Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry

Russian Jews were first conscripted into the Imperial Russian army during the reign of Nicholas I in an effort to integrate them into the population of the Russian Empire. Conscripted minors were to serve, in practical terms, for life. Although this system was abandoned by his successor, the conscription experience remained traumatic in the popular memory and gave rise to a large and continuing literature that often depicted Jewish soldiers as heroes. This book traces the conscription theme in novels and stories by some of the best-known Russian Jewish writers such as Osip Rabinovich, Judah-Leib Gordon, and Mendele Mokher Seforim, as well as by relatively unknown writers.

-- Joseph Haberer * SHOFAR *

. . . [A] valuable scholarly work . . . Recommended.

* Choice *

. . . this is a valuable, theoretically sophisticated contribution to both Russian and Jewish history. Litvak has convincingly shown that what Russian Jews came to know about conscription was a literary, and highly polemical, construction that helped shaped how Jews came to understand and remember their collective plight in tsarist Russia.Vol. 68.1 Jan. 2009

-- Charters Wynn * University of Texas at Austin *

Litvak has written an imaginative, path-breaking study that contributes immeasurably to the study of modern Jewish history and culture, Imperial Russian history, and theoretical discussions regarding the intersection between literature, history, and memory.

* Religious Studies Review *

Olga Litvak has written an incisive, thought-provoking, and critical account of the emergence in late imperial Russia of a new Jewish literary discourse in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Vol. 81.2 June 2009

-- Eli Lederhendler * Hebrew University of Jerusal