All sorts of books are needed, or there are only Jews around
I. E. Antropova
Collection of documents on the history of the Jews of the Urals from the funds of institutions of the pre-Soviet period of the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk Region
M.: Ancient storage, 2004. - 460 p.
Ya. M. Shulman
Cities and people of the Jewish diaspora in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 20th century. Russia: Voronezh, Kursk, Rostov-on-Don, Smolensk, Taganrog M.: Parallels, 2004. - 144 p.
A. Davidov
Wise Men of the Caucasus
Jerusalem, 2004. - 214 p.
The regional history of Jewish life can be told in different ways. The three books presented here tell about Jews not only in three different regions - in the Urals, in the cities of European Russia and in the Caucasus - but also in three different ways. The first of them, with a depressingly boring title - especially boring for those who do not have a clear understanding of archival work - not only fully corresponds to the title, but also contains a very voluminous historical outline. The next issue of the series "Cities and People of the Jewish Diaspora" by Ya. M. Shulman is a selection of brief descriptive notes of an encyclopedic nature. Finally, “The Wise Men of the Caucasus” by Adam Davidov is a panegyric narrative about the Mountain Jewish rabbis, not without literary pretensions. The various tasks set by the authors have been solved with varying degrees of success.
In the first book, in addition to its content and style, there is something inexplicable - some kind of "energy" of the text emanating from each page and even from the cover. From the "Jews of the Urals" - as I will call for brevity "Collection of documents on the history of the Jews of the Urals from the funds of the institutions of the pre-Soviet period of the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk Region" - even before the start of reading it breathes thoroughness and thoughtfulness, artistic taste and sense of proportion. Everything here is academically rigorous: three parts plus an introduction, an appendix (demographic tables, a glossary of terms, a list of Jewish political organizations, etc.), a bibliography, and an index of names. The first part is a historical essay of a monographic nature for one and a half hundred pages "Jews in the Urals until October 1917." Further - a brief overview of the documents and the main, third part of the book - the documents themselves. This part is well structured, its sections are “The Right to Residence”, “Jewish Soldiers”, “Types of Activities. Prohibitions, Restrictions” with subsections by type of activity, “Religious and Communal Life”, “Jews in the Revolutionary Movement”, etc. - make it easy to find information on the desired topic. And what information! In real documents of the time, official and everyday, there is an undoubted charm that captures the reader no worse than an adventure novel. A secret order to dismiss from work a person who had the misfortune of being a Jew, and the outwardly restrained, dignified refusal of a simple, honest Russian campaigner who had the misfortune to be the head of this Jew - a refusal to carry out the order. Denunciations and circulars, protocols of police interrogations and private letters, military reports and humiliated petitions not only paint a bright and gloomy picture of the life of the Ural-Jewish society full of unique life details, but also create a living string of portraits and voices. These voices testify and “let it slip”, they are cunning and simple-hearted, they complain and defend themselves, some build insurmountable walls, others beat their foreheads into them.
For all that, it is clear that the general reader can hardly recommend this book "for easy reading." This is clear to the creators of the book and to themselves: the “mass” circulation of 500 copies speaks for itself.
But “Cities and People of the Jewish Diaspora in Eastern Europe until the Beginning of the 20th Century” by Ya. M. Shulman is quite possible to read on the road. A small book, the third in a series of publications by the same author (the first was devoted to the five Ukrainian cities, the second to the five Belarusian cities) is the embodiment of a simple and successful idea for a concise and popular presentation of material to the reader. Each story about the city is a short historical sketch, followed by lists of famous Jews who were born here, each name is accompanied by an encyclopedia entry. In the book we will meet the aircraft designer Lavochkin and the sculptor Zadkin, the actress Ranevskaya and the diplomat Shafirov, the physicist Flerov and the poet Marshak, the musician-teachers the Gnessins and the paratrooper Kunikov, as well as many others, who, as Pushkin noted, “not only can, but should be proud of.” ".
The modesty of the appearance of Cities and People of the Jewish Diaspora, as well as the solid academic restraint of The Jews of the Urals, are more than offset by the juiciness of the design of The Wise Men of the Caucasus, a book that the author himself presents as follows: “... Not a historical study, but stories about spiritual teachers mountain Jews. Color illustrations, splash screens, huge font. At first glance, the collection is quite eclectic, stories stylized as folklore are interspersed with informational essays under the heading "Customs and Traditions". However, an undoubted stylistic unity is observed - both are written in such a way that it fully meets the author’s goal: to give spiritual support in the study of the Torah and observance of mitzvahs, to testify that “Mountain Jews lived in accordance with the laws of the Torah, in love and devotion to the Creator” . It is useless to look here for a detailed and objective story about the relationship of the Jews with the non-Jewish environment, about the contradictions and problems in the Jewish environment itself. For example, Yosef Shur (Joseph ben Chaim Chaimovich, late 19th - early 20th century), the rabbi of the village of Kusary, who was disgraced for free-thinking, did not fall into the number of Mountain Jewish sages. A poet and educator, who even kept his diary mainly in Hebrew verse, he joined those who sought to change the way of life of the Mountain Jews. Felix Shapiro, who knew him personally - the same author of the Hebrew-Russian Dictionary - called him "the only bright figure of Mountain Jewry." But the author of The Wise Men of the Caucasus, Rabbi Adam Davidov, is interested in completely different people and other stories: stories similar to Hasidic parables about insightful sages, shabosny stories about miraculous salvation, the author’s memories of how he revived Jewish religious life in the 1990s cubed. If you are not picky about the oily-pathetic style, then from these stories you can learn a lot of interesting things about the Mountain Jews.
However, it is easiest to understand and most difficult to accept the irreconcilable position of the author in relation to science, historical and ethnographic. On the very first page of the preface, the author resolutely states: “One should not take into account the absurd fabrications of some “historians”, including Israeli ones, who are preoccupied with the Judeophobia complex. Mountain Jews are surprised to read about themselves that they are former Persians, Khazars, Avars, Muslims and the like. In the end, you can agree that the Jordan River is a tributary of the Mississippi River. But scientists are not to blame for the fact that the historical evidence they have (inscriptions on tombstones, written references in the texts of other peoples, etc.) do not provide grounds for confirming the version unconditionally proclaimed by the author about the two thousand-year history of Mountain Jews in the Caucasus. Working hypotheses about the ethnogenesis of the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus do not aim to satisfy someone's religious and national ambitions, but they do not contain any anti-Semite complex either. Rather, an attempt to “draw by the ears” some Jewish society to the ancient Jews alone, without the assumption that other communities participated in ethnogenesis over the past millennia, can be likened to an attempt to defend the slogan about the “Mississippi tributary”. In a word, in this case, the scientific approach does not belong to the strengths of the author's thinking. Although there are many readers to whom this particular book will seem the closest and most understandable of the three presented by us.
Mikhail Lipkin
Monthly literary and journalistic magazine and publishing house.
Irina Antropova - historian-archivist, researcher of the history of the Jews of the Urals, author of a number of scientific and popular publications on this topic, including the "Collection of documents on the history of the Jews of the Urals from the funds of institutions of the pre-Soviet period of the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk Region" published in 2004".
At the end of the XVIII century. as a result of the three partitions of Poland, a million Jewish population joined the number of subjects of the Russian Empire. For more than two hundred subsequent years, Jews in Russia were subjected to open discrimination, served as an object for various government experiments, the hatred of the crowd, skillfully directed by the same government, the envy of the townsfolk and religious intolerance1. Since 1791, the so-called Pale of Settlement was established (it included the newly annexed western provinces), beyond which Jews were forbidden to live. The Russian government periodically closed their access to public service and some free professions, set a percentage rate for admission to higher educational institutions and gymnasiums, from time to time deprived them of voting rights in elections at various levels, severely punished those who, having converted to Orthodoxy (even under duress) , decided to return to Judaism, condoned the organization of Jewish pogroms.
The Urals is a mining region, there were many "strategically important objects" on the Ural lands: mines, gold mines, mining plants. All this significantly influenced the position of the Jews. In addition, the south of the Urals, according to the government, was considered a place unacceptable for Jews to live, since in the first half of the 19th century. the Orenburg fortified line passed there, separating the Russian Empire from the tribal associations of the Kazakhs. Ekaterinburg, remaining by status a county town of the Perm province, was at the same time the center of the entire mining Urals, where the management bodies of mining plants were concentrated (from Votkinsk to Tyumen). In Yekaterinburg, there was the residence of the Chief Manager of the Ural Mining Plants and a number of industries of paramount importance: a cutting factory, a mint, a laboratory for remelting non-ferrous metals, etc. Forbidding Jews to appear in the Urals (a region that was not part of the "Pale of Settlement"), the government placed the main emphasis on the ban on the presence of Jews in mining plants and mines. However, representatives of the local mining administration were tolerant of Jews employed in factories. Moreover, it happened that the managers of enterprises stood up before the authorities for their Jewish engineers, trying to prevent their dismissal. Artisans, merchants (we are not talking about the first guild merchants who had the opportunity to quickly resolve emerging misunderstandings) and small traders were in the worst position, since they were "under the jurisdiction" of the Perm governor and his officials, who, according to the well-known local historian V.S. Verkholantsev, "tried to imitate the bosses to the best of their ability and avoid what the bosses don't like."
