Elusive Emancipation: Jews in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Beyond

The majority of the worlds Jews entered the twentieth century unemancipated. Most of that majority lived in what is today Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, at the time part of the Russian Empire. Join Benjamin Nathans (University of Pennsylvania) as he explores why emancipation came so late to the empire of the tsars, what role Jews played in its arrival, and how the Bolshevik Revolution recast the meaning of emancipation itself, with consequences that are still with us today.
Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Associate Professor of History at Penn, specializing in modern Russia, the Soviet Union, modern Jewish history, and the history of human rights. He is author of the prizewinning "Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia," which has been translated into Hebrew and Russian, and co-editor, most recently, of the collective volume "From Europe's East to the Middle East: Israel's Russian and Polish Lineages." His book "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" is forthcoming with Princeton University Press. He chaired the international committee of scholars hired by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the New York-based museum design firm, to help create the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, which opened in 2012. His essays have appeared in The Economist, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and other venues.
This lecture is part of the Sid Lapidus Lecture Series, programs created in partnership with the exhibition "How Jews Became Citizens: Highlights from the Sid Lapidus Collection."
The exhibit and program have been made possible by the generous support of Sid and Ruth Lapidus, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
This event took place on February 9, 2023.