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Chapter 8 Henrik Sliozberg: A Mirror of Petersburg Jewry in Late Tsarist Days In Russia in the second half of the 19th century there appeared a significant group of Jews who, joining the Russian intellectual elite, began together with Russians to offer a liberal political alternative to the tsarist government. Such Jews lived primarily in St. Petersburg and worked as lawyers, doctors, engineers , and journalists. Among this elite one can name Aleksandr Passover, Lev Katsenelson, Mikhail Kulisher, Jacob Halpern, Leon Bramson, Aleksandr Braudo, Oskar Gruzenberg, and Henrik Sliozberg. Like these men, Sliozberg was comfortable both with shtadlanut-the intercession with the government on behalf of the Jewish people by wealthy Jewish leaders- and a democratic politics based on liberal notions of rule of law and respect for individual rights. Professionally, he served as Baron Horace Gintsburg's lawyer and was given wide latitude to fight on behalf of Jewish causes in those institutions of the government where he could be effective , such as the State Senate. At the same time Sliozberg had a leading role in Petersburg's Jewish philanthropic institutions: the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE) and the Society for the Promotion of Jewish Farmers and Artisans (aRT). He was one of the organizers of the Defense Bureau, "an office established to defend the rights of Jews though organized legal action," and after 1905, a leader of the Russian Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets)l He also served as a leader of the Union for the Attainment of Equal Rights for Jews (1905-06) and the Jewish People's Group (1907)2 He played central roles in the Kovno Conference of 1909 and the Rabbinical Conference of 1910. He was also active in the Jewish War Relief Committee (Evreiskii komitet pomoshchi zhertvam voiny- YEKOPO), the committee dedicated to providing relief to Jewish refugees during World War I. We know a great deal about his life and the world of Jewish St. Petersburg thanks to his three-volume memoir, Dela minuvshikh dnei: Zapiski russkogo evreia (Events of Past Days: Sketches of a Russian Jew), published in 1933. His attitudes and activities embody the mindset of a Jew in late tsarist Russia who was both a Russian patriot and felt responsibility to help the Jew1 Y. S. [Yehuda Slutzky], "Henry Sliozberg," En cyclopedia Judaica, 14: 1667. 2 See Gassenschrnidt, Jewish Liberal Politics ill Tsarist Russia, 20-44. 140 EMPIRE JEWS ish masses. An undeterred patriot, Sliozberg was in love with Russia. His younger colleague, Oscar Gruzenberg, described it thus: "Why do we love Russia, how can one explain it? We love it for the way the sun shines and warms us, which is unique, the clouds flow in the sky in a different way, the rivers sing, and sand crunches under our feet.... And our consciousness gives rise to different thoughts there.... In the presence of Henrik Borisovich Sliozberg no one dared speak badly about Russia.,,3 Despite repeated pogroms, Sliozberg had confidence in the inherent goodness of the Russian people and was convinced that Jews could find a secure haven in Russia. He believed that antisemitism was motivated solely by political interests and that it was a temporary phenomenon which would be eradicated with the end of the tsarist regime. Sliozberg's love for his country motivated his conviction that, "despite the empirical condition of Russia, ultimately she will rid herself of autocratic and arbitrary rule and will transform herself into a democratic state based on rule of law." Therefore, Russia was a true homeland for Jews. Sliozberg explains with the help of a metaphor: "Speaking about our national self-consciousness , I allow myself to compare the attitude of Jewry toward Russia with the attitude of a passenger on a ship. Such a passenger is concerned that his own cabin should be in order, but he also understands that the fate of his cabin depends on the fate of the entire ship.,,4 Sliozberg's viewpoint reflects the tremendous optimism of that generation of Jews who came of age in the 1860s and 1870s in Russia. Educated in Russian schools and universities and offered work in the state service, this group managed to avoid the struggles of an earlier generation and the numerus clausus of the next. Sliozberg and his contemporaries regarded the reforms of Alexander II as a harbinger of inevitable process. The legal reform of 1864 emerged, they held, from autocracy's incontrovertible contradictions, and just as the tsar had to turn...

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