The Making Of Jewish Revolutionaries In The Pale Of Settlement

This book examines the emotional aspects of revolutionary experience during a critical turning point in both Russian and Jewish history - the Revolution of 1905. Inna Shtakser argues that radicalization involved an emotional transformation that enabled many young Jewish revolutionaries to develop an activist stance towards reality and a prioritization of feelings demanding action over others.

Uncovering the links between emotion and activism holds a special significance in the context of modern Jewish history. When pogroms swept through the Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement during 1905-07, young Jews who had fled their communities years earlier, often after bitter conflicts with their families, returned to protect them.

Never expecting to be accepted back, they arrived with new identities, forged in radical study circles and revolutionary experience, as activist, self-assertive Jews. The self-assertion that previously drove them away often made them more effective leaders than the traditional Jewish communal authorities.