In point of fact, the OPE board was in a bind: the nationalist coup had achieved the ideal of a totally new board, free of the conservative plutocrats, but had also led to a severe shortage of funds due to cuts in the kosher tax allocation. Neither could the organization expect to receive donations from the wealthy individuals who usually supported Jewish organizations in Kiev, for most of them had disapproved of the coup. The 1907 annual report noted plaintively, "the city's wealthy men are keeping completely aloof from the society, for obvious reasons."167 One wag had commented only half-jokingly at an OPE meeting in 1905, "That's why we voted for Brodsky as chairman, so we would always have money!"168 And indeed, there was serious discussion at one of the first general meetings after the coup about inviting Lev Brodsky to serve as chairman of the new board. On one hand, Brodsky's role as the "king" of Kiev Jews was so entrenched that he was seen by some as above the fray, and a vital figurehead for any Jewish organization; on the other, his contributions were essential for the health of any society. Apparently, though, having him as chairman was too risky and had too many associations with the old order; Dr. Max Mandel’shtam was elected instead.169
Not surprisingly, the lack of funding proved to be a serious problem: the 1907 annual report repeated over and again that many important activities had to be put on hold "in view of limited resources."170 The OPE was already facing criticism from the community for its lack of accomplishments.171 Even a member of the society's own Adult Education Commission, L. E. Dynin, wrote in the newspaper Khronika evreiskoi zhizhi (Chronicle of Jewish Life) that the society was good at promising things but not delivering on them.172 What was the use of the revolution in leadership if nothing had changed— except for a radical loss of funding?
Moreover, members and supporters of the old board now accused the new one of abrogating the very democratic principles it had advocated so strenuously; for example, of arbitrarily eliminating organizational committees. Tsitron was personally accused of "despotic leadership and usurpation of power"—the same allegations he had originally made against the plutocratic establishment! The new board was also imputed with arranging for its new pedagogical commission to be elected not by all of Kiev's Jewish teachers, but rather only those teachers who supported the "abandonment" of Hebrew.173 A charge of manipulation of democratic procedures was quite serious, especially in the days of revolution and incipient democracy.
As we have seen, despite the OPE board's appeals to the Representation for Jewish Welfare, the society's subsidy from the kosher tax was not restored, and in 1909 the board took the fateful step of recommending that Lev Brodsky and Baron V. G. Gintsburg be elected to the board. The invitation to the two men was scorned by some OPE members as a slap in the face of the democratization process, but the apparent consensus was that the society had to make the compromise for its own good, and both men were voted onto the board (though Gintsburg declined the position).174 It is interesting to note that while Brodsky served as chairman of the Representation for Jewish Welfare, so hostile to the OPE, and had not made any financial contributions to the society since the 1906 coup, he had made several significant in-kind donations, paying for the electrical and maintenance expenses of the OPE's Saturday adult education classes, which were housed at the Jewish school that he had founded, and making available one of his country houses for an excursion of the society's kindergarten.175 Clearly, he had been unwilling to abandon the educational organization altogether, and perhaps this history provided the board with the face it need to save when inviting the king of Kiev Jewry to join them. Compromise could no longer be avoided.
The OPE's decision may also have been affected by a government crackdown on similar educational organizations with a nationalist bent: in 1908, the Kiev Literacy Society, with a pronounced Ukrainophile bias in its activities, and the Polish society Oswiata (Education) had been shut down by the authorities.176 Members of the literacy society had also played a role in the revolutionary activities of 19 0 5.177 Bringing in men with contacts in high places like Lev Brodsky would no doubt help to defend the society from administrative attack.
