Elissa Bemporad, "Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Vol. 1" (NYU Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Jenna Pittman
Guest: Elissa Bemporad, historian and author
Episode: "Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Vol. 1"
Date: October 29, 2025

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Overview

This episode features historian Elissa Bemporad discussing the first volume of her ambitious six-volume series, "Jews in the Soviet Union: A History," published by NYU Press. The book examines the transformation of Jewish life in the Soviet Union from the upheavals of the 1917 Revolution through the end of the 1920s, using new archival sources and presenting a nuanced perspective that moves beyond traditional narratives of victimhood. The conversation explores shifting identities, state structures and policies, the experience of everyday Jews, gender, the tension between Jewish institutions and the Soviet regime, and broader European contexts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Project Background and Author's Motivation

• Bemporad is an Italian-born New Yorker with a long history of scholarship in Eastern European and Jewish history.
• Motivation: To synthesize a vast period of Jewish experience in the Soviet context, integrating new archival material and moving beyond narrow narratives.
  (02:09)

2. Periodization: Why 1917–1930?

• Three Main Turning Points:
  • February Revolution, 1917: Jews are emancipated and gain full citizenship, marking a major social shift.
  • Civil War (1919-1921): Unprecedented anti-Jewish violence forces Jews to navigate survival, often aligning with the Bolsheviks more from necessity than ideology.
  • Establishment (and liquidation) of the Jewish Section (Yevsektsiia) of the Communist Party: Launches a project to create "the new Soviet Jew," which ends in 1930, demarcating the close of this era and the start of Stalinism.
• Memorable quote: "Violence makes Jews Soviet." (03:56–08:08)

3. Archival Revolution and Historiographical Interventions

• Spanning Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Israeli, US, and digitized archives, Bemporad leverages the post-1991 "archival revolution."
• Contribution: Challenges the lachrymose, black-and-white narrative of Soviet Jewish suffering and instead presents a multilayered, nuanced history accommodating both adaptation and destruction.
• On the archival turn:

  “Without archives, we almost have ... an echo chamber of brutality employed by the Bolsheviks to uproot everything that is Jewish.”
  (08:32)

4. Diversity & Homogenization of Jewish Identities

• Under the Russian Empire, Jewish communities were diverse in language, culture, politics (Zionist, socialist, assimilationist), and geography.
• Soviet policies both reinforced regional identities (Ukrainian, Belarusian, etc.) and forged a new overarching "Soviet Jewry."
• Space matters: Whether Jews lived in Moscow, Crimea, Belarusian shtetls, or Central Asia radically shaped their experience of Sovietization.
  (13:34–18:01)

5. Institutional Transformations under the Soviet State

• Soviet policy recast Jewish identity in secular, socialist terms, using instruments like the Yevsektsiia and state-sponsored cultural/educational programs.
• Paradox: State educational initiatives, intended to secularize, ironically reinforced certain ethnic bonds through Yiddish culture.
• Economic reforms forced Jews into new professions, further integrating them into Soviet society.
• Quote:

  “The Soviet Jewish experience cannot be understood apart from these mechanisms of governance and apart from the institutional and state structures ... which really tried to mold Jews into ideal Soviet citizens.”
  (18:46–23:27)

6. 1920s: The Best and Worst of Times

• Inspired by Ezra Mendelssohn’s essay comparing conditions in Poland and the Soviet Union;
  • Best: Jews benefitted from social mobility, affirmative policies, and state campaigns against antisemitism.
  • Worst: Jewish religious/cultural expression suffered under state atheism and repression.
• Quote:

  “Poland was indeed bad for Jews but good for Judaism ... the Soviet Union was good for Jews but bad for Judaism.”
  (24:45)

7. Antisemitism and the “Judeo-Bolshevik” Myth

• In Europe, antisemitism was rooted in nationalist anxieties and exclusion from the nation-state.
• In the USSR, antisemitism persisted but was reconceptualized; the Bolsheviks' goal was to create productive, secular Soviet citizens rather than exclude Jews.
• "Judeo-Bolshevism," the myth that Jews masterminded communism, gained traction during the Civil War, weaponized by anti-Bolshevik forces, with Trotsky a particular target.
• Quote:

  “This myth is weaponized ... by the White movement that is fighting on behalf of the Tsar and uses this as an instrument of propaganda.“
  (29:20–34:09)

8. State vs. Religious and Organizational Structures

• The Soviet Union was equally repressive toward all religions; rabbis and other religious leaders faced persecution.
• Emergence of "folk religion": with rabbis sidelined, women became central in keeping rituals alive (e.g., circumcision and kosher meat practices shifting to the home).
• Quote:

  “Bolshevik rule, in a way, made ritual observance much more connected to the private sphere ... with Jewish women becoming really key in these folk practices.”
  (34:33–40:01)

9. Gender, Family, and the Self

• Understudied role of Jewish women; Bemporad’s chapter integrates their perspective.
• The 1918 Family Code transformed marriage and divorce practices, emphasizing civil over religious unions—a change often favored by youth and resisted by families.
• Quote from a contemporary observer:

  "Changing a wife is easier than changing a name"—the “room of tears” at the Soviet divorce office.
  (41:22)

• The revised 1926 Family Code recognized de facto marriages, benefiting women's rights.

