Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917: Drafted into Modernity

For some time now historians of the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe and especially in Russia have been demonstrating that the “lachrymose history” that still lives on in popular memory is one-sided, distorted, and more akin to myth than to “objective history” (if one may use such a reactionary term). Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern’s new book which is only in part a translation of his earlier (and considerably longer) Evrei v russkoi armii, 1827-1914 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2003) ..