Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia (review)

Book Reviews II7 a decline in social rank; this despite some organizations, at least in theory, championing diversifying Jewish occupations. Steven Beller, in analyzing the national identity of Austrian Jews, concludes by saying that "Austrian Jews thus became Germans or Austrians, but remained Jews" (p. 238). A scholar from Portugal, Manual Duarte de Oliveira, reaches a similar conclusion in his study of Martin Buber by showing how closely Buber's ideas were connected with Fichte and the German romantic notion ofthe Volk. And Jacques Kornberg shows how some liberal Austrians defended Jews against antisemitism by organizing the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus. In the end, Kornberg asserts, the organization failed because it was "hopelessly tied to a political ship that was sinking" (p. 179). Yet it espoused values that were antithetical to antisemitism and in line with the Enlightenment. No doubt many Austrian Jews took comfort that non-Jewish liberals went to such lengths to defend them. Likewise, Jacob Bornt fmds that the active Verein fUr jiidische Geschichte und Literatur saw no contradiction between Deutschtum and Judentum. He writes that the reason for the group's popularity was that it provided Jews with ammunition for their basic claim that identification with Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish history in no way contradicted the values of the German bourgeoisie (p. 113). For the majority ofJews, including the Zionists, before the advent ofNazism there was little problem with being both German and Jewish even ifthat duality was denied by antisemites. No organization could fathom the disgusting and numerous restrictions offreedom described by Moshe Ayalon in his piece on Jewish life in Breslau under the Nazis. A short review cannot, ofcourse, do justice to the breadth and depth ofthe research contained in the 1996 edition. This volume includes a variety of topics that do not lend themselves easily to summary, but the editors should be congratulated for putting together a book that includes some of the latest and most important research on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German Jewry. Glenn R. Sharfman Department of History Hiram College Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia, by Erich E. Haberer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 346 pp. $69.95. The first analysts ofthe Russian revolutionary movement were Imperial police officials whose job it was to isolate populist activists and to combat their influence in society. Especially those policemen who examined revolutionary populism and terrorism in the 1870s and 1880s were struck by the prominent role ofJews-"the Hebrew leprocy"-in 118 SHOFAR Winter 1998 Vol. 16, No.2 the ranks ofthe revolutionary movement. Since that time, historians have episodically noted and discussed the presence ofJews in Russian radical circles. But Erich Haberer's Jews and Revolution is by all rights the frrst serious book to examine systematically the most important questions related to Jewish participation in Russian radicalism. I) How many Jews were in the Russian revolutionary movement at various stages of its development? 2) Was there a specifically Jewish character to their participation? 3) Did these Jewish radicals influence the content of revolutionary populism as Jews? In answering these questions, Haberer provides a very important perspective on the Russian revolutionary movement as a whole and on the history of Jews in the Russian Empire. Moreover, this is a well-written, impeccably researched, and fmely crafted piece of work. With that said, it is also the case that Haberer will not be without his critics. For example, Haberer has done the most thorough job possible establishing from published ( sources the number of Jews who participated in the revolutionary movement. But Department of Police, Ministry of Interior, and Ministry of Justice data are now fully available to historians ofthe nineteenth century in the Russian archives. Therefore, his reliable summation of present knowledge will have to be revised by further investigation in the Imperial archival sources. Moreover, Haberer argues rather too insistently that the particularly Jewish character ofthose revolutionaries who came into the movement from Jewish backgrounds marked the form and content of their participation. He convincingly revises and expands upon Leonard Shapiro's idea that the Jews' "techno-organizational contribution, .. kept the wheels of the revolutionary organizations turning" (p. 270). But in my view, he carries the generalization...