HISTORY OF THE JEWS
IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY
HISTORY OF THE JEWS
IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY
BY
S. M. DUBNOW
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
BY
I. FRIEDLAENDER
VOLUME I
FROM THE BEGINNING UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I
(1825)
Philadelphia
The Jewish Publication Society of America
1916
Copyright, 1916, by
The Jewish Publication Society of America
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
It is not my intention to expatiate in these prefatoryremarks on the present work and its author. A history of theJews in Russia and Poland from the pen of S. M. Dubnowneeds neither justification nor recommendation. The want ofa work of this kind has long been keenly felt by those interestedin Jewish life or Jewish letters, never more keenly than to-daywhen the flare of the world conflagration has thrown intoghastly relief the tragic plight of the largest Jewry of theDiaspora. As for the author, his power of grasping and presentingthe broad aspects of general Jewish history and hislifelong, painstaking labors in the particular field of Russian-Jewishhistory fit him in singular measure to cope with thetask to which this work is dedicated.
In what follows I merely wish to render account of theEnglish translation and of the form of the original which ithas endeavored to reproduce.
The translation is based upon a work in Russian which wasespecially prepared by Mr. Dubnow for The Jewish PublicationSociety of America. Those acquainted with modernJewish literature in the Russian language know that theauthor of our book has treated the same subject in his generalhistory of the Jewish people, in three volumes, and in a numberof special studies published by him in the periodicalYevreyskaya Starina ("Jewish Antiquity"). Upon this[4]material Mr. Dubnow has freely drawn for the present work,after subjecting it to a careful revision, and so supplementingand co-ordinating it that to all intents and purposes the bookissued herewith is a new and independent publication. Moreover,the history of Russian Jewry after 1881, comprising thegruesome era of pogroms and expulsions, has been written byMr. Dubnow entirely anew, and will appear for the first timeas part of this work. The present publication may thusproperly claim to give the first comprehensive and systematicaccount of the history of Russo-Polish Jewry.
The work is divided into two volumes. The first volume,now offered to the public, contains the history of the Jews ofRussia and Poland from its beginnings until the death ofAlexander I., in 1825. The second volume will continue thehistoric narrative up to the very threshold of the present. Thebook was originally scheduled to appear at a later date. Thegreat events of our time, which have made the question ofRussian Jewry