Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry 9780804781046

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Barricades and Banners

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture e d i t e d by

Aron Rodrigue and Steven J. Zipperstein

Barricades and Banners The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry Scott Ury

stanford u n i ve rs i t y p res s stan f o rd, ca l i f o rn ia

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. This book has been published with the assistance of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, the Hebrew University’s Center for Research on the History and Culture of Polish Jews, and Tel Aviv University’s Yoram Schnitzer Foundation. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, rchival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ury, Scott, author. Barricades and banners : the Revolution of 1905 and the transformation of Warsaw Jewry / Scott Ury. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-6383-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jews —Poland —Warsaw —Politics and government —20th century. 2. Jewish nationalism —Poland —Warsaw —History —20th century. 3. Warsaw (Poland) — Politics and government —20th century. 4. Poland —History —Revolution, 19051907. 5. Russia —Politics and government —1904-1914.I. Title. DS134.64 .U79 2012 305.892/4043841 20110407196 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/14 Galliard

For My Parents and In Memory of Their Parents

Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly ... All your life You were only waiting for this moment to be free Blackbird, The Beatles

Contents

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables Naming, Dating, Placing, and Other Methodological Dilemmas Acknowledgments Introduction: Between Past and Present

xi xiii xvii 1

1. Warsaw before 1905: One City, Many Stories

22

2. Urbanization, Community, and the Crisis of Modernity: Jewish Society in Turn-of-the-Century Warsaw

45

3. Revolution, Jews, and the Streets of Warsaw: Between Secret Cells and Popular Politics

91

4. The Rise of the Jewish Public Sphere: Coffeehouses, Theaters, and Newspapers

141

5. From Public Sphere to Public Will: The Elections to the Russian State Duma and the Politicization of Ethnicity

172

6. Democracy and Its Discontents: The Image of “the Jews” and the Transformation of Polish Politics

214

Conclusion: Politics, Order, and the Dialectics of Jewish Modernity

261

Notes Bibliography Index

273 365 401

Maps, Figures, and Tables

Maps

1. Warsaw at the crossroads between central and eastern Europe, c. 1900. 2. The Pale of Settlement, 1900. 3. Congress Poland (the Kingdom of Poland), 1900. 4. The streets of Warsaw, c. 1900.

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Figures 1. Warsaw’s produce market off the banks of the Wisła (Vistula) River, c. 1900. 2. Market in Warsaw’s Jewish district, c. 1880. 3. David Yosef Gruen (later to become better known as Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion) and childhood friend Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, c. 1904. 4. Jewish children in the streets of Warsaw, c. 1897. 5. Four young Jewish anarchists pose for a studio photo, Warsaw, 1912. 6. Jewish water carriers, Warsaw, c. 1900. 7. Postcard memorializing Bund martyrs including Shloyme Margolin and Eliezer Cohen, victims of the demonstrations of April 1905. 8. Simon’s Passage at the corner of Długa and Nalewki streets, Warsaw.

28 37

53 71 97 121

124 131

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Maps, Figures, and Tables

9. H. Fridman’s Café, Warsaw, 1910. 10. Yitzhak Tabenkin and other members of a Poale Zion group, Warsaw, 1905. 11. Sholem Aleichem and daughter Ernestina (Tessa), Vilna, c. 1905. 12. Jewish children sneaking into Muranower Theater, Warsaw, c. 1910.

147 153 156 159

Table 1. Warsaw’s Jewish and general populations, 1864–1910.

51

Naming, Dating, Placing, and Other Methodological Dilemmas

Although the debates regarding the lines and borders of the geopolitical region often referred to as eastern Europe continue, I have chosen to speak of the area in question as “eastern Europe” with the hope that the lowercase “eastern” will slightly deflate the potentially loaded impact of “Eastern Europe” and avoid the somewhat clumsy and similarly imprecise concepts like “east central Europe” or “central Europe.” That said, when referring to the Jews who lived in these areas, the term “East European Jewry” is not completely inaccurate, and I use it throughout this study to emphasize the cultural, linguistic, and religious ties between Jews across political borders. Congress Poland, the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish provinces, Russian Poland, and Vistulaland were all used to describe the ten Polish provinces under Russian administrative rule at this time. While some of these terms may be more accurate than others, I refer to this region as most of its Polish and many of its Jewish residents referred to it, “Congress Poland,” or, alternatively, the “Congress Kingdom.” While such appellations may lend a premature sense of autonomy to Russian-ruled lands, they offer the best compromise to the problematics of naming. Throughout this study, I use common American spellings when referring to different cities in the region as codified by Merriam-­Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Thus, although Poles referred to Warsaw as Warszawa and most Jews by the Yiddish name of Varshe, the new lingua franca of the academic world offers me an easy out when speaking of this contested symbol of a city as Warsaw. At the same time, I refer to most other cities and towns by their contemporary Polish spellings

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Naming, Dating, Placing, and Other Dilemmas

unless they are commonly recognized by English readers. Thus, I use Płońsk and not Plonsk, Białystok and not Bialystock, but Lodz and not Łódź. Names are another problem for the scholar. In most cases, I have referred to individuals as they were referred to in specific documents. While some of these examples (in particular, names listed in different government records) render rather unconventional spellings and ostensibly odd-sounding names (to the eyes and ears of many contemporary readers), such spellings underscore the sense of confusion that pervaded so many aspects of daily life in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. When specific individuals are referred to in several different ways, I have tried to standardize their names as much as possible. If individuals have commonly recognized names—Y. L. Peretz, Yosef Hayim Brenner, Yitzhak Grünbaum—then I refer to them by these versions in the text to avoid confusion. That said, bibliographical references remain consistent with standard transliteration guidelines. Names and misnomers are related to the thorny question of language, another issue that arises throughout this book. In transliterating Hebrew sources and names, I have followed the system laid out by the Jewish Quarterly Review. Yiddish transliterations follow the Weinreich standard as codified in the Modern Yiddish-English, English-Yiddish Dictionary. Transliterations from Russian adhere to the Library of Congress system. Time is another matter of debate in this region as there were not only two but at least three competing calendar systems at play in turnof-the-century Warsaw: Gregorian, Jewish, and Julian. While the Russian Empire followed the Julian (Old Style) calendar, most of Polish society followed the Gregorian (New Style) calendar (which was thirteen days ahead of the Julian calendar at this time). And many Jews in Warsaw used one or both of these systems as well as the traditional Jewish calendar to date documents and events. Throughout this book, I use both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars when referring to larger political events in an effort to prevent confusion. When Hebrew or Yiddish sources refer to the Jewish calendar then I list both the Jewish and the Gregorian dates. At the same time, many Polish newspapers use only the New Style, and I cite them according to the date listed on

Naming, Dating, Placing, and Other Dilemmas

each document. As part of these efforts to remain consistent and clear, the endnotes refer to newspaper and archival sources as they were recorded at the time: date, month, and then year. Thus, October 17, 1905 is listed as 17 X 1905. Lastly, many of these names and dates appear in archival sources, personal letters, party materials, and other documents in Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish that I have used to follow the ebbs and tides of the Revolution of 1905 in Warsaw. As many of these archival and manuscript collections have histories of their own, and as archival collections are often reorganized, files do not always make it back to the right shelf, and documents are sometimes misplaced, I have tried to be as detailed as possible when referring to different archival and manuscript sources. Thus, in addition to the standard citing of archives, collections, files, and, when possible, pages, folios, or document numbers, I have also cited dates (when provided) and other distinguishing characteristics. My hope is that these efforts will help prevent some of the confusion that is certainly bound to occur as the result of the potential reorganization of these and other collections. And so, the search for order continues.

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Acknowledgments

A great number of people and institutions have assisted me as I researched and wrote this book about Jews and Poles in turn-of-the-­ century Warsaw and it is my distinct pleasure to thank many of them for their support and guidance. It is difficult, if not impossible, to express the intellectual, academic, and personal debt that I owe to my advisors at the Hebrew University, Professors Ezra Mendelsohn and Jonathan Frankel of blessed memory. Together, they judiciously and patiently guided me through each and every stage of the academic process; challenging me in the classroom, advising me on the fine art of interpreting sources, reviewing multiple drafts of different papers and articles, guiding me through the bewildering process of writing a dissertation, and assisting me in my quest for an academic position. I can hardly imagine a more rewarding intellectual and academic experience than studying with Jonathan Frankel and Ezra Mendelsohn and am humbled by all that I have learned from them. A demanding teacher and a brilliant scholar, Israel Bartal’s erudition and curiosity never cease to amaze me. Israel was always eager to discuss with me the history of eastern Europe and the Jews who lived there, and he has been a stalwart of academic support and a source of intellectual inspiration over the years. Shaul Stampfer’s historical imagination, critical thinking, and boundless encouragement have shaped and saved a number of academic careers from an (un)certain fate and I am only one of many scholars who owe much to Shaul. Shaul not only intro- xvii duced me to the realm of social history but also urged me to study both Russian and Polish in addition to Yiddish. While the very thought of learning three different languages in a fourth foreign language, Hebrew,

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Acknowledgments

seemed simply surreal at the time, it is hard for me to remember a time when mine was not a multilingual existence. While at the Hebrew University, I was fortunate enough to be part of two dynamic departments and gained much from open and supportive exchanges with faculty of both the Institute of Contemporary Jewry and the Department of Jewish History. Ongoing conversations with Steven Aschheim, Richard I. Cohen, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Eli Leder­ hendler, Avraham Novershtern, Sergio DellaPergola, Uzi Rebhun, Michael K. Silber, Yair Zakovitch, and other Hebrew University faculty members ensured that the trek up to Mt. Scopus would very often prove to be a journey into uncharted intellectual territories. Outside of my home departments, Ted Friedgut, Gabriel Motzkin, and Zeev Sternhell all helped shape my thinking as did Yitzhak Brudny. This book was conceived, researched and written alongside a number of other studies on East and Central European Jewish history undertaken at the Hebrew University, and a careful reader will see where I have been influenced by the work of Roni Ber-Marks, Uriel Gellman, Haim ­Gertner, Semion Goldin, Rachel Greenblatt, Louise Hecht, Vladimir Levin, Ilia Lurie, Rachel Manekin, Natan and Viki Shifris, Rafi TsirkinSadan, and others. Together, in the winding corridors of Mt. Scopus over simply horrific cups of coffee, and later in Friday morning seminars on the university’s Givat Ram campus, we searched for new ways to understand and represent Jewish life in eastern Europe in our radically transfigured post-1989 worlds. While in Israel, I also had the good fortune of studying alongside other students and scholars of (modern) Jewish studies including Ela Bauer, Elisheva Baumgarten, Manuela Consonni, Yaakov Deutsch, Noah Gerber, Sol Goldberg, Adi Gordon, Tamar Hess, Amos Morris-Reich, Moshe Naor, Benjamin Pollock, Ephraim Shoham, ­Dimitry Shumsky, Haim Weiss, and Rona Yona. Being based in Jerusalem allowed me to meet and befriend visiting students and scholars working on different aspects of Jewish history and culture. Library breaks and informal discussions with these and other visitors expanded my academic and intellectual horizons, and it is my pleasure to thank Conny Aust, Gene Avrutin, Glenn Dynner, Roni Gecht­man, Shai Ginsburg, François Guesnet, Brian Horowitz, Agnieszka Jagodzińska, Olga Litvak, Paweł Maciejko, Natan Meir, Ken Moss, Arieh Bruce Saposnik, Magda Teter, Ted Weeks, and Marcin Wodziński. I am particularly

Acknowledgments

indebted to Michael Miller, Eddy Portnoy, and Kalman Weiser, whose friendship and humor helped me balance my accidental role as an academic middleman between East and West. The subculture of academic conferences and the power of the Internet have enabled me to receive sound feedback and support from a number of leading scholars of East European Jewry based outside of Israel. David Engel, Gershon David Hundert, Antony Polonsky, and Steven Zipperstein not only were kind enough to read various drafts of this and other pieces but also were very often instrumental in helping me publish my work. The academic part of my life began under Sather Gate off of Telegraph and Bancroft avenues, and I owe a tremendous intellectual debt to my undergraduate instructors at the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of History, in particular the late Richard Webster. My semester abroad at the Hebrew University’s Rothberg School for Overseas Students piqued my interest in Jewish history and it is my pleasure to extend a long overdue thanks to Edith Rogovin-Frankel. Although incredibly rewarding, conducting research in Poland was not always an easy enterprise. For their assistance and friendship during different research trips to Warsaw, I would like to thank Ray Brandon, Monika Krawczyk, Daniel I. Silverberg, and Karina Sokolowska. I would also like to thank Dr. Alina Cała, as well as Professors Jan Kancewicz, Szymon Rudnicki, and Jerzy Tomaszewski for opening their homes, ­libraries, and minds to an itinerant student of the Jewish past in Polish lands. While in Poland, I was generously assisted by the staffs of different libraries and archives including the National, Sejm, and University libraries as well as the Archiwum Akt Nowych, Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, and Archiwum Państwowe m. st. Warszawy. In New York, Leo Greenbaum, Rivka Schiller, and other staff members at the YIVO Archives made working at YIVO as enjoyable as it was productive. For many years, the Jewish National and University Library served as my academic base and I owe a long overdue thanks to the librarians of the General and Judaica Reading Rooms as well as other members of the library’s staff for their tireless assistance and wry humor. This study also benefited greatly from the dedicated staff of the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem as well as the cooperation of Jesse Aaron Cohen of YIVO’s Photo Archive, Miki Joelson of the Hebrew University’s Judaica Postcard Collection,

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Chana Pollack of the Forward Association, and Zippi Rosenne of Beit Hatfutsot. It is my pleasure to acknowledge the financial support of the Hebrew University’s Nevzlin Center for Research on Russian and East European Jewry, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. I was also fortunate enough to receive the American Council of Learned Societies’ Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in East European Studies, the Israeli Council of Higher Education’s Rotenstreich Fellowship, a Racolin Family Fellowship from the YIVO Institute, and the support of Beit Shalom Aleichem in Tel Aviv. Assistance from these and other institutions gave me the time and peace of mind necessary to delve deeply into a range of academic and intellectual questions. The publication of this book was made possible by grants from the Littauer Foundation, the Hebrew University’s Center for Research on the History and Culture of Polish Jews, and Tel Aviv University’s Yoram Schnitzer Foundation. I would also like to thank the staff at Stanford University Press, in particular Emma Harper, Judith Hibbard, Norris Pope, and Sarah Crane Newman, for their professionalism and patience throughout the publication process. And I owe a special thanks to Lisa Lidor and Anat Vaturi who assisted me in the final stages of production. The outbreak of the Second Intifada disrupted much of everyday life in Israel and the Palestinian Territories and my graduate studies were no exception. As cafes and buses exploded in Jerusalem and the Israeli army entered Palestinian cities, the echoes of shelling, gunfire, and ­sirens filled Jerusalem’s air and academic pursuits never seemed more academic. Thus, I am grateful to Professor Dan Diner of the Hebrew University and the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish Culture and History in Leipzig, whose invitation to spend several months in Leipzig in the spring and summer of 2003 offered me the opportunity to disconnect from the early twenty-first-century Middle East and reconnect with early twentieth-century eastern Europe. Although the transition from Ph.D. to academic position took longer than expected, the path was a productive one thanks to a number of fellowships in America, Canada, and Israel. My year as a George L. Mosse Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison was an incred-

Acknowledgments

ibly rewarding experience. It is my pleasure to thank David Sorkin and the participants in his reading seminar on Jewish history, in particular Ethan Katz, Gideon Reuveni, and Sarah Wobick, for challenging me to reconsider much of what I had thought I knew about Jewish history. Francine Hirsch and Tony Michels also provided sound feedback ­during my year on the shores of Lake Mendota. My time in Madison was followed by an engaging year at the University of Toronto as the Ray D. Wolfe Fellow. Derek Penslar wisely guided me as I began to move out of the Israeli seminar room and Polish archives and into North American academia. While in Toronto, Jeff Kopstein, Anna Shternshis, and Piotr Wróbel were all terrific interlocutors. And, I owe an inestimable degree of thanks to Hindy Najman, who tirelessly supported me and my work as I dangled precariously between doctorate and underemployment. I would also like to thank Mark Clamen, ­Sharon Levinas, Mia Spiro, Drorit Weiss, and others for welcoming me in Toronto the Good. I also had the pleasure of spending a semester at the University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies where conversations with other members of the working group on “Secularism and Its Discontents” helped sharpen my thinking about the course of Jewish modernity. I am deeply indebted to the center’s indefatigable director David Ruderman and his dedicated staff, as well as other members of the group for their encouragement and support at 420 Walnut Street. A postdoctoral fellowship at Tel Aviv University not only brought me back to Israel but also led to a tenure-track position in the university’s Department of Jewish History. It is my pleasure to thank David Assaf, Anita Shapira, and Yaacov Shavit, as well as the former Dean of Humanities Shlomo Biderman, for ensuring that my days of academic wandering would come to an end exactly where I wanted them to, in Tel Aviv. Ora Atza, Haim Cohen, Jeremy Cohen, Havi Dreifuss, Iris Rachamimov, Elchanan Reiner, Gadi Sagiv, Ruthi Vygodski, and other tenants of the Carter and Gilman Buildings all helped create a supportive academic community in Tel Aviv as I returned to Israel and Israeli academia. This manuscript was completed during my tenure as a fellow in the research group on “Jews and Cities” at the Hebrew University’s Scholion

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Center for Interdisciplinary Jewish Studies. I owe a special thanks to the center’s director Israel Yuval as well as to staff members Eti Mizrahi and Maya Sherman for creating such an enjoyable and productive academic environment. Merav Kaddar graciously took time off from her graduate studies of philosophy to help me wade through the piles of red tape necessary to obtain the rights for many of the images used in this book. I would especially like to thank the other members of the working group on “Jews and Cities,” in particular doctoral students Gali Drucker BarAm, Naama Meishar, and Dvir Tzur, who kept me honest—intellectually, academically, and ethically. Although my pursuit of academic matters has often proven to be an all-consuming affair, I would like to note the assistance of friends from outside the world of academe who have lived patiently with this project and its demands. For their years of friendship and support, I am forever indebted to Galia Arotchas, Tamir Borensztajn, Sagit Butbul, Ruth Eben­stein and Yonatan Goshen-Gottstein, Aviva and Elan Freedberg, and Noa Shein. I doubt that my parents and siblings fully understood what possessed me to start traipsing across the globe in search of dusty documents and the lost worlds that they portend to represent. On the face of it, little seems more different from my protected childhood on Chicago’s insular North Shore than my experiences as a young adult immigrant in a war-torn Middle East or my ventures to a post-Communist Poland that vacillated between miraculous recovery and total collapse. And yet, as a family unit we still recall and periodically perform stories that other immigrants once told about their Old Country, a truly mythical place with towns that bore incomprehensible names, vivid encounters with local revolutionaries, confrontations with hostile neighbors, and faint whispers of distant relatives whom we would never meet but whose names, burdens, and memories we would always carry. My own search for order and meaning on the streets of Warsaw had its origins in these mesmerizing childhood tales of faraway times and places and I can only hope that I have succeeded in lending sense to that world without reducing it to yet another child’s tale.

Map 1. Warsaw at the crossroads between central and eastern Europe, c. 1900. From Paul Robert Magocsi, Historical Atlas of Central Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).

Map 2. The Pale of Settlement, 1900. From Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914. © 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by permission of The University of Wisconsin Press.

Map 3. Congress Poland (the Kingdom of Poland), 1900. From Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914. © 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Reprinted by permission of The University of Wisconsin Press.

Map 4. The streets of Warsaw, circa 1900. Adapted from The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon David Hundert (Yale University Press, 2008, www. yivoencyclopedia.org). Prepared by Eleonora Bergman, Ursula Fuks, and Olga Zienkiewicz, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.

Barricades and Banners

Introduction

Between Past and Present

For generations, the year 1905 has loomed large in both Jewish and east European histories. The tumultuous, ever-changing series of events and counterevents, which engulfed and redefined society and life for so many of the Russian Empire’s approximately 120 million residents, has long provided an abundance of raw material for historians, pundits, and politicians of various shapes and colors. Thus, such ostensibly divergent master narratives as those describing the Bolsheviks’ rise to power and the Zionists’ return of the Jews to the Holy Land pointed to the same strikes, democratic experiments, counterrevolutionary outbursts, and the Tsarist regime’s ultimate return to power between 1904 and 1907 as the political baptism of two very different, yet essentially parallel, generational sagas, one Soviet and Russian, the other Zionist and Jewish. Looking back on the collection of events that would later become defined and canonized as the Revolution of 1905, Lenin himself would declare that the events of 1905 had served as a “dress rehearsal” that had helped ensure “the victory of the October Revolution in 1917.”1 Roughly thirty years after the Revolution of 1905, in a radically different setting, the longtime hero of Labor Zionism and one of the founding members of the Poale Zion group in Warsaw, Yitzhak Tabenkin, would recall the impact of the Revolution of 1905 on the course of Jewish history in no less dramatic terms: “This is one of those periods in history designated as turning points, a special period in the life of the people—not just in the social perspective but also in all the transformations in the spiritual and cultural domain. And in that period, the years when the Second Aliya type was created were a time of renaissance. What an outburst of forces!”2 Here, too, Tabenkin believed that he was taking part in a revolutionary project that was designed to create a new world on the ruins

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Introduction: Between Past and Present

of the old one. Nor was he alone. In time, such giants of the Zionist pantheon as David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katznelson, and others would all look back on the events of 1905, in general, and their own experiences in Warsaw, in particular, as watershed moments that would lead directly to the birth of the much-hallowed Second Aliyah and, some four decades later, the founding of the State of Israel.3 Thus, the Zionist narrative of Jewish national redemption in Palestine and the Soviet story of the Bolshevik march of good versus evil would converge at the onset of the twentieth century in eastern Europe where the people—sometimes workers, sometimes Jews, sometimes Jewish workers—sought and fought to control their own fates. Moreover, while these two master narratives, one Bolshevik, the other Zion­ ist, would certainly differ according to each particular ruling party’s specific needs and demands, both narratives were similarly redemptive, romantic, and convincing. Indeed, both narratives told of how formerly powerless individuals and ragtag organizations joined together against astronomically low odds in a common struggle to do away with what appeared to many to be the last remnant of Europe’s old regime, Tsarist Russia. In retrospect, good and evil, future and past, redemption and apocalypse were clear to all. Nor did this fascination with the events of 1905 remain confined to relatively embattled societies such as the former Soviet Union and the young, fledgling Jewish society that would soon become the State of Israel. For many scholars in “the West,” the Revolution of 1905 became a virgin, somewhat pure revolution that often represented the path not taken. Thus, while the American Revolution was later tainted by the violent taming of the West and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans, the French Revolution by the Reign of Terror, and the Bolshevik Revolution by what one scholar labeled “the Soviet tragedy,” relatively few of the leaders or students of the “failed” Revolution of 1905 ever had to contend with the pleasures, privileges, and problematics of power.4 As an arrested, ostensibly untainted revolution, the Revolution of 1905 provided historians and other observers with a series of counterfactual historical scenarios regarding what could have happened in the Russian Empire—and, de facto, throughout the remainder of the European continent—over the course of the brief yet unspeakably horrible twentieth century had the good Revolution of

Introduction: Between Past and Present

1905 succeeded.5 Thus, the Revolution of 1905 became a pivotal marker for many students of Jewish, Russian, and east European histories as the eastern half of the European continent and its approximately five million Jewish residents stumbled, willy-nilly, into the modern era.

Questions and Methods: Modern Jewish Politics as a Discourse of Order With these and other issues in mind, this book will focus on several key questions regarding the intersection between Jewish society, Polish politics, and the Russian government in the city of Warsaw between the years 1904 and 1907. Among the many questions raised, I will focus on: Whether or not the urban environment is critical to our understanding of modern Jewish society and politics? Why did so many Jews flood the streets of Warsaw in support of various antigovernment organizations and movements, Jewish and non-Jewish? And, finally, how did the quasi-democratic reforms implemented by the Tsarist regime in 1905 and 1906 change the nature of political organization, action, and thinking among Jews and non-Jews? As a continuation of these questions, I also ask whether the Russian Empire’s early experiments with democracy were destined to fail in the empire’s ten Polish provinces; and, if so, whether the various designs for Jewish integration into liberal or socialist visions of new worlds were similarly predestined to collapse. Finally, through an intensive microstudy of modern Jewish society and politics in one specific location, I repeatedly try to ascertain what national rhetoric, organization, and action offered Jewish individuals that the politics of revolution and democracy ultimately were not able to provide. Were Jews, simply said, always a nation, the oldest of nations, unlike any other nation? Or, did other factors contribute to the rise and supremacy of national politics among so many Jews in early-twentieth-century Warsaw? At its core, then, this study examines the intersection of the three great ideologies of the nineteenth century—socialism, liberalism, and nationalism—among Jews in one specific city, Warsaw, during one particular period, the Revolution of 1905 (1904–1907). Throughout this book, I argue that all three ideologies and the various political movements that they spawned should be seen as attempts to wield intellectual

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Introduction: Between Past and Present

and social order over a particularly chaotic world.6 As such, I maintain that modern Jewish politics should be viewed as a discourse of order. Moreover, as a discourse of order, modern Jewish politics was intended to codify, comprehend, and control such fundamentally elusive social and political components as community and self in times of rapid social change, political upheaval, and pervasive uncertainty.7 The on­going search for community and the accompanying struggle to achieve order serve as the intellectual foundation and framework of this study. If this study is about different, at times competing, attempts to instill order upon an inherently disorderly world, then that chaotic, practically incomprehensible environment is the great turn-of-the-century city of Warsaw. Firmly rooted in a particular time and place, this synchronic microstudy of Jewish society and politics in Warsaw points to the urban origins of modern Jewish culture and politics. The city of Warsaw was an arena that regularly defied comprehension, and the widespread turn to modern political ideologies and movements should be seen as part of a larger attempt to render the fundamentally new experience of life in the urban metropolis more understandable, more digestible, and, ultimately, more manageable. The ongoing attempt to comprehend and thus to control life in the city underscores the extent to which modern Jewish politics was imbued with a deep ambivalence toward many aspects of the modern world. As such, I argue that all three modern ideologies and the various movements that they produced should be seen as both results of and responses to modernity. In an effort to explicate what I will refer to as the dialectics of Jewish modernity, I repeatedly discuss the many ways in which political movements—revolutionary, democratic, and national— used fundamentally new political, cultural, and social institutions to address and resolve the twin crises of urbanization and community.8 As part of my efforts to gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of what modern Jewish political ideologies and movements meant for Warsaw’s 275,000 Jewish residents, I trace the path of modern Jewish politics in Warsaw first from its underground revolutionary phase; then into its liberal, democratic period; and, finally, culminating with the rise of national rhetoric and organization. In each particular stage, I argue that the possibilities and practices of Jewish politics were directly shaped and influenced by larger social and cultural forces. For

Introduction: Between Past and Present

example, the very institutions and practices that fueled and favored the conspiratorial politics so characteristic of revolutionary activity later inhibited these organizations’ attempts to transform themselves into large-scale, popularly supported political parties. Soon thereafter, the government’s implementation of semidemocratic reforms and institutions in late 1905 and early 1906 gave birth to a new style of electoral politics that undermined previous support for revolutionary organizations. Finally, the very types of communities that these new democratic institutions and practices helped create subsequently led to the nationalization of the public sphere and the parallel demise of liberal, democratic visions for moderate, constitutional reform in the Russian Empire’s Polish provinces. Another integral part of my discussion of the various political ideologies and movements that arose at this time is my emphasis on the very culture of modern Jewish politics. As such, I repeatedly stress the common political culture that these organizations shared and not the ideologies or strategies that may have divided political parties.9 By focusing on some of the more fundamental, basic units of society and culture that ostensibly rival political movements had in common, I hope to shift the larger academic debate on modern Jewish politics from a discussion of parties, members, and policies to one of structures and discourse. This structural-discursive analysis of modern Jewish politics also illustrates how particular developments and specific actions were, in many cases, the by-product of specific institutional pressures and cultural practices, and not the result of particularly prescient decisions made by exceptionally wise political heroes. Lastly, by emphasizing the influence of situations, structures, and language, and not the role of individuals, I consciously problematize the very question of Jewish agency and its place in the construction and study of a specifically Jewish history, the history of Jewish nationalism, and, indirectly, the study of other movements for national liberation and independence.10 Focusing on Jewish politics in Warsaw, the disputed capital of the Russian Empire’s former Kingdom of Poland, also enables me to address the complex web of confrontation, isolation, and mimesis that was part and parcel of Jewish and non-Jewish politics and society in eastern ­Europe for generations. Indeed, few environments were more rife with potential ethnic conflict than the ten Polish provinces under direct

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Russian rule after their reorganization in 1864 as Vistulaland. Here, too, however, the possibilities available to Jewish organizations were often determined by another set of external factors, the course of Polish politics and the whims of Russian bureaucrats. Throughout the period in question, Polish and Jewish political organizations and parties responded not only to a similar set of developments, practices, and possibilities but also to one another. Furthermore, while the ongoing, parallel development of Polish and Jewish politics ultimately led to the consolidation of ethno-linguistic communities, this was not the predetermined course of a uniquely east European history of hate but, rather, the result of specific social structures, cultural practices, and political strategies. Lastly, throughout this study, I repeatedly ask what enabled national rhetoric, organization, and action to succeed where other political movements—most notably revolutionary and democratic ones—failed. Other factors, such as the implementation of martial law, the government’s consolidation of power, and the periodic fear of antisemitic outbursts (pogroms), certainly influenced the nature and course of modern Jewish politics in Warsaw. That said, the rise and fall of revolutionary parties; the relatively short-lived popularity of liberal, democratic organizations; and the final rise of nationalism (Jewish and Polish) all had their roots in the particular political institutions, discourses, and practices that arose at this time and place. Ultimately, nationalism alone was best suited to the reigning institutional and cultural factors. Lastly, nationalism was best able to satisfy the needs of potential supporters by providing a specific worldview and modern political community that addressed successfully a slew of fundamentally new questions and crises that arose in the heart of modernity, the city. And thus, the city not only gave birth to modern Jewish politics but also had a say in the shape that this new political culture would take.

Historiographical Subtexts: Agency, Community, Politics, Poles, Nations, and Modernity In addition to raising questions about the course of Jewish (and Polish) society and politics in turn-of-the-century Warsaw, I also engage a series of larger questions related to modern Jewish history and society

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including, but not limited to, those regarding the role of agency in the writing of Jewish history, the relationship between Jewish communities and the urban environment, the very nature of Jewish politics, and relations ­between Poles and Jews. Alongside these central thematic questions from the realm of modern Jewish studies, I also engage questions of interest to scholars of nations and nationalism as well as larger issues regarding the path of modernity and the definition and fate of “Eastern Europe.”

Modernity and Agency: Beyond the Katzian Model In one of the most definitive works of modern Jewish history written to date, the Hungarian-born, German-educated Israeli historian Jacob Katz laid out the foundations for the (European) Jewish entry into and mastery over the modern world. Focusing on the Jews of “the West,” but ever cognizant of the Jews of “the East,” Katz’s groundbreaking study, Tradition and Crisis, changed the way many thought about Jewish history and, in doing so, helped pave the way for generations of studies on Jews and modernity.11 Dividing European Jewry between East and West, Katz claimed that intellectual changes related to religious belief and practice implemented in the mid-eighteenth century by Jewish leaders and thinkers (Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin and Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, Ba‘al Shem Tov [BESHT] in Poland) led to the creation of new social institutions and communities that challenged the traditional religious authorities and helped bring Jewish society out of its traditional phase and into the modern era.12 More than anything else, Katz’s emphasis on religious and intellectual change put the very power of historical agency in the hands of individual Jews and, in doing so, made Jews the ultimate masters of Jewish history and fate.13 Furthermore, as a result of this paradigm, modernity, according to Katz, was not only something that Jews chose of their own volition but, as a result of this willful choice, it also became something that they were able to define and, in the process, to control.14 Sweeping, convincing, and daring, Katz’s argument has helped shape the writing of Jewish history in Israel and America for decades. Under Katz’s direct and indirect influence, generations of scholars have turned to the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and to Hasidism as the key

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aspects of Jewish society’s encounter with modernity in both eastern and western Europe.15 Unfortunately, this emphasis on the intellectual and religious roots of the Jewish encounter with modernity has led to a certain academic disinterest in social history and cultural affairs. As different practitioners of Jewish social and cultural history have noted, studies of the intellectual and religious aspects of the Jewish past remain the dominant paradigm in the field of modern Jewish history.16 This book will address this historiographical imbalance by questioning two fundamental tenets of Katz’s thesis: that the Jewish entry into the modern era was marked primarily by intellectual and religious changes associated with the Haskalah and Hasidism, and that as a result of these particular changes modernity was something that Jews consciously chose, implicitly defined, and ultimately controlled. By focusing on the urban roots of modern Jewish society, politics, and community, this book will detail a series of intellectual constructs and political practices that were designed to wield control over a haphazard and fundamentally bewildering Jewish encounter with the heart of modernity, the city. Ultimately, I argue that modernity was not something that Jews defined, created, and controlled but, rather, something that they encountered, struggled with, and, in the end, attempted to master. ­Although seemingly minor, this turn to the realm of social history and the accompanying attempt to suspend dominant (Jewish) historiographical assumptions regarding Jewish agency are critical to gaining a deeper understanding of the Jewish search for order and community, the subsequent turn to modern political ideologies, and the inherently dialectical nature of modern Jewish politics in eastern Europe and beyond.

On Communities and Cities: What Have We Learned from Dubnow? In turning my attention to Jewish history in the urban arena, I am not only problematizing Katz but also questioning another fundamental tenet and looming master of modern Jewish history, namely, the central role of Jewish communal institutions as envisioned and codified by the historian, ideologue, and politician Simon Dubnow.17 Written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dubnow’s corpus helped lay the foundations for a long-standing emphasis on the very

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concept of “the Jewish community” and the prominent role played by communal institutions in Jewish history and historiography. As another definitive scholar of modern Jewish history, the late Jonathan Frankel, has noted: “Dubnov now emphasized communal history, the forms of autonomous self-government which had sustained the Jewish people through the millennia of exile [sic].” Nor was Dubnow’s work without influence. Frankel, again, refers to Dubnow’s critical role by claiming that “in an extraordinary burst of energy and creativity during the decade 1888–1898, he [Dubnow] laid down the basic guidelines for his own work during the rest of his life and for that of mainstream historians over a number of generations.”18 Here, too, I maintain that the turn to the concept of the Jewish community and the central place afforded to communal institutions in the construction of Jewish history are similarly motivated by a desire to lend a semblance of order to the past and, in Dubnow’s case, a sense of control over an exceptionally precarious present. Moreover, under the influence of Dubnow’s theory of Jewish communal autonomy, historians of the Jews and a past that was consciously written as “Jewish history” (including Baron, Ben-Sasson, Ettinger, and Halpern; and, a generation later, Bartal, Zipperstein, and others) have repeatedly highlighted the central role of the Jewish community and communal bodies such as Va‘ad Arba Aratsot, Va‘ad Medinat Lita, and various successor institutions (both large and small) in the Russian Empire.19 As a result of this emphasis, the history of East European Jewry has often been written as one that revolves around institutions and the men who administered them. Most importantly, this concentration on institutions and organizations has lent an almost universal sense of order, continuity, and destiny to both the corpus and the course of Jewish history in eastern Europe, from shtetl to state. In the wake of these and other methodological and ideological factors, different works on local, urban histories of Jews often assume a seemingly automatic association of Jewish communal institutions with the rather ill-defined yet practically omnipresent concept of “the Jewish community.” This frequent association of communal institutions with the concept of community has contributed to another Achilles’ heel in the academic literature on Jews in Europe’s eastern half, the widespread conflation of “the Jewish community” with the city. Thus, in

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many cases the concept of “a Jewish community” is often presented as one that embraces practically all aspects of life among Jews in different cities and towns.20 While certainly interrelated, the Jewish community and the urban environment were not one and the same, and the two concepts need to be separated and dissected to be understood properly. In the case of Warsaw, these historiographical trends have led many to write about life among Jews in this particular city as though it were primarily a collection of communal institutions and societies. While this is most apparent in the case of Guterman’s work, Levinson, Shatzky, and others have also turned to Jewish communal institutions for social, political, and historiographical order.21 Other histories and popular works dedicated to memorializing and, at times, sacralizing various Jewish communities in eastern Europe, in particular after their near decimation during the Holocaust, take similarly positivistic and holistic approaches toward Jewish society and history. Here, as well, these interpretations emphasize the central role of Jewish communal institutions; a seemingly permanent, all-encompassing concept of community; and the men who guided them.22 In an effort to go beyond this narrative of community and the inherent structure and sense of permanence that it helps create, if not impose, this study will focus on life among Jews beyond communal institutions and elite biographies. My efforts to problematize the Jewish narrative of community and continuity is particularly relevant to life in a large urban center like Warsaw and to the various attempts to reconstruct a sense of community and belonging at the onset of the twentieth century.

Modern Jewish Politics in Polish Lands: Going Beyond Parties, Members, and Ideologies Although ostensibly situated beyond the academic interests of Katz and Dubnow, most studies of modern Jewish politics are imbued with Katz­ian notions regarding the primacy of Jewish agency as well as an overtly Dubnowian subtext of Jewish nationhood. Moreover, under the influence of both Dubnow’s historical framework and Cold War concepts of East and West, the bulk of what has been written about Jews in the Russian Empire, in general, and Jewish politics until 1914,

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in particular, has focused primarily on “the Jews of Russia.”23 Thus, Frankel’s magisterial study as well as critical works by Lederhendler, Nathans, and others look at political developments among Jews in the Russian Empire within a predominantly Russian cultural and political context.24 In many cases, the experiences of the over one million Jews living in the Russian Empire’s ten Polish provinces and other heavily Polish areas in the Pale of Settlement (such as Białystok) are either quietly overlooked or simply subsumed into the larger, somewhat misleading concept of “Russian Jewry.”25 Moreover, while Polish historians of the fifties, sixties, and seventies wrote extensively about specific aspects of Polish history and society in the early twentieth century, ideological and linguistic factors severely limited the place of the Jews in these studies.26 Recent studies by Dynner, Guesnet, Jagodzińska, and Wodziński have helped correct this academic imbalance, and this book should be seen as part of this growing discussion of local Jewish societies and histories within the imperial context.27 Indeed, focusing on Jewish society and politics in Polish lands not only helps me evade the long shadow of an imperial Russian Jewish body but also enables me to focus on the critical intersection of Polish and Jewish societies in Warsaw. This focus on events in the empire’s provinces is particularly relevant in a period like that surrounding the Revolution of 1905 when centrifugal forces threatened to tear the empire apart. One additional outcome of these and other historiographical assumptions is that studies of Jewish politics in Polish lands often focus on the period after the establishment of the independent Polish Commonwealth in 1918. Like Mendelsohn’s groundbreaking studies on inter­war history and society, many works focus on the so-called Golden Age of Jewish and Polish politics, the interwar years.28 Indeed, other than ­Zimmerman’s study of relations between the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the Bund (the General Jewish Labor Union in Lithuania, ­Poland, and Russia), and Wodziński’s work on Hasidic politics, relatively few works look at Jewish politics in pre–1914 Congress Poland.29 By examining Jewish politics in the heart of Congress Poland, Warsaw, this study is designed to overcome both Dubnowian and Cold War influences on dominant historiographical conceptions of Jewish community and politics in eastern Europe. Here, as well, my hope is that a shift in the geographic focus in the study of Jewish politics will shed new

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light on some of the more gnawing questions troubling the study of Jewish history, the history of Zionism, and the State of Israel. In addition to geographic and chronological oversights, many studies of Jewish politics suffer from one additional pitfall, an overconcentration on parties, ideologies, and leaders. While such an approach may seem logical it does not mean that this academic discourse is without its own blind spots. Seminal works by definitive historians like Kolatt, Vital, and others look at specific organizations and institutions, the leaders that led them, and the platforms that were advocated as the body and soul of Jewish politics.30 However, much like the histories of Jewish communal institutions and organizations, these histories of specific party leaders, structures, and organizations also lend a sense of order, autonomy, and, at times, destiny to the practice of Jewish politics. 31 Thus, Lederhendler’s pathbreaking study speaks of The Road to Modern Jewish Politics as if there was a specific road to “Modern Jewish Politics,” one which, like most other roads, led to a particular (political) place.32 Finally, in many cases the ultimate destination of this and other roads “to modern Jewish politics” are, more often than not, today’s state of Israel. Although this study points in the same direction, I repeatedly try to suspend this sense of historical destiny by illustrating how, when, and why Jewish history took this particular path. Thus, instead of focusing on parties, platforms, and leaders, I analyze the very structures, practices, and discourses that helped create modern Jewish politics. Realizing that numbers are oftentimes misleading and inaccurate, I have shied away from giving definitive figures for specific parties at particular moments and have, instead, examined the common building-blocks of different political organizations. Moreover, understanding that histories of specific parties or individuals often lend themselves to somewhat triumphalist readings of the past, I have concentrated on the intersection of the three main political ideologies—socialism, liberalism, and nationalism—and not the rags-to-riches path of any one specific party or leader, from Płońsk to Palestine.33 More than anything else, this is a story that I try to tell as it moves forward and not as one might read it backward. Finally, in an effort to avoid potentially teleologically redemptive narratives of Jewish politics between eastern Europe and the Middle East (or, alternatively, to the golden land of America), I have chosen to focus on a specific period and a geographic area.34

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Jews and Poles in the Russian Empire: Toward a New Understanding of Subject Nations The field of Jewish politics is not the only realm in which the present weighs heavily upon the representation of the past. The study of Polish Jewry is also influenced by the needs of two clumsy, at times angry, historiographical schools: one Jewish, the other Polish.35 On one side of this divide, the traditional Jewish school of Polish Jewish history has been one in which predominantly Jewish scholars have often presented Poland as a cursed land of antisemitism, pogroms, and exclusion in which anti-Jewish animus was not only dominant but, at times, perfected.36 On the other side of this divide, many Polish scholars have tried either to justify the animosity between Poles and Jews by pointing to the role that prominent Jews supposedly played in the implementation and administration of Polish Communism (often embodied in the notorious image of the żydokomuna [Judeo-Communism]) or to minimize tensions by highlighting the actions of those Poles who risked their lives to save Jews during the German Occupation.37 Although recent scholarship has attempted to correct this image, the historiographical record on Poles and Jews is still heavily influenced by needs of the present.38 As part of my efforts to move beyond this binary division (and intellectual impasse) of Poles versus Jews and to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the nature of relations between the two groups, as well as their place in the study, definition, and construction of a specifically “Eastern Europe,” I look at the various ways in which particular visions of Polish-Jewish harmony (and discord) were imagined and dismantled. Through this analysis, I illustrate how the construction of modern ethno-linguistic nations in the Russian Empire’s Polish provinces was neither an eternal, always existing fact, nor the result of a set of predetermined historical developments. Rather, it was the result of a particular set of structural and discursive developments, accompanying political decisions, and their implementation among Jews and Poles in a certain place and at a particular time. As part of my analysis of the image of “the Jews” that crystallized during the debates to the first two Dumas, I show how many of the same motifs that would later be associated with the żydokomuna were already integral parts of Polish

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political discourse by early 1907, well before many of the more infamous “Jewish Communists” were even born or had developed a political consciousness.39 In addition to deconstructing primordial and essentialist conceptions regarding the supposedly eternal division between Poles and Jews, I also demonstrate not only how both communities passed through common experiences but also how these parallel paths often reinforced the development of two remarkably similar, if albeit increasingly divided, communities. Poles and Jews grew side by side in the city of Warsaw, were intimately aware of developments in each particular camp, and, in many cases, specific decisions were made in response to steps taken (both real and imagined) by the other party. By emphasizing these common processes, accompanying responses, and angry exchanges, I demonstrate how Polish and Jewish histories should also be seen as two interrelated societies that represent separate, if not always equal, parts of a larger cultural-political constellation. Lastly, throughout this book, I show how the construction of ethnolinguistic communities in Warsaw was very often the result of specific responses to particular political realities and not the end result of wellplanned, carefully implemented political designs. This interpretation helps recast the context in which decisions were taken, processes set in motion, and dies cast. Indeed, just as modernity and the encounter with the modern world were not processes that Jews always controlled, the construction of nations and their accompanying definitions of belonging and exclusion, two quintessentially modern phenomena, were not developments that many Poles and Jews were always conscious of and in control of.40 Sometimes history just happens.

Like All Other Nations? Jewish and Other Nationalisms The study of Poles and Jews as (modern) nations leads me to another key issue raised in this book, nations and nationalisms. Although many Jewish and Polish historians often view their own particular nations as eternal ones, my discussion of the different intellectual, cultural, and political developments that coalesced in this period demonstrates how nations were constructed in eastern Europe as a result of specific institutional and discursive developments. As such, I claim that nations are

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not only part and parcel of the modern era but also developments that grew out of the very confrontation with the modern world. This position challenges both primordial and traditionalist schools of nationalism such as those espoused by John Armstrong and Anthony Smith, which claim that nations are rooted in already-existing groups (referred to by Smith as ethnie), and that these bodies serve as the core for future nations.41 Although preferred by many advocates of particular nations and their specific nationalisms, Smith’s theory fails to explain fully several key questions. For one, Smith’s theory of ethnie does not adequately explain why some ethnie survive and go on to become nations while others simply fade away.42 Furthermore, Smith’s theory implies that all ethnie are proto-nations waiting to develop into maturity. Unfortunately, such an interpretation leads to the conclusion that the integration or assimilation of members of any one ethnie into another ethnie is close to impossible. When applied to the case of Jews in Europe, Smith’s theory fails to allow for the possibility that Jews could have integrated into any European society, Polish, German, British, or other. Most importantly, Smith’s theory of ethnie implies that “the Jews” were, essentially, a nation in waiting, and that all that was needed was their own midwife of history. However, as this study shows, many Jews in turn-ofthe-century Warsaw were far from certain about what “the Jews” really were (and were not), and, as a result, they spent a fair amount of time debating what Jews and “the Jews” could and could not become. In direct contradistinction to both the primordial and traditionalist schools of nations and nationalisms, a careful examination of the institutions, practices, and rhetoric implemented by both Jews and Poles in the wake of the quasi-democratic reforms of 1905 and 1906 shows how the advent of participatory politics led to the politicization of ethnicity, the construction of ethno-linguistic communities, and the crystallization of modern, politicized nations in turn-of-the-century eastern Europe. In this sense, my study draws from theories of nations and nationalisms advocated by Elie Kedourie and Benedict Anderson. My interpretation of the connection between modern means of communication and organization and the development of nations is also influenced by ideas regarding the construction and transformation of the public sphere as suggested by Jürgen Habermas, Partha Chatterjee, Pheng Cheah, and others.43 In the case of Warsaw, the crisis of urban-

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ization, accompanied by the rise of modern social, cultural, and political structures, the types of communities they helped construct, and the very discourses they facilitated, were all necessary and critical factors that contributed to the construction of two separate, parallel nations in Warsaw, one Jewish, the other Polish. Moreover, while I do not claim that “the Jewish people” were invented ex nihilo by an assortment of frustrated intellectuals, politicians, and historians, I do argue that ethnicity is not destiny.44 Something happened in and around the Revolution of 1905 that irrevocably altered reigning conceptions and practices of community and self. Although this decidedly modern view of nations and nationalisms challenges key works on Jewish history by Israel Bartal, Gideon Shimoni, and others, my emphasis on the impact of particular ideas, cultural institutions, and political practices that coalesced in a specific time and place underscores the inherently modern aspects of nationalism.45 Ultimately, these sociopolitical bodies (nations) were neither permanent, preexisting collective entities nor the result of a set of predetermined historical developments but, rather, specific constructs that arose as a result of a particular set of circumstances and institutions. The development, imagination, and serialization of these new socio-political constructs occupies the better part of this study.

The Dialectics of Jewish Modernity Lastly, Jewish politics, in general, and Jewish nationalism, in particular, not only were quintessential by-products of the modern age and modern means of organization, communication, and action but also were responses to and reactions against key aspects of modernity, including life in the city and a series of questions regarding the fate of the individual and the nature of community in this radically new environment. By examining different responses to these and related questions, I show how many of the new political movements and their central representatives were less than optimistic about the world that they had inherited and far more interested in using modern means of communication and organization to resolve key problems that they associated with modernity. The repeated drive for social, political, and personal order in and over the city emphasizes the extent to which the Jewish encounter with

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modernity often led to the adoption of modern political ideologies and movements that were imbued with a distinctly antimodern spirit. Unlike Katzian or Dubnowian master narratives, which revolve around intellectual or communal histories that inevitably lead to collective regeneration and redemption, my turn to social structures and reigning discourses highlights a much more ambivalent encounter with (and not construction of) modernity. In doing so, I raise difficult questions regarding the very origins, nature, and course of modern Jewish society and politics.46 Little, in fact, epitomizes the dialectics of Jewish modernity more than the efforts by different leaders and organizations to redefine and transform the modern world from an unbound, undefined, and threatening myriad of practically incomprehensible phenomena to a bound, defined, and controlled intellectual, cultural, and political construct, the nation.

Six Chapters: The Setting, the City, Revolution, the Public Sphere, Democracy, and Antisemitism The six substantive chapters that compose this book trace the Jewish search for community in Warsaw from the end of the nineteenth century to the demise of the revolutionary era in 1907. Although chronologically oriented, each chapter addresses a specific theme as well as a set of questions designed to elucidate key aspects of the chapter’s main theme. Chapter 1 consists of an integrative historical analysis of the main forces that form the core of this cultural history: the city of Warsaw, the city’s Jewish residents, their Polish neighbors, and the Russian imperial context. Designed to lend historical background to different developments taking place over the course of the nineteenth century, this chapter charts Warsaw’s growth as an industrial center; discusses key developments in Polish society, including changing visions of community and nation; explores the trials and tribulations of new, burgeoning Jewish communities in Warsaw; and examines various attempts by Russian government officials to wield control over the provincial center of Warsaw and its increasingly restless inhabitants. This historical discussion concludes with a brief summary of events of the Revolution of 1905 throughout the empire. In addition to providing historical context,

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this opening chapter also helps set the stage for many of the themes analyzed throughout this book, including the transformation of Warsaw from a local center to an urban metropolis, the prevailing sense of crisis that arose regarding the urban environment, how this crisis shaped the nature and direction of community and politics among Jews and Poles, and the influence of these social and political struggles on reciprocal images and relations between the two groups. In the second chapter, I examine various representations of disorder and confusion in Warsaw in an attempt to challenge the historiographical concept of an urban Jewish community and to place the origins of modern Jewish politics within the context of the modern city. By focusing on the experiences of new arrivals (in-migrants), the plight of other marginal members of Jewish society, a widespread level of mistrust, and practically uncontrollable displays of violence and crime, chapter 2 takes a hard look at life in the city. In addition to setting the foundations for this study, my thematically driven analysis of urban life in this chapter is rooted in three methodological assumptions that help shape the book. First, I illustrate how the officially recognized Jewish community ( gmina) and its various institutions in no way reflected the daily experiences of Warsaw’s 275,000 Jewish residents. Second, by looking at the role played by the recently legalized and incredibly popular daily press, I demonstrate how a specific image of the city was created and then disseminated to tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of readers and other observers. Lastly, this particular image of the urban arena highlights not only the unprecedented size and scale of problems in the city but also the growing challenge to traditional Jewish institutions and organizations. As a result of this perceived crisis, the press and other new bodies were able to create new institutions and practices that would fill the gaping void left by the city. One of the first expressions of the widespread need for new forms of communal organization and belonging in the city was the newfound popularity of various revolutionary organizations among Jews in Warsaw. By focusing on questions of community, chapter 3 presents revolutionary activity in general, and support for such activity among Jews in particular, as part of larger processes surrounding the collapse of community in the urban arena and the fervent search for new forms

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of belonging. Through this analysis of Jewish support for revolutionary activity, I also try to shed light on the conundrum regarding Jewish participation in revolutionary organizations in eastern Europe and beyond. Based on long-overlooked police, court, and other government records, the first part of this chapter examines the social structure and political culture of different revolutionary organizations in Warsaw. Through this analysis, I detail a unique underground world in which youth, conspiracy, and intimacy prevailed. The second part of this chapter looks at the language, teleology, and conceptions of community that various revolutionary organizations attempted to implement, and the extent to which these intellectual and cultural constructs took hold among potential supporters. While successful on many levels, these organizations soon found themselves confused as the rules of political engagement and activity changed over the course of 1905, 1906, and 1907. Thus, the last section of this chapter traces the different attempts by the Bund, the PPS, and other parties to bridge the transition from illegal, clandestine organizations to mass-based political parties. Ironically, many of the same factors that led to the early success of these groups in the days of illegal, conspiratorial activity would later serve as impediments to their attempted transition to become popularly supported organizations in the era of participatory politics. The new rules of political organization and activity would demand new ways of thinking and acting, and not all groups were able to make this transition successfully. Where underground politics stumbled, new public institutions and organizations flourished. The larger transformation from the politics of underground activity to popular politics was rooted in a series of new institutions and structures that helped construct a specifically Jewish public sphere in Warsaw. By closely examining the critical role played by coffeehouses, Yiddish theater, and the daily press in Yiddish, chapter 4 argues that the shape and borders of community in Warsaw were rooted in the very institutions that helped create the new Jewish public sphere. Although there were other aspects to the public sphere in Warsaw, these three institutions were central to the reconstruction of reigning concepts of organization and community in the age of popular culture and participatory politics. While the coffeehouse, the theater, and the daily press helped reconstruct popular concepts of public space and community, the experience

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of semidemocratic elections in 1906 and again in 1907 contributed to the crystallization and consolidation of these concepts. In chapter 5, I follow the political debates aired in the Jewish political sphere during the elections to the first two Russian State Dumas and show how the very practice of participatory politics led to the solidification of specific lines of inclusion and exclusion in Warsaw and, de facto, throughout the area. The first half of this chapter looks at the organizations and policies that competed for the two seats in Warsaw’s urban curia in the elections to the First Duma in early 1906. Through an analysis of political debates, I demonstrate how the very nature of participatory politics, as well as the electoral process itself, contributed to the reinforcement of specific, ethno-linguistic concepts of community. The second half of this chapter shows how the politicization of ethnicity was further exacerbated by the disappointing results of the elections to the First Duma. In response to these electoral losses, Jewish leaders were particularly critical of those Jews who dared to cross the line advocated by new communal and political leaders in the elections to the Second Duma. The move toward popular politics and the accompanying need for large-scale mobilization demanded an increased degree of individual loyalty and collective discipline, and various spokesmen were fervent in their position that Warsaw’s Jewish voters learn to behave accordingly. Jews, of course, were not the only ones who lived in Warsaw. Alongside Warsaw’s 275,000 Jewish residents lived close to a half-million ­ethnic Poles. The last chapter in this book examines the changing nature of politics and society among Poles in Warsaw through an examination of the image of “the Jews” that coalesced in the elections to the first two Dumas. Through this analysis of the image and place of “the Jews” in the Polish political discourse, I demonstrate not only how both Poles and Jews passed through similar processes of politicization and encampment but also how these parallel developments often reinforced one another in an ongoing, reciprocal process of isolation, confrontation, and mimesis. This analysis of the image of “the Jews” in the Polish political sphere revolves around several key aspects of this figure that would, in one way or another, prove pivotal to the course of modern Polish and Jewish politics over the course of the twentieth century. Throughout this chapter, I show how the image of “the Jews” was composed of three

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key motifs that included an inherently hostile, anti-Polish drive bent on the destruction of Poland and the enslavement of Poles; the seemingly natural tendency of “the Jews” to ally themselves with other anti-Polish forces of domination, like Russian bureaucrats, and disorder, such as different socialist parties; and the inherent illegitimacy of coalitions between “the Jews” and different liberal groups, as well as the accompanying charges that such groups were either controlled by Jews or, in fact, crypto-Jews masquerading as Poles. Although some of these concepts would change over time, these key aspects of the image of “the Jews” were all integrated into mainstream political thought and debate during the elections to the first two Dumas. Finally, the prominent place of “the Jews” in Polish politics helps explain the ultimate course of Jewish politics. Indeed, just as democratic practices took the wind out of the revolution’s sails, and as the need for collective organization helped reinforce the construction of communities rooted in an ethno-linguistic plane, the turn to the politics of hate among so many voices in the Polish political sphere lent a harsh blow to Polish and Jewish visions of Jewish integration into Polish society. Labeled as traitors, suspected of hostile intentions, and periodically threatened with political violence, more and more Jews turned to their own politics of isolation and, at times, hate, to create communities that were equally tenable and potentially redemptive in confusing and angry times.

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O n e  Warsaw before 1905 One City, Many Stories

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Decoding and deciphering the urban arena is a vibrant academic field, and this study of Jews, Poles, and Russians in the city of Warsaw should be seen as part of this larger academic discussion.1 Often inspired by the works of Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel, and other thinkers, many studies of the city point to the limits inherent in any intellectual attempt to define and narrate that indecipherable site and symbol of modernity and entropy known, alternatively, as the city, the urban environment, the metropolis, and, by some, even as home. Such dilemmas regarding the narrativization and representation of the city are particularly relevant when speaking of Warsaw, a nineteenth-century city par excellence. During this period, members of at least three different communities referred to the city by at least three different names in at least three different languages: Warszawa in Polish, Varshava in Russian, and Varshe in Yiddish. In many senses, this book is about these intersecting and at times conflicting desires and the ensuing attempts to define and possess the embattled center that would eventually serve as a symbol of Russian imperial progress, Polish national independence, and Jewish martyrdom. In an effort to lend structure to these three intersecting histories and their respective narratives of redemption, this introductory chapter will address each particular historical story separately—first the Polish, then the Russian, and lastly the Jewish. While some will claim that dividing Warsaw’s history into three separate narratives is inherently misleading, my hope is that this historically oriented chapter will lend background and context to many of the thematic questions addressed throughout this book.

Warsaw before 1905

Warszawa: From Medieval Outpost to Polish National Center The earliest accounts of a permanent settlement in or near the area that would become known as Warsaw date back to the tenth or early eleventh centuries when the settlement of Stare Bródno (also referred to as Bródno) was founded on the banks of the Wisła (Vistula) River. In the middle of the eleventh century, Bródno was succeeded by the settlement of Kamion, which was then followed by the village of Jazdów. Around 1300, Jazdów was conquered and the settlement was relocated three kilometers to the north in the fishing village of Warszowa, which in time received its present-day Polish appellation, Warszawa (­Warsaw). There, on the banks of the Wisła at the onset of the fourteenth century, the settlement’s status became somewhat less precarious, as can be observed from the establishment of a town council in 1376. In fact, by the early fourteenth century Warsaw had become one of the seats for the duke of Mazovia, and by 1413 it was made the capital of Mazovia. Like many other medieval towns, Warsaw owed its survival to the local waterway, in this case the Wisła River. By serving as a conduit between Warsaw and the cities of Kraków and Gdańsk (Danzig), and also providing connections to other centers like Sandomierz, Kazimierz Dolny, and Góra Kalwaria as well as Chelmno and Oswieciem (Auschwitz), the Wisła would prove to be Warsaw’s lifeline for the next four centuries.2 With the end of the Mazovian ducal line in 1526, Warsaw was incorporated into the crown lands of the Jagiellonian state. By 1569—the same year that witnessed the union of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—meetings of the General Sejm and royal elections were regularly held in Warsaw.3 As a way station situated halfway between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s capitals of Kraków in the south and Vilnius in the north, Warsaw’s location was, apparently, already everything. Some four decades later, Warsaw became the permanent site of the Polish Sejm. In 1596 King Zygmunt III Waza (­Sigismund III Vasa, b. 1566, 1587–1632) moved the seat of the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Wawel Castle in Kraków, which was severely damaged by fire, to the Warsaw Castle off the banks of the Wisła.4 By the late sixteenth century, Warsaw had begun to solidify its place in Polish history.

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Under the protection of Zygmunt III Waza and Władysław IV Waza (Ladislaus IV Vasa, b. 1595, 1632–1648), the Counter-Reformation found a supportive base in Polish lands and Warsaw benefited. At the same time, the city’s growth in this period also attracted the attention of its neighbors. As a result, Warsaw and its residents suffered greatly during the Swedish invasion of 1655–1660 when the city was occupied by hostile forces.5 Damaged by the vicissitudes of war, Warsaw’s population remained relatively limited at roughly 6,000 residents in the middle of the seventeenth century.6 This lack of growth hindered the city’s international status as it was overshadowed by more dominant centers of wealth and power during this era, such as Kraków and Prague. Like many other frontier outposts that would later metamorphosize into great industrial cities—Odessa, Manchester, Chicago—Warsaw’s beginnings were rather humble. The city’s modest beginnings took a turn for the better in the middle of the eighteenth century during the reign of King Stanisław II August Poniatowski (1732–1798). Poniatowski, who ruled from 1764 to the final dismemberment of the Polish Commonwealth in the Third Partition of 1795, is credited with a series of political and financial changes that transformed Warsaw from a way station along the banks of the Wisła to a major European center. During the second half of the eighteenth century, Warsaw’s registered population grew over fourfold from roughly 24,000 residents in 1754 to some 110,000 in 1792.7 As a patron of the arts and an advocate of the Enlightenment, Poniatowski helped turn the capital into a center of publishing, art, and scholarship.8 Warsaw’s prominence as a center of enlightenment and culture was bolstered further by technological and communication developments. Improvements in the Dnieper-Bug Canal in 1775 created a connection between the Bug and the Pripyat rivers that opened new trade routes between Warsaw and markets to the east including Dnipropetrovs’k and Kiev as well as the southern port city of Odessa. As Wandycz notes, “Warsaw grew as an important trading, banking, and industrial center.”9 With the Third and final Partition of Poland in 1795, Warsaw experienced a series of political changes that would characterize its precarious fate at the crossroads of the European continent for the next two hundred years. The spoils of war and the whims of peace—in this case

Warsaw before 1905

the failed Kościuszko Insurrection of 1794—placed Warsaw in Prussian hands where it served as the capital of New East Prussia. As a provincial center under Prussian imperial rule, Warsaw’s influence and stature shrank at the expense of Prussia’s newly acquired province of Poznań (Posen), which developed quickly.10 After the Napoleonic invasions, Warsaw came under French rule in 1807 and served as the capital of the truncated Polish state known as “the Duchy of Warsaw.”11 The Napoleonic experiment of creating a puppet Polish state was relatively short-lived, and with Russia’s victory in the Napoleonic Wars and the realignment of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Warsaw was incorporated into the Russian Empire where it became the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, a constitutional monarchy under the indirect rule of Russia’s Tsar Alexander I.

Varshava: A Russian Imperial Center With Kraków slipping under Austrian control and Poznań slowly being integrated into the Prussian economy and society, Warsaw became a key center and symbol of both Russian administrative designs and Polish national aspirations for the remainder of eastern Europe’s long nineteenth century (1772–1914).12 Repeatedly, Russian government officials and, in time, Polish national visionaries would clash over the fate, definition, and direction of Warszawa/Varshava/Varshe as they struggled to construct a city that would satisfy their imperial agendas and political needs. Few phenomena represent as many different aspects of the modern era—technology and urbanization, social engineering and internal colonialization, capitalism and nationalism— more than the ongoing struggles over the construction, definition, and control of the city of Warsaw. Imperial designs for a domesticated, well-functioning, and well-­ behaved city started slowly as the cumbersome Russian imperial apparatus struggled in the late eighteenth century to wield order over its ever-expanding empire of peoples. Russian administrative designs to impose bureaucratic order were hindered further in the Congress Kingdom by the influence of twenty years of Prussian and then French rule that had strengthened economic and cultural connections between

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Warsaw and other centers like Berlin and Danzig. As such, the first fifteen years of Russian rule in the Kingdom of Poland were, relatively speaking, rather benevolent. In addition to granting the Kingdom of Poland (also known as the Congress Kingdom) a formal constitutional monarchy that permitted a fair degree of local autonomy, government officials also promoted industrial growth and institutional development designed to serve the empire’s interests. Although clearly under Russian rule, the Congress Kingdom had a great deal of autonomy at the time including: “its own Government, its own judiciary, its own elected Assembly or Sejm, its own civil service and its own army.”13 Furthermore, many earlier rights such as the Napoleonic Code, freedom of the press, religious toleration, and the peasantry’s right to purchase land were all upheld.14 Under this political environment, Polish enlightenment thinkers like Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755–1821) and Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826) remained influential figures, and enlightenment-oriented educational institutions blossomed. In a relatively short period, Warsaw University was established, and the Preparatory Polytechnical School in Warsaw was created. As part of these educational reforms, over one thousand primary schools educated local children.15 After steady demographic decline in the period of political uncertainty between 1794 and 1815, Warsaw’s population rose in the first quarter of the nineteenth century to roughly 130,000 residents by 1827.16 This growth was bolstered by the city’s integration into the Russian Empire’s economic market, which solidified its status as a growing center for industrial production, in particular textiles and metal goods.17 More efficient tax collection, the reinstatement of state monopolies over the sale of salt and tobacco, and the creation of the Polish Bank in 1828 further contributed to the city’s economic development in this period.18 Other significant changes in this period of imperial innocence included a network of new roads linking Warsaw to other cities in the Congress Kingdom and, ultimately, other parts of the Russian Empire, and the construction of the Augustów Canal. These transportation and communication improvements were matched by the creation of a city municipality and the reconstruction of the city’s urban layout, including the expansion of Warsaw to include the Belvedere Palace in Ujazdów.19 The French Revolution of 1830, the inspiration of other movements for national liberation, and a growing sense of dissent within Rus-

Warsaw before 1905

sian society encouraged increased demands for self-rule among Polish intellectuals, army officials, and other local leaders. These and other calls for autonomy directly challenged tsarist designs to bring local regions and peoples under direct Russian rule. Coming to the throne on the heels of the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, Tsar Nicholas I (1796– 1855) was intent upon reasserting imperial control over the empire’s provincial territories, residents, and resources. The conflict between these two forces erupted in November 1830 when Polish army officers led an armed insurrection against Russian rule. Lasting several months, the rebellion, known in Polish historiography and collective memory as the November Insurrection, was ultimately defeated by Russian forces.20 Moreover, true to the imperial handbook for colonial administration, the uprising was followed by a series of punitive measures including the abolishment of autonomy in the Congress Kingdom and the implementation of Russian military rule in and over Poland.21 As part of these imperial reforms, Polish administrative regions (­wójewodztwa) were replaced by Russian ones ( gubernia) in 1837; schools were now under the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Enlightenment in 1839; the Polish currency, the złoty, was abolished and replaced with the Russian one, the ruble, in 1841; and the Enlightenment-influenced Napoleonic Code was restricted and the Russian Criminal Code implemented over the region.22 The central political conflict between Russian (and later Soviet) imperial designs and local, Polish aspirations for self-rule that would characterize the region for the next two centuries had begun to crystallize. Despite these conflicts between government anxieties, bureaucratic machinations, and national aspirations, Warsaw continued to serve as a center of imperial, national, and economic desires in the decades following the revolt.23 Improved technological means, like the expansion and improvement of the Dnieper-Bug Canal, and administrative decisions, including the reduction of tariffs on the import of raw materials and the export of goods to and from Russia proper as well as restrictions on imports from Prussia, strengthened the economic and political ties between Warsaw and other parts of the Russian Empire. The opening of rail lines with Vienna between 1845 and 1848, with local industrial centers like Skierniewice and Rogów in 1845, and soon thereafter with St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and Danzig further connected the city

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Figure 1. Warsaw’s produce market off the banks of the Wisła (Vistula) River, c. 1900. Source: Joseph and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, Folklore Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, hof3-0161.

to commercial markets and industrial centers in the Russian Empire. In addition to these technological advancements, the use of steamships up and down the Wisła also helped fuel the Congress Kingdom’s economic integration into the Russian Empire as Russia entered the age of industrialization.24 These technological and commercial developments were matched by urban improvements in Warsaw including the introduction of gas service to the city in 1856, the construction of the first permanent bridge over the Wisła between 1859 and 1863, and the installation of a waterpumping system between 1851 and 1855.25 These steps boosted the city’s growth and solidified its status as an industrial, commercial, and financial center. By the mid-nineteenth century, Warsaw was no longer simply an imperial outpost or a local commercial center but a burgeoning industrial city that would play a critical role in the Russian Empire’s seemingly never-ending race to keep up with “the West.” The Spring of Nations of 1848, which witnessed revolts across central ­Europe from Berlin to Budapest, seemed to pass over Warsaw. Like other nineteenth-century frontier outposts that were busy being transformed into

Warsaw before 1905

industrial powerhouses, such as Chicago, Warsaw appeared to be “a city that works” and not a magnet for political radicals and revolutionary intellectuals. This focus on business and industry was furthered during the Crimean War of 1853–1856 when Warsaw-based industries served the needs of Russian imperial forces. This period of relative calm and economic development was paralleled by continued demographic growth to some 200,000 residents in 1860, an increase of roughly 50 percent from 1830.26 These economic advances and a period of relative calm led to a degree of political liberalization in the Congress Kingdom during the early years of Alexander II’s reign. Official reforms regarding the right to public assembly and organization gave birth to new organizations and institutions including a City Delegation whose role was to inform the ruling viceroy of public opinion.27 These and other reforms fed a larger sense of anticipation that soon erupted in the uprising of January 1863. Despite the expectations and growing demands for local autonomy, the January Uprising against tsarist rule was suppressed by government forces. In response to the insurrection and the ensuing period of rebellion, tsarist authorities closed Polish social and cultural institutions, rescinded earlier reforms regarding the right to use Polish language and practice Polish culture, replaced Warsaw’s Main School with the Russian University of Warsaw, made Russian the official language of courts and administration, and officially turned the Polish Kingdom into the Russian Province of Vistula land.28 Other punitive measures included the confiscation of thousands of noble estates, the destruction of villages, massive exiles, torture, and hundreds of executions.29 Frightened by the sight of a local rebellion that threatened the very sanctity of empire, the Russian Empire struck back with a vengeance. At first, the imperial policies seemed to achieve their goals. Indeed, the four decades that separated the January Uprising from the Revolution of 1905 are often viewed as a particularly quiet period in Polish history. In wake of the government reforms that followed the January Uprising, many turned away from romantic nationalism and dedicated themselves to the politics of self-improvement as advocated by Polish Positivism.30 Led by intellectual figures like Aleksander Świętochowski (1849–1938), Bołesław Prus (Aleksander Głowacki, 1847–1912), Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910), and others, and based on western philoso-

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phies grounded in concepts like rationality and labor, Positivism called on Poles to adopt “organic work” as their main strategy for advancing the nation.31 The turn to organic work contributed to the growth of Polish newspapers and periodicals in the Russian Empire, which grew from twenty-two in 1864 to ninety-two in 1894, and to the creation of a small but critical reading public.32 Theater in Polish also grew at this time but remained limited to government-owned institutions where officials could keep an eye on the potentially restless Polish public.33 In addition to these cultural developments, the period was characterized by rapid industrial, technological, and demographic growth. Fed, in part, by the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and the accompanying development of critical industries like metal works and textiles, Warsaw’s population tripled in the four decades preceding the Revolution of 1905 from roughly 225,000 in 1864 to approximately 775,000 by 1905.34 Moreover, by 1890, 70 percent of trade in the Congress Kingdom was with Russian centers.35 As a result, the former Congress Kingdom became “the most advanced part of the Russian Empire.”36 Widespread social and economic changes as well as growing frustration with the politics of Positivism led to the rise of a new generation of political organizations and actors. The earlier generation’s faith in Positivism was replaced by a new generation of young Poles known as the niepokorni, the angry ones.37 The last decade of the nineteenth century saw the growth of new political organizations that would set the stage for the next hundred years of Polish politics. In 1892, the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), led by Józef Piłsudski, was founded in Paris. The PPS was followed by the creation of the more radical Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) headed by Rosa Luxemburg. These socialist organizations were joined by a national movement, the Polish League, which was also founded abroad in Geneva in 1887. Renamed the National League in 1893 and then the National Democratic Party (ND; Endecja, Endeks) in 1897, the organization was led by the young and vocal Roman Dmowski. More than anything else, the appearance of the National Democrats helped solidify central political divides in Polish society.38 And, thus, Polish society suddenly found itself in a situation that was simultaneously familiar and unknown as the twentieth century suddenly opened its gates to the embattled city and national capital, Warsaw.

Warsaw before 1905

Varshe: The Jewish Mother City? As with many other early chapters in Jewish history, the exact origins of Jewish settlement in Warsaw remain murky. Despite writs forbidding Jewish residence, Jews apparently lived in the city as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century. The first signs of an ongoing Jewish presence in Warsaw date to the early fifteenth century when the Jewish community included five houses, a synagogue, a graveyard, and, most likely, a bathhouse on what was then known as the Jewish Street.39 As a trading center between Lithuanian and Prussian lands, many of the town’s Jewish residents earned their livings as traders, middlemen, and money changers.40 Permanent Jewish presence in the city, however, incurred competition and tension with other urban dwellers. As a result, Jewish residents of Warsaw repeatedly found themselves threatened with expulsion from their somewhat lucrative trading positions. Thus, histories of Jewish society in medieval Warsaw often read like endless cycles of threats, expulsions, and returns. The vicious circle of expulsion and return includes expulsions in 1454, 1483, and 1498 as well as similar actions in 1527 and 1570.41 While the specifics of privileges of de non tolerandis Judaeis (not tolerating Jews) varied, in almost every case decrees of expulsion were followed by attempts by Jews to return. While contemporary historians of medieval and early modern Poland disagree about the extent to which different rulings were enforced, the picture that emerges is one of a limited yet consistent presence of a core of Jewish merchants in Warsaw throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.42 Despite these restrictive measures and the financial and social difficulties that they produced, Jews continued to be drawn to Warsaw. While many of the city’s Jewish residents lived without the legal right of residence or on the outskirts of town in neighboring suburbs and estates that belonged to local magnates or the church ( jurydyki), a small number of privileged, wealthy Jews were able to secure temporary residence permits in the growing center of some 30,000 residents.43 As such, the Jewish population in the town stood at approximately 2,500 Jewish residents in 1764–1765.44 As in the past, periods of growth and prosperity were followed by contestations, legal restrictions, and periodic expulsions. These actions

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included the expulsion of all illegal Jewish residents from Warsaw in 1768 and again in 1776. The second expulsion was followed by a new regulation mandating that all Jews visiting the city purchase a daily ticket. Jewish women were particularly affected by this measure and were granted entry to the city only when they or their children were in need of medical care.45 Warsaw’s eastern suburb of Praga across the Wisła River provided some relief to the legal restrictions, and many Jews were granted the right of residence there as well as the right to trade freely, to construct houses, and to establish a Jewish cemetery.46 Despite these restrictive measures, Jews were very often allowed to return to Warsaw.47 As a result of such returns, the question of Jewish residence in Warsaw arose again during the debates in the Polish Four Year Sejm, 1788–1792. Under pressure from local merchants and other interested parties, most Jews were expelled from Warsaw in March 1790. The only exceptions were those merchants who already had received permission to reside in the city. Reflecting tensions at the time, the expulsion decree was accompanied by outbursts of anti-­Jewish violence in March, April, and May of 1790.48 In response to these legal actions and expressions of popular violence, the number of Jewish residents in Warsaw stood at less than 10,000 registered individuals at the end of the eighteenth century. Hence, much like the city itself, the Jews in Warsaw began the nineteenth century on a somewhat modest note. Despite these slow beginnings, the nineteenth century would prove to be a period of tremendous industrial, commercial, and cultural expansion for Warsaw and its Jewish residents. Side by side, intertwined and yet separate, Warsaw and its Jewish residents would both be transformed from small provincial hubs to key centers. The occupation of Warsaw by Prussian forces and administrators from 1796 to 1806 proved to be a critical phase in the history of the city’s Jewish community. First, Prussian authorities granted all those Jews who were already in the city in early 1796 the right to settle permanently.49 Reflecting the enlightened spirit of their times, Prussian authorities also abolished marriage restrictions and clothing regulations, granted Jews the right to purchase and build homes, and equalized tax rates for Prussian and Polish Jews. As part of larger efforts to modernize Polish lands, they also demanded that Jews integrate into the modern bureaucratic system by adopting surnames, restructure

Warsaw before 1905

Jewish communal organizations, and expel some of the Jewish poor and unemployed.50 Additional institutional changes that followed included the creation of a Jewish publishing house in 1796 as well as government approval for a Jewish hospital on Nowolipki Street in 1799 and a Jewish cemetery on Gęsia Street in 1806.51 Legal and institutional changes contributed to demographic growth, and Warsaw’s registered Jewish population nearly doubled in size from 6,750 in 1796 (8.3 percent of the population) to 11,911 in 1805 (17.4 percent of the population).52 The end of the Napoleonic Wars and the integration of central ­Poland into the Russian Empire in 1815 marked a new era in the history of Warsaw and its Jewish residents. Determined to integrate resources and residents without relinquishing power, early Russian policies toward Jews in Congress Poland proved rather fruitful for both long-term Jewish residents and newcomers. At the same time, many of these policies and their resulting developments would contribute to tensions between Poles and Jews. Indeed, throughout the period, Jews repeatedly found themselves torn between imperial Russian desires, on the one hand, and the increasing demands of Polish patriotism, on the other. Jewish residents and institutions flourished during the period of the Congress Kingdom’s autonomy, 1815–1831. Demographically, the Jewish population rose both in real numbers and as part of the larger population, from some 16,000 in 1815 to more than double that number by the outbreak of the November Revolution of 1830 when Jews represented close to one-quarter of the city’s total population. 53 The growth of Warsaw’s Jewish population was augmented by the newfound prominence of two distinct yet related Jewish subcommunities: the Jewish bourgeoisie and followers of Hasidism. As a key financial and trading center newly integrated into the expansive Russian empire, Warsaw gave rise to a new generation of Jewish business magnates including Leopold Kronenberg (1812–1878), Jan Bloch (1836–1902), and others. Oftentimes, these Jewish entrepreneurs began their careers as local bankers and merchants before moving on to modern, industrial projects like sugar production, railroad construction, and other, related enterprises.54 While the story of this group of Jewish merchants has yet to be written, it is clear that these Jews played critical roles in the financial and industrial development of Warsaw and the surrounding region. As in many other cases, financial success led to demands for increased

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civic rights and cultural if not social integration into the surrounding society.55 In time, many key representatives of this generation became dominant figures in both the Jewish and the Polish worlds as they tried to steer the city’s Jews and Poles toward some kind of cultural and social compromise that they and their cohorts referred to as “assimilation.”56 The economic, political, and ideological drive for rapprochement furthered the development of a Polish circle of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), spearheaded by figures like Antoni Eisenbaum (1791–1852), Jakub Tugendhold (1794–1871), and Abraham Stern (1762–1842), and revolving around institutions like the Warsaw Rabbinic Academy, the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street, and the Polish-language weekly Izraelita.57 Although scholars debate the extent to which these figures and institutions represented a distinct school of the Haskalah, their call for Jews to study secular, non-Jewish subjects; engage in “more productive” economic spheres; and embrace, if not integrate into, Polish culture and society were supported by many in Warsaw and elsewhere. In response to this push for assimilation and other changes, the relatively new Jewish religious movement of Hasidism took off like wildfire in Polish lands. Recent studies by Glenn Dynner and Marcin Wodziński allow us to trace the rise of the new religious movement in small towns and big cities over the first half of the nineteenth century. In Warsaw, Jewish merchants often provided “a sturdy foundation of privilege” that enabled different Hasidic groups to gain a foothold in the burgeoning center.58 According to Dynner, Berek Sonnenberg-Bergson and his wife Temerel “served as the movement’s foremost sponsors and advocates.”59 Despite current debates regarding how many Jews became followers of different courts and why, Hasidism clearly offered many Jews new ways of being Jewish that often encouraged social, cultural, and linguistic separation from non-Jewish society. On the political plane, the Polish insurrections of 1830–1831 and 1863 are often seen as moments of truth for Warsaw’s Jewish integrationists and their designs for large-scale reforms of “the Jews.” Caught between Russian desires for imperial rule, on the one hand, and Polish desires for national autonomy, on the other, most of Warsaw’s Jews avoided taking open public positions on these questions. That said, many other Jews volunteered to support Polish battles for national liberation. During the Uprising of 1830–1831, some 1,000 Jewish men joined a specifi-

Warsaw before 1905

cally Jewish Civil Guard; and several hundred went so far as to shave their beards and adopt European (non-Jewish) clothing in order to participate in the Polish National Guard.60 Some thirty years later in 1863, many Jews responded to Polish calls for the construction of a new type of Polish society and supported openly the January Uprising. Different estimates place Jewish participation in the 1863 Insurrection in the hundreds if not thousands.61 Particularly prominent roles were played by leading Jewish figures, among them the progressive Rabbi Markus Jastrow (1823–1903) and the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Dov Ber Meisels (1798–1870).62 These open and vocal displays of loyalty and patriotism in 1863 are often presented as key moments in the history of relations between Poles and Jews.63 Scholarship has long pointed to a period of bitter disappointment that followed both revolts as imperial reprisals exacerbated tensions between Poles and Jews. Moreover, in both cases the waves of reaction and realignment that followed both revolts are often seen as harbingers of more insular political and cultural agendas on both sides of this growing divide. Thus, the failed revolt of 1863 and the imperial politics of divide and conquer lent a blow to Polish and Jewish visions of Polish-Jewish rapprochement and, with it, designs for Jewish integration into Polish society. Some of these changes can be gleaned from the new style of cultural and social institutions that began to appear among Jews in Warsaw. On the cultural plane, Warsaw soon became a center for distinctly Jewish cultural projects like new Jewish weeklies in Polish ( Jutrzenka, 1861–1863 and Izraelita, 1866–1916) as well as in Hebrew (Ha-tsefira, 1862–1863, 1874–1931). In addition to providing public forums for those Jews who were able to read Hebrew and Polish, these journals and related projects also began to attract young intellectuals and activists to the burgeoning center. Aspiring Jewish intellectuals like the precocious Nahum Sokolow and others flocked to the city where they found intellectual guidance and direction in key cultural figures like Y. L. Peretz.64 Warsaw also became home to a growing number of cultural projects that provided these intellectuals with semistable sources of income. Here, as well, the image of Jewish culture and politics was just as, if not more, important than the reality behind these visions. Thus, while the total circulation of the new journals rarely surpassed several thousand copies and the size of the Jewish intelligentsia

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remained limited, the advent of Jewish periodicals and cultural activity signaled the beginning of a new type of Jewish culture in Warsaw and the region. That said, these new cultural projects remained limited in size, scope, and influence. The last three decades of the nineteenth century also marked a dramatic increase in the range of activities undertaken by the officially recognized Jewish communal organization, the gmina. Despite repeated government efforts to limit or abolish Jewish autonomy in the Russian Empire, the Jewish gmina continued to operate in Polish lands throughout the imperial era. Although originally designed to serve Jewish religious needs, the institution grew significantly in the last third of the nineteenth century as a result of government concessions and the indirect influence of Polish Positivism. Ludwik Natanson (1822–1896) led the gmina from 1878 till his death some twenty years later. In this period of rapid urban development, he oversaw the creation of two new hospitals, the founding of a new cemetery, and the expansion of charitable activities. By the end of his tenure, the gmina’s budget of 137,000 rubles in 1896 was more than double its budget in 1871.65 As the officially recognized communal body, the gmina also served as a forum for many of the ideological, religious, and political conflicts among Jewish camps. Time and again, different Jewish groups clashed over the right to control the Jewish communal body as well as the numerous educational, charitable, and religious institutions and employees that came under its fold. These and other changes in the size, nature, and direction of Jewish communal, cultural, and political organizations seemed to strain the precarious state of relations between Poles and Jews in the city. One stark sign of the state of relations was the pogrom that broke out in Warsaw on Christmas Day 1881. Starting with a scuffle and then a panic-driven stampede in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw’s Old Town, three days of rioting and looting in Warsaw’s Jewish neighborhoods left two dead and twenty-four injured, damage to over 2,000 homes, and financial losses estimated at over 800,000 rubles. According to some estimates, almost 1,000 Jewish families were left homeless as a result of the violence.66 While some observers viewed the violence as an aberration or an act of tsarist provocation, others believed that it marked a new stage in rela-

Warsaw before 1905

Figure 2. Market in Warsaw’s Jewish district, c. 1880. Source: Prints and Photograph Division, Library of Congress.

tions between Jews and Poles.67 This position is supported by the fact that the Christmas pogrom was followed by the founding of the journal Rola in 1883. Established by Jan Jeleński (1845–1909), Rola consistently called for the economic, social, and political division of Jews from Poles.68 While the paper’s distribution and influence remained limited at the time, the introduction of antisemitic motifs into the nascent world of modern Polish politics set an ominous precedent for future relations between Poles and Jews.69

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The tensions fueled by both the Christmas pogrom and Jeleński’s journalistic antisemitism contributed to a parallel shift in the realm of Jewish politics. While studies debate when exactly relations between  Jews and Poles passed from assimilation to antisemitism, the end of the nineteenth century marked a low point in relations between Jews and Poles in Warsaw and throughout the Russian Empire’s Polish provinces.70 The growth of new Jewish (and Polish) political organizations should be seen as part of these larger developments. Thus, the advent of new cultural institutions and the expansion of the gmina’s activities were complemented by new Jewish political organizations. Early signs of proto-Zionist activity in the city included a branch of the Lovers of Zion organization (Hibbat Zion) founded in 1882 and headed by the local maskil, Shaul Pinḥas Rabinowicz (Shefer).71 Although the movement’s organizational center remained in the Russian port city of Odessa, the Warsaw branch played an important role in early Zionist activity. Less than a decade later, the city witnessed early signs of socialist groups and activities among Jews (and Poles) in Warsaw.72 These developments began with charitable activities organized by professional unions in 1888 as well as socialist pamphlets that appeared in Yiddish as early as 1893.73 No longer content with promoting linguistic and cultural integration as a means toward attaining civic rights, these organizations advocated new ideologies that would soon go on to change the political landscape of eastern Europe.74 Despite these early developments, the actual number of members and their larger influence remained limited. Indeed, even generous estimates cite no more than several hundred supporters of the new Jewish politics in a city of some 275,000 Jewish residents on the eve of the new century. Here, too, early changes affected only a small percentage of Warsaw’s Jewish residents as legal and political restrictions prevented these organizations from becoming popular political movements.

A Brief History of the Revolution of 1905 Jews and Poles in Warsaw were not the only ones who seemed to suddenly discover that they had entered a new century. Many of the same factors that led to the reconstruction of life in Warsaw similarly affected

Warsaw before 1905

many other parts of the vast, multinational empire of the Romanov tsars. Breakneck industrialization, ambitious governmental reforms, the introduction of new technologies and means of communication, and the tension inherent in the empire’s desire to be simultaneously part of and apart from the West fueled different sources of unrest and frustration that would erupt in 1904, reach their peak in 1905, continue during 1906, and die down in late 1907. In time, this tide of unrest would become known as the Revolution of 1905. The following brief history of the Revolution of 1905 throughout the Russian Empire is meant not only to introduce readers to many of the events unfolding at the time but also to place developments among Jews and Poles in Warsaw within the context of events taking place across the empire of the last tsar, Nicholas II (1868–1918). For the better part of the nineteenth century, the Russian government and its bureaucratic administrators were determined to walk the fine line between government reform and social and political control. In bits and pieces over the course of the nineteenth century, government officials implemented reforms that were intended to strengthen the government apparatus and improve the empire’s economic status without threatening the delicate social order and political balance. In the ideal world of nineteenth-century social planning and reform, Russian officials believed that they could attain the industrial and economic growth of their immediate neighbor Germany without incurring the political unrest of their distant neighbor France. And, yet, try as they may, the more the government gave, the more various groups seemed to demand. As such, Abraham Ascher is correct in his interpretation that the Revolution of 1905 was not one coherent, united movement of protest but, rather, the confluence of several separate uprisings that seemed to erupt at the same time: liberal, revolutionary, national, agrarian, and worker.75 Over the second half of the nineteenth century, the repeated demands of educated individuals and liberal groups stood as one of the more pressing and intractable social and, in time, political problems that faced the tsarist regime. On the one hand, tsarist officials knew that they desperately needed an educated class to lead the empire in its ongoing competition with “the West.” As part of these efforts to keep up with its neighbors, the Russian education system grew tremendously. By 1917, there were somewhere between 100,000 to 180,000 students

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in different institutions of higher learning.76 These institutions were designed to train the next generation of administrators, engineers, and technocrats who would go on to transform the empire’s government and economic status. At the same time, the more people were educated, the more they began to realize that other societies offered a greater degree of personal freedom and independence. By the end of the century, these educational and intellectual developments led to the growth of a number of movements dedicated to restructuring the empire. In addition to representatives of local self-government (the zemstvos), members of a new sector of society that came to be known as the “Third Element” began to gather strength and support for their demands for greater public involvement in various aspects of the political process.77 In January 1904, advocates of these and other liberal projects convened at the first meeting of the Union of Liberation in Russia in St. Petersburg. In 1905, many of the same individuals and organizations helped found both the Union of Unions and the distinctly political Constitutional Democratic Party, the Kadets. Dedicated to the establishment of a constitutional democracy, these bodies helped the liberal camp articulate its position and define its presence.78 Although the growth of the liberal camp challenged the autocracy, it was far less threatening than the revolutionary camp, which included the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries (SR), founded in Saratov in 1896, and the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP), founded in Minsk in 1898.79 Even though revolutionary organizations like the People’s Will, Land and Liberty, Black Partition, and Liberation of Labor already had long histories of confrontation with the tsarist regime, the new wave of revolutionary organizations remained numerically small. Bitter divides between rival groups did not improve the situation. Thus, while the Socialist Revolutionaries remained an elitist organization, the popularly oriented Social Democrats split into the “Bolshevik” faction and the opposing “Menshevik” camp at the Social Democrats’ 1903 Congress.80 Thus, the Social Democrats claimed a mere 12,000 activists in early 1905.81 That said, when anger began to erupt throughout the empire in 1905, the various revolutionary organizations were best prepared and best situated to capitalize on the popular frustration. Much like the ruling powers themselves, the liberal camp and the revolutionary groups struggled repeatedly with questions regarding

Warsaw before 1905

the fate of the different ethnic and national groups that composed the multiethnic empire.82 While Finland seemed to set the standard for national aspirations, different movements for national liberation began to grow across the empire from Poland and Ukraine in the western borderlands to Armenia in Transcaucasia.83 Although the various national movements varied in strength, the growing consciousness regarding their demands for self-rule if not independence grew significantly among the 55 percent of the empire’s subjects who were not ethnically Russian.84 By the first decade of the twentieth century, the empire faced a veritable epidemic of nationally oriented protest movements that flared from the western borderlands to the eastern provinces. While national passions periodically erupted in the provinces from Warsaw to Baku, anger in the rural areas seemed to spread like wildfire. However well intentioned they may have been, the tsarist reforms of 1861 that marked the liberation of the serfs had proven to be nothing short of a colossal failure. Dislocated by their sudden liberation and impoverished by a bewildering maze of government regulations, Russia’s rural population was neither here nor there.85 In time, the initial euphoria associated with liberation was quickly replaced by hunger, frustration, and anger. Moreover, while Russia, like many other European societies, had a long history of rural protest and revolt, observers were shocked by the level and intensity of violence in the early twentieth century as rural residents repeatedly stole, plundered, and burned crops, estates, and, at times, even their owners. Anger and frustration characterized the mood across the various sectors of Russian society as the twentieth century began on a sour note for the Russian Empire. Under the impression that a short war against a nonEuropean nation would produce quick dividends, including increased patriotism, loyalty, and support, Russia entered into a conflict with the eastern power of Japan in early 1904. If there was ever a straw that broke a camel’s back, the Russo-Japanese War would prove to be the immediate catalyst for the pandemic breakdown of public order that would develop into the Revolution of 1905. Repeated military defeats and catastrophic losses on land (in Manchuria) and at sea (in the northern Pacific) not only proved deadly but soon led to a groundswell of protest against recurring draft call-ups, increased economic pressures, the war in the Far East, and the tsarist government that was held responsible.86

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Although different revolutionary groups were determined to transform the antiwar sentiment into antigovernment action, it was, ironically, a government agent, Father George Gapon of St. Petersburg, who would be credited with starting the Revolution of 1905 with the protests in St. Petersburg that would be referred to as Bloody Sunday. In an effort to draw workers away from revolutionary movements, Gapon began organizing a series of apolitical social organizations and volunteer bodies. With government approval and support, Gapon’s Assembly of Russian Factory Workers grew into a viable labor union with thousands of supporters in the imperial capital. In response to a local labor conflict, Gapon organized a number of large-scale citywide strikes in December 1904.87 Armed with a petition for Tsar Nicholas II, Gapon and over a hundred thousand supporters marched on the tsar’s Winter Palace on Sunday, January 9/22, 1905.88 There in the depth of Russia’s winter, the increasingly separate worlds that divided Russian society from its rulers clashed as over a hundred protesters—including children and family members who joined the procession—were killed by Cossack troops after protesters approached the tsar’s palace.89 Soon to be known as Bloody Sunday, the clashes precipitated a series of protests and conflicts in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Tiflis, and other centers across the empire in early 1905. Railroads, newspapers, and other trappings of modern Russian society would both inform and enable the opposition, which was both spontaneous and directed by a cadre of revolutionary activists.90 While the fervor of strikes, protests, and confrontations dissipated soon after the initial wave of revolutionary activity in January 1905, the revolutionary momentum returned in full force in the summer of 1905 with a new wave of protests and confrontations in both rural and urban areas. Fearful and tottering, the regime responded by announcing an imperial manifesto in August 1905 that included a proposal for an elected assembly, the Bulygin Duma.91 Although the August Manifesto promised to establish a State Duma, it failed to set a specific date for elections. Moreover, residents of many parts of the empire, including many residents of Congress Poland, Siberia, Central Asia, and Transcaucasia, were denied voting rights.92 Half-hearted and self-contradictory, the August Manifesto and the proposed Bulygin Duma seemed to satisfy no one and anger almost everyone. True to the script of the tragicomedy that

Warsaw before 1905

seemed to be unfolding before everyone’s eyes, tsarist policies in 1905 seemed to do nothing but backfire. Protests continued and reached their peak in October of 1905 as a general strike swept the empire. For ten days—from October 7/20 to October 17/30—the different sectors that composed imperial society seemed to be united in their will to act as a unified body.93 In addition to postal employees, printers, and rail workers, doctors, professors, students, and teachers joined the strike.94 Although the different groups were divided, they were also inspired by their resolve and the new show of force. Workers in some forty to fifty different cities organized local councils (soviets) that directed activities during the strike.95 The long year of protest that began with Bloody Sunday seemed to reach its peak, and the tsarist regime appeared to be standing on its last leg. Frightened by a united front and a seemingly endless sea of strikes and protests, Nicholas II attempted to appease the opposition groups by issuing another Manifesto on October 17/30, 1905. Hallowed as the October Manifesto, the imperial decree attempted to achieve what had, until then, proven impossible, the transition of the Russian Empire from Europe’s last autocracy to one of the continent’s constitutional democracies. In addition to increased freedoms regarding the right to assembly, relaxed censorship regulations, and other political rights, the October Manifesto also granted relatively widespread male suffrage in elections to a constituent assembly, the Russian State Duma. Unlike the lukewarm reception of the August decree, the public response to the October Manifesto was euphoric. Large crowds gathered in cities across the empire to celebrate the apparent victory of the revolution and to take part in the onset of a new era. In many instances, public gatherings and celebrations of the Manifesto were met with counterprotests that supported the regime and its embattled figurehead, Tsar Nicholas II.96 In over six hundred instances, public confrontations in the wake of the October Manifesto turned into violent, anti-Jewish riots (pogroms) that left hundreds of Jews dead in centers such as Kiev, Odessa, and Gomel.97 Despite fears and concerns, this particular wave of anti-Jewish violence did not spread to Polish centers like Warsaw. At first, the regime maintained its commitment to reform, and the elections to the First Duma in the spring of 1906 proceeded as planned. All told, voters chose an overwhelmingly oppositional Duma that included

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184 representatives of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets), 124 members of various left-wing parties (most revolutionary organizations boycotted the elections), and 32 seats that belonged to various national groups.98 Right-wing parties loyal to the tsarist regime garnered a mere 45 representatives out of a total of 497.99 To the disappointment of many, the opposition’s electoral victory turned out to be a pyrrhic one. Threatened by the Duma’s oppositional majority and fearful of the transition to a constitutional democracy, Tsar Nicholas disbanded the legislative body in July 1906, less than three months after it had convened.100 Determined to continue its balancing act between reform and stability, the government soon announced elections to the Second Duma, which took place in early 1907. Once again, the Duma was decidedly oppositional with 54 representatives of social democratic parties, 37 members of the Social Revolutionary Party, and 98 members of the ­Kadets. Although the number of representatives loyal to the regime grew, it remained a minority with 114 seats out of almost 500.101 Here, as well, divisions and conflicts between the Duma and the government led to the dissolution of the elected body in June 1907. Determined to avoid the mistakes of the first two Dumas, Prime Minister Piotr Stolypin revised the electoral laws in an effort to limit the number of non-Russian representatives, raise the representation of rural gentry, and reduce the influence of peasants, urban residents, and workers.102 Subsequently referred to as the Stolypin coup d’état, the decision to curtail electoral rights was matched by determined efforts to stamp out revolutionary resistance. In a relatively brief period, Stolypin instituted a series of measures that included frequent government raids, arrests, military trials, and executions.103 As a result, over 1,000 people were executed in the period following the Second Duma, and some 21,000 were exiled to distant provinces.104 While political scientists would debate the various reasons for the revolution’s demise and Bolshevik historians would claim that it never died but simply continued into 1917, most observers were convinced by the fall of 1907 that the tsarist regime had achieved the impossible, the restoration of order and power. And so, while the Romanov dynasty may have emerged from the events of 1904–1907 bruised and wounded, it would continue to rule for another ten years.

Tw o Urbanization, Community,

and the Crisis of Modernity

Jewish Society in Turn-of-the-Century Warsaw

When high noon on a summer’s day makes the sky a fiery furnace and the heart seeks a quiet corner for dreams, then come to me, my weary friend. A shady carob grows in my garden— green, remote from the city’s crowds— whose foliage whispers secrets of God. Good my brother, let’s take refuge ... My dwelling is modest, lacking splendour, but warm and bright and open to strangers. A fire’s in the grate, on the table a candle— my lost brother, stay and get warm. When we hear a cry in the howling storm we will think of the destitute starving outside. We will weep for them—honest and pitiful tears. Good friend, my brother, let us embrace.1

Introduction: The City and the Search for Community By the turn of the century, Warsaw had become home to over threequarters of a million residents, including approximately 275,000 Jews. As a result of the city’s sudden growth and accompanying demographic developments, the very experience of living in an urban metropolis was completely new for many of its residents. These and other changes in the scope and size of Jewish urban society influenced key aspects of daily

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life among many of the city’s Jewish residents. Ultimately, the daily confrontation between an inherently disorderly urban arena and the larger drive for individual, social, and political order would lay the foundations for the radical reconstruction of Jewish conceptions of community and self in early-twentieth-century Warsaw. Through a survey of newspaper accounts, personal letters, memoir literature, and other sources, this chapter examines the image of Warsaw that coalesced at this time as well as the responses of many of Warsaw’s Jewish residents to the combined experiences of large-scale in-­ migration, the increasing marginalization of large parts of the city’s Jewish population, the specter of almost epidemic violence, and the daily encounter with a hitherto unknown reality—life in a city large enough to instill a pervasive sense of anonymity and invisibility.2 Through this analysis of how Jews, both individually and collectively, experienced and responded to the urban arena of Warsaw, this chapter will illustrate how the very concept of an urban Jewish community was often undermined by the experience of life in the metropolis. One institution that simultaneously depended upon and exacerbated the crisis of urbanization and community in Warsaw was the newly established Jewish daily press. Throughout this period, newly legalized Jewish (and non-Jewish) papers in Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish played a key role in the construction, representation, and dissemination of a specific image of Warsaw.3 Over time, hundreds of thousands of Jewish readers were influenced by the steady flow of reports regarding the many perils of life in the city, and they responded to the image of the city that these reports helped to create and serialize.4 Oftentimes, newspapers portrayed the city as a dangerous modern jungle in which little was sacred and few were safe. Moreover, in many cases the representation of urban society in Jewish newspapers was just as important (if not more) than the actual events that were described in the pages of the daily press.5 As Warsaw grew and grew, there was no possible way that residents—both long-term and newcomers—could keep abreast of developments taking place among the city’s three-quarters of a million residents in a range of different neighborhoods and areas. This decision to focus on the role of the daily paper in the urban arena is particularly relevant when discussing cities like Warsaw that included so many new residents. As Peter Fritz­sche notes in regard to turn-of-the-

Urbanization, Community, and the Crisis of Modernity

century ­Berlin: “With the daily influx of hundreds of newcomers, the breakdown of older neighborhoods and turnover of residents in newer ones . . . a great crowd traversed the city. . . . These strangers found in newspapers indispensable guides to unfamiliar urban territory.”6 Lastly, while various aspects of urban life such as in-­migration, petty scams, and urban violence may seem marginal to some observers, the following discussion will show just how central they were to the image and experience of Warsaw at this time. The image of the city in the Jewish press was, of course, directly influenced by parallel images and discussions taking place in other European societies. The turn-of-the-century city—the ultimate symbol of modernity—both fascinated and frightened its admirers and its critics, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. As Mark Steinberg writes in regard to the image of the city in turn-of-the-century Russian society and culture: Not only artists and writers worried about the meaning of living in the modern world. Large numbers of Russians, including many with only a rudimentary education, were preoccupied with similar questions. The press, including the mass-circulation commercial press, engaged actively, even obsessively, in such discussions. Journalists and others writing for newspapers and journals portrayed the physical and social landscapes of cities as at once desirable sites of opportunity and vitality and disturbing places marked by cold indifference, greed, exploitation, immorality and suffering. The press was filled with stories about the wide range of troubling (but also alluring) phenomena of modern life in Russia: nightclubs and cabarets, prostitution and suicide, the defiant antimorality of “hooligans,” bizarre murders, vitriol-throwing women, clever swindlers, car races, fires, accidents and scandals of all sorts. Questions of morality, values and cultural meaning preoccupied many of those who wrote for large public audiences. The press regularly featured stories about, for example, the disintegration of civic moral order, ideals of proper social behavior, social injustices, moral values conveyed in art and literature, national character, sex (the widespread public discussion of which raised important questions about gender roles, the individual, modern life, national virtue, and social order), and death (especially about the moral quandaries posed by suicide and murder).7

Urbanization and the image of the city shaped perceptions of modernity among Jews and non-Jews in similar ways. Despite these sim-

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ilarities, Jewish papers and, in turn, many of their contributors and readers, regularly interpreted the crisis of urbanization and (Jewish) community in Warsaw as though it was a specifically Jewish one. A critical reading of various Jewish newspapers illustrates how concerned, if not obsessed, Jewish papers, readers, and other observers were with the fate of the Jewish community in the city. Innumerable articles, items, and other news stories help illustrate the extent to which many individual Jews and Jewish communal organizations interpreted these reports and the sense of impending disaster that they conveyed as though they were problems particular to the Jewish community. As part of this interpretation, different papers and commentators repeatedly turned to Jewish institutions, leaders, and readers to resolve what they saw as a specifically Jewish crisis of urbanization and community. The nature of this response not only tells us much about how many Jews viewed the world that they had inherited but also explains the response of many Jewish journalists and other observers to the larger crisis of modernity. While the crisis of urbanization and modernity was universal, the response of Jewish newspapers and observers was very often particularistic. Jewish interpretations of and responses to the new urban environment were further influenced by the fact that Jews in Warsaw and throughout the Russian Empire’s Polish provinces organized most communal activities through the auspices of the local, recognized Jewish communal body, the gmina. Originally granted permission by the Russian authorities to administer religious affairs, Warsaw’s Jewish gmina was eventually responsible for an array of religious, communal, and charitable institutions and activities. With an annual budget of approximately 350,000 rubles by 1906, it oversaw local synagogues, ritual baths, and burial societies and provided salaries to community ­employees.8 The gmina also supervised fifteen communal rabbis who helped government officials register births, marriages, and deaths, and also served on rabbinic courts. As was noted earlier, the gmina significantly expanded its activities in the last quarter of the nineteenth century under the leadership of Ludwik Natanson. As a result of these efforts, the communal body administered large-scale philanthropic institutions including a Jewish hospital, a home for the aged, an orphanage, and the synagogue on Tłomackie Street.9 In time, these institutions and their

Urbanization, Community, and the Crisis of Modernity

leaders would come to serve as symbols of Warsaw’s Jewish community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, as a result of its unique legal status, many Jews in Warsaw would look to the gmina and its affiliated bodies to resolve many of the problems that they faced in the city. Despite this aura of Jewish communal autonomy, the gmina’s activities were still conducted under the supervision of Russian government authorities. Until early 1906, each new communal organization had to be approved by government officials and be associated with the community’s religious institutions.10 In addition to these legal restrictions, the gmina was run by a limited number of wealthy men who represented only a small percentage of Warsaw’s Jewish residents.11 Jewish critics regularly charged that voting for the gmina was inherently undemocratic if not oligarchical and that its policies were, as a result, ineffective.12 Observers pointed to the fact that the gmina’s fourteen-member board was chosen by some 2,800 tax-paying representatives out of a total population of some 275,000 Jews.13 Another example of this divide between the gmina and the people it was supposed to assist was the fact that in 1895 only 6,000 families paid the local community état tax out of a total of some 40,000 Jewish families in the city.14 In time, critics would charge that the body’s limited autonomy and representation affected not only the gmina’s legitimacy but also its ability to understand and respond to the needs of the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the city. Thus, while the annual budget of 350,000 rubles in 1906 may seem impressive, it actually equaled roughly 1.25 rubles per Jewish resident of Warsaw.15 Others pointed to the fact that the gmina’s charitable efforts were limited. Thus, yearly disbursements to charities, such as the 40,000 rubles spent on Jewish welfare in 1895, had only a modest impact among Jews in Warsaw.16 Moreover, while the creation of a new hospital was a step forward, it only had space for some five hundred beds in 1906.17 In still other cases, incompetence seemed to mar even the best of intentions. Thus, Jacob Shatzky notes the mishaps involved with communal projects designed to distribute coal to the needy during Warsaw’s long winters. “By the time one received a coal voucher, the winter had passed, and the voucher was automatically annulled.”18 As Warsaw’s Jewish population continued to rise, these institutional and organizational shortcomings would become more acute and would con-

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tribute to a parallel, related crisis regarding the nature of community and the state of communal authority in Warsaw.19 Thus, rapid urbanization, the newfound role of the Jewish press, and the limitations (both internal and external) placed on Jewish communal institutions combined to produce a crisis that was, in the minds of many observers, a uniquely Jewish one. Furthermore, once interpreted as a specifically Jewish crisis, these problems demanded specifically Jewish answers. In time, new modes of individual and communal self-­conception and organization would arise in response to this growing sense of frustration as well as to the larger efforts to comprehend, define, and control the urban environment. Hence, any attempt to understand the new Jewish politics and the accompanying conceptions of community and belonging (as well as those of exclusion) that arose in early-twentieth-century eastern Europe should begin with a discussion of the crucible that gave birth to modern Jewish society and politics: the city.

