In 2005 the following lectures were delivered within the framework of the series:

Jews in Russian Liberalism
Lecturer: Alexander Davidovich Stepansky, Doctor of History, Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

The focus of the lecture was the role of the Jews in the liberal movement, which is a topic that remains less studied compared to the role of the Jews in the revolution. The lecture showed the role of Jews in the leadership of the Constitu-tional Democratic Party and their congresses, conferences, and the Central Committee assem-blies (based on the documents published by these bodies) and also in the Kadet factions in the State Duma. Special attention was devoted to the activities of M.M. Vinaver.

Religious Practices of the Jews Through the Eyes of Their Ethnic Neighbors (Based on Materials of Field Studies in Polesye and Podolia)
Lecturer: Olga Vladislavovna Belova, Ph. D. in Philology, Senior Academic Associate of the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow); author of more than 200 publications on traditional and literary culture of Slavic peoples, ethno-cultural contacts n Eastern Europe, folk lore. She is the author of monographs The Folk Bible: Eastern Slavic Aetiological Legends and Ethno-Cultural Stereotypes in Slavic Folk Tradition.

The lecture was based on the results of the field studies of 2000–2004 and demonstrated the current state of the folk tradition in its attitude towards “strangers”—“aliens” and adherents of a different faith in two regions which are most interesting from the ethno-cultural point of view—in Volynskoye Polesie and in southwest part of Podolia (Vinnitsa and Chmielnicki regions of the Ukraine). Slavic people and the Jews were neighbors in these regions for several centuries, and, as a result, a mechanism for cultural coexistence of the two ethnic groups emerged. It combined everyday and ethnographic realities with a whole set of folk and mythological stereotypes, based on ambivalent attitude to everything “alien,” which is so traditional for folk culture. The history of coexistence left its traces in popular notions about religion and rituals of the ethnic neighbors. The lecturer illustrated the “popular” views of the Slavic people regarding religion rituals of the Jews with the excerpts of the field records devoted to the Jewish holidays, attitudes to ritual objects and sacral texts.

From the History of the Blood Libel
Lecturer: Victoria Valentinovna Mochalova Ph. D. in Philology, Senior Academic Associate of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Sefer Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, specialist in the history of Slavic literature, intercultural connections, Jewish- Christian dialog in Eastern Europe.

The choice of the topic was conditioned by the enduring vitality of this issue. As Russia was faced with the Jewish question rather late relative to European countries, in the very end of 18th century, as a result of the division of Poland and annexation of a considerable share of the former Polish lands, together with their Jewish population, to the Russian Empire, it is very important to trace the roots of allegations that the Jews were using the blood of Christians for ritual purposes. These allegations had existed in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and were, in one way or another, inherited by Russia. The lecture provided both the official view of the Catholic Church on the problem and overview of legal cases, analysis of the publicists’ works and public reaction caused by the accusations in 16th—18th centuries.

Khazars and the Rus
Lecturer: Vladimir Yakovlevich Petrukhin Doctor of History, Leading Academic Associate of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities, lecturer of the Jewish University in Moscow, specialist in the history of the Jews in the Kievan Rus, and Khazars.

The lecture covered the following questions:
• Who were the Khazars and why they adopted
Judaism?
• What were their relationships with the
neighboring ethnic groups, including Slavic
peoples, and the Rus?
• What do we know about descendants of the
Khazars?

The Beilis Affair: New Aspects of Exploration
Lecturer: Leonid Fridovich Katsis Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor of the Russian-American Center for Biblical Studies and Judaica at the Russian State University for the Humanities. In 2001–2003 he was the editor-in-chief, and since 2004—a member of the editorial board of the collection Judaica Rossica. The author of the book Osip Mendelshtam: The Musk of Jewishness (2002). Editor of the collection The Beilis Affair: Research and Materials (1995). He is the author of over 40 works on history and culture of the Russian Jews and Russian-Jewish cultural and religious relations.

The lecturer focused on the analysis of the expert examination of rituals during the Beilis trial, the role of the highly positioned clergymen both as organizers of the defense for Beilis against the ritual libel and his theological support. Special attention is devoted to the role of the Antony (Khrapovitsky) and father Pavel Florensky in that affair. The typology of the ritual trials in Central and Eastern Europe was discussed, in particular the role of ritual theological constructs for organization of the ritual legal cases in modern times.

