"Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life" with Elissa Bemporad

Jews in the Soviet Union, a new multi-volume history, is an unprecedented undertaking. This groundbreaking work draws on rare access to documents from the Soviet archives, allowing for the presentation of a sweeping history of Jewish life in the Soviet Union from 1917 through the early 1990s. Authored by Elissa Bemporad, Volume 1, Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, tells the story of the ways in which Jews endured, adjusted to, and participated in the Soviet system both as individuals and as part of a Jewish collectivity during the first decade of its existence. The volume explores Jewish cultural, political, and social life in the different regions of the Soviet Union, integrating gender and women’s issues, narratives of historical elites and ordinary folk. It focuses on everyday life and discusses the fate of Jews in the Soviet Union both as Soviet citizens and as Jews. Chronicling the ways in which different Jews became Soviet in the 1920s, the volume reveals how the lines of contact between Jews in the Soviet Union and the outside world fluctuated between open antagonism and impassioned support.

Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and the Graduate Center - CUNY. She is a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Bemporad is the author of three monographs, including Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual M**der in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, 2019), and the editor of several volumes, including, most recently, Pogroms: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2021) and The Destruction of Dubova: Chronicle of a Dead City (Bloomsbury 2025). Her work has appeared in different languages, including French, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, and Russian. 

*Guests must register by Monday, March 9, to be approved for campus access; unregistered guests will not be permitted on campus. Each guest must register individually using a unique email address.

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.

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