People
History is generally concerned with people and change, therefore historians seek to analyze the transformations that societies and civilizations have undergone throughout history. The Center’s Educational Platform uses an array of analytical tools to understand the past and to reconstruct the multiplicity of past human experiences. Our materials exemplify how the experiences of people have changed over time and how people have transformed their ideas, imagination, institutions, or cultural practices on a profound level. The modules and resources within this theme are concerned with human relationships, corporeality or bodily experiences, emotions, self-representation, community, and the ways people have struggled while inhabiting a shared world. We offer a range of sources to support historians in connecting the accounts of individuals and group movements with narratives that allow us to view our past through a critical perspective. Examining the tension between individuals and collectives improves our understanding of difficult questions concerning historical problems, so that we can have a fuller picture of how the past has shaped global, national, and local relationships between societies and people.
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Primary Sources
Sofia Rusova’s Memories on Ukrainian People’s Republic
Sofia Rusova's book “My Memories” was published in Lviv in 1937. The extract presented below covers the period of her participation in the Ukrainian Central Rada (representative institution of the political, social, cultural, and professional organizations, later to be the Revolutionary Parliament of Ukraine, that run the Ukrainian National Movement) with a wide range of political life in Ukraine at that time.
Marko Cheremshyna, Short Story “The Invalid”
This short story by Mark Cheremshyna (real name Ivan Semaniuk; 1874–1927), a Ukrainian writer, lawyer, and Doctor of Law, explores the aftermath of the First World War and the struggles faced by its veterans, all set against the vivid backdrop of Hutsul culture.
A satirical report by the Soviet magazine Perets on the use of official vehicles for private Affairs, 1960
The humorous and satirical magazine Perets, published (albeit intermittently) since 1922, served as a supplementary weapon for the government in its fight against social issues. Its editorial board frequently aligned with various official campaigns, wielding its sharp wit to expose violations, shortcomings, and vices, thereby shaping public attitudes. Hryhorii Bezborodko, an experienced feuilletonist for Perets, often targeted the “antipodes of Soviet morality,” such as indifference, mismanagement, careerism, and other societal flaws. His report was no coincidence; it aimed to bolster the campaign against the misuse of official vehicles. Despite the 1959 restrictions on the use of state cars, members of the nomenklatura continued to exploit loopholes, necessitating public shaming rather than relying solely...
Corruption in Kolomyia, Stanislav (Ivano-Frankivsk) Oblast, 1962
In the early 1960s, the Ukrainian prosecutor's office reported to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine about “exposed groups of large-scale embezzlers of socialist property and bribe-takers who had long been operating within various sectors of the national economy.” The scale of the defendants' shadow income was staggering: during investigations into four cases, authorities seized hundreds of thousands of rubles, single-story houses, kilograms of gold, dozens of cars, and other assets. Such wealth was enabled by a well-developed “shadow economy.” Despite inflated economic plans, strict resource controls, and rigorous oversight, resourceful producers consistently found ways to generate “surplus” production, which they used to enhance their own comfort and secure patronage....
Illegal Construction of Dachas in Kherson, 1970
The satisfaction of Soviet citizens’ basic needs led to a growing demand for an improved quality of life, with one key indicator being access to comfortable recreation. Members of the nomenklatura became active participants in the establishment of “gardening societies,” which involved allocating land plots to factory workers for gardening and horticulture. However, the widely publicized “Kherson case” revealed that their interest lay less in gardening and more in personal comfort. Instead of allowing the construction of simple “summer-type buildings,” the nomenklatura opted for “permanent brick large summer cottages, often equipped with heating.” These practices not only violated the 1960 government decree banning the construction of such dachas but also involved the illegal...
Abuses of a Sugar Factory Director and his Party Rehabilitation, 1953
The case of H. illustrates the activities of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which reviewed appeals for reinstatement into the party. H. had been expelled for “the use of his official position for mercenary purposes and illegal spending of public funds” while heading a sugar factory. Specifically, he exchanged his old cow for a younger one and fed his pig on the farm of the Division of Workers' Supply (rus. Отдел рабочего снабжения), which was under his supervision. Additionally, he had two employees in excess of the factory’s staffing needs and persecuted the chief accountant for exposing his abuses. H. was also accused of selling sugar...