A City of Strangers: Urbanization, In-Migration, and Anonymity The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of tremendous demographic growth and economic change for many Jews and nonJews throughout the Russian Empire and beyond. Alongside Warsaw, Lodz, Odessa, and other new centers rose and soon became magnets for Jews and non-Jews in search of higher living standards and an escape from the cultural and economic poverty that often characterized towns and small centers throughout the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement and its Polish provinces.20 In Warsaw, the rapid growth of the city’s Jewish population in the four decades immediately preceding the Revolution of 1905 shocked both the larger society and Jewish residents as the city came to dominate social, financial, and cultural spheres in Congress Poland. While some scholars have pointed to a relatively high birth rate among Jews as the primary cause of this population explosion, Shaul Stampfer, Stephen Corrsin, and others have argued convincingly that Jewish in-migrants from other parts of the Russian Empire contributed considerably to this population boom.21 As a result of these demographic changes, some 50 percent of the city’s Jewish

Urbanization, Community, and the Crisis of Modernity

residents in 1897 were born outside of the city. At the same time, over half of Warsaw’s Jewish residents were under the age of twenty.22 By the turn of the century, Warsaw’s Jewish population was overwhelmingly young and new to the city. As Daniel Brower observes, many cities in turn-of-the-century Russia were nothing less than “great revolving doors through which passed a significant proportion of the population of large regions of Russia.”23 Although population figures are notoriously problematic, Table 1 helps illustrate the growth of Warsaw’s Jewish and non-­Jewish populations in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.24 Between 1864 and 1905, the general population of the city multiplied roughly three and a half times from 222,000 to almost 780,000, and the city’s Jewish population of Warsaw grew almost fourfold from 72,000 to 275,000. While these and other statistics are helpful, they shed relatively little light on the actual experiences of those migrants who suddenly found themselves in large cities like Warsaw. For many young Jews who arrived in the city, Warsaw was often an intimidating, foreboding metropolis that regularly defied comprehension and understanding.25 Thus, one particular result of the large-scale migration of many young Jews to Warsaw and other centers throughout eastern Europe and abroad was a growing sense of alienation and anonymity that began to characterize turn-of-the-century Jewish society.26 One of the many young Jews who arrived in Warsaw at this time was David Yosef Gruen. Gruen, who would later become better known

Table 1. Warsaw’s Jewish and general populations, 1864–1910 Year

Jewish Residents

Total Residents

Percentage of Jewish Residents

1864

72,776

222,906

32.6

1881

127,917

379,763

33.7

1895

190,300

535,968

35.4

1905

275,238

777,897

35.8

Source: Figures compiled from Stephen Corrsin, “Aspects of Population Change and of Acculturation in Jewish Warsaw,” in The Jews in Warsaw: A History, ed. Władysław T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 214; Jacob Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn in Varshe (New York: YIVO, 1947–1953), 3:23; and Piotr Wróbel, “Jewish Warsaw Before the First World War,” in Jews in Warsaw, 255.

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by his Hebraicized name of David Ben-Gurion, came to Warsaw from the provincial town of Płońsk in the summer of 1904 to prepare for his entrance exams to a local technical school as an external student. His personal letters from the period are filled with insights into the existential and material difficulties that often accompanied the process of migration to the big city.27 Writing to an older friend from Płońsk who had already left their hometown for London and would soon move on to New York, the seventeen-year-old Gruen speaks repeatedly of the pervasive sense of alienation and loneliness that he could neither escape nor overcome in the city of some three-quarters of a million residents. Yaakov Bogato went home on Monday and who knows when he will return . . . and I remain here alone, alone and depressed. Oh, how great is my sorrow and how heavy is my heart these days! For even when one is sad, one’s load can be lightened when one has someone to whom one can turn and tell one’s sorrows and woes. But what could be worse than to suffer so much that your heart is shattered to pieces out of sheer loneliness!!!28

While periodic trips to his hometown of Płońsk and an increased level of participation in political organizations helped alleviate Gruen’s gnawing sense of loneliness as well as accompanying bouts of depression, insomnia, and other inexplicable illnesses, little seemed to help this young man resolve the many existential dilemmas involved in the transition from the familiar surroundings of a hometown to his new life in the city.29 As Anton Kaes notes regarding urban society and culture in early-twentieth-century German cities: “Migration produced destabilization, displacement, and disorientation with radical consequences for personal identity, social and cultural homogeneity, and the national narrative.”30 Several months after his arrival in Warsaw, Gruen returned to many of these themes in another letter to the same childhood friend, Shmuel Fuchs. Here, as well, we catch a glimpse of what it meant to be young, male, and alone in the city. For three months, I have been living on Franciszkańska Street—not far from my school and my teachers—in the home of an enlightened man who speaks Polish in the home to his family. He has two daughters . . . the youngest of whom is very nice. . . . And to tell you the truth, once

Urbanization, Community, and the Crisis of Modernity

in a while, I have a soft spot for her. That’s probably only because I am, for the most part, alone here, and “everything around me is cold, foreign, and deadly silent.”31

Although deeply personal, Gruen’s lamentations were by no means the random musings of a confused youth who somehow got lost in the urban shuffle. First, few experiences encapsulate the Haskalah-­ inspired Jewish narrative of the period more than those of the young

Figure 3. David Yosef Gruen (later to become better known as Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, on right) and childhood friend Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, c. 1904. Source: Photograph Collection of the Ben-Gurion House, Tel Aviv.

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man who—fed up with the lack of progress and opportunities in the small town—flees to the big city.32 Thus, while David Yosef Gruen’s letters may represent a particularly vivid example of what it meant to be young and Jewish in Warsaw, the experiences of other young Jews who also found themselves in imperial Russian cities reflect a similar combination of fits of isolation and bouts of urban malaise. Letters written by Yosef Hayim Brenner, Uri Nissan Gnessin, and others repeatedly refer to the degree to which their experiences in Warsaw (and other cities) left them confused and alone, desperate and depressed.33 The veteran of the Second Zionist Aliyah Yosef Yudelevitch recalled his own sense of confusion upon his arrival in Warsaw at the tender age of sixteen: “Now, I was fortunate enough to enter the legendary city. However, I soon discovered a world that I never imagined. Everything was so new and impressive in its size and colors. The noise that deafened one’s ears, bustling movement in wide streets, tall buildings, display windows filled with all sorts of good things, statues, monuments.”34 Looking back on his own encounters with the city of Vilna, the Zionist politician Shmarya Levin recalled his entry into the modern city in even more dramatic terms as he emphasized the connection between urbanization and atomization: “I had no relatives in Vilna. I stayed in a hotel and for two lonely days I tramped the streets, admiring the great houses and the great shops and approaching no one. I learned for the first time the curious feeling of loneliness which belongs to the big cities. It seemed incredible to me that among these thousands and thousands of people there should not be one who cared about my fate.”35 Nor was the experience of “destabilization, displacement and disorientation” limited to a few intellectuals and political activists who would, in time, share a unifying generational saga. Writing to his brother Wolff in 1882, Sholem Aleichem describes a similar sense of anonymity and confusion that threatened the very fabric of Jewish society in eastern Europe: “A foreign city is like a wild forest. In such a forest none of the trees are recognizable and it’s very difficult to differentiate between each and every tree. Thus, it’s also very difficult to find your way. When you find yourself in a strange city, among strangers, there as well it’s impossible in the beginning to differentiate between people, and hard for you to find good friends like the ones you have in your hometown.”36 Some fifteen years later, in an 1896 brochure written to help secure a license

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for a new synagogue in Warsaw, the veteran communal activist Yeḥezkel Kotik writes in a similar vein about the larger sense of anonymity and collapse that seemed to characterize life among Jews: “There are here, right now, some two-hundred thousand of our fellow children of Israel who are strangers unto one another, they are like a large forest, with many trees, all of which plant roots in the earth, and none of which connect to the other, everyone worries only about himself, and no one looks out for his neighbor . . . there is no love or solidarity between us.”37 Left on their own to adjust to new environs and to create new lives, many of these barely postadolescent youths were often overwhelmed by the city, its masses, its structures, and its anonymity.38 As Levin would later note in his memoirs: “In Warsaw, for the first time, I came up against the harshness and brutality of life.”39 Alienation, anonymity, and loneliness were, of course, only part of a larger set of problems that Jewish newcomers encountered in the city. Thus, many of the letters that David Yosef Gruen wrote to his dear friend and “brother” Shmuel Fuchs also speak of the material difficulties that he and other new arrivals experienced as they entered the city.40 In many instances, these material difficulties contributed to a larger sense of hardship among Warsaw’s new Jewish residents. Hence, the young Gruen writes repeatedly about the difficulties he had finding employment in the city as well as his precarious financial situation. My return to Warsaw was met by more hard times. I stopped eating at Mordechai’s house as his financial situation only worsened. . . . Moreover, all of my hopes to begin teaching failed to produce any tangible results. For days, I lived off of bread alone. Of course, I couldn’t write about any of this to my father, as it would only dampen his spirits.41

In other letters, Gruen speaks of wandering from rented room to rented room and from teaching job to teaching job until he stumbled upon his true calling, Jewish politics.42 Like Gruen, Yudelevitch similarly recalls the difficult economic conditions among many of the young Jews in Warsaw who he described as “a group of ‘external’ students; half-fed boys who went around like ghosts and barely made ends meet by giving private lessons; their faces were sunken and pale, their eyes were dim, and their speech was always coupled with nervous gesticulations.”43 Levin’s memoirs similarly speak of widespread poverty at the

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time. “There were young people whose lives were a profound tragedy. They were wretchedly poor, and lived in dire and unrelenting need. Many of them went along for months on a diet of dry bread, cheap cheese and tea; a piece of herring was a red-letter occasion.”44 Here, too, personal experiences reflected larger social phenomena that had changed the very nature of everyday life in the city. Newspaper accounts also note the material difficulties that many new arrivals faced in Warsaw. Poverty was already far too widespread to be dismissed as an insignificant problem that affected only those living in the city’s poor and outlying districts. Moreover, in this and many other cases, the fate of new arrivals in Warsaw was presented as the responsibility of the organized Jewish community. From its earliest days, the newly legalized Jewish press would challenge the traditional Jewish community and present a set of questions and alternatives regarding what it viewed as the gmina’s chronic inability to address the increasingly dismal plight of so many Jews in Warsaw. The following citation from a late 1904 edition of the Hebrew daily Ha-tsofe drew the public’s attention to the decrepit state of a local hostel for new arrivals and called on the Jewish community to take steps to alleviate the abysmal conditions that many new residents encountered in the city. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, few residents of our city are aware of a rather unique guesthouse in our city. This hotel serves our city’s poorest visitors. Most of those who sleep there spend their days wandering the city with traveling minstrel bands or going from door to door in search of handouts. The entire hotel is a one-room cellar and it is almost always cold and wet. Oftentimes, there are at least twenty people in the room; men and women . . . who sleep on straw sacks which lie on the floor as there are no beds. . . . Even the smallest towns have their own organizations for welcoming newcomers. Why doesn’t our city have such an organization?45

In addition to such accounts of dislocation and other difficulties connected with securing and maintaining material security, news­papers regularly detailed the particularly vulnerable status of Jewish newcomers and visitors in Warsaw. Like other accounts of life in the city, many of these items often blur the lines between news reports and urban legends. Regardless of the veracity of these accounts, this particular style

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of reportage does not detract from the critical role that such items and their dissemination played in the creation of a specific image of the city and the place of Jewish in-migrants in this new environment. In these and other reports, Jewish newcomers were regularly portrayed as ­naïve simpletons who were easily deceived by local con artists and other unsavory characters that seemed to flourish in the city. While most accounts described financial scams and other petty crimes, new arrivals were also cited as the frequent victims of muggings, homicides, and other violent assaults. Ultimately, the steady flow of reports in Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers regarding the travails of newcomers helped construct the image of Warsaw as a physically dangerous and morally bankrupt environment in which Jewish visitors and new residents not only were not welcome but also were singled out as easy targets for the city’s many urban predators. As Charles Baudelaire writes of nineteenth-century Paris: “What are the perils of the jungle and prairie when compared to the daily shocks and conflicts of civilization? Whether a man embraces his dupe on the boulevard, or spears his prey in unknown forests, is he not . . . the most highly perfected beast of prey?”46 In innumerable cases, the Jewish newcomer to Warsaw was portrayed as the consummate “dupe” of modern Jewish society, if not modernity itself. The following notice regarding the experiences of a woman from the Hasidic town of Góra Kalwaria is typical of this new style of reportage that freely mixed journalism, folklore, and morality to present the city as a space of moral decay and imminent danger and the Jewish newcomer as the city’s preferred “dupe.” In this particular case, the smalltown visitor not only falls prey to a local ruse but in doing so loses all of the money that her daughters had earned by working as domestic servants. These savings represented the dowry that was to be used to marry off the woman’s oldest daughter and thus bolster the family’s hopes for social advancement. Such reports reinforced the image of the city as the epitome of modernity’s illusion—a fantastic dream that repeatedly turned out to be a living nightmare. A woman recently came to our city from Góra Kalwaria in order to ask her daughters, who work as servants in wealthy homes, to help raise the money necessary to marry her oldest daughter. Whether out of free will or not, the daughters were forced to give their mother their

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hard-earned money for their sister’s wedding dowry. The mother then went out to buy a few necessary items for the wedding. On the street, she met one of the city’s more notorious hooligans who by way of the known trick of pickpocketing took all of her money. The poor woman was forced to return home empty handed.47

Time and again, provincial Jews and newcomers were portrayed as the preferred dupe of urban predators, and Warsaw as the site of their entrapment and tragic fates. Like the citation above, the following item from Der veg notes the fate of a woman from the provinces whose brief time in Warsaw leads to disaster after she is fooled into losing all of her money and, as a result, is left stranded in the city. A woman M. N. from Lublin recently arrived in Warsaw where she was supposed to continue to take a steam ship to Płock. On her way to the steamship on the Wisła, she remembered that she needed to find a pharmacy to fill a prescription. However, she didn’t know where to find a pharmacy and asked a young man where she might find one. He was extremely helpful and offered to show her the way to a pharmacy, and went with her to Mostow Street. There, some men pulled the known trick of “the dropped wallet” on her. After throwing her bag to the ground, one of the men approached N. and demanded to know if she hadn’t actually picked up his bag; he then asked her to prove that it was hers. She took out her wallet and showed it to him, and the unknown man counted the forty-three rubles and the promissory note for 1,500 rubles three times. He then gave her the wallet back and left. She put the wallet back in her bag, and upon her return to the steam ship loading dock she realized that they had stolen everything.48

Nor were female visitors the only ones targeted by Warsaw’s many urban predators. The following midday incident that was reported upon in a June 1907 edition of Idishes tageblat encapsulates the reception of many Jewish arrivals in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. “Yesterday in the day, a Jew from the provinces was attacked at number 1 Gęsia Street. A sack was placed over his head and 560 rubles were taken. The attackers then fled.”49 In response to these and other incidents, Jewish newspapers made explicit warnings to potential new arrivals and other Jewish visitors regarding the imminent dangers of urban society. On these and other

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occasions, papers were concerned not only with the level of crime but also with the newcomers’ provincial ways and their apparent inability to comprehend and adjust to life in the city. Unlike “local residents” who knew how to navigate and behave in modern society, Jews from out­ lying areas were repeatedly deemed incapable of adapting to life in the city. In these and other cases, it was incumbent upon the paper to fulfill its multiple roles as informer, guide, and educator.50 On Friday, local hooligans succeeded in taking 300 rubles by way of the known scam, “the pickpocket” from a Jew who was visiting our city for business purposes from the town of Konotop. Such incidents are so common of late that the local newspapers don’t even bother reporting them. Local residents know that they should be on the ­lookout for such scams, and, thus, most of the victims are visitors from out­lying areas who come to the city to do business. These visitors should also take note of this phenomenon and, in the future, exercise more caution.51

In the eyes of many, small towns and local centers were somehow able to inhibit the type of anonymity and immorality that seemed to flourish and color life in the city.52 Moreover, in a city whose population—both Jewish and non-Jewish—was constantly being bolstered by waves of new arrivals and visitors, newcomers were relatively lowrisk and potentially lucrative targets for various urban predators. Far removed from the familiar settings of a hometown in which they could depend upon family, friendship circles, and a known public culture, Jewish newcomers in Warsaw were regularly exposed to a battery of hostile forces that threatened their material well-being and physical safety. Moreover, the message delivered by these and other newspapers was clear: If a society’s moral standards are measured by its treatment of visitors and strangers, Jewish society in turn-of-the-century Warsaw was in a deep crisis. Lastly, while many of these items express a degree of sympathy for newcomers and their travails, other reports were far more ambivalent and at times even hostile toward Jewish newcomers. Warsaw’s rising Jewish population, growing fears of economic difficulties, and concerns regarding tensions between the city’s Jewish and Polish residents helped feed a nativist backlash among many of Warsaw’s long-term Jewish resi-

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dents. Intended as a warning to potential visitors from the region, the following commentary from late 1904 was anything but subtle in its comment that Jewish in-migrants were no longer welcome in the former Polish capital. Unfortunately, we must unequivocally warn our brothers that they should not fool themselves with false hopes that they will find work in our city. . . . The jobs being distributed by the authorities and industries do not supply enough work for the one-fifth of our city’s residents who are seeking work. Moreover, the charitable organizations, rightly or not, distribute assistance only to those workers who were recently employed in a local factory or workshop. Those workers who recently arrived will receive only a train ticket back to their city of origin, and nothing more.53

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anxieties and accompanying tensions between long-term Jewish residents and new arrivals would repeatedly flare. Thus, an influx into Warsaw of poor Jewish families fleeing conflicts and violence in Lodz in the spring of 1907 not only was reported upon by the local Jewish press but also was accompanied by a set of announcements regarding the Warsaw branch of the Information Bureau for Jewish Immigrants.54 Open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Bureau offered to “provide all the information necessary for the Jewish immigrant” and to help them continue their journeys abroad.55 Like many other cities, turn-of-the-century Warsaw had already become home to an established Jewish community that was deeply concerned with its own image and position in the city as well as the potentially destabilizing influence of new waves of Jewish in-migrants. 56 Despite these and related efforts to stem the tide of Jewish in-migrants to Warsaw, the city’s Jewish population continued to rise with a steady flow of newcomers, and the number of people who slipped beyond the margins of Jewish society seemed to grow. As a result, the line separating formerly marginal phenomena from central, defining aspects of Jewish urban society became more and more difficult to discern. In time, this fluidity and ambiguity—classic traits of modernity and urban society—as well as the accompanying fear of potential backlashes on the part of Warsaw’s non-Jewish residents would lead to a series of intellec-

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tual, political, and ideological changes that would alter the perception of community and self among Jews in turn-of-the-century Warsaw and throughout eastern Europe.

On the Margins: Women, Children, and the Dead New arrivals were not the only ones left exposed to the many threats that confronted the city’s Jewish residents and visitors. Alongside those Jewish newcomers who were easily disoriented and duped by the sights and sounds of the city, representatives of other marginal groups—especially women and children—were also portrayed as being endangered residents in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. Members of these groups were repeatedly presented in the daily press and other sources as regular, even preferred “dupes” of the many forces of social abandon and moral decay that defined life in the city. Moreover, here, as well, the sheer number of such reports further blurred the line between what was normative and what was exceptional as the city metamorphosized into its own universe in which little could be assumed and nothing could be taken for granted. Few phenomena encapsulate this combination of moral decay, personal vulnerability, and an impending sense of crisis more than the white slavery trade or, as the Hebrew and Yiddish press referred to it, “the trade in human flesh.” Thus, while Jewish newcomers were advised to be wary of dishonest acquaintances, experienced conmen, and other dangerous predators, migrant and underprivileged women and their families were repeatedly warned with stories about those who were either deceived or forced into prostitution. While figures regarding Jewish involvement in different aspects of the white slavery trade vary, many contemporary observers associated Jews with the white slavery trade and prostitution. As a result, a clear sense of crisis gripped Jews in Warsaw and other centers.57 As the Orthodox paper Ha-peles noted in late 1903: “The despicable ‘trade in the human flesh’ and houses of ill repute have exploded in recent times, much to the sorrow and shame of all that is decent and human.”58 In response to the threat posed by the specter of white slavery, different voluntary organizations were founded throughout the Russian Empire.59 One of these organizations, “The Christian League for the

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Defense of Women,” was already active in early-twentieth-century Warsaw. The following newspaper announcement regarding the group’s activities highlights their policies and underscores the extent to which white slavery and prostitution were perceived as being tied to modernity, migration, and urbanization: “women’s patrol at railway station: Representatives of ‘The Christian League for the Defense of Women’ have enlisted scores of female volunteers who will stand guard at railway stations and other public locations in order to protect inexperienced women travelers.”60 While trains, ports, and other sites of urban motion and commotion were particularly notorious centers of these and other acts of violence and deception,61 the problem was far more intricate. As a result, voluntary organizations were often unable to curb the white slavery trade in Warsaw and other parts of eastern Europe. Moreover, according to at least one report, this particular organization in Warsaw refused “to protect Jewish women and to accept Jews as members.”62 In response to the continued problem of white slavery among Jews and the Christian League’s apparent refusal to assist Jewish women, a group of Jewish communal leaders in Warsaw petitioned local authorities in late 1904 to establish the “Jewish Organization for the Defense of Women.”63 This organization, which was in contact with similar Jewish bodies throughout Europe, was headed by some of the leading members of Warsaw’s official, Jewish communal body.64 Indeed, the list of officers reads like a veritable who’s who of Warsaw’s Jewish elite, including Nussbaum, Bergson, Natanson, Poznanski, and Kornblum.65 In line with other charitable organizations headed by members of Warsaw’s Jewish elite, this organization was committed to a liberal, bourgeois platform of social reform designed to save female victims from the debilitating combination of hostile environments and their own personal weaknesses.66 Pursuing an agenda of education, professional training, and self-control, announcements from early 1905 declared the creation of an employment office in Warsaw that would help women overcome the weaknesses and temptations that often led to lives of prostitution. Here, as well, the link between modernity, urbanization, and prostitution was critical to this organization’s mandate and activities. The “Jewish Organization for the Defense of Women” has decided to establish an employment office for women whom the Organization

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can offer employment and supply moral direction. In addition to an employment office, the Organization has also decided to establish a hotel for women from other cities who due to their lack of financial resources and inexperience in the new and strange surroundings often end up falling prey to those who deal in the human flesh.67 The Organization for the Defense of Jewish Women has announced that it has opened an employment office for women at 6 Twarda Street. The office has job offers for different occupations including: teachers, secretaries, book keepers, domestic servants, health-care practitioners, fashion workers, storekeepers, seamstresses, embroiders, tailors, maids and more. . . . The office is open from 9 to 2 in the afternoon and from 6 to 8 in the evening, except for the Sabbath and holidays.68

Similar to the London-based “The Association for the Protection of Girls and Women,” which called for “training girls for domestic service,” “helping girls to reform . . . by teaching them how to lead useful and respectable lives,” and “the establishment of a certified Industrial School,” the reform projects supported by Warsaw’s established Jewish community and associated bodies reflected Enlightenment-oriented policies that were rooted in the belief that proper education, productivization, and vocational training would lead to useful professions, social advancement, and, ultimately, the rehabilitation of Jewish individuals and society.69 As Michel Foucault has noted regarding the place and role of labor in enlightenment reform policies: “It was the sloth which led the round of vices and swept them on. . . . Labor in the houses of confinement thus assumed its ethical meaning: since sloth had become the absolute form of rebellion, the idle would be forced to work, in the endless leisure of a labor without utility or profit.”70 Much like their western and central European Jewish contemporaries and their non-Jewish neighbors, the founders of this particular organization believed that the source of white slavery and prostitution often lay in improper education and upbringing.71 In line with Enlightenment conceptions of the individual, guidance, reeducation, and training would turn potential Jewish prostitutes from embarrassments to the Jewish community into respectable “teachers, secretaries, book keepers, domestic servants, health-care practitioners, fashion workers, storekeepers, seamstresses, embroiders, tailors, maids and more.”72

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Nor were such efforts limited to reforming or saving those women whose potential involvement in illicit activities threatened the precarious state of Warsaw’s Jewish urban society. Alongside efforts to save poor and marginalized Jewish women from the threat of prostitution through courses on basket weaving and flower design, other sources expressed a wider concern over the behavior of Jewish women in the city. These concerns led to the establishment of additional Jewish organizations designed to warn women of the hazards inherent in their new worlds and to educate them on the dangers of new fashions and the importance of preserving traditional social codes and gender roles.73 In several cases, Jewish religious leaders took public positions on the apparently deviant behavior of different women. In a public letter written in 1908 by the leader of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, the rabbi expressed his concern over “the rumors regarding violations of borders among the Jewish community.” In addition to rumors regarding Jewish participation in non-Jewish educational frameworks, Alter was particularly worried that such activities might corrupt Jewish women. “One should watch over the girls and make sure that they observe appropriate moral borders and codes of modesty so that they do not go about in immodest clothing and exposed hair.”74 In a rabbinic response written several years later by Rabbi Moshe Shapira of Maglinca in the Warsaw province, the rabbi goes to great lengths to clarify the status of a Jewish woman who apparently ran off with a non-Jew. Reflecting deeper anxieties, he writes of “the daughter of a very wealthy man, about whom it became known that she whored with a non-Jew and then, several months later, ran off by train on the Sabbath with the said non-Jew; and when they searched they found her in Warsaw in the hotel of said non-Jew.”75 In these and other cases, many of the changes brought about by the metropolitanization of Jewish life threatened traditional Jewish conceptions of gender roles and community. These rabbinic admonishments regarding appropriate behavior by Jewish women were paralleled by other new organizations dedicated to saving women from continuing down the wrong path. In 1904, the religious Zionist journal Ha-mizraḥ reported on a new, “respectable women’s” group entitled “Don’t Overdress.”76 Founded in Warsaw in 1904, this organization was dedicated to fighting “excessive decoration and make up” and other superfluous luxuries that threatened

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traditional gender roles and the existing social order. Ha-tsofe noted the creation of another organization that was committed to warning Jewish women of the many dangers associated with new fashions “that damage a ­woman’s health.” Dedicated to proving that “one can design clothing that is both healthy and aesthetically pleasing,” this organization was particularly concerned with fashions such as “the knot, the décolleté and others.”77 In the rapidly changing and confusing times, Jewish women were not only in need of protection and salvation but also of instruction on such fundamental aspects of daily life as the proper forms of dress and basic codes of modesty. These designs to educate young Jewish women about proper modes of behavior reflect the larger desire to shape and control different members of Warsaw’s burgeoning Jewish society, including women. As such, these organizations often served as tools of social control in the hands of a threatened and precarious communal elite. True to the social status and political agenda of many communal leaders, none of these women’s organizations challenged the existing social order and none proposed radical social or political reforms that might alleviate some of the more fundamental causes of the trade in Jewish women. Moreover, few of these organizations ever addressed seriously the role played by Jewish men in “the trade in human flesh.” In most cases, their responses remained limited to advising female travelers, dispensing moral guidance, and providing women with the professional training that would enable them to fulfill their proper place in the existing Jewish social and class system as shopkeepers, seamstresses, domestic servants, and more. Ultimately, the various and sundry efforts to save Jewish women from their errant ways and to protect them from the many threats of urban society made little headway.78 As in other cases, Jewish communal organizations and resources proved to be far too limited and their policies too mild-mannered and conservative to respond effectively to the new type and scale of problems that festered in the city. Even the best of intentions led to minimal results, and the specter of prostitution and white slavery continued to threaten Jewish senses of respectability as well as the lives of many Jewish women. Commenting on the state of affairs, the Warsaw daily Ha-yom noted the continued presence of white slavery and the violence that often erupted between those involved in such activities. Both the prosaic tone and the actual content of the fol-

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lowing item from late 1906 leave little doubt regarding the long road ahead of those organizations dedicated to restoring order to the turnof-the-century city. On Friday in the middle of the day C. Lewandowski was murdered in the hotel room at 4 Książęca Street where he had been staying for the past month. Two people came to his room and stabbed him with spears [hanitot]. Apparently, L. was a member of an organization designed to combat the white slavery trade. Several days earlier, a certain Puchalski, who was a member of this sector of society, was murdered. Thus, the murder of L. appears to be an act of revenge carried out by P.’s colleagues.79

Ongoing reports on the trade in white slavery and prostitution in Warsaw and the failures of communal policies led to demands for more far-reaching solutions. Critics argued that traditional Jewish politics of self-help, education, and self-restraint were simply not enough to address the problem. As a Yiddish booklet entitled “The Trade in Women and Prostitution” claimed in 1908: “All of the means which the different authorities have taken and the entire battle against white-slavery cannot help very much. Give more bread to the poorer classes, give them more education, give more rights to women, make them independent. This is what will help fight white-slavery.”80 Nor was the author of this Yiddish brochure alone in his critique of traditional communal policies regarding white slavery and prostitution. The astute observer and central cultural figure Y. L. Peretz made similar arguments in his assault on the Jewish community’s response to “the trade in human souls that has erupted in our land.” The sin does not originate in opinions that are easily swayed and not in those who don’t think well, but as a result of the conditions. . . . the origins of the sin are poverty; poverty is the origin of sin and decay— just as the sins of the soul are the sins of the body. [These sins will continue] as long as nothing changes in regard to the basic conditions of life, as long as young Jewish men and women are forced to uproot themselves from their families.81

Lastly, regardless of whatever factors contributed to these phenomena, white slavery and the exploitation of Jewish women reflect many of the larger forces at play in turn-of-the-century Warsaw including

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large-scale migration, the breakdown of traditional family structures, and the collapse of a larger sense of community. Through these and other accounts in the daily press, Warsaw was repeatedly portrayed as a threatening urban jungle in which women and other members of Jewish society were left vulnerable and exposed to the whims of urban predators. The growing anxiety regarding these and other urban threats is further demonstrated by the plight of another relatively powerless sector in Jewish society, children. Thus, in addition to stories regarding the dismal fate of Jewish newcomers and the dangers posed to young women, local papers were filled with urban horror stories regarding the rampant neglect and widespread exploitation of Jewish children. Much like in-migrants and women, children were often portrayed as regular, if not preferred, victims of both passive and active forces of physical danger and moral decay in the urban arena. Here, as well, repeated reports of fatal accidents, callous indifference, and blatant cruelty reinforced the image of Warsaw as a dangerous and corrupt environment in which fewer and fewer people seemed to practice any recognizable codes of behavior or subscribe to even a modicum of faith in the concept of an urban Jewish community. One aspect of this image of the city as an arena of deadly abandon was the frequent reports regarding the difficulties that many children—and apparently some of their guardians—had with some of the more fundamental aspects of urban life. Multiple reports regarding children and their parents who were unable to navigate even the most basic aspects of daily life in the city—tall buildings, new modes of transportation, and other urban trappings—highlighted the inherently chaotic and dangerous aspects of city living. In one edition from the summer of 1907, the Yiddish paper Idishes tageblat reported two separate cases in which young children fell out of apartment buildings onto the pavement below. “At 5 Grzybowska Street a child, Moshe Rokhman, fell from the second floor and injured his brain. Since he was already dying, the first aid society simply left him where he was. . . . At the same time at 17 Ostrowska Street a four-year-old child fell from the second story and was killed.”82 Nor were tall buildings the only aspects of urban life that threatened the well-being of Jewish children. Modern means of transportation and other aspects of urban life were also presented as pernicious sources of modern peril.83 Thus, a

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1907 edition of Idishes tageblat noted the case of a child who was hit by a wagon;84 and another item from the paper described how “off of 98 Pawia Street a four-year-old child was struck by a wagon and broke his skull and his hand.”85 Although oftentimes reported in small news items, the frequency of such reports reinforced a looming sense of danger in the urban environment. In the eyes of many, no one—not even those Jewish children who remained in their own homes—was safe in the city of Warsaw. In addition to children who fell prey to the trappings of daily life in the urban arena, newspapers also included frequent reports regarding children who were either lost or, at times, abandoned in the big city.86 Such reports of child abandonment underscore further the sense of anonymity and moral decay that came to shape the image of Jewish urban society at the turn of the century. The following excerpt from the summer of 1904 is typical of the many announcements regarding lost children that adorned the pages of Warsaw’s Jewish papers: “lost girl: On 81 Krochmalna Street, a Jewish girl of five years old was found. Her name is Golda and she is wearing a red dress.”87 Several years later, a report from Unzer leben described the case of another “lost girl” who was wearing a “red jacket” and found at 9 Dzielna Street.88 In many of these cases, newspapers fulfilled their newfound role as central Jewish communal institutions and tried to help locate the parents of lost or perhaps abandoned children. Thus, an item from Ha-tsofe announced: “A Jewish boy of approximately six or eight years was found near our city in the district of Grachów. His name is Velvel and his father’s name is Itsche Mayer. His teacher’s name is Shloyme. The child’s parents should turn to the Rabbi of Grachów who took the child into his home.”89 In another item from 1906, Der veg called on its readers to help locate a missing girl of three to four years old who was, again, last seen wearing red. “A girl of three–four years old has gone missing, she was wearing a red dress. Anyone who knows anything or has found her should come to 10 Dzielna Street to Mr. Watenmacher.”90 Oftentimes, however, such appeals to the Jewish (reading) public failed to produce tangible results. Many of these children were at an age at which they were too old to be easily cared for and too young to work in local industries, and apparently they had been brought to the city by their parents or guardians to be abandoned.91 Indeed, the very

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nature of many of these announcements highlights the fact that many parents either failed to contact local authorities regarding their children’s disappearance or, at the very least, that no one was sure who was responsible for missing children in the city.92 Either way, Jewish society in turn-of-the-century Warsaw was in a state of chaos and abandon. Nor could it be argued that the countless reports of such incidents were marginal events cynically designed to feed the reading public’s newfound appetite for sensational stories. Reports regarding abandoned, orphaned, and missing Jewish children were integral parts of the Jewish cityscape, and the main observer of this environment, the daily press, faithfully reported on this phenomenon. Reflecting this discourse regarding the fate of Jewish children, a 1907 edition of Idishes tageblat listed no less than four different cases of children aged three, five, nine, and fifteen who were reported missing on the same day.93 If the Jewish small town (shtetl) would be associated with close-knit Jewish families and supportive communities, the city was already portrayed as a modern jungle that tore Jewish children away from their parents. Lastly, even though some papers were optimistic and assumed that the parents (or other family members) were interested in finding “lost children,” other reports expressed far less optimism and hope regarding the state of Jewish society in Warsaw. As another source noted: “The number of children abandoned in different locations and found both dead and alive has multiplied at an alarming rate of late.”94 As in the case of white slavery and prostitution, Warsaw’s organized Jewish community attempted to respond to the problem of wayward Jewish children who colored the cityscape. While Jewish orphanages existed in Warsaw as early as 1840, the problem of abandoned or orphaned children continued to grow.95 A glimpse into contemporary perceptions of this problem can be gleaned from a brochure published in 1901 by the organization ‘Ezrat yetomim (Help for Orphans).96 Founded by the communal activist Yeḥezkel Kotik, the organization’s official charter reflects many of the same principles of education, productivization, and self-help advocated by the Jewish Organization for the Defense of Women and other Jewish voluntary associations. Like the gmina’s orphanage that taught children “shoemaking and tailoring,” Kotik believed that education and vocational training would rehabilitate and redeem marginal members of Jewish society.97 Moreover, the

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introduction to this brochure illustrates that the desire to assist and rehabilitate was motivated, at least in part, by a palpable fear that the sight of abandoned Jewish children in the streets of Warsaw could potentially strain the delicate relations between Jews and non-Jews in Warsaw.98 Throughout this period, Warsaw’s Jewish leadership was concerned with the scourge of Jewish criminality and the effect that the sight of such unsightly Jews might have on relations between Jews and Poles.99 Reflecting the spirit that drove these and other charitable bodies, a late 1904 announcement in Ha-tsofe declared the creation of two additional orphanages designed to save Jewish children from lives on the streets. Here, in particular, the dependence of these communal organizations and Russian government officials is apparent. Orphanages: By permission of the governor-general, two orphanages have been opened in the past three months for poor children. Both of these institutions on Petrovovska Street in Praga are funded by the Hebrew [Jewish] community. The first is for children between the ages of two and five and the second for those who are between the ages of five and seven. Both institutions are under the supervision of the police.100

Ultimately, however, these and other efforts offered little help as Warsaw seemed to be flooded with a sea of troubles, and traditional means of communal organization and action repeatedly proved incapable of resolving these problems. Thus, several years after the government granted permission to establish two new Jewish orphanages in the city, the Yiddish daily Unzer leben noted the frequent sight of Jewish women and children from the provinces roaming the city’s streets. “In Warsaw of late, one can see many poor women, some with their small children in hand. Many of these women come from small shtetls in search of their men who recently stopped sending money.”101 Like many other new centers, Warsaw continued to serve as a magnet for Jews from the surrounding area who came in search of some form of assistance, if not salvation, in the modern city. Despite such hopes, many of these newcomers found exactly the opposite as turn-of-thecentury Warsaw became widely known as a site of broken dreams and shattered lives. Few phenomena embody this deadly combination of anonymity, collapse, and hopelessness in the city more than the regular accounts

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Figure 4. Jewish children in the streets of Warsaw, c. 1897. Source: Prints and Photograph Division, Library of Congress.

of corpses found in and around Warsaw that people either could not or did not want to identify.102 Here, too, local papers reported a disproportionate number of newcomers, women, and children among those whose bodies often lay unidentified and unclaimed. The following item from Ha-tsofe typifies such reports on death in the city as papers continued to fulfill central communal and social roles in the age of mass society. “A Jewish woman was found murdered in Grachów near the railroad tracks. She was approximately thirty-five years old. Perhaps one of her family members can help identify the woman?”103 Several years later, Ha-yom reported a similar incident regarding an unknown

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woman whose mutilated, unidentified corpse embodied many of the dangers and fears associated with the city. “Last night, the body of a woman was found on the Briskait railroad tracks. The body was split into two by the force of the train that rolled over it. While it is not known who this woman was, from the looks of her clothing, she appears to have been a member of the upper classes.”104 Nor were examples of unidentified corpses that awaited a pauper’s burial restricted to the bodies of women.105 In other cases, the bodies of recent arrivals or other members of Jewish society also went unclaimed, at times for days on end as the number of strangers seemed to outnumber known members of any specific Jewish community. The following notices from Idishes tageblat and Ha-tsofe regarding the sudden deaths of unidentified individuals in the middle of the day reinforced the connection between death, anonymity, and the streets of Warsaw. Yesterday at four in the afternoon at the corner of Senatorska and Miodowa, an unidentified man fell over and died. The reason for his death is unknown.106 On Saturday at 11 am, a man suddenly died at 22 Bielańska Street. The Jewish man was about fifty years old. A passerby stated that his family name was Friedman but that he didn’t know his first name and didn’t know any other details about him. His body was brought to the local hospital.107

Nor did such deadly accounts dissipate. If anything, reports of anonymous death in the city only increased in their intensity, perhaps as readers became desensitized by repeated tales of bodies found mutilated near train tracks or accounts of the bitter fates of unidentified visitors whose public deaths in the middle of the city seemed to interest few if any residents. The following item from the Yiddish daily Der telegraf regarding the fate of a woman from the provinces, whose body was found in a local cesspool several months after she had disappeared, illustrates the manner in which newspaper reports and urban folklore mingled to create a particularly graphic and precarious image of life in the city. Here, too, the tale of a female in-migrant whose search for a new beginning in the city ended tragically encapsulates many of the

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central themes regarding the many connections between life and death in the city as the dreams of individual Jews met the harsh reality of urban life. Yesterday, the building supervisor of 19 Sapieżyńska Street found the body of a dead woman in a cesspool. Her face was unrecognizable, and the skull was badly decayed. However, from several other signs she was identified as a member of the Hoffnung family; they came to Warsaw a half year earlier from Biała to search for their daughter who had been missing for some time. However, no one could find her. It was said that she was a bit disturbed. Whether she was thrown into the cesspool or fell in, no one knows.108

While newspaper reports of unidentified corpses in Warsaw were fairly common, the phenomenon of Jewish bodies lying unclaimed was not limited to Congress Poland’s largest city. The same anonymity that usurped the fabric of Jewish society in Warsaw also affected Jews in other centers throughout the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement and Polish Provinces. Immediately after the pogrom of October 1905, members of Odessa’s Jewish community were unable to identify all of the pogrom’s victims.109 Thus, when the St. Petersburg–based Yiddish paper Dos leben published a special edition of the paper with graphic photos of pogrom victims from different cities, the photo spread included a shot of several unknown victims of the pogrom in Odessa who awaited a pauper’s burial.110 Some eight months later, Jews in Białystok, which had a much smaller Jewish population of approximately 50,000, were similarly unable to identify over one-fourth of the victims of the Białystok pogrom of June 1906. Thus, while the Jewish press was filled with detailed, step-by-step accounts of this particular pogrom, fifteen out of the fifty-six victims listed on the pages of Der veg’s supplement devoted to the violence remained anonymous victims not only of ­urban violence but also of urban society.111 Reporting on the same events, Der telegraf identifies roughly three-quarters of the pogrom’s victims, and admits: “The names of the remaining [victims] are for now unknown.”112 Thus, despite the manner in which the victims of this violence would later be remembered as national martyrs, these examples underscore the larger sense of anonymity that pervaded Jewish society in turn-of-the-century eastern Europe.113

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Death was not only often anonymous in Warsaw but was also selfinflicted. Unable to cope with many of the vicissitudes of urban life, many Jewish residents chose extreme measures to end their seemingly irresolvable litany of woes and irredeemable lives. Newspaper reports of suicide revolved around many of the themes central to other discussions of degeneration and chaos in the city, including the fate of new arrivals, the vulnerable status of Jewish women, and other dangers of urban life.114 Once again death, or perhaps the angel of death, seemed to be everywhere. As the Russian poet Aleksander Blok writes in his poem “On Death”: “I wander more and more about the city / More and more see Death. And I smile.”115 Playing off of themes of urbanization, despair, and Jewish self-­ destruction, Der veg described the plight of a “foreign Jewish student” named Weiss who attempted suicide in his hotel room on Nowolipki Street soon after his arrival in Warsaw; Unzer leben reported on an incident in which a recently unemployed fifteen-year-old woman poisoned herself by drinking carbolic acid; and Idishes tageblat reported two separate suicides in which individuals used modern structures to induce their own deaths.116 Themes regarding urbanization and the disintegration of the traditional family unit were also featured prominently in a report from Idishes tageblat regarding a Warsaw resident who hanged himself after having killed his stepfather. “In Wilanów, Yaakov Malkovski killed his stepfather after he had beaten his mother. Malkovski was arrested and while in the jailhouse he hanged himself.”117 Nor were the consumption of carbolic acid or hanging the only methods that individuals used to end their own lives. Later that year, Idishes tageblat noted three different suicides in one day, including a forty-nine-year-old servant who jumped out of a window, a hospital patient who stabbed himself three times in the chest with a dagger, and a woman who plummeted to the pavement after jumping from the fourth floor of a building.118 Jewish society—or at least the society reported upon, read about, imagined, and lived on the pages of the daily press—was clearly ill. Here, as well, these acts of self-destruction in Warsaw often left few traces regarding people’s names, families, or identities, and it was, again, up to the Jewish dailies to lend order to urban chaos by locating these people’s families and lending their life stories some form of narrative structure, if not redemption. A particularly graphic report from

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1906 regarding the case of an unknown woman who burnt herself to death in a forest outside of Warsaw highlights further these themes of anonymity and despair as well as the newspaper’s attempt to resolve these and related problems. The burnt corpse of a woman was recently found in a forest next to Warsaw. The woman apparently burnt herself to death on purpose. Earlier, she purchased a large container of flammable spirits for 4 rubles and 95 kopecks, dumped the contents all around her and then ignited the fluid. No one knows who she is or why she did such a thing.119

These and other accounts of Jewish self-destruction reinforced the sense of Warsaw as a place where dreams came to die. Moreover, much like child abandonment or white slavery, the organized Jewish community had very little experience with such widespread acts of suicide and little idea how to address this and related matters. The problems that plagued modern Jewish urban society ran much deeper, and traditional policies of launching lecture series or creating special hospital wards for the mentally ill proved to be far too little to resolve the pressing number of life-threatening worries that plagued many in a city the size of Warsaw. Modern society had created a new slew of problems that few seemed able to comprehend let alone resolve. Lastly, while many of these news stories of death and suicide reflect the degree of anonymity that characterized new urban environments, they also illustrate the extent to which newspapers and other new institutions had already begun to replace traditional Jewish communal organizations such as burial societies, charitable organizations, and other less formal communal networks. Time and again, people turned to the press to help them locate missing children, identify unclaimed bodies, and restore some semblance of order to Jewish life in Warsaw. And the newspapers repeatedly responded to the widespread need for information, guidance, and order. Ultimately, the size of Jewish urban society and the scope of new social problems in cities like Warsaw were far too large to be addressed adequately by traditional communal institutions. Thus, it was up to Yiddish papers like Der veg, Der telegraf, Idishes tageblat, and Unzer leben, and Hebrew papers like Ha-tsofe and Hayom, to inform the public of these incidents, to educate them about the causes of these and other problems, and to serve as a conduit between

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individual readers, the ever-elusive concept of community, and the fervent search for order and meaning in the city. Newspapers themselves were well aware of the changing dynamics of community in the city and began demanding reforms in the structure of Warsaw’s official Jewish community, the gmina.120 In time, the Jewish newspapers’ central role as the lifeline of information and organization among Jews in Warsaw would facilitate a series of fundamental changes in the very nature of community and belonging in Warsaw and throughout eastern Europe.

A Matter of Trust? Fraud, Pretenders, and Profanity The same anonymity that crippled many Jewish urban residents also fostered darker desires that other forms of society were somehow able to restrain or, perhaps, camouflage. The increasing subversion of hitherto respected, if not sacred, norms, positions, and institutions further demonstrates the chaos and confusion that colored urban society. Time and again, mass society left many urban residents wondering what was real, who could be trusted, and what, if anything, bound the city’s hundreds of thousands of residents to one another. One particularly poignant example of this growing level of uncertainty is the frequent announcements regarding counterfeit goods and other petty scams that were regularly used to dupe unsuspecting urbanites. Although related to the larger financial crisis and the accompanying wave of lawlessness throughout the region, frequent reports regarding repeated acts of deception undermined further the level of trust necessary to bind individual Jews into a community. Here, too, newspapers often took it upon themselves to expose the different scams and to lend a sense of order to urban society. One example of such incidents of counterfeiting were the detailed advertisements placed in different newspapers by Carmel Wines and other large corporations. Designed to combat the sale of imitation goods, these advertisements went to great lengths to enumerate the markings of authentic products. Bearing headlines that warned readers to “Beware of Impostors,” announcements listed the telltale signs of authentic Carmel wines as well as those stores that had the right to sell such goods in Warsaw and other centers.121 “In an effort to pre-

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vent counterfeiting, we only sell our wine and cognac in bottles that are marked with our closed, metal seal and bear the imprint of our company, ‘­Carmel.’”122 In addition to exposing counterfeit wines, ­papers also reported on attempts to deceive the public into purchasing other imitation and potentially nonkosher goods. Thus, a newspaper item from 1905 notes an incident in which several butchers in Warsaw had replaced low-grade kosher meat with distinctly nonkosher products. “Several stores that sell kosher meat have been charged with selling horse meat instead of bull meat, the police have already been informed of this and have taken the store owners into custody for questioning.”123 Much like the trade in counterfeit wine, the very fact that items regulated by religious observance—like wine and meat—could be replaced by nonkosher imitations reflects the growing degree of anonymity and mistrust among Jews in Warsaw.124 Nor were religiously mandated goods the only items subject to fraud. Other, seemingly innocuous staples of everyday life were also subject to shameless imitations as mass society and mass consumption seemed to breed mass deception. Advertisements similar to those regarding Carmel wines warned the public to be on the lookout for imitation cocoa, chocolate, and coffee.125 And, in another incident, authorities attempted to ban the sale of milk on the streets of Warsaw after street vendors were caught selling imitation milk.126 Despite these measures, the distribution of counterfeit goods must have proven lucrative as the trend continued. The following warning regarding the production and sale of substandard candy demonstrates the extent to which committing fraud in turn-of-the-century Warsaw was, apparently, as easy as stealing candy from a baby. A certain type of candy is being sold in the streets of our city at a relatively low price. These candies are not produced in proper factories, but in small workshops. Many of these workshops are located in cellars and the product is made of some type of combination of gelatin and sugar substitutes. Of course, we won’t even begin to speak about the sanitary conditions during the production of these candies. The end result is, in many cases, rather tragic as these candies are sold to the poorer residents of our city and, of course, to the children of the poor. In many cases these candies lead to various illnesses.127

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These and other notices regarding the sale and distribution of imitation wines, milk, meat, cocoa, and other products reinforced the sense that fewer and fewer people in urban society operated according to known rules of conduct and behavior. As a result, more and more individuals were subject to suspicion. Moreover, the very fact that many were not only able to envision but also to sell imitation products illustrates the sense of anonymity and abandon that characterized Jewish urban society. Indeed, merchants not only did not mind deceiving people but also did not fear that they would be punished for their actions. This erosion of trust in the urban arena was further reinforced by the number of incidents in which formerly respected and sacred institutions and figures were treated with a growing degree of irreverence. Thus, while some scams revolved around imitation goods, others included pretenders who were not above masquerading as rabbis or other community leaders to exploit the mass nature of urban society. Press reports of everything from impostor rabbis to fictitious charities detail the various schemes that depended upon the willful misrepresentation of traditional Jewish symbols, causes, and institutions. As the Jewish population in Warsaw multiplied, older modes of social cohesion and forms of community became less and less relevant. As Sholem Aleichem wrote to his brother Wolff in 1882: “In every city there are all kinds of people and each and every one of them has a different character and a different education. There are honest people and dishonest people. People with good values and people with bad values.”128 The following case of an impostor rabbi collecting donations in the name of the Jewish community underscores the extent to which little was sacred in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. A Jew dressed “like a rabbi” is going from door to door to Jewish and Christian houses in Warsaw and asking for donations for the Jewish poor in the name of our city’s Jewish community. . . . At present, the Jewish community is not collecting donations and certainly not via individual rabbis. Indeed, the community never uses individual rabbis or other individuals for such purposes and, thus, the person in question is a fraud who is using the funds collected for his own purposes.129

In another incident from 1903, Warsaw’s rabbinic court issued a stern public statement in response to rumors that “the rabbinic court

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of justice has forbidden the children of Israel from buying and enjoying goods and products (including cigarettes, tea and other items) of a certain firm or factory.” The rabbinic court’s announcement ­continued: We, the representatives of the rabbinic court signed below have found it necessary to warn our fellow children of Israel not to pay attention to such false and malicious rumors which have no basis whatsoever. Moreover, we announce that all decisions made by the rabbinic court are announced and published publicly and openly.130

Other scams were somewhat less dramatic but were ultimately just as destabilizing. The following item from Idishes tageblat details how one of the city’s residents regularly exploited the kindness of strangers through the somewhat simple scam of fainting in order to collect donations from bystanders. Here, too, such acts of fraud and deception played upon the anonymity so characteristic of large urban societies. Lastly, frequent newspaper reports warning readers to be on the lookout for impostors and charlatans undermined further the sense of trust and community between individuals. the poor people of warsaw have found a new means of ­collecting money: Off of 38 Dzika a person helped pick up a Jew who fainted from weakness. This Jew, or so we are told, does this often and in doing so has been able to get a number of people to give him handouts.131

In another, particularly infamous case of fraud, Jewish newspapers detailed the misappropriation of charitable funds that had been collected for victims of anti-Jewish violence, including those intended for victims of the Białystok pogrom of June 1906. Several months after it had turned the pogrom into a Jewish cause célèbre, the Jewish press brought the entire pogrom-money scandal to the public’s attention through a series of articles detailing the misappropriation of donations.132 However, even the new, alternative leadership of the Jewish press lacked the means necessary to address and resolve such matters. Despite the popular outrage, the only recourse available to the Jewish press remained one of information and condemnation.133 As workers organized and government authorities attempted to wield control over the city, they, too, became the subject of various

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schemes designed to exploit the larger state of confusion and anonymity that reigned. The following examples from Ha-yom and Unzer leben illustrate such examples as mass society presented a slew of opportunities for local pretenders. among workers: We have been asked to warn the public that the man who is going around and telling those in the wool trade that he represents the “Organization of Wool Workers” and collecting money from dealers and from workers seeking employment does not represent any such organization and that his official seal is a forgery.134 People have handed over the thief Hersh Shpilrayn to the police; he was going around between the different offices and taking money by way of fraud after telling people that he was an agent of the Okhrana [secret police].135

Nor were impostor rabbis, con artists, and other pretenders the only ones exploiting the anonymity, mobility, and confusion that characterized urban life. The following items from Ha-tsofe and Der veg note the growing number of incidents in which indecent material was peddled to unsuspecting and otherwise uncorrupted young men on the streets of Warsaw. Here, as well, the sheer size of the city enabled a wave of immoral and illicit activity that usurped further the very foundations of Jewish society. Different people are going around the many cafes in our city and approaching young men and promising to show them something so amazing that they will be stricken by its beauty. The young men, who are naturally interested in such propositions, almost always agree to see the secret object. The person then shows him a plate upon which are vile and obscene pictures. In most of these cases, the young men buy these cards at a cheap and bargain price. The local police authorities have already forbidden the sale of such cards in stores and should also prohibit cafe owners from permitting such activities in their institutions as these cards have been proven to corrupt our youth.136 Confiscated: Off of 13 Muranowska, the police have discovered an entire warehouse with uncensored pictures and photographs. . . . In a room there were forty-two boxes with pictures. A record book with correspondence with merchants from different Russian cities in the empire was also found.137

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In time, even some of the most sacred of Jewish symbols and communal institutions would become the targets of such acts of fraud and deception. In one glaring example of the increasing desacralization of formerly respected rites and objects, a synagogue in the Warsaw suburb of Ochota reported the theft of the community’s Torah scroll. Torah scroll: In Ochota next to Warsaw someone has stolen a . . . twenty-two panel long Torah scroll with silver handles. Whoever knows anything about this theft should contact: Avraham Binshtock, Ochota at the slaughterhouse.138

Little encapsulates the pervasive sense of disorder, confusion, and mistrust that engulfed Jewish society in Warsaw more than the advertisement that this local synagogue published in Warsaw’s Yiddish daily Unzer leben in 1907. Indeed, by turning to the local press to help locate the stolen scrolls, members of the traditional Jewish communal institution essentially admitted to their growing irrelevance as a social and political force that few seemed to fear. Lastly, this and other incidents not only highlight the extent to which Jewish Warsaw was a society of strangers, but also the extent to which urbanization contributed to a constant reevaluation, if not subversion, of many traditionally held ­mores and values.

Modernity’s Abyss: Crime, Disorder, and Fear Unlike many other problems that Jews encountered in Warsaw and that the Jewish community attempted to resolve, neither communal leaders nor government officials were able to comprehend let alone control the most frightening and seemingly uncontainable threat of all: urban violence. Thus, while items on Jewish prostitutes, abandoned children, and death periodically appeared on the pages of local newspapers, reports of violent crime were standard items in all papers. More than any other issue, the coverage of this topic influenced the very perception of urban society.139 In fact, reports of armed robberies, wanton murders, and other acts were so common that many papers had regular columns with headings such as: “crimes,” “unrest,” “attacks,” “murders,” or, simply, “violence.”140 Through these and other items, the city became

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synonymous with assaults, danger, and death. Additionally, while this unrest was, in time, somewhat normalized by the sheer frequency of such reports, the specter of rampant, uncontrolled, and random violence would serve as a constant, debilitating source of chaos and fear.141 Lastly, while this sense of disorder was certainly exacerbated by the ongoing political conflict and revolutionary violence in Warsaw throughout 1905, 1906, and 1907, the majority of these acts were not overtly political but, rather, were nonideological expressions of anger and frustration. Thus, while these acts of violence certainly contributed to the steady deterioration of government authority, contemporary observers often viewed them as part of a separate apolitical crisis, one that revolved around the very collapse of modern, urban society. In time, the violence and chaos that engulfed Warsaw at this time would help set the stage for the fervent search for order and the subsequent turn to new forms of political organization and action. The main types of urban violence in Warsaw at this time were muggings, armed robbery, and murder. Although robbery was not new to Warsaw or other cities, reports in the Jewish press detailed an epidemic of muggings and burglaries at the time. Such reports turned this violence into an integral part of contemporary representations and interpretations of urban life. The following anecdotes from Der telegraf and Ha-yom from early 1906 regarding assaults in Warsaw are typical of the reportage that bound the city to crime and its readers to danger. An armed man descended upon Mrs. Wishinska as she was walking down Monuiszki Street and tore from her hand a purse that had nineteen rubles in cash and 325 rubles in promissory notes.142 Mrs. Bernstein recently took 176 rubles from the savings fund on 53 Panska Street. As she was heading toward Twarda Street, a man armed with a revolver approached her and ordered her to accompany him to one of the nearby courtyards. As they approached the courtyard gate, four more men arrived. One of them beat her on the head with the butt of his gun. In the end, the gang took her money and fled.143

In many cases, assaults and muggings led to injuries or death. The following excerpts from two different editions of the Yiddish daily

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Idishes tageblat reflect the pervasive violence that seemed to threaten almost every Jewish visitor, resident, and, ultimately, reader. At two in the afternoon yesterday at the corner of Ceglana and Twarda, thieves descended upon Yisrael Rindfleish, a twenty-seven year old man from Nowodworce. The thieves threatened him with revolvers and demanded money; but Rindfleish put up a fight. The thieves struck him hard in the face, tearing out his eye and took his watch.144 Yesterday at eleven at night several men descended upon twenty-yearold baker Mordekhai Bergazinger off of Gęsia Street and hit him with clubs; one of them wounded him critically with a knife in the chest; afterwards, they ran off.145

Although revolvers were used in some incidents, knives and clubs were still the preferred weapons for many in Warsaw. As a result, knife wounds were not uncommon and stabbings became, via the press, parts of everyday life for Jewish readers. In the summer of 1906, the Yiddish paper Di naye tsaytung reported on a particularly violent weekend in which two different people were wounded in separate stabbing incidents. Here, as well, the paper’s reportage style presented these stabbings as regular parts of everyday life in Warsaw. “On Shabbat, the following people were injured with knife wounds: the twenty-eight year old shoemaker Leyzer Kirenboym, and off of 26 Twarda Street, the twenty-nine year old Aharon Kalt.”146 Several weeks later, Idishes tageblat reported another incident that characterizes the disorder and unrest that colored the very nature and experience of life for many Jews in the urban arena: “Off of 62 Nowy Świat unknown murderers stabbed a seventy-six year old storekeeper and took his money.”147 Nor were attacks with knives limited to random encounters on the city’s streets. In a particularly gruesome incident, Der veg reported on the case of Efraim Marchasin who stabbed his wife to death after she insisted upon a separation. Life was very often a precarious entity in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. Yesterday in Praga on Targowa Street at 10 in the evening Efraim Marchasin killed his wife. She was twenty-five years old and they had been married for several years. They had ongoing arguments that included physical violence and had since separated. The man asked that they get

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back together. However, she adamantly refused to return. He started chasing after her and stabbed her twice in the abdomen.148

Alongside reports of muggings and stabbings, a rash of armed robberies, in particular of monopoly alcohol stores, further destabilized the sense of order in Warsaw. The following example from Der telegraf typifies the armed assaults that regularly targeted these institutions: “On Monday, several men entered the monopoly store off of Chmielna 56 and took all the money that they found in the cash register.”149 Later that year, Idishes tageblat confirmed fears regarding an apparent rise in the number of armed robberies in the spring and summer of 1906. “The number of attacks and robberies is growing from day to day. In particular, the number of assaults on collectors and cashiers is increasing.”150 In response to these and other incidents, officials ordered locally based soldiers and gendarmes to guard monopoly shops. However, this policy proved to be simply unfeasible as there were far more stores than guards available. Thus, Ha-yom noted the futile nature of the plan as well as the prospect of never-ending violence. “For several days, army guards have been placed in different monopoly stores. The governorgeneral has ordered that no monopoly store be opened without the presence of such a guard. As there are not enough soldiers to guard all of these shops, many of them remain closed until further notice.”151 Thus, even when government officials were aware of the robberies and the chaos that prevailed, they were ultimately unable to respond adequately to the threat posed by a seemingly unstoppable wave of violence. Another sign of the authorities’ growing inability to rule the streets of Warsaw were the frequent clashes between police and thieves in the streets of Warsaw. In these and other incidents, the police were oftentimes on the defensive as thieves and, at times, political activists responded with violence to government attempts to exert control. 152 While many of these confrontations may not have been ideologically driven, together with political unrest they openly challenged tsarist claims to sovereignty and legitimacy and, in doing so, further destabilized the reigning political and social order in the city.153 As Judith Walkowitz notes, life in the modern city is very often “a series of multiple and simultaneous cultural contests and exchanges.”154 These conflicts over public order and spaces in Warsaw were clear examples of such con-

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tests to define and control the city. Over time, repeated newspaper stories regarding these clashes turned Warsaw into an urban no man’s land. The following excerpt from Der telegraf is typical of the helter-­skelter atmosphere that characterized life in Warsaw as violence ran amok and formerly feared bastions of power and authority were challenged at every corner. Moreover, like many other reports, the following item details a seemingly haphazard series of clashes and mishaps that seemed to threaten all of the city’s residents as urban society spun out of control. Friday at three-thirty, a policeman was riding the tramway. At the corner of Marszalkowska and Królewska, a carriage with three men was passing by; they started shooting and the policeman fell wounded. The shooters then fled in their carriage. At the corner of Erywańska they came upon the guardsman Mattis. They again started shooting, wounded the policeman and fled.155

Nor was this the only occasion on this particular weekend when the police struggled to control the city, its public spaces, and the people who filled these spaces. Der telegraf continued the same column by detailing a series of confrontations between government representatives and residents. In this and in other reports, it was not entirely clear which party the press really wanted to win in the ongoing battle over the streets of Warsaw. In the end, readers were regularly informed and entertained by a journalistic style that liberally mixed various motifs including satire, instruction, and the grotesque. Moreover, while this style may have fed the sale of newspapers, it also spread fears and panic. Lastly, while other reports highlighted the vulnerability of newcomers, women, and children, the epidemic of urban violence seemed to threaten everyone. No one was safe on the streets of Warsaw. On Saturday at ten in the morning, a patrol on Grzybowska Street was conducting searches on pedestrians when several men started shooting and wounded the policeman Sidorowitch and the soldier Fomin. The shooters ran away through the courtyard passageway. The soldier shot through the gate, but hit no one. An hour later, the superintendent from the Seventh District, Harasenek, went into the house off of Wolska 8. Several men shot him ten times with revolvers and killed the superintendent. The police started to pursue them and shot a woman who was passing by.156

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Several weeks later, Ha-yom reported a similar incident in which police and thieves clashed and innocent bystanders paid the price for the carnival of violence, police ineptitude, and Warsaw’s spiraling descent into disorder. The incident which took place at the corner of Chłodna and Biały streets yesterday evening and which we reported on in our last issue, claimed many victims. After the pub owner Garros was murdered in his store in front of his wife, his employees and other guests, the culprits fled via Biały Street. There they ran into a patrol composed of one policeman and two soldiers. The three tried to catch them. The perpetrators fired on the patrol and wounded all three of them. Additional forces from the area soon arrived and they began checking other people, many of whom were beaten with the butt of rifles or stabbed with bayonets. All together, ten people were treated by the first aid society. Amongst those who were treated were: Reuven Agorek (seventeen years old), Avram Bleinberg (twenty-four years old), Bunem Rosenblum (twenty-seven years old), Shlomo Grey (thirty-five years old), Moshe Kalender (twenty-eight years old), and Avram Finkelstein (twenty years old).157

These conflicts over the right to rule the city were not limited to confrontations between police and thieves. Once questioned, the right to control the streets of Warsaw opened a veritable Pandora’s box of competition over the city, its streets, its residents, and their fate. As Brower claims in regard to other cities at the time, “the result of such conflicts was endemic unrest resembling latent civil war.”158 Der telegraf reported on one of the many clashes between representatives of different groups over the definition and control of the city’s public spaces. As it became increasingly clear that government authorities were unable to wield power over the city’s streets, it became progressively less clear who did rule the streets of Warsaw. A group of thieves gathered yesterday at the beer salon at 48 Radzymińska Street (Praga). Suddenly, a few workers entered the saloon with revolvers and started shooting; the thieves began to run away, but almost all of them were wounded. As the thieves did not want to be caught by the police, the wounded fled and when the police arrived in the saloon they found the critically wounded thief, Ludwig Gorazshka.159

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Ultimately, such reports regarding unrest and violence further undermined the very foundations of Jewish society in the city. In addition to repeated accounts of such incidents, different papers also published figures confirming the rising violence, the alarming number of murders and assaults, and repeated displays of police and government incompetence that together validated the public’s growing fears. Emphasizing a growing sense of anarchy that pervaded Warsaw, Idishes tageblat turned to the power of statistics to highlight the dismal state of urban society. In the past year, 1906, twenty military men, seven gendarmes, and fifty-six policemen were killed in Warsaw. Among the wounded, there were forty-two military men, twelve gendarmes, and forty-four policemen. All told, one hundred seventy-two people. Ten bombs were thrown. From explosions, fifty people were wounded and eight were killed. One hundred and forty-nine monopoly stores were robbed. In the past three years, eighty-three policemen were killed and one hundred twenty-four were wounded.160

Frustrated by the wave of violence and fear that engulfed Warsaw as well as the authorities’ inability to contain the unrest, different individuals and groups began to respond. In the summer of 1906, a group of storeowners petitioned the government to allow them to carry weapons.161 Other residents called for the organization of civil defense groups.162 The following report from Ha-yom details one such proposal. Self-Defense: Due to the number of store robberies which take place day after day in broad daylight, the idea has been raised amongst local businessmen to establish a self-defense organization along the following lines. Every storeowner will employ an armed guard at the entrance to their store. Stores adjacent to one another will be connected to one another by an electrical system and upon the sounding of an alarm, guards from adjacent stores will come to the assistance of the store under assault. While these guards are assisting the store in question, their own stores will be closed until the guards return. The local merchants association will petition the appropriate authorities to permit the establishment of such an organization.163

In other cases, residents were less concerned with formal appeals and proper petitions and began to seize power and exercise author-

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ity wherever, whenever, and however they could. The following report from Idishes tageblat details one such incident in 1907 in which a crowd of some one hundred people apprehended, beat, stabbed, and detained a suspected thief in the name of law and order. Last night, people caught a thief off of Nowolipki. Immediately, a crowd of a hundred men assembled and dragged the thief through the gate and started to beat him. The local medic [feltcher] from the Third Police District was passing by and tried to rescue the thief, but people descended upon him as well. Then came the local superintendent and the crowd dispersed. The thief was taken to the local station and said that his name was Mendel Nusboym. He was wounded by a knife in the right eye and his side.164

In another incident, the daily Ha-yom describes how a group of residents similarly decided to take the law into their own hands. One of the city’s citizens, B., was on his way back from the theater last night with his wife and decided to rest for a bit on one of the benches in the park. Suddenly, several people armed with pistols arrived in a carriage and descended upon him. In addition to his money pouch and his gold watch, they also took the clothes off of his back and the rings off of his wife’s fingers. They ran off in the carriage. B. turned to several of his friends and they began searching for the thieves in the middle of the night. Later on, they spotted the carriage at the Vienna railway station and B. recognized the thieves, including the one who was wearing B.’s clothes. They were able to apprehend one of the robbers, a young, eighteen year old builder named Paczowski.165

While some of the city’s residents responded to the specter of violence with action, others were frozen with fear. The following report from Di naye tsaytung announcing the decision of the synagogue on Tłomackie Street to change the format of its holiday prayers so that congregants would be less exposed reflects the fear that gripped many. The committee of the synagogue on Tłomackie Street has asked us to announce that the following decisions have been made regarding this year’s holiday services. A) Women are not allowed to come to the synagogue for evening services. B) The prayer service will be significantly shortened, in particular, the role of the cantor and other hymns. The

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synagogue committee also asks that those who come to pray not congregate in groups in the courtyard in front of the synagogue or in the alleys nearby.166

Such attempts by residents to instill a sense of control over Warsaw underscore the mayhem that usurped any and all semblance of order in the city. Despite the pressing sense of crisis and impending disaster, different observers continued to hold on to the hope that the wave of violence would eventually run its course and that life in the city would, somehow, return to normalcy. Advertisements like the one in Idishes tageblat for a miracle-working antitheft nabat (alarm), news items regarding the installment of electric streetlights in part of the city in mid-1907, shop owners who petitioned for the right to bear arms, and other news sources reflect the deep desire and ongoing search for order in the urban arena.167 Despite such hopes, the more dominant mood was a mixture of fear, confusion, and despair. Frustrated by a pervasive sense of violence and catastrophe, Lodz’s Yiddish paper Lodzer nakhrikhten openly wondered if the violence would ever end. “Something akin to the angel of death in a mask is wandering about the city. The past week was full with murders and death, shootings, Christians and Jews. Who? . . . When? . . . What? . . . No one really knows. And we ask the Lodz world: What will be the end of this?”168

Chaos and Community: Last Words on Lost Worlds Yesterday at nine-thirty in the evening at Nowolipie 67 a chunk of snow fell off the roof and struck a harsh blow to the head of a Jewish passerby Yehiel Mikhrovski. Since then, his head hasn’t quite been the same.169 On Wednesday, at five o’clock Leah Gutman, 18 years old, went out on her balcony at Muranowska 37, a soldier saw her and as she was on her way back into the room she was shot and killed.170

Bewildered by radically new realities created by the city, alienated from many other urban residents, and frightened by a steady dose of tales regarding human and seemingly superhuman threats from vice to violence, many of Warsaw’s Jewish residents were at a loss as to how to understand, define, and conduct their lives in the city. This sense of

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helplessness was exacerbated by the repeated failures of traditional Jewish institutions to respond effectively to the many challenges that the urban environment posed to Jews as both individuals and as members of a community. As Der veg claimed: “The Jewish bureaucracy has never done anything positive for Jewish life. It did not develop from within, from the internal Jewish life. It is nothing more than a replica of the Russian bureaucracy in its worst possible form; it is nothing more than an illness, which has been brought onto Jewish life from beyond.”171 In addition to the perceived failures of traditional Jewish institutions, government authorities were equally inept at curbing the violence that raged and usurped the very rhythm of daily life. These combined failures to address the avalanche of troubles that plagued many of Warsaw’s residents led to a pressing need for radically new solutions to the fate of the individual and the community in the urban arena. The following chapters will address the connection between this crisis of urbanization and community in the heart of early-twentieth-century eastern Europe, Warsaw, and the new forms of Jewish politics and community that arose in response to the Jewish encounter with modernity.

Th re e Revolution, Jews,

and the Streets of Warsaw

Between Secret Cells and Popular Politics

Introduction One of the immediate results of the rapid urbanization and rampant chaos in Warsaw was the widespread search for order and meaning among many Jews in the city. Oftentimes, this drive for personal and collective order in the city led young Jewish men and women to the different revolutionary organizations that began to appear in Warsaw and other urban centers. Unlike numerous other studies that view revolutionary activity among Jews through the lens of ideology, this chapter will argue that the attraction of many young Jews to revolutionary politics and organizations in turn-of-the-century eastern Europe was, in fact, a direct result of the larger confrontation with life in the modern city.1 Aimed at toppling the tsarist regime and armed with radically new, if not at times divergent, worldviews, revolutionary organizations such as the Polish Socialist Party (PPS); the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL); the General Jewish Labor Union in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (the Bund); and other smaller groups grew quickly in Warsaw and other cities including Lodz, Białystok, and Vilna.2 In an effort to explain the sudden attraction and rising popularity of these and other revolutionary organizations, I will examine the membership, culture, and activities of the new revolutionary groups that thrived on the margins between the legal and the illegal realms in Warsaw. By first focusing on a set of thematic questions regarding the culture of radical politics and then following a series of chronological developments over the course of 1905, this chapter will also trace the path of the Revolution of 1905 as it unfolded in the streets of Warsaw.3 Moreover, by looking at the transition of these groups from small-scale

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conspiratorial cells to popularly supported political parties, I will highlight the repeated efforts by various revolutionary organizations to create viable revolutionary political parties in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. Lastly, through this discussion of radical political activity in Warsaw in and around 1905, this chapter will shed light on the tangled, volatile, and oftentimes misunderstood connection between Jews and revolution in eastern Europe and other regions. Throughout this chapter, I focus on a set of questions designed to explicate the very attraction and practice of revolutionary politics among Jews. Through a survey of a wide array of government reports, party materials, and memoir literature I ask such questions as: Who was attracted to these organizations? What did these new groups offer potential members and supporters? And, how did different organizations attempt to effect the critical transition from conspiratorial activity to popular politics? As part of this discussion, I also examine what happened to these organizations once the rules of political activity and engagement changed after the implementation of government reforms and the advent of new political practices in late 1905 and early 1906. This chapter begins with an analysis of the membership, culture, and allure of revolutionary cells and organizations in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. After this examination of everyday life in a variety of organizations, I turn to another, no less important, issue: organizational attempts to turn widespread anger and popular unrest into popularly supported political movements. As part of this discussion, the second part of this chapter looks at the various linguistic and conceptual tools that the Bund and other organizations used to generate support for their movements. The third part of this chapter charts the course of political activity in Warsaw throughout 1905 by analyzing how different organizations attempted to move revolutionary political organization and activity out of backrooms and into the public realm. Lastly, this chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the different factors that contributed to the decline of revolutionary politics in late 1906 and 1907. Thus, even though semidemocratic reforms led to the sudden expansion of the public sphere in 1905 and 1906, the changing nature of political culture, the implementation of martial law in late 1905, and the ongoing repression of different revolutionary groups in late 1906 and 1907, all hindered the efforts of different groups to take part in the new style of popular political organi-

Revolution, Jews, and the Streets of Warsaw

zation and action that had suddenly become possible. Ironically, the very reforms that were implemented in response to the revolutionary groups’ early successes helped bring about their sudden fall.

Revolutionary Lives: Lost Generations and Underground Organizations A careful examination of the government records, political fliers, and memoir literature available highlights the unique membership and organizational structure of various revolutionary cells in early-twentiethcentury Warsaw. Together, these sources reveal the extent to which revolutionary organizations served as new networks and surrogate communities for many of the young Jews who were simply overwhelmed by their entry into the city.4 Indeed, not only were most members of these groups adolescents or young adults, but they often met in regular locations, such as safe houses, street corners, and public parks, which helped lend a much-needed sense of structure and community to their newly urban lives. Furthermore, while many were certainly enticed by the allure of new political rhetoric and ideas, others seemed rather oblivious to the ideological differences among various organizations. This combination of youth, organizational intimacy, and ideological openness would characterize the culture and milieu of revolutionary organizations in early-twentieth-century Warsaw.5 As traditional communal institutions stumbled and other, less radical groups—in particular mainstream Zionist ones—remained decidedly ambivalent about the value of political and cultural activity in the Russian Empire, new revolutionary groups were able to fill the gaping social and communal void by providing alienated and confused Jews in Warsaw with much of what they needed: a sense of belonging, a larger purpose, and ways to make sense of their radically transformed, quintessentially modern lives.6 Ultimately, these factors made the new revolutionary organizations and other forms of modern Jewish politics significantly different from other, more traditional forms of Jewish social and communal organization, and help explain their sudden popularity. The tsarist police and court records available show that the overwhelming majority of those Jews arrested for involvement in and sup-

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port of underground organizations in early-twentieth-century Warsaw were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. While some detainees and political prisoners were younger than seventeen and ­others were, at times, older than twenty-five, these cases remained the exception. Additionally, even though the majority of those arrested were young men, Jewish women were also among those suspected of belonging to these underground organizations.7 As such, the growing revolutionary activity that engulfed Warsaw and other centers should be seen as an expression of youthful angst that often crossed gender lines. Young Jews entered the city in unprecedented numbers and both male and female newcomers were in need of new forms of community and support. Moreover, the participation of Jewish women in these organizations further substantiates the view that revolutionary parties succeeded because they were able to provide new social spheres and communal bodies for many of those young Jews, including unmarried Jewish women, who often slipped beyond the reach of traditional Jewish communal organizations. While any attempt to present statistics on the age distribution of Jews arrested in Warsaw for antigovernment activity would lead to a distorted representation of Jewish and revolutionary societies, the following examples from several government sources reflect larger trends.8 Thus, a list of thirty people arrested on the suspicion of belonging to either the SDKPiL or the Bund in March 1907 includes eleven Jews between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two.9 In fact, only one of those Jews arrested, a twenty-seven-year-old member of the SDKPiL named Władysław Weingoldov Wengren, was either older than twenty-five or younger than seventeen. Another police report from May 1907 identifies fifty individuals suspected of antigovernment activity. Of the fortytwo Jews named, thirty-five were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five.10 Moreover, only one of the remaining six Jews who was over the age of twenty-five was over thirty. Other arrest reports from this period record a similar predominance of young Jews arrested for supporting or belonging to various revolutionary organizations in Warsaw. Thus, an arrest of twenty-seven Bund activists in October 1906 included nineteen people under the age of twenty-five and only one over the age of thirty.11 Additionally, all but one of the eleven Bund members arrested in a raid in July 1906 were under the age of thirty.12

Revolution, Jews, and the Streets of Warsaw

Nor were such trends limited to more established parties like the Bund and the SDKPiL. Smaller, more secretive organizations exhibited similar demographics. Thus, the thirteen members of the conspiratorial Warsaw Anarchist-Communist Group “International” arrested in January 1906 not only were all Jewish but all those whose ages were listed were under the age of twenty.13 And, government records regarding the arrests and subsequent trials of individual arrests illustrate a similar age distribution for those Jews suspected of taking part in revolutionary activity.14 Again, while information gathered from arrest reports between 1905 and 1907 might not represent the exact composition of the Bund, the SDKPiL, and other organizations, police and court records do point to a consistent profile of young revolutionary activists and supporters under the age of twenty-five.15 While many of those arrested were—like some 50 percent of Warsaw’s Jewish residents—recent arrivals to the city, some of these suspected revolutionaries were either born in the city or had, apparently, moved to Warsaw with their families. Thus, in several instances the parents of those arrested intervened with local officials on behalf of their children. Although limited, these cases underscore the extent to which revolutionary activity was undertaken by adolescent or postadolescent youths who still had at least one foot in their parents’ home. In 1906, Itshok Geshleder of 35 Nalewki Street begged the governor-general to pardon his twenty-one-year-old son Abram-Yankel, who the father described as “a quiet man who has never been suspected of any reprehensible actions and is such a good subject of his Fatherland that he would never belong to any party whatsoever.”16 Moshek Maizner submitted a practically identical letter on behalf of his two sons, Shaya and Abram, who were suspected of belonging to a new organization in Warsaw, the Zionist-Socialist Workers’ Party, in 1906.17 Even though Abram apparently had a loaded Bulldog revolver in his possession at the time of his arrest, his father still pleaded his sons’ innocence and praised their dedication to tsar and empire. “My older son Shaya is such a well-educated and quiet youth that he has never been suspected of any reprehensible actions and is such a good son of his Fatherland that he would never join any party.”18 Maizner went on to explain that his other son Abram had purchased the gun in order to protect the family from criminal elements that had begun to appear of late.

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Nor were these the only instances when fathers took actions on behalf of their imprisoned sons. Citing poor health, Gersh Poznanski and Yakov Mushkatenblit requested that the governor-general intervene on behalf of their sons Khazkel Poznanski and Moshek Mushkatenblit, both of whom were nineteen when they were arrested and exiled to the distant Olonets Gubernia for participating in a Bund meeting in July 1906.19 Even the young David Yosef Gruen recalls how his father, the local scribe Victor Gruen of Płońsk, intervened on his son’s behalf after he “was arrested for no reason whatsoever.”20 While these government records and the accompanying appeals are far from a systematic recording of the age distribution and personal situation of different members of various revolutionary groups, they do reflect the larger composition of these organizations. Indeed, the relative absence of members of an older generation of activists who either emerged locally or were sent by party organizations to instill political orthodoxy underscores the extent to which revolutionary activity was very often a spontaneous, youth-based phenomenon that arose in Warsaw and other cities. Another central aspect of the new revolutionary culture and society that coalesced among young, oftentimes unmarried men and women was the local cell and safe house. Small groups of activists regularly met in secret locations where members discussed strategies, translated and published materials, and, in many cases, simply enjoyed one another’s company.21 While secluded woods, public parks, and street corners were also used for such purposes, private apartments and other protected sites remained the preferred venues. On one level, the use of safe houses and other private spaces helped bolster the growing sense that revolutionary activists and other supporters belonged to a new society, one marked by underground meeting spots, secret societies, and revolutionary missions. This sense of community and purpose was an integral part of revolutionary culture as the cell and the safe house provided many young Jews with a secure, intimate, and protected space where comrades came together, friendships were forged, and new communities were created. At the same time, the use of private apartments and other enclosed spaces for organization and planning had significant implications for these parties’ organizational structure, political culture, and popular appeal.

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Memoir literature and government documents available detail not only the larger story of a generation of young activists but also the organizational structures and social intimacy that characterized these groups.22 Thus while many revolutionaries were arrested on the streets of Warsaw for distributing illegal literature or participating in antigovernment assemblies, others were arrested in various revolutionary safe houses. In December 1905, for example, ten members of the Bund Committee in Warsaw were arrested for taking part in a meeting held in Shein-Gold Leizerov Strashun’s private apartment and part-time dentist’s office at 23 Nalewki Street.23 Several weeks later, eleven people were arrested during a government raid at 18 Gęsia Street for taking part in a Bund meeting.24 A report from the summer of 1906 details the arrest of eleven delegates of different Bundist professional organizations at a gathering that took place in Yankel Abramov Teplitskii’s apartment at 31 Nowolipki Street.25 Nor was the practice of organizing antigovernment activity in private apartments limited exclusively to the Bund. In December 1905, five members of the primarily Jewish Warsaw Committee of the Military Revolutionary Organization were arrested during a search of Meir Raizman’s apartment.26 Moreover, while police records

Figure 5. Four young Jewish anarchists pose for a studio photo, Warsaw, 1912. Source: ­Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

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note that members of the Anarchist-Communist Group “International” met in apartment number 15 at 18 Dzielna Street,27 Frumkin recalls a series of safe houses belonging to the organization’s cells in Warsaw, including one on Pawia Street and, after a raid on that location, a new safe house at 21 Small Mila Street and an office on Gęsia Street.28 In many cases, searches of these safe houses led to warehouses of revolutionary material and, at times, weapons caches. Private apartments and other enclosed spaces proved to be ideal sites for storing illicit material and preparing intricate actions. The storage of literature in safe houses underscores further the central role that these locations played in revolutionary culture and society. Thus, a police raid in December 1905 of an apartment at 43 Nowolipki Street led officials to Bundist and other revolutionary material in Yiddish and Russian.29 Another raid at the office of Nadezhda at 32 Saint George Street led to the discovery of hundreds of fliers, brochures, and newspapers in Russian, Polish, Yiddish, and German published by the Bund, the PPS, and other organizations.30 Likewise, the arrest of Zalman-Leib Gersh Yoffe in late 1905 led officials to an assortment of Poale Zion and Bund materials in Polish and Yiddish that had originated in London, Ekaterinoslav, Vitebsk, and Warsaw.31 Lastly, Raphael Abramovitch notes how his own circle of Bundists used the Warsaw apartment of the teacher Yisrael Likhtenshtayn to store illicit literature;32 and the Bund leader Beinush Mikhalevitch recalls how Bund activists would regularly “make noise and sing” so that no one would hear the printing press that the group ran in a small apartment on Karmelicka Street.33 On other occasions, caches of revolvers and other weapons were also uncovered in safe houses and apartments. Thus, the arrest of seven Bund activists in June 1905 led to a cache of six revolvers and rounds of ammunition that belonged to the Bund’s Fighting Unit,34 and a search of Fraindli Rakhmilevoi Kershman’s apartment turned up four ­revolvers and thirty-eight cartridges that were also attributed to the Bund’s Fighting Unit.35 These examples regarding the use of private apartments as safe houses highlight the extent to which revolutionary activity remained a secretive, backroom affair in which different groups and cells congregated in small, enclosed locations to discuss and plan actions. While this mode of operation was certainly due to ongoing government harassment and the repression of revolutionary organiza-

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tions, the regular use of safe houses and other secluded spaces directly influenced these organizations’ structure, size, and appeal. Although private apartments were very often the preferred venues for secret meetings and for storing illicit material, revolutionary organizations also ventured into public locations such as forests, parks, and streets in attempts to expand their pool of supporters and organize large-scale public assemblies. In time, these public meeting points became known as birzhe, regular locations where activists, supporters, and the curious gathered to discuss the affairs of the day.36 While such public venues provided revolutionary organizations with an opportunity to move beyond limited, protected spaces and supporters, the public nature of these meetings often left organizations and members exposed to government informers, police surveillance, and potential arrests.37 Thus, as long as government forces wielded even a modicum of control over the streets of Warsaw, such ventures into the public realm were brief, risky endeavors, and revolutionary politics remained a limited affair. Memoirs and other sources are replete with anecdotes regarding specific meetings that took place in remote woods, public parks, or other venues that were large enough to accommodate a crowd, distant enough to avoid the detection of officials, and temporary enough to elude government raids. As the government’s control over public spaces began to wane, some groups gained confidence and moved their activities into more central locations. In his memoirs of political activity in Białystok, Mordekhai Pogarelski recalls how forests and other secluded areas were used for such activities.38 Frumkin, too, notes how the Warsaw Anarchist-Communist Group “International” would meet in the Praga Forest outside of Warsaw.39 As Yeshayahu Trunk would later write in his summary of Bundist activity in Warsaw: “In the illegal conditions of the Tsarist regime, we would meet outside of the city in open fields or in the woods.”40 Abramovitch, for example, also notes how the Bund would organize picnics, walks, and other events along the shores of Warsaw’s Wisła River and in local forests in an attempt to evade government agents.41 Hence, as long as restrictions regarding public assembly and political activity were enforced, revolutionary organizations sought and thrived in woods, parks, and other marginal spaces that linked the underground world of conspiratorial politics and open political activity in the public realm.

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As the revolutionary movement gained strength and confidence, Jewish revolutionaries began to move their meetings and activities into more central urban venues such as street corners, specific streets, and  other open spaces. This transition out of woods and public parks and into the city’s public spaces often found its earliest expression in neutral locations where such gatherings would be somewhat camouflaged by the many other urban residents who roamed the city’s streets. Moreover, as these meetings usually took place in city spaces that had no specific owner, no one person could later be held responsible for sponsoring these assemblies. Pogarelski, for example, vividly recalls how the nascent Poale Zion organization quickly adapted to the urban environment and integrated its activities into Warsaw’s changing cityscape. “The Poale Zion birzhe was located next to the communal guest house (linat tsedek) alley between the stables and Nowy Świat Street. Day in, day out, the male and female members would meet on the sidewalk. It would start at one part and then move to the other side of the street. From eight in the evening till ten at night the sidewalk was packed with people who were going back and forth.”42 Litwak describes the development of the Bund birzhe in Warsaw in similar terms as the organization’s entry into the public realm changed the very nature of Jewish urban society and culture. “At the bottom of Dzika and the neighboring streets was our office. Twice a week, on Tuesdays in the evening and Saturday afternoons, thousands of people would meet. On Dzika itself was the general office. On Miła, Muranowska, Stawki and other places were the offices of particular unions. That was our club, under the blue sky.”43 While revolutionary Jewish politics had begun to move into the public realm in 1904 and 1905, few groups were able to create permanent meeting points in Warsaw. Despite the revolutionary movement’s growing strength, tsarist authorities still wielded enough power to preempt the creation of permanent venues that would lend a visible revolutionary presence to the streets of Warsaw. Government reports detail the repeated attempts by revolutionary organizations to gain footholds in the city’s changing public realm. The arrests of different proprietors of bookstores, cafes, and other institutions after these locations were used as meeting spots for political groups reflect the ongoing competition between revolutionary organizations

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and government forces over these and other urban spaces. Throughout this period, the possession, sale, and distribution of revolutionary material were acts punishable by law. As such, store­owners and others risked their personal freedom and livelihood by having revolutionary literature on hand or by hosting revolutionary gatherings. Thus, storeowner Gersh Shlyomovitch and store assistants Abram Zabilinski and Rakhil Shlyomovitch were arrested for possessing and distributing Bundist literature after the Jewish bookstore Znanye (Yeda) at 20 Nowolipki Street was raided in late 1905.44 Nor were such transitions into public spaces limited to distributing literature in bookstores. In some of the bolder displays of revolutionary activity, coffeehouses, restaurants, and other public locations also served as sites where activists met and discussed their plans without being easily detected by local authorities or their various agents.45 In time, individual meetings of activists grew to include larger gatherings of party members, supporters, and urban bystanders. However, these meetings were still risky affairs and such entries into the public realm often led to sweeping arrests.46 Thus, both Gershon Rodzakh’s Bund café on Gęsia Street and Hillel Fried’s Poale Zion coffeehouse also on Gęsia Street were the targets of government raids and mass arrests in January of 1904 and 1906, respectively.47 Later, in the summer of 1906, some thirty people were arrested after a police raid on a café at the corner of Dzika and Niska streets.48 The cat-andmouse game between revolutionary parties and government forces over the use and control of public spaces illustrates the extent to which both sides—tsarist bureaucrats and revolutionary groups—viewed the transition of revolutionary organizations into the public realm as a critical phase in their efforts to become popularly supported political parties.49 However, these and other ventures by revolutionary organizations into the public realm almost always drew the attention of tsarist authorities, and they were often followed by police raids, widespread arrests, and, in some cases, expulsions. Thus, as long as tsarist forces exerted some form of control over the city’s public spaces, revolutionary activity remained restricted to secluded locations, and the scope of revolutionary organizations was limited to the small circles of supporters that such enclosed environments could accommodate. As in many other cases, the form of Jewish politics would often determine the content of Jewish politics.

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In addition to their dependence upon safe houses, another critical aspect of the intimate political culture of revolution was the frequent use of code names or nicknames by revolutionary activists. While code names were often used to protect individuals from identification and arrest, the widespread implementation of these appellations strengthened further the sense of community among activists and supporters.50 Like residents of a village or a small town, these communities had no need for formalities such as family names or other forms of identification mandated by modern governments.51 Moreover, much like safe houses, code names helped augment the sense that participants were taking part in a new society, one that demanded and would then provide new identities. In some cases, underground names referred to obvious physical characteristics. Thus, Solomonia Mordekhova Marshak went by the name “Rozh ” (red head) and the Bundist Abram Simkhov Shpeker was called “Shvartse ” (the dark one).52 In other cases, individuals went by appellations that were, essentially, variations of their given names. Such was the case of some Jewish SDKPiL members, including Shlema-Meilakh Oizerov Melnik who was known as “Solomon,” Shaia Zelkov Zaltsman who went by “Salman,” and Malya Ioselev ­Salyamon who was called “Manya.”53 Other activists received nondescriptive names that referred to their hometown, profession, or other aspect of their personal biographies. These included the case of Yakub “the boot maker” Golshain and Abram “Lodzer” Rotkopf of the Warsaw ­Anarchist-Communist Group “International.”54 Testifying to the centrality of such monikers, Frumkin would later recall that Golshain was known as “the boot maker,” that Leybel Puterman was also known as Leybel “the boot maker,” and that Rotkopf was, indeed, from Lodz.55 In addition to physical characteristics and common permutations of given names, other nicknames reflected hopes for larger personal and social transformations.56 Thus, the Bundist Levek Itsaakov Zaidman went by the seemingly Polonized name of “Yosef,” Poale Zion member Rebekka Solomonova Gertsman was known by the Russian name “Evgenia” (after apparently changing her code name from “Aleksandra” upon her arrival in Warsaw in late 1906), Sora Movsheka Shriro went by “Sonya,” and the dental student Leib Luzerov Poizner preferred the code name “Leon” while underground.57 Most importantly, these and other nondescriptive names illustrate that such nicknames were used

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not only for underground identification and clandestine activity but also as standard aspects of the new revolutionary culture that was designed to create a larger sense of community and purpose. In time, almost all revolutionaries seemed determined to cultivate a revolutionary persona marked by a code name that designated their underground identification, belonging, and legitimacy.58 Underground names soon became a critical and even necessary part of the new revolutionary identities and communities that began to coalesce. In fact, in some cases there was absolutely nothing cryptic about these names. Thus, police reports note that various Bund activists went by code names that were often little more than their officially registered names. In one police report, Genya Shmuelova-Eseleva Rabinovitch was listed with the nickname of “Genya,” Basya Khaimova Mirman with the code name of “Basya,” and Yakub-Iser Moshekov Shlengel as “Yakub.”59 While these examples may be little more than somewhat comical representations of bureaucratic ineptitude, they underscore the extent to which a recognized code name had become a standard part of revolutionary culture and, perhaps more importantly, part of reigning perceptions—both popular and official—of underground organizations, activities, and individuals. Thus, even when no secret, underground moniker existed, true revolutionaries and their most dedicated observers, the police, felt a need to invent one. Later, when many of these organizations began to move into the public realm, nicknames would be presented as a sign of an individual’s commitment to the revolutionary cause and their rightful place in the world to come. Most importantly, the use of code names and nicknames illustrates a critical component of revolutionary culture at this time: its inherent intimacy.60 As a result of this dependence on secret circles characterized by high levels of intimacy, many revolutionary cells in Warsaw included representatives of only one specific ethnic group. For either linguistic or cultural reasons, the bonds of communication, trust, and culture that were necessary to establish and operate secretive, conspiratorial groups rarely crossed ethno-linguistic lines. These divisions applied not only to specifically Jewish organizations, such as the Bund and Poale Zion, but also to non-Jewish organizations that had predominantly Jewish members, such as the Warsaw Anarchist-Communist Group “International” and the Warsaw Committee of the Military Revolutionary Organiza-

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tion.61 Thus, Frumkin notes that there were actually separate Jewish and Polish meeting points for the local anarchist group in Warsaw.62 In fact, the only organizations that seemed interested in crossing these barriers were the PPS and, to a lesser extent, the SDKPiL. However, here, too, the lines that separated Jews from Poles continued to influence the composition of underground political groups. Thus, while many Jews were arrested for either distributing or possessing PPS material in Warsaw, specific PPS cells were very often divided along ethnic lines. Hence, there were apparently no Jews among the eleven members of the PPS Fighting Organization arrested in June of 1905;63 and there were also no Jews among any of the twenty-four members of the PPS Fighting Organization arrested in separate raids in August 1905.64 While these divisions were not ironclad, they represent the difficulties that many of these groups had recruiting new members and expanding their pool of supporters.65 Moreover, in many cases these limitations were not only structural and organizational, but also cultural and linguistic. Hence, in order to move beyond the revolutionary cell and into the era of popular politics, these organizations would have to not only enter the public realm but also create and disseminate new conceptions of community that had broader, supra-ethnic appeal. Although revolutionary cells were limited in their size and scope, the wide range of literature confiscated in government raids illustrates a high degree of political fluidity as ideological differences between parties often remained unclear. Indeed, as long as revolutionary activity remained limited to underground groups, few organizations and even fewer supporters were ever really pressed to take consistent public positions on the differences between groups. As a result, many of the more fundamental issues that would later divide political organizations and their supporters—such as questions of ideology or language—remained open and undecided in these days of underground organizations. Ironically, it was the limited, conspiratorial nature of these groups that allowed supporters and activists to remain decidedly undecided. The ideological and linguistic permeability of many of these groups is abundantly clear from the range of fliers, brochures, and other materials that cells and activists held, read, or distributed. Throughout the period in question, Bundists were arrested with material published by the PPS and the SDKPiL, Poale Zion members read and distributed Bundist lit-

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erature, and members of smaller organizations often had a wide variety of sources in their possession. Thus, despite later, politicized renditions of these and other parties, many contemporary supporters either had much difficulty distinguishing between the various revolutionary organizations or had little difficulty transgressing whatever political boundaries may have already existed. This fluidity and lack of ideological fervor was another central aspect of the nascent revolutionary culture. One example of this organizational and ideological openness is the fact that none of these Jewish organizations limited their political literature to one specific language.66 The bitter language wars so often associated with modern Jewish politics and society in eastern Europe (and the Middle East) had yet to define the politics of revolution in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. Hence, many organizations distributed material in all three central languages: Polish, Yiddish, and Russian.67 Only in late 1905 and 1906, when revolutionary organizations began to move out of the backrooms and into the public realm, would the need to define, organize, and mobilize a specific public in a particular language become a pressing issue. Until that stage, the culture of revolution among Jews in Warsaw remained an open, fluid world in which young Jews gathered in closed spaces to read, discuss, and distribute a wide variety of materials in a number of different languages. Lastly, this ideological and linguistic openness underscores further the extent to which the social and communal aspects of these groups was oftentimes just as, if not more, important than the ideological aspects of the new Jewish politics. One factor contributing to this linguistic diversity in Warsaw was the fact that the Bund, Poale Zion, and other organizations were producing, translating, and distributing materials not only for Yiddish-­ speaking Jews but also for those Jews in the Polish provinces who felt more comfortable in Polish as well as for potentially sympathetic Poles.68 Thus, Bundist fliers denouncing early constitutional reforms and the Russo-Japanese War appeared in both Polish and Yiddish.69 While the material distributed in Yiddish bore the stamp of the Bund’s Central Committee, fliers and brochures in Polish were often translated and distributed by members of the Bund’s Warsaw Committee. This was not the only time the Bund’s Warsaw Committee translated and distributed literature in Polish.70 In other cases, Jewish members or

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supporters of the PPS and the SDKPiL were arrested for possessing material in Polish even though both organizations already published and distributed political literature in Yiddish.71 Finally, while literature in Yiddish and Polish was far more prevalent in Warsaw, materials in Russian, in particular newspapers or journals that were too difficult or too costly to translate, were regularly distributed by supporters of the Bund, the PPS, and other, smaller groups.72 Hence, while Yiddish was still the preferred language for debate and reading among Jews in Warsaw, revolutionary organizations were still not sure which particular language, if any, should dominate their political activity and culture.73 In addition to this linguistic diversity, arrests of suspected revolutionaries often led to caches of political literature that included a wide variety of materials published by theoretically rival organizations. The varied nature of these collections further demonstrates the extent to which the ideological differences that occupied the political elite had yet to resonate among activists and supporters. Thus, an arrest of several individuals in late 1905 uncovered twelve different brochures and newspapers in Yiddish and Russian, including copies of the Bund newspaper Der bund as well as copies of a Russian Social Democratic paper.74 In this particular case, the inability of government officials to associate these individuals with one specific organization reflects the degree of confusion that reigned regarding the very meaning of revolutionary membership and organization. When Zalman-Leib Gersh Yoffe was arrested in late 1905 on suspicion of belonging to Poale Zion, tsarist officials found not only dozens of brochures and fliers published by Poale Zion organizations in Warsaw, Vitebsk, and Ekaterinoslav but also copies of material published by the Bund in Yiddish and Polish.75 A half year later, two young Jews, Leib German and Gersh Mitelsbakh, were arrested for distributing material published by two ostensibly rival organizations, the SDKPiL and the PPS.76 While some might attribute this behavior to political inexperience, such ideological openness was not exceptional. Even members of the rather tight-knit, conspiratorial Warsaw Committee of the Military Revolutionary Organization read and distributed literature published by several different organizations including the PPS, the Bund, and the PPS-Proletariat.77 As late as 1905 and early 1906, membership in any one particular organization did not inhibit or prohibit the reading or distribution of material published by

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other organizations. Like the city itself, revolutionary culture in earlytwentieth-century Warsaw remained distinctly fluid as literature, ideas, and individuals flowed among organizations, parties, and languages. The dynamic, open nature of political organization and revolutionary culture is reflected further in the arrest report of Yankel Abramov Teplitskii and the detailed list of political literature that was found in the office of Nadezhda at 32 Saint George Street. While the material itself represents a fascinating cross-section of what revolutionary organizations distributed and what revolutionaries read, it also speaks volumes to the open, nonideological nature of revolutionary culture in late 1905 and early 1906. Identified by officials as a warehouse of Bundist literature, the collection of fliers, brochures, and newspapers included material in Russian, Polish, Yiddish, and German from a variety of organizations. The cache contained not only literature published by the Bund in Russian and Yiddish but also material attributed to the Russian Social Democrats, the Polish Socialist Party-Proletariat, and other revolutionary organizations.78 Although Teplitskii and his co-conspirators may have been supporters of the Bund, they were not averse to reading and distributing sources published by other organizations in a number of languages. Moreover, even if their activities were motivated, at least in part, by financial interests, the distribution of such a wide array of materials reflects the diverse tastes and desires of a still-­undefined revolutionary public.79 As the Labor Zionist hero Berl Katznelson would later recall of his own experiences at the time: “I won’t tell you how I wandered from party to party. Essentially, I ‘betrayed’ every party that I ever belonged to.”80 Ironically, it was the underground nature of these organizations that enabled them to maintain this degree of linguistic and ideological openness. However, like many other aspects of revolutionary culture and organization at the time, this diversity also hindered the ability of different groups to create popularly supported political movements. Throughout most of this period, revolutionary groups and organizations remained bound to a particular style of political organization that ultimately restricted their ability to expand beyond limited circles. In most cases, small groups of young Jewish men and women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five met in apartments or other secret locations to discuss and plan political activity. More often than not, this

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activity was confined to the translation, publication, and preparation of illicit revolutionary material. Moreover, the organizations were limited to small circles of intimates and comrades that rarely transgressed ethnolinguistic lines. While this underground system helped the Bund, the PPS, and other organizations provide much-needed surrogate communities for many young Jews in Warsaw, these organizations, structures, and the revolutionary culture they created also inhibited the ability of these organizations to branch out to more diverse sectors of Jewish and non-Jewish societies and to make the critical transition from secret cells to popular political movements. Thus, even figures published in party literature cite 1,220 Bund members in the entire Warsaw region in late 1906.81 Ironically, much of what attracted activists and supporters to revolutionary politics ultimately limited the ability of these and other organizations to move revolutionary activity out of backrooms and into the streets of Warsaw.

