“Three serpents with tongues and eyes of flame”: the 1905 pogroms in Russian‐Jewish literature

Abstract

Despite the fact that the 1881/82 pogroms had a much greater effect on Jewish thinking, representing a watershed in the Jewish strategy of assimilation, the 1905 pogroms were much more widely mirrored in literature. The Silver Age period of Russian literature had a great impact on new stylistic strategies that were capable of depicting the horror and avoiding the sentimental, documentary or didactic extremities. The following article discusses what new ways were found by S. An‐sky, David Aizman, Aleksandr Kipen and Semion Yushkevich to express in the language of art the incomprehensible.

Keywords:

• Russian‐Jewish literature
• pogrom
• 1905
• Aizman
• An‐sky
• Yushkevich
• Kipen

Notes

1. For discussion of the 1905 pogroms, see Lambroza, “The Pogroms of 1903–1906”; Weinberg, “Workers, Pogroms and the 1905 Revolution in Odessa.”

2. For Jewish responses to the pogroms of 1881/2, see Frankel, Prophecy and Politics. A few short stories or sketches based on the 1881/2 pogroms appeared in Jewish publications. The prominent Russian‐Jewish poet Simon Frug also published pogrom‐related poems.

3. For further discussion, see Frankel, “‘Youth in Revolt’,” 72.

4. Gornfeld, “O russkikh pisatel’akh,” 67.

5. Kipen, “V okt’abre (1905),” 96.

6. Voskhod (1882): 7–8; (1883): 9–10.

7. Kipen, “V okt’abre (1905),” 97.

8. Ibid., 140.

9. Evreiskii mir (1909): 65–6.

10. Gornfeld, “O russkikh pisatel’akh,” 69.

11. Aizman, “Serdtse Bytiia,” 64.

12. Ibid., 56.

13. Ibid., 59.

14. Ibid., 76.

15. In Paskhalov’s name there is an allegoric hidden double reference to “Paskha” (Easter): on the one hand, it alludes to Paskhalov’s weak, yielding personality that let the tragedy of Abram’s family happen and, on the other, to the usual time of the year that pogroms broke out in Russia.

16. Aizman, “Krovavyi razliv,” 200.

17. Ibid., 126.

18. Information given to the author by Boris Czerny, a specialist on Yushkevich, University of Caen, France.

19. Yushkevich, Sobraniie sochinenii, 164–9.

20. Ibid., 168.

21. See Hetéyni, “The Child’s Eye.”