In addition, the Urals was a multinational and multi-confessional region. The Russians colonized it relatively late. Exiles of all stripes have long lived here, criminals from Siberia fled here, and schismatics settled here. The Orthodox treated various religions and sects with tolerance. In such a mixture of nationalities and religions, little attention was paid to a small handful of Jews. Therefore, the small Jewish population coexisted peacefully with the rest of the inhabitants, and extreme manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Urals were not observed until October 1905.
Speaking about the first appearance of the Jews in the Urals, we note that Nikita Demidov in his industrial development of the region was patronized by Petrovsky Vice-Chancellor Pyotr Shafirov, about whom ill-wishers said that "he wears a yarmulke under his wig." It was he who fussed for Demidov before the tsar. (Shafirov was the son of a baptized Jew Shafir, or according to other sources, Shai Sapsaev).
Until the thirties of the XIX century. there were few Jews in the Urals. The case of the Jew Gumprecht, who in 1805 managed a cement factory near Yekaterinburg, is curious. Considering that Gumprecht "began" as a major counterfeiter, for which he was captured, beaten with rods, branded and exiled to an eternal settlement in Siberia, then we can say that he made a brilliant career. The tolerance of some heads of the mountain administration in the Urals extended quite widely. Confirmation of this is Ivan Filippovich German, who accepted Gumprecht into the service. During the war with Napoleon, Jews suspected (often on the basis of denunciations) of espionage were sent to the Orenburg province. However, it happened that the authors of the slanders themselves were exiled. So, in 1823, false informers Leiba Gershkovich and Itzik Moshkovich arrived in Perm, remaining in the Urals even after serving their sentences.
Despite the fact that there is no clear evidence of the existence of a settled Jewish population in the Urals until the 1830s. no, Emperor Alexander I, after traveling through the Urals in 1824, issued a decree forbidding Jews even to temporarily stay in state-owned and private factories, as well as in Yekaterinburg itself. The detailed hourly accounts of Alexander's trip do not mention the specific reason for such a decree. There is an assumption that the Jewish merchant who caught the eye of the emperor is to blame for everything - a figure rather mythologized and infernal (a kind of Ahasuerus - where and when were there no Jewish merchants?). It is also possible that someone filed a complaint against a Jewish neighbor who turned out to be more successful in business. Be that as it may, Alexander, by that time pretty tired of fruitless attempts to "lead the sons of Israel to the right path" through the Society of Israeli Christians, issued the above-mentioned decree. Moreover, the decree was not included in the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, but simply sent to the Perm berg inspector for execution "secretly" and, given that the legislation on Jews "gained momentum" every year, should have quickly lost the force of law. However, throughout the 19th century, that same decree of Alexander served as the basis for prohibitive circulars of the central authorities and orders of the local (not only the Urals) authorities.
The first truly massive appearance of Jews in the Urals is associated with the infamous decree of Tsar Nicholas I in 1827 on the introduction of military service for Jews. In addition to ordinary conscripts, cantonists began to be recruited from Jews - boys of 12 years old (and in fact - starting from eight). They were sent to serve in special battalions away from their homes. Upon reaching the age of 18, the cantonists were sent to the "real" 25-year military service. This tragedy, which "gave" the first Jewish communities to the Urals, lasted almost 30 years (the institute of cantonists for Jews was abolished in 1856). Without going into details of the dramatic collisions, well and in detail described in the old literature and the latest journalism, we will only say that the number of cantonists increased from year to year and by 1843 in the Ural battalions (Perm, Orenburg, Trinity) served 1812 Jewish teenagers. The purpose of attracting Jews to serve military service was not only their acculturation in the Russian environment, but also an attempt by various means - moral and physical "exhortation" - to achieve the transition of young people to Orthodoxy. In the Perm battalion, the baptism of Jewish cantonists was carried out so successfully that children who did not succumb to the instructions of army missionaries were transferred here from other battalions. The military chief of Danchevsky and Archbishop Arkady of Perm put forward their own new methods of conversion, often far from the oily instructions described in official communications, and more than once received the highest attention and awards. Needless to say, many cantonists subsequently returned to the faith of their fathers.
In 1836, thirteen-year-old Pinkus Raychik was baptized in the Perm Battalion, who became Mikhail Afanasyev, later a famous poet, Perm chronicler of the turn of the century. There were also cases of baptism by adult soldiers - in this case, consciously, because. the unbaptized could not advance in rank above non-commissioned officer. It should be noted that apostasy among adults was a rarity, despite the privileges acquired by the converts.
In the early 1840s. on the site of the city churchyard of Perm, where Jewish cantonists were buried, the first Jewish cemetery of the city arose. In Yekaterinburg, the Jewish cemetery was founded, according to some data, to the 30s, according to others - to the 40s. 19th century (Even the name of its "founder" is known - Itzhok Lansberg). It was the cemeteries that were the first material confirmation of the existence of the beginnings of Jewish communities in the Urals. In the same years, in the military battalions, more precisely, in the settlements and cities where they were stationed, Jewish prayer houses officially allowed by the authorities appeared, assigned to military personnel of the Jewish faith. In 1852, the Jewish prayer school (also known as a prayer house) was mentioned for the first time in police reports from Yekaterinburg. And by the 1860s. all the provincial cities of the Urals acquired the so-called soldiers' synagogues.
At the end of their service life, Jewish soldiers did not have the right to remain outside the "Pale of Settlement", where they served. Such a right was granted to them only in 1867. But common sense nevertheless took up over legal constructions, and "indefinite leave" settled in places of former service. In addition, it is very likely that from the point of view of local authorities, semi-literate, middle-aged soldiers cut off from their roots did not pose a "threat" to the Fatherland. After retiring, the Jews were engaged in some simple craft, started families (brides for soldiers, as a rule, dowry women who did not have a chance to marry in their homeland, were brought from the "Pale of Settlement" by specially engaged in this shadkhen2), united around prayer houses and, with permission from the authorities, in some cases, they subscribed to themselves shoikhets3, and then rabbis. In 1852, the police reports of Yekaterinburg first mentioned a Jewish prayer school (aka a prayer house). And by the 1860s. all the provincial cities of the Urals acquired the so-called soldiers' synagogues.
Until 1859, Jews (not military personnel) were essentially denied access beyond the Pale of Settlement. Despite the fact that the Jews were subjects of Russia, the government and a certain part of society saw them as strangers, suspected them of espionage, worldwide conspiracies, striving for kahal domination, and sometimes even in ritual actions using the blood of Christians and similar unthinkable and ridiculous intentions. And therefore, the government was especially zealous in protecting economic objects of strategic importance for the country - gold mines and mining mines - from the Jews. In the Urals, large-scale operations were periodically carried out to identify a few Jews and their subsequent deportation. Thus, in 1827, special orders appeared for the eviction of Jews from Orenburg, in 1828, state institutions of the Perm province were checked, and the following year, Orenburg. By the way, after the "removal" of the Jews from the areas of the mines, the problem of theft of the washed gold, of course, was not resolved. And since the presence of Jews in the mountain districts was no longer allowed, this time the Minister of Finance was explained the continued theft by an increase in the number of gypsies ...
Merchants, clerks, and some others were allowed a temporary visit to the interior of Russia, but the remoteness of the Ural Territory from the provinces of the Pale of Settlement allowed only a few to get there. Jews were accepted into public service only with the highest permission. Perhaps the only "Ural" example is Abraham Nasonovich Shein, who in 1844 was in the service at the Perm factories with the rank of 13th class chief master4. As for the common example - the collegiate assessor Alexander Dmitrievich Blank (grandfather of V. Lenin), who served as a surgeon at the Ural factories in the 40s, as you know, he converted to Orthodoxy, which radically changed his status.
The situation changed significantly after the liberal reforms of Alexander II. Restrictive laws against Jews were preserved, however, along with them, a fairly large number of liberal ones were adopted, which at first glance somewhat softened the discrimination against Jews in Russia. The most famous and significant of them are the decrees that opened access for parts of the Jewish population beyond the Pale of Settlement: in 1859 - to merchants, 1861 - to holders of academic titles, 1865 - to artisans, 1867 - to Nikolaev soldiers and their descendants, 1879 - Jews with higher education, as well as dentists, obstetricians, pharmacists, midwives.
