At the Sectoral Level: Village Jews in the Nineteenth-Century Minsk Gubernya

The lecture will present some results of an extensive research project into the lives and lineages of rural Jewish population of Minsk Guberniya in the 19^th century (“village Jews”). The study was based mainly on Russian systematic records, such as the eviction lists of rural Jews composed in 1808, fiscal censuses (“Revisions”) conducted periodically from 1795 to 1858, statistical volumes published annually from 1860 to 1913, and materials drawn from the first National Census of the entire population in Russian Empire, taken in 1897. The research is the first systematic investigation of the rural Jews in any region of the Russian Empire. Contrary to the stereotypic view of the Jews in Eastern Europe as typically, if not wholly, urban dwellers, the rural Jews constituted a significant segment of population throughout the modern period (until World War I), sometimes reaching about one-third of the total Jewish population and in some exceptional cases constituting an absolute majority of the local Jews. The presentation will focus on the particular family structure of the rural Jews of Minsk Guberniya, and especially its composition in terms of age and gender, as reflected in the eviction lists. Genealogical aspects, as they emerge in the fiscal censuses, will also be examined.. This multi-layered research will demonstrate the complicated interaction between the urban and rural Jewish populations in this region. Among other things, it may possibly throw light on the longstanding conundrum of the failure of the Hassidic movement to catch on in “Lita” (Belarus and Lithuania).