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12. Mikhail Gershenzon: A Jew in the Russian Elite
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Chapter 12 Mikhail Gershenzon: A Jew in the Russian Elite It was striking for his contemporaries that Gershenzon, a Jew, celebrated Russian national culture with his enthusiastic essays on Russian intellectual history . Indeed, Gershenzon was so well known as a sympathizer of conservative Russian culture that many referred to him as a "Slavophile." Indeed, an anecdote runs that N. A. Khomyakov, the prominent Octobrist and first president of the Third Duma, remarked that "[tJhere is only one Slavophile left in Russia, and he is a Jew" -having in mind Gershenzon. In a letter to Pyotr Struve, Gershenzon heatedly denied the charge: "What kind of Slavophile am I, as you know, I'm a Jew.,,1 In truth, the charge, "Jewish Slavophile," does not do justice to Gershenzon 's attitudes toward his Jewish past and culture in Russia, nor does it accurately describe his attitude toward Russian culture. In fact, it was not Slavophilism that Gershenzon expounded, nor was he antisemitic. Rather, he believed in a pantheistic religion of the universe, which he called "cosmic unity." This belief, in association with Gershenzon's own negative childhood experiences, colored his relations to Judaism. While he never converted to Russian Orthodoxy or rejected his background, he was also not a practicing Jew. In his many writings he did not reveal a belief in the Jewish God. Moreover , in two monographs, Kliuch very (1921) and Sud'by evreiskogo naroda (1922), Gershenzon treated the Jews and their religion critically. He chastised the Jews for their separatism, their supposed refusal to follow the cosmic imperative that all individuals, nations, and states unite together. This cosmic idea held that everything in the universe composed a unity that should not be harmed. Gershenzon had a mixed attitude toward his Jewish roots. He criticized his past because it had caused him much personal suffering, and yet he never completely condemned it, for he knew the significance of his origins for his spiritual enlightenment and professional achievements. Unable to absolutely negate his Jewish identity and unable to absolutely affirm it, Gershenzon remained ambivalent. 1 Gershenzon, "Otvet P. B. Struve," 175. 218 EMPIRE JEWS Bom in 1869 to Jewish parents, Mikhail Gershenzon became one of Russia's greatest historians. Often referred to as the "Russian Carlyle," Gershenzon wrote more than 250 works, including 12 books, on Russian literary and intellectual history. Best known among them are Petr Chaadev (1908), Istoricheskie zapiski (1910), the celebrated Perepiska iz dvukh uglov (1921), which he coauthored with the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Vekhi, the sensational collection criticizing the revolutionary intelligentsia (1909), whicl1 he edited, and to which he contributed a passionate article. Gershenzon was also the first president of the Moscow Writer's Union after the Revolution of 1917 and head of the literary section of the Soviet Academy of Arts from 1922 to 1925. Looking at such achievements from the perspective of his origins, we can gauge his enormous success. His father was an unsuccessful businessman, whose failures led to bitter quarrels between his parents. In an attempt to escape the misery of the Pale, Gershenzon senior fled to Argentina, where he barely survived as a poor haberdasher. Unsuccessful there too, he perished on the retum trip to Russia. Although little is known about his mother, Gershenzon did speak out about his cl1ildhood in the Pale, expressing his feelings in a letter from 1894 to his brother: "Terrible city, terrible life! From here it appears to me as a heavy nightmare which miserably depresses people; embraced as if by a dream, as if by despair, the people move like ghosts, and obeying only instinct, they execute the needs of life. I shudder at even the memory of it.,,2 Recalling his youth, Gershenzon later remarked that he was "bom into darkness." Gershenzon hated Kishinev, and he asserted that his horrible childhood had left deep wounds on his consciousness3 Early on, Gershenzon set his hopes on a university education, but with only a silver medal from his high school, the numerus clausus stood in his way. His parents sent him to Berlin to study engineering. Although he successfully managed to finish the two-year course, he spent his time attending lectures on history at Berlin University. He retumed home with the dream of studying history in Petersburg or Moscow4 In 1891, he was, surprisingly, accepted to Moscow University's Philological-Historical Faculty. Legend has it that he was accepted despite the Jewish quota thanks to a chance accident: out of the many thousands of university...