5 Key Questions

Theory

1. What is the rationale for “decolonising the curriculum”?
2. What might this look like when teaching Russian and Soviet Jewish history?

​

​

Practice

• How can we critically engage students in the nature of antisemitism across time?
• How can we humanise and diversify Russia’s Jews as historical actors?
• How can we approach teaching the Holocaust in a Soviet context?

Decolonising the Curriculum:�Conceptual Starting Points

“Decolonisation involves identifying colonial systems, structures and relationships, and working to challenge those systems… It involves a paradigm shift from a culture of exclusion and denial…” Quoted in Dan Lyndon-Cohen, TH 183 (2021)

Moving away from “established master narratives” within an intellectually rigorous, enquiry-based pedagogical framework, demonstrating more than victimhood without denying its realities

Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn, Doing Justice to History: Transforming Black history in secondary schools (2016)

“…black British history is not an optional extra. Nor is it a bolt-on addition to mainstream British history… It is an integral and essential aspect of mainstream British history.” David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)

Approaches to Jewish History

Importance of humanising Jewish historical subjects, “plac[ing them] in historical context by showing life before and after [the Holocaust].” IHRA Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust (2019)

“…to move away from victimhood and focus more broadly on Jewish life, culture, and history.”

Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre, HA Webinar (2023)

Exam Classes: Challenge and Opportunity

“…it is not a zero-sum game between teaching the prescribed content and … ‘doing justice to history’. Both can be done.”

Nick Dennis, TH165 (2016)

AQA KS5 Specification, Tsarist and Communist Russia, 1855-1964

• Tsarist antisemitism and pogroms of 1881-84
• Russian and Soviet nationalities, including repression
• “High Stalinist” repression including the “Doctors’ Plot”

What about…

• Contextual omissions?
• Conceptual underdevelopment?
• Narrative limitations?

What was a century of reform, revolution, and conflict c. 1855-1964 to Russian and Soviet Jews?

Approaching Antisemitism(s)

Chapter 8, “Antisemitism and Holocaust Education”, Andy Pearce, Stuart Foster, Alice Pettigrew

​

“Since antisemitism is a transhistorical phenomenon – and one which is renowned for its mutability – learning about the ways it manifested itself […] is clearly an immensely valuable exercise.”

Interrogating Antisemitism(s): Focus on Pogroms

Pogrom: “related to word for ‘thunder’ (grom) […] derived from the verb pogromit’ meaning variously ‘to break or smash’ and ‘to conquer’” (John D. Kleir, “The pogrom paradigm in Russian History”, 1992)

​

How can we engage students critically in examining this phenomenon?

• Causation: Problematising simplified narratives
• Agency: Broadening agency of perpetrators
• Continuity and Significance: Mapping historical trajectories
• Scholarship: Active engagement in historiography

​

Doing so can unlock the trajectories of Russian antisemitism over the long term, including through and beyond the revolution of 1917, which was officially to have liberated Russia’s Jews

Pogroms of 1881-84: Actors and Origins

Official

Popular

Intellectual

Konstantin Pobedonostsev, tutor to Tsars, demanded of Jews: “one third assimilate, one third emigrate, one third die”

New Tsar Alexander III held deeply antisemitic beliefs

Antisemitism was rife in the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church

Ordinary workers and peasants carried out antisemitic violence

Violence against Jews posed a significant security risk to Tsarist authorities, whom it alarmed greatly

Liberal newspapers suggested Jews were being attacked as “exploiters” of poor

Populist revolutionaries often celebrated pogroms as a sign of the rebellious of masses

Pogroms and Revolution: Antisemitism(s) in 1917

Historians have sometimes missed the reality that antisemitism continued through the revolution of 1917 and beyond in Russia. Russian Jews didn’t.

​

Jewish writer, Ilya Ehrenburg, wrote the following account in October 1917.

​

What does it reveal about antisemitism and revolution?

Yesterday I was standing in line, waiting to vote for the Constituent Assembly. People were saying, ‘Whoever’s against the Zhidy, vote for number 5! [the Bolsheviks]’, ‘Whoever’s for world-wide revolution, vote for number 5!’ The patriarch rode by, sprinkling holy water; everyone removed their hats. A group of soldiers passing by started the belt out the Internationale in his direction. Where am I? Or is this truly hell?

Pogroms and Civil War: Antisemitism(s) in 1918-21

Brendan McGeever, Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution (2019)

​

“This was the most violent assault on Jewish life in pre-Holocaust modern history; conservative estimates put the number of fatalities at roughly 50,000-60,000, but the true figure likely reached 100,000 or more. […] What is certain is that at least 2,000 pogroms took place during the revolutionary period. […] The bulk of the atrocities had been carried out by the [White] armies […] [The first pogroms of the Civil War, however] were principally carried out by loosely assembled ranks of the Red Army stationed in the borderlands of western Russia and eastern Ukraine.”

Hlukhiv

In lessons, Brendan McGeever’s account of the Hlukhiv massacre of 1918 is used as a way in to the complexity of Civil War antisemitism

Thinking about Language

In Russia, the antisemitic term “Zhid” was often used to describe Jew. This word has a parallel in English (beginning with “Y”). The English word, which is offensive towards Jews in Britain today, has been removed from the texts you are reading. It has been replaced by the Russian.