Language, Time, and the Construction of a New Revolutionary Culture As part of these larger efforts to transform revolutionary groups from small circles to widespread political movements, new organizations would try—with varying degrees of success—to generate widespread support for their platforms. One key aspect of these efforts was the creation of a series of new intellectual, cultural, and political constructs designed to redefine and restructure popular concepts of community and self in Warsaw. Ultimately, the dissemination of a new language of revolution, new conceptions of calendar time, and new markers of community were intended not only to forge a distinct revolutionary community but also, in the process, to bring about the fundamental transformation of Jewish and non-Jewish societies. Led by the political avant-garde and influenced by revolutionary culture and politics in centers as diverse as New York, London, Geneva, and St. Petersburg, revolutionary organizations embarked on ambitious programs designed to convert Jewish residents in Warsaw to the cause of revolution. Even though these groups were still in their infancy, they were already keenly aware of the fact that in order to expand their base of support they

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would need to effect more fundamental changes in the ways in which individual Jews (and non-Jews) imagined themselves as individuals and as members of specific communities.82 As Lynn Hunt notes in regard to the French Revolution, “a new political authority required a new ‘master fiction.’”83

To the People! Popularizing and Preaching Revolution The process of bringing revolutionary politics to a much wider public was conducted first and foremost by the political avant-garde. Armed with the ideological and intellectual tools of revolution as well as the logistical and financial support of their political organizations, Jewish emissaries repeatedly adopted the principles of Russian radicalism by going “to the people.”84 The idea of sending political activists to outlying areas was not new to the Bund or to other Jewish organizations. Even the more conservative Zionist movement had already adopted the practice of sending representatives to remote centers in an effort to spread their gospel and collect much-needed funds.85 In the case of revolutionary politics, activists were critical to the expansion of the new political ideology, culture, and organization. Trunk, for example, cites the role of Bund emissaries who helped spread the party gospel as they passed back and forth between urban centers and the surrounding region. “From Warsaw, the Bundist influence spread to the Polish provinces. Various workers from the Warsaw organization, whenever they visited their hometowns or when they passed through on their way to work in another area, would fulfill the role of an emissary of the Bund.”86 In these and other cases, revolutionary activists traveled to outlying areas to establish local cells that could promote party organization in the provinces. Government reports chart the trails of various cells that attempted to move beyond safe houses and surreptitious activity and into out­lying urban districts and provincial centers. The example of an unidentified Jewish revolutionary cell that settled in the Warsaw suburb of Mokotów in the fall of 1905 illustrates such activities.87 Determined to foment revolution in one of the city’s outlying districts, approximately ten activists found a safe haven in the apartment of Mordekhai Frost on NowyAlexander Street. According to government reports, the group started

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to hold meetings during which they plotted antigovernment actions. Several weeks after their arrival, group members apparently felt confident enough to move their actions into the public realm. With guns in hand, they rushed into the local synagogue and interrupted prayers, shouting declarations that challenged both Jewish and official concepts of community and order: “Your God is not necessary; and the Tsar, who has spilled our blood, is not necessary.”88 Although bold and spirited, such confrontations with traditional Jewish institutions and members exposed the group and led to their subsequent arrest. Additional circles of activists arrested in the town of Sochaczew and the provincial city of Kalisz in the summer of 1905 behaved similarly as they ventured out of Warsaw and other cities and into provincial areas. Here, too, one is struck by the degree to which revolutionary culture often had to be exported to outlying areas. Thus, in both Sochaczew and Kalisz, police raids uncovered Bund cells that consisted of members from Warsaw and other locations.89 Reflecting familiar practices of political organization, the arrest of Zainvel Moshkov Grizhivats of Warsaw and others in Kalisz led to a cache of weapons, banners, and literature in Russian, Yiddish, and Polish intended to foment revolutionary activity in the local center.90 While attempts to create revolutionary circles in the Warsaw suburb of Mokotów, the town of Sochaczew, and the provincial city of Kalisz are well documented, other sources reflect similar organizational patterns as activists from urban centers repeatedly went “to the people.” While many of these steps ended in arrests, government documentation, and, ultimately, organizational failure, they also highlight the extent to which revolutionary politics in outlying areas remained limited in both scope and range. Thus, even when people did turn out to participate in local political events—such as readings of the Bundist ­Hagadah by Moshek Shmulev Rudmanovitch in a “field next to the town of Stary Wec in Radom Gubernia” or the discussion of political materials in “the Chishew Farm in Łomza Gubernia” by Nukhim Moshkov Zegelbaum—public assemblies in the provinces were often limited to sporadic gatherings on the outskirts of town.91 Although revolutionary organizations and activity continued to grow in Warsaw, smaller environments that experienced fewer social or economic transformations proved far less conducive to the growth of such activity.

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Moreover, these smaller locales were often unable to provide the types of urban anonymity, hiding spaces, and gray zones that fueled revolutionary politics.

The Language of Revolution While repeated attempts to move revolutionary politics beyond closed rooms and intimate circles were often thwarted by government forces, party literature continued to be distributed on the streets of Warsaw. The reception of these materials touches upon another important challenge facing organizations at the time: the need to create an actual community of supporters. In addition to their focus on entering the public realm and expanding their constituencies, the education of urban residents and the subsequent transformation of potential supporters into a cohesive political community became a key priority for revolutionary groups in Warsaw. Ultimately, the ability of these groups to expand beyond small, conspiratorial cells depended upon their ability to disseminate the language of revolution to a wider pool of supporters. Moreover, while it would be difficult to determine how many people read and were influenced by the fliers, brochures, and other materials distributed in Warsaw, this literature sheds much light on the intellectual and cultural transformations that various organizations hoped to effect. Lastly, the gap between the goals of the political elite and the response of their constituencies reflects key problems that would haunt many Jewish political parties throughout this period. Through these and other materials, Yiddish-speaking workers in Warsaw and throughout the region were exposed to a series of terms, concepts, and phrases that were central to revolutionary culture and politics. Nor was this a project to be taken lightly. In a relatively brief period, activists, supporters, and bystanders had to learn an entirely new vocabulary and set of phrases, which included such basic terms as “comrades,” “proletariat,” “socialism,” and “capitalism”; terms for political events, ranging from “demonstrations” and “protests” to “the First of May”; a litany of loaded revolutionary slogans, such as “Down with capitalism” and “Long live socialism”; and even such basic concepts as “brother-workers” and the “fighting-proletariat.” Moreover, while the meaning of such terms, concepts, and phrases might seem relatively

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self-evident today, there is no reason to assume that Jews living in Warsaw or in any other part of the Russian Empire had an intuitive sense of what these terms and phrases actually meant.92 Indeed, with the exception of the phrase yom tov for revolutionary holidays and the term herem for a political boycott, relatively few traditional Hebrew or Yiddish words or phrases were used in these consciously political efforts to transmit and explain the new revolutionary culture. Furthermore, in many cases key terms such as “solidarity,” “socialism,” and “the proletariat” were little more than Yiddishized versions of words used in Russian, Polish, and other languages.93 Thus, revolution and, in particular, the revolution of the Yiddish language itself became central vehicles for the modernization of many Jews as well as for their eventual integration into the new, quintessentially modern community of revolution. The difficulties that revolutionary organizations encountered as they attempted to introduce some of the more basic aspects of revolutionary culture to potential supporters can be gleaned from the language used in political literature. As many of the phrases and concepts used in these materials were completely new to potential supporters, efforts to create popular political movements often began at the very basic level, that of language. An early Bund flier distributed in Warsaw in late 1903 exemplifies the many difficulties involved in teaching local Jews the language of revolution. Throughout this particular flier, the authors go to great lengths to explain basic concepts and terms, including the meaning of class-consciousness, the advantages of strikes, and the very existence of the Bund. Although optimistic in tone, activists were keenly aware of the fact that not all Jewish workers had a natural predisposition to understand and support the cause and that a fair degree of explanation was needed. In December 1903, the road to revolution appeared to be a long one. Jewish workers have already organized themselves in the Jewish workers’ “Bund” and are leading the worker struggle against economic and political oppression. We call on you to join them in this struggle. Stand together in line with the proletariat and join together with them in the great war against the present state of slavery for a brighter future. Awake from your slumber, do away with your oppression, organize yourselves and strike and demand a shorter work day, a larger paycheck and better conditions. Together with all of your oppressed

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comrades declare a continuous struggle against Tsarist despotism, the entire capitalist order! To battle! Long live the democratic republic! Long live socialism! Down with the autocracy!94

Despite these and similar pleas, the process of political education in Warsaw proceeded slowly as organizational, political, and cultural factors repeatedly hindered efforts by the Bund and other organizations. Reflecting this process, another flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee almost a year and a half later in March 1905 went to great lengths to explain the very concept of an economic boycott. In this case, the traditional Jewish term for a religious ban, herem, was used to help explain one of the movement’s more fundamental concepts. “Ban (herem)! Boycott! The Warsaw Social-Democratic Committee of the Bund is conducting a herem (to impose a boycott) against the following industrialists.”95 The use of the traditional Jewish term for a religiously mandated ban to explain the concept of an economic boycott helps demonstrate the extent to which many Jews in Warsaw had to be taught some of the more basic revolutionary terms and ideas. Moreover, as new, essentially non-Jewish words like “boycott” came to replace traditional terms like “herem,” language itself—in particular many of the new terms and phrases that would soon become part of the Yiddish vocabulary—played a key role in the political education and cultural transformation of a generation of Jewish readers and supporters. As part of these efforts to modernize both Yiddish and its speakers, political materials regularly invoked key phrases designed to introduce supporters to some of the more fundamental aspects of revolutionary language and culture. Over time, these phrases helped standardize not only the form of revolutionary literature but also the very content of the political culture of revolution. The conclusion from a Bund flier distributed in anticipation of the First of May in 1904 typifies this new language and form of revolution. Through such materials, party activists popularized an entire series of phrases and concepts that would, in time, serve as pillars of revolutionary culture: “Down with capitalism, that brings with it only hunger and hardship! Down with wars! Down with Tsarism—the defender of capitalism! Long live political freedom! Long live socialism!”96 Later that year, another Bundist handbill distributed in Warsaw (in both Polish and Yiddish versions) ended with

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similar calls: “Down with the war! Down with the mobilization! Down with militarism! Down with the autocracy! Long live the fighting proletariat!” 97 As the revolutionary wave continued over the course of 1905, such appeals became more and more standard as a common set of ideas and terms regularly adorned revolutionary proclamations. The conclusion of a Bundist flier from early 1905 is typical of both the form and content of the new language of revolution. “Down with Tsarism! Long live the revolution! Long live the democratic republic! Long live socialism!” 98 Thus, a new language arose as the first step toward creating a new revolutionary culture and society. Nor was this language of revolution limited to specifically Jewish organizations or to literature written and distributed primarily in Yiddish. The conclusion of a Polish flier distributed in the summer of 1905 by the PPS differed little from the Bund flier of early 1905 cited above. “Down with Tsarism! Long live the revolution! Long live the Polish people’s assembly in Warsaw! Long live socialism!” 99 A year later, a Yiddish handbill published by the SDKPiL used similar phrases in its closing call: “Down with the autocracy! Long live the revolution! Long live the international proletariat holiday the First of May! Long live the democratic republic! Long live socialism!”100 In these and other cases, the use of common revolutionary slogans introduced a core of concepts that potential supporters and observers could identify and, if needed, repeat. Moreover, by regularly employing key phrases and terms used by non-Jewish revolutionary organizations, the Bund was invoking the common language of revolution as a tool for the integration of Jewish supporters into the larger revolutionary community. Whether these phrases appeared in Yiddish, Polish, or Russian, all of these parties (and ideally their supporters) now spoke a common language, the language of revolution.101 Such steps were, of course, only the beginning of a larger process of education, socialization, and politicization on the road to revolutionary Jewish politics.

Revolutionary Time: First of May Celebrations In addition to a new language, revolutionary culture also included a series of new holidays and other events that were designed to distinguish the revolutionary calendar and community from more traditional

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ones.102 While the new calendar included several different events and days, protests and demonstrations surrounding the First of May represent the most prominent example of how these organizations attempted to popularize revolutionary holidays that would be used to transform the calendar, teleology, and boundaries of culture and society in eastern Europe.103 However, here, as well, the very meaning of events like the First of May often had to be explained before they could have any intellectual, cultural, or political significance. Although the Bund and other organizations had already been promoting demonstrations on the First of May for several years, a flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee in anticipation of the First of May in 1904 reflects the organization’s awareness of the pressing need to educate supporters about some of the more fundamental aspects of revolution.104 Once again, the didactic nature of this broadsheet is particularly telling as basic terms and concepts are explained to novice revolutionaries. The First of May is approaching; the holy proletarian holiday, the day when from all sides of the entire world one hears the thunder of the overwhelming cry “Down with capitalism! Long live socialism!” The day upon which the fighting proletariat from near and far extends its hand and unites in a holy struggle against economic and political oppression; against the existing social and political order.

This particular flier continues by explaining further not only what the First of May actually was but also what one was supposed to do on this occasion. We, Warsaw workers are not coming out for the first time on the First of May with our protests and our demands. This is not the first time that our voices will be united with all of our fighting brothers. We have already participated many times in public demonstrations, left our places of work; this is not the first time that Warsaw society will see our victorious banners.105

A year later, in the spring of 1905, the Bund distributed fliers in Yiddish and Polish that began with similar introductory explanations regarding the significance of the First of May. Here, too, Bund literature focused on the need to educate supporters about the very fundamentals of revolution. While the spring of 1905 may have been one of the

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revolution’s high points, the meaning of the First of May and other concepts still remained unclear to many.106 The road to a cultural revolution in Warsaw was far from complete. the first of may. comrades! The First of May is approaching; the great, the beautiful, the bright proletarian holiday; the holiday of peace, of solidarity, of freedom; the holiday of socialism. Now a great army is converging: In the East, in the West, in all parts of the world they go in one direction; all of the heroes with enslaved bodies and liberated souls. . . . And from one corner of the world to the other, one hears the loud sound, like the waves of the storm: “Brother-workers! We are all here! We go together! We go, we go!” Brother-workers, proletariat from all lands! We, workers from Russia, greet you on this holiday with much happiness!107

Similar handbills distributed by Bund Committees in Lodz and Białystok at the time were equally didactic in their content and style as the party focused on basics. “Comrades! The First of May is coming, the holiday of the international proletariat. We must observe the day! Don’t work! Everyone to the streets! Down with the capitalist society!”108 Although the strikes, protests, and confrontations continued in Warsaw, the efforts by the Bund and other parties to transform these and other expressions of discontent into controlled acts of protest continued erratically. The following excerpt from an SDKPiL flier distributed in Yiddish in 1906 highlights the extent to which the First of May was often used to overcome the confusion and apathy that reigned. Here, too, the explanation of revolutionary language, concepts, and time were pivotal to efforts to construct a new political community. Comrades! The First of May is approaching, the worldwide proletarian holiday is approaching. On this holiday all of the class conscious workers from the entire world come together like one man. . . . The First of May unites, like an electric storm, the proletariat from all lands into one fighting army.109

Although SDKPiL literature may have placed more of an emphasis on international unity and quasi-military action, the need to explain the new language and time of community was similar to that expressed in literature distributed by the Bund. More importantly, after several years of intensive political propaganda, many organizations still felt the need

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to explain such basic aspects of revolutionary culture and politics like “the holy proletarian holiday,” “the First of May.”

Creating a Revolution in Warsaw Although not immediately successful, these efforts did help lay the foundations for the protests that erupted in Warsaw and other parts of the Russian Empire over the course of 1905 and 1906. These protests and confrontations included both those of importance throughout the empire, like the events of Bloody Sunday on January 9/22, 1905, and markers of local struggle that often revolved around clashes with government forces. In many cases, funeral processions and confrontations with representatives of the regime were critical to these efforts to construct defining moments that would lend structure and meaning to the unrest in Warsaw.110 Moreover, the actual interpretation of these events was just as critical to revolutionary efforts to lend a specific meaning to the widespread upheaval. Thus, while anger and frustration often erupted in Warsaw and other centers, it was up to the different organizations to translate these expressions of anger into politically purposeful acts of revolution. In time, this newly constructed narrative of protest, conflict, and redemption would become known as the Revolution of 1905. The strikes and confrontations that began in St. Petersburg on Bloody Sunday in early 1905 raised the hopes of many in Warsaw and throughout the empire.111 After years of distributing literature, organizing small-scale actions, and initiating protests, revolutionary leaders and activists were convinced that the violence that had erupted in the capital marked the imminent demise of the much-despised tsarist regime. However, before the Revolution of 1905 could be born, the events in St. Petersburg first had to be made relevant to Jewish workers and other potential supporters. As part of these efforts to lend meaning to the chaos, political materials repeatedly presented the events of January and the protests that followed as critical phases in the larger revolutionary struggle. In many cases, these interpretations were designed not only to validate specific protests but also to confirm the inevitable course of historical progress and to reaffirm a deeper faith in the course of events.

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Bundist fliers and brochures from January 1905 were filled with enthusiasm as they gave specific, redemptive meaning to the events of Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg and their implications for Jewish workers in Warsaw. A particularly ebullient flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee in January 1905 begins: to all warsaw workers! the bloody days have arrived! The flames and fires of the revolution have engulfed all of Russia. The storming of the autocracy’s fortresses has begun. . . . The proletariat’s battle-cry has made its roar in the streets of Baku, Odessa, Saratov, Ekaterinoslav, Moscow, Kharkov and more. This is the long-awaited rise of the revolution. The telegrams have brought news that in Petersburg, in the center of the regime’s bureaucracy, a true people’s uprising has broken out. Like a hero, the working masses have risen up, full of valor and enthusiasm, and have started a bloody, fierce war with the dark forces of Tsarism.

After placing the events in St. Petersburg and other locations into their proper political and teleological perspective, the flier turns to its Yiddish readers with the following appeal: Comrades! To arms! The workers of Warsaw must uphold the respect of the revolutionary flag! Long live the revolution! Long live socialism!112

These efforts to present the unrest in St. Petersburg within the appropriate linguistic, political, and teleological framework were the necessary first steps for replicating such actions in Warsaw. This gap between potentially random, uncontrolled displays of protest and the revolutionary parties’ efforts to lend meaning and direction to these events would characterize the Bund’s literature and activities throughout this period. Such attempts to impose intellectual order on the different events are only part of the story. Indeed, in order to facilitate the transition from revolutionary cells to popular political movements, the Bund and other parties also had to organize and lead prospective supporters in various controlled acts of political protest. This movement from the realm of rhetoric to that of action would prove exceptionally elusive for the Bund and other revolutionary organizations as they came up against a series of structural, legal, and linguistic barriers that repeatedly impeded their efforts to create a full-fledged cultural and political revolution in 1905.113

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The first attempt to organize a large-scale protest in Warsaw was the general strike supported by the Bund, the PPS, and the SDKPiL in late January 1905. Designed to show support for the unrest in St. Petersburg and to continue the revolutionary wave, the general strike in Warsaw demanded a large degree of preparation and direction. The occasional Bundist paper Di arbeter shtime relays an account of the events in Warsaw and the intricate level of planning needed to lead the strike.114 While events in St. Petersburg and other locations fueled popular expectations in Warsaw, few activists had any real experience in turning these expectations into directed political action. More workers than usual were coming to our birzhe. The mood was very revolutionary. Our organization decided to call on workers to come to the birzhe every day so that they could all hear the decisions. On Wednesday in the evening our proclamation (6,000 copies) was distributed among the workers; in this proclamation, we pointed out that the present struggle of the working-class against the regime was crucial and called on the masses to conduct an organized protest. The proclamation had a tremendous impact. Although the form and date of the protest were not yet decided, people were already speaking about a general strike. . . . By Wednesday it had become clear that the Jewish workingmasses were quite anxious, that it was impossible to wait any longer and that we had to determine immediately the form and type of protest. On Wednesday night, our organization announced a general strike.115

Despite this glowing account of popular unrest, the Bund and other parties faced a number of organizational and logistical obstacles when it came time to lead a popularly supported protest movement in Warsaw. Di arbeter shtime details how Bund activists went from workshop to workshop to encourage local workers to support the strike. While many in Warsaw were receptive to the Bund’s pleas, these and other sources show that organized revolutionary activity required a large degree of planning and involvement. Friday in the morning, organizational worker committees of five to ten men went to different workshops to announce the strike. In several of these sites they gave speeches. People pointed to the significance of the moment and in the name of the Bund called on them to leave their place of work. In all of the workshops, their calls led the workers to go out on strike.116

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Ultimately, the general strike in Warsaw was supported by all of the major revolutionary organizations.117 While the strike succeeded in disrupting life in Warsaw for several days, the intricate nature of interparty negotiations and the relatively poor level of coordination between the Bund and other groups quickly led to a significant degree of organizational confusion and disorder.118 This organizational disorder was exacerbated by confrontations with police and other government forces that resulted in somewhere between sixty-five and ninety-three casualties.119 As a result of organizational confusion and government crackdown, the strike ended after several days. Although experienced in the art of conspiratorial politics and political propaganda, revolutionary organizations in Warsaw had little practical experience in mobilizing and directing the type of large-scale demonstrations characteristic of modern politics. That said, the events did help the Bund heighten public awareness regarding the connection between the fate of workers in Warsaw and those in St.  Petersburg and other parts of the empire.120 Common battles, struggles, and enemies underscored a growing faith in a shared destiny among Jewish and non-Jewish workers as members of the burgeoning revolutionary movement and society. More importantly, the general strike in Warsaw soon became part of a series of revolutionary actions and developments that would help organizations define and forge a distinct revolutionary culture in Warsaw.121 Despite growing awareness of political concepts like class consciousness and solidarity, the sense of a local revolutionary struggle would often prove to be the most effective means of generating popular support in the former Polish capital. While Warsaw’s general strike of January received much initial support, the city’s revolutionary organizations were unable to maintain a continuous antigovernment front throughout the early months of 1905. Whether due to the strength of tsarist forces or a mixture of confusion and apathy among supporters, revolutionary activity in Warsaw remained uneven.122 Popular frustration helped fuel a series of smallscale strikes by bakers (which the Bund and the Anarchists competed to direct),123 brush makers, bookbinders, box makers, carpenters, shoe­ makers, printers, builders, and barbers.124 Despite these strikes, both larger parties like the Bund and the PPS and smaller organizations like Poale Zion and the Anarchists-Communists had much difficulty maintaining a continuous level of popular support and activity during early

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1905. Reflecting the sporadic level of revolutionary activity, a flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee in March 1905 boasts of the revolution’s progress in St. Petersburg, Dvinsk, and Białystok but includes only limited references to activity in Warsaw.125 Likewise, a partisan history designed to celebrate the Bund’s achievements lists relatively modest accomplishments by the party in early 1905 such as the organization of trade unions.126 In light of such limited examples of consistent and widespread revolutionary activity, many observers felt that the tsarist regime would ultimately be able to contain the unrest in Warsaw. Despite the erratic pace of revolutionary activity, the government’s optimism and the revolutionary parties’ insecurities changed dramatically in early April 1905 after the arrest, incarceration, and subsequent

Figure 6. Jewish water carriers, Warsaw, c. 1900. Source: Photo Collection, Archives Department, National Library of Israel, TM8 368. Reproduction Courtesy of Beit Hatfutsot Photo Archive, Tel Aviv.

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death of the Bund activist Yisrael Gravier (Graver, Gruwier, Grawier).127 The following quasi-realistic account of the protests surrounding ­Gravier’s death in Warsaw’s already infamous Pawiak Prison illustrates the extent to which local confrontations and revolutionary martyrs helped boost the revolutionary movement’s popularity and confidence. Another in a series of bloody events in the written history of the revolutionary proletariat in Warsaw. Sunday, the Second of April, five o’ clock in the evening. The streets near the Pawiak [Prison] were filled with workers. Karmelicka, Nowolipki, Dzielna, Pawiak, Dzika and Gęsia looked like a sea of heads. A mass of approximately thirty-thousand men, if not more, among them more than a few Christians. . . . This frighteningly great mass did not come here today and congregate to go to war; they all came in response to our organization’s call for all to come and pay their last respects to our comrade Yisrael Gravier who died last night in Pawiak. And oh how quickly the masses came together! In one hour’s time, all of the Jewish workshops and factories came to a halt.128

Although Gravier’s funeral procession, including revolutionary speeches and songs, began relatively peacefully, protesters clashed with gendarmes and police forces toward the end of the day in the heart of Warsaw’s Jewish neighborhood at the corner of Smocza and Gęsia streets. As a result of these clashes, three additional protesters, among them Eliezer Cohen and Zelig Hoberstein, were killed and another twenty were wounded. Later that week, two additional Jewish protesters, Bund activists Shloyme “Semion” Margolin and Fruma “Vera” Grabelskaya, would die from wounds that they suffered in confrontations with the tsarist authorities on Sunday, April 2, 1905. The initial protest, the confrontations, and the funeral processions for the three main Bundist martyrs (Gravier, Margolin, and Grabel­ skaya) would soon serve as key markers of the revolutionary movement’s growing strength and popularity in Warsaw.129 The following excerpt from the Bund flier cited above captures the optimism that permeated Jewish revolutionary circles in Warsaw as history and destiny seemed to be unfolding before everyone’s eyes. Sunday the Second and Wednesday the Fifth of April will be remembered forever in the history of the revolutionary proletariat in Warsaw;

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these will be sad days, these will be great days. Sad days because we have lost close comrades; great days because they have shown us how great the solidarity and revolutionary fervor among the proletariat are. We have seen that the Jewish proletariat is not alone on the battlefield; that the entire Warsaw proletariat, Jews and Christians, were in the army that fought against the autocracy. These days have made us more secure in our strength, firm in our hopes for the coming victory.130

Such spirited proclamations regarding large-scale protests, expressions of inter-ethnic solidarity, and confrontations were joined by a series of fliers, broadsheets, and other materials that memorialized those who fell in clashes with representatives of the regime.131 Much like armed conflicts with representatives of the regime, violent deaths in the service of the revolution would often prove to be excellent raw material for organizations in search of a new political narrative.132 While the glorification of those killed in protests and demonstrations was not unique to the Bund,133 the manner in which many activists were turned into revolutionary martyrs exemplifies the ways that the Bund used these and other events to forge a new revolutionary narrative, culture and community.134 The following citation from party literature dedicated to the memorialization of Fruma “Vera” Grabelskaya highlights the Bund’s own interpretation of the intimate connection between violence, martyrdom, and community.135 Among the victims, one of our best comrades, Fruma Grabelskaya, Vera, as the proletariat in Warsaw called her, who was killed. When two bullets struck our Vera; a female comrade who was standing there let out a cry. Vera stopped her and said: “Why are you already mourning for me? I have not died in vain.” She has not died in vain, she has fallen like a martyr in the battlefield! Her conscious years, as short as they were, she lived in battle. We have all seen you in the last year in Warsaw, the entire Warsaw Jewish proletariat knew you. When workers were in the streets, Vera was there, standing among them, standing and explaining to them their interests; showing them what to do. In every battle that we experienced in the last year Vera was one of the leading fighters. . . . We call on the Warsaw Jewish proletariat to mark the memory of the new victims with a one day general strike, Wednesday, April Fifth.136

This particular flier was accompanied by a series of proclamations and other materials in Polish and Yiddish commemorating Grabelskaya,

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Gravier, Margolin, and other activists as Bund leaders set out to create a new set of heroes and martyrs for Jews (and Poles) in Warsaw.137 As part of this concerted effort to forge a new political narrative, these materials repeatedly highlighted specific aspects of these martyrs’ biographies, including their relatively young ages, their working-class backgrounds, their long-standing commitment to the Bund, and the violent manner in which they died. Thus, legends of brave young Jews who died in the cause of revolution were quickly constructed and disseminated as definitive accounts of the events at hand.138 Indeed, while most of these materials include tales of wandering, working-class backgrounds, and organizational commitment, very little is actually said about the victims’ immediate families, hometowns, or early years. Even the names used are telling as both Grabelskaya and Margolin are referred to by their distinctly non-Jewish names “Vera” and “Semion” and not their Jewish names Fruma and Shloyme. Thus, personal biographies were tailored to suit the Bund’s interpretations of history and destiny as these and other Bund activists were, essentially, born again at the very moment at

Figure 7. Postcard memorializing Bund martyrs including Shloyme Margolin and Eliezer Cohen, victims of the demonstrations of April 1905. Source: Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

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which they joined the organization.139 Furthermore, unlike other Jewish in-migrants in Warsaw whose deaths on the very same streets left many of the city’s residents wondering about the fate of the individual in the modern world, the sacralization of Grabelskaya, Margolin, and others gave their deaths (and lives) a deeper, redemptive value. Moreover, through these and other acts of sacralization, the lives of hundreds of thousands of other Jewish urbanites who roamed the city’s streets were also given potential meaning. The following excerpts from fliers distributed in both Polish and Yiddish immediately after the confrontations and processions of early April 1905 highlight these attempts to create a new set of heroes for both Yiddish and Polish readers in Warsaw. Conscious of its own need to construct a new cultural canon, the Bund had found a set of new revolutionary martyrs and political tragedies that would validate its interpretation of history, community, and destiny. Yisrael Gravier, a tailor, died on the First of April in “Pawiak,” the jail in Warsaw. He was only eighteen years old and he had already sat in prison twice for political crimes. . . . Zelig Hoberstein, a butcher; twenty-years old, took part in the demonstration on the Second of April and fell on a soldier’s bayonet. . . . Fruma Grabelskaya, Vera. A twenty-four year-old tailor. For four years she worked for our organization in Berdichev and Warsaw. She was one of our most dedicated fighters and best comrades. She was in Warsaw for about a year and the entire proletariat, those who were under the influence of our organization, knew her. Whenever workers took to the streets, Vera was there, standing with them, standing up for their interests. . . . Shloyme Margolin, Semion; A twenty-two year-old intellectual who resided in Warsaw illegally. . . . For sixteen months he worked for our organization in Berdichev, Minsk, Lodz and Warsaw. He was a public speaker; The revolutionary spirit burned in his heart like a flame.140 On Wednesday, the Fifth of April, a victim of the demonstration on Sunday and our close friend Shloyme Margolin, Semion, as he was known in Warsaw, died in a hospital in Warsaw. . . . He was a leading fighter for the Jewish proletariat and he died like a hero on the battlefield. The Jewish proletariat will never forget their comrade and fellow combatant.141

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As with the general strike and the First of May, the deaths of ­Gravier, Grabelskaya, and others gave the Bund events and causes that it could use to transform reigning conceptions of community and identity. Moreover, popular responses to these deaths and to the party’s construction of local martyrs demonstrate that political form mattered just as much, if not more, than content. Thus, while the various underground organizations had repeated difficulty mobilizing support for economic and political issues, the same pool of supporters was particularly responsive to calls to commemorate the deaths of local activists. The public’s erratic responses to these and other pleas underscore the extent to which support for the Bund and other revolutionary parties was very often a voice of protest against the tsarist regime and not a conscious commitment to the Bund, its still somewhat unclear ideological program, or other forces of revolution.142 That said, these protests were certainly not without impact, and the revolutionary wave continued in Warsaw and throughout the empire over the second half of 1905. Soon after the confrontations in April 1905, the Bund’s efforts to mark the First of May proved incredibly successful. Years of revolutionary activity and a growing sense of confrontation proved infectious as factories, workshops, and other businesses in Warsaw closed for the day and no newspapers were distributed. Reflecting its growing position of strength in the city, the Bund conducted no less than seven different meetings in various synagogues across the city as the First of May coincided with the last day of Passover.143 While part of this success in Warsaw was certainly due to the growing revolutionary wave throughout the empire, the Bund’s own self-confidence continued to grow. While the events of April and early May led to an increased sense of enthusiasm and a growing level of confidence among Bund operatives, the organization’s influence among Jewish workers in Warsaw was far from ironclad. Few events underscore the gap between revolutionary visions and popular actions more than the Alfonse pogrom of May 1905. For several days in late May, Jewish workers and members of the Jewish underworld clashed in and around brothels and other public spaces throughout Warsaw.144 Although accounts differ over the exact origins and course of the violence, most renditions concur that bands of Jewish workers went from brothel to brothel for several days ran-

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sacking property and assaulting both prostitutes and pimps. In addition to assaults on houses of ill-repute and purveyors of “the human flesh,” clashes between Jewish workers and members of the Jewish underworld spread to other locations throughout the city. While reports regarding the number of casualties vary, the most reliable reports claim that over one hundred apartments were ransacked, five people were killed in the events themselves, another ten died from wounds they incurred during the mayhem, and over forty were hospitalized.145 Regardless of the accuracy of these and other figures, the violence itself and the ensuing public debates surrounding the events highlight the Bund’s efforts to wield cultural hegemony and discipline over the anger that continued to simmer in Warsaw.146 Hence, while the Bund was able to capitalize on the conflicts between government forces and workers in early April, it still lacked the infrastructure and influence necessary to exert ideological and organizational influence, if not discipline, over thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of potential supporters in the city. Little underscores the difficulties that the Bund had creating and directing a revolutionary movement more than the Alfonse pogrom and the party’s immediate responses to the violence. As part of its efforts to lend a politically redemptive interpretation to the events, the Warsaw Committee of the Bund portrayed the Alfonse pogrom as part of government designs to discredit the revolution. As with other interpretations of violence and anti-Jewish pogroms at the time, the regime was cast in the role of the mastermind and director of the affair.147 The following excerpt from a Bund flier distributed in Warsaw immediately after the Alfonse pogrom illustrates how the party attempted to lend narrative structure and political meaning to these manifestations of violence. In this and other cases, the Bund placed the blame for the developments on the tsarist regime and its reactionary allies, the Black Hundreds, local thieves, and “the wild youth.” To all Warsaw workers. The autocracy is in its last days. . . . It has organized the thieves and the wild youth and the Black Hundreds and sent them to beat Jews, intellectuals, revolutionaries. . . . Those who have not once given up on the word “order” have united with the biggest enemies of that order; [and] with their help they will drown the liberation movement in blood. . . . Horrible events have taken place in

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Warsaw in the last few days. The police have joined in arms with the thieves and the wild youth. . . . Thieves have descended upon workers; workers on thieves.148

While this initial account placed the blame for the violence on the regime and its supporters, it did not deny the involvement of at least some workers and even some Bund supporters in the violence. Thus, the flier noted that “thieves have descended upon workers; workers on thieves.” As part of this admission of partial responsibility, the flier continued with a stern reminder to potential supporters regarding the lines of community and belonging in Warsaw. Here, too, the party’s explanations reveal its own awareness (and perhaps fear) that at least some of its supporters had not yet internalized many of the party’s more basic principles. Pointing to an amorphous group of “underdeveloped workers” as those who were involved in the violence, the Bund was clearly concerned that the same anger and violence that it had successfully mobilized several weeks earlier did not represent a mature, conscious proletariat. Moreover, here and in other cases, the organization clearly feared that the frustration that fed Bund protests could easily be co-opted and channeled in other, less productive, if not destructive, directions. After a long, detailed explanation of why the tsarist regime, and not local prostitutes and pimps, was the real enemy of Jewish workers, the party reminded supporters of what really divided Warsaw’s residents. The regime, the capitalist order—these are our enemies; against them we have fought to this day; against them we ought to fight; against them we must fight, fight until we win. We are not afraid of the regime’s new tactic; they will not stop our movement. . . . Do not forget that the autocratic regime is our bloody enemy.149

Despite such vocal condemnations, the Bund’s early critique of those supporters who lacked a proper revolutionary consciousness soon changed. One clear expression of this shift was the June edition of the Geneva-based Bundist paper Di letste pasirungen that went to much greater lengths to distance both workers and the workers’ movement from the violence that threatened to stain the revolution. In this version, the tsarist regime and its agents were deemed solely responsible for the events in Warsaw. In fact, this rendition even accused the government and its allies of fabricating early newspaper accounts that had

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connected the Bund and its supporters to the Alfonse pogrom.150 Ignoring the fact that it, too, had placed at least part of the blame on some of its supporters, the lead article from Di letste pasirungen, which was entitled “The Counter-Revolution in Warsaw,” claimed that government officials had planned the violence as part of their efforts to delegitimize the revolution. The telegrams [in the press] have a somewhat official character; in some cases the Tsar’s regime had a hand in sending them and others came from the bourgeois Polish press that has energetically helped the Russian regime spread all sorts half-truths and misinformation about the Bund. All that is written in these telegrams about the role of the Bund in the organization of these bloody pogroms is nothing more than a concocted lie that people are using to disgrace the Jewish proletarian organization. The truth is that the assault on the houses of ill repute, which took place during the bloody conflicts between the workers and the “wild youths,” was organized by the Warsaw police, and is nothing more than an act of counter-revolution through which the regime would like to intimidate people throughout all of Russia. . . . The goal of the regime, which called for the pogrom against the urban underclass, is a clear one: to weaken the revolutionary spirit of the Jewish proletariat, to turn the force of this energy against the unlucky victims of the capitalist order, and, at the same time, to halt the growing strength of the Jewish worker’s movement in Warsaw by casting suspicions that the Jewish proletariat and their organization support the wild actions and murders that were carried out by several anonymous elements.151

More than anything else, the Bund’s responses to the Alfonse pogrom in the spring of 1905 highlight the revolutionary movement’s own “under­developed” relationship with its supporters as well as its anxieties regarding the potential redirection of revolutionary fervor. Thus, the Bund at first admitted the role played by some of its supporters and critiqued those workers who attacked Jewish prostitutes and members of the Jewish underworld. Later the Bund’s focus shifted to blaming the regime for organizing the violence and early reports of the events as part of its efforts to discredit the revolution. Only later would the Alfonse pogrom receive its third and definitive reading as righteous actions by socially conscious workers opposed to the activities of pimps (alfonsim) and other agents of moral decay.152

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Despite the Bund’s inability to control the actions of many of its supporters, the street violence of May 1905 did not spell the end of the party’s presence or influence. Support for the Bund and other revolutionary organizations continued to grow throughout the second half of 1905 as more and more people were drawn to the antiregime positions and confrontational policies advocated by socialist parties. Over the summer and fall of 1905, a wave of protest culminated in an empire-wide general strike in October 1905. In an attempt to undermine the growing support for the strike and the revolutionary movement, the government issued an official decree on October 17/30, 1905, known as the October Manifesto. Far-reaching for its place and time, the October Manifesto called for the creation of a representative body, the Duma, as well as the institution of other semidemocratic reforms including a relaxation of censorship laws and related restrictions regarding public assembly and political activity. The announcement of the October Manifesto set off a wave of celebrations and processions throughout the empire as both opponents of the regime and Romanov loyalists prepared themselves for a period of social and political upheaval.153 Throughout late October 1905, protesters flooded the streets, counterprotesters marched in support of the tsar, and government forces tried to maintain control of the crumbling empire. In over six hundred locations, these confrontations turned into anti-Jewish riots (pogroms) that left several hundred fatalities and thousands wounded.154 Like many other urban centers, Warsaw became the site of innumerable processions, protests, and clashes as well as growing fears of anti-Jewish violence. Commenting on the initial wave of protest in Warsaw, the ZionistSocialist Workers’ Party paper Der idisher proletariar expressed the hope shared by many that the October Manifesto and the ensuing protests marked the arrival of a new era. Looking out on the city’s streets, the paper’s mood was euphoric. “In the afternoon the streets of Warsaw were filled with inspired demonstrating masses. All of Warsaw, from the many different strata of the people came out in the streets, celebrating our victory, the first blow to the universally hated enemy.”155 While protests in January 1905 demanded a significant amount of planning on the part of various revolutionary organizations in Warsaw, the public needed little prompting in October 1905 as the city’s streets were quickly filled with tens of thousands of protesters, supporters, and by-

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standers. Der idisher proletariar continued its spirited rendition of the events in the city. One part of our masses demonstrated at Graniczna, Królewska, Marszal­kowska; Thousands of people followed our red flags. Our comrades spoke to the masses many times; off of Nalewki, tens of thousands of people gathered and one of our comrades spoke. The rest of our comrades took part in the great revolutionary process that went from Leszno to Bielańska to Nowy Świat to Jerozolimska to Marszalkowska. On many occasions, our comrades spoke to the crowd of fifty-thousand people in Polish. . . . Near Jerozolimska Avenue . . . our spokesman stopped the entire process with a short speech in Polish in which he noted the memory of our tortured comrades. Upon the call of the speaker, “Long live the revolution, respect the memory of the fallen martyrs!” a cry of “hurrah” from tens of thousands of voices thundered through the air.156

Revolutionary activity had reached new heights as Jewish activists and organizations helped lead Jews and non-Jews through different parts of the city and protesters filled the city’s streets. For many, the

Figure 8. Simon’s Passage at the corner of Długa and Nalewki streets, Warsaw. Source: Joseph and Margit Hoffman Judaica Postcard Collection, Folklore Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, hof3-0160.

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cooperation between Jewish and Polish protesters and organizations seemed to confirm the imminent arrival of a new, much-anticipated era, one marked by solidarity between Poles, Jews, and other residents of the multinational empire of the tsars.157 Indeed, sources and memoirs are filled with anecdotes such as the one above in which Jews and Jewish revolutionary groups not only took part in larger protests but were often welcomed as leaders, though based upon the unspoken condition that they addressed crowds in Polish. These initial displays of support for the revolutionary cause did not, however, guarantee the results that Bund leaders and representatives of other organizations had hoped and, in some cases, died for. If anything, the need to turn to large, inter-ethnic crowds underscores one of the central obstacles that would repeatedly hinder efforts by the Bund and other Jewish organizations to lead and direct widespread political movements, the question of language. More than any other factor, the question of language—Polish, Russian, or Yiddish— impeded the activities and goals of both Jewish revolutionary organizations and their Polish contemporaries as they attempted to guide tens of thousands of protesters through the streets of Warsaw. Thus, while political material was distributed and read in several different languages, only one language would prove capable of uniting and organizing various sectors of Warsaw’s diverse population in large public rallies. Indeed, any appeal to the public demanded not only common concepts, phrases, and ideals but also, perhaps more importantly, a common language that would unite disparate individuals into a coherent political community. In Warsaw that language was to be Polish.158 Thus, while the tsarist regime and its representatives were often unable to contain public protests and marches in Warsaw, the question of language repeatedly hindered the ability of the Bund and other Jewish parties to transform these displays of discontent into a cohesive, popular revolutionary movement composed of Jewish and Polish supporters. Ultimately, the same structural and linguistic need to organize largescale public rallies in Polish actually facilitated the popularity of Polish patriotic organizations such as the National Democratic Party (ND, Endeks). Thus, government reports from October 1905 describe not only a large degree of social and political turmoil but also the growing prominence of Polish patriotic demonstrations. As the Bund and other

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organizations feared, the same anger that led many urban residents into the streets was oftentimes rechanneled in the direction of the Polish national movement. In many cases, the antiregime aspects of the revolutionary organizations’ fervor was quickly supplemented by patriotic language and national sentiments. While revolutionary organizations (both Polish and Jewish) were able to inspire widespread demonstrations, they were not always capable of organizing, let alone directing or controlling, the many protesters that filled the city’s streets. A police report from immediately after the announcement of the October Manifesto notes the confusion that characterized these protests as both revolutionary and patriotic symbols were displayed in the same procession: “Today in the morning there was a demonstration with Polish national flags, banners, red flags and flowers that went down Marszalkowska Street past the Mickiewicz Monument and on to the Theater Square.”159 Later that same day, another demonstration led by revolutionary groups was transformed into a show of force for Polish national organizations. Again, government sources note: “The vast majority of those in the procession were nationalists with Polish patriotic flags in the accompaniment of priests. Approximately 30,000 people took part in this procession down Nowy Świat to Ujazdowski Avenue. Many representatives of the intelligentsia were part of the procession.”160 The popularity and size of Polish patriotic processions grew quickly as the National Democrats proved to be the organization most capable of capitalizing on the unrest that filled Warsaw’s streets. A steady flow of government reports charts the National Democrats’ dramatic rise in late October 1905. Here, too, the relative ease with which revolutionary unrest spilled over into patriotic demonstrations highlights the extent to which public support for various political organizations very often represented antiregime sentiment and not deep ideological commitment to new revolutionary ideals. Despite the years of revolutionary propaganda, political ideas, loyalty, and belonging remained exceptionally fluid, open, and, at times, confused in times of widespread upheaval. On the 22 and 23 of October . . . there were several large demonstrations on the part of the nationalists that had the permission of the Police Minister. In the course of these demonstrations songs such as

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“Boże cós Polskę ” and “Z dymem póranów” [sic] (songs with revolutionary content) were sung, and flags were carried with drawings of the Polish Eagle and different national slogans such as: “Long live a free and independent Poland,” “Long live Poland”. . . . In the largest national demonstration (National Democrats) there were more than a hundred-thousand participants. During the demonstration, proclamations were distributed regarding the need to continue the struggle for the rebirth of Poland.161

The ascendance of the National Democrats and their ability to lead popular unrest were significant on several levels. First of all, with the tacit support of the tsarist authorities—who feared the revolutionary forces far more than Polish national organizations—the National Democrats were able (with “the permission of the Police Minister”) to conduct rallies of tens of thousands and, at times, “more than a hundredthousand participants.”162 These demonstrations directly undermined attempts by the revolutionary parties to create popular political movements that crossed ethno-linguistic lines and also subverted their spirited claims to political legitimacy. Acutely aware of this threat, members of “the Jewish-Bund” confronted protesters in one of the patriotic processions in Warsaw with sticks and shouts of “Down with nationalism.”163 Despite these and other street clashes, the rise of the National Democrats would serve as a harbinger of the divisions that would soon redefine life for many of Warsaw’s residents in late 1905 and early 1906. In this and other cases, ethno-linguistic communities—and not those based on interethnic cooperation if not amalgamation—would repeatedly prove to be the most successful framework for organizing popular political parties, movements, and polities.164 Nor were the tsarist authorities and revolutionary organizations the only ones who anxiously observed the growing popularity of the Polish national camp and its influence on the nature and direction of politics and society in Warsaw. As Warsaw—a city whose definition, character, and streets remained undecided and open to a variety of interpretations, definitions, and masters—passed from tsarist to revolutionary to national hands, many feared what this period of transition and disorder might mean for the city’s Jewish residents.165 Police reports, newspaper articles, and memoir literature all capture an acute sense of fear that the widespread disorder and the rise of the National Democrats

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instilled in many of Warsaw’s residents, Jewish and other, in the fall of 1905. While these rumors and fears were very often responses to the pogroms that struck Jewish communities in Odessa, Kiev, and other locations in the Russian Empire’s southwestern provinces, large demonstrations led by the National Democrats did little to calm the atmosphere in Warsaw.166 Thus, one government report from late October 1905 notes: “In the Jewish districts there are repeated rumors regarding preparations for pogroms against the Jewish population.”167 Several days later, another internal government document relays that “on the evening of October 30, the Jewish population of Ostrowska, Miła and Wołyńska streets was stricken with a sense of distress, youth were yelling that hooligans were coming to beat the Jews.”168 Ultimately, the sudden popularity of the National Democratic camp, the long shadow of pogroms in other provinces, and the fear of anti-­Jewish violence in Warsaw would lend a critical blow to the revolutionary movement. Indeed, not only would many Jews begin to think twice about participating in protests organized by revolutionary parties, but many others became disillusioned with earlier calls for Polish-Jewish cooperation and solidarity. While the revolutionary movement had reached surprising new heights in late 1905, it was not clear whether or not it would continue and, if so, in which direction.

A Revolutionary Postscript: A City without Flâneurs Warsaw’s parks, Łazienki, and the Botanic Gardens were completely ­silent as the gates were closed, and they were guarded by police patrols. Ujazdowski Park was open, but all those who wanted to enter had to show documents. People who walked down Ujazdowski Avenue also had their documents checked. Saxony Garden was closed to young people, and in the evening it was only open to those with tickets to the Summer Theater. The documents of all those who went over the bridge to Praga were also checked.169

While October 1905 may have witnessed the announcement of semidemocratic reforms and the dramatic rise of the National Democrats, revolutionary groups in Warsaw were far from convinced that the antigovernment tide had run its course. Despite such hopes, con-

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tinued revolutionary activity was repeatedly hindered by concerted government actions, including the implementation of martial law in the Polish provinces in late 1905 and ongoing government efforts to reassert control over the city and restore authority throughout the region.170 Hence, over the course of late 1905, 1906, and into 1907, government forces were able to slowly, if albeit erratically, reaffirm their control over the streets and other public spaces in Warsaw through a series of government raids and arrests designed to repress revolutionary organizations and actions. In time, these and other efforts bore fruit. Reflecting these trends, a late 1906 edition of the Hebrew daily Ha-yom noted “the number of people arrested in our city by the police since the beginning of the year till today stands at 8,500 people.”171 Moreover, even if the government was not able to identify and arrest all supporters of the revolutionary movement, consistent police actions helped tip the precarious balance of power on the streets of Warsaw as revolutionaries and activists were forced to return to their former lives underground. Although severely battered, the tsarist apparatus was ultimately able to withstand the challenge to its authority in Warsaw and other centers. As part of its efforts to reassert control over the city, its public spaces, and its residents, Warsaw’s governor-general announced a series of new curfews in the summer of 1906, which included the closing of building gates at 7 p.m., restaurants from 8 p.m. till midnight, coffee shops with alcoholic beverages at 10 p.m., and shows in private theaters and gardens at 10 p.m.172 This was only part of a number of steps undertaken by authorities to stem the revolutionary tide. The following newspaper items from the fall of 1906 further illustrate the atmosphere in Warsaw as authorities set out on a series of government raids designed to reassert control over public spaces and curtail political activity throughout the city’s many neighborhoods. Friday in Warsaw: On Friday at three in the afternoon, the police started going around from gate to gate and from store to store demanding that everything be closed. . . . The city was filled with panic.173 Yesterday afternoon, the police and the army blocked off the following streets: Franciszkańska, Nowiniarska, Bonifraterska, and others. A thorough check of all of the houses on these streets was made and

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those who could not produce a proper identity card or declare a profession were arrested.174

As a result of government efforts, various revolutionary organizations were forced throughout late 1906 and 1907 to retreat from the public realm and to operate again on the city’s margins. As part of this changing tide, the PPS, the SDKPiL, and the Bund remained dedicated to small-scale activities like organizing labor unions and initiating ­local strike actions. These actions included the organization of garment workers in the spring of 1906, a strike by male and female hairdressers in the summer of 1906, and a work stoppage by Jewish bakers immediately following Passover in the spring of 1907.175 Other groups like the Bund’s Fighting Organization in Warsaw also continued their activities including the disruption of local meetings of electoral caucuses and the continuation of other antigovernment activities.176 More often than not, however, ongoing government repression forced revolutionary organizations in Warsaw to return to underground political activity. Reflecting this transition back to the world of conspiratorial politics, the Polish Socialist Party-Proletariat held a Sunday afternoon political meeting in the Palencia Forest in the summer of 1906.177 In time, the return to underground politics led to parallel turns to more violent activities. Still illegal and very much on the run, many groups were unable to take part in large-scale protests and processions that defined the period. As a result, various organizations and parties responded to government repression in late 1905 and throughout 1906 by returning to more covert, violent actions. As part of their protest regarding the conditions of Jewish workers in local bakeries, the Anarchist-Communist Group “International” placed sticks of dynamite in traditional Jewish dishes of chulent that awaited professional baking.178 Other revolutionary parties turned to expropriations in order to raise funds for weapons and other activities. Reflecting this trend, Nahum Nir-Rafalkes recalls how members of the local Poale Zion organization in Warsaw decided to rob the train station in the nearby town of Otwock.179 These smaller, sporadic, oftentimes violent actions were not only successful but helped maintain the morale of more dedicated revolutionaries. Indeed, even those who had been arrested and imprisoned remained committed to the cause of revolution. Thus,

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prisoners in Warsaw’s Pawiak Prison demonstrated their support for the revolutionary cause in the summer of 1906. “Last night at 7 p.m. the internees in Pawiak hung two red banners and sang revolutionary songs. The administrators from the jail arrived quickly and silenced the singers.”180 While periodically successful, many of these actions had the unintended effect of further linking revolutionary organizations with the larger wave of violence and chaos that continued to threaten the reigning social order in Warsaw. Although part of this association of revolutionary organizations with violence was due to the successful efforts by proregime forces to delegitimize these groups, the wave of expropriations and ongoing acts of political violence in 1906 and 1907 dissuaded many of the city’s residents from supporting these groups and their confrontational policies.181 Moreover, in many cases Jewish residents of Warsaw were far less concerned with the exact causes of such violence than they were with their personal safety in these times of turmoil. The following report from a June 1906 edition of the Yiddish daily Idishes tageblat reflects the anxieties and fears that characterized Warsaw at the time. “Last night at 7 p.m. people on Ostrowska Street started saying that there was a pogrom happening downtown. This led to a huge commotion and a panic-driven stampede. The soldiers, who were stationed off of Nowa Karmelicka started to shoot and killed a young Jew, a floor maker, who was struck in the head by a bullet that hit him in the brain. Another Jew and a Christian were also gravely wounded.”182 Thus, while periodic actions may have boosted local organizations’ profile and morale, their perceived commitment to antigovernment activity did little to garner the type of large-scale popular support that they had hoped for. In times of pervasive uncertainty, more and more people (Jews and others) gravitated toward organizations that offered a new sense of social and political order and not those that called for antigovernment actions and confrontations. Moreover, strategies of small-scale political organization and violent action would become more and more ineffective as the political realm underwent a series of structural changes in late 1905 and early 1906. With the October Manifesto’s partial legalization of daily papers, cultural endeavors, and political activity, those parties that remained illegal were at a distinct disadvantage. Under the new political order, liberal

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and national organizations were soon able, albeit within the restrictions of martial law in the Polish provinces, to assemble publicly, distribute political literature, and organize large-scale actions. Lastly, as I discuss in the following three chapters, the changing nature of political engagement led to another development that contributed immeasurably to the crisis of revolutionary activity: the rise of the ethno-linguistic divides and communities and the increasing centrality of antisemitic rhetoric in the Polish political sphere. The changing nature of political organization and the accompanying ascendancy of the National Democrats highlight one additional problem that would haunt Jews and Jewish revolutionary parties for generations: the question of language. The inability of many revolutionary parties to come to clear decisions regarding the actual language that would be used to disseminate revolutionary ideals and organize a revolutionary public severely impeded their efforts to create larger communities of supporters and, ultimately, to turn these communities into modern political movements. The question of language was particularly divisive at this time as much of the material distributed by non-Jewish revolutionary parties remained inaccessible to those Jews who preferred material in Yiddish, and many of the Jewish parties had difficulty reaching out to those non-Jews who were certainly not at home in Yiddish. Unable to operate effectively in the public realm and torn between language and ethnicity, Jewish revolutionary movements were repeatedly unable to create and organize the mass-based body of supporters for which they had so hoped and worked. While years of propaganda in Yiddish, Russian, and Polish may have succeeded in creating an avantgarde of several hundred activists and a core of perhaps a few thousand supporters, the vast majority of Warsaw’s Jewish residents were not yet converted to the new series of cultural, intellectual, and political transformations of language, time, and community. Thus, despite their periodic successes, the events of late 1905 show how far revolutionary parties in Warsaw really were from creating modern political organizations that commanded widespread popular support.183 While a specific revolutionary subculture thrived underground, Jewish revolutionary organizations were repeatedly unable to direct and organize the tens of thousands of protesters that periodically filled Warsaw’s streets. In fact, in many cases the initial excitement that these and

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other parties helped generate was quickly co-opted by Polish patriotic organizations. However, before these and other political forces could dominate the city’s public sphere, the entire region would first have to experience a series of institutional, cultural, and political reforms that would irrevocably alter the nature of collective organization, thinking, and action in eastern Europe.

Fo u r  The Rise of the Jewish Public Sphere Coffeehouses, Theaters, and Newspapers

Introduction While the previous chapter analyzed the nature and allure of revolutionary politics among Jews, this chapter will focus on the impact that the development of a specifically Jewish public sphere had on the form, content, and style of Jewish culture and politics in Warsaw. As various government bans on publications and public assembly were either lifted or overlooked throughout late 1905 and early 1906, a new genre of cultural activity, collective organization, and political action arose in Warsaw and other cities throughout the Russian Empire. In many cases, this new style of culture and politics was inextricably tied to, and shaped by, several key institutions that helped create a distinctly Jewish public sphere. Foremost among these institutions were relatively new public forums like coffeehouses, theaters, and newspapers. Although the Jewish public sphere included other entities, these three bodies helped create the institutional frameworks necessary for bringing Jewish politics out of backrooms and secret cells and into the public realm of open meetings, political debates, and democratic experiments. In time, this reconstructed Jewish public sphere would serve as the foundation for both a new type of community and a new style of politics among Jews in the city. Material in this chapter appeared in “Urban Society, Popular Culture, Participatory Politics: On the Culture of Modern Jewish Politics,” in Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry, ed. Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, and Stefani Hoffman (Oxford, UK, and Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 151–165.

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One crucial aspect of many of the new institutions that helped create the Jewish public sphere was their turn to the local Jewish vernacular, Yiddish. This dependence upon the Jewish vernacular contributed directly to the solidification of a socio-political community based on an ethno-linguistic plane and not, for example, on a class or regional axis. At their core, both Yiddish theater and the Yiddish press were business ventures that relied upon the distribution and sale of specific cultural products for continued, institutional survival. Ultimately, this basic economic need for the continued sale of theater tickets and newspapers helped reinforce specific lines of culture and community. Although the need to sell the largest number of tickets and news­ papers was not the only factor driving these cultural institutions and accompanying changes, it was a central one that intimately bound language, culture, and community in the age of mass society. Thus, while the politics of revolution promoted solidarity among members of different ethnic groups, the politics of popular culture and collective assembly as they were reconstructed and redefined by the theater and the press depended upon and fortified very different lines of belonging. Ultimately, the construction of particular types of modern political communities in turn-of-the-century Warsaw should be seen as the result of the central role played by the institutions that helped create the Jewish public sphere. As in the case of revolutionary politics, the very form of Jewish politics would help determine the content of Jewish politics.

The Jewish Public Sphere In his critical study on the development of the bourgeois public sphere, Jürgen Habermas describes the body as a neutral space in which private individuals meet to debate collective affairs in a rational manner. Once constructed, this space serves not only as the meeting point for individuals but also allows them to “come together as a public” in opposition to the regime. In this and other ways, the public sphere also helps crystallize a public’s sense of community. For Habermas, the bourgeois public sphere serves as both the marketplace of ideas and one of the formative experiences of modern political communities. Moreover, this

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is the very forum that ensures the construction of a rational, democratic political community. The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: the people’s public use of their reason.1

In many senses, Habermas’s theory reflects developments taking place among Jews in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. Thus, throughout his historically oriented study, Habermas points to coffeehouses, theater, and newspapers as the key institutions that helped construct the bourgeois public sphere.2 According to Habermas, coffeehouses were quintessentially open, public spaces. Unlike social clubs, voluntary associations, and other charitable organizations, the coffeehouse helped ensure that, “however exclusive the public might be in any given instance, it could never close itself off entirely and become consolidated as a clique; for it always understood and found itself immersed within a more inclusive public of all private people, persons who—insofar as they were propertied and educated—as readers, listeners, and spectators could avail themselves via the market of the objects that were subject to discussion.”3 In addition to the coffeehouse, the theater is another central component of the public sphere. Returning to the theme of access, Habermas maintains that this particular institution became especially important when formerly limited or restricted theaters “became ‘public.’” 4 Lastly, the press, which Habermas refers to as “the public sphere’s preeminent institution,” plays a pivotal role in the construction of “the bourgeois public sphere” by creating forums for open political debate.5 Thus, while other institutions certainly contributed to the transformation of the public sphere, these three—the coffeehouse, the theater, and the press—established the spaces and practices necessary for the creation of open, public forums in which individuals could assemble and debate as part of a cohesive political community. Furthermore, once established, this forum would serve not only as the center for politi-

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cal debate and a place where “private people come together as a public” but also as the basis for opposition “against the public authorities themselves.”6 Nor is Habermas alone in pointing to the transformative effect that the press, increased literacy, and public debate have on concepts of community and the nature of the modern body politic. For Benedict Anderson, the advent of the printed word is a critical and necessary factor leading to the construction of “the imagined community.”7 While this community is not imaginary, it is imagined in the sense that individuals must envision what they have in common with other co-nationals.8 As Anderson notes: “It [the nation] is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”9 Elie Kedourie similarly points to literacy, the press, and the rise of the vernacular as critical and necessary factors that help facilitate the serialization of the concept of collective selfdetermination and, in doing so, lay the groundwork for the emergence of nationalism.10 And, a generation later, Partha Chatterjee concurred that: “It was principally in this public sphere where through the medium of print-capitalism, the homogenized forms of national culture were forged—through the standardization of language, aesthetic norms and consumer tastes.”11 This chapter will use these and related theories regarding the construction of modern political communities as a framework for discussing the development and impact of a specifically Jewish public sphere in Warsaw. More specifically, I will use ideas raised by Habermas, Anderson, Kedourie, Chatterjee, and others to illustrate how the construction of a bourgeois public sphere in Warsaw laid the foundations for the creation of a national public sphere in Warsaw. Throughout this chapter I will ask: Whether or not the new cultural institutions that arose in early-twentieth-century Warsaw led to the construction of a specifically Jewish public sphere? As a continuation of this question, I will also discuss how this new public sphere influenced the nature of Jewish politics, community, and self. As in the previous chapter, my theoretical and methodological emphasis will be on the structures and institutions that helped reformulate Jewish concepts of community. Although these forums were certainly created and administered by indi-

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viduals, the institutions themselves played key roles in determining the types of communities that were feasible at this time. Thus, while I am not arguing for historical, institutional, or national determinism, I do maintain that individuals and collectives are influenced, shaped, and bound by the institutions, culture, and societies that they take part in and help create. Discussions regarding the public sphere and its role in Jewish society have not gone unnoticed. Indeed, issues of both the journal Jewish History and the Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook have both been dedicated to questions regarding Jews and the public sphere.12 Other studies such as Eli Lederhendler’s analysis of the metamorphosis of Jewish politics and Jeffrey Veidlinger’s discussion of Jewish voluntary associations also make extensive use of Habermas’s concept of the public sphere.13 That said, the developments that these studies discuss remained inherently limited. Thus, while Lederhendler sheds much light on the politics of Russian maskilim, his study concentrates on a relatively limited circle of maskilic thinkers and activists. Indeed, even at their height, the journals that Lederhendler surveys served no more than several thousand readers out of a Jewish population in eastern Europe of some five million men, women, and children. 14 Hence, while one might be able to speak of Hebrew literary circles connected through highbrow journals geared toward educated, predominantly male, Hebrew readers, this society of Hebrew letters lacked the widespread appeal characteristic of mass-based institutions such as the public theater or the Yiddish daily press.15 Veidlinger’s analysis of Jewish voluntary organizations also focuses on associations whose size, scope, and membership remained restricted. This was especially true before legal changes in 1906 gave individuals the right to create independent educational, cultural, and social societies that could be separate from existing religious institutions.16 Thus, government policies often succeeded in their goal of preventing these organizations from becoming mass-based, popularly supported movements. Hence, while the maskilic and volunteer organizations detailed by Lederhendler and Veidlinger would often claim to speak for the people, these institutions were structurally unable to embrace a wider portion of “the people” into their inherently limited organizations.17 Ultimately, size and numbers did matter as a quantitative difference in the number of readers

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and participants in a particular cultural institution or project would ultimately produce a qualitative difference in the form and subsequent content of the Jewish public sphere, the type of Jewish community that it enabled, and the style of Jewish politics that it facilitated. Furthermore, many of the key cultural institutions that helped create the Jewish public sphere were all established before legal changes engendered a wave of voluntary organizations throughout the Russian Empire.18 As a result, the very experience of social and political organization and activity among Jews in Warsaw and other centers actually passed directly from intimate circles to large-scale parties and movements. This particular transition is critical because the key public-sphere institutions—in particular the theater, the newspaper, and popular politics— also demanded a critical transformation in the relationship between the individual and the collective, one that was radically different than the role played by participants in smaller organizations. This great Jewish leap forward from small circles of intellectuals to large-scale political movements that were structurally able and ideologically committed to binding complete strangers within the framework of a cohesive political community will guide both this and the following chapter.

“Out of the Ghetto” and into “the Jewish Street”: Coffeehouses, Theaters, Newspapers, and the Construction of the Jewish Public Sphere Although the sudden popularity of the Yiddish theater and the growth of the Jewish press were phenomena particular to the period surrounding the Revolution of 1905, coffeehouses, lunch buffets, and other public dining establishments were not completely new to Warsaw’s urban landscape.19 As I have discussed in the previous chapter, their growth and presence at the turn of the century were already viewed by many as a threat to the state of public order in the city. This tension underscores the extent to which these institutions were widely seen as sources of potential power. Press accounts, memoir literature, and police reports are replete with examples regarding the impact that cafes and similar dining establishments had on the nature of both Jewish and non-Jewish societies in turn-of-the-century Warsaw.20

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The following item from a 1904 issue of Ha-tsofe encapsulates the sudden and surprising appearance of cafes in Warsaw and their influence on life in the city.21 The number of cafes in our town has grown at an alarming rate of late and some of these institutions are even open on the Sabbath. The reason for this phenomenon is the growing number of solitary and lonely people [aneshim bodedim] living in our city without their families. These people have much difficulty finding a place where they can go on the Sabbath.22

Figure 9. H. Fridman’s Café, Warsaw, 1910. Source: Courtesy of the Beit Hatfutsot Photo Archive, Tel Aviv.

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Like Ha-tsofe, the journalist and folklorist A. Litvin (Shmuel Leyb Hurvits) also notes the extent to which cafes and other informal institutions served as unofficial meeting points for many Jewish residents in Warsaw, in particular for new arrivals who felt shunned by more veteran residents and their established communal institutions. Speaking of Yeḥezkel Kotik’s cafe, Litvin comments: “Among the Polish Jews, no communal organization existed that would help the Litvakes, not even philanthropic organizations.”23 In the period of mass migration and widespread social upheaval, informal public institutions such as coffeehouses and lunch buffets often filled critical roles previously undertaken by more established communal institutions.24 Like many other aspects of Warsaw’s changing cityscape, the nature, definition, and control of cafes and other new public spaces were hotly contested issues. Newspaper accounts regarding the connection between these new spaces and violent clashes highlight the extent to which such seemingly innocuous meeting points often served as lightning rods for competition and conflict between different groups. 25 Thus, Avrom Teytlboym recalls that “restaurants and cafes were, in general, known as places which were predestined for trouble, places which attracted all sorts of people and tactics.”26 Litvin similarly notes the rowdy side of such institutions in his colorful description of Warsaw’s underworld. According to him, (Jewish) pimps in Warsaw liked “the good life” including “restaurants (they hated parve and dairy restaurants), pool halls, and card clubs.”27 More than anything else, the periodic clashes over the control of these new public spaces underscore the extent to which the character and fate of many of these spaces and the city that they would soon redefine remained unclear. Another example of how cafes and other public institutions served as sites for larger competitions for control over the city was the street violence and assaults on Jewish prostitutes, pimps, and brothels that erupted as part of the Alfonse pogrom of May 1905. According to different sources, violent clashes took place in and around different public institutions in Warsaw including a wedding hall in Eizerman’s Courtyard, a teahouse frequented by Jewish workers on Krochmalna Street, a coffee shop at the corner of Sienna and Zielna streets, and various houses of ill repute (which were known as “public houses” in Polish, Russian, and Yiddish) that were probably frequented by both Jewish

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workers and members of the Jewish underworld.28 In many cases, it was the public nature of these institutions that attracted the attention and anger of Jewish workers. Like many other Jewish urbanites, they, too, were intent on claiming and defining the city’s public spaces, the Jews that would fill these spaces, and the type of Jewish community that they would eventually create. Thus, as Jewish community and society moved out of closed spaces and building courtyards and into more public arenas like coffeehouses, many of Warsaw’s residents, new political organizations, and tsarist authorities were acutely aware of the presence of these new, informal public spaces and their potential to change the face of Jewish urban society. In the eyes of many observers, the control of these and other public institutions would prove critical to their efforts to redefine, reconstruct, and redeem the city, its streets, and its residents. In addition to these accounts of street clashes over the definition of these new spaces, various memoirs written by political activists and cultural figures note the central role that cafes and other ostensibly apolitical public institutions played in the reconstruction of Jewish society and culture. Figures as diverse as the bourgeois klal-tuer (communal activist) Yeḥezkel Kotik, the legendary Poale Zion figure Yitzhak Tabenkin, and the journalist-actor Avrom Teytlboym all cite the central role that coffeehouses played in creating public spaces in which young Jews could meet, discuss, and act. Again, what was so striking and novel about these instances was not that young Jews congregated but where they congregated. As opposed to meeting on the benches of the ­yeshiva, beit midrash, or other, more traditional Jewish communal institutions, these young Jews—many of whom were among the city’s new Jewish residents—met in spaces that were inherently inclusive, distinctly secular, and, most importantly, decidedly public. Moreover, as in many other cases, larger social and cultural transformations were not preplanned actions but, rather, the spontaneous result of the city’s rapid growth as well as parallel changes in government regulations regarding public assembly. Kotik, who is probably best known for his two-volume memoir of pre–World War I Jewish life, was no stranger to the nexus between cafes and politics.29 His memoirs and other sources repeatedly note the central role that his own café at 31 Nalewki Street played as a meeting point for new arrivals, cultural figures, political activists, and many

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other Jewish urbanites who seemed to roam the streets of Warsaw.30 Thus, ­Litvin notes “the important role which both of them, Kotik and his café, played in the cultural life of the Jewish people in Warsaw.”31 Similar to coffeehouses in central and western Europe, newspapers and discussions surrounding literary journals were essential parts of the atmosphere in Kotik’s café. This synthesis underscores the extent to which different parts of the Jewish public sphere were intertwined.32 Moreover, true to the bourgeois nature of the public sphere and ­Kotik’s own politics of self-improvement, brochures outlining many of the charitable organizations that he helped found were distributed by the owner in the café.33 While Kotik’s skills as a community activist should not be underestimated, the coffeehouse on Nalewki Street gave him an actual, physical center that he could use to disseminate materials, organize communal projects, and recruit supporters. The following citations from the memoirs of the publisher Shlomo Shreberk illustrate the degree to which Kotik’s café created a new type of public space in which newspapers, culture, and politics fed off of one another and together transformed the nature of social and cultural life for many Jewish residents in Warsaw. One could always meet the Yiddish writers at a certain café on Nalewki Street. It was a rather inexpensive establishment, and for twenty kopeks one could eat lunch for a week. Most of the patrons were, for the most part, lower class businessmen: traders, office clerks and, once in a while, a teacher. One could even find the paper Ha-tsefira on the table and to the best of my knowledge this was the only restaurant in which one could find the paper. People would sit there for hours and hours, they would read the paper, get to know one another, and converse. Sometimes they would do all three at the same time; even people who met for the first time in their lives in the café. . . . They would speak about new literary works by writers, recent newspaper articles and the lives of the writers themselves such as Frishman, Nahum Sokolow, Peretz, [and] on “Zionism,” local matters and general affairs among the Jewish people. All of these were daily topics.34 Kotik’s café became the home of Warsaw’s Jewish writers. All of the worker activists would also come there. One could meet the Bund leaders Beinush Mikhalevitch and Alter Erlich. H. D. Nomberg and Avrom Reyzen were also regular guests even though Kotik had Zionist

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tendencies. In Kotik’s café people would read new stories and poems before they were published. . . . I remember the first time I was in the café, the owner handed me a small brochure in Yiddish entitled, “Ten Commandments for the Daughters of Zion.” After he saw that I knew Hebrew he gave me the same brochure in Hebrew. To more radical patrons, he would give “The Proletarian Calendar, 1907–1908,” which he edited as well as the brochure, “The Jewish Deputy.”35

Nor was Shreberk alone in noting the centrality of Kotik’s café. Reyzen also emphasizes the café’s critical role as well as its inclusive, nonideological nature. “Kotik’s café was a mixture of all sorts of people: Zionists, Bundists, ‘Iskra-ites,’ PPS’ers, and even non-party members.”36 According to these and other accounts, Kotik’s coffeehouse was the quintessential public-sphere institution, one in which politics, culture, and urban society mixed freely in a time of political innocence. During the early days of modern Jewish politics, institutions like Kotik’s café thrived as curiosity and common interest, not ideological differences and demands for party loyalty, determined the nature of Jewish society and community.37 The growing importance of coffeehouses and other public institutions in Warsaw was not, by any means, limited to members of the Jewish community. Another example of the centrality of cafes in Warsaw can be found in the following excerpt from the Polish literary weekly Tygodnik Ilustrowany regarding activity surrounding the elections to the First Duma in the spring of 1906. Reflecting the many social and political developments common to both Poles and Jews, the leading cultural journal reports: “Due to the lack of political clubs in Warsaw, pastry shops and coffee houses have an especially important place in the capital. During the heated period of the local elections, these institutions became barometers of the times. The coffee shops were crowded and loud and, above all, restless and nervous.”38 In other cases, this nexus between cafes and politics was far less innocuous as different revolutionary organizations continued to search for public spaces and institutions that would help them operate in the public realm. Bund members in Warsaw regularly met at Gershon Rodzakh’s coffeehouse on Gęsia Street where, according to Litvak, there was room for “some two-hundred people,” and patrons included “some of the most intimate confidants, communal activists and or-

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ganizers.”39 True to character, the rough-and-tumble Polish Socialist Party-Proletariat commandeered a café run by Avrom Teytlboym’s family in its search for a foothold in the city.40 In time, it seemed as though every self-respecting political organization had its own place for informal meetings and public assembly. Thus, Tabenkin’s early political career and the rise of Poale Zion groups in Warsaw were also tied to a specific coffeehouse. In this case, members of Warsaw’s different Poale Zion cells regularly met in Hillel Fried’s café at 29 Gęsia Street (around the corner from Kotik’s cafe on Nalewki Street and down the street from Rodzakh’s Bund café) where two backrooms served as impromptu lecture halls for educational and political programs.41 Looking back on his own experiences in Warsaw, the Poale Zion activist Nir-Rafalkes, who would later go on to serve as speaker of the Israeli Knesset, recalled: “Our meeting point was Hillel’s restaurant at 29 Gęsia Street.” Teytlboym also points to the critical role played by Fried’s café and comments that it had “a small conspiratorial library where we could find and read thin, illegal brochures and other revolutionary material.”42 Although these political gatherings and other activities continued to take place in backrooms, the café itself provided Tabenkin, Nir-Rafalkes, and their group (which probably included no more than several hundred supporters at the time) an actual physical space in which they could meet and organize beyond the watchful eye of government officials and other, more conservative members of Warsaw’s Jewish community.43 However, much like other attempts to bring revolutionary politics into the public realm, these efforts to turn Fried’s café on Gęsia Street into a permanent center of political organization soon ran into difficulties as the organizers apparently transgressed the line separating legitimate public assembly from subversive political activity. Like Habermas, the Russian police and other government forces viewed coffee­houses and  other public dining institutions as critical sites of public assembly and of potential political critique if not subversion.44 Thus, a January 1906 meeting of approximately 150 Poale Zion supporters in the café led to the arrest and imprisonment of many participants, including Tabenkin and Rafalkes (who had not yet Hebraicized his name to “Nir”).45 Nor was this the only incident in which meetings of revolutionary groups in local cafes led to political raids and sweeping arrests.46

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Figure 10. Yitzhak Tabenkin and other members of a Poale Zion group, Warsaw, 1905. Source: Yad Tabenkin Archives, Israel.

As revolutionary activity entered the public realm, government representatives repeatedly focused on these and other institutions in their struggle to reassert control over the city’s public spaces. Thus, a police report from late 1906 includes a detailed list of no less than forty-nine “restaurants, milk bars, coffee shops” and other potential sites of unrest connected to the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and other subversive organizations.47 Government focus on these public spaces soon led to a series of raids on different coffeehouses and arrests including the arrest of twenty-four Jews for taking part in a Bundist meeting in Gershon Rodzakh’s coffeehouse at 21 Gęsia Street in January 1904,48 ten to fifteen young Jews for reading and discussing illegal Bundist materials in Yiddish in Makarevitch’s teahouse at 10 Nowolipki Street in March 1905,49 and thirteen individuals for taking part in a Bundist meeting in July 1906 in a coffeehouse at 17 Gęsia Street.50 As Warsaw’s population grew and the nature of urban society changed, government representatives, political organizations, and many urban residents were all aware of the fact that the city was changing and that a series of new public institutions would provide the key to controlling these developments as well as the city’s future.

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Although increasingly popular, such open, public forums in which individuals could meet and discuss the issues of the day ultimately proved to be too limited to support the burgeoning need for largescale organization and action in Warsaw and other cities. Moreover, the implementation of semidemocratic reforms such as the October Manifesto and the Fundamental Laws in late 1905 and early 1906 led to a new style of popular culture and collective activity grounded in much larger, more inclusive institutions like the theater, the daily press, and, ultimately, electoral politics.51 Like the Hebrew-based maskilic society of letters and the conspiratorial political cell, the Jewish coffeehouse would soon be superseded by a new set of institutions. Ultimately, popular political movements that were simultaneously for the people and of the people required institutions and frameworks that would go beyond the local and the familiar and mobilize those who would never meet toward common political goals. One of the key institutions that would help reconstruct the Jewish public sphere and subsequently reconfigure Jewish conceptions of community was the Yiddish theater. The annulment (or even the perceived annulment) of the 1883 tsarist ban on Yiddish theater in the spring of 1905 led to an explosion of Yiddish theater and secular Jewish culture in Warsaw.52 Ultimately, the growth of Yiddish theater in this period helped bring Jewish culture and communal organization out of the realm of intimate meetings in backrooms and small gatherings in cafes and into the world of popular culture and mass politics. Thus, in addition to their critical role in the development of modern Jewish culture, theaters also served as actual physical centers of collective assembly and action.53 Unlike Jewish attendance of theaters in Polish or performances in German, theaters that featured performances in Yiddish quickly became permanent, visible, and undeniably Jewish public spaces in Warsaw. Another key aspect of public theater in Yiddish was the manner in which it reconfigured the relationship between the cultural elite and the public. The elite’s desire to direct not only theater but also its patrons represents another critical difference between informal gatherings in local cafes and the new forms of popular culture and assembly that arose in Warsaw. Thus, while few cultural figures would ever challenge the public’s role as the ultimate bastion of political legitimacy, the ten-

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sion between producers and consumers of modern Jewish culture that was inherent in public theater created a dynamic that would irrevocably alter (and haunt) the nature and practice of Jewish culture, politics, and community in eastern Europe. Studies by Michael Steinlauf, David Fishman, and others have done much to highlight the transformation of Jewish theater in turn-of-thecentury Warsaw and throughout the Russian Empire.54 Writing about developments in 1905, Steinlauf notes: “During the first Russian Revolution, long-standing Tsarist prohibitions against both the Yiddish daily press and Yiddish theater in the spring of 1905 were repealed, and nearly overnight Warsaw was flooded with Yiddish publishers, journalists and actors.”55 Other scholars also point to the impact that changes regarding the legal status of Yiddish theater had on the scope of such activity.56 While a large population center and a growing interest in new forms of modern Jewish culture were certainly prerequisites for the sudden growth of Yiddish theater, the relaxation (or even the perceived relaxation) of government restrictions was a critical factor that propelled Yiddish theater onto the central stage of Jewish culture and community in early-twentieth-century Warsaw.57 As a result of these changes, Warsaw witnessed the establishment of four different theaters—Bagatela in the suburb of Mokotów, Elizeum at 18 Karowa Street, Jardin d’Hiver at 9 Chmielna Street, and the new Muranower Theater at 14 Bonifraterska Street—all dedicated to regular performances in Yiddish.58 For many observers, the experience of popular Jewish theaters was nothing short of miraculous. One particularly colorful account of the impact of Jewish theater in Warsaw can be found in a letter by Sholem Aleichem to his daughter Ernestina (Tessa) regarding the presentation of his play Scattered and Dispersed in Polish only weeks before the ban on Yiddish theater became passé.59 What can I tell you about yesterday’s victory? While I myself have received applause on behalf of a beloved artist, I’ve never seen anything like this, not even in my wildest literary imagination. After the first act, I was covered (literally) with flowers. Afterwards, they took me and put me on the stage several times after every act. During the fourth act, the crowd went crazy and started clapping after every line that was connected to the play’s main theme. When it ended, hats began to fly through the air and a powerful, supernatural force overcame me. For

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a second, I thought that the theater was going to collapse and I feared that a riot would break out. I don’t know how to explain it: Was it due to the popularity of a folk artist? Was the crowd hypnotized by Jewish theater? Or was it the thrill of being part of an unrestrained mob. A crowd of over a thousand people waited for me at the exit. . . . God in heaven. What would actually happen if it were possible to perform in Yiddish? My fate and their future are intimately bound to the Jewish theater. Mark this day in your calendar.60

Sholem Aleichem’s comments are particularly revealing as they highlight the almost automatic connection between popular culture and mass politics. As he claims: “My fate and their future are intimately

Figure 11. Sholem Aleichem and daughter Ernestina (Tessa), Vilna, c. 1905. Source: Courtesy of the Shalom Aleichem House, Tel Aviv. Printed by permission of Beth Shalom Aleichem.

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bound to the Jewish theater. Mark this day in your calendar.” Thus, from its very inception, Yiddish theater was revered and feared by both cultural figures and tsarist authorities as a powerful, potentially uncontrollable political force.61 In addition to personal testimonies, regular advertisements and newspaper reports on the pages of new Yiddish dailies like Idishes tageblat, Unzer leben, Der veg, and others demonstrate further the sudden popularity and central role played by Yiddish theater.62 The sheer number of daily shows as well as the multiple performances on weekends and on Jewish holidays underscores the undeniable centrality of Yiddish theater. During Passover of 1906 and 1907, for example, the front-running Yiddish theater Jardin d’Hiver (note the Western-style French name of the Yiddish theater in Warsaw) on Chmielna Street advertised no less than two performances a day of six different plays by the popular theater troupe of Fishenzon and Kaminski. 63 These performances ran not only during the intermediate days of Passover, when such activities are religiously permitted, but also on the last day of the holiday, a day on which Jewish religious law prohibits financial transactions and other nonessential activities. Other sources point to the fact that Saturday performances not only were regular events but also were the most popular and profitable days for Yiddish theaters.64 Nor were Yiddish theaters the only public sphere institutions open on Saturdays and holidays. Responding, apparently, to public demand, the sweet shop at 3 Żelazna Brama next to the Saxony Garden and the coffee shop at 11 Karmelicka Street announced in 1905 that they would be open throughout the entire Easter holiday and over Passover. 65 In a prosaic yet bold display of the new dynamics of community, many of the Jewish public sphere’s new institutions openly flaunted their independence by consciously ignoring religiously mandated laws regarding time, assembly, and community. This newfound influence and power was not limited solely to theater. Yiddish theater was part of an entire constellation of interdependent cultural institutions that together helped create the new Jewish public sphere. The dependence, for example, of different theaters and theater troupes on the press for both publicity and legitimacy further bound these institutions to one another, to the public sphere, and, ultimately, to the public. The press not only served as a running source

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of information regarding upcoming performances but also functioned as one of the main sources of legitimization for the Yiddish theater through regular news items and theater reviews.66 Reflecting this bond between the theater and the paper, the new Yiddish daily Der veg touted itself as a forum that would feature reports on “theater and the arts” as well as regular news items.67 In time, charity raffles and other projects designed to assist the needy would be tied to the sale of theater tickets and, indirectly, to the fate of Yiddish theater.68 In these and other cases, many communal functions formerly undertaken by traditional Jewish institutions were co-opted by the new public institutions. Lastly, in 1908 the first journal dedicated to Jewish theater, Teater velt, began its publication in Warsaw thus adding another layer of interdependence and legitimacy to the relationship between the theater, the press, and the public. In a relatively short span of time, Jewish theater in Yiddish was transformed from a marginal form of semilegal cultural activity to a pillar of Jewish urban society and culture. Moreover, as Jewish theater passed from Polish and quasi-­German performances to predominantly Yiddish ones, the entire experience of Jewish theater and Jewish urban culture and society were radically transformed.69 While coffeehouses offered disparate individuals neutral public spaces in which they could meet and discuss matters of the day with confidants and, at times, with strangers, Yiddish theater provided spectators with a much more tangible experience: the opportunity to embody the Jewish body politic. Theater audiences regularly numbered hundreds of people and at times reached over a thousand spectators.70 As a result of such large gatherings, different Jewish theaters like the Muranower Theater on Bonifraterska Street and the Elizeum on Karowa Street became permanent public spaces in which individual Jews could meet, laugh, converse, and simply be with—and be seen as—Jews.71 Moreover, due to the sheer size of these forums and the number of daily performances, many patrons attended Yiddish theater alongside people from different parts of the city and the region whom they could not possibly have known but with whom they shared, or at the very least imagined that they shared, a common set of cultural and political interests, desires, and destinies. The creation of permanent public spaces for hundreds of disparate Jewish urbanites was particularly important in a city like Warsaw whose Jewish population included

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so many newcomers and visitors.72 Ultimately, the very act of being in a theater populated almost exclusively by Jews reinforced a specific set of linguistic and cultural signifiers and borders as art, culture, and community were immediately and intimately bound to one another. As Y. L. Peretz noted in a 1906 review of the Yiddish play The Lurie Family, Yiddish theater took place “in front of all of Israel.”73 Thus, Yiddish theater performed the critical role of bringing Jewish urban society and community out of the realm of the imagined and into the realm of the real. Moreover, unlike smaller forums like coffeehouses, Yiddish theater not only helped embody the Jewish body politic but also was responsible for its ultimate shape and direction. Thus, while Kotik, Tabenkin, and others periodically used coffeehouses as bases for preaching their politics to café patrons, theater performances revolved around the very act of performing to captive audiences. By its very nature, theater in Yiddish instructed audience members how to imagine Jewish roles, how to speak a standardized form of Yiddish, and how to behave as

Figure 12. Jewish children sneaking into Muranower Theater, Warsaw, c. 1910. Source: Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, with permission of the Forward Association, New York.

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modern Jews.74 Furthermore, as a parallel drama—the Revolution of 1905—was unfolding in the city, many audience members looked to Yiddish theater for instruction, direction, and meaning. In an era of mass migration, social upheaval, and political unrest, Jewish theaters became critical tools for implementing and wielding social and personal order as they institutionalized and serialized modern Jewish language, culture, and, ultimately, conceptions of community and self.75 The immediate and critical connection between culture, consumption, and community was apparent to many. Thus, different observers repeatedly voiced their concern over the content of theater in Yiddish and its potentially harmful impact on Jewish society. The journalist and political activist Noah Prylucki, for example, bitterly complained about the extent to which theaters were shirking their moral responsibilities to Jewish audiences.76 The “father” of Yiddish theater Avrom Goldfaden was similarly dissatisfied with the state of Yiddish theater, which was “no longer Jewish but Goyish, or, more exactly, neither Jewish nor Goyish.”77 From its very inception, it was clear that entertainment was not the Yiddish theater’s main task and that those involved in its production were interested in producing far more than art for art’s sake.78 Few phenomena encapsulate the intimate and problematic connection between Yiddish culture, modern Jewish politics, and the fate of Jewish society more than the role of the theater critic. Although relatively new to the realm of Jewish culture, Jewish critics immediately took it upon themselves to educate and direct “the masses,” masses whom they simultaneously worshipped and abhorred. As Habermas notes, the critic “assumed a peculiarly dialectical task: he viewed himself at the same time as the public’s mandatary and as its educator.”79 Ultimately, it was the critic’s responsibility not only to tell the audience what Yiddish theater was actually supposed to look like but also to educate audience members on how they were supposed to understand, consume, and respond to this new cultural phenomenon.80 Moreover, like so many other aspects of Jewish urban society, Jewish theater was in need of radical reform. And the critics raged. Writing in Tsevi and Noah Prylucki’s Yiddish daily Der veg in late 1905, Peretz was dismayed at both the level and content of Yiddish theater. “Why have the Jewish folk-writers gone astray? Why must Jewish talent play ‘Bar Kochba’ and ‘Fallen Woman’? Where is our Jewish fate?81 In an-

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other biting critique of Yiddish theater in Warsaw, Peretz charged that Jewish theaters were nothing less than an embarrassment to Jewish civilization. A pig-sty, or just a sty. . . . The Jewish theater cannot be any different [than other institutions]. The theater must be an institution to educate the adult. However, it cannot be any better or more beautiful than the heder in which the child is educated. Its [the Yiddish theater’s] buildings are made from old boards similar to our sukkes; its level of cleanliness is similar to that of our prayer minyans, and it is as sturdy and safe as our gravestones.82

Despite these and other complaints about the supposedly substandard level of Yiddish theater, critics regularly acknowledged, if at times begrudgingly, that the audience, or the publikum as it was regularly referred to in the Yiddish press, remained the final arbiter.83 Ultimately, the publikum decided which shows went on and which ones folded in shame. Addressing these and other efforts by critics to raise the level of Yiddish theater, a frustrated Noah Prylucki echoed Rousseau’s dilemmas regarding the elite’s desire to lead the masses without violating some of the fundamental principles of democracy. Thus, Prylucki lamented that “the public wants funny, happy pieces. And their will is the law.”84 Jewish critics of Yiddish theater in Warsaw were trapped in one of democracy’s more fundamental contradictions. Indeed, while they were often able to envision and articulate the public’s destiny, they had far greater difficulty convincing the ostensibly noble masses to follow. Despite Noah Prylucki’s dilemmas and Peretz’s complaints, ­others eagerly embraced Yiddish theater as a critical tool for molding and leading the fledgling masses on the path to collective redemption.85 An article penned by Ha-mashkif (The Observer), from a 1905 edition of the Hebrew literary journal Ha-shiloaḥ, marveled at the power that Yiddish theater had already amassed over “the Jewish masses” and the potential uses of this new cultural forum. “One barrier against assimilation and an important tool for educating the Jewish masses in the national and Zionist spirit is the jargon [Yiddish] theater. . . . Nothing works on the masses and the intelligentsia like theater productions that bring abstract ideas to life through real-live performances and, thus, synthesize theoretical issues with visual representations.”86 Years later, the vener-

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ated Poale Zion leader (Yaakov) Zerubavel would record similar impressions of his early encounters with Yiddish theater: I came to understand that the direct influence of the theater on spectators from all levels of society, in particular those from the poorer classes, was tremendous; I understood that the theater could serve as a multi-faceted social and educational tool, for both positive and negative goals. It was all dependent upon the person in whose hands this tool rested: whether in the hands of a private manager whose eyes were set on revenues, or in those of a public body concerned with the good of the people.87

And thus, within a relatively brief span of time, Yiddish theater became a mainstay of modern Jewish culture and a critical tool for the reconstruction of Jewish urban society. While the impact of the theater was certainly critical, its influence was magnified exponentially by other key public-sphere institutions, in particular the daily press. In addition to the newfound popularity of Yiddish theater, a series of governmental reforms led to the legalization and proliferation of newspapers and journals throughout the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1907.88 As a result of these reforms, Warsaw alone soon became home to five Yiddish dailies (Idishes tageblat, Di naye tsaytung, Der telegraf, Unzer leben, Der veg), three Hebrew dailies (Ha-yom, Ha-tsefira, H ­ a-tsofe), one Polish-language Jewish daily (Nowa Gazeta), and an assortment of Jewish weeklies in Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish.89 Moreover, while the combined distribution of the Warsaw-based Jewish dailies reached over 100,000, one can only estimate how many women and men read these newspapers or, alternatively, had the news read to them in public and semipublic readings.90 These developments are particularly striking when one notes that until 1903 there was only one Jewish daily published in Warsaw, the Hebrew paper Ha-tsefira, and that its distribution rarely went beyond several thousand copies.91 Reflecting the changing nature of Jewish culture and politics after the legalization of Yiddish dailies, Ha-tsefira not only closed shop in early 1906 but its editor, the Zionist activist Nahum Sokolow, responded by joining the bandwagon and publishing a Yiddish daily, Der telegraf. 92

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Sokolow was not the only committed Zionist in Warsaw who was acutely aware of the fact that the new opportunities associated with the Yiddish daily press would soon transform Jewish culture and society.93 Expressing a sense of frustration and more than a tinge of jealousy over the sudden popularity of Yiddish newspapers in early 1906, Hayim Nahman Bialik wrote the following sarcastic complaint to the “grand­ father” of Jewish literature, Mendele Mokher Seforim: Ever since the relaxation of censorship restrictions every Tom, Dick and Harry has been given a license and the Yiddish press has begun to blossom like wild flowers. There are nearly a thousand newspapers. The Bund alone, for example, publishes a dozen papers, including, Der ­veker, Der leker and Der shmeker and many, many more. An endless sea.94

Sholem Aleichem was equally moved, if albeit from a somewhat different perspective, by the appearance of the Yiddish dailies in Warsaw, Odessa, and other centers. Again writing to his beloved daughter ­Ernestina (Tessa), the iconic cultural figure was simply elated by the very experience of seeing, reading, and speaking about Yiddish newspapers. In a relatively short span of time, newspapers had become a central component of Jewish culture and society as well as daily life for hundreds of thousands of Jews. First of all, and most importantly, the matter of newspapers, news­ papers, newspapers. Tens of thousands of newspapers! In addition to the local paper Der veg, Di idishe tsaytung has just received its license to publish in Odessa and the matters related to Der tog in Vilna are also taking shape. In addition to these papers, people are already talking about a second paper Der telegraf as though it, too, has already obtained a license here in Warsaw.95

Nor was this excitement and the accompanying need for newspapers and news limited to members of the cultural elite. The thirst for news and the need to be a part of the newly transformed Jewish culture and public appealed to many of Warsaw’s 275,000 Jewish residents.96 Like Yiddish theater, the cultural attraction, social function, and political impact of Yiddish dailies went far beyond the literary elite as these and other new institutions automatically included a hitherto unparalleled proportion of Warsaw’s Jews into the rapidly expanding Jewish public sphere and, ultimately, the newly reconfigured Jewish body politic.

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Thus, more than any new cultural institution, the press, in particular the Yiddish dailies, laid the foundations for the construction of a specifically Jewish public sphere that would bind tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of readers within the framework of an imagined political community.97 However, before it could be bound and forged, the community had to first be imagined. Illustrating this new sense of community with other, anonymous readers of the daily press, the young Avraham Gruen from the provincial town of Płońsk used the pages of the Yiddish daily Der veg and its Hebrew parallel ­Ha-yom to send New Year’s greetings “to my parents, my relatives and my friends, and especially to Mr. Simḥa Izaak in Jaffa, in the Holy Land, to Yitzḥak Ya‘akov Estherzon in New York, to all Zionists, wherever they may be, and to all subscribers to Der veg and ­Ha-yom.” 98 Gruen’s New Year’s wishes demonstrate the manner in which the newspaper and its new community of fellow readers were already on their way to supplementing more traditional aspects and forms of Jewish society. Thus, while Gruen extended New Year’s greetings to political comrades (“all Zionists”) and to fellow readers (“all subscribers to Der veg and Ha-yom”), he neglected to mention his younger brother David Gruen (David Ben-Gurion), who, like their former neighbor Simḥa Izaak, had already moved to “the Holy Land.”99 Soon after their creation, Yiddish dailies would help reconstruct the nature and contours of Jewish society by enabling total strangers to imagine one another as comrades, brothers, and intimates who shared a common community and fate. Like the theater, the Jewish press was acutely aware of its new role as a key communal institution and took active steps toward reinforcing this status. As a result of this growing realization, many papers and journalists began to fulfill roles formerly undertaken by traditional communal institutions and functionaries. In the era of mass society, unprecedented migration, and constant displacement, it was up to papers like Ha-tsofe to publish the popular column “Questions and Answers” (She’alot u-tshuvot) on legal matters; Der veg to instruct readers about the meaning of different Jewish holidays and other customs; Idishes tageblat to help identify and locate missing children; and other papers to raise funds for the impoverished and disadvantaged.100 In these and other cases, new public institutions filled roles once performed by tra-

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ditional communal organizations that were simply unable to respond effectively to the size and scope of the challenges posed by mass society. Like other public sphere institutions, the newspaper also lent a sense of rhythm and order to the inherently chaotic urban environment.101 In time, the daily paper would serve as a basic staple of modern life that many of Warsaw’s Jewish residents could no longer live without. As Hegel once observed, “newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers.”102 Reflecting this newfound need for news and papers, a local hospital called on readers of Ha-tsofe to donate old newspapers to the elderly and the infirm who, apparently, had asked that newspapers be made available as they convalesced.103 In other cases, newspapers took steps to reassure readers that their summer retreats to nearby towns such as Świder, Józefów, and Otwock would not leave them out of touch with newspapers and with other members of the new, imagined community of readers. In the case of Ha-tsofe, the newspaper agent M. Lederer not only pledged to honor subscriptions to the paper but also committed to having single copies of the paper available for sale in these towns.104 Nor was the distribution of Warsaw’s papers limited to the city’s immediate surroundings. Advertisements regularly listed locations or agents throughout the Russian Empire where dedicated readers could pick up individual copies or subscribe to their favorite dailies. The reach of Der veg extended far and wide as the paper boasted of agents throughout the Pale of Settlement, including Białystok, Bobruisk, Dvinsk, Grodno, Kielce, Kiev, Kishinev, Kovno, Lodz, Pinsk, Riga, Siedlce, and more.105 Wherever one went, Der veg, Ha-tsofe, and other papers were there to inform and entertain, guide and instruct, comfort and bind.106 Ha-tsofe’s regular column “Questions and Answers” illustrates the central role that the press played in Jewish society as the paper began to replace more traditional institutions and functionaries. “Questions and Answers” was, apparently, an incredibly popular forum that attracted a flood of inquiries from both inquisitive readers and, at times, less innocent parties. Recognizing the wider need for a new kind of communal leadership, Ha-tsofe advertised itself as a paper that would supply not only general and Jewish news but also a new forum on legal questions: “‘Ha-tsofe ’ answers all of its subscribers’ different legal questions. This column is in the hands of a legal specialist who will strive to clarify in a

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popular fashion all of the questions that are posed to him. In addition to this, he frequently writes articles on different legal questions.”107 Reflecting the sudden popularity of the column, an announcement from late 1904 begged readers’ patience as the staff struggled to keep up with the flow of inquiries regarding residency permits, draft regulations, and other matters related to the bewildering combination of Russian bureaucracy and urban living. “To all those who have turned to us with legal questions that demand immediate answers, we wish to inform you that due to the sheer number of inquiries that our editorial staff has received, we cannot publish answers any earlier than two to three weeks from the day that we receive them.”108 The column’s success demonstrates further the extent to which the traditional roles played by rabbis and other communal leaders were already being complemented, if not at times supplemented, by the journalist, the paper, and other public sphere institutions. Indeed, the column’s very title, “She’alot ­u-tshuvot,” is the same name used for traditional rabbinic correspondence regarding questions of religious law. Despite this aura of continuity, the types of questions asked underscore the degree to which economic and legal concerns were already just as important to many Jewish readers as the finer points of religious law.109 Thus, reader number 4091 asked: “Unto whom should I turn to in order to correct a mistake in the way that my name is recorded in the official registry; so that I can make sure that it is recorded correctly?” And, reader number 7919 from the Vitebsk region wanted to know, “What residency rights do Jewish midwives have?”110 The social and economic realities of urban life demanded a new, more nuanced form of Jewish leadership, and the new papers and a new generation of journalists were more than eager to fulfill this pressing need. Furthermore, in these and other cases, the ties that bound Jewish urban residents were no longer those of blood relations, confidants, or neighbors but, rather, connections between strangers who were now bound to one another through modern cultural institutions like the coffeehouse, the theater, and the daily press. Another testimony to the power of this column, in particular, and the press, in general, can be found in the feverish correspondence between a small circle of Zionist activists in Warsaw and the movement’s leaders in Ekaterinoslav and Odessa regarding attempts to influence the content of this specific column. Letters sent by the secretary of

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the Warsaw branch of Zionists for Eretz Yisrael (Zionei Zion) Ḥayim ­Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin highlight the group’s efforts to place Zionist-­oriented questions and answers in Ha-tsofe’s regular advice column. “I’m sure that they will be published soon,” the eager activist promised the intimidating leader of the Zionist federation of Russia.111 Soon thereafter, a somewhat embarrassed Katzenelson apologized to ­Ussishkin: “The questions and answers that we sent to ­Ha-tsofe were not published by the editor. According to the editor, they resemble questions and answers written by a rebbe and his disciple and they must be crafted in a different manner. Moreover, he cannot print them at this time due to the large amount of material that already awaits publication.”112 In a later letter, an already distraught Katzenelson drew a direct connection between the success of the popular press and the Zionists’ precarious situation in early 1905 as revolutionary ferment and excitement swept the empire. “You yourself have to admit that the paper cannot afford to ignore the demands of its readers; Even the most dedicated Zionists among them demand news and items that interest, at this moment, the entire world.”113 More than anything else, this correspondence shows how critical the publication of a letter in a local Hebrew paper was for Zionist activists in early 1905. Moreover, the letters illustrate Zionism’s lack of influence as newspapers and other new institutions came to dominate Jewish society. As the young Katzenelson explained to the impatient Ussishkin, “I don’t really have the power to do anything to change the situation as I am new to this city.”114 Lastly, the voluminous correspondence and Katzenelson’s pleas illustrate the extent to which newspapers were already viewed as critical centers and measures of power. As the Jewish public sphere expanded its influence over Warsaw’s Jewish residents, it became clear to all that the path to communal power now passed over the editor’s desk. Not only was the paper slowly performing more and more functions formally undertaken by communal institutions, but the writer had also begun to replace traditional communal leaders. Thus, the critic and journalist A. Mukdoni (Alexander Kappel) would later note that “the writer has become a type of rabbi, a new rabbi. Not one who takes requests and payments, not one who gives blessings and advice, but one who teaches. He says something new, something beautiful, something electrifying. And so the young Hasid becomes a disciple of the

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writer.”115 Moreover, while the press served as both the central forum for and representative of the new Jewish body politic (alternatively referred to as “the Jewish public,” “the Jewish people,” and “the Jewish street”), it was the writer’s task to further refine and direct this collective body. Thus, while the Hebrew publisher Ben-Avigdor reluctantly admitted to the growing popularity of publications in Yiddish (or jargon in his lexicon), he also noted that these publications could be used to achieve such quintessential Zionist goals as the revival of modern Hebrew language and culture. “As far as that jargon is concerned, I certainly do not love it nor do I consider it a national treasure. However, experience has taught me that we cannot ignore it and inadvertently allow others who are foreign to our ways to use it for their own purposes. We must use it and use this powerful tool to influence the larger masses and lead them according to our desires.”116 Reflecting the papers’ new responsibilities, Ha-tsofe expressed its own concern that different satirical journals circulating in Warsaw were “corrupting the readers” with “all sorts of indecent and obscene material from which all pure souls distance themselves.” Like other observers, the paper feared that these unchecked forces might lead to disaster. Thus, Ha-tsofe, which was itself no stranger to sensationalist journalism, warned, “who knows what the future will bring” if this trend were to go unchecked.117 Much like the theater critic, the newspaper and the journalist quickly assumed the responsibility of not only informing the public but also shaping and molding this still amorphous body. This critical nexus between political organizations, the press, and the potential mobilization of “the people” was recognized by many as different groups constantly jockeyed for position and influence in and over the new public sphere and its key institutions. Thus, less than twelve months after local Zionists were unable to influence the contents of a column in a Hebrew paper published in Warsaw, Der veg’s editor Tsevi Prylucki turned to Ussishkin and Katzenelson with an effusive request for financial assistance.118 Revised censorship laws and new regulations regarding newspaper distribution had curtailed paper sales and reduced revenues, and the paper’s editors Tsevi Prylucki and his precocious son Noah were desperate for additional financial support.119 Throughout his letter, Prylucki was well aware that such external support would come at a price and was more than ready to give local Zionists what

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they had so desperately sought only one year earlier: a public platform and political relevance.120 Thus, the elder Prylucki went to great lengths to reassure Ussishkin that his potential investment in Der veg and its Hebrew parallel Ha-yom would ensure that “the lovers of the Hebrew language and Zionists would now have three papers.”121 From its earliest days, it was clear that the daily press was an indispensable tool for all those interested in the education, organization, and mobilization of its readers, the Jewish public.

