War or Revolution: Russian Jews and Conscription in Britain, 1917 by Harold Shukman (review)
2007; Maney Publishing; Volume: 85; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/see.2007.0007
ISSN2222-4327
Autores Tópico(s)Eastern European Communism and Reforms
ResumoREVIEWS 787 of steb,too, isby no means confined to theworld of rockmusic. The intention of theMusic and Word chapter is to reveal the origins of contemporary pop music 'on the one hand in the official Soviet pop culture of the 1960s and 1970s (estrada) and on the other hand in the underground bard and rock movement' (p. 199). This is a crucial undertaking and the account of Soviet popular music, official and non-official, iswide-ranging and lucid.One minor omission is the explanation of the institution of the state-licensed vokal'no instrumental'nyi ansambl' ? despite not defining this phenomenon, Beumers occasionally uses the acronym 'VIA'. Nonetheless, the chapter provides a much-needed account of theway inwhich both official and unofficial Soviet culture played a part in shaping post-Soviet trends. It also introduces an interesting discussion of the importance of gender, sexuality and transgression in the lyricsand visual culture of rock and pop since the 1980s. One of the real successes of Pop CultureRussia!, especially as a teaching resource, is in giving context to aspects of contemporary Russia that have some currency outside the former Soviet Union, whether related to a particu lar cultural product, such as the girl pop duo, t.A.T.u., or the film version of Nochnoi dozor (Night Watch, 2004), or simply as a result of the kinds of events thatmake it into Western headlines. With its insightfuldiscussion of an ambi tiously conceived and always engaging panorama of contemporary culture, itmakes an important contribution to the development of Russian popular culture as a subject for serious study. Department ofRussian and Slavonic Studies Polly McMighael Universityof Nottingham Shukman, Harold. War or Revolution: RussianJews and Conscriptionin Britain, igiy. Vallentine Mitchell, London and Pordand, OR, 2006. x + 157 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?45.00; ?18.50. War or Revolution follows the fate ofRussian Jews in Britain who, hitherto exempt from compulsory military service during the First World War, were compelled to choose in the summer of 1917either to enlist in theBritish forces or return to fightforRussia. This is not one of the big subjects of theGreat War ? the dilemma applied to only around 30,000 men, and less than 4,000 were sent to Russia ? nevertheless, it is a micro-history with a big theme: the question of identity.This is fundamental to the study of history; after all, history is supposed to tell us where we came from, so we can understand who we are. This subject isparticularly important toHarold Shukman because his father and uncle were among those sent to Russia in 1917. One of themany iniquities of totalwar was that the state foisted a national identity upon all subjects and citizens. Yet the Yiddish speaking Russian Jews in Britain didn't seem to fit into any convenient category: were they belligerents, neutrals or allies? Were they refugees or immigrants? Russian or British?When a British court demanded thatLeon Trotskii state his national ity in 1917 he replied 'Social Democrat' (p. 69). There were no answers to 788 SEER, 85, 4, OCTOBER 2007 these questions largely because Jews of the Diaspora were self-professed 'Internationals' (p. 69), 'stateless before the notion of statelessness existed' (p. 68). Nevertheless, the bureaucrats of Britain, with Kafkaesque absurdity, expended a great deal of energy in trying to find an answer. Chapter one of this book explains why the Russian Jews could not be included in theMilitary Service Act of 1916: theywere not citizens, so they had neither the rightsnor obligations of citizenship. Chapter two explains why they came toBritain in the first place in a succinct and even-handed summary of the plight ofRussia's Jews in the lastdecades of tsaristrule. Chapters three and four explain why, even if the British chose to ignore their refugee status, they couldn't send them toRussia: put simply, the tsardidn't want them back ? Jews and emigre socialists were all considered politically unreliable. All of this changed with the downfall of the Romanovs: the new Provisional Government was sympathetic to both Jews and socialists alike. The British government duly hammered out an agreement for the return of thoseRussian political emigres and Jews who chose to return, and conscripted the...
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