10. Continuity into the 1930s (Next Volume Preview)

• Success and visibility of Jews persisted, but by late 1930s, state commitment to combating antisemitism wanes.
• Yiddish culture's decline (school closures, fewer publications) marks assimilation and loss of Jewish particularity.
• The groundwork of the 1920s shapes the harsher realities under Stalin.

11. Current and Future Work

• Bemporad is now writing a biography of Esther Frumkin, a prominent but understudied Jewish socialist-turned-Communist woman, tracing her journey and ultimate fate during Stalin’s terror.
  (51:12)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On moving beyond the Cold War narrative:

  “Thanks to the archival revolution, we have been able to craft a narrative that is much more nuanced ... one that allows us to appreciate the existence of gray categories.” (08:32)

• On the transformation of religious practice:

  “Circumcision becomes, for the first time, a woman’s domain and women’s liability—something that is certainly not the case if we think about Jewish tradition and Jewish law.” (34:33)

• On the fate of Yiddish:

  “Despite the support from the Soviet state, Yiddish lost substantial ground... In 1938, the state liquidated Soviet Yiddish schools.” (47:18)

• On gender and biography:

  “I am currently writing a biography ... about a Jewish woman who was a socialist but became a Communist. Her name is Esther Frumkin ... a biography of a woman, but also a biography of an era.” (51:12)

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Key Timestamps

• Author’s background: 02:09
• Periodization and key turning points: 03:56
• Archival revolution and historiography: 08:32
• Russian Jewish diversity and Soviet homogenization: 13:34
• Impact of Soviet institutional and organizational structures: 18:46
• The best and worst of times: 24:45
• Antisemitism and the Judeo-Bolshevik myth: 29:20
• Tension between state and Jewish religious leadership: 34:33
• Jewish family, gender, and the 1918/1926 Family Codes: 41:22
• Transition to 1930s and Yiddish decline: 47:18
• Current biography project: 51:12

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Tone & Style

The discussion balances rigorous academic analysis with narrative storytelling, and Bemporad’s responses are detailed, thoughtful, and nuanced, avoiding simplistic victim/perpetrator binaries. The host, Jenna Pittman, is informed, enthusiastic, and draws parallels to broader historiographical debates, creating an engaging yet intellectually rich atmosphere.

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For listeners and readers interested in Soviet, Jewish, and gender history, this conversation offers fresh insights and promises a series that will reshape scholarship in the field.

Transcript

[Jenna Pittman]

Hello, everybody.

[Marshall Poe]

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[Jenna Pittman]

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the New Books Network podcast. I'm Jenna Pittman, a host for the network. Today we are joined by Alyssa Bemparad to discuss her new book, Revolution, Civil War and New ways of Life. 1917-1930. Revolution, Civil War and New Ways of Life is the first volume in the new six book series. Jews in the Soviet Union A History of published by NYU Press. Alyssa Bemprad explores the ways in which Jews endured, adjusted to, and participated in the Soviet system both as individuals and as part of a Jewish collectivity during the first decade of its existence, revealing how the lines of contact between Jews in the Soviet Union and the outside world fluctuated between open antagonism and impassioned support. Alyssa, I'm so happy to welcome you to the show. Thanks so much for joining me today.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Hi, Jenna. Thank you so much for having me.

[Jenna Pittman]

Thank you. I wonder if you could just begin by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you came to write this value.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