Jews who arrived in the Urals in the 1870s-1880s (the second wave of migration), found here an already well-established Jewish community with its own specific features. The old-timers differed from their compatriots from the Pale of Settlement by a higher degree of assimilation, Russian clothing, partial or complete loss of the Yiddish language, poor knowledge of Jewish tradition, and some disregard for religious precepts. In addition, their professional and social status was lower than that of the newcomers. New arrivals, having no choice, were initially forced to attend soldiers' chapels, and this inevitably caused conflicts between them and the old-timers. According to the then-existing tradition, the call to the Torah5 was awarded to those who promised to donate more than others for community needs. They, as a rule, turned out to be "free" rich and intellectuals. Former soldiers were not happy with this. Conflicts led to the fact that visitors began to establish their own prayer houses. For example, in Orenburg around the 60s. 19th century along with the existing "battalion" prayer house, there was (we do not know the exact time of its appearance) an "engineering" one. There was also a separate prayer house for Bukharian Jews, later destroyed by fire and never reopened. In Perm, along with the already functioning soldiers' synagogue, in 1881 the so-called free synagogue was founded. Each synagogue had its own congregation. However, after seven years, representatives of both communities, having discussed at the meeting (in Russian, since not everyone could speak Yiddish fluently), decided to unite. And very timely, because in the depths of Russian society that force has already arisen that turned out to be stronger than centuries-old traditions - the revolutionary movement.
The assassination of the tsar by the Narodnaya Volya in 1881 caused a tightening of the government's policy towards the Jews. In particular, in the Urals, this was expressed in the establishment of total control over their stay in Yekaterinburg and at the Ural mining plants. Local authorities increasingly began to question even the legal rights of Jews to live in the region. In 1886, a decree was issued by the Minister of State Property, which prohibited Jews from serving in the mining department and closed their access to the gold mining business for a decade. As a consequence of this decree, an order was issued by the Chief Head of the Ural Mining Plants to identify Jews who were in the public service at factories and crafts, for their subsequent dismissal. Judging by the reports of the district mining authorities, the Jews were in the service of both state and private factories as mining engineers, clerks, mine overseers, chemists, and field managers. (By the way, at the beginning of the 20th century, the future director of the laboratory at the Lenin Mausoleum, professor of biochemistry, and then just an engineer of chemical plants near Solikamsk Boris Zbarsky and his assistant, a young factory clerk Boris Pasternak, worked in the Urals). Of course, to fire them all (and to evict some of them from the region) meant damaging production, which, it must be said, was not on the rise anyway. Therefore, with rare exceptions, cases were cut short at the stage of correspondence. The artisans, who made up the bulk of the Jewish population and, unlike merchants and engineers, were not left without attention, they did not represent any special "value" in the eyes of the local authorities. Despite the fact that in 1865 artisans were given the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement, over time it acquired a whole garland of additional and mandatory conditions. So, the artisan was obliged to engage exclusively in his craft, to start working no later than a month after arrival, to justify his rights to provide a certificate of the craft council, in addition, he had to prove that his occupation was really a craft, etc. Let us add to this that Jews who had documents for the right to reside outside the Pale of Settlement were forbidden to live in rural areas, to move without permission even within the province (from county to county), to temporarily stay outside their place of registration without special permission from the police. Violation of any of these conditions threatened with deportation. This whole complex system was regulated by an ugly overgrown legislation: numerous laws, acts, orders, clarifications, which gave rise to bribery and abuse on the part of police officials who saw Jews as a reliable source of income.
Those who managed to gain a foothold reached certain heights. In Yekaterinburg and beyond, the merchant names Peretz, Antselevich, Mekler, Polyakov, Halameyser were widely known. Perm merchant of the 1st guild Kalman Naumovich Lieberman was the manager of the regional branch of the Bank for Foreign Trade, owned tobacco and building materials stores. The oldest - since 1850 - from trading houses in Perm (ready-made clothes, cloth and fur goods) was founded by Zelik Epfelbaum. The only one of the all-Russian banks that arose in Yekaterinburg, the Siberian Trade Bank, was founded in 1872 by Albert Soloveichik. The director of the timber industry society in Perm was the well-known timber merchant S.I. Lieberman. Up to 35% of the members of the Chelyabinsk Exchange Society were Jews, many participated in the management bodies of the Chelyabinsk Exchange - the Exchange Committee, the Arbitration Commission of the Exchange, the Quotation and Audit Commissions.
The most famous Jewish doctors were: in Yekaterinburg - Boris Osipovich (Iosifovich) Kotelyansky (who served as the prototype for the protagonist of Mamin-Sibiryak's story "The Gide"), who died at 32 from typhus, having contracted it from a patient during an epidemic; Dr. I. Siano - the owner of a large house on the corner of the modern streets of Liebknecht and Malyshev; in Perm - Maria Yakovlevna Brushtein, who combined healing with revolutionary work, N.I. Okun, the only one of the local Jews who was awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus with swords, Abraham Kaufman - later on a major Zionist figure; in Ufa - head of the city psychiatric hospital, hereditary nobleman Yakov Febusovich Kaplan. Dealing with the problems of forensic psychiatric examination, Kaplan died at the age of 31 at the hands of a criminal patient. There were many remarkable people among the sworn attorneys, teachers, musicians, but the format of the essay does not allow to tell about them in more detail.
Unfortunately, there is no description of the life of Yekaterinburg and Ural Jews in the late 19th - early 20th centuries in archival materials. There are very few documents about the community itself. We can only say with certainty that her social status has grown significantly compared to the 70-80s. 19th century The imbalance between the male and female population has disappeared. Competent, intelligent, wealthy people advanced to the first posts. At that time, belonging to the community's asset was an indicator of social status rather than a matter of religiosity. In addition, the activities of opening a synagogue, etc. was for Jewish intellectuals part of the struggle for their civil rights. Some wealthy Jewish merchants, entrepreneurs or high-ranking officials took a direct and active part in the affairs of the Jewish community. The most striking examples are barrister David Lvovich Rassner, merchant of the 1st guild Heinrich Borisovich Peretz, lumber merchant Aron Halameyzer - in Yekaterinburg; merchant of the 1st guild, bank manager Kalman Lieberman and the owner of the factory Solomon Abramovich, who at one time was the headman of the soldiers' synagogue, - in Perm. There were also those who donated or bequeathed to the Jewish community part of their property. For example, the Chelyabinsk merchant of the 2nd guild, Solomon Bren, bequeathed his land plot for the construction of a synagogue. Z.L. Obukhovsky donated a new house for the Orenburg Jewish-Russian School. The manager of a large company, and then the owner of a commercial and industrial enterprise and a gold mine, chemical engineer Simon Drusvyatsky served for some time as the state rabbi in Perm, the merchants Peretz, Antsevich, Mekler were members of the board of the Jewish community of Yekaterinburg, and largely thanks to their support, the city was opened prayer house.
By the end of XIX - beginning of XX centuries. on the territory of the Ural region prayer houses operated in all provincial cities - Perm, Orenburg, Ufa, Vyatka, in large district cities - Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Troitsk, Birsk, Sterlitamak, Zlatoust and some others. There were synagogue buildings in Perm (wooden, built in 1886, not preserved, stone built in 1903), Chelyabinsk (wooden, built in the 80s of the XIX century, not preserved, stone - in 1905) , Orenburg (stone - in 1871), Ufa (wooden - around 1896, stone - in 1915), Vyatka (wooden - in 1907, not preserved). Paradoxically, there has never been a specially built synagogue building in Yekaterinburg; its role was performed by prayer houses located in rented premises. At the beginning of the XX century. it was a building at the corner of Simanovskaya and Usoltsevskaya streets at number 16/52. At the beginning of 1917, the community laid the foundation for the future synagogue and purchased building materials. But after the well-known events, all this was confiscated by the new authorities.
Communities quickly acquired appropriate institutions involved in charity, in charge of education, rituals and enlightenment: charitable societies (before 1906 - under the communities, after - independently), almshouses, "children's hearths", funeral brotherhoods, mutual aid funds, mikvams, kosher meat shops, canteens, etc. Perm at the beginning of the 20th century. On the initiative of the bookbinder Ilya Ioffe (father of the famous microbiologist Vladimir Ioffe), a group of parents sent a Hebrew teacher from Ukraine and organized a modern home cheder6 for their children and several other students. The students even published a handwritten magazine in Hebrew called "Kitmey ha-die" ("Inkblots"). Hebrew teachers, by virtue of existing legislation, sometimes had to live on forged documents, most often on craft certificates. Thus, the Hebrew teacher in Kungur, Aron Pinevich Sterin, lived in the city from 1907 on the false testimony of a leather cutter, setting up a fictitious blank workshop in the house. Traditional cheders, both home and synagogue, were gradually replaced by Jewish schools and schools.
