Jewish bureaucracy in late imperial Russia: The phenomenon of expert Jews, 1850-1917

All-encompassing modernization and reform has dominated the political agenda of Russian autocracy since the early nineteenth century. The modernization of Russian Jews occupied a significant place on this agenda. Policy making and its implementation was the sole prerogative of the imperial bureaucratic elite and its institutions. The same is true for Jewish policy, which was carried out by institutions of Russian Jewish bureaucratic elite, a product as well as a major instrument of change. Political and institutional consistency, demonstrated by the Russian Jewish bureaucratic elite, cemented integrity and continuity of the whole modernization process. This institutional aspect is largely underestimated by scholarship; as a result, the modernization of Russian Jews is inevitably understood as a number of self-sustaining processes in social, political, economical, and cultural spheres.The goal of this study is to establish political integrity for the process of modernization by Russian Jews through the examination of the Russian Jewish bureaucratic elite, as a vehicle of social and political change. Thus this dissertation study defines Russian Jewish bureaucratic elite, along with its institutions and politics, as a focal point and a bureaucratic hub for every single issue within the modernization of Russian Jews. Moreover, the significance of Russian Jewish bureaucrats stretches beyond their service and involvement within Jewish politics. They emerged as a distinctive secular Jewish identity, based on a conservative bureaucratic variety of maskilic ethos, comprising a commitment to change and loyalties to both the government and the Jewish people.In sum, this study contextualizes the Russian Jewish elite, known as the expert Jews (uchenye evrei), as Jewish officials in government service. It provides a fresh new perspective on modern Jewish history in Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as a critical reevaluation of modern Jewish politics.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 2010.School code: 0021