So about myself, I am originally from Italy, where I grew up, but I consider myself a New Yorker. I've been living in this city for many years. I have written a lot about Jewish communities and Jewish life in Eastern Europe, in particular, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia. My first book, on Minsk, the Jews of Minsk under Soviet Rule. My second book on, I guess a linguere of antisemitism from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union well into the 1960s. And I was intrigued by the possibility of writing more of, I guess, a synthetic work, a comprehensive synthetic work about the experience of Jews within the context of. Of the Soviet Union. So that is how I came to this project.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you for that. So Jews in the Soviet Union A History is a groundbreaking new series making use of new archival material from the Soviet archives. And all of the six volumes provide a really comprehensive overview of a formerly underexplored area of historical research spanning from 1917 to 1991. The series covers the history of Jews throughout the history of the Soviet Union. Elisa, with your book being the first volume in this series, your study really begins with the Bolshevik Revolution, the beginning of the Soviet Union in 1917, and your book ends in 1930. What about the period from 1917 to 1930, other than kind of that starting point, makes this an efficient parameter for defining and studying the first two decades of Jews in the Soviet Union.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Yeah, so I think if we consider periodization, I think there are three turning points that justify making 1917, 1930 kind of an efficient perimeter. The first is that actually the book begins with the February Revolution of 1917, the largely democratic revolution that led to the abdication of Nicholas ii, the collapse of the Tsarist regime, which is a turning point in Jewish history because Jews who had been restricted by legal disabilities and confined to the pale of Settlement are suddenly emancipated. They are included as full citizens into this geopolitical context. So it's the end of legal discrimination which opens up many opportunities for the Jewish minority in terms of social mobility, political participation. So that's the first, I think, historical moment that is crucial for us to keep in mind. The second one is not so much the Bolshevik coup of October 1917, but actually the Civil war, the period that goes from 1919 to 1921 that follows the Bolshevik coup, that unleashes an unprecedented wave of anti Jewish violence and that forces Jews to make choices. I mean, everyone, Jews and non Jews alike, have to you adjust to this new revolutionary reality, internationalist framework, a reality that is officially atheist, but within the context of the civil war, within the context of unprecedented pogroms, anti Jewish violence, Jews become victims of violence, but because of the violence, they also become agents of revolution. So they choose to support, to side with the Bolsheviks, with the Red army, because the Red army is carrying out less pogroms than the Other armies and forces involved in the civil war, such as the White forces, the White movement and the Ukrainian forces. So they side with the Bolsheviks out of, you know, because of. It's a survival strategy or it's about revenge for, you know, family members who were killed. It's not so much about ideology. So this is a very important turning point because in a way, the violence makes Jews Soviet. And finally, the third turning point that again justifies, I guess, the periodization 1917, 1930, is the establishment of the Jewish section of the Communist Party, the Yevsek, which is established by the Soviets to bring communism to the Jewish masses, promoting secularization, Yiddish culture and education, and the construction, the creation of a new Jew. And it's a very important moment when the Ysekia is established, but also when the Yafzia is trying, the Jewish section is trying to create the new Soviet Jewish man and Jewish woman. But 1930 is the natural endpoint of this kind of volume because the Yafsetsia is liquidated. So this whole project of trying to establish, trying to create a new Soviet Jew in a way comes to an end. So 1930 really closes this formative period of revolutionary enthusiasm and ideological experimentation and kind of feeds into the beginning of Stalinism that imposes a new and far more rigid social and cultural order.

[Jenna Pittman]

Sure, yeah. Thank you for that. That definitely sounds like a good endpoint with that 1930. And that's a very well thought out and intentional timeline. So thank you. What archives did you work with for this study, and what new interventions does this book contribute to The Historiography of 20th Century Jewish History?

[Alyssa Bemparad]

So to write this volume, I did work in many archives. I was fortunate to be in Ukraine before the beginning of the full scale war launched by Russia against Ukraine. So I did a lot of work in those archives. I also integrated some material, archival material that I had collected over the course of previous work that I've done in the city of Minsk and Moscow. I've also used many collections from archives of the former Soviet Union that have been digitized in this past decade in Jerusalem, in New York, in Washington, and so on. Of course, this volume also builds on some work that has been produced by a number of historians who have worked, like me on, have integrated, like me in their histories, the archival material. So have been lucky to use the archival material that has become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which, in terms of your question about the historiography and the historiographical contribution up until what we can call the archival revolution that followed 1990, 1, the Soviet Jewish experience was largely told through the lens of suffering, through the lens of a lachrymose interpretation of this experience. It was written under the shadow of the Cold War. Right. This history was captive, in a way, of the Cold War narrative of persecution, victimization, suffering, which came to portray the Jewish minority as the ultimate casualty of the Soviet totalitarian system. So in other words, without archives, we almost have, like an echo chamber of brutality employed by the Bolsheviks to uproot everything that is Jewish. In fact, thanks to the archival revolution, we have been able to craft a narrative that is much more nuanced, a narrative that incorporates, that moves away from the idea of destruction, only moves away from the black and white colors of the Cold War, that a narrative that allows us also to explore the complicated, multi layered aspects of social history, local history, and we are able to appreciate the existence of gray categories. It's not only two groups of Jews. In a way, those who suffered because they were committed to their Jewishness and those who embrace Communism, renouncing all of their Jewishness. Right. So just as an example, to go back to the Yafsetia, the Jewish section of the Communist Party, the members of the Yafsetia who were responsible for bringing the revolution to the Jewish masses have been in a way described as the destroyers of Jewish life. Right. They had to, in a way, uproot Jewish, quote, unquote, bourgeois religious and cultural institutions. But in a more nuanced narrative in my book, in this case, they don't appear as blind bureaucrats who are striving to hasten Jewish assimilation and destroy all expressions of Jewish particularity. They are committed to the revolution, but they also, there is a commitment to preserve some aspects of, you know, of Jewish identity, of Jewishness, which I think is important to, you know, integrate into the history.