The Jews of the Urals took an active part in the all-Russian public life, spoke Russian, and taught children in gymnasiums. However, no matter how actively the process of integrating Jews into Russian society proceeded, the influx of new migrants to the Urals from the Pale of Settlement, which continued despite the prohibitions, held back assimilation. And although the Jews for the most part integrated into local life, the Jewish community remained quite close-knit, and its members retained their own ethno-cultural and religious identity. This is evidenced, for example, by the extremely small number of mixed marriages between Jews and Christians, as well as the statistics of baptized Jews. There were few of them - for example, in the Perm province they made up only about one percent of the entire Jewish population. Another indicator of the preservation of ethnic identity is language. According to the 1897 census, from 85 to 97% of the Jews living in the four Ural provinces called Yiddish their native language.
The third, most massive wave of Jewish migration to the Urals was caused by the First World War. Moreover, the move was far from always voluntary - the government and the military command pursued a policy of mass eviction of Jews (Russian subjects) from the front line, indiscriminately accusing them of political disloyalty, suspecting them of espionage and aiding the enemy. Thus, 97 families were expelled from Bialystok because their members had visited German resorts before the war. In addition to refugees and deportees, prisoners from the Austro-Hungarian and German armies were brought to the Urals, as well as the so-called "military detainees" - civilian hostages captured by Russian troops on enemy territory. In June 1915, 146 Jews - Austrian subjects who had nothing to do with military operations, were sent in freight cars to Irbit. The local district police officer, not knowing what to do, imprisoned them just in case (and among them were women, old people and children). By the end of the summer of 1915, a significant part of the so-called Pale of Settlement was occupied by the enemy, and the Russian government was nevertheless forced to allow Jews to temporarily reside in the interior provinces. It cannot be said that the local authorities were delighted with this turn of events. The governor of Orenburg even ordered police officials to keep lists of Jews "for the future," with particular reference to refugees and foreign nationals. According to the Jewish Committee for Assistance to War Victims (EKOPO), the number of Jewish refugees in all four Ural provinces as of November 4, 1915, was 6,731. It should be noted that the espionage mania that escalated during the war came from government circles - Jews were often accused of speculation, agitation against the tsar, etc., official reports spoke of the growing discontent of the local population (for example, in Orenburg and Chelyabinsk). However, in reality, there was no particular discontent - the locals did not associate the difficulties of the war with the Jews. And the government's initial fears - whether the influx of refugees would cause pogroms - did not come true.
Before October 1917 there had been only one pogrom in the Urals. They were not caused by an "initiative from below", but became part of a "wave" launched by the authorities that swept across Russia. We are talking about the pogroms of October 1905. Events developed according to a single scenario developed in the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: after the promulgation of the tsar's manifesto "On the improvement of the state order", demonstrations of protest by supporters of leftist parties and those dissatisfied with the manifesto took place everywhere. In contrast, the "patriots" organized marches and religious processions with flags and banners (and along with clubs and sticks captured "just in case"), which soon turned into clashes with left-wing demonstrators, and then into pogroms. The drunken mob beat not only Jews, but also students, high school students, and intellectuals. In Ufa, four people were killed, including a Jew - Matvey Rucker, in Yekaterinburg, two young people were killed - Russians by nationality, thirteen were seriously injured. In Vyatka, random Russian inhabitants became victims of the crowd. The most brutal pogrom took place in Chelyabinsk - according to various sources, 10 people were killed (including three Russians who defended Jews), 38 Jewish apartments, 16 shops and stores were looted.
Of course, even before these events, the pages of local and all-Russian publications distributed in the Ural cities had published anti-Semitic content, and a little later, branches of the Black Hundred Union of the Russian People and anti-Semitic leaflets appeared, trying to form the image of a Jew as the culprit of all troubles. But still, in the Urals, Judeophobia was not inherent in the mass consciousness. However, the tragedy was not that the so-called "guides of evil" appeared. The trouble was different: unfortunately, many inhabitants easily, even for a short time, took their side.
Discrimination and pogroms led to the fact that part of the Jewish population emigrated from Russia, and the other part - the younger generation - joined the ranks of the revolutionary movement, joining the Bund or all-Russian socialist parties. Everyone is well aware (at least by street names) of the names of Sverdlov, Weiner, Goloshchekin, Sheinkman, Sosnovsky, Zwilling, and Yurovsky, so "beloved" by anti-Semites. Thus, a misleading impression may arise that in the Urals the Jews took the most active part precisely in the organizations of the Bolsheviks. Without explaining the reasons for this situation, we will only say that in fact the Jews most actively joined the ranks of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and young people who did not want to break with their Jewish roots preferred the Bund and Poalei Zion parties. I.V. Narsky, having analyzed data on four thousand members of various parties in the Urals (2/3 of them socialist) from the documents of the Special Section of the Fund of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (stored in the State Archives of the Russian Federation), came to the conclusion that among the Ural Social Democrats, Jews accounted for 9 %, among the Socialist-Revolutionaries - 6%, among the liberal-radical Cadets - 2%. Speaking of the latter, it is worth mentioning Lev Afanasyevich Krol, the unchanging leader of the Ural Cadets and a member of the Central Committee of the party. Being a fairly large businessman, Krol during the First World War was a member of the leadership of the Ural Military-Industrial Committee. He actively fought against Bolshevism and Soviet power, in 1918 he headed the regional provisional government of the Urals, and later he was a member of the Amur People's Assembly. Just before emigrating to Paris, he published in Vladivostok a curious book of memoirs about the three post-revolutionary years. In general, the personal stories of the revolutionary figures of those years are very interesting and almost always tragic. Many of them either died during the civil war, or were later shot by the Soviet authorities, sent into exile, died in poverty, like Lev Gershtein, some committed suicide, like David Hansburg. Some were helped to avoid such a fate by natural causes, such as the death of Sverdlov from the "Spanish flu" or Yurovsky from cancer.
The Jews, unlike other peoples, except for the revolution and religion, had one more alternative to Russian reality. If some wished to correct society and change the existing system here, others dreamed of the kingdom of justice "there" - at the white walls of Jerusalem. The Zionist movement, which arose at the end of the 19th century, quickly gained strength and in spite of, or perhaps even thanks to, the prohibitions gained great popularity. The very first Zionist organization in the Urals arose in Perm - shortly after the first congress of Zionists in Basel in 1897. By 1900, the number of its members amounted to approximately 10% of the entire Jewish population of the city. After February 1917, the influence of the Zionists only strengthened - according to the results of elections to the councils of new democratic Jewish communities: in Perm they received 21 seats out of 35, in Orenburg - 11 out of 31, in Ufa - 12 out of 28. In addition to the Zionists, in all large Ural cities Jewish parties of various directions acted: socialist Marxist - Bund and Poalei Zion and non-Marxist - United Socialists - ESWP (which arose from the merger of the Socialist Jewish Workers' Party - SERP and the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party), liberal - Jewish People's Group, Jewish People's Party. After February 1917, they became actively involved in the all-Russian public life, put up their deputies in elections to local governments, and even sometimes passed. So, in the summer of 1917, a representative of the Jewish Democratic Group, Isaac Abramovich Kontorovich, was elected as a member of the Yekaterinburg City Duma. However, most of the provincial branches of the All-Russian Jewish parties, with rare exceptions (representatives of the Bund after February were members of the Soviets of Perm, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Kungur), performed cultural and national functions to a greater extent than political ones.
On March 20, 1917, the "Resolution of the Provisional Government on the abolition of religious and national restrictions" equated the Jews with the citizens of Russia, declaring the abolition of all laws that contradicted the principle of equality. But the flourishing of Jewish parties and organizations that followed was short-lived. The new Soviet government, through the Jewish Commissariat, created under the People's Commissariat for Nationalities headed by Stalin, as well as the Jewish sections of the CPSU (b), began the gradual curtailment, and then the complete liquidation of national Jewish parties and public associations. By 1930, in the Urals, Jewish prayer houses, synagogues and other premises were requisitioned by the authorities, and the organizations themselves were closed (material assets were confiscated even earlier - in 1922, under the pretext of helping the starving).
During the Great Patriotic War, mass evacuation to the Urals led to the appearance in the late 1940s and 50s. in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) and Molotov (Perm) small religious societies engaged in purely religious affairs and existed on voluntary donations. But they did not last long: in 1959, by the decision of the Council of People's Deputies of the local convocation, the Jewish society of Molotov was closed, in 1961 - Sverdlovsk. The only building in Sverdlovsk, built in 1916 specifically for Jewish religious needs (ritual bath - mikveh), was demolished.
