Conclusion

In 1910, Baron V. G. Gintsburg informed the mayor of Kiev that he wished to donate to the city a statue of Tsar Alexander II by the renowned Jewish sculptor Mark Antokol’skii. The statue was to be poured in Paris and brought thence to Kiev, where Gintsburg requested that it be placed in the main hall of the public library.157 Carefully parsed, this seemingly ordinary civic-minded gift shows j ust how loaded with symbolism philanthropy could be. If they wished to show their patriotism, for Jews there was really no other choice among the tsars of the previous century than Alexander II, who was still remembered fondly by most Jews for his role in expanding Jewish rights in the 1860s. Liberals who still insisted on viewing Russian history through Whiggish lenses (as did most Jewish "notables" such as Gintsburg) hearkened back to those happy days of optimism and progress, and an effigy of the "Tsar Liberator" in Kiev was almost a talisman—a statement of hope that perhaps some day Russia would return to his path. Of course, the choice of artist was no coincidence: a sculpture created by a Russian Jew was a fine example of the contributions that Jews made not only to the world of commerce and industry (as with Gintsburg) but to the arts as well. The placement of the sculpture in Kiev's public library was a reminder of the important role that Jewish contributions played in advancing literacy in the city. And finally, the artwork's provenance in Paris showed that just as Jewish philanthropists had brought the best medical and technological expertise from throughout Europe to the Russian Empire for the good of its Jewish and Christian subjects alike, so would they continue ever to brighten the urban landscape of the empire in other ways as well—with delightful monuments such as this one, for example.

In a sense, all Jewish charitable initiatives in Kiev were destined to be laden with symbolic meaning in addition to their more practical, rational aims. Even those engaged in more traditional forms of charity not discussed in this chapter—hevrot for dowering the bride or visiting the sick, for example—would not have been ignorant of the significance of a positive Jewish profile in holy, Russian Kiev. But for acculturating Jews in particular, modern philanthropy was a way of expressing their own sense of what being Jewish was about no less than it was a means to the transformation of the Jewish masses and the creation of a new Russian Jewry in the image of the Jewish bourgeoisie. Jewish philanthropists and community activists used social services to mold the (as yet) unacculturated Jewish migrants who settled in Kiev as well as to shape public and official opinion of Jews and Judaism. The institutions they built were a crucial—and as yet largely unrecognized— pillar of modern Jewish self-expression in the Russian Empire. As donors both large and small, administrators, employees, and clients, most Russian Jews were implicated in the project of Jewish welfare in one role or another. In an era of Jewish ideological division, communal fragmentation, and socioeconomic differentiation, this was a remarkable achievement indeed. No less an attainment was the mobilization of philanthropy for political or quasipolitical aims and to project Jewish leadership from the realm of the parochial to the wider imperial stage.

Some measure of integration into Russian society was surely one of the goals of the leaders of philanthropic projects—but the results of their efforts were mixed. The communal welfare system they created, though identical in many ways to that which lay at the heart of the emerging Russian civil society, was often a world apart: a separate, Jewish institutional world that (often unconsciously) hindered integration and interaction with non-Jewish society. With the increasing exclusion of Jews from Russian society in the early years of the twentieth century, however, this world took on a very significant role and significance of its own. However unwittingly, the grandees had fashioned a network of institutions that would form the kernel of a separate Jewish public sphere—albeit one that was heavily bound about with restrictions. While increasing governmental oppression and growing antisemitism in the last years of Romanov rule had a chilling effect on the faith of Russian Jews in philanthropy's ability to effect political or anti-defamatory change within Russian society, they did not lose their conviction that organized networks of individuals—after 1907 largely in the form of cultural, educational, welfare, and self-help organizations—could have a decisive impact on both everyday life and the long-term prospects of Russian Jewry. It is to these organizations that we now turn.

FIGURE 4.1. Sasha Rutov with unidentified girl (possibly his sister). From family collection of Viktor Khamishon. From the Archive of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York (RG 120, folder 145.02).

FIGURE 4.2. The Choral Synagogue. Photograph courtesy Leonid Finberg and the Kiev Institute of Jewish Studies.

FIGURE 4.4. Unidentified woman, possibly a student. On the back of the photo: "Remember 'Strange' Chava." From the Archive of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York (RG120, folder 015).

FIGURE 5.1. Khmel’nitskii Monument, Kiev, ca. 1890-1900. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

FIGURE 6.2. The Brodsky School. Note the inscription at the top of the fagade with the name "BRODSKII." Photograph courtesy Leonid Finberg and the Kiev Institute of Jewish Studies.

FIGURE 6.3. Interior view of grand staircase inside the Brodsky School, 1905. Courtesy University of Southampton Special Collections (MS 128, Papers of Carl Stettauer, AJ 22IAI7).

FIGURE 6.5. The infectious diseases ward of the Jewish Hospital (undated).

Photograph courtesy Leonid