The Białystok Pogrom and the Instrumentalization of the Jewish Public Sphere Few developments demonstrate the centrality and power of the newly reconfigured Jewish public sphere more than the combined response of the theater, the press, and coffeehouses to the three days of antiJewish violence in the provincial center of Białystok in June 1906. In the wake of the pogrom that left some eighty Jews dead, all three institutions pooled their resources to assist the victims of what would quickly become a (Jewish and non-Jewish) cause célèbre. Responding to the public’s need for information, different newspapers began by publishing special afternoon supplements dedicated to the events in Białystok. Boasting that it was now published two times a day, Der veg also lowered the price of these supplements to one kopeck (penny) per issue instead of the regular price of three kopecks.122 The response of different public-sphere institutions continued with a bidding war regarding the exact percentage of theater profits that would be donated to relief funds.123 Thus, while Jardin d’Hiver published advertisements claiming that 25 percent of its proceeds would go to the victims of the pogrom, the Muranower Theater declared that 50 percent of its sales would aid pogrom victims.124 Other announcements noted that patrons could obtain charity tickets to theater performances at theater box offices or, alternatively, at different cafes in Warsaw, including Kirshen­ blatt’s at 7 Gęsia Street, Zucker’s at 17 Dzika Street, Bialystochki’s at 25 Franciszkańska Street, and Fordalder’s at 20 Królewska Street.125 Like more traditional Jewish communal bodies, the new public-sphere institutions—the coffeehouse, the theater, and the press—pooled their

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efforts to assist Jews in need. However, while these actions seemed similar to those undertaken by traditional institutions, the manner in which such relief projects were carried out was radically different as it was the new cultural institutions and not traditional communal bodies that informed readers about the horrific events, initiated inter­communal relief projects, and enlisted the assistance of other public sphere institutions in their efforts to mobilize widespread public support for specific communal goals. And thus, the center of Jewish community and politics had passed from the gmina building to the editor’s desk. That said, this response was not completely spontaneous and it, too, demanded a fair degree of intervention on the part of various actors and forums. The Yiddish daily Der telegraf, for example, admonished those theaters that did not immediately honor a three-day moratorium on performances or did not commit to donating a certain percentage of their proceeds to assisting pogrom victims.126 Thus, while many of these institutions possessed the potential to reconstruct the Jewish community, the responsibility to set the appropriate bodies in motion ultimately rested in the hands of a new generation of cultural figures and political leaders. Regardless of the exact origins of these coordinated actions, this cooperation among the different institutions that had only recently begun to shape and dominate the lives of Jews in Warsaw illustrates the extent to which these bodies were well on their way to replacing traditional communal organizations and practices. Lastly, this instrumentalization of the public sphere reflects the larger mobilization and subsequent transformation of the Jewish public sphere that would take place during the elections to the First and Second State Dumas in 1906 and 1907.

Conclusion: Urban Society, Popular Culture, and the Rise of the Jewish Public Sphere By creating new centers of organization and power, the coffeehouse, the theater, and the press combined to reconfigure the nature of public assembly, cultural activity, and communal organization for Jews in Warsaw. Together, these cultural institutions created frameworks that brought Jewish collective organization and political activity out of

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backrooms and into “the Jewish street.” In doing so, these institutions lent a much-needed sense of structure to the chaotic urban environment. Moreover, much like Habermas’s public sphere, the Jewish public sphere in Warsaw quickly became the central platform for collective assembly, political debate, and, ultimately, political action. At the same time, a public sphere that was grounded in popular theater in Yiddish and a daily press that was also in Yiddish helped construct a public body that was rooted on an ethno-linguistic plane and not on a regional, class, or other common axis. Thus, unlike Habermas’s bourgeois public sphere, the Jewish public sphere in Warsaw was, from its very beginnings, a national public sphere. The nature of this Jewish public sphere was further influenced by the ongoing interaction between the leaders and the public. The inherent dependence—ideological, political, and economic—of public sphere institutions on the Jewish public repeatedly forced leaders to confront the theatergoing and newspaper-reading public and to continuously renegotiate their relationship with them. In time, this tension between the cultural and political elite and the public that they so desperately wanted to lead and redeem would set a series of precedents regarding the nature of political organization and action in eastern Europe. However, in order for this transformation to become complete, Jews in Warsaw had to first pass through one of modernity’s more definitive experiences: the process of participatory politics.

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Fi v e From Public Sphere to Public Will The Elections to the Russian State Duma and the Politicization of Ethnicity

Introduction: Between the Public Sphere and Participatory Politics

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Although the café, the theater, and the press helped construct the new public sphere, it was the actual experience of participatory politics during the elections to the first two Dumas in 1906 and 1907 that led to the fundamental transformation of this new public body. By their very nature, electoral politics demanded that leaders and activists first define and then mobilize the body politic through a discourse of organization, action, and discipline. The following chapter focuses on this process of definition and mobilization by analyzing the strategies and rhetoric employed by various organizations in the elections to the first two Dumas. Through this discussion, I demonstrate how the experience of participatory politics irrevocably altered the manner in which many Jews in Warsaw could and did envision themselves as individuals and as members of an imagined political community. While new cultural institutions helped create the public sphere, the need to achieve specific political goals would transform the public sphere from an open forum for public debate to a vehicle for large-scale organization and action. Another important difference was that this demand for political mobilization required not only a refined sense of community but also a much larger degree of intervention on the part of political leaders as well as a much greater sense of discipline among the wider public. This critical transition of the public sphere—from an open space designed to foster

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public debate to a political apparatus used to mobilize a specific collective via a discourse of order and discipline—marked the final entry of Jewish politics into its modern phase. This chapter will address these and related questions through an analysis of the relationship among the public sphere, the body politic, and the language of modern politics. Despite its impact, Habermas’s theory regarding the bourgeois public sphere has come under critique from a number of directions, in particular since its translation into En­ glish in 1989.1 Thus, critics such as Geoff Eley charge that Habermas fails to consider the possibility that several different public spheres can simultaneously coexist.2 In addition to Eley’s comments, other works also point to the exclusive nature of Habermas’s ostensibly inclusive model.3 Here, as well, scholars claim that Habermas overlooks the many different facets of what he presents as a singular reality. Despite such arguments, these disagreements are very often about the ultimate shape and size of the public sphere and not about its pivotal role in the construction of modern societies. Several works that fundamentally challenge the very foundations of Habermas’s argument include those by Harold Mah, Pheng Cheah, and other postcolonial thinkers. Mah, in particular, calls for a reconsideration of “how the theory of the public sphere is inscribed in a contradictory and problematic discourse of rational modernity.”4 Like other critics, he maintains that “[b]ecause of its formal conditions, the public sphere, in fact, cannot appear to be made of diverse groups.” 5 According to Mah, the public sphere is summarized best by Habermas’s own statement: “In the self-understanding of public opinion the public sphere appeared as one and indivisible.”6 Unlike Eley and ­others, Mah contends that Habermas’s approach is not self-contradictory but, in fact, a reflection of the public sphere’s true nature. In Mah’s opinion, the public sphere cannot make room for difference because it is, by its very nature, inherently monolithic.7 Indeed, any attempt to create a larger sense of community through an act of discursive unity is based on the twin processes of consolidation and exclusion. The ultimate result of these developments is that that which cannot be made

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part of the public sphere is either silenced or excluded from the body. Mah writes: This process of arriving at a judgment in the public sphere involves an extraordinary transformation. Many persons from disparate backgrounds and with conflicting opinions enter the public sphere, but the strange dynamic of the public sphere fuses these heterogeneous opinions into a single judgment, a unified voice. People enter the public sphere as if they were entering a “space,” but once inside that space, they are transformed into a collective subject, a single authoritative persona.8

For Cheah, the indivisibility of the public sphere finds its expression in the union between the public sphere and the nation: [T]he nation and the public sphere are mutually constitutive. For it is only through public activity such as political organization that the masses become united into a totality, the nation or the people, at the same time that the public sphere’s legitimacy derives from its ability to represent the masses’ collective interests, which it also actively shapes. . . . The national public sphere is thus a self-generating and self-causing phenomenon.9

Mah’s emphasis on a “one and indivisible” public sphere, one that in its use of ostensibly open, modern institutions sets borders and creates limits, and Cheah’s discussion of how the public sphere is “a self-­ generating and self-causing phenomenon” that transforms the “masses . . . into a totality, the nation or the people” will serve as the theoretical framework for this chapter. Throughout this chapter, I pose a series of questions designed to trace the transition from a bourgeois public sphere in Warsaw to a national one. This discussion will not only elucidate the connection between the practice of democratic politics and the development of national communities but also shed light on the dialectics of modernity that shaped these and similar developments.10 In particular, I will ask: What happened to the Jewish public sphere in Warsaw as it passed from its early role as a forum for public discussion to a platform for political mobilization? Can a public sphere be used to direct a collective body toward concrete political goals and still remain a collection of individuals who assemble in the name of rational debate? Or does the transition from debate to action necessitate the suspension

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of discussion in favor of a desire for action, a drive for organization, and a need for discipline?11 Ultimately, I argue that this movement from the realm of debate to the need for action led to the fundamental transformation of the nature of the Jewish public sphere and to the advent of a radically new style of Jewish politics and collective organization. Moreover, as a result of this process, the individual search for self-­ emancipation that was so characteristic of the Enlightenment and of the Jewish Haskalah was soon replaced by the drive for collective organization and discipline so typical of modern political movements. And so the electoral experiences of 1906 and 1907 would cast the die for a new relationship between the Jewish individual and the Jewish collective in eastern Europe and beyond for the remainder of the twentieth century. As in other cases, the critical transformation of the public sphere was the result of several seemingly random yet related factors. As I have argued in chapter 4, the key institutions that helped create the public sphere, in particular the press and the theater, encouraged the refinement and crystallization of communities constructed along ethno-linguistic lines. That said, while the new public-sphere institutions may have prepared the mold, it was the actual experience of participatory politics during the elections to the first two Dumas that led to the final solidification of the newly reconfigured body politic. In addition to clarifying the lines of community, electoral practices also forced activists and leaders to confront the very object of their admiration and horror, “the people.” Indeed, before the people could fulfill their role in the grand theater of Jewish politics, leaders first had to exercise sufficient control over the public through a discourse of organization and discipline. This need to instill order over a potentially undisciplined urban population represents another critical phase in the transformation of Jewish politics and community in Warsaw. Hence, while Warsaw’s Jewish residents may have entered the Revolution of 1905 as an amorphous collection of strangers and disparate groups that met in secret revolutionary cells, on street corners, and in coffeehouses, they would conclude the revolutionary period as a well-defined and politicized ethno-linguistic community with an acute sense of inclusion and exclusion. Once sharpened, this heightened sense of community would be used not only to clarify that body but also to direct it. Thus, the actual experience of democratic practices, the critical need to mobilize

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repeatedly tens of thousands of potential voters, and the subsequent politicization of ethnicity would lead to the refinement, consolidation, and transformation of Jewish conceptions of community and self. However, in order to reach that point, Jews in Warsaw would have to take part in the Russian Empire’s first experiment in participatory politics, the elections to the Russian State Dumas.

The Elections to the First Duma: Chaos, Confusion, and the Creation of the Jewish Street Based on a revised version of the electoral laws for the proposed ­Bulygin Duma of August 1905, the regulations regarding the elections to the First Duma were made public in December 1905. Like many other semidemocratic reforms implemented by the regime in late 1905 and early 1906, the election of a representative body, a Duma, was designed to implement the type of moderate reform that would satisfy the demands of the liberal opposition without usurping the tsar’s claim to sovereignty. According to the new electoral laws, voters in the twenty urban curiae throughout the empire would include adult men over the age of twenty-five who either owned taxable property or had paid a commercial or industrial tax of at least fifty rubles.12 In an effort to diffuse the potential influence of opposition groups, electoral bylaws mandated that eligible voters choose electors from a prepared list.13 After being chosen, electors would meet to decide upon the city’s representatives to the Duma. In the case of Warsaw, eighty male electors divided among  the city’s twelve districts were to be chosen by some 105,000 eligible voters.14 Once chosen, these electors would convene to elect the two Duma representatives of Warsaw’s urban curiae.15 Of the 105,000 potential male voters in Warsaw roughly 42,000 were identified by contemporary observers as Jews.16 This figure represents approximately 15 percent of Warsaw’s registered Jewish population at the time or close to 30 percent of the city’s legal male residents who were Jewish.17 While these figures may seem unimpressive at first, they become more striking when one examines the demographic distribution of Warsaw’s Jewish residents more closely. Indeed, if approximately one-half of Warsaw’s Jews at the time were under the age of twenty,

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then the figure of 42,000 male Jews out of an adult male population of approximately 70,000 suddenly becomes far more representative.18 According to this calculation, some 60 percent of adult Jewish men in Warsaw had the right to vote in the elections to the first two Russian State Dumas in 1906 and 1907. While this figure falls far short of the number of Jews who would have had the right to vote had there been universal suffrage (which would have included approximately 135,000 adult men and women), it is far greater than the 2,800 Jews (roughly one percent of the Jewish population) who participated in elections for the board of the official Jewish community, the gmina.19 Moreover, while the pool of eligible voters may not have included all Jews living in the city, it was certainly far greater than any other political project hitherto known to Jews in Warsaw. Indeed, if a crowded café could seat several dozen people and a packed theater several hundred, then the elections to the first two Dumas, which demanded the mobilization of over a hundred thousand potential voters, represented a new level of political organization for Jews in Warsaw and throughout the empire. As a result of the sheer dimensions of this electoral experiment, the experience of participatory politics would lead to the transformation of political organization and practice in Europe’s largest Jewish center. Despite the initial excitement regarding the announcement of the October Manifesto, many Jews in Warsaw were somewhat reserved about the prospect of elections to the First Duma.20 In many senses, the widespread apathy and confusion reflected the amorphous state of Jewish politics in late 1905 and early 1906. By late 1905, revolutionary activity had reached an impasse, and it was not clear which organization would fill the vacuum left in the wake of the revolutionary parties’ return to underground activity. More importantly, it was also not clear in which direction these organizations might lead Jews in Warsaw. This leadership vacuum and the accompanying disorder were exacerbated by several different factors. First, many leaders of Warsaw’s organized Jewish community ( gmina) were initially hesitant to join and support ­empire-wide Jewish organizations that called for active cooperation with the leading liberal party, the Russian-oriented Constitutional Democrats (Kadets).21 Hence, while the St. Petersburg–based Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for Jews was successful in organizing different Jewish voting committees throughout the Pale of Settlement, it was a virtually nonex-

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istent political force in Congress Poland.22 Time and again, Warsaw’s established Jewish elite would call on the city’s Jewish residents to exercise caution in regard to the upcoming elections. In many cases, these Polish-speaking, acculturated leaders whose status rested on the three main bulwarks of integration and assimilation in turn-of-the-century Warsaw—the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street, the Polish-language Jewish weekly Izraelita, and the gmina—feared that an open alliance with the Kadets might be seen as a threat to Polish demands for local rule.23 Torn between Jewish solidarity, on the one hand, and loyalty to Polish concepts of self-determination, on the other, the leaders of Warsaw’s established Jewish community sought a local solution. Expressing this local patriotism, Izraelita urged its readers to oppose the creation of an empire-wide Jewish union: We cannot, as long as we still have scruples, join our co-religionists in the Russian Empire in their struggle for civil rights for Jews. . . . We cannot enclose ourselves within a narrowly defined nationality, we cannot limit our entire work to the improvement of rights for Jews when, at the same time, the issue of general rights remains unresolved. . . . Jewish people cannot enclose themselves in a ghetto.24

An additional cause of the widespread confusion among Jewish voters in Warsaw was the fact that the Polish parallel to the Constitutional Democrats, the Polish Progressive Democratic Union, was somewhat unclear about its own electoral policies until early 1906.25 Reflecting on this state of confusion, an article from a January 1906 edition of the Yiddish daily Der telegraf bemoaned the fact that Jewish voters in Warsaw had nowhere to turn as “the only party for which the Jewish bourgeois can even consider giving their votes, the Progressive Democrats, is not taking any part in the elections.”26 Hence, even if Jews in Warsaw wanted to take part in the upcoming elections, no actual group was prepared to fill the void left by the Kadets’ inability to compete effectively in the Polish provinces. Nor were Polish and Jewish liberals the only groups that remained conspicuously silent as the elections approached. While Jewish liberals were apprehensive about supporting the Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for Jews, other Jewish supporters of the Union, namely nationalists and Zionists, were equally unable to come to a decision

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regarding their participation in the elections. The feverish correspondence between the young Ḥayim Katznelson in Warsaw and the Zionist leader Menaḥem Ussishkin reflects the second-guessing and indecision that would plague many Zionist leaders and activists throughout this period.27 Thus, up until the decision at the Third Conference of Russian Zionists in Helsinki (Helsingfors) in late 1906—after representatives to the First Duma had been not only elected but already dismissed—local Zionist organizations were simply unsure about whether or not they could or even should participate in political and cultural affairs outside of the Holy Land.28 Political activity in the present (Gegenwartsarbeit) had not yet been adopted by the party that still longed for the realization of their designs to resettle the empire’s Jews in the Holy Land or in some other suitable territory. Zionism’s political and ideological stalemate is further reflected by the fact that the main Zionist organ in the Russian Empire at the time, Nahum Sokolow’s Warsaw-based daily Ha-tsefira, closed its offices in early 1906.29 A longtime fixture of Warsaw’s literary and cultural spheres, Sokolow himself was far removed from the arena of participatory politics and direct encounters with Jewish readers and potential voters. By late 1905 he had already relocated to St. Petersburg (before soon moving on to London and later to Cologne) as part of his own efforts to create an international Jewish organization that would implement more traditional strategies of petitioning and intercession (shtadlanut) to attain civic rights for Jews.30 Without the support of a well-functioning political apparatus, a daily press, and a clear policy regarding political activity in the Russian Empire, Zionist politics and organizations remained wary and disorganized. Some six months after the elections to the First Duma, Warsaw’s Zionist-oriented Hebrew daily Ha-yom would confess its own mistakes by declaring: “For a variety of reasons our organization did not take an official part in the elections to the First Duma.”31 Moreover, like many other established organizations, Zionist groups and leaders were initially paralyzed by the new modes and possibilities of political activity and action. The advent of popular politics in 1905 and 1906 caught them unprepared as they—like Zionists throughout the Russian Empire—struggled to find the appropriate balance between utopian visions and present-day needs. Writing in Warsaw’s leading Yiddish daily Der veg under one of his favorite pseudonyms, “Lucifer,”

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the doyen of Yiddish culture and literature Y. L. Peretz admonished local Zionists for their lack of political organization. Commenting on the excitement and fervor that swept many of the city’s other groups in late 1905, Peretz observed: “The PPS [Polish Socialist Party] is convening thousands and thousands in the philharmonic . . . meetings of our ‘Bund’ are secretly taking place behind closed doors; and the ND’s (National Democrats) are not keeping quiet—meetings and demonstrations; Why do our Zionists sleep?”32 Thus, while Zionism would eventually go on to lead, represent, and mold Polish Jewry between the two world wars, it was a relatively weak political force in Warsaw and the rest of the Polish provinces at this time.33 The lack of activity among Zionists and other established Jewish groups was paralleled by an initial period of confusion and then an active electoral boycott on the part of most revolutionary parties. At first, the Warsaw branches of the Bund, Poale Zion, and other organizations adapted poorly to the new rules and realities of popular politics. As discussed in chapter 3, many of the same organizations and parties that flourished in the underground world of conspiratorial politics were unsure of how to navigate the new rules of political engagement. Moreover, many of these groups remained illegal and, as such, were often unable to operate effectively in the public realm. To many, it seemed as though the regime’s designs to divide and conquer bore fruit. In addition to these obstacles, most socialist organizations remained adamantly opposed to the regime and to its reform plans. In the eyes of many revolutionaries, the elections to the First Duma and other quasidemocratic measures were little more than another tsarist ploy designed to lure the opposition into a state of political complacency and to divide the diverse opposition. In an effort to highlight these points, many in the revolutionary camp pointed to the fact that the ratio of voters to electors in the workers’ curia was significantly lower than that of other curiae. Thus, Hans Rogger notes that “the vote of one landowner was equal to that of 3.5 townsmen, 15 peasants and 45 workers.”34 Furthermore, only those who worked in factories that employed over fifty workers were eligible to participate in the ­workers’ curia. As most Jewish laborers were employed in workshops of several dozen employees or less, the new electoral statutes effectively prevented Jewish workers from securing any substantial representation. Suspicious of the regime’s

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intentions, unsure of their place in the newly transformed political arena, and wary of government repression and arrests, most Jewish revolutionary parties decided to honor the Bolshevik call to boycott the elections to the First Duma.35 Reflecting these suspicions of the electoral process as well as their continued commitment to “the way of revolution,” a January 1906 Polish leaflet distributed by the Bund urged supporters not to take part in the elections. down with the state duma! The workers will not be able to send their representatives to the Duma. And the Duma will be in the hands of the reactionary elements; and different steps have been taken to guarantee that the Duma will not be a real popular assembly. . . . No comrades! We have before us only one way—the way of revolution! We have one immediate demand—a constituent assembly based on universal, equal, secret and direct voting rights. We have only one way to achieve our goal—armed uprising. . . . No comrades! The revolution is not over. The battle continues. Our goal does not depend upon concessions. They want to divide us with the Duma—Down with the Duma! They want to cheat us with elections—Down with the elections! Down with the Tsarist tricks!36

While this flier notes specific points such as the need for democratic elections and the nature of the regime’s intentions, it also reflects the deep suspicion with which many revolutionary parties viewed the entire constitutional project. This rejection of democratic politics and institutions would repeatedly divide the revolutionary camp from those groups, whether liberal or national, that viewed such reforms as inherently positive, if not redemptive, signs of progress.37 Regardless of their motives, the revolutionary parties’ decision to boycott the elections would limit their influence in Warsaw as Jewish politics entered the era of public assembly and large-scale action. The promises held out by the advent of participatory politics would prove far too enticing, and many of the same Jews who had only recently cast their lot with the forces of revolution soon found themselves participating in various aspects of the constitutional project. Little would prove as infectious as hope, and on October 17, 1905, that hope passed almost overnight from revolutionary visions for the radical reconstruction of society to liberal designs for more moderate plans for constitutional re-

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form. Ultimately, it was the open, fluid nature of political allegiance and belonging in the early days of Jewish politics that allowed many potential supporters to move about between revolution, democracy, and other political camps. And so, the revolutionary parties’ ideological commitment to “the way of revolution” would cost them much of the revolutionary momentum that they had worked so hard to create. With the assimilationist elite handcuffed by Polish sensibilities, the Zionists confused by the prospect of participatory politics, and the revolutionary parties boycotting the elections, there were relatively few established political groups that could lead Jewish voters in Warsaw down the path of democratic redemption. As a result of this organizational vacuum, the initiative, ideas, rhetoric, and fervor that would come to characterize political activity in this formative period would often come from less established actors and groups, in particular journalists and other nonparty activists who had recently risen to prominence through their activities in different parts of the new Jewish public sphere. These nonaffiliated leaders and their new institutions, in particular the Yiddish press, would soon fill the organizational vacuum in Warsaw and, in the process, help create a new style of Jewish politics and community. Moreover, as a result of these developments, the press, which was created and fueled by a unique combination of entrepreneurs, writers, and, in many cases, political activists, would play a central role in the elections to the first two Dumas. The press’s key role in the elections served several additional goals. First, daily reports on the election campaigns fed not only the public’s growing need for information but also the papers’ institutional demand for continued sales as well as the press’s newfound desire to serve as the central forum for information, debate, and influence in and over the city. Once established, this nexus between the press and modern politics would become a critical component of modern Jewish politics and further distinguish it from earlier forms of political organization and action such as intercession and voluntary organizations.38 A new generation and type of leadership that repeatedly turned to “the people” for legitimacy and support would soon challenge, if not supersede, the longtime centers of Jewish politics and power grounded in traditional communal organizations and led by such legendary Jewish elites as the Natanson family of Warsaw and the Günzburgs of St. Petersburg.39

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Early reports regarding the elections to the First Duma in late 1905 and during the early months of 1906 reflect the press’s new role as the public’s central forum, representative, and, ultimately, master. Throughout these reports, Warsaw’s new Yiddish papers, in particular popular dailies like Der veg and Der telegraf, repeatedly bemoaned widespread public apathy and admonished readers for failing to respond to the historic opportunities that the elections presented. Unlike the mood in the Pale of Settlement, preelection fever had yet to infect the local Jewish populace. If, however, the masses would not come to the election polls—or even to voter registration sites—then the papers would have to bring the elections to the masses. Thus, just as revolutionaries had to learn how to read and speak the language of revolution and theater patrons had to be taught how to appreciate popular theater, potential voters had to be taught how to understand and value the inherently redemptive aspects of the democratic process. However, while the path to political redemption seemed clear to many observers, the people repeatedly refused to fulfill their role in the unfolding drama. Initial press reports reflect this gap and the tense relationship between the new Jewish activists and the voting public. Thus, despite its frequent salutes to the “beautiful Jewish folk-masses,” Der telegraf openly criticized the public for its lack of interest in the electoral process.40 “The attitude among the people toward the upcoming elections is rather reserved,” the paper noted in an early article designed both to inform readers and to generate interest in the electoral experiment.41 Commenting on the lackluster mood in Warsaw in late 1905, Peretz similarly noted the inactivity and passivity that characterized Jewish institutions and organizations. “Where is our organization? Why are we running around scattered and dispersed like sheep? . . . Have we no interests, moral or economic, around which we can organize?”42 Employing similar language, an article from an early 1906 edition of Der telegraf lamented the sad state of affairs: “In the large Jewish cities like Warsaw, Odessa, Lodz, etc., look at how we sleep. The preparations for the elections move along and one thing is clear, how little interest our Jewish folk-masses really have in the elections.”43 Nor was this mood limited to the initial period of confusion immediately following the announcement of the somewhat convoluted election laws in December 1905. A front-page article from Der veg pub-

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lished only a few weeks before the elections also commented on the apathy that apparently characterized many Jewish voters in Warsaw. “The elections to the Duma are proceeding exactly as the bureaucracy wants them to proceed: quietly.”44 Thus, in spite of the repeated efforts to spur interest, many Jews remained—much to the consternation, confusion, and embarrassment of journalists and other would-be leaders—inexplicably removed from, if not apathetic toward, the coming elections.45 For many, this glaring disparity between the leaders’ visions and the public’s mood underscored the need to organize voters into a viable political community. Much like the actions of the revolutionary avant-garde that repeatedly went to “the people,” a new core of political activists would begin to take responsibility for initiating, leading, and directing popular political activity. Despite this gap between elite visions and public behavior, major papers like Der telegraf and Der veg remained stridently optimistic regarding the potentially redemptive aspects of popular elections and other associated reforms. The liberal, democratic phase of the revolutionary wave was in high gear in late 1905 and early 1906 and little, let alone large-scale public apathy, would stand in its seemingly predestined path.46 This optimism was buoyed by early election returns from other locations such as St. Petersburg, which gave the Kadets and their Jewish coalition partners surprising electoral victories.47 Encouraged by these electoral successes, Der veg published an article on the eve of Passover that invoked traditional religious motifs to encourage Warsaw’s Jewish voters to join the historic electoral battle for freedom. In addition to highlighting its new role as the public’s moral compass, the use of the holiday of Passover to inspire readers also implied that the reading public had a religiously mandated duty to take part in the newly sanctified struggle for democracy and freedom. Passover, the holiday of liberation! This has always been the most important Jewish holiday from time immemorial. . . . The Jew has, time and again, overcome all of his troubles with bravery and shown the entire world how strong his spirit is. . . . The time for the Jewish liberation and revival must come and will come!48

Although Der veg and other platforms remained enthusiastic, the public itself was still somewhat indifferent to, if not confused by, the en-

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tire electoral process. Only two weeks before the elections, Der telegraf sought to make sense of its readers’ attitude. Noting the discrepancy between the early hopes that had swept Jewish and non-Jewish societies in the wake of the October Manifesto and the lack of popular activity in early 1906, the columnist known as “S-N” went to great lengths to praise the Jewish masses and to condemn communal leaders. According to the author, the public’s lukewarm response represented not apathy but, in fact, the people’s ability to see through the empty rhetoric and misguided policies of their so-called leaders. In the author’s opinion, it was the self-anointed leadership of the Jewish community and not actual Jewish voters who were at fault. From the moment that they entered the stage of modern Jewish politics, the people were revered as an inherently noble body that could do no wrong.49 We see no signs of any real awakening or interest or desire in the elections on the part of the democratic folk masses; the folk stand apart from everything, withdrawn, cold. . . . the elections interest the masses as much as last year’s fair. . . . Unlike our liberal bourgeois, they have no illusions of such sweet hopes and dreams, choosing to remain removed and free. Indeed, few men have taken part in the elections—even in the last few days. . . . There are several agitators who go in and out of Jewish circles and they alone make the elections.50

Despite such assaults on the liberal bourgeois leaders and their illusory “sweet hopes and dreams,” Der telegraf remained one of the more vocal proponents of Jewish participation in the electoral process.51 Like many other components of the new Jewish public sphere, newspapers and popular politics were intimately bound to one another on the practical, ideological, and teleological levels. At the same time, the paper, its ­major contributors, and other voices repeatedly found themselves mired in the common, intractable contradiction inherent to democratic politics: How can journalists and papers lead the masses without forcing their opinions on potential supporters? Regardless of whatever reservations they may have had regarding their tense, dialectical relationship with “the folk-masses,” neither Der telegraf nor other voices, such as those of the young activists Noah Prylucki and Yitzhak Grünbaum, could withstand the temptation to ride the democratic wave and lead the masses out of “their dark caves.” However, before the masses could

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learn how to march to electoral victory and democratic redemption— the birth-child of electoral politics—they first had to be taught how to walk. However, in order for this metamorphosis of “the people” to take place, newspapers and other critical parts of the new Jewish public sphere had to be transformed from their earlier functions as public forums to their new roles as political masters. The need for newspapers to make this critical series of transitions— from forums to representatives to masters—became increasingly clear. As the elections approached, Der telegraf and other organs were soon caught up in election fever as the prospect of participatory politics was far too exciting and far too profitable to dismiss as a playground for the “liberal bourgeois” elite. Moreover, after he was forced to close the Hebrew daily Ha-tsefira, Der telegraf’s long-distance publisher Nahum Sokolow was no stranger to a journal’s dependency upon its readers’ whims and the tide of public opinion. In response to growing interest in the elections as well as increased competition between papers, Der veg, for example, lowered the price of a single copy of the paper to three kopecks and added a special afternoon supplement dedicated to the elections. Regardless of whatever complaints various critics may have had regarding the elections themselves and the policies of Jewish notables in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and other locales, no paper could afford to miss the historic (and potentially profitable) moment as the entire Russian Empire braced itself with great expectations for the empire’s long-overdue entry into the era of participatory politics and, de facto, into the modern Western world. Moreover, while many readers may have been initially hesitant about participating in local election meetings and other public activities, many others were, apparently, interested in reading, hearing, and learning about the elections. Drawing on earlier practices that bound press ­reports to a newfound public interest in key events like the Russo-­ Japanese War, the press capitalized on and generated popular interest in the elections with regular stories about the elections and electoral politics throughout 1906 and 1907. Thus, as the elections to the First Duma approached, various forums began to speak of a rising public interest. Commenting on the mood in Warsaw in early April 1906, Der telegraf noted a distinct change in the local atmosphere. “The kahal teapot is boiling; and, the kahal mixes its pot. Men go back and forth with elec-

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tion forms, gabbais give speeches in beitei hamidrash, kahal leaders hold caucuses and print leaflets; people go from prayer house to prayer house agitating among Jews and encouraging them to participate in the elections.”52 A lead article from Der veg in early April 1906 similarly spoke of a popular awakening in the days immediately preceding the elections: “In the final minutes before the elections, the Jewish voters in Warsaw and other large cities in Poland have remembered Jewish interests and have begun to organize like the Jews in Russia and to prepare for the elections.”53 The long-awaited awakening of “the beautiful Jewish folkmasses” represented a moment of truth, and it was now up to journalists and activists to turn this sudden interest and increased activity into concerted political action. Would the Jewish public sphere and its new representatives prove capable of replacing the more traditional communal-based leaders and help elect one representative, or perhaps even two, from Warsaw to the Duma? Or, would their spirited challenges to the traditional communal leadership prove to be as vacuous as those of the established communal elite? In addition to the key role played by the new Jewish dailies, much of the electoral activity among Jews in Warsaw was undertaken by a local ad-hoc organization, the Jewish Electoral Committee. Taking a  cue from successes in other parts of the empire, the Committee (which was led by members of Warsaw’s established communal elite, representatives of national organizations, and other local activists) flooded the streets of Warsaw with fliers and announcements detailing their position and their electoral coalition with the local liberal party, the Progressive Democratic Union.54 With most socialist parties boycotting the elections, the coalition between the Jewish Electoral Committee and the Progressive Democratic Union effectively divided the elections in Warsaw into two separate blocs, with the Progressive-Jewish coalition in one camp and the Polish National Democratic Party in the other. Once again, a seemingly random set of factors and impromptu decisions led to key political divides that would set a series of critical precedents. Despite the success of similar coalitions in other areas, these lastminute efforts to mobilize Jewish voters in Warsaw faced several distinct hurdles. First, Warsaw’s residents, both Jewish and non-Jewish, had never before participated in such an experiment.55 Moreover, simi-

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lar to the case of revolutionary politics, there is no reason to assume that tens of thousands of Jews (or Poles for that matter) were naturally inclined to understand, let alone participate in, new electoral processes. Indeed, many potential first-time voters were simply overwhelmed by basic questions such as who could vote, how one was actually supposed to cast a ballot, and how one’s vote would be calculated as part of the larger electoral process.56 The voting process itself was far from simple as voters had to first register to vote and then cast their ballots for local electors who would, in turn, convene to choose Warsaw’s two Duma representatives.57 Thus, the Jewish Electoral Committee’s task was actually threefold: the Committee had to convince potential Jewish voters to take part in the elections; it had to explain the entire voting process to them; and it had to convince them to support the electoral coalition with the Progressive Democratic Union.58 This need to educate potential voters about some of the more basic aspects of popular politics would set the tone for the relationship between the political leadership and potential supporters throughout this period. This larger process of explanation, education, and persuasion began with a series of announcements and other materials designed to introduce first-time voters to the nuts and bolts of hitherto unknown institutions and practices. Similar to efforts used to disseminate the language of revolution, the process of educating potential Jewish voters often began at the most basic level of consciousness, that of language. Published in the summer of 1905, a Yiddish brochure titled “The Constitution and Our Program” reflects the widespread need to educate potential supporters. In anticipation of the semidemocratic reforms that were announced as part of the Bulygin Duma, the booklet went to great lengths to explain the constitutional project and other basic democratic principles with which most readers were not yet familiar. On this occasion, the authors of the pamphlet felt the need to introduce and explain the meaning of such new Yiddish terms as “di ­folksfartretung ” (representative assembly), “di legislator,” and “der kandidat.” 59 Nor were such actions limited to politically engaged circles. Much like the excitement surrounding other central phenomena such as the paper, the theater, and the revolution, the constitutional project infused wide sectors of Jewish society with a newfound sense of excitement. Nikolai Poltika, for example, recalls how his own introduction to mod-

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ern politics began rather spontaneously at home. “From the paper, we were informed that the war had come to an end. There were peace negotiations with Japan, and in Russia a popular movement had begun that demanded reforms and a constitution. What was a constitution? Grandma explained that to us, and we anxiously followed the events in Kiev and the rest of the country through newspaper items.”60 Despite such examples regarding the very process of political education, many Jews in Warsaw remained confused by the upcoming elections. In an effort to generate support, two leading Hasidic rabbis, Avraham Mordechai Alter, the influential rabbi of Ger Hasidim, and Avraham Bronstein, the rabbi of the town of Sochaczew, published a joint statement encouraging local Jews to take part in the upcoming elections. This announcement not only highlights the active role played by some traditional Jewish leaders in the political process but also illustrates the extent to which some of the more basic aspects of electoral politics had to be explained to potential Jewish voters. to our brothers, the children of israel! As it is known, our rabbis taught us: “Do not withdraw from the public.” We turn to our brothers the children of Israel in Warsaw and in all of Poland with the following appeal: As we have seen, in all the places where Jews live in Russia, they have taken part in the elections to the “State Duma,” and this has been good for the Jewish community. We Polish Jews are also obliged to take part in the elections; this will increase the number of Jews among the electors in different regions so that the number of Jewish representatives in the Duma will be higher and they will be able to undertake different actions to defend the interests of all Jews in the entire Russian Empire.61

In addition to explaining the basics of electoral politics, the Jewish Electoral Committee also had to justify its electoral strategies, including its alliance with the liberal Polish party, the Progressive Democratic Union, as well as its opposition to the National Democratic Party. The electoral coalition in Warsaw was based on a strategy of presenting voters with a combined list of Jewish and Progressive electors. As part of this plan, Jewish voters were encouraged to vote for Progressive electors in those districts in which Jewish voters were a minority; and supporters of the Progressive Democrats were called upon to vote

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for Jewish electors in those districts in which Jewish voters held a clear majority.62 Once chosen, Jewish and Progressive electors would pool their efforts in the city’s electoral caucus and, thus, be able to elect their representatives in Warsaw’s urban curia. Modeled after the strategy that the Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for Jews, the Kadets, and other groups had implemented in different locations, this policy of combining forces with non-Jewish groups proved extremely successful throughout the Pale of Settlement and in parts of Russia proper.63 Despite electoral successes in other cities, voters in Warsaw seemed hesitant to support the coalition. In response to this ambivalence, Warsaw’s Jewish Electoral Committee went to great lengths to explain its policies of interethnic cooperation.64 The following flier distributed by the Jewish Electoral Committee in the days immediately preceding the elections attempted to justify its position and strategies. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Jewish people in our city would like to send representatives that in addition to being good for the country will also be positively inclined towards the interests of the Jewish population, and, above all, in favor of equating their rights to those of the rest of the people in the country and state. Thus, Jewish citizens must strive to elect Jewish electors when possible; and, when it is not possible to choose Jewish electors, [to elect] people who are extremely sympathetic to Jewish interests and prepared to wholeheartedly and energetically support these interests.65

Despite such spirited calls for interethnic cooperation, the coalition between the Jewish Electoral Committee and the Progressive Democrats remained fraught with tension. Indeed, all this particular flier could guarantee was that potential Progressive Democratic representatives would be “extremely sympathetic to Jewish interests and prepared to wholeheartedly and energetically support those interests.” Moreover, the degree of explanation employed in this flier reflects the fear that many voters were still hesitant to support the Jewish Electoral Committee’s policies. Although some had reservations about the electoral coalition with the Progressive Democrats, both Der telegraf and Der veg placed their full support behind Warsaw’s Jewish Electoral Committee and its partnership with the Progressive Democrats as the semidemocratic elec-

From Public Sphere to Public Will

tions and the prospect of larger political reforms fueled the hopes of many. As part of this growing interest, Yiddish newspapers published detailed rosters of electors in each of the city’s twelve voting districts. While meetings in synagogues and the actions of local activists may have been successful, the only viable way to reach tens of thousands of potential Jewish voters in such a short span of time was through the new public forum, the daily press.66 Time and again, popular politics would demand and depend upon popular means of communication and organization. Moreover, the Jewish daily press was more than happy to continue its new role as the center stage and main advocate of Jewish politics and community. The press’s function as the main stage of modern Jewish politics and the pressing need to mobilize popular support led to a distinct shift in the content and style of political language and rhetoric. Throughout the elections, newspapers not only gave extensive coverage to the events but also published the Jewish Electoral Committee’s official announcements as large advertisements that appeared on the front pages of papers such as Der telegraf and Der veg. These announcements illustrate how the Committee’s rhetoric had already passed from explanation to instruction. The following excerpt from a Jewish Electoral Committee announcement that appeared on the front page of Der veg highlights the new discourse of organization, mobilization, and discipline that began to characterize electoral literature in these critical, defining moments of political action. Brothers! If your people are dear to you and their honor is important to you, then you will immediately go to the election bureaus and register to vote so that all Jewish voters can participate in the elections and not one Jewish vote will be lost!67

The full-page announcement by the Jewish Electoral Committee on the following day was even more demanding in its appeal to Jewish voters: “Don’t forget the elections!” to the jewish voters in warsaw: brothers! The final hour approaches; those who have not yet registered to vote and taken their registration ticket must do so immediately; whoever does not do so will bear a huge responsibility for his brothers. Our opponents are searching for ideas and means through which they can foil our efforts; how-

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ever, these actions, even when shameless and evil, will not succeed and their efforts will not prevent us from fulfilling our goal of a brighter future, a future of freedom, of real civil rights, a future in which all those restrictions that have made our lives unhappy will be irrevocably abolished. Brothers! You must now use all your energies, and all your power to help elect our electors. Only thus can we succeed: When all voters vote unanimously for those people whom the Jewish Electoral Committee has listed below. No other names can be chosen. Remember brothers! Only by voting together in unison can we succeed!68

Like other electoral materials, this particular call highlights the critical connection between democracy and discipline.69 Thus, potential voters were encouraged to use all of their energies and power to “vote unanimously for those people whom the Jewish Electoral Committee has listed.” This particular announcement continues by warning voters not to fall prey to phony lists that were distributed in Warsaw.70 “We remind you that those who hate us have sent their lists to Jewish voters to confuse them to no end. Thus, voters should only take notice of our list and . . . no other lists. Lastly, the Jewish Electoral Committee will send all Jewish voters voting cards with the names of the candidates. Those who do not have these lists can obtain them at the following locations.”71 The advertisement ends with an additional set of instructions and warnings including: not to write anything on the ballot itself, to bring proper voter registration, and not to send a proxy. Once again, it fell upon the new journalists and political activists to lead the newly defined public to “a brighter future” through a discourse of collective responsibility, organization, and discipline. This growing sense regarding the need to instruct the people led Der veg and other papers to preach to their Yiddish readers about the public’s new responsibilities. Here, too, the paper’s tone was increasingly adamant and didactic. As the experience of participatory politics transformed the Jewish public sphere from a forum for public debate to a vehicle for the mobilization of tens of thousands of voters, electoral politics demanded an increased level of collective discipline. Moreover, in its new capacity as the initiator and director of popular support, the paper repeatedly found itself in the somewhat contradictory situation of having to explain the public’s better interests to the public itself. In the following excerpt from an article published immediately before the

From Public Sphere to Public Will

elections, Der veg is particularly concerned with explaining what “many voters do not understand.” Many voters do not understand that in order for the Jewish “Bloc” to win all Jewish voters must cast their votes for those candidates, Jewish and Christian, who are listed on the Jewish Electoral Committee lists. They do not understand that if they vote for only some of the electors and not for others that they may contribute to the defeat of the entire Jewish “Bloc.”72

Like the full-page advertisements that accompanied such editorials, this appeal included detailed instructions regarding how voters were to cast their ballots. Taken together, these materials reflect not only the widespread confusion that reigned but also the extent to which many papers regularly took it upon themselves to instruct and to lead the city’s residents out of their state of electoral confusion.73 Indeed, if the “voters do not understand,” then it was the paper’s task to make sure that they would see the light and “cast their vote for those candidates, Jewish and Christian, who are listed on the Jewish Electoral Committee’s lists.” Throwing their full weight behind Warsaw’s ad-hoc Jewish Electoral Committee, the newly established and immensely popular Jewish newspapers attempted to transform tens of thousands of Jewish residents of Warsaw into an organized, directed, and conscious political community, united by common interests, struggles, and destinies. Reflecting the fundamental need to define and direct the public, the Jewish Electoral Committee’s announcement on the day of the elections was especially dramatic as the earlier need to educate was quickly replaced by a more pressing need for discipline: brothers! today the world is born anew! Today you will show what you understand, what you will!! Today you will show the world that you know how to struggle for your rights!! That you will not be confused by foreign lists!! Only together in one voice can we defeat those who hate us!! Go brothers and vote unanimously for the Jewish Electoral Committee’s list.74

Again, while political legitimacy rested in the hands of Warsaw’s Jewish voters, it was the responsibility of the press and local activists to turn potential urban voters into a viable political community, and this was to be accomplished through a discourse of order and discipline. As the

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Jewish Electoral Committee announcement distributed on the day of the elections noted, only by voting “unanimously” and as “one voice” could Jewish voters unite as “brothers” against those who “hate” them. Moreover, any failure to comply with these demands would prevent the otherwise imminent arrival of a “brighter future” “in which all those restrictions that have made our lives unhappy will be irrevocably abolished.” While the need for order and unity in pursuit of specific political goals would be further refined in the elections to the Second Duma, the structures, practices, and rhetoric that would help redefine Jewish politics and community were already well on their way to becoming integral aspects of the new Jewish political culture. Despite the electoral successes that coalitions between Jews and liberals produced in the Pale of Settlement and other locations, the ­Progressive-Jewish alliance was unable to elect either one of Warsaw’s two Duma representatives. In an ominous harbinger of later developments, the National Democrats swept the elections in Warsaw by winning nine of the city’s twelve districts and, in the process, securing spots for sixty of the city’s eighty electors. As a result, two National Democratic candidates, Franciszek Nowodworski and Władysław Tyszkiewicz, were chosen to represent the city’s urban curia in the First Duma.75 The defeat of the Progressive-Jewish coalition in Warsaw led to an array of articles that questioned both the strategies and actions of the Jewish Electoral Committee as well as the public’s commitment to these goals. Through such postelection commentaries, the press further bolstered its role as the definitive critic and undisputed leader of the newly reconstructed Jewish public sphere. Moreover, this position enabled the press to take additional steps toward defining and refining political communities in Warsaw. Combining its new roles of critic and advocate, Der telegraf published detailed accounts of the election results in each of the city’s twelve voting districts. These reports included not only the names of specific electors chosen in each particular district but also, in many cases, the actual number of votes cast by members of each particular ethnic group. Thus, readers were informed that the Jewish Electoral Committee lost its campaign in the Third District by a margin of 124 votes (3,850 for the National Democrats and 3,726 for the Jewish Electoral Committee) and in the Seventh District by 1,260 votes (3,548 versus 2,288).76 Such detailed accounts of the election results and the

From Public Sphere to Public Will

repeated identification of different electoral blocs with specific ethnic communities reflect the growing divides in Warsaw. The new democratic practices, the accompanying process of political encampment, and the experience of electoral competition left little room for gray areas as the city’s residents began to divide into two clearly defined political communities. Thus, one either supported the Progressive-Jewish alliance in Warsaw or one was, essentially, not Jewish. Conversely, one either supported the National Democrats or one was, de facto, not Polish. Either way, the elections to the First Duma helped clarify popular concepts of community and belonging. With political communities further refined, it did not take long for some observers to start questioning whether or not Jewish voters (and readers) fully understood their responsibilities and destinies. The increased demand for electoral discipline contributed to a public search for political deviants, and the press was more than happy to help locate guilty parties. According to different press accounts, some Jews in Warsaw actually voted for the National Democratic list. Indeed, soon after the elections a series of urban tales revolving around themes of community and loyalty began to surface. Reflecting the larger search for deviant parties and the need to clarify boundaries, Der telegraf informed readers: “The following fact has been relayed to us. In the doorway of the sixth gymnasia through which voters passed and in which Dr. Konpinski stood, many Jews threw away their voting lists and asked for a National Democratic list. Mr. Goldwasser of 34 Żelazna Street and Mr. Pfeffer of 11 Senatorska Street witnessed this themselves.”77 Continuing this theme of collective loyalty and discipline, Der veg began to question the extent to which the people actually understood their own best interests. Although ostensibly noble, the masses were apparently still not ready to recognize or fulfill their destiny. Thus, a lead article from Der veg openly questioned the political consciousness of many Jews in Polish lands. “The Polish Jew is either too religious and will not transgress one step, even if it is an archaic tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages. . . . Or, he has surrendered all Jewish traditions from the Jewish national heritage and is ashamed to speak about his Jewishness. In the last few years, there is almost no middle ground among Polish Jews. . . . In the hour in which the Russian Jews have organized a collective leadership, the Polish Jews have forgotten that

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they were even Jews.” This article continued by echoing the charges aired earlier by Der telegraf and noting that even “the Polish Endek press has noted that among the Jews here, there were many ma yofes [Uncle Toms] who voted for the Nationalists.” Frustrated by the public’s lack of political maturity and, perhaps, its own failures, the paper returned to the dialectical relationship and tension between the people and their advocates: “Will the Polish Jews ever organize so that they can mobilize toward their future? When will they demand that their rights be defended?”78 Like many other pieces published at the time, this article fully acknowledged that political sovereignty continued to lie in the people. At the same time, the author couldn’t help but express frustration over the public’s inability to appreciate and embrace this sacred right. Unity and community demanded both individual and collective discipline, and the new leaders of Warsaw’s Jews remained at an ideological, political, and ethical crossroads: What were they to do with a public that was not politically mature enough to recognize and “demand that their rights be defended”? Der telegraf continued this discussion of loyalty and consciousness with its own search for guilty parties. Returning to many of the themes that characterized preelection pieces, the paper again pointed to the struggle between the Jewish masses and the Jewish elite as the key to understanding the electoral losses. In an article titled “The Last Act of the Electoral-Comedy,” the paper’s assistant editor (Moses) Naḥman Syrkin derided the coalition with the Progressive Democrats as another in a series of morally and politically flawed schemes that shamelessly sacrificed Jewish interests and pride. At the same time, the author praised the “Jewish folk-masses” for remaining true to their pure instincts and impervious to the cynical attempts to manipulate the public’s unadulterated will. In Syrkin’s opinion, it was the self-anointed leaders of Warsaw’s Jews, those who had not yet liberated themselves from the archaic, antidemocratic practices so characteristic of premodern Jewish politics, who were responsible for the electoral defeat.79 The Jewish voting-masses did not lose the struggle; the loss has again exposed the bankruptcy of the old-style kahal system in which a single spokesman takes upon himself the entire effort . . . at the expense of the Jewish folk-masses and pulls the masses along without involving

From Public Sphere to Public Will

them in the election campaign. The electoral defeat is another victory for democratic principles: for their own benefit, the masses have spoken for themselves with their own will.80

According to Syrkin, the “Jewish folk-masses” were not guilty of the sins of apathy or betrayal. In fact, they alone remained the true bearers of political legitimacy and wisdom. Thus, it was again the responsibility of the so-called communal spokesmen who had selfishly grabbed the mantle of leadership without any real support and had thus violated “democratic principles” “at the expense of the Jewish folk-masses.” Once again, the people’s innate wisdom and beauty helped them to see through the elite’s self-serving designs and convinced them not to take part in their corrupt policies and destructive practices. True to their inherently noble and pure nature, the “Jewish folk-masses” were endowed not only with powers that enabled them to distinguish between good and evil but also with a will of their own, a public will. Hence, the leaders of the “old-style kahal system” were not at fault because they advocated participation in the electoral process but because they claimed to speak in the people’s name and abused this false legitimacy to further the “dark, hidden, cowardly politics of Bontshe the Silent.”81 Reflecting the mood at the time, Grünbaum used similar, if albeit somewhat harsher, language to disparage those communal leaders who claimed to represent the people: “The official Jews remain the same slaves and lackeys that they always were.”82 In these and other accounts, claims to possess legitimate political support were tainted with vestiges of premodern Jewish politics, in particular the sin of false representation.83 However, while few could fool the Jewish folk-masses, even fewer seemed to be able to lead them along the correct path. Thus, the experience of participatory politics not only furthered the position of a new generation of political activists and their new public forums but also solidified the borders of community and, in the process, consecrated the people’s role as the sole proprietor of political legitimacy. From this moment on, any individual or group claiming to represent Jews in Warsaw, or in any other locale in the Russian Empire, had to contend with the charge that not only were they operating without the support of the masses but also, like the so-called Jewish leaders in Warsaw, they, too, were using illegitimate political methods

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that essentially undermined the people’s better interests. Once these charges regarding the right to represent the people entered the public realm, they would repeatedly be employed to legitimize certain groups and disqualify others. While political community demanded order and order was to be achieved via organization and discipline, all of these goals were to be carried out in the name of the people. This dynamic between the need for political legitimacy, the demand for collective loyalty, and the sanctity of the public will was further refined during the elections to the Second Duma.84

The Elections to the Second Duma: Chaos, Confusion, and the Domestication of the Jewish Street The nature and course of public debate during the elections to the Second Duma in early 1907 further illustrate the extent to which the institutions that helped make participatory politics possible depended upon and engendered a specific style of political organization, rhetoric, and action. Moreover, while the campaign featured similar electoral blocs and strategies, the repeated experience of popular elections exacerbated many underlying tensions. As a result of these developments, the debates aired in the Jewish public sphere became even more acerbic. The earlier failure of Warsaw’s Jewish Electoral Committee and its unofficial patron, the Yiddish press, to elect even one Jewish representative to the First Duma in Warsaw’s urban curia led to an increased emphasis on collective loyalty and discipline. Hence, while the elections to the First Duma may have been viewed by some as a democratic experiment, the preparations for the Second Duma were already portrayed as part of an all-out war. Ultimately, the repeated experiences of popular politics and large-scale political mobilization would lead to the solidification of specific ethno-linguistic lines of community and to increasingly vocal calls to conform to these boundaries. As George L. Mosse notes in a different context: “the careful efforts of nationalist movements” are often “directed toward disciplining and directing the masses in order to avoid the chaos which defeats the creation of a meaningful mass movement.”85 Like the elections to the First Duma, the elections to the Second Duma in February 1907 were initially greeted with a degree of indif-

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ference on the part of many of Warsaw’s Jewish residents. The tsar’s decision to disband the First Duma in July 1906 several months after it was convened did little to counter the opposition’s arguments that not much had changed in St. Petersburg.86 Less than a half-year after the dismissal of the first elected assembly, the public remained wary of, if not indifferent to, the prospect of popular elections and constitutional reform in the tsar’s empire. Here, as well, it was up to a new cadre of leaders, in particular journalists and political activists, to lead Warsaw’s Jewish residents out of their state of confusion and indifference and onto the road to electoral victory. However, in order for this transformation to occur, the press and its representatives would again have to spur the public’s interest, refine its goals, and convince voters to take the necessary, critical steps into the public realm that would allow them to fulfill these visions. Once again, it was up to the elite to lead the Jewish masses out of their darkness and into the light. The first challenge that Jewish activists and leaders faced was the need to generate widespread public support for their political projects. In an article from November 1906, one of the central figures in the new Jewish public sphere, the increasingly vocal journalist Noah Prylucki, admonished both the public and its leaders for their apparent lack of activity. According to Prylucki: The silence on the greater part of the Jewish people in Poland, in particular, the entire middle class, those who can now have the greatest influence on the character of the Jewish representation to the Duma, this utter silence, is an abomination! . . . Everything is artificial, everything is a cheap imitation: our national movement, our parties, our demands.87

The Hebrew daily Ha-yom was equally dismayed by its readers’ apparent lack of interest in the elections. In response to the dismal state of affairs, the paper called for an increased level of communal organization. Electoral failures in the elections to the First Duma had taught Jewish activists and journalists the importance of collective organization and discipline, two themes that would become increasingly central to Jewish political culture and behavior in late 1906 and early 1907. We cannot withdraw from the electoral war. We must reorganize and return to the confines of our community. . . . We must expand our

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v­ ision and sense of our future; we must politically educate through the elections, enrich those who bear our soul, and not give up on them in any war; and patiently wait till we achieve our goals; if not now, then in the near future, if not in these elections, then in the near future.88

The need to awaken the dormant masses was, however, only the first step toward political victory. Indeed, once awakened, the public needed to be led down the correct path. Thus, much like the rhetoric surrounding the elections to the First Duma, different activists were repeatedly concerned with protecting readers from being duped into supporting other groups that claimed to represent Jewish interests. In many cases, it was the responsibility of the papers and journalists to instruct potential voters on some of the basics of popular politics, including the borders and definition of their own political community. Just as newspapers walked readers through the dizzying maze of urban life, here, too, ­papers led potential voters through the labyrinth of electoral regulations and new political organizations that suddenly flooded their already hectic modern lives. Wherever one went, the paper instructed, directed, protected, and bound readers and voters. Throughout the elections to the Second Duma, various Jewish observers were incensed by the decision of some Jews to support the National Concentration, a new coalition led by the National Democrats and the newly formed Polish Progressive Party (a patriotic organization created to challenge the Progressive Democrats). Writing on the pages of Der veg, Noah Prylucki claimed that Jewish support for this particular coalition was not only strategically flawed but also reflective of the moral decay that characterized many members of Warsaw’s Jewish elite. Repeatedly faced with challenges and competitors, Prylucki’s aim throughout the elections to the Second Duma became one that combined education and mobilization with condemnation and delegitimization. In addition to informing readers, the paper and its advocates now felt that they had a right if not an obligation to critique, instruct, and direct its readers. Moreover, here, in particular, Prylucki used his new position and power as one of the editors of the popular paper Der veg to grant legitimacy to those who he thought should lead the masses and to disqualify those who he believed threatened the people’s better interests. His comments in late 1906 and early 1907 regarding those

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Jews who threw their support behind the National Concentration were particularly scathing as Prylucki and other journalists began to reconfigure the very meaning and lines of community in Warsaw. The following two citations from Prylucki’s many articles reflect his new stance. No Jewish representative . . . can enter into any negotiations with the pogrom party [National Democrats]. This group of traitors who want to join the National Concentration have no place among the Jewish people. They are no longer part of Jewish society.89

And: The National Democrats have collected some fifty people who were once Jews and who have now betrayed their people.90

Like Prylucki, Yitzhak Grünbaum, who would go on to be the undisputed leader of Polish Zionism (and Jewry) between the two world wars, similarly condemned those Jews who supported the National Democrats’ coalition. “The vast majority (of Jews) viewed this committee with disdain and hatred and saw its [Jewish] members as traitors who had passed over to the enemy camp.”91 Much like theater critics and journalists, activists like Prylucki and Grünbaum now possessed the dual responsibility of not only educating the public but also redefining it. This new role as the arbiter between right and wrong as well as “us” from “them” underscores the degree to which the writer, the newspaper, and other public sphere institutions helped clarify the nature and borders of community and encampment. Nor were Prylucki and Grünbaum alone. Idishes tageblat was similarly dismayed by the proposed alliance with the National Democrats. Although somewhat more tempered than the increasingly vituperative Prylucki and the always confrontational Grünbaum, an unsigned article regarding the alliance with the National Concentration expressed utter dismay regarding those Jews who supported the coalition. In these and in other cases, the public’s new advocates were again faced with one of democracy’s more intractable dilemmas: What are leaders to do with disobedient masses? Three Polish parties from the “right”: the National Democrats, the Real­ist Party, and the Polish Progressive Party, [the last] of which none of our readers have ever heard, have decided to establish a central elec-

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toral committee which will join forces with various non-party elements and work together in the elections. The Central Committee, which includes two Jews, Dr. Nussbaum and Mr. Kornblum, will try to attract Jewish voters. . . . How can Jews ally themselves with the National Democrats who throughout the elections to the First Duma distributed threatening proclamations and advocated pogroms?92

Despite the paper’s disbelief, it was not yet entirely convinced that all of its readers would recognize the National Democrats’ true designs as well as the sheer bankruptcy of supporting this coalition. Thus, the writer felt compelled to instruct readers about the very nature and ­limits of their own community. Another article from Idishes tageblat similarly reminded the reading public that this particular coalition was “not for you, Jews, but for the good of Poland, and for the happiness of the Polish people.”93 The Hebrew daily Ha-yom was even more direct in its assault on those Jews who supported the National Democrats and their leading candidate Roman Dmowski. A front-page article from early 1907 employed some of the same rhetoric used by Noah Prylucki, Grünbaum, and others. In a sarcastic attack on those Jews who supported the alliance with the National Concentration, the paper asked “when will you open your eyes; you, our good ‘guardians’ who ally yourselves with the [National] Concentration? How long will you continue to lick the feet of Dmowski which walk all over you in pride and contempt?”94 Ultimately, these and other public platforms not only felt that they had a duty to tell Warsaw’s Jewish residents how to vote but also that they had the right to restate and reclaim the borders of the community. In many cases, these strategies led them to exclude anyone who supported the National Concentration from this new political community. Indeed, the repeated conflation of this newly reconstructed political community with all “Jews” in Warsaw meant that Prylucki, Grünbaum, and others were not only clarifying the lines of community and belonging, but also expunging those who failed to back their political policies from this body. As Prylucki put it so angrily, “they are no longer part of Jewish society.” Unlike participation in revolutionary political cells or informal public spaces such as coffeehouses, the experience of electoral politics forced activists and organizations to take clear public positions regarding the

From Public Sphere to Public Will

contours and parameters of the body politic. For Prylucki, Grünbaum, and others, these lines of belonging were increasingly clear. For one, they did not include those Jews who supported the National Democrats or their allies. More importantly, these lines of belonging no longer depended exclusively on seemingly primordial factors. Membership in the newly reconfigured and politicized Jewish body politic now demanded not only kinship and blood but also a publicly stated commitment to a specific set of political values. Once this example was set, Prylucki and others would not stop with their assaults on the National Democrats and their Jewish “traitors.” As a result of these practices, the precedent of publicly delegitimizing dissenting political groups and deviant individuals from the Jewish body politic would be employed repeatedly throughout this period in an effort to refine further the lines of community, to legitimize political representation, and, ultimately, to exert order and control over Warsaw and its Jewish residents. The days of open-ended discussions in Warsaw’s cafes and revolutionary cells, with fluid movement among different organizations, had given way to a new era that demanded public statements and commitments of loyalty to specific political platforms. More than any other factor, it was the transition of the public sphere from a forum for public debate to a tool for political mobilization that precipitated this critical transition in the very nature and style of political rhetoric and thinking. This transition from an open, static public space to an enlisted, directed one bound by a discourse of loyalty and discipline would mark a critical phase in the transformation of Jewish conceptions and practices of politics, community, and self. Despite such attempts to define the Jewish body politic in Warsaw, dissenting voices continued to appear in the Jewish public sphere. One of these voices was the somewhat obscure group, the “Committee of Warsaw Jews.” While this group openly opposed the policies advocated by Der veg, Ha-yom, and other forums, their justification of their position used concepts similar to those employed by Grünbaum, Prylucki, and others, in particular the well-being of the people. Apparently, no group or leader, no matter what their policies, could afford to overlook the supremacy of the public’s will. The only question that remained was how the people’s needs were to be defined. A Yiddish flier distributed by the organization in the days preceding the elections warned

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“our brothers the children of israel” not to take any steps that might unnecessarily endanger Jews in Warsaw. Warsaw Jews! The day of the elections is fast approaching and we Jews, torn between two paths, know not what to do. One group tells us that we must not divide Poland, and that we must give our votes to the [National] Concentration. The other group of Jews, the Litvakes and the Zionists . . . have joined the “Progressives,” and other complete heretics in order to send two Polish representatives from Warsaw. . . . This is a very dangerous game. The Poles are a strong and stubborn people and it is best to live with them in peace. . . . If there are no Polish representatives from Warsaw, all of the Poles will seek revenge on us and make our lives more difficult; they won’t buy any goods in ­Jewish stores and factories. . . . Peace unto Israel.95

Such calls, however, remained marginal, and most voices in the Jewish press and other bodies remained united in their opposition to the National Democrats’ coalition. At the same time, a widespread consensus regarding the exact platform that these organs and their readers were to support remained elusive. Two additional issues that continued to divide Jewish organizations and activists were the extent to which parties ought to support Jewish national rights and the degree to which Jewish voters could rely upon potential electoral partners, in particular the newly reconstituted Progressive Union. Not surprisingly, these were some of the same issues that plagued the empire-wide Union for Attainment of Full Rights for Jews.96 The debates regarding these points illustrate further the changing nature of political rhetoric, the key role played by new public sphere institutions, and the extent to which both of these developments combined to further refine the nature and borders of community in Warsaw. Regarding the question of national rights, the daily Ha-yom was clear in its demand that all viable Duma candidates support the national interests of Warsaw’s Jewish residents. Turning inward, the paper angrily criticized those deviant Jewish groups—in this case “assimilationists” and local “Hasidim”—that hesitated to demand these national rights. Much like its assaults on those who supported the National Concentration, the paper remained adamant and, at times, hostile toward those Jews who violated its conception of right from wrong. In various pre-

From Public Sphere to Public Will

election pieces, Ha-yom clarified its own definition of community as well as the borders of belonging by expressing support for non-Jewish candidates who advocated Jewish national rights over those Jewish candidates who failed to support such claims. And as we are sure that a progressive Christian will certainly be more likely to agree to such a program—one that any people that are concerned with their own existence would demand—than an assimilated Jew, we demand that either a Jewish nationalist or a progressive Pole be elected and not a “Pole of the Mosaic faith”; Not an assimilationist!97 We can only agree to the election of a national Jewish candidate, or of a progressive Christian who will agree to all of our national demands. . . . Moreover, just as the election of an assimilated Jew is a violation of our program, so, too, is a coalition with the Polish National Democrats, who do not even try to hide their hatred of Jews. And, if the Jewish Electoral Committee in our city . . . will act differently; if they find reason to ally themselves in a coalition with and support those who hate us, then we will think of such an act as one of betrayal.98

Thus, “assimilated” Jews—a onetime neutral term that had already become a politically loaded phrase—were now equated with the Jewish community’s sworn enemies, the National Democrats. As the electoral campaign to the Second Duma continued, Ha-yom and other platforms repeatedly implemented these and other acts of delegitimization and, at times, excommunication of those Jews who opposed their political platforms. Hence, in both of these cases cited above the paper calls on voters to support liberal Poles over Jewish “assimilationists” who openly side with “those who hate us” in acts of national betrayal. Throughout the elections to the Second Duma, discussions regarding Jewish national rights contributed to a growing discourse of consolidation, on the one hand, and delegitimization, on the other.99 “Assimilated” Jews, however, were not the only ones who bore the brunt of such assaults. Continuing this tactic, Ha-yom and other papers also attacked those “Hasidim” who similarly questioned the paper’s demand for Jewish national rights. Thus, Ha-yom openly condemned those “‘Hasidim’ who would rather join the enemy’s camp or the camp of those who deny their own people, than support the Jewish Elec-

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toral Committee founded by the national elements.”100 Here, too, those Jews who opposed the paper’s political platform were accused of joining “the enemy’s camp” and of betraying “their own people,” a body which now possessed not only new boundaries but also a clear set of political principles. As papers and the new generation of Jewish activists strengthened their position, political loyalty became a critical marker of belonging, and dissenting voices became increasingly marginalized. Nor were these the only divides between different Jewish organizations. While the National Democrats were viewed with open hostility and the “assimilationists” and the “Hasidim” were labeled as traitors, the Jewish Electoral Committee’s proposed coalition partners, the newly reconstructed Progressive Union, was charged with being vague and unclear in regard to its commitment to Jewish national rights. In different debates, Jewish representatives argued over the extent to which the Progressive Union should and could be trusted. Responding to conflicting reports regarding the Progressive Union’s position, Idishes ­tageblat criticized the party and called on the Progressives to clarify their partnership with the local Jewish Electoral Committee. The Progressive Union is, quite simply, a lying one; and a cowardly one; one that is too afraid to say: “Yes! We, we [sic] have joined with the Jewish Committee and we have adopted their platform.” If this is their position, then how can we believe that they will honor their commitments to Jews? We cannot make any sense of this.101

True to character, Noah Prylucki was far less diplomatic in regard to the Progressive Union’s apparent failure to take clear public positions on the issues of Jewish national rights and their proposed coalition with the Jewish Electoral Committee. In his mind, the Progressive Union’s indecision was not a question of policies but, rather, a reflection of the party’s true position. The Union’s failure to recognize and support Jewish national rights revealed the true face of Polish liberalism.102 Highlighting the ever-hardening nature of political rhetoric and the drive for collective unity, Prylucki portrayed the Progressive Union as a thinly disguised version of National Democracy. In his eyes, both were exclusionary national movements that had little tolerance for Jewish rights or, for that matter, for the Jewish people. By the end of 1907, politics (both Jewish and Polish) in Warsaw had little

From Public Sphere to Public Will

patience for those groups and individuals that had difficulty deciding where their loyalties lay. They [the Progressive Union] have purchased a lease on life with the mere toleration of our existence; with silence, with humiliation, with a minor reference to our rights. No, this is too humiliating for us. . . . At that very moment that they deny our national rights, they cease, in our eyes, to be a progressive group. We can only support a party that is truly democratic, and not one that sacrifices our national rights.103

In a series of angry articles, Prylucki continued his claim that such “‘progressiveness’ is no better than” the National Democrats’ “chauvinism.”104 Surrounded by either self-hating Jews willing to sell out their people for an illusion of peace, on the one hand, and Polish chauvinists masquerading as liberals, on the other, Prylucki was clear about where the shrinking lines of political belonging and legitimacy lay. Furthermore, while Prylucki may have been one of the more vituperative voices in the Jewish papers, his angry opposition to the National Democrats, his bitter disillusionment with Polish liberals, and his contempt for those Jews that did not toe his hard line reflect the new style of Jewish politics that arose in the period. Less fearful of antisemitic backlashes (perhaps because he was writing in Yiddish) and openly distrusting of liberal promises, Prylucki expressed the increasingly exclusive, nationalist, and angry style of rhetoric, politics, and community that would come to characterize political life among Jews (and Poles) in Polish lands both before and after World War I. Lastly, Prylucki’s angry silencing of political rivals in the name of unity reflects a critical transition in the uses and nature of the Jewish public sphere and the political culture that it supported and produced. For his part, Grünbaum responded by similarly ridiculing the alliance with the Progressive Union and the shame that it brought to Jews in Warsaw. In his opinion, the electoral coalition demonstrated that many Jews had not yet entered the modern phase of political thinking, one that was marked by honorable demands for collective self-­ determination. Despite the experiences of the past few years, Warsaw’s Jews remained politically backward, if not humiliatingly masochistic. Grünbaum’s bitter caricature of the Progressive Union’s Jewish allies left little room for doubt regarding who now had the right to lead War-

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saw’s Jewish residents and in which direction. “The Jews have turned themselves into the Progressive Union’s servants; into nothing more than a tool in their hands. They did not want to be the National Democrats’ lackeys, so they became the Progressives’ lackeys. The principle of slavishly serving others remains the same principle.”105 Here, too, the lines of division and the need for allegiance were becoming increasingly clear as repeated elections led to an angry new style of political rhetoric, organization, and culture. Despite such misgivings regarding the Progressive Union, Idishes tageblat and other forums eventually supported the coalition between the Jewish Electoral Committee and the Progressive Union.106 That said, the papers’ endorsement of the Progressive-Jewish bloc in the elections to the Second Duma was far less enthusiastic than its spirited calls a year earlier during the elections to the First Duma. Oftentimes, it seemed as though the paper was supporting the lesser of two evils and not a coalition that it felt was destined to lead to the birth of a new world. Once again, the cause of Polish-Jewish solidarity that had bound Polish and Jewish liberals for decades was on the verge of collapse.107 In a lead article on the day of the elections in Warsaw, Idishes tageblat openly shared its dilemmas with readers. For whom should Jews cast their votes? . . . On one hand, our ears hear the wild calls of the dark masses: The Jews are working against our fatherland. On the other hand we hear the voices of the liberation movement: Jews, don’t vote for the dark forces, don’t vote for those who are full of hatred and poison for all that is bright. And we stand in the middle, between the two burning fires of our time; and we ask ourselves: What should we do?108

Thus, even though the paper backed the alliance with the Progressive Union, Idishes tageblat was not completely convinced of its own position. The same article continues by listing the reasons why Jews should not vote for the National Democrats—the candidacy of Roman Dmowski, their alliance with the forces of reaction, and their implementation of anti-Jewish rhetoric—rather than emphasizing why Jews should support the Progressive Union. A steady string of angry newspaper articles and the Progressive Union’s own reluctance to clarify its position on the question of Jewish national rights had influenced Idishes

From Public Sphere to Public Will

tageblat and other forums. As the elections approached, more and more Jews in Warsaw began to view the Progressive Union with suspicion. Despite such reservations, the specter of popular elections was again too alluring to be dismissed. Thus, different Jewish groups soon placed their support behind the coalition between the Progressive Union and the Jewish Electoral Committee. The growing support for this alliance was facilitated by public commitments on the part of the Progressive candidate Ludwik Krzywicki’s in support of Jewish national rights. Soon thereafter, the coalition was bolstered by the backing of a significant portion of what the Yiddish and Hebrew press referred to as “the Hasidim.” Commenting on these developments several weeks before the elections, Ha-yom noted: “Recently, our brothers the Hasidim have joined the Jewish Electoral Committee after coming to an agreement on the issue of national rights which has undergone some minor changes.”109 In light of the multiple debates and divisions, the mobilization of Jewish voters demanded even more intervention as the effort to define a specific line and to rally voters behind this position proved particularly difficult. Here, as well, announcements by the Jewish Electoral Committee repeated many of the arguments and positions employed in the elections to the First Duma. Thus, election materials again instructed voters how to vote, where to vote, and for whom to vote. While the repeated experience of electoral politics may have helped refine political boundaries, it was still not enough to forge a cohesive, well-disciplined political community. The following citation from a preelection announcement published in Idishes tageblat demonstrates the didactic nature of election propaganda as the Jewish Electoral Committee and the papers again attempted to lead voters down the path to democratic redemption. Brothers! The Jewish Committee again turns to you; you must all pick up your registration, as Tuesday is the last day, and vote for the list which the Jewish Committee published. Do not be frightened by any proclamations and threats! Do not be fooled by representatives who hate Jews, and have put together a false Jewish list. Do not give your voter registration to anyone.110

The Jewish Electoral Committee’s announcement on the day of the elections was even more adamant in its call on Warsaw’s Jews to dem-

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onstrate discipline and unity in their support for the coalition with the Progressive Union. As in the elections to the First Duma, the Jewish Electoral Committee seemed concerned that many voters did not yet understand the very practice of modern politics. In light of this confusion, the Committee’s literature employed a combination of instruction and persuasion designed to mobilize supporters. Today, a new world is born! Today, Tuesday, we go to the polls. One mustn’t be threatened by the announcements and rumors that the enemies of Israel have spread in their Yiddish proclamations. Don’t listen to them; they have been bought off by those who hate us. Go and vote for the Jewish and Progressive Committee lists. Swiętochowski and Krzywicki are true righteous Gentiles!111

Despite such spirited calls, the coalition between the Jewish Electoral Committee and the Progressive Union again failed to elect either one of Warsaw’s two representatives to the Duma. The National Concentration received 53 percent of the votes cast in Warsaw and the ProgressiveJewish alliance 45 percent of the votes. Of Warsaw’s eighty electors, fifty-two cast their votes for the National Democratic candidates Roman Dmowski and Franciszek Nowodworski.112 The interethnic cooperation and democratic practices that had proven so successful in other parts of the empire were again unable to produce tangible results in Warsaw as the city’s electorate was repeatedly divided into two distinct ethno-linguistic camps.

Conclusion: The Public Sphere, the Politicization of Ethnicity, and the Birth of the Nation Many of the same social and political processes that began in the elections to the First Duma in early 1906 were further refined during the campaigns to the Second Duma a year later. First, the same political practices and frameworks that required the enlistment of tens of thousands of potential supporters in Warsaw again demanded that advocates and organizations turn to and instrumentalize the new public sphere in their efforts to mobilize the largest possible body of voters. Through this appeal to a community of supporters via a daily press published

From Public Sphere to Public Will

in a local vernacular, the practice of participatory politics entered into and contributed to a cultural-political framework that favored ethnolinguistic divisions over other types of collective organization. In addition to the influential role played by the new cultural institutions that created the Jewish public sphere, the process of popular elections also mandated the definition and mobilization of a specific political community. This process was achieved in several stages. First, by implementing a political campaign of explanation and education, various organizations clarified the contours of community in Warsaw. In many cases, such attempts to refine these boundaries required additional efforts, and advocates responded by employing increasingly adamant discourses of loyalty, discipline, and legitimacy. Thus, the new generation of political leaders not only took it upon themselves to define the Jewish body politic but they also served as the arbiter of community and belonging on the path to political redemption. Throughout the elections to the Second Duma, the new leaders and their public forums repeatedly decided who would be part of the newly refined and politicized community and who would not. Thus, the practice of participatory politics transformed the Jewish public sphere from a body that was designed to foster rational debate to one that mobilized a specific political community toward concrete political goals. Lastly, while few doubted the role played by the new leadership in this tense, dialectical process, this twin need to instruct and lead an urban constituency demanded the adoption of a political discourse of organization, action, and discipline that would soon redefine and reshape the very nature of community, belonging, and power in Warsaw. While these actions were politically expedient, they were also socially and personally redemptive. This, of course, was the other half of the secret of their success, despite their electoral failures. In many cases, the very same political drive for collective definition and discipline answered a parallel set of personal troubles that arose in the city, in particular the individual’s search for order and need for belonging. Thus, unlike the revolutionary parties that were repeatedly unable to construct popularly supported political communities in Warsaw, the critical intersection of the Jewish public sphere with the very practice of participatory politics helped create an entire series of political, linguistic, and ideological constructs that would reconfigure the nature and definition of both com-

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munity and self for many of the city’s Jewish residents. Moreover, by refining and solidifying concepts of community, many of the new voices and institutions that filled the city’s reconstructed Jewish public sphere lent a much-needed sense of intellectual order and existential meaning to life in the city. Thus, while the domestication of Warsaw’s Jewish residents into a cohesive community may have marginalized some, it soothed others. No longer left to roam the city’s streets, hundreds of thousands of Jewish urbanites now had a place, a newly reconfigured community with clearly marked social boundaries, a well-defined set of political goals, and a road that would lead to collective (and individual) redemption. Throughout this chapter, I have taken a structural-discursive approach to modern Jewish politics in order to highlight the connection between the institutions that facilitated participatory politics, the political discourse that popular politics engendered, and the specific type of community that these structures and discourses helped create. These were, in the words of Michel Foucault, “the mechanisms, techniques and technologies of power.”113 Like the theater and the press, the new political organizations and bodies that led the electoral campaigns in the first two Dumas further accentuated ethno-linguistic divides in Warsaw. Their turn to, use of, and dependence upon the daily press (in particular the nascent and popular Yiddish press) to mobilize tens of thousands of Jewish voters as Jews, per se, toward specific goals marked a critical new phase in modern Jewish politics. As a result, the ethno-linguistic community soon became synonymous with political lines of separation, community, and, ultimately, redemption. Thus, while new public institutions like the coffeehouse and the theater may have helped create the public sphere, it was the very experience of participatory politics that transformed the public sphere. As a result of this transformation the nature and style of political engagement, rhetoric, organization, and action among Jews were irrevocably altered as the public sphere gave birth to and was superseded by the public will.114 And, thus, the elections to the first two Dumas in the spring of 1906 and winter of 1907 would give birth to the demon of politics and society in twentieth-century eastern Europe: the nation. Was this, then, the end of earlier visions of a new world of interethnic solidarity and cooperation that had proven so incredibly popular

From Public Sphere to Public Will

during the heady days of 1905? Did the repeated failure of ProgressiveJewish coalitions in Warsaw in 1906 and again in 1907 mark the last chapter in both revolutionary and liberal sagas and the beginning of a new era of nationally oriented politics? Or, could the newly crystallized and politicized ethno-linguistic camps in eastern Europe coexist with hopes for a new society organized along class lines or, alternatively, with liberal visions of constitutional rule? These and other related questions will be discussed in the following chapter as I trace the reciprocal influence of the Polish and Jewish political spheres on one another through a detailed analysis of the changing image of “the Jews” in the Polish public sphere and the further politicization of ethnicity in earlytwentieth-century Warsaw.

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S i x  Democracy and Its Discontents The Image of “the Jews” and the Transformation of Polish Politics

On Democracy and Nations

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Jews in Warsaw were not the only ones deeply affected by the transformation of the city’s public sphere and the changing nature of political activity. Many of the same institutions and developments that contributed to the radical reconstruction of community and identity among Jews also affected those ethnic Poles who composed some 60 percent of the city’s 775,000 residents.1 This chapter will highlight the manner in which many of these same processes of democratization influenced the nature, content, and limits of the Polish public sphere by examining the image of “the Jews” that was popularized at this time.2 Through this analysis of political rhetoric and imagery, I will demonstrate how the turn to participatory politics precipitated critical changes in the manner in which Poles envisioned themselves and others as members of specific, politicized communities. Here, as well, I will claim that the rapid expansion of the public sphere and the sudden need to garner widespread popular support during the elections to the first two Dumas led to the politicization of ethnicity as Polish and Jewish politics traveled down similar paths. In the end, these parallel, intersecting developments reinforced each specific group’s own sense of isolation, confrontation, and community and furthered the division of Warsaw’s residents into two separate politicized camps, Poles and Jews. As such, these early experiments with democratic institutions and processes should be seen as watershed events in the history of eastern Europe. Indeed, the experience of participatory politics and the accompanying need to turn to “the people” in order to secure political legitimacy not only engendered the consolidation of political commu-

Democracy and Its Discontents

nities rooted in ethno-linguistic identities but also led to the marginalization of dissenting voices and the exclusion of deviant groups from the body politic.3 This was a moment at which critical decisions were made, processes were set in motion, and precedents were set. While the National Democrats’ greatest competition for support in Warsaw may have been various revolutionary organizations, the party quickly turned to anti-Jewish rhetoric as a means of generating popular support, delegitimizing Warsaw’s Jewish residents and defeating the liberal opposition. This sense of conflict was exacerbated by the nature of the electoral system of urban curia, which essentially pitted Warsaw’s Polish residents against Jewish ones. Poles and Jews made up the city’s two largest groups, representing roughly 60 percent and 30 percent of the total population, respectively.4 Thus, by adopting antisemitic rhetoric and imagery, the National Democrats and associated organizations were able to kill three birds with one stone. First, they were able to politically rout the liberal and socialist opposition in the Duma elections of 1906 and 1907. Second, these steps helped the National Democrats delegitimize the socialist parties and Polish liberals by depicting them as partners in hostile, anti-Polish coalitions that were controlled by “the Jews.” Third, through repeated representations of “the Jews” as an inherently hostile force, the National Democrats clarified further the lines of exclusion and inclusion among both Poles and Jews in Warsaw. Ultimately, the widespread implementation of antisemitic rhetoric and the subsequent nationalization of the political sphere left little room for “the Jews” (both imagined and real) in the newly refined concepts of community and nation. In the end, the advent of participatory politics, the turn to the people, the implementation of antisemitic rhetoric, and the subsequent nationalization of the Polish public sphere dealt a severe blow to the spirit of interethnic solidarity that had been a staple of both the revolutionary ethos and liberal ideals. While historians of various shades and colors have long searched for the event or moment that represented the end of the revolutionary era, few developments marked the end of socialist and liberal dreams more than the increasing influence of the National Democrats and the growing centrality of their antisemitic rhetoric. Although many of the charges aired throughout the election campaigns were not entirely new (indeed if they were too new or too un-

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familiar then they would not have proven so incredibly successful), their widespread dissemination in the Polish political sphere led to a certain codification, if not institutionalization, of a composite image of “the Jews.” Throughout both elections, charges that “the Jews” were a hostile, alien force bent on working with the ruling Russian powers in a campaign to conquer and humiliate Poles were regularly aired in both election campaigns. In addition to charges of Jewish hostility and domination, “the Jews” were also portrayed as a subversive and disruptive force that cooperated with or, alternatively, controlled various revolutionary parties including the SDKPiL and the PPS. Lastly, in both elections Polish liberals and their coalition partners were repeatedly portrayed as being part of a Jewish-led, anti-Polish conspiracy. Through the repeated popularization of such motifs, many voters were frightened into rallying around the national camp in an effort to save Warsaw and Poland from hostile Jewish forces and their assorted allies. Hence, many of the charges that would later haunt Jews in Poland throughout the twentieth century can be traced back to the political rhetoric, strategies, and culture that coalesced during Polish society’s early encounters with participatory politics in 1906 and 1907. While democracy may have brought many blessings, it also came with at least one curse that would scar Polish society for generations: political antisemitism. As part of my attempt to address these and other questions, this chapter follows the political debates that took place among a wide range of Polish parties and organizations in the elections to the first two Dumas. This discussion will highlight the main characteristics of a composite image of “the Jews” that was popularized in the elections of 1906 and 1907, as well as the changing role that this composite image played in public debates as a loaded symbol of political allegiance and belonging. After a brief summary of historiographical debates on the topic, I will turn to discussions regarding “the Jews” in the mainstream and underground Polish press before 1905. Through this analysis, I show that “the Jews,” along with debates regarding their place in Polish society, were not central issues in the Polish political sphere in the period immediately preceding the advent of constitutional reforms. This analysis of the Polish political discourse preceding the introduction of democratic reforms will be followed by a detailed examination of the motifs and images used to portray “the Jews” and their non-Jewish

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a­ llies throughout the elections to the first two Dumas. By comparing the nature of political rhetoric before, during, and after the elections, this chapter will show how democratic institutions and processes were critical to the crystallization of key political concepts and communities. As in other places, I am not arguing that antisemitic rhetoric and imagery were created ex nihilo in 1905, but rather I show how they became central, defining parts of the political discourse and culture in this formative period of modern politics in Warsaw. Lastly, I claim that the introduction and institutionalization of specific antisemitic motifs set a series of critical precedents for Poles, Jews, and others throughout eastern Europe.

Historiographical Literature: Original Sin, Paradise Lost, and Supernatural Forces For many, it is almost a truism to assert that Poles and Jews are mortal enemies and that the forces of ethnic separatism that divide these two groups are as old and as permanent as time itself.5 In many senses, this interpretation of eternal conflict between Poles and Jews reinforces primordial or traditionalist conceptions of nations and nationalism. According to advocates of these schools of thought such as Armstrong and Smith, nations are traditional historical communities rooted in premodern social and political units that Smith refers to as ethnie.6 In the case of Poles and Jews, the traditionalist school of nationalism supports the assumption that these two groups were destined to two completely divergent histories and fates. While recent scholarship has challenged such binary interpretations of relations between Poles and Jews, few have actually traced the tortured path of Polish-Jewish relations from promises of solidarity to a fate of bitter enmity.7 Ultimately, this lack of a detailed analysis of relations between Poles and Jews lends indirect credence to the traditionalist claim that national camps and eternal hatred were the inevitable and therefore somewhat natural result of a predestined course of “history.” This chapter will challenge these and other assumptions regarding Polish, Jewish, and east European histories. In the following discussion, I will show how the implementation of a specific set of institutions and practices at a specific time contributed to the

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integration of antisemitic images and motifs into mainstream political culture and the separation of Poles from Jews for the remainder of the twentieth century. The first fifteen years of the twentieth century are not uncharted territory for researchers interested in Poles and Jews in the Russian Empire.8 Despite the depth and range of these studies, few point to the Revolution of 1905 or, more specifically, to the elections to the first two Dumas as watershed events in the history of relations between Poles and Jews. Like Israel Bartal and Magdalena Opalski, many view the mutual charges and bitter disappointments that followed the failed January Uprising of 1863 as the larger historical framework for continued or episodic outbursts of antisemitic charges and the accompanying crisis in Polish and Jewish political spheres.9 Thus, Joanna Michlic’s comprehensive survey of antisemitism weaves the events surrounding the Revolution of 1905 into a larger study of Polish society and history.10 In other, more focused studies of the pre–World War I era, the deterioration of relations between Poles and Jews is often seen as the result of somewhat random factors, such as government fiat, or particularly boisterous politicians, such as the National Democratic leader Roman Dmowski.11 Moreover, while Brian Porter’s study of the ideological roots of Polish nationalism in this period is persuasive, his claim that Polish nationalism became an ideology of hate in the late 1890s due to a synthesis of historical and ideological factors does not explain how National Democracy passed from an idea to a popular political movement.12 Lastly, more detailed analyses of the events of 1905 by Theodore Weeks and Joshua Zimmerman are both revealing and thought provoking, but here, too, the reader is often left pondering the larger question of why.13 Why did relations between Poles and Jews in Warsaw and throughout the Congress Kingdom take such a disastrous turn for the worse in and around 1905? By closely examining Polish political debates throughout the pre­ revolutionary period (1900–1904), the revolutionary year (1905), and the electoral phase (1906–1907), I will show how all of these arguments— the “longest hatred” camp, the accidental antisemitic school, and Porter’s ideological interpretation—overlook the critical connection between the implementation of democratic institutions and processes, the turn to the people, and the advent of political antisemitism. Far from being the in-

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evitable—and therefore uncontrollable and perhaps even natural—result of “the forces of history,” the turn to the politics of ethnicity and the rhetoric of hate expose democracy’s darker side. Ultimately, the same developments, structures, and practices that helped construct modern societies would also give birth to the language, symbols, and ideals that opposed many aspects of modernity in the heart of Europe, Warsaw.14 As Foucault notes, “[T]he modern State can scarcely function without becoming involved with racism at some point. . . . It is a way of separating out the groups that exist within a population.”15 This connection between nation building and the politics of exclusion will guide this chapter as I analyze the structures, strategies, and images that led to the institutionalization of antisemitic rhetoric and symbols in Polish politics.

An Age of Innocence: Revolutionary Visions, Liberal Abstinence, Patriotic Silence In the years preceding the announcement of early constitutional reforms in the second half of 1905, public discussions regarding “the Jews” and their place in turn-of-the-century Polish society attracted surprisingly little attention in the Warsaw-based Polish-language press. While Jews and “the Jewish question” periodically occupied political thinkers throughout the late nineteenth century, they were not dominant issues at the onset of the twentieth century.16 Hence, a review of the major newspapers and weeklies in the period preceding the Revolution of 1905 shows that while public discussions regarding “the Jews” did appear in the Polish press, they did so sporadically.17 Despite the limited nature of these discussions in periodicals before 1905, various forums did address Jews and questions regarding their future role in Polish society. Moreover, while many organizations were concerned with the place of Jews in Polish society, others—in particular revolutionary and liberal groups—were also interested in attracting the support of local Jews. Foremost among the parties that sought the backing of Jews at this time was the leading Polish revolutionary party, the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). Through their party literature and the establishment in 1898 of a Jewish section that was designed to disseminate material in Yiddish, the

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PPS repeatedly emphasized that their vision of Polish society included a place for Jews.18 While the party’s position varied over time, its general policy remained rather consistent: Jews were to be accepted as partners in the revolutionary project and its future plans for Polish society.19 This interest in attracting Jewish supporters led the party to comment on Jewish matters more frequently than other groups. In the period preceding the reforms of 1905, statements by the PPS regarding Jews were usually issued in response to outbursts of anti-Jewish violence or other moments of crisis. In many cases, the PPS went to great lengths to protest such acts of violence. Through these and other condemnations of antisemitic incidents as well as the regime’s supposed role in promoting such actions, the PPS was also able to present itself as the primary antigovernment force in Polish lands. This leading position up to late 1905 also gave the PPS a certain amount of confidence and leeway on a variety of issues, including those related to Jews. One example of the party’s defense of Jews and accompanying calls for interethnic solidarity can be found in a May 1905 flier distributed by the party’s Central Workers’ Committee in Warsaw after a series of anti-Jewish incidents in other regions. As in many other cases, the PPS used these defenses of “the Jews” as opportunities to discredit the tsarist regime and to dissuade workers from participating in other potential anti-Jewish excesses. That said, the party’s defense of Jewish lives and property was clear. comrade workers! Again we have received information regarding the barbaric riots against Jews in Russia. The Tsarist regime did not suspend for even one second their shameful attempts to incite different nations and faiths to civil war. . . . The despotic Tsar and his underlings smile with satanic delight as they witness the events and they say to themselves: “Keep on beating; Keep on murdering. As long as this continues we can rule comfortably.” . . . Comrades, workers of Poland and Lithuania! We turn to you with our request, don’t be led to similar shameful incidents in our country. The bulk of the working people already understand how foolish and criminal such anti-Jewish acts are. They understand that all Christian capitalists are no better than Jewish capitalists. They understand that a working Jew is a working Pole or Lithuanian’s brother and that the entire proletariat have common interests! . . . Be prepared for every possible government attempt to

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incite against Jews. . . . Brothers! Remember the days of revolutionary battle when the blood of working-Jews flowed together with Christian blood! This common bloody battle united the entire proletariat forever! All of our workers, regardless of their faith, nationality or party stand united toward one goal—revenge for our victims, the overthrow of the Tsar!20

Some six months later, the PPS was even more vocal in its demand that Polish workers take active steps to defend Jews. In the wake of the pogroms that engulfed the Russian empire’s southwestern provinces immediately following the announcement of the October Manifesto, Jewish residents of Warsaw and other cities were gripped with fear that similar attacks might erupt throughout the Congress Kingdom.21 Apparently, such fears were not limited exclusively to Jews and to Jewish political organizations.22 Thus, a flier distributed by the Warsaw Workers’ Committee of the PPS in early November 1905 demanded that workers not only refrain from participating in anti-Jewish acts but also organize self-defense units to protect Jewish and worker interests. Here, too, the flier presented the anti-Jewish outbursts as part of a government-led plot designed to divide the revolution’s spirit of interethnic cooperation. comrades, workers! warning! to arms! The Tsarist thugs want to instigate a pogrom against Jews in Warsaw. . . . Don’t be goaded into attacking Jews, to plundering their property. Defend yourselves against aggressors, everyone who can must arm himself. Conscious workers should create patrol units in Jewish neighborhoods against criminals.23

Another handbill distributed by the PPS Revolutionary Guard in the same period was even more explicit in its demand that Polish supporters intervene to protect Jews from tsarist machinations. “The government has withdrawn its troops from Jewish neighborhoods. Bandits have been released from prisons. They want to respond to the revolutionary movement with pogroms against Jews. Every member of the revolutionary guard is obliged to protect without delay all those who are threatened; we must respond to all attempted pogroms.”24 In these and other cases from the summer and fall of 1905, the PPS repeatedly called on its supporters to take active steps to oppose what it viewed as

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government-inspired attacks on Jews that were designed to besmirch and divide the revolutionary movement. Nor was the PPS the only party that openly defended Jews at this time. During this earlier period, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) was similarly adamant in its defense of Jews. Like the PPS, the SDKPiL called on supporters to refrain from participating in anti-Jewish offenses, condemned the tsarist regime for supposedly unleashing counterrevolutionary forces on Jews, and urged interethnic solidarity. In many cases, the SDKPiL’s rhetoric varied little from that of the PPS. A flier distributed by the SDKPiL’s Central Committee in the summer of 1905 summarizes these points: “The Tsarist regime again wants new acts of murder, new atrocities, and by turning Christians against Jews, to stifle the revolutionary movement.”25 Another SDKPiL handbill from the same period calls on workers in Warsaw to cooperate with and defend Jews from potential assaults by government forces and other groups. “Polish workers should join forces with Jews and protect them through all possible means.”26 While material distributed by both the PPS and the SDKPiL in the summer and fall of 1905 repeatedly called on Polish workers to refrain from participating in what they saw as government-sponsored anti-­ Jewish actions and to come to the assistance of Jews, such proclamations of solidarity often remained secondary to discussions of larger revolutionary issues. In many cases, calls to join and defend Jews came in the wake of specific pogroms in other regions or, alternatively, in response to rumors that government officials and associated organizations were planning similar actions in Polish lands. Moreover, these vocal defenses of Jews were very often presented as part of the party’s larger policy of opposition to the regime. That said, while discussions regarding “the Jews” and their place in Polish society may not have been central parts of the revolutionary parties’ literature and debates, such defenses demonstrate that “the Jews” already served as a recognized marker of political allegiance and encampment. Later, as politics in Warsaw moved from pitched street battles to heated public debates, the revolutionary parties’ early defenses of “the Jews” would prove to be their Achilles’ heel, one that political opponents would not hesitate to exploit. While socialist parties periodically defended “the Jews,” many liberal and patriotic organs remained relatively quiet on these issues through-

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out 1904 and the first half of 1905. The lack of public discussion of Jewish issues in mainstream Polish newspapers and journals such as Głos, Kraj, Kurier Codzienny, Kurier Warszawski, Prawda, Tygodnik ­Ilustrowany, and other forums reflect the extent to which questions regarding “the Jews” were not yet central or dominant parts of the public discourse. Although the Jews and their place in Polish society were not unknown issues, they were not central topics in the period immediately preceding the Revolution of 1905. As a result of this secondary status, debates regarding “the Jews” rarely made it to the front pages of major newspapers or journals as the Polish press preferred to debate other issues such as Polish cultural projects, the nuances of local autonomy, and the potential limits of tsarist rule.27 As long as politics remained in the realm of the theoretical, “the Jews” remained a theoretical nonissue. Indeed, it was only later, after the revolution’s democratic phase, that questions and debates regarding “the Jews” and their place in Polish society would become inseparable parts of modern Polish politics. Thus, even though the socialist daily Kurier Codzienny published periodic items on Jews throughout 1904 and the first half of 1905, these discussions usually consisted of small, informative news reports that appeared on the inside pages of the paper. For example, brief reports informed readers about the admittance of Jews to schools, activities of local Zionists, and Nahum Sokolow’s meetings with Russia’s Prime Minister Sergei Witte.28 Coverage of Jewish issues was similarly limited in the popular newspaper Kurier Warszawski in the period leading up to 1905. Thus, the paper periodically summarized items from the Polish and Jewish press and also published small notices regarding internal Jewish matters like the establishment of an organization for assisting the poor.29 In fact, when the paper published a front-page article on Lithuania and Lithuanians (Litwomani) in May 1905, it did so without even referring to the menace of the so-called Jewish Litvakes.30 Conservative and liberal weeklies such as Kraj, Prawda, and Tygodnik Ilustrowany treated Jewish issues and questions regarding the place of Jews in Polish society in a similarly disinterested fashion throughout 1904 and early 1905.31 During this period, Prawda’s discussion of ­Jewish issues included articles on relatively esoteric matters such as Jewish history, the status of Jews in Galicia, and antisemitism in France.32 Kraj’s coverage of these matters consisted of a running column on “the

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Jewish question” that posted brief summaries of events in Warsaw and throughout the empire on the weekly’s inside pages.33 Here, as well, discussions regarding Jews and “the Jews” rarely made it to the journal’s front pages until mid-1905.34 Lastly, even National Democratic journals expressed little interest in “the Jewish question.”35 Surveying central National Democratic forums, Semion Goldin claims: “In 1900 the main organ of the National Democrats Przegląd Wszechpolski devoted one article to the ‘Jewish Question,’ four to the ‘German threat,’ and six to Russia’s anti-Polish policy. In 1904 this monthly published one article about the Jews and fifteen about Russia.”36 Theodore Weeks concurs: “Neither Gazeta Warszawska nor Przegląd Wszechpolski devoted much space to the Jewish question during that year [1905].”37 While the lack of on­going discussion of Jewish issues may have been due to fears of government censorship, a review of different Polish newspapers and journals shows that Jews and questions regarding their place in Polish society were not central issues in the period preceding the Revolution of 1905. The potentially influential Catholic Church also remained quiet at this time. As Robert Blobaum has noted, government repression in the late nineteenth century created a situation in which “[t]he Roman Catholic Church was simply terrorized into submission.”38 Moreover, the Church had difficulty “adjusting to the demands of the modern era and the new post-revolution political culture.”39 Commenting on the role of the Church at this time, Porter agrees and points to its conservative nature. According to Porter, the Church was reluctant to adopt and advocate antisemitic positions out of a deeply rooted fear of all things modern, including modern antisemitism. “The problem with antisemitism around the turn of the century, from a Catholic perspective, was that it was quintessentially modern.” Thus, he concludes that “before the First World War there was simply no space within Catholicism for any flirtation with modernism or modernity—not even an anti-liberal modernity.”40 Thus, discussions regarding “the Jews” did not become central, public issues until the summer of 1905 when Polish journals began to debate questions of local autonomy and the prospects for self-rule. As the proendecja journal Gazeta Polska would later note: “Until that moment little to nothing was written about the Jewish question in the press.”41 “That moment” was the moment when Polish society was given the op-

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portunity to imagine that it, too, might be able to serve as the master of its own fate through a series of semidemocratic reforms and institutions that offered many the hope of local autonomy and self-determination.42

The Advent of Participatory Politics and the Transformation of Polish Politics Despite the lack of consistent interest in “the Jewish question” in the pre-reform era, the implementation of quasi-democratic reforms and the turn to participatory politics altered the nature of political debate in the Polish provinces. Much like the experiences of Jews in Warsaw, the advent of popular politics and the drive toward collective self-­ determination led to a wave of heated public discussions regarding the fate of Polish society. As a result of these debates, questions regarding “the Jews” suddenly became definitive ones as Polish society searched for clearly defined borders of inclusion and exclusion. As Antony Polonsky notes: “For Dmowski and his National Democrats, conflict with the Jews now became a central part of their political ideology and strategy.”43 Grounded in the institutions, mechanisms, and practices that would soon go on to create modern political communities, language and ethnicity soon became the central forces that bound disparate individuals in an imagined political community envisioned, constructed, and led by National Democratic thinkers, activists, and supporters. While the elections to the first two Dumas in 1906 and 1907 marked the full arrival of antisemitic rhetoric, “the Jews” and questions regarding their potential place in the Polish body politic were already important parts of public debates surrounding the Bulygin Duma and, later, the October Manifesto in the summer and fall of 1905. In many cases, discussions regarding Poland’s right to local autonomy or, in the language of Elie Kedourie, “the drive for collective self-determination,”44 led to debates regarding local Jews, their participation in the upcoming electoral experiment, and their right to represent and determine the fate of Poland and its historic capital, Warsaw. Reflecting this connection between the process of democratization, the construction of national communities, and debates regarding the place of “the Jews,” Kurier Codzienny featured a series of front-page articles in the sum-

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mer and fall of 1905 in which topics such as “The Jewish Question and National Representation,” “On the Question of Jewish Assimilation,” “The Relations Between Faiths and Nations in Congress Poland,” and others were addressed at length.45 The other major Polish newspaper in Warsaw at the time, Kurier Warszawski, also began to pay more attention to “the Jews.” Here, as well, this newfound interest was often expressed within the context of articles that discussed cultural or political autonomy for Poles.46 Thus, early debates on plans for constitutional reforms and questions of local autonomy were very often tied to discussions concerning the exact number of Jews in the Congress Kingdom, the question of Jewish voting rights and citizenship, and the rights of Jewish residents to represent and lead a potentially autonomous Polish Kingdom. Through their promises of widespread reforms, proposals for democratic institutions created a dynamic that bound Polish national aspirations to Jewish participation in the political process. Even the specter of democratic reforms heightened a sense of competition and tension in Warsaw. Nor were Kurier Codzienny and Kurier Warszawski the only forums that began to draw a connection between proposed constitutional reforms and debates concerning collective and individual rights for Jews. Ongoing discussions of autonomy or self-rule in the Polish provinces led to an array of articles on these topics. Thus, weeklies such as Kraj and Prawda also began discussing “the Jewish Question” in conjunction with proposals for a constitutional regime and Polish autonomy. Pointing to the presence of Jewish immigrants from Russian areas, Kraj openly questioned the loyalty of “the large group of Russian Jews in Warsaw” who “join neither the Polish people nor the Polish Jews” in the struggle for autonomy.47 This comment came as part of a series of articles published in the summer and fall of 1905 in Kraj regarding Jews and their role in the imminent transformation of Polish society.48 The liberal mainstay Prawda was similarly drawn into public debates on the place of Jews in future projects for Polish autonomy.49 As the prospect of democratic reforms and questions of self-rule continued, various Polish organs became increasingly concerned with the role that Jews might play in determining the future of Polish society. From its very inception, modern Polish politics revolved around the nature, composition, and fate of the Polish nation.