Thus, until the late 1980s, Jewish life was denied legal public manifestations. However, this could not eradicate people's craving for communication and knowledge, preservation and transmission of traditions. Many families kept spoken Yiddish at home, especially those evacuated during the Great Patriotic War and left to live in the Urals. Communication, discussion of miraculously arriving letters from relatives from Israel took place exclusively at home, "in the kitchen." In several regional centers of the region, "home" minyans were gathered for prayer7. It is also known that despite the threat of arrest in several cities, Hebrew classes were held underground in apartments. And largely thanks to this glimmering "home" Jewish life, as well as the huge need for national communication and self-expression, which has not faded over the Soviet decades, the modern revival and re-creation of Jewish communities in the Urals and throughout the country was received with amazing enthusiasm.
1 Anti-Semitism in Russia is an extremely complex topic. The role of the authorities of the Russian Empire in provoking and organizing Jewish pogroms is far from always clear. At the very least, the widespread opinion among both Jewish and Russian intelligentsia about the responsibility of the authorities, especially the government, for organizing pogroms is by no means always based on reliable evidence. Another thing is the blatant connivance of these pogroms.
2 Shadkhen - an intermediary in the marriage of the Jews.
3 Shoikhet - a butcher who slaughters livestock and poultry in accordance with the ritual prescriptions of Judaism.
4 Shichtmeister - the title of a mining official of the 13th or 14th class. The shiftmaster of the 13th class corresponded in the table of ranks to an army lieutenant and a civilian collegiate recorder and registrar.
5 Torah - the first five books of the "Jewish Bible" (the Hebrew name of which is Tanakh, the non-Jewish name is the Old Testament). The Torah in the form of a scroll is kept in the synagogues and a certain weekly section is read during the Sabbath service.
6 Cheder is a Jewish religious elementary school.
7 Minyan - a gathering of at least ten male Jews who have reached the religious age of majority (13 years). The presence of a minyan is obligatory for the performance of public worship.
Poles (self-designation of Poles). They belong to the western branch of the Slavic peoples. The main population of Poland. 73 thousand people live in Russia (according to the 2002 census).
The language is Polish. Writing - based on Latin graphics.
Believing Poles are mostly Catholics, there are Protestants.
Poles appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. at the end of the "Time of Troubles" and the expulsion of Polish troops from Russia. Took part in the development of Siberia. From the middle of the XVII century. the social composition of Polish migrants was constantly changing. Initially, these were the Smolensk and Polotsk gentry, who swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar and entered the military service class. Traces of their stay in the Southern Urals (at least in Ufa) are visible. A striking episode in the history of the Urals was the stay of the exiled Confederates here. The captured Confederates were exiled to the cities of the Urals, some of them became privates in the Orenburg separate corps. They left a noticeable mark in the development of local culture, in the formation of European standards of life.
The influx of exiles especially increased after the Polish national liberation uprisings of 1830-1831 and 1863-1864. In 1865, in the cities of Orenburg and Ufa provinces, there were 485 people under police supervision. In addition, some of the exiles were placed in the villages of the Chelyabinsk and Ufa districts. The Poles, exiled to the Urals in the 19th century, continued the traditions laid down by their predecessors: they performed the functions of doctors, teachers, scientists, and musicians. Due to the lack of educated people in the province, local authorities were forced to allow exiles to work in various institutions. U. Rodzevich served in the Orenburg provincial government. A. Lipinitsky served as a clerk in Verkhneuralsk, R. Sharlovsky in the Orenburg State Chamber. The teachers were I. Rodzevich, V. Kosko, A. Shumovsky, E. Strashinsky. Many Poles made a living by craft: carpentry, shoemaking, saddlery, tailoring. The Poles actively took root in the local environment. They established contacts not only with Russians, but also with representatives of indigenous peoples.
The Poles appeared in the Southern Urals not only as exiles. Many of them voluntarily chose the Urals as their place of residence. With the beginning of the construction of the West Siberian Railway in Chelyabinsk, the contingent of the Polish population increased significantly. The Poles served as engineers, technicians, foremen, accountants, accountants. The head of construction was K.Ya. Mikhailovsky; among the administrative and managerial personnel of the road V.M. Pavlovsky, A.V. Live-
rovsky, A.F. Zdziarsky, the Stukenberg brothers. According to statistics, there was an increase in the Catholic population in Chelyabinsk: in 1863 - 23 people, in 1897 - 255, in 1910 - 1864.
The facts of the construction of Catholic churches - churches speak rather eloquently about the increase in the number of Poles in the Southern Urals. The first such temple was built in Orenburg. In 1898 a wooden church was opened in Chelyabinsk. In 1909, the construction of a stone church began.
Settling in new lands, the Poles quite often assimilated through marriages, converted to Orthodoxy, and lost their ethnic roots. However, the distribution of traditional Polish surnames among the old-timers of the Southern Urals reliably preserves the trace of this people in the regional history.
Germans (self-designation Deutsche). The main population of Germany. According to the 2002 census, 597 thousand people live in Russia, and 28,457 people live in the Chelyabinsk region.
Language - German (Germanic group of the Indo-European language family).
Confessional affiliation - Christianity (mainly Catholics and Lutherans, as well as a small
number of Protestants: Baptists, Adventists, Mennonites, Pentecostals).
The ancestors of the Russian Germans moved to the country at different times and from different places. The influx of Germans into Russia especially intensified under Peter I and his successors. These were artisans, merchants, scientists, military men. The Germans took an active part in the colonization of uninhabited territories of Russia, including the South Urals. This was facilitated by the overpopulation of German lands. In Russia, all immigrants from the northern lands (depending on the political situation) were called Swedes, Germans or Saxons. According to pre-revolutionary census documents, they were also identified according to confessional grounds - German settlers in Russia were predominantly Lutherans.
The Russian name "Germans" meant those who did not understand the Russian language, the dumb. The Swedes and the Dutch definitely fell among the Germans, among the latter Ivan Andreevich Reyensdorp and Pavel Petrovich Sukhtelen, two governors of the Orenburg Territory. Well known in the Urals is the name of their compatriot, the founder of the Yekaterinburg fortress and factory (1723) - Georg Wilhelm de Genin, an outstanding specialist in the field of fortification and mining and metallurgical business, lieutenant general of artillery. He was invited to the Russian service in 1697. For 12 years he was the manager of state-owned factories in the Urals and Siberia. De Gennin was engaged not only in the organization of metallurgical and military production, but also in scientific activities. He collected material for a book about the Ural and Siberian factories and was seriously interested in antiquities. The scientist collected a large collection of archaeological items, descriptions and drawings of which were included in the book (it was first published in Russian in 1937). The materials of this book attract the attention of specialists to this day.
The construction of factories and the organization of military service in the border fortresses attracted a significant number of foreign employees of the Lutheran faith to the Southern Urals. In the middle of the XVIII century. there was already a Lutheran parish in Orenburg. To serve the spiritual needs of the parishioners, on the proposal of the governor Avraam Putyatin, Catherine II decreed on November 16, 1767, ordered to “create” the position of a divisional preacher in Orenburg. The first preacher Philip Wernburger arrived in Orenburg on March 12, 1768. Here, in 1776, the first Lutheran church (church) of St. Catherine in the province was consecrated. Funds for the construction of the church were collected from Lutheran parishes in Russia. Great support was given by Governor Reyensdorp. Subsequent repairs and reconstruction of the building were carried out with the assistance of the state treasury. Representatives of various faiths participated in the collection of funds for bells for this church (1895-1897): a third of the amount was collected by the Germans, the rest by Russian merchants. The entire staff of Lutheran field and divisional preachers was maintained at the expense of the Ministry of the Interior. Government during the XVIII-XIX centuries. demonstrated a loyal policy towards the Gentiles, and first of all, towards the Lutherans. The situation changed during the First World War.
Simultaneously with the parishes for the military in the Southern Urals, parishes for the civilian population arose. In the first half of the XIX century. one of the largest German diasporas formed in Zlatoust. In 1811, the post of Lutheran preacher was established here. The parish increased significantly after a factory for the production of edged weapons was opened in Zlatoust in 1815. Under a contract signed by the manager of the Zlatoust factories, G. Eversman, a group of gunsmiths from a private factory in Solingen arrived in the South Urals, which had stopped working by that time. By 1818 there were 115 German craftsmen in Zlatoust (450 people together with their families). In 1849, when its own school of gunsmiths had already been formed, the factory retained the privileges of 102 craftsmen.
The founders of the Zlatoust school of decorated weapons were
Wilhelm-Nicholas Schaf and his son Ludwig. Gunsmiths settled in the Urals on extremely favorable terms for them. They were given the right to sue by their own court, to have a school, a church and a club. In the 1880s (after the demand of German Chancellor Bismarck to return to their homeland), the majority of Germans in the Zlatoust diaspora preferred to accept Russian citizenship. Visited Zlatoust in the 20s of the XIX century. editor of Otechestvennye Zapiski P.P. Svinyin left enthusiastic memories of the city, presenting it as "a corner of Germany, transferred to the Ural Mountains."
