A. Lvov "A LA RECHERCHE DE RUSSIAN JEW."

The question seems senseless. No matter how we estimate the number of Jews in Russia - it can be estimated differently, from several hundreds of thousands up to 11 million - their number is great. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that only an insignificant part from this number reveals itself in a way, which can be observed and calculated - visits synagogues, clubs, lecture halls, sends children to Jewish schools, etc. According to different estimations, from 3 to 7% of Jews of St. Petersburg have some connection with what can be called the Jewish life of the city. The other 93-97% have nothing in common with it. Approximately the same is the situation in other cities. In small towns, and especially in the Ukraine, the part of people participating in Jewish life reaches 30-40%, but the majority of them are simply receiving humanitarian aid. Of course, these estimations are rather approximate and subjective (1) because of great vagueness of such notions as "Jewish life" and "Jew", but Jewish activists now cannot but see "them"- a huge inert mass looking at "our" efforts with indifference (or maybe even with censure? with hostility?)

Of course, Jewish leaders in Russia would like to consider themselves to be the real leaders of the Russian Jewry. But in the current situation this appears to be hardly possible, and, to put a good show and not to let this scandalous situation to become a common fact, the leaders seek for those to be blamed - either themselves ("we" are not enough attractive to "them", not enough strong, work not well enough...), or "them" ("they" have deliberately chosen assimilation and refused from their Jewishness, having not come to "us") or the external circumstances (if all nations unite within the limits of their confessions and communities, then the anti-Semitism increases and "they" will have nowhere to go except to "us") (2). All these thoughts (maybe even true) have the common shortcoming - they are too emotional, the desire to explain the situation before accepting and realising it is too obvious. And also we can hear from abroad, from our former compatriots, the same - very hasty - words:

The past cannot be returned, the black decades, which have turned the Russian Jewry into a spiritual corpse, cannot be crossed off the history. The corpse can - by means of financial infusions from the West and from Israel - be only galvanised, but not revived.(3)

It can be said even in a more strong, more hopeless way: if the Russian Jewry has survived and overlived both Hitler and Stalin, it means only that it survived biologically - that is all; if today one can hear about "the revival of the Soviet Jewry", the only people who speak about it are financially interested people.<...> It is obvious, that such amorphous, vague Jewry (maybe it would be better to say "Jewry" in inverted commas?) is not able to create its own specific literature. (4)

Let the hints on financial interest be on the author's and Jewish activists' conscience and let's try to find more solid ground. We can understand Shimon Markish who knows what the Soviet Jewry was. We can also understand a Jewish leader, who knows very well what it must be. But isn't it high time now to have a look at the Soviet Jewry and to try to see it as it is? Maybe we will find more suitable metaphors for its description than "galvanised corpse" or "the field studded with bones"? (5)

1. I received these estimations in private talks with many Jewish activists of Russia and the Ukraine.

2. I heard similar phrases from very different people actively involved in the Jewish movement. Almost always it was said casually, with obvious difficulty. The attempts of direct talk meet the resistance - "We must do our business and not philosophise"or "What can you propose concretely?"

4. Op.cit., p. 204. Let us note that "the specific literature" is regarded here as the evidence of the existence of the Jewry. In the same way "the Russian-Jewish literature as an accumulator of all ideological trends among the Russian Jewry" and the main source for studying Russian-Jewish culture of the past is described by historian Dmitry Elyashevich (see D. Elyashevich, Russian-Jewish press and Russian-Jewish culture// Jews in Russia: History and Culture. St. Petersburg, 1994, p. 57). The topic of the connection between the Russian Jewry and literature is very important and will be discussed further.

5. See Ezekiel 37. This image was used by r. Adin Steinzaltz for characterising the Russian Jewry when he became the spiritual rabbi of Russia.

To see the reality, a simple desire is not enough. We approach to the reality with our own system of notions and ideas, we already - beforehand - know what the Jews must be, and that is why the imperceptible existence of the Russian Jews, their reality, which is not similar to anything else, escapes from our notice. They appear unnoticeable - not only for an observer from the outside but even for themselves.