The changes that Brodsky ushered in were striking. Though the character of the society's programs was apparently not affected, its fiscal standing improved dramatically, as did—perhaps more significantly—its standing among Kiev's Jewish haute bourgeoisie. Brodsky chaired a new finances commission (listed ahead of all the other commissions in the 1909 annual report, signaling its crucial role in the organization's operations), and three of the seven members were new faces in OPE governance; two of them (L. B. Ginzburg and D. S. Margolin) were wealthy industrialists, while a third,
I. P. Kel’berin, was Brodsky's right-hand man and a powerful force in Kiev Jewry. Brodsky was also listed as honorary chairman—a new title, apparently created for him—of the library commission and the board of guardians of the society's Model Heder.178 and he proved his worth by immediately calling a special fund-raising meeting at which he personally pledged 3,000 rubles, attracting almost 1,000 rubles in additional donations from attendees. (By contrast, the largest single donation in the previous year had been 400 rubles.)179
A new gala concert and ball, organized by Brodsky and to which invitations were sent in his name, netted more than 5,000 rubles for the OPE, well over three times the receipts from the concert of Jewish folk music held the year before.180 The new event was also a significant shift for the public profile of the organization: folk music, while clearly in keeping with the character of a nationalist society devoted to the education of the masses, did not have the appeal of a society soiree to which, moreover, one had to be invited by none other than Lev Brodsky himself! Indeed, one Jewish nationalist complained that but for the Jews in attendance, there was nothing Jewish about the evening at all; one might hear an Italian aria or a Russian folk song, but "not the slightest hint of a Jewish word, motif, sound. . . ."181 Despite such complaints, however, no one could deny that the Kiev Branch of the OPE was no longer a pariah but was now an integral part of the Kiev Jewish establishment. In subsequent years, similar and even more successful fund-raisers netted well over 6,000 rubles.182
Another tactic using Brodsky's name, influence, and contacts was to send out letters to specific individuals asking for their support of the OPE.183 Brodsky's first year on the board also saw a tremendous increase in special income, consisting mostly of interest-bearing securities; these, too, were likely linked to the "king."184 Perhaps most important of all for the nationalist leaders of the OPE, the society's subsidy from kosher tax revenues was restored to its previous level before the split between the two institutions had taken place.185 Indeed, by 1911 five of the seven members of the executive board of the Representation for Jewish Welfare also sat on the board or on various commissions of the OPE, and by 1913 almost one-third of the members of the Representation's schools commission were also active in the OPE.186 The days of exile and ostracism were over.
The 1909 annual report noted in an understated fashion that "the activity of the board. . . differed slightly from [that] of the previous five years"; thanks to the significant influx of resources in 1909, "the board succeeded in realizing its goals."187 Indeed, the new infusion of funds enabled the society to carry through with many more activities than ever before. However, Brodsky's presence did not enable the society to achieve its long-standing goal of dramatically increasing its membership rolls; the new contributions were mostly in the form of one-time donations, perhaps pointing to a dependence on Brodsky's influence rather than any new commitment to the OPE and its goals.188 The society might be "serving the people," but it did not achieve the popular mandate it had so ardently wished for in the form of a broad membership base.
We have noted that the arrival of Brodsky did not influence the OPE's direction. Remarkably, the organization was actually exporting the communal revolution that it had achieved in Kiev to the smaller cities and towns of Kiev province, where it actively encouraged the development of modern community schools. (Moshe Rozenblat claims that, thanks to the Zionist tendencies of OPE board members, all the schools in Ukraine supported by the Kiev OPE adopted a Hebrew-language curriculum.)189 For legal reasons, Jewish communities lacked the rights to establish girls' schools, and thus the OPE's policy was to advocate the founding of official Societies for the Care of Poor Children, which were permitted to open schools of their own. As the OPE clearly acknowledged, these new societies served as a welcome counterweight to the influence of both individual benefactors and conservative communal elders, and created schools that were publicly accountable: "The opening of girls' schools on the basis of society charters freed the schools from the most undesirable tutelage of private individuals and transformed them from semiofficial into entirely legal institutions, under broad communal oversight."190 The new schools, then, led to the development of an array of societies in the image of the Kiev OPE itself—declaring their independence from the communal establishment in favor of a nationalist agenda.
World History