The fact of the opening of a new parish in Troitsk (1872) testified to the growth of the urban German population.
After the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the Southern Urals, the network of rural German settlements expanded significantly (primarily due to the relocation of the Mennonite colonies from the south of Russia). Mennonites are followers of one of the movements of the Protestant direction. At the end of the XIX century. Three Mennonite settlements arose in the Southern Urals: Novo-Samarskoye, Orenburgskoye and Davlekanovskoye. The Mennonites organized a highly productive and technically equipped agricultural production.
The population census of 1897 showed that a total of 1,790.5 thousand people lived in Russia; in the Orenburg province - 70% of the total German population of the Urals, which amounted to 5457 people. Of these, 689 people lived in cities, and 4768 in counties. Another flow of Germans to the South Urals is associated with the agrarian reforms of P. Stolypin (early 20th century). The Germans moved to the Urals in the general mass of immigrants.
In Chelyabinsk, the Germans primarily had the opportunity to engage in trading activities. If in 1894 there were 34 Lutherans here, then in 1911 their number reached 497. In 1906, the General Consistory discussed the issue of allocating an independent parish for them in Chelyabinsk. However, the church in the city was never built. 248
With the appearance of the Germans in the Urals, the spread of education and literacy is associated. In 1735, on the initiative of the head of the state factories of the Urals, V.N. Tatishchev, a German school was opened in Yekaterinburg. Bernhard Stormer became its first rector. The school was an educational institution of a higher type. It sent the children of the upper strata of society and the management personnel of mining factories, who graduated from verbal or arithmetic schools or home schooling. The doors of the school were not closed for the children of craftsmen and factory workers either. Along with reading, writing, German grammar and translations, the basics of history, geography, and scripture were taught at the educational institution. Knowledge of the German language, according to V.N. Tatishchev, could give Russian youth access to literature on mining, which was published mainly in German. The school has a library of books, magazines and newspapers. The educational institution prepared a large number of translators who were sent to foreign specialists in the Urals and Siberia.
According to the 1897 census, in the Orenburg province, about 70% of the total German population was literate. Approximately a third of the male population knew how to read Russian, the same number - in German. German women knew German letters better. At this time, children in German families preferred to be taught in Russian.
For many centuries of life among the Russian population, the Germans not only actively took root in Russian culture, but were themselves subjected to assimilation (Russification), without losing their ethnic identity. The high level of literacy, the presence among the Germans of skilled artisans (shoemakers, tailors, watchmakers), narrow specialists (doctors, pharmacists, etc.) created a respectful attitude towards them in society. In the XX century. the life of Germans in Russia has lost its former status and stability. In 1930-1940. the Germans received autonomy - the German Volga Republic was created.
But during the Great Patriotic War, the Germans became outcasts. The Republic was abolished. About 1 million people were deported to Kazakhstan, the Urals and Siberia. After the end of the war until 1956, the Germans were under the supervision of the police. In 1964 they were partially rehabilitated. Since 1979, the emigration of Germans to their historical homeland has intensified in Russia. According to the 1926 census, the number of Germans in Russia was 1238.5 thousand people, in 1989 - 842.3 thousand.
On the territory of Russia, the Germans usually lived in isolation from other ethnic groups, which allowed them to preserve ethnic traditions. However, the culture of Russian Germans is significantly different from the actual German culture. This is due to two factors. First, by the time the first settlers appeared in Russia, there was no single German culture (Germany was divided into more than 300 independent principalities). The German ethnos and culture still had to go through the stage of formation. Secondly, living in completely new environmental conditions, the Germans adapted to them. This also applied to building materials, and the composition of the herd, and the nomenclature of cultivated crops, etc. In Russia, the process of formation of the German sub-ethnos was going on, which was reflected in its names: “Russian Germans”, “Soviet Germans”. Of the features of sub-ethnic culture, attention should be paid to the low level of urbanization. According to the 1926 census, it was 14.9%. The Russian Germans were mostly rural dwellers. Urban Germans differed significantly from other ethnic groups in their demographic behavior. They were characterized by late marriages and low birth rates. Such a model of behavior was formed in Western Europe already in the 15th century.
Jews - the general ethnic name of the peoples, historically ascending to the ancient Jews. The main population of Israel. They live in different countries.
Language - Hebrew, Yiddish, the languages of the countries where they live.
Religion - Judaism.
In Chelyabinsk appeared in the middle of the XIX century. They were soldiers of the active 25-year service, graduates of the schools of military musicians (cantonists). In 1840 there were 40 of them, in 2000 - 4.4 thousand. In the 1990s, about 50% of the Jews emigrated.
Before the revolution, they lived in the city on the basis of a temporary permit document, since their main place of residence was determined by the Jewish Pale of Settlement, introduced in 1791. Due to the fact that Jews did not have the right to own land, houses (with the exception of retired soldiers and persons with an average special and higher education), most of them in Chelyabinsk at the end of the 19th century. consisted of retired soldiers and non-commissioned officers. In addition, boys from Jewish families who were sent to military schools and forcibly converted to Orthodoxy, after studying and long service, often remained in places where they retired. Mostly Jews were engaged in trade, medicine, as well as jewelry, publishing, pharmacy, sewing, and baking activities.
The increase in the Jewish population began at the beginning of the 20th century. and was associated with the temporary abolition of the Pale of Settlement (during the First World War, the government allowed Jewish refugees to live in the Urals and Siberia), the industrial growth of the city. The growth in numbers was also facilitated by the outflow of the Jewish population from the western regions of Russia in connection with the pogroms (in Chelyabinsk, during the Jewish pogrom of 1905, several people died). Indirectly, this was facilitated by the launch of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Children studied in heders (elementary schools), in a Jewish school, within the framework of a five percent norm in a real school, a gymnasium, and a trade school. The center of social and religious life of the Jews in Chelyabinsk was the synagogue (Jewish temple), built in 1900-1905. It was under her that a Jewish school and a society for helping poor Jews, later refugees who arrived in Chelyabinsk during the First World War, were opened. The Jewish community patronized the families of the defenders of the Fatherland.
The October Revolution of 1917 changed the social composition of the Jews. Representatives of large and medium capital have emigrated. In connection with the liquidation of Jewish societies (1917), the prohibition and seizure of books in Hebrew (1919), the confiscation of all silver items from the synagogue (1921), and then the closing of Jewish schools and the synagogue (1929), national traditions also changed. The weakening of national-religious traditions contributed to the rapid assimilation of the Jews. This was facilitated by familiarization with Soviet culture and mixed marriages. At the same time, the new government allowed Jews to study at higher educational institutions and participate in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the city.
During the period of industrialization of the 1920-1930s. Jews contributed to the creation of a new society: they worked in the construction of factories, in party and state bodies (ChTZ director A. Bruskin, chief engineer I.Ya. Nesterovsky, head of construction of ChGRES Ya.D. etc.). Many of them became victims of repression in the second half of the 1930s.
During the Great Patriotic War, the number of Jews increased due to the evacuees, but decreased in the post-war years: many returned to their old place of residence. In the late 1940s Almost all Jews were removed from leadership positions. In 1953, 10 heads of departments of the medical institute were arrested in the "doctors' case". In the 1990s the revival of the religious and national-cultural life of the Jewish population began: the synagogue was returned, Jewish schools, a library were opened, public organizations were created.
Chelyabinsk Synagogue.
Then and now
The appearance of the Jewish population in Chelyabinsk dates back to the 40s of X 9th century The first "Jews" were Nikolaev soldiers of active 25-year service, graduates of the cantonist schools of Orenburg and Troitsk. At the end of the service, they often remained in the city, started families, thus, in the second half of the 19th century. most of the Jewish population of the city were retired soldiers and non-commissioned officers. Their names are known from the archives: B. Bershtein, M. Bruslevsky, N. Weiner, D. Mlanin, O. Henkel and others. They preserved their native language and strictly observed the tradition, the laws of the Torah. During the years of service, Jewish soldiers bought a hut together, where they prayed on Saturdays and holidays.
