role of the Jew-baiting priest Pranaitis. His uncanny resemblance to that anti-Semite goes well beyond the physical (“He looks an awful lot like a Lithuanian priest—tall, lean, wiry, long-legged” (Sobol, 1918a: 47)): his essence, informed by his real-life conversion to Christianity, seems to fit the nature of the role he is asked to play. — 97 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

The narrator, who knew the “many-named” protagonist back in Switzerland and France, meets him in Italy. By that time, the latter has acquired the donkey (an ancient symbol of wandering), in addition to a cart and an old barrel organ “that hissed like some old, angered cat” (ibid.), and become a voluntary vagabond— a transformation that, in Sobol’s metaphorical language, must indicate a return to his earlier, Jewish condition. Undoubtedly, the very title of the story has a Jewish connotation—a fact correctly noted by Hetényi, who writes that the Ashkenazi Hebrew form used in the text (“lekh lekho”) corresponds not to “Get up and go” (“Qum lekh,” Jonah 1: 2), but, rather, to the beginning of chapter 12 of the Book of Genesis: “The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you....” (Hetényi, 2006: 77). She also mentions the use of the phrase “Lekh lekho” as the title of the final novella of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman (ibid.: 78). Oddly, however, she says nothing about the Beilis trial, which is mentioned in Sholem Aleichem’s text. This reference strengthens the link between Sobol’s text and the classic Jewish author. In fact, it does not merely strengthen the link but also enables us to regard this story as Sobol’s own take on the trope of Jewish exile from “hearth and home”—an exile that is followed by endless wandering along life’s crooked paths. It is clear that Sobol’s reworking of this classic tale is consciously modeled on Sholem Aleichem’s prototype (albeit with a different setting and plot structure). In his review of Safrut, A. Lavretskii (Frenkel) noted that Sobol’s story is written in a harsh, even fitful, style, which recalls Pyl’ and the first volume produced by this writer [i.e., his collection Rasskazy (1915)]. The protagonist is symbolic: he is human “dust,” “without kith or kin”—and, obviously, without that “law” of which Bialik dreams.25 Iakov Baltsan, a.k.a. Aleksandr Gomelskii, is capable of only one thing—“advertising his pain on all the platforms of all the railway stations in the world.” Through this living and breathing artistic image, Sobol has explained the poet’s mournful contemplation (Lavretskii, 1918).

— 98 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

A later review of the Berlin edition of Safrut was rather skeptical of Sobol’s story, claiming that it, like all the other texts in the prose section, “did not rise above the level of mere belletristic craftsmanship” (Berkhin, 1922).26 Nevertheless, the available evidence indicates that Vstan’ i idi contains another, more complex subtext, which is associatively tied to a specific person— P. M. Rutenberg (1878-1942)—and to his return to Judaism. A former engineer at the Putilov plant in St. Petersburg, a member of the Social-Revolutionary Party who was close to the terrorists (those foremen of the “red workshop” who struck terror into the hearts of the powers that be), Rutenberg took part in the event that would go down in the annals of Russian history as “Bloody Sunday.” On that day, January 9, 1905, several tens of thousands of St. Petersburg workers, led by the Orthodox priest Georgii Gapon, marched toward the Winter Palace in order to present the tsar with a petition that described their dire situation. However, this peaceful demonstration was met with a hail of bullets: the people’s attempt to submit their grievances to the tsar and persuade him to alleviate their suffering was drowned in blood. Apparently, Rutenberg was assigned by the central committee of the Social-Revolutionary Party to watch over Father Gapon and exercise “party control.” When the first shots rang out, and it became clear that the authorities had decided to use deadly force against unarmed civilians, Rutenberg virtually saved Gapon’s life: he took him out of the line of fire, found a safe shelter for him, etc. However, it soon turned out that Gapon was a police agent, and Rutenberg orchestrated the execution of the provocateur. In 1906, Rutenberg left Russia, fleeing imminent arrest, and settled in Italy. It was there that Sobol made his acquaintance. Back in Russia, Rutenberg had converted to Christianity in order to marry a Christian woman, Olga Nikolaevna Khomenko (1871–1942), who was at the time head of the democratic Biblioteka Dlia Vsekh (Library for All) publishing house. After his arrival in Italy, in addition to thoughts of divorce, Rutenberg also entertained the possibility of “de-converting” from the Orthodox Christian faith. In a letter to Khomenko dated December 20, 1911 (mailed from Milano to St. Petersburg), he wrote openly of the “racial — 99 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

intolerance” emanating from the woman whom, up until recently, he had regarded as his life partner: It is not I who show you hostility; it is you who treat me with hostility—albeit possibly an unconscious one; a hostility borne of the bitter fate that has befallen you on account of me; an organic and understandable hostility that has unfortunately become all too palpable; a hostility that is clouded by the racial intolerance which has been suggested to you (Khazan, 2008, I: 289).

One year later, on January 7, 1913, Rutenberg contacted Savinkov, who was also in Italy at the time, and asked him to help find a lawyer who would be able to inform him “what needs to be done in order to leave the Orthodox faith and be once again officially registered as a Jew.”27 It seems likely that the lawyer whom Savinkov recommended was none other than the future defense attorney of the abovementioned Beilis (whose trial would be held in the autumn of that year, 1913), Oskar Osipovich Gruzenberg; at least, a meeting between Rutenberg and Gruzenberg in Italy is recorded in the latter’s memoirs.28 In 1919, Rutenberg—who had not merely left the Orthodox faith and returned to the fold of Judaism, but had also become an ardent Zionist—arrived in Palestine, and went on to become one of the most prominent and fascinating figures in the twentieth-century history of this land: he founded the Palestine Electric Company, which still exists today as the Israel Electric Corporation, and became its first director. Several letters from Sobol have survived in his archive: the last is dated February 20, 1925, and it was written in Sorrento, where Sobol was resting and recuperating after a failed suicide attempt. This letter is a cry for help by a writer who is experiencing a tragic rupture within himself and with the surrounding world: Sobol asks Rutenberg to help him secure passage to Palestine, if only for a brief time. How Rutenberg responded to this request is unknown. It is doubtful whether he could have replied in the affirmative (or, indeed, whether he would have replied at all): Rutenberg was hardly able to assist Sobol, no matter how much he wanted to help. For one thing, Palestine in those years was one of the least suitable places for those looking for respite and a change — 100 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

of scenery; and besides, Rutenberg, who was reasonably familiar with Sobol’s personality, knew all too well (and made no secret of that knowledge) that, should Sobol actually come to the Promised Land, he would not stay there for long. Sobol’s request was a kind of desperate plea, a manifestation of his restless spirit—and nothing more. Obviously, Rutenberg, as a respectable statesman, could neither accept nor respect such wishes. However, let us go back to the short story Vstan’ i idi. Apparently, Sobol was deeply troubled by the notion of changing one’s religious affiliation. Echoes of this theme can be heard elsewhere in his oeuvre—notably, in the thoughts of one of the characters in his story Moisei i Magomet. Trying to determine the motives that lead one to convert to another faith and charting the seemingly improbable transformation of a Christian into a Muslim (or the even more incredible transformation of an erstwhile Jew into a believer in Allah and his prophet Muhammad), he asks his interlocutor, with rhetorical pathos: So, in your opinion, we should believe the one to whom we go, thereby killing our faith in the one whom we leave? And if that is the case—this is not apostasy, is it? But what if we couldn’t care less for either of them, and this whole “transformation” is just as easy as changing one’s pantaloons? Why is a change of pantaloons considered a trivial event, whereas a change of “this” is regarded as apostasy? What is the difference? Where should we draw the line? (Sobol, 1916b: 43).29

In addition to the abovementioned request, Rutenberg’s Israeli archive contains a few more letters from Sobol; all of them date to the period of his European exile, and were mailed from the Italian town of Cavi di Lavagna. One of them, which appears to have been written for a single purpose—to remind Rutenberg of his existence—ends with Sobol sending his regards to Rutenberg’s “wonderful little donkey” and asking Rutenberg “how it [the donkey] is doing” and whether it still remembers him, Sobol. None of the extant sources on Rutenberg’s life in Italy—including reports by the Foreign Department of the Russian secret police, which took a keen interest in the activities of the erstwhile “troublemaker”— — 101 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

seem to contain any references to a donkey. The austere Rutenberg, who had little fondness for useless trinkets and baubles, would be highly unlikely to own such an exotic pet. The only possible reason for him to acquire it would be a practical need for transportation. In the final iteration of this recurrent plot—the short story Pechal’nyi vesel’chak—Sobol launches into a veritable hymn of praise to the donkey, which was possibly modeled on Rutenberg’s pet: A donkey—whether in Italy, in Central Asia, on the Mugan Plain in the Caucasus, or in the vicinity of the village of Vapniarka; it does not matter where—is a wonderful, exceptionally charming, and pleasant animal that has been unfairly maligned and slandered by man. I ask you to treat donkeys with honor and respect. Their poor reputation is a historical error that must be corrected sooner or later, and what better time to do it than our period of the “transvaluation of all values”? (Sobol, 1927: 8).

We may assume that Sobol’s contacts with Rutenberg in Italy were fairly extensive. Apparently, Sobol was well-informed of Rutenberg’s marital woes and of the intention of this “repentant apostate” to return to Judaism. It was this real-life plot that served as the catalyst for his short story, where, in accordance with the laws of literature, true events are embellished with fiction, in the same way that Rutenberg’s hard-working donkey was bedecked with the festive, multi-colored ribbons of the tramp Aleksandr Gomelskii. From this thematic perspective, Sobol’s story turns out to be even more closely linked to Sholem Aleichem’s Lekh Lekho! [Get Thee Out!], the last part of the Tevye cycle: as Tevye is being driven out of his native land, his wayward daughter Chava, whom he had cursed for marrying a Christian and betraying the faith of her forefathers, wishes to join him in exile. This dilemma—if Tevye should forgive his own daughter, who wishes to de-convert from the Orthodox Christian faith (to use Rutenberg’s terminology); or if he should persist in his rejection of the former apostate and remain deaf to her pleas, despite her repentance—turns out to be Tevye’s final test and the point where we leave him for good. It is hard to believe that such a close intertextual link between Vstan’ i idi and Tevye the Milkman could be accidental. — 102 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

Certainly, this reading of Sobol’s tale is just one possible interpretation, and there may be other, equally valid readings. Nevertheless, it enables us to see a closer connection between the author’s fictional generalizations and the real-life events which were known to him and to which he never ceased to pay attention. Obviously, the “Rutenberg plot” (if we may call it so), has undergone an artistic transformation in the story. One character that never had a real-life prototype and was invented by Sobol out of whole cloth is Mikhail, the brother of the protagonist’s wife. He is “a prominent cooperator,” who works with Gomelskii-BaltsanSuraiskii in one “very radical” newspaper and who stands “as he likes to say, ... on the same platform” as the protagonist (Sobol, 1918a: 49),—later, Gomelskii names his donkey after him. Mikhail tries to downplay the incident between the protagonist and his wife, claiming that his sister’s offensive remark was a mere accident: I have here a letter from Mikhail. I know that he was stroking his crew cut with one hand even as his other hand wrote to me that, obviously, I shouldn’t blow one casual word out of all proportion and make a mountain out of a molehill, that my pathological sensitivity will be the death of me. Well, what can I do, comrade Mikhail? That’s just the way I am—and I will advertise my pain on all the platforms of all the railway stations in the world (ibid.).

In Pechal’nyi vesel’chak, this fragment was greatly expanded— which is yet another indication of the nature of the “artistic obsession” that took hold of Sobol and made him revisit a plot that he had used in the past: I have here a letter from Mikhail. It is a very sensible, dialectical letter, with the proper quotes (“anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools,30 but you know, my dear, that my sister is a smart, cultured woman, that she adores you, that our family has always devoutly observed the best commandments of the Russian intelligentsia...”). There are commas in all the appropriate places, everything is sorted out with meticulous precision; all things are ordered and shiny, like the buttons on his waistcoats; it is all so clear-cut, like the formula “Being determines consciousness.” — 103 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

I see him confidently stroking his crew cut with one hand, even as his other hand writes to me patronizingly that I should not—nay, must not—blow one casual word out of all proportion because of my pathological sensitivity (“I have always told you that your thoughts are disorganized, that you cannot tie up the knots, and that the art of synthesis is not for you...”). Dear comrade Mikhail; dear crew cut; dear waistcoat, buttoned up with the latest syntheses—there’s no helping it, I’m not cut out of the same mold. And allow me to untie one small, old, little knot in my own way—by cutting it (Sobol, 1927: 17).

Undoubtedly, Sobol was driven by one burning desire, which made him go in circles (or, rather, go repeatedly through the same circle)—the desire to call attention to the hateful syndrome of antiSemitism. This peculiar trait, which formed an integral part of his psychological make-up—this propensity, bordering on obsession, to repeat himself over and over again—turned into a fundamental attribute of his authorial poetics, a fact that we will demonstrate later. Paradoxically, whereas Sobol the person loved to constantly move from place to place, his artistic consciousness preferred to circle around the same points. Sobol’s second encounter with Rutenberg took place when the latter came to Moscow, following a six-month stint in the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Kresty Prison in Petrograd, where he had been imprisoned for his role as one of the leaders of the defense of the Winter Palace during the Bolshevik uprising. On March 23, 1918, Sobol informed Bakhmutskaia of Rutenberg’s arrival: Rutenberg is here. Yesterday, I went with him to visit Iaffe. I’ll tell you about him, and about my conversations with him, when I come to see you.31

The Sobol family archive also contains a photograph taken in the summer of 1918 in the village of Taininskaia near Moscow: Sobol, Rutenberg, and Iaffe are shown sitting on a porch (unfortunately, the fourth person appearing in the image could not be identified). On the back side of the photo, there is an inscription in Bakhmutskaia’s hand: — 104 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

On this day, I cooked lunch, while Mark’s diapers were washed by Rutenberg, who claimed that he found this activity enjoyable (Khlavna, 2005).

However, this photograph and the inscription on its reverse are remarkable not so much for the everyday reality which they reflect— which is rather fascinating in its own right (an erstwhile enemy of tsarist autocracy, who has turned into a staunch anti-Bolshevik and would soon leave for Palestine, where he would become one of the founders of the industrial sector of the future Jewish State, is washing the diapers of a future Soviet poet)—as for their historical context and profound symbolism. Two Jewish public figures, Leib (Lev) Iaffe and Pinkhas Rutenberg—both equally prominent, yet so different from each other—come together in Sobol’s home, and this meeting is a clear indication of the common interests that unite the three men, of their mutual attraction, and (to a certain extent) of the similarity of their aspirations in life. This conclusion is inescapable, even if we accept the view that Sobol’s presence in this company was, in terms of his worldview, not complete, but only partial: undoubtedly, Figure 11. Lower row: Leib Iaffe and Pinkhas the “Russian chaos” Rutenberg; upper row: unidentified person was crawling inside the and Andrei Sobol (village Taininskaia, Jew Sobol.32 near Moscow, summer of 1918) — 105 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

This bears directly on the Jewish element in Sobol’s oeuvre. Obviously, this oeuvre cannot be reduced to a mere depiction of the Jewish worldview. Nevertheless, Jewish themes and images, and the Jewish emotional élan, occupy a prominent place within it. Furthermore, in most of his depictions of Jewish problems (and his attempts to resolve them), Sobol acts not as a mere outside observer and chronicler, but, rather, as a true artist. Obviously, Sobol the writer did not attain a level of literary mastery that might merit a comparison with figures such as Isaac Babel; nevertheless, much of his Russian-Jewish literary output bears the mark of true talent. We must also point out that the poetics of Sobol’s works are rooted in a highly elaborate and harmonious literary technique. By way of illustration, we may mention the effect of “concealed Jewishness” that is achieved in his works. This means that the author does not explicitly identify the characters in all his stories as Jews. On the contrary, he frequently gives them Russian-sounding names, thereby suggesting to the reader that there is nothing specifically Jewish about these types. Thus, the protagonist/narrator of the short story Gorbatyi [The Hunchback] tells us the following about himself: Today, March 25, the Day of the Annunciation, at twelve o’clock, Sergei Petrovich Skorobogachev, a teacher of literature at the former Mariinskii Women’s Gymnasium, will cease to exist. This is necessary, this is inevitable, and this has been preordained. And Skorobogachev is me (Sobol, 1927–28, IV: 61).

However, by virtue of the autobiographical element, Sergei Petrovich Skorobogachev—who outwardly appears to be Russian in all respects—turns into an “implicit Jew.” In the story, Skorobogachev, who does not suffer from any physical imperfections, feels a peculiar hump growing between his shoulder blades. This hump is invisible to all others, except for his niece, who is herself a hunchback. However, it is precisely her perception of her own uncle that turns out to be true. — 106 —

I I I . 2 . J e w i s h T h e m e s , M o t i f s , a n d I m a ge s i n S o b o l ’s S h o r t S t o r i e s

I was dropped when I was a child, she tells him, and then the hump began to grow. I used to be straight as a pine tree—and now I’m twisted and ugly. You seem to have been straightbacked till you turned thirty-five, and only then did you notice your hump. Oh, what a mighty hump you’ve got! And when the powerful, straight-backed people are rushing by, how can you possibly move around? How can you catch up with them? And now you’ve realized the truth—and you’re not afraid of it. But others are afraid, and are hiding their humps (ibid.: 66).

Gorbatyi, whose protagonist forms one link in the endless chain of typically “Sobolian” protagonists—“addled people” (Sobol, 1927: 8)—is the author’s attempt at a metaphorical description of his difference from others, and of his consciousness of that difference. Undoubtedly, Sobol was playing with the familiar image of the “Jewish hump,” which was widespread in contemporary literature—see, for instance, one of Jabotinsky’s articles (Nabroski bez zaglaviia [Sketches Without a Title]): And he bears the weight of his accursed Jewishness, like a disfiguring pustule, like an ugly hump that will never go away, and each and every minute of his life is poisoned by this gulf between his desired self-image and his actual condition... (Jabotinsky, 1905: 39).

Now compare this fragment to a text that was very popular in the 1910s—Leonid Andreev’s article Pervaia stupen’ [First Step], which opens the well-known collection Shchit [Shield]; it depicts the “Jewish Question” as a hump on the back of the Russian man: And how can I, as a Russian intellectual, fail to feel this abnormality, when, together with the solution of the “question,” my own soul is suddenly liberated? It leaps out of the vicious cycle of regular, unpleasant, and monotonous sensations, and gets rid of the pain that was my constant companion throughout my life, acquiring all the traits of those chronic and incurable conditions that will be with us as long as we draw breath. After all, while the Jews themselves may have come to regard the Pale of Settlement, the numerus clausus, and all the rest of it as a basic and immutable fact that disfigured their lives—I, a Russian, saw — 107 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

all this as a kind of hump on my back, an immovable and ugly excrescence that had become a part of me at an uncertain date, under unclear circumstances. But, no matter where I went and what I did, this hump would always stay with me. It disturbed my sleep at night, and during my waking hours, when I was in the company of others, it filled me with shame and embarrassment, like a palpable reminder of some crime for which I thought myself blameless (Andreev, 1915: 2–3).

It should be noted that a real scholarly study of Sobol’s poetics has yet to be done. Right now, this field of research is still in its infancy (for one of the first attempts at such a study, see: Khazan, 2015: 630–86).

