Conclusion

Abstract

This book presents a cultural history of Jewish working-class radicalism in the Pale of Settlement during the Russian Revolution and its immediate aftermath and covers the period 1905–07. Several cultural histories of the Russian working class already exist, but this is not the case for the other nationalities of the Russian Empire, including Jews. Among different possible ways to write the cultural history of social movements, I chose to concentrate on identity and emotions. An understanding of the new structure of feeling and newly emerging identities offers important insights into Jewish working-class revolutionary politics. Radical ideologies provided a theoretical framework for a new structure of feeling emerging as a result of the Jewish experience of industrialization and urbanization. This structure of feeling was liberating for some, but oppressive for those excluded from the working-class radical milieu. Both its liberating and its oppressive aspects had important ramifications for Jewish working-class politics at the time.