This collection of essays covers a hundred-year history of Russian-language literature in Israel, including the pre-state period. Some of the studies are devoted to an overview of the literary process and the activities of its participants, others—to individual genres and movements. As a result, a complex and multifaceted picture emerges of a not quite fully defined, but very lively and dynamic community that develops in the most difficult conditions. The contributors trace the paths of Russian-Israeli prose, poetry and drama, various waves of avant-garde, fantasy, and critical thought. Today, in Russian-Israeli literature, the voices of writers of various generations and waves of repatriation are intertwined: from the "seventies" to the "war aliyah" of the recent times. Both the Russian-Israeli authors and their critics often hold different opinions of their respective roles in Israel’s historical and literary storms. While disagreeing on the definition of their place on the map of modern culture, Russian-Israeli writers are united by a shared bond with the fate of the Jewish state.

Following the abolishment of state-sanctioned antisemitism under Gorbachev’s Perestroika liberalization policy, Jewish life in the (F)SU ([former] Soviet Union) was dominated by two interrelated trends: large-scale emigration on the one hand, and attempts to re-establish a fully-organized local Jewish life on the other. Although many aspects of these trends have become the subjects of academic research, a few important developments in the recent decade have not been studied in depth. The authors of this volume trace these trends using various methods from the social sciences and humanities and focusing on issues pertaining to the physical, mental, legal, and cultural borders of the Jewish collective in the post-Soviet Eurasia; traditional and modern patterns of Jewish ethnic, national, religious, and cultural identities; the development of Jewish organizations and movements; contemporary Jewish religious and civil culture; and the general sociocultural and political context(s) of the FSU Jewish life. This volume will make a robust contribution to research on contemporary Jewish (and other) ethnicities and will enrich public discourses on ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities and their current situation in Europe and the FSU.

Is there an essential Russian identity? What happens when "Russian" literature is written in English, by such authors as Gary Shteyngart or Lara Vapnyar? What is the geographic "home" of Russian culture created and shared via the internet? Global Russian Cultures innovatively considers these and many related questions about the literary and cultural life of Russians who in successive waves of migration have dispersed to the United States, Europe, and Israel, or who remained after the collapse of the USSR in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the Central Asian states. The volume's internationally renowned contributors treat the many different global Russian cultures not as "displaced" elements of Russian cultural life but rather as independent entities in their own right. They describe diverse forms of literature, music, film, and everyday life that transcend and defy political, geographic, and even linguistic borders. Arguing that Russian cultures today are many, this volume contends that no state or society can lay claim to be the single or authentic representative of Russianness. In so doing, it contests the conceptions of culture and identity at the root of nation-building projects in and around Russia.

Review: "This encyclopedia offers an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the important writers and works that form the literature about the Holocaust and its consequences. The collection is alphabetically arranged and consists of high-quality biocritical essays on 309 writers who are first-, second-, and third-generation survivors or important thinkers and spokespersons on the Holocaust. An essential literary reference work, this publication is an important addition to the genre and a solid value for public and academic libraries."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004

This book deals with the work of fifteen young Jewish poets who were killed, died of wounds, or were executed in captivity while serving in the Red Army in the Second World War. All were young, all were poets, most were thoroughly assimilated into Soviet society whilst at the same time being rooted in Jewish culture and traditions. Their poetry, written mostly in Russian, Yiddish, and Ukrainian, was coloured by their backgrounds, by the literary and cultural climate that prevailed in the Soviet Union, and was deeply concerned with their expectation of impending death at the hands of the Nazis. The book examines the poets’ backgrounds, their lives, their poetry and their deaths. Like the experiences and poetry of the British First World War poets, the lives and poems of these young Jewish poets are extremely interesting and deeply moving.

Both Britain and the United States have had a long history of harbouring foreign political exiles, who often set up periodicals which significantly contributed to community-building and political debates. However, this varied and complex journalism has received little attention to date, particularly regarding the languages in which it was produced. This wide-ranging edited volume brings together for the first time interdisciplinary case studies of the exile foreign-language press (in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Flemish, Polish, among other languages) across Britain and the US, establishing a useful comparative framework to explore how periodicals tackled key political, linguistic and literary issues from the 19th century to the present day. Building on the existing literature on the exile foreign-language press in the United States and developing the study of this phenomenon in the British context, Immigration and Exile Foreign-Language Press in the UK and in the US offers fresh perspectives into how these marginalised periodicals influenced the political, economic and social contexts that brought them into existence. This is a major contribution to the burgeoning field of transnational periodicals and will be of interest to anyone studying the history of the Anglo-American press, the history of immigration and cultural history.

This definitive anthology gathers stories, essays, memoirs, excerpts from novels, and poems by more than 130 Jewish writers of the past two centuries who worked in the Russian language. It features writers of the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, both in Russia and in the great emigrations, representing styles and artistic movements from Romantic to Postmodern. The authors include figures who are not widely known today, as well as writers of world renown. Most of the works appear here for the first time in English or in new translations. The editor of the anthology, Maxim D. Shrayer of Boston College, is a leading authority on Jewish-Russian literature. The selections were chosen not simply on the basis of the author's background, but because each work illuminates questions of Jewish history, status, and identity. Each author is profiled in an essay describing the personal, cultural, and historical circumstances in which the writer worked, and individual works or groups of works are headnoted to provide further context. The anthology not only showcases a wide selection of individual works but also offers an encyclopedic history of Jewish-Russian culture. This handsome two-volume set is organized chronologically. The first volume spans the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century, and includes the editor's extensive introduction to the Jewish-Russian literary canon. The second volume covers the period from the death of Stalin to the present, and each volume includes a corresponding survey of Jewish-Russian history by John D. Klier of University College, London, as well as detailed bibliographies of historical and literary sources.

This volume traces the history of antisemitism from antiquity through contemporary manifestations of the discrimination of Jews. It documents the religious, sociological, political and economic contexts in which antisemitism thrived and thrives and shows how such circumstances served as support and reinforcement for a curtailment of the Jews’ social status. The volume sheds light on historical processes of discrimination and identifies them as a key factor in the contemporary and future fight against antisemitism.

This handbook examines the study of international relations (IR) in Russia, giving a comprehensive analysis of historical, theoretic-conceptual, geographical, and institutional aspects. It identifies the place and role of Russia in global IR and discusses the factors that facilitate or impede the development of Russian IR studies. The contributors represent diverse Russian regions and IR schools and offer an overview of different intellectual traditions and key IR paradigms in the post-Soviet era. Filling the vacuum in international understanding of the Russian perspective on pivotal international issues, they demonstrate the continuity and change in Russia’s international policy course over the past three decades and explain how different foreign policy schools and concepts have affected Russian foreign policy making and the decision-making process. Providing a unique contribution to the discussion on non-Western IR theory, this handbook will appeal to scholars and students of international relations, Russian studies, world politics, and international studies.

In this volume Robert Seltzer examines Simon Dubnow (1860-1941) as the most eminent East European Jewish historian of his day and a spokesperson for his people, setting out to define their identity in the future based on his understanding of their past. Rejecting Zionism and Jewish socialism espoused by contemporaries, he argued in “Letter on Old and New Judaism” that the Jews of the diaspora constituted a distinctive nationality deserving cultural autonomy in the liberal multi-national state he hoped would emerge in Russia. Seltzer traces the young Dubnow’s personal encounter with European intellectual currents that led him from the traditional shtetl world to a non-religious conception of Jewishness that resonated beyond Tsarist Russia.