In summer 1993 at the seminar in St. Petersburg (6) Natalya Ukhneva made a report "Russian Jews as a sub-ethnical group. Formulation of the question". The simple, as it was, mentioning of this question caused a storm. I remember 2 speeches - one made by an Israelite ("There are no Russian Jews. Their literature is untalented and unliveable") and the second made by a Jew who found himself in the hall by chance ("Why do you say we all have assimilated? We are Jewish!").... It is obvious that the report touched some painful points. It was an attempt to name something that cannot be named.

In summer 1997 M. Chlenov's report seemed to be the brightest event at the conference (7). He gave a system of notions enabling to describe the different types of Jewish self-identification. The system was so flexible that it gave - at last! - a place even for the Russian Jews with all their differences from Jews of, say, the USA. M. Chlenov stated 3 most important features of this type of identification:

1. Separation from the religion. Judaism for a Russian Jew is only one of the religions and is related to him not more (though not less) than Christianity, Buddhism, etc.

2. Passiveness. The term, to my mind, is not very apt, but its purpose is to stress the difference from the American active type of identification, which requires efforts from a Jew for acquisition and maintaining his identity. For a Russian Jew his Jewishness is a fact of his biography, something not dependent on him. He won't ask as an American would do - "Do I need it?", his question will be different - "What shall I do with it?".

3. Aiming at social characteristics and the value system of the Soviet intelligentsia. This aiming includes, for example, the well-known yearning for education.

Let us note that the last point contains something positive, while the first two describe mainly the Russian Jews' lack of properties, which all the other Jews have; these first 2 points enable us to explain their non-participation in the Jewish movement. But fortunately the only positive one is, to my mind, a breakthrough, for it enables us to leave the vicious circle of tautological definitions (like "the Russian Jew is a Russian-speaking Jew") and positivist ones (like "the Russian Jew is a Russian who answers this certain way to these certain questions when filling out a form"). But this paradoxical definition of the Russian Jew by means of a completely alien notion "Soviet intelligentsia", which is located in a completely different plane of being, seems very fruitful to me. M. Chlenov finally introduced to scholaric usage something, which has long been suspected and implied by many, something which had previously been used only (8) as a witticism, as a reductio ad absurdum, as a vivid poetical image - a paradoxical identity of the two incompatible notions - "Russian Jew" and "Soviet intelligent".

Anyway the Soviet intelligent is an equally enigmatic figure as a Russian Jew. In Soviet times he was sure that his sources, his real spiritual motherland is somewhere behind the iron curtain, which cuts all the existing reality - space, time and culture - into 2 isolated parts - the permitted and the forbidden, the available and the unavailable. But now the curtain has been lifted and it turned out to be that it is the Soviet Union, the state hated and despised by any intelligent, that is – no, was - his motherland, his nourishing soil… Well, again we have a situation, which is both scandalous, painful and preventing from a normal serious investigation. But some attempts have already been made to turn from castigating vices of the Soviet past to raising the questions. Sometimes there appear - not for purpose, but in line with some other things - such, for instance, beautiful and deep definitions:

...in the country of professional philosophers (or poetry lovers) nobody would ask what philosophy is; its notion is a language universalia of our culture area meaning such a

6. Fifth annual seminar "Jewish civilisation and Jewish thought"(see Jewish school, 3-4, 1993, p. 269-277)

7. International conference "Jews of the former USSR: yesterday, today, tomorrow", St.Petersburg, June, 30-July, 3, 1996

8. See, for example, P.Bail, A Genis. The Last Mystery. Jews // Theatre, 7, 1992, p.197: "Describing an ideal Jew activists of Jewish rebirth have described an ideal person... It is possible even to find out the source, which was used as a prototype. It is a Russian intelligent."

metaposition in respect of life, which simultaneously gives the opportunity to be in the opposition to all existing, possessing, nevertheless all its presuppositions. Our alibi in existence is based on substitution of a deed by its philosophy; we philosophise, hence we exist (9)

(The Soviet Union is a country of philosophers and poetry lovers... It sounds unusually, doesn't it? It's more common to speak about dropping from the civilised world, about absence of elementary rights… But the Greeks once sometimes named the Jews a people of philosophers, sometimes considered them to be fanatic and pushy barbarians…. )

But let us look again at the main formula of this strange definition: "to be in the opposition to all the being, possessing, however, all its presuppositions". Isn't the key to the main enigma of Russian Jew here: how is it possible to remain Jewish without having any positive Jewish contents?.

