Jewish Clergy Survival Strategies in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s – 1930s
Abstract
The purpose of the study is to determine the content and change of strategies for the survival of the Jewish clergy in Soviet Ukraine in the conditions of social transformations of the 1920s – 1930s.
The research methodology includes a combination of macro and microhistorical approaches for the reconstruction of the everyday life of the Jewish clergy. The biographical method is applied to show the life paths of some representatives of the Jewish clergy and to find out the impact of social and political events on the formation of their social behavior.
The scientific novelty is in the historical reconstruction of survival strategies of the Jewish clergy in Ukraine during the 1920s – 1930s. The dependence of change of those strategies on the forms and methods of the pressure of state-political power and the force of ethno-confessional traditions in the Jewish community environment is shown.
Conclusions. The formation of strategies for the survival of the Jewish clergy in Ukraine during the 1920s and 1930s was influenced by the strengthening and diversification of social and political challenges that were resulted from the totalitarian system strengthening. Particularly noticeable among the Jewish clergy were changes in social and national policy in the form of famines, reducing social standards, increased anti-religious pressure, and political repression. In the 1920s, the conditions of social and political life were still relatively favorable for not so numerous Jewish clergy. The demand for religious services and the authority of rabbis and hazzans in the communities were the factors supporting the social status of ministers of religion.
The main strategies for the survival of the Jewish clergy were following the ethno-cultural traditions notwithstanding the increasing political pressure, seeking additional earnings, and receiving assistance from the community and family. The cult of a family in Jewish society meant the close interconnections of its members, which minimized the psychological and economic pressure of an atheistic society.
Forcing a political assault of the authorities on the Jewish community at the turn of the 1930s formed new strategies for physical self-preservation. The Jewish clergy had to abandon religious activity, intensively being in search of assistance abroad, but state administration and communist powers' repression, its destruction of ethno-confessional infrastructure became the factors causing limitation of foreign links of Jews in Ukraine, and therefore cut the assistance from abroad. One of the main ways of escaping of the Jewish clergy from political lawlessness was emigration, first of all, of the members of the Jewish clergy families. In the 1930s, the authorities blocked that humanitarian corridor, forming a totalitarian society in the crucible of Stalin’s modernization.
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