With the launch of the Great Siberian Railway, the population of the city began to increase rapidly, incl. the proportion of Jews also increased. In 1894 there were 104 people. Jewish religion - 0.6% of the population of Chelyabinsk, and already in 1901 - 686 people. (3%). These were merchants, artisans, specialists in the field of medicine, because only these categories of the population were allowed to live outside the “Pales of Settlement” defined by the government of the Russian Empire, located mainly in the west of Russia. They settled on the streets of Workshop (Pushkin Street), Nikolskaya (Sovietskaya Street), Stepnaya (Communy Street) and Isetskaya (K. Marx Street). Many business people gathered in the city, who were engaged in the collection and sale of grain, tea trade, opened pharmacies, shops and workshops (locksmiths, furniture, hats, ready-made dresses, etc.). A great contribution to the development of crafts and trade was made by: Abram Breslin, Max Geiman, Ovsey Dunevich, Anany Kogen, Solomon Bren, Yakov Elkin, Leya Breslina and others. The first doctors in the city were Naum Sheftel, Zalman Mazin, Adolf Kirkel, who played a huge role in saving thousands of residents of the Chelyabinsk district from epidemics, they opened zemstvo hospitals in the villages.
According to tradition, the synagogue became the center of the life of the Jewish community (synagogue - in Hebrew “beit-kneset” - a meeting house). At the end of the 60s 19th century the community acquires the first building for the "Jewish prayer house", where the first rabbis of Chelyabinsk were invited - the spiritual rabbi - reb. Ber Hein, official - Abram Yatsovsky; Shoikhet (slaughterer) - Chaim Auerbach. The state rabbi was approved by the provincial authorities, from which he received a certificate for the title of rabbi. He represented the community in state and administrative institutions. The birth of a child, the act of circumcision, marriage and burial were allowed to be registered only by him, all documents bear his signature. The duties of the state rabbi also included taking an oath from Jewish recruits, delivering patriotic sermons on holidays. Abram Ovseevich Yatsovsky died in 1915 at the age of 85. The spiritual rabbi Reb Hein was considered A. Yatsovsky's academic adviser, but both of them were great experts in Judaism and were spiritual mentors in the religious community. Reb Hein died in 1914 at the age of
80 years old. These people served in the synagogue for more than forty years, earning the respect of all members of the community.
In the 80s of the XIX century. a wooden building of the synagogue was built on the northern outskirts of the city (now the building of the Administration of the Kalinin district is on this site).
In 1894, the merchant of the 2nd guild, Solomon Bren, bequeathed to the Jewish community for the construction of a synagogue a piece of land he had bought at the address: st. Workshop, 6, where there was a wasteland, as it was listed in the archive - "an empty yard place."
On December 16, 1900, the Decree of the Orenburg Spiritual Consistory was issued, allowing the construction of a synagogue. For three months, the city government considered the question of whether there were “local obstacles, as well as obstacles on the part of the Orthodox residents of the city” to the construction of a large stone synagogue according to the proposed project. On March 21, 1901, the Chelyabinsk City Duma decided that "there are no obstacles on the part of the Duma to allow the construction of a chapel."
In 1903, the construction of a stone building of the synagogue began with the money collected from the Jewish population. Construction proceeded slowly, since the community was not rich, and only in 1905 did the synagogue begin its activities in a new building (now Pushkin Street, 6-B).
From the estimate sheet for 1905. : "st. Workshop, 6, two-storey stone house, covered with iron. Occupied by the Chelyabinsk Jewish Society Synagogue. Belongs to Sheftel Naum Markovich and the heirs of Bren S.I. Building area - 435 sq. meters."
Nakhman Mordukhovich Sheftel is the first doctor of the Jewish faith who appeared in Chelyabinsk since 1891, a deeply religious person who most likely made a large contribution to the construction. In 1906 he took over the upkeep of the synagogue building.
The life of the Jewish community of Chelyabinsk became more and more active.
On May 20, 1907, the construction of a Jewish school begins on the street. Asian, 7 (now Elkin St.). Along with religious subjects, the school also taught general education in the native language. In addition, several heders worked in the city - primary religious schools where they taught the Torah and the basics of the Talmud with prayers memorized. Usually they were in the apartment of the teacher - melamed. 6 - 8 students gathered at a long table - boys from 5 years old and studied diligently, because. a centuries-old tradition required that all male children, regardless of the family's wealth, receive a primary education. Jewish children also studied at a real school, a women's gymnasium, and a trade school. The prestige of education in the Jewish environment has always been high, although not all children could study because of the mandatory tuition fees and restrictions - the admission of Jewish children was limited to 5% of the norm. Boards of trustees were created to raise funds for the needs of education. A particularly large contribution was made by Geiman Max Isaakovich - a merchant of the 1st guild, Vysotsky Petr Matveevich - a merchant of the 1st guild, Basovsky Iosif Borisovich - a tradesman.
in 1913 - the Chelyabinsk Jewish funeral brotherhood was created.
The Community became especially active after the election in 1909 of the Chairman of the Board of the Synagogue of Avrum Berkovich Breslin, a merchant of the 1st guild, a member of the board of the Chelyabinsk Stock Exchange, the owner of a printing house, and the creator of the first daily city newspaper, Voice of the Urals.
With the outbreak of the First World War, the synagogue became a center for helping refugees, whose flow was very large - in 1916, out of 6302 refugees who arrived in the city, 683 were Jews. Refugee families are accommodated in the synagogue building. The so-called "circle" collections are constantly held to assist the victims of hostilities, and the collected money was distributed not only among the Jews, but also surrendered to the State Bank. The Jewish community takes patronage over the families of the defenders of the Fatherland. At the synagogue, a "labor bureau" was opened, which helped the refugees to get a job.
In 1915, the Committee for Assistance to Refugees was formed under the Society for Assistance to Poor Jews; a sanitary squad of Jewish youth is created to receive wounded front-line soldiers from sanitary trains and transport them to local hospitals.
In the same year, after the death of Abram Yatsovsky, who had served in the synagogue for more than 40 years, Mikhail Volosov, a graduate of the Jewish Higher Religious School (yeshiva), was elected state rabbi.
In 1917, Russia experienced two revolutions, entered a period of great social upheavals that broke the usual way of life. Jews for the first time received equal civil, political and national rights with other peoples. The slogans of freedom and equality conquered the Jewish youth, the majority went to study, higher education became available even to the poorest segments of the population. But Judaism, which for thousands of years has strengthened the Jews into a single people, preventing assimilation, preserving traditions, culture, religion from outside influences, has become a "harmful national superstition" for the new ideology. Among the Jews there was a split into those who tried to preserve the usual forms of life, and those who were actively involved in the construction of a new life. The desire to change everything, a sincere passion for the slogans of "proletarian internationalism" led to the fact that part of the Jewish youth renounced not only religion, but also the customs, culture, language of their people. Various kinds of Jewish societies are being liquidated gradually. The gubernatorial committee of the RCP(b) launched work on the elimination of national characteristics as remnants of the past and atheistic propaganda under the slogan "Religion is the opium of the people." Repressions began against the bearers of thousands of years of Jewish traditions and religion. In 1919, books in Hebrew were banned and confiscated; it is forbidden to study the Hebrew language - the language of the Torah. In 1921, all silver items were confiscated from the synagogue: menorahs, candlesticks, oil jugs. In 1921, according to the decision of the Jewish section of the provincial committee of the RCP(b), the cheder at the synagogue was closed with the following justification (Minutes No. 19 of May 21, 1921, paragraph 3):
“Considering that children of preschool age cannot understand the meaning of religion, do not allow them to participate in group activities, ... no religious teaching, except for mechanical reading in an incomprehensible language, occurs, but which cause dullness and affect their mental abilities, accompanied by physical retardation , Jewish Cheder subdivision nat. Minorities CLOSE!”
Comprehensive Jewish school on the street. Asian, 7 (now Elkina St.) worked until September 1919, then its premises were occupied by the Siberian Revolutionary Committee, and in May 1923 the school was finally closed.
Only the synagogue continued to operate: a minyan gathered for prayer, the Jewish library worked, occasionally cantors came - synagogue singers.
During the years of the first five-year plan, under the slogan "The fight against religion - the fight for socialism", a new anti-religious campaign began with the seizure of religious buildings. On November 14, 1929, an act was drawn up stating that the synagogue building was being destroyed, "the pipeline and the boiler had become completely unusable", but at the request of the workers and the public, the synagogue building should be "used for a socially useful institution - the club of the Komsomol and Pioneers." On January 18, 1929, by decision of the Presidium of the City Council, the synagogue was closed, and in 1930, the Chelyabtraktorostroy club was opened in the “collapsing” building of the synagogue, which operated until the autumn of 1933; then the premises became the concert hall of the Philharmonic, where Emil Gilels, David Oistrakh, Boris Goldstein and other masters of culture performed.
In 1937, a workshop for the manufacture of prostheses was opened here, and in 1941, a prosthetic factory, which occupied the premises until 1964. It was completely re-equipped, machines were supplied, the vibration from which destroyed the unique stucco molding on the walls and the walls of the building themselves. After 1964, the synagogue turned into a warehouse for a prosthetic factory.