Democracy and Its Discontents

While debates regarding Jewish roles in the future representation and administration of Polish lands appeared far more frequently in late 1905, such matters were not included in every discussion of Polish autonomy. Thus, a series of lead articles from Kurier Warszawski in late 1905 that address the October Manifesto and its implications for the Congress Kingdom do not discuss potential electoral conflict between Polish and Jewish voters at length.50 Although more central than in the past, the seemingly automatic connection between political representation, ethnicity, and “the Jews” had yet to become an axiom of Polish politics. The link between these concepts depended upon one more development: the establishment of semidemocratic institutions and the experience of popular elections. Here, in particular, the move from theoretical discussions of Polish autonomy to the need for political organization and action would demand the clarification of the borders of community and belonging in Warsaw, the mobilization of these political communities through discourses of discipline, and the consolidation of newly politicized communities that would cement the divide between Poles and Jews for the remainder of the twentieth century.51 Although part and parcel of the larger processes of modernization, political developments in Warsaw were further exacerbated by specific factors including the decision of socialist parties to boycott the elections to the First Duma and the subsequent search for coalition partners. The decision by most revolutionary parties—including the popular Polish Socialist Party (PPS), the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), and the leading Jewish organization the Bund—to boycott the elections to the First Duma significantly altered the balance of power between political parties and organizations in Warsaw. As a result of the revolutionary parties’ electoral boycott, the leading Polish liberal party, the Progressive Democratic Union, quickly became the National Democrats’ main electoral opponent. This sense of competition was exacerbated by the decision of the Progressives to join forces with Warsaw’s Jewish Electoral Committee in the April 1906 elections to the First Duma and again in the elections to the Second Duma.52 Although this coalition supported self-rule for the Polish provinces, the alliance fueled the National Democrats’ anxieties regarding Jewish participation in the political process and led to the division of Warsaw into two main electoral blocs: the Progressive-Jewish alliance, on the one

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hand, and National Democratic organizations, on the other. Although not inevitable, these alliances would soon contribute to the widespread conflation of political camps with particular ethno-linguistic communities and, in doing so, would set fateful precedents in Polish lands. As the prospect of democratic elections approached in early 1906, Polish parties found themselves in a predicament similar to that of their Jewish contemporaries: electoral apathy. Like many Jewish voters, Polish voters were either confused by or indifferent to the voting process as well as the National Democrats’ still undefined platform. Here, too, it was up to political leaders and their respective organizations to motivate and organize the masses. Faced with the prospect of a potential electoral defeat at the hands of the Progressive-Jewish alliance, the National Democratic Party and its affiliated organizations turned to a discourse of fear and hate to rally potential voters.53 One key aspect of this drive toward political mobilization was an increasingly hostile representation of “the Jews” and their supposed attempts to control and dominate Warsaw, Poland, and Poles.54 Thus, democracy and collective self-determination—two leitmotifs of modernity and Westernization—included a Trojan horse that many political activists felt they had to identify and overcome, “the Jews.” The remainder of this chapter will examine the development and implementation of anti-Jewish rhetoric and symbols by the National Democratic groups and affiliated organizations. As part of this analysis, I will also discuss how these developments influenced and shaped reigning conceptions of community and self in Warsaw. While this section revolves around a familiar chronology of events in 1905–1907, thematic questions will shape the structure of the coming pages. In particular, I will examine fliers, brochures, and newspaper articles from the campaigns to the first two Dumas to demonstrate how a composite image of “the Jews” came to be inscribed in the political discourse in Warsaw and other centers. Although initially implemented by the National Democrats and affiliated organizations, this set of politically charged images and concepts soon exerted its influence on almost every political party and organization that took part in Polish society’s early experiments with participatory politics. In heated debates throughout the elections to the first two Dumas, a composite image of “the Jews” emerged. Key parts of this image portrayed “the Jews” as a hostile, subversive, pro-

Democracy and Its Discontents

Russian fifth column bent upon defeating and enslaving Poland and Poles. The following analysis shows that these and related images were integral parts of mainstream Polish political thought and rhetoric in 1906 and 1907 long before the period surrounding World War II when the image of the żydokomuna (Judeo-Communism) would dominate Polish politics and haunt Jewish lives.55 Lastly, while these developments were directly influenced by structural factors, the politicization of ethnicity and the accompanying nationalization of the public sphere in Warsaw were not, by any means, foregone conclusions. In the case of Warsaw, the turn toward the politics of national organization and hate was the result of specific decisions taken on the part of the popular, yet struggling, political party, the National Democratic Movement. The antisemitic rhetoric used in the election campaigns revolved around three key themes that would remain central to anti-Jewish attitudes, prejudices, and actions for the next one hundred years. These central motifs included the image of “the Jews” as an inherently hostile, anti-Polish force bent upon dominating and enslaving Poland and Poles; the seemingly natural alliance between “the Jews” and other hostile (or disruptive) bodies such as Russian imperial or socialist forces; and the transformation of the word “Jew” into a pejorative political code that could be used to delegitimize non-Jewish groups, in particular Polish liberals, that were either associated with “the Jews” or, alternatively, portrayed as crypto-Jews. Time and again, these three interrelated themes would be used to discredit Jewish and non-Jewish parties in public campaigns aimed at questioning Jewish loyalty to the Polish body politic, undermining the rights of Jews to participate in democratic processes, and delegitimizing their claim to political representation. Thus, political antisemitism in Poland can be traced to the very advent of modern politics during the semidemocratic elections to the first two Dumas in 1906 and 1907. Once unleashed, the politicization of ethnicity and the politics of hate would repeatedly feed off of one another in a seemingly never-ending cycle of fear and mistrust. Indeed, few would prove capable of containing the forces unleashed by the widespread implementation and institutionalization of political antisemitism. In this and in many other ways, Polish society’s sudden entry into the modern world of popular politics would prove frighteningly similar to the path of other European societies.56

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Jewish Separatism, Enmity, and Domination During the elections to the first two Dumas, fliers, brochures, and articles published and distributed by the National Democratic Party (­Stronnictwo Narodowo-Demokratyczne, SND) and related groups like the newly founded National Workers’ Union (Narodowy Związek ­Robotniczy, NZR) presented “the Jews” as an inherently hostile body that could not be trusted and as one that, when given the opportunity, would work against the interests of Poles and Poland.57 Thus, while various socialist and liberal groups may have been the National Democrats’ biggest competitors for popular support in Warsaw, “the Jews” were regularly presented as the group that posed the greatest threat to Polish national aspirations. From the very onset of popular politics, “the Jews” were portrayed as an uncompromising anti-Polish force that had to be recognized, confronted, and defeated. Throughout the election campaigns of 1906 and 1907, National Democratic literature repeatedly presented “the Jews” as an oppositional political body. Part of this image revolved around fears that Jewish electoral organizations would use traditional Jewish communal bodies to mobilize widespread Jewish support for their ostensibly antiPolish designs. Although fears of Jewish communal institutions as bastions of “Jewish separatism” were not new, this portrayal of “the Jews” and their communal organizations as part of an anti-Polish cabal that plotted to undermine Polish claims to self-determination helped clarify and solidify divisions in Warsaw. Reflecting these and related fears of Jewish manipulation of the electoral process, a front-page piece from the popular National Democratic daily Gazeta Polska noted: “Jews, as is known, are practical; not only as far as business interests are concerned, but also in politics . . . and as such they will be duly prepared to swarm the ballot boxes and to vote for their candidates en masse.”58 In the eyes of many, the Polish road to self-determination and independence would have to pass over the obstacle of Jewish organization and power.59 This sense of an imminent conflict was heightened in the days immediately preceding the elections to the first two Dumas when National Democratic activists were gripped with the fear that Jewish electoral organizations had exploited Jewish communal bodies to register a particularly high number of potential voters. A flier distributed in Febru-

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ary 1907 typifies the view that the elections in Warsaw were a zero-sum game between two opposing camps. As in other cases, this flier echoed the sense of panic and disaster regarding Jewish participation in the electoral process as popular politics led to growing anticipations of a direct confrontation. “Countrymen! Look at what is happening at the election bureaus. The Jewish masses are closing in on the ballot boxes— the Poles are scattered and dispersed.”60 The growing association of political representation with specific ethno-linguistic communities and an inevitable sense of conflict between these two bodies became particularly acute at the time. Indeed, the Duma elections not only demanded that first-time voters identify with a particular political community but also required that they take steps toward the consecration of the bond between the individual and the newly reconfigured collective. Here, in particular, political leaders and activists regularly implemented antisemitic rhetoric and motifs in their efforts to clarify and reinforce the borders that separated Poles from Jews and to maximize electoral turnout. Little, in fact, seemed to work better in 1906 and 1907 than the deadly combination of fear and hatred. The following citation from an unsigned flier from April 1906 is particularly explicit in this regard. This particular flier consciously conflates political representation with specific ethno-linguistic communities and warns of Jewish attempts to manipulate the electoral process and its participants, the people, thereby corrupting the very process and meaning of Polish society’s entry into the modern world. countrymen! The Jewish people of Warsaw, and also in the neighboring provincial cities, are swarming the election bureaus with election announcements in jargon [Yiddish] that call on all Jews to vote in solidarity for those candidates that will defend Jewish interests. What does this mean? This means that Jews, who represent one third of the population of Warsaw, prefer that our capital send their representatives to the Duma, representatives who will advocate their interests and not defend the rights of the country. We are not talking about all Jews without exception; we are not talking about those who truly feel like Poles, but about the overwhelming majority. That majority feels no solidarity toward the country or toward Polish society. If that were not the case, then they would not go out on their own and would not separate from us during the elections.61

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Thus, the elections not only provided central forums for the popularization of antisemitic concepts and rhetoric but also led to the transformation of “the Jews” into clear markers of political opposition and community. Another flier from the elections to the First Duma was similarly hostile in its description of the role played by Jewish organizations and voters in Warsaw’s working-class district of Wola. In this and other cases, Jewish organizations were depicted not only as oppositional bodies but also as groups motivated by a deeply seated hatred for Poland and a desire to dominate Poles. And thus, “the Jews” passed from electoral competitors to mortal enemies of the burgeoning Polish nation. countrymen, citizens of wola. As we defend our rights and our Polishness, jews and the judaicized progressive-democrats stand against our nationalism [sic]. They long to deprive you of your will and choose foreign representatives for you, representatives who are willing to sell out Poland for their own interests. They want to bring misery to all working people and have already done so. We won’t allow Jews to rule over us. . . . Hurry citizens of Wola and go to the electoral bureaus tomorrow and together choose the national candidates.62

Other fliers were equally explicit in their descriptions of “the Jews” as a hostile, alien force that threatened Polish aspirations for self-rule. As in other cases, fear of a Jewish drive for control and accompanying threats of Jewish usurpation of the political process were used to intimidate and motivate voters. “Poles! Warsaw is threatened! Jews will be its representatives unless you vote for the national list. Long live Poland!!!”63 Thus, political representation and power were presented as the responsibility of a specific community. Further, as part of this constellation “the Jews” were consistently depicted as the main obstacle to Polish efforts to achieve these national goals. Democracy and participatory politics demanded not only collective organization and discipline but also clearly defined borders of belonging and community. Thus, it was the popularization of the image of “the Jews” as a hostile, ravenous body that helped the National Democrats rally voters and solidify Polish (and Jewish) conceptions of community and self. As Foucault has noted in another context, “the exclusion of some others” is very often a means for constituting oneself.64

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This view of “the Jews” as a hostile body that competed directly with Poles for the representation and definition of Warsaw as well as the mutually exclusive survival of each particular community, quickly spread beyond National Democratic circles. In both electoral campaigns, mainstream newspapers voiced similar concerns regarding the level of political organization among Jews and fears that such activity could deprive Polish society of its long-coveted dreams of self-rule. In the days leading up to the elections to the first two State Dumas in April 1906 and again in February 1907, popular newspapers such as Kurier Warszaw­ski published daily tables that directly compared the number of Polish voters who had registered in each particular district to the number of Jewish voters who had registered.65 While the practice of publishing such tallies may have originated in National Democratic organs such as Goniec Poranny and Dzwon Polski, the decision by more mainstream, ostensibly nonpartisan dailies such as Kurier Warszawski (whose distribution hovered around 30,000 copies a day) to publish statistics on the number of potential voters by their ethnicities reflects the growing acceptance of National Democratic conceptions of community and fate.66 Much like political parties, these newspapers had to take public positions regarding the critical connection between democracy, community, and destiny. Moreover, similar to their Jewish neighbors, Polish readers also looked to newspapers for direction and guidance. Throughout this period, Polish papers responded by fulfilling their central role in Warsaw’s electoral drama. In fact, even Jewish forums such as Nahum Sokolow’s Yiddish daily Der telegraf accepted and internalized National Democratic divisions of Warsaw and posted similar tables that divided Warsaw’s electorate into two competing camps: Jews and Poles.67 As a result of such listings, tens if not hundreds of thousands of readers of daily newspapers in Polish and in Yiddish were regularly informed that Warsaw’s residents were divided into two distinct bodies. More than any other example, these prosaic manifestations of the link between democracy, representation, ethnicity, and the paper illustrate the growing awareness that democratic practices demanded not only collective definition but also communal organization and, ultimately, discipline. Thus, the introduction of participatory politics contributed immeasurably to the solidification and division of Warsaw’s residents into dis-

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tinct political communities. A flier distributed during the elections to the First Duma combined many of these themes in its plea to voters in Warsaw’s hotly contested seventh electoral district. “citizen-voters of the vii (wola) district! In the VII district there are a total of 5,200 Christian voters and 3,700 Jewish voters; to date, 2,000 Jews have registered to vote and 1,700 Poles. That means that 3,500 Poles have not yet picked up their voter registration card! . . . If Christian-voters from District VII do not succeed then Jews will have a definite majority in the entire city among the electors and they will choose their representatives.”68 Ultimately, these and other political materials created a simple image that few could escape. Indeed, even casual readers of popular dailies like Kurier Warszawski and Der telegraf were informed of the increasingly clear divisions and separate political destinies that divided Poles from Jews. In many senses, this drive for clarity and organization was fueled by the widespread need for order in the city. Indeed, even if the city refused to be tamed, elections provided the opportunity for it to be named and, in the process, claimed. As Goniec Poranny announced immediately before the elections to the Second Duma: “Tomorrow Warsaw will decide who is her master; We Poles or Jewish nationalists”69; Jewish nationalists who wanted “to turn Congress Poland into a Jewish territory.”70 In the eyes of many, the time had come for Warsaw’s residents to decide and act upon the city’s character and fate. Throughout the elections to the first two Dumas, the National Democrats and associated organizations flooded the streets of Warsaw with fliers, handbills, and brochures that described Jewish organizations and voters as dark “masses” that threatened to “swarm the ballot boxes” in an attempt to elect candidates that would “defend Jewish interests” and “bring misery” to Poland and Poles. As a result, “the Jews” and Jewish parties were widely presented as sworn enemies not only of the National Democrats but also of Poland and Polish national causes. Moreover, as part of this politicization of ethnicity, any potential electoral success on the part of “the Jews” or their affiliated parties was depicted as one that came at the expense of Polish parties and that would lead to the transition of Warsaw from the Polish capital to a center for the antiPolish designs of an irredeemable Jewish foe.71 Democratic elections in Warsaw left little room for compromise with “the overwhelming majority” of Jews who felt “no solidarity toward the entire country or to-

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ward Polish society.”72 Thus, the introduction of participatory politics in Congress Poland contributed directly to the popularization and legitimization of a set of assumptions regarding Jewish enmity and hostility toward Poland and Polish national causes. If 1904 and 1905 belonged to angry revolutionary parties such as the PPS and the SDKPiL, 1906 and 1907 would mark the rise of equally angry national organizations, rhetoric, and divisions.

An Eastern Triangle: Russians, Jews, and Socialists Another integral part of the composite image of “the Jews” that was institutionalized at this time was the pervasive association of “the Jews” with other perceived enemies of Polish national aspirations: Russian imperial forces and socialist organizations. Here, in particular, “the Jews” were presented not only as a group that was inherently hostile to Polish causes but also as one that was intimately tied to and, at times, in control of other anti-Polish forces. This growing link between “the Jews” and other sworn enemies (real or imagined) of the Polish national movement represents another central element in the composite of anti-Jewish images and tropes that coalesced at this time. Over the course of the twentieth century, the Russian-Jew-Socialist triangle would repeatedly be used to question the rights of Jews, Jewish organizations, and those non-Jews associated with these bodies to participate in various aspects of Polish public life. By tracing the origins of this association of “the Jews” with Russian imperial forces and revolutionary forces, this particular section will show how two key antisemitic motifs—the image of the Litvak and that of the żydokomuna—were grounded in the political language and culture that crystallized at the very moment at which Polish society entered the era of participatory politics. Indeed, while the Litvak was portrayed as the Jewish immigrant from Russian lands who assisted tsarist efforts to Russify Poles, and the żydokomuna would later be accused of collaborating with the Stalinist regime’s attempts to consolidate power in a stubborn satellite state, both motifs shared several key components.73 In both cases, ominous Jewish figures filled key roles as mediators of hostile anti-Polish forces that emanated from “the East.”74 According to these two images, “the Jews” were portrayed as either a dangerous, subversive force that

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cooperated with Russian bureaucrats or, alternatively, as supporters of socialist organizations that were intent on facilitating the Russification, domestication, and emasculation of Polish society. Either way, “the Jews” were viewed as willing partners in external, Russian-oriented designs for conquest that were key parts of Polish political rhetoric and culture long before most of the more infamous “Jewish Communists” were even born.75 Here, too, the advent of participatory politics marked a turning point in popular associations of “the Jews” with Russian imperial forces. In the minds of some, the dynamics of electoral politics created a situation in which Jews in Warsaw could join a number of different alliances with other ostensibly anti-Polish bodies. With one force, “the Jews,” attacking from within and with the other, “the Russians,” attacking from without, the Russian-Jewish alliance was viewed as a particularly dangerous threat to Polish aspirations for self-rule. An anonymous flier from the elections to the First Duma in April 1906 encapsulates these fears of a Russian-Jewish union. “citizen countrymen! We have received information that the Jews have joined forces with the Muscovites [moskal] in order to carry the elections together! Will we allow our capital to be represented by foreign elements, enemies of the interests of Polish society?”76 Another flier from the same period expresses similar fears regarding efforts by “the Jews” and “the Russians” to join forces and to tip the scales against “Polish candidates.” “Warning! The election of Polish candidates is threatened! The Jews and the Russians are exerting all of their efforts to choose their candidates.”77 This belief in a Russian-Jewish alliance was reinforced further by the widespread assumption that many Jews were attracted to Russian culture or that they were inclined to support the imperial regime.78 In the eyes of many, it was increasingly clear that “the Jews” and “the Russians” were bound in a natural alliance and that such a union threatened Polish national interests. A flier distributed by the newly founded National Workers’ Union (NZR) echoes these and other fears regarding the fatal combination of Russians, Jews, and democracy. As in other cases, “the Jews” were presented as a hostile force that had no qualms in joining Russian imperial forces at the expense of Poland and Poles. “The present solidarity between Jews and other enemies of our interests will bring us disaster. Warsaw might then have representatives who are

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Jews, or Poles, who won’t join the Polish [National] union, but will side with the Muscovites [moskiewski] and the Polish representation will be even weaker.”79 In addition to the growing association of “the Jews” with Russian imperial forces from the East, “the Jews” were also presented as committed allies of various revolutionary organizations. While the Jewish-Russian union often focused on themes of domination, the Jewish-socialist bond revolved around motifs of chaos and disorder. According to this view, “the Jews” and socialist organizations were united in a common desire to spread disorder and subvert the Polish national cause from within. The association of “the Jews” with socialists had several sources. First, the belief in Jewish support or, alternatively, control of such organizations was oftentimes a continuation of related assumptions that “the Jews” had a natural tendency to cooperate with other theoretically pro-Russian forces (such as the Russian Social Democrats or the Constitutional Democrats). Moreover, the success (or failure) of the newly formed National Workers’ Union (NZR) depended upon a strategy of portraying different socialist organizations such as the PPS and the SDKPiL as either Russian-oriented or Jewish-controlled groups that cared little for the fate of Polish workers. Lastly, disorder and division were the last thing that the National Democrats or any political movement wanted in this time of collective organization and action. Thus, the National Workers’ Union repeatedly attacked revolutionary organizations by calling on supporters to oppose what it referred to as the “Jewish-Socialist parties” and Jewish-socialist unrest.80 Other organizations were even more direct in their charges: “Every Pole knows that socialism is a branch of the Jewish world!”81 The frequent association of “the Jews” with socialist organizations also played upon widespread fears of revolutionary violence as well as assumptions regarding Jewish disloyalty and a Jewish desire to dominate Poles and Poland. Here, too, these two motifs—“the Jews” as a disruptive force and “the Jews” as an oppressive force—became integral parts of dominant myths regarding an increasingly hostile and feared body, “the Jews.” Lastly, even though such assaults on socialists and Jews may have been motivated by the desire to combat support for the PPS and the SDKPiL, charges regarding the involvement of “the Jews” in revolutionary activity and “the Jews’” propensity for disorder soon took on lives of their own.

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A flier distributed by the National Workers’ Union in the summer of 1905 illustrates this growing association of “the Jews” with revolution and disorder. In this case, different motifs merge as socialism is presented as part of a Russian-Jewish cabal that operates at the expense of “the Polish worker.” As in other cases, the NZR decried Jewish designs of deception and disorder, disaster and domination: “The Socialists have no national interests and don’t care about the Polish worker. The Soc.-Dem. [SDKPiL] are leading a battle over the interests of the Jews and in the name of these interests are leading hundreds of thousands of foolish Poles to disaster. The PPS has joined the muscovite socialists, and has made an agreement with them just like the agreement with the Moscow regime that abandoned our society.” The flier continued: “We should struggle to improve the conditions of every Polish worker . . . without regard for the leadership of the socialists who, in their extremism, demand that we concern ourselves more with jewish and muscovite interests than with the interests of the Polish worker” [sic].82 Other materials were somewhat more subtle but no less salient in their use of specific symbols and codes that reinforced the image that “the Jews” and the socialists were almost one and the same, two anti-Polish forces united under “the red Jewish banner.”83 Charges that Jews and socialists worked together to foment violence, disorder, and, ultimately, destruction in the Polish provinces soon became regular parts of the national camps’ charges and, in time, part of the larger discourse regarding “the Jews.” In another flier from the summer of 1905, the National Workers’ Union called on supporters to oppose a general strike organized by socialist parties because the strike was, in their eyes, part of larger Jewish-socialist schemes designed to spread chaos and disaster. In this and other cases, workers were warned not to serve as pawns in the Social Democrats’ anti-Polish, pro-Jewish plans. countrymen! The Social-Democrats have given an order in Warsaw that there be a strike today. Warsaw is supposed to mourn over an attack on Jews in Białystok. Warsawians! Is our city under the total command of the socialists? Is their mourning really our mourning? Countrymen! The Social-Democrats wave revolvers and slogans like “Down with Poland.” Show them today that Warsaw is not afraid of the threats and violence of the international socialists; show them that the people of Warsaw fight and sacrifice as one in the name of Poland. Today Warsaw

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wants to work and will work in spite of the socialists! Down with the general strike! long live poland!!!84

The following day, the National Workers’ Union praised supporters for not falling into the socialists’ Jewish-oriented trap. Again, Jews and socialists were presented as two parts of a united, anti-Polish front. “The Jewish ‘Bund’ and the international social-democracy called on you to strike to ‘avenge the blood of the Jewish proletariat.’ And you, Polish-workers, did you obey? . . . No, no one heeded their call.”85 Another National Workers’ Union flier also from the heated days of June 1905 combined many of these same fears regarding a potential alliance between Jews, Russians, and socialists. While this flier may have used somewhat elliptical reasoning, its rhetoric echoes the growing association of “the Jews” with Russian and socialist forces and the accompanying assumptions that these groups were united in their determination to carry out anti-Polish designs. “Thus the revolution will be good for the regime as it wipes us out and destroys our property. At the same time, it will also be good for the Jews who in the moment of our weakness and oppression will only increase their domination of our country.”86 As in other cases, the assumption that “the Jews” would exploit revolutionary disorder and join forces with the hostile desires of the Russian regime exacerbated fears among many and helped solidify the growing divide between Poles and Jews. This perception of an alliance between Jews and socialists gained additional momentum during the election campaigns of 1906 and 1907. Here, too, Jews and Socialists were presented as sworn allies in a common, anti-Polish bloc. Thus, a flier from the elections to the Second Duma warned voters in Warsaw of the dangers that a potential electoral alliance between Jews and Socialists posed to Polish political designs. “countrymen! In Lodz, the National List won the elections despite the strong union between the Social Democrats and the Jews.”87 Another flier from early 1907 similarly reflects growing anxiety regarding “Jewish-pagan-cosmopolitan” efforts to wrest Warsaw from Polish hands. This handbill warns: “As a result of the elections, in particular in districts II, VII and XII where the Jews and their miserable coalition partners, the Pedeks [Progressive Democrats] have joined together with the socialists, there will either be a victory of our nationalists or a

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Jewish victory! And is there any Pole . . . whose heart and conscience do not shudder with fear at the very thought of the victory of such decided enemies of the Fatherland?!”88 In addition to fears of a Jewish-socialist electoral alliance, “the Jews” were repeatedly represented as a body that manipulated revolutionary organizations in order to attain their devious designs. As the National Democratic paper Goniec Poranny noted in a series of articles on the elections to the Second Duma that was provocatively entitled “What Do the Jews Want?”: “The present activities can lead to nothing but the moral and material disaster for the land [Poland], and that is clearly a goal towards which the Jews strive. Socialism among us is merely a pawn in the hands of a Jewish master, and, as such, one that naturally serves the interests of the Jew.”89 Thus, the specter of direct competition and the uncertainty associated with elections contributed to the growing association of “the Jews” with other perceived opponents of the Polish nation. Moreover, this alliance was portrayed as a direct threat against which “the entire nation, the Polish people” ought to rally.90 Lastly, much like the perceived alliance between Jews and Russians, the alliance between Jews and Socialists didn’t always follow the rules of logic as political rhetoric simultaneously fed fear and fed off of fear in a vicious circle of hate. Thus, a flier from April 1906 attacked Polish socialists for boycotting the elections to the First Duma and, in the process, directly assisting “the Jews” and “the Russians” in their electoral campaigns against Poland’s freedom. For many, it was already clear that Russians, socialists, and Jews had a common anti-Polish agenda; that all three were “degenerates” that were hated by “the entire nation, the Polish people”; and that little would be able to contain these anti-Polish passions.91 The image of “the Jews” as a Russian-oriented, pro-socialist force would go through a number of different permutations throughout the late imperial, interwar, and post–World War II eras as “the Jews” would repeatedly serve as a key marker of political loyalties and communities in twentieth-century Polish society. Despite the many changes that Polish society would experience over the course of the twentieth century, the core of these two myths—the Jew as an agent of Russian imperialism (embodied in the image of the Litvak) and the Jew as an eager partner in the anti-Polish designs of a dogmatic, pro-Russian socialist cabal (later to be codified as the żydokomuna)—were already central parts of

Democracy and Its Discontents

the language, imagery, and culture of Polish politics from the very moment that Polish society entered the era of popular politics.

The Center Collapses: Liberals as Jews, Jews as Liberals Once established as a cultural code, this image of “the Jews” as a hostile, anti-Polish force of deception and domination was repeatedly used to delegitimize different organizations and individuals that cooperated with “the Jews.” While the practice of discrediting various parties by labeling them as philo-Semitic or crypto-Jews had already been used to challenge the place of socialist organizations, it soon became a successful means of attacking Polish liberals. Throughout the elections to both Dumas, National Democratic organizations and associated groups repeatedly portrayed Polish liberals and their electoral coalitions with Jewish parties as either pro-Jewish or Jewish-controlled enterprises that were created to lure unsuspecting Poles into advancing anti-Polish causes. Here, too, the assault on Progressive-Jewish coalitions depended upon the dual image of “the Jews” as an irrational, anti-Polish body, bent on dominating Poles and Poland, and “the Jews” as a dangerous force of deception, chaos, and destruction. Lastly, while this tactic may have been designed to discredit the liberal camp, it had the added effect of further undermining Jewish participation in the political sphere. The National Democrats’ assaults on the Progressives in both electoral campaigns were so unprecedented and so successful that Polish liberals rarely knew how to respond. Furthermore, even when Polish liberals did respond, their positions very often reflected an internalization of various aspects of the National Democrats’ worldview. The Polish liberals’ inability to respond effectively to these charges not only “fanned the flames” of suspicion and hate but also helped pave the way for the repeated failures of Polish-Jewish coalitions.92 Lastly, much like the institutionalization of other key motifs regarding “the Jews” and their place in Polish politics and society, the rhetorical battles and failed strategies of 1905, 1906, and 1907 laid the foundations for the repeated failure to create a viable center in Polish politics for the remainder of the twentieth century. Through a steady flow of newspaper articles, political fliers, and other materials, the National Democrats and affiliated organizations were able to muddle the line that separated Polish liberals from their

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Jewish coalition partners. Part of this confusion regarding the difference between liberals and Jews was due to the fact that many liberals were, in fact, Jews.93 At the same time, many were not.94 Moreover, many of those liberals who were Jewish often saw themselves as Poles.95 Ultimately, the hybrid nature of these Polish-Jewish identities and visions did little to assuage anxieties as the National Democrats and many of their supporters searched for social and political order in a period of constant upheaval. A flier from the elections to the Second Duma in early 1907 warning against a Progressive victory is typical of the charges conflating liberals and Jews. “If you vote for the list known as the Progressive Union, then the representatives from Warsaw will be Jews.”96 A front-page editorial from the National Democratic daily Gazeta Polska similarly argued that little separated the Polish progressives from their Jewish coalition partners. “From their perspective, the ProgressiveDemocrats will vote in electoral caucuses for a Jewish representative from Warsaw. . . . If their plan succeeds, then Warsaw will be represented by a Jewish-separatist and by a progressive democrat chosen by the Jews.”97 Through these and other attacks, Progressive-led coalitions and Polish liberals were repeatedly represented as organizations that supported Jewish candidates at the expense of Polish ones. Thus, the fatal conflation of Polish liberals with “the Jews” was quickly integrated into mainstream political rhetoric and culture. Other fliers and articles went even further by charging that liberalled coalitions not only supported “the Jews” but that they actually served as front organizations that subconsciously or, at times, even consciously abetted Jewish attempts to oppose Polish national aspirations. Here, in particular, “the Jews” were portrayed as a cunning, subversive group that manipulated otherwise well-intentioned coalition partners and their unsuspecting supporters. The following excerpt from a flier distributed immediately before the elections to the First Duma illustrates the charges that Polish liberals collaborated with such Jewish conspiracies: “Countrymen! The Progressive democrats have sold Warsaw to the Jews. Don’t let yourselves be fooled by their election list. Several Polish names appear on the list for decoration, but the majority are Jews, and if national votes are wasted, Jews will be the representatives from Warsaw.”98 A handbill from the elections to the Second Duma made similar charges that the progressive coalition was a mere

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front organization created to camouflage Jewish designs for power. In this case, the Progressive candidates Ludwik Krzywicki and Aleksander Świętochowski were accused of knowingly serving as pawns in Jewish schemes to fool Polish voters and corrupt the electoral process.99 “Countrymen! The candidates Krzywicki and Świętochowski are mere puppets as they have no right to vote in the districts in which they are candidates.”100 Dzwon Polski, one of the many different journals that succeeded Goniec after its repeated closure by the authorities, similarly warned readers of the dangers and half-truths embedded deep within the Jewish-Progressive coalition.101 “The crowd does not know history and is not aware of the fine tradition of liberation politics on the part of Polish nationalists. Although, we have nothing to hide, the new [Progressive] electoral union is a grave threat to our security.”102 Thus, while liberal (and Jewish) politics were rooted in deception, Polish politics and the National Democrats were presented as noble representatives of the people who had “nothing to hide.” In addition to charges that Polish liberals were complicit in Jewish conspiracies to dominate and subjugate Poland and Poles, other sources went so far as to claim that Polish liberals were, in fact, crypto-Jews. Time and again, motifs of Jewish manipulation and deception were implemented to discredit Polish liberals with what would soon become the kiss of death of Polish politics: the charge that an organization or individuals were attempting to hide their true “Jewish” origins.103 Mass society, popular elections, and the drive for “collective self-­determination” demanded clear lines of community and public identification as well as the exposure of those who attempted to violate these boundaries and, in doing so, contaminate the Polish body politic.104 These angry assaults on Jewish acts of deception also highlight the increasing sense of confrontation in the Polish political sphere as political charges progressed from casual association and naive collusion to those of masochistic selfdenial and pathological self-destruction. The following excerpt from a preelection flier cited earlier illustrates the increasingly hostile nature of these and other accusations. “country­men citizens of wola! As we defend our rights and our Polishness, jews and the judaicized progressive-democrats stand against out nationalism [sic]. They long to deprive you of your will and choose foreign representatives for you, representatives who are willing to sell

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out Poland for their own interests.”105 In this case, Polish liberals no longer served as unwitting partners in Jewish schemes but had essentially converted to Judaism and had become “the judaicized progressive democrats.” Again, political opposition was widely conflated with a specific ethno-linguistic community as any and all opposition suddenly became Jewish. Moreover, the frequent labeling of liberal allies as Jewish organizations turned public association with “the Jews” into a fatal political liability. As a result, the critical connection between Jews and political opposition found its way into mainstream political culture. Lastly, while such charges were intended to combat Polish liberals, they helped transform the word “Jew” into a pejorative political code embodying hostile, anti-Polish designs.106 The National Democrats’ rhetoric and imagery was so dominant that it soon influenced the language and strategies that Polish liberals employed in their responses. Time and again, liberals would turn to language and concepts from the National Democrats’ lexicon to justify their own positions. Thus, instead of defending coalitions with Jewish organizations as part of their larger vision of a liberal, democratic society, liberal organizations emphasized the extent to which their policies were designed to defend the Polish nation and its honor. Other Progressive materials revolved around classic National Democratic ideals, including the connection between representation and ethnicity. Finally, even when Progressives did refer to their alliances with Jewish organizations or voters, they often went to great lengths to reassure supporters that these unions were temporary coalitions and not unions of political allies bound by common values. Thus, even Polish liberals agreed that the debate was not about a particular group’s right to participate in the larger political process but, rather, about such quintessentially National Democratic concepts, terms, and values as the Polish nation, its culture, and its honor. Much like the National Democratic ideals that saturated the political discourse, Progressive responses lent further credence to assumptions that Progressive-Jewish coalitions were not only oddly unnatural but also deeply flawed. To borrow from Ronald Schechter’s analysis of French Enlightenment discussions of “the Jews,” the appropriation of hostile rhetoric did not mean that Polish liberals agreed with what National Democratic leaders said, “but that they were in the same conceptual universe, that they were capable

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of understanding the reasoning, allusions, and rhetoric.”107 While liberal politics, projects, and visions were in a state of crisis in turn-ofthe-century Vienna and Paris, they were never able to even get off the ground in Warsaw.108 Literature, pamphlets, and fliers distributed by the liberal-led coalitions in 1906 and 1907 all reflect the influence of National Democratic language and imagery on different Progressive organizations. The following excerpt from a flier distributed by the Progressive Union during the elections to the Second Duma highlights the party’s internalization of a key National Democratic ideal: the Polish nation. Thus, while the authors of this particular leaflet argued with National Democratic representatives over what “Poland” and “Polishness” actually was, they went to great lengths to convince the public of their commitment to these concepts. Even Polish liberals felt a need to pledge allegiance to the indivisible Polish nation.109 citizens! There are a number of ridiculous charges against the Progressive Union including that there are those under their roof who: are not Poles, are not rooted in nationalism and that cosmopolitan forces are weakening their patriotic sentiments. . . . We, progressive Poles, know only a Poland free of prejudice, a Poland that does not allow for either privilege or discrimination, a Poland of great spirit and brilliant thought, bound together by an equal love of all of its sons for the mother’s womb! Such a Poland we love with all our soul and we are completely opposed to the position that any person might have the right to think of himself as a better or more faithful son of hers! No one has the right to decide what Polishness is, because Polishness is decided by an internal feeling and is the sum total of all of the country’s residents.110

Another flier distributed by the Progressive Union in early 1907 emphasized the organization’s commitment to National Democratic ideals like patriotism, the defense of Warsaw, and loyalty to the Polish nation. “Citizen! When you stand in front of the ballot box, call upon the most competent and best people to represent ‘the Heart of Poland’—Warsaw. . . . The national and truly patriotic [Progressive] Union recommends a progressive force of Aleksander Świętochowski and Ludwik Krzywicki.”111 In these and other cases, liberal organizations repeatedly touted their commitment to key national ideals like the Polish nation, patriotism, and loyalty. Thus, even when they attempted to refute

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National Democratic charges and rhetoric, they did so by borrowing from the National Democrats’ political lexicon and worldview.112 This tension between democratic values and national communities would continue to torment liberal groups throughout the period as national rhetoric, organization, and action would prove to be a powerful and intoxicating combination that few could resist and even fewer could afford to ignore in Warsaw.113 As a result of National Democratic accusations, liberal groups repeatedly found themselves justifying their alliances with “the Jews.” The following excerpt from a Progressive Union flier regarding the elections to the Second Duma highlights the extent to which National Democratic language and values influenced liberal views of themselves, their coalition partners “the Jews,” and the role of both groups in Polish politics and society. citizens! comrades! Again, the nationalists mount their favorite horse: again the jews are threatening us! . . . And what are the jews doing? After all it is known that the nationalists are supporting Mr. Dmowski and Mr. Nowodworski and that we have Świętochowski and Krzywicki. And the jews? The Jews are not putting forward any of their own candidates, merely supporting our candidates as it will be difficult to demand that they support Mr. Dmowski who has already threatened them with pogroms.114

Thus, the coalition between Jewish and liberal organizations was not presented as a political alliance but rather as a temporary electoral coalition of convenience, one justified by the fact that Jewish voters could not possibly bring themselves to support the National Democrats’ candidates Dmowski and Nowodworski. Furthermore, in response to various charges, this flier emphasized the fact that the Progressive coalition was supporting two Polish candidates and no Jewish ones. Thus, even when the Progressives opposed the National Democrats, they took steps to distance themselves from “the Jews” and from Jewish organizations. This ambivalence toward their electoral alliances with Warsaw’s Jewish Electoral Committee reflects not only the degree to which National Democratic ideals and language dominated Polish politics but also the extent to which Polish liberals themselves were torn between liberal ideals and national agendas. As democratic processes and patri-

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otic rhetoric contributed to the nationalization of Warsaw’s political sphere, many Polish liberals found it increasingly difficult to justify and support their alliances with “the Jews.” Few documents illustrate this tension between burgeoning national communities, liberal values, and the place and fate of “the Jews” more than an open, public letter distributed by one of the leading figures of the Polish liberal camp, the writer and publicist Bolesław Prus.115 As the elections to the First Duma approached in the spring of 1906, Prus turned to the power of numbers to clarify his opposition to Jewish efforts to manipulate the new, vulnerable democratic institutions and the fledgling body that these institutions were supposed to represent and protect—the people. Once again, the specter of democratic reforms, institutions, and practices led to a clear division of Warsaw’s residents into two opposing camps. dear fellow citizens! I write this letter as a man without a party or a vested interest in the elections and, at the same time, as a journalist who has turned to you thousands of times on public issues and one who periodically enjoys your trust. . . . In Warsaw, according to the calculations, Poles must have 1.14 representatives and Jews 0.63. However, as it is difficult to split a representative into fractions, both representatives must be Poles. . . . Our society is composed of different elements, of different faiths and nationalities, but the clear numerical majority belongs to us, the Poles.116

The increasingly confrontational position expressed by Prus and other liberals was evident to many Jewish observers. In some cases, angry Jewish firebrands such as Noah Prylucki and Yitzhak Grünbaum were more than happy to point to liberal antisemitism and to the imminent demise of the Polish-Jewish alliance.117 While Prylucki and others may have been somewhat eager to declare the end of Polish-Jewish solidarity, the positions taken by liberal organizations and leaders throughout both elections would prove to be fatal harbingers of liberal ambivalence and, at times, hostility toward “the Jews,” as well as the collapse of Polish liberalism. Thus, even though some have pointed to the postrevolutionary era of reaction between 1907 and 1914 as the period that witnessed the advent of a specific brand of liberal antisemitism in Polish politics,118 liberal

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responses to National Democratic charges during the elections of 1906 and 1907 demonstrate that the growing association of liberal parties with “the Jews” and liberal ambivalence regarding Jewish participation in the political process date back to the implementation of semidemocratic reforms in Congress Poland.119 The increasingly dominant role of the National Democratic discourse regarding the nation, loyalty, and discipline left little room for those who advocated a union with “the Jews” based on liberal, democratic ideals. Thus, while progressive organizations often condemned the National Democrats’ use of antisemitic imagery and language, they were also reluctant to embrace Jews and Jewish organizations as full partners in democratic projects designed to reconstruct Polish society. By early 1907, the National Democrats’ use of antisemitic motifs and strategies had already succeeded in delegitimizing and excluding Jewish parties and many of their Polish allies from the political arena and, ultimately, from the emerging body politic.

Another Marriage of Convenience? Revolutionaries, Jews, and Antisemitism Polish liberals were not the only ones influenced by the central role played by National Democratic rhetoric and images. Statements by different revolutionary parties regarding “the Jews” also demonstrate the extent to which the National Democrats’ literature influenced the positions and views of even their most bitter political rivals: the PPS and the SDKPiL. In some cases, this influence can be gleaned from the different ways that socialist parties responded to National Democrats’ rhetoric, charges, and positions. In still other cases, comments by socialist parties passed from those of staunch support for “the Jews” to those expressing a more reserved and, at times, even ambivalent position. Thus, even though revolutionary parties still opposed antisemitic rhetoric and actions as part of their larger struggles against the regime, the National Democrats’ growing popularity encouraged revolutionary parties to temper their public statements regarding “the Jews.” As the entire political arena became saturated with national language and symbols, even those parties that had previously trumpeted interethnic solidarity were cognizant of the fact that public association with “the Jews” could prove

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to be a potential liability. In a relatively short span of time, the National Democrats’ influence on the political sphere led to a distinct shift on the part of the PPS and the SDKPiL in regard to “the Jews.” Throughout the electoral period, revolutionary parties repeatedly attacked Polish liberals for their duplicitous policies on Jewish issues. While the nuances of these polemics varied, the fact that “the Jewish question” now served as a recognized barometer of political allegiance underscores the success of the National Democrats’ efforts to turn “the Jews” into a central and loaded political code. In an assault on the Progressive Democrats following the elections to the First Duma, an article from the PPS journal Robotnik pointed to the Progressives’ treatment of “the Jews” to emphasize the extent to which both liberals and patriotic organizations shared a common language and culture. Turning to the example of Prus, Robotnik argued that: “Not only the endecja [National Democrats] warn the people of Jewish threats and through such an appeal to fear encourage people to vote for the National Democrats. Bolesław Prus points to the same dangers. . . . Word for word, the National Democrats and Bolesław Prus write the exact same thing.”120 After a period of intense propaganda, the National Democrats and their affiliates had succeeded in turning “the Jews” and one’s relation to this body into widely accepted markers of political allegiance and legitimacy. The SDKPiL weekly Czerwony Sztandar also turned to Jewish issues in its assault on the Progressive-Jewish coalition in the elections to the Second Duma. Here, as well, both the National Democrats and the Progressive Democrats were characterized as reactionary parties that differed in name only. However, this particular statement included an additional twist, a condemnation of the Progressives’ alliance with what the paper referred to as “the dark Jewish bourgeoisie.” “The N.D. [National Democrats] and the P.D. [Progressive Democrats] are one and the same; without scruples they recruit ‘supporters’ from the dark Jewish bourgeoisie, the only difference is the costume: one presents a . . . national costume and the other in a progressive dress. The enlightened Jewish workers must exert all of their strength and expose those Jewish converts who prostitute themselves left and right.”121 Thus, while the paper criticized the Progressives’ strategies and actions it also attacked their decision to “recruit ‘supporters’ from the dark Jewish bourgeoisie.” Such comments reflect the extent to which anti-

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Jewish sentiments—in this case the association of Jews with capitalism and other supposedly dark forces—had permeated socialist culture and thought.122 While such expressions of revolutionary antisemitism were not entirely new, this example demonstrates how “the Jews” or, in this particular case “the dark Jewish bourgeoisie,” had become part of a volatile political code. Like many political symbols, the image of “the Jews” was so loaded that it could simultaneously be used to discredit both national and liberal organizations. As a result of this malleability, the former defender of “the Jews,” the SDKPiL, was able to use the term “the dark Jewish bourgeoisie” to discredit both of its main political opponents: the National Democrats and the Progressive Democrats. As in other cases, the rhetoric of hate didn’t always follow the rules of logic. The following excerpt from a different SDKPiL flier distributed immediately after the elections to the First Duma further illustrates both the growing centrality of the political debates regarding “the Jews” and the revolutionary parties’ responses to these charges. Throughout the flier, titled “A Day of Shame for Warsaw’s Bourgeoisie and of Crime by the ‘National’ Hooligans,” the SDKPiL’s Warsaw Committee went to great lengths to discredit the Progressive-Jewish coalition, the National Democrats, and the entire electoral experiment. Once again, it turned to the image of “the Jews” to achieve all of these goals. “What is the cause of greater consternation,” it asked, “a union between horrible liberal forces and the ‘intelligentsia’ from the Jewish kahal along with masses from the most backward Jewish urban underclass, or the collection of hooligan elements under the slogan of ‘nationalism’?”123 Although the flier continues by condemning acts of electoral violence and threats of anti-Jewish pogroms, it repeatedly questions the alliance between Progressive organizations and Jewish leaders, including the Hasidic rabbi from Ger Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter and the organized Jewish community “the kahal.” In the opinion of the SDKPiL, both electoral blocs worked against the interests of the workers. More importantly, such statements show that revolutionary parties were not immune from the growing influence of anti-Jewish rhetoric that now colored Warsaw’s political realm. Thus, unlike vocal defenses of Jews in the summer of 1905, the SDKPiL went to great lengths to clarify its position so that it could not be accused of lending unlimited support

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to “the Jews.” Like many other observers, the SDKPiL realized that it was witnessing the advent of a new era and that unconditional support for “the Jews,” such as that which it expressed less than a year earlier, would now exact a hefty political price. Like the SDKPiL, the PPS was also aware that a political shift had taken place. Thus, while it, too, had distributed literature condemning antisemitic acts and calling on workers not to take part in government-led excesses a year earlier, the party never actually published a brochure on antisemitism.124 These and other arguments used by the PPS and the SDKPiL to combat both the National Democrats and the Progressives demonstrate how central debates regarding “the Jews” and their place in Polish society had become. By early 1906, “the Jews” had been transformed into a volatile political code that parties from both the right and the left would employ in their attempts to discredit opponents and influence the course of Polish politics and society. Moreover, like many other cultural codes, the image of “the Jews” remained an extremely malleable term, one that was open to a wide spectrum of interpretations and uses. Thus, throughout these debates, “the Jews” were represented as both potential victims who had to be defended from the National Democrats’ assaults and as irrepressible oppressors who had to be prevented from manipulating the Progressives, the electoral process, and the people.125 Lastly, despite various public defenses, “the Jews” were rarely represented as a group whose place in Polish society was beyond dispute. By early 1907, the image of “the Jews” had already become an overwhelmingly negative, if not a pejorative, political code that was regularly used to define the positions and allegiances of a wide range of parties and organizations. Beauty, community, and hate all lay in the eyes of the beholder.

A Political Eulogy: Boycotts and Violence, Satire and Hate Although images of “the Jews” as sworn enemies of Poland and as dedicated allies of other hostile groups were fundamental aspects of the antisemitic rhetoric and propaganda that became part of the political discourse in 1906 and 1907, one additional development marked the advent of a new era of political culture: the turn to satire and hate.

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Throughout the electoral period, Warsaw was flooded with political materials that were particularly vicious in their assaults against “the Jews.” These materials not only repeated many of the themes and arguments regarding the image and place of “the Jews” in Polish lands but also changed the very tone of popular politics with threats of social ostracism, economic sanctions, and physical violence. In addition to their increasingly angry style, another sign that these images and accompanying language were further integrated into mainstream political culture was the repeated appearance of such charges in various satirical renditions of “the Jews.” This combination of satire, hatred, and threats represents an additional phase in the nature and level of antisemitic language and symbols as the politics of hate extended far beyond the realm of political propaganda. While the historiographical literature often associates economic boycotts and anti-Jewish violence in Warsaw with the elections to the Fourth Duma in 1912, such strategies of intimidation were widely implemented throughout the elections to both the First and Second Dumas.126 Thus, alongside literature that warned Poles that “the Jews” were endangering Warsaw, other materials voiced more direct threats aimed at intimidating Jewish voters.127 The following citation from a flier distributed in the elections to the Second Duma illustrates the combination of economic boycotts and thinly veiled threats of violence that began to surface at this time. In these and other cases, the message relayed to Jewish voters was clear: Participation in the political process and opposition to the Polish national program would demand a heavy price including impoverishment and expulsion. countrymen! we swear!! If the Jews win the elections we will not spend one penny on goods from Jews. We do not want pogroms or violations of the law, however arrogance must be punished; if you oppose us, you will not make a penny from us and will be forced to wander out of hunger and will find no place in Poland.128

Another flier, this one from the elections to the First Duma, voiced a similar combination of economic actions and threats of physical harm. In this case, traditional antisemitic motifs of the wandering, disloyal Jew were employed to present “the Jews” as an ungrateful guest and a hostile fifth column that threatened the modern nation. Moreover,

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here as well, any sign of Jewish disobedience or impudence was to be greeted with threats of economic and even physical actions.129 Poland accepted You, and settled You on her lands at a time when You were persecuted and expelled from everywhere else. . . . However, Polish lands were never a motherland for You. And now, at a moment when the entire people stand in a battle for their national rights and liberation, the entire population has found an enemy in You instead of a partner. Do not forget that it will be an embarrassment for the Polish country and the Polish nation if in the end You will be the stronger party. If that happens, we will treat You like an enemy. In every sphere, in business and in employment, in the city and in the countryside, we will fight You for You have acted against our national honor. Abandon this dangerous game or You will bring unhappiness on yourself.130

Nor were such threats limited to a few unsigned fliers. The specter of economic sanctions and rumors of physical violence filled the air during the elections to the early Dumas. Commenting on the mood during the elections to the First Duma, the National Democratic daily Dzwon Polski echoed the widespread belief that a victory on the part of the Progressive-Jewish coalition might “lead to a boycott of Jews in the economic realm.”131 Reflecting the mood in early 1906, the SDKPiL weekly Czerwony Sztandar also noted that “the N.D.’s [National Democrats] are planning to stop all business with Jews.”132 In addition to these threats of boycotts, other sources spoke of rumors regarding possible anti-Jewish violence. Thus, one SDKPiL flier mentions National Democratic threats against Jews,133 and other materials urged supporters not to participate in potential anti-Jewish excesses.134 Thus, in these and other cases, the authors of these pieces assumed not only that such acts were imminent but that supporters might be tempted to participate in such anti-Jewish acts.135 By early 1906, threats of economic sanctions and fears of physical violence had become part of the dominant political culture.136 Rumors of potential economic actions against Jewish businesses and fears of anti-Jewish assaults were also swirling around Warsaw during the campaign to the Second Duma in early 1907. Thus, Czerwony S­ ztandar noted threats that an electoral loss on the part of the National Democrats would lead to violence against the “Jewish parasites.”137 In

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response to rumors of anti-Jewish acts, the National Democratic paper, Goniec Poranny, published an editorial lamenting the lack of viable political options available to the National Democrats and their supporters. In this and other cases, support for an economic boycott was presented as a somewhat reluctant option, one reserved for dire circumstances, and one that was, more often than not, somehow thrust upon the National Democrats and their supporters.138 However, while such rationalizations of economic actions and rumors of violence were often presented as somewhat regrettable developments, they were rarely condemned outright. Moreover, few seemed convinced of the sincerity of the paper’s declarations as National Democratic leaders and affiliated organizations continued to threaten Jews and their electoral partners.139 Lastly, the sheer repetition of these charges and the accompanying rationalizations underscore the extent to which such rumors had become integral parts of the new political culture and debates. Summing up the mood at the time, the “Committee of Warsaw Jews” urged Jewish voters not to take part in the elections to the Second Duma. According to the “Committee of Warsaw Jews,” the Poles were a “strong and stubborn people and it is far better to live with them in peace.”140 In a relatively short span of time, threats of economic boycotts and anti-Jewish violence succeeded in one of their primary goals as Jewish voices began advocating a retreat from the public realm. And so, the turn to aggressive, angry, and potentially violent anti-Jewish strategies, such as economic boycotts and physical violence, were already part of political rhetoric, imagination, and action in the elections to the First and Second Dumas in 1906 and 1907. Another sign of the growing influence of the National Democrats’ agenda was the fact that such warnings were complemented throughout both election campaigns by satirical material that not only depended upon the widespread recognition of certain motifs regarding “the Jews” but also reinforced many of these concepts. This combination of satire and hate further illustrates the extent to which the advent of electoral politics irrevocably altered the rules and style of political debate, engagement, and activity. One satirical flier distributed at the time begins with a light-hearted “earnest and secret” plea to “Warsaw’s literate residents, in other words, Our Polish Intelligentsia on the matter of tomorrow’s melodramatic, vaudeville elections.” Alongside these and

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other barbs against the Polish intelligentsia and the electoral process, this broadsheet focuses on “the Jews,” their role in the political process, and their alliance with Polish liberals. Throughout the piece, “the Jews” are described as a hostile, anti-Polish force bent on manipulating naive Poles or, alternatively, crypto-Jewish liberals, into supporting their designs to undermine Polish claims to self-rule. Key aspects of the National Democratic lexicon had already found their way into various expressions of popular culture. This particular flier continues with the narrator presenting himself as a Pole who supports the idea of Polish assimilation to Jewishness. “I write this letter as a supporter of the party of Poles who have assimilated to Jewishness, as a fervent agitator of the idea of Poles converting to Judaism.” Through this satirical account it becomes clear that only one thing could be more absurd than Poles trying to become Jews: Jews who tried to pass as Poles. As such, the narrator uses the farcical example of Poles aspiring to become Jews to underscore the ridiculous nature of the idea that Jews might be able to integrate into Polish culture, become Poles of the Mosaic faith, and form a Polish-Jewish coalition. Threatened by the Polish-Jewish union as well as the very specter of Polish Jews, the lines between Poles and Jews had to be clearly defined; and, little seemed to work better than the seemingly preposterous example of Poles who actually wanted to become Jews.141 In addition to ridiculing key liberal principles like Jewish integration into Polish society and Polish-Jewish solidarity, this broadsheet also demonstrates the extent to which Jewish parties and their coalition with non-Jewish partners were deemed inherently hostile to the Polish national cause. As in other cases, any support, direct or indirect, for Jewish parties or affiliated organizations was presented as a fatal step that would ultimately lead to the destruction of Poland and the enslavement of all Poles. Continuing the ostensibly ludicrous theme of Poles converting to Jewishness, the author admonishes those who foolishly fell prey to the consummate Trojan horse of Polish politics: Polish-­Jewish cooperation. In a verse that ridiculed both Jewish political rhetoric as well as that of Polish liberals, the flier reinforces many of the central motifs regarding “the Jews.” Once again, the authors attempt to prove their point and exacerbate fears of Jewish domination by satirically turning the tables on Poles and Jews. “Remember, we live in the Jewish

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homeland in which we are a people without a state. . . . We are all Jews! Without difference of sex, faith, position or class! Polania is not a nation; it’s a utopia; no it isn’t even a utopia, it’s a song, about something that never was! Down with Polonism, long live us Jews! Down with Polishness! Long live philo-judaism! [sic]Long live assimilation!” While this particular flier was intended to undermine the role of Jews and Jewish organizations in the larger political processes, another central target was those “Polish intellectuals” who were repeatedly duped into supporting malevolent Jewish schemes. Ultimately, the flier claimed that it was these Polish liberals who needed to be exposed as the crypto-Jewish traitors that they really were. Here, as well, key themes regarding “the Jews” colored both the institutional and the popular spheres of modern Polish politics and society. Thus, the flier concludes with a plea in pidgin Polish designed to warn those Poles who were about to help “the Jews” destroy Poland. Once again, bitter satire and fears of Jewish domination were presented through the voice of a Pole who had abandoned his Polishness for Jewishness and, in doing so, was assisting a wider Jewish project to subvert Polish claims to selfrule. “Citizens of Polish Palestine! Respected Jewish citizens of the Heebie faith (żydowatego)! Honorable Jewish citizens of the Polak faith (­Polakowatego)! . . . Sing the election may-u-fest, Poland has not yet perished, We will destroy her!”142 In addition to ridiculing Jewish and Polish visions of Jewish integration into Polish society and expressing fears of Jewish domination, this excerpt alludes to the purported connection between Jews and socialism (may-u-fest) as well as the traditional Jewish practice of self-humiliation, ma yofes. Moreover, the comment that “Poland has not yet perished, We will destroy her!” refers directly to the Polish national hymn and hopes for national rebirth. However, in this case plans for Polish-Jewish rapprochement would inevitably lead to the end of such dreams.143 The disastrous implications of alliances between Poles and Jews were now clear to all, nothing less than the total transformation of the future Polish society to “Polish Palestine.” Democracy, elections, and modern politics had raised a slew of questions regarding the nature of society and self in Warsaw and in doing so had destabilized the relationship between Poles and Jews. As integral parts of these processes, such satirical accounts were intended not only to expose the ludicrous nature of liberal projects but also to end any real discussion

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on such matters. Only a complete and total fool (or a pathological masochist bent on self-destruction) would continue to believe and support anything so fantastic as a union between Poles and Jews. Not to be outdone, the master of Yiddish culture and Warsaw’s Jewish society, Y. L. Peretz, wrote a series of similar satirical pieces about Jewish assimilationist fantasies gone awry at the turn of the century. Turning to the example of the fictitious Jewish communal activist Moyshe Yankelevitch, Peretz’s biting satire from immediately after the elections to the First Duma echoes many of the same points raised by the Polish satirical flier discussed above, if, albeit, from a radically different perspective. Bound together by common institutions and repeated confrontations over the representation and definition of the same urban space (as well as its residents), Poles and Jews not only shared common environments but also a similar language and culture. One reflection of this common culture was that both Peretz and the author of the Polish broadsheet used satire to express their bitter disdain for those residents of Warsaw who violated the newly reconstituted lines of community by pretending to be what they were not. Starting off by describing ­Yankelevitch as “a type of Jewish-Polish communal activist,” Peretz’s piece launches into a bitter assault on generations of Polish-Jews including Kempner, Nussbaum, and others and their fantastic hopes that “the two peoples sitting in one country will merge into one people.”144 Playing off of prevalent fears regarding the connection between democracy and demography and echoing many of the themes raised by Polish commentators, Peretz satirically alludes to a not-too-distant future when Jews, and not Poles, would be the majority in Poland and Poles would, as a result, be forced to assimilate and become Jews. “Accordingly, the Jewish masses will not say, what do we have to do with the Poles, and what do we care what they think of us; indeed, in the near future we will be the majority and we will rule here.”145 While Peretz’s immediate political agenda varied greatly from those of Polish political satirists, the themes, the language, and the dilemmas that occupied Peretz—Jewish-Polish relations, the blessings and curses of assimilation, and the intimate connections between demography, democracy, and the nation—illustrate the extent to which members of both camps shared a common political culture, one that used a variety of modern means to convey a clear message: Warsaw was now a divided city.

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The growth of urban society, the expansion of the public sphere, and the advent of participatory politics had given birth to a new world and an accompanying slew of questions that demanded new answers. Another Polish satirical handbill from this period was even less subtle in its assaults on the dangers posed by “the Jews,” their alliances with socialist groups and Russian bureaucrats, and their common goals of disorder, the destruction of Poland, and the enslavement of all Poles. Once again, charges and themes central to the National Democrats’ worldview permeated a wide range of cultural and social realms. Starting with the title “Awake!” this thirty-stanza poem from March 1906 begins with a reference to the Jews’ historical experience in Polish lands and their place as guests: “Can anyone remember in the long history of our people, an enemy that has been so mischievous.”146 The broadsheet continues with a series of rhymed assaults against the supposed Jewish-Russian-German alliance, the Jewish-socialist design to promote disorder, and the Jewish desire to conquer Poland. Thus, the poem portrays the elections as a direct competition between Polish patriotic forces and a united Jewish-Russian-German coalition designed to deny Polish representatives their rightful place in the Duma. Referring to conflict between Polish patriots and Polish liberals, the broadsheet asks: “Who gains from a situation in which brothers fight brothers? . . . The Germans, the vile Jews and the horrible bureaucrat.” The flier continues: “The horrible bureaucrat, the German and the Jews, don’t want our representatives in the Duma. They want there to be disorder among us, So that they can carry out their plans.” As in other cases, “the Jews” are represented as a hostile fifth column that eagerly joins other antiPolish bodies like “the Germans” and the Russian bureaucracy. This representation of the Jewish-Russian-German alliance is joined by a series of comments regarding another dangerous anti-Polish coalition: the Jewish-socialist covenant. Like other materials, the flier explains that the coalition between Jewish and socialist groups is, in fact, part of a larger plan to destroy Poland. Here, as well, key motifs regarding a Jewish-socialist alliance were integrated into various aspects of political culture in early 1906. “The Jew and the Socialist go hand in hand, making new misery for the people; one is with the government, the other spits on the government, but together they help one another.” As in other examples, both of these alliances—the Jewish-Russian-German

Democracy and Its Discontents

union of foreign domination and the Jewish-socialist axis of disruption—serve the same goal: the destruction of Poland and the enslavement of Poles. “They want to drive the people to despair and hunger, to force them to fight and to destroy their nation; and later to rob all of their property, so that they will rule over them as though they were their slaves.” Whatever veiled threats of economic boycotts and physical violence may have failed to achieve, satire and hate were able to convey as the style, manner, and content of political debate adapted to new modes of expression and new ideas that began to dominate the reconstructed political sphere in Warsaw. Moreover, both of these relatively new forms of political expression—hate and satire—illustrate the extent to which the elections to the first two Dumas facilitated fundamental transformations in the Polish political discourse and culture. Fear and loathing, suspicion and threats, ostracism and violence were already central to the political sphere as “the Jews” and debates regarding their role and place (or lack thereof) became clear markers of community and allegiance in modern Polish politics.

Conclusion: The Public Sphere and Its Limits Slowly and methodically ostracized as an anti-Polish force by the right, discreetly abandoned by many of their allies from the center and the left, and ridiculed and threatened by anonymous vendors of satire and hate, the possibilities and practices of Jewish politics in Warsaw were irrevocably transformed as a result of the new language and style of Polish politics that was popularized in 1905, 1906, and 1907. Throughout the electoral campaigns to the First and Second Dumas, the image of “the Jews” as an inherently hostile, manipulative force bent on joining other anti-Polish bodies, such as revolutionaries and Russian bureaucrats, in the service of obsessive, anti-Polish designs became central parts of the Polish political discourse. Indeed, even allies and supporters such as the SDKPiL, the PPS, and Polish liberals were not immune to the power and allure of nationalism and the intoxicating draw of hate as they, too, internalized the National Democrats’ rhetoric and worldview.

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Ultimately, all those who chose to participate in the Polish political sphere were forced to take a position on two increasingly exclusive yet intimately bound concepts: the Polish nation and “the Jews.” Thus, the politicization of ethno-linguistic communities (in this case Poles) and the subsequent mobilization of the body politic demanded the clear definition of the borders and limits of community and belonging in Warsaw. In many cases, this newly transformed concept of community was clarified in direct contradistinction to a theoretically competing body, “the Jews.” And, thus, two separate political communities—Poles and Jews—were redefined and juxtaposed against one another in an ongoing battle for the right to define, represent, and control the disputed city of Warsaw and the fate of its 775,000 residents. In the end, the National Democrats’ electoral victories in 1906 and 1907 went far beyond the party meetings, voting caucuses, and election halls of Warsaw. As a result of their successful campaigns, an entire series of antisemitic images and tropes entered the discourse of Polish politics. Moreover, the rise of the Polish patriotic camp, the consistent delegitimization of the principle of Jewish participation (either as individuals or as organizations) in the political process, and the intimidation of both Jewish parties and potential partners left few political options for the one-third of Warsaw’s residents who happened to be Jewish. Thus, while the elections to the first two Dumas may not have been the final curtain call of Polish-Jewish solidarity, they were certainly its last hurrah as the politics of assimilation received a fatal blow in the elections of 1906 and 1907.147 Whatever dreams and visions Polish, Jewish, and Polish-Jewish liberals may have had about the creation of a liberal, democratic society in Russia’s Polish provinces were eclipsed by the undeniably powerful appeal of antisemitic parties, their affiliated organizations, and the modern political communities that they helped create.

Conclusion

Politics, Order, and the Dialectics of Jewish Modernity

And the time was one of total chaos, a time of confusion between the end and the beginning, of ruin and of creation, of ancient times and of new beginnings.*

Bewildered by the vicissitudes of life in the city, weary after years of upheaval and revolution, disillusioned by electoral coalitions that failed to produce tangible results, and intimidated by threats of anti-Jewish violence, many Jews found themselves searching for stability and order in early-twentieth-century Warsaw. In the eyes of many, years of intense revolutionary activity and experiments in popular politics had produced minimal, if not pitiful, results.1 In response to the confusion and despair that characterized the period, many Jewish residents of Warsaw and other cities turned to new, quintessentially modern political movements for structure, community, and meaning.2 Both then and later, the years and events surrounding what would soon become known as the Revolution of 1905 would be viewed as moments of historical and collective truth in the history of the Jewish people. Writing in Warsaw’s premier Hebrew literary annual, Sefer h­ a-shana, the silver-tongued (Moses) Naḥman Syrkin would note: “There are moments so emotional in the life of a people, that one year is considered a complete epoch. . . . Such an epoch, one in which old worlds are destroyed and the construction of new ones begins, such *Hayim Nahman Bialik cited in M. N. (Moses Naḥman) Syrkin, “Tekufat ma‘avar,” Sefer ha-shana, vol. 5 (December, 1905): 3.

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was this past year in all of the land of Russia, and of course, also for the Jews who lived there.”3 The former Poale Zion activist Yitzhak Tabenkin would recall his own experiences in Warsaw in this very period in similar apocalyptic terms. When we examine the period and its influence, we see it as a period of stormy changes, events and upheavals in the life of the nation and the individual. In a very short time, people were hurled from one extreme to another. It was a period of conflagration, a whole new generation went up in flames. Values were burned, worlds and ideas were burned— people were constantly on fire.4

Yet, much like the biblical story of creation, chaos and confusion would ultimately lead to order, meaning, and redemption. The prevailing state of confusion and the gnawing sense of fatigue was further exacerbated by the violence and, no less important, the specter of violence that repeatedly erupted and threatened Jewish residents of towns and cities throughout the Russian Empire. As the political unrest continued and the regime responded with its own acts of state-controlled violence designed to instill order, the rhetoric of the National Democrats and the newly institutionalized politics of hate repeatedly spilled over into the realm of action, specifically, anti-Jewish actions. Over the summer of 1906, the lull between the elections to the first two Russian State Dumas was punctuated by two particularly violent and well-publicized pogroms in Polish cities: the first in Białystok and the second in Siedlce.5 Although the earlier wave of anti-Jewish violence in late 1905 had passed over Polish areas, the destruction that had tainted the revolutionary wave soon found its way onto Polish lands. After the three days of violence in Białystok between June 1 and June 3, 1906, some eighty Jews were left dead and another eighty were wounded.6 Some three months later, another three days of anti-Jewish rioting in the local center of Siedlce in early September left as many as one hundred people dead and a similar number wounded.7 While many Polish liberals and socialists were shocked by such displays of anti-Jewish violence and were quick to condemn publicly what they viewed as government-led actions designed to divide the opposition, many Jewish organizations and individuals reacted in a different manner.8 Throughout the fall of 1906 and into 1907, the pogroms in

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Białystok and Siedlce became rallying points for Jews throughout the Russian Empire and abroad. Thus, while many Jews  in Warsaw had remained hopeful after the pogroms of late 1905, the violence of 1906 confirmed lingering suspicions, fears, and anxieties. For many Jews in Polish lands, the ominous warnings voiced almost a full year earlier by Simon Dubnow in his powerful essay “The Moral of Stormy Days”— regarding the extent to which Jews could trust non-Jews and the degree to which Jewish political activists ought to invest their time in the affairs of other nations and projects—seemed particularly relevant.9 Thus, the repeated outbursts of violence and hate in Białystok and Siedlce were widely interpreted as signs that the revolution had gone awry. Coming less than one year after over six hundred different pogroms and countless other acts of seemingly random violence, in the midst of constant uncertainty and confusion, and in between two particularly volatile Duma campaigns, the events in Białystok and Siedlce and accompanying threats of violence in other regions helped dissuade many Jews from participating in and supporting various aspects of popular politics. However well intentioned the revolutionary movement may have been, Jewish politics and society began to retreat from the public sphere and return back to the private realm. Part of this Jewish retreat from the realm of popular politics came as a result of the growing association of the revolutionary organizations with violence, disorder, and, ultimately, Jewish victims. Although written several years earlier, the following quote from a letter by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann reflects the popular image of revolutionary movements as a source of unrest and insecurity for Jews in the Russian Empire. The Bund is undoubtedly a powerful destructive force, but one that will soon destroy itself. Bund propaganda is mostly conducted among adolescents and déclassés [dentists, “externs,” poor young men, etc.]. . . . There is a veritable slaughter of the innocents. Syphilis, debauchery and complete demoralization have appeared in Jewish towns, and with them a most tragic development in the break-up of families. May thunder and lightning strike Gorky, the Bund, the Russian liberals, etc. etc! My instinct was always to sense an enemy in them and I am now convinced of this more than ever before.10

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Writing in Warsaw in 1905, Y. L. Peretz expressed the fears and anxieties that many now associated with the path of revolution in an essay titled “Hope and Fear”: I fear that the oppressed will become the victors, they are liable to become slave masters, and all masters sin against human nature. . . . With pure joy I observe and see how you tear down the walls of the old regime; but my heart tremors with the fear that you may build an even greater evil on the ruins of the old one—colder, darker! . . . I want you to win; I hope that you will win; but I shake and fear at the thought of your victory. You are my hope, you are my fear.11

Nor was the growing fear of revolution limited to political activists like Weizmann and venerated cultural figures such as Peretz. Many other Jewish residents of Warsaw were far less patient with the disorder and chaos that the authorities seemed incapable of containing. In many cases, Jews in Warsaw simply voted with their feet and chose to flee the city for safer environs. The following item from the Hebrew daily ­Ha-yom describes popular responses in Warsaw to rumors of violence and fears of revolutionary activity in the summer of 1906. Fear has spread again among Jews in Warsaw in wake of a recent proclamation distributed by the “Bund” in three languages, Russian, Polish and Yiddish. The proclamation calls on Jews to be ready at any given moment to respond to the signal (a raised banner) and to rush the barricades with whatever weapons they might have in their possession. Moreover, the flier threatens that those who do not do so endanger their own lives. The proclamation has frightened many of the quiet Jews in Warsaw. Many of them have decided to flee the city immediately. Others will leave when “the signal” is given.12

After several years of intense activity, antirevolutionary rhetoric had, apparently, succeeded as revolutionary organizations (and not the regime or other political movements) were widely associated with displays of violence, widespread chaos, and a growing sense of insecurity in Warsaw. As Russian, Polish, and Jewish societies teetered on the verge of total collapse, many Jews and non-Jews began to believe that the revolutionary groups were ultimately responsible for the disorder. As a result, many Jews began to withdraw their support for various revolutionary parties as they slowly, at times painfully, came to the con-

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clusion that tsarist rule, however flawed and problematic it may have been, was far better than no rule at all. Thus, while many younger Jews were still attracted to revolutionary organizations and their spirited calls for action, others became increasingly wary of their confrontational politics and the minimal, if not obscure, results that years of propaganda and action had produced. Furthermore, even though the new culture of revolution offered supporters newly reconfigured worlds, paths to collective redemption, and lives filled with potential meaning, the repeated inability of revolutionary organizations to articulate clearly these new concepts of community and belonging contributed further to their repeated failure to construct widespread, popularly supported political movements. This failure to transform the politics of revolution from the arena of determined activists to the realm of popular political movements was further exacerbated by the government’s implementation of martial law in the Polish provinces and the ensuing assault on many of these organizations and their supporters. Ultimately, the rise and fall of so many of these revolutionary organizations demonstrates how fluid political belonging and allegiance among Jews was at this time. Could government oppression, however effective it may have been, really have broken a determined, well-developed political movement supported by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of individuals in Warsaw? In an odd, sick way, the pogroms of Białystok and Siedlce, along with the repeated waves of antisemitic political rhetoric that preceded, accompanied, and followed them, succeeded in achieving their primary goal as many Jews in Warsaw began to reconsider their entry into the public realm and their turn to political activity. Modern Jewish politics required many things, but at its core it required that Jews feel secure and safe enough in their environment to undertake public political stands and actions. Many Jews in early-twentieth-century Warsaw had not yet reached that stage or internalized such a sense of social and physical security. Jewish advocates of liberal politics and of the government’s promises of constitutional reforms were similarly dismayed by the sight of antiJewish violence in Białystok and Siedlce. In many cases, the carnival of violence in these regional centers served as a stark reminder regarding the limits of intergroup cooperation as well as the increasingly marginal

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status of Polish liberals. Here, as well, the revolution (in this case the liberal one) that had promised so much seemed to deliver so little as repeated electoral coalitions were unable to make even modest progress toward the reconstruction of society and politics in early-­twentiethcentury Russian Poland. Thus, while many Polish liberals vocally condemned the anti-Jewish violence, many Jewish leaders (and many of their supporters) were still far from convinced of the potential influence (or even of the very sincerity) of such proclamations. These suspicions and fears were fueled further by the somewhat tepid response of many Polish papers and leaders to the National Democrats’ ongoing rhetorical assaults and their thinly veiled threats during both electoral campaigns. Ultimately, real support, true cooperation, and a fundamental transformation of society and culture in Warsaw was either too weak or came too late for those Jews who had only recently dreamed of constructing a liberal, semiautonomous Poland under Russian protection.13 Moreover, like the revolutionary parties, liberal and democratic organizations (both Jewish and Polish) repeatedly failed to adapt to the needs and demands of the ever-changing political sphere and the new political culture that it created. Few, apparently, could keep pace with the rapidly changing rules of political engagement in the years between 1905 and 1907 as Jewish, Polish, and Russian societies passed through a series of social, cultural, and political convulsions. As a result of this hesitancy and confusion, the Polish liberal parties’ message regarding the place of Jews in Polish society and the nature of relations between Poles and Jews remained unclear and, at times, ambivalent if not selfcontradictory. Lastly, the tsarist government’s failure to implement fully and to subsequently honor semidemocratic reforms and institutions underscored the extent to which many of these changes were ultimately dependent upon the goodwill and cooperation of the ruling powers. In light of the repeated displays of liberal ambivalence and consistent government unwillingness to implement and honor even quasi-democratic reforms, Jewish liberals and their potential partners in Warsaw were unable to fulfill their promises to restructure Polish society. If it takes two to tango, then the Jews of Warsaw were repeatedly left to dance alone on the center stage of politics and culture in eastern Europe. As the astute political observer, onetime champion of liberal, democratic politics, and future president of the State of Israel Chaim Weiz-

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mann would confess in a letter to his then fiancée Vera Khatzman several weeks after the pogrom in Białystok: The current situation is unbearable. You are right, my Verusya, my optimistic view of our situation in Russia was a little premature; but I so wished to believe in something better. I lived by virtue of this faith for two to three months. What a sobering effect Białystok had upon me. It is indescribably hard. An utterly painful, oppressive, sickening ache torments me the whole time.14

With revolutionary forces increasingly associated with disorder and violence, and with liberal organizations proven to be painfully impotent, modern Jewish politics and those Jews who advocated for or supported Jewish engagement in popular politics seemed to have few choices but to turn inward.15 For those Jews in search of political solutions to the multiple crises that engulfed turn-of-the-century Warsaw, there were, at this point and time, few other tenable options. Describing a newly reconstructed world divided into nations, Warsaw’s Yiddish paper Der telegraf noted: “Between Poles and Russians, Russians and Lithuanians, Lithuanians and Germans, the Russian Jew searches for a home.”16 The increasingly widespread sense that society and culture were now firmly rooted in ethno-linguistic communities was further bolstered by the path of Polish politics. Time and again, developments in the Polish political sphere exerted an immeasurable degree of influence over the course of Jewish politics as predominant concepts of community and belonging among Jews were repeatedly shaped by parallel conceptualizations of these key social and political constructs in the Polish political sphere. As the Yiddish proverb states: “As the Christians go, so go the Jews” (“Vy es kristl zikh, azoy yidlt zikh”).17 Under the influence of the National Democrats’ language and rhetoric as well as critical changes in the Jewish public sphere, Jewish organizations began to construct their own brand of nationalism that was both democratic and exclusive. In this sense, the roots of what should be referred to as “Jewish national democracy” can be traced back to turn-of-the-century eastern Europe and not, as has been argued by some scholars, to the twentieth-century Middle East.18 While separated by only several decades, it is critical to note that Jewish politics and nationalism were angry and exclusive long before they were transplanted and transformed in Ottoman and then

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British Palestine. Reflecting the dialectical aspects of the larger (Jewish) encounter with modernity, quintessentially modern processes like democratization went hand-in-hand with the construction of disciplined political communities of ethnic self-empowerment and exclusion in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. As Partha Chatterjee notes in another context: “The search for a postcolonial modernity has been tied, from its very birth, with its struggle against modernity.”19 The growing centrality of national rhetoric, thinking, and organization among Jews was bolstered by several other structural and discursive factors that also worked to the detriment of revolutionary organizations and liberal parties and to the benefit of national groups—Zionist, Yiddishist, National Democratic, and others. First, the very building blocks of the newly constructed Jewish public sphere, in particular Yiddish theater and the Yiddish newspaper, depended upon and fortified specific lines of division and community. As public assembly, cultural affairs, and political activity moved out of backrooms and into the public realm, these two institutions helped reinforce the ethno-­linguistic lines of community among Jews. These particular divisions were further solidified during the election campaigns to the first two Russian State Dumas when the newly reconstructed Jewish public sphere was transformed from a forum for debate to a tool for the mobilization of tens of thousands of Jewish voters in Warsaw. This change in the nature and function of the public sphere led to a parallel transition in the nature of political discourse as it passed from one of explanation and education to one of action and discipline. Indeed, just as the experience of observing theater in Yiddish and reading dailies in Yiddish helped reinforce specific types of communities, the very act of large-scale political mobilization of tens of thousands of Jews as Jews, per se, clarified and strengthened the sense of a unique political community among Jews for Jews. Thus, a specific set of factors and institutions coalesced that helped promote national politics as the dominant form of political thinking, organization, and action among Jews (and Poles) in Warsaw. Here, in particular, the fate of Jewish politics and society was not only the result of the wise decisions and brave actions of political heroes but also the byproduct of a specific constellation of public institutions, social structures, and intellectual constructs that encouraged some options and discouraged others. Moreover, many of the same institutions

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and forces similarly influenced the path of Polish politics, which in turn helped direct the options available and paths undertaken by many Jews in Warsaw. And so, like a broken phonograph crying out in the middle of the night, modern politics—Jewish and Polish—in early-twentiethcentury eastern Europe was stuck in a bad rut. The course of Jewish politics, however, was not only the result of structural forces, external developments, and available options but also the result of the widespread, quintessentially human needs for order in the radically new urban arena. In this case, Jewish nationalism—nascent and inchoate, undefined and fluid, angry and exclusive—succeeded because it gave so many Jews in Warsaw exactly what the politics of revolution and democracy ultimately could not provide: a clear answer to the combined crisis of urbanization and community that plagued so many of the city’s new Jewish residents. More than any other modern political ideology and movement, Jewish nationalism was able to pre­ sent a clear sense of community, a larger political purpose, and a viable vision of the future. Ultimately, national politics was able to provide an answer to the pressing need and search for order, meaning, and hope in times of radical social disruption, ongoing political turmoil, and deep existential despair.20 Few sources encapsulate the search for order and meaning more than the words of the young David Yosef Gruen in his intense emotional correspondence with his long-distance friend Shmuel Fuchs. In a series of letters to his landsman and male mentor Fuchs, written at the height of revolutionary activity in the summer of 1905, the young man who would go on to become Israel’s first prime minister is painfully honest about what he stands to gain (or, alternatively, lose) by committing his life to the cause of Jewish nationalism. In regard to the question of “why” and “what for,” there is only one solution, unique and special . . . and that is to work. Indeed, I am thirsty for work, work in which I can invest my entire soul, work that will extinguish all of my senses, all of my thoughts, that will alleviate all of my wild emotions, make me forget all of my cursed, troubling questions—but, where can I find such work, where? I ask! . . . I can tell you with an honest heart that all of my soul’s desires, life’s worth, life’s breath is—Zionism—in other words the re-birth of our people on its land. . . . My brother! I don’t ask for a single thing from life, I yearn

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for neither pleasure nor education, neither respect nor love; I’d give up everything, everything, only one thing I ask for—hope!!! 21

Nor was Gruen alone in declaring his dedication to the concept of work and the fate of the nation as the keys to individual salvation in a world in which, according to Gruen, one’s “entire existence is pointless, superfluous, desolate and sorrowful.” The Hebrew writer Uri ­Nissan Gnessin and many others also turned to the redemptive aspects of modern Jewish culture, politics, and nationalism as they too searched for direction and salvation in turn-of-the-century Warsaw. For Gnessin, Gruen, and a generation of wayward Jewish youth, the turn to work, the decision to dedicate oneself to the collective, and accompanying acts of self-sacrifice would help render their otherwise vacuous lives meaningful.22 As Gnessin notes in a letter from his own days in Warsaw: Yes, work and suffering: work even though you suffer; work even though you sometimes doubt your actions; overcome all of the obstacles, internal and external, that you encounter along your way—Work! Because we need work! . . . We must consecrate ourselves, purify ourselves. . . . Because all of these doubts and questions are nothing more than the result of our own profanity. Once our souls are purified, these [matters] will also disappear. . . . For the time being, dedicate your energies, to the needs of the local community so that you can later be of use to the entire people of Israel. . . . Work, Work, Work!23

This entrance into the potentially redemptive realm of modern Jewish politics and the universe of Jewish nationalism was, however, not without an accompanying price of admission. On the individual level, these personal points of departure and moments of self-deliverance— or, in the language of Arendt, “self-abandonment”; in that of Mosse, transcendence; and in the words of Cheah, “absorption”24—represent the moment at which specific individuals turned to modern political ideologies and movements (and not, for example, to traditional religious ones) for a sense of meaning and community. Taken together, these repeated acts of “self-abandonment” and absorption signify critical turning points in the larger Jewish engagement with the modern world. In many cases, these individual transitions to modern Jewish politics, in general, and to national politics, in particular, represent the moment at which Haskalah-inspired searches for individual rehabilita-

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tion and self-realization were replaced by conscious, willing acts of selfsurrender to an infinitely higher goal, the fate of the collective. And so, the fundamental failures of the Haskalah and the painful collapse of Enlightenment visions—and not, as it is often argued, their success—laid the groundwork for the rise of Jewish nationalism. That said, these critical steps of self-surrender and transcendence were not completely irrational acts of Jewish self-negation. Indeed, while the individual’s decision to join the nation mandated a degree of sacrifice, once taken this act promised an infinitely higher reward—immortality. As Cheah notes, the individual act of absorption into the nation is very often “an exorcism of death because it imbues mere matter with an inner vitality.”25 Of course, Gruen and Gnessin were not alone in their desire to overcome the many travails of the modern world by giving themselves to the nation in exchange for a glimmer of hope or, perhaps, an eternal place among “the eternal people.”26 Over a half-­century after Gruen and Gnessin struggled with the debilitating triangle of modernity, self, and nation, Jacob Katz, another Jew who spent the better part of his twentieth-century life migrating—first from Hungary to Germany and then from Germany to British Mandate Palestine—would construct a definitive master narrative of modern Jewish society that was deeply embedded within the redemptive framework of history, the nation, and eternity.27 Thus, Katz’s 1958 classic of Jewish history Tradition and Crisis repeatedly emphasizes “the national unity of the Jewish people in the Diaspora.”28 While modernity could not be mastered, it could, at the very least, be reconceived, rewritten, and restrained. These and other encounters with the modern world highlight the very dialectics of Jewish modernity. Indeed, in order for modern Jewish political movements to be successful, modern, and popular, thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of individual Jews would have to reconfigure their own understanding of and relationship to the collective.29 Thus, while the byproducts of modernity (the public sphere, the daily press, the political party, and popular elections) would grant the individual the means through which he or she could potentially alleviate many of the more gnawing and painful ailments of the modern world (alienation, confusion, and disorder), they also demanded a parallel set of critical personal decisions and compromises on the part of the same individuals that very often contradicted the very

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spirit and essence of modernity. The construction of the modern Jewish nation and the fervent pursuit of the modern Jewish self were, if not mutually exclusive, certainly deeply at odds. Moreover, as a result of many of these choices, both conscious and subconscious, the search for order and community that was so emblematic of life in the modern city effortlessly, seamlessly, and, at times, even accidentally passed from individual solutions rooted in self-improvement and self-fulfillment to collective fantasies of belonging and redemption. And, thus, the Jewish encounter with modernity would come full circle as a generation of runaway Jews would return to find community, order, and eternity in the very act of sublimating their individual wills to the ever-enticing allure of the national will.

Notes

Introduction 1.  Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 1. Originally cited in V. I. Lenin “‘Left-Wing’ Communism—An Infantile Disorder,” in The Lenin Anthology, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1975), 555–556. For more on the legacy of 1905, see Leon Trotsky, 1905, trans. Anya Bostock (New York: Random House, 1971). Nor was this interpretation limited to participants in the events of 1917. See, for example, Robert Weinberg’s comments regarding the politicization of workers in Odessa in Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 234. “The patterns of labor’s political activism first witnessed during the 1905 revolution paved the way in 1917 for a vast upheaval.” For more on the debate over the role of 1905 in Russian history, see Leopold Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905–1917,” Slavic Review 23, no. 4 (1964): 619–642; Slavic Review 24, no. 1 (1965): 1–22; and Haimson, Russia’s Revolutionary Experience, 1905–1917, intro. by David McDonald (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 2.  Yitzhak Tabenkin, “The Roots,” trans. Barbara Harshav, in Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 196, 195–204; originally in Bracha Habas, ed., Sefer ha-‘aliyah ha-sheniyah (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1947), 24, 23–30, emphasis in original Hebrew. Also see Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 133–134. 3.  See David Ben-Gurion, Zikhronot, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1971), 11–18; Berl Katznelson, “Derkhi le-aretz,” in Kitve B. Katznelson, vol. 5 (Tel Aviv: ­Mifleget po‘ale Erets-Yisrael, 1947), 382–386; Rachel Katznelson, “Language Insomnia,” trans. Barbara Harshav, in Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 183–194; originally in Rachel Katznelson, Masot u-reshimot (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1946), 9–22; and Yitzḥak Grünbaum, “Ha-sheniyah be-aliyot: Shai hokerah le-anshe ‘aliyah ­ha-sheniyah,” in P’ne ha-dor, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Ha-sifriyah ha-tsiyonit, 1960), 129 and 132–133. For more on the Second Aliyah and its founding myths, see Habas, Sefer ha-‘aliyah hasheniyah; and Jonathan Frankel, “The ‘Yizkor’ Book of 1911—A Note on National

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Notes to Introduction Myths in the Second Aliya,” in Essential Papers on Zionism, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira (New York–London: New York University Press, 1996), 422–453. Also see Anshe ha-‘aliyah ha-sheniyah: pirkei zikhronot, 6 vols., ed. Ya‘akov Sharet and Naḥman Tamir (Tel Aviv: Ha-histadrut ha-klalit, 1971–1974); and Ha-‘aliyah ha-sheniyah, 3 vols., ed. Israel Bartal, Ze’ev Zahor, and Yehoshua Kaniel (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Tzvi, 1997). 4.  See Martin E. Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York: Free Press, 1994). For discussions of the role of power in Jewish history, see David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History: The Jewish Tradition and the Myth of Passivity (New York: Schocken Books, 1986); and David Engel, “Perceptions of Power—Poland and World Jewry,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 1 (2002): 17–28. 5.  Central works on 1905 in English include: Ascher, Russia in Disarray; Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Authority Restored (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992); Robert E. Blobaum, Rewolucja! Russian Poland, 1904–1907 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Terence Emmons, The Formation of Political Parties and the First National Elections in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); Laura Engelstein, Moscow, 1905: Working-Class Organization and Political Conflict (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); Sidney Harcave, First Blood: The Russian Revolution of 1905 (New York: Macmillan, 1964); Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds., The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Weinberg, 1905 in Odessa; and Charters Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms: The Donbass-Dnepr Bend in Late Imperial Russia, 1870–1905 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). Also see Mikhail Krutikov, Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905– 1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); and Barry Trachtenberg, The Revolutionary Roots of Modern Yiddish, 1903–1917 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008). 6.  Note Harshav’s comment: “Ideologies provided a unifying model to explain various aspects of existence and suggest a horizon for a better future.” Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 98. 7.  See Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 42. “Yet in its very constitution as a discourse of power, nationalist thought cannot remain only a negation; it is also a positive discourse which seeks to replace the structure of colonial power with a new order, that of national power. Can nationalist thought produce a discourse of order while daring to negate the very foundations of a system of knowledge that has conquered the world? How far can it succeed in maintaining its difference from a discourse that seeks to dominate it?” 8.  For various interpretations of this concept, see Amir Banbaji, Mendele ­ve-ha-sipur ha-leumi (Ber Sheva: Merkaz heksherim, 2009); and Zeev Sternhell, The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition, trans. David Maisel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).

Notes to Introduction 9.  See Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 52. 10.  See Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 79. 11.  Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: Schocken Books, 1993). For responses to Katz, see Shmuel Ettinger, “Mesoret ve-mashber,” in Historyah ve-­historyonim, ed. Shmuel Almog and Otto Dov Kulka (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1992), 60–68. On the impact of Katz’s work, see Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, “Emancipation and the Liberal Offer,” in Birnbaum and Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 3–36; Jay Harris, ed., The Pride of Jacob: Essays on Jacob Katz and His Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Jacob Katz, ed., Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987). 12.  Katz, Tradition and Crisis, 196, 206, 208, and 219, respectively: “Both movements, Haskala and Hasidism, established new values alongside those of tradition, and thus denied tradition’s claim to exclusive authority”; “The shift in emphasis from the actual performance of the precept to the attainment of ecstasy through the performance constitutes the primary religious change”; “[J]oining the Hasidim meant detaching oneself from the Jewish community and linking up with the Hasidic associative group”; and, “A decisive turning point in the history of Jewish society occurred only when its individual members transferred their social aspirations from the context of their own community to that of the surrounding Jewish milieu.” 13.  Referring to the work of both Katz and Henrich Graetz, Rosman speaks of how “the conscious turn of the maskilim in Germany . . . not merely challenged traditional society but undermined it, bringing it into crisis. Not only did the ‘Haskalah Movement’ fracture the coherence of the traditional world; it induced a series of processes that made the Jews modern: assimilation, religious reform, critical scholarship, emancipation and assimilation. As such, Haskalah was the primary engine of Jewish modernization.” Moshe Rosman, “Haskalah: A New Paradigm,” Jewish Quarterly Review 97, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 129. 14.  Katz was clearly influenced by “the Jerusalem school” of Jewish history. See Katz, Tradition and Crisis, 3–16, esp. 5 and 8, respectively. “All Jews, whether in Poland or Yemen, Holland or Palestine, saw themselves as members of a single nation”; and, “To the extent that it is ever legitimate to speak of the history of nations in organic terms, it is certainly legitimate to do so with regard to the Jewish people in the Diaspora. The Jews formed a ‘national body’ that reacted to external stimuli as well as to internal developments.” On the Jerusalem School, see David N. Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). On Zionism and the writing of Jewish history, see S. N. (Shmuel Noaḥ) Eisenstadt and Moshe Lissak, eds., Ha-tsiyonut ve-ha-ḥazarah la-historyah: ha‘arakhah ­me-ḥadash (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzḥak Ben-Tsevi, 1999). For more on agency, history,

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Notes to Introduction and the nation, see Asad, Formations of the Secular, 79. “There is a secular viewpoint held by many (including anthropologists) that would have one accept that in the final analysis there are only two mutually exclusive options available: either an agent (representing and asserting himself or herself) or a victim (the passive object of chance or cruelty).” 15.  See the following works on the Haskalah and Hasidism written by Katz’s students and other scholars: David Assaf, The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin, trans. David Louvish (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Immanuel Etkes, Ba‘al ha-shem: ha-Besht: magyah, mistikah, hanhagah (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 2000); Etkes, The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image, trans. Jeffrey M. Green (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness, trans. Chaya Naor and Sondra Silverton (Portland, OR: Littman, 2002); Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba‘al Shem Tov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Michael Silber, “Shorshe ha-pilug be-yahadut Hungarya: temurot tarbutiot ve-ḥevratiyot ­me-yame Yosef ha-sheni ‘ad erev mahapeḥat 1848” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1985), 1–92; David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999); Shaul Stampfer, Ha-yeshivah ha-Lita‘it be-hithavutah (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1995); Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983); and Mordechai Zalkin, Ba-‘alot ha-shaḥar: ha-haskalah ha-yehudit ba-imperyah ­ha-rusit ba-me’ah ha-tesha‘ ‘esreh (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000). Also see Katz, Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model. 16.  Todd M. Endelman, “In Defense of Jewish Social History,” Jewish Social Studies 7, no. 3 (2001): 52–67; and David Biale, “Confessions of an Historian of Jewish Culture,” Jewish Social Studies 1, no. 1 (1994): 40–51. Recent studies that challenge this paradigm include: Rebecca Kobrin, Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010); Natan Meir, Kiev, Jewish Metro­ polis: A History, 1859–1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010); and Tony Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 17.  The centrality of the community and communal institutions in Dubnow’s theory is outlined in Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, ed. and intro. Koppel S. Pinson (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1958), esp. “The Doctrine of Jewish Nationalism,” 76–99, and “Autonomism, the Basis of the National Program,” 131–142. For examples of Dubnow’s emphasis on communal institutions and the concept of communal autonomy, see Dubnow, ed., Pinkas ha-medinah, o, pinkas va‘ad ha-kehilot ha-rashiyot bi-medinat Lita (Berlin: ‘Ayanot, 1925). For more on Dubnow’s political activity and ideologi-

Notes to Introduction cal impact, see Sophie Dubnov-Erlich, The Life and Work of S. M. Dubnov: Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish History, trans. Judith Vowles, ed. Jeffrey Shandler, intro. Jonathan Frankel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); and Kristi Groberg and Avraham Greenbaum, eds., A Missionary for History: Essays in Honor of Simon Dubnov (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). 18.  See Jonathan Frankel, “Assimilation and the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Towards a new historiography?” in Jonathan Frankel and Steven Zipperstein, eds., Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2. Like so many Jews at this time, Dubnow’s name has been transliterated in several different ways including Frankel’s use of the Russian-influenced spelling “Dubnov.” 19.  Salo Baron, The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1942); Ḥayim Hillel Ben-Sasson, ed., Ha-kehila ha-yehudit bi-yeme ha-benayim (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1976); Shmuel Ettinger, “Va‘ad arba‘ aratsot,” in Ben Polin le-Rusyah, ed. Israel Bartal and Jonathan Frankel (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1994), 174–185, esp. 174; Israel Halpern (Halperin) and Israel Bartal, eds., Pinkas va‘ad arba‘ aratsot (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1989); Israel Halpern (Halperin), ed., Takanot medinat Mehrin (Jerusalem: Ḥevrat mekitse nirdamim, 1951); Katz, Tradition and Crisis; Isaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1772–1844 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943); and Azriel Shoḥat, Mosad “ha-Rabanut mi-ta‘am” be-Rusyah: parshah be-ma’avak-ha-tarbut ben ḥaredim le-ven maskilim (Haifa: University of Haifa, 1975). Also see Gershon David Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatów in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Stampfer, Ha-yeshivah ha-Lita‘it; Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I; and Steven J. Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985). Also see Yosef Kaplan, ­Isaiah Gafni, Avraham Grossman, and Israel Bartal, eds., Kehal Yisrael: ha-shilton ha-‘atsmi ha-Yehudi le-dorotav, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 2001–2004). 20.  This point is made in Dan Miron, “The Literary Image of the Shtetl,” Jewish Social Studies 1, no. 3 (1995): 1–43. 21.  Alexander Guterman, Kehilat Varshah ben shete milḥamot ha-‘olam: otonomya le’umit be-khivle ha-ḥok ve-ha-metsiyut, 1917–1939 (Tel Aviv: Diaspora Research Institute–Tel Aviv University, 1997); Guterman, Me-hitbolelut le-le’umiyut: perakim be-toldot bet ha-keneset ha-gadol ha-Sinagogah be-Varshah 1806–1943 (Jerusalem: Karmel, 1993); David Flinker, Varshah: ‘Arim ve-imahot be-Yisrael, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kook, 1948); Avraham Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1953); Jacob Shatkzky, Geshikhte fun yidn in Varshe, 3 vols. (New York: YIVO, 1947–1953). Shatzky’s archive at the YIVO Institute is a fascinating example of how his particular History of the Jews in Warsaw was constructed. See YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO), New York, Shatzky Collection, RG 356, Files 97, 98, 115, 116, 130, and 134.

