The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well. A few Jews were allowed to live outside the area, including those with university education, the ennobled, members of the most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans, some military personnel and some services associated with them, including their families, and sometimes their servants. Pale is an archaic term meaning an enclosed area.
Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro, commonly known as "The Bartenura", was a 15th-century Italian rabbi best known for his popular commentary on the Mishnah. In his later years, he rejuvenated the Jewish community of Jerusalem and became recognised as the spiritual leader of the Jews of his generation.
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian philosopher, theologian, poet, pamphleteer, and literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century and in the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century.
Cantonists were underage sons of conscripts in the Russian Empire. From 1721 on they were educated in special "cantonist schools" for future military service. The cantonist schools and the cantonist system were eventually abolished in 1857, following public and international criticism and the Russian defeat in the Crimean War.
Yiddishism is a cultural and linguistic movement which began among Jews in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th century. Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1836–1917), I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), and Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916). The Yiddishist movement gained popularity alongside the growth of the Jewish Labor Bund and other Jewish political movements, particularly in the Russian Empire and United States. The movement also fluctuated throughout the 20th and 21st century because of the revival of the Hebrew language and the negative associations with the Yiddish language.
Walter Ze'ev Laqueur was a German-born American historian, journalist, political commentator, and Holocaust survivor. He was an influential scholar on the subjects of terrorism and political violence.
Nazi analogies or Nazi comparisons are any comparisons or parallels which are related to Nazism or Nazi Germany, which often reference Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, the SS, or the Holocaust. Despite criticism, such comparisons have been employed for a wide variety of reasons since Hitler's rise to power. Some Nazi comparisons are logical fallacies, such as reductio ad Hitlerum. Godwin's law asserts that a Nazi analogy is increasingly likely the longer an internet discussion continues; Mike Godwin also stated that not all Nazi comparisons are invalid.
Isaac Erter was a Polish-Jewish satirist and poet of the Galician Haskalah. His Hebrew prose has been compared to that of writers Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne.
The accusation that Joseph Stalin was antisemitic is much discussed by historians. Although part of a movement that included Jews and rejected antisemitism, he privately displayed a contemptuous attitude toward Jews on various occasions that were witnessed by his contemporaries, and are documented by historical sources. Stalin argued that the Jews possessed a national character but were not a nation and were thus unassimilable. He argued that Jewish nationalism, particularly Zionism, was hostile to socialism. In 1939, he reversed communist policy and began a cooperation with Nazi Germany that included the removal of high-profile Jews from the Kremlin. As dictator of the Soviet Union, he promoted repressive policies that conspicuously impacted Jews shortly after World War II, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. At the time of his death, Stalin was planning an even larger campaign against Jews, which included the deportation of all Jews within the Soviet Union to Northern Kazakhstan. According to his successor Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin was fomenting the doctors' plot as a pretext for further anti-Jewish repressions.
The Russian State Institute of Performing Arts, formerly known as St Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy, formerly Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinema (LGITMiK), is a theatre school in Saint Petersburg. It is the oldest Russian state theatre school, being founded in 1779, and has incorporated several mergers of other institutions during its history, including the Ostrovsky Leningrad Theatre Institute and the Leningrad Institute of Art History.
The Soviet offensive plans controversy was a debate among historians in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as to whether Joseph Stalin had planned to launch an attack against Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941. The controversy began with Soviet defector Viktor Suvorov with his 1988 book Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War? In it, he claimed that Stalin used Nazi Germany as a proxy to attack Europe.
Pavel Vyacheslavovich Gusterin is a Russian orientalist.
Vasily Pavlovich Kravkov was an Imperial Russian Army medical officer, Privy Councilor (1917), and author of diaries of the Russo-Japanese War and World War I.
Eli Schechtman was a Yiddish writer. He defined the purpose of his work as follows: "My mission in Jewish literature was and still is ... to show to those who negate the power of the Galut, how mighty – spiritually and physically – were the generations who grew up in that Galut, even in the most godforsaken places."
Boris Derevensky is a Russian writer, best known for his publication of a popular omnibus "Jesus Christ in the Documents of History", which had several reissues. Derevensky also has publications in different literary magazines and collective books.
Putler, sometimes extended to Vladolf Putler, is a derogatory neologism and portmanteau formed by merging the names of Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler. Often used in the slogan "Putler Kaput!" by people opposed to Putin, the term has a negative connotation.
Mordecai Suchostaver was a Galician adherent of the Haskalah, and teacher of philosophy at the rabbinical seminary of Zhitomir. He was a student of Nachman Krochmal and Menachem Mendel Levin.
The Cold Synagogue or Školišča Synagogue was a synagogue located near the intersection of Vyalikaja Hramadzianskaya and Pravaya Naberezhnaya Streets, in Mogilev, Belarus.
Modern Jewish historiography is the development of the Jewish historical narrative into the modern era. While Jewish oral history and the collection of commentaries in the Midrash and Talmud are ancient, with the rise of the printing press and movable type in the early modern period, Jewish histories and early editions of the Torah/Tanakh were published which dealt with the history of the Jewish religion, and increasingly, national histories of the Jews, Jewish peoplehood and identity. This was a move from a manuscript or scribal culture to a printing culture. Jewish historians wrote accounts of their collective experiences, but also increasingly used history for political, cultural, and scientific or philosophical exploration. Writers drew upon a corpus of culturally inherited text in seeking to construct a logical narrative to critique or advance the state of the art. Modern Jewish historiography intertwines with intellectual movements such as the European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment but drew upon earlier works in the Late Middle Ages and into diverse sources in antiquity.
Menahem Mann Ben Solomon ha-Levi Amelander was a Dutch-Jewish author and historian of the 18th century. He died before 1767.