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Celebration at the Stadium of the Ukrainian Sokil-Batko, Lviv, 1934
The event captured in the image takes place at the stadium of the Ukrainian Sokil-Batko, likely during the third and final Regional Sokil gathering in 1934. The first Ukrainian gymnastic society, Sokil (Sokil-Batko [Father Falcon]) was founded in Lviv on February 11, 1894. The model was the charter of the Czech Sokol (1862, founded by Miroslav Tyrš). The goal of the society was fostering national unity, strength, and dignity among Ukrainians while also promoting endurance, agility, entrepreneurship, and discipline. Beyond gymnastics, Sokil placed significant emphasis on firefighting and tourism. The society’s first chairman, serving until 1900, was the renowned architectural engineer Vasyl Nahirnyi. By 1900, Sokil had expanded its activities across Galicia, leading...
View on the Monument to the Soviet Constitution, Lviv 1940
The monument to the Soviet constitution, or the Stalin Constitution, was built in Lviv in October 1939. The authors were the sculptor Serhyi Lytvynenko and Kyiv artist Mykhailo Dmytrenko, it’s possible that, the artists adapted the project, originally conceived in Moscow, to the new city conditions. The sculptors Yevhen Dzyndra and Andryi Koverko carried out the project, but the participation of Lytvynenko’s student the young sculptor Yakiv Chaika is also a possibility. The monument was made in the ceramic-sculpture factory, which opened on Muchna St. in 1939. The location for the monument was chosen in the city centre, the “island” on the boundary mark of the Hetman embankments, between Yahellon’ska st. and Holy...
Members of the cinema club in the village of Novooleksandrivka, Ukrainian SSR, during a film shoot, May 1981
In addition to film studios, which predominantly comprised adults, the network of amateur filmmaking also encompassed groups tailored for children and teenagers, typically organized within houses of culture or schools. Oversight of these groups was typically carried out by representatives from People’s Studios and local film clubs. The archival caption of this photograph reads as follows: “Members of the cinema club at the House of Culture in the village of Novoaleksandrovka, Belovodsk district, Voroshilovgrad oblast, during a film shoot. From left to right: students Naydysh A, Petrov P, the club’s leader Kolesnik V. I., student Burian V. — village Novoaleksandrovka, 15 May 1981, by Y. Khromushyn (outdoors against the backdrop of a river).”
Film amateurs of the steam locomotive and car repair plant, photograph dated of 1956
“The initiators of a film studio at the steam locomotive and truck repair plant (from the left to the right) Slutskyn S.S., Art Club Director of Tool and Inventory Shop, Skybalo G.L., Director of Radio Broadcasting Center, and Zirka A.V. are looking through the first shots of the new film about the plant, Lviv December 7th, 1956". This archival record accompanies this photograph in the Central State Audio/Visual and Electronic Archive (until the recent times called Central State G.S. Pshenychnyi Filming Archive) in Kyiv. Despite it is the official representation of film amateurs that was probably created for the purpose of media publications, careful analysis of the details makes it possible to discern...
Wall newspaper of Kostyantynivka’ bottling plant, 1967
This wall newspaper is part of a series of wall newspapers from the Kostiantynivka bottling plant, created in 1967. The series consisted of 13 excerpts dedicated to local participants in the fights against the White Guards after the First World War. Thirteen newspaper issues reveal the plant's history, explain its name "13 Executed Workers Plant", and call for the publication of photographs and memories related to the confrontation with the White Guards. The presented here example tells the story of the family of Bobylov Aleksandr Semenovych and Bobylova-Chumychkina Mariia Semenivna, who were participants in the revolutionary movement. In 1918-1920, Kostiantynivka underwent numerous power changes, seized first by the White Guards and then by...
Olha Maria Zhydacek and her husband Hryhoriy Bandurka, Lviv, spring 1939
This photo is a testimony to a photographic practice popular in the 1930s. It was about making portraits of passers-by on the city streets. Such photos often recorded people in motion in the middle of a large street, and seemed to emphasize the belonging of those depicted characters to urban culture. In view of this, the genre of such photography can be called street portrait, the street and commercial photography. The photo shows the great-grandmother and great-grandfather of Bozhena Pelenska — Olha-Maria Zhydacek and her husband Hryhoriy Bandurka (b. 1899). Based on the Bozhena's memories, the story was recorded of the photograph and of the people in it. The photo was taken on...