[Jenna Pittman]

Sure, yeah, absolutely. I think, kind of to your point about the nuances and the more complex historical narrative that we're starting to get, can you describe the kind of wide range of Russian Jewries and Jewish identities under the Russian Empire and how the establishment of the Soviet Federation of Republics homogenized these distinct regional and cultural identities under this kind of umbrella of the term of Soviet jewelry?

[Alyssa Bemparad]

That's an excellent question. So, you know, first of all, we have to start with, you know, acknowledging the fact that Tsarist Russia was the largest country in the world and had one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. Right. By the early 20th century, these different Russian juries who lived within the vast confines of the empire had kind of generated a variety of Political views, movements, some of them embrace Zionism, some socialism, some a combination of the two movements. There were differences in terms of cultural, linguistic, elements of religious identity, acculturation, assimilation with their neighbors, whether they lived in the Ukrainian lands, in the Lithuanian lands, in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Right. So it's a very diverse number of juries. Now the years of revolution and war, of course, lead to the breakdown of the Russian Empire and lead to the establishment of new borders. And the new geopolitical order, I guess, leads to the construction of new national and regional identities. First of all, we have the establishment of new nation states that inherit smaller segments of the Jewish population of the former Russian Empire, including the nation state of Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland. And then we have the establishment of independent Poland and of the Soviet Union that split among themselves the bulk of the Jewish communities in the Soviet Union. We have approximately 3 million Jews. Now the next step, of course, is the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Federation of Republics. And what is so interesting is that we see how this reinforces old regional and cultural identities, but at the same time forges new ones that intersect with an all Soviet identity that is rooted in ideology and in geography. So in other words, the existence of a Ukrainian, Belarusian, an Uzbek or a Nazerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic strengthens pre existing notions of Jewish regional identities, but it also shapes new ones. So Russian Jewries in a way yield to Soviet Jewries. And it's interesting that we do have the relationship between, say, Ukrainian Jewish identity and an all Soviet identity was not always harmonious and devoid of tensions. We see it, for example, in the language question. Tensions between, as far as the Jewish minority living in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is concerned. We see tensions between learning Ukrainian, which is the language of the republic, and learning Russian, which is the all Soviet language. So we have almost this kind of dual categories, dual identity in a way. The last point that I want to make about the question of regional identity is in this volume. I've really tried to pay close attention not only to gender and age. If we think about the way in which the Jewish community responded to the Soviet experiment, but also to place and how place mattered. The way in which Jews responded to the ideology, responded to the Soviet experiment depended on whether they were living in Moscow, in a small agricultural settlement in Crimea, in a small shtetl in Belarus, or in a small town near Samarkand. Right. It had an impact on the way in which they negotiated Jewishness and Soviet Union.

[Jenna Pittman]

Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for that. And I think that that's such an important aspect that you do recognize that, you know, the experience of somebody living in Moscow is completely different than somebody living in Crimea, especially during this period. Space, it seems, is so important. And I think that that is definitely a distinction that comes through very clear when reading, reading your book, I guess I also wonder, and I felt like you do a really good job of addressing kind of like the structures that are influencing this as well. So how is the history of Soviet Jewry during this time distinctly shaped by unique institutional and organizational structures, frameworks and state structures of the Soviet Union?

[Alyssa Bemparad]

So I guess there are maybe two answers to this question. First of all, I want to emphasize that one of the goals of the volume is really to integrate the Soviet Jewish experience not only into Soviet history, which often overlooks it, but also into modern Jewish history, which also overlooks it. So if we think about modern Jewish history in other European contexts, what stands out is the following. We have a highly educated, mostly urban population which is living within a largely rural, illiterate society whose social mobility was hindered by legal restrictions under the Tsar and suddenly under the Soviets. The lack of official constraints governing the lives of Jews allows them to achieve an extraordinary degree of mobility and attain remarkable feats. And, and these accomplishments of Jews in the Soviet context, in terms of economic life, political life, cultural sectors of Soviet society are comparable to the heights reached by German Jews at the time of the Weimar Republic. It's an impressive process that starts out in the 1920s and really paves the way in the Soviet Union for the future successful trend that persists in the 1930s and even into the 1940s. That being said, the history of Soviet Jewry is profoundly shaped, as you mentioned in your questions, profoundly shaped by unique institutional and organizational framework of the Soviet state which really seeks to redefine ethnic and national belonging through socialist principles. And Soviet Jews experience a transformation unlike that of any other Jewish community in Europe or outside of Europe, because of their social culture and political lives became inseparable from these new structures of Soviet power that emerged after 1917. I'll just go over them very quickly. The states nationalities policies that really offered a framework within which Jewish identity is recast in secular and socialist terms. And we've already mentioned these, the Yafsecia which has as a goal to eradicate religion, Zionism and so on. The second, which is connected to this point of course is state sponsored cultural and educational institutions that shaped a new Soviet Jewish identity that is supposed to.