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Notes to Introduction 22.  See, for example, the historical series published in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘Arim ve-imahaot be-yisrael. 23.  For more on Cold War influences on the various divisions of Europe between East and West, see Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” New York Review of Books 31, no. 7 (April 26, 1984): 33–38; Czesław Miłosz, “About Our Europe,” in Robert Kostrzewa, ed., Between East and West: Writings from Kultura (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 99–108; and Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). Also see Scott Ury, “Who, What, When, Where and Why Is Polish Jewry? Envisioning, Constructing and Possessing Polish Jewry,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 3 (2000): 205–228. 24.  See Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Eliyahu Feldman, Yehude rusyah bi-yeme ha-mahpekha ha-rishona ve-ha-pogromim (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999); Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900–1914: The Modernization of Russian Jewry (New York: New York University Press, 1995); Yosef Goldstein, Ben tsiyonut medinit le-t­siyonut ma‘asit: ha-tenu‘ah ha-tsiyonit be-Rusyah be-reshita (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993); Brian Horowitz, Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009); Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Yitsḥak Maor, Ha-tenu‘ah ha-tsiyonit be-Rusyah: me-reshitah ve-‘ad yamenu (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986); Ezra Mendelsohn, Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Workers’ Movement in Tsarist Russia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Kenneth B. Moss, Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I; and Henry J. Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia from Its Origins to 1905 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972). 25.  On this point, see Eli Lederhendler, “Did Russian Jewry Exist Prior to 1917,” in Jews and Jewish Life in Russia, ed. Yaacov Ro‘i (Ilford, UK: Frank Cass, 1995), 15–27. 26.  See Stanisław Kalabiński and Feliks Tych, Czwarte powstanie czy pierwsza rewolucja: Lata 1905–1907 na ziemiach polskich (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1969); Halina Kiepurska, Warszawa w rewolucji 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1974); Paweł Korzec, Walki rewolucyjne w Łodzi i okręgu łódzkim w latach 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1956); Wspomnienia weteranów rewolucji 1905 i 1917 roku, ed. Zdzisław Spieralski (Lodz: Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, 1967); and Anna Żarnowska, Geneza rozłamu w Polskiej Partii S­ocjalistycznej, 1904–1906 (Warsaw: Państwowe wydawn. naukowe, 1965). A series of articles published in the mid-1950s on Jews and revolution to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution of 1905 are rich in material, but influenced by the political atmo-

Notes to Introduction sphere at the time they were written. See B. Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w ­okresie strajków ekonomicznych w lutym-marcu-kwietniu 1905 r.,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego ­Instytutu Historycznego, nos. 19–20 (1956): 3–37; B. Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie walk styczniowo-lutowych 1905 roku,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, nos. 17–18 (1956): 3–59; B. Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w przededniu rewolucji 1905 roku,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, nos. 13–14 (1955): 5–72; and Henryk Piasecki, “Żydowska klasa robotnicza w rewolucji 1905 r.,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego I­nstytutu Historycznego 98, no. 2 (1976): 39–51. 27.  Glenn Dynner, Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); François Guesnet, Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998); Agnieszka Jagodzińska, Pomiędzy: ­akulturacja Żydów Warszawy w drugiej połowie XIX wieku (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2008); Marcin Wodziński, Oświecenie źydowskie w Królestwie Polskim wobec chasydyzmu: Dzieje pewnej idei (Warsaw: Cyklady, 2003); Alina Cała, Asymilacja Źydów w Królestwie Polskim, 1864–1897: Postawy, konflikty, stereotypy (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1989); Stephen David Corrsin, Warsaw before the First World War: Poles and Jews in the Third City of the Russian Empire, 1880–1914 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1989); Artur Eisenbach, The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland, 1780–1870, ed. Antony Polonsky, trans. Janina Dorosz (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1991); and Michael Jerry Ochs, “St. Petersburg and the Jews of Russian Poland, 1862–1905” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986). 28.  See Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983); and Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915–1926 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981); as well as Gershon Bacon, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996); Bernard K. Johnpoll, The Politics of Futility: The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917–1943 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967); Moshe Landau, Mi ‘ut leumi loḥem: ma’avkak Yehude Polin ba-shanim, 1918–1928 (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1986); Emanuel Melzer, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935–1939 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997); and Gertrud Pickhan, Gegen den Strom: Der Allgemeine Jüdische ­Arbeiterbund “Bund” in Polen 1918–1939 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001). 29.  Marcin Wodziński, “Hasidism, ‘Shtadlanut,’ and Jewish Politics in Nineteenth-Century Warsaw,” Jewish Quarterly Review 95, no. 2 (2005): 290–320; and Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). Also see David Engel, “Ha-sheela ha-polanit ve-ha-tenu‘a ha-tsiyonit,” Gal-Ed 13 (1993): 59–82 (Hebrew pagination); Joseph Goldstein, “The Beginnings of the Zionist Movement in Congress Poland: The Victory of the Hasidim over the Zionists?” Polin 5 (1990): 114–130; and Piotr Wróbel, “Jewish Warsaw before the First World War,” in The Jews in Warsaw: A History, 246–277. Even those studies that go back in time, such as Wróbel’s articles and Zielinski’s book, ex-

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Notes to Introduction amine what Mendelsohn so eloquently coined “the grand rehearsal” of Jewish politics, the period of the First World War. See Piotr Wróbel, “The First World War: The Twilight of Jewish Warsaw,” in The Jews in Warsaw: A History, 278–290; Konrad Zielinski, W cieniu synagogi: Obraz życia kulturalnego społeczności żydowskiej ­Lublina w latach okupacji austro-węgierskiej (Lublin: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 1998); and Marcos Silber, “She-polin he-ḥadasha tihyei em tova le-khol yeladeha,” Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 2001. 30.  Johnpoll, Politics of Futility; Israel Kolatt, Avot u-meyasdim (Tel Aviv: Hakibuts ha-meuḥad, 1975); Matityahu Mintz, Zemanim ḥadashim—zemirot ḥadashot: Ber Borokhov, 1914–1917 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1988); Anita Shapira, Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, Berl Katznelson, 1887–1944, trans. Haya Galai (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); Vital, Zionism: The Crucial Phase (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); Vital, Zionism: The Formative Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); and Steven J. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha‘am and the Origins of Zionism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 31.  See Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart A. Cohen, The Jewish Polity: Jewish Political Organization from Biblical Times to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 1,13, 21, and 217. 32.  Lederhendler, Road to Modern Jewish Politics. 33.  These points are made in Michael Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews: ­Essays in Jewish Self-Fashioning (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 3–17; and Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), xvi, 121, and 169. 34.  On the tendency to read American Jewish history backward through rosetinted glasses, see Michels, Fire in Their Hearts, 18–20. 35.  For more on these schools, see Ezra Mendelsohn, “Interwar Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews?” in The Jews in Poland, ed. Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 130– 139; Mendelsohn, “Jewish Historiography on Polish Jewry in the Interwar Period,” Polin 8 (1994): 3–13; and Piotr Wróbel, “Double Memory: Poles and Jews after the Holocaust,” East European Politics and Societies 11, no. 3 (1997): 560–574. Also see Ury, “Who, What, When, Where and Why Is Polish Jewry?” Works that attempt to overcome this binary division of Jewish and Polish histories include Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997); Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal, Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992); Michael Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997); and Zimmerman, The Politics of Nationality. 36.  See Celia S. Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland between the Two World Wars (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); Yisrael Gutman,

Notes to Introduction “Polish Antisemitism between the Wars: An Overview,” in The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars, ed. Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Rienharz, and Chone Shmeruk (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 97– 108; Paweł Korzec, Juifs en Pologne. La question juive pendant l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1980); Korzec, “Antisemitism in Poland as an Intellectual, Social and Political Movement,” in Studies on Polish Jewry, 1919–1939, ed. Joshua A. Fishman (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1974), 12–104; Joanna B. Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006); and David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 761–774, esp. 766. For more on the supposedly unique path of Polish antisemitism, see Frank Golczewski, Polnische-Jüdische Beziehungen, 1881–1922 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981). Also see the critique of this school by Jerzy Tomaszewski, “Polish History through the Eyes of Three Jewish Popular Historians,” Polin 11 (1998): 312–318. Interwar historians of Polish Jewry who were intimately familiar with both communities had a much more nuanced interpretation of relations between the two groups. See, for example, Emmanuel Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War, trans. Dafna Allon, Danuta Dabrowska, and Dana Keren, ed. Joseph Kermish and Shmuel Krakowski (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992). 37.  On the żydokomua stereotype, see Krystyna Kersten, Polacy, Żydzi, ­komunizm: Anatomia półprawd, 1939–1968 (Warsaw: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992); Kersten and Jerzy Szapiro, “The Contexts of So-Called Jewish Question in Poland after World War II,” Polin 4 (1989): 255–268; Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006), 192–243; Gross, Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, 1941 (London: Arrow, 2003); Gross, Upiorna Dekada: Trzy Eseje o Stereotypach na Temat Żydów, Polaków, Niemców i Komunistów, 1939–1948 (Kraków: Universitas, 1998). On Polish acts of heroism during World War II, see Władysław Bartoszewski, The Blood Shed Unites Us: Pages from the History of Help to the Jews in Occupied Poland (Warsaw: Interpress, 1970); Ewa Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, 1939–1945, intro. Jan Karski (New York: Hippocrene, 1997). 38.  Thus, debates in Poland regarding Gross’s provocative book Neighbours quickly degenerated into debates regarding who did what to whom and how the events in Jedwabne affect contemporary Polish society. For responses to Gross’s book, see Thou Shalt Not Kill: Poles on Jedwabne, ed. Jacek Borkowicz, Israel Gutman, and William Brand (Warsaw: Więź, 2001); Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., The Neighbours Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak, eds., Wokól Jedwabnego, 2 vols. (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2002). 39.  For the record, Jakub Berman was born in 1901 and Hilary Minc in 1905.

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Notes to Introduction 40.  On the question of historical intentionality in another east European context see Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 5. Also see Asad, Formations of the Secular, 72–73. 41.  Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 13–32. For Smith’s argument with what he labels as “the modernist” school of nationalism, see Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New En­ gland, 2000), 69–71. Also see John Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). 42.  Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 124, 98–125. 43.  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London–New York: Verso, 1991); Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1994); Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1993); and Pheng Cheah, Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 44.  On “the invention of the Jewish people,” see the controversial Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, trans. Yael Lotan (New York, Verso, 2009). For a critique of Sand, see Anita Shapira, “The Jewish People Deniers,” Journal of Israeli History 28, no. 1 (2009): 63–72. 45.  For more traditional views of Jewish nationalism see: Israel Bartal, Me‘umah’ li‘le’om’: yehude mizraḥ-Eropah, 1772–1881 (Tel Aviv: Misrad ha-bitaḥon, 2002), esp. 7–9; and Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995), 3–51. Taking a cue from Smith, Shimoni concludes: “The Jewish case is so patently one in which a preexisting ethnic identity was of paramount importance that only an account of the genesis of nationalism that recognizes the great significance of preexisting ethnic ties holds promise for the explanation of Zionism’s emergence.” And, “that the Jews were clearly a defined social unit with distinctive ethnic and religious attributes (answering par excellence to the description of what Smith calls an ethnie) for many hundreds of years before the era of nationalisms set in is a truism that does not call for elaboration here.” Shimoni, Zionist Ideology, 9 and 12, respectively; also see 13, 22, 46, 51, and 389–396. For a different opinion on continuity and revolution in Jewish history, see Harshav, Language in a Time of Revolution, 12–13. “The same move of immigration and assimilation indeed canceled the old nation but created a new Jewish secular nation instead. The concept ‘Jew’ shifted: from a religious category to the designation of a culture and a nation, on the one hand, or a racial-ethnic origin, on the other.” 46.  On the writing of history and the drive for redemption, see Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays

Notes to Introduction and Chapte One and Reflections, ed. and intro. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 254. “In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on the earth.”

Chapter One 1.  See, for example: Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Peter Fritszche, Reading Berlin, 1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt H. Wolff (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1964), 409–424; Simmel, “The Stranger,” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 402–408; Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-­Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); and, Hanna Wirth-Nesher, City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 2.  On Warsaw’s early history, see Bogusław Bulska et al., eds., 400 lat stołeczności w świetle statystyki, 1596–1996 (Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Statystyczne, 1997); and Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna, PWN, vol. 6 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1996), 657–658. 3.  Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 44; and, Daniel Stone, The ­Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386–1795 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 43 and 221. 4.  Stone, Polish-Lithuanian State, 222. 5.  Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 98; and, Stone, PolishLithuanian State, 295. 6.  Bulska, 400 lat stołeczności, 205. 7.  Stone, Polish-Lithuanian State, 296–297. 8.  Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 122–123. 9.  Piotr S. Wandycz, The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 9. 10.  Ibid., 15. 11.  Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, vol. 2 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1981), 294–305. 12.  Kraków fell under Austrian rule in 1795 and then became a free city from 1815 to 1846 before returning to Austrian lands. See Davies, God’s Playground, 2:334–339. 13.  Davies, God’s Playground, 2:309. 14.  Ibid. 15.  Ibid., 2:309–310; and Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 156–157.

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Notes to Chapter One 16.  Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 74. 17.  Ibid., 82. 18.  Davies, God’s Playground, 2:311. 19.  Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 82. 20.  Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 157–163. 21.  Davies, God’s Playground, 2:331–332. 22.  Ibid., 2:333. 23.  Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 168. 24.  Davies, God’s Playground, 2:173–177. 25.  Ibid., 2:107 and 176. 26.  Bulska, 400 lat stołeczności, 205. 27.  Davies, God’s Playground, 2:348–349. 28.  Ibid., 2:364; Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 182–183; and Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 195–196. 29.  Davies, God’s Playground, 2:365; and Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 195. 30.  Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 207–209 and 260–272. 31.  Theodore R. Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 57–58. 32.  Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 264. 33.  Ibid., 267. 34.  Bulska, 400 lat stołeczności, 205–206. 35.  Davies, God’s Playground, 2:176; and Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 202. 36.  Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 189; and Wandycz, Lands of Partitioned Poland, 197–201 37.  Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000), 75–103. 38.  Lukowski and Zawadzki, Concise History of Poland, 198–201 39.  Avraham Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1953), 25; Peter J. Martyn, “The Undefined Town within a Town: A History of Jewish Settlement in the Western Districts of Warsaw,” in Władysław T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky, eds., The Jews in Warsaw: A History (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 26; and, Jacob Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, in Yitzḥak Grünbaum, ed., Varshah: Entsiklopedyah shel galuyot: sifre-zikaron le-artsot ha-golah ve-‘edoteha, vol. 1 (Jerusalem–Tel Aviv: Ḥevrat entsiklopedya shel galuyot, 1953–1959), 2. 40.  Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 3. 41.  Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 33–37; and Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 2. 42.  Martyn, “Undefined Town,” 26; and Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 8. 43.  Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 8.

Notes to Chapter One 44.  Levinson cites the figure of 2,519 Jews in 1764. See Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 56; and Martyn, “Undefined Town,” 27. 45.  Artur Eisenbach, “The Jewish Population in Warsaw at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century,” Polin 3 (1988): 47. Flinker cites expulsions in 1768, 1770, and 1778. David Flinker, Varshah: ‘Arim ve-imahot be-Yisrael, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-Rav Kook, 1948), 31–33. 46.  Eisenbach, “Jewish Population in Warsaw,” 48–49. 47.  Flinker, Varshah, 33. 48.  On the anti-Jewish violence in 1790, see Eisenbach, “Jewish Population in Warsaw,” 52; and Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 72–73. 49.  Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 83. Eisenbach dates this ruling to December 1799. See Eisenbach, “Jewish Population in Warsaw,” 58. 50.  Flinker, Varshah, 56; and Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 17. 51.  Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 85–86; and Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 19. 52.  Flinker cites similar figures in 1797 of 3,892 Jewish men and 2,905 Jewish women. Flinker, Varshah, 57; Eisenbach, “The Jewish Population in Warsaw,” 60; and Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 18. 53.  Flinker, Varshah, 71 and 89; and Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 23. 54.  Martyn, “Undefined Town,” 28–29. 55.  See Benjamin Nathans’ discussion of the Jewish elite of St. Petersburg in Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 45–82. 56.  Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 33–51; and Marcin Wodziński, “Language, Ideology and the Beginnings of the Integrationist Movement in the Kingdom of Poland in the 1860s,” East European Jewish Affairs 34, no. 2 (2004): 21–40. 57.  See Alina Cała, Asymilacja Żydów w Królestwie Polskim, 1864–1897: Postawy, konflikty, stereotypy (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1989); and Alexander Guterman, Me-hitbolelut le-le’umiyut: perakim be-toldot bet ha-keneset ha-gadol ha-Sinagogah be-Varshah 1806–1943 (Jerusalem: Karmel, 1993). 58.  Glenn Dynner, Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 89 and 97. Also see Marcin Wodziński, Oświecenie źydowskie w Królestwie Polskim wobec chasydyzmu: Dzieje pewnej idei (Warsaw: Cyklady, 2003). 59.  Dynner, Men of Silk, 97. 60.  Flinker, Varshah, 82; Stefan Kieniewicz, “The Jews of Warsaw, Polish Society and the Partitioning Powers,” Polin 3 (1988): 111–112; and Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 29–31. 61.  Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 48–50. 62.  Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 40–43; and Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 48–50. 63.  See, for example, Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal, Poles and Jews: A

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Notes to Chapter One Failed Brotherhood (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992); and Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 51–70. 64.  Ela Bauer, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow’s Political Thought (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005). 65.  Shatzky, Toldot Yehude Varshah, 45–46. 66.  Ibid., 46–47; and Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 79–81. 67.  Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 85–86. 68.  See Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 89–95. Also see Joanna B. Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 55–58. 69.  Weeks concludes: “Jeleński’s obsessive judeophobia remained a minority voice in Polish society before the turn of the century.” Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 94. 70.  For a summary of relations between Poles and Jews in this period, see Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 87–128. 71.  Flinker, Varshah, 294. 72.  On early socialist organizations, see Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 69–82. 73.  Flinker, Varshah, 293–294. 74.  See Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 173. 75.  Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray, vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 11–42. 76.  Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 437–438; and Seton-Watson, Russian Empire, 477–478. 77.  Riasanovsky, History of Russia, 405; and Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881–1917 (New York: Longman, 1983), 50. 78.  Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 235–237; Rogger, Russia in the Age, 159 and 211; and Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801–1917 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1967), 557 and 603. 79.  Seton-Watson, Russian Empire, 552, 558. 80.  Rogger, Russia in the Age, 147–148. 81.  Ibid., 150 and 152. 82.  Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 42. 83.  See Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996). 84.  Rogger, Russia in the Age, 182. 85.  Riasanovsky, History of Russia, 431–432. 86.  Sidney Harcave, First Blood: The Russian Revolution of 1905 (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 38–41. 87.  Lionel Kochan, Russia in Revolution, 1890–1917 (London: Paladin, 1970), 88. 88.  Rogger, Russia in the Age, 116–117.

Notes to Chapters One and Two 89.  Harcave, First Blood, 81–99; Kochan, Russia in Revolution, 91–92; and Riasan­ovsky, History of Russia, 407. 90.  Victoria E. Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion: Workers’ Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 149. 91.  Riasanovsky, History of Russia, 407; and Rogger, Russia in the Age, 211–212. 92.  Harcave, First Blood, 161–162. 93.  Riasanovsky, History of Russia, 407. 94.  Rogger, Russia in the Age, 212. 95.  Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 221–222. 96.  Harcave, First Blood, 199–200. 97.  On the pogroms of 1905, see Shlomo Lambroza, “The Pogrom Movement in Tsarist Russia, 1903–1906,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1981; and A. Linden (Leo Motzkin), ed., Die Judenpogrome in Russland, 2 vols. (Cologne and Leipzig, 1910). 98.  Kochan, Russia in Revolution, 119. 99.  Riasanovsky, History of Russia, 409–410. 100.  Kochan, Russia in Revolution, 122. 101.  Rogger, Russia in the Age, 223. 102.  Kochan, Russia in Revolution, 131; and Rogger, Russia in the Age, 223. 103.  Riasanovsky, History of Russia, 413; and Rogger, Russia in the Age, 223. 104.  Rogger, Russia in the Age, 223.

Chapter Two 1.  Hayim Nahman Bialik, “On a Summer’s Day,” 1900, in Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of Hayim Nahman Bialik, ed. and trans. Atar Hadari (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 119–120. By permission of Syracuse University Press. For a discussion of this poem, see Ḥamutal Bar-Yosef, Maga‘im shel dekadans: Bialik, Berdichevski, Brenner (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1997), 196–198. 2.  As Ralph Ellison wrote: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Ellison, The Invisible Man (New York: Signet Books, 1952), 7. On anonymity, alienation, and invisibility as leitmotifs of modernity, see Hannah ­Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 305–326 and 474–479; Homi K. Bhabha, “Dissemination: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” in Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 169–170; E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 91, 109, 124, 173, and 177; and Georg Simmel, “The Stranger” and “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt H. Wolff (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1964), 402–408 and 409–424. 3.  The role of the Jewish press in turn-of-the-century Warsaw will be discussed at length in chapters 4 and 5. 4.  As Hanna Wirth-Nesher notes: “The metropolis is rendered legible, then, by multiple acts of the imagination; it is constantly invented and reinvented.”

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Notes to Chapter Two Wirth-Nesher, City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 9. For more on newspapers and cities, see Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin, 1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); and, Gregory Shaya, “The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860–1910,” American Historical Review 109, no. 1 (Feb. 2004): 41–77. On Jewish readers and reading culture, see Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 23–84; and Joel Perlmann, “Russian Jewish Literacy in 1897: A Reanalysis of Census Data,” in Sergio Della Pergola and Judith Even, eds., Papers in Jewish Demography in Memory of U. O. Schmelz, Jewish Population Studies, vol. 27 (Jerusalem, 1997): 123–137. 5.  Thus, I have avoided using government records to discuss the image of the city as they often reflect bureaucratic desires for social order and not the impression of Warsaw among readers. On the limits of tsarist documents, see Daniel R. Brower, The Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 1850–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 203. 6.  Fritzsche, Reading Berlin, 8 and 16–20. 7.  Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, documents translated by Marian Schwartz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 45. Also see Roshana Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa: Crime and Civility in a City of Thieves (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). 8.  A summary of the gmina’s financial report in 1906 notes annual income of 373,783 rubles, expenditures of 352,878 rubles, and 635,042 rubles in savings and trusts. Ha-yom, no. 5, 5/13 I 1907, 3. 9.  See Jacob Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn in Varshe, vol. 3 (New York: YIVO, 1953), 120–129. For more on the people and policies who dominated the gmina in this period, see François Guesnet, Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998), 334–412; Alexander Guterman, Kehilat Varshah ben shete milḥamot ha-‘olam (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1997), 11–39; and Jacob Shatzky, “Institutional Aspects of Jewish Life in Warsaw in the Second Half of the 19th Century,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 10 (1955): 24 and 28. 10.  Jeffrey Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 18–19. 11.  For a detailed defense of participation in and representation to the gmina, see Dane o składce gminnej za 10-ciolecia, 1903–1912 (Warsaw, 1913). Also see Avraham Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1953), 187–189. 12.  For contemporary critiques of the gmina, see O poźądanych reformach w gminie źydowskiej w Warszawie (Warsaw, 1906); Noyekh Davidson, Di varshaver idishe gmine (Warsaw, 1912); S. Hirszhorn, Samorząd miejski a Gmina Żydowska w Warszawie (Warsaw, 1916), 17–18; and Der veg, no. 99, 4/17 V 1906, 1. 13.  See O pożądanych reformach, 5 and 13. 14.  Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn, 3:129.

Notes to Chapter Two 15.  For more on the gmina’s budget at the time, see Obraz porównawczy budżetów Warszawskiej Gminy Starozakonnych za 10-lecie 1904–1913 (Warsaw, 1914). 16.  Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn, 3:129. 17.  O poźądanych reformach, 10. 18.  Shatzky, “Institutional Aspects,” 44. 19.  See, for example, Shatzky’s quote of Samuel Peltyn, the editor of the Polishlanguage Jewish weekly Izraelita. Shatzky, “Institutional Aspects,” 33; as well as 43–44. 20.  For statistics on Jewish society at the time, see Arcadius Kahan, Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History, ed. Roger Weiss, intro. Jonathan Frankel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 1–81. For more on internal migration patterns within the Russian Empire, see Barbara A. Anderson, Internal Migration during Modernization in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 1980); Joseph Bradley, Muzhik and Muscovite: Urbanization in Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 47–53. 21.  For demographic analyses of Warsaw in the nineteenth century, see Bina Garncarska-Kadary, Ḥelkam shel ha-Yehudim be-hitpatḥut ha-ta‘asiyah shel Varshah ba-shanim, 1816/20–1914 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1985), 103–147; and Stephen David Corrsin, “Political and Social Change in Warsaw from the January 1863 Insurrection to the First World War: Polish Politics and the ‘Jewish Question,’” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1981, 52–107. (Although the latter source also exists as a monograph, the dissertation is far richer and will, thus, be used throughout this study. Also see Stephen David Corrsin, Warsaw before the First World War: Poles and Jews in the Third City of the Russian Empire, 1880– 1914 [Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1989]). Additional studies of these demographic changes include: Bronisław Bloch, “Spatial Evolution of the Jewish and General Population of Warsaw, 1792–1939,” in U. O. Schmelz, P. Glikson, and S. Della Pergola, eds., Papers in Jewish Demography, Jewish Population Studies, 1973 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1977): 209–253; and Bloch, “Urban Ecology of the Jewish Population of Warsaw, 1897–1938,” in Schmelz, Glikson, and Della Pergola, Papers in Jewish Demography, Jewish Population Studies, 1981, vol. 16 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1983): 381–399. For an analysis of the relative impact of birthrates and in-migration on Jewish populations, see Shaul Stampfer, “Patterns of Internal Jewish Migration in the Russian Empire,” in Yaacov Ro‘i, ed., Jews and Jewish Life in Russian and the Soviet Union (Ilford, UK: Frank Cass, 1995): 28–47. 22.  Stephen D. Corrsin, “Warsaw: Poles and Jews in a Conquered City,” in Michael F. Hamm, ed., The City in Late Imperial Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 128; and, Corrsin, “Aspects of Population Change and of Acculturation in Jewish Warsaw at the End of the Nineteenth Century: The Census

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Notes to Chapter Two of 1882 and 1897,” in Władysław T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky, eds., The Jews in Warsaw: A History (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 215. 23.  Daniel R. Brower, “Urban Revolution in Late Imperial Russia,” in Hamm, City in Late Imperial Russia, 327. 24.  These figures are to be viewed with a degree of skepticism. See Piotr Wróbel, “Jewish Warsaw before the First World War,” in Bartoszewski and Polonsky, Jews in Warsaw, 254. 25.  For an alternative interpretation of life in the city, see Koenker, Moscow Workers, 48–50. 26.  For more on this point, see Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” 27.  A far more optimistic (and redemptive) rendition of Gruen/Ben-Gurion’s early years in Warsaw can be found in his memoirs: David Ben-Gurion, Zikhronot, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1971), 11–20. 28.  D. Y. Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, July 8, 1904, in Igrot David BenGurion, 1904–1919, vol. 1, ed. Yehuda Erez (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, and Tel Aviv University, 1971), no. 5, 20. Also see R. Brainen, Ha-tsofe, no. 519, 26 IX/9 X 1904, 951. 29.  “Only my soul remains unsettled. I don’t exactly know why, but from time to time I’m so sad here. I feel this gaping hole deep within my heart . . . I have these tremendous longings for something that I can’t quite describe.” David Yosef Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw (?), 28 VI 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 4, 18. “I know how deep and bitter the feeling of loneliness can be and how sharp it can sting . . . I won’t be long this time as a certain sadness has overcome me today. I, myself, don’t know exactly why this is the case.” Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Płońsk, 22 VII, 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 7, 25. Also see Gruen to Fuchs, Płońsk, 24 IX 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 9, 28; and Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Płońsk, 2 VI 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 1, 3, 5; Gruen to Fuchs, Warsaw, 6 II 1905, no. 17, 47; Gruen to Fuchs, Warsaw, 14 II 1905, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 18, 49; and Gruen to Fuchs, Płońsk, 2 IV 1905, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 20, 55. 30.  Anton Kaes, “Leaving Home: Film, Migration, and the Urban Experience,” New German Critique 74 (Spring–Summer, 1998): 186. 31.  David Yosef (Gruen) to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, 6 XI 1904, Igrot Ben-­ Gurion, vol. 1, no. 11, 31–32. 32.  This generational biography is described beautifully in Dan Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam: Li-deyokanah shel ha-republikah ha-sifrutit ha-‘ivrit bi-tehilat hameah ha-‘esrim (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1987), 296–429. Also see the biographical rendition of Simon Dubnow’s life as told by his daughter, Sophie Dubnov-Erlich, The Life and Work of S. M. Dubnov, trans. Judith Vowles, ed. Jeffrey Shandler and intro. Jonathan Frankel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), esp. 46–69; and Yosef Yudelevitch, Zikhronot ve-reshamim shel ish ha-‘aliyah ha-sheniyah (Tel Aviv: Moses, 1928), 20–28. For more on this motif, see Marcus Moseley, Being For Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). 33.  On Brenner, see Yitsḥak Bacon, Brener ha-tsa‘ir: ḥayav vi-yetsirotav shel

Notes to Chapter Two Brener ‘ad le-hofa‘at “ha-Me‘orer” be-London (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibuts ha-meuḥad, 1975); Bar-Yosef, Maga‘im shel dekadans: Bialik, Berdichevski, Brener; Ḥaim Be’er, Gam ahavatam, gam sinatam: Bialik, Brener, Agnon—ma‘arkhot yeḥasim (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1992); and Avner Holtzman, Temunah le-neged ‘enai (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 2002), 61–91. On Gnessin, see Holtzman, Temunah le-neged ‘enai, 93– 133; and Uri Nissan Gnessin: Meḥkarim ve-te‘udot, ed. Dan Miron and Dan Laor (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1986). Also see Scott Ury, “The Generation of 1905 and the Politics of Despair: Loneliness, Friendship, Community,” in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews, ed. Stefanie Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 96–110. 34.  Yudelevitch, Zikhronot ve-reshamim, 22. On the influence of the sights and sounds of the city, see Georg Simmel, “Metropolis and Mental Life.” For a different interpretation of Jews and the “noise, the rush, the chaos of the street,” see Shmarya Levin, “The Arena,” in Forward from Exile: The Autobiography of Shmarya Levin, trans. Maurice Samuel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967), 302. 35.  Shmarya Levin, “Youth in Revolt,” in Forward from Exile, 219. Nor were such experiences limited to particularly large cities. Medium-sized cities like the local center of Dvinsk were also foreign enough to bewilder the new arrival. Note Levin’s comments: “Dvinsk was the first big city that I had ever really seen. With its population of 100,000, its seemingly endless streets of stone houses, massive and unshakable, it made me breathless with wonder. Even Beresin, which had made such a prodigious impression on me, was a village in comparison. I walked the streets for hours, drinking in the atmosphere of power and permanence. This was a revolution indeed. The old world had been softer, weaker, more yielding; against this new world axes, hammers and saws would be of no effect: nothing short of bombs and heavy guns could do anything here. The stone walls of the great fortress were a human symbol too; in such a city the people were harder and firmer.” Levin, “Youth in Revolt,” 213. 36.  Sholem Aleichem to Wolff (brother), Lubani, 10 XII 1882, in Sholem Aleichem (S. Rabinovitch), Mikhteve Shalom ‘Alekhem: mivḥar, ed. and trans. Avraham Yavin (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1998), 15. 37.  Yeḥezkel Kotik, Hatsa‘at ḥukei aḥi-‘ezer (Warsaw, 1896), 4. Kotik’s communal activities in Warsaw and their significance are discussed at length in chapter 4. 38.  On the adolescent character of many of these migrants, see Shlomo Zemach’s account of his own flight to Palestine in 1904 which details his father’s efforts to convince him not to leave for Ottoman Palestine. Shlomo Zemach, Sipur ḥayai, ed. Ada Zemach (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1983), 31–32. For a different view of this particular father–son relationship, see David Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, 14 XII 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 13, 36–37. 39.  Shmarya Levin, “The Arena,” 305. 40.  See D. Y. Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Płońsk, 2 VI 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 1, 6; Gruen to Fuchs, Warsaw (?), 28 VI 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 4, 17; and Gruen to Fuchs, Warsaw, 6 XI 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 11, 32.

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Notes to Chapter Two 41.  D. Y. Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Płońsk, 2 VI 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 1, 3 and 5. 42.  On Gruen’s attempts to secure employment and housing in Warsaw, see D. Y. Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Płońsk, 2 VI 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 1, 9; David Yosef Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw (?), 28 VI 1904, Igrot Ben-­Gurion, vol. 1, no. 4, 17–18; and David Yosef (Gruen) to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, 6 XI, 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 11, 31–32. For more on poverty among Jewish youth across the Russian Empire, see Holtzman, Temunah le-neged ‘enai, 64; and Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam, 349–350, and 382–429. 43.  Yudelevitch, Zikhronot ve-reshamim, 24; also see 20–21. Brenner, “Uri Nisan,” Yosef Ḥayim Brener, ketavim, vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibuts ha-meuḥad, 1985), 155–157. 44.  Shmarya Levin, “Youth in Revolt,” 226. 45.  Ha-tsofe, no. 504, 3/16 IX 1904, 878. The frequent advertisements regarding private hostels, guesthouses, and rooms for rent in Warsaw reflect the transitory nature of Jewish society at the time. See, for example, Di naye tsaytung, no. 31, 5/18 IX 1906, 4; Unzer leben, no. 61, 3/16 V, 1907, 4; Unzer leben, no. 136, 2/15 VIII 1907, 3; and Unzer leben, no. 152, 21 VII/3 IX 1907, 4. For more information on housing conditions, especially among workers, in late Imperial Russia, see Brower, Russian City, 142–145; Bradley, Muzhik and Muscovite, 194–248; Koenker, Moscow Workers, 54–57; Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 35–37, 46–47, and 52–53; and Charters Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms: The Donbass–Dnepr Bend in Late Imperial Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 32–36. 46.  See Benjamin’s citation of Baudelaire in: Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 443, 445. 47.  Ha-tsofe, no. 404, 5/18 V 1904, 449. 48.  Der veg, no. 139, 21 VI/4 VII 1906, 3. 49.  Idishes tageblat, no. 133, 8/21 VI 1907, 3. 50.  On this point, see Fritzsche, Reading Berlin, 16–20. 51.  Ha-tsofe, no. 390, 19 IV/2 V 1904, 393. For additional examples portraying newcomers as easy targets, see Der veg, no. 59, 10/23 III 1906, 5; and Idishes ­tageblat, no. 133, 8/21 VI 1907, 3. 52.  On this point, see Simmel, “Metropolis and Mental Life,” 418–419. 53.  Ha-tsofe, no. 540, 20 X/2 XI 1904, 1039. For additional examples regarding hostile attitudes toward Jewish in-migrants, see Ha-tsofe, no. 411, 14/27 V 1904, 489; Ha-tsofe, no. 424, 30 V/12 VI 1904, 543; Unzer leben, no. 34, 1/14 IV 1907, 3; and Unzer leben, no. 37, 4/17 IV 1907, 3. 54.  Unzer leben, no. 30, 27 III/9 IV 1907, 4; Unzer leben, no. 36, 3/16 IV 1907, 4; and Unzer leben, no. 41, 9/22 IV 1907, 4. 55.  See Unzer leben, no. 6, 8/23 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 36, 3/16 IV 1907, 4;

Notes to Chapter Two and Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 29 VII/12 VIII 1906, 3. On the activities of the Warsaw Information Bureau for Jewish Immigrants, see Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Biura Informacyjnego dla emigrantów Żydów, 4 vols. (Warsaw, 1910–1914), in Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), Magnes Archive, File P3 1156, 107–229. For more on the treatment of indigent immigrants by Jewish communities, see Israel Bartal and Yosef Kaplan, “‘Aliyat ‘aniyyim me-Amsterdam le-Erets Yisrael be-reshit ha-meah ha-sheva ‘esreh,” Shalem 6 (1992): 175–193. 56.  On the tension between local Polish Jews and newcomers, see Scott Ury, “‘On the Gallows!’ The ‘Politics of Assimilation’ in Turn of the Century Warsaw,” Polin 20 (2008): 339–353. Also see Sabina Levin, Perakim be-toldot ha-ḥinukh ­ ha-yehudi be-Polin ba-meah ha-tesha‘ ‘esreh u-ve-reshit ha-meah ha-‘esrim (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1997), 211. For a discussion of how many Poles viewed this tension, see Joshua D. Zimmerman, “Józef Piłsudski and the ‘Jewish Question,’ 1892–1905,” East European Jewish Affairs 28, no. 1 (1998): 87–107. Nor were such tensions limited to Warsaw. See Cohen’s comments regarding a similar dynamic among Jews in London. Richard I. Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions: Jewish Culture in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age,” in David Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews: A New History (New York: Schocken, 2002), 738–739. 57.  See, for example, Laurie Bernstein, Sonia’s Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 161–166; Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 305–307; and, Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 21. Also see Sander Gilman, “The Jewish Murderer: Jack the Ripper, Race and Gender,” in The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991), 104–127. For a contemporary example of the association of Jews with the white slavery trade, see Teodor Jeske-Choiński, Historja Żydów w Polsce (Warsaw: Gebethner and Wolff, 1919), 287–296. 58.  Ha-peles, no. 2, Heshvan, Tarsa”d (1903), 127–128. 59.  On the response of different Jewish communities to prostitution and the white slavery trade, see Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870– 1939 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1982), 48– 110; Aryeh Gartner, “Yahadut Anglia ve-ha-saḥar ha-benleumi be-znut,” ­Zemanim 20 (Winter 1986): 45–59; Victor Mirelman, “The Jewish Community versus Crime: The Case of White Slavery in Buenos Aires,” Jewish Social Studies 46 (1984): 145– 168. Also see Gur Alroey, “Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience,” Jewish Social Studies 9, no. 2 (Winter 2003): 55–59; and ­Alroey, Imigrantim: ha-hagira ha-yehudit le-Erets-Yisrael be-reshit ha-meah ­ha-‘esrim (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Tsevi, 2004), 146–162. For discussions of white slavery and prostitution in late Imperial Russia, see Richard Stites, “Prostitute and Society in Pre-Revolutionary Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 31 (1983): 348–364; and Keely Stauter-Halsted, “Moral Panic and the Prostitute in Partitioned

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Notes to Chapter Two Poland: Middle-Class Respectability in Defense of the Modern Nation,” Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (2009): 557–581. 60.  Ha-tsofe, no. 353, 2/15 III 1904, 226. For additional examples connecting white slavery to railroads, see Ha-tsofe, no. 511, 14/27 IX 1904, 915; and Der veg, no. 20, 23 I/5 II 1906, 1. 61.  For reports on violence in the public realm, see Ha-yom, no. 14, 31 VII/13 VIII 1906, 3; Ha-yom, no. 15, 1/14 VIII 1906, 4; Ha-yom, no. 27, 15/28 VIII 1906, 4; Ha-yom, no. 40, 30 VIII/12 IX 1906, 4; Di naye tsaytung, no. 5, 6/19 VIII 1906, 4; Di naye tsaytung, no. 25, 29 VIII/11 IX 1906, 2; Unzer leben, no. 79, 27 V/9 VI 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 148, 16/29 VIII 1907, 3; and Der veg, no. 56, 7/20 III 1906, 3. 62.  See Ha-tsofe, no. 461, 13/26 VIII 1904, 699. “The Organization for the Defense of Women: The official newspaper announced that approval has been received for the creation of a Jewish Organization for the Defense of Women in our city. While an organization for the defense of women has already been established this year in our city, this organization’s founding charter clearly stipulates that it will not protect Jewish women and will not accept Jews as members. Thus, representatives of our community lobbied the local officials to receive permission to establish such an organization for Jewish women.” For more on the attitude of non-Jewish reformers to the role of Jews in white slavery, see Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness, 308; and Bernstein, Sonia’s Daughters, 161–166. 63.  See Izraelita, no. 46, 29 X/11 XI 1904, 538–539. “The Jewish Organization for the Defense of Women: The Polish language weekly ‘Izraelita’ has started to publish a series of articles by Mr. S. Posner about the responsibilities and goals of the Warsaw Jewish Organization for the Defense of Women. While there is already an organization designed to defend women in our city, it bears the name ‘Christian.’ . . . At the head of this new organization stands M. Bergson the Head of Warsaw’s Jewish community, Dr. Nussbaum and S. Posner.” Ha-tsofe, no. 541, 21 X/3 XI 1904, 1043. Also see Ha-tsofe, no. 416, 20 V/2 VI 1904, 511; Der veg, no. 40, 19 IX/2 X 1905, 1–2; Der veg, no. 53, 11/24 X 1905, 2; Der veg, no. 161, 17/30 VII 1906, 3. On government efforts to control the movement and residency of unattached women, see Der veg, no. 36, 13/26 IX 1905, 3. 64.  On the international scope of these organizations, see Report of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women for 1908 (London, 1908), 6. On the Warsaw organization, see Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego Źydowskiego Towarzystwa Ochrony Kobiety za 1909 rok (Warsaw, 1910). For more information on the people and policies who dominated the gmina in this period, see Guesnet, Polnische Juden, 334–412; Guterman, Kehilat varshah, 11–39; Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn, 3:110–191; and Shatzky, “Institutional Aspects,” 9–44. 65.  See Izraelita, no. 46, 29 X/11 XI 1904, 538–539; and Ha-tsofe, no. 544, 25 X/7 XI 1904, 1055. 66.  On the policies of the gmina, see Guterman, Kehilat varsha, 21. 67.  Ha-tsofe, no. 638, 11/24 II 1905, 125. For a summary of the meeting in question, see Izraelita, no. 46, 11/29 XI 1904, 538–539.

Notes to Chapter Two 68.  Izraelita, no. 9, 25II/10 III 1905, 105; and Ha-tsofe, no. 671, 23 III/5 IV 1905, 262. On a similar effort to educate women in Odessa, see Ha-tsofe, no. 492, 18/31 VIII 1904, 825. 69.  See Report of the Jewish Association, 6. On the Warsaw group, see Sprawozdanie Warszawskiego. On other Jewish charitable organizations in Warsaw, see Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn, 3:172–191. Also see Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, “From Charity to Social Policy: The Emergence of Jewish ‘Self-Help’ Organizations in Imperial Russia, 1800–1914,” East European Jewish Affairs 27, no. 2 (1997): 53–75. For a larger discussion of Jewish philanthropy, see Derek J. Penslar, Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 70.  See Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (London: Routledge, 2001), 53. For more on the need to make the individual a productive member of modern society, see Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995), 25–27 and 239–244. 71.  Note the reform policies of the employment organization, Ustawa Towarzystwa dostarczania pracy biednym Żydom w Warszawie (Warsaw, 1904), 5–7. 72.  Izraelita, no. 9, 25II/10 III 1905, 105; and Ha-tsofe, no. 671, 23 III/5 IV 1905, 262. 73.  At the Jewish community’s vocational school for girls, students were offered the option of choosing among three different professions: basket weaving, the sale of choice leather goods, and artificial flower design. Ha-tsofe, no. 449, 28 VI/11 VII 1904, 649. 74.  Avraham Mordechai Alter, Osef mikhtavim u-devarim (Warsaw, 1937), 11–12. 75.  The text appears in Eli Lederhendler, Jewish Responses to Modernity: New Voices in America and Eastern Europe (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 99. 76.  Ha-mizraḥ, no. 9, 1904, 573. 77.  Ha-tsofe, no. 353, 2/15 III 1904, 226. 78.  On the varying degrees of success of these and other efforts, see Gartner, “Yahadut Anglia”; and Gilman, “The Jewish Murderer.” 79.  Ha-yom, no. 31, 19 VIII/2 IX 1906, 3. For additional reports on white slavery and violence, see Der veg, no. 55, 13/26 X 1905, 2; and Unzer leben, no. 152, 21 VIII/3 IX 1907, 3. For reports on the white slavery trade among Jews, see Ha-tsofe, no. 342, 17 II/1 III 1904, 176; and Der veg, no. 12, 13/26 I 1906, 3. 80.  B. Hoffman, Froyen-handel un prostitutsye (Warsaw: Farlag di velt, 1906), 35–36. Also see Der veg, no. 40, 19 IX/2 X 1905, 1–2. 81.  Y. L. Peretz, Kitve Y. L. Peretz, trans. S. Melzer, vol. 8 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, n.d.), 349. Originally published as Y. L. Peretz, “Mitnaged ha-leumiut,” Ha-tsofe, no. 5, 1903. 82.  Idishes tageblat, no. 164, 16/29 VII 1907, 3. Reports of people falling off of buildings or out of windows were not limited to children. See “the case of a thirty-

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Notes to Chapter Two five year old man who fell off of the roof at 27 Nowy Miasto Street,” Idishes tageblat, no. 19, 22 I/4 II 1907, 3; and that of “a woman in her twenties fell out of a window from the second floor and was seriously wounded,” Der veg, no. 8, 10/23 VIII 1906, 3. 83.  See, for example, the case of a child who died after falling down a flight of stairs, Idishes tageblat, no. 182, 26 X/8 XI 1906, 3. 84.  Idishes tageblat, no. 6, 7/20 I 1907, 3. 85.  Idishes tageblat, no. 133, 8/21 VI 1907, 3. Children were not the only ones injured by wagons and other forms of transportation. See the case of the wagoner who was somehow run over by his own vehicle after having fallen off the wagon, Idishes tageblat, no. 45, 20 II/5 III 1907, 3. Also see Idishes tageblat, no. 6, 7/20 I 1907, 3. 86.  On orphans and abandoned children at this time, see Elżbieta Mazur, “Care for Orphans in Nineteenth Century Warsaw,” Acta Poloniae Historica 99 (1999): 123–133. Also see ChaeRan Y. Freeze, “Lilith’s Midwives: Jewish Newborn Child Murder in Nineteenth-Century Vilna,” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 2 (2010): 1–27. 87.  Ha-tsofe, no. 463 15/28 VII 1904, 706. 88.  Unzer leben, no. 43, 11/24 IV 1907, 4. 89.  Ha-tsofe, no. 419, 24 V/6 VI 1904, 523. 90.  Der veg, no. 169, 27 VII/9 VIII 1906, 3. 91.  For additional examples of lost or abandoned children, see Idishes tageblat, no. 132, 8/26 XI 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 69, 21 III/3 IV 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 133, 8/21 VI 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 143, 20 VI/3 VII 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 164, 16/29 VII 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 102, 22 VI/5 VIII 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 151, 20 VIII/2 IX 1907, 2; and Der veg, no. 77, 7/20 IV 1906, 2. 92.  For reports regarding cases in which parents did turn to local papers for assistance regarding lost children, see the announcement regarding the search for a five-year-old-boy named Pinhas and a nine-year-old-girl in a red blouse (again) in Idishes tageblat, no. 95, 23 IV /6 V 1907, 3. Also see Der veg, no. 169, 27 VII/9 VIII 1906, 3. 93.  Idishes tageblat, no. 133, 8/21 VI 1907, 3. 94.  Ha-tsofe, no. 373, 30 III/12 IV 1904, 319. As opposed to the names and ages of adults, the somewhat regular item in Ha-tsofe entitled “List of Dead in Warsaw” (which listed only Jewish names) does not mention the names of dead children. See Ha-tsofe, no. 315, 16/29 I 1904, 63; Ha-tsofe, no. 338, 12/25 II 1904, 161; Ha-tsofe, no. 427, 2/15 VI 1904, 556; Ha-tsofe, no. 440, 17/30 VI 1904, 610; Ha-tsofe, no. 427, 2/15 VI 1904, 556; and Ha-tsofe, no. 440, 17/30 VI 1904, 610. 95.  On earlier Jewish orphanages, see Levinson, Toldot Yehude Varshah (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1953), 175–176. On other efforts to regulate and control street children and juvenile crime in this period, see Timothy J. Gilfoyle, “Street-Rats and GutterSnipes: Child Pickpockets and Street Culture in New York City, 1850–1900,” Journal of Social History 37, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 853–882.

Notes to Chapter Two 96.  See Kotik, ‘Ezrat yetomim (Warsaw, 1901), 8–19. For more on ‘Ezrat yetomim, see Der veg, no. 50, 4/17 X 1905, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 117, 9/22 X 1906, 3; and Idishes tageblat, no. 117, 9/22 X 1906, 3. 97.  Shatzky, “Institutional Aspects of Jewish Life in Warsaw,” 43. 98.  Kotik, ‘Ezrat yetomim, 5–6. For similar sentiments, see Kotik, ‘Aseret hadibrot le-benei tsion (Warsaw, 1899), esp. 37–42; and Kotik, Hatsa‘at ḥukei aḥi-‘ezer (Warsaw, 1896), 6–8. 99.  See the series of articles in Izraelita on Jewish morality: Izraelita, no. 12, 18 31 III 1905, 135–136; Izraelita, no. 13, 25 III/7 IV 1905, 147–148; and Izraelita, no. 14, 1/14 IV 1905, 160. 100.  Ha-tsofe, no. 531, 10/23 X 1904, 1002. 101.  Unzer leben, no. 37, 4/17 IV 1907, 3. 102.  For examples of Jewish (and non-Jewish) corpses, both identified and unidentified, found in and around Warsaw, see Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 29 VI/12 VII 1906, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 6, 7/20 I 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 84, 9/22 IV 1907, 3; and Der veg, no. 5, 5/18 I 1906, 3. For an alternative interpretation of Jewish newspapers and the plight of Jewish corpses, see Mark Baker, “Imagining the Jewish Nation: Midrash, Metaphor, and Modernity in Hamagid, a Hebrew Newspaper,” Prooftexts 15, no. 1 (Jan. 1995): 5–32. 103.  Ha-tsofe, no. 336, 10/23 II 1904, 152. Also see Ha-yom, no. 51, 14/27 IX 1906, 3: “The name of the woman found dead at Brodno is Giberman, a resident of Gęsia Street in Warsaw. She was identified by her clothing as her face was desecrated by the murderers. She was murdered in a robbery in which 250 rubles were taken.” 104.  Ha-yom, no. 26, 14/27 VIII 1906, 4. 105.  For other cases in which papers were used to help identify and locate missing persons, see Ha-yom, no. 31, 19 VIII/2 IX 1906, 3; and Ha-yom, no. 32, 21VIII/3 IX 1906, 3. 106.  Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 2/15 II 1907, 3. 107.  Ha-tsofe, no. 391, 20 IV/3 V 1904, 397. 108.  Der telegraf, no. 27, 2/15 II 1906, 5. For a slightly different account of this gruesome discovery, see Der veg, no. 29, 2/15 II 1906, 3. 109.  For a detailed account of the violence in Odessa, see Weinberg, 1905 in Odessa, 164–187. 110.  See Di blutige teg, Dos leben, October 1905, 4. For a discussion of these photos, see Stein, Making Jews Modern, 108–113. The pogrom in Białystok is discussed further in chapter 4 and in the conclusion. 111.  See Der veg, no. 127, 7/20 VI 1906, evening supplement, 1–2. A similar report from Der Fraynd included forty-nine names and “many others—women, children, youths, old people, whose names we do not yet know.” Der Fraynd, no. 124, 7/20 VII 1906, cited in Stein, Making Jews Modern, 116. For additional reports on the difficulties involved with identifying the victims of urban violence, see Ha-yom, no. 21, 8/21 VIII 1906, 4; and Ha-tsofe, nos. 615–621, 23 I/5 II 1905, 54. 112.  Der telegraf, no. 123, 6/19 VI 1906, 2.

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Notes to Chapter Two 113.  For a different interpretation of death, journalism, and community, see Stein, Making Jews Modern, 113–119. 114.  Reports of suicide in Warsaw appeared rather regularly in the Jewish press. See, for example, Unzer leben, no. 5, 22 II/7 III 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 117, 9/22 X 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 135, 30 X/12 XI 1906, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 28, 31 I/13 II 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 69, 21 III/3 IV 1907, 3; and Der veg, no. 81, 11/24 XII 1905, 3. For studies of suicide in this period, see Irina Paperno, Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky’s Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Kenneth M. Pinnow, “Violence against the Collective Self and the Problem of Social Integration in Early Bolshevik Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 653–677. 115.  Cited in Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin-de-Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 191. 116.  Der veg, no. 81, 11/24 XII 1905, 8 (incorrect pagination); Unzer leben, no. 5, 22 II/7 III 1907, 3; and Idishes tageblat, no. 151, 29 VI/12 VII 1907, 3. For other cases of individuals who committed suicide by ingesting carbolic acid, see Idishes tageblat, no. 79, 17/30 VIII 1906, 3. 117.  Idishes tageblat, no. 69, 21 III/3 IV 1907, 3. For additional reports of domestic violence, see Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 12/25 II 1907, 3. 118.  Idishes tageblat, no. 151, 29 VI/12 VII 1907, 3. 119.  Ha-yom, no. 17, 3/16 VIII 1906, 4. 120.  See, for example, Der veg, no. 99, 4/17 V 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 119, 29 V/11 VI 1906, 1; Ha-tsofe, no. 652, 28 II/13 III 1905, 179; and Izraelita, no. 46, 29 X/11 XI 1904, 537–538; 121.  See the advertisement exposing imitation wines that did not include the official company seal: Der telegraf, no. 40, 17 II/2 III 1906, 4; Ha-tsofe, no. 356, 5/18 III 1904, 242; and Ha-tsofe, no. 429, 4/17 VI 1904, 568 (incorrect pagination). Also see Ha-tsofe, no. 316, 18/31 I 1904, 67: “Counterfeit wine: Over the past few days, the number of cases of counterfeit wines has increased dramatically, including the most expensive wines. Amongst the fake wines are those which may damage one’s health. Thus, the idea has been raised to create a general supervisory body over all of the stores which sell wine, without any exception. It has also been suggested that it be publicly noted which stores which sell such counterfeit wines and that they also be subject to fines according to the decision of the courts.” Also see warnings regarding imitation Passover wines that include signed affidavits by local rabbis testifying to the product’s legitimacy: Ha-tsofe, no. 347, 24 II/8 III 1904, 204; Der telegraf, no. 69, 24 III/6 IV 1906, 1; Der telegraf, no. 72, 31 III/13 IV 1906, 4; Der veg, no. 71, 24 III/6 IV 1906, 1; and Der veg, no. 53, 3/16 III 1906, 6. 122.  Aḥiasaf, vol. 12, 1904, unnumbered page, advertisement supplement. 123.  Ha-tsofe, no. 671, 23 III/5 IV 1905, 261. For more on kosher meat scandals, protests, and corruption at the time, see Idishes tageblat, no. 82, 6/19 IV 1907, 2; Idishes tageblat, no. 113, 16/29 V 1907, 4; and Unzer leben, no. 65, 10/23 V 1907, 4.

Notes to Chapter Two Also see Paula E. Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York Kosher Meat Boycott of 1903,” American Jewish History 70, no. 1 (1980): 91–105. 124.  See Endelman’s comments regarding similar phenomena in a different environment. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 143–144. 125.  See Idishes tageblat, no. 20, 23 I/5 II 1907, 4; Lodzer nakhrikhten, no. 211, 7/20 XI 1907, 4; and Lodzer nakhrikhten, no. 223, 21 XI/4 XII 1907, 4. 126.  Ha-tsofe, no. 403, 4/17 V 1904, 445. 127.  Ha-tsofe, no. 536, 15/28 X 1904, 1023. For an account regarding concern over poison candy, see Michael Jerry Ochs, “St. Petersburg and the Jews of Russian Poland, 1862–1905,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986, 217–218. 128.  Sholem Aleichem to Wolff (brother), Lubani, 10 XII 1882, in Mikhteve Shalom ‘Alekhem, no. 1, 15. 129.  Ha-tsofe, no. 492, 18/31 VIII 1904, 825. Also see Ha-tsofe, no. 359, 9/22 III 1904, 252; and Ha-tsofe, no. 525, 3/16 X 1904, 976. 130.  YIVO Institute (YIVO), Shatzky Collection, RG 356, File 81. 131.  Idishes tageblat, no. 8, 25 V/7 VI 1906, 3. 132.  For reports regarding the misappropriation of funds collected for victims of the Białystok pogrom, see Idishes tageblat, no. 32, 5/18 II 1907, 1–2; Idishes ­tageblat, no. 33, 6/19 II 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 35, 8/21 II 1907, 3; “Zum pogrom-gelt skandal,” Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 12/25 II 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 40, 14/27 II 1907, 2; and Idishes tageblat, no. 11, 29 V/11VI 1906, 3. For information regarding efforts to assist the victims of the Siedlce pogrom in the summer of 1906, see ­Ha-yom, no. 45, 5/18 IX 1906, 4; Ha-yom, no. 50, 13/26 IX 1906, 4; and Ha-yom, no. 51, 14/27 1906, 4. For examples illustrating the role which the press already played in raising funds for pogrom victims see Ben-Avigdor’s letter to Sholem Aleichem regarding the Kishnev pogrom of 1903. Ben-Avigdor to Sholem Aleichem, 19 VI 1903, no location, (Warsaw?), in Genazim, ed. Baruch Karu and A. M. Habermann, vol. 4 (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1971), unnumbered letter, 41–42. 133.  See, for example, Unzer leben, no. 119, 13/26 VII 190, 3. 134.  Ha-yom, no. 2, 16/29 VII 1906, 3. For additional examples of such schemes, see Idishes tageblat, no. 27, 30 I/12 II 1907, 3. See Hertz’s account of impostors in Lodz who exploited the Bund’s early successes in 1905. I. Sh. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund in Lodzsh (New York: Farlag unzer tsayt, 1958), 131–132. Also see the Bund flier from Warsaw denouncing similar scams involving the false representation of Bundist activists in Warsaw. YIVO, Bund Archives (BA), RG-1401, Box 33, File 347, unnumbered doc., Warsaw, April 1905. 135.  Unzer leben, no. 41, 9/22 IV 1907, 4. 136.  Ha-tsofe, no. 337, 11/24 II 1904, 156. 137.  Der veg, no. 242, 29 X (11 XI) 1906, 2. For a larger discussion of pornographic material at this time, see Lisa Z. Sigel, “Filth in the Wrong People’s Hands:

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Notes to Chapter Two Postcards and the Expansion of Pornography in Britain and the Atlantic World, 1880–1914,” Journal of Social History 33, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 859–886. 138.  Unzer leben, no. 61, 3/16 V 1907, 4. On assaults and robberies of different communal organizations (Jewish and other), see Idishes tageblat, no. 9, 26 V/8 VI, 1906, 3; and the report regarding the gmina in Blizne outside of Warsaw, Lodzer nakhrikhten, no. 12, 5/18 III 1907, 3. On the assault on the Warsaw gmina building in the spring of 1907, see Idishes tageblat, no. 64, 14/27 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 22, 14/27 III 1907, 3. Unzer leben, no. 23, 15/28 III 1907, 4; Lodzer nakhrikhten, no. 20, 14/27 III 1907, 3. Also see Lodzer nakhrikhten, no. 28, 26 III/8 IV 1907, 3. 139.  For larger discussions of Jews and crime, see Michael Berkowitz, The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Robert Blobaum, “Criminalizing the ‘Other’: Crime, Ethnicity, and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth-Century Poland,” in Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, ed. Blobaum (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 81–102; Gilman, “The Jewish Murderer,” 104–127; Jenna Weissman Joselit, “An Answer to Commissioner Bingham: A Case Study of New York Jews and Crime, 1907,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 18 (1983): 121–140; and Susan L. Tananbaum, “‘Morally Depraved and Abnormally Criminal’: Jews and Crime in London and New York, 1880–1940,” in Forging Modern Jewish Identities: Public Faces and Private Struggles, ed. Michael Berkowitz, Susan L. Tananbaum, and Sam W. Bloom (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), 115–139. 140.  Note, Idishes tageblat’s regular subheadings: “Murders and Assaults” and “Assaults and Robberies”: Idishes tageblat, no. 57, 23 VII/5 VIII 1906, 3; Idishes ­tageblat, no. 76, 14/27 VIII 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 87, 27 VIII/9 IX 1906, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 97, 10/23 IX 1906, 3. For additional examples, see Di naye tsaytung, no. 12, 14/27 VIII 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, no. 49, 3/16 X 1906, 2; Unzer leben, no. 87, 5/18 VI 1907, 3; Der telegraf, no. 86, 21 IV/4 V 1906, 2; Der veg, no. 4, 4/17 VIII 1905, 3; Der veg, no. 9, 11/24 VIII 1905, 3; Der veg, no. 55, 13/26 X 1905, 2; Der veg, no. 7, 8/21 I 1906, 3; Der veg, no. 81, 12/25 IV 1906, supplement, 1; and Der veg, no. 178, 7/20 VIII 1906, 3. 141.  See Brower’s discussion of the contradiction between urban crime and the urban ideal in Brower, Russian City, 218–221. Also see Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Authority Restored (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 7, 146, and 161. 142.  Der telegraf, no. 40, 17 II/2 III 1906, 3. 143.  Ha-yom, no. 23, 10/23 VIII 1906, 3. 144.  Idishes tageblat, no. 10, 11/24 I 1907, 3. 145.  Idishes tageblat, no. 143, 20 VI/3 VIII 1907, 3. 146.  Di naye tsaytung, no. 5, 6/19 VIII 1906, 4. Brower similarly notes the frequent use of knives at the time: Brower, Russian City, 220–221. 147.  Idishes tageblat, no. 130, 24 X/6 XI 1906, 3.

Notes to Chapter Two 148.  Der veg, no. 55, 6/19 III 1906, 3. 149.  Der telegraf, no. 26, 1/14 II 1906, 5. For further examples of similar robberies see Idishes tageblat, no. 5, 22V/4 VI 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 46, 9/22 VII 1906, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 82, 21 VIII/3 IX 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 97, 10/23 IX 1906, 3; and Unzer leben, no. 5, 22 II/7 III 1907, 3. 150.  Idishes tageblat, no. 76, 14/27 VIII 1906, 3. 151.  Ha-yom, no. 16, 2/15 VIII 1906, 4. 152.  Ascher, for instance, observes: “In Nowo-Minsk, a town near Warsaw, the police literally ceased to function by the summer of 1905. Many thieves had moved there from the Polish capital, and stealing increased at such a rapid pace that the police simply gave up all attempts to curb it.” Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 134. The question of revolutionary violence will be discussed at length in chapter 3. 153.  Brower contends that most of the violence directed against police and other officials in St. Petersburg and Moscow was not politically motivated. Brower, Russian City, 198–202. Also see Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 133. For a discussion of political violence in this period, see Peter Holquist, “Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism? Russia in the Epoch of Violence, 1905–1921,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 627–652. 154.  Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, 10. 155.  Der telegraf, no. 121, 4/17 VI 1906, 3. For other reports connecting violence and various forms of public transportation, in particular trams and trains, see Idishes tageblat, no. 65, 1/24 VIII 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 133, 8/21 VI 1907, 3; Di naye tsaytung, no. 1, 1/14 VIII 1906, 3; Di naye tsaytung, no. 12, 14/27 VIII 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, no. 51, 5/18 X 1906, 1; Unzer leben, no. 142, 9/22 VIII 1907, 3; Der veg, no. 20, 23 I/5 II 1906, 1; and Der veg, no. 75, 2/15 IV 1906, 3. 156.  Der telegraf, no. 121, 4/17 VI 1906, 3. For similar incidents, see I. Sh. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund, 120; as well as Ha-yom, no. 40, 30 VIII/12 IX 1906, 3. 157.  Ha-yom, no. 40, 30 VIII/12 IX 1906, 3. Also see Di naye tsaytung, no. 25, 29 VIII/11 IX 1906, 2; and also Ha-yom, no. 22, 9/22 VIII 1906, 3. “Yesterday, the General Governor of Warsaw issued a temporary order prohibiting the sale of newspapers on the city’s streets. . . . On the corner of Leszno and Rymarksa, a patrol stumbled upon a young man selling newspapers in public. The police officers began to chase the youth and fired several shots in his direction. In the end, they ended up wounding two Jews and killing two others.” 158.  Brower, Russian City, 199. Also see Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 132–136. 159.  Der telegraf, no. 44, 22 II/7 III 1906, 4. 160.  Idishes tageblat, no. 4, 4/17 I 1907, 3. Also cited in Ha-yom, no. 5, 5/18 I 1907, 3. Official government figures for the year 1906 varied little. See Police Superintendent General Major Piotr Meir to Tsar Nicholas II, Warsaw, 22 XII 1907/4 I 1908, in Raporty Warszawskich Oberpolicmajstrów, no. 14, 69. For the publication of more statistics regarding the number of murders, assaults, and arrests, see Idishes tageblat, no. 5, 22 V/4 VI 1906, 3; and Ha-yom, no. 47, 10/23 IX 1906, 3. On

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Notes to Chapters Two and Three the reliability of such figures, see Robert E. Blobaum, Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904–1907 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 143. 161.  See Ha-yom, no. 3, 16/29 VII 1906, 2. “Many store owners and businessmen in our city have petitioned the Minister of Police for the right to purchase revolvers so that they can defend themselves from thieves.” For more on the possession of weapons at this time, see Ha-yom, no. 14, 31 VII/13 VIII 1906, 3. 162.  On civil defense groups, see Idishes tageblat, no. 57, 23 VII/5 VIII 1906, 3. Also see Ha-yom, no. 7, 23 VII/5 VIII, 1906, 3. These moves paralleled similar vigilante efforts throughout the Congress Kingdom. See Blobaum, Rewolucja, 93–94. “Vigilante actions against gangsters, thieves, and prostitution rings, beginning in Warsaw and subsequently spreading to other urban and industrial centers, threatened to assume the form of a mass movement at the end of May.” On “the spread of mob law” in Moscow and St. Petersburg, see Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 132–133. 163.  Ha-yom, no. 27, 15/28 VIII 1906, 4. 164.  Idishes tageblat, no. 151, 29 VI/12 VII 1907, 3. For another incident in which residents of Warsaw made citizen arrests, see Unzer leben, no. 41, 9/22 IV 1907, 4. 165.  Ha-yom, no. 11, 27 VII/9 VIII 1906, 3. 166.  See Di naye tsaytung, no. 31, 5/18 IX 1906, 3. Also see Ha-yom, no. 3, 16/29 VII 1906, 2; and Ha-yom, no. 45, 5/18 IX 1906, 4. For a similar, citywide response, see Ha-yom, no. 46, 6/19 IX 1906, 4; Ha-yom, no. 47, 10/23 IX 1906, 3. Also see Idishes tageblat, no. 97, 10/23 IX 1906, 3. 167.  Idishes tageblat, no. 109, 11/24 V 1907, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 143, 20 VI/3 VIII 1907, 3; and Ha-yom, no. 2, 16/19 VII 1906, 3. On the implementation of electric streetlights in Warsaw, see Stefan Kieniewicz, Warszawa w latach 1795–1914, vol. 3 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976), 218. 168.  Lodzer nakhrikhten, no. 41, 10/23 IV 1907, 1. 169.  Idishes tageblat, no. 186, 28 XII 1906/10 I 1907, 3. 170.  Di naye tsaytung, no. 5, 6/19 VIII 1906, 4. 171.  Der veg, no. 87, 22 XII 1905/4 I 1906, 1. Also see Ha-tsofe, no. 652, 28 II/13 III 1905, 179. “From day to day, it becomes clearer that our organized community is not only not with us, but actually working and acting against us. . . . The Jewish community of Warsaw, the real one and not the fictitious one, demands that voting rights within the communal organization be extended.”

Chapter Three 1.  Key studies on Jews and revolution include Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006), 192–243; Erich Haberer, Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robert Levy, Ana Pauker: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Arthur Liebman, Jews and

Notes to Chapter Three the Left (New York: Wiley, 1979); Ezra Mendelsohn, Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Workers’ Movement (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 28–33 and 93–103; Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Robert S. Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982). 2.  For English histories of these organizations, see Robert E. Blobaum, Feliks Dzierżyński and the SDKPiL: A Study of the Origins of Polish Communism (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984); Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004); and Henry J. Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia from Its Origins to 1905 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972). 3.  For a terrific English study of the revolution in Polish lands, see Robert E. Blobaum, Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904–1907 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). 4.  For more on the nature of revolutionary organizations, see Charles E. Woodhouse and Henry J. Tobias, “Primordial Ties and Political Process in Pre-­ Revolutionary Russia: The Case of the Jewish Bund,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 8 (1965–1966): 331–360. Also see Mordekhai Levin, “Ha-mishpaḥa be-ḥevra mahpakhanit yehudit,” Measef 13 (1982–1983): 109–126; and Levin, Measef 14 (1984): 157–171. On Jewish youth at this time, see Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 56. 5.  For more on these and related questions, see Inna Shtakser, “Structure of Feeling and Radical Identity among Working-Class Jewish Youth during the 1905 Revolution,” Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 2008. 6.  On Zionism in this period, see Yosef Goldstein, Ben tsiyonut medinit le-­tsiyonut ma‘asit: ha-tenu‘ah ha-tsiyonit be-Rusyah be-reshita (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993). 7.  On Jewish women and revolution, see Paula E. Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 77–80; Puah Rakovsky, My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland, ed. and intro. Paula E. Hyman, trans. Barbara Harshav with Paula E. Hyman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); and Naomi Shepherd, A Price below Rubies: Jewish Women as Rebels and Radicals (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993), 107–207. For anecdotal evidence regarding women in revolutionary movements, see Idishes tageblat, no. 11, 29 V/11 VI 1906, 3. 8.  For more on the reliability and use of government sources and statistics at the time, see Blobaum, Rewolucja, 143; and Daniel R. Brower, The Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 1850–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 203. 9.  Among those arrested were Yankel Mendelev Veinberg (18), Estera Mikhailova Kratka (19), Yosif Abramov Serzhbovski (18), and Shmuel Yoskov Chapka (22) of

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Notes to Chapter Three the SDKPiL; and Yankel Yoinov Altman (20), Solomonia Mordekhova Marshak (19), Abram Mordekov Rotkhaub (21), Abram Simkhov Shpeker (19), Levek Isaakov Seidman (18), Yankel Shmulev Kausfriedt (21), and Anshel Maerov Likhtengoff (18) of the Bund. Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD), Kancelaria GenerałGubernatora Warszawskiego (KGGW), File 2932, March 11, 1907, doc. 3738, fols. 560–562b and 596–597. Although at times irksome, I have transliterated all names as they appear in government documents. 10.  AGAD, KGGW, File 3022, May 16, 1907, doc. 7353, fols. 1–7 and 15–15b. Those arrested who were twenty-five or younger included: Haia Beniaminova Galperin (21), Abram Vafailov Livshitz (21), Khil Yakovlev Yeretskii (17), Rebekka Solomonova Gertsman (20), and Shaya Froimov Oratch (18) of Poale Zion; Khaim-Wolf Nahmanov Gastman (17), Ruta Itskova Gerson (17), Berek-Sakherberk Grosglik (17), Yosek Leibov Zaltsman (17), Yakub-Yuda Gershov Kartsovitch (21), Moise Berkov Kofenbaum (21), Mindlya Leizerova Lev (18), Moise Zelmanov Leder (21), Peisakh-Gerts Gabrielev Lufliand (19), Shlema-Meilakh Oizerov Melnik (20), Volek-Berek Moshkov Orzhek (22), Malya Ioseleva Salyamon (21), MordkhaBerek Moshekov Tenenbaum (21), Moshek Levikov Turman (17), Khaim-David Shmulev Shvartsbard (21), Movshe Zelmanov Epshtein (17), Laia Mordkova Shpitbaum (22), Khaim Meer Moshkov Gingold (17), Movsha-Yankel Boguslavskii (20), Nakhman-Angel Moshkov Kava (21), Movsha-Nuta Leizorov Leizerovskii (20), Yakub Izrailev Adelfang (18), Estera Sheerov-Gersheva Goldenberg (17), YakovShaev-Mordkov Goltsman (20), Shaia Zelkov Zaltsman (24), Yehiel Shneerov-­ Gershev Goldenberg (23), and Pinkus Mordkov Shpitbaum (20) all of the SDKPiL; Moshek-Berk Borukhov Korentaf (20), and Shiia-Mordka Abramov-Shimonov Slovik (17) of the Bund; and Borukh Berkov Gluzman (25) of the PPS. Those over twenty-five included: Khazkel-Nuhem Galpern (30), Aizik Nukhimov Krimer (28), and Abram Moshkov Sukenik (30) of Poale Zion; and Zelman-Girsh Mikhelev Minkin (26), Girsh-Zalman Afroimov Ratner (26), and Aron Shmulev Fainshtein (32) of the SDKPiL. David Bentzelev Blokh of the SDKPiL is the only Jewish detainee whose age is not listed. 11.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2833, Nov. 13, 1906, doc. 13445, fols. 1a–5b. 12.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2737, July 21, 1906, doc. 8142, fols. 2a–3. 13.  AGAD, Prokurator Warszawskiej Izby Sądowej (PWIS), File 4628, Jan. 3, 1906, unnumbered doc., fols. 14–25. 14.  See the case of Ilya Shiev-Rubenov Rosenvald (17), AGAD, PWIS, File 4033, June 8, 1905, doc. 2877, fols. 4a–4b; Leizer Yankelev Vetshtein (17), AGAD, PWIS, File 4020, May 28, 1905, doc. 2665, fols. 4a–4b; Srul-Abram Leisman (Leikhman) (18), AGAD, PWIS, File 4008, July 13, 1905, doc. 3580, fol. 6; Ber (Berek) Simkhov Kaminskii (16), AGAD, PWIS, File 3995, May 11, 1905, doc. 2485/1041, fol. 4, and, July 9, 1905, doc. 1534, fol. 6a; Aron Itskov Kholtsgener (18), AGAD, PWIS, File 3980, May 4, 1905, doc. 968/2335, fols. 4a–4b; Rakhmiel Khaimov-Gershkov Rozentsveig (17), AGAD, PWIS, File 3812, Feb. 4, 1905, doc. 186, fols. 5 and 8a–8b; Beniamin Leibov Sorkin (19), AGAD, PWIS, File 3796, Jan. 27, 1905, fol. 2, and

Notes to Chapter Three April 2, 1905, doc. 666, fol. 6; Yosek Kravets (24), AGAD, PWIS, File 4471, Dec. 7, 1905, doc. 6652/3318, fol. 5; and Itsek Maerov Dorenblum (17), AGAD, PWIS, File 4469, Nov. 12, 1905, doc. 6075/2959, fol. 2 15.  For additional examples see: the arrest of twenty-eight Jews between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two suspected of taking part in and promoting antigovernment disturbances, AGAD, KGGW, File 2491, April 1, 1905, doc. 1869, fols. 22a– 26b; the arrest of nine Jews between the ages of fifteen and twenty for possession of antigovernment material and illegally residing in Warsaw, AGAD, PWIS, File 4055, June 1, 1905, docs. 2802/2937, fols. 2, and doc. 3031, June 14, 1905, doc. 3031/1338, fols. 12a–12b; the report regarding ten Bund activists under the age of thirty, AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, January 8, 1906, doc. 305, fol. 49a, and Feb. 4, 1906, doc. 3079, fol. 50; the arrest of fifteen Bund members, fourteen of whom were under thirty, AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, Jan. 26, 1906, doc. 1049, fols. 119a–119b; and, the case of five members of the Bund’s meat workers’ union who were all under the age of thirty, AGAD, KGGW, File 2955, Feb. 9, 1907, doc. 2546, fol. 1, and Feb. 23, 1907, doc. 3404, fols. 3–8b. 16.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2763, Aug. 25, 1906, doc. 18481/6021, fols. 46a–46b. 17.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2763, Aug. 11, 1906, doc. 9305, fols. 38a–38b, and Aug. 25, 1906, doc. 18432/6032, fols. 50a–50b. 18.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2763, Aug. 25, 1906, doc. 18432/6032, fols. 50a–50b. While it is unclear whether these two petitions were written by the parents themselves or by paid scribes or other intercessors, both letters bear the same date, use similar language, and have identical typeset. On the traditional Jewish practice of writing and submitting supplications to government representatives, see Scott Ury, “The Shtadlan of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Noble Advocate or Unbridled Opportunist,” Polin 15 (2002): 267–299. 19.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2737, July 21, 1906, doc. 8142, fols. 2a–3; Sept. 5, 1906, doc. 19513/6416, fol. 36; and undated letter received by the Warsaw Governor-General’s Office on April 25, 1909, doc. 9841/33213, fol. 40. Also see the requests submitted on behalf of another Bund member, Shmuel Eliav Goldfein, AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, Jan. 25, 1906, doc. 1983/773, and Feb. 3, 1906, doc. 2741/894, fols. 53a–54. For a similar petition regarding permission to cross Russia’s international border, see the request regarding another nineteen-year-old Bundist, Shmul-Nuta Kaplan: AGAD, KGGW, File 2737, Sept. 3, 1906, doc. 16875, fol. 27. Not all requests submitted to the authorities were done so by concerned parents. See the Russian translation of Artur Rudolf Eder’s Polish request that he himself be either released from custody or sent abroad after being arrested in late 1905 on Chłodna Street for possessing four copies of a PPS proclamation in Russian. AGAD, PWIS, File 4466, unnumbered and undated doc., fol. 7. 20.  David Ben-Gurion, Zikhronot, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1971), 13. 21.  See, for example, “Varshe,” Di arbeter shtime, no. 39, supplement, March 1905, 11. 22.  See the detailed government report on the structure of the SDKPiL Work-

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Notes to Chapter Three ers’ Organization in Warsaw. AGAD, KGGW, File 104335, fol. 10, March 27, 1906, in Źródła do dziejów klasy robotniczej na ziemiach polskich, ed. Stanisław Kalabiński, vol. 3, part 3 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1972), doc. 32, 35–36. 23.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, Jan. 8, 1906, doc. 305, fols. 49a–49b, and Feb. 24, 1906, doc. 3079, fol. 50. For more on the Bund’s reputation of attracting Jewish dentists, see Chaim Weizmann’s derisive comments: Weizmann to Moses Gaster, Manchester, Nov. 27, 1905, in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, ed. Meyer W. Weisgal, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1973), no. 180, 205– 206. “But every young Jew in Russia calls himself a Bundist now: the thousands of dentists who have no practice, the thousands of students or candidates for admission to Universities who cannot get in because of the discriminatory laws.” 24.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, Jan. 26, 1906, doc. 1049, fols. 119a–b. 25.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2737, July 21, 1906, doc. 8142, fols. 2a–3, Sept. 3, 1906, doc. 16785, fol. 27, Sept. 5, 1906, doc. 19513/6416, fol. 36, and, received on April 25, 1909, doc. 9841/33213, fol. 40. Also see AGAD, KGGW, File 2861, Sept. 19, 1906, doc. 10768, fols. 1a–5. For more on the Bund’s professional organizations, see Der bund in der revolutsye fun 1905–1906 loyt di materialn fun bundishn arkhiv (Warsaw: Farlag di velt, 1930), 73–91; and A. D. Kirzhnitz and M. Rafes, eds., 1905, Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie (Moscow: Gos izd-vo, 1928), 298–301. 26.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4745, Dec. 30, 1905, doc. 3804, fols. 15a–15b. For more on the Military Revolutionary Organization, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4521, Nov. 29, 1905, doc. 3240/6354, fol. 4. 27.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4628, Dec. 22, 1905, doc. 35771, fols. 5a–7, and Jan. 3, 1906, unnumbered doc., fols. 14a–25a. 28.  L. Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkhistishe grupe in Varshe,” unpublished manuscript, YIVO Institute (YIVO), Jacob Shatzky Collection, RG 356, File 122, 2, 4, 7 and 9. 29.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2493, December 31, 1905, doc. 9132, fols. 582a–582b. For additional examples of police raids uncovering revolutionary material, see AGAD, PWIS, File 3980, May 4, 1905, doc. 2335/968, fols. 4a–4b and 10(1)–10(4); AGAD, PWIS, File 5035, Jan. 23, 1906, doc. 549/931, fol. 2; AGAD, PWIS, File 4204, Aug. 20, 1905, doc. 4339, fols. 5a–5b; AGAD, PWIS, File 4176, July 4, 1905, doc. 3969, fol. 4; and, AGAD, PWIS, File 3868, March 19, 1905, fol. 4. 30.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, Jan. 4, 1906, doc. 111, fols. 10a–10b, 12a–12b, 17a– 17b, and 20a–20b. For additional cases detailing illicit material see AGAD, PWIS, File 4746, Dec. 30, 1905, doc. 3806, fols. 4a–4b. 31.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4389, Oct. 28, 1905, doc. 2653, fols. 4a–4b. 32.  Raphael Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes: di geshikhte fun a dor, vol. 1 (New York: Arbeter ring, 1944), 144–145. 33.  Cited in Yeshayahu Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” unpublished manuscript, YIVO, Bund Archives (BA), Collection RG-1401, File 346, 11. 34.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4078, June 24, 1905, doc. 3245/1403, fols. 10a–10b. For examples of weapons being hidden in private apartments, see the draft regarding

Notes to Chapter Three the Fighting Organization of the Polish Socialist Party: AGAD, PWIS, File 4160, July 21, 1905, no. 1626, fols. 47a–51a, esp. the arrest of Yankel-Gersh Gedalev Liverant, fol. 48a; as well as a draft regarding a Bundist circle in Kalisz, AGAD, PWIS, File 3837, Aug. 28, 1905, docs. 1947–1949, fols. 11a–13b. 35.  AGAD, PWIS, File 3868, June 22, 1905, doc. 1387, fols. 8a–8b. Weapons were also found upon the arrest of thirteen members of the Warsaw Anarchist-­Communist Group “International” in late 1905. See AGAD, PWIS, File 4628, Jan. 3, 1906, fols. 17a–25, esp. 21a–21b. 36.  The term birzhe most likely originates from the Slavic term for stock exchange. For more on the birzhe, see Mendelsohn, Class Struggle in the Pale, 69–70; Tony Michels, A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 89–90; and Tobias, Jewish Bund, 101. 37.  Note the case of Iosef Batalin and Shmul Edelman who were arrested in July 1905 for distributing revolutionary material in Warsaw’s Saxony Garden, and that of Elya Shiev-Rubinov Rozenvald who was charged with reading a SDKPiL flier in his army tent camp to other soldiers. See, respectively, AGAD, PWIS, File 4236, Aug. 31, 1905, doc. 2056/4519, fols. 4a–4b; and AGAD, PWIS, File 4033, June 8, 1905, doc. 1247, fols. 4a–4b. 38.  “In the summer of 1903 we had mass meetings in the woods.” Mordekhai Pogarelski, “Poale Zion un tsionistish-sotsialistishe richtungen in Bialistok,” unpublished manuscript, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-2, File 507, 10. For additional references to Bundist meetings in the woods outside of Bialystok, see YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 32, Warsaw, Fall 1905 (Yiddish and Polish versions). 39.  Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkhistishe grupe,” 9. Also see the report regarding a meeting of the “Proletariat” group held in the forest that featured speeches in Yiddish and Polish: Di naye tsaytung, no. 1, 1/14 VIII 1906, 3. 40.  Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” 6–7. Also see Nakhum Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn: in rod fun dor un bavegung (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Perets bibliotek, 1960), 145. 41.  Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, 1:142. 42.  Pogarelski, “Poale Zion,” 23. For a similar account of the Bund birzhe on the streets of Gomel, see Grigori Aronson, “Di homler ‘birzhe’ un di homler zelbstshuts,” Der veker (April 1955): 10–11, located in YIVO, BA, MG-2, File 118. 43.  Litwak, A. (Ḥayim Ya‘akov Helfand), Mah she-hiya: zikhronot ‘al tenu‘at hapo‘alim ha-yehudit, trans. H. S. Ben Avraham (Ein Harod: Ha-kibuts ha-meuḥad, 1945), 160. 44.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, Jan. 3, 1906, doc. 100, fols. 2 and 7. A contemporary report on the raid lists the address as 20 Nalewki Street. See Der veg, no. 2 2/15 I 1906, 3. For another case of a police raid on local bookstores, see Ha-yom, no. 44, 4/17 IX 1906, 4. 45.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2503, Aug. 8, 1905, doc. 27345/8629, fol. 130. The role of these institutions in the growth of a Jewish public sphere will be discussed in chapter 4. 46.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2651, Nov. 1, 1906, doc. 3535/8375, fols. 126a–127b.

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Notes to Chapter Three 47.  On the raid on Rodzakh’s Bund café, see AGAD, PWIS, File 3375, Feb. 8, 1904, doc. 1087, fols. 1a–1b, and Feb. 11, 1904, doc. 1462, fols. 3a–5a. For more on the raid of Fried’s café, see Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 115–127; and Matityahu Mintz, Ḥaver ve-yariv: Yitzḥak Tabenkin be-mifleget Po‘ale-Tsiyon, 1905–1912 (Tel Aviv: ­Ha-kibuts ha-meuḥad, 1986), 43, as well as Mintz’s Hebrew translation of the police report regarding the affair: Mintz, Ḥaver ve-yariv, app. 1, 176–183. 48.  Ha-yom, no. 27, 15/28 VII 1906, 4. 49.  See, for example, the report regarding the decision to regulate the hours of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and theaters, Di naye tsaytung, no. 5, 6/19 VIII 1906, 4. 50.  For a vivid account of life on the run, see Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, 1:143. 51.  Note Mayer Kirshenblatt’s memoirs regarding his childhood in the town of Opatów (Apt). “Everybody in town had a nickname. Mine was Mayer tamez, Mayer July, because July was the hottest month of the year. Mayer tamez means Crazy Mayer.” Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 1, also see 115, 225, and 320. 52.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2932, March 11, 1907, doc. 3738, fols. 558b–562b, esp. fols. 561b and 562a. It was, apparently, not uncommon to refer to people’s external appearances when distributing nicknames. Note the article regarding the Bundist “the dark Mordechai” from a later period. Hershel Tetaloviats, “Der shvartser Mordekhai,” March 12, 1971, unidentified newspaper clipping, YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, File 346, doc. 15. 53.  AGAD, KGGW, File 3022, May 16, 1907, doc. 7353, fols. 1a–7a, and 15a–15b, esp. fols. 3a, 4a and 4b. 54.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4628, Jan. 3, 1906, unnumbered doc., fols. 23b–24a. 55.  Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkistishe grupe,” 9. 56.  For more on the significance of names and name changes in revolutionary times, see Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 57–60; and Slezkine, Jewish Century, 61, 171, 222, and 288. 57.  See, respectively, AGAD, KGGW, File 2932, March 11, 1907, doc. 3738, fols. 558a–562b, esp. 562a; AGAD, KGGW, File 3022, May 16, 1907, doc. 7353, fols. 1a–7a and 15a–15b, esp. fol. 2b; and, AGAD, KGGW, File 2833, Nov. 13, 1906, doc. 13445, fols. 4a and 5a. 58.  For more on Bundist code names, see Arieh Gelbard, “Shemotehem ha-­ beduim shel po‘ele ha-‘bund’ be-Rusyah,” Shvut 12 (1987): 156–175. 59.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2833, Nov. 13, 1906, doc. 13445, fols. 1a–5b, esp. 5a, 4a, and 3b. 60.  A volume published some twenty years later in the Soviet Union presents a much more formal version of Jewish revolutionaries in which nicknames and other personal details are significantly downplayed. See N. A. Bukhbinder, Materialy dlia istorii evreiskogo rabochego dvizheniia v Rossi (Moscow: Gos izd-vo, 1923).

Notes to Chapter Three 61.  On the arrest of twelve Jewish and one non-Jewish members of the Warsaw Anarchist-Communist Group “International,” see AGAD, PWIS, File 4628, Dec. 22, 1905, doc. 35771, fols. 5a–7; Jan. 3, 1906, unnumbered doc., fols. 14a–25; and, Dec. 9, 1906, doc. 14403, fols. 63a–63b. Also see AGAD, (K)GGW, File 104415a, Jan. 4/17, 1906, fol. 26, in Carat i klasy posiadające w walce z rewolucją 1905–1907 w Królestwie Polskim: Materiały archiwalne, ed. Stanisław Kalabiński (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnicto Naukowe, 1956), doc. 352, 430–431; as well as AGAD, (K)GGW, File 104415a, Jan. 12, 1906, fol. 27, in Kalabiński, Carat, doc. 358, 436. Also see Tomasz Szczepański, Ruch Anarchistyczny na ziemach polskich zaboru rosyjskiego w dobie rewolucji 1905–1907 roku (Poland: Inny Świat, 2000[?]), 31–33. For information on the activities of the Warsaw Committee of the Military Revolutionary Organization, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4521, Nov. 29, 1905, doc. 3240/6354, fol. 4; AGAD, PWIS, File 4471, Nov. 12, 1905, doc. 2961/6077, fol. 4; AGAD, PWIS, File 4745, Dec. 30, 1905, no. 3804, fols. 15a–15b; AGAD, PWIS, File 4480, doc. 6111/3037, Nov. 17, 1905, fol. 9, and, Dec. 4, 1905, doc. 3305/6523, fols. 11a–11b; and, AGAD, Warszawski Rząd Gubernialny, wydz. Więziennictwa, ref. 2, 1906, June 19/ July 2, 1906, no. 543, fols. 1–6, in Kalabiński, Carat, doc. 418, 504–510. Also see the fliers distributed by the organization: YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 365, File 46, Warsaw, 3/16 Aug. 1906; YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 366, File 49, Warsaw, Oct. 1906; and YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 366, File 49, Warsaw, Nov. 1906. 62.  L. Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkistishe grupe,” 3. 63.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4038, June 29, 1905, doc. 3504/3358, fols. 14a–14b. 64.  See AGAD, PWIS, File 4348, Sept. 1, 1905, doc. 4919/4567, fols. 3a–3b; and, Oct. 3, 1905, doc. 2418/5135, fols. 32a–34b. 65.  On revolutionary cells that included both Poles and Jews, see, for example, AGAD, PWIS, File 4160, May 15, 1905, doc. 2659/2491, fols. 28a–30; July 21, 1905, doc. 1626, fols. 47a–51; and AGAD, PWIS, File 4233, Aug. 13, 1905, doc. 4519/4200, fols. 7 and 33a–35. 66.  For examples of the multilingual nature of revolutionary material at the time, see AGAD, PWIS, File 3868, March 19 (?), 1905, fol. 4; AGAD, PWIS, File 3854, March 8, 1905, doc. 472, fol. 5; AGAD, PWIS, File 4055, June 14, 1905, doc. 1338/3031, fols. 12a–12b; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 32, Warsaw, Sept. 1905; and the draft of an arrest report regarding two Bund activists in Kalisz, AGAD, PWIS, File 3837, Aug. 28, 1905, docs. 1947–1949, fols. 11a–13b. 67.  See, for example, the Bundist summary of the literature distributed at this time in Yiddish, Russian, and Polish. Der bund in der revolutsye, 115–119. 68.  Approximately 17 percent of Warsaw’s Jewish population in 1897 claimed that Polish was their preferred language. For more on language use among Jews in Warsaw, see Stephen D. Corrsin, “Language Use in Cultural and Political Change in Pre-1914 Warsaw: Poles, Jews and Russification,” Slavonic and East European Review 68, no. 1 (Jan. 1990): 69–90; and Corrsin, “‘The City of Illiterates’? Levels of Literacy among Poles and Jews in Warsaw, 1882–1914,” Polin 12 (1999): 221–241.

