ABSTRACT
Russian Jewry had become the largest in the world during the course of the nineteenth century. Jewry had been absorbed reluctantly under Czarist rule and confined to the areas of European Russia, known as the ‘Pale of Settlement’, areas where Jews were permitted to reside. The great period of Russian liberalism came to an end with the assassination of the reformist Czar Alexander II in 1881. The Jewish leadership and masses were shocked and many reappraised their position. The official disapproval of any Jewish ethnicity expressed in literature, history, folklore, or even memorials, was to become further pronounced with the passing of years, in the post-Stalin era as well. The Jews are also almost entirely absent in Ehrenburg’s account. Ehrenburg even suggests that the Allies are not pulling their weight sufficiently in the common struggle.