Yes, the Russian Jews have nothing positive, they are only "disabled of the 5th group" (as Zvi Gitelman quoted an old Soviet joke). Then he asks a question: "What will the general Jewish culture, able to change this definition for a new one, be like?"(10) That is, something positive has to appear at last, this must happen for sure, for the only alternative to positive content is "Jewish identity as accident, a burden which one has to get rid of as soon as possible"(11) But the Russian Jews are still indifferent en masse to all the variants of positive content proposed to them (are in the opposition to all the being) but meanwhile, seemingly, are not going to assimilate (12) (have all the presuppositions of it). It is impossible, but it is true. It can not yet be understood, but it can and should be accepted as a fact.

This study would have finished with establishing this paradox if the strange existence of the Russian Jews did not create any material traces (the opinion of D. Elyashevich):

In the after-war period the forms of existence of Russian-Jewish (Soviet-Jewish) culture - and it undoubtedly remained though having changed into rather a pure psychological, non-materialised phenomenon - have changed (13)

But the forms of existence of the Russian Jews, having undergone changes , do not coincide with pure non-being, it is more of an other-being which manifests itself in the material plane, but in some other place, not in the one where such manifestations can be expected.

The reluctance of the Russian Jews to manifest themselves, their passiveness which was treated above concerns only the social and economic manifestations. In the other ways, we should think, they are normal people, Russian citizens, Russian intelligents, and therefore they think of their fate, try to understand themselves and (among the other problems) the mystery of their Jewish identity which is either a gift or a damnation for them, but in the first place - a riddle which was not, to some reason, asked to some lawful Jews who definitely know the right answer, but to them, to most ordinary people, to Russian intelligents. And they discuss these problems by their usual way of discussing - in thick fiction magazines and theoretical journals, not asking for help from special Jewish editions and institutions.

The first search, which didn't pretend to be careful, revealed more than 70 publications in magazines for the last 3-4 years directly dedicated to the Jewish question. These publications contain neither gross anti-Semitism and meaningless controversy on it (14), nor apologetics. What they contain is thoughts different in their quality and competence, attempts to understand oneself through answering painful questions - or only by raising them.

9. Igor Peshkov. Refusion of thought//L.Vygotsky. Thought and speech. M., 1996, p.377

10. Zvi Gutelman. choosing Jewish Identities. Constructing Jewish Communities. Report at conference in St.Petersburg (see note 7)

12. From 1989 to 1994 the loss at the expense of assimilation does not exist - this is the result of a research made and reported on by M.Kupovetsky (report made at the conference - see note 7)

13. D.Elyashevich. Russian-Jewish press and Russian-Jewish culture // Jews in Russia. History and culture. SPb, 1994, p.57. italics is mine. The said relates only, as it is obvious from the text, to the Soviet-before-the-perestroyka period, in the end of which the "Post-Soviet Jewish press" appears (see also p.66). But the same words can be said about the Russian Jewry remaining not implicated to this new press

14. That is why Sh.Markish is right in his characteristics of this phenomenon: "The main in these texts and in this polemics is that they lack originality(?) and new thoughts and reasons and they only repeat the set of stock phrases, from blood slander and poisoned wells to the plot of Zion sages, and known for long refutations on these worn-out stock phrases. This polemics is fruitless and sterile..."(see Sh.Markish, p.205) The said relates rather not to purely anti-Semitic editions of low quality and Jewish newspapers arguing with them but to thick magazines. Articles in them, which are regarded anti-Semitic, as, for instance articles by Igor Shapharevich, can not be reproached for, at least, lack of originality.