The Jews and V.Ch.K.
Lecturer: Oleg Vitalievich Budnitskii Doctor of History, Leading Academic Associate of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academic Director of the International Center for Russian and East European Jewish Studies.

Disproportionably large share and special role of the Jews in the revolutionary bodies of prosecution became a common knowledge. “Anyone who was unlucky enough to fall into Ch.K.’s hands, had very high chances of confronting a Jewish investigator and, possibly, being executed by him,” wrote Leonard Shapiro (1961). Following Shapiro, Zvi Gitelman stresses that working for Ch.K. was especially popular among the Jews (1972). At the same time, historians made their conclusions mainly based on opinions rather than documented facts. When Salo Baron said that many Jews were employed by the Ch.K., he noted that the issue was never studied in detail (1977). The lecture, based on the current research, new documentary publications, and archival materials, covered the role and motivation for the Jews to be part of the V.Ch.K. (1917–1921) and tried to sketch the socio-cultural portrait of a Jew working for the V.Ch.K.

State Anti-Semitism in the ussr: Roots, Emergence, Consequences
Lecturer: Gennady Vasilyevich Kostyrchenko, Senior Academic Associate of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the author of a voluminous monograph Stalin’s Secret Policy. The Power and
Anti-Semitism (Moscow, 2001), other books, and many articles devoted to this topic.

Did the problem of anti-Semitism exist in the Soviet Union? This question was perceived almost exclusively as a political one until very recently and was answered mainly from the ideological point of view. Liberals who condemned Stalin’s totalitarian regime, insisted on the existence of this phenomenon, while their conservative antipodes from the ranks of the right and left nationalists denied it in their attempts to preclude the “blackening” of Russian history. The problem of anti-Semitism is still understood by many as solely an ideological one, and thus the pragmatic view of the problem as just an additional argument in political disputes continues to dominate. At the same time, purely academic interest to this problem is gradually picking up. While the initial impulse was provided sometime ago in the West, in the course last decade Russia was the clear leader in this field of study, reflected in the productivity of academic research. This is largely due to the fact that, following the major socio-political changes, scholars got access to the previously classified archives of the Soviet regime, and thus were able to expand their source base faster than their western colleagues. Publication in July 2005 by International Democracy Foundation (Foundation of A.N. Yakovlev) of a collection of documents entitled State Anti-Semitism in the USSR. From Roots to Climax, 1938–1953 is making a significant contribution to academic understanding of new archival materials on this topic. The lecture was based on the materials published in the collection.

Jewish Political Parties in the Pre-Revolutionary Russia, and Their Leaders
Lecturer: Alexander Lokshin, Ph. D. in History, Senior Academic Associate of the Department for the Study of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora of the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A specialist in the history of the East European Jewry.

The lecture was devoted to the portrait characteristics of the Jewish political party leaders: B. Borokhov, V. Medem, V. Kossovsky, H. Zhitlovsky, E. Chlenov, E. Mandelshtam, N. Syrkin, and others, and an analysis of the influence their backgrounds and personal qualities had on their participation in the Jewish political life and emergence of some of their beliefs.

The Jewish Century
Lecturer: Yuri Slezkine, Professor of the University of California, Berkley, a leading specialist in history of the ussr.

The lecture was dedicated to Slezkine’s bestseller The Jewish Century (in Russian translation—Era merkuriya. Evrei v sovremennom mire (The Era of Mercury. The Jews in the Modern World)) which encountered a mixed reaction in the international academic community and a great interest from the readers; the book analyzes the reasons for conspicuous success and unique vulnerability of the Jews in the modern world. Marxism and Freudism are interpreted as attempts to solve the Jewish question; Slezkine demonstrates transformation of the genocide of the Jews into the universal symbol of absolute evil; he traces history of the Jewish revolution within the Russian Revolution and describes the three types of pilgrimages, or migrations, which followed the break-up of the Pale of Settlement in Russia, and embodied the three evolution paths of modern society: to the United States of America—the bhold of uncompromised liberalism, to Palestine—the Holy Land of the radical nationalism, and to the cities of the ussr, which were free of both liberalism and ethnic exclusivity.

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