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Bilka, film,12 minutes
A film by amateur filmmaker Roman Buchko, co-directed with Volodymyr Bordiuk and Roman Chyzhyk. The film is named after the Bilka River in Lviv Oblast, a right tributary of the Poltva (Vistula River basin). It was created at the Murator People’s Film Studio of the Lviv House of Culture of Builders. The triple authorship reflects the specifics of amateur filmmaking in the USSR, where any amateur activity had to be collective. The chosen topic and content of the work were characteristic of Roman Buchko, who systematically worked with this theme. Buchko hailed from the area depicted in the film, the village of Hai, near Zvenyhorod. Noteworthy is that Volodymyr Bordiuk, head...
Collective of Communist Labor at Shoe Factory, 1960
Television news of the Lviv Television Studio followed the operators of Ukrkinochronika who chose shoe factory No. 3 as a model enterprise of the city’s light industry. The television camera shows to the audience Kateryna Lysak, an exemplary employee of the enterprise that was granted a status of a “communist labor enterprise”. At such enterprises, the example of the pioneers was to be followed by other workers, and a television clip told the people of Lviv about leaders of production and how the shoe factory was developing.
Roman Buchko on Soviet Film Amateurs: Excerpt from an Interview on November 1, 2012
Comment will follow...
“Oh, in the meadow blooms the red viburnum,” a Ukrainian resistance song
This source is an audio recording of the folk version of the one of the most popular Ukrainian resistance songs. It is known by various titles: “The rifleman’s Anthem,” [Cтрілецький гімн] “The song of the viburnum,” [Пісня про калину] or “Oh, in the meadow blooms the red viburnum” [Ой у лузі червона калина]. The song’s worldwide spread was facilitated by the performance of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, the lead singer of the Boombox band, who on February 28, 2022, the fourth day of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, sang only the first stanza of the song. His performance on St. Sophia Square in Kyiv led to the emergence of remixes. Among the many performers are...
Legend about the “disguised emperor” during the First World War
This source is the audio recording of the legend about the events of the First World War. The storyline describes an “emperor” who was incognito inspecting his army and its provisions. The prototype for the protagonist is Franz Josef I (1830–1916), the emperor of the Austrian Hungarian Empire. This artistic image shows the elements of naive monarchism. The type of “just and kind” ruler is based on his favorable attitude to Galician Ukrainians, who he took as loyal to the Habsburgs. This social myth about the “loyal troops” consisting of Ukrainians was reflected in the prose but also in songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Our emperor is getting old...
Grine kuzine (Green Cousin), song about emigration, 1921
The song, with a debatable authorship, was written for a Jewish theater. It was performed both in Europe and in the United States, and it became one of the most popular migrant works. The word “green” was an ironic definition of new immigrants who did not navigate well in American reality. The song “Green Cousin” raises the issue of disappointment of migrants in America, where hard work exhausts new-comers and does not bring the expected profit. The “Columbian state” appears not as a dream country where dreams come true, but a society of inequalities. Despite the hilarious music and satirical plot, the song shows the anxiety of emigrants due to the lack of...
A brivele der mamen (A Little Letter to Mama), song about emigration, 1907
The song was written by a Belarusian composer and singer, Solomon Smulewitz (1868-1943) in 1907. The author also had experience of migration to the United States. The song became very popular. In particular, it was used as a basis for a theatrical production and a film in Yiddish. The work raises the issue of migration caused separation of families. While the son who went to America has a successful life and a new family, his mother feels abandoned. Before her death, she asks her son not to forget to read Kaddish, a memorial prayer for her. The problem of separated families remained common to all migrants, but in this text the Jewish prayer...
“Goldene land” (Golden land), song about emigration, 1889
The song was written by a Lithuanian Jewish poet, Eliakum Zunser (1840-1913) based on his own experience of emigrating to the United States. The song "Golden Land" touches on the issue of new migrants, whose high expectations fail. The American city turns out to be a space full of dirt, noise, and poverty. Although jobs are available, they are poorly paid and dangerous to health. America is also not a place of social equality, because like in Europe, there is a disproportion in the distribution of wealth. This is an urban experience that was shared by many Jewish migrants who found work in the textile industry, or like Zunser himself, in the printing...
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In addressing the causes of unlawful actions committed by high-ranking officials in the 1940s and 1960s, the authorities often attributed them to the lingering influence of pre-revolutionary capitalist mentalities among certain managers. This explanation lost credibility over time, as by the 1970s and 1980s, the leadership consisted largely of individuals born and fully socialized within the Soviet Union, supposedly free from the flaws of other, non-communist societies. In this module, Viktor Krupyna uses unpublished archival materials and available source collections to examine the widespread abuse of power by Soviet officials in the Ukrainian SSR in 1945-1991, its causes, scope, and consequences.