The most surprising thing, to my mind, which attracts attention when we regard our data <..> is the discrepancy between the very insignificant differences of real content of the culture of Jews from the culture of the ethnical majority and the considerably greater differences is psychology and value orientation<...> Jews have a greater real interest towards the Russian culture than Russians do. ...Thus, Jews more often than Russians name as their favourite writer Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Bunin, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky and even, in spite of certain tendencies regarded in Jewish society as anti-Semitic, Alexander Solzhenitsin and Valentin Rasputin <...> An astonishing (but corresponding to my personal impressions) result of our poll appeared that only 3 people from 40 identified themselves as Judaists, while 10 - as Christians, 2 from them identifying themselves as Russian Orthodox Christians and others - as "Christians in general" without confessional specification<...> Such a situation of prevailing of Christianity over Judaism cannot be observed in any other Jewish community... We can see a very strange picture: In the situation of general loss of Jewish culture, the belonging to Jews has become to a great extent formal. It comes to such things as a record in passport, surname, appearance (it is also a formal "exterior" sign). But nevertheless the psychological significance of such formal belonging is very great. What makes this psychological significance? (15)

Unfortunately, Furman's answer which explains this all with the primordial Jewish fear of real or imagined anti-Semitism is not as interesting as the question itself, for it is but a new wording of the same question. In fact, the fear and perception of any milieu as "potentially hostile"(16) looks in Furman's explanations not like an everyday occurrence, but like an irrational universal law, a kind of doom over the Jews which makes them to be an "opposition to all the being" and to seek salvation from themselves and from their fear. And it is still not clear where this fear comes from - is it caused by enduring one's appearance? or name? or passport record?

The article caused polemics and "became a point of discussion in a Moscow elite club"(17). Lev Anninsky, a literary critic, shares his ideas on the same question (Who are the Russian Jews?) in his response to Furman's article.

"I had to write about the principal impossibility to solve the problem of the Russian-Jewish self-identification in Russia, about the soul being pressed between the ideas of assimilation and disappearance - and dissimilation and setting apart: they are both dangerous. The Jews' reaction to these speculations was a shock for me: but we don't want either of these! Neither Russification nor Jewification! We want to be neither "just Russians", nor "Jews in general" - we want to be Russian Jews. We are a very special anclave - not a part of some other people but a PEOPLE with its own fate and its own system of values.

"Sarafans"and "armyaks" and also old Slavonic values are not included. "Torah", "Wall of Wailing" and "Our lamentations by the rivers of Babylon" - this is all equally unreal for us. But what is left?

So, the Jews immerse themselves in the Russian culture (primarily in belle-lettres), and moreover, they want to see their national identity in this. What's more, they have the right to do this because the Russians do not immerse themselves in their own culture like this, it (the culture) doesn't incite them to do this. But what incites the Jews? Their national self-identification, that is the Russian culture... Ravings of a madman!

"An ideal projection of our notion (Russian Jew) is the "non-Jewish Jew", a person who not only denies all the Jewish in himself, but even treats this denial as a sign of "Jewishness"(19).

15. Dmitry Furman. Mass conscienceless of the Russian Jews and anti-Semitism // Free thought, 1994, 9, p. 37-38

17. Lev Anninsky. Who is more Russian than Russians themselves? // Druzhba narodov 1995, 1, p.189

(Mind the fact that the familiar wording "to be in the opposition but still to have" is here changed to a stronger one - "to be in the opposition and due to this to have").

The paradoxal existence of a Russian Jew develops a taste for paradoxes. That is why I cannot refrain from proceeding with the quotation:

"Under Soviet conditions the main principle of Jewish identification is the "record in the passport". That is why the utmost expression of this principle was for me in the words of one Leningrad woman-painter. These words were uttered with absolute confidence and sincerity and undoubtedly express not only her but also her parents' mind, her parents belonging to the circle of the official liberal intelligentsia of the 60-ies. Here are these words: "The real Jews are the ones who have the record "Russian" or something else. Those who have the record "Jewish" are not Jews but fools, they were not able to fix things the right way. I have the record "Armenian", that is why I am a real Jew!"(20)

Dear professor Gitelman! Please, don't understand too literally the words about the "disabled of the 5th group"- they can mean anything but "Jewish identity as accident, a burden which one has to get rid of as soon as possible"(21) . It is just a joke, a paradox. Besides, the Russian Jew is ready to be in opposition even to his own "disability"- only, of course, to acquire it! You also write "some Jews are real cosmopolitans sincerely believing in the Marxist-Leninist image of the world devoid of nations"(22), but I recollect a phrase from a casual talk: "When I was young, I was a real cosmopolitan and divided all the humanity into Jews and fools"(23). Why "fools"? Because they are not yet cosmopolitans so they are not Jews.

