Beyond the Pale : The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Studies on the History of Society and Culture)

Rating:
Summary: Book Prize Winner
Review: Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia won the 2003 Wayne S. Vucinich book prize awarded annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) for the most outstanding monograph in Russian, Eurasian, or East European studies in any discipline of the humanities.

The book prize selection committee wrote the following about this volume:

Benjamin Nathans' masterful study provides a fresh look at an age old problem, the entry and integration of Jews into larger territorial, cultural and political communities. The book takes us, literally and figuratively, "beyond the pale" of Jewish life in late imperial Russia to the encounter of Jewish professionals and intellectuals with Russian civil institutions.

Through exhaustive and innovative research, from newly available archives to private family memoirs, Nathans brings to life key personalities and social interactions that redefine the Jewish presence in St. Petersburg, and in turn reshape ties to the other subjects of the empire and to Russian Jewry. Through these vibrant portraits of the Jewish-Russian encounter, the author paints a much larger canvas tracing a cultural world of understandings and misconceptions, a social existence beset by advances and setbacks, and a political discourse of emancipation and reaction.

This exemplary, insightful book, argued with balance and nuance and written with flair, provides an original interpretation of a central problem in Russian history and politics. More, the intellectual journey goes well beyond Russia to recast our understanding of broader, ever-present issues of identity, integration, and conflict.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent work
Review: This is a fascinating study of the Jews in Russia. The book description is accurate... it is a highly detailed and first rate work of scholarship. The only concern is that it is not casual reading-- it is an in-depth and comprehensive study that rewards the devoted reader.