III.3

T he Fat e of S obol’ s B ook E vr e i

After Sobol’s death, the Warsaw-based Jewish magazine Literarishe bleter (1932, n 8, February 19, pp. 118-19), published recollections of him by Isaiah Klinov, a Jewish writer and journalist who knew him well. According to these recollections, Klinov had met Sobol in Berlin in early 192533 and found him in the grip of a severe depression, yet his creative energy had remained undiminished. Among other things, Sobol was planning to publish a new series of short stories on everyday life in the Soviet Union, and some of them were supposed to deal with Jewish themes. Given this connection, he asked Klinov to search for a publishing house in Berlin that might be interested in taking on this project. After a visit to Italy, Sobol returned to Moscow. According to the author of this memoir that also served as an obituary, Sobol then sent him an inquiry concerning the progress of this publishing project. However, in the end it amounted to nothing: little more than a year later, Sobol committed suicide. Klinov asserts that, before his death, Sobol wrote a suicide note with a final request to publish his stories in a separate book to be entitled Evrei [Jews]—and furthermore, that the existence of this letter was reported in the press. “What has become of this final collection of short stories by Sobol?” asked Klinov, who was convinced that this collection had been prepared for publication and then irretrievably lost. Here is some information about the author of this memoir. Isaiah (Shaya) Klinov (1890–1963) was born in Ukraine, in the town of Holovanivsk in the Podolia Governorate (nowadays, it is an urban-type settlement in the Kirovohrad Oblast), on December 7, 1890. His father, Iakov Judah, was a petty trader. His mother’s first name was Iakha (née Zborovskaia). Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Odessa, where Shaya began to attend the Faig School of — 109 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

Commerce in 1909. He graduated from the School on June 8, 1911. Later, he studied at the universities of Geneva and Petrograd, and completed his education after returning to Odessa, already under Soviet rule. In his university days, he began to contribute to both Jewish and Russian periodicals. During the brief liberal period that followed the February Revolution of 1917, he edited the Petrogradbased Jewish newspaper Ha-Yom and contributed to the Moscowbased Ha-Am. Klinov’s reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution was extremely hostile, and he moved back to Odessa, fleeing hunger and persecution. There, in 1920, he met Sobol. In the same year, he married Rachel Rappoport, with whom he then emigrated to Berlin. He worked in the Cultural Center of Jewish refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe, and was the Berlin correspondent of the New York-based Yiddish-language Morgen Jurnal. He also contributed to a number of other Jewish newspapers: the Warsawbased Haint, the Kaunas-based Di Yiddishe Shteime and Yiddishe Zeitung, etc. He drew close to the Revisionist Zionist movement, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, and began to write for the Russian-Jewish weekly Rassvet, which was published in Berlin from 1922 and was edited by Jabotinsky (later it moved to Paris). He was also co-editor, with Jabotinsky, of Der Nayer Weg, the Yiddish-language magazine of the movement (the first issue came out in April 1926). At the same time, he wrote for the Palestine-based newspapers Ha’aretz and Doar Ha’yom. In 1931, he left the Revisionists and joined the Poalei Tzion workers’ party. Following the Nazi seizure of power, he left Germany for Britain. Later, he made aliyah to the Land of Israel, where he became one of the most prominent and influential local journalists. In 1934–39, he was head of the Tel Aviv Union of Press Workers. In 1939, he served as director of the propaganda department of the Jewish Agency and worked in the office of Keren ha-Yesod (the primary Jewish fund). In 1947, he was sent by the Jewish Agency to work in Paris, where he dealt with issues related to propaganda work in the League of East European states. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, he was put in charge of the press, propaganda, radio, and cinema section of the Ministry of the Interior. In the 1950s, he headed the office of the chairman of the Jewish Agency. He died in Jerusalem, and was buried there. He — 110 —

I I I . 3 . T h e Fa t e o f S o b o l ’s B o o k Ev r e i

authored numerous books and compiled albums about the history of Zionism and the cultural and economic achievements of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. There is no corroborating evidence for Klinov’s claim that Sobol wrote a suiside note with a request to publish his stories in a separate book entitled Evrei. Apparently, the information concerning Sobol’s suicide, which was published in the abovementioned Rassvet, came from Klinov. This brief article, which contained obvious distortions and exaggerations (for instance, it said that Sobol had been a member of OZET, or the “Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land”—a social organization that was active in the Soviet Union in the years 1925–38 and aimed at promoting agricultural labor among Soviet Jews), and that he had “taken part in the activities of the Jewish Chamber Theater”), also asserting that the late author had “expressed his wish that all his Jewish stories be published in a separate collection entitled Evrei.”34 It is almost certain that Klimov also authored the following announcement, which was sent to the Palestine-based Jewish newspaper Doar Ha’yom and printed there: The Russian-Jewish writer Andrei Sobol, who committed suicide several weeks ago, requested in his will, which has only now been made public, that all of his Russian-language works which had been published in various books and collections, as well as the unpublished ones, be gathered and printed in a collection entitled Evrei.35

Despite numerous errors made by Klinov regarding the recently-deceased writer, we can safely state that Sobol’s intention to publish a collected edition of his Jewish prose in the mid-1920s was no mere figment of the memoirist’s imagination. It is corroborated by other known pieces of evidence, such as a letter from Sobol to the Petrograd-based Mysl’ publishing house, which had offered to edit and publish a new book by him. In response, Sobol wrote to its director, L. V. Wolfson: Currently, I don’t have much material available. I can offer you the foll[owing]: — 111 —

Pa r t I I I . O ve r c o m i n g t h e M y t h

1) Of the works that have al[ready] been published—right now I’m putting the finishing touches on a slim volume containing works that are ded[icated] to Jewish life. It will include: a) the novel Pyl’ (dealing with the period of 1905–1907; it was serialized in Russ[kaia] Mysl’ in 1916;36 you probably haven’t heard of it), b) the short story Pesn’ Pesnei, c) the short story Shchet, and d) the short story Pogreb—these last two date to the period 1919–1920. All told, the volume will consist of 7½ - 8 pr[inter’s] sheets. […]

We do not know the subsequent fate of this plan: either Sobol’s offer was rejected, or else the publishing house made some counteroffer that broke down because of the author’s suicide. In any case, this publishing project failed to materialize. As we can see, Sobol intended to reprint his novel Pyl’, whose original title (as was mentioned earlier) was Evrei. According to information from the Sobol family archive, Pyl’ was supposed to constitute the first volume of Sobol’s Complete Works, which were to be published by the Writers’ Association of either Moscow or Leningrad. We know virtually nothing about this unrealized project. However, the fact that, contrary to the author’s wishes, the introductory article was not written by Sobol’s friend, Abram Markovich Efros (1888-1954), but rather by the critic Dmitry Gorbov, who was apparently assigned this job by some “higherups” (Gorbov’s article features in the first print run (1926); for the second run (1928), he was replaced by the critic Zelik Shteinman), leads us to suspect that the publication of Sobol’s posthumous Collected Works was accompanied by some backstage wrangling. Pyl’ was expunged from the printed version, thereby turning the “Complete Works” into a mere “Collected Works.” Furthermore, the Writers’ Association, the publisher, was replaced with Zemlia i Fabrika (The Earth and Factory). Obviously, none of this necessarily indicates some irresistible dictatorial will that overrode Sobol’s wishes (whether he was dead or alive at the time). However, these facts do point to the patchy state of our knowledge regarding the dramatic events of the final months of his life, including his concern for the Jewish part of his literary legacy (which, apparently, weighed heavily on his mind at the time). — 112 —

I I I . 3 . T h e Fa t e o f S o b o l ’s B o o k Ev r e i

For this reason, we cannot rule out the possibility that, after arriving in Berlin, Sobol met with Klinov and discussed the future publication of a volume of his Jewish prose, as the latter asserts. We might make an even bolder assumption: Klinov, who was deeply rooted in the Jewish world (despite his excellent command of the Russian language) and wished to aid Sobol, may have been thinking of a publishing house that specialized in Jewish literature. There were dozens of such publishing houses in Berlin in those days (for a list of them, see: Kühn-Ludewig, 2010: 177–228). In any case, Klinov’s testimony regarding Sobol’s projected Jewish volume must be given due consideration when analyzing the latter’s biography. Besides, the very fact that we have discovered a new face in Sobol’s circle of friends and acquaintances is undoubtedly valuable—all the more so since this new face belongs to a prominent Zionist journalist. To summarize what has been said above: there is no documentary evidence that substantiates Klinov’s assertion regarding Sobol’s testament, where the latter supposedly made clear his wish to have all his Jewish writings be gathered and published in one volume. Yet, paradoxically, the fictional nature of this anecdote does not preclude such a possibility. In other words, the fact that Sobol wrote nothing of the sort in his testament (that is, his “suiside note”) does not mean that he could not have written such a request. Thus, while we decisively reject Klinov’s claim and regard it either as an unpremeditated error or as a conscious fabrication, we must nevertheless concur with him when speaking not of actualities, but of likely scenarios. The likeliest scenario, supported by all the available evidence, is that Sobol mulled over the possibility of publishing a volume of his “Jewish” prose till his very last days. However, we can say nothing definite about the length of this hypothetical book, or its contents.

PART IV S o b o l ’ s T r a n s l at i o n o f W a n d e r i n g S ta r s

During his European exile, Sobol met the classic Jewish author Sholem Aleichem in Italy. There is some evidence, such as a letter by Sobol dated March 5, 1912 (see below), to suggest that they had met face-to-face earlier, in Switzerland. In any case, even before that time, they had known each other by correspondence. Their first epistolary “encounter” dates to the period when Sholem Aleichem corresponded with A. V. Amfiteatrov, editor of the magazine Sovremennik. Their exchange of letters led to the idea that Sholem Aleichem’s novel Blonzhende Stern [Wandering Stars] be translated into Russian (under the title Bluzhdaiushchie Zvezdy) and published in that magazine. Amfiteatrov, who lived in Fezzano, Italy, at that time, became acquainted with Sholem Aleichem (either by correspondence or through a face-to-face meeting) no later than August 10, 1909—this is the date of the first of his thirty-four letters to the Jewish author that have been preserved in the latter’s archive; this archive also contains thirteen letters from Sholem Aleichem to Amfiteatrov.1 It is reasonable to suppose that Sobol was introduced to Sholem Aleichem by Amfiteatrov: let us recall that Sobol’s novella Staryi Dom was printed in issue 6 of Sovremennik in 1911. After this publication, the editor of the magazine offered the young writer the job of translating Blonzhende Stern—an offer recorded in Sobol’s letter to Sholem Aleichem from January 10, 1912. Apparently, October 13, 1911 is the date of Sobol’s letter to Amfiteatrov from Berne (although the author has indicated only the number “13”). There, Sobol gives an overview of the nature of the novel, summarizes the contents of its first part, and touches on the question of how the artistic idiosyncrasies of a Jewish author might be perceived by the Russian audience. Characterizing the plot of Bluzhdaiushchie zvezdy as fairly simple, Sobol devotes most of his attention to the details which, in his opinion, will serve as the building blocks of “a sweeping — 115 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

panorama of everyday life.” According to this letter, Sholem Aleichem is a master of describing his characters’ appearance. He conveys their colorful language wonderfully and makes the reader appreciate the distinguishing features of each one. However, he cannot be said to portray the inner world of his protagonists with sufficient clarity and attention to detail.

Sobol singles out the author’s brilliant ability to convey the speech of his characters. He notes that the language spoken by them lives, sparkles, and veritably overflows with humor. That peculiarly “Jewish” humor, which loses so much in translation, since the Jargon2 makes heavy use of wordplay, the playful arrangement of Hebrew words, creating witty combinations and mixtures of Yiddish and Hebrew words.

According to him, the novel is a mosaic made up of tiny fragments; however, if you take a few steps back and look at it, “you see a huge canvas.” Moving on to the question of how such a novel might be received by the Russian audience, Sobol thought that, on the whole, Wandering Stars would be a “good gift to the Russian reading public” (“This novel will be of great interest to the Russian reader. A different world, different concepts, different images”; “...it will be a message from a “new world”—and, moreover, a “message” conveyed in an artistic, clever, and fascinating way”). At the same time, he also noted: True, the writing style may occasionally seem too... well, too primitive and antiquated to the Russian reader; and the form may sometimes seem overly simple. Here, there are no eccentricities of the kind [that] the Russian reader has gotten used to. At the end of the letter, he returned to this subject: One often encounters expressions that have long been forgotten in Russian literature, such as, “Let us leave our hero for the nonce, and check up on our heroine,” “His thoughts are difficult to put on paper,” “I will put a period here— — 116 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

and go on to the next matter,” etc. Doesn’t this sound rather quaint? Long-forgotten? Naive? And there are many more such examples, in various forms, with lots of repetitions. Certainly, I’ll translate it without omissions; after all, you’ll look over the text and edit it. But, since you asked me to give you my opinion, I deem it necessary to say a couple of words on these stylistic quirks. Incidentally, expressions of this kind are the hallmark of a Jewish writer as such—but, should such phrases be deleted, and some of the repetitions shortened, the novel will be none the worse for it.3

The Russian translation of the novel by Sobol (under the pseudonym Andrei Nezhdanov4) was serialized in Sovremennik throughout 1912, in issues 1–12, and it later formed the first volume of a four-volume edition of Sholem Aleichem’s prose, which was published by L. A. Stoliar’s Moscow-based Universalnoie Knigoizdatelstvo in 1913–14. In all likelihood, Sobol began to translate the novel in the autumn of 1911. However, a letter by Sholem Aleichem dated September 28, 1911, which he mailed to Amfiteatrov together with the manuscript of Part I, does not mention Sobol by name, referring instead to another translator—Lurie: Dear Aleksandr Valentinovich, I’m sending you Part I of the novel together with this brief note. You’ll have to mail the manuscript to Mr. Lurie in a sealed envelope, because a Yiddish-language manuscript will not pass censorship, and will be lost; meanwhile I have only a single copy of it. Another, more convenient option, is to send it to some editorial office, which will then forward it to Lurie. Awaiting your response,

Sh[olem] Aleichem

NB: You have inquired regarding the title? As you can see, I have titled the novel Wandering Stars. However, you might prefer to change the title to Itinerant Actors. In any case, I don’t think you should add the subtitle Translated from the Yiddish. However, should the translator wish to, he may append the following note to the text: “Translated from the Yiddish by so-and-so.”5 — 117 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

The papers of the Russian police department that monitored Amfiteatrov (and possibly Sholem Aleichem, too) mention the name of another potential translator: a much-belated report dated July 9 (22), 1912, states that Wulf Fabrikant6 got a job—translating some of the works of “Sholem Aleichem” from Yiddish into Russian. The task of translating some additional works by “Sholem Aleichem” has been entrusted to another known Socialist Revolutionary—Iulii Sobol (Andrei Nezhdanov).7

The available evidence indicates that the question of who would translate the novel was finally resolved in October, and Sobol, having applied himself to the task, spent no more than two months translating Part I. One of the reasons for this unusual hurry was his depressing lack of funds, which led him to try out all kinds of tricks and schemes. He sent the translation to Amfiteatrov from Cavi di Lavagna on December 6, 1911, and attached the following letter: Esteemed Aleksandr Valentinovich, I’d hate to bother you with this letter—but, unfortunately, I have no choice. I apologize in advance, but circumstances compel me to write to you. Were it otherwise, I would never trouble you with such trifles. Here is the crux of the matter: I have to inquire regarding the money. I look ahead to December 20 with horror. On that day, I absolutely have to mail two hundred francs to Berne. As you are well aware, the practice of small loans is highly developed in Switzerland. And so, when two Swiss citizens agreed to vouch for me, the Bank of Berne lent me a sum of 250 francs. I need to repay this loan by December 20. I’ll be able to procure fifty francs on my own. I’m telling you all this in detail, so that you can judge for yourself the urgency of my need to obtain these two hundred francs. If not for this loan, I would never have asked you to pay me an advance for the translation of the novel. But what can I do? I have no other means of procuring the money, and I cannot betray the trust of these two Swiss men— that would be both shameful and dishonorable. Nobody would give me anything on credit. No one has the required sum on hand. — 118 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

And it is for this reason that I write to you, esteemed Aleksandr Valentinovich. After all, Parts II and III of the novel will probably soon follow. I will translate them, finish the job—and then I’ll have money. Should I ask Pevin?8 But I’m convinced that I won’t receive the sum from him by Dec[ember] 20. Back then I asked him (regarding the payment for Staryi Dom) about 10 times—and received it only two months later. And now December 20 is fast approaching, while I have no other way out of this mess. I was about to write to you several times—but every time I felt unable to proceed. It’s not easy to ask, not easy to talk of such a despicable thing as money. But now I have no choice. And so I’m asking you, Aleksandr Valentinovich. Obviously, I will not ask you for money again until I’m done with the translation. I’d never have asked you this time, either, if not for this sordid business with the 250 francs. Do not deny my request. I have no faith in Mr. Pevin; I know that I won’t get a penny out of him till December 20, and by then I’ll be in deep trouble. I’m pinning my hopes on you. Do not be angry with me for bothering you. I’m in such dire straits. I would like to believe that you will not deny my request. I ask—nay, beg—you to aid me. Respectfully, Andrei9

We have no reliable information regarding Amfiteatrov’s response to the request; however, in light of the subsequent evolution of his relationship with Sobol, and the latter’s continuing efforts to translate the novel, we may reasonably assume that he did come to the aid of the young writer. On the very same day, December 6, Amfiteatrov forwarded the translated part of the novel to Sholem Aleichem, and attached a letter that described the translator in the following way: Dear Sholem Aleichem, I’m sending you the translation of Part I of Bluzhdaiushchie zvezdy, completed by Andrei Nezhdanov (Sobol), a young writer, — 119 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

the author of a passable novella, Staryi Dom, which we have published. Having briefly scanned the translation, I think it best to send it to you before the editor goes over it, so that you can check the manuscript for accuracy and—no less importantly—look at the way the idioms have been rendered. The manuscript will have to be significantly abridged. Some of it is due to the fact that the novel will be published in lengthy installments, rather than in brief newspaper feuilletons, which removes the need for authorial addresses to the reader and reminders of what came before: Russian literature has long ago abandoned this mode of writing, and the present-day reader would find it rather strange. Some other passages need to be excised because they clutter up the narrative with descriptions of psychological activities and moods—things that are obvious to the audience in any case, since they follow naturally from the situation itself. Please examine the manuscript from this angle, as well. The less sermonizing remains in the published version, the brighter your incomparable literary virtues—the profound descriptions of everyday life and the sense of humor—will shine, and the more comprehensible the novel will be to the Russian intelligentsia. ... As for myself, I am really fond of the novel, and I’d like to serve it to the public like a rare treat. Goodbye. I wish you all the best. Give my regards to your wife and to the rest of your family. Al. Amfiteatrov10

Sholem Aleichem went over the translation very swiftly. Already on December 8, he let Amfiteatrov know his opinion regarding its quality, strengths, and weaknesses: Dear Aleksandr Valentinovich, I received the manuscript of Andrei Nezhdanov’s translation of Wandering Stars, took a break from all my other duties, and sat down to correct the translation. After going over the first few chapters, I became convinced that he can translate into Russian far better than my Pinus.11 There is just one problem: he does not know Hebrew. For ins[tance]: he transcribes sason ve-simkha (joy and merriment) as “Shishan veshimkha.” It’s as if you said “Moshcow Univershity.” [Unfortunately, there is a single Hebrew

— 120 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

letter—‫—ש‬which marks the sounds “s” and “sh”—let’s say there is a dot, either on the right or on the left side ]‫[שּׁ | שׂ‬, this reflects the unfortunate ignorance of Mr. Andrei...]12 The translator suffers from yet another flaw: he slavishly follows the original, occasionally translating untranslatable, idiomatic expressions literally. For ins[tance]: “Have you seen some!” This is just an interjection, like the Russian “ишь ты!” [“What!”], “Волк тебя заешь!” [“The devil you say!”], etc. I’ve replaced this interjection everywhere with the Yiddish “Woe is me!”13

Almost a week later, on December 14, Sholem Aleichem wrote to Amfiteatrov once again. This second letter attests to the diligence with which he undertook the task of correcting the translator’s “goofs” and pruning the novel’s excessive length: Dear Aleksandr Valentinovich, So as not to hold you up, I’m sending you more than half of the translation of Part I of the novel. In a couple of days, I will send you the remaining chapters. I’ve removed the chapter titles, thinking them outdated and unnecessary. As for the chapters themselves, I’ve merged every two or three of them. They were too brief otherwise. Following your advice, I will throw out all the excessive verbiage from Parts II and III. I think that the material I’ve looked over still needs to be carefully edited. The manuscript is being sent via registered parcel post. Our Andrei Nezhdanov also has lots of “jargonisms.” I’ve weeded them out ruthlessly. Sh[olem] Aleichem14

A week later, Sholem Aleichem notified his correspondent: Dear Aleksandr Valentinovich, I’m sending you Part II of the novel. I’ll have to send the last chapters later. Even a casual glance will let you appreciate the significant abridgement that has taken place. I really need to see the translation of Part II by Nezhdanov, even though I’m giving him material that has already been prepared, with my notes in Russian. Yours, Sh[olem] Aleichem15

— 121 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

Despite the “ruthless weeding out” of Sobol’s “jargonisms,” it appears that Sholem Aleichem was largely satisfied with the translation. His original missive to Sobol has been lost, but the latter’s reply, dated January 10, 1912, indicates that the author and the translator already had a good working relationship: I apologize for not addressing you by your first name and patronymic—unfortunately, I do not know them.16 I received your letter from Berne only yesterday.17 For some reason, it was a long time in transit. I hasten to pen a reply. I would really like to hear your opinion of my translation. I received Part II of your novel, and have managed to translate a lot of it by now. Judging by the notes, you have found several errors in Part I. I own up to them freely. And as for the “jargonisms,” I would like to say a couple of words, if I may. In my opinion, any translation of your works is bound to contain certain “jargonisms”—otherwise, much will be lost. True, the result does not always sound purely “Russian,” but I wanted to better convey the wit and poignancy of your language, to let the reader feel the piquancy and liveliness of the speech of many of your characters. Even before receiving Aleksandr Valentinovich [Amfiteatrov]‘s offer to translate your novel, I always thought, when reading your stories, how much of them would be lost in translation. This conviction of mine grew even stronger when I undertook this job myself. In general, it seems to me that deeply national writers are difficult to appreciate in another language. If you ever read a translation of Gogol’s works—say, into German—you would certainly agree with me. Or take, for instance, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, etc. It is even harder when you are translating from a jargon. This is the reason for my “jargonisms.” I put them in the text because I wanted to give the reader a better and more accurate impression of the essence of your style, of your characters’ speech, and of your incisive language. Incidentally, while I have the opportunity, I would like to ask you a few questions. 1) ”‫ “אקעס‬in Chapter 1 of Part II. A measure of wine that is unfortunately unfamiliar to me. I don’t know how to translate it into Russian.18 — 122 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

