Moscow on the Spree: Russian Jews as Cultural Brokers in Berlin, 1919–1933

In the wake of the 1917 Russian revolution thousands of Russian Jews fled territories of the former Russian Empire in order to escape hunger, violence and instability of post-revolutionary years. Following the patterns of the general Russian emigration, many settled in Berlin, one of the main centres of Russian cultural, political, and economic life in exile.

An important transportation hub close to Soviet Russia, Berlin offered easy access to the rest of Europe, East and West. It was an ideal transit point for migrants, many of whom stayed here before deciding where to move next. The 1919-23 German hyperinflation slashed costs of living and of doing business in the Weimar capital, leading to a proliferation of publishing ventures. Among other, these attracted the Russian Jewish literati who hoped to find a source of income in the booming publishing industry.

The creative output and influence of these Russian Jewish intellectuals extended far beyond the spatial and chronological confines of the German capital in nineteen twenties. Employing Yiddish and Hebrew in addition to Russian as languages of cultural production, they engaged in direct or indirect cultural, political or commercial brokerage between the young Soviet Union and Weimar Germany, with some in direct employ of Soviet institutions. The political divisions among Russian Jews who found refuge in the Weimar capital reflected those that predated 1917: there were the Zionists, proponents of cultural autonomy and territorialists, socialists of various stripes, and even a small cluster of anti-Bolshevik, monarchist activists, writing and arguing in cafés, lecture halls and rentals across Berlin. What united them all, however, was an almost obsessive preoccupation with Soviet Russia, its present and future.