Title A Race for the Future : Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness / Marina Mogilner

Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2022] ©2022

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Description 1 online resource (352 p.) Contents Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction: Jews, Race, and the Challenge of (Post)Imperial Modernity -- I. THE SCIENCE OF RACE -- 1. The Dawn of the Jewish Race in the Late Nineteenth-Century Russian Empire -- 2. Samuel Abramovich Weissenberg: "Provincializing Europe" through Jewish Racial Self-Description -- 3. Arkadii Danilovich El'kind: Constructing a Jewish "Cultured Nation" -- 4. Lev Iakovlevich Shternberg: The Political Science of Jewish Race -- II. THE BIOPOLITICS OF RACE -- A Necessary Introduction: Jewish Biopolitics as a Victim of Aphasia -- 5. Russian Jewish Physicians and the Politics of Jewish Biological Normalization -- 6. Medical Statistics and National Eugenics -- 7. Civil War and the Biopolitics of Survival -- 8. The Gray Zone of Jewish Biopolitics and Its Place in Soviet Modernity -- Conclusion: At the Finish Line -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index Summary The forgotten story of a surprising anti-imperial, nationalist project at the turn of the twentieth century: a grassroots movement of Russian Jews to racialize themselves.In the rapidly nationalizing Russian Empire of the late nineteenth century, Russian Jews grew increasingly concerned about their future. Jews spoke different languages and practiced different traditions. They had complex identities and no territorial homeland. Their inability to easily conform to new standards of nationality meant a future of inevitable assimilation or second-class minority citizenship. The solution proposed by Russian Jewish intellectuals was to ground Jewish nationhood in a structure deeper than culture or territory--biology.Marina Mogilner examines three leading Russian Jewish race scientists-- Samuel Weissenberg, Alexander El'kind, and Lev Shternberg--and the movement they inspired. Through networks of race scientists and political activists, Jewish medical societies, and imperial organizations like the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population, they aimed to produce "authentic" knowledge about the Jewish body, which would motivate an empowering sense of racially grounded identity and guide national biopolitics. Activists vigorously debated eugenic and medical practices, Jews' status as Semites, Europeans, and moderns, and whether the Jews of the Caucasus and Central Asia were inferior. The national science, and the biopolitics it generated, became a form of anticolonial resistance, and survived into the early Soviet period, influencing population policies in the new state.Comprehensive and meticulously researched, A Race for the Future reminds us of the need to historically contextualize racial ideology and politics and makes clear that we cannot fully grasp the biopolitics of the twentieth century without accounting for the imperial breakdown in which those politics thrived Notes In English Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2022) Subject Ṿaysenberg, Shemuʼel, 1867-1928. Ėlʹkind, A. D Shternberg, Lev I︠A︡kovlevich, 1861-1927. SUBJECT Shternberg, Lev I︠A︡kovlevich, 1861-1927 fast Subject Jews -- Anthropometry -- Russia Jews -- Anthropometry -- Soviet Union Jews -- Russia -- Identity Jews -- Soviet Union -- Identity Scientific racism -- Russia Scientific racism -- Soviet Union Race -- Political aspects HISTORY / Russia & the Former Soviet Union. HISTORY / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union Jews -- Anthropometry Jews -- Identity Race -- Political aspects Scientific racism Russia Soviet Union Form Electronic book ISBN 9780674290099 0674290097 9780674290075 0674290070

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