2) Benia held some documents which gave him the right to put people in chains. You call them „Hetman[‘s] documents.” This is a bit unclear to me. 3) I couldn’t make out the name of the hotel where the “Paradis” cabaret was located, or the name of the street. Should the name of the street be written in Moldov[an]? Or perhaps I should just write “In one of the best streets”? In any case, let me know the name of the hotel and the street. 4) The title of the play ‫ – איזאבעלא צערייס מיר דעם סטאן‬how should I translate it?19 5) ”‫—“אפאקאיאווע‬the profession of Schwalb, the actress.20 This word is unfamiliar to me. In Part II, I will try to avoid “jargonisms”—but, obviously, without losing sight of the crucial thing. Obviously, all this is barely scratching the surface, without going into details. I will do all this when I receive your letter, when I see your opinion of where my weaknesses lie. It goes without saying that I will be very happy to read your notes, and will not take offence at any “harsh words” you may choose to write. I’d like to mail this response as soon as possible, so I’ll end the letter here. Awaiting your response, Andrei Nezhdanov Address: J. Sobol Cavi di Lavagna (via Genova) Italia P. S. I trust you will not object if I ask you some questions from time to time?21

Presumably after being told by Sholem Aleichem to address him by his pseudonym, not by his first name and patronymic, Sobol wrote in his next letter, dated January 27, 1912 (judging by the postal stamp): Dear Mr. Sholem Aleichem, I apologize for writing on a postcard: it is no fault of mine. Please forgive me. I’ve already received your letter. It gave me great joy. In the future, I won’t need to bother you about words. I’m currently rewriting the manuscript for publication. In a few days, as soon as the rewriting is finished, I will return the original to you, and send the translation to Mr. Amfiteatrov. And, needless — 123 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

to say, I’ll be eagerly awaiting your response. I haven’t translated the passages that had been crossed out. On page 303 (of the original), I had to replace the word “‫”יפהפיה‬22 with “Braindele-Kozak” (she is the subject of the passage), since earlier you had crossed off lines 25–30, which discuss Golzman’s unexpected friendship with Braindele-Kozak. I had to make a similar alteration in two or three other places, because of the lines that had been cros[sed out] (obviously, I’ve read these lines, too). In short, see for yourself and tell me whether I’ve done the right thing. In the manuscript, I do not write “End of Part II.” I can see that this is not the end of Part II. I’ve translated the word “signet” as “ring.” “Thimble” would sound very odd to the Russ[ian] reader. Or so it seems to me. I’ve taken your exhortation to put in “fewer jargonisms” into account, without losing sight of the crucial thing. The December issue has been out for quite a while—it was published about 20-25 days ago. I haven’t contacted Pevin. A comrade of mine who lives at Amf[iteatrov]‘s place told him that my situation was critical (it still is, as of this day), and Amf[iteatrov] wrote to Pevin himself about the advance payment, yet Pevin failed to send it. He is in no hurry to send payment for the stuff that is in pr[int], either. Oh, and one more thing: you asked me about the payment. Sovr[emennik] will pay me 25–30 rub[les] per sheet; I don’t know the exact rate. I will gladly translate your new work. My apologies once again for writing to you on a postcard. Yours, Andrei Nezhdanov23

Judging by the context, we may assume that Sobol’s next missive to Sholem Aleichem was dated February 5, 1912 (the author himself merely indicates that it was written on the fifth of the month): Esteemed Mr. Sholem Aleichem, Is it possible that you still haven’t received the postcard? Such a pity. My exact address is as f[ollows]: J. Sobol Avenue du Parc Montsouris 17, Hotel du Parc. You may safely send the next portion—i.e., the remainder of your novel—to this address, but be sure to indicate where I should then send both the original and the translation. — 124 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

I will stay here till April 1 (N[ew] S[tyle]). After I leave, I’ll make sure to pay a visit to you on the way. And I absolutely must talk to you. And what’s the status of the project that you wrote to me about? Correcting the 8th (or 7th) volume of your works in Mr. Pinkus’s [sic] translation? Who is the editor of Sovremennik now?24 So, I’ll be waiting for the manuscripts and for your reply. Hopefully, I’ll receive both soon. How long will you be staying in Clarens? Will I find you there, if I arrive in the first days of April? Please accept my best wishes e[tc.]. Resp[ectfully], A. Nezhdanov I’ve received messages from the editors of two magazines, Zhizn’ dlia Vsekh and Obshchedostupnyi Zhurnal, informing me that my stories had been accepted. Each magazine has accepted one story.25 A. N[ezhdanov]26

We know of only one response by Amfiteatrov to the quality of the language in Sobol’s translation of Wandering Stars; however, this response is rather juicy. The first page of his letter (including the date) has been lost, but, judging by its contents, it must have been composed in the spring of 1912, when he was no longer editor of the magazine (see note 24). In it, he wrote to the author of the novel: Truly, your Wandering Stars is a marvelous piece of work! However, Nezhdanov ought to be soundly smacked on the soft parts of his body for his translation of the last part in the April issue—although, mind you, his body has few soft parts, since he is as thin as a spindle. A proper translator should not write “no more” instead of “enough,” etc. What were the “wise men” on the editorial team thinking? How could they let such errors slide? 27

On October 16, 1912, as Wandering Stars was being serialized, Sobol wrote Sholem Aleichem a letter that was devoted primarily to prosaic monetary considerations—or, rather, to a certain financial operation that he was proposing: — 125 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

Esteemed Sholem Aleichem, Regrettably, I must bother you with yet another letter. Today is already the 16th, and, because of numerous “domestic and personal” circumstances, I need to receive your reply by the 22th of th[is] m[onth]. I simply cannot wait any longer—no matter how much I’d want to. Such is life. I would gladly go on waiting, but it is impossible: I need to have your final answer by the 22th— and then, depending on the nature of this answer, I’ll be able to take certain steps. Besides all that, I would like to add a couple of words on another matter. Here is the thing. When I visited you, you gave me 45 francs (25 of them in Berne), and I received 100 francs from you about 4 weeks ago. Ergo, I owe you 145 francs. After all, it is quite possible that the answer you’ll give me by the 22th will be negative. Obviously, should you accept my offer, we will subtract these 145 francs from my fee for the future work. But you may very well reply in the negative, and then I’ll be 145 francs in debt to you. I have absolutely no hope of repaying it in the near future. I have no wish to deny you this money. That would be ridiculous—you’re no Rothschild. And so, this is what I’d like to suggest. I’m sure you recall my “ill-fated” transaction with Sovremen[nye] Problemy. After my visit to you, I wrote to them, in accordance with your instructions, that I consider my contract with them to be null and void because of such-and-such points, and that I ask them to send the signed contract back to me, or else accept my new one (which I had drawn up according to your instructions); should they reject the new contract, I will return my advance of 130 francs. However, they still haven’t replied to me, and this bothers me a great deal. So now I’m offering you the following: I’ll transfer the rights to my translation of Wandering Stars to you. They will be yours on the same terms as were offered by Sovremen[nye] Prob[lemy]— i.e. 10 rubles per printer’s sheet. You should draw up a paper which says, among other things, that I (Andrei Nezhd[anov]-Iulii Sobol) authorize you to declare the termination of my contract with Sovremen[nye] Prob[lemy], and that you simultaneously take it upon yourself to pay them the 130 francs that were sent to me—and thereby the translation becomes wholly yours; — 126 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

you will have the right to publish it and dispose of it as you see fit. This is my offer, esteemed Mr. Sholem Aleichem. And then, out of the sum of the fee which I will need to receive from you for the “sale” of the translation—you will send them 130 francs, keep another 145 francs for yourself (i.e., the 145 francs which I owe you), and pay me the rest. If you agree to this proposal, draw up the “paper”—and I’ll sign it. In this way, my “ill-fated” contract with Sovremen[nye] Prob[lemy] will be essentially terminated. I think you will accept my proposal, since my price is the same as the one offered by Sovremen[nye] Prob[lemy]—10 rubles per pr[inter’s] sheet—and I thereby repay my debt to you (145 francs). So I’ll be waiting for your letter. I’m waiting for your final answer to my first offer (don’t forget that I need to have your response by the 22nd), as well as to the Sovremen[nye] Problemy “affair” and the sale of my translation to you. Obviously, the offers are not mutually exclusive. Hopefully, you’ll reply to me by the 22nd. Truly, I can’t wait any longer—such are my life circumstances. Please accept, etc. Andrei Nezhdanov Have you received the last notebook? [on the margins, above the first page:] If you can, please send me the finale of Wandering Stars, and then I’ll finish it quickly.28

Sholem Aleichem’s undated reply, which was sent from Lausanne and began with the warm greeting, “Dear Andrei! I’m giving you my response before the 22nd,” has been preserved in only one location—the Special Section of the Department of Police: a perlustrated letter (in the form of a tracing-paper copy) belongs not in a literary archive, but in the major surveillance agency.29 Sholem Aleichem made some changes to Sobol’s formulation, but he largely agreed to the terms of his offer. By now, the fact that Sobol was the first to translate Sholem Aleichem’s Wandering Stars has become widely recognized by the scholars (see Khazan, 2005a). However, nobody seems to have mentioned the fact that he also translated another novel by Sholem — 127 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

Aleichem, Republic of Thirteen.30 This was the second translation of that novel into Russian, and it was published under the same pseudonym, Andrei Nezhdanov—although this time it was shortened to “A. N-ov.” And yet this translation did exist, and a surviving document in Sholem Aleichem’s archive entitled “An Acknowledgment, Signed by A. Nezhdanov, of the Receipt of the Fee for the 2nd Edition of Repub[lic] of Thirteen” attests to this fact: I, the undersigned, do hereby transfer my translation of Mr. Sholem Aleichem’s Republic of Thirteen to the author for the purpose of producing a second reprint, for a fee of 10 rubles per printer’s sheet, which sum I have received from him. Andrei Nezhdanov (Iulii Sobol) Cavi di Lavagna, March 12, 1913.31

In this way, Sobol fulfilled his promise to “translate [Sholem Aleichem’s] new work,” a promise he had given to Sholem Aleichem back in his letter from January 27, 1912. It should be noted that financial and economic concerns are a favorite topic in Sobol’s correspondence, forming a constant refrain in his business letters to various addressees. A passage that describes one of the characters in his story Vstan’ i idi could very well serve as a portrait of the author himself: “As for my only Russian acquaintance, Rivochka Menagid—her wallet lies boringly on the shelf; it is all shriveled, like a sponge that has just been drained of the last drop of water” (Sobol, 1918a: 50). Vladislav Khodasevich, who knew Sobol well, recalled many years after the latter’s death: Without receiving adequate fees, he was perpetually in debt, and, despite being nicknamed “the king of advances,” he could barely make ends meet (Khodasevich, 1936).32

It should be emphasized that Sobol did not actually care for money and was willing to give the last shirt off his back to a friend in need. If we did not know this, we might get the wrong impression from reading his letters (or memoir fragments such as the above), which paint an unflattering image of a man utterly — 128 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

obsessed with money and with settling accounts, who seems to regard complaining about his lack of funds as his sole raison d’être. This problem was Sobol’s constant companion throughout his life— not only during his European exile, when he knew true poverty, but also under Soviet rule, when, after joining the ranks of wellknown authors and becoming a secretary of the Writers’ Union of Russia, he began to receive reasonably large fees (by the standards of the time) or take advance payments for future work (some of which remained undone).33 However, this change in fortune did not reduce the number of epistolary laments bemoaning his dire financial straits—ergo, the root of the problem lay not in his actual income, but in something else. In attempts to explain this contradiction, some people spread wild rumors about Sobol’s alleged profligacy, alcoholism, and gambling debts, which supposedly ate up all of his income. These tall tales were revived most recently in the 1990s by Sobol’s son, the poet Mark Sobol, who stated the following in an interview to the newspaper Literaturnaia Gazeta: He [Andrei Sobol] was a hard-drinking man who racked up considerable gambling debts by playing cards with the Danish embassy, which was quartered in the left wing of the Herzen House. He was secretary of the Writers’ Union of Russia, which was located in the same building. (Later, my father’s debts were repaid by his wives.) (Sobol M., 1995).

We will not bother with defending the elder Sobol. Suffice it to say that the claims of his son are flatly contradicted by numerous documents. Here is one instructive detail that illustrates the general mechanism by which legends and myths are created. There was no “Danish embassy” in the Herzen House, which served as headquarters of the Writers’ Union in the 1920s. Using the traditional template of popular rumors and stories that “grow in the telling,” Mark Sobol transforms the Danish Telegraph Society, which did indeed occupy a section of the House, into a fictitious “embassy.” For many years, the Writers’ Union and the Telegraph Society were engaged in a legal battle over the premises and the property contained therein; and Sobol, in his capacity as secretary, — 129 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

and later as a member of the directorate, had to become involved in this dispute regardless of his wishes. In a letter dated August 29, 1925, mailed from the Writers’ Guesthouse in the hamlet of Ertelevo (in the Voronezh Governorate) to G. M. Novikov, a technical worker at the Union, he wrote: I’ve written from here to the directorate, to remind them and propose some kind of “tantième” [profit sharing] arrangement34 on the Danish case. I’ll be happy if this alleviates your financial woes in some measure.35

A month earlier, on July 31, as he was preparing to go on vacation to the Guesthouse completely penniless, Sobol had written to A. I. Svirsky, custodian of the Herzen House, begging the latter to lend him one hundred rubles out of the treasury of the Writers’ Union: My dear Aleksei Iv[anovich], give me 10 chervontsy [a Russian banknote worth 10 rubles] on your own responsibility. They will save me, enabling me to go on vacation and recover. You can do this, because I’ll return the sum by the time we need to give the report on the Danish money. My salary can be withheld till spring—this alone will cover the expenses. Save me, my dear Aleks[ei] Ivan[ovich], my body is shaking and reeling and I’m wrecked by fear. Later, when I return rested, I’ll tell you everything. Right now I can’t talk, I can barely hold myself together. Help me out, my dear. And nobody else needs to know about this (obviously, apart from Tat[iana] Alek[seyevna] [Svirsky’s wife]), because I don’t want anyone else—except for you—to see the extent of my weakness. Tear up this letter—and help me.36

We do not know all the “nitty-gritty” of the financial troubles of the Herzen House. However, it seems that the Danes were paying their rent directly to the treasury of the Union (or, at least, these payments went through the treasury), and Sobol was asking Svirsky to lend him 10 chervontsy out of this very money. Such debts and advance payments were not a one-time occurrence for Sobol: following his suicide, there were rumors that the sum of his debts totaled eleven thousand rubles.37 — 130 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

However, pressing life circumstances (or even a general maladroitness in financial matters) are one thing; transforming them into “considerable gambling debts to the Danish embassy” is quite another. The available evidence on Sobol’s life contains no indications of any particular fondness for card games. And besides, in the light of what we know of Sobol’s temperament, it is very hard to picture him sitting for hours on end at the card table. It is even less believable that he would spend sleepless nights at such a table battling a foreign opponent over the ownership of the Herzen House. Finally, we should consider the police protocol drawn up after Sobol’s suicide. It details the Spartan condition of his room and lists his meager possessions: a chair, a table, and a wardrobe with a single suit of clothing.38 This document dispels all doubt regarding the actual amount of money that this “king of advances” used to spend on himself. His lifestyle was almost ascetic, even according to the norms of that time period, and he contented himself with the barest necessities. This way of life reflected the experience of his penurious childhood and youth, his time as a penal laborer, and his general frugality—those who knew him remarked on his “monklike ability to be satisfied with little” (Pilskii, 1926). How, then, did Sobol spend his income? Let us reformulate this question to make it fit better with the subject of the present chapter: how could he possibly have spent the money that he had earned by translating Sholem Aleichem’s novels? Reports by undercover agents who watched him during his stay in Cavi indicate that Zhdanov [sic], Andrei, a man of letters, resides in Cavi di Lavanna [sic], Riviera Levanda; occasionally, he procures funds for the group.39

If we believe the police detectives’ claim that “Zhdanov”Nezhdanov-Sobol “occasionally procured funds for the group” (and there is no reason to distrust them in this case), then it is reasonable to assume that the money he received (for translating Sholem Aleichem’s works into Russian, and for other literary jobs) did not only serve to cover his own expenses (actually, it probably did not — 131 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

cover these expenses at all). Rather, it was also used to finance the activities of the militants who strove to overthrow the hated tsarist regime “with fire and sword.” What other sources of income could “Andrei, that man of letters” possibly have during the half-starved European period of his life? There is another example, which has less to do with Sholem Aleichem but is relevant to the general question of what Sobol did with his meager income. In a letter dated June 1, 1910, mailed by Sobol from Berne to an acquaintance of his named Katia in Vienna, he makes a customary complaint about his lack of funds; however, his stated reason for this lack proves once again that he was no tiresome complainer, but rather a man who cared deeply about his fellow men: My dear Katia, I’m very happy for you. You’ll see lots of wonderful, fascinating things. I envy you in particular for having visited the Russian gallery, since I haven’t seen any Rus[sian] artworks. As for myself, dear Katia, my situation isn’t good. There’s no money. Iakov left for Paris yesterday. I had to give him 120 f[rancs] so that he could pay his debts and leave, and now I’ll have to procure this money somewhere.40

“Iakov” refers to Iakov Krul, a member of the Combat Organization of the Social-Revolutionary Party and a close friend of Sobol’s. His name is often mentioned in the reports of the secret police agents who watched over Sobol and his social circle. In general, not much is known about Iakov Krul, and every new smidgen of information—such as this letter by Sobol—is very precious. Let us mention another incident, which occurred shortly after these events. In late 1916 to early 1917, Sobol found himself on the Caucasus Front and received a promotion. On February 1, 1917, he wrote to Bakhmutskaia: My beloved Richik, believe it or not, but I seem to have been promoted: the Represent[ative of the Land Union] appointed me as his secretary. If I’m not mistaken, this should also lead to a pay raise, but I won’t remind them of it: I find such things distasteful. — 132 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

If he remembers it himself, that’ll be fine by me; if he doesn’t, I won’t begrudge him.41

Then, a few days later, on February 4, he wrote to her: I’ve already written to you that [the Representative] had appointed me as his secretary. This new job naturally entails a pay raise, but I won’t remind him of it. Truly, Richik, this makes me uncomfortable; and besides, we’re talking about a not for profit organization, and I would feel bad taking extra money from them. What say you?42

Examples of this kind—attesting to Sobol’s selflessness, which occasionally bordered on a peculiar contempt for money—could be added at will. Thus, when we talk of the nickname “king of advances” that stuck to him, and of his constant complaints about his poverty and lack of funds—both things that may create an image of Sobol as an inveterate schnorrer (to use the appropriate Yiddish word)— we must also recall his “distasteful” and his “uncomfortable,” and modify our view of him accordingly. And besides, let us not forget the spirit of magnanimity and self-sacrifice that was always implicitly—if sometimes invisibly—present in the behavior of this restless, unbalanced, yet incredibly candid and honest person. Going back to Sholem Aleichem, while simultaneously making a chronological leap into the future, we must note that, even in the Soviet era, Sobol remained a popularizer of this classical Jewish author, to the extent allowed by circumstances. Obviously, he had to accommodate himself to the new ideological demands. In 1925, the Moscow-based Sovremennye Problemy publishing house issued a collection of Sholem Aleichem’s short stories entitled Skvoz’ Slezy [Through Tears] (2nd edition: 1928). The stories were translated by I. Pinus, while Sobol edited them and supplied a foreword. In accordance with the prevailing ideological clichés, Sobol seriously asserted in his foreword that the Jewish writer had passed away “on the very eve of a new and glorious era of construction” (Sholem Aleichem, 1925: 3), and that, if he were still alive, he would certainly take part in this “glorious construction”—or, at the very least, he would derive great joy from it. — 133 —

Pa r t I V. S o b o l ’s Tr a n s l a t i o n o f Wa n d e r i n g S t a r s

Sobol also served as editor of a new edition of Sholem Aleichem’s novel The Flood (in I. Slonim’s translation), which was published by the Moscow-based Puchina in 1927 (that is, after his death). When discussing Sobol’s role as editor of Soviet-era Russian translations of Jewish works, we must note that he edited the novels Between Two Fires (1924) by P. Markus and The Speculators (Spekulianty, 1924; 2nd edition: 1927) by Oizer Warshawski, and that he wrote the afterword to L. I. Ostrover’s book In a Grey Overcoat: Notes from 1914–1918 (1925). These works serve to enrich our view of Sobol as a Russian-Jewish writer and as a promoter of the Russian-Jewish literary dialogue. We must also note that, just as Sobol was able to exist simultaneously in both the Russian and the Jewish worlds with no feeling of contradiction, so there was no unbridgeable gulf—let alone a dramatic conflict—between his status as an assimilated Soviet writer and his Jewish cultural identity. This phenomenon, which should be familiar to us from studies of the cultural identity of Sobol’s younger contemporary, Isaac Babel,43 was, despite its variable manifestations, a general typological feature, and it largely accorded with the literary legacy of Sholem Aleichem as a landmark figure in the Jewish artistic culture of the twentieth century.