The Soviet Union positioned itself as a society of social equality, where the elimination of human exploitation was said to have achieved harmony in class relations. The eradication of social contradictions between the “top” and “bottom” (in Soviet terminology, the “exploiters” and “exploited”) was widely promoted as an indisputable and irreversible achievement of the Soviet state. Yet, this created a paradox: while this ideal was publicly championed, the significant social gap between the people and the so-called “people's power” was a reality that remained unacknowledged. This module by Viktor Krupyna focuses on the financial privileges of the Ukrainian Soviet nomenklatura.
This module by literary scholar Olha Petrenko-Tseunova tells the story of Kateryna Biletska-Kandyba, the wife of Oleh Kandyba (known by the literary pseudonym Oleh Olzhych), a poet and member of the Ukrainian nationalist underground, head of the cultural and educational department of the Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN) and the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) (1939-1941), and her WWII experience and post-war emigration.
The Soviet government aimed to profoundly transform the styles and structures of people’s everyday lives, encompassing housing, leisure, and work. Particularly ambitious projects were conceived and executed during the 1920s and 1930s. Workers were at the forefront of Soviet social policy, with the Bolshevik Communist Party depicted in Soviet discourse as the avant-garde of the proletariat, primarily serving the interests of the working class. Did these ideas correspond to practice, and at what cost were they realized? This will be discussed in the module by historian Roman Liubavskyi.
The early vision of amateur filmmaking in the Soviet Union was characterized by the pragmatic idea of using the new media not only for entertainment but also to involve a wide range of citizens in the production of newsreels and to create a network of correspondents across the country to cover the construction of socialism. However, despite sporadic attempts, this idea was not immediately implemented on a large scale. The lack of technology and sufficient equipment, and later the political climate of the 1930s, hindered this. It was only after liberalization and Khrushchev's reforms that the idea reappeared on the agenda.
The end of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century is known as the period of mass migration from Europe to other continents, when more than 55 million people changed their place of residence. In particular, this process captured the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, where a difficult economic situation, job shortages, and persecutions stirred various groups of the population to leave. Such groups included both Ukrainian and Polish peasants, and Jews from urban centers who were small-scale craftsmen or workers. Most often, they moved to the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, where labor was needed at factories or farms.
The founders of the Soviet Union believed that the basis for new forms of labor was to be an amateur initiative and talents, of which the people have an endless source, managed by “nationwide accounting and control”. The method of introducing new forms of industry management was the widest propaganda of labor achievements. Soviet ideologists habitually cited Lenin who believed that labor could change a human being under socialism and advised how to organize socialist competition. This module by historian Bohdan Shumylovych is devoted to the topic of labor in communist propaganda, using the example of the 1960s.
In the 19th century, the gender pact dividing public and private spheres, as man-owned and women-inhabited, found its most solid reasoning. In this vision, the city as the most obvious embodiment of public life, seemed to be male by default. Women in the city were taken as potentially threatened. This was evidenced by a number of prohibitions, which could include not only certain places inaccessible to women, such as universities in Lviv until the late 1890s, but also ordinary everyday experiences that they could claim only at the cost of their own reputation. In this module, historian Ivanna Cherchovych will try to look at the city from its women's experiences.
The "The City as a Stage: When Politics Takes to the Streets" project focuses on mass events in the public space of Lviv during the Habsburg period, which took place in the open air – on the streets and squares of the city. As the political center of Galicia, the "royal capital city" of Lviv was simultaneously considered the "capital of the freest part of Poland" and the "capital of Prince Lev." Political and national confrontations were concentrated here. Although the population of Lviv at that time consisted mainly of Poles and Jews, followed by Ukrainians, it was the competition between Ukrainians and Poles that was most significant. These two groups declared their...
У 1950–1960-х роках на підприємствах Радянської України поширилися практики, скеровані на удосконалення праці. Двигуном цього процесу були так звані передовики – учасники руху трудящих СРСР за комуністичне ставлення до праці та за виховання людини комуністичного суспільства.
The course aims to engage students in a dialogue with different disciplinary frameworks that explore the concepts of sexuality and decoloniality, and their intersection with other epistemic categories. These frameworks, which include anthropology, sociology, gender, queer, and trans* studies, are introduced with attention to and focus on the “decolonial option” as a method and source of knowledge.