[Marshall Poe]

Be.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Organized within the state controlled framework. But the unintended consequence, of course, is that the Soviets do support ethnic Jewish identity in a way. Right. Because if you think about Jewish schools, Yiddish language schools, the students are studying only Marxism. Right. They're studying Marxism in the Yiddish language. But the context is a very ethnic context. Right. They are among other Jewish students and they're being taught by Jewish teachers. So that's the unintended consequence that Yuri Sloskin, for example, has analyzed so well in the context and others have in the context of other nationalities. And finally, the economic and social reorganization of society under Soviet rule really affects Jewish life. Right. The abolition of private trade, the emphasis on productive labor that challenges the traditional socioeconomic profile of Jews, really pushing them into new professions in collective farms and industries. So I really think that the Soviet Jewish experience cannot be understood apart from these mechanisms of governance and apart from the institutional and state structures of the Soviet Union, which really tried to mold Jews into ideal Soviet citizens in a very new way that we don't see elsewhere.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think kind of your approach in emphasizing that history does seem to really help integrate the history of Soviet Jews with all of these other kind of historiographies that sometimes overlook it. And there's so much focus on how these Soviet structures kind of emerge through this period, the 1920s and 1930s. But I think it's very innovative to look at specifically how these structures were affecting the population of Jews in the Soviet Union. Yeah, thanks. So you described the 1920s as the best and worst of times, which it's not. It's not a funny period of history, but that wording did make me giggle a little bit. And for the 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union, you kind of use this phrase that it was the best and worst of times, beyond so many of the unprecedented social and economic hardships that might characterize 1920s Soviet Union as the worst of times. I'm interested to hear more about this turn of phrase and if you could describe some of the major changes to Soviet Jewish life in society in the 1920s and how the Soviet state either improved or worsened or both conditions for Jews in the Soviet Union.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Yeah. Let me begin by saying that this phrase, the best of times and the worst of times, was. I was actually inspired by a brilliant essay, a short essay that was written, written by the great historian. Ezra Mendelssohn, was a historian of Polish Jewish history, and he wrote about interwar Poland. Good for the Jews. So the best of times or bad for the Jews? The worst of times, in which he compared actually interwar Polish Jewry to interwar Soviet Jewry. And he emphasized the fact that Poland was indeed bad for Jews because of widespread antisemitism, but good for Judaism and Jewish life, cultural life. On the other hand, the Soviet Union was good for Jews but bad for Judaism, meaning that the socialist system again emancipated Jews had granted them full fledged equality to some degree and opened the doors to Jewish minority, granting them unprecedented upward mobility and rapid success, and fought against anti Semitism at the same time. However, it also, you know, with violence, circumscribed Jewish identity to Marxism only and stifled all cultural, religious and political expressions of Jewishness. So that's where the phrase comes from. More specifically to your question, if we think about the best of times, in a way, I want to emphasize here the Soviet campaign against antisemitism of the mid and late 1920s, which actually resulted in layoffs, arrests, officially reprimands, trials, even discontinuation of party membership, prison labor, camp sentences. The fact that a state launched the largest campaign against antisemitism in modern European history is pretty impressive. And it had an impact on Jews and Jewish life, Especially if we think about the geopolitical context. We're going from Tsarist Russia, where there was a widespread cultural acceptability of, of anti Jewish violence in the form of pogroms, of accusing Jews of ritual murder, you know, the blood libel accusation, according to which Jews, you know, kidnap Christian children and use their blood for ritual purposes, which was culturally acceptable, you know, The Bayless Affair, 1911, 1913, to a state in the same geopolitical context that outlaws in a way, antisemitism. Yes, we also must acknowledge that. And you know, I do this, I think in an honest way, that the Bolshevik confrontation with antisemitism was inconsistent and contradictory from early on. So there is an ambivalence. And this ambivalence remained a constant feature throughout the inter period and persisted during World War II and in its aftermath, especially in the newly occupied territories. Meaning that the Soviets would actively confront antisemitism only when Jews would speak up, first of all, and secondly, they would do that only if confronting antisemitism was in the interests of. Of the state. Once confronting anti Semitism, fighting anti Semitism is no longer in the interest of the state, then you do have this ambivalence and you do have silence in a way on the part of Soviet authorities.

