Jewish Community of Omsk before 1917: Building a New Sociocultural Image

The paper will be dedicated to the analysis of the building of a new collective sociocultural image by Jewish community in prerevolutionary Omsk, one of the biggest cities of Western Siberia now and then). The population of Siberia due to various factors has never been homogeneous neither in ethnical, nor in religious terms. In multicultural space of Siberian cities in XIX- early XX centuries there was a place to the Jewish community despite its long distance from the Pale of Settlement. The Jews, like many other groups, got to Siberia mainly by three ways: as exiled, voluntary migrants or soldiers. There exists quite a popular idea of Siberia as a freestyle area remote from the central imperial authorities. It allowed and allows modern researchers to draw conclusions about a high level of tolerance among the population of the region, the absence of tough confrontation between different social groups, different economic status, religious and ethnic identity. Omsk could hardly be called a typical Siberian city. It was “a city of bureaucrats and militaries” and this fact influenced on all the groups of its population including Jews. It is planned to discuss following key-issues: social background and status of new community leaders, the ways of integration of Jews into a new social structure, the peculiarities of relations with non-Jewish neighbors (local authorities, Cossacks, representatives of other ethnical and religious groups). The research is based on primary archival materials, memoirs of local Jews, urban press and published sources.