Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments iam most grateful to all my colleagues, friends, and family, who, in different ways and in different countries, supported me through the ups and downs that the researching and writing of this book entailed. First, i would like to thank Steve zipperstein, who saw this project through its initial stage and who gave me the support and encouragement to become a better writer of russian Jewry. i am grateful for his mentoring, his rigor, and above all his generosity. it is a pleasure to thank others who guided my training in Jewish history and russian history: Valerio marchetti, who, in my years at Bologna university, first showed me where russia and Jews meet; Aron rodrigue, who made me think broadly about issues of emancipation, acculturation, and national minorities in multinational empires; Amir weiner, who helped me sharpen my ideas about the Bolshevik experiment and who was ultimately responsible for my shift from the nineteenth to the twentieth century when, during a graduate seminar on Soviet historiography, he said to me, “don’t you see how much more interesting Soviet Jews are?”; and terrence emmons, with whom i had some of the most engaging conversations on russian society and historiography of my career. i thank Avrom nowershtern, david roskies, david Fishman, and Samuel kassow, for showing me the exceptional richness of eastern european Jewish life and culture. over the years, a number of individuals have offered useful comments on different sections of this book, or discussed other relevant issues with me that informed my views. Among the many scholars who in many different ways contributed to the making of this book, warm thanks to evelyn Ackerman, natalia Aleksiun, mordechai Altshuler , eugene Avrutin, zachary Baker, Yaacov Basin, elisheva carlbach, igor dukhan, Gennady estraikh, olga Gershenson, zvi Gitelman, Harriet Jackson, laura Jokusch, naomi kadar z”l, mikhail kalnitskii, Joshua karlip, Ben-tsion klibansky, rebecca kobrin, misha krutikov, John champagne, cecile kuznitz, leonid katsis, efim melamed, misha mitsel, kenneth moss, Jess olson, eddy portnoy, Alyssa Quint, per Anders rudling, robert Seltzer, Sasha Senderovich, Anna Shternshis, nancy Sinkoff, Julia Sneeringer, Barry trachtenberg, Shelly tsar-zion, Sarah tsfatman, Amir weiner, debby Yalen, Vital zajka, Arkadii zeltser, and carol zemel. my heartfelt appreciation to marion kaplan (no one has ever read my work as closely as she has), olga litvak (the most brutal and brilliant critic on the russian Jewish street), david Shneer, and Jeffrey Veidlinger, for their comments and suggestions. The research for this book was enabled by support from a number of institutions, including the taube center for Jewish Studies at Stanford university, the national Foundation for Jewish culture, the memorial Foundation for Jewish culture, the center for Jewish History in new York city, the mellon Foundation, the American x | Acknowledgments councils (Actr/AccelS) for international education title Viii research Scholarship , the YiVo institute for Jewish research, and the Hadassah-Brandeis institute. i also owe a debt of appreciation to Jerry and william ungar for generously sponsoring the chair that makes possible my presence at Queens college. The research for this book involved more than a dozen archives and libraries on three different continents. in minsk, i am indebted to the archivists and staffs of the national Archives of the republic of Belarus, the State Archives of the minsk province, the Belorussian State museum and Archives of literature and Art, the Belorussian State Archives of Film and photography, the national Academy of Sciences of Belarus, and the national library of Belarus. i wish to thank inna pavlovna Gerasimova, head of the Jewish museum in minsk, who was generous in sharing her knowledge with me. in moscow, i am grateful to the staffs of the russian State Archive of literature and Art, the State Archives of the russian Federation, the russian State Archive of Social and political research, Former party Archives to 1945, and the russian State library. in Jerusalem, warm thanks are due to the staff of the Avraham Harman institute of contemporary Jewry, oral History division at Hebrew university, the central zionist Archives, the Yad Vashem Archives, and the Jewish national library. in new York, i thank misha mitsel, senior archivist at the American Jewish Joint distribution committee . last but not least, i am immensely grateful to the staff of the YiVo Archives and library, and i wish to thank in particular marek web, krisha Fisher, and Jesse Aron cohen, all of whom offered their assistance. i would like to thank my editor at indiana university press, Alex Giardino, as well as...