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Notes to Chapter Three 69.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2482, Jan. 13, 1905, doc. 191/1, fol. 6a; March 31, 1905, doc. 1249/1583, fols. 36, 37a–38 and 39a–42a; and April 9, 1905, doc. 1359/1744, fols. 63a, 69a–70b, 73a–75a, and 76a–79b. 70.  For additional examples of materials published and distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee in Polish, see AGAD, KGGW, File 2482, June 23, 1905, doc. 2521/1, fol., 120; AGAD, KGGW, File 2500, Jan. 1905, Warsaw, fol. 33; AGAD, KGGW, File 2665, Jan. 20, 1906, doc. 803, fol. 43a; AGAD, PWIS, File 3980, May 4, 1905, doc. 968/2335, fols. 4a–4b; AGAD, PWIS, File 3978, May 11, 1905, doc. 1005, fols. 4a–4b; AGAD, PWIS, File 4516, Nov. 29, 1905, doc. 3223/6348, fol. 6; AGAD, PWIS, File 4498, Nov. 23, 1905, doc. 3116/6225, fol. 6; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, docs. 30–31, Warsaw, Aug. 1905; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 17, Warsaw, Dec. 1904; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 22, Warsaw, April 1905; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 27, Warsaw, May 1905; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 80, Dec. 1904; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 80, April 1905. The Bund Committee in Lodz also distributed materials in Polish. See, for example, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 47, doc. 21, Lodz, March 1905; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 47, doc. 22, Lodz, July 1905. Also note the separate cases of Bund activists Berko Naimon and Nuta Galperin who were arrested with hundreds of copies of Bundist fliers in Polish, Yiddish, and Russian. See, respectively, AGAD, PWIS, File 4178, Aug. 5, 1905, doc. 1810, fol. 4; and AGAD, PWIS, File 4176, doc. 3969, Aug. 4, 1905, fol. 4. For examples regarding the translation of literature between Polish, Russian, and Yiddish, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4745, Feb. 22, 1907, doc. 908, fols. 17a–17b. 71.  See the report regarding the arrest of Rakhmiel Khaimov-Gershkov Rozent­ sveig, AGAD, PWIS, File 3812, Feb. 4, 1905, doc. 186, fol. 5; and March (n.d.) 1905, doc. 129, fols. 8a–8b. Also see AGAD, PWIS, File 4673, Dec. 30 (?), 1905, fols. 2a– 2b; as well as the report regarding the arrest of Abram Basov for possessing 110 copies of PPS brochures, journals and fliers in Polish and Yiddish, AGAD, PWIS, File 4204, Aug. 20, 1905, doc. 1982/4339, fols. 5a–5b. Also see AGAD, PWIS, File 4160, July 21, 1905, fols. 47a–51, esp. 48a. 72.  For examples of material distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee in Russian, see YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 36, Warsaw, Nov. 1903; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 32, Warsaw, Sept. 1905. The latter document was, apparently, distributed in both Polish and Russian but not in Yiddish. For more regarding Bundist material in Russian distributed in Warsaw, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4469, Nov. 12, 1905, doc. 2959/6075, fol. 2; and Dec. 21, 1905, doc. 6078, fol. 4. For cases in which PPS material was published and distributed in Russian as late as fall 1905, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4466, Nov. 12, 1905, doc. 2955/6072, fol. 4; and, AGAD, PWIS, File 4584, Dec. 8, 1905, doc. 3362/6682, fol. 2. The Warsaw Anarchist-Communist Group “International” also distributed material in Russian as well as in Yiddish. See AGAD, PWIS, File 4425, Nov. 7, 1905, doc. 2803/5807, fol. 2; and, AGAD, PWIS, File 4628, Jan. 3, 1906, fols. 15a–16. Also see the examples of Russian-language materials distributed by the Military Revolutionary Organization

Notes to Chapter Three in Warsaw. YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 365, File 46, Warsaw, Aug. 3/16 1906; YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 366, File 49, Warsaw, Oct. 1906; and YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 366, File 49, Warsaw, Nov. 1906. 73.  Most documented cases of public readings of Bund and other material included literature published in Yiddish or, at times, material in other languages that was read aloud in Yiddish translation. See, AGAD, KGGW, File 2511, Aug. 17, 1905, doc. 15787/3852, fol. 134, and, Aug. 12, 1905, doc. 2935/4000, fols. 135a–135b; AGAD, KGGW, File 2520, Oct. 11, 1905, doc. 3734, fol. 17; and, AGAD, PWIS, File 3879, March 21, 1905, doc. 564/1390, fols. 2a–2b. For an example of a Russian-language flier distributed by the PPS and apparently read aloud to a group of Jews in Yiddish, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4584, Dec. 8, 1905, doc. 3362/6682, fol. 2. 74.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2493, Dec. 31, 1905, doc. 9132, fols. 582a–582b. For additional examples of individuals or groups distributing material published by a variety of organizations see AGAD, PWIS, File 3908, May 4, 1905, doc. 968/2335, fols. 4a–4b and 10 (1–4). 75.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4389, Oct. 28, 1905, doc. 2653, fols. 4a–4b. For examples regarding arrests that led to political material attributed to several organizations see, for example, AGAD, PWIS, File 3837, Aug. 28, 1905, docs. 1947–1949, fols. 11a–13b. 76.  AGAD, PWIS, File 5004, April (?) 20, 1906, fols. 12a–13. 77.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4745, Dec. 30, 1905, doc. 3804, fols. 15a–15b. Also see the reports regarding the arrest of four Jews caught with both Bundist and PPS material and the arrest of two young Jews in Warsaw’s Saxony Garden for distribution of material by both the PPS and the Russian Social Democratic Party. AGAD, PWIS, File 4236, Aug. 31, 1905, doc. 2056/4519, fols. 4a–4b; and AGAD, PWIS, File 4250, Sept. 3, 1905, doc. 4571, fol. 7. 78.  For the complete report and list of the over 130 brochures, booklets, and newspapers, see AGAD, KGGW, File 2627, Jan. 3, 1906, doc. 100, fol. 7; Jan. 4, 1906, doc. 111, fols. 10a–12b; and Jan. 4, 1906, doc. 112, fols. 16–17b and 20a–20b. 79.  For reports regarding the production or sale of revolutionary material for profit, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4507, Nov. 26, 1905, doc. 3198/6282, fol. 4; and, AGAD, PWIS, File 4469, Nov. 12, 1905, doc. 2959/6075, fol. 2, and, Dec. 21, 1905, doc. 6078, fol. 4. 80.  Berl Katznelson, “Derkhi le-aretz,” in Kitve B. Katznelson, vol. 5 (Tel Aviv: Mifleget Po‘ale Erets-Yisrael, 1947), 385. Also note Stein’s comments regarding “the fluid boundaries that defined turn-of-the-century Russian Jewish party politics,” in Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 113; and Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 54–55. 81.  The Bund claimed to have 1,220 members in the Warsaw region and an additional 1,600 members in Lodz and its surroundings. See Izvieshchenie o VII s”ezdie Bunda (Geneva, 1906), 17. The party boasted of 1,000 members in Warsaw in 1903. Materialy k istorii evreiskogo rabochego dvizheniia (St. Petersburg: Tribuna, 1906),

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Notes to Chapter Three 138. Kiepurska estimates that the party’s membership for the entire Congress Kingdom ranged somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 members by the end of 1904. Halina Kiepurska, Warszawa w rewolucji 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1974), 49. By 1906, according to Zimmerman, the Bund had 5,320 members in Congress Poland. Zimmerman, Politics of Nationality, 214. The figures for Warsaw correspond to less than 5 percent of the empire-wide total of 30,000 members given by Tobias. Tobias, Jewish Bund, 239. What it actually meant to be “a member” of the Bund (or any other party for that matter) is neither defined nor agreed upon by any of these sources. 82.  Three works that chart similar transformations in slightly different historical contexts include Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 198–237; and Michels, Fire in Their Hearts, 69–124. 83.  Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 88. See also Victoria E. Bonnell, ed., The Russian Worker: Life and Labor under Tsarist Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 30. 84.  As Wynn has noted in regard to workers in Ekaterinoslav, “Years of education and propaganda by the revolutionary parties had led to the emergence of a worker elite committed to radical change.” Charters Wynn, Workers, Strikes and Pogroms: The Donbass-Dnepr Bend in Late Imperial Russia, 1870–1905 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 197. On the concept of “going to the people” in Russian history and society, see Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia, trans. Francis Haskell (New York: Knopf, 1964), 469–506; and Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Hilda Andrew-Rusiecka (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 222–267. 85.  For more on Zionist emissaries in this period, see Goldstein, Ben tsiyonut medinit, 56–60; and Chaim Weizmann to Theodor Herzl, Geneva, 6 V 1903, in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, ed. Meyer W. Weisgal, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), no. 316, 301–322, esp. 311. Also see Ben-Gurion’s memoirs regarding debates between Bundist and Poale Zion emissaries from neighboring cities (at least in his own case from Warsaw) in Płońsk. David Ben-Gurion, Zikhronot, 1:13; as well as David Green to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, 8 VII 1904, in David Ben-Gurion, Igrot David Ben-Gurion, 1904–1919, ed. Yehuda Erez, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1971), no. 5, 20. 86.  Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” 7. Pogarelski similarly notes the key role played by the avant-garde. “Starting from 1905 there were already about a hundred members in the organization. The core was made up of intellectuals who studied with the group; they read articles from books and journals and answered questions that the members presented. The remaining part was composed of actual activists; those who managed the group, distributed proclamations, took books from

Notes to Chapter Three the organization’s library and led strikes.” Pogarelski, “Poale Tsion un tsionistish-­ sotsialistishe,” 15 and 22. For more on the dynamic between Jewish intellectuals and Jewish workers, see Moshe Mishkinsky, Reshit tenu‘at ha-po‘alim ha-yehudit beRusyah (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibuts ha-me’uḥad, 1981). 87.  See, for example, AGAD, KGGW, File 2503, Sept. 9, 1905, doc. 3633/1, fols. 256a–256b; and Sept. 10, 1905, doc. 3203/4390, fols. 257a–258. 88.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2503, Sept. 10, 1905, doc. 3203/4390, fols. 257a–257b. On the practice of Jewish revolutionaries using traditional Jewish institutions such as synagogues to promote revolutionary activity, see Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, 1:212. 89.  On the cell in Sochaczew, see AGAD, KGGW, File 2503, Aug. 8, 1905, doc. 27345/8629, fol. 130; Aug. 5, 1905, doc. 3081/1, fols. 139a–140; and Aug. 4, 1905, doc. 2660/3593, fols. 141a–141b. 90.  On the cell in Kalisz, see AGAD, PWIS, File 3837, Aug. 28, 1905, docs. 1947– 1949, fols. 11a–15. 91.  On the readings in Radom and Łomza, respectively, see AGAD, KGGW, File 2520, Oct. 11, 1905, doc. 3734, fol. 17; and AGAD, KGGW, File 2511, doc. 2935/4000, Aug. 22, 1905, fol. 135. 92.  Michels makes this point regarding revolutionary activity in New York. See Michels, Fire in Their Hearts, 91–114, esp. 109. For more on the language of revolution, see Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution; Halfin, Terror in My Soul; Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 198–237; and Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917, documents trans. Marian Schwartz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). 93.  For more on this phenomenon, see Tony Michels, “‘Speaking to Moyshe’: The Early Socialist Yiddish Press and Its Readers,” Jewish History 14 (2000): 51–82. Also see Susanne Marten-Finnis, “Bundist Journalism, 1897–1907—Instruction, Exclusion, Polemic: The Relationship between Leaders and the Followers in Light of the Bundist Literary Activities,” East European Jewish Affairs 30, no. 1 (2000): 39–59. 94.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, unnumbered doc., Warsaw, Dec. 1903. 95.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 20, Warsaw, March 1905, parentheses in original. For additional examples of the language and tone of Bund literature at the time, see YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 7, Warsaw, Jan. 1904; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 26, doc. 8, Bialystok, May 1905. For further examples regarding specific boycotts, see the flier distributed by the Bund Committee in Bialystok: YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 26, doc. 12, Bialystok, Nov. 1904. 96.  YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, Box 33, unnumbered doc., Warsaw, March 1904. 97.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 15, Warsaw, Oct. (Nov.) 1904. 98.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 19, unnumbered doc., Feb. 1905. Two

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Notes to Chapter Three additional Bund fliers from May 1905 end with practically identical closing calls. See YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, Warsaw, May 1905; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, Warsaw, May 1905. 99.  YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 377, File 3, PPS Central Committee, unnumbered doc., Warsaw, Aug. 1905. 100.  YIVO, BA, Collection, ME-21, Box 377, File 35, unnumbered doc., Warsaw, April 1906. 101.  See Blobaum, Rewolucja, 113. For more on similar processes in the Soviet period, see Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 198–237. 102.  On time and the creation of new communities, see Eviatar Zerubavel, Hidden Rhythms: Schedules and Calendars in Social Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 70–100; Claude Lefort, “La Révolution comme religion nouvelle,” in The Transformation of Political Culture, 1789–1848, vol. 3 of The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, ed. François Furet and Mona Ozouf (New York: Pergamon Press, 1989), 391–399. On the role of time in moments of revolution, see Lynn Hunt, “The World We Have Gained: The Future of the French Revolution,” American Historical Review 108, no. 1 (Feb. 2003): 1–19, esp. 5–8; and Harold Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies: Cultural Identity in France and Germany, 1750–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 159–163. 103.  For contemporary attempts to construct a specific legacy and history of the First of May among Jewish workers, see Materialy k istorii, 1906, 55–59 and 86–91. For an example of how these efforts to use the First of May to help create a specifically Bundist sense of history and community continued into the interwar years, see Der bund in der revolutsye, 68–72. For more on the memory of the First of May, see, for example, the memoirs of Julian Lewandowski, “Wspomnienia,” in Archiwum ruchu robotniczego, ed. Feliks Tych, vol. 3 (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1976), 76–77; and those of Jan Jaworksi, “Wspomnienia bojowca—ESDEKA,” in Archiwum ruchu robotniczego, 3:57–58. 104.  For more on the First of May in Warsaw, see Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” 7–8. Trunk claims that the first demonstration in Warsaw took place in May 1901, three years before this particular flier was distributed. Other party materials note First of May demonstrations in Warsaw as early as 1896. See Materialy k istorii, 1906, 56, 59, and 86–91. For further examples of early celebrations of the First of May in Warsaw, see AGAD, KGGW, File 102330, June 3/16 1903, fols. 84–85, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 1 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1968), doc. 32, 61–63; and AGAD, (S)IFGW, IA 56/1904, April 21/May 4, 1904, fols. 3–4, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 1, doc. 53, 117–118. 105.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 10, Warsaw, April 1904. An additional copy of this particular flier is located in YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21. For accounts of the First of May in Lodz, see I. Sh. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund in Lodzsh (New York: Farlag unzer tsayt, 1958), 124 and 176. For more on these efforts, see the flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee in March 1904. YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, Box 33, File 343, unnumbered doc., Warsaw,

Notes to Chapter Three March 1904. “The First of May is approaching; the brightest day in the workers’ lives; the day on which they go with courage and hope into battle; the day when workers throughout the entire world cast aside their work and take their demands into the streets. Let everyone on this day know what we are asking for and what we are striving for! Let us declare together that we no longer wish to be slaves, but free men.” 106.  On the Bund’s growing sense of self-confidence throughout 1905, see the flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee: YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 28, Warsaw, May 1905. A Polish version of this flier can be found in Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN), KC PZPR, Bund Collection, sygn. 30/I-3, 7–8. For more on the First of May, 1905, in Warsaw, see AGAD, KGGW, File 103718, April 19/May 3, 1905, fols. 65–67, in Kalabiński, Carat, doc. 132, 149–152. Also see AGAD, KGGW, File 103729, April 20, 1905, fol. 40, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 2 (1971), doc. 95, 126–127; and “Di letste pasirungen,” no. 10, 8/21 VI 1905, 1–2. 107.  Citations from the Yiddish version. YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 80, unnumbered doc., without location, April 1905. 108.  YIVO, BA, Collection, MG-7, File 47, doc. 16, Lodz, April 1905; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 26, unnumbered doc., Bialystok, April 1905. 109.  YIVO, BA, Collection ME-21, Box 377, File 35, Warsaw, April 1906. For more on May 1906, see AGAD, (S)IFGW, Ia 93, April 19/May 2, 1906, fol. 46, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 3 (1972), doc. 42, 42–43. Also see AGAD, KGGW, File 104340, fol. 92, April 21, 1906, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 3, doc. 44, 44. Also see the Poale Zion flier from 1906 that was translated and reprinted in Kirzhnitz and Rafes, eds., 1905, Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie, 393–395. 110.  On the role of funeral processions in Lodz, see Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund, 128–129 and 140. 111.  On the course of the revolution in St. Petersburg, see Gerald D. Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society, and Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). For more on the revolution throughout the empire, see Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 74–126. 112.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 18, Warsaw, Jan. 1905. For a Polish version of this flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee, see AAN, Bund Collection, sygn. 30/I-3, 4. An identical flier was distributed by the Bund Committee in Lodz. See YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 47, doc. 11, Lodz, Jan. 1905. For other examples of Bundist interpretations and representations of Bloody Sunday and related events, see YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 19, Warsaw, Jan. (Feb.) 1905; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 79, unnumbered doc., no location, Jan. 1905. 113.  On the efforts by the Bund to make this transition, see the comments of the longtime Yiddish journalist and political activist Moishe Olgin, “Di idishe arbeter bevegung in Varshe,” Forverts, undated article from 1911, newspaper clipping, YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, Box 33, File 346. Frumkin similarly recalls the emphasis

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Notes to Chapter Three that organizations placed on creating popular movements. Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkistishe grupe in Varshe,” 5–6. 114.  Di arbeter shtime, no. 39, supplement, March 1905, 10–12, newspaper clipping, YIVO, RG 356, Jacob Shatzky Collection, File 124. For more on Di arbeter shtime at this time, see “Di revolutsia in 1905 in baloykhtung fun tsentral-organ fun ‘Bund’ ‘Di arbeter shtime,’” unpublished manuscript, YIVO, BA, Collection MG9-10, File 66, 1–2. For an additional account of the general strike in Warsaw, see Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” 8–9. 115.  Di arbeter shtime, no. 39, supplement, March 1905, 10. The proclamation being referred to is most likely the one cited above, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 18, Warsaw, Jan. 1905. 116.  Di arbeter shtime, no. 39, supplement, March 1905, 11. For a similar account of the events of Friday, Jan. 27, 1905, see B. Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie walk styczniowo-lutowych 1905 roku,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 17–18 (1956): 27. 117.  Di arbeter shtime, no. 39, supplement, March 1905, 10. For scholarly accounts of the general strike in Warsaw, see Blobaum, Rewolucja, 75–76; Halina Kiepurska, Inteligencja zawodowa Warszawy, 1905–1907 (Warszawa: Państwowe ­Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1967), 73–79; and Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w ­okresie walk ­styczniowo-lutowych,” 24–32. For vivid personal accounts of the events at hand, see the letters by the young David Gruen: D. Y. Green to Shmuel Fuchs and Lipa Toyb, Warsaw, 2 II 1905, in David Ben-Gurion, Igrot David Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 16, 43–45; and the memoirs of Julian Lewandowski, “Wspomnienia,” in Archiwum ruchu robotniczego, 3:74–76. For more information on the activities of the Warsaw Anarchist-Communist Group “International” in January 1905, see Frumkin, Di ershte anarkhistishe grupe in Varshe, 6–9. 118.  On the actual negotiations between parties, see Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie walk styczniowo-lutowych,” 24–32. As in many other cases, Mark’s politically charged narrative should be read with a healthy dose of skepticism. 119.  On the events of late January, see Blobaum, Rewolucja, 76; and Zimmerman, Politics of Nationality, 194–196. 120.  See the boastful proclamation distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee in Polish immediately after the general strike. AAN, Bund Collection, sygn. 30/I-3, 5, Warsaw, Feb. 1905. 121.  Much like the First of May, the events of January 1905 (in both St. Petersburg and Warsaw) soon became key aspects of the revolutionary parties’ efforts to construct and implement new interpretations of calendar time and community. See, for example, the efforts by the Warsaw Committee of the Bund to commemorate the revolution’s first anniversary in January 1906. YIVO, RG 316, Gustave Eisner Collection, Box 1, Warsaw, Jan. 1906. Also see “Di proletariat fun Varshe,” unidentified newspaper clipping, YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, Box 33. For more on the efforts by the PPS, the SDKPiL, the Bund, and the Proletariat to mark the oneyear anniversary of January 1905, see “Listy warszawskie,” Naprzód, Jan. 12, 1906,

Notes to Chapter Three 1–2, newspaper clipping, YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, Box 33, File 346, doc. 2. Also see Di letste pasirungen, no. 20, 2/15 I 1905, 1–2 (incorrect date); as well as the Zionist-socialist flier from January 1906 reprinted in Kirzhnitz and Rafes, 1905, Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie, 390–391. On the atmosphere in Warsaw on January 9, 1906, see Der veg, no. 81, 11/24 XII 1905, 3; and Der veg, no. 9, 10/23 I 1906, 3. On debates regarding the proper way to mark and remember the October Manifesto as well as the post-Manifesto pogroms, see Di naye tsaytung, no. 58, 15/28 X 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, no. 59, 16/29 X 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, no. 60, 17/30 X 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 69, 27 XI/10 XII 1905, 1; and Ha-zeman, no. 236, 30 IX/3 XII 1905, 1. 122.  Commenting on the revolution’s path in Odessa, Weinberg notes that an “unevenness of political awareness characterized the labor movement in the Spring [of 1905]” and that “it was not until the fall [of 1905] that workers on a mass scale engaged in protest designed to transform society and the political system.” Weinberg, 1905 in Odessa, 116. Friedgut is even more skeptical regarding the degree of worker consciousness at the time. Theodore Friedgut, Iuzovka and Revolution: Politics and Revolution in Russia’s Donbass, 1869–1924, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1994), 201 and 469–470. On this point, also see Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg, 250–251 and 252–303. 123.  See the flier distributed by the Bund’s Warsaw Committee: YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 14, Warsaw, Oct. 1904. For more on the Anarchists’ role in the bakers’ strike, see the memoirs of L. Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkistishe grupe in Varshe,” 2 and 4. For more information on strikes by Jewish bakers, see Unzer leben, no. 29, 26 III/8 IV 1907, 4. See also the Bund flier supporting a weaver strike in Bialy­stok, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 26, doc. 6, Bialystok, March 1905. For an account of the strike wave in Warsaw, see B. Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w ­okresie strajków ekonomicznych w lutym-marcu-kwietniu 1905 r.,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 19–20 (1956): 13–21. 124.  See Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie strajków ekonomicznych,” 17–18. Even the euphoric Olgin contends that these separate actions included between fifty to five hundred workers. Olgin, “Di idishe arbeter bevegung in Varshe.” 125.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 20, Warsaw, March 1905. 126.  For a rather optimistic rendition of the Bund’s activities in this particular period, see Der bund in der revolutsye, 82 and 73–91. 127.  The various permutations of Gravier’s family name in Yiddish, Polish, and Russian underscore the extent to which many Jews in Warsaw—including those who would be catapulted to revolutionary notoriety and fame (if albeit in exchange for their lives)—often remained relatively unidentifiable, even in their own intimate circles. Throughout this chapter I will refer to him by the most common Yiddish transliteration, Yisrael Gravier. For a secondary account of Gravier’s arrest and death, see Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie strajków ekonomicznych,” 19–20. 128.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 21, Warsaw, April 1905. An additional copy is stored in YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, Warsaw, April 1905. For more on these events, see Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” 9. For a police account

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Notes to Chapter Three of the events of March 20/April 2, see AGAD, KGGW, File 103718, April 1/14, 1905, fols. 21–23, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 2 (Warsaw, 1971) doc. 91, 124–125. 129.  For more on the role of burials and funeral processions in times of revolution, see Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 46–48; and Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 60–61. On funeral processions in Lodz, see Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund, 128–129 and 140. 130.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 21, Warsaw, April 1905. For more on the Bund’s awareness of the need to write its own history, see “Di revolutsia in 1905 in baloykhtung fun tsentral-organ fun ‘Bund’ ‘Di arbeter shtime,’” unpublished manuscript, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9–10, File 66, 1. 131.  The theme of interethnic solidarity has long played a prominent role in historiographical accounts of the revolution. Mark’s articles on the revolution are laden with examples of Polish-Jewish solidarity. See, for example, Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie walk styczniowo-lutowych,” 29–31 and 55; and Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie strajków ekonomicznych,” 20, 33, and 37. Also see Materialy k istorii, 1906, 87 and 89; Henryk Piasecki, “Żydowska klasa robotnicza w rewolucji 1905 r.,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 98, no. 2 (1976): 51; and, Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund in Lodzsh, 120, 124, and 125. 132.  For additional examples regarding death and revolution, see, Piasecki, “Żydowska klasa robotnicza,” 44; Der veg, no. 72, 30 XI/13 XII 1905, 2; and Der veg, no. 89, 25 XII 1905/7 I 1906, 3. 133.  See, for example, the Yiddish flier distributed by the Central Committee of the PPS regarding the hanging of Stefan Orkshaya, YIVO, BA, Collection ME21, Box 377, File 3, Warsaw, July 1905. For an example of how this revolutionary mythology continued well into the second half of the twentieth century, see Mark, “Proletariat Żydowski w okresie strajków ekonomicznych,” 15. 134.  For additional examples of Bundist martyrology in this period, see YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 17, Sept. 1904; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, docs. 30–31, Warsaw, July/Aug. 1905; AAN, Bund Collection, sygn. 30/I-3, 9; and Di letste pasirungen, no. 9, 1/14 VI 1905, 1. Also see, Di letste pasirungen, no. 16, 9/22 VIII 1905, 4; Di letste pasirungen, no. 19, 13/26 IV 1905, 1–2; and Di letste pasirungen, no. 20, 19 IX/2 X 1905, 1. Also see Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” 8; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 47, doc. 15, Lodz, May 1905. The most famous example of Bundist martyrology remains that of Hirsh Lekert. For more on Lekert, see Tobias, Jewish Bund, 150–152; Hirsh Abramovitch, “Fun Hirsh Lekerts Tseiten,” in Royter pinkes, vol. 2 (Warsaw: Kultur-lige 1924), 144–151; Hirsh Lekert: Tsum 20-tn yortog fun zayn kepung (Moscow, 1922); and M. Olgin, 1905 (New York: Olgin ondenk-komitet, 1940), 61–66. 135.  Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). 136.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 24, Warsaw, April 1905; additional copy located in YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21. Efforts to commemorate the events of April 1905 continued in the interwar era and beyond. See, for

Notes to Chapter Three example, Der bund in der revolutsye, 20–21; and Kirzhnitz and Rafes, 1905, Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie, 105–106. In both of these cases, Grabelskaya was again renamed, this time bearing the Russian name of Frania (Vera). 137.  See, for example, the Yiddish materials dedicated to the memories of Gravier, Cohen, Hoberstein, Grabelskaya, and Margolin, as well as the Polish flier regarding Margolin. YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, Warsaw, May 1905; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 24, Warsaw, April 1905; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 22, April 1905. 138.  See, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 22, Warsaw, April 1905; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 27, Warsaw, May 1905. For a Yiddish version of the last document, see YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, Warsaw, May 1905. 139.  For fascinating discussions of how young Bolsheviks reinterpreted their own personal histories to suit the party’s demands in the early Soviet period, see Igal Halfin, “Looking into the Oppositionists’ Souls: Inquisition Communist Style,” Russian Review 60 (July 2001): 316–339. 140.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, Warsaw, May 1905 (Yiddish); and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 27, Warsaw, May 1905 (Polish). 141.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 22, Warsaw, April 1905. 142.  Note Wynn’s observation: “While the number of disciplined, highly literate, and politicized workers was much larger in the capitals, the mass of workers in both regions shared an aversion to ‘abstract’ politics, a frustration with the outcome of general strikes, and a proclivity for violence.” Wynn, Workers, Strikes and Pogroms, 265. 143.  Trunk, “Der ‘bund’ in Varshe,” 9. On the practice of conducting political meetings in synagogues, see Abramovitch, In tsvey revolutsyes, 1:212; and Goldstein, Ben tsiyonut medinit, 53–56. 144.  The term “alfonse” was used to refer to those who traded “in the human flesh.” For various, often conflicting descriptions of the events, see Sh. Shnitser, Pogrom oyf der untervelt in 1905 (Warsaw: Groshn bibliotek, 1935); A. Litwak, Mah she-hiya, 161–164; and Ber Borochov to Parents, Warsaw, 13/26 V 1905, in Igrot Ber Borokhov, 1897–1971, ed. Matityahu Mintz (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1989), no. 20 (1905), 151–153. Also see Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870–1939 (New York: Schocken, 1982), 58–61; and Laura Engel­stein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 308–310. 145.  Kiepurska, Warszawa w rewolucji, 173–175, cited in Bobaum, Rewolucja, 94. 146.  Brass argues that the interpretation of pogroms and interethnic violence is just as important as the actual events themselves. See Paul R. Brass, “Introduction: Discourses of Ethnicity, Communalism and Violence,” in Brass, ed., Riots and Pogroms (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 1–46. For debates regarding the Bund’s interpretation of violence and pogroms, see Der veg, no. 69, 27 XI/10 XII 1905, 1.

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Notes to Chapter Three 147.  For similar discussions regarding the pogroms of October 1905, see ­Eliyahu Feldman, Yehude Rusyah bi-yeme ha-mahpekha ha-rishona ve-ha-pogromim (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999); Michael F. Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800–1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 189–207; Shlomo Lambroza, “The Pogrom Movement in Tsarist Russia, 1903–1906,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1981; A. Linden (L. Motzkin), ed., Die Judenpogrome in Russland, 2 vols. (Cologne-Leipzig, 1910); Gerald Surh, “The Jews of Ekaterinoslav in 1905 as Seen from Town Hall: Ethnic Relations on an Imperial Frontier,” Ab Imperio 4 (2003): 217– 238; Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 164–187; and Weinberg, “Workers, Pogroms, and the 1905 Revolution in Odessa,” Russian Review 46 (1987): 53–75. 148.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 29, Warsaw, May 1905. 149.  YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, doc. 29, Warsaw, May 1905. An additional copy of this flier is located in YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21. Nor was this the first time that the Bund had to distance itself and its supporters from outbursts of urban violence that threatened to confuse and discredit the revolutionary movement. In the summer of 1903, the Bund felt a similar need to separate itself and its supporters from “the ‘wild youth,’ those for whom there is no moral standard, no respect, no sense of humanity.” Here, too, violent confrontations and unrest in Jewish working-class areas were portrayed by the Bund as the result of efforts by industrialists and others to break strikes and undermine the workers’ movement. At the same time, however, potential supporters were similarly suspected of taking part in the melee and were admonished for forgetting that: “We social-democrats fight against the capitalist order.” See, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-9-10, File 21, Warsaw, Aug. 1903. 150.  In the Polish press these events were often referred to as “the brothel pogroms.” See Kurier Codzienny, no. 130, 12/25 V 1905, 5–6; Kurier Codzienny, no. 131, 13/26 V 1905, 5–6; Prawda, no. 21, 21 V/3 VI 1905, 251; and “Lynch Warszawski,” Kraj, no. 20, 20 V/2 VI 1905, 9–11. 151.  Di letste pasirungen, no. 9, 1/14 VI 1905, 1–2. For an example of how these events were later recast in the early Soviet period, see Kirzhnitz and Rafes, 1905, Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie, 106. 152.  See Sh. Shnitser, Pogrom oyf der untervelt. 153.  For more on the October days, see Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 211–304. For an account of the events in Polish lands, see Blobaum, Rewolucja, 103–108. 154.  On the pogroms of October 1905, see the sources cited in fn. 147. 155.  Der idisher proletariar, no. 1, Nov. 1905, 38. Newspaper clipping, YIVO, BA, Collection MG-1, Box 41, File 140. 156.  Der idisher proletariar, no. 1, Nov. 1905, 38. 157.  On interethnic solidarity as a mainstay of revolutionary politics among Jews, see Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics, 96. 158.  For information on the growing tendency of Jews in Congress Poland to learn and speak Polish at the time, see Der veg, no. 67, 20 III/2 IV 1906, 3; Unzer

Notes to Chapter Three leben, no. 6, 8/23 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 14, 5/18 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 77, 24 V/6 VI 1907, 4; Unzer leben, no. 102, 22 VI/5 VIII 1907, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 12/25 II 1907, 3; and Izraelita, no. 36 2/15 IX 1905, 417–419. 159.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, doc. 32823, Oct. 20, 1905, fol. 14b. For more on the color red and flowers as symbols of the revolutionary movement, see Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 32–33, 41, 65, and 85; Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 59–60; and Tobias, Jewish Bund, 44. 160.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, doc. 32887, Oct. 24, 1905, fol. 19b. For more information on the various protests, meetings, and processions of Oct. 20 in Warsaw, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, Oct. 21, 1905, doc. 32855, fols. 18a–18b; and Oct. 29, 1905, doc. 2488, fols. 47b–48a. Here, as well, government representatives seemed to be particularly concerned with processions, flags, and other public displays of political loyalty. For more on the role of flags (red and other) in later revolutionary actions, see Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 41–43. Also see Yitzḥak Grünbaum, P’ne ha-dor, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ha-sifriyah ha-tsiyonit, 1957), 229. 161.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, Oct. 29, 1905, doc. 2488, fols. 48b–49a, parenthetical comments in original. Also see AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, doc. 32887, Oct.  24, 1905, fol. 20, which dates this particular procession to the afternoon of Oct. 23. For more on this particular demonstration, see AGAD, KGGW, File 103719, Oct. 23, 1905, fol. 457, in Kalabiński, Źródła vol. 3, part 2 (1971) doc. 213, 247. For additional examples of patriotic processions, see AGAD, KGGW, File 103731, Oct. 26/Nov. 8, 1905, fol. 152, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 2, doc. 217, 249. For government responses to “extremist nationalist movements” and public performances of “Boże coś Polskę,” “Z dymem pożarów,” “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła,” and “Warszawianka” as well as other displays of nationalist, socialist, and anarchist flags (red and black) and banners, see AGAD, (K)GGW, File 103826, Dec. 9, 1905, fol. 65, in Kalabiński, Carat, doc. 315, 385–386; also see Police Superintendent General Major Piotr Meir to Tsar Nicholas II, Warsaw, 31 XII 1905/12 I 1906, in Raporty Warszawskich Oberpolicmajstrów (1892–1913), ed. Halina Kiepurska and Zbigniew Pustuła (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1971), no. 12, 55–56. On the arrest of the sixteen-year-old Gabriel Czapski for teaching the words of “Warzawianka” to a soldier in restaurant on Wronia Street, see Unzer leben, no. 63, 8/21 V 1907, 3. Hertz notes the prevalence of both colored banners and singing in Lodz. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund, 140. The important role of various songs (revolutionary and other) is discussed in Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 39–41 and 51–52. 162.  In wake of the National Democrats’ success, local government officials soon changed their view of the organization. See, for example, Police Superintendent General Major Piotr Meir to Tsar Nicholas II, Warsaw, 22 XII 1907/4 I 1908, in Raporty Warszawskich Oberpolicmajstrów, ed. Kiepurska and Pustuła, no. 14, 68. 163.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, Oct. 29, 1905, doc. 2488, fols. 47b–48a.

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Notes to Chapter Three 164.  The development and construction of the divisions and communities will be discussed throughout the remainder of this book. 165.  See Yitzḥak Grünbaum, “Ha-pogromim be-Polin,” in Grünbaum, Milḥamot Yehude Polin (Warsaw: Aḥiasaf, 1922), 36. 166.  For examples of rumors of pogroms at this time, see Der veg, no. 7, 8/21 I 1906, 1; Der telegraf, no. 66, 21 III/3 IV 1906, 2; Idishes tageblat, no. 25, 14/27 VI 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 29 VI/12 VII 1906, 3–4; and Idishes tageblat, no. 97, 10/23 IX 1906, 3. Also note that the first police report regarding rumors of an impending pogrom in October coincided with the large National Democratic demonstration on Oct. 23, 1905. See AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, Oct. 24, 1905, doc. 32887, fol. 20. 167.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, doc. 2488, Oct. 29, 1905, fols. 48b–49a. For a cogent analysis of the regime’s response to potential anti-Jewish violence in Congress Poland, see Michael Jerry Ochs, “St. Petersburg and the Jews of Russian Poland, 1862–1905,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986, 199–237. 168.  AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, doc. 33383, Oct. 31, 1905, fol. 59a. For more on government communications and responses to potential anti-Jewish violence as well as reports of unofficial Jewish self-defense patrols armed with revolvers, ­sickles, and iron bars in Warsaw, see AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, doc. 33039, Oct. 26, 1905, fols. 25a–26. Also see, AGAD, PWIS, File 4364, doc. 33090, Oct. 27, 1905, fols. 29a–29b; AGAD, KGGW, File 103719, Oct. 23/Nov. 5 1905, fol. 457, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 2, doc. 213, 247; AGAD, KGGW, File 103719, fol. 457, Oct. 28, 1905, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 2, doc. 220, 251; and, AGAD, KGGW, File 103719, Nov. 3/16, 1905, fol. 457, in Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 2, doc. 224, 253–254. For more on fear of pogroms and self-defense at the time, see Piasecki, “Żydowska klasa robotnicza,” 48–49. Also see Hertz’s account of fear and flight in Lodz, I. Sh. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund, 182. 169.  Warsaw on the First of May, 1911, in Karolina Beylin, Warszawy dni powszednie, 1800–1914 (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1985), 522–523. 170.  On martial law, see Blobuam, Rewolujca, 260–291; Kiepurska, Inteligencja zawodowa Warszawy, 336–370; and Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Authority Restored (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 216–263 and 337–368. Also see Reakcja Stołypinowska w Królestwie Polskim, 1907–1910, ed. Herman Rappaport (Warsaw: Państwowy Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1974); and AGAD, (K)GGW, File 103826, Dec. 8/21 1905, fol. 20, in Kalabiński, Carat, doc. 312, 383–384. 171.  Ha-yom, no. 47, 10/23 IX 1906, 3. 172.  Di naye tsaytung, no. 5, 6/19 VIII 1906, 4. 173.  Di naye tsaytung, no. 17, 20 VIII/2 IX 1906, 1. 174.  Ha-yom, no. 44, 4/17 IX 1906, 4. For additional examples of such activity, see Di naye tsaytung, no. 1, 1/14 VIII 1906, 3; Di naye tsaytung, no. 4, 4/17 VIII 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, no. 17, 20 VIII/2 IX 1906, 1; Ha-yom, no. 13, 30 VII/12 VIII 1906, 3; Ha-yom, no. 45, 5/18 IX 1906, 4; Ha-yom, no. 47, 10/23 IX 1906, 3; Unzer leben, no. 24, 19 III/1 IV 1907, supplement, 2; Idishes tageblat, no. 17, 19 I/1 II

Notes to Chapters Three and Four 1907, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 84, 9/22 IV 1907, 3. For a personal account of this period of reaction, see the memoirs of Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 134. 175.  See, for example, Der telegraf, no. 92, 28 IV/11 V 1906, 3; Der veg, no. 106, 12/25 V 1906, 3; Der veg, no. 183, 13/26 VIII 1906, 3; and Unzer leben, no. 29, 26 III/8 IV 1907, 4. 176.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2691, Feb. 27, 1906, fols. 84a–84b. 177.  Di naye tsaytung, no. 1, 1/14 VIII 1906, 3. 178.  L. Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkhistishe grupe,” 2. 179.  Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 139–143. For more on such actions, see Litwak, Mah she-hiya, 166–171. 180.  Idishes tageblat, no. 31, 21 VI/4 VII 1906, 4. 181.  The widespread association of revolutionary organizations and Jewish supporters with violence is addressed at length in chapter 6. 182.  Idishes tageblat, no. 25, 14/27 VI 1906, 3. 183.  Note Ascher’s comments: “During the first nine months of 1905, the workers were too disorganized, and their activities too disparate, for them to have assumed leadership in any meaningful sense. . . . The labor unrest still lacked a conscious political focus, and so long as that was the case the liberals were bound to be the dominant force in the political arena.” Ascher, Russia in Disarray, 150. On liberal politics in St. Petersburg, see Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg, 254.

Chapter Four 1.  Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 27. 2.  On cafes, theater, and the press, see Habermas, Public Sphere, 32–37, 38–-41, and 16–22, as well as 181–195. 3.  Habermas, Public Sphere, 37. Also see ibid., 33. “The coffee house not merely made access to the relevant circles less formal and easier; it embraced the wider strata of the middle class, including craftsmen and shopkeepers.” 4.  Ibid., 38–39 and 14. 5.  Ibid., 181; also 16–22 and 181–196, as well as 88, 163, 168, and 175. Also see Michael Schudson, “News, Public, Nation,” American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (April 2002): 483. 6.  Habermas, Public Sphere, 27. 7.  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London–New York: Verso, 1991), 22–46. 8.  As Cheah notes: “Since its organization comes from within itself, this form of techne is not merely artificial. The nation is an organism. Even though it is patently the product of modern tech mediation, the technical has been subordinated by and made into an integral moment of the people’s life process.” Pheng Cheah, Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 290.

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Notes to Chapter Four 9.  See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6. 10.  Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1994), 58– 68. On the serialization of the national idea, see Benedict Anderson, “Nationalism, Identity, and the Logic of Seriality,” in Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons (London: Verso, 1998), 29–45. 11.  Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 235–236. Also see Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 240. 12.  Derek Penslar, “Introduction: The Press and the Jewish Public Sphere,” Jewish History 14 (2000): 3–8; Sarah Abrevaya Stein, “Creating a Taste for News: Historicizing Judeo-Spanish Periodicals of the Ottoman Empire,” Jewish History 14 (2000): 9–28; Ela Bauer, “From the Salons to the Street: The Development of a Jewish Public Sphere in Warsaw at the End of the 19th Century,” Jahrbuch des ­Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 7 (2008): 143–159; Jonathan Frankel, “Jewish Politics and the Press: The ‘Reception’ of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (1860),” Jewish History 14 (2000): 29–50; Tony Michels, “‘Speaking to Moyshe’: The Early Socialist Yiddish Press and Its Readers,” Jewish History 14 (2000): 51–82; and Marcos Silber, “Jews and Non-Jews in the Public Sphere in Poland (1848–1939): A Brief Prolegomenon,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 7 (2008): 115–125. Also see ­Hannan Hever, Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon: Nation Building and Minority Discourse (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 25–27. For applications of Habermas to Russian society, see Joseph Bradley, “Subjects into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society, and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia,” American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (Oct. 2002): 1094–1123; Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 109–165; Louise McReynolds, The News under Russia’s Old Regime: The Development of a Mass-Circulation Press (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 3–29; and Beth Holmgren, Rewriting Capitalism: Literature and the Market in Late Tsarist Russia and the Kingdom of Poland (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1998). 13.  Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York– Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 119–133; and Jeffrey Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). 14.  Feiner discusses the difficulty that the Haskalah faced as an intellectual movement that had trouble adapting to the challenges posed by mass society. Shmuel Feiner, “‘Ke-yonek ha-nosheḥ shedai imo’: post-haskalah be-kets ha-meah ha-tesha‘ ‘esreh,” Alpayim 21 (2000): 59–94. For more on the size and scope of the Jewish Enlightenment, see Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983); and Mordechai Zalkin, Ba-‘alut ha-shaḥar:

Notes to Chapter Four ha-haskalah ha-yehudit be-imperia ha-Rusit be-me’ah ha-tisha‘ ‘esreh (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000). 15.  Both Feiner and Miron continue this conflation of maskilim and Hebrew writers with a specifically Jewish “republic of letters.” See Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment; and Dan Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam: Li-deyokanah shel ha-republikah ha-sifrutit ha-‘ivrit bi-tehilat ha-meah ha-esrim (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1987), 9–19. Note Biale’s comment: “In choosing either Hebrew or a European language, the maskilim were almost deliberately constructing an elite culture, because the vernacular of the vast majority of Jews was Yiddish and few could read Russian or German or the flowery, artificial Hebrew of the Haskalah.” David Biale, “A Journey between Worlds: East European Jewish Culture from the Partitions of Poland to the Holocaust,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 825. 16.  For more on these changes, see Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture, 18–19 and 21–22. 17.  Also see Habermas, Public Sphere, 33. “The coffee house not merely made access to the relevant circles less formal and easier; it embraced the wider strata of the middle class, including craftsmen and shopkeepers.” 18.  Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture, 19 and 21–22. 19.  For a discussion of coffeehouses, pastry shops, and similar establishments in Warsaw, see Wojciech Herbaczyński, W dawnych cukierniach i kawiarniach warszawskich (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1983). 20.  For more on the role of coffeehouses in Central Europe, see Sarah Elizabeth Wobick, “Siting the Public Sphere: The Place of the Coffeehouse in the Lives of Jews and Women in Central Europe in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth centuries,” master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2004). Also see Shachar Pinsker, “Lemberg, Vienne, Berlin: Cafés Juifs et Créativité Littéraire,” Les Cahiers du Judaïsme no. 26, (2009): 31–43. 21.  For an account of how Ha-tsofe was run, see the memoirs of the paper’s founder, Eliezer Eliahu Friedman. Friedman, Sefer zikhronot (Tel Aviv: Aḥdut, 1926), 248–313. For more on the impact of Ha-tsofe and other newspapers on the literary scene in Warsaw, see Dan Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam, 365–381; Chone Shmeruk, Prokim fun der yidisher literatur-geshikhte (Tel Aviv: Farlag Y. L. Perets, 1988), 292–308; and Avrom Reyzen, Lider, dertseylungen, zikhroynes (Buenos Aires: YIVO, 1966), 260–274. 22.  Ha-tsofe, no. 498, 25 VIII/7 IX, 1904, 849. In his memoirs, Yeḥezkel Kotik notes that some Jews would circumvent the religious ban on conducting financial transactions on the Jewish Sabbath by paying for their drinks on Friday and bringing a receipt on Saturday so that they could drink beer or wine on the Sabbath. Yeḥezkel Kotik, Mayne zikhroynes, vol. 2 (Berlin: Klal-Verlag, 1922), 90. While the practice of Jews paying for services in advance of the Sabbath or holidays and receiving said services on credit was not entirely new, Kotik’s comments show that traditional Jews were among those drawn to these new public centers, and that

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Notes to Chapter Four they institutionalized practices in order to ensure their participation in these institutions. On the practice of “selling drinks on credit to Jews” on the Sabbath, see Jacob Katz, The “Shabbes Goy”: A Study in Halakhic Flexibility, trans. Yoel Lerner (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 94. For more on such developments in Warsaw at this time, see Bernard Singer (Regnis), Moje Nalewki (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1959), 91–94. Also see Endelman’s contextualization of similar phenomena in early-nineteenth-century London. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 143–144. 23.  A. Litvin (Shmuel Leyb Hurvits), “Yehezkel Kotik un zayn kaviarnaya,” in his Yudishe neshomes, vol. 4 (New York: Folksbildung, 1917), 3. For similar charges regarding divisions between Polish Jews and new arrivals, see Jacob Shatzky, “Institutional Aspects of Jewish Life in Warsaw in the Second Half of the 19th Century,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 10 (1955): 38; Ha-tsofe, no. 427, 2/15 VI 1904, 555; and Shmarya Levin, “Youth in Revolt,” in Forward from Exile: The Autobiography of Shmarya Levin, trans. Maurice Samuel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967), 262–263. 24.  On the influx of young men into Warsaw at this time, see Nahum Nir-­ Rafalkes, Ershte yorn: in rod fun dor un bavegung (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Perets bibliotek, 1960), 59; Avrom Kotik, Dos lebn fun a idishen inteligent (New York: H. Toybenshlag, 1925), 100–101; and Sh. Shnitser, Pogrom oyf der untervelt in 1905 (Warsaw: Groshn bibliotek, 1935), 12–15. 25.  See, for example, Di naye tsaytung, no. 5, 6/19 VIII 1906, 4; and Di naye tsaytung, no. 25, 16 VIII/11 IX 1906, 2. 26.  Avrom Teytlboym, Varshever heyf: mentshn un gesheenishn (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun poylishe yidn in Argentine, 1947), 120. Also see A. Litwak (Ḥayim Ya‘akov Helfand), Mah she-hiya: zikhronot ‘al tenu‘at ha-poalim ha-yehudit, trans. H. S. Ben Avraham (Ein Harod: Hakibuts ha-meuḥad, 1945), 168. 27.  Litvin, “Alfonsen,” Yudishe neshomes, 4:4. For more on public space and Warsaw’s Jewish underworld, see Shnitser, Pogrom oyf der untervelt, 51–64. 28.  Shnitser, Pogrom oyf der untervelt, 56 and 58. Also see Litwak’s account of the violence between Jewish workers, Jewish pimps, and Jewish prostitutes. Litwak, Mah she-hiya, 161–164. For contemporary accounts see, for example, Kurier Codzienny, no. 130, 12/25 V 1905, 5–6; and Kurier Codzienny, no. 131, 13/26 V 1905, 5–6. For more on “public houses” in the Russian Empire at this time, see Laurie Bernstein, Sonia’s Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 144–188. 29.  Yeḥezkel Kotik, Mayne zikhroynes. 30.  On Kotik and his memoirs, see Jack Mark Kugelmass, “Native Aliens: The Jews of Poland as a Middleman Minority,” Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research, 1980, 125–164; and Yeḥezkel Kotik, Mah she-raiti: zikhronotav shel Yeḥezkel Kotik, ed. and trans. David Assaf (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1999), 13–84. 31.  A. Litvin, “Yehezkel Kotik,” 1.

Notes to Chapter Four 32.  For more information regarding Kotik’s café and Warsaw literati, see Litvin, “Yehezkel Kotik,” 6. On the nexus between the coffeehouse and newspapers, note Habermas’s comment: “The moral weeklies, on the contrary, were still an immediate part of coffee-house discussions.” Habermas, Public Sphere, 42. Also see Singer (Regnis), Moje Nalewki, 78–79. 33.  On Kotik’s role as a communal activist, see Litvin, “Yehezkel Kotik,” 3–11. Also see Kotik, Ma she-raiti, 27. 34.  Shlomo Shreberk, Zikhronot ha-motsi le-or Shlomo Shreberk (Tel Aviv: S.  Shreberk, 1955), 144. Also see Avrom Reyzen, Epizodn fun mayn lebn, vol. 1 (Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1929), 214–216. Originally cited in Kotik, Ma she-raiti, 26. For contemporary examples regarding the connection between cafes, newspapers and public readings, see Der veg, no. 72, 30 XI/13 XII 1905, 2. 35.  Shreberk, Zikhronot ha-motsi, 158–159. Shreberk is probably referring to the bilingual pamphlet published by Kotik in 1899 titled ‘Aseret ha-dibrot li-vene tsion. Also note Litvin’s description of how Kotik would peddle his organizational literature. Litvin, “Yehezkel Kotik,” 2–3, 7 and 9. 36.  Reyzen, Epizodn fun mayn lebn, 1:214–215. For more on the fluid nature of political allegiance at this time, see Nir-Rafalkes’s remarks regarding the diverse nature of Poale Zion’s early members as well as the political wanderings of the Poale Zion activist-cum-Zionist firebrand-cum-Folkist leader Noah Prylucki. NirRafalkes, Ershte yorn, 108–109. Also see Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 54–55; and Sarah Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 113. Compare these comments with Habermas’s analysis of the role of cafes in the construction of an inherently open and inclusive public sphere. Habermas, Public Sphere, 33–34. Also note Habermas’s comment: “A public sphere from which specific groups would be eo ipso excluded was less than merely incomplete; it was not a public sphere at all.” Habermas, Public Sphere, 85. 37.  For additional examples of the central role of cafes and restaurants in Jewish society, see Shlomo Zemach’s memoirs, Shana rishona (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1965), 7, 46–47, and 143; Dan Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam, 372; A. Mukdoni (Alexander Kappel), In Varshe un in Lodzsh: mayne bagegenishn, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires: Tsentralfarband fun poylishe yidn in Argentine, 1955), 25–28; Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 158; Shnitser, Pogrom oyf der untervelt, 58; Singer (Regnis), Moje Nalewki, 78–80; and Yeḥezkel Kotik, Mayne zikhroynes, 2:90 and 238–240. 38.  Tygodnik Ilustrowany, no. 18, 5 V 1906, 341. For more on the role played by cafes and sweetshops in the Polish political milieu, see Andrzej Jeżewski, ed., Warszawa na starej fotografii (Warsaw: Artystyczno-Graficzne, 1960), 9. 39.  Litvak, Ma she-hiya, 160. 40.  See Teytlboym, Varshever heyf, 120, as well as 24, 78–80. For more on the Proletariat at this time, see Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 147; and A. Litvak, Mah ­she-hiya, 155–156.

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Notes to Chapter Four 41.  See Matityahu Mintz, Ḥaver ve-yariv: Yitzḥak Tabenkin be-mifleget Po ‘­ale-Tsiyon, 1905–1912 (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibuts ha-meuḥad, 1986), 35 and 43. For additional examples highlighting the role that cafes and restaurants played in uniting the cultural and the political realms, see B. (Beynish) Mikhalevitsh, Zikhroynes fun a yudishen sotsialist, vol. 1 (Warsaw: Farlag lebens-fragen, 1921), 73 and 77. 42.  See Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 110, and also 115; and Teytlboym, Varshever heyf, 145–146. 43.  Nir-Rafalkes charts the growth of the local Poale Zion group from a circle of some twenty members at its founding in late 1905 to six or seven cells of ten members each soon thereafter to several hundred members by early 1906. Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 108–115, 128–129, and 145. Mintz claims that the organization numbered some 300 to 400 members in May of 1906. Mintz, Ḥaver ve-yariv, 51. For a similar account of the connection between a local Poale Zion group and public institutions in Białystok, see Mordechai Pogarelski, “Poale Tsion un Tsionistish-Sotsialistishe richtungen in Bialistok,” unpublished manuscript, YIVO Institute (YIVO), Bund Archives (BA), MG-2-507, 23. 44.  Note Habermas’s comments on the threat that coffeehouses posed to the political order in early modern Britain. “Already in the 1670s the government had found itself compelled to issue proclamations that confronted the dangers bred by coffee-house discussions. The coffee-houses were considered seedbeds of political unrest; ‘Men have assumed to themselves a liberty, not only in coffee-houses, but in other places and meetings, both public and private, to censure and defame the proceedings of the State, by speaking evil of things, they understand not, and endeavouring to create and nourish universal jealousie and dissatisfaction in the minds of all His Majesties good subjects.’” Habermas, Public Sphere, 59. Quotation cited from C. S. Emden, The People and the Constitution (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1956), 33. 45.  Nir-Rafalkes, Ershte yorn, 115–127. For more on these events, see Mintz, Ḥaver ve-yariv, 43, as well as Mintz’s Hebrew translation of a police report regarding the affair: Mintz, Ḥaver ve-yariv, app. 1, 176–183. 46.  For additional examples of political arrests that took place in cafes or restaurants, see Idishes tageblat, no. 72, 9/22 VIII 1906, 3; and Ha-yom, no. 27, 15/28 VIII 1906, 4. Also see Singer (Regnis), Moje Nalewki, 80. 47.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2651, Nov. 1, 1906, fols. 126a–127b. 48.  Sources are divided on whether this café was located at 19 Gęsia Street or 21 Gęsia Street. On the arrests, see AGAD, PWIS, File 3375, Feb. 8, 1904, doc. 1087, fols. 1a–1b, and Feb. 11, 1904, doc. 1462, fols. 3a–5a. 49.  AGAD, PWIS, File 3879, March 21, 1905, doc. 564/1390, fols. 2a–2b. 50.  AGAD, KGGW, File 2738, Aug. 3, 1906, doc. 8774. For more examples of coffee and politics, see Frumkin, “Di ershte anarkistishe grupe in Varshe,” 4; Litvak, Mah she-hiya, 160; and Unzer leben, no. 63, 8/21 V 1907, 3. 51.  For English translations of the October Manifesto of 1905 and the Fundamental Laws of 1906, see Basil Dmytryshyn, ed., Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700–1917 (Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press, 1974), 383–393.

Notes to Chapter Four 52.  Klier claims that the tsarist ban was never officially repealed and that, as a result, the ban was far less relevant than many observers often claim. See John Klier, “‘Exit, Pursued by a Bear’: The Ban on Yiddish Theatre in Imperial Russia,” in Joel Berkowitz, ed., Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches (Portland, OR: Littman, 2003), 159–174. 53.  Shatzky claims that the Jewish communal institution, the gmina, periodically cooperated with the official ban on Yiddish theater out of a fear that Yiddish theater (including Purim balls) might subvert the community’s authority. See Jacob Shatzky, In shotn fun over (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun poylishe yidn in Argentine, 1947), 169–170. 54.  David E. Fishman, “The Politics of Yiddish in Tsarist Russia,” in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism, Intellect in Quest of Understanding: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Nahum M. Sarna, vol. 4 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 155–171; and Michael Charles Steinlauf, “Polish-Jewish Theater, The Case of Mark Arnsteyn: A Study of the Interplay among Yiddish, Polish and Polish-Language Jewish Culture in the Modern Period,” Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1987. Also see Steinlauf, “Fear of Purim: Y. L. Peretz and the Canonization of Yiddish Theater,” Jewish Social Studies 1, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 44–65; Steinlauf, “Jewish Theater in Poland,” Polin 16 (2003): 71–91; Steinlauf, “Mr. Geldhab and Sambo in Peyes: Images of the Jew on the Polish Stage, 1863–1905,” Polin 4 (1989): 98–128; and Steinlauf, “Jews and Polish Theater in Nineteenth Century Warsaw,” Polish Review 32, no. 4 (1987): 439–458. On Jewish theater in Warsaw, see Mirosława Bułat, “Teatr żydowski w świetle ‘Izraelity’ w latach 1883–1905,” in Teatr żydowski w Polsce do 1939, Pamiętnik Teatralny, vol. 41, nos. 1–4 (Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk 1992), 77–126. Histories of Polish theater at the time include Barbara Król-Kaczorowska, Teatry Warszawy: Budynki i sale w latach 1748–1975 (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1986), 71–211; and Teatr Polski w latach 1890–1918: zabór rosyjski, ed. Tadeusz Sivert (Warsaw: Państwowe ­Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988), 171–271 and 284–361. For a general discussion of government policies toward theater in the late tsarist era, see Murray Frame, “‘Freedom of the Theatres’: The Abolition of the Russian Imperial Theatre Monopoly,” Slavonic and East European Review 83, no. 2 (April 2005): 254–289. 55.  Steinlauf, “Fear of Purim,” 45. Also see Fishman, “The Politics of Yiddish,” 167; and Steinlauf, “Polish-Jewish Theater,” 139. 56.  See, for example, Nokhem Oyslender, Yidisher teater, 1887–1917 (Moscow: Der emes, 1940), 53–160; B. Gorin, Di geshikhte fun idishen teater, vol. 1 (New York: Literarisher farlag, 1918), 190–197; and Mukdoni, In Varshe un in Lodzsh, 1:137–296. 57.  For contemporary comments on the popularity of theater in Yiddish, see ­Kurier Codzienny, no. 146, 28 V/10 VI 1905, 5. Even if one accepts Klier’s view that the government ban of 1883 was never officially lifted, the very fact that many local officials and residents thought that it was annulled made the changes just as relevant. See Klier, “‘Exit, Pursued by a Bear,’” 172–174.

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Notes to Chapter Four 58.  See Steinlauf, “Polish-Jewish Theater,” 158–159 and 193–194. 59.  On the performance and Sholem Aleichem in Warsaw, see Ha-tsofe, no. 683, 11/24 IV 1905, 311. On “Scattered and Dispersed,” see Chone Shmeruk, “‘Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt’ le-Shalom ‘Alekhem ve-ha-hatsagot shel ha-maḥaze ba-safa ha-polanit be-Varshah ba-shanim 1905 ve-1910,” in Ezra Mendelsohn and Chone Shmeruk, eds., Studies on Polish Jewry: Paul Glikson Memorial Volume (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1987), 79–96. Teytlboym claims that the practice of Jews attending Polish theater was a standard “part of Jewish life in Warsaw.” Teytlboym, Varshever heyf, 95. For more on Jewish attendance in Polish theater and Yiddish plays translated into Polish to circumvent the ban on Yiddish theater, see Steinlauf, “Jews and Polish Theater in Nineteenth Century Warsaw”; Shatzky, In shotn fun over, 167; M. Gnessin, Darki ‘im ha-teatron ha-‘ivri (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibuts ha-meuḥad, 1946), 68–69; Anna Kuligowska-Korzeniewska, “Polska Szulamis. Dramat żydowski na scenach polskich na przełomie XIX i XX wieku,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 205 (2003): 35–51; and Kraj, no. 51, 18/31 XII 1904, 16. 60.  Sholem Aleichem to Ernestina, Warsaw, April 14, 1905, Mikhteve Shalom ‘Alekhem, 1882–1916: mivḥar, ed. and trans. Avraham Yavin (Tel-Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1998), no. 9, 23. 61.  See Steinlauf ’s discussion in “Fear of Purim.” For more on the popularity of Yiddish theater, see Y. L. Peretz to Mendele Mokher Sefarim, n.p., n.d., in Peretz, Kol kitve Y. L. Peretz, trans. S. Meltzer (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1962), vol. 10, book II, 280. 62.  See Idishes tageblat, no. 15, 2/15 VI 1906, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 29, 1/14 II 1907, 4; Idishes tageblat, no. 113, 16/29 V 1907, 4; Der veg, no. 77, 7/20 IV 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 83, 14/27 IV 1906, 1; Unzer leben, no. 24, 19 III/1 IV 1907, supplement, 2; Unzer leben, no. 29, 26 III/8 IV 1907, 4; and Der telegraf, no. 120, 2/15 VI 1906, 1. Newspapers regularly reported on theater schedules in Warsaw and Lodz. See Der veg, no. 9, 11/24 VIII 1905, 3; and Der veg, no. 12, 15/28 VIII 1905, 3. 63.  See Der veg, no. 75, 2/15 IV 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 73, 27 III/9 IV 1906, 1; and Der veg, no. 117, 28V/10 VI 1906, 2. On performances over Passover 1907, see Unzer leben, no. 24 (supplement), 19 III/1 IV 1907, 2. 64.  Thus, representatives of a Russian-language troupe visiting Warsaw in late 1904 complained that the only days they could fill the theater were on Fridays and Saturdays when they presented “Jewish plays” and “the theater overflowed with Jews.” Kraj, no. 51, 18/31 XII 1904, 16. For announcements regarding Yiddish theater on Saturday afternoons, see Der telegraf, no. 114, 26 V/8 VI 1906, 2; Der telegraf, no. 120, 2/15 VI 1906, 1; Der telegraf, no. 132, 16/29 VI 1906, 2; and Der veg, no. 77, 7/20 IV 1906, 1. 65.  Izraelita, no. 15, 6/19 IV 1905, 169. 66.  See Steinlauf, “Polish-Jewish Theater.” Also see Ha-yom, no. 8, 24 VII/6 VIII 1906, 3; Ha-tsofe, no. 683, 11/24 IV 1905, 311; Unzer leben, no. 53, 24 IV/7 V 1907, 4; Unzer leben, no. 77, 24 V/6 VI 1907, 4; and Der telegraf, no. 41, 19 II/4 III 1906, 5. 67.  See the July 1905 announcement regarding the paper’s forthcoming publication, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), PL-116.

Notes to Chapter Four Also see the Polish version of this announcement published in Izraelita, no. 31, 29 VII/11 VIII 1905, 367. For more on the inner workings of Der veg, see Keith Ian Weiser, “The Politics of Yiddish: Noyekh Prilutski and the Folkspartey in Poland, 1900–1926,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2001, 30–47. 68.  See Der veg, no. 87, 22 XII 1905/4 I 1906, 4; Der veg, no. 91, 27 XII 1905/9 I 1906, 3; and Der veg, no. 126, 6/19 VI 1906, 1. Also see the announcement regarding the contribution of 50 percent of the proceeds from New Year’s greetings in different Jewish papers to the local “national fund.” Di naye tsaytung, no. 28, 1/14 IX 1906, 1; and Di naye tsaytung, no. 31, 5/18 IX 1906, 1. 69.  See, for example, Sholem Aleichem’s letter from Kiev published in Der veg, no. 47, 29 IX/12 X 1905, 3. 70.  The Elizeum Theater seated approximately 550 at this time, and the Summer Theater over 1,000. See Król-Kaczorowska, Teatry Warszawy, 132 and 117. 71.  For anecdotal information regarding the centrality of theaters in Warsaw, see Mukdoni’s recollection of his visit to the Muranower Theater with Mordechai Spektor. A. Mukdoni, In Varshe un in Lodzsh, 1:24. 72.  See Kaes’s comments regarding the similar role played by cinema in Weimar Germany. Anton Kaes, “Leaving Home: Film, Migration, and the Urban Experience,” New German Critique 74 (Spring–Summer 1998): 190. “Cinematic events . . . constituted small but regular substitute communities which made the masses of migrants aware of thousands of others who were also seeking refuge from alienation, separation, and a sense of not belonging. Movies catered precisely to those who had left their originary geographical, political, social, and cultural milieus, and who sought confirmation in the urban lifestyle. They flocked to movies making them imaginary homelands.” 73.  Y. L. Peretz, “Benei Lurie,” in Peretz, Kol kitve, vol. 10, book 1, 107. Originally published in Peretz, “Di Luries,” Der veg, no. 33, 7 (20) II 1906, 2. 74.  Note Asad’s comments: “The professional actor’s concern to perfect a role on the stage is of a piece with the teaching and learning of rhetorical skills (speech, gesture, attitude, behavior) by agents in other domains where actions are not absolutely ‘their own.’” See Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 77. 75.  On the serialization of national identity, see Anderson, “Nationalism, Identity, and the Logic of Seriality,” 29–45, esp. 34–35. 76.  Noah Prylucki, Yidish teater, 1905–1912, vol. 2 (Bialystok: A. Albek, 1921), 81–86. Steinlauf raises some of these themes in “Fear of Purim.” 77.  Goldfaden to Lichtenshtayn, New York, December 12, 1904, Goldfadenbukh (New York: Idisher teater muzey, 1926), 74–75. On theater and the representation of culture and identity, see M. Gnessin, Darki ‘im ha-teatron ha ‘ivri, 66-69. 78.  Also see the article by Mark Arnsteyn in Der veg, no. 26, 1/14 IX 1905, 1–2; and that by Sholem Asch, Der veg, no. 37, 14/27 IX 1905, 1–2. 79.  Habermas, Public Sphere, 41. 80.  Prylucki, Yidish teater, 78. Also see A. Mukdoni, “Zikhroynes fun a yidishn

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Notes to Chapter Four teater-kritiker,” in Jacob Shatzky, ed., Arkhiv far der geshikhte fun yidishn teater un drame, vol. 1 (New York–Vilna: YIVO, 1930), 341–421. For more on the relationship between the Jewish critic and the Yiddish theater, see Nina Warnke, “The Child Who Wouldn’t Grow Up: Yiddish Theatre and Its Critics,” in Berkowitz, Yiddish Theatre, 201–216; Veidlinger, Jewish Public Culture, 183–186; and Joanna Godlewska, “Polski Żyd: Jakub Appenszlak jako krytyk teatralny,” in Teatr żydowski w Polsce, 127–134. 81.  Lucifer (Y. L. Peretz), “Der tog,” Der veg, no. 74, 2 (15) XII 1905, 4. Several years later, Peretz and a group of Jewish intellectuals including Sokolow and others would establish an organization dedicated to improving the level of Yiddish theater, including the Yiddish spoken in these venues. Writing to no less than the grandfather of modern Jewish literature, Mendele Moykher Seforim, Peretz complained: “Thousands of Jewish people go to the Jewish theater day in day out (or more precisely, each and every evening) and they don’t hear a word of Yiddish, as the plays presented are complete and total trash [shund]. ‘Yiddish’ and ‘shund’ have become synonyms in the theater.” Y. L. Peretz to Mendele Moykher Sefarim, 1910, in Kol kitve, vol. 10, book II, 280. 82.  Y. L. Peretz, “Hoy, dalut, dalut!” in Kol kitve, vol. 10, book I, 89. Peretz was repeatedly disgusted by the public’s thirst for shund (lowbrow) performances. Complaining in a letter to David Pinsky, Peretz noted with disdain: “We have three theaters here and three troupes. In each one there are several talented people; and usually—shund.” Y. L. Peretz to David Pinsky, Reinharz, 29 VIII 1906, in Peretz, Kol kitve, vol. 10, book 2, 235. 83.  See Habermas’s analysis of different terms used to describe the public and the public sphere. Habermas, Public Sphere, 25–26 and 89–102. For uses of the Yiddish term publikum in this context, see Shatzky, In shotn fun over, 176 and 180; Goldfaden’s letter to Lichtenshtayn, Goldfaden-bukh, 74; Der veg, no. 117, 28 V/10 VI 1906, 2; Der telegraf, no. 41, 19 II/4 III 1906, 5; Der telegraf, no. 123, 5/19 VI 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, no. 5, 6/19 VIII 1906, 4; Unzer leben, no. 164, 9/22 IX 1907, 3; and Lodzer nakhrikhten, no. 211, 7/20 XI 1907, 4. 84.  Prylucki, Yidish teater, 2:116; also see ibid., 2: 76. For more on Prylucki as a theater critic, see A. Mukdoni, In Varshe un in Lodzsh, 1:231–242, esp. 233–235. On Rousseau’s understanding of the delicate relationship between the public and its leaders see Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. H. J. Tozer (Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth, 1998), 25–57. For a critique of the different interpretations and applications of Rousseau’s ideas, see J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Mercury Books, 1961), 38–50. 85.  On theater and the masses in another east European context, see Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 100–121. 86.  Ha-mashkif, “Hashkefa ‘ivrit,” Ha-shiloaḥ 15 (1905): 91. 87.  Y. Zerubavel, Ale ḥayim (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Perets, 1960), 82. 88.  For larger discussions of these developments in the Russian Empire, see

Notes to Chapter Four Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, 109–165; McReynolds, News under Russia’s Old Regime, 198–222; and Holmgren, Rewriting Capitalism, 1–16. On the October Manifesto and other reforms, see Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 211–242. 89.  On the explosion of Jewish newspapers and journals in this period, see Chone Shmeruk, Prokim fun der yidisher literatur-geshikhte, 292–308; Avrom Reyzen, Lider, dertseylungen, zikhroynes, 260–274; and Avrom Kirzhnits, Di yidishe prese in der gevezener rusisher imperye, 1823–1916 (Moscow-Kharkov-Minsk: Tsentraler felker-farla fun fssr, 1930), 15–36 and 72–88. Also see Fishman, “The Politics of Yiddish,” 159–163; and Dan Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam, 367–381. On the founding and popularity of Idishes tageblat, see Khayim Finkelshteyn, Haynt: a tsaytung bay yidn, 1908– 1939 (Tel Aviv: Farlag Y. L. Perets, 1978), 23–48, esp. 27–28 and 43– 44; and Khayim Finkelshtayn, “Di grinder fun varshever Haynt,” in Hyman Bass (Khayim Bez), ed., Pinkes far der forshung fun der yidisher literatur un prese, vol. 3 (New York: Yidishen kultur-kongres, 1975), 345–368, esp. 348–349 and 362–363. 90.  Fuks cites a combined distribution of over 100,000 copies for Yiddish and Hebrew dailies and another 40,000 copies for weeklies in Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish. In both cases, close to 90 percent of all papers distributed were in Yiddish. See Marian Fuks, Prasa żydowska w Warszawie, 1823–1939 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979), 298. Also see Fuks, “Początki n ­ owoczesnej prasy żydowskiej w Warszawie (do 1918 r.),” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 95, no. 3 (1975): 51–52, 17–52. Corrsin is somewhat less generous in his figures. See Stephen David Corrsin, “Political and Social Change in Warsaw from the January Insurrection to the First World War: Polish Politics and the ‘Jewish Question,’” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1981, 263. According to Stein, Yiddish papers may have been read by as many as five to fifteen individuals. Stein, Making Jews Modern, 33. The total distribution of Polish-language periodicals published in Warsaw at this time hovered around 150,000. For more on Polish newspapers and journals, see Zenon Kmiecik, Prasa polska w rewolucji 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1980), esp. 24 and 60; Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000), 77; and Corrsin, “Political and Social Change in Warsaw,” 236–237. On literacy rates in Warsaw at the time, see Halina Kiepurska, Inteligencja zawodowa Warszawy, 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1967), 13–16; as well as Corrsin, “‘The City of Illiterates?’ Levels of Literacy among Poles and Jews in Warsaw, 1882–1914,” Polin 12 (1999): 221–241. 91.  On Nahum Sokolow and Ha-tsefira, see Ela Bauer, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow’s Political Thought (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005); and Shoshana (Anish) Stiftel, “Derko shel Naḥum Sokolow min ha-pozitivizm ha-Yehudi-Polani el ha-tenua ha-tsiyonit,” Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 1994. 92.  For information regarding Ha-tsefira’s financial difficulties in this period, see Menachem Ussishkin to Nahum Sokolow, Odessa, 28 VI/11 VII 1906, Cen-

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Notes to Chapter Four tral Zionist Archives (CZA), Sokolow Collection (SC), A-18, File 13/2; Menachem ­Ussishkin to Nahum Sokolow, Odessa, 29 Tamuz Tarsa”v (22 VII 1906), CZA, SC, A-18, File 13/2; and Menachem Ussishkin to Nahum Sokolow, Odessa, 1/14 XII 1906, CZA, SC, A-18, File 13/2. Also see Regina Sokolow to Nahum Sokolow, Warsaw, 9 XI 1905, CZA, SC, A-18, uncatalogued box, no. 221 aleph. On Sokolow’s decision to abandon the Hebrew daily and enter the realm of Jewish diplomacy, see his open letter: London, 5 IV 1906, YIVO Institute Archives (YIVO), Tcherikower Archive (RG 80–89), Dubnow Collection (RG 87), File 985, Doc. 75523. 93.  Note Grünbaum’s comments on the fate of Hebrew newspapers at the time: Yitzḥak Grünbaum, P’ne ha-dor, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ha-sifriyah ha-tsiyonit, 1957), 75. Also see Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 67. 94.  Bialik to Sh. Y. Abramovitch (Mendele Mokher Seforim), Odessa, 3/16 I 1906, Ḥalifat igrot ben S. Y. Abramovitch u-ven Ḥ. N. Bialik ve-Y. Ḥ. Ravnitski, ed. Chone Shmeruk (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1976), no. 2, 33. 95.  Sholem Aleichem to Ernestina, Warsaw, 30 VI 1905, Mihteve Shalom ‘Alekhem, no. 11, 24–25. According to Sholem Aleichem, Sokolow’s efforts to secure a license for a Yiddish paper predated Ha-tsefira’s closure by some six months. 96.  For a testimony to the sheer power that the very existence of daily papers possessed at this time, see Singer (Regnis), Moje Nalewki, 71–72. 97.  On this process, see Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 266, 276, and 335. The mobilization of the Jewish public in Warsaw will be discussed in chapter 5. 98.  Ha-yom, no. 51, 14/27 IX 1906, 4; and Der veg, no. 206, 11/24 IX 1906, 1. For other New Year’s greetings that connected newspapers with communities, see Di naye tsaytung, no. 28, 1/14 IX 1906, 1; and Di naye tsaytung, no. 31, 5/18 IX 1906, 1. 99.  The young David Gruen was also, apparently, a regular reader of Ha-tsofe before his departure for Ottoman Palestine in the summer of 1906. See David Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, no location, 28 VI 1904, in Igrot Ben-Gurion, 1904–1919, ed. Yehuda Erez, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1971), no. 4, 17; and David Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, 20 XI 1904, in Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 12, 35. 100.  See Der veg’s rendition of the Passover story that was designed to encourage Jews in Warsaw to vote in the elections to the First Duma, Der veg, no. 73, 27 III/9 IV 1906, 1. Also see Głos Żydowski, nos. 10–11, 6 IV 1906, 133. For other reinterpretations of the Passover story at this time, see “Hagada shel pesaḥ,” Hulyot 2 (1994): 245–254. For additional attempts to educate the masses regarding the meaning of traditional Jewish holidays, see the pamphlet “Hanukah” distributed by the Warsaw organization Toshiyah in 1904 and reprinted in 1911. Ḥanukah (Warsaw, 1904 and 1911). On papers and charity, see Ha-tsofe, no. 504, 2/15 IX 1904, 875. For other examples of papers fulfilling roles traditionally undertaken by communal organizations, see, for example, Der veg, no. 139, 21 VI/4 VII 1906, 1; Der telegraf, no. 121, 4/17 VI 1906, 1; and Izraelita, no. 48, 22 XII 1905, 561. 101.  See Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin, 1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 16–20.

Notes to Chapter Four 102.  Cited in Anderson, Imagined Communities, 35. 103.  Ha-tsofe, no. 504, 2/15 IX 1904, 875. 104.  Ha-tsofe, no. 425, 31 V/13 VI 1905, 548. Also see Der telegraf, no. 15, 19 I/1 II 1906, 4. 105.  Der veg, no. 11, 14/27 VIII 1905, 3. 106.  For more on this point, see Fritzsche, Reading Berlin, 16–20; and Stein, Making Jews Modern. 107.  Aḥiasaf, vol. 12, Ha-tsofe, unnumbered page, advertisement supplement, 1904. 108.  Ha-tsofe, no. 568, 22 XI/5 XII 1904, 1053. 109.  Queries often revolved around residency rights, employment regulations, and other government matters. See, for example, Ha-tsofe, no. 364, 15/28 III 1904, 275; and Ha-tsofe, no. 482, 6/19 VIII 1904, 785. For similar observations regarding the influence of urbanization on the place of religion and the role of the religious elite in a different time and place, see Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 134 and 142. 110.  Respectively, Ha-tsofe, no. 341, 16/29 II 1904, 172; and Ha-tsofe, no. 468, 21 VII/3 VIII 1904, 728. 111.  Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, 1 Adar A, Tarsa”h (6 II 1905), CZA, Menaḥem Ussishkin Collection (UC), A-24, File 81-1, letter no. 149. Also see Menaḥem Ussishkin to Ḥayim Katzenelson, Ekaterinoslav, 21 Heshvan Tarsa”h (30 X 1904), CZA, Ḥayim Katzenelson Collection, AK-25. 112.  Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, 22 Adar Aleph Tarsa”h (27 II 1905), CZA, UC, A-24, File 81-1, letter no. 169. 113.  Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, 30 Adar A Tarsa”h (7 III 1905), CZA, UC, A-24, File 81-1, letter no. 202. Also see Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, 19 Shvat Tarsa”h (25 II 1905), CZA, UC, A-24, File 81-1, unnumbered postcard. For a similar assessment of Zionism’s waning popularity at this time, see David Green to Shmuel Fuchs, 2 IV 1905, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 20, 55; and Chaim Weizmann to Vera Khatzman, Warsaw, 21 III 1903, in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, ed. Meyer W. Weisgal, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), no. 296, 276–277. “I never imagined that I would find it such hard going; mainly because of the special conditions here, and because the Jews are divided into a large number of groups that have nothing in common with each other. There are ‘Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion,’ Hassidim, our Litvaks, all of different worlds, and to throw a bridge from one section of this population to another is very laborious work . . . I have never found things as hard as I do in Warsaw.” Also see S. J. Stupnitzky to Samuel Levinson, Warsaw, 29 III 1903, in Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. 2, no. 300, 280–281. Also see Ha-mashkif, “Hashkafa ivrit,” Ha-shiloaḥ 16 (1907): 88. 114.  Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, Yom Aleph (Sunday), letter unnumbered and undated, CZA, UC, A-24, File 81-1. For more information regarding the local Zionist organization’s inability to dictate the publication of its materials in

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Notes to Chapter Four the local Hebrew and Yiddish journals, see Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, undated postcard postmarked October, 1904, CZA, UC, A-24, File 81-1; as well as Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, 15 Sivan Tarsa”h (18 VI 1905), postcard, CZA, UC, A-24, File 81-1. “Der veg, according to the rumor, will be published here, indeed it is still being kept a secret. Prylucki promised to add me to the editorial board; however, I am suspicious as to the extent to which one can trust him.” 115.  A. Mukdoni, In Varshe un in Lodzsh, 1:35. 116.  Ben-Avigdor (A. Shlokovitch) to Slushez, 23 IV 1903, Warsaw, in Genazim, vol. 3, ed. Baruch Karu and A. M. Habermann (Tel Aviv, 1969), no. 3, 160–161. For more on Hebrew literature at the time, see Ben-Avigdor to Sh. Ben Zion, 22 III 1895, Warsaw, in Genazim, vol. 4, ed. Baruch Karu and A. M. Haberman (Tel Aviv, 1971), no. 5, 15. Also see Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam, 44. 117.  Ha-tsofe, no. 511, 14/27 IX 1904, 915. For further examples of literary assaults on ostensibly irresponsible journalism, see Yosef Ḥayim Brenner, “Ha-‘itonut h­ a-tsehuba,” in Kesher 11 (May 1992): 66–67; A. Mukdoni, In Varshe un in Lodzsh, 1:37–47; and Yitzḥak Grünbaum, Ha-shiloaḥ 14 (1905): 86–92. 118.  Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, Warsaw, 18 III 1906, CZA, UC, A-24, File 117-II; and Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menaḥem Ussishkin, Warsaw, 24 IV 1906, CZA, UC, A-24, File 117-II. 119.  Although immensely popular, Der veg was already in financial difficulties as can be seen by the repeated public pleas to subscribers who had not yet fulfilled their financial commitments to forward remaining sums to the editorial offices on Pańska Street. See Der veg, no. 77, 7/20 IV 1906, 1. On attempts to restrict the sale of Jewish newspapers, see Ha-tsofe, no. 483, 8/21 VIII 1904, 788; Di naye tsaytung, no. 12, 14/27 VIII 1906, 1; and Ha-yom, no. 22, 9/22 VIII 1906, 3. Also see Der veg, no. 78, 9/22 IV 1906, 3. On the role of the censor and the influence of the authorities on the publication of different papers, see Idishes tageblat, no. 49, 12/25 VII 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 140, 5/18 XI 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 8, 9/22 I 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 14, 5/18 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 61, 3/16 V 1907, 3; Der veg, no. 87, 22 XII 1905/4 I 1906, 3; Der veg, no. 49, 26 II/11 III 1906, 3; and Der telegraf, no. 117, 30 V/12 VI 1906, 3. Also see Shoyl Ginzburg, Amolike Peterburg, vol. 1 of Historishe verk (New York: Bikher farlag, 1944), 207–214 and 222–228. 120.  For more on Zionism and the press, see Yosef Klausner’s desperate plea that Ussishkin use his influence to support the struggling Hebrew daily, Ha-tsofe, before it became too late and “we don’t have one single organ of our own and no platform in which to write.” Yosef Klausner to Menachem Ussishkin, 17 IV/1 V 1905, CZA, UC, A-24, File 125/92. Nor was this search for a public platform limited to political Zionists. Also see Shlomo Landau’s letter seeking support for the Orthodox monthly, Ha-peles. Shlomo Landau, Kovno, Tarsa”d (1904), CZA, Mizrahi Collection, K-5, File 1/6. 121.  Tsevi Prylucki to Menachem Ussishkin, 13 IX 1906, CZA, UC, A-24, File 117 II. 122.  Der veg, no. 125, evening supplement, 4/17 VI 1906, 1–3; Der veg, special

Notes to Chapters Four and Five supplement (unnumbered), 4/17 VI 1906; Der veg, no. 126, evening supplement, 6/19 VI 1906; Der veg, no. 127, evening supplement, 7/20 VI 1906, 1–3; Der veg, evening supplement, no. 131, 12/25 VI 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 135, special supplement, 16/29 VI 1906; and, Der veg, no. 141, evening supplement, 9 VII (23 VI) 1906, 1–5. 123.  Der telegraf, no. 132, 16/29 VI 1906, 1; Der telegraf, no. 139, 25 VI/8 VII 1906, 2; Der veg, no. 126, 6/19 1906, 3; and Der veg, no. 127, 7/20 VI 1906, 3. 124.  Der veg, no. 126, 6/19 1906, 3; Der veg, no. 127, 7/20 VI 1906, 3; and Der veg, no. 130, 11/24 VI 1906, 3. 125.  Der veg, no. 139, 21 VI/4 VII 1906, 3; Der veg, no. 127, 7/20 VI 1906, 2; Der veg, no. 130, 11/24 VI 1906, 2; Der veg, no. 161, 17/30 VII 1906, 2; Der telegraf, no. 120, 2/15 VI 1906, 1; Der telegraf, no. 132, 16/29 VI 1906, 2; and Der telegraf, no. 139, 25 VI/8 VII 1906, 2. The practice of selling theater tickets at local cafes, restaurants, and bookstores was not an entirely new development. See Der telegraf, no. 15, 19 I/1 II 1904, 4. 126.  Der telegraf, no. 123, 6/19 VI 1906, 1.

Chapter Five 1.  See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). For critiques of Habermas’s theory, see Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); and Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse, ed. and intro. Johanna Meehan (New York: Routledge, 1995). 2.  Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, 289–339. Also see Craig Calhoun’s remarks, “Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, 1–48; as well as Benjamin Nathans, “Habermas’s ‘Public Sphere’ in the Era of the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 620–44; and Michael Schudson, “News, Public, Nation,” American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (April 2002): 481–495. 3.  See Marie Fleming, “Women and the ‘Public Use of Reason,’” in Feminists Read Habermas, 117–137; and Joan B. Landes, “The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconsideration,” in Feminists Read Habermas, 91–116. Also see ­Landes’s monograph, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988). 4.  Harold Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Habermas of Historians,” Journal of Modern History 72 (March 2000): 156, 153–182. Also see Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies: Cultural Identity in France and Germany, 1750– 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). I am indebted to Michael K. Silber for his comments on this issue. 5.  Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere,” 166. 6.  Habermas, Public Sphere, 56. Cited in Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere,” 166.

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Notes to Chapter Five 7.  Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies, 25–28. 8.  Ibid., 27. 9.  Pheng Cheah, Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 256; also see ibid., 335: “This public grows into a sphere of public opinion, whose force is feared by the colonial state. The paper’s power of critical publicity derives from its organic unity with the people. . . . Through the paper, which is an organ deployed to voice these extra-state interests, the natives come together and become the people, represented by an autonomous public.” Also see Chatterjee’s comments regarding how the public sphere creates: “the cultural standards through which ‘public opinion’ could claim to speak on behalf of the nation.” Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 236. 10.  On the dialects of enlightenment, see Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1999). 11.  On the turn from theory to action, see Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 12.  Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 409. Also see Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Authority Restored (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 43; and Emmons, Political Parties, 269. 13.  These regulations are detailed in the bilingual (Polish and Russian) flier distributed by government authorities that outlines voting rights according to the laws of August 19, 1905 and March 21, 1906. Archiwum Państwowe m. st. Warszawy (APW), Warszawska Gubernialna Komisja Wyborów do Dumy Państwowej, File 85, 1. Also see the public announcement in Gazeta Polska, no. 13, 15 I 1906, 1. 14.  Kiepurska cites the figure of 105,084 eligible voters in Warsaw’s twelve electoral districts, or 13.6 percent of the total population. Halina Kiepurska, Warszawa w rewolucji 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1974), 288. For contemporary figures, see Nowa Gazeta, no. 187, 21 IV 1906, 4. 15.  For more information on the intricacies of the elections in the Russian Empire’s twenty largest cities, see Terence Emmons, The Formation of Political Parties and the First National Elections in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 265–286. 16.  See, for example, Nowa Gazeta, no. 187, 21 IV 1906, 4. 17.  This figure corresponds closely to Emmons’s conclusion that “[i]n most large towns the registered electorate under the December law seems to have ranged from between ten and fifteen percent of the total population.” Emmons, Political Parties, 270. 18.  For detailed demographic figures, see Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 5 (St. Petersburg, 1907–1913), 335.

Notes to Chapter Five 19.  On the rules regulating gmina elections, see O pożądanych reformach w gminie żydowskiej w Warszawie (Warsaw, 1906), 5. Also see Noyekh Davidson, Di varshever idishe gmine (Warsaw, 1912); Kurier Codzienny, no. 119, 1/14 V 1905, 5; Kurier Codzienny, no. 243, 25 IX/8 X 1905, 3; and Izraelita, no. 11, 16 III 1906, 123–124. 20.  On Jewish participation in the elections throughout the empire, see Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900–1914: The Modernization of Russian Jewry (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 32–37. 21.  On the pro-Russian orientation of the Kadets, see Emmons, Political Parties, 42, as well as 177 and 197. Also see Yitzḥak Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot el shelosh ‘ha-dumot’ ha-rusyot,” Milḥamot Yehude Polin (Warsaw: Aḥiasaf, 1922), 132–137. For an English translation of the Kadets’ program, see Basil Dmytryshyn, ed., Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700–1917 (Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press, 1974), 405–410. 22.  See Emmons, Political Parties, 149–150 and 176. For more on this group, see Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 23–39; Vladimir Levin, “Russian Jewry and the Duma Elections, 1906–1907,” Jews and Slavs 7 (2000): 233–264; Binyamin Mizenmacher, “Ha-berit le-hasagat melo ha-zekhuyot le-‘am ­ha-yehudi be-Rusyah,” master’s thesis, Hebrew University, 1973; and the spirited defense by one of the more prominent Jewish Kadets, Maxim Vinaver, M. (Maxim) Vinaver, Kadety i evreiskii vopros (St. Petersburg, 1907). 23.  On the Great Synagogue, see Alexander Guterman, Me-hitbolelut ­le-le’umiyut: perakim be-toldot bet ha-keneset ha-gadol ha-Sinagoga be-Varshah, 1806–1943 (Jerusalem: Karmel, 1993); and Henryk Kroszczor, “Wielka Synagoga na Tłumackiem,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 95, no. 3 (1975): 3–16. For more on these circles, see: Alina Cała, Asymilacja Żydów w Królestwie Polskim, 1864–1897 (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1989). On the connection between these three institutions, see, for example, Izraelita, no. 4, 21 I/2 II 1905, 45; Izraelita, no. 13, 25 III/7 IV 1905, 152; Izraelita, no. 47, 15 XII 1905, 550; and Izraelita, no. 48, 22 XI 1905, 561. 24.  Izraelita, no. 45, 1 XII 1905, 517–519. Also see Izraelita, no. 16, 27 IV 1906, 186–187. For a more detailed analysis of this position, see Scott Ury, “‘On the Gallows’! ‘The Politics of Assimilation’ in Turn of the Century Warsaw,” Polin 20 (2008), 339–353. 25.  On the Progressive Democrats, see Robert E. Blobaum, Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904–1907 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 213–217. 26.  Der telegraf, no. 11, 15/28 I 1906, 4. Also see Der telegraf, no. 1, 3/16 I 1906, 3; as well as Der veg, no. 75 2/15 IV 1906, 1; and Der veg, no. 78, 9/22 IV 1906, 2. Note Grünbaum’s comment that the Progressive Democrats waited until the week before the elections to decide to take part in the electoral process. Grünbaum, “Habeḥirot,” 133. For more on the Progressive Democrats at this time, see Tadeusz Stegner, Liberałowie Królestwa Polskiego, 1904–1915 (Gdańsk, 1990), 149–177. 27.  Note Ḥayim Katzenelson’s comments regarding his inability to comprehend, let alone respond to, the unrest in January 1905. Ḥayim Katzenelson to Menachem

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Notes to Chapter Five ­ ssishkin, Warsaw (?), Jan. 27, 1905, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Ussishkin U Collection (UC), A-24, File 81-1, unnumbered postcard. Also see Zipperstein’s description of Ahad Ha‘am’s indecisiveness at the time. Steven J. Zipperstein, ­Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha‘am and the Origins of Zionism (London: P.  Halban, 1993), 218–222. 28.  On Zionism in this period, see Yosef Goldstein, Ben tsiyonut medinit ­le-tsiyonut ma‘asit: ha-tenu‘ah ha-tsiyonit be-Rusyah be-reshita (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993). For a discussion of similar debates in Austrian Galicia, see Hannan Hever, Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 19–23 and 32–37. 29.  The decline of Ha-tsefira and other Hebrew journals is discussed in the previous chapter. 30.  For more on Sokolow’s efforts at this time, see Menaḥem Ussishkin to Naḥum Sokolow, Odessa, 28 VI/11 VII 1906, CZA, Sokolow Collection (SC), A-18, File 13/2; Menaḥem Ussishkin to Naḥum Sokolow, Odessa, 29 Tamuz Tarsa”v (22 VII 1906), CZA, SC, A-18, File 13/2; Menaḥem Ussishkin to Naḥum Sokolow, Odessa, 1/14 XII 1906, CZA, A-18, File 13/2; Naḥum Sokolow to Regina Sokolow, Liverpool, 22 IV 1906, CZA, SC, A-18, File 581; and Naḥum Sokolow to Regina Sokolow, London, 26 IV 1906, CZA, SC, A-18, File 581. Also see Kurier Codzienny, no. 92, 30 III/12 IV 1905, 2; Kurier Codzienny, no. 93, 31 III/13 IV 1905, 2; and Kurier Codzienny, no. 100, 7/20 IV 1905, 2. Also see Ela Bauer, “A Polish Jew and a Project for Jewish Emancipation in the Russian Empire: Nahum Sokolow and Count S. I. Witte, 1905–1906,” Gal-Ed 15–16 (1997): 67, 65–82. On shtadlanut and the old style of Jewish politics, see Ezra Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics (New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 26; and Scott Ury, “The Shtadlan of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Noble Advocate or Unbridled Opportunist?” Polin 15 (2002): 267–299. 31.  Ha-yom, no. 83, 27 X/9 XI 1906. 32.  Lucifer (Y. L. Peretz), Der veg, no. 74, 2/5 XII 1905, 4. 33.  Note Chaim Weizmann’s lament: “The larger part of the contemporary younger generation is anti-Zionist.” Chaim Weizmann to Theodor Herzl, Geneva, May 6, 1903, in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, ed. Meyer Weisgal, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), no. 316, 306. Cited in Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet, 218–219. For more on Zionism’s waning popularity at this time, see David Yosef Green to Shmuel Fuchs, Płońsk, 2 IV 1905, in David Ben-Gurion, Igrot David Ben-Gurion, 1904–1914, ed. Yehuda Erez, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1971), no. 20, 55. On the rise of Zionism in interwar Poland, see Ezra Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915–1926 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). 34.  Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881–1917 (New York: Longman, 1983), 218. 35.  On the Bolshevik-led boycott, see Ascher, Authority Restored, 48–50. For more on these strategies, see the PPS brochure Czy robotnik może wybierać posłów

Notes to Chapter Five do Dumy państwowej? (Warsaw, 1906), esp. 4 and 6–7; as well as Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN), PPS Collection (PPS), Sygn. 305/III/34, File 3, 41–41a; AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/34, File 3, 67; AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/36, File 3, 49; and AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/36, File 4, 29–29a. For other calls to uphold the boycott, see “Wybory pod osłoną bagnetów,” Czerwony Sztandar, no. 43, 13 I 1906, 1–2; “­Bojkot Dumy carskiej,” Czerwony Sztandar, no. 51, 2 III 1906, 1–2; and “Robotnicy polscy,” ­Czerwony Sztandar, no. 59, 5 IV 1906, 1. For a synopsis of the boycott in Lodz, see I. Sh. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund in Lodzsh (New York: Farlag unzer tsayt, 1958), 164–165. For a government report on boycotts of the worker curia, see AGAD, KGGW, File 104335, f. 9, March 27, 1906, in Źródła do dziejów klasy robotniczej na ziemiach polskich, ed. Stanisław Kalabiński, vol. 3, part 3 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1972), doc. 31, 34. The boycott was consistent with the socialist organizations’ opposition to earlier constitutional reforms including the Bulygin Duma. See Kalabiński, Źródła, vol. 3, part 2 (1971), doc. 177, 214–216. 36.  Zakład Dokumentów Życia Społecznego, Biblioteka Narodowa (DŻS, BN), File Ii Ic, doc. 30 (emphasis in original). While this particular Bund flier does not bear the name of the Warsaw Committee, the fact that it was written in Polish, and not, like most Bund fliers, in Russian or Yiddish, points to the Bund’s Warsaw Committee or some local variation thereof as the source of this Polish-language piece. For more on the Bund and constitutional projects, see the Bundist brochure Di konstitutsye un unzer program (Geneva, 1905); as well as AAN, KC PZPR, Bund Collection, Sygn. 30/I-1, 18–19 and 20–21; YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 34, Warsaw, doc. 30-31, Aug. 1905; and YIVO, BA, Collection MG-7, File 79, unnumbered doc., Aug. 1905. On the decision by various socialist parties to boycott the elections see Der telegraf, no. 1, 3/16 I 1906, 4; as well as Der telegraf, no. 3, 5/18 I 1906, 3. Also see the PPS Yiddish publication, Sotsialistishe bleter, Warsaw, no. 5, Dec. 1, 1905, 1, newspaper clipping located in YIVO, Gustave Eisner Collection, RG 316, Box 1. For more on the boycott, see Pavel Yushkevitch, Vegen vahlrekht (Warsaw, 1905); and A. D. Kirzh­nitz and M. Rafesa, eds., 1905, Evreiskoe robochee dvizhenie (Moscow: Gos izd-vo, 1928), 277–281. 37.  On the Kadets’ commitment to the constitutional project and their decision to distance themselves from other opposition organizations, see Emmons, Political Parties, 22–23 and 61–62. For expressions of Jewish faith in the path of liberalism in the Russian Empire, see, for example, Ha-tsefira, 17 II/2 III 1905, 2; Ha-tsefira, no. 91, 5/17 V 1905, 1; Ha-tsefira, no. 135, 28 VI/11 VII 1905, 2; Ha-tsefira, no. 232, 16/29 XI 1905, 1; Ha-zeman, no. 75, 6/19 IV 1906, 3; and Ha-zeman, no. 232, 15/28 XI 1905, 1. For more on Jewish liberals in Warsaw and their underlying faith in the constitutional project, see Ury, “‘The Politics of Assimilation.’” 38.  This alliance also illustrates the influence of the new Jewish centers of Warsaw and Odessa. For more on this dynamic, see Dan Miron, Bodedim be-mo‘adam: Li-deyokanah shel ha-republikah ha-sifrutit ha-‘ivrit be-teḥilat ha-meah ha-‘esrim (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1987), 333–381. Lederhendler makes this and many other im-

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Notes to Chapter Five portant points in regard to the Jewish Enlightenment’s world of Hebrew letters. See Lederhendler, Road to Modern Jewish Politics, 119–133. 39.  On the balance of power between St. Petersburg and other Jewish communities, see Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 165–198. 40.  See the full-page statement marking the paper’s inauguration and its intimate tie to the “Jewish folk-masses.” Der telegraf, undated announcement from early 1906. 41.  Der telegraf, no. 1, 3/16 I 1906, 4. 42.  Lucifer (Y. L. Peretz), “Der tog,” Der veg, no. 73, 1/14 XII 1905, 2. The language refers to Sholem Aleichem’s play Scattered and Dispersed which was playing in different Jewish theaters at the time. Also see Lucifer (Y. L. Peretz), “Der tog,” Der veg, no. 74, 2/15 XII 1905, 4. “And yet, together, we do not act. The ‘German shul’ is nailed shut, the ‘community’ is closed and our world is asleep.” 43.  Der telegraf, no. 39, 16 II/1 III 1906, 2. 44.  Der veg, no. 66, 19 III/1 IV 1906, 1. 45.  Also see Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 132. Polish political organizations expressed similar frustrations regarding their own constituencies. See, for example, the PPS brochure, Baczność! Kontrrewolucja rozstawia sidła (Warsaw, 1906), 2. “The proletariat in the countryside has an underdeveloped consciousness and does not have the means to defend its own interests.” 46.  For expressions of such optimism in the first half of 1906, see the comments of Chaim Weizmann: “And you, child, are probably enjoying a rest and new impressions of the New Russia. I think that a profound change has taken place in every sphere in these two years.” Weizmann to Vera Khatzman, Manchester, May 25, 1906, in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, ed. Meyer W. Weisgal, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1973), no. 261, 289; and “Ussishkin and Sokolow are full of hope regarding the Jewish future in Russia. Hard times still lie ahead, but the end is in sight. The Russian Jews are growing, growing and growing, and I look happily towards the great day when they will free themselves of West European-Jewish tutelage too. Then they will cease to be treated as ‘shnorrers and conspirators.’” Weizmann to Judah Leon Magnes, Manchester, June 1, 1906, in Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. 4, no. 266, 294. 47.  On these early election results, see Der veg, no. 71, 24 III/6 IV 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 75, 2/15 IV 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 76, 6/19 IV 1906, 1; and Der veg, no. 77, 7/20 IV 1906, 1. For discussions of the elections, see Levin, “Russian Jewry and the Duma Elections”; and Sidney Harcave, “The Jews and the First Russian National Elections,” American and Slavic East European Review 9, no. 1 (1950): 33–41. 48.  Der veg, no. 73, 27 III/9 IV 1906, 1. For a similar interpretation of this Jewish holiday, see the Polish-language Zionist weekly Głos Żydowski, no. 10–11, 6 IV 1906, 133. On the political uses of Jewish tradition from a somewhat later period, see Edward Portnoy, “Exploiting Tradition: Religious Iconography in Cartoons of the Polish Yiddish Press,” Polin 16 (2003): 243–267.

Notes to Chapter Five 49.  For a discussion of this point in an earlier period, see Lederhendler, Road to Modern Jewish Politics, 111–154. 50.  Der telegraf, no. 73, 2/15 IV 1906, 2. On the policies of the Jews of St. Petersburg at this time, see Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics. 51.  While Der telegraf was, for example, critical of the Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for Jews, their critiques were nowhere near as vituperative as those of other organs. See, for example, Der telegraf, no. 39, 16 II/1 III 1906, 2; and Der telegraf, no. 48, 28 II /13 III 1906, 2; as well as the bitter satirical assault on the Union published in Di Bein, no. 1, 9/22 III 1906, 8. 52.  Der telegraf, no. 74, 6/19 IV 1906, 2. Głos Żydowski also expressed a sense of surprise at the extent to which the gmina and its representatives were involved in the election campaign. See Głos Żydowski, no. 12, 20 IV 1906, 157–158. Again, Warsaw’s satirical journal Di Bein was far less complimentary. See the caricature and accompanying poem that lambasted communal leaders and the gmina for their lack of interest in the elections. Di Bein, no. 4, 14/27 IV 1906, 5–6; and Di Bein, no. 1, 9/22 III 1906, 7. Despite Di Bein’s critiques, several prominent members of Warsaw’s Jewish elite, including the President of Warsaw’s gmina Michał Bergson, appeared on the Jewish Electoral Committee’s list of electors. 53.  Der veg, no. 78, 9/22 IV 1906, 1. Also see Der veg, no. 77, 7/20 IV 1906, 1. 54.  For more on the local committee’s actions, see Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 135. On local election caucuses, see Izraelita, no. 7, 15 II 1907, 78. 55.  See Emmons, Political Parties, 281. 56.  On the rather intricate set of rules regulating the voting process in urban curiae, see Emmons, Political Parties, 277–281. 57.  See the personal announcements and accompanying instructions sent to individual voters by different government authorities. APW, Warszawska Gubernialna Komisja Wyborów do Dumy Państwowej, Collection 1131/II, File 85, p. 1; APW, Warszawska Gubernialna Komisja Wyborów do Dumy Państwowej, Collection 1131/II, File 86, 1; and APW, Warszawska Gubernialna Komisja Wyborów do Dumy Państwowej, Collection 1131/II, File 87, 2. 58.  As a result of these and other logistical difficulties, Emmons claims that “about fifty percent of the registered electorate generally turned out for the elections.” Emmons, Political Parties, 274. 59.  Di konstitutsye un unzer program (Geneva, 1905), 13, 19, and 31. Also see Yushkevitsh, Vegen vahlrekht. Throughout this period, different papers published detailed descriptions of the entire voting process. See, for example, Gazeta Polska, “Kto u nas ma prawo wyborcze,” no. 13, 15 I 1906, 1–2; Dzwon Polski, “Wybory w Warszawie,” no. 46, 20 IV 1906, 1; Dzwon Polski, “Wybory w Warszawie,” no. 46, 19 IV 1906, 1; and Dzwon Polski, “Baczność!” no. 53, 24 IV 1906, 1. Also see BN, DŻS, File Ii Ie, doc. 2933; BN, DŻS, File Ii Ie, doc. 189; and BN, DŻS, File Ii Ie, doc. 2920. Also note Weinberg’s comments regarding political consciousness among workers in Odessa. “Workers at these meetings were becoming more and more familiar with the concepts of popular sovereignty, a constituent assembly and civil

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Notes to Chapter Five liberties and how these notions were intimately connected to their lives as workers and citizens.” Also see, Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1993), 92. 60.  Nikolai Poltika, “Be-‘enai yeled ben tesha‘ . . . ,” He-avar 22 (1966): 84. 61.  Der veg, no. 76, 6/19 IV 1906, 3. 62.  Progressive representatives were listed in districts 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11; and Jewish electors were the list’s candidates in districts 3, 4, 5, 8, and 12. See Nowa Gazeta, no. 190, 24 IV 1906, 2. On coalitions between national organizations and liberal parties in the Western Provinces, see Emmons, Political Parties, 172 and 274–275. 63.  On the coalition between the Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for Jews and the Kadets see Emmons, Political Parties, 200–201; also see 197–199, 274– 275, 282, and 333–339. Also see Levin, “Russian Jewry and the Duma Elections”; and Harcave, “The Jews and the First Russian National Elections,” 38. For contemporary accounts of local coalitions, see reports of the “Jewish-Latvian-­Lithuanian-PolishRussian” coalition in Courland, Ha-zeman, no. 88, 23 IV/6 V 1906, 3; a Jewish-­ Estonian-Lithuanian-Russian-Progressive alliance in the Baltic region, ­Ha-zeman, no. 84, 17/30 IV 1906, 3; and a Jewish-peasant coalition in the Kovno and Grodno regions, Ha-zeman, no. 76, 7/20 IV 1906, 1. For more on electoral coalitions between Jewish and non-Jewish parties, see Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics, 67–72. 64.  On Jewish opposition to such coalitions, see, for example, Ha-tsefira, no. 81, 24 IV/7 V 1905, 1. 65.  DŻS, BN, File Ii 3, doc. 170. 66.  For more on the local election committee’s actions at this time, see Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 135. Note Tsevi Prylucki’s estimate that Der veg alone had a distribution of 16,000–18,000 during the week and 25,000 on the weekend (Friday). Tsevi Prylucki to Menaḥem Ussishkin, Warsaw, 13 IX 1906, CZA, UC, A-24, File 117 II. Fuks places Der veg’s distribution in 1906 at a more modest figure of 9,000 copies. Marian Fuks, “Początki nowoczesnej prasy żydowskiej w Warszawie (do 1918 r.),” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (BŻIH) 95, no. 3 (1975): 52. 67.  Der veg, no. 78, 9/22 IV 1906, 1; and Der telegraf, no. 76, 9/22 IV 1906, 1. 68.  Der veg, no. 79, 10/23 IV 1906, 1; and Der telegraf, no. 77, 10/23 IV 1906, 1. For a somewhat abbreviated Polish version of this announcement, see Izraelita, no. 15, 20 IV 1906, 179. 69.  For similar developments in the Polish political sphere, see Brian A. Porter, “Democracy and Discipline in Late Nineteenth-Century Poland,” Journal of Modern History 71, no. 2 (June 1999): 346–393. 70.  See Der veg, no. 80, 11/24 IV 1906, 3. “We have been notified that the National Democrats have printed electoral lists in Yiddish with their candidates and distributed them among Jews so that Jewish voters will think that these lists are from the Jewish Electoral Committee.” 71.  The practice of submitting preprinted lists was not limited solely to Jewish electoral committees. See Emmons, Political Parties, 277–280. 72.  Der veg, no. 79, 10/23 IV 1906, 2.

Notes to Chapter Five 73.  See Der veg, no. 80, 11/24 IV 1906, 2–3; and Der veg, no. 81, 12/25 IV 1906, afternoon supplement, 2. 74.  Der telegraf, no. 79, 12/25 IV 1906, 2; and Der veg, no. 81, 12/25 IV 1906, 1. 75.  See Kiepurska, Warszawa w rewolucji, 290; and Corrsin, Warsaw before the First World War, 86. 76.  Der telegraf, no. 81, 14/27 IV 1906, 3. 77.  Der telegraf, no. 81, 14/27 IV 1906, 2. Also see Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 136. 78.  Der veg, no. 83, 14/27 IV 1906, 1. For similar charges regarding Jewish voters who cast their lot for the National Democrats, see Der veg, no. 84, 15/28 IV 1906, 3; and Głos Żydowski, no. 14, 29 IV 1906, 174–175. On the image of the “ma yofes” in Jewish culture, see Chone Shmeruk, “ ‘Mayofes’—musag-mafteaḥ be-toldot ­ha-yaḥasim ben Yehudim le-Polanim,” in Chone Shmeruk, Ha-keriah le-navi, ed. Israel Bartal (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1999), 101–120. 79.  For contemporary charges regarding the damaging influence of premodern Jewish politics, see Ha-tsefira, no. 35, 17 II/2 III 1905, 2; Ha-tsefira, no. 134, 27 VI/10 VII 1905, 2; Ha-zeman, no. 126, 16/29 VI 1905, 2; and Ha-zeman, no. 185, 5/18 IX 1905, 3. For more on the image of premodern Jewish politics, see Ury, “The Shtadlan of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.” 80.  Der telegraf, no. 81, 14/27 IV 1906, 2 (emphasis in the original). 81.  Der telegraf, no. 81, 14/27 IV 1906, 2. A story by Y. L. Peretz, ­Bontshe the Silent, tells the tale of a Jewish man who suffers passively in silence, never complaining of his miserable lot of poverty and powerlessness. 82.  Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 136. 83.  Der telegraf, no. 104, 12/25 V 1906, 2. 84.  For more on this process in a different context, see Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 205. “But as a concrete bureaucratic function, it was in planning above all that the postcolonial state would claim its legitimacy as a single will and consciousness—the will of the nation—pursuing a task that was both universal and rational: the well-being of the people as a whole.” 85.  George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: Meridian, 1975), 16. 86.  For more on these events, see Ascher, Authority Restored, 162–215. 87.  Noah Prylucki, In Poylen: Kimat a publitsistish togbukh, 1905–1911 (Warsaw: Farlag Yidish, 1921), 78–79 (originally published in Der veg, no. 246, 2/15 XI 1906). Also see Prylucki, In Poylen, 95 (originally in Der veg, no. 278, 10/23 XII 1906); as well as Ha-yom, Y. H. Z. (I. Zagorodski), no. 79, 23 X/5 XI 1906, 1; Ha-yom, no. 81, 25 X/7 XI 1906, 1; and Ha-yom, no. 83, 27 X/9 XI 1906, 1. For more on Prylucki’s political views in this period, see Keith Ian Weiser, “The Politics of Yiddish: Noyekh Prylucki and the Folkspartey in Poland, 1900–1926,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2001, esp. 68–81. 88.  Y. H. Z. (Zagorodski), Ha-yom, no. 79, 23 X/5 XI 1906, 1.

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Notes to Chapter Five 89.  Prylucki, In Poylen, 106 (originally in Der veg, no. 294, 21 XII 1906/3 I 1907). 90.  Prylucki, In Poylen, 113 (originally published in Der veg, no. 7, 8/21 I 1907). 91.  Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 141. 92.  Idishes tageblat, no. 178, 19 XII 1906/1 I 1907, 3. Also see Idishes tageblat, no. 8, 9/22 I 1906, 2. For more on the Realist Party see Blobaum, Rewolucja, 216–217. Also see APW, Warszawski Gubernialny Urząd do Spraw Stowarzyszeń, File 20. 93.  Idishes tageblat, no. 13, 15/28 I 1907, 3. 94.  Ha-yom, no. 15, 18/31 I 1907, 1. 95.  Archiwum Akt Nowych, PPS (AAN, PPS), Sygn. 305/III/37, File 3, 42, emphasis in original. Another copy of this flier is located in the YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, Box 33, File 347. Nor were fears of retribution limited to integrationists or traditional Jews. Note the comment in Der telegraf: “In one city, they say that people will make a pogrom and Jews decide not to go to the election polls; in another city, people fear a pogrom if Jews do go to the polls and elect their candidates.” Der telegraf, no. 39, 16 II/1 III 1906, 3. Also see Der telegraf, no. 66, 21 III/3 IV 1906, 2; and Naḥum Sokolow to Regina Sokolow, London, 19 VI 1906, CZA, Sokolow Collection (SC), A-18, File 581. For reports of violence in Warsaw, see Der telegraf, no. 78, 10/23 IV 1906, 2. For an account of electoral violence in Lodz and other areas, see Gazeta Polska, no. 76, 19 III 1906, 1; and Ha-zeman, no. 63, 16/29 III 1906, 1. For more on threats of violence during the elections, see Emmons’s comments regarding Ekaterinoslav. Emmons, Political Parties, 286. 96.  See Emmons’s description of the negotiations in Odessa’s voting caucuses. Emmons, Political Parties, 281–282. For colorful accounts of these negotiations, see Ha-zeman, no. 85, 18 IV/1 V 1906; Ha-zeman, no. 74, 2/15 IV 1906; and Ha-zeman, no. 83, 20 IV/3 V 1906. Also see Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics, 23–44. 97.  Ha-yom, no. 91, 6/19 XI 1906, 1. 98.  Ha-yom, no. 121, 10/23 XII 1906, 1. Also see Ha-yom, no. 89, 3/16 XI 1906, 1. 99.  Ha-yom, no. 127, 17/30 XII 1906, 2–3; Ha-yom, no. 128, 18/31 XI 1906, 1; ­Ha-yom, no. 135, 26 XII 1906/8 I 1907, 1; and Ha-yom, no. 137, 28 XII 1906/10 I 1907, 4. 100.  Ha-yom, no. 139, 31 XII 1906/13 I 1907, 1. The paper is most likely referring to the “Committee of Warsaw Jews” discussed above. 101.  Idishes tageblat, no. 15, 17/30 I 1907, 3. 102.  These and related questions regarding Polish liberals and “the Jews” will be discussed in the following chapter. 103.  Prylucki, In Poylen, 91 (originally published in Der veg, no. 254–255, 5/18 XI 1906). Also see Prylucki, In Poylen, 103 (originally published in Der veg, no. 288, 21 XII 1906/3 I 1907). 104.  Prylucki, In Poylen, 91 (originally published in Der veg, no. 254–255, 5/18 XI 1906). Also see Prylucki, In Poylen, 111 (originally published in Der veg, no. 295, 28 XII 1906/10 I 1907). 105.  Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 144. 106.  See Grünbaum, “Ha-beḥirot,” 139 and 142. Also see Nowa Gazeta, no. 75, 14 II 1907, 6; and Nowa Gazeta, no. 81, 18 II 1907, 3.