​

Neither the Russian nor English words should be used outside of the study environment in this classroom.

Russia’s Jews: Exploring Diversity

Race: Problems of Connotations – by the late 1800s, the idea of “race” was being used to discriminate against Jews

Religion: Orthodox, Liberal, and converted – not all Jews had retained their religious traditions

Nation: Question of Zionism – some, but not all, Jews in Russia accepted the idea of emigrating to a new homeland in historic Palestine

Culture: Assimilated vs. Shtetl – those living in larger towns and cities were more integrated into wider Russian culture

Ethnicity: Language: Yiddish vs. Hebrew – most Jews spoke Yiddish, but the religious language of Judaism was Hebrew

Which of the following terms best describes Jewish people?

​

Race

Religion

Nation

Culture

Ethnicity

Russia’s Jews: Exploring Diversity

Social

Economic

Cultural

Political

1. In your group, collect post-it notes for your area of Jewish life/contribution

​

• Now take a look at the pictures around the room. Which do you think might relate to your area?

​

• Using the text, create captions to stick on relevant photographs, summarising each one

Diversity and Representation

Course textbooks rarely refer to any specific Jewish individuals (or individuals as Jews). One exception is this. How far can they be used to “represent” Russian Jews?

• Archetypal Jewish radical and intellectual (narrative of “Judeo-Bolshevism”)
• Assimilated
• A-(and anti-)theist
• Integrationist

Claire Hollis, Teaching History 185 (2021)

​

“Of course, seeking to represent the diversity inherent within any period raises the perennial problem of curriculum time. When contemplating the richness of a particular historical period, how does a teacher go about identifying which element of it they are going to represent in the time they have available?”

Representing Diversity: Jewish Parties in 1917

Bund

Poale-Tsion

United Jewish Socialist Workers Party (OESRP)

General Zionists

Jewish National Group

A huge range of Jewish political parties participated in revolutionary politics in 1917

​

These all made some claim to representing Jews, separately from non-Jews

​

Their aims and aspirations give a valuable window into:

• What Russian Jews wanted to achieve in revolution
• The political diversity of Russian Jews
• Trajectories in Jewish politics after 1917

Tasks

1. Look through the cards – what do they suggest about Jewish responses to revolution?

​

• What are the main points of disagreement in Jewish politics at this time?

​

• Where would Russia’s Jewish political parties be placed on this diagram?

Poale-Tsion

General Zionists

Jewish National Group

OESRP

Bund

Jewish Politics

Importance of Zionism(s) as key conceptual component to Jewish politics

• contentious term (past and present)
• fundamental to Jewish self-identification

​

Unlocking trajectories of Jewish politics in later Soviet History:

• projects for a Soviet Jewish homeland (Birobidzhan, c. 1928-1930s)
• rapid growth of Zionism following World War Two
• Soviet post-WWII anti-Zionism and antisemitic campaigns (“Doctors’ Plot”, 1952-53)

Birobidzhan: A Soviet Jewish Homeland?

Soviet Anti-Zionism and Antisemitic Campaigns after WWII

• 1941-45: Holocaust on Soviet territory*

​

• 1945-48: Soviet support for Jewish state in Palestine

​

• 1948: Solomon Mikhoels assassinated, Israel’s establishment, crowds greet Golda Meir in Moscow

​

• 1952-53: “Doctors’ Plot”

Soviet WWII: Victimhood, Survival and Resistance

Questions of acknowledgement and representation:

• the Holocaust was a vital component of Soviet WWII experience
• the impact on Soviet Jews was often devastating and must be acknowledged
• but war and the Holocaust it affected Soviet Jews in diverse ways precisely because they were diverse

Survivors

Victims

Universal

Unique

What was a century of reform, revolution, and conflict c. 1855-1964 to Russian and Soviet Jews?

Threatening

Discriminatory

Violent

Deadly

Liberating

Challenging

Inspiring

Integrative

Exclusionary

Exhilarating

Uncertain

Limiting

Taking a Risk? What Students Said

Results of student voice survey with 27 students in Y13

​

• Three quarters agreed Jewish history was “extremely” or “very” important to Russian and/or Soviet history
• Just over half agreed it was “extremely” or “very” important to study aspects of Jewish history that were omitted from the exam board specification

“At A Level study shouldn’t just be to pass exams, in history we should be learning more about the past because we’re interested in it – if significant factors are missed then that takes away from this goal of learning”

“I think to ignore an entire group so prevalent throughout the whole of Russian history as victims and also as contributors (eg. all the Jews that fought in WWII) would be a disservice to the study of Russian history”

Thanks Also To…

This project has been supported and encouraged by many people, without whom it would not have been possible:

• Our wonderful Year 12 and 13 classes of the past two years
• Tommy-James Alexander
• Katie Amery
• Robert Dale
• Alistair Falk
• George Gilbert
• Michael Hickey
• Natalie Hopper
• Eleni Karayianni
• Dan Lyndon-Cohen
• Helen McCord
• Josh Rimmer

Continuing the Discussion

Twitter: @ADIDickins and @IstorikBlog

​

​

Facebook: Istorik: Russian and Soviet History in the Classroom

​

​

Blog: Istorik Blog on Blogger – regular posts and full curriculum resources