THE GOLDEN AGE SHTETL : A NEW HISTORY OF JEWISH LIFE IN EAST EUROPE

By Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Princeton University Press. 431 pages. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-691-16074-0

Reviewed by Jim Burns

THE GOLDEN AGE SHTETL : A NEW HISTORY OF JEWISH LIFE IN EAST EUROPE

By Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Princeton University Press. 431 pages. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-691-16074-0

Reviewed by Jim Burns

The shtetl. Images of Fiddler on the Roof and the paintings of Marc Chagall. The introduction to a book called Favourite Yiddish Stories that is on my shelves says that “living conditions were usually very bad,” and Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern talks of “broken-down Jews, wooden huts, rotting shingles, clumsy wooden fences, cracked church walls, and pitiful market-place with several crooked wooden stalls.” And on top of all that the constant threat of the pogrom or anti-Jewish riot. That’s the picture we get from Fiddler on the Roof, he says. He also refers to writers like Sholem Aleichem, Y.L. Peretz, Isaac Babel, and Dovid Bergelson who described the shtetl in various derogatory ways, such as “a dead town” and “a godforsaken town.” The shtetl, he says, “came to usher in its own decline and fall, as if there were nothing in its history but agony.” 

But there was a time, he insists, when things weren’t like that, and the period from roughly 1790 to roughly 1840 was, in fact, one of “prosperity and stability.” The laws enacted by Catherine II which created the Pale of Jewish Settlement following the Russian occupation of what had been a part of Poland were, in their way, relatively enlightened with regard to what Jews were allowed to do. There was, of course, a reason for this. “The shtetl Jews engaged in trade; trade brought in people; people brought in goods; goods brought in money; and money enriched the magnates, benefited the towns, and contributed to the Russian economy.”

It does seem true that when the Russians occupied the Ukraine they were, in some ways, seen by Jews almost as liberators from the Polish tyranny. And initially, at least, their rule appeared to be reasonably tolerant and paternalistic. Jews may have been largely confined to living within the Pale of Jewish Settlement, but, for the reasons outlined above, they did have a great degree of freedom when it came to developing businesses, trading, obtaining permission to build houses, and generally running their own lives. It perhaps wasn’t a perfect state of affairs, and the high levels of corruption within the Russian bureaucracy meant that bribery was often the only means of persuading the authorities to allow certain activities. But corruption also meant that a blind eye would often be turned towards matters which otherwise would have been declared illegal. There are some entertaining stories about how the system was operated so that everyone benefited, or at least everyone (traders, local bureaucrats) directly involved. Presumably some money must have filtered through to the state coffers, though with others taking a cut along the way one wonders just how much, or little, that was. It’s suggested that the bureaucrats started with the intention of taming the shtetl trading practices, but were largely tamed by them. It made sense not to interfere too much, otherwise trade would die and no-one would be able to pay bribes.

One of the prime theatres of operations for Jews was the liquor business. It’s claimed that it “shaped the shtetl industry, trade, and finance,” and those controlling the liquor trade “controlled the shtetl.” There were suggestions, even before Russia took over, that the widespread availability of vodka had a negative effect on the peasantry. The Russians then brought in rules that prohibited Jews from owning taverns in certain areas. The problem was that by trying to cut down on the amount of liquor sold the state was reducing its income from taxes, and the minister of finance “realised that removing Jews from the liquor trade was counterproductive. Russia could not afford it.” But there was an aim, later achieved by state monopoly, to remove Jews from the liquor trade.

There were other reasons for having places where people could drink easily available. They provided “relief for the repressed libido of the shtetl. Russians, Poles, and Jews sought an escape in the tavern from all sorts of religious, social, and cultural prohibitions.” Taverns were where people gossiped, found jobs, made deals, and sometimes even engaged in matchmaking. It should not be thought that they were purely basic in their facilities, and it’s noted that billiard tables and musical instruments were found in some, and food as well as drink was available. The drinks, too, were often from a wide range, including a variety of wines, sherry, absinthe, and non-alcoholic beverages such as coffee and tea. True, there were pubs and shtetl house cellars where beer could be bought cheaply, but the fact that quality was on offer in the taverns does indicate that the shtetl was, at that time, thriving. When, much later in the 19th Century, laws were introduced to make the liquor business a state monopoly, the result was that thousands of Jews were deprived of employment.

