Overview

In the 1860s, a series of reforms imposed by Tsar Alexander II dramatically began modernizing and reshaping life in imperial Russia. However, for a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals educated under earlier doctrines, the reforms became an opportunity to interrogate and construct a new view of Jewish identity. Questionable People: Inventing Modern Jewish Selves in the Russian Empire, 1860–1890 explores how these young intellectuals, the maskilim, used self-expression, fashion, dress, and their artistic work to define themselves. Differentiating themselves from what came before, maskilim crafted Jewish identities within a modernizing Russia. While many surveys of the Great Reforms and Jews in the Russian Empire examine assimilation and urbanization, Questionable People focuses on the reformers themselves, their self-construction and work as unique to their era, rather than part of a larger transitional moment. Svetlana Natkovich analyzes the maskilim as a group existing between social and economic classes in a time of change, a generation of thinkers forced to radically assert their self-hoods. Questionable People locates the common ground between the social and intellectual histories of Jewish modernization.

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9780815638605

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Reviews

“Natkovich’s reading is grounded in her impressive historical knowledge of Russian imperial history and Jewish social history in the Russian Empire. Historians who read her book will be able to see seemingly well-studied topics in an entirely new light.” - Marina Mogilner, author of A Race for the Future: Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness

Author Information

Svetlana Natkovich is a senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa. She has held fellowships at Stanford University, Hebrew University, and the Simon Dubnow Institute in Leipzig.

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