[Jenna Pittman]

Yeah, thank you for that. So how did antisemitism in Europe and the Jewish question area quotes from that differ from the Soviet Jewish question? And where does the European Judeo Bolshevik myth emerge from and what antisemitic stereotypes and myths and generalizations emerged in the 1920s Soviet Union kind of separately.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Yeah, that's an excellent question. When we talk about antisemitism and the Jewish question in early 20th century Europe versus the Soviet Union, we're really looking, I think, at two different worlds in Europe. The Jewish question really centered on whether Jews could truly belong in the modern nation state. Antisemitism there was tied primarily to nationalism and fears of modernity. Jews are portrayed as outsiders, as to capitalist, as disloyal to the state. So it was really about exclusion from the nation. In the Soviet Union, as I show in the book, the Jewish question is completely redefined. In a way, the Bolsheviks reject religion and nationalism. So Jewishness wasn't seen as a religious or ethnic issue, but as a social and ideological one. The goal wasn't to exclude Jews. It was really to transform them into secular and productive Soviet citizens. Now, the European Judeo Bolshevik myth emerges during and after the Russian Revolution, especially in Germany and Poland. In the Polish lands and Hungary, it claimed that Jews were the masterminds behind Bolshevism. Bolshevism is seen as this conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization. And this myth grew out of older antisemitic tropes that linked Jews to finance and to communism, to Marxism. Jews were accused of being both capitalist exploiters and these kind of radical subversives. The civil war is crucial because in the chaos of the civil war, where some Jewish individuals indeed played a role, actually a prominent role in the Bolshevik movement, this myth is weaponized in particular by the white movement that is fighting on behalf of the Tsar and uses this as an instrument of propaganda. The most prominent Jewish individual, although he did not identify as a Jew, is Leon Trotsky, the founder and leader of the Red Army. By the way, the Ukrainian army also uses the Judeo Bolshevik trope to attack the Bolsheviks and attack, undermine the Red Army. So what you have here is a vicious circle. After the revolution, you have this extraordinary visibility of Jews of the Jewish minority. They were not visible under the Tsar because of legal restrictions. They become visible, they become successful. And this made many who were opposed to the Bolsheviks and were anxious about what the Bolsheviks were doing, make them accuse the system of being led or undermine the system and accuse the system of being led by Jews. So several such accusations I was able to identify from some newer archival collections that I've looked at in Kyiv, for example. And it's also interesting to think about the fact that Leon Trotsky himself, again, we could refer to him in quotation marks as the king of assimilation and internationalism, who in the 1920s refused to take on senior roles in the Soviet government after the Civil war to escape greater Jewish visibility, which would further fuel antisemitism under the guise of Judeo Bolshevism. And Judeo Bolshevism does play a very important role in the dynamics that will take place in terms of collaboration with, with the Nazis under Nazi occupation during World War II. So it's something that there is a continuity that really starts with the Civil War and is tamed in the interwar period and then explodes ex novel during World War II.

[Jenna Pittman]

That's very fascinating. Thank you for that. How did the tension between Soviet institutional structures and Jewish religious leadership and organizational structures manifest among the Jewish population? And how might this tension be reflective of broader conflict between state ideology and individual identity across Soviet society?

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Yeah, so I think, let me just start by saying what might maybe be obvious, that the Soviet Union was in a way an equal opportunity persecutor, that everyone equally and every religion equally. So Judaism is not singled out compared to Christianity or Islam in the campaigns against religion. So that's the first point. The second point again to thinking about, again, this comparative approach, which I think is very useful for historians. Soviet Union vis a vis what is happening in the rest of Europe compared to the rest of Europe. In the Soviet Union we have unrelenting propaganda and terror devices that are employed by the state in order to suppress religion. And this boosted the drive towards secularization and the decline in religious observance that we might have seen in other Jewish communities. But it really comes to the fore in the Soviet Union because of, of this. Again, the state makes this a priority. This weakens religious authorities. One word about rabbis, of course, rabbis, like priests and imams, are persecuted by the system, especially early on. Lenin makes that a priority. Rabbis are accused of being closely involved with the ideologically repulsive, yet tolerated new economic policy. They are depicted as degenerate miracle workers who compete with modern Soviet hospitals and doctors in curing the sick. There is resistance on the part of rabbis, just like there is resistance on the part of priests and imams. One of the most outspoken warriors for the preservation of Judaism in the Soviet union in the 1920s is actually the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Josep Yitzhak Schneerson, who helps establish underground Jewish institutions, educational primarily in different Soviet cities. And he's an important, very important figure in parenthesis. I also want to mention that not all rabbis oppose Soviet power. So, for example, I call him the Bolshevik rabbi, Avrom Zhitnik. He might have been an exception, but it's still worth mentioning him. He was born in Osmosztatl in the Zhytomyr province in Ukraine. He grew up in a very religious kind of family. But during the Civil War, he moved to Kyiv and he supported the Bolsheviks because of his concern with the poor and the oppressed. And so he is a very interesting figure that I think we should not dismiss. But more to the point, to go back to your question, I have really chronicled the emergence of, in a way, what I call folk religion, a religion or a Judaism that is divorced from rabbinic authorities because rabbinic authorities lose. I mean, they no longer have power, they no longer have control over the Jewish masses. Right. So what happens to, you know, to Jewish rituals? And what is so interesting is that we have, you know, Bolshevik rule, in a way, made ritual observance much more connected to the private sphere of the home, possibly making it more central for ritual observance than in any other time in Jewish history, with the exception, perhaps, of the experience of the Marranos in medieval Spain or the experience of Jews in the ghettos of Eastern Europe during World War II. But Jewish women become really key in these folk practices. And two folk practices or two Jewish practices that really change because of what the Soviets are doing are the practice of circumcision, the circumcision ritual, and the consumption and the production of kosher meat. I don't want to get into all the details of this, but in the Soviet context, circumcision becomes, for the first time, a domain of women's domain and women's liability, something that is certainly not the case if we think about Jewish tradition and Jewish law. So it's very interesting, again, thinking about the Soviet Union as a system that destroyed certain practices, but it also inadvertently led to the emergence of other practices. Right. Which is, you know, really interesting to me as a socialist.