This Lesson/Unit plan was developed within the Curriculum Development Project: On Ukraine, organized by the Davis Center, Harvard University in partnership with Alexander Langstaff (New York University), and the Center for Urban History in 2024. The project was intended for middle, high school, or community college educators, living and working in the U.S. The author: Paul R. Huard, Ashland High School (Oregon, USA).
Transport Mobility in Eastern Europe: Political Designs and Lived Experiences (mid XIX – XX Century)
The course invites to explore East-European History of mid XIX - late XX cent. through the concept of mobility, which encompasses movement of people, goods and ideas. Students will deal with a corpus of texts on social history of transportation, as well as with a rich array of visual materials. Of special interest will be cases, specific to the region, for example cultures of Christian and Muslim pilgrimage, Socialist rallies, trolleybus infrastructures or “destalinization” of metro stations. Cases of imported western technologies will provide ground for interregional comparisons, not only in aspects of introduction of transport system, but also in aspects of their exploitation and disintegration. The course is built on a premise...
The course invites to look at the history of Soviet Ukraine from the perspective of its everyday practices. Using many visual sources from 1922 to 1991, students will explore daily routines, housing, clothing, transportation, leisure, and music consumption in urban and rural settings. Periods of peace, war, and crisis will receive equal attention so that one can see how global developments were experienced on a microlevel. Students will explore how maintaining everyday objects and personal habits was essential for building personal safety in different historical contexts. The everyday histories of Soviet Ukraine will also provide a deeper insight into the standard historical narratives about East-European societies, particularly their dialogue with the global society...
East-Central Europe played a vital role in the global history of mass migration and experienced an enormous variety of mobility processes in the long 19th and short 20th centuries. For instance, mass emigration from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and the Soviet Union, human trafficking, labor migration, forced migration during WWI and WWII, refugee crises and asylum, travel, and professional mobility. The voluminous scholarship on this chapter of migration history has lots of gaps and, notably, is almost absent from history curricula. This introductory course broadens our lens to examine the role of migration and mobility for the places where it occurred as well as the experiences of migrants, displaced persons, refugees, and...
The field of social history has achieved the edge of its popularity in 1950-1980s. It was strongly connected with other disciplines, such as economics, demography, sociology, and allowed historians to reach a much wider range of research themes. Since the 1960s, the social history of the Jewish people became important and influential part of the studies. Historians were exploring the possibilities to study Jewish community with new tools and integrating different representatives of Jewish community – workers, women, immigrants, criminals - in a research. Since 1990s historians of Jewish past shifted their interest to cultural studies. However, in the last years, we can see an economic turn, which signifies the search for a...
This course forms a part of Jewish History and Culture of East Central Europe in the 19th-20th Centuries summer school. The syllabus is availible only in Polish.
This course was a part of Jewish History and Culture of East Central Europe in the 19th-20th Centuries summer school. The syllabus is written in Polish.
In our mini-course we will explore cultural interaction between Jews and non-Jews (Ukrainians, Poles, Russians) in the borderlands of the Habsburg and Romanov empires. This is interaction that may have been conscious or unconscious, and may have involved encounter, appropriation, negotiation, exchange and destruction.
The course intends to show the possibilities afforded by applying the gender (cultural sex) perspective in the study of Jewish culture. Proceeding from the analysis of the role of the woman and man in traditional Jewish society, we will present gender difference in the process of modernization among Jewish women and men. In looking at autobiographical materials, we will trace characteristic stages and stories, as well as life’s choices of Jewish maskilim (advocates of Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment). We will use the examples of the life and work of Pua Rakowska (known as "the Grandmother of Zionism") and Sara Szenirer (reformer of the traditional education system of Jewish girls) to analyze the problem...
This short course looks at Jewish history in the context of two multinational empires: the Russian and the Habsburg. Both of these states must be understood as fundamentally pre-modern, non-national (even anti-national) political structures, a fact that is crucial for understanding Jewish history here. In the mid-19th century, the great majority of world Jewry made its home in this region and even at the end of the First World War, after the great wave of emigration to the Americas, western Europe, Erets Israel / Palestine, and South Africa, the Jewish presence here was considerable. In 1918 even antisemites could hardly imagine a Warsaw, Wilno, Lwów, Odesa (etc.) without Jews.