PART V

and

Andrei Sobol t h e J e w i s h T h e at e r

The subject of “Andrei Sobol and theater,” is still in need of separate and detailed study.1 Its various aspects include his plays, which have mostly remained unpublished; his articles and reviews on theatrical topics;2 his activity as head of the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Theater Studio in Moscow in the early 1920s; and, finally, the use of theatrical themes and images in his works, which depict both theater troupes and individual characters, such as actors, directors, booking agents, singers (both male and female), and even prompters (Kazimir Bronislavovich from the novella Bred [Delirium]3). At the same time, this broad subject comprises the smaller yet equally important subtopic of “Sobol and the Jewish theater.” This subtopic has its own share of curious incidents and motifs, which have to do with his work as both a Russian-Jewish writer and as an artist in general, which was a tiny speck of the Jewish world within the Russian cultural space. For example, Sobol was one of those who applauded the amazing talent of Solomon Mikhoels, of whom he wrote, in his usual lyrical idiom: Some things are unforgettable—things such as a first meeting, first love, the first word babbled by your child, the first hint of green after a long winter. Now, surround all this with curtains, put up a sign with the words “Jewish Theater” above the entrance, watch the gray shadows of the buffoonish past slink away into nothingness (hey, where are they now?!)—and you will feel all of this within the brief designation “Mikhoels”; and, having felt it, you will understand how one brief word can encapsulate the meeting and the love relationship, the babble and the spring. And all this is happening for the first time (Sobol, 1923: 810).

Sobol’s first article on the subject of theater—and, specifically, on Jewish theater—was entitled Vina intelligentsii (K voprosu o evreiskom teatre) [The Guilt of the Intelligentsia (On the Question of the Jewish Theater)]. He wrote it (or, at least, began to conceptualize — 136 —

Pa r t V. A n d r e i S o b o l a n d t h e J e w i s h T h e a t e r

it) after his illegal return to Russia, when he resided in Moscow. In those days, he led a double life: on the one hand, he lived under an assumed identity, with forged documents and no legal rights; on the other hand, he was heavily involved with the literary and artistic circles. His letters from this period are full of references to regular visits to the theater: he watches and listens to the legendary Jewish actress Clara Young (née Chaya-Risye Spikolitzer; 1876– 1952) and to the singer Isa (Isabella) Kremer (1887–1956). At the same time, his brother, Vladimir Sobol, launches his own career as a musician and a performer of satirical songs. His close friends and acquaintances begin to include individuals whose lives revolve around the theater. One such person was Ksenia Semenova (1887– 1956), a close friend of Bakhmutskaia’s, who was then a student of Evgenii Vakhtangov and would go on to become a prominent actress and theater instructor (“Ksenichka” is mentioned several times in the letters sent by Sobol to Bakhmutskaia in Tver). In September 1915, he completed a play entitled Oni i my [Them and Us]. Half a year later (March 24, 1916), in a letter to V. S. Miroliubov, Sobol wrote: I’ve finished a play in 4 acts, but, frankly, I have no idea what to do with it. I must admit: I’m sorely tempted to send it to you, but I’m afraid it will bore you.4

In May 1916, the play was sent to the Censorship Committee. On June 6, 1916, it was permitted to be staged in Petrograd,5 and, almost three weeks later (June 26, 1916), Sobol wrote in a letter to S. O. Simanovich: The play is already back from the censors—so I’ve been told in a letter from Moscow. Now, I need to send it to Karpov.6 I’m slightly jittery: what if I get lucky? Then my job will be done, and I’ll be firmly in the saddle.7

Evtikhii Karpov, who had just been appointed manager of a Russian dramatic troupe and chief director of the Alexandrinsky Theater in Petrograd, replied to Sobol, but the contents of his letter are unknown. Sobol reported his reply (which was probably negative) in a letter to Bakhmutskaia from August 12, 1916: — 137 —

Pa r t V. A n d r e i S o b o l a n d t h e J e w i s h T h e a t e r

By the way, Richik, I’ve received a reply from Karpov, and I’m forwarding it to you, but you’ll need to bring it back with you. You’ll understand everything from the letter itself, so I don’t need to tell you anything here.8

Sobol also sent his play to Maxim Gorky, hoping to have it published in the magazine Letopis’. The latter’s response can be gleaned from his letter to the actress M. F. Andreeva (written before February 22, 1916): I’ve also read Sobol’s play—it has 6 men and one woman in it. It is titled Them and Us. It is somewhat sexual and psychological in its nature, and it’s certainly pathological—but, in general, it’s unclear what the fuss is all about (Gorky, 2006: 22).

We have no information on any productions of Sobol’s play; in all likelihood, it has never been staged, since even its text has never been printed. In the summer of 1916, M. B. Gorodetskii9 suggested that Sobol write an article on Jewish theater, and it seems likely that this was the abovementioned Vina intelligentsii, which would be published later, in a different time and under different circumstances: it was printed during the Civil War, in the Kiev-based magazine Teatral’naia Zhizn’ (Theater Life) (Sobol, 1918a; reprinted in Iegupets (Kiev), 2000, n 7, pp. 307–09).10 Sobol’s interest in Jewish theater remained undiminished despite the cataclysms of his life, which seemed to leave little time and energy for such “idle” pursuits. In 1918, after fleeing Moscow and Bolshevik persecution, he reached Kharkov, which was then occupied by the Volunteer Army. Sobol, who was always in opposition to the ruling regime, worked briefly (from June 27 to July 22, 1919) as editor of Novoe Slovo [The New Word], Kharkov pro-democratic weekly journal that printed literature and political essays. This job nearly cost him his life. The weekly was closed down after the fifth issue on the orders of the Volunteer authorities, who, like the Bolsheviks before them, took a dislike to Sobol’s overly bold opinion pieces, with their persistent defense of democratic values— the values that were dearer to him than any specific ideology. — 138 —

Pa r t V. A n d r e i S o b o l a n d t h e J e w i s h T h e a t e r

Through some miracle, the editor avoided the firing squad, and was deported from Kharkov by general V. Z. Mai-Maievsky.11 And yet, despite such inauspicious conditions, Sobol still pursued his hobby of theater-going. At the time, Kharkov was home to the Jewish theater Unzer Winkel, which had been established in 1918 and was headed by Yehuda-Leib Baumval (who would be killed by Poles in April 1920) and Mikhail Fiodorovich Rafalskii (1883–1937; his true name was Moshe Aharon; he would go on to become People’s Artist of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and then perish in the Great Purge). The All-Ukrainian Jewish National Traveling Theater Unzer Winkel (this was its full name in official documents) staged its performances in the building of the Ekaterinoslavskii Theater (currently the Young Spectator’s Theater). There Sobol watched The Mistress of the Inn by Goldoni— a production to which he would later refer, in his article A New Day for the Jewish Theater, as the first sign of the death throes of the old Jewish stage (Sobol, 1922b: 297). While sketching out some tentative approaches to Sobol’s engagement with the issues pertaining to Jewish theater, we would like to acquaint the reader with one little-known text by him, which deals with the Jewish Habima Theater. This text was eventually published, but only in a Hebrew-language collection dedicated to Habima—Breshit Habima: Nakhum Tsemakh: Meyased Habima bekhazon u-ve-ma’as (“The Birth of Habima: Nakhum Tsemakh: the Founder of Habima in Vision and in Deed”)—which limits its accessibility to specialists and to the general public alike. Sobol, who did not know Hebrew, wrote his brief essay on Habima in Russian, and it was then translated into Hebrew by M. Peleg,12 who also translated articles by Sergei Volkonsky and Aleksandr Kugel, David Talnikov and Sofia Dubnova-Erlich, and others for the same collection. Since Sobol’s original text could not be located, our only option is to translate it from Hebrew. In this essay, Sobol does not make any new revelations or discoveries about the famous Habima—a subject that has been adequately covered in plenty of other memoirs, studies, articles, and books. Rather, it is valuable for another reason: the author’s exposure of those aspects of his Jewish essence that have received — 139 —

Pa r t V. A n d r e i S o b o l a n d t h e J e w i s h T h e a t e r

little exposure (or have not been exposed at all) in our study. In this respect, the very subject matter of Sobol’s essay—the Jewish theater—serves as a kind of X-ray that penetrates deep into those who write about him. Here are a few introductory remarks regarding the theater itself. The Habima Haivrit (“Hebrew stage, theater”) studio, the forerunner of the future theater, was established for the first time in Białystok in 1909, on the initiative of Nakhum Tsemakh (1887–1939). In 1917, having moved to Moscow, Tsemakh made a second attempt to realize his life’s dream: Konstantin Stanislavsky took the troupe under his wing, appointing Evgenii Vakhtangov as the director of Habima. The theater was allotted a building on 6 Nizhniaia Kislovka Lane. Describing the mansion that housed Habima, a modern-day scholar writes: [...] Tsemakh began to search for a suitable building for the theater. In one of the small lanes near the Arbat, he found a two-story mansion abandoned by its owners, who had fled the Revolution. The first floor could house the members of the troupe, most of whom were homeless, having just escaped from the Pale of Settlement. The second floor could contain the stage, the audience hall, and even the lounge. In order to obtain permission to move into the mansion, Tsemakh had to appeal to some high-ranking officials, including Lunacharsky himself. Thus did the Habima troupe come to occupy the building on 6 Nizhniaia Kislovka Lane, which would be home to them for a long time (Ivanov, 1999: 26).

In his essay, Sobol, with a measure of stylistic wit, makes several playful allusions to performances staged at Habima. Thus, when he describes himself as a man who is not limping (“I am not lame; when I walk, I do not lean on my hip”), this is clearly not just a reference to his physical condition, but, rather, a “reverse” allusion to the lame Biblical forefather Jacob from the production Jacob’s Dream, based on a play by Richard Beer-Hofmann. Sobol compares his ardent love for Habima to the love between Leah and Khanan, the protagonists of The Dybbuk, one of Habima’s most celebrated productions (based on a play by S. An-sky);13 when he uses the phrase “between two worlds,” this is an obvious allusion to the first (primary) title of the play; “a Jew who spends the nights at the train — 140 —

Pa r t V. A n d r e i S o b o l a n d t h e J e w i s h T h e a t e r

stations of the whole world” echoes the production The Eternal Jew, based on a play by David Pinsky. In a word, Sobol’s article is a kind of “composite quote,” consisting of a kaleidoscope of fragments of Habima’s art, which impart an exceptional artistic vividness to his text. Habima is not merely a theatrical creation, not just a revolutionary phenomenon in the world of theater, not just an ongoing celebration of scenic revolution, not just a shift in the historical pedigree; it is also a profound upheaval in all the layers of the Jewish consciousness, a break with the existing rules, a radical transformation of the whole [Jewish] spiritual condition. The small stage in the tiny theater building on Kislovka Lane has been the scene of an uprising against all the usual forms, concepts, and feelings, and this uprising has swept not only over Kislovka Lane, but over the whole of Moscow. This rupture has given the Jews—not just in Russia, but everywhere—a new set of tools, a new calendar with unfamiliar days, months, and years.14 If theater does indeed contain some philosophical essence, Habima was created seemingly ex nihilo, for the sake of existence itself. It is this essence which is contained within it, being the source of its vitality. It is this power that enables it to transform the theatrical curtains into the curtains of the whole Jewish existence. After all, Habima’s theatrical lanterns seem to have been lit only on Kislovka Lane... And so, between two worlds—although in this case, “between” does not signify the usual vacillation: trackless wandering, proceeding by touch, like a blind man groping for a firm path. When worlds collapse, when territorial boundaries are drawn and redrawn, one must expend enormous efforts to stay on one’s feet. At such times, cautious movements are preferable, even if they are necessarily suffused with inner passion. Habima knew these movements; it knows them still, and it may yet come to know them in the future. As for the inner passion—it existed; it exists, and it will exist, to prevent the downward slide, because... “But why? Why does the soul tend to slide downward?” One can experience the true theatrical thrill only when one has overcome the false nature of the non-theatrical passions, thereby accepting the theater as it is—becoming infected with its simultaneous love and hate, when it wounds us and salves our wounds, and thereby to become part of its flesh, to recreate it within oneself and for oneself, to bind oneself and the theater — 141 —

Pa r t V. A n d r e i S o b o l a n d t h e J e w i s h T h e a t e r

with the chains of asceticism, whose clangor fills us with sweet pain. Habima has given me this thrill on the very first day of our acquaintance, and it has bound me with the chains of love, like the love of Leah and Khanan. This is the proper betrothal of the stage and the audience, if the audience does not wish to be merely spectator number so-and-so, while the theater has no desire to be a mere stage for playacting, whose program is so-and-so and whose social ideology is such-and-such... I am not lame; when I walk, I do not lean on my hip. However, I have no need of a chair or a bench when I am at the Habima theater, because I am a Jew who spends the nights at the train stations of the whole world, a Jew who—in 1924—inherits the grimaces of the Spanish marrano from 1600. I know that this theater promises me not peace and quiet, but restless wandering; not a pair of binoculars, but two bleeding, tearful eye sockets. Habima has many thoroughfares and many more untraveled paths branching off of them, where one can get lost easily. Yet all paths converge upon a single point. Habima possesses the secret of metamorphosis, the mysteries of the alloys, and the ability to transform ordinary matter—occasionally quite insignificant— into bars of gold. Thus do the prose fragments of An-sky’s Dybbuk come together to create a tragedy. Habima is a theater born under the constellations of tragedy. It is the aristocratic emblem of its pedigree. Habima has not merely accepted this emblem as its heritage; rather, it has etched it with its own hands. Habima is its own father by virtue of renouncing its inheritance. Thus has Habima ceased to be a mere theater—life bursts out of its floorboards and flows onto the stage. I have slaked—and will continue to slake—my thirst in the waters of this spring. I am no theater critic—I have not a single decent theatrical article to my name; nor have I engaged in any theatrical polemics. However, both the Wandering Jew and the Warrior Jew speak with my voice, and I am myself a passerby. Yes, I am indeed a passerby. I, who have beheld the arrivals and departures of all the trains of the world with my own eyes, can speak only of myself with my slow tongue, since only an inner spring can slake my spiritual thirst.15

Conclusion

Sobol’s life, fate, and works provide very fruitful material for the study of numerous highly significant and prominent issues, processes, and phenomena having to do with Russian-Jewish cultural interaction. Sobol belied many common stereotypes of assimilated Jews. He remained loyal to his national roots and his national legacy to the very end of his days, writing: “Do not forget that I, too, am a Jew. I do not sever my ties with Jewry, and have no intention of doing so: it is within me, and I am within it” (Sobol, 1922a: 40). He also remained an ardent Russian patriot. Given all of these factors, Sobol should be analyzed as a highly peculiar ethnocultural and ethical-psychological phenomenon. Furthermore, the symbiosis of the Russian and the Jewish elements within him reached such a degree of harmony that the resulting contradiction—which undoubtedly exists—is no longer perceived as a contradiction. And it is this “coordinated duality” of Sobol’s cultural-national identity—which occasionally attains an amazing inner balance: we are dealing, on the one hand, with a Russian author who is possessed by the Jewish spirit, and, on the other hand, with one of those Jews who, as Jabotinsky put it, “have to worship Pushkin and Komissarzhevskaia all alone” (Jabotinsky, 1913: 164)—that we have attempted to uncover and understand. In our opinion, this reflects not only, and not so much, his individual personality traits; rather, it stems from an important feature in the psychology of a certain segment of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia. However, alongside the “typological” Sobol, we were primarily interested in the individual Sobol, with his personal worldview and peculiar attitude toward the “Jewish question”—an attitude that he consistently expressed in his various roles and guises, as a journalist — 143 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

and literary critic, a writer and translator, an editor and an author of theatrical articles and reviews. As we have tried to demonstrate, Sobol—and this is most clearly visible in his journalistic work—was unwilling to regard Judeophilia as the mark of exceptional moral goodness; rather, he considered it a trivial norm and a moral baseline—the “first step” (Leonid Andreev). Often, the basic message of his articles in the press could be summarized as the refusal to recognize Judeophilia as the measure of civic virtue wherein one tries to earn the title of a “liberal” or a “progressive” through a positive attitude toward the Jews. In Sobol’s view, a well-developed civic democracy should transcend this lowest “step” and regard it as something self-evident, with no need to give special distinction to those who treat the Jews as a nation like all others. Sobol, both as a social activist and as a writer, clung tenaciously and uncompromisingly to this principle throughout his life. Our analysis of his texts—both published and unpublished ones—indicates that many of his writings on Jewish themes have remained unknown. In a letter to the Kharkov writer Vladimir Iurezansky (his real last name was Nos; 1888-1957), Sobol divulged some information that we have been unable to verify anywhere else. He wrote: In your Kharkov, a new magazine will be launched in May. It will be titled Evreiskii Mir [The Jewish World], and will be devoted exclusively to Jewish affairs. They’ve sent me a letter asking me to contribute, send them some material as soon as possible, etc. As it happens, I’m currently working on a short story from Jewish life, which will be about 1–2½ pr[inter’s] sheets in length. It’s been long in the making, and I think it’ll turn out pretty well. I’ve been thinking of submitting it to Novyi Mir, but I’m so much in their debt that I’ll be lucky to get a penny out of them. As for Voronskii,1 this story would be “non-kosher” to him. And so, this Evrei[skii] Mir couldn’t have come in at a better time. The trouble is, I won’t be able to finish the story earlier than May 20–25, or May 15 in the very best case. All told, there are 2-3 guys writ[ing] on Jewish subjects, and so this magazine is obviously interested in high-quality fiction.2 — 144 —

Conclusion

However, neither the magazine Evreiskii Mir (if such a magazine was ever conceived in the first place) nor Sobol’s short story (judging by the page count, it was more like a novella) ever saw the light of day. The most troubling aspect of this whole affair is the fact that the story has not survived even in manuscript form, and it is not mentioned anywhere else apart from this letter to Iurezansky. This disappearance of a fairly substantial text, coupled with the radical reworking of Sobol’s Pesn’ Pesnei (discussed in part III.2) and with Klinov’s recollections (III.3), leads one to suspect that the “Jewish” portion of Sobol’s manuscripts was mercilessly confiscated (and possibly destroyed) by some unknown individuals. We may assume that these were, for the most part, people who had been close to Sobol in life (that is, his friends and relatives), and that they acted with the best of intentions, seeing it as their duty to “purge” his artistic legacy of any “compromising” materials having to do with Jewish issues. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that this confiscation of texts by the recently-deceased writer was sanctioned by more hostile forces—some agents of the powers that be who could not bear the sting of Sobol’s “highbrow” retaliation and suicide, which constituted a silent protest against the despotism of the Soviet regime. Arlen Blium, a scholar of the Russian censorship apparatus, has correctly noted: even though the author had taken his own life “voluntarily,” his works remained suspicious for decades afterward, and were not published. Numerous books by him were confined to restrictedaccess collections, listed in the indices of prohibited works of Glavlit [the official Soviet censorship organ] (Blium, 2011: 393).3

The materials which we have gathered indicate that, during the last days of Sobol’s life—and even more so after his death— his friends and relatives tried desperately to “Sovietize” him. His “Jewish” writings, constituting an important (and large) segment of his oeuvre, were one of the first victims of this “mopping-up” operation, which occasionally resulted in the complete destruction of literary works. The case of Sobol was one of the first instances of a successful denationalization of a recalcitrant author, used as a way of forcing a complete ideological capitulation to the ruling regime. — 145 —

A n d r e i S o b o l a s a R u s s i a n - J e w i s h Wr i t e r

At the time of this experiment, the Soviet repressive apparatus was still winding up. Later, this methodology would be honed to perfection and become a permanent fixture of the Soviet ideological machine. The experience that we have acquired by working on this book leads us to conclude that a multifaceted and large-scale investigation of the phenomenon of the “Russian-Jewish Sobol” can expand and enrich the historiographical and bibliographical chronicle of Russian-Jewish literature, and—most importantly— make a substantial contribution to its inventory of ideas and themes, raising its cultural and aesthetic value.

Notes

Preface 1

Some information about the Unzer Winkl circle can be gleaned from the colorful recollections of Sobol’s close friend Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (1877–1932)—a poet, critic, translator, and artist who lived in Koktebel (during his numerous visits to Crimea, Sobol would stay in Voloshin’s home; one such visit took place during the Civil War, which is the period discussed here). Voloshin read his works at a meeting of Unzer Winkl only once, and he later recalled this experience in the following way: In those difficult and dangerous times, the only group of people who came to my help were the Jews of Feodosia. Back then, Feodosia was a refuge for numerous Jewish literary figures—both young writers and old, respected figures, such as Oneikhi [sic], who wrote talented and varied stories from Hasidic life. [...] The Jews had their own literary circle, which they named Unzer Winkl. I was approached by members of this circle, who told me: “You’re probably going through a hard time and have little money left. Would you like us to organize a literary soiree for you?” Needless to say, I gladly agreed. I considered it an honor, since nonJews were not admitted to Unzer Winkl. They would hold readings in Hebrew and in the Jargon [Yiddish]. And as I read my series of poems The Vision of Ezekiel, all those in attendance rose to their feet and began chanting in union. It was a solemn and melancholy song in Heb[rew]. When I inquired as to its meaning, they told me that this song is ordinarily sung only when greeting rabbis; however, the audience had heard the voice of a genuine Jewish prophet in my poems, and decided to greet me as a rabbi. [...] Thus was I honored by the Jewish national Pride, and my poems about Russia, which were banned by the Volunteers——as they would later be banned by the Bolsheviks—were read publicly for the first time in the Unzer Winkl Jewish society (Voloshin, 2003–2013, VII/2: 416–17).

The Jewish writer mentioned by Voloshin, Zalman Isaak Onoikhi (his real last name was Aronson; 1877–1947), was a close acquaintance — 147 —

Notes

2 3

4

5

6 7

of Sobol’s, and the latter devoted a separate essay to him (Sobol, 1919/1920a). Noted in: Estraikh, 2005: 199; Estraikh, 2012: 121. See his letter to G. P. Struve from June 23, 1977 (The Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. G. Struve Coll., box 75, folder 12). A. Bacherac devoted a section in his book of memoirs to V. Parnakh, see: Bacherac, 1980: 166–70. Spisok chlenov evreiskoi obshchiny Saratova, 1890–1918 (Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Saratovskoi Oblasti) [List of members of the Jewish community of Saratov, 1890–1918 (The State Archives of Saratov Province)]. F. 637, box 2, folder 3777b, p. 134. The Sobol family archive. B. Faivush, a close friend of Sobol’s who, after his death, took it upon herself to tell about his childhood and youth, also gives his date of birth as January 22, 1888 (Faivush, 1928: 135); S. Khlavna—the daughter of Sobol’s first wife, R. Bakhmutskaia, from a later marriage—asserts that Sobol was born on a “Friday in January”; however, she fails to specify the year (Khlavna, 2005). GA RF. F. 533, box 3, folder 2762, pp. 1, 4. A definition applied by Shimon Markish to Ilya Ehrenburg. See Markish, 1996: 132.

Part I 1

2

3

The protagonist, who is plotting an attempt on the life of the governor while masquerading as a newspaper seller, is asked whether he has Novoe Vremia. He replies: “Novoe Vremia, the pogromist newspaper? You must have a very low opinion of me, Mr. Clerk. I am an honest Jew” (Sobol, 1916d: 172). This precipitated Gorky’s well-known Open Letter to Baal-Makhshoves (Evreiskaia Nedelia, 1916, n 6, February 7, pp. 6–7) and the latter’s reply to it. However, this reply, which was submitted to Evreiskaia Zhizn’, was not published: Gorky sent a letter to Lev Iaffe, who edited this weekly, asking him to refrain from publication, since, in his view, it was untimely and could “lead to excessive polemics, to the delight of anti-Semites” (for these and other materials that touch on this discussion, see: Agurskii, Shklovskaia, 1986: 230–44). Incidentally, Sobol’s attitude toward Sologub’s story is similar to the views expressed by progressive Jewish journalists who saw it as a naive and stilted apologia for the Jew—a cold, contrived, and calculated work, which is “an affront to our human dignity” (Grinbaum, 1915: 9). In his critical article, Grinbaum went on to say: “You will not find a single vivid image or heartwarming word in this story, and the soul—the suffering, wounded Jewish soul—is utterly absent from it” (ibid.: 9–10). — 148 —

Notes 4

We must also mention the little-known fact that Sobol was a member of the editorial board of the fourth edition of Shchit, which remained unpublished because of the Bolshevik Revolution. 5 RGB, F. 135, part II, box 22, folder 29, p. 36. 6 Evidently, this is a printer’s error: the respondent was referring to 1905, the year of the pogroms. 7 Unfortunately, we have been unable to determine the exact issue where the article was printed: It is preserved as a newspaper clipping in the Sobol family archive. 8 The subtitle of Rasskazy v pis’makh points to a kind of “external” prototype: An Imitation of Michel Province. Michel Province’s Epistolary Novellas (translated from the French by R. Markovich) were published in the magazine Sovremennyi Mir [The Modern World] (1916, n 3, pp. 89–123), in the same issue that also carried A. Ozhigov’s critical article Novels of post-Revolutionary Collapse, which includes a review of Sobol’s novel Pyl’. 9 Apparently, the “Society for Unadorned Art” is a parodic reference to Literaturnye sredy [Literary Wednesdays]—writers’ gatherings that were organized by the well-known Russian writer Nikolai Teleshov and held in his house. Sobol attended them regularly. 10 А. V. Bacherac, who had known Lidin in Berlin, wrote in his memoirs many years later: “A long time ago—in those days—Lidin often traveled abroad. When in Berlin, he frequented the ‘Writers’ Club,’ which was organized by Boris Zaitsev and Osorgin; there he was glad to meet old acquaintances from the ‘other shore.’ Once, he brought me a freshly-printed copy of his Tales of Many Days, to which he added a loving inscription. I devoured it at one go, but later I forgot what it was about, just like I forgot the contents of almost all his other books. The experience of reading them was somewhat pleasurable, but never memorable. When I made his acquaintance, our mutual friends warned me never to tell him, whether accidentally or intentionally, that I knew his real last name from somewhere. Apparently, he could not stand its ‘bourgeois’ sound. Well, who knows? It may be that this very revulsion enabled him to live out his long life without having his real name regularly exposed, as was the norm in Soviet culture. Actually, there was something miraculous in the fact that he was granted such a relatively prosperous existence, and that even in the darkest years he was able to serve as professor at a literary institute. I think that he owed this good fortune primarily to his ‘mildness and tidiness’” (Bacherac, 1980a). 11 Incidentally, we should note that Nazhivin’s wife was a Jew: Anna Efimovna Zusman (1877–1954), the daughter of a merchant from Warsaw. He met her in 1902 in Lausanne, where she was a student — 149 —

Notes

12

13

14

15

of medicine at the local university; for more about her, see the work of the Belgian scholar of Slavic Studies W. Coudenys (Coudenys 1999)—the most comprehensive study of Nazhivin’s life to date (see especially p. 235). The response to this article by progressive Russian figures can be gaged, for example, by reading Petrunkevich’s work (Petrunkevich, 1920). Nazhivin was not alone in proposing to redefine the Russian Jews as foreign subjects. A similar idea was entertained by Zinaida Gippius, among others. In a letter dated November 5, 1920 to P. Rutenberg (who lived in Palestine at the time), she wrote that this project was a realistic political option, given the possibility of establishing a Jewish state. For more on this, see: Khazan, 2008, II: 501–02. See also I. Vasilevskii’s book Belye memuary [Memoirs of a White Émigré], which was written after his return to Soviet Russia, and which devotes considerable space to Nazhivin (Vasilevskii, 1923). This book also mentions Bunin several times, in a particularly “denunciatory” context: long before the onset of the famine, Bunin began to seriously contemplate the question of whether “a ‘soup of human fingers’ is a staple food in Soviet Russia” (ibid.: 73–4). This refers to Bunin’s Open Letter to the Editor of The Times: “A Soup of Human Fingers,” which was published in the Paris-based Svobodnye Mysli [Free Thoughts]— a newspaper that was edited by Vasilevskii himself (Bunin, 1920). To be precise, in this letter Bunin did not really discuss the question of the “soup of human fingers” so much as speak of the unbridled cruelty awakened in the Russian people by the Bolsheviks (contra Gorky). The actual origin of this notorious “dish” (“human finger soup”) is mentioned in the memoirs of L. E. Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, who was Vasilevskii’s wife in those years: “The intense mutual dislike between Bunin and Vasilevskii was based on an unfortunate misunderstanding. A recent arrival from the Soviet Union was telling that, in Soviet dining halls, the soup was served ‘with fingers.’ He was referring to the sloppiness of the waiters, who would dip their fingers in the overflowing bowls of soup while serving them. Bunin took this infelicitous wording literally: that Soviet eating establishments served ‘human finger soup.’ He then published an outraged article in the White émigré press, where he expressed his horror and excoriated the Bolsheviks for their cruelty” (Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, 1989: 33). For more on this, see the introduction to the published correspondence between Nazhivin and Bunin (Coudenys, Davies, Primochkina, 2002: 277–78); see also Nazhivin’s letters to Bunin (Coudenys, Davies, 2004). Cf. Nazhivin’s letter to Bunin from June 8, 1920: “While in Belgrade, you would often remark: ‘Oh, the Jews are a force to be reckoned — 150 —

Notes

with!’ I wouldn’t argue with that, except for the fact that their strength lies only in our weakness and disunity. The choice is ours: with just a little effort, we may be able to, if not crush this force, then at least counteract its malignant ‘planetary’ influence [...]” (Coudenys, Davies, 2004: 325).

Part II 1

2

3

4

In the 1920s, E. B. Loiter worked as a director at the Meyerhold Theater (Moscow). See, for instance, Isaac Babel’s letter to his wife-to-be, T. Kashirina, who was then an actress at that theater (April 24, 1925): “Write to me about the tour: what is its status now? Are you going with the theater? Have you worked out the final route? On which date will the performances begin? I need to know this. I would like to coordinate my plans with... Loiter (his last name is Loiter, right?)” (Ivanova, 1992, n 5: 188). In his July 28, 1918 letter to I. A. Novikov (see below), Sobol appears to give a different address for the editorial office: 37 Tverskaia Street (across from Maly Gnezdnikovskii Lane); however, he is still referring to the same Nirnzee House. See the announcements printed in Moscow newspapers, such as Novosti Dnia [Daily News] (1918, n 55, June 8, p. 2): “The publication of the Evreiskii Mir literary anthologies will soon commence in Moscow. The first issue will include the short stories The Cross by L. Shapiro and The Golden Peacocks by Z. Segalovich, a long poem by I. Ehrenburg, articles by A. M. Efros (on Jewish painting) and I. Engel (on Jewish music), poems by Amari, N. Vengrov, K. Lipskerov, and others. The anthologies are edited by Sobol and E. B. Loiter; Ponedel’nik [Monday] (1918, n 16, June 17, p. 4): “The Evreiskii Mir publishing house is preparing a series of anthologies under the same title. The first issue will include numerous articles on Jewish culture, literature, painting, and music, as well as a large prose section. The anthologies are edited by A. Sobol and E. B. Loiter. Each issue will consist of approximately 18 pr[inter’s] sheets. Subscription for the first 5 issues has been opened (45 r[ubles])”. To round out the picture, let us mention another Moscow-based Russian-Jewish periodical: Novyi Put’ [The New Way], a weekly that was published under the Bolsheviks in the spring and summer of 1918. Many of its contributors were also included in the first issue of Evreiskii Mir (or were slated to appear in subsequent issues): A. Krein, S. Niger, S. Zinberg, I. Engel, and A. Efros. Incidentally, the imminent publication of Evreiskii Mir was announced in the “Literary Chronicle” section of Novyi Put’ (Novyi Put’, 1918, n 3, June 8, p. 31). — 151 —

Notes 5

6 7

8

9

10 11 12 13 14

For more on him, see: Bernhardt, 1974; Timenchik, Kopel’man, 1995; Khodasevich, 1998: 22–3; Horovits, 1998; Kopel’man, 2001; Horovits, Khazan, 2005; Khazan, 2005; Horovitz, 2009: 65–85, etc. Sobol also contributed to this peculiar journalistic “Festschrift” (Sobol, 1916). It should be noted that it was Iaffe who introduced M. O. Gershenzon to the national Jewish poet Hayim Nahman Bialik. Gershenzon, who was taken by Bialik’s personality, wrote in a letter to his mother and brother (April 23, 1917): “Last night, Iaffe brought Bialik to see us; aside from them, only Iaffe’s wife was present. They sat and talked for three hours. I can say one thing: I’ve seen lots of outstanding people in my day, but never has a person of Bialik’s stature graced our table. Marusia [Gershenzon’s wife] says that only Kant or Shakespeare could have been made of such stuff. He is such an amazingly profound thinker, and his thoughts are so substantial and concrete, that our own thinking seems rather airy and groundless in comparison. At the same time, his demeanor and manners are so simple, as if he were a mere clerk. His tone, too, is utterly free of artifice; yet, when you listen carefully, you can hear the growing, iron-hard fortitude of his thoughts, the clarity and poetry of his Russian words, and the keen intellect shining from his narrow eyes. … Compared to him, Viacheslav Ivanov, Sologub, Andrei Bely, Shestov, and Berdyaev are mere children who carelessly play at living, thinking, and composing poetry” (Gershenzon, 2016: 40–1). For Baltrušaitis’s letters to Sobol, in which he sends him the translated poems and asks for new ones, see: RGALI. F. 1605, box 1, folder 8. Apparently, Khodasevich’s remark, in his letter to Iaffe from March 23, 1918, concerning the money that Sobol left for him, refers to the advance payment (or the whole fee) for his contribution, as a translator, to Evreiskii Mir (Khodasevich, 1996–97, IV: 410). On the same day, Khodasevich—who, presumably, had seen Sobol (or spoken to him on the telephone)—wrote to Iaffe: “Please get better. Sobol tells me that you’ve been getting better. Is it true? You must write to me about yourself” (ibid.). The Sobol family archive. RGB. F. 356, box 3, folder 17, p. 2. RGB. F. 386, box 6, folder 9, pp. 1–3. Ibid., p. 4. On January 22, 1918, Sobol wrote to Viacheslav Ivanov, a prominent Russian philosopher, poet, literary and art critic, and art historian and theorist), and asked him to invite the young poet I. I. Krom to his home and take a look at his poetry (RGB. F. 109, box 34, folder 51, p. 1): — 152 —

Notes

Esteemed Viacheslav Ivanovich, Do not turn away my good acquaintance Iosif Ilyich Krom. He is a poet, and he would like you to take a look at his verse; your opinion is very important to him. I hope you will grant his wish. Regards, Andrei Sobol 15

16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29

30

S. An-sky’s book/album The Popular Jewish Artistic Heritage reached the typesetting stage, yet remained unpublished; for a modern edition, reconstructed on the basis of archival materials (and including the article by Efros), see: Kantsedikas, Sergeeva, 2001. Evreiskaia Mysl’ (Odessa), 1918, n 44/45, October 25, p. 35. Mädchen für alles: a female servant who is responsible for everything (German). At that time, Sobol and Bakhmutskaia were renting a dacha in the village of Taininskaia near Moscow. The movie theater of Aleksandr (Abram) Osipovich Drankov (1880– 1949)—a photographer, cameraman, film director and producer, one of the pioneers of Russian cinema. RGALI. F. 343, box 4, folder 884, p. 11. IMLI. F. 180, box 25, p. 1. RGALI. F. 95, box 1, folder 794, p. 1. Pavel Sergeevich Sukhotin (1884–1935)—a poet, prose writer, and playwright; a close friend of Sobol’s. RGALI. F. 1890, box 3, folder 429, p. 2. IMLI. F. 180, box 1, folder 28, p. 1. Apparently, this refers to Rachel Grigor’evna Gintzberg (1885– 1957), the daughter of the prominent Jewish writer, journalist, and philosopher Ahad Ha’am (Asher Hirsch Gintzberg). At the time, she was the second wife of Sobol’s close friend, the writer M. A. Osorgin. The Iaffes had two daughters—Miryam (1911–93) and Tamar (1914– 2004)—and a son, Benyamin (1921–85), who was born after their emigration from Russia. Here Sobol hints at his imprisonment in the Cheka jail in Odessa. This refers to the novellas Bred [Delirium] and Salon-Vagon [The Parlor Car], which were published together as a separate book by the Severnye Dni publishing house (on May 12, 1922); in a letter to his brother Vladimir, written on the following day, Sobol informed him: “Yesterday, my book came out—this is my first publication after three years of silence” (the Sobol family archive). At the time, Korsch’s Theater was preparing to stage Sobol’s play To You, the One and Only. — 153 —

Notes 31 32

33

34

35

36 37

Frida Veniaminovna Iaffe (née Kaplan, 1892–1982), Lev Iaffe’s wife. See note 27. It may be that the girl was named Tamar(a) on the advice of Vladimir Jabotinsky. The Iaffe archive holds a letter from Jabotinsky to Iaffe, written on the occasion of the birth of the latter’s daughter and dated May 9, 1914: “We congratulate you wholeheartedly. May God grant you... well, you know. Tonight, at dinner, Ania and myself will toast your health and the health of your charming girls. I would advise you to name the daughter Zimra or Tamara” (CZA. L. Jaffe Coll. А13/117). Die Zeit: a socialist-leaning Jewish (Yiddish-language) newspaper based in New York. It was edited by David Pinsky (1872–1959), a writer and playwright. Russia was not a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which had been effective from 1886. ARA (the American Relief Administration): an American relief organization that was active in the years 1919–1923. Its goal was helping the European countries which had been affected by World War I (the future US president Herbert Hoover was its director). In 1921, following the outbreak of famine in the Volga region, the ARA moved its activities to Russia. CZA. L. Jaffe Coll. А13/135. The fact that he had received royalties for the publication in Die Zeit is reported by Sobol in one of the forms that he filled out (see: RGALI. F. 131, box 1, folder 272, p. 1).

Part III 1 2 3 4

5 6

The novel Pyl’ was serialized in Russkaia Mysl’ [Russian Thought], a very highbrow and authoritative magazine (1915, n 1–4). Novaia Zhizn’ (Moscow), 1915, n 11, p. 204; 1916, n 1, p. 204. The G. V. Plekhanov Archive (G. V. Plekhanov’s House, St. Petersburg). F. 1097 (Coll. L.G. Deich), box 1, folder 403, p. 1. Aleksei Ivanovich Svirsky (name before baptism: Shimon Dovid Vigdorovich or Vigdoros; 1865–1942): a writer, playwright, and essayist. Evreiskaia Zhizn’ (St. Petersburg), 1904, n 3, pp. 3–13. Another possible intertextual link between Sobol (an episode from the novella Salon-Vagon) and Babel (the short story Sol’ [Salt]) is pointed out by Iu. Leving (Leving, 2004: 156–58). However, he wrongly dates the publication of Sobol’s novella to 1923. It was actually published one year earlier. — 154 —

Notes 7

8

9

10

11 12

13

14

Cf. the more categorical—and hence more controversial—conclusion of А. Gornfeld, who stated that, “obviously, the images created by Mr. Sobol are utterly lyrical: they say nothing about anything observable in real life, and have no objective significance” (Gornfeld, 1915: 334). Incidentally, we must mention the transformation of this perfectly “Russian” man into a Jew—a change that baffled contemporary critics (Kuniaev St., Kuniaev Serg., 2005: 368). Cf. Sobol’s reaction to this article, which is recorded in a letter to V. Lidin from February 24, 1916: “Rogachevskii’s article in Ezhem[esiachnyi] Zhur[nal] has nothing to say about you. As for myself, he petted me with one hand while slapping me with the other. Or, the way Miroliubov puts it: ‘He has written a very complimentary review of your work’” (Pis’ma Sobolia Lidinu, 2012). In an undated letter to Miroliubov himself, who was editor of Ezhemesiachnyi Zhurnal, Sobol offered a broadly similar appraisal of L’vov-Rogachevskii’s critical response: “I’ve read the article by L’vov-Rogachev[skii]. Yes, he petted me with one hand; as for the other hand—well, I can’t say it hurt too much, but—whatever” (IRLI. F. 185, box 1, folder 1081, p. 3). Cf. the use of this very definition in an announcement of his arrival in Kharkov during the Civil War: “The writer Andrei Sobol, author of the sensational novel Pyl’, is currently in Kharkov” (Parus (Kharkov), 1919, n 1, December 19, p. 12). Latutnik (from the Russian latat’—“to patch up”) is a Yiddishized term signifying a tailor who does minor mending of clothes. The story was published in the Evreiskii Mir [Jewish World] anthology (1918), which was jointly edited by Sobol and E. B. Loiter (for more about Evreiskii Mir, see part II). Sobol may have shown the galley proofs of the story to the writer, journalist, and ethnographer S. Ansky; in any case, part of these galley proofs, which shows signs of heavy editing, is preserved in the An-sky’s RGALI fund (F. 2583, box 1, folder 9, pp. 1–4); the upper section of page 1 bears the following inscription, addressed to Sobol: “Iulii Mikh[ailovich]! Wait for me. I’ll be back soon. Loiter.” It was published for the first time in the magazine Russkie Zapiski [Russian Notes] (1915, n 3, pp. 55–85), and was later included in the author’s collection Rasskazy (Мoscow: Severnye dni, 1915, pp. 182–225). In addition to the fact that one of the characters “compliments” Mekhanik by saying that he “doesn’t look at all like a Jew” (Sobol, 1915b: 199), an unfamiliar Frenchwoman sitting next to him in — 155 —

Notes

a railway carriage remarks to her friend: “‘Now look at him. Isn’t he a handsome guy?’—‘These Russians are rarely handsome, but this one...’—was the hushed reply” (ibid.). It seems that the question of the relative beauty of Russian and Jewish men greatly preoccupied Sobol—cf. a different novella by him, Panoptikum [Freak Show] (1922), where the Jew Solomon openly envies the Russian Lesnichii: “Oh, if I were only built like you and had a nose like yours! Your snub nose, that truly Russian, glorious proboscis! People follow a nose like yours blindly!” (Sobol, 1930: 281). 15 Reprinted in: Sobol, 1926а. 16 See, for instance, an incident described by М. Geizer (Geizer, 1993: 52–3). Samuil Marshak deleted two stanzas from his poem We Lived in Tents at an Encampment (from his Palestinian cycle of poems) for the 1920 edition, thereby completely altering the conceptual code of the text: the actual setting has been erased; the new, sanitized version depicts a kind of agricultural labor process. Later, this second edition—without the offending two stanzas—was published in the volume S. Marshak, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (Moscow, 1974), which formed part of the Biblioteka poeta series (however, it should be noted that the old version was also printed in the section “Other Editions and Versions”). These are the two stanzas: When we arrived, my old companion Drew my attention to a slope With the paupers’ dwellings. This is Zorah. This, then, was Samson’s childhood home. Now, Samson’s strength is sorely missed here: From break of dawn till late at night, The locals chase the snakes and scorpions, Move heavy rocks, and burn the shrubs.

Oblomki [Wreckage] is a collection of short stories by Sobol, published in 1923 by the Moscow-based Krug [Circle] publishing house (cover design by the artist L. Bruni; publisher’s logo design by Iu. Annenkov). In addition to that, in the very same year Pogreb [The Cellar], together with the short story Oblomki, was issued as a small booklet by the Berlin-based Mysl’ [Thought] as part of the series Biblioteka ‘Kniga dlia vsekh’ (n 100); Pogreb was published for the first time in the magazine Moskva [Moscow] (1922, n 6, pp. 4–6). 18 The topic of the Jews as the scapegoats of the Russian apocalypse is explored by Sobol in an essay entitled Zhut’ [Horror], which was published during the Civil War in the Odessa newspaper Sovremennoe Slovo [The Modern Word] (1919, n 30, November 16, p. 2). 17

— 156 —

Notes 19

20 21

22

23 24 25

26

27 28

29

30

31 32

Rossia, 1923, n 5, January, pp. 31–2; Sobol’s work on this novel was also reported in the Berlin magazine Novaia Russkaia Kniga [New Russian Book] (1923, n 3/4, p. 52). Knigonosha (Moscow), 1923, n 28, December 8, p. 3. On some recurring images used to describe anti-Semitic pogroms in Russian literature (with particular reference to the poetics of D. Knut), see: Khazan, 2001: 106–15. Sobol submitted the story for publication in Iaffe’s projected anthology back in the summer of 1917. See a letter from Iaffe to M. Gershenzon dated August 3, 1917, where he mentions Sobol’s name among authors whose works would be published in the first issue of Safrut (Horovits, 1998: 216). Das Yiddishe Folk (Warsaw), 1918, n 44, October 31, pp. 3–8; n 45, November 7, pp. 3–8. On the publisher Shlomo (Solomon Davidovich) Zaltsman (1873– 1946), see: Waisblai, Khazan, 2015. This refers to Bialik’s essay Halakha and Aggadah, which was published in the same issue of Safrut as Sobol’s story; the Halakha is the body of Jewish religious laws and regulations, which govern the lives of Jews. The review was signed with the secret name Iu. Ber., which referred to Mikhail Iur’evich (Michael-Chaim Urievich) Berkhin (1885–1952), a journalist, political commentator, literary and artistic critic, Zionist, and social activist. For more on him, see: Khazan, 2013a. GA RF. F. 5831, box 1, folder 174, p. 31. NLI (Dept. of Manuscripts and Rare Books). Arc. Ms. Var 322/4. For a biographical sketch of O. O. Gruzenberg, which touches on his attitude toward Rutenberg, see: Khazan, 2013a. These words are spoken by the protagonist, Hillel Foskrupnik, who adopts a new, Islamic persona named “Khalil” because of pressing life circumstances: he desperately searches for ways to be admitted to the university, from which he is barred as a Jew. This aphorism is commonly attributed to the German politician August Bebel (1840–1913), a prominent figure in the labor movement both in Germany and abroad, and one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The Sobol family archive. This expression was used by the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev in reference to Andrei Bely, the author of the novel Petersburg; he is paraphrasing a line of verse by Tyutchev: “A. Bely has no Russian ideology, and there is no need to search for it in his works. He possesses something greater than the Russian ideological consciousness: the Russian nature and the Russian element. He is Russian to the very — 157 —

Notes

33

34 35 36

depths of his being; the Russian chaos is crawling inside him” (Berdyaev, 1989: 439). Following another suicide attempt in October 1924 (via morphine overdose), Sobol was in need of rest and medical treatment. In February 1925, he set out for Sorrento, stopping for a few days in Berlin. There, he met I. Klinov. Rassvet (Paris), 1926, n 30, July 26, p. 15. Doar Ha’Yom (Jerusalem), 1926, July 22, p. 2. It should say: in 1915.

Part IV 1 2

3 4 5

6

7

8

Some of them are printed in: Suvorova, 1993: 149–51 and Suvorova, 1994. The reference to Yiddish, the vernacular of European Jewry, as “the Jargon” was a common and accepted usage both among the Jews themselves and in the wider non-Jewish environment, and it carried no pejorative connotation. Correspondingly, Yiddish-language writers were commonly referred to as “Jargon writers”. This definition was used to better differentiate Yiddish from ancient Hebrew, which was used for sacred purposes (the reading of the Scripture, which was written in that language; prayer; religious rituals, etc.). Manuscript Collections, Lilly Library, Indiana University (Bloomington). A. Amfiteatrov MSS. Box 6. Sobol derived this pseudonym from the first and last name of the protagonist of Ivan Turgenev’s novel Nov’ (1877). Published on the basis of the manuscript (the second copy, written in agate pencil), which is kept in the following archive: BShAl, 3/9 kn. Vladimir (Wulf) Osipovich Fabrikant (1879–1931) was a member of the Combat Organization of the Social-Revolutionary Party (led by Boris Savinkov). For more on him, see: Kan, 2012: 287–89. Following the October Revolution, he aided A. F. Kerensky in his escape from Russia, and was one of his closest associates and confidants—see: Margulies, 1923, II: 92–3; Abraham, 1987 (in the index of names). GA RF. F. DP ОО, box 1906, folder 1115, t. 17, p. 185. Incidentally, we should note that the correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Sobol, which has been partially preserved in the archives of the Police, creates the amusing impression that Wandering Stars posed a grave danger to the political system in Russia. Piotr Ivanovich Pevin (also known under the pseudonym Bedniak; ?-1918) was a journalist who published Obshchedostupnyi Zhurnal, Sovremennik, and the newspaper Ural’skaia Zhizn’. — 158 —

Notes 9 10 11

12

13

14 15 16 17

18 19

Manuscript Collections, Lilly Library, Indiana University (Bloomington). A. Amfiteatrov MSS. Box 6. BShAl, 9/28 al. Iu. (U.) I. Pinus translated Sholem Aleichem’s writings for the eight– volume Russian-language edition of his works, issued in 1910–13 by the Moscow-based Sovremennye Problemy publishing house, which was headed by L. A. Stoliar. Sholem Aleichem met Pinus when the latter was a student at the Faculty of Medicine of Moscow University. The writer’s daughter, Maria Waife-Goldberg, writes: “I. Pinus was a fairly mediocre translator, whose work pales in comparison to the excellent Russian translators who are active today. However, he was reasonably good for his time, and my father’s works quickly became very popular with the Russian reading public” (Waife-Goldberg, 1968: 253). The square brackets are in Sholem Aleichem’s original text. Sobol, who did not know Hebrew and could not distinguish between “s” and “sh” in those Yiddish borrowings from Hebrew that began with the letter “shin” (“sin”), was in a situation similar to that of the Ephraimite from the Book of Judges (12:6: “Then said they [the Gileadites] unto him [the Ephraimite]: ‘Say now Shibboleth,” and he said ‘Sibboleth,’ for he could not frame to pronounce it right”). However, Sobol reversed the two in error. Incidentally, several Russian authors alluded to this well-known Biblical episode. See, for instance, the “Twelfth Letter” from Viktor Shklovsky’s Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, or (to pick a less trite example) the final line of Aleksei Kruchenykh’s poem The Shift (1922?): “The Shilistines are near” (Kruchenykh, 2001: 156), where the phonetic change of “Philistines” to “Shilistines” partially imitates the same source. BShAl, 4/9 kn; published for the first time in: Suvorova, 1994: 307 (the real identity of “A. Nezhdanov” is passed over in silence in this publication). BShAl, 5/9 kn. BShAl, 7/9 kn. Sobol refers to the real (and Russified) first name and patronymic of Sholem Aleichem—Solomon Naumovich. To maintain secrecy, Sobol received some of his mail through the address of his close friend Sofia Borisovna (Sara Berkovna) Simanovskaia (1889–?), who studied medicine at the University of Berne. An old measure of capacity, roughly equivalent to 1 liter (Yiddish); here, the plural form is used. The title of a melodrama with which one of the characters, Getzel ben Getzel, head of the Lvov Jewish Theater, regales the audience. It literally means, “Isabella, Tear My Corset” (Yiddish). — 159 —

Notes 20

21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32

33

34

35 36

37

This refers to a scene in the novel where the future prima donna, Henrietta Schwalb, who is at the beginning of her theatrical career, comes to the theater dressed like a poor girl, and Getzel ben Getzel takes her for a chambermaid— ‫( אפאקאיאווע‬from the Polish “pokojowa”—chambermaid). BShAl, 1/6–nl. A beautiful woman (Hebrew). BShAl, 2/6–nl. In January 1912, Amfiteatrov resigned as editor of Sovremennik (see: Rech’, 1912, n 20, January 21, p. 7), and this job was taken up by the literary scholar Evgenii Aleksandrovich Liatsky (1868–1942). This refers to the short stories Zven’ia [Links] (Sobol, 1912) and Listki iz zabytoi tetradi [Sheets from a Forgotten Notebook] (Sobol, 1912a). BShAl, 4/6–nl. BShAl, 11/28–аl. BShAl, 5/6–nl. This letter was perlustrated by foreign police agents and copied onto tracing paper. It has also been preserved in the archive of the Department of Police—see: GA RF. F. 102, box 265, folder 783, pp. 27–30. GA RF. F. 102, box 265, folder 801, pp. 64–7. The novel was serialized in the St. Petersburg weekly Novyi Voskhod from July 25 to September 27, 1913. BShAl, 3/6–nl. We do not know who coined the nickname “king of advances”: Khodasevich probably borrowed it from the biographical sketch by B. Faivush, who wrote: “He [Sobol] became ‘the king of advances,’ as one author has jokingly told me” (Faivush, 1928: 140). For instance, on December 31, 1924, Sobol received thirty rubles (a considerable sum for that time) as an advance payment for the publication of his short story Kandaly [Fetters] in the magazine 30 Dnei; however, the story was never published there (RGALI. F. 1433, box 3, folder 289, p. 42). Apparently, he was really planning to reissue this story from 1912 (possibly in a somewhat revised form). Tantième (French): a bonus paid as a percentage of profits to directors and high-ranking employees of joint-stock companies, banks, and insurance firms. RGALI. F. 1605, box 1, folder 4, p. 5. RGALI. F. 1153, box 1, folder 206, p. 2 (the other side). The letter is written on official letter stationery of the Writers’ Union: “The Secretariat, Moscow, ‘Herzen House,’ 25 Tverskoy Blvd.” This is mentioned in a letter (dated July 12, 1926) sent by I. M. Sarkizov from Moscow to M. A. Voloshin (Kupchenko, 2007: 308). — 160 —

Notes 38 39 40

41 42 43

Even the bed, armchair, and table lamp were borrowed by Sobol from his cousin, S. O. Simanovich. GA RF. F. DP OO, box 1913, folder 9, p. 126. The Sobol family archive. Earlier, in a letter (postcard) dated April 27, 1910 and sent to an unknown addressee (possibly the very same Katia), Sobol had written: “Iakov has been admitted to the Technic[al] School in Biel (half an hour’s ride from Berne). The tuition fee is pretty high—125 fr[ancs] per semester, but I’ve already procured 100 francs through my relatives, and I’m going to send the money to him today”. (ibid.). Ibid. Ibid. See, for instance, recent works by the Israeli scholar E. Sicher: Sicher, 2012; Sicher, 2014.

Part V 1

2

3

Another, related subject—which is less prominent, yet still present in Sobol’s literary and critical oeuvre—is his interest in cinema. See his article The Voice of the Minority in the Moscow-based magazine about film, Proektor [The Projector] (1915, n 3, pp. 3–5). Written with a fair degree of professionalism, the article discusses film as a serious art form rather than a mere farcical spectacle driven by popular vulgarity, poor tastes, or crass stereotypes. We should also mention two film reviews by Sobol, both of which were published in the magazine Sovetskii Ekran [The Soviet Screen] in 1926. The first review (n 1, January 5, pp. 12–4) discussed A. Granovskii’s silent movie Evreiskoe shchast’e [Jewish Happiness] (1925), which was based on stories by Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Mikhoels played the lead role of Menachem Mendel; the title cards were written by Isaac Babel). The second review (n 22, June 1, p. 4) covered E. A. Ivanov-Barkov’s film Mabul (1926), which was based on another work by Sholem Aleichem: the novella The Bloody Belt. In addition to those mentioned below, let us note the following: Odin iz trekh [One out of Three] (Sobol, 1922); a series of articles entitled Molodoi teatr [The Young Theater] (Sobol, 1923; Sobol, 1923a; Sobol, 1923b); Zhut’ [Horror] (Sobol, 1923d); Pochti vyigrysh [Almost a Win] (Sobol, 1923e). A prompter’s box is mentioned in the very same novella Bred: the “Bitirsky Theater of Reasonable Popular Entertainment” burns down on the first evening after its opening, and then, “during the winter months, until the opening of the fair, the wind would whistle, howling in the prompter’s box” (Sobol, 1922c: 30). It should be noted — 161 —

Notes

4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13

14 15

that, in his youth, Sobol himself worked as a prompter at a summer operetta theater (Sobol, 1922a: 38). In his memoirs, B. Faivush recalls an amusing incident from Sobol’s career as a prompter: “One time, when an inexperienced actor was carried away in the act of fake piano playing and got his fingers stuck in the keyboard of the mock piano, Andrei was quite frightened and rushed out of the prompter’s box to aid him, to the great amusement of the spectators” (Faivush, 1928: 136). IRLI. F. 185, box 1, folder 1081, p. 4 (the other side). The copy of the play that passed through the censors is kept in the St. Petersburg Theater Library (№ 28254). Yevtikhi Pavlovich Karpov (1857–1926), a playwright and director. The Sobol family archive. Ibid. Mikhail Borisovich (Moisei Berkovich) Gorodetskii (1869–1918) was a journalist, entrepreneur, editor, and publisher; Gorodetskii’s “publishing empire” was one of the largest and most massive in Russia. For Gorodetskii’s obituary, see: Den’ [Day] 1918, n 45, March 10; for biographical information on him, see: Gontmakher, 2007: 451. On this article, see: Katsis, 2002: 362–64. GA RF. F. 533, box 3, folder 2762; Sobol, 1922a: 39. M. Peleg appended the following note to his translation of Sobol’s essay: “[...]Once, in the hallways of Habima, Sobol told me: ‘I don’t understand Hebrew, but I do see a wondrous pattern on cloth, where each sign seems to be stitched out of the twenty-two letters [the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet]... The Hebrew language is the language of the soul, and its letters are hewn stones in the masonry of the building... Heavenly geometry does exist, and it is the architecture of eternity’” (Breshit Habima, 1966: 261). In the first article of the series Molodoi teatr, Sobol refers to this production as “stuffy nocturnal Jewish mysticism” (Sobol, 1923: 409). The first two sentences of the second paragraph are quoted from the book: Gilboa, 1977: 1982. Sobol, 1966.

Conclusion 1

Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronskii (1884–1937, executed) was a literary critic, writer, and art historian. Here, Sobol is referring to his role as the editor of the magazine Krasnaia Nov’ [Red Virgin Soil]. — 162 —

Notes 2 3

RGALI. F. 2529, box 1, folder 195, p. 30. In an earlier study, this scholar mentioned Sobol’s Kitaiskie teni (povesti i rasskazy) [Chinese Shadows (Novellas and Short Stories)] (Moscow; Leningrad: Zemlya i fabrika, 1925, The Ogoniok Library) as a book that had been withdrawn from circulation (Blium, 2003: 167).

Bibliography

Abraham, 1987—Abraham, Richard. Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press). Adaskina, 2013—Adaskina, N. L. “Sodruzhestvo muz: Literaturnokhudozhestvennyi kruzhok Kara-Murzy,” Tret’iakovskie chteniia 2012: Materialy otchetnoi nauchnoi konferentsii / Ed. L. I. Iovleva (Moscow: SPM-Industriia). Agurskii, Shklovskaia, 1986—Maxim Gorkii. Iz literaturnogo naslediia: Gorkii i evreiskii vopros / Avtory-sost.: M. Agurskii, M. Shklovskaia (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Center for Research and Documentation of East European Jewry). Andreev, 1915—Andreev, L. “Pervaia stupen’,” Shchit: Literaturnyi sbornik (Moscow), pp. 2–8. Baal-Makhshoves, 1916—Baal-Makhshoves. “Listki. II,” Evreiskaia Zhizn’ (Moscow), n 1, January 3, pp. 8–10. Baal-Makhshoves, 1916a—Baal-Makhshoves. “Listki. IV,” Evreiskaia Zhizn’ (Moscow), n 5, January 21, pp. 21–3. Babel, 1960—Babel, Isaac. The Collected Stories / Ed. and Trans. by Walter Morison, with an Introduction by Lionel Trilling (Cleveland and New York; Meridian Books). Bacherac, 1980—Bacherac, Alexander. Po pamiati, po zapisiam: Literaturnye portrety (Paris: Le Presse Libre). Bacherac, 1980a—Bacherac, Alexander. “Tri vstrechi,” Novoe Russkoe Slovo (New York), n 25091, January 13, p. 5. Baum, 1927—Baum, Ia. D. “Andrei Sobol’ pered voennym sudom,” Katorga i ssylka (Moscow), n 6 (35), pp. 193–203. Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, 1989—Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, L. Е. Vospominaniia (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura). Berdyaev, 1989—Berdyaev, Nikolai. Sobranie sochinenii, t. 3: Tipy religioznoi mysli v Rossii (Paris: YMCA-Press). Berkhin, 1922—Ber[khin] Iu. “[review of] Safrut: Literaturnokhudozhestvennyi sbornik / Pod red. L. Iaffe. Izdatel’stvo S. D. Zalstmana. Berlin, 1922,” Rassvet (Berlin), n 30, November 5, p. 23. — 164 —

Bibliography

Bernhardt, 1974—Bernhardt, Luis. “V. F. Khodasevich i sovremennaia evreiskaia poezia,” Russian Literature (Amsterdam), n 6, pp. 21–31. Blium, 2003—Blium, Arlen. Zapreshchennye knigi russkikh pisatelei i literaturovedov 1917–1991: Index sovetskoi tsenzury s kommentariiami (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennyi universitet kul’tury i iskusstv). Blium, 2011—Blium, Arlen. Russkie pisateli o tsenzure i tsenzorakh: Ot Radishcheva do nashikh dnei: 1790–1990: Opyt kommentirovannoi antologii (St. Petersburg: Poligraf). Breshit Habima, 1966—Breshit Habima: Nakhum Tsemakh: Meyased Habima be-khazon u-ve-ma’as / Ed. Yitzhak Norman (Jerusalem: Hasifriia ha-tzionit), Hebrew. Bunin, 1919—Bunin, I. “Zametki,” Iuzhnoe Slovo (Odessa), n 67, November 21, pp. 1–2. Bunin, 1920—Bunin, I. “Sup iz chelovecheskikh pal’tsev: (Otkrytoe pis’mo k redaktoru gazety Times),” Svobodnye Mysli (Paris), n 2, September 27, p. 2. Coudenys, 1999—Coudenys, Wim. Onedelachtbaren! Het weerspannige leven van Ivan Nazjivin, Rus, schrijver en emigrant (Antwerpen: Benerus). Coudenys, Davies, Primochkina, 2002—“I. A. Bunin i I. F. Nazhivin. Perepiska” / Preface by W. Coudenys; Nazhivin’s Letters—publ. and notes by R. Davies, W. Coudenys; Bunin’s Letters—publ. and notes by N. N. Primochkina, S dvukh beregov: Russkaia literatura XX veka v Rossii i za rubezhom (Moscow: IMLI RAN), pp. 277–326. Coudenys, Davies, 2004—“Pis’ma I. F. Nazhivina k I. A. Buninu (1919– 1920)” / Publ. by Wim Coudenys, Richard Davies, I. A. Bunin: Novye materialy, vol. I (Moscow: Russkii put’), pp. 317–32. Dubnov, 1915—Dubnov, S. “Inter arma. IV: Sub’ektivnye osnovaniia protiv beznadezhnosti,” Novyi Voskhod (Petrograd), n 10–11, pp. 9–10. Evrei, 1915—Evrei. “Iz russkoi pechati,” Rassvet (Petrograd), n 8, February 22, pp. 20–3. Evrei, 1915a—Evrei. “Iz russkoi pechati,” Rassvet (Petrograd), n 11/12, March 15, pp. 26–7. Estraikh, 2005—Estraikh, Gennady. “Evreiskaia literaturnaia zhizn’ v poslerevoliutsionnoi Moskve,” Arkhiv evreiskoi istorii, t. 2 (Moscow: ROSSPEN), pp. 187–212. Estraikh, 2012—Estraikh, Gennady. “Sovetskaia kar’era SholomAleichema,” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (Moscow), n 114, pp. 113–33. Faivush, 1928—Faivush, B. “Ob Andree Sobole (Materialy k biografii,” Zvezda (Leningrad), n 7, pp. 134–55. Frezinskii, 2008—Frezinskii, Boris. Mozaika evreiskikh sudeb (Moscow: Knizhniki). Gantseva, 2001—Gantseva, D. V. Andrei Sobol’: Tvorcheskaia biografiia. Thesis... of PhD (Yekaterinburg: Ural State University). — 165 —

Bibliography

Geizer, 1993—Geizer, Matvei. Evreiskaia mozaika (Moscow: Prometei). Geizer, 2001—Geizer, Matvei M. Russko-evreiskaia literatura XX veka. Thesis... of PhD (Moscow: Moscow State Open University). Gilboa, 1977—Gilboa, Yehoshua A. Lashon omedet al nafsha: Tarbut ivrit beBrit ha-Moatsot (Tel Aviv: Hotsa’at sfarim poalim), Hebrew. Gontmakher, 2007—Gontmakher, M. A. Evrei na Donskoi zemle: Istoriia, fakty, biografii. 2nd edition, corrected and expanded (Rostov-on-Don; Rostizdat). Gorbov, 1926—Gorbov, D. “Dnevnik obnazhennogo serdtsa,” Krasnaia Nov’ (Moscow), n 8, pp. 197–204. Gorky, 2006—Gorky, M. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: Pis’ma: v 24-kh tomakh, t. 12 (Moscow: Nauka). Gornfeld, 1915—[Gornfeld, А.]. “[review of Sobol’s novel Pyl’ and his book Rasskazy (1915)],” Russkie Zapiski (St. Petersburg), n 12, pp. 331–34. Gornfeld, 1923—Gornfeld, A. “Russkoe slovo i evreiskoe tvorchestvo,” Evreiskii almanakh: Khudozhestvennyi i literaturnyi sbornik / Ed. B. I. Kaufman and I. A. Kleinman (Petrograd; Moscow: Petrograd), pp. 178–94. Grigor'iants, 1971—Grigor'iants, S. I. “Sobol’ A.,” Kratkaia literaturnaia entsiklopediia, t. 6 (Moscow: Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia), pp. 993–94. Grinbaum, 1915—Grinbaum, I. “Dva vystupleniia,” Rassvet (Petrograd), n 8, February 22, pp. 9–12. Gruzenberg, 1938—Gruzenberg, O. O. Vchera (Paris). Gurevich, 1915—Gurevich, S. “Zametki o knigakh: Pyl’,” Novyi Voskhod (Petrograd), n 7, February 20, pp. 39–42. Gurfinkel, 1919—Gurfinkel, M. “Novye motivy evreiskoi liriki,” Evreiskaia Mysl’ (Odessa), n 19, September 11, pp. 26–8; n 21, September 26, pp. 17–9. Hetényi, 2006—Hetényi, Zsuzsa. “Andrei Sobol’, russko-evreiskii pisatel’,” Russko-evreiskaia kul’tura (Moscow: ROSSPEN), pp. 71–84. Hetényi, 2008—Hetényi, Zsuzsa. In a Maelstrom: The History of RussianJewish Prose (1860–1940) (Budapest; New York: Central European University Press). Horovits, 1998—“Pis’ma L. B. Iaffe k M. O. Gershenzonu” / Publ. by B. Horovits, Vestnik Evreiskogo universiteta v Moskve, n 2 (18), pp. 210–25. Horovitz, 2009—Horovitz, Brian. Empire Jews: Jewish Nationalism and Acculturation in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University, Slavica Publisher). Horovits, Khazan, 2005—“Iz istorii russko-evreiskikh literaturnykh otnoshenii: Pis’ma russkikh pisatelei k L. B. Iaffe” / Publication, introduction, and commentary by B. Horovits and V. Khazan, Arkhiv evreiskoi istorii, t. 2 (Moscow: ROSSPEN), pp. 407–38. — 166 —

Bibliography

Iaffe, 1948—Iaffe, Leib. Tkufot (Tel Aviv: Masada), Hebrew Ivanov, 1999—Ivanov, V. V. Russkie sezony teatra “Gabima” (Moscow: Artist. Rezhisser. Teatr). Ivanova, 1992—Ivanova, Tamara. “Glava iz zhizni: Vospominaniia. Pis’ma I. Babelia,” Oktiabr’ (Moscow), n 5, pp. 183–207; n 6, pp. 183–207; n 7, pp. 161–86. Jabotinsky, 1905—Zhabotinskii, Vladimir. “Nabroski bez zaglaviia,” Khronika Evreiskoi Zhizni (St. Petersburg), n 3/4, January 23, pp. 38­–42. Jabotinsky, 1913—Zhabotinskii, V. Fel’etony (St. Petersburg). Kan, 2012—Kan, Grigorii. Natal’ia Klimova: Zhizn’ i bor’ba (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo im. N. I. Novikova; Istoriko-revoliutsionnyi arkhiv, 3). Kantsedikas, Sergeeva, 2001—Kantsedikas, A.; Sergeeva, I. Albom evreiskoi khudozhestvennoi stariny Semena An-skogo (Moscow: Mosty kultury). Karpov, 1998—Karpov, A. S. “Sobol’, Andrei,” Russkie pisateli, XX vek: Biobibliograficheskii slovar’: v 2-kh tomakh, t. 2 (Moscow: Prosveshchenie). Karpov, 2005—Karpov, A. S. “Sobol’, Andrei,” Russkaia literatura XX veka: Prozaiki, poety, dramaturgi: Biobibliograficheskii slovar’: v 3-kh tomakh, t. 3 (Moscow: OLMA-Press Invest). Katz, 2008—Katz, Elena M. Neither with Them, Nor without Them: The Russian Writer and the Jew in the Age of Realism (Syracuse University Press). Katsis, 2002—Katsis, Leonid. Osip Mandelstam: muskus iudeistva (Jerusalem: Gesharim; Moscow: Mosty kul’tury). Kazak, 1988—Kazak, Wolfgang. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ russkoi literatury s 1917 goda (London: Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd.). Khazan, 2001—Khazan, Vladimir. Osobennyi evreisko-russkii vozdukh: (K problematike i poetike russko-evreiskogo literaturnogo dialoga v XX veke) (Jerusalem: Gesharim; Moscow: Mosty kul’tury). Khazan, 2005—Khazan, V. “Dva fragmenta na temu “Sionizm i russkaia kul’tura,”” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (Moscow), n 73, pp. 100–08. Khazan, 2005a—Khazan, Vladimir. “Evreiskii mir Andreia Sobolia v zerkale russkoi revoliutsii (materialy k biografii pisatelia),” Мirovoi krizis 1914–1920 godov i sud’ba vostochnoevropeiskogo evreistva (Moscow: ROSSPEN), pp. 342–68. Khazan, 2008—Khazan, Vladimir. Pinkhas Rutenberg: Ot terrorista k sionistu: Opyt identifikatsii cheloveka, kotoryi delal istoriiu; in 2 vols. (Jerusalem; Moscow: Gesharim-Mosty kul’tury). Khazan, 2008a—Khazan, Vladimir. “Sobol, Andrei,” The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe [in two vols.], vol. 2 / Ed.-in-chief Gershon David Hundert (New Haven: London: Yale University Press), pp. 1767–68. Khazan, 2013—Khazan, Vladimir. “K portretu Mikhaila Berkhina,” Lechaim (Moscow), n 2, February, pp. 38-42. — 167 —

Bibliography

Khazan, 2013a—“‘Mne vsegda tiazhelo dyshat’ tam, gde menia nelaskovo prinimaiut:’ O. O. Gruzenberg” / Publication, preface, and commentary by V. Khazan, Sovremennye zapiski (Paris, 1920–1940): Iz arkhiva redaktsii, t. 3 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie), pp. 431–676. Khazan, 2014—Khazan, Vladimir. “‘Dvoinaia tiazhest’, dvoinoi krest:’ Andrei Sobol’ kak russko-evreiskii pisatel’,” Vestnik Evreiskogo universiteta (Jerusalem), n 15 (33), pp. 86–124. Khazan, 2015—Khazan, Vladimir. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo Andreia Sobolia, ili Povest’ o tom, kak vse vyshlo naoborot (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo im. N. I. Novikova). Khlavna, 1999—Khlavna, Salomeia. “Sniato Ovsianniko-Kulikovskim po pros’be Bunina…, ili Istoriia odnogo konflikta,” Voprosy Literatury (Moscow), n 3, March-April, p. 315–23. Khlavna, 2005—Khlavna, Salomeia. “Naedine so smert’iu,” Okna: Literaturnoe prilozhenie k gazete “Vesti” (Tel Aviv), May 19 – June 30. Khodasevich, 1936—Gulliver [V. Khodasevich]. “Literaturnaia letopis’. Andrei Sobol’,” Vozrozhdenie (Paris), n 4041, August 29, p. 7. Khodasevich, 1996–97—Khodasevich, V. F. Sobranie sochinenii: v 4-kh tomakh (Moscow: Soglasie). Khodasevich, 1998—Khodasevich, Vladislav. Iz evreiskikh poetov / Compilation, introduction, and commentary by Z. Kopel’man (Jerusalem: Gesharim; Moscow: Mosty kul’tury). Kipen, 1910—Kipen, Aleksandr. “Liverant,” Evreiskii Mir (St. Petersburg), n 1, pp. 73–93. Kopel’man, 2001—Kopel’man, Z. L. “Iaffe, Leib,” Kratkaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia [in 11 vols.], vol. 10 (Jerusalem: The Society for Research on Jewish Communities; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), pp. 902–94. Kornblatt, 1992—Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch. The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature: A Study in Cultural Mythology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press). Kruchenykh, 2001—Kruchenykh, Aleksei. Stikhotvoreniia. Poemy. Romany. Opera (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt). Kühn-Ludewig, 2010—Kühn-Ludewig, Maria. Jiddische Bücher aus Berlin (1918-1936): Titel, Personen, Verlage. 2., ergänzte Auflage (Numbrecht: Kirsch Verlag). Kuniaev St.; Kuniaev Serg., 2005—Kuniaev, Stanislav; Kuniaev, Sergei. Sergei Esenin. Izd. 3–e (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia). Kupchenko, 2007—Kupchenko, Vladimir. Trudy i dni Maksimiliana Voloshina: Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva 1917–1932 (St. Petersburg: Aleteia; Simferopol: Sonat). Lavretskii, 1916—Lavretskii, А. “Kriticheskie zametki,” Novyi Put’ (Moscow), n 10, pp. 38-40. — 168 —

Bibliography

Lavretskii, 1918—Lavretskii, А. “[review of] Sbornik Safrut, kn. 1,” Ponedel’nik ‘Vlasti Naroda’ (Moscow), n 1, February 25, p. 3. Lazurskii, 1919—Lazurskii, V. “Knizhnaia letopis’,” Iuzhnoe Slovo (Odessa), n 60, October 31, p. 2. Leving, 2004—Leving, Iu. “Sluchai na stantsii: Babel’, Sobol’, Tsvetaeva i drugie,” Zvezda (St. Petersburg), n 7, pp. 156–61. Lezhnev, 1927—Lezhnev, A. Sovremenniki: Literaturno-kriticheskie ocherki (Moscow: Krug). L’vov-Rogachevskii, 1916—L’vov-Rogachevskii, V. “Velikoe ozhidanie (Obzor sovremennoi russkoi literatury,” Ezhemesiachnyi Zhurnal (St. Petersburg), n 1, January, pp. 155–80. L’vov-Rogachevskii, 1922—L’vov-Rogachevskii, V. Russko-evreiskaia literatura (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo). Margulies, 1923—Margulies, M. S. God interventsii [v 3-kh tomakh] (Berlin: Izdatel’stvo Z.I. Grzhebina). Markish, 1994—Markish, Sh. “Babel’ i oni (glazami otshchepentsa),” Znamia (Moscow), n 7, pp. 165–70. Markish, 1996—Markish, Shimon. Babel’ i drugie (Kiev: Mikhail Schigol’). Merezhkovsky, 1915—Merezhkovskii, D. “Evreiskii vopros kak russkii,” Russkie Vedomosti (Moscow), n 68, March 25, p. 2. Murav, 2011—Murav, Harriet. Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Nakhimovsky, 1992—Nakhimovsky, Alice Stone. Russian-Jewish Literature and Identity: Jabotinsky, Babel, Grossman, Galich, Roziner, Markish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Nazhivin, 1919—Nazhivin, I. Chto zhe nam delat’? (Rostov-on-Don). Nazhivin, 1919a—Nazhivin, I. “K evreiskoi intelligentsii,” Svobodnaia Rech’ (Rostov-on-Don), n 217, October 9, p. 1. Nazhivin, 1922—Nazhivin, I. Sredi potukhshikh maiakov: Iz zapisok bezhentsa (Berlin: Ikar). Nevskii, 1915—Nevskii, A. “Drama bespochvennosti,” Evreiskaia Zhizn’ (Moscow), n 2, July 12, pp. 7–10; n 3, July 19, pp. 10–2; n 4, July 26, pp. 7–11. Ozhigov, 1916—Ozhigov, Al. [N. P. Asheshov] “Romany revoliutsionnogo krakha,” Sovremennyi Mir (St. Petersburg), n 3, pp. 150–53. Parnakh, 1925—Parnakh, Valentin. Vstuplenie k tantsam (Moscow). Parnach, 1926—Parnach, Valentine. “In the Russian World of Letters,” The Menorah Journal (New York), vol. 12, n 3, June-July, pp. 302–05. Perepiska Tolstogo, 1989—Perepiska A. N. Tolstogo: v 2-kh tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura). Petrunkevich, 1920—Petrunkevich, I. “Natsionalizm i antisemitizm,” Evreiskaia Tribuna (Paris), n 2, January 23, pp. 2–5. Pil’skii, 1926—Pil’skii, Piotr. “Sud Andreia Sobolia nad soboi,” Segodnia (Riga), n 128, June 12, p. 8. — 169 —

Bibliography

Pis’ma Sobolia Lidinu, 2012—“‘…Rossia—eto moe:’ Pis’ma Andreia Sobolia Vladimiru Lidinu (1916–1926)” / Publication and commentaries by V. Khazan, Toronto Slavic Quarterly, n 41, Summer [http://www. utoronto.ca/tsq/41/index.shtml]. Polonskii, 1915—Polonskii, V. “[review of A. Sobol’s novel Pyl’],” Letopis’ (Petrograd), December, pp. 390–92. Prat, 1996—[Prat, Naftali]. “Sobol’, Andrei,” Kratkaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia [in 11 vols.], vol. 8 (Jerusalem: The Society for Research on Jewish Communities; The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), pp. 79–82. Prat, 2000—Prat, Naftali. “Andrei Sobol’ i problema russko-evreiskoi literatury,” Mezhdu Vostokom i Zapadom: Evrei v russkoi i evropeiskoi kul’ture (Tallinn: Tallinn University), pp. 166–80. Rozanov, 1994—Rozanov, V. V. Mimoletnoe / Ed. A. N. Nikoliukin (Moscow: Respublika). Rytman, 1993—Rytman, Dora. Russian-Jewish Literature as a Mirror Jewry: The Special Case of Ilya Ehrenburg. Thesis... of PhD (Dept. of Slavic Languages at Brown University). Shafir, 1926—Shafir, Ia. “Bez kornei,” Knigonosha (Moscow), n 39, October 25, pp. 7–8. Shmi—Shmi [M. L. Trivus]. “Zametki,” Novyi Voskhod (Petrograd), n 5, February 6, p. 10. Sholem Aleichem, 1925—Sholem Aleichem. Skvoz’ slezy: Izbrannye rasskazy / Trans. by Iu. Pines; Ed. and with Introduction by A. Sobol’ (Moscow: Sovremennye problemy); 2nd edition—1928. Sicher, 1995—Sicher, Efraim. Jews in Russian Literature after the October Revolution: Writers and Artists between Hope and Apostasy (Cambridge University Press). Sicher, 2012—Sicher, Efraim. Babel in Context: A Study in Cultural Identity (Boston: Academic Studies Press). Sicher, 2014—Sicher, Efraim. “The Cultural Identity of Babel’,” Around the Point: Studies in Jewish Literature and Culture in Multiple Languages / Ed. H. Weiss [et al.] (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), pp. 492–513. Slonim, 2001 (1944)—Slonim, Mark. “Pisateli-evrei v sovetskoi literature,” Evreiskii mir (Jerusalem: Gesharim; Moscow: Mosty kul’tury); first edition—1944. Sobol, 1912—Nezhdanov, Andrei [A. Sobol’] “Zven’ia,” Obshchedostupnyi Zhurnal (St. Petersburg), n 4, pp. 24–32. Sobol, 1912a—Sobol’, Andrei. “Listki iz zabytoi tetradi (I. Moi nochi; II. Kandaly; III. V puti),” Zhizn’ Dlia Vsekh (St. Petersburg), n 12, pp. 1826–37. Sobol, 1915—Sobol’, Andrei. “Anketa ob antisemitizme,” Evreiskaia Zhizn’ (Moscow), n 9, February 28, pp. 7–10. — 170 —

Bibliography

Sobol, 1915a—Sobol’, Andrei. “Otkrytoe pis’mo D. S. Merezhkovskomu,” Otechestvo (Petrograd), n 6, pp. 2–3. Sobol, 1915b—Sobol’, Andrei. Rasskazy (Moscow: Severnye dni). Sobol, 1915c—Sobol’, Andrei. “Russkie belletristy i evrei na voine,” Evreiskaia Nedelia (Moscow), n 25, November 8, pp. 46–8. Sobol, 1916—Sobol’, Andrei. “Bialik,” Evreiskaia Zhizn’ (Moscow), n 14/15, April 3, pp. 28–9. Sobol, 1916b—Sobol’, Andrei. “Moisei i Magomet,” Evreiskaia Zhizn’ (Moscow), n 10, March 6, pp. 42–7. Sobol, 1916c—Sobol’, Andrei. “О Russko-Evreiskikh Pisateliakh (Pis’mo v redaktsiiu),” Novyi Put’ (Moscow), n 4, February 13, pp. 13–5. Sobol, 1916d—Sobol’, Andrei. Pyl’ (Moscow: Severnye dni). Sobol, 1916e—Sobol’, Andrei. “Rasskazy v pis’makh,” Novyi Put’ (Moscow), n 29, August 7, pp. 25–8; n 30, August 14, pp. 21–7. Sobol, 1918—Sobol’, Andrei. “Son tysiacheletii,” Evreistvo i Palestina (Moscow), May 19–26, p. 8. Sobol, 1918a—Sobol’, Andrei. “Vina intelligentsii (K voprosu o evreiskom teatre),” Teatral’naia Zhizn’ (Kiev), n 34, December 1, pp. 12–3. Sobol, 1918a—Sobol’, Andrei. “Vstan’ i idi,” Safrut, v. 1 / Ed. L. Iaffe (Moscow: Safrut), pp. 47–54. Sobol, 1919—Sobol’, Andrei. “Tridtsat’,” Evreiskaia Mysl’ (Odessa), n 28, November 17, pp. 20–2. Sobol, 1919/1920—Sobol’, Andrei. “Varnaki,” Sovremennoe Slovo (Odessa), n 56, December 19, 1919— January 1, 1920, p. 1. Sobol, 1919/1920a—Sobol’, Andrei. “Onoikhi,” Evreiskaia Mysl’ (Odessa), n 34, December 26, 1919—January 8, 1920, p. 5. Sobol, 1922—Sobol’, Andrei. “Odin iz trekh,” Teatral’noe obozrenie (Moscow), n 1, January 24, pp. 9–10. Sobol, 1922a—Sobol’, Andrei. “[Heading] Pisateli o sebe,” Novaia Russkaia Kniga (Berlin), n 6, pp. 38-40. Sobol, 1922b—Sobol’, Andrei. “Novyi den’ evreiskogo teatra,” Teatr i Muzyka (Moscow, n 12, December 19, pp. 297–99. Sobol, 1922c—Sobol’, Andrei. Salon-vagon. Bred (Moscow: Severnye dni). Sobol, 1923—Sobol’, Andrei. “Molodoi teatr,” Teatr i muzyka (Moscow), n 1/2, January 5, pp. 409–10. Sobol, 1923a—Sobol’, Andrei. “Molodoi teatr,” Teatr i muzyka (Moscow), n 6, February 13, pp. 628-29. Sobol, 1923b—Sobol’, Andrei. “Molodoi teatr,” Teatr i muzyka (Moscow), n 1/2, January 5, pp. 409–10. Sobol, 1923c—Sobol’, Andrei. “Molodoi teatr. Mikhoels,” Teatr i Muzyka (Moscow), n 11, May 27, pp. 810–11. Sobol, 1923d—Sobol’, Andrei. “Zhut’,” Teatr i Muzyka (Moscow), n 32, September 18, pp. 1031–32. — 171 —

Bibliography

Sobol, 1923e—Sobol’, Andrei. “Pochti vyigrysh,” Teatr i muzyka (Moscow), n 36, November 6, pp. 1153–54. Sobol, 1925—Sobol’, Andrei. Kniga malen’kikh rasskazov (1922–1925) (Moscow: Moskovskoe Tovarishchestvo Pisatelei). Sobol, 1926—Sobol’, Andrei. “O liubvi i starosti,” Krasnaia Gazeta (Leningrad), n 131, June 9, p. 2. Sobol, 1926a—Sobol’, Andrei. “O liubvi i starosti,” Dni (Berlin), n 1029, June 16, p. 2. Sobol, 1927—Sobol’, Andrei. Pechal’nyi vesel’chak (posmertnoe proizvedenie) […] ([Khar’kov:] Izdanie P. A. Krasnogo i M. S. Shliaposhnikova), pp. 7–28. Sobol, 1927–28—Sobol’, Andrei. Sobranie sochinenii [v 4-kh tomakh] (Moscow; Leningrad: Zemlia i Fabrika). Sobol, 1930—Sobol, Andre. Freak Show / Transl. from the Russian by Jenny Covan (New; London: Claude Kendall). Sobol, 1966—Sobol, Andrei. “Meeyn ha-tankhumin,” Breshit Habima: Nakhum Tsemakh: Meyased Habima be-khazon u-ve-ma’as / Ed. Yitzhak Norman (Jerusalem: Hasifriia ha-tzionit), pp. 260–61, Hebrew. Sobol M., 1995—Sobol’, M. “Ia ochen’ nekhrabryi chelovek: Interv’iu na fone novoi knigi” / Besedu vela Anna Saed-Shakh, Literaturnaia Gazeta (Moscow), n 30, July 26, p. 3. Suvorova, 1993—Suvorova, A. V. “K istorii odnoi nesostoiavsheisia publikatsii,” Sbornik statei po evreiskoi istorii i literature [v 4-kh tomakh], t. 3 / Ed. Moshe S. Zhidovetskii (Rehovot, Israel), pp. 81–161. Suvorova, 1994—“Iz neopublikovannoi perepiski Sholom-Aleichema i A. V. Amfiteatrova” / Publication by A. V. Suvorova, Sbornik statei po evreiskoi istorii i literature [v 4-kh tomakh], t. 4 / Ed. Moshe S. Zhidovetskii (Rehovot, Israel), pp. 304–14. Tal’nikov, 1919—Tal’nikov, D. “Evreiskii Mir,” Evreiskaia Mysl’ (Odessa), 1919, n 15, April 14, pp. 13–6. Tamarkin, 1985—Tamarkin, Haim. “Moskve in di tsvantsiker yorn,” Sovetish heymland (Moscow), n 8, z. 125–33 (Yiddish). Timenchik, Kopel’man, 1995—Timenchik, Roman, Kopel’man, Zoia. “Viacheslav Ivanov i poeziia H. N. Bialika,” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (Moscow), n 14, pp. 102–18. Ustami Buninykh, 1977–1982—Ustami Buninykh: Dnevnik Ivana Alekseevicha i Very Nikolaevny i Drugie Arkhivnye Materialy: v 3-kh tomakh / Ed. M. Grin (Frankfurt am Main: Posev Verlag). Val’be, 1919—Val’be, Bor. “Na ushcherbe,” Odesskii Listok, n 179, November 16. Vasilevskii, 1919—Vasilevskii, I. M. (Ne-Bukva). “Lysaia dusha,” Sovremennoe Slovo (Odessa), n 21, November 6, p. 2. — 172 —

Bibliography

Vasilevskii, 1921—Vasilevskii, I. (Ne-Bukva). “Besplodie: Literaturnye nastroeniia,” Poslednie Novosti (Paris), n 291, April 1, p. 2. Vasilevskii, 1923—Vasilevskii, I. M. (Ne-Bukva). Belye memuary (Petrograd: Moscow: Petrograd). Voloshin, 2003–2013—Voloshin, Maximilian. Sobranie sochinenii [v 12–ti tomakh, 14 knigakh] (Moscow: Ellis Lak). Vygodskii, 1915—Vygodskii, D. “Shchit,” Evreiskii Student (Petrograd), n 8, October 8, pp. 11–4. Waife-Goldberg, 1968—Waife-Goldberg, Marie. My Father, Sholom Aleichem (New York: Simon & Schuster). Waisblai, Khazan, 2015—Waisblai, Gil’; Khazan, Vladimir. “‘…Ia raduius’ v dushe, chto proshel etu shkolu’ (Fragment iz knigi S. D. Zal’tsmana Iz proshlogo),” Russkie evrei v Amerike / Ed. Ernst Zal’tsberg (Toronto; St. Petersburg: Giperion), pp. 64–88. Wentzel’, 1916—V. Iu. B. [N. N. Wentzel’]. “Iz ‘evreiskikh melodii,’” Novoe Vremia (Petrograd), n 14268, November 28, p. 10. Yehudei Rusia ba-mea ha-esrim, 2014—Yehudei Rusia ba-mea ha-esrim / Ed. Yacov Roi [et al.] (Raanana: Ha-universita ha-ptukha), Hebrew. Zarechnaia, 1916—Zarechnaia, S. “Literaturnyi dnevnik,” Mir Zhenshchiny (Moscow), n 6, p. 9.

Index

Abraham, Richard, 158 Adaskina, Natalia, 69 Agurskii, Mikhail, 148 Ahad Ha’am (original name: Asher Hirsch Gintzberg), 153 Aizman, David, 27 Amari, see Tsetlin, Mikhail Amfiteatrov, Aleksandr, 80, 115, 117-21, 123-25, 158-60 Andreev, Leonid, 36, 37, 40, 107, 108, 144 Andreeva, Maria, 138 Annenkov, Iuri, 156 An-sky, Semyon (original last name: Rappoport), 55, 60, 140, 142, 153, 155 Asch, Sholem (Sholom), 76, 80 Ashukin, Nikolai, 61, 64 Baal-Machshoves (BaalMachshavot; original name: Yisrael Isidor Eliashev), 24, 26-31, 148 Babel, Isaac, 12, 77-9, 106, 134, 151, 154, 161 Bacherac, Aleksandr, 13, 148, 149 Bakhmutskaia, Rakhil, 6, 14, 18, 19, 58, 64, 104, 132, 133, 137, 138, 148, 153 Baltrušaitis, Jurgis, 57, 60, 61, 152 Barth, Miriam-Tamar, 61 Baum, Iakov, 17

Baumval, Yehuda-Leib, 139 Bebel, August, 157 Beer-Hofmann, Richard, 140 Beilis, Menahem Mendel, 31, 97, 100 Belozerskaia-Bulgakova, Liubov’, 150 Bely, Andrei (original name: Boris Bugayev), 152, 157 Ben-Ami (original name: Mark Rabinovich), 29 Berdyaev, Nikolai, 152, 157, 158 Bergelson, David, 61 Berkhin, Mikhail, 99, 157 Bernhardt, Luis, 152 Bessel-Vinogradov, Aleksei, 18 Bialik, Hayim Nahman, 56, 77, 152, 157 Bikerman (Bickermann), Joseph (Iosif), 40 Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente, 122 Blium, Arlen, 145, 163 Blos, Wilhelm, 16 Braudo, Aleksandr, 55 Bruni, Lev, 156 Bryullova-Shaskolskaia, Nadezhda, 61 Bryusov, Valery, 57, 59-61 Bunin, Ivan, 25, 46-52, 65, 150 Bunina, Vera (née Muromtseva), 48, 49 Burenin, Viktor, 50

— 174 —

Index

Cahan, Abram, 61 Charny, Daniel, 61 Chekhov, Anton, 25 Chulkov, Georgii, 61, 65 Churilin, Tikhon, 95 Coudenys, Wim, 150, 151 Davies, Richard, 150, 151 Deitsch, Leo (Lev), 72, 154 Denikin, Anton, 93 Derman, Abram, 58, 59, 61 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 30 Drankov, Aleksandr (Abram), 62, 153 Dubnov, Shimon, 36, 37, 55, 61

Dubnova-Erlich, Sofia (original last

name: Dubnova), 60, 61, 139 Dymov, Osip (original last name: Perelman), 27

Efros, Abram, 60, 61, 112, 151, 153 Ehrenburg, Ilya, 60, 61, 91, 148, 151 Einhorn, David, 57 Engel, Joel (Yulii Dmitrievich), 62, 151 Engels, Friedrich, 16 Estraikh, Gennady, 148 Fabrikant, Wulf (Vladimir), 118 Faig, Heinrich, 109 Faivush, Berta, 15, 16, 148, 160, 162 Fondaminskii, Ilya, 18 Frenkel, I. (pen name: A. Lavretskii), 74, 80, 81, 84, 98 Frezinskii, Boris, 90 Gantseva, Diana, 7 Gapon, Grigory, 99 Geizer, Matvei, 7, 156 Gershenzon, Maria (née Goldenveizer), 152 Gershenzon, Mikhail, 56, 152, 157 Gilboa, Yehoshua, 162

Gintzberg, Rachel (Rakhil’; married name: Ossorguine), 61, 65, 153 Gippius, Zinaida, 150 Gogol, Nikolai, 122 Goldoni, Carlo, 139 Gontmakher, Mikhail, 162 Gorbov, Dmitry, 13, 112 Gorky, Maxim (original name: Aleksei Peshkov), 25, 31, 32, 36-39, 138, 148, 150 Gornfeld, Arkady, 38, 56, 71, 72, 85, 155 Gorodetskii, Mikhail (Moisei), 138, 162 Granovskii, Aleksandr, 161 Grigor’iants, Sergei, 13 Grinbaum, Isaac, 148 Gruzenberg, Oscar (Israel), 31, 32, 37, 100, 157 Grzhebin, Zinovy, 32 Gurevich, Solomon, 74, 75 Gurfinkel, M., 57 Hetényi, Zsuzsa, 7, 12, 96-8 Hofshtein, David, 11 Hoover, Herbert, 154 Horovits, Brian, 152, 157 Iaffe, Benyamin (Benjamin), 66, 67, 153 Iaffe, Frida (née Kaplan), 55, 66, 152-54 Iaffe, Leib (Lev), 6, 8, 55-7, 65-7, 96, 104, 105, 148, 152-54, 157 Iaffe, Miryam (married name: Haisraeli), 66, 153 Iaffe, Tamar (married name: Oren), 66, 153, 154 Ignatov, David, 60 Iurezansky, Vladimir (original last name: Nos), 144, 145

— 175 —

Index

Iuschinskii, Andrei, 97 Iushkevich, Pavel, 49 Iushkevich, Semyon, 12, 27, 29, 76, 80 Ivanov, Viacheslav, 152, 153 Ivanov, Vladislav, 140 Ivanov-Barkov, Evgenii, 161 Ivanova, Tamara, see Kashirina, Tamara Jabotinsky, Anna (née Halperin), 154 Jabotnsky, Vladimir (Zeev), 37, 41-3, 107, 110, 143, 154 Kan, Grigory, 158 Kant, Immanuel, 152 Kantorovich, Vitalii, 61 Kantsedikas, Aleksandr, 153 Kara-Murza, Sergei, 69 Karpov, Anatolii, 13 Karpov, Yevtikhi, 137, 138, 162 Kashevich, V., 61 Kashirina, Tamara (married name: Ivanova), 151 Katia (A. Sobol’ acquaintance), 132, 161, Katsis, Leonid, 162 Katz, Elena, 7 Kazak, Wolfgang, 13 Kerensky, Aleksandr, 158 Khazan, Vladimir, 7, 100, 108, 127, 150, 152, 157 Khlavna, Solomeya (original name: Alla Rochko), 46, 51, 52, 105, 148 Khodasevich, Vladislav, 56, 57, 60, 61, 128, 152, 160 Khomenko, Olga, 99 Kipen, Aleksandr, 86 Klinov, Iakov Judah, 109 Klinov, Isaiah (Shaya), 109-11, 113, 145, 158

Klinova, Iakha (née Zborovskaia), 109 Klinova, Rachel (née Rappoport), 110 Knut, Dovid (original name: David Fixman), 95, 157 Komissarzhevskaia, Vera, 143 Kopel’man, Zoya, 152 Kornblatt, Judith, 7 Korolenko, Vladimir, 25, 37 Korsch, Fyodor, 66, 153 Kremer, Isa (Isabella; Izabella), 137 Krein, Aleksandr, 60, 61, 151 Krestovskii, Vsevolod, 25 Krom, Iosif, 60, 61, 152, 153 Kruchenykh, Aleksei, 159 Krul, Iakov, 132, 161 Kugel, Aleksandr, 139 Kühn-Ludewig, Maria, 113 Kuniaev, Sergei, 155 Kuniaev, Stanislav, 155 Kupchenko, Vladimir, 161 Kuprin, Aleksandr, 25 Ladyzhnikov, Ivan, 90 Landau, Grigory, 40 Lazerson, Max Matthasia, 61 Lazurskii, Vladimir, 48 Levik, Beba, 19 Levin, Joseph (Iosif), 40 Leving, Iurii, 154 Lezhnev, Abram (original last name: Gorelik), 12 Liatsky, Evgenii, 160 Lidin, Vladimir (original last name: Gomberg), 43, 44, 149, 155 Lieberman, Semyon (Solomon), 90, 92, 93, 96 Linskii, D. (original name: Naum Dolinskii), 40 Lipskerov, Konstantin, 60, 151

— 176 —

Index

Loiter, Efraim, 22, 55, 58, 61, 151, 155 Lunacharsky, Anatolii, 140 Lunts, Lev, 12 Lurie (translator), 117 L’vov-Rogachevskii, Vasily, 7, 56, 82, 83, 155 Machtet, Grigory, 25 Mai-Maievsky, Vladimir, 139 Makhno, Nestor, 93 Makovskii, B., 62 Maliantovich, Pavel, 36, 37 Mandel, Benjamin (Veniamin), 40 Mandelberg, Avigdor (Viktor), 72 Mandelstam, Osip, 10, 61 Margulies, Manuil, 158 Markevich, Boleslav, 25 Markish, Shimon, 12, 148 Markovich, Rozaliia, 149 Markus, P., 134 Marshak, Samuil, 156 Menshikov, Mikhail, 27 Merezhkovsky, Dmitry, 31-6, 44, 45 Mikhoels, Solomon, 136, 161 Miroliubov, Viktor, 137, 155 Mirskii, Boris (original last name: Mirkin-Getsevich), 49 Mukdoni, Aleksandr, 61 Murav, Harriet, 7 Nakhimovsky, Alice, 7 Nazhivin, Ivan, 46-52, 149, 150 Nazhivina, Anna (née Zusman), 149, 150 Nevskii, A., 76 Niger, Shmuel (Samuel) (original last name: Charney; Charnyi), 60, 61, 151 Nikitina-Akinfieva, Ekaterina, 18 Nomberg, Hirsh (Girsh) David, 61 Novikov, Georgii, 130

Novikov, Ivan, 62, 63, 151 Novikova, Olga (née Levenshtein; in the first marriage: Printz), 62, 63 Onoikhi, Zalman Isaak (original last name: Aronson), 147 Osorgin, Mikhail (original last name: Il’in), 20, 149, 153 Ostrover, Leon, 134 Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, Dmitry, 48 Ozhigov, A. (original name: Nikolai Asheshov), 73, 149 Pamfilova-Zilberberg, Ksenia (née Pamfilova), 18 Parnakh, Valentin, 13, 148 Pasmanik, David, 40 Pasternak, Boris, 16 Peleg, M., 139, 162 Peretz, Isaac Leib, 29 Petrunkevich, Ivan, 150 Pevin, Piotr (pen name: Bedniak), 119, 124, 159 Pilskii, Piotr, 93, 131 Pinsky, David, 66, 67, 141, 154 Pinus, Iulii (Uri), 120, 125, 133, 159 Plekhanov, Georgii, 154 Polonskii, Viacheslav, 72, 73, 80 Portugalov, Grigory, 55 Pranaitis, Justinas, 97 Prat, Naftali (original name: Anatolii Potashnikov), 7 Primochkina, Natalia, 150 Provins, Michel (original name: Anne Gabriel François Camille Lagros de Langeron), 149 Przybyszewski, Stanislaw, 72 Purishkevich, Vladimir, 50 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 33, 143

— 177 —

Index

Rafalskii, Mikhail (original name: Moshe Aharon), 139 Ratner, Mark, 55, 61 Ravnitzky, Yehushua Hana, 60 Rodin, Elisha (original first and second names: Abram Moiseevich), 10, 11 Rosenblatt, Girsh, 57, 59 Rozanov, Vasily, 71 Rubanovich, Semyon, 61 Rutenberg, Pinkhas, 6, 18, 72, 99, 100-04, 150, 157 Ryvkin, Miron, 29 Rytman, Dora, 7 Sarkizov-Serazini, Ivan, 161 Savinkov, Boris (pen name: V. Ropshin), 18, 19, 73, 100, 158 Segalovich, Zusman, 60, 61, 64, 151 Semenova, Ksenia, 137 Sergeeva, Irina, 153 Sev, Leopold, 55 Shafir, Iakov, 88, 89 Shakespeare, William, 152 Shapiro, Lamed (Levi Yehoshua), 60, 61, 151 Shestov, Lev (original name: Yehuda Leib Schwarzmann), 152 Shklovskaia, Margarita, 148 Shklovsky, Viktor, 159 Shneur, Zalman, 86 Sholem Aleichem (original name: Solomon Rabinovich), 11, 29, 60, 98, 102, 115-28, 131-34, 136, 158-61 Shteinman, Zelik, 112 Shriro, S., 60 Shulgin, Vasily, 50 Sicher, Efraim, 7, 161 Simanovich, Semyon, 137, 161

Simanovskaia, Sofia (Sara), 159 Slonim, Iakov, 134, Slonim, Mark, 9, 10 Sobol, Aleksandr, 19 Sobol, Leib (Lev), 6, 14, 16 Sobol, Mark, 6, 18, 19, 105, 129 Sobol, Mina (née Berman), 6, 14, 15 Sobol, Moisei-Yitzhak, 6, 14, 15 Sobol, Solomon, 6, 14, 15 Sobol, Yitzhak (“Volodia,” “Vladimir”), 14, 15, 137, 153 Sologub, Fyodor (original last name Teternikov), 34, 36, 37, 148, 152 Spire, André, 61 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 140 Staniukovich, Konstantin, 25 Stoliar, Lazar’, 117, 159 Stolypin, Pyotr, 47 Struve, Gleb, 148 Sukhotin, Pavel, 64, 153 Suvorova, Aleksandra, 158, 159 Svirskaia, Tatiana, 130 Svirsky, Aleksei (original name: Shimon Dovid Vigdorovich or Vigdoros), 77, 130, 154 Talnikov, David, 60, 61, 139 Tamarkin, Chayim, 11 Teleshov, Nikolai, 149 Timenchik, Roman, 152 Tolstoy, Aleksei K., 83 Tolstoy, Aleksei N., 65 Trivus, Moisei (pen name: Shmi), 38, 39 Tsemakh, Nakhum, 139, 140 Tsetlin, Maria (née Tumarkina), 18 Tsetlin, Mikhail (pen name: Amari), 18, 60, 151 Tumpovskaia, Margarita, 61 Turgenev, Ivan, 158 Tyutchev, Fyodor, 157

— 178 —

Index

Vakhtangov, Evgenii, 137, 140 Valbe, Boris, 50 Vasilevskii, Ilya (pen name: Nebukva), 49, 50, 150 Vengrov, Nathan, 60, 61, 151 Vinaver, Maxim, 55 Volkonsky, Sergei, 139 Voloshin, Maximilian, 14, 161 Volynskii, Akim (original name: Chayim Flexer), 63, 64 Voronskii, Aleksandr, 144, 162 Vygodskii, David, 32 Waife-Goldberg, Maria (née Rabinovich), 159 Waisblai, Gil, 157 Warshawski, Oizer, 134 Weisenberg, Itzhak Meir, 60 Wentzel, Nikolai, 27, 28 Wolfson, Lev, 111

Young, Clara (née Chaya-Risye Shpikolitzer), 137 Zaitsev, Boris, 20, 25, 149 Zaligson, M., 58 Zaltsman, Shlomo (Solomon Davidovich), 96 Zarechnaia, Sofia, 76, 80 Zaslavskii, David, 61 Zhirkova, Yelizaveta (in marriage: Bichovsky; in Eretz-Israel: Elisheva), 61 Zhitlovsky, Chayim, 61 Zinberg, Sergei (original first name: Israel), 61, 151 Zuckerman, G., 58