[Jenna Pittman]

Absolutely. Yeah. That is very, very fascinating to me as well. And I think that is such an important distinction that you set forth kind of earlier on in your response there, that this was not just a Soviet and Jewish issue. It was really all organized religions in the Soviet Union, and it was pretty equally discriminated against. So my favorite chapter was toward the end of the book, your chapter on the family, the Body and the self. And listeners who are a little familiar with the historiography of the Soviet Union through the 1930s might draw some parallels between your chapter and historian Wendy Goldman's Word in the State and Revolution, Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, where she covers the period 1917 through 1936. Both of these, your chapter and her book, within kind of their respective subjects and frameworks are very, very similar. And I noticed even when I was kind of doing a Google stock of what you've been up to recently, before we met, I saw that you and Wendy had a talk not too long ago, earlier this year, I think. Think. Would you mind describing the significance of the 1918 Family Code in both Soviet society, kind of broadly, but also among Soviet Jewish communities?

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Yeah, sure, yeah. Wendy. Wendy Goldman's work on women and the Soviet state is, you know, of course it's pathbreaking and is crucial for anyone studying women's history. And I just want to to start by saying that the experience of Jewish women is largely understudied in the context of Soviet Jewish history. And for me it was very important as a social historian, as someone who's interested in the question of gender, was very important to try to tackle the question of how women responded to this system and how the system impacted the lives of women. So it's also one of my favorite chapter. I admit it was very exciting to write about Jewish women and also Jewish women vis a vis. I think I do a pretty good job vis a vis the experience of other women in the cities and towns that I discuss. So primarily Ukrainian and Belarusian women, and to some degree also women Jewish women in Central Asia and the Caucasus. So what I have done is I have looked at the impact of the 1918 Family Code, which as we know, introduced some sweeping changes in the areas of marriage. Marriage, divorce, women's rights, civil wedding replacing the religious one. And I've looked at how this family code impacted Jews and Jewish life, especially women. Thinking about the so called Red Wedding, which was a contract with the state and the couple had no obligation to the divine or to the family. It is interesting to see how different generations of Jews responded to this. Right. Most young Jews, if they married at all, usually chose a Soviet style civil registration. But families were very often opposed to this. So the family does play a role in pushing back, especially in smaller towns in shtetl, but also in Central Asia, in the Caucasus for sure. I analyze also kind of the social setback in the family code that becomes very clear in particular in the sphere of divorce, with cases of Jewish husbands who desert their wives, leaving them desperate, without any legal rights to fend for themselves and their children. And I'll just Mention here what the Moscow correspondent for the most widely read Yiddish publication in Poland at the time noted that, quote, unquote, changing a wife is easier than changing a name. And he described the Soviet divorce and the divorce department with the label used by Jewish women at the time as the room of tears, quote, unquote. I also used some trials from the Yiddish courts. There were Yiddish language courts in the 1920s, and I used them to see the impact of the new family code that is issued in 1926 that Wendy, of course, also studied, is the first historian to study it and to see the impact that it has on women and family life. So the new family code that replaces the 1918 one, and that really marks a clear retreat from this idea of free love, free unions and easy divorce. And the 1926 code, in a way recognizes the de facto marriages, giving them equal status to registered marriages, so that if a woman and a man, Jewish woman and Jewish man, or. Or any woman and man cohabited, shared a household and had children, then the de facto marriage was legally binding under the law, which meant that women had the right to alimony and child protection. And again, I have looked at this through the lens of the impact on Jewish life through these Yiddish languages courts, and I've used some exciting new material. And again, I just want to say that the Soviet experiment among Jews has really been written primarily by excluding the experience of women. So I hope that younger and junior scholars who are interested in the topic might further contribute to this unwritten chapter.