Shtetl life could often be violent, and during the period covered by this book the violence could sometimes be directed by Jews against policemen, tax inspectors, and other representatives of the State. Jews were not afraid, either, to be aggressive in their views about other religions, though this could obviously lead to friction between neighbours where Jews lived alongside Christians in a shtetl. But Petrovsky-Shtern avers that the violence could have a positive effect. Jews, he says, “boldly settled accounts when it came to getting even and protecting their independence.”  Violence “put Jews on an equal footing with Christians long before any civil rights did, precisely because Jews in the shtetl were adamant about defending their own cultural space, independence, and dignity.” He says that there were no pogroms in the Golden Age shtetl for over a century. They came later with the clumsily organised abolition of serfdom, the concentration of thousands of peasants seeking employment in urban areas, and the deliberate use by the government of anti-Jewish propaganda to distract attention from the large social and economic problems affecting Russia.

It’s interesting, too, to read Petrovsky-Shtern on the subject of Jewish criminality. Jews were not then seen as rebels or revolutionaries in the way that later claims by the authorities made them out to be. They did engage in illegal activities but these were viewed as purely criminal in character, and the courts dealt with them on that basis. Jewish gangs often included non-Jews. Deserters from the Russian army could be found in some, serfs in others, and Petrovsky-Shtern quotes a case where “two Christian Kiev dwellers” were involved with a gang controlled by Jews. A Jewish gang-leader named Karmaniuk became a kind of “Ukrainian Robin Hood” and took part in around a thousand attacks on government clerks, merchants, and wealthy peasants. He was captured several times but always escaped and his exploits became the stuff of legend. His gang included several hundred people, he was said never to attack shtetl Jews, and like many rebels of his kind he could usually depend on local people to hide him when necessary. He was eventually betrayed by an informer and was killed. But he was looked on by the authorities as a criminal and there doesn’t appear to have been any kind of attempt to portray him as typical of Jews generally, nor to suggest that he was engaged in activities with a political motive.

The closeness of shtetl life, together with the control exerted by the religious authorities, meant that promiscuity was not tolerated. In Petrovsky-Shtern’s words: “Transgressing sexual norms ruined not only families but also family businesses, increasing the number of individuals in need of the communal social relief fund.” Obviously, human nature being what it is, there must have been cases of men and women involving themselves in affairs, though it’s easy to understand that the confined spaces of the shtetl would limit the opportunities for clandestine meetings and the like. But family matters were of key importance, and there are references to several cases where husbands who beat their wives, or deserted them, were dealt with severely by the communal elders who often expected the local police to help them enforce their punishments. When the shtetl began to decline, and people moved to bigger towns, the divorce rate increased and there was something of a breakdown in relationships. It was easier in a town or city to engage in liaisons, and the old-style morality of the shtetl was sometimes frowned on by younger people who saw themselves as belonging to more-sophisticated circles with progressive views about personal relationships, politics, and enforced allegiance to Jewish religious teachings. As Petrovsky-Shtern puts it: “The urbanisation of the second half of the nineteenth century brought hundreds of thousands of Jews to bigger towns and cities. Preserving a traditional Jewish family in the new industrial centres with their two or three shifts per day, proletarian barracks, and seven-day work-week was next to impossible.” The shtetl at its best had provided “a unique realm without separation between the natural rural life cycle and the economic schedule of urban civilisation.” Migrating to large towns and cities, often in an abrupt and disruptive way, destroyed that balance.

Pointing to the seemingly favourable economic circumstances for many Jews during the Golden Age does not hide the fact that not all Jews were rich. Petrovsky-Shtern’s survey of housing conditions compares a range of dwellings, some well-built, decorated, and able to accommodate a family in comfort, whereas others were sometimes little more than shacks in which people shared the space with any animals they might own. Traders often ran their businesses from their homes, so that goods were stored on the premises and sold over make-shift counters. And it was mentioned earlier that beer could be bought from cellars in certain houses. But no matter how poor a Jewish family might be there were significant differences between their homes and those of their non-Jewish neighbours: “A shabby dwelling was the most characteristic living situation of at least one-third of all shtetl Jews, but it did not mean that Jews actually lived like peasants.” It seems that, whereas peasants preferred household items that were long-lasting, Jews liked theirs to be nice-looking. The inference is that even “the poorest Jewish homeowners lived with an urban ethos and went to all lengths to pass for townsfolk,” no matter that their actual circumstances defined them as “unquestionably rural.”  Petrovsky-Shtern develops an intriguing series of discussions around points like these, and always manages to employ actual examples to illustrate what he’s saying.

