ABSTRACT
In 1989 I. R. Shafarevich published an essay, Russophobia, which he had written a decade earlier. In his writings, Shafarevich borrowed from the 19th century French historian Augustin Cochin the concept of the little nation', a self-contained band of intellectuals which is alienated from the broader culture surrounding it, and which serves as a revolutionary ferment within society. In pre-revolutionary France, the little nation' comprised the Masonic lodges, which created their own, anti-national culture. Shafarevich concedes that Jews played no part in Russian public life before the 1880s, isolated as they were in their closed religious communities. He argues that at the end of the century, as the traditionalist community began to disintegrate, Jews flooded into Russia's economic, political and cultural life. Portraying Judaism in the broad and sweeping terms favoured by critics like Shafarevich involves oversimplification and vulgarization of the entire Jewish tradition.