[Jenna Pittman]

Chapter, absolutely. Of course. And I think specifically that chapter, the Family, the Body and the Self, I think, really opens that door for that. That future work to be done. Kind of thinking about this book in the context of the series a little bit, I was wondering if you might speak just briefly about how the period from 1917 to 1930, which you cover in this book, helps us understand the period from 1930 to 1930, 39, Stalin's purges, and what the next book in this series is about.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Yeah, so if we think about continuities right from the 20s into the 30s, I think the success that Jews achieved in the 1920s, success and visibilities, really continues during, you know, the following decade, as does their visibility in the arts and Soviet institutions and party organizations and by this. So that's one point that is very important to keep in mind. Second point is that at the same time, by the second half of the 1930s, fighting antisemitism is no longer a priority for the state, although there still is a commitment on paper, to confront it, to oppose it, which I do analyze closely. And I know that the next volume also does, you know, one change is that over time, battling social antisemitism is no longer a priority as it was before. And this, I do think that this indirectly does play a role in the purges. Now, I'm not saying that Stalin's purges were motivated by antisemitism with regards, of course, to the Jewish elites, but the fact that Jews were so visible and successful, the fact that antisemitism is kind of not a priority right now, and of course, the fact that Jews did have relatives outside of the territories of the Soviet Union during this time did not play in their favor from the 1920s. Another point, I guess, of connection or continuity that I think readers should keep in mind is that the Soviet project was very successful in assimilating Jews. And if we, you know, especially if we think about the question of language. Despite the support from the Soviet state, Yiddish lost substantial ground during the Antor period. In the census 1939 census, only 39% of Ashkenazi Jews declared Yiddish their mother tongue. And even that number did not necessarily use Yiddish as their primary language of oral and written communication. In 1938, the state liquidated Soviet Yiddish schools. And so. So this is something that I think we need to keep in mind and something that the next volume does study closely. It is true that Yiddish writers and poets who were not killed during Stalin's terror in the late 1930s still belong to the Yiddish language section of the Soviet Writers Union. And their work was published primarily in Russian translation. But their readership in Yiddish was slowly vanishing. The state had not only closed the schools, but also cut the print runs of Yiddish books periodicals, and in 1938, had also shut down the leading Yiddish newspaper issued in Moscow. So I think that that is an important theme that the next volume does pick up and further explore. You know, from my volume from the 90s.

[Jenna Pittman]

Awesome. Thank you for that. So just to kind of start to wrap up here a little bit, what are you working on now that this book is in print?

[Alyssa Bemparad]

So I am currently writing a biography. I've never written a biography before, so this is a new genre for me. But it's very exciting and challenging. And I'm writing about a Jewish woman who was a socialist but became a communist. Her name is Esther Frumkin. She was probably one of the most prominent and yet understudied female political leaders and cultural activists in modern Jewish history. And I follow her life from the city of Minsk where she was born, and she becomes one of the leaders of the Jewish Socialist Party, the Bund. And I follow her political involvement at the time of the first Russian Revolution. She becomes a champion for Yiddish and Bundest nationalism. I follow her through the Revolution of 1917, the Coup of October 1917, the Civil War, and finally, in the Soviet context, when she embraces Leninism and communism and how she spearheads the Sovietization of the Jewish communities in the Soviet Union. As the only female leader of the Jewish section of the Communist Party in Moscow, she embraces power. She serves as an agent of violence, but she was ultimately killed by the same system that she strove to build as she succumbed to Stalin's terror and was murdered in 1943 in one of the gulags in Kazakhstan. So, you know, this is the biography of a woman, but it's also biography of an era told through the lens of the life and work of a radical Jewish woman.

[Jenna Pittman]

That's absolutely fascinating. I already know my roommate is going to be very excited to hear of a biography of a. Of a Soviet woman. Those just. She's a big Krubskaya fan, so she's very. She loves this type of stuff, and she'll be very excited to see how that one.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Yeah. And they were friends. They were colleagues. Krupskaya does write about Frumpkinna. Yeah.

[Jenna Pittman]

That's so funny. She's gonna be so excited whenever I get home and tell her that this biography is being written, and she'll be very excited to hear that. So for our listeners, Revolution, Civil War, and New ways of Life, 1917 through 1930. Volume one of the series, Jews in the Soviet Union, a History, published by NYU Press earlier this year, is available now. Alyssa, thank you so much for being here today. I really enjoyed chatting with you. Thanks again.

[Alyssa Bemparad]

Thank you, Jenna. It has been a real pleasure talking to you.

[Marshall Poe]

You.