A legible people: Identification politics and Jewish accommodation in Tsarist Russia.

If in the eighteenth century Jews could be identified by their speech, clothing, and religious practices, then by the end of the nineteenth century these symbols of Jewishness were no longer as visible or distinct. How were Jews recognized as Jews, as differences between Jews and non-Jews diminished? This study analyzes the politics and problems of documenting Jewish identities in the western borderlands and certain regions of the interior provinces of the Russian Empire in the long nineteenth century. This study uses petitions and other forms of official correspondence written by and about Jews to analyze how Jews interacted with the bureaucracy, conceived of themselves as members of the empire, and made sense of the world around them. At the beginning of the nineteenth century an important shift occurred in documentary practice that serves as the point of departure for this study. If in the early modern period dress, badges, and headgear represented social status and religious identities, then in the modern period states made their populations legible by indirect means of registration, through censuses, passports, and vital statistics books. The bureaucratic preoccupation with recognition generated massive paper trails that became important tools by which the state guaranteed public safety and at the same time constrained individual freedoms. As an unprecedented number of individuals traveled across wide geographic terrains, government officials faced the dilemma of identifying individuals based on a series of documents that were often unreliable and poorly managed. Errors and various forms of irregularities hindered Jews' ability to participate in the civic order, as well as challenged the state's ability to control its territories and peoples. Documentation practices, however, not only constrained movement and facilitated government surveillance, but linked individuals to the body social. Ordinary and elite Jews alike began to gradually embrace administrative procedures and regulations in their daily lives by petitioning to settle questions of record keeping and documentation. One of the most important consequences of the documentation practices was the inculcation of a new participatory ethos and commitment to record keeping, as well as the gradual involvement of Jews in this record-keeping enterprise.Ph.D.Ethnic studiesEuropean historyModern historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124617/2/3150151.pd