Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry

3. The Romance of Enlightenment: Gender and the Critique of Embourgeoisement in the Recruitment Novels of I. M. Dik, Grigorii Bogrov, and J. L. Gordon

73 3 THE ROMANCE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: GENDER AND THE CRITIQUE OF EMBOURGEOISEMENT IN THE RECRUITMENT NOVELS OF I. M. DIK, GRIGORII BOGROV, AND J. L. GORDON the domestication of enlightenment in the age of emancipation During the 1870s Russian Jewry’s conscription past emerged as a key theme in the expanding repertoire of maskilic literature, written in Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish, and aimed at an increasing number of Russian Jews eager to claim the fruits of economic and educational opportunities afforded by the policy of ‘‘selective integration’’ in order to move beyond the Pale. One of the characteristic features of this literature, cutting across generic and linguistic differences, was a self-conscious commitment to the defense of the Haskalah at a time when it grew increasingly clear to its proponents that the historic effects of emancipation did not necessarily coincide with the triumph of Jewish enlightenment. To be sure, emancipation led to the emergence of Russian-Jewish educated society and to the exponential growth of Russian-Jewish publishing. At the same time, however , principled adherents to the Haskalah now found themselves competing for authority in the expanding literary marketplace rather than in the halls of Russian administrative power or in the courtyard of study houses 74 conscription and the search for modern russian jewry and synagogues. With the decline of official support for Jewish enlightenment and the growth of an increasingly self-conscious Jewish orthodoxy, maskilic values emerged in new forms in order to hold the attention of its discerning and fractious Russian-Jewish public. The rapid expansion of Jewish belles lettres, a phenomenon generally associated with the ostensible ‘‘zenith’’ of the Haskalah in the 1860s to the 1870s, came into its own precisely at the moment when it first became possible to conceive of Jewish educated or semi-educated society and when it became increasingly difficult to monopolize its attention and control its tastes.∞ The contradictory effects of the political turn toward the ‘‘unserfment ’’ of Russian society accounts for the impressive growth of imaginative prose and historical narrative. As Jewish enlightenment discourse spilled over into new literary modes, conscription became a compelling source of interest to three writers—Isaac-Meir Dik (1807–1893), Grigorii Bogrov (1825–1885), and Judah-Leib Gordon (1830–1892)—whose work exempli fied the aspirations and anxieties of maskilim struggling for cultural capital in the age of emancipation. In the work of Dik, Bogrov, and Gordon, the conscription story speaks directly to the tension between the virtues of enlightenment and the aims of emancipation, a conflict that transformed both the content and prevailing style of maskilic literary production. The ties that bound these three writers to the same dilemmas of conscience and creativity are not immediately obvious, given the kinds of works each of them produced and the languages in which they expressed themselves. Dik wrote primarily Yiddish romances, Bogrov melodramatic Russian stories about contemporary Jewish life, and Gordon scores of publicistic pieces and essays in cultural criticism but was best known for Hebrew narrative poetry. The voice of Jewish liberalism in nineteenth-century Russia, Gordon devoted himself to burning contemporary causes like the state of the rabbinate, the plight of Jewish women, religious reform, and the improvement of Jewish education.≤ Dik and Bogrov are, by contrast, less well known. Scholarship segregates them by language and ideological orientation. Dik, who wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish, remained throughout his life a pious and observant Jew; thus he is characterized as a ‘‘moderate maskil,’’ the ‘‘guardian of enlightened faith.’’≥ Bogrov , the Russian ‘‘assimilationist,’’ remained completely secular, referred to himself as an ‘‘emancipated cosmopolitan,’’ and converted to Orthodoxy on his deathbed.∂ Gordon, the staunch Hebraist, occupies a special place at the crossroads of the Haskalah and Zionism, a ‘‘national poet’’ before his time.∑ Yet, such qualifications notwithstanding, Bogrov, Dik, and Gordon all shared an unprecedented degree of popular acclaim as Jewish writers, speci fically as authors of Jewish fiction explicitly informed by the ideals of the Haskalah. All three were equally troubled and inspired by the often conflicting demands of commercial authorship and intellectual authority. Despite differences in lifestyle and linguistic choice, all three were driven by similar 75 the romance of enlightenment concerns about the consequences of emancipation to elevate Jewish domesticity and to attempt the domestication of Jewish reading habits. Dik, Bogrov, and Gordon each marshaled the conscription story as a moral lesson, aimed explicitly at an upwardly mobile...