Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry

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Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry Olga Litvak Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry The Modern Jewish Experience Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore, editors Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry Olga Litvak indiana university press bloomington and indianapolis Published with the generous assistance of the Koret Foundation. This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail iuporder@indiana.edu ∫ 2006 by Olga Litvak All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Litvak, Olga. Conscription and the search for modern Russian Jewry / Olga Litvak. p. cm. — (Modern Jewish experience) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-253-34808-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-253-34808-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jews—Russia—History. 2. Draft—Russia. 3. Jews—Russia—Intellectual life. 4. Russia—Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series: Modern Jewish experience (Bloomington, Ind.) DS135.R9L54 2006 305.892%4047—dc22 2006015064 1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08 07 06 To Polina Moiseevna Slizinova (1915–1975) Hanan Ayzikovich Portnoi (1906–1981) Moisei El’kunovich Litvak (1919–1943) Vitya L’vovna Kaushanskaia (1917–1986) my past and to Abigail Hannah Litvak (b. July 31, 2002) my present A Jewish boy and his father are walking down the street. The boy is thin and pale. He wears thick glasses and carries a book under his arm. They pass a uniformed Russian soldier, tall, broad, and muscular—a picture of gentile health and strength. The father looks down at his son and says: ‘‘See, Moishe, if you don’t study, you’re going to look like that.’’ Russian-Jewish joke I’d like to underline the fact that the state’s power (and that’s one of the reasons for its strength) is both an individualizing and a totalizing form of power. —Michel Foucault, ‘‘The Subject and Power’’ The ‘‘proper stuff of fiction’’ does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured. —Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, 1925 ...