So, the Jew looks into the mirror and sees an intelligent there. And only having identified himself with this intelligent, he sees that it is a Jew who is behind the looking-glass. In this perpetual motion he is blessed with something he is never able to coincide with - his self-identification.

But is it possible to make any distinction between the notions of "Russian Jews"and "Soviet intelligentsia"? Yes, in a certain way, for not all the intelligents are Jewish, one can find Russians, and russified Georgians, Armenians, Kazakhs, etc. among them. But the Jews are russified as well, they identify themselves as Russians, therefore they constitute some part of the Soviet intelligentsia. On the other hand, the Soviet intelligentsia's self-identification with Jewry (a more or less metaphoric one) is a key process which plays a role which is completely different from the identification with Georgians, Armenians, etc. That is why the words of Tsvetayeva pronounced in some other time and some other circumstances are quoted so often: "In this most Christian of all the worlds, the poets are Yids". The Russian Jews and the Soviet intelligentsia are in the relationship of doubleness, of identity-negation. It is possible to distinguish them, but impossible to separate.

"Isn't it the way God chooses a man among people to be wizened with fear? The experience of the dispersed and as if abandoned Israel is ultimately the same with the experience of a Russian man, a restless soul dispersed in the vast spaces of his Motherland. Only perhaps among the Jews the trend towards earthly organising, to home-sweet-home, to everything arranged in duly fashion is stronger and more patient; while for the Russians a home, a place in this life, etc. are granted, they are at home. But some strange spirit makes us leave our homes, turns us into "wandering stars", into "charmed wanderers" and how close are we in this spirit! "(24)

Of course, Christian thought has always tried to stress the similarity ("For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek"(25)) while Jews insisted on the difference. That is why the Jewish devotion to the Russian literature can be considered to be a sign of assimilation, and Russian intelligentsia's self-identification with Jews can be considered to be an invitation to such assimilation, Christian fraternisation with Jews. It is true, but I think, the reverse is true too: it is possible to speak of assimilation of Russian intelligentsia (with its by far not orthodox Christianity) by Jews, about some kind of new 'Yid-heresy'.

Two very important peculiarities of this brotherhood of Jews and intelligentsia are grounds for such a point of view: 1) detachment from the mass, from the majority and 2) philologity of this brotherhood,

24. Anatoly Akhutin, A big nation without a small one //Russian Idea and Antisemitism, M.,1994, p. 94

love to literature, even as opposed to the other fields of culture, to other manifestations of the national spirit (like "sarafans" and "armyaks"). These two peculiarities are noted in the Jews by A. Akhutin: "The Jew accumulates in himself and personifies everything alien to the nazi-totalitarian unity"(26) and "Who but the Jew, a "philologist" by the grace and commandment of God, can feel a devouring love to the Russian word, speech and literature?"(27). Philologists alien to unity - this, to my mind, is a possible, though a little bit idealising, definition of the Jews.

It seems to be the right time to make all necessary stipulations and specifications and to create a working model, which enables to continue the search single-mindedly. Much of the said below will be based almost exclusively on my own intuition and general reasons, as it is an attempt to comprehend and interpret the empirical material gathered.

The beginning, the starting point for the Russian intelligentsia was literature, and primarily the Russian literature. Its traditions and its texts do create the tension between word and being, which made an intelligent to be in the opposition to the being, to reality - together with the word, with literature.

The beginning, the starting point for Soviet Jews was the only word of the Torah, written in his passport - "Jewish". It is this word that creates tension between the Jew and the being, which pushes him (the Jew) out from the being to the word, from reality to literature.

Here the Soviet Jew and the Russian intelligent have met each other. United by the similarity of fate, they have become brothers and have exchanged adjectives. The Jew has become Russian, while the intelligent – Soviet.

