Lars Fischer

The Pogromshchina and the Directory: a New Historiographical Synthesis?

National Ukrainian historiographys attempts to place the most extensive mass killings of Jews in modern history prior to the Shoah beyond the national movements responsibility have traditionally combined the suggestion of an undue involvement of Jewry with Bolshevism and the notion that the autonomy rights granted to Ukrainian Jewry by the Rada (and reinstated by the Directory) would vouchsafe for the movements ingrained hostility toward antisemitism. An examination of both traditional anglophone National Ukrainian historiography and of Henry Abramsons claim to have achieved a synthesis of ‘Ukrainian’ and ‘Jewish’ historiography reveals not only that these exonerative strategies are hardly tenable but also the extent to which Abramsons line of argument continues (albeit, perhaps, unintentionally) to echo numerous aspects fundamental to the conventional ‘Ukrainian’ approach.

Is the study of Jewish–Christian relations in Europe still important?

Neither of the two most common objections to the continued importance of the study of Jewish–Christian relations – the “changed circumstances thesis” and the “job done thesis” – is compelling. The pioneering work of individual scholars notwithstanding, as a serious academic discipline or sub-discipline, the study of Jewish–Christians relations is still in its infancy and its protagonists would be well advised to take into account the critical comments Gershom Scholem formulated in 1944 with regards to Jewish studies as an evolving discipline.

Hitler’s Priests. Catholic Clergy and National Socialism / Wissenschaftsmanagement im “Dritten Reich.” Geschichte der Generalverwaltung der Kaiser‐Wilhelm‐Gesellschaft / Nazi Germany and the Humanities

context constitute serious conceptual shortcomings. She reconstructs as precisely as possible the multifaceted cultural history of a provincial town during a very short period of time. To be sure, her account includes an analysis of the connections between Vitebsk and the Russian capitals and the organised arrivals of artists from Petersburg (Dobuzhinsky, Liubavina, Radlov, Tilberg, Chagall, then Ermolaeva, Romm, Lissitzky). She suggests that many artists agreed to come to Vitebsk only because they believed they would enjoy better working and living conditions there. Even so, the book ultimately fails to situate the cultural life of Vitebsk in a broader context. Shatskikh’s account frequently sounds like an homage to the “creative energy of Vitebsk” and its ability to stir “the creative juices not only of its native but of its naturalized and temporary citizens as well” (3). She claims that the atmosphere of Vitebsk touched everyone who came in contact with it and recognises that she has no rational, scholarly explanation for this phenomenon. Rather disconcertingly, Shatskikh suggests the existence of a specific “Vitebsker” nationality that supposedly unified all those who came to love the city and she clearly asserts her own intention to make a decisive contribution to the building of a new nation and nationalism à la Vitebsk. While the chaotic vitality and creativity of the town is sometimes reflected in the book by a no less chaotic assemblage of information, it nevertheless forms an important point of reference for students of the cultural history of Eastern Europe and will undoubtedly help to shore up the status of Vitebsk as an important focal point for the history of (European) art.