One thing that stunned me in Slezkine’s book is how extremely successful Jews were in the Russian Empire in finance, banking, business and manufacturing circles. We are talking the decades of 1870-1890s, and the numbers are insane. I had this image in my head of miserable, persecuted, long-suffering Jews in the Pale of Settlement, when in reality, the percentage of Jews among, for example, factory owners in Kyiv, Odessa and St Petersburg was insane relative to their percentage in the population.
Slezkine gives pages and pages of numbers, endless bibliographical references. It’s incontrovertible evidence, and I had absolutely no idea. Dude. This is hardcore. It is even more hardcore that the children of all these very successful Jews then went on to organize the Communist revolution. I thought they were reacting to poverty and misery but I was wrong. Oh wow.
I’m very glad I found this book based on a random Twitter post rubbishing Slezkine for being pro-Putin. But he’s part-Jewish himself and see what I wrote earlier today about that.
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