Authority, Religion, and the Urban Order: The Case of Kiev's Jewish Commercial Elites

This paper investigates the role of Jewish commercial elites in the political and economic life of Kiev, a multi-cultural urban center in the Russian empire’s western borderlands.  Dubbed “the inferno of Russian Israel” by the historian Simon Dubnow, the city often is portrayed (even in the most recent historiography) as a cold and unwelcoming environment for Jews—a site where they faced constant discrimination from the tsarist administration and anti-Semitic violence from the masses.  This paper, by contrast, examines the cooperative relationship that developed between the rulers of the city and its most successful Jewish entrepreneurs.  It documents the measures that imperial administrators took to engage Jews in economic development projects, which ultimately vested the city’s Jewish elites with substantial political and cultural power. It also notes that Jews’ “assimilation” into imperial/Russian culture was not necessarily a prerequisite for their engagement in local society; indeed, many of Kiev’s Jewish elites prided themselves on their religious devotion, which imperial officials themselves celebrated.  The paper concludes by considering the ramifications of Jewish elites’ involvement in urban affairs, arguing that precisely the integration of this group bred new resentments among the city’s Orthodox working classes.