Russian Jews and/or Soviet intelligents form a community opposed to other social groups. The centre, around which this community has grown, is literature and art in general. The main body of this community is constituted by humanitarian intelligentsia - writers and philologists. Adjoining to the main body is scientific and technical intelligentsia, the readers of thick magazines, amateurs of art and not alien to art themselves - within the limits of their profession and even beyond them. The highest values of this community is creativity, spirituality, refinement, opposed to Philistinism and consumer-style, the latest being understood as the state of complete immersion into being, the full blending with it bought by betrayal of the highest values, refusal from the literary ideals - and there was no other way for self-realisation in the Soviet reality.

The Soviet Union was an ideal nutrient medium for this community. Unbearable falseness and vulgarity of Soviet being made one suspect moral or esthetical deafness in everyone who managed to realise himself in this reality. Moreover, not only the Soviet manifestations (carrier, membership in the Communist party, etc.) caused these suspicions but also the anti-Soviet, dissident ones ("Uprising is the freedom of those who are not free; It is only an outward appearance of freedom. It is usually organised by slaves"(28). So the opposition "personality"- "totalitarian state" is not decisive for this community, though is important for it. Having grown in the Soviet Union, the community of intelligents identifying themselves as Jews and Jews identifying themselves as intelligents accepted and personified another, a much more fundamental contradiction, going far beyond the limits of the Soviet specifics - it is the opposition between literature and reality, between word and being, between text and real life.

Higher education was an important formal indication of membership in this community (though I remember school disputes "What is to be an intelligent" and "Can an uneducated person be an intelligent?"). This means that the number of this community in the USSR was apparently dozens of million people. Of course, only few of them expressed the opposition to the being through devotion to literature, only a handful of them being able to stand all the tension of this contradiction losing sight neither of the obligations towards the challenging word nor of their love of life, active will to be, to exist. Many chose a compromise ("I will make a carrier, but a scientific, not a Communist one") or uncompromising alcoholism (more often both of them), nevertheless even a complete breaking it off between the individual and the community was being understood in terms of the latter, as a transition from non-realistic bookish conceptions to drastic truth of life.

A special attention should be paid to another way to lower tension, to evade the critical contradiction - it is its objectivation, turning it into a deliberate principle which can be used, for instance, to excuse one's own laziness and impotence ("There are people who can make it in life, I am not of that kind" which means "I am a looser but an intelligent"). By means of objectivation the contradiction itself is reduced to the everyday level, becomes the being which is not opposed the word in all its fullness but coincides with it in its tragic decline. The immersement, inclusion in this declining being gives birth to the new Philistinism which nevertheless doesn't break off with the community which gave birth to it, but becomes a kind of intelligent Philistinism. It is this intelligent Philistinism that ensures the reproduction of this Jewish-intelligent community and gives it stability, preserving and passing to the future generation the contempt to mass-culture and worship of genuine art, though brings about inevitable confusion because of the impossibility for them to tell art from fake. We have to stress again that this distinction between mass-culture and elite art is here not the lot of single dispersed intellectuals as it happens to be in the West, but a mass phenomenon, the most important characteristic of the intelligent-Jewish mass sub-culture.

So the intelligent Philistinism bears in its body (and, as we have seen, it does have a body) objectivated contradiction between word and being. It was this fact that enabled it to be the nutrient medium for the intellectual elite - a thankful audience and source of replenishment, - and to maintain the high prestige of education.

Does this community exist now? The disintegration of the Soviet Union seems to have undermined the very basis of its existence. Huge masses of formerly inactive people poured into politics, religion, business, emigration through the now opened borders and boundaries. But not all, by far not all, former Soviet intelligents and contemporary Russian Jews have found their place in the centre of this new life, and from those who have remained at the periphery not every single one has become embittered, and it means that they are trying to understand what is happening with them, and as before very great are (for today's Russia) the numbers of copies of thick magazines. And - who knows? - maybe there are several million people in Russia who perceive their keeping away from pushiness and rudeness of the being that have captivated their world as impossibility to admit, in spite of very convincing arguments, that lie is truth and ugliness is beauty, as esthetical rejection of falseness and fake (And let us state once again that we are speaking not of how adequate such perception is, but only of the existence of the community for which such perception is characteristic.)

An indirect proof of the existence of such a community today is mass non-participation of Jews in the Jewish movement.