It could be asked how so much is known about the contents and layout of Jewish houses? One of the reasons is that court records of litigation about ownership sometimes provide details of the property concerned. One case that is referred to involved several claimants to a property and has an almost-Dickensian (or perhaps more accurately a 19th Century Russian novel) aspect in that by the time the court finally came to a decision all the litigants involved were dead. Petrovsky-Shtern doesn’t say what happened to the house, though one assumes that the state benefited from its sale.

Another way of arriving at information about Jewish property is by accessing army records and the  letters and journals of soldiers who were billeted there. Householders were required by law to accommodate troops, often for long periods, and the Russian military administration recorded that Jewish households were always more comfortable than those of non-Jews. Officers were naturally billeted with the better-off families, and the rank-and-file with poorer Jews. There were sometimes complaints that ordinary soldiers were noisy, drunken, and damaged property, but there was an advantage in having them in the area. An anti-Jewish riot was unlikely to take place if there were troops around. It may be significant that the onset of pogroms from the 1880s onwards ties in with the billeting system being largely abandoned in favour of purpose-built barracks to house the army.

Books were of key importance in Jewish life, not only in terms of them being read but also because Jews were heavily involved in printing and distributing them. The Polish authorities had allowed Jews to own and operate printing presses, and Catherine II extended that right. The books that were produced by Jews were religious and, though theoretically subject to censorship, they were often not known to the authorities because the printers did not register their businesses and operated from their homes. Selling the books was also frequently a small-scale activity and done through peddlers and at fairs. There were eventually attempts to impose controls over the actual printing and also the contents of books, but many small presses continued to function despite this. There was a demand for books in the Jewish community, even among people who could afford to buy only one or two books and sometimes not even those. Instead, they purchased unbound parts of books in instalments and then later had them bound. Wealthier Jews, however, built up collections and Petrovsky-Schtern lists some interesting information about who owned what. The government did in time start to crack down on what was being produced and was partly helped by informers within the Jewish community. Foreign books that were reprinted in Russia came under suspicion, and the censors, who were sometimes what are described as “enlightened Jews,” also attempted to exert control over books that dealt with mysticism : “The traditional piety of the shtetl, peppered with mystical beliefs, needed to be replaced by the enlightened rationalism of Russian-language education.”

Earlier references were made to the reasons for the decline of the shtetl, which is not to suggest that it completely disappeared. But it became less influential and certainly lost its reputation for being a vigorous and competitive community that gave Jews the opportunity to engage in commercial activities of a varied kind. State monopoly of liquor sales drove many Jews out of business, into poverty, and towards towns and cities. The rise of Russian nationalism after 1850 or so tended to see Jews as a disruptive influence, though there is little, if any, evidence to suggest that, prior to the late-19th Century, many of them were involved in any form of revolutionary activity. But it suited the authorities to have scapegoats for economic and political problems, and what better than a group of people who could often be easily identified by their appearance and habits and who adhered to religious beliefs which were not in accordance with those of the greater society. A new passport system which “made the racial differences of the Jews a key feature of their identification” played its part. Newspapers and magazines published articles and illustrations which focused on obviously Jewish figures (complete with earlocks, yarmulke, etc.) as revolutionaries. Petrovsky-Schtern does point out that “the xenophobic regime of Late Imperial Russia” not only singled out Jews, but also Poles and Ukrainians, for “social and legal segregation.”  And some natural disasters, such as a series of disastrous fires that raged through one shtetl after another, further helped to bring the Golden Age to an end.

The Golden Age Shtetl is a fascinating and informative book and Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern has made it thoroughly readable, while still maintaining its academic veracity, by selecting some wonderful examples to illustrate his story of a period which, he claims, was indeed a Golden Age for Jews in the area he focuses on. His anecdotes, drawn from court records, state archives, and other sources, are always relevant. It’s a personal comment, and not a complaint, but there were times when I wanted to know what happened next when he recounts the story of a certain incident or the activities of a certain individual. The information may not have been available, of course, and we can’t blame Petrovsky-Shtern for that, so it’s only fair to credit him with being a good storyteller if he left me wanting more.

The book is fully documented, with copious notes for those who want to follow up on anything. I did notice a few minor misprints, but nothing that held back the flow of this entertaining and useful volume.