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To ignore such figures would mean to underestimate the significant Jewish impact on Russian history and culture. Indeed, as Berdnikov shows, already under Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, apart from Almaz Ivanov, there were numerous converted Jews in state service: the Russian ambassador in Kakhetiia V. S. Zhidovin; the departmental clerk V. Yudin; head of the Moscow strel'sty I. V. Zhidovin; court physician D. Gaden; and others (and here we are speaking only of those in state service). These figures are so distant from us in time that to delve into their minds and understand the logic of their actions is necessarily speculative. History is silent, for example, on what Almaz Ivanov felt when he received «Khmer the Wicked» in the Kremlin-that is, the infamous Bogdan Khmel'nitskii at whose hands tens of thousands of innocent Jews perished. Who would doubt that at that moment he had a thought for his own Jewish origins?
This book is filled with striking stories about converted Jews who used their privileged position to intervene with the Russian crowned authorities in favor of their fellow countrymen. Thus the Kremlin physician Daniil Gaden obtained permission for Jewish merchants to trade in Moscow, procured commissions for them from court, and received them in his home. The Russian resident in Vienna Avraam Veselovskii convinced Peter the Great, far from well-inclined to Jews, of the high professional qualifications of Jewish specialists; and his brother Isaac Veselovskii, who was the teacher of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich, did not shy away from trying to convince the imperial judeophobe Elizabeth Petrovna to allow Jews to settle in Russia unimpeded. Similarly precious is the admission of the General-lieutenant of army command Mikhail Grulev, made on the cusp of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries: «The most important thing, that I always held before myself in the light of conscience, was to fight as best I could, passively or actively, against unjust accusations and attacks on Jews. Following both the 'voice of my blood' and the command of my heart, in these cases I also saw my sacred and rational service to Russia, my land of birth, in consonance with duty to conscience and to my vow.» And how many generations of Russians have listened to the piercing «voice of blood» expressed by Semen Nadson (whose grandfather was Jewish), in particular, to his poem «I grew up, alien to you, outcast people.» This poem had heightened emotional power for Nadson's contemporaries, since the tragic death of the poet himself, defamed by the Jew-hater Burenin and the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds' press, lent his words about «a pack of ravenous hounds» sharpness and topicality. The exceptional popularity of this poet in the late nineteenth century suggests the important role of this work in the battle with anti-Semitism in Russian society of the time. It is also important that Berdnikov succeeds in remaining faithful to historical truth and contemporary realia, independent of which period is being analyzed. This is all the more important since in several works by Israeli authors attempts are unjustifiably made to present all of our outstanding ancestors as committed advocates of Judaism. Thus one well-known writer describes the following fantastic scene: Allegedly Jews at the court of Peter I, including the tax-farmer Boruch Leibov, who arrived at the Tsar's quarters directly from Smolensk, were gathering together for a Passover seder, and convinced the Russian emperor to don a yarmolka, which he did without hesitation. «Not only is this episode doubtful,» responds Berdnikov, «but so is the very existence of an alleged Jewish party at the beginning of the XVIIIth century, supposedly supported by other co-religionists and firmly united by corporate and religious interests… In fact, Peter the Great's attitude toward Jews was complex and contradictory. |