This course covers the period from the partitions of Poland through the Russian and Habsburg Empires, the Soviet Union and interwar Poland. Students will familiarize with the geopolitical results of Russia’s westward and Austria’s eastward expansions and will focus among other overarching themes on the shtetl, the unique East European Jewish habitat; on Hasidism, a Ukraine-born popular movement of religious enthusiasm; on the interaction between Zionists and Ukrainian nationalists in Galicia; on the development of Ukrainization and Yiddishization (or Ukrainian and Jewish korenizatsiia) in the 1920s and the situation of Jews in Poland in the 1920s; on the Holocaust and its aftermath; on Ukrainians and Jews in the dissident movement; and on Jewish-Ukrainian...
This course was a part of Jewish History, Multiethnic Past, and Common Heritage: Urban Experience in Eastern Europe summer school (July 13 – August 7, 2015. Center for Urban History. Lviv, Ukraine).
This course was a part of Jewish History, Multiethnic Past, and Common Heritage: Urban Experience in Eastern Europe summer school.
This course forms a part of Jewish History, Multiethnic Past, and Common Heritage: Urban Experience in Eastern Europe summer school. The syllabus is available only in Polish.
This course forms a part of Jewish History, Multiethnic Past, and Common Heritage: Urban Experience in Eastern Europe summer school.
This intensive 5-lecture mini-course (12 academic hours) takes a close look at various urban centers (sometimes the shtetl-like and sometimes the city-like) that shaped Jewish-Polish-Ukrainian cultural encounters that inspired the rising literary figures to explore East European multi-cultural urban legacy and make this legacy central in their creative writing. Students will explore various forms of East European urban culture—a shtetl (Chortkiv and Berdychiv), a provincial center (Chernivtsi and Ternopil), a city (Kyiv), a metropolis with a strong East European diaspora presence (Montreal and New York). This course will provide students with methodological tools at the intersection of the literary and cultural studies, urban studies, and social history.
At the end of the eighteenth century the Russian Empire acquired the largest Jewish population in the world. Although Jews and Christians had lived side by side with one another for over three hundred years in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, their life-worlds were distinct. The Great War, the Russian Revolution, and the Holocaust radically transformed the Jews of Russia, however, and the distinct culture of Russian-Jewry remains a crucial part of Jewish heritage today.
The course will cover the major development of the East European Jewry from the mid-eighteenth century till the present. More specifically, it will focus on the apparently largest category of modern Jewish history, i.e. modernity itself. The course will start with the discussion of what modernity means in contemporary scholarly discourse, and—more specifically—how it is applied today in historiography of East European Jewry. This introduction will provide a frame for the focus of the course: the analysis of the changing life patters and differing strategies of adopting, rejecting, or negotiating modernity in every-day lives of East European Jews.
This intensive 5-lecture mini-course (12 academic hours) introduces key broad themes that explore modernization and anti-modernization, urbanization and migration, secularization and acculturation and a new stratification of the Jewish society in East Europe. While it looks at the Russian empire and its western borderlands and Austrian Empire and its eastern borderlands, it focuses on Ukraine in its to-date geographical boundaries that include Galicia and Bukovina. The course does not have any prerequisites and provides broad contextualization of the selfimposed and empire-orchestrated reforms within the Jewish society against the backdrop of the Late Imperial Russia and the "long nineteenth century."
The course offers a short introduction to some of the key concepts and literary and cultural practices that shaped the represenations of modern Jewish spaces in Eastern Europe as well as their contemporary reconstructions and exhibitions. While focusing on (Jewish) Poland and Yiddish culture, this course introduces critical tools for understanding and interpreting modern (Jewish) contructions and experiences of space and place.
In 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, east European Jewry constituted the most important and culturally influential Jewish community in the world. As a result of half a century of mass migration, up to 90% of world Jewry either lived in Eastern Europe or were children of immigrants from there. Jews were particularly prominent in East European cities. In Galicia, for example, Jews constituted a plurality or majority of nearly every major city. (L’viv was an exception, where they made up “only” a quarter of the population.) This course will survey the modern history of this once vital community – social, economic, political, religious and cultural – from the Polish partitions until...
The field of social history has achieved the edge of its popularity in 1950-1980s. It was strongly connected with other disciplines, such as economics, demography, sociology, and allowed historians to reach a much wider range of research themes. Since the 1960s, the social history of the Jewish people became important and influential part of the studies. Historians were exploring the possibilities to study Jewish community with new tools and integrating different representatives of Jewish community – workers, women, immigrants, criminals - in a research. Since 1990s historians of Jewish past shifted their interest to cultural studies. However, in the last years, we can see an economic turn, which signifies the search for a...