After the closure of the synagogue, the religious life of the community was effectively banned. In some private houses on Saturdays and holidays people gathered for prayer. These meetings for "unauthorized worship" became especially dangerous in 1937, when several owners of these apartments were arrested and repressed. National ties, the traditional way of communal life were rapidly destroyed, assimilation proceeded at a rapid pace. Mixed marriages have become commonplace, before the revolution this was possible only in the most extreme cases - subject to the change of religion by the bride or groom. Already in 1924, out of 109 Jewish marriages, 27 were mixed. Not only religious traditions were lost, but also a huge layer of national culture, the bright, unique color of the Jewish community in the city was erased from life and memory.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, many evacuees arrived in Chelyabinsk, especially a large group of religious people who continued to observe the tradition arrived with the Kharkov plant. In 1943 they bought a small old prayer house on the street. Communes. In 1946, the community bought a two-room house on Kirova Street for religious ceremonies, then on Kalinina Street, and later rented an apartment. Through the efforts of mostly elderly people, national traditions were preserved in families: Sabbath, traditional Jewish holidays were observed, Easter dishes, prayer books, features of Jewish cuisine were kept.
An initiative group consisting of A. Kaplan and T. Lieberman, D. Orenbach, M. Mokhrik began work on collecting documents for the return of the synagogue building to the Jewish community.
On March 22, 1991, the Executive Committee of the City Council adopted a decision “On the return of the cult building of the synagogue to believers,” which states: “Consider legitimate the demand of believers to return the synagogue building to the Jewish community for the performance of religious rites. Further use of this building for storage facilities of the prosthetic enterprise is unacceptable and illegal ... Up to 1 May 1991 to carry out current repairs of the roof and release one of the rooms on the first floor for believers…”.
At first, only one room was vacated in the warehouse of the prosthetic factory. Enthusiasts cleared out a cluttered, dilapidated room, in which the first prayer took place.
In 1993, with the blessing of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Or-Avner Chabad Lubavitch International Foundation was opened in Russia. The president and sponsor of the fund is an Israeli businessman, Mr. Levi Leviev. The purpose of the fund is the development of Jewish education, culture and traditions throughout the CIS. The Foundation began to send rabbis to different cities of the former USSR. To date, 232 rabbis have already been sent to 78 cities of the CIS.
In 1995, the Or-Avner Chabad Lubavitch Foundation sent two young rabbis, Yossi Levy and Sholom Goldshmit, to Chelyabinsk. The purpose of their arrival is to create a real traditional Jewry for the Jews of the city. Immediately after their arrival, they opened a Sunday School at the synagogue, where children could learn their language, traditions and culture, knowing that they were learning according to the thousand-year traditions of our ancestors. At the synagogue, a country summer camp for children was organized, Jewish holidays, many young people began to come to the synagogue for prayer.
In August 1996, as an envoy of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and at the invitation of the Jewish community with the support of the Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, Rabbi Meir Kirsh arrived in Chelyabinsk with his wife Devorah Leah and eldest son Menachem Mendl for permanent residence.
In February 1998, Abram Itskovich Zhuk was elected Chairman of the religious community.
In September 1997, he began his work Chelyabinsk branch of the Russian Jewish Congress Charitable Foundation (Director Ya. Oks, members of the Board of Trustees: E. Weinstein, M. Vinnitsky, A. Livshits, M. Lozovatsky, A. Levit, L. Merenzon, S. Mitelman, B. Roizman ), who, on the initiative of A. Livshits, determined the restoration of the synagogue building as a priority direction of his activity. REC's decision was supported by Rabbi Meir Kirsch.
Chairman of the Russian Cultural Foundation Academician D.S. Likhachev supported the initiative to restore the synagogue and presented the Chelyabinsk Cultural Foundation with a unique candlestick - a silver Hanukkah - made in the art workshops of Leningrad according to old sketches. Today, a donated Hanukkah decorates the synagogue. The Joint Foundation provided assistance in purchasing chairs for the dining room. The Federation of Jewish Communities, headed by Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar, financed the purchase of special furniture for the prayer hall and lamps, a bimah, a Torah ark, an omud, and stained glass windows.
In 1999 By the decision of the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk region, the synagogue building was declared an architectural monument of the Chelyabinsk region (Resolution No. 457 of 01/28/1999).
On October 26, 2000, one of the largest events in the life of the Jews of the Urals took place - a synagogue restored to its original form was solemnly opened in Chelyabinsk. It became the first officially opened after the revolution Jewish temple in the vast Ural-Siberian region.
Representatives of various Jewish organizations of Russia came to congratulate the Chelyabinsk Jews, including Chief Rabbi of Russia and Chairman of the Association of Rabbis of the CIS Berl Lazar, Executive Director of the FEO CIS Avraham Berkovich, Editor-in-Chief of the Lechaim magazine and Head of the Department of Public Relations of the FEO Borukh Gorin, Chief Rabbi of KEROOR Adolf Shayevich, Vice-President of the Russian Jewish Congress Charitable Foundation Alexander Osovtsov, Head of the Moscow Branch of the Joint Joel Golovensky, Representative of the Jewish Agency in Russia Yair Levy, Executive Vice-President of the Jewish Community of Moscow Pavel Feldblum, Executive Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Congress of Jewish Religious organizations and communities of Russia Anatoly Pinsky, heads of regional branches of the charitable foundation "REK" from Kazan (M. Skoblionok, V. Rozenshtein), Yekaterinburg (A. Khalemsky) Governor of the Chelyabinsk region Petr Sumin and Mayor of Chelyabinsk V Yacheslav Tarasov. According to the vice-president of the "Russian Jewish Congress" A. Osovtsov, who spoke at the ceremony: "What the people of Chelyabinsk were able to do, in such a short time, they actually rebuilt the temple, is a real miracle!" Indeed, when the synagogue building was returned to the community in the wake of perestroika, the first enthusiasts who began to revive Jewish life in the city were greeted by broken glass and a destroyed roof through which the sky looked through. It was hard to imagine that a synagogue would be rebuilt on the site of these ruins. And now, less than three years after the start of work, thousands of Jews of the Chelyabinsk region received a building of remarkable beauty and equipment, transferred in 2001 for free use to the Chelyabinsk Jewish religious community "Judim", which since August 1996 has been led by the Chief Rabbi of Chelyabinsk and Chelyabinsk region Meir Kirsch, chairman since 1998 - A. Zhuk.
The first Jews appeared in the Urals in the 17th century, even before the construction of the capital of the region, Yekaterinburg, began. The subsequent division of the Polish state of the Commonwealth in the 18th century provoked a massive migration of Jews to the Russian Empire. Catherine II indicated that the Jewish people should be resettled up to a certain border - the "Pale of Settlement", beyond which only those who converted to Christianity or served in the tsarist army for 25 years could settle.
In addition, the Jews at that time were not given land for agriculture and farming. The result of these circumstances prompted me to engage in other work, for example: law, medicine, sculpture, trade, banking, etc.
For a long time, officials tried to impose local way of life and culture on the Jews, to mix their community with the Russian people. They were taken into the army, forced to convert to Orthodoxy, rewarded with a cash prize for renouncing their native faith and converting to Christianity.
The foundation of the Jewish community in Yekaterinburg was the soldiers-cantonists who arrived here from the Nikolaev province (south of modern Ukraine). Already by the end of the 19th century, Jews in Yekaterinburg launched an intensive commercial business. Later they acquired large houses, some of them became industrialists. The local intelligentsia was made up, among other things, of the Jews, a vivid example - in 1906, the engineer Lev Krol became the owner of the deputy rank.
Jewish Pale of Settlement in Yekaterinburg
No one knows for sure whether there were obligatory observance of the "Pale of Settlement" in Yekaterinburg for Jews. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were places of compact residence near the synagogue and prayer houses. Jewish special schools are formed and graveyards appear, where one of the first buildings for serving God was located - for these purposes, funds were allocated from the city treasury to the Jews for renting a house on the left bank of the Iset River. By that time, the number of Jews in the capital of the Urals exceeded a thousand people, and after the revolution there was a sharp increase in their number.
There are 3 waves of further resettlement of Jews to the Urals:
- During World War I, Jews were evacuated by families from the western regions of the Russian Empire.
- After the overthrow of Nicholas II, the interim government removed the "Pale of Settlement" - this factor contributed to the resettlement of Jews throughout Russia. And the city of Yekaterinburg, due to its commercial and industrial potential, has become an attractive place to live.
- In the Soviet years, in connection with large construction projects, engineers, architects and other highly qualified specialists were in great need. Educated Jews of the necessary professions came to the Urals. In principle, these people have always been famous for their high level of education, and skilled workers, as you know, are valuable.
The modern Jewish community of Yekaterinburg numbers in the thousands. They communicate at the level of local, all-Russian and international organizations. For example, the European Jewish Congress, whose president is Viacheslav Moshe Kantor
