Tracing the evolving nature of popular and official beliefs about the purported nature of the
Jews from the 18th century onwards Russia and the Jewish Question explores how perceptions of
Jews in late Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union shaped the regimes' policies toward them. In
so doing Robert Weinberg provides a fruitful lens through which to investigate the social
economic political and cultural developments of modern Russia. Here Weinberg reveals that
the 'Jewish Question' - and by extension anti-Semitism - emerged at the end of the 18th
century when the partitions of Poland made hundreds of thousands of Jews subjects of the
Russian crown. He skillfully argues the phrase itself implies the singular nature of Jews as a
group of people whose religion culture and occupational make-up prevent them from fitting
into predominantly Christian societies. The book then expounds how other characteristics were
associated with the group over time: in particular debates about rights of citizenship the
impact of industrialization the emergence of the nation-state and the proliferation of new
political ideologies and movements contributed to the changing nature of the 'Jewish Question'.
Its content may have not remained static but its purpose consistently questions whether or not
Jews pose a threat to the stability and well-being of the societies in which they live and this
in a specifically Russian context is what Weinberg examines so expertly.
