Jews in the Russian Army, 1827–1917
Drafted into Modernity

This book examines the experience of the Jews who served in the Russian Army between 1827 and 1917.

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (Author)

9781107682238, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 July 2014

326 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'Jews in the Russian Army draws on an immense range of published and unpublished sources in multiple languages.' The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

This is the first study of the military experience of some one to one-and-a-half million Jews who served in the Russian Army between 1827, the onset of personal conscription of Jews in Russia, and 1917, the demise of the tsarist regime. The conscription integrated Jews into the state, transforming the repressed Jewish victims of the draft into modern imperial Russian Jews. The book contextualizes the reasons underlying the decision to draft Jews, the communal responses to the draft, the missionary initiatives directed toward Jews in the army, alleged Jewish draft evasion and Jewish military performance, and the strategies Jews used to endure military service. It also explores the growing antisemitism of the upper echelons of the military toward the Jews on the eve of World War I and the rise of Russian-Jewish loyalty and patriotism.

1. The empire reforms. The community response
2. Militarizing the Jew. Judaizing the military
3. 'Let the children come to me': Jewish minors in the Cantonist battalions
4. Universal draft and the singular Jews
5. The Russian army's Jewish question
6. The revolutionary draft
7. Banished from modernity.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Military history [HBW], History of other lands [HBJQ]