Notes to Chapters Five and Six 107.  On Polish-Jewish solidarity, see Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal, Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992). 108.  Idishes tageblat, no. 33, 6/19 II 1907, 1. 109.  Ha-yom, no. 6, 7/20 I 1907, 3. On dwindling Jewish support for the alliance with the National Democrats, see Ha-yom, no. 12, 14/27 I 1907, 2; and Ha-yom, no. 15, 18/31 I 1907, 1. 110.  Idishes tageblat, no. 32, 5/18 II 1907, nonpaginated supplement. 111.  Idishes tageblat, no. 33, 6/19 II 1907, 1. 112.  Kiepurska, Warszawa w rewolucji, 376–377. 113.  Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 141. 114.  For more on the public sphere and the public will, see Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 235–236; and Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies, 27.

Chapter Six 1.  Piotr Wróbel, “Jewish Warsaw before the First World War,” in Władysław T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky, eds., The Jews in Warsaw: A History (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 255. 2.  In speaking of “the Jews,” I am referring to the image of “the Jews” that coalesced in this period and not to an actual community of individuals, groups, or parties. 3.  For more on the “the people” and sovereignty, see Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 3, 7, and 10; Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post­ colonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 205; and Maurice Cranston, “The Sovereignty of the Nation,” in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, ed. Colin Lucas, vol. 2, The Political Culture of the French Revolution (Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press, 1988), 2:97–104. 4.  On the elections, see Halina Kiepurska, Warszawa w rewolucji 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1974), 158–159. 5.  The classic example of the school of eternal hatred remains: Celia Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland between the Two World Wars (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). The following excerpts typify Heller’s perspective: “A historical perspective may help reveal how the invited guests became an oppressed and suffering minority . . . and were hated as foreign intruders (from the Poles’ perspective)”; “the historical roots of the anti-Jewish feelings among the bulk of the population”; and, “in interwar Poland, anti-Semitism was not simply the manifestation of the lunatic fringe; it was respectable and in the forefront of political affairs—a fact one must grasp in order to understand how pervasive Polish antiSemitism really was.” Heller, Edge of Destruction, 14, 20–21, and 77, respectively. Also see ibid., 44–45 and 84. Revisions of this school include Ezra Mendelsohn,

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Notes to Chapter Six “Jewish Historiography on Polish Jewry in Interwar Poland,” Polin 8 (1994): 3–13; Mendelsohn, “Interwar Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews,” in Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky, eds., The Jews in Poland (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 130–140; Piotr Wróbel, “Double Memory: Poles and Jews after the Holocaust,” East European Politics and Society 11, no. 3 (1997): 560–574; and William W. Hagen, “Before the ‘Final Solution’: Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Antisemitism in Interwar Germany and Poland,” Journal of Modern History 68, no. 2 (June 1996): 351–381. I have touched upon these issues in Scott Ury, “Who, What, When, Where and Why Is Polish Jewry? Envisioning, Constructing and Possessing Polish Jewry,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 3 (Spring– Summer 2000): 205–228. For a more popular attempt to correct the historiographical record, see Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 6.  See Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986), esp. 6–21 and 22–46. Also see John Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). 7.  Jan T. Gross wrestles with these questions in Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006); and Gross, Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, 1941 (London: Arrow, 2003). Other works that attempt to balance the record in this specific period include Stanislaus A. Blejwas, “Polish Positivism and the Jews,” Jewish Social Studies 46, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 21–36; Jerzy Jedlicki, “The End of Dialogue, Warsaw 1907–1912,” in Sławomir Kapralski, ed., The Jews in Poland, vol. 2 (Cracow: Jagiellonian University, 1999), 111–123; Joshua D. Zimmerman, “Józef Piłsudski and the “‘Jewish Question,’ 1892–1905,” East European Jewish Affairs 28, no. 1 (1998): 87–107; and Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). 8.  See Robert E. Blobaum, “The Politics of Antisemitism in Fin-de-Siècle Warsaw,” Journal of Modern History 73, no. 2 (June 2001): 275–306; Stephen D. Corrsin, “Polish-Jewish Relations before the First World War: The Case of the State Duma Elections in Warsaw,” Gal-Ed 11 (1989): 31–53; Corrsin, “The Jews, the Left, and the State Duma Elections in Warsaw in 1912: Selected Sources,” Polin 9 (1996): 45–54; David Engel, “Ha-sheela ha-polanit ve-ha-tenu‘a ha-tsiyonit,” Gal-Ed 13 (1993): 59–82 (Hebrew pagination); Frank Golczewski, Polnisch-Jüdische Beziehungen 1881– 1922 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981), 101–120; Israel Oppenheim, “The Radicalization of the Endecja’s Anti-Jewish Line: During and After the 1905 Revolution,” Shvut 25, no. 9 (2000): 32–66; Antony Polonsky, “The Dreyfus Affair and Polish-Jewish Interaction, 1890–1914,” Jewish History 11, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 21–40; Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Roman Wapiński, “The Endecja and the Jewish Question,” Polin 12 (1999): 271–283; Theodore R. Weeks, “Fanning the Flames: Jews in the Warsaw Press, 1905–1912,” East European Jewish Affairs

Notes to Chapter Six 28, no. 2 (1998): 63–81; Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006); Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), esp. 152–171; and Weeks, “Polish ‘Progressive Antisemitism,’ 1905–1914,” East European Jewish Affairs 25, no. 2 (1995): 49–68. 9.  The year 1863 figures prominently in the historiographical literature. See Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal, Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (Han­ over, NH: University Press of New England, 1992); and Weeks, “Poles, Jews and Russians, 1863–1914: The Defeat of the Ideal of Assimilation in the Kingdom of Poland,” Polin 12 (1999): 242–256. Also see Ephraim F. Kupfer, Ber Meisels i jego udział w walkach wyzwoleńczych narodu polskiego (1846, 1848, 1863–1864) (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1953). For more on these questions, see the wartime history of the chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto, Emmanuel Ringelblum. Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War, trans. Dafna Allon, Danuta Dabrowska, and Dana Keren, ed. Joseph Kermish and Shmuel Krakowski (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992). 10.  Joanna B. Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 64, 52–68. 11.  See Blobaum, “The Politics of Antisemitism,” esp. 277–279 and 305–306; Corrsin, “The Jews, the Left and the State Duma Elections in Warsaw in 1912,” 45; Corrsin, “Polish-Jewish Relations before the First World War,” 52; Golczewski, Polnisch-Jüdische Beziehungen, 101–120; Oppenheim, “Radicalization of the AntiJewish Line”; Polonsky, “The Dreyfus Affair,” 22 and 33–36; Rudnicki, “Society for the Advancement of Trade,” 313–314. Also see Engel, “Ha-sheela ha-polanit”; and Weeks, Nation and State, 152–171. 12.  Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate, 178–181. 13.  Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 136–139, 170–178; and Zimmerman, The Politics of Nationality, 214–218. 14.  On modernity, counter-modernity, and the dialectics of modernity, see Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1999). Also see Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Zeev Sternhell, The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition, trans. David Maisel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). For depictions of Poland as the “Heart of Europe,” see Norman Davies, Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986). 15.  Michel Foucault, “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976,” ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), 254–255. 16.  For an overview of this period, see Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 52–68. 17.  See Antony Polonsky, “The New Jewish Politics and Its Discontents,” in The

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Notes to Chapter Six Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe, ed. Zvi Gitelman (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 44. 18.  On the Jewish section of the PPS, see Henryk Piasecki, Żydowska Organizacja PPS, 1893–1907 (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1978). 19.  Zimmerman analyzes these debates carefully throughout Zimmerman, The Politics of Nationality. 20.  Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN), KC PZPR, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna Collection (PPS), Sygn. 11/II-2, 48–48a. Also see the PPS Central Workers’ Committee flier from July 31, 1904 reprinted in the PPS journal Przedświt 8 (August 1904): 348–349; and B. S. (Bernard Szapiro), Przyjaciele i wrogowie ludu roboczego (Warsaw, 1905), 6–11. 21.  On the post–October Manifesto pogroms, see Eliyahu Feldman, Yehude Rusyah bi-yeme ha-mahpekha ha-rishona ve-ha-pogromim (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999); Michael F. Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800–1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 189–207; Shlomo Lambroza, “The Pogrom Movement in Tsarist Russia, 1903–1906,” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1981; A. Linden (L. Motzkin), ed., Die Judenpogrome in Russland, 2 vols. (Cologne-Leipzig, 1910); Gerald Surh, “The Jews of Ekaterinoslav in 1905 as Seen from Town Hall: Ethnic Relations on an Imperial Frontier,” Ab Imperio 4 (2003): 217–238; Robert Weinberg, Blood on the Steps: The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 164–187; and Weinberg, “Workers, Pogroms, and the 1905 Revolution in Odessa,” Russian Review 46 (1987): 53–75. Personal accounts of the events in Odessa and Kiev can be found in Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik, Igrot ḥayim Naḥman Bialik, ed. P. Lahover, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1938), 1–5; and Sholem Aleichem, Mikhteve Sholem ‘Aleikhem, 1882–1916: mivḥar, trans. and ed. Avraham Yaveen (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1998), nos. 13–16, 26–29. 22.  For an examination of official responses to rumors of anti-Jewish violence in Congress Poland, see Michael Jerry Ochs, “St. Petersburg and the Jews of Russian Poland, 1862–1905,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986, 199–237. 23.  AAN, PPS Collection, Sygn. 305/III-36, File 3, 54, 4 XI 1905. Also see AAN, PPS Collection, Sygn. 305/III-36, File 4, 119. 24.  AAN, PPS Collection, Sygn. 305/III-36, File 3, 51, 4 XI 1905. Also see the declaration of Russian workers from Minsk reprinted in A. D. Kirzhnitz and M. Rafes, eds., 1905, Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie (Moscow: Gos izd-vo, 1928), 384. 25.  Biblioteka Narowdowa (BN), Zakład Dokumentów Życia Społecznego (DŻS), File IB 2, doc. 2103, 15 VI 1905. Also see BN, DŻS, File IB 2, doc. 2056, VII 1905; and BN, DŻS, File IB 2, doc. 2465, 16 VIII 1905. 26.  BN, DŻS, File IB 2, doc. 2070, 5 VII 1905. 27.  On the place of “the Jews” in larger public discussions, see Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 137. 28.  See, respectively, Kurier Codzienny, no. 336, 3 XII 1904, 2; Kurier Codzienny, no. 342, 9 XII 1904, 2; and Kurier Codzienny, no. 92, 12 IV 1905, 2. 29.  Kurier Warszawski, no. 32, 1 II 1904, 3; Kurier Warszawski, no. 74, 14 III

Notes to Chapter Six 1904, 4; Kurier Warszawski, no. 107, 18 IV 1904, 4; and Kurier Warszawski, no. 3, 3 I 1905, 4. 30.  Kurier Warszawski, no. 141, 23 V 1905, 1–2. For a similar example, see Prawda, no. 13, 26 III/8 IV 1905, 147–148. 31.  See summaries of relatively innocuous items from the Jewish press published under the subtitle “The Jewish Question” in Kraj, no. 50, 10/23 XII 1904, 16; Kraj, no. 10, 11/24 III 1905, 23–24; and Kraj, no. 14, 8/21 IV 1905, 19. Also see the discussion of Jewish immigrants in “Wychodźy w Bremie,” Tygodnik Ilustrowany, no. 44, 16/29 X 1904, 842–843. 32.  Prawda, no. 5, 17/30 I 1904, 53–54; Prawda, no. 16, 3/16 IV 1904, 184–185; Prawda, no. 20, 1/14 V 1904, 238; and Prawda, no. 21, 8/21 V 1904, 248. 33.  Kraj, no. 27, 2/15 VII 1904, 16; Kraj, no. 36, 3/16 IX 1904, 15–16; Kraj, no. 42, 15/28 X 1904, 19; and Kraj, no. 49, 3/16 XII 1904, 18. 34.  Kraj, no. 24, 17/30 VI 1905, 1–4; and Kraj, no. 26, 1/14 VII 1905, 1–6. 35.  On patriotic journals at this time, see Urszula Jakubowska, Prasa Narodowej Demokracji w Dobie Zaborów (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988), 78–142 and 309–361. Also see Zenon Kmiecik, Prasa polska w rewolucji 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1980), 120–148. 36.  Semion Goldin, “Jews as Cosmopolitans, Foreigners, Revolutionaries: Three Images of the Jew in Polish and Russian Nationalist Ideology at the End of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” European Review of History 17, no. 3 (2010): 438, 431–444. 37.  Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 141. 38.  Blobaum, Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904–1907 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 3. 39.  Ibid., 234, and 234–259. 40.  Brian Porter, “Making Space for Antisemitism: The Catholic Hierarchy and the Jews in the Early Twentieth Century,” Polin 16 (2003): 421 and 422, emphasis in original. 41.  “Kwestya żydowska,” Gazeta Polska, no. 91, 3 IV 1906, 1. Note Y. L. Peretz’s comments that the question arose at this time regarding: “What position should the Polish-Jewish community take in regard to the question of local government.” Dr. Shtitser (Y. L. Peretz), Der veg, no. 87, 22 XII 1905/4 I 1906, 1. 42.  See Weeks’s comment: “Toward the end of 1905 . . . the Jewish question again came to the forefront of public discussion in Russian Poland.” Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 133; also see 140. On visions of Polish autonomy at the time, see the “Declaration of Autonomy” published by the twenty-seven Polish representatives to the First Duma: “Deklaracya Autonomiczna posłów z Królestwa Polskiego,” Gazeta Polska, no. 129, 14 V 1906, 1. Also see “Odezwa wyborcza,” Praca Polska, no. 85, 22 II 1906, 1; “Pogram Polskiego Stronnictwa Demokratycznego,” AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/46, File 12, 1–4, esp. 4a; BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2899; BN, DŻS, File IB 7, doc. 2990; and BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2902. An academic discussion of this topic can be found in Weeks, Nation and State, 110–130.

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Notes to Chapter Six 43.  See Polonsky, “New Jewish Politics,” 45. 44.  Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1994), 56–86. 45.  See “Sprawa żydowska i przedstawicielstwo narodowe,” Kurier Codzienny, no. 155, 10/23 VI 1905, 1; “W sprawie asymilacji żydów,” Kurier Codzienny, no. 173, 25 VI/8 VII 1905, 1; “Stosunki wyznaniowe i narodowościowe w Królestwie Polskiem,” part 1, Kurier Codzienny, no. 236, 18 IX/1 X 1905, 1–2; and “Stosunki ­wyznaniowe i narodowościowe w Królestwie Polskiem,” part 2, Kurier Codzienny, no. 237, 19 IX/2 X 1905, 1–2. Also see “Autonomia Polski,” Gazeta Warszawska, no. 248, 19 IX/11 X 1905, 1. For more on Kurier Codzienny, see Kmiecik, Prasa polska, 69–72. In English, see Beth Holmgren, Rewriting Capitalism: Literature and the Market in Late Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Poland (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), 1–16. 46.  See, “Żydzi i język polski,” Kurier Warszawski, no. 131, 13 V 1905, 1; “Szkoła żydowska,” Kurier Warszawski, no. 288, 18 X 1905, 2–3; and “Chasydzi,” Kurier Warszawski, no. 84, 25 III 1905, 2–3. 47.  “Z Królestwa Polskiego: Przegląd,” Kraj, no. 22, 3/16 VI 1905, 14–15. Also see, “Z Królestwa Polskiego: Warszawa,” Kraj, no. 38, 23 VIII/6 IX 1905, 11. This division between native Jews and Jewish immigrants from outside of Warsaw was not always clear to many Jews and Poles at this time. Thus, an article from the Polish-language Zionist weekly Głos Żydowski on “Litwaki” included a prefatory note clarifying just who and what a “Litvak” was supposed to be. See “Litwaki,” Głos Żydowski, no. 14, 29 IV 1906, 178–180. Also see “Litwini i ich stosunek do nas,” part 1, Prawda, no. 13, 26 III/8 IV 1905, 147–148; and “Litwini i ich stosunek do nas,” part 2, Prawda, no. 14, 2/15 IV 1905, 158–159. For a discussion of these debates, see Scott Ury, “‘On the Gallows!’ The Politics of Assimilation in Turn of the Century Warsaw,” Polin 20 (2008): 339–353. 48.  “Z Królestwa Polskiego: Przegląd,” Kraj, no. 22, 3/16 VI 1905, 16–18; “Wyjaśnienie,” Kraj, no. 24, 17/30 VI, 3–4; and “Spory Stronnicze,” 14–15, and “Z Królestwa Polskiego: Warszawa,” Kraj, no. 38, 23 VIII/6 IX 1905, 13. 49.  For a discussion of Polish autonomy, see “Projekt autonomii Królestwa Polskiego,” Prawda, no. 43–44, 22 XI 1905, 502–504. 50.  “Przed wyborami,” Kurier Warszawski, no. 284, 14 X 1905, 2–3; and “Kogo i jak wybierać?” Kurier Warszawski, no. 290, 20 X 1905, 1–2. 51.  On democracy and discipline in the Polish context, see Brian A. Porter, “Democracy and Discipline in Late Nineteenth-Century Poland,” Journal of Modern History 71, no. 2 (June 1999): 346–393. 52.  See chapter 5. 53.  See Finkelshtayn’s comments: Khayim Finkelshteyn, Haynt: a tsaytung bay yidn, 1908–1939 (Tel Aviv: Farlag Y. L. Perets, 1978), 50. 54.  See Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 146 and 161, respectively. “While anti-Jewish rhetoric and action had always been a part of the Endek political platform, antisemitism now took on a central role.” “After 1905 it seemed

Notes to Chapter Six that the National Democrats had very little left in their party program aside from antisemitism.” 55.  On the genealogy of the żydokomuna stereotype, see Krystyna Kersten, ­Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm: Anatomia półprawd, 1939–1968 (Warsaw: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992); Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948, trans. John Micgiel and Michael H. Bernhard (Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 215–221; Krystyna Kersten and Jerzy Szapiro, “The Contexts of So-Called Jewish Question in Poland after World War II,” Polin 4 (1989): 255–268; Gross, Fear, 192–243; Gross, Neighbours; and Gerrits, The Myth of Jewish Communism: A Historical Interpretation (Bruxelles: PIE Peter Lang, 2009). 56.  See Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (London: P. Halban, 1988); and Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981). 57.  For more on the NZR, see Blobaum, Rewolucja, 106–107; and Zimmerman, The Politics of Nationality, 202. 58.  “Żydzi a my wobec wyborów,” Gazeta Polska, no. 9, 11 I 1906, 1. For charges regarding the role that the local Jewish gmina and other traditional Jewish organizations purportedly played in the elections, see the National Democratic paper, Dzwon Polski: “Demokracja narodowa i żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 53, 24 IV 1906, 1; and “Demokracja postępowa a żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 69, 5 V 1906, 1. Immediately following elections to the First Duma a leading National Democratic organ described electors from the fourth district as candidates of the “Jewish kahal.” See Dzwon Polski, no. 58, 27 IV 1906, 1. 59.  See Engel’s comments regarding myths of Jewish power in eastern Europe. David Engel, “Perceptions of Power—Poland and World Jewry,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 1 (2002): 17–28. 60.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 192, “Rodacy!” Undated flier from February 1907. Another copy of this flier is located in PPS, Sygn., 305/III/45, File 3, 51. For additional examples of similar charges regarding the competition over voter registration, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2905, “Do prawyborców 7-go okręgu,” undated from April 1906, “Citizens, we are being threatened by a great danger!!! The Jewish masses are applying for their voter registration cards and want to choose their Jewish candidates to the state Duma.” Also see AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/36, File 4, 29–29a; “Postępowa demokracja i żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 46, 19 IV 1906, 2; “Demokracja narodowa i żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 53, 24 IV 1906, 1; “Groźne położenie,” Goniec Wieczorny, no. 79, 16 II 1907, 2; “Przed wyborami,” Gazeta Polska, no. 76, 19 III 1906, 1; and “Czy abdykacya?” Gazeta Polska, no. 104, 19 IV 1906, 1. 61.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2903, 20 IV 1906. For similar charges regarding Jewish separatism, disloyalty, and hostility as well as a natural inclination to join “anti-Polish forces,” see BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2904; BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2906; and BN, DŻS, File IJ 3, unnumbered document, “Do Wyboroców Postępowych,” Warsaw, 24 IV 1906. Also see “Kwestya żydowska,” Gazeta Polska, no. 91, 3 IV 1906, 1; “Układ Żydów z P.D.,” Gazeta Polska, no. 108, 22 IV 1906, 1;

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Notes to Chapter Six “Żydzi i wybory,” Goniec Poranny, no. 33, 20 I 1907, 2; “Groźne położenie,” Goniec Wieczorny, no. 79, 16 II 1907, 2; and AAN, Bund Collection, Sygn. 30/I-5, 12. For additional charges of Jewish attempts to control and dominate Congress Poland, see AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/47, File 1, 7. 62.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2914, undated flier from April 1906. See also “­Apatja,” Dzwon Polski, no. 49, 21 IV 1906, 1; and “Demokracja narodowa i żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 53, 24 IV 1906, 1. 63.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/45, File 3, 42. Also located in AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/44, File 4, 28. For other examples representing Jews as sworn enemies of Poland and Poles, see “Pod znakiem nienawiści i niepolskiego żydowstwa,” Goniec Wieczorny, no. 44, 26 I 1907, 1; “Czego chcą żydzi?” Goniec Wieczorny, part i, no. 79, 16 II 1907, 1; and “Czego chcą żydzi?” Goniec Poranny, part ii, no. 80, 17 II 1907, 1. 64.  “I have tried to show how we have indirectly constituted ourselves through the exclusion of some others. . . . How did we directly constitute our identity through some ethical techniques of the self which developed through antiquity down to now.” Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 146. 65.  Kurier Warszawski, no. 108, 20 IV 1906, 4; Kurier Warszawski, no. 109, 21 IV 1906, 4; Kurier Warszawski, no. 110, 22 IV 1906, 11; Kurier Warszawski, no. 112, 24 IV 1906, 6; Kurier Warszawski, no. 43, 12 II 1907, 10; Kurier Warszawski, no. 46, 15 II 1907, 10; and Kurier Warszawski, no. 51, 20 II 1907, 4–6. 66.  Dzwon Polski, no. 58, 27 IV 1906, 1; Goniec Poranny, no. 80, 17 II 1907, 4; and Goniec Poranny, no. 81, 18 II 1907, 2. For more on these papers, see Kmiecik, Prasa polska, 120–148. On the changing image of Kurier Warszawski, see Baczność! Kontrrewolucja rozstawia sidła (Warsaw, 1906), 6. 67.  Der telegraf, no. 81, 14/27 IV 1906, 2. For similar representations of the electorate in Jewish papers, see Der veg, no. 82, 13/26 IV 1906, 3; and Der veg, no. 82, 13/26 IV 1906, supplement, 1. 68.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2906, undated, April 1906, Warsaw, emphasis in the original. Additional copies of this flier can be found in AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/ III/47, File 1, 23; and, AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/45, File 3, 35. 69.  Goniec Poranny, no. 81, 18 II 1907, 1. Also see AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/44, File 4, doc. 34. Note the comment in Dzwon Polski: “We cannot tolerate such a position on the part of the Jews. We must remind them who is the master of this country. Thus, there is not one Jew among our candidates to the nation’s representation in the State Duma.” “Po wyborach Warszawskich,” Dzwon Polski, no. 59, 27 IV 1906, 1. Also see “Czy abdykacya?” Gazeta Polska, no. 105, 19 IV 1906, 1; and “Groźnie położenie,” Goniec Wieczorny, no. 79, 16 II 1907, 2. 70.  Goniec Poranny, no. 80, 17 II 1907, p. 4. See also, “Żądania sjonistów,” ­Goniec Wieczorny, 2 I 1907, 1. 71.  See Cheah’s discussion regarding “otherness” and the end of the nation.

Notes to Chapter Six Pheng Cheah, Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 113 and 120. 72.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2903, 20 IV 1906. 73.  It is not clear exactly when and how the image of the Litvak began to take hold in Polish and Jewish cultures at this time. For more on the image of the Litvak, see Golczewski, Polnisch-Jüdische Beziehungen, 96–100; Guesnet, “Migration et Stéréo­type: Le cas de juifs russes au Royaume de Pologne à la fin du XIX siècle,” Cahiers du Monde russe 41, no. 4 (2000): 505–518; Jerry Ochs, “St. Petersburg and the Jews of Russian Poland, 1862–1905,” 195–199; and Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 156–158. Also see Yitzḥak Grünbaum, “Ha-litvakim ve-hashpa‘atam ‘al Yehude Polin,” in Grünbaum, Milḥamot Yehude Polin (Warsaw: Aḥiasaf, 1922), 58–63; and Joshua D. Zimmerman, “Józef Piłsudski.” On the genealogy of the term “Litvak,” note that Grünbaum’s article on the topic, “Ha-litvakim ve-hashpa‘atam al Yehude Polin,” was originally published in the Hebrew journal Ha-‘olam in 1909. For additional examples of the image of “the Litvakes” and their role in supposedly promoting revolution and disorder, see Teodor Jeske-Choiński, Historja Żydów w Polsce (Warsaw: Gebethner i Wolff, 1919), 258–274. On the genealogy and uses of the żydokomuna see Kersten, Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm; Jan T. Gross, Upiorna Dekada; and André W. M. Gerrits, “‘Jewish Communism’ in East Central Europe: Myth versus Reality,” in Vampires Unstaked, 159–177. Also see the sources cited in fn. 55. 74.  For a discussion of Jewish “middlemen,” including Yeḥezkel Kotik of Warsaw, see Jack Mark Kugelmass, “Native Aliens: The Jews of Poland as a Middleman Minority,” Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research, 1980. On the various images of “the East” in European society, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978); Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); and Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 75.  For the record, Jakub Berman was born in 1901 and Hilary Minc in 1905. For various discussions regarding those Jews who were active in the Polish Communist Party, see, for example, Gross, Fear, 226–242; Gross, Neighbors, 41–53; Kersten, ­Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm; Jaff Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Teresa Toranska, Them: Stalin’s Polish Puppets, trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska (New York: Harper and Row, 1987). Also see Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Prince­ ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 76.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2913, 24 IV 1906. Also see, BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2912. For additional charges of Jews being part of hostile, alien forces, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2916; “Obywatele!” Dzwon Polski, no. 55, supplement, 24 IV 1906, 1; “Demokracja narodowa i żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 53, 24 IV 1906, 1; and BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, unnumbered document, “Rodacy! Głosujemy wszyscy.” Also see the banners distributed by the District Committee of the National Con-

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Notes to Chapter Six centration in Warsaw’s Eighth District before the elections to the Second Duma: BN, DŻS, Ii 1e, unnumbered document, “Komitet Okręgowy Koncentracji Narodowej,” Warsaw, February 1907. 77.  BN, DŻS, File Ii I e, unnumbered document, “Baczność! Wybór posłòw [sic] polskich zagrożony!” Also see “Apatja,” Dzwon Polski, no. 49, 21 IV 1906, 1. For other accounts of such literature, see: Der veg, no. 79, 10/23 IV 1906, 3; and Głos Żydowski, no. 14, 29 IV 1906, 175. 78.  On the assumption that Jews were drawn to Russian culture and society and were inherently hostile to Poland and Polish national causes, see “Czy wybierać Żyda na posła,” Praca Polska, no. 75, 16 II 1906, 1; “W kwestji żydowski,” Dzwon Polski, no. 40, 14 IV 1906, 1; “Po wyborach Warszawskich,” Dzwon Polski, no. 59, 27 IV 1906, 1; and “Czego chcą żydzi,” part II, Goniec Poranny, no. 80, 17 II 1907, 1. Also see Unzer leben, no. 14, 5/18 III 1907, 3; and Głos Żydowski, no. 14, 29 IV 1906, 175. 79.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/44, File 4, doc. 34. 80.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/44, File 4, 3–3a. Also located in BN, DŻS, File IB 10, doc. 275. 81.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/46, File 3, doc. 1. 82.  BN, DŻS, File IB 10, doc. 276. Lowercase proper nouns in original. Also see the antisocialist flier from March 1906 distributed by the editors of the National Democratic peasant paper Polak: AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/45, File 3, 29–29a. 83.  See the flier distributed in July 1905 by the “Guards of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania,” an antisocialist group whose name played upon the SDKPiL’s full title. AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/47, File 1, 7. For a poignant response by the SDKPiL to such charges, see “Robotnicy Polscy,” Czerwony Sztandar, no. 59, 5 IV 1906, 1. 84.  BN, DŻS, File IB 10, doc. 279. Emphasis in the original. 85.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/44, File 4, doc. 6. An additional copy of this flier is located in BN, DŻS, File IB 10, doc. 280. 86.  AAN, PPS, File 305/III/44, File 4, 3. For additional charges regarding a common desire among Jewish, socialist, and Russian forces to promote disorder in an effort to weaken and conquer Poland, see AAN, PPS, 305/III/44, File 4, 6. 87.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/45, File 3, 47. For an additional copy, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 194. 88.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 193, undated flier from February 1907. For similar charges of electoral cooperation between Jews and Socialists, see Gazeta Polska, “Żydzi a my wobec wyborów,” no. 9, 11 I 1906, 1. 89.  “Czego chcą żydzi?” part 2, Goniec Poranny, no. 80, 17 II 1907, 1. See also, “Czego chcą żydzi?” part I, Goniec Wieczorny, no. 79, 16 II 1907, 1; as well as “Żydzi i wybory,” Goniec Poranny, no. 33, 20 I 1907, 2. 90.  BN, DŻS, Ii 1e, doc. 2912. 91.  BN, DŻS, Ii 1e, doc. 2912. 92.  The phrase “fanning the flames” has been used in this context by both Weeks and Corrsin. See Weeks, “Fanning the Flames”; and Corrsin, “Polish-Jewish Relations before the First World War,” 53.

Notes to Chapter Six 93.  For more on Polish liberal circles at this time, see Tadeusz Stegner, Liberałowie Królestwa Polskiego, 1904–1915 (Gdańsk, 1990). 94.  Stegner estimates that approximately one-third of the liberals were Jews. See Tadeusz Stegner, “Na pograniczu dwóch obyczajów politycznych: Liberałowie Królestwa Polskiego wobec rewolucji 1905–1906,” in Anna Żarnowska and Tadeusz Wolsza, eds., Społeczeństwo i polityka: Kultura polityczna w Królestwie Polksim na początku XX wieku (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo DiG, 1993), 76. Cited in Zimmerman, Politics of Nationality, 216. 95.  For more on these Polish-Jewish liberals, see Ury, “‘On the Gallows!’” 96.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 192, undated flier, February 1907. An additional copy of this flier can be found in AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/45, File 3, 51. 97.  “Układ Żydów z P.D.,” Gazeta Polska, no. 108, 22 IV 1906, 1. See also “Po wyborach Warszawskich,” Dzwon Polski, no. 59, 27 IV 1906, 1. For additional charges of the Progressives’ support for Jewish separatism, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 3, doc. 169; and AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/47, File 1, 23, undated, April 1906, Warsaw; and BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2906. 98.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/44, File 4, 29. For similar claims regarding Jewish attempts to fool voters in the elections to the First Duma, see AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/ III/47, File 1, 22. Also see “Po wyborach Warszawskich,” Dzwon Polski, no. 59, 27 IV 1906, 1; and “Demokracja postępowa a żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 69, 5 V 1906, 1; as well as the election posters distributed by different National Democratic organizations before both the First and the Second Dumas, respectively, BN, DŻS, File Ii Ie, unnumbered document, “Narodowa organizacja wyborcza,” April 1906, and, BN, DŻS, File Ii Ie, unnumbered document, “Komitet okręgowy koncentracji narodowiej,” February 1907. 99.  Corrsin discusses this in Corrsin, “Polish-Jewish Relations before the First World War,” 41–45. 100.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 192. For other charges questioning Krzywicki’s and Świętochowski’s loyalty to Poland and Polish national causes, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 191. For more on Świętochowski see Maria Brykalska, Aleksander Świętochowski: Biografia, 2 vols. (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1987). 101.  For more on Goniec and the different papers that followed after repeated government closures see Kmiecik, Prasa Polska, 133. 102.  “Postępowa demokracja i żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 45, 19 IV 1906, 2. Also see “Pod znakiem nienawiści i niepolskiego żydowstwa,” Goniec Wieczorny, no. 44, 26 I 1907, 1. 103.  For a discussion of similar charges in Polish presidential elections after 1989, see Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 263 and 271. 104.  For more on foreign contamination and the death of the nation, see Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 112–113 and 128. 105.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2914. Lowercase proper nouns in Polish original. For charges depicting Polish liberals as Jews, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 193; and “Występ nowej trupy żydowskiej,” Prawda, no. 4, 26 I 1907, 45.

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Notes to Chapter Six 106.  For similar developments in German lands, see Shulamit Volkov, “Anti­ semitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 23 (1978): 25–46. 107.  Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 37. 108.  On the crisis of liberal politics in Paris and Vienna, see, respectively, Michael Robert Marrus, The Politics of Assimilation: The French Jewish Community at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); and Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. 109.  See Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate, 200–218. 110.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1h, doc. 2966. For other examples extolling the Progressive Union’s dedication to Poland and Polish national causes, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 1h, doc. 2974; and, AAN, PPS, File 305/III/46, File 13, 6. 111.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/46, File 13, 3. Also see, AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/ III/46, File 13, 5. 112.  For a more detailed discussion of National Democratic ideology, see Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate, 189–232. 113.  On these developments, see Blobaum, “The Politics of Antisemitism”; Jedlicki, “End of Dialogue”; Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 143–145; and Weeks, “Polish ‘Progressive Antisemitism,’ 1905–1914.” 114.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1h, doc. 2974, emphasis and lowercase proper nouns in original. For similar justifications of the Progressive-Jewish alliance, see BN, DŻS, File Ii 3, doc. 169; and BN, DŻS, File Ii 3, doc. 170. 115.  For more on Prus and Jewish issues, see Agnieszka Friedrich, “Bolesław Prus and the Dreyfus Case,” Polin 14 (2002): 271–280; and Ela Bauer, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow’s Political Thought (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005), 116–124. 116.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 3, doc. 4220. 117.  See Yitzḥak Grünbaum, “Ha-antishemiyut ha-progresivit,” Milḥamot Yehude Polin, 78–90; and Finkelshtayn, Haynt, 49–50. Also see the discussion in chapter 5. 118.  See Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 129, 146, 149, 152, and 166; and Jedlicki, “The End of Dialogue.” 119.  Discussions of Polish liberals and “the Jews” in this era include Blejwas, “Polish Positivism and the Jews”; Blobaum, “Politics of Antisemitism”; Polonsky, “New Jewish Politics,” 45; Tadeusz Stegner, “Liberałowie Królestwa Polskiego wobec kwestii żydowskiej na początku XX wieku,” Przegląd Historyczny 80 (1989): 69–88; Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 152–156; and Weeks, “Polish ‘Progressive Antisemitism.’” 120.  “Burżuazja a Wybory,” Robotnik, no. 89, 28 IV 1906, 3. 121.  “Walka o żydów,” Czerwony Sztandar, no. 129, 25 I 1907, 3. Also see “Święcone wielkanocne,” Czerwony Sztandar, no. 62, 20 IV 1906, 1–2. 122.  Note Mendelsohn’s comment that “the left possessed an antisemitic tra-

Notes to Chapter Six dition of its own, ostensibly based on the perception that the capitalist class was strongly permeated by Jews.” Ezra Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 96. 123.  AAN, AZHP, SDKPiL Collection, Sygn. 9/VII-33, 19. 124.  Zimmerman, Politics of Nationality, 219. 125.  As Schechter has noted in regard to French Enlightenment discussions regarding “the Jews,” they were malleable enough to stand “alternatively for victims and perpetrators of fanaticism.” Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 101; also see 7, 64–65, and 108. 126.  See Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 163–165; and Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other, 64. For analyses that focus on the impact of the elections to the Fourth Duma on “Polish-Jewish relations,” see fn. 8. 127.  For materials in which “the Jews” are referred to as a direct threat to Warsaw’s well-being, see AAN, PPS, 305/III/45, File 3, 42; and, BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, unnumbered document, “Baczność! Wybór posłòw polskich zagrożony!” [sic]. Also see “Apatja,” Dzwon Polski, no. 49, 21 IV 1906, 1. 128.  AAN, PPS, 305/III/45, File 3, 44, anonymous flier from February 1907. 129.  On “the wandering Jew” see Galit Hasan-Rokem and Alan Dundes, eds., The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). 130.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1e, doc. 2916, emphasis in original, anonymous flier from April 1906. Also located in BN, DŻS, File IK 2a, unnumbered document, postfactum dated 24 IV 1906. Also cited in Zimmerman, Politics of Nationality, 217. 131.  “Demokracja postępowa a żydzi,” Dzwon Polski, no. 69, 5 V 1906, 1. 132.  “Święcone wielkanocne,” Czerwony Sztandar, no. 62, 20 IV 1906, 1. 133.  AAN, AZHP, SDKPiL Collection, Sygn. 9/VII-33, 19. 134.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 1h, doc. 2974. 135.  Note the report by Warsaw’s general-governor, G. A. Skalon, regarding fears of potential acts of disorder on the part of Polish nationalists. AGAD, KGGW, File 104582, May 1, 1906, fol. 19, reprinted in Carat i klasy posiadające w walce z rewolucją, 1905–1907 w Królestwie Polskim, ed. Stanisław Kalabiński (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1956), doc. 410, 495. For contemporary press accounts of government responses to such threats, see Der veg, no. 73, 27 III/9 IV 1906, 3; and Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 29 VI/12 VII 1906, 4. 136.  Discussions of economic battles against “the Jews” contributed to the growing discussion regarding mandatory Sunday rest laws in Warsaw and other areas. See, for example, Unzer leben, no. 4, 21 II/6 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 5, 22 II/7 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 7, 25 II/10 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 9, 27 II/12 III 1907, 2; Idishes tageblat, no. 51, 27 II/12 III 1907, 3; Unzer leben, no. 53, 24 IV/7 V 1907, 3–4; and Unzer leben, no. 55, 26 IV/9 V 1907, 2. 137.  “Walka o żydów,” Czerwony Sztandar, no. 129, 25 I 1907, 3. Also see AAN, SDKPiL Collection, Sygn. 9/VII-33, 19. For more on Jewish fears of antisemitic violence and pogroms in Warsaw, see the colorful memoirs of Dovid Halter, “Der

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Notes to Chapter Six and Conclusion zelbstshuts in ‘bund,’” Unzer shtime, 29 XII 1967, newspaper clipping located in YIVO Institute (YIVO), Bund Archives (BA), Collection RG-1401, Box 33. 138.  See Goniec Poranny, no. 81, 18 II 1907, 2. Weeks makes this point regarding earlier anti-Jewish attitudes. See Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism, 91. 139.  See, for example, Der telegraf, no. 78, 10/23 IV 1906, 2. 140.  AAN, PPS, Sygn. 305/III/37, File 3, 42. Also in YIVO, BA, Collection RG-1401, Box 33, File 347. For more on Jewish fears of pogroms and violence at the time, see Idishes tageblat, no. 25, 14/27 VI 1906, 3; Idishes tageblat, no. 38, 29 VI/12 VII 1904, 3–4; Der veg, no. 75, 2/15 IV 1906, 3; Der veg, no. 83, 14/27 IV 1906, 2; and Der veg, no. 85, 17/30 IV 1906, 1. Also see Grünbaum, “Ha-pogromim be-Polin,” in Grünbaum, Milḥamot Yehude Polin, 7, 36, and 39–41; and the account of revolutionary and antisemitic violence in Lodz, Andreas R. Hoffman, “The Bieder­manns in 1905 Revolution: A Case Study in Entrepreneurs’ Response to Social Turmoil in Łódź,” Slavonic and East European Review 82, no. 1 (Jan. 2004): 27–47, esp. 37–38. 141.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 3, doc. 4218. 142.  For more on language and the trials of assimilation and their connection to the nature of anti-Jewish stereotypes, see Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: AntiSemitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). The image of the “ma yofes ” is also discussed in chapter 5. 143.  On the fear of otherness and the specter of death in the national discourse, see Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 112 and 128. 144.  Y. L. Peretz, “Moyshe Yankelevich,” in Y. L. Peretz, Kol Kitve Y. L. Peretz, trans. S. Meltzer, vol. 10, book I (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1962), 64 and 67. Originally in Der veg, no. 91, 25 IV/8 V 1906, 1–2; and Der veg, no. 93, 27 IV/10 V 1906, 1–2. 145.  Y. L. Peretz, “Moyshe Yankelevich,” 69. 146.  BN, DŻS, File Ii 3, doc. 4216, Warsaw, March 1906. 147.  The politics of assimilation would rise again after the creation of independent Poland between the two world wars. See, for example, Pamiętnik pierwszego walnego zjazdu Zjednoczenia Polaków Wyznania Mojżeszowego wszystkich ziem ­polskich (Warsaw, 1919).

Conclusion 1.  See, for example, Yosef Klausner, “Ayzohi ha-derekh?” Ha-shiloaḥ 16 (1907): 1–9, esp. 2–3. 2.  See Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 98. 3.  M. N. (Moses Naḥman) Syrkin, “Tekufat ma‘avar,” Sefer ha-shana 5 (December 1905): 3. 4.  Yitzhak Tabenkin, “The Roots,” trans. Barbara Harshav, in Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 203, 195–204; originally in Bracha Habas, ed., Sefer ha-‘aliyah ha-sheniyah (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1947), 29. 5.  On the pogrom in Białystok, see Paweł Korzec, Pół wieku dziejów ruchu

Notes Conclusion r­ ewolucyjnego białostocczyzny, 1864–1914 (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1965), 259– 280. Also see A. D. Kirzhnitz and M. Rafesa, eds., 1905, Evreiskoe rabochee dvizhenie (Moscow: Gos izd-vo, 1928), 316–323; A. M. Goldstein, Sredi evreistva, 1905–1917 (Peters­burg: Kadima, 1918), 33–82; M. Olgin, 1905 (New York: Olgin ondenk-komitet, 1940), 152–180; and Tomasz Szczepański, Ruch Anarchistyczny na ziemach polskich zaboru rosyjskiego w dobie rewolucji 1905–1907 roku (Poland: Inny Świat, 2000[?]), 30. For a detailed account of the events in Siedlce, see Stanisław Martynowski, Pogrom w ­Siedlcach (Lodz, 1936). Also see the official report on the pogrom in Siedlce reprinted in Materialy k istorii russkoi kontr-revoliutsii: Pogromy po offitsialnym dokumentam, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1908), 405–412; and Józef Bekker, “The Day after the Pogrom: A Documentary Account,” Polin vol. 13 (2000): 347–365. For more on Siedlce at the time, see Jan Patoleta, “Stosunki społeczno-gospodarcze w powiecie siedleckim na przełomie XIX i XX w.,” in Józef Ryszard Szaflik, ed., Społeczeństwo siedleckie w walce o wyzwolenie ­narodowe i społeczne (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981), 21–41. For a somewhat ideologically slanted interpretation of the events in Siedlce, see Urszula Głowacka-Maksymiuk, Gubernia siedlecka w latach rewolucji, 1905–1907 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985), 140–145. Also see the debates regarding these and other related issues in the Duma reprinted in Materialy k istorii russkoi kontr-revoliutsii, 417–451; and Shmuel Galai, “The Jewish Question as a Russian Problem: The Debates in the First State Duma,” Revolutionary Russia 17, no. 1 (June 2004): 31–68. 6.  Korzec, Pół wieku, 265. 7.  Głowacka-Maksymiuk, Gubernia siedlecka, 140–145. As in many cases, the exact number of dead and injured is somewhat disputed. For a lower estimate of thirty-two killed and eighty wounded, see Martynowski, Pogrom w Siedlcach, 22. Also see Bekker, “The Day After the Pogrom,” 347. 8.  For various condemnations of the anti-Jewish violence, see, for instance, the pamphlet distributed by the Lodz committee of the SDKPiL, Pogromy i proletarjat. Also see the PPS fliers of July 1906 and September 1906 reprinted in Martynowski, Pogrom w Siedlcach, 16–18 and 27–28, respectively. On Jewish notions regarding the relative safety of Jewish life in Polish lands, note Grünbaum’s comments that “I believed, like all Polish Jews in those days, that a period of pogroms in Poland was simply not possible”; and “Pogroms of the Russian sort are not possible in Poland. The nation that is here is more civilized and is not capable of such barbaric acts as those that take place in Russia.” Yitzḥak Grünbaum, “Ha-pogromim be-Polin,” in Grünbaum, Milḥamot Yehude Polin (Warsaw: Aḥiasaf, 1922), 5 and 49. 9.  Simon Dubnow, “The Moral of Stormy Days,” in Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, ed. and intro. Koppel S. Pinson (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958), 200–214. On the public response to Bialystok and Siedlce, see, for example, Der veg, no. 125, evening supplement, 4/17 VI 1906, 1–3; Der veg, special supplement (unnumbered), 4/17 VI 1906, 1; Der veg, no. 126, 6/19 VI 1906, 1–3; Idishes tageblat, no. 16, 4/17 VI 1906,

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Notes to Conclusion 1–2; Idishes tageblat, no. 17, 5/18 VI 1906, 1–2; Idishes tageblat, no. 18, 6/19 VI 1906, 1–3; Idishes tageblat, no. 24, 13/26 VI 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, 28 VIII/10 IX 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, 29 VIII/11 IX 1906, 1; Di naye tsaytung, no. 26, 30 VIII/12 IX 1906, 1. 10.  Weizmann to Catherine Dorfman, Geneva, 4 V 1903, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, ed. Meyer W. Weisgal, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), no. 314, 298–299. 11.  Y. L. Peretz, Tikvah ve-pahad, in Peretz, Kol kitve Y. L. Peretz, trans. S. Melzer, vol. 8 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1962), 229–230. 12.  Ha-yom, no. 7, 23 VII/5 VIII, 1906, 3. Also see Ha-yom, no. 7, 23 VII/5 VIII, 1906, 1. 13.  See the comments of Y. L. Peretz, “Maria Konopnitska,” in Kol kitve, vol. 10, book i, 57. Originally published in Der veg, no. 70, 28 XI/11 XII 1905, 2–3. “Like lightning from the sky on a clear day, the fact fell upon the Polish-Jewish intellectual, and shocked and scared them more than others.” 14.  Weizmann to Vera Khatzman, Manchester, 24 VI 1906, in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, ed. Meyer W. Weisgal, vol. 4 (Jerusalem, 1973), no. 275, 303. For more on the significance of the pogrom in Białystok, see Yitzḥak Grünbaum, “Ha-pogromim be-Polin,” 41–42. 15.  See, for example, Yosef Klausner, “Ayzohi ha-derekh?” Ha-shiloaḥ 16 (1907): 1–9, esp. 3. Also see Ha-mashkif, “Hashkafah ‘ivrit,” Ha-shiloah 16 (1907): 86 16.  Der Telegraf, undated announcement, 1906, 1. 17.  Cited in Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 37, also see 112; and Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915–1926 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 345. “There can be no doubt that . . . Polish nationalism exerted a tremendous influence on Polish Jewish youth and pointed large numbers of Jews toward Zionism.” For more on the various modes of interaction between Jews and non-Jews, see David Biale, “Preface: Toward a Cultural History of the Jews,” in Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews: A New History (New York: Schocken, 2002), esp. xxi. 18.  See Zeev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); and Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/­Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 19.  See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post­ colonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 75. 20.  See Pheng Cheah, Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 166 and 243. 21.  David Yosef Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Płońsk, May 9, 1905, Igrot David BenGurion, ed. Yehuda Erez, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘oved, 1971), no. 22, 57. Also see D. Y. Gruen to Shmuel Fuchs, Warsaw, Dec. 18, 1904, Igrot Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, no. 14, 39. 22.  For more on this process, see Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 19, 121, 127, 134,

Notes to Conclusion and 294. Also see Scott Ury, “The Generation of 1905 and the Politics of Despair: Loneliness, Friendship, Community,” in Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds., The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 96–110; and Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 67. 23.  Uri Nissan Gnessin to G. Ginzburg, Warsaw, Aug. 25, 1900, in Kitve Uri Nissan Gnessin, vol. 3 (Merḥavia: Ha-kibuts ha-artsi, 1946) no. 8, 24. 24.  Arendt speaks of “[s]elflessness in the sense that oneself does not matter, the feeling of being expendable, was no longer the expression of individual idealism but a mass phenomenon”; and that “[i]t soon became apparent that highly cultured people were particularly attracted to mass movements and that, generally highly differentiated individualism and sophistication . . . sometimes encouraged, the selfabandonment into the mass for which mass movements provided.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 315 and 316, respectively. Mosse describes nationalism as “the mobilization of private discontent into collectivities that promised to transcend the anxieties of the modern age”; and also discusses how “[t]he individual fulfilled himself in the collectivity, which alone really mattered; the virtues of tolerance and compassion were not abolished but annexed and monopolized by the nation.” George L. Mosse, Masses and Man: Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality (New York: Howard Fertig, 1980), 1 and 9, 1–18. See Cheah’s comments in Spectral Nationality, 286 and 120. “This shift from liberal individualism to a concrete notion of freedom that entails a collective responsibility toward one’s people is a more active form of absorption” and “[a]ny historical appeal to the nation and any defence of national culture, no matter how mundane or concrete, will always be rooted in a traditional discourse of the transcendence of finitude.” 25.  Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 294; also see 127. “By affirming its internal border, the nation effectively interiorizes and overcomes the border between life and death. Death would be subsumed by life because it would no longer be an external limit to life, but a limit that life (qua patriotic individual) posits within itself (qua nation) through cultural work so that it can renew itself and live on. . . . The internal border allows the nation, or life, to infinitely renew itself in and for itself.” 26.  Note that Dubnow’s classic history of the Jews was given the Hebrew title of Chronicles of the Eternal People, Divre yame ‘am ‘olam. Dubnow, Divre yame ‘am ‘olam: toldot ‘am yisrael me-yame kedem ‘ad ha-yom ha-zeh, trans. Baruch Krupnik, 10 vols. (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1939–1945.) 27.  On history and redemption, see Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” ed. and intro. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken, 2007), 254. “In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on the earth.”

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Notes to Conclusion 28.  Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: Schocken, 1993), 6; also see 5 and 8, respectively. “As we shall see, the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora were united by the sense of a common past. . . . All Jews, whether in Poland or Yemen, Holland or Palestine, saw themselves as members of a single nation”; and, “To the extent that it is ever legitimate to speak of the history of nations in organic terms, it is certainly legitimate to do so with regard to the Jewish people in the Diaspora. The Jews formed a ‘national body’ that reacted to external stimuli as well as to internal developments. . . . Granted this ‘organic’ unity, we certainly seem to have sufficient justification for writing a national history of the Jewish people” (emphasis in original). For a discussion of Fichte’s thinking regarding the unity and “boundlessness” of the nation, see Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 126–127. 29.  For more on these transformations and the limits of the individual, see Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, 5–6 and 286; and Cheah, Spectral Nationality, 17–19 and 134–135.

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Index

Abramovitch, Raphael, 98–9 Activists, klal-tuer (community activist), 55, 69, 122, 149, 150, 257; political, 54, 84, 109, 149, 160, 182, 184, 192, 197, 199, 228, 263–4; Zionist 152, 162, 167, 262. See also Bund Advertisements, 76–7, 81, 89, 157, 165, 169, 191–3 Alcoholic beverages, 76–8, 84, 86, 136, 325n22 Alfonse pogrom, 126–9, 148. See also Pogroms; Violence Alienation, 51–2, 55, 89, 93, 271. See also Anonymity; Loneliness Alter, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai, 64, 189, 250 America, 7, 12, 105 Anarchist-Communist Group “International,” 95, 98–9, 102–3, 137; birzhe, 104 Anderson, Benedict, 15, 144 Anger and frustration, 40–2, 82, 92, 117, 127–8, 133, 149 Anonymity, 46, 51, 54–5, 59, 68–80, 111. See Urban Antigovernment actions, 3, 42, 94, 97, 110, 137–8, 120, 220 Anti-Jewish, motifs, 231, 235, 248, 252; rhetoric, 208, 215, 225, 229, 231–2, 248–51, 265; symbols and images, 228-241, 243–244, 250, 260; violence,

23, 43, 79, 127, 130, 135, 169, 220–2, 229, 250–4, 261–2, 265–6. See also Pogroms Antisemitism, journalistic, 38; liberal, 241–8; modern, 224; political, 216, 218, 229, 251, 260; revolutionary, 248–51 Apathy, First of May, 116; general strike, 120; elections, 177, 183–5, 197, 228. See also Elections Arendt, Hannah, 270 Arrests, 44, 94–110, 121, 136–7, 152–3, 181. See also Coffeehouses; Bund; Revolutionary organizations Art, 24, 47, 159–60 Assimilation, 15, 34, 38, 161, 178, 182, 204–6, 226, 255–7, 260. See also Integration Autonomy, Jewish, 9, 12, 36, 49; Polish, 12, 26–7, 29, 33–4, 223–7 Avant-garde, 108–9, 184 Baku, 41, 118 Banking, 24, 26 Banners and flags, 110, 115, 131, 133, 138, 238, 264, 321n160 Belvedere Palace, 26 Ben-Gurion, David. See Gruen, David Yosef Berlin, 7, 26, 28, 47 Bialik, Hayim Nahman, 163

401

402

Index Białystok, 11, 73, 79, 91, 99, 116, 121, 165, 169–70, 238, 262–3, 265–7. See also Pogroms Bielańska Street, 72, 131 birzhe (meeting points), 99–100, 119. See also Anarchist-Communist Group “International”; Bund; Poale Zion; Revolutionary organizations Black Hundreds, 127 Blobaum, Robert, 224 Bloch, Jan, 33 Bloody Sunday, 42–3, 117–8 Body politic, 172–5, 203, 213–5; Jewish, 33, 158–9, 163, 168, 203, 211–2; modern, 144; Polish, 225, 229, 243, 248, 260 Bolshevik, 1–2, 40, 44, 181 Bolshevik Revolution (October, 1917), 1–2, 44 Bonifraterska Street, 136, 155, 158 Bookstores. See Stores Bourgeois, 22, 62–3, 129, 149, 249–50; Jewish, 178, 250; liberal, 185–6; public sphere, 142–4, 150, 171, 173–4. See also Liberal; Public sphere Boycotts, economic, 113, 251–4, 259; electoral, 180–2, 187, 227, 240; political, 112 Brenner, Yosef Hayim, 54 Bronstein, Rabbi Avraham, 189 Brothels, 61, 126–7, 129, 148. See also Prostitution; White slavery Brower, Daniel R., 51, 86 Bulygin Duma, 42, 176, 188, 225 Bund (the General Jewish Labor Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia), 11, 19, 91–2; activists, 102–3, 109, 119, 122, 124–5, 150; activity, 97, 99, 109, 126, 137, 153; and disorder, 239, 263–4; arrests of, 94–8, 104, 110; birzhe, 99–100, 119; boycott of elections to First Duma, 227; Central Committee, 105; code names, 102–3; coffeehouse,

101, 151–3; confiscation of materials, 98; emissaries, 109; Fighting Unit, 98, 137; figures and leaders, 102, 122, 150; First of May, 115, 126; fliers, 105, 112–5, 122, 127; Hagadah, 110; illegal activity and secret meetings, 99–101, 108, 151–2, 180; literature, 98, 101, 104–7, 112–6, 118–9, 122, 128, 153, 163, 263–4; martyrs, 122–6, 131; political activity, 118, 123, 126, 132–4, 180–1; response to Alfonse pogrom, 127–9; support for, 130–132; Warsaw Committee, 105, 113, 115, 118, 121 Bureaucracy, Jewish, 90; Russian, 25, 27, 32, 39, 90, 103, 118, 166, 184, 258 Bureaucrats, 6, 21, 101, 236, 258–9 Burial, 72–3; society, 48, 75 Calendar, 108; revolutionary, 114–5; Proletarian, 151 Capitalism, 25, 111, 113, 115–6, 128–9, 144, 250 Carmel Wines. See Alcoholic beverages Cemetery, 32–3, 36 Censorship, 43, 130, 163, 168, 224 Chaos, 176, 198, 261–2; fear of, 82, 237–8, 241; responses to, 117, 138, 198; urban, 69, 74, 76, 78, 82, 84, 91, 264 Charitable organizations, 36, 38, 48–9, 60–2, 66, 69–70, 75, 79, 143, 150, 158, 169; Chatterjee, Partha, 15, 144, 268 Cheah, Pheng, 15, 173–4, 270–1 Children, 32, 55, 159; abandoned, 67– 70, 75, 81; accidents involving, 67–8; arrest of, 95; death of, 42, 67, 69, 71; endangered, 61, 68, 85; lost, 68–9; missing, 75, 164; neglected, 67–8, 70, 77; orphans, 69–70 Chmielna Street, 84, 155, 157 Christian League for the Defense of Women, 61–2 Church, 31, 36, 224

Index Civic rights, 34, 38, 178–179, 192 Clothing and dress, 32, 35, 64–5, 68, 72, 88, 249 Code names, 102–3. See also Bund Coffeehouses, 19, 80, 147, 157; as political center, 150–4, 159; as public sphere, 19, 25, 41, 141–52, 158–9, 166, 169–72, 202, 212; Avrom Teytlboym’s café, 152; Gershon Rodzakh’s café, 101, 151–3; Hillel Fried’s café, 101, 152; illegal activity, 148; Makarevitch’s teahouse, 153; raids and arrests in, 101, 153; revolutionary activity in, 101, 175; Yehezkel Kotik’s café, 148, 150–2 Cohen, Eliezer, 122, 124. See also Bund; Martyrs Committee of Warsaw Jews, 203, 254 Communal organizations, 9–10, 18, 79, 148, 167; Jewish, 8–10, 12, 33, 48–50, 65, 68, 70, 75, 81, 93–5, 148–9, 164–5, 170, 182, 230. See also Gmina (Jewish community) Communication, 15–6, 24–6, 39, 103, 191; telegram, 118, 129 Communism, Polish, 13. See also żydokomuna (Judeo-Communism) Communists, 14, 20, 236. Community, borders and limits of, 19, 197, 201–3, 212, 227, 232, 260; changes in, 17–18, 76–8, 90, 94, 108, 116, 142, 155–7, 175, 182, 194, 212, 214; conceptions of, 9–10, 16, 19–20, 46, 50, 61, 76, 104, 108–10, 126, 144, 154, 160, 176, 195, 203, 212–5, 228, 232–3, 265–67; ethno-linguistic, 175, 198, 212, 244; imagined, 144, 159, 164–5, 225; Jewish, 9–11, 18, 31–2, 46, 48–9, 56, 60, 63–4, 69–70, 72–8, 81, 146–9, 151–2, 170, 177–8, 185, 189, 191, 250; leaders of, 78, 150; nature of, 16, 50, 76, 211–2; political, 6, 111, 116, 132, 139, 142–3, 146, 164, 172, 184, 193, 198, 200–2, 209, 211–2, 225, 231–3, 268;

problems and crisis of, 4, 18, 46, 48, 79, 90, 111, 269; revolutionary, 108, 112–14, 123–25, 175; search for, 4, 8, 17, 45; sense of, 10, 67, 96, 102–3, 142, 164, 172–3, 175, 269–70 Competition, 31, 39, 86, 100, 148, 186, 195, 215, 226–7, 240, 258 Confusion, 18, 54, 76, 80, 89, 106, 116, 120, 133, 177, 183, 193, 210, 242, 261, 263, 266, 271 Congress Kingdom. See Kingdom of Poland Conspiracy, 19, 216; conspiratorial groups and activities, 19, 92, 95, 103, 104–6, 111, 152, 154; conspiratorial politics, 5, 99, 120, 137, 180 Constitutional Democratic Party, (Kadets), 40, 44, 177–8, 184, 190, 237. See also Dumas; Elections Constitutional reform, 5, 105, 181, 188–9, 199, 216, 219, 226, 265 Corrsin, Stephen David, 50 Counterfeit goods, 76–7, 298n121. See also Deception Court (Rabbinic), 48, 78–9 Court records (Tsarist), 19, 93, 95 Crime, 18, 59, 81–9, 250; gangs, 82; muggings, 57, 82, 84; murder, 47, 66, 71–2, 81–3, 86–7, 89, 129, 220, 222; pickpockets, 58–9; political, 125; robbery, 81–2, 84, 87–8, 137, 259; scams, 47, 57, 59, 76, 78–9; scandals, 47, 79; stabbings, 66, 74, 83–4, 86, 88; theft and thieves, 58, 80–1, 83–4, 86, 88, 127–8 Critic. See Theater Cultural institutions. See Coffeehouse, Press and Theater Cultural projects, 35–6, 223 Czerwony Sztandar, 249, 253 Death, 36, 47–8, 71–5, 81–2, 89, 122, 138; and nationalism, 271; and violence,

403

404

Index 43, 87, 127, 169, 262; casualties, 120, 127; corpses, 71–3, 75; of martyrs, 122–3, 125–6; murder, 74, 83, 85, 89; of protestors, 42, 122–3; suicide, 47, 74–5 Deception, 62, 76–7, 79, 81, 238, 241–3. See also Dupe Democracy, 3, 17, 40, 44, 161, 182, 184–5, 192, 201, 214–6, 219, 228, 232–6, 239, 244, 248, 256–7, 266–7, 269; contradictions, 161, 196; dark side, 216, 219 Democratic, institutions, 5, 214, 217–8, 226–7, 247, 266; practices, 21, 141, 174–6, 195, 198, 210, 233; principles and values, 188, 197, 246; processes, 180–3, 229, 246; redemption, 182, 186, 209; reforms, 3, 5, 15, 92, 130, 135, 154, 188, 216, 225–6, 247–8, 266; society, 260. See also Dumas Demographic growth, 26, 29–30, 33, 45, 50, 176, 257. See also Population Demonstrations, 115, 120, 125, 133–4. See Protests Der idisher proletariar, 130–1 Der telegraf, 72–3, 75, 82, 84–6, 162–3, 170, 178, 183–6, 190–1, 194–6, 233–4, 267 Der veg, 58, 68, 73–5, 80, 83, 90, 157–8, 160, 162–5, 168–9, 179, 183–4, 186–7, 190–3, 195, 200, 203. See also Prylucki, Noah; Prylucki, Tsevi Despair, 74–5, 89, 259, 261, 269 Di arbeter shtime, 119 Di letste pasirungen, 128–9 Di naye tsaytung, 83, 88, 162 Discipline, 127, 191–9; collective, 20, 175, 192, 196, 198–9, 209, 232–3, 268; discourse of, 172–5, 191–9, 203, 211, 227, 248; electoral, 195, 210–11, 265 Dmowski, Roman, 30, 202, 208, 210, 218, 225, 246 Dos leben, 73 Dubnow, Simon, 8–11, 263

Dumas, 13, 20–1, 43, 130, 170, 172–176, 214–5, 225, 228, 230, 241, 258–60, 262–3; First Duma, boycott of, 181, 227, 240; dismissal of, 179, elections to, 20, 43, 151, 170, 176–198, 200, 202, 208–10, 227, 232–6, 242, 247, 245–7, 249–50, 252–3, 257; electoral results, 20, 79, 198–9; regulations, 130, 176–7, 200; Fourth Duma, 252; Second Duma, election to, 20, 44, 170, 194, 198–210, 211, 234, 239–40, 242, 252, 254; Progressive-Jewish bloc, 208, 227, 242, 245–6, 249; violence, 44, 202, 252–3. See also Bulygin Duma Dupe, 57–8, 61, 76, 200, 256. See also Deception Dynner, Glenn, 11, 34 Dzielna Street, 68, 98, 122 Dzika Street, 79, 100–1, 122, 169 Dzwon Polski, 233, 243, 253 Economy, 25, 126, 142, 166, 171, 183; boycotts, 113, 252–4, 259; conditions, 41, 55; developments, 25–6, 29–30, 34, 39–40, 50, 110, 166; difficulties and poverty, 50, 59, 112, 115, 183; economic actions, 252–3; integration, 27–8, 34, 126; sanctions, 252–3; separation, 37 Editors, 162, 166–8, 170, 196, 200 Education, 40, 62–6, 69, 75, 78, 111, 114–5, 152, 160–2, 169, 188, 193, 200, 211, 268, 270; institutions, 26, 36, 145; political, 113, 189, 200; reforms, 26; Russian, 39, 47 Ekaterinoslav, 98, 166 Elections, apathy and confusion, 177, 183–5, 193, 197, 199, 228; bureaus, 191, 231–2; campaign, 182, 197, 205, 212, 215–6, 229–30, 233, 239, 254, 259, 268; candidates, 192–4, 202–5, 209–10, 230–2, 234, 236, 242–3, 246; caucuses, 137, 190, 242; curiae, 20, 180, 190, 194, 198, 215; coalitions, 187–8, 190,

Index 195, 198, 204, 207, 227, 239, 241, 246, 261, 266; lists, 176, 189, 192–3, 195, 209, 232, 239–40, 242, 254; literature and materials, 191–2, 209; losses and failures, 20, 196, 199, 211; politics, 5, 154, 172, 186, 189, 192, 202, 209, 236, 254; practices, 175, 177, 183; process, 181, 183, 185, 188, 197, 230–1, 243, 251, 255; regulations, 44, 176, 180, 183, 200, 215; results, 184, 194; rights, 44; system, 215; victories and successes, 184, 190, 194, 234, 260. See also Apathy; Democracy; Duma; Jewish Electoral Committee; Voters Eley, Geoff, 173 Elite, 10, 163, 178, 182, 184, 196–7; communal, 62, 65, 187; cultural, 154, 163; political, 106, 111, 171, 199 Employment, 55, 62–3, 80, 253 Enlightenment, 24, 26–7, 63, 175, 244, 271. See also Haskalah Ethnicity, 15–6, 20, 139, 176, 213–4, 219, 225–9, 233–4, 244; ethnic groups, 103, 142, 195; politicization of, 15, 20, 172, 176, 210, 213–4, 234, 244, 260 Ethnie, 15, 217. See also Smith, Anthony D. Ethno-linguistic, communities, 6–7, 13, 15, 20–1, 134, 139, 142, 171, 175, 198, 212, 215, 228–31, 244, 260, 267–8; divisions, 103, 108, 134, 139, 175, 198, 210–3 Exclusion, 13–4, 20, 50, 173, 175, 206, 215, 219, 225, 232, 268 Excommunication (herem), 112–3, 200–1, 205 Exploitation, 47, 66–7 Expulsion, 31–3, 252–3 ‘Ezrat yetomim (Help for Orphans). See Charitable Organizations and Children Family, 42, 52, 57, 59, 67, 69, 71, 73, 74, 95

Fear, 72, 138, 168, 224, 228–32, 240, 249, 257, 259, 264; of antisemitism, 6, 43, 60, 70, 88–9, 130, 134–5, 178, 190, 221, 224, 253, 263–4; of crime, 6, 36, 60, 81–8; of Jews, 228, 230–2, 236–7, 240, 249, 255–6; of revolution, 134, 156, 237, 239–40, 264, 266 Financial difficulties, 31, 36, 55, 63, 76 First of May, 111–7, 126 Fishman, David, 155 Flags. See Banners Folklore, 28, 57, 72, 131, 148 Folk-masses. See Masses Forests and woods, 54–5, 57, 75, 96, 99–100, 137; Praga forest, 99 Foucault, Michel, 63, 212, 219, 232 France, 25, 39, 223 Franciszkańska Street, 52, 136, 169 Frankel, Jonathan, 9 Fraud and forgery, 76–81. See also Deception; Dupe French Revolution, 2, 26, 109 Fried, Hillel, 101, 152. See also Coffeehouses Fritzsche, Peter, 46 Frumkin, L., 98–9, 102, 104 Fuchs, Shmuel, 52–3, 55, 269 Fundamental Laws, 154 Funeral processions, 117, 122 Gazeta Polska, 224, 230, 242 Gazeta Warszawska, 224 Gdańsk (Danzig), 23, 26–7 Gender, 47, 64–5, 94 Geneva, 30, 108, 128 Germany, 39, 271 Gęsia Street, Jewish cemetery, 33; Jewish coffeehouses, 101, 151–3, 169; raids, 97; violence, 58, 83, 122 Głos, 223 gmina (Jewish community), 18, 36, 38, 69, 76, 170, 186–7, 196–7, 250; activities, 36, 48–9, 177; elections and

405

406

Index voting, 49, 177–8; failures, 56, 90; leaders, 36, 49 Gnessin, Uri Nissan, 54, 270–1 Goldin, Semion, 224 Goniec Poranny, 233–4, 240, 254 Góra Kalwaria, 23, 57 Government records, 19, 93, 95–6 Grabelskaya, Fruma “Vera,” 122–126. See also Bund; Martyrs Grachów, 68, 71 Gravier, Yisrael, 122, 124–6. See also Bund; Martyrs Gruen, Avraham, 164 Gruen, David Yosef (David BenGurion), 2; arrest of, 96; in Warsaw, 51–5; Zionism, 269–71 Gruen, Victor, 96 Grünbaum, Yitzhak, 185, 197, 201–3, 207, 247 Grzybowska Street, 67, 85 Guesnet, François, 11 Ger (Hasidic dynasty), 64, 189, 250 Habermas, Jürgen, 15, 142–4, 152, 160, 171, 173. See also Public sphere Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), 7–8, 34, 53, 175, 270–1 Hasidism, 7–8, 11, 33–34, 57, 64, 189, 204–6, 209, 250 Hate, 6, 21, 192–4, 205, 209–10, 218–9, 228–9, 240–1, 250–4, 259, 262–3 Ha-tsefira, 35, 150, 162, 179, 186 Ha-tsofe, 56, 65, 68, 70–2, 75, 80, 147–8, 162, 164–5, 167–8 Ha-yom, 65, 71, 75, 80, 82, 84, 86–8, 136, 162, 164, 169, 179, 199, 202–5, 209, 264 Historiography, 8–11, 13, 18, 27, 216, 252 Hoberstein, Zelig, 122, 125 Holidays, 63, 88, 112, 157, 164, 325n22; Easter, 157; Passover, 126, 137, 157, 184; Revolutionary, 114–5. See also First of May Home for the aged, 48

Hospitals, 33, 36, 48–9, 72, 74–5, 125, 165 Hunt, Lynn, 109 Ideals, 47, 132, 219, 244; 248; liberal, 215, 246; National Democratic, 244– 6; revolutionary, 133–4, 139 Idishes tageblat, 58, 67–9, 72, 74–5, 79, 83–4, 87–9, 138, 157, 162, 164, 201–2, 208–209 Illicit material, 98–9, 108 Images, 18, 47, 214, 219, 228, 263; antiJewish and antisemitic, 13, 20–1, 213–9, 228, 232–8, 240–1, 244–251, 260; National Democratic, 215, 244, 246–8; of the city, 18, 46–7, 57, 60, 67–8, 72; political, 18, 20–1, 213–4, 216, 228–30, 234, 240–1, 250–2, 259. See also Anti-Jewish; Antisemitism Imitation goods, 76–8, 199, 298n121 Immigrants, 60, 226, 235 Impostor, rabbis, 78–80; wine, 76 Individual, 5, 7, 12, 50, 63, 72, 90, 107, 125, 142–5, 154, 158, 172, 174–5, 211, 265, 270–2; and community, 16, 75–6, 79, 90, 109, 132, 143–4, 146, 172, 175, 212, 225, 231, 262, 270–2; Jewish, 3, 63, 73, 90, 109, 175, 243; modern, 125, 270–2; order, 46 Industrialization, 28, 39; industrial center, 17, 24, 27–9; industrial growth, 26, 30, 32–3, 39 Information Bureau for Jewish Immigrants, 60 In-migration, 47, 50; in-migrants and newcomers, 18, 33, 46–7, 50–1, 55, 57–61, 67, 70–2, 85, 94, 125, 159. See also Migration Integration, 15; cultural, 38; economic, 28; Jewish, 3, 21, 35, 112, 114, 178, 255– 6; social, 34. See also Assimilation Intellectuals and Intelligentsia, 16, 27, 29, 35, 54, 125, 127, 133, 146, 256; Jewish, 35, 161, 250; Polish, 254–5

Index Interethnic cooperation, 134, 177, 190, 210, 212, 215, 220–2, 248, 265–6 Israel, 2, 7, 12, 53, 112, 152, 167, 266, 269. See also Palestine; Zionism Izraelita, 34–5, 178 Jails and prisons, 74, 122, 125, 138, 221. See also Pawiak Prison January Uprising (1863), 29, 35, 218 Jeleński, Jan, 37–8 Jewish Electoral Committee, 177, 187–194, 198, 205–6, 208–10, 227, 246. See also Dumas Jewish Organization for the Defense of Women, 62–3, 69, 294n62. See also Women Jewish-Progressive coalition, 187–196, 206–10, 213, 227–8, 239, 241–6, 249– 50, 253, 255, 261, 266. See also Dumas; Elections Journalists, 47–8, 148–9, 155, 160, 164, 166–8, 182–5, 187, 192, 199, 200–1, 247 Journals. See Newspapers Kahal. See Gmina Karmelicka Street, 98, 122, 138, 157 Karowa Street, 155, 158 Katz, Jacob, 7–8, 10, 271, 275nn11–14, 364n28 Katznelson, Berl, 2, 107 Katznelson, Ḥayim, 167, 179 Kedourie, Elie, 15, 144, 225 Khatzman, Vera, 267 Kiev, 24, 27, 43, 135, 165, 189 Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland), 3, 5, 11, 13, 25–30, 33, 42, 48, 50, 73, 91, 105, 109, 136, 139, 178, 180, 218, 221–2, 225–7, 234–5, 238, 248, 260, 265; map of, xxv Kirshenblatt, Mayer, 169 Kosher meat, 77–8 Kotik, Yeḥezkel, 55, 69, 148–152, 159 Kraj, 223, 226

Kraków, 23–5 Krochmalna Street, 68, 148 Kronenberg, Leopold, 33 Krzywicki, Ludwik, 209–10, 243, 245–6 Kurier Codzienny, 223, 225–6 Kurier Warszawski, 223, 226–7, 233–4 Language, German, 98, 107, 154, 158; Hebrew, 35, 46, 56–7, 61, 75, 112, 136, 145, 151, 154, 161–4, 167–9, 179, 186, 199, 202, 209, 261, 264, 270; Polish, 22, 29–30, 34–5, 46, 52, 98, 105–7, 110–115, 123, 125, 129, 131–2, 139, 148, 151–5, 158, 162, 178, 181, 196, 216, 219, 223–4, 226, 233, 257–8, 264, 266; Russian, 22, 29, 98, 102, 105–7, 110, 112, 132, 148, 244; Yiddish, 19, 22, 38, 46, 57, 66–7, 70, 72–3, 75, 81–3, 89, 98, 105–7, 110–6, 118, 123, 125, 132, 138–9, 145–6, 148, 150–1, 153–64, 168, 170–1, 178–80, 182–3, 188, 191–2, 198, 203, 207, 209–10, 212, 219, 231–3, 257, 264, 267–8 Lederhendler, Eli, 11–2, 145 Legal, changes, 33, 138, 145–6, 155; questions, 165–6; restrictions, 32, 38, 49, 118; rights, 31 Lenin, Vladimir, 1 Levin, Shmarya, 54–6 Liberal, ambivalence, 246–8, 266; antisemitism, 241–248; groups, 21, 39, 219, 230, 244–7, 250, 266–7; parties, 176–8, 181, 187–9, 227, 248, 268; policies towards Jews, 206, 219, 222, 225–6, 241–8; 265–7; Polish liberalism, 39, 40, 206, 215, 229, 241, 245, 247–9, 255–6; politics, 3–6, 12, 62, 138, 176, 181, 184–7, 194, 205–7, 213, 215–6, 224, 227, 241, 243, 247, 260, 265; publications, 223, 226; Russian, 263. See also Bourgeois Linguistic, factors, 11, 92, 103, 132, 211; framework, 118; diversity, 104–7;

407

408

Index i­ntegration, 38; separation, 34, 118, 159. See also Ethno-linguistic; Language Literacy, 144 Lithuania, 23, 220, 223 Litvakes, 148, 204, 223, 235, 240 Litvin, A. (Shmuel Leyb Hurvits), 148, 150 Litwak, A. (Hayim Ya‘akov Helfand), 100 Lodz, 50, 60, 89, 91, 102, 116, 125, 165, 183, 239 Lodzer nakhrikhten, 89 London, 52, 63, 98, 108, 179 Loneliness, 52, 54–5, 147. See also Alienation Loyalty, 20, 35, 41, 133, 195–6, 211; collective, 195, 198; political, 151, 195, 203, 206, 246, 248; to Poland, 178, 226, 229, 245 Luxemburg, Rosa, 30 Mah, Harold, 173–4 Margolin, Shloyme, 122, 124–5 Marriage, 48, 57–8; restrictions, 32 Marszalkowska Street, 85, 131, 133 Martial law, 6, 92, 136, 139, 265 Martyrs, 73, 122–6, 131; martyrdom, 22, 123. See also Bund Maskil, 38, 154; maskilim, 145. See also Enlightenment; Haskalah Masses, 55, 119, 122, 160–1, 168, 174, 183, 185, 195–201, 208, 228, 231, 234, 250, 257; demonstrating, 130–1; Folk-Masses (Jewish), 183, 185, 187, 196–7; Jewish, 161, 185, 196, 199, 231, 257; working, 118–9. See also Masses; Participatory politics; Protests May Day. See First of May Meisels, Rabbi Dov Ber, 35 Memoirs, 46, 55, 92–3, 97, 99, 132, 134, 146, 149–50 Merchants, 31–4, 78, 80, 87. See also Trade

Mickiewicz Monument, 133 Migration, 51–2, 60–2, 67, 148, 160, 164, 226. See also In-migration Mikhalevitch, Beinush, 98, 150 Miła Street, 100, 135 Milk, 77–8 Minsk, 40, 125 Modernity, and antisemitism, 224; and community, 6, 112, 142, 144, 225, 260; and nationalism, 6, 13–5, 37, 142–4, 151, 225–6, 252, 270–1; and politics, 10, 12, 20, 93, 105, 120, 139, 160, 173, 182, 185, 191, 207, 212, 217, 223, 226, 256, 259, 261, 265, 267–70; city as representation of, 6, 8, 22, 25, 46–7, 50, 54, 57, 62, 67–8, 70, 82, 84, 91; crisis of, 46–48, 62; dialectics of, 4, 8, 14, 16–17, 174–5, 219, 228, 261, 268–72; fear of, 224; fluid nature of, 60, 62; Jewish encounter with and response to, 3–4, 8, 14–16, 46, 90, 261, 268, 271; Jewish interpretations of, 7–8, 16, 47; visions of, 57 Modern Jewish Politics, 3–6, 8, 10–2, 93, 105, 151, 160, 182, 185, 191, 196, 212, 265, 267, 270 Mokotów, 109–10, 155 Money, 27, 31, 57–8, 70, 79–80, 82–4, 88 Morality, 47, 57, 59 Moscow, 27, 42, 118, 238 Mosse, George L., 198, 270 Mukdoni, A., (Alexander Kappel), 167 Muranowska Street, 80, 89, 100 Muscovites (moskal, moskiewski), 236–8 Nalewki Street, 95, 97, 131, 149–50 152 Napoleon, invasions, 25–6; code, 26–7; war, 25, 33 Natanson, Ludwik, 36, 48, 62, 182 National, autonomy, 33–4, 226–7; communities, 15, 41, 216–8, 225, 232, 245–6, 250; independence, 22; libera-

Index tion, 5, 26, 34, 41; movements, 4, 30, 41, 133, 181, 198–9, 206, 250, 268–9; narrative, 52, 145; politics, 3, 25, 27, 213, 230, 232–8, 245, 252, 255; public sphere, 171, 174; redemption, 2; rhetoric, 3, 6, 134, 248, 268; rights, 204–9, 253; will, 272 National Concentration, 200–2, 204, 210. See also Dumas; Elections National Democratic Party (ND, Endeks), 180, 187–9, 194–5, 200–8, 215, 224–5, 227–8, 234–7, 241–4, 248– 51, 258–60, 266–7; and “the Jews,” 202–8, 215, 227–32, 241, 248–9, 253–4, 259, 262; development of, 30, 132–5, 139; literature, 230, 234, 141, 253; rhetoric, 228, 244–6, 255, 259, 266–7. See also Dumas; Elections National Workers’ Union (Narodowy Związek Robotniczy, NZR), 230, 236–9 Nationalism, allure of, 259, development of, 3, 6–7, 12, 25, 144, 267; Jewish, 5–6, 14–6, 134, 267, 269–71; modern aspects of, 16, 270; politics of, 232, 239, 250, 259; romantic, 29, scholarship on, 15–6, 144, 217–8 New York, 52, 108, 164 Newcomers. See Visitors; In-migration; Migration Newspapers and journals, advertisements, 76–7, 81, 89, 157, 165, 169, 191–3; and community, 75–6, 142, 162, 165, 244, 168, 182, 194; and politics, 150, 168, 186, 191, 194–5, 199–200, 219, 224, 233; as public institution, 18, 85, 129, 141, 143, 150, 157–8, 164–6, 168–70, 172, 175, 185–6, 193, 201, 212; commercial, 47; freedom of, 26; Hebrew, 35, 145, 161–2, 164–5, 168, 179, 209; Jewish, 18, 35, 46–8, 50, 56–8, 60–1, 67, 69, 73–4, 76, 79, 82, 146, 162–4, 178, 187, 193,

204, 223, 249, 253; journals, 35, 47, 64, 106, 150; Polish, 30, 34–5, 98, 106–7, 129, 151, 163, 165, 183, 210, 216, 219, 223–4, 226, 233–4, 243, 249; popular, 167; readers, 48, 68, 72, 83, 170, 178, 183, 186, 188, 195, 199, 234; replacement of traditional Jewish community, 75–6, 164–5; Russian, 98, 106–7; Yiddish, 18, 57, 61, 72, 98, 106–7, 142, 145, 150, 155, 157–8, 161–4, 166, 169, 171, 182, 186, 190–1, 198, 212, 268; Zionism, 167. See also Nationalism; Popular culture; Public sphere Nicknames. See Code names Nir-Rafalkes, Nahum, 137, 152 November Insurrection (1830), 27, 33 Nowa Gazeta, 162 Nowodworski, Franciszek, 194, 210, 246 Nowolipki Street, 33, 74, 88, 97–8, 101, 122, 153 Nowy Świat Street, 83, 100, 131, 133 October Manifesto (1905), 43, 130, 133– 4, 138, 154, 177, 181, 185, 221, 225, 227 Odessa, 24, 38, 43, 50, 73, 118, 135, 163, 166, 183 Okhrana (secret police), 80 Olonets Gubernia, 96 Orphans, 48, 69–70. See also Children Orzeszkowa, Eliza, 29 Otwock, 137, 165 Pale of Settlement, 11, 50, 73, 165, 177, 183, 190, 194; map of, xxiv Palestine, 2, 12, 256, 268, 271. See also Israel; Zionism Paris, 30, 57, 245 Parks and gardens, 45, 88, 93, 96, 99–100, 135–6; Botanic Gardens, 135; łazienki Park, 135; Saxony Garden, 135, 157; Ujazdowski Park, 135

409

410

Index Participatory politics, development of, 15, 19, 141, 233, 235; experience of, 20, 171–2, 175–7, 179, 182, 186, 192, 236, 258; and nationalism, 192, 197–8, 211–2, 214–6, 225, 228, 232 Patriotism, 33, 35, 41, 178, 245–6 Pawia Street, 68, 98 Pawiak Prison, 122, 125, 138. See also Jails and prisons Peasants, 44, 180 Peretz, Y.L. (Yitskhok Leybush), 35, 66, 150, 159–61, 180, 183, 257, 264 Petitions, 42, 62, 87, 89, 179 Philanthropy, 48, 148. See also Charitable organizations Piłsudski, Józef, 30 Pimps, 127–9, 148. See also White slavery; Alfonse pogrom Płock, 58 Płońsk, 12, 52, 96, 164 Poale Zion, 102, 120, 162; activity, 100, 120, 149, 180; arrests of activists, 98, 106; birzhe, 100; coffeehouses, 101, 149, 152; group in Warsaw, 102–3, 106, 137, 152–3, 262; materials, 98, 104–6. See also Revolutionary organizations Poetry, 74, 151, 258 Pogroms, 6, 13; fear of, 135, 138, 222; in Białystok, 73, 79, 138, 169–70, 238, 262–263, 265, 267; in October 1905, 43, 73, 130, 135, 221; in Siedlce, 262–263, 265; on Christmas Day 1881, 36–8; threats of, 201–2, 246, 250, 252, 265. See also Alfonse pogrom; Violence Police, 77, 80, 84–88, 93, 97–9, 103, 122, 128, 135–6, 152; Police Minister, 133–4; raids, 98, 101, 110; records, 19, 95, 97; reports, 94–5, 103, 133–4, 146, 153; violence, 70, 84, 86, 120, 128–9 Polish Progressive Party, 200–1 Polish provinces. See Kingdom of Poland

Polish Socialist Party (PPS), 11, 19, 30, 91, 104, 108, 151, 216, 235, 237–8, 259; activity, 106, 119–20, 137, 152–3, 180, 220–2, 227; and “the Jews,” 104, 219–22, 237–8, 248–51; Central Committee, 220; Fighting Organization, 104; literature, 98, 107, 104, 106, 114, 219, 222, 251; Robotnik, 249 Polish Socialist Party-Proletariat, 106–7, 137, 152 Polish-Jewish solidarity, 123, 132, 135, 142, 190, 208, 212, 215, 217, 220–2, 231–4, 247–8, 255, 257, 260, 266 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 23–5 Political communities, construction of, 6, 111, 116, 132, 142–4, 146, 184, 193, 198, 200, 202, 211, 214, 223, 225, 231, 268; imagination of, 164, 172, 225; limits of, 194–5, 200, 202, 209, 227, 232, 234, 260; mobilization of, 192, 198, 203, 209, 211, 227–8, 260, 268 Political movements and organizations, 2–6, 16, 52, 82, 92, 107, 109, 149, 153, 221, 237; development of, 12, 30, 36, 38, 107–8, 112, 118, 132, 139, 146, 154, 175, 218, 261, 264–5, 271; divisions, 104, 212; language, 112, 132, 134; modern, 139, 168, 175, 200, 212, 261; revolutionary, 108, 118, 133, 265 Political organization, 3, 19, 82, 92, 107, 110, 138–9, 146, 152, 171, 174, 177, 180, 182, 198, 227, 233 Political sphere, 215, 241, 247, 249, 259, 266; Jewish, 20, 213, 218; nationalization of, 215, 247; Polish, 20–1, 139, 213, 216–8, 243, 260, 267 Polonsky, Antony, 225 Popular culture, 19, 141–2, 154–70, 255 Popular politics, 19–20, 92, 104, 108, 112, 118, 132, 134, 138, 145–6, 154, 179–80, 185, 188, 191, 198, 200, 212,

Index 225, 229, 231, 241, 252, 261–3, 267. See also Elections; Participatory politics; Revolutionary organizations Population, Jewish, 31, 33, 46, 49–51, 59–60, 73, 78, 135, 145, 155, 158–9, 175–7, 190, 215, 231; Polish (Warsaw), 24, 26, 30, 33, 51, 59, 132, 153, 215, 219, 253; Russian empire, 41, 50. See also Demography Positivism, 29–30, 36 Poverty, 50, 55–6, 66 Praga, 32, 70, 83, 86, 99, 135 Prawda, 223–226 Predators, 57–9, 61, 67. See also Dupe; In-migration Press. See Newspapers and Journals; Public sphere Printers and Printing, 43, 98, 120, 144, 167, 187 Prison. See Jails and prisons Professional training, 62, 65 Professional unions, 38 Progressive Democratic Union (Progressive Democrats, PD), 178, 187–90, 196, 200, 204, 206–10, 227, 239, 249–50; critiques of, 232, 239, 242–4, 249; materials, 245–6; policies toward Jews, 189–90, 196, 242, 242–6 Progressive-Jewish coalition, 187, 194–5, 208, 210, 213, 227–8, 232, 241, 244, 249–50, 253. See also Dumas; Elections Propaganda, 265; antisemitic, 251; Bundist, 263; electoral, 209, 249; political, 116, 120, 252; revolutionary, 133, 139 Prostitution, 47, 61–7, 69; prostitutes and pimps, 63, 81, 127–9, 148. See also Alfonse pogrom; Brothels; White slavery Protests, 39, 41–3, 111, 115–9, 122–3, 126, 128, 130–5, 137, 139, 220. See also Demonstrations

Prus, Bołesław (Aleksander Głowacki), 29, 247, 249 Prylucki, Noah, 160–1, 185, 199–203, 206–7, 247 Prylucki, Tsevi, 168–9 Public debate, 127, 144, 172–4, 192, 198, 203, 211, 216 Public sphere, 19, 140, 150, 172–3, 203; and community, 142, 145, 174, 271; and mobilization, 172, 175, 192, 203; as forum for debate, 142–3, 171, 172–5, 182, 192, 203, 211, 268; bourgeois, 142–4, 150, 173–4; expansion and transformation of, 15, 19, 92, 141–3, 163, 167, 172–5, 192–4, 203, 207, 210– 12, 214, 258; institutions, 143–4, 146, 151, 157, 162, 165–71, 174–5, 185–6, 201, 204, 211–2; instrumentalization of, 169–70, 192, 203, 210–12, 268; Jewish, 19, 141–6, 150–7, 163–7, 169–71, 174–5, 182, 185–7, 192, 194, 198–9, 203, 207, 211–2, 267–8; limits of, 173–4, 263; national, 144, 174; nationalization of, 5, 171, 174, 215, 229, 247, 268; Polish, 213–5; politics in, 140, 143, 168, 173, 229, 263. See also Bourgeois; Coffeehouses; Habermas, Jürgen; Newspapers; Political sphere Public will, 197–8, 212, 272 Publishing, 24, 33 Publikum, 161, 332. See Public sphere;, Theater; Yiddish theater Rabbinic court. See Court Raids, 94, 98, 101, 104, 152–3; government, 44, 97, 99, 101, 104, 136–7; police, 98, 101, 111 Redemption, 2, 12, 17, 21–2, 74, 117, 181, 211–2, 262, 272; collective, 11, 161, 212, 265; democratic, 182–4, 186, 209; historiographical, 12, 17, 22, 262, 271–2; national, 2, 270–2; political, 127, 183, 211; revolutionary, 117, 118, 125,

411

412

Index Reforms, 34, 43–4, 62–3, 76, 160, 176, 180, 220, 225; constitutional, 5, 105, 199, 216, 219, 220, 226, 265; democratic, 216, 225–6, 247, 266; educational, 26; governmental, 27, 29, 39, 41, 43–4, 93, 162, 226; political, 65, 140, 184, 191; semi-democratic, 3, 5, 15, 92, 130, 135, 154, 176, 181, 188, 216, 225, 248, 266; social, 62–4 Religious law, 77, 113, 157, 166 Repression, 92, 98, 137, 181, 224 Restaurants, 101, 136, 146, 148, 150, 152–3. See also Coffeehouses Revenge, 66, 204, 221 Revolutionary organizations, 5, 18–9, 40, 42, 44, 91–3, 96, 101, 105, 107–8, 111, 132–3, 134–5, 151–2, 237, 264, 268; activities of, 92, 99–101, 107, 110, 114, 118, 120, 130, 133, 265; and antisemitism, 264; and violence, 138, 263–4; cells, 92–3, 103–4, 109, 118, 175, 203; culture, 96, 98, 103, 105, 107–8, 110–4, 117, 120; development and support of, 5, 18, 92–3, 110, 120, 130, 139, 215; difficulties, 112, 265, 268; entry into public realm, 92, 100–1, 105, 108, 118, 132–3, 139, 202; Jewish participation in, 19, 91, 93–4, 97, 106–8, 132, 139, 151, 237, 240, 263, 265; language and literature, 101, 106–7, 111, 113–4; materials, 98, 101, 108, 152; repression of, 92, 98, 136–7, 152, 181 Revolutionary politics, and Jews, 91–2, 141–2, 188; decline, 92; growth, 109, 111; limitations, 99, 110; transition into public realm, 108–9, 111, 152. See also Activists; Revolutionary organizations Revolutionary time, 108, 114, 116–7 Reyzen, Avrom, 150–1 Ritual baths, 48 Rodzakh, Gershon, 101, 151–3. See also Coffeehouses

Rola, 37 Romanov Dynasty, 39, 44, 130. See also Russian Empire; Tsars Russian Empire, 1–3, 5, 9–11, 13–4, 25–30, 33, 36, 38–41, 43, 50, 61, 80, 93, 95, 130, 186, 189, 197–8, 262–3; culture and politics, 141, 146, 155, 162, 165, 176, 186; policy, 36, 178–9. See also Romanov Dynasty Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP), 40, 106–7, 227, 237 Russian-Jewish alliance, 236–239 Russo-Japanese War, 41, 105, 186, 189 Safe houses, 93, 96–99, 102, 109. See also Revolutionary organizations Saint George Street, 98, 107 Satire, 85, 168, 251–2, 254–9 Second Aliyah, 2, 54. See also Zionism Sejm, 23, 26, 32 Self-defense, 87, 221; Jewish, 220–2 Self-determination, 144, 178, 207, 225, 228, 230, 243 Self-government, 9, 40 Self-help organizations. See Charitable organizations Self-rule, 27, 41, 224, 226–7, 232–3, 236, 255–6 Senatorska Street, 72, 195 Serfs, 26, 30, 41, 44. See also Peasants Shapira, Rabbi Moshe, 64 Shatzky, Jacob, 10, 49 Sholem Aleichem (Shalom Rabinovitz), 54, 78, 155–6, 163; brother Wolff, 54, 78; daughter Ernestina (Tessa), 155–6, 163 Shreberk, Shlomo, 150–1 Shtetl, 9, 69–70 Siedlce, 165; pogrom in, 262–3, 265 Simmel, Georg, 22 Sin, 66, 197, 264 Smith, Anthony D., 15, 217. See also Ethnie

Index Sochaczew, 110, 189 Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), 30, 91, 216, 222, 235, 237–8, 248–51, 259; activity, 119, 137, 227; and “the Jews,” 237–8, 248–51, 253; arrests of supporters, 94, 106; cells, 94–5, 102; Central Committee, 222; materials, 104, 106, 114, 116, 222, 248–50, 253, 260; Warsaw Committee, 250 Social institutions. See Coffeehouses; Newspapers and journals; Public sphere; Theater Social Revolutionary Party, 44 Socialism, 3, 12, 111–6, 118, 237–8, 240, 256 Sokolow, Nahum, 35, 150, 162–3, 179, 186, 223, 233. See also Ha-tsefira; Der telegraf St. Petersburg, 27, 40, 42, 73, 108, 117– 121, 177, 179, 182, 184, 186, 199 Stampfer, Shaul, 50 Steinlauf, Michael, 155 Stolypin, Piotr, 44 Stores, 76, 80, 136, 204; bookstore, 100–1; butcher shop, 77; illegal activities in, 101, 148; monopoly alcohol store, 76, 84; robberies and assaults in, 86–7, 89 Strikes, 1, 42, 112, 116–7, 123, 126, 137, 238–9; general strike of January 1905, 43, 119–20, 123, 126, 130, 238–9; general strike of October 1905, 43, 130 Suffrage, 43, 177 Suicide, 47, 74–5. See also Death Świętochowski, Aleksander, 29, 210, 243, 245–6 Symbols, 219, 238; antisemitic, 219, 228, 238, 252; city as; 22, 25, 47; Jewish; 29, 78, 81; patriotic and revolutionary; 133; political, 216, 248, 250 Synagogues, 31, 48, 55, 81, 110, 126; Great Synagogue on Tłomackie

Street, 34, 48, 88–9, 178; political meetings in, 110, 126, 191 Syrkin, (Moses) Naḥman, 196–7, 261–2 Tabenkin, Yitzhak, 1, 149, 152–3, 159, 262 Tax, 26, 32, 49, 176 Teahouses, 148, 153. See also Coffeehouses; Public sphere Teplitskii, Yankel Abramov, 97, 107 Textiles, 26, 30 Teytlboym, Avrom, 148–9, 152 Theater, 88, 136, 141, 154, 163–4, 166, 170, 188; and community, 142, 154–5, 159–60, 166, 168–71, 177, 183, 212; critics, 160–62, 167–8, 201; and public, 154, 155, 157–9, 161; and public sphere, 143, 146, 154, 157–9, 169–72, 175, 212, 268; appeal and influence, 145, 157, 162, 212; appreciation and education, 183, 201; as public institutions and spaces, 19, 143, 154, 158–9; economics of, 142, 158, 169; Elizeum, 155, 158; Jardin d’Hiver, 155, 157, 169; Muranower Theater, 155, 158–9, 169; Polish, 30; Summer Theater, 135; Teater velt, 158; troupes, 157; Yiddish, 19, 142, 146, 154–5, 157–63, 248, 268. See also Popular culture; Public sphere Theater Square, 133 Tłomackie Street, 34, 48, 88, 178 Trade, 24–5, 30–3, 77, 80, 150. See also Merchants Trades and crafts, 120–1, 137 Transportation, 26, 67; carriages, 85, 88; ports, 62; steam ships, 28, 58; trains and railroads, 27, 33, 42–3, 60, 62, 64, 71–2, 88, 136–7 Trunk, Yeshayahu, 99, 109 Trust, 76–9, 81, 103, 247, 263; mistrust, 18, 77, 81, 229 Tsars, Tsar Alexander I, 25; Tsar Alexander II, 29; Tsar Nicholas I, 27;

413

414

Index Tsar Nicholas II, 39, 42–44, 51, 110; Tsarist regime, 1, 3, 39–40, 43–44, 91, 99, 117, 121, 126–29, 132, 180–1, 220, 222. See also Romanov Dynasty; Russian Empire Tugendhold, Jakub, 34 Twarda Street, 63, 82–3 Tygodnik Ilustrowany, 151, 223 Tyszkiewicz, Władysław, 194 Ujazdowski Avenue, 133, 135 Underground organizations, 93–4, 96, 102–4, 107–8, 126, 139, 177, 216; politics, 4, 19, 99, 104, 136–7, 180 Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for Jews, 177–8, 180, 190, 204 Unrest, 39, 81–84, 86–7, 92, 117–9, 121, 133–4, 153, 160, 237, 262–3. See also Crime; Strikes Unzer leben, 68, 70, 74–5, 80–1, 157, 162 Urban, 4, 25, 45–8, 50–4, 62, 74, 81, 90–1, 269; and individual, 53–4, 111; crisis of urbanization, 15–6, 46, 48, 74, 81, 90; developments, 26, 28, 33, 36; environment, 3, 7–8, 10, 18, 22, 42, 45–6, 48, 50, 68, 75, 78, 90, 100, 165, 171, 269; predators, 57–9, 67; residents, 31, 44, 76, 89, 100, 111, 133, 153, 164; spaces, 100–1, 257 Ussishkin, Menaḥem, 167–9, 179 Va‘ad Arba Aratsot, 9 Va‘ad Medinat Lita, 9 Values, 47, 78, 81, 203, 244, 246–7, 262 Veidlinger, Jeffrey, 145 Vernacular, 142, 144, 211. See also Language Vilna, 54, 91, 156, 163 Violence, anti-Jewish, 32, 36, 43, 73, 79, 127, 130, 135, 169, 220, 250, 252–4, 259, 261–3, 265–6; attacks, 58, 81, 83–4, 129, 221–2, 238; bombings, 87; explosions, 87; revolutionary, 82, 237,

264, 267; unrest, 39, 46–7, 60, 81–92, 117–9, 121, 133–4, 138, 153, 160, 237–8, 262–3; wounded as result of, 83, 85–8 122, 127, 130, 138, 262. See also Crime; Pogroms; Weapons Visitors, 56–61, 72, 83, 159. See also In-Migration Vistula land (province), 6, 29. See also Kingdom of Poland Vitebsk, 98, 106, 166 Vocational training, 63, 69 Voters, 43, 209, 239; curiae, 20, 180, 190, 194–5, 215; education, 183, 188, 192–3, 199–200; electoral law; 176; indifference, 190; Jewish, 20, 176–9, 182, 184–5, 187–9, 190–5, 202–4, 209, 212, 227–8, 232–4, 246, 252, 254, 268; mobilization of, 176; 184, 192, 205, 209–10, 216, 230–2, 234; Polish, 228, 233, 243; registration, 183, 192, 209, 234; voting process, 188–9, 209, 228; voting rights, 42, 181, 226. See also Apathy; Dumas; Elections; Jewish Electoral Committee Walkowitz, Judith, 84 Warsaw Committee of the Military Revolutionary Organization, 97, 103, 105–6 Warsaw Rabbinic Academy, 34 Warsaw University, 26, 29 Weapons, 83, 87, 98, 110, 137, 264; bayonets, 86, 125; bullets, 123, 138; cartridges, 98; clubs, 83; dynamite, 137; guns, 95, 110; knives, 66, 83–4, 88–9; pistols and revolvers, 88, 95, 98, 238; rifles, 86; shooting, 73, 85–6, 89, 138; stabbings, 66, 83–4, 86, 88. See also Crime Weeks, Theodore R., 218, 224 Weizmann, Chaim, 263, 266–267 White slavery, 61–3, 65–6, 69, 75. See also Brothels; Crime; Pimps

Index Wisła (Vistula) River, 23–4, 28, 32, 58, 99 Witte, Sergei, 223 Wodziński, Marcin, 11, 34 Wola, 232, 234, 243 Women, 32, 47, 56, 57, 58, 61–75, 85, 88, 94, 100, 107, 123, 137, 160; Jewish, 32, 62–6, 70, 74, 94, 162. See also Gender; In-Migration Workers, 2, 39, 42–4, 60, 79–80, 86, 109, 111, 115–20, 122–3, 125–30, 180–1, 220–2, 250–1; fashion, 63; Jewish, 2, 111–2, 117–8, 120, 125–8, 137, 148–9, 180, 249; Polish, 221–2, 237–9 Writers, 47, 150, 167–8, 182, 201–2, 247, 270. See also Journalists Yiddish Theater. See Public sphere; Theater Youth, 19, 53, 55, 80, 93–6, 127–8, 135, 270

Yudelevitch, Yosef, 54–5 Zemstvos (local government), 40 Zimmerman, Joshua, 218 Zionei Zion (Zionists for Eretz Yisrael), 167 Zionism, 1, 12, 150, 164, 178, 180; activity, 38, 109, 150–1, 161, 166, 168, 179–80, 182, 204, 223, 269; institutions and organizations, 38, 93, 167, 179, 268; labor, 1, 107; leaders and activists, 2, 54, 107, 150–1, 162–3, 166–7, 179, 201, 223, 263, 269; publications, 64, 169, 179. See also Israel; Palestine Zionist-Socialist Workers’ Party, 95, 130 Zipperstein, Steven J., 9 Żydokomuna (Judeo-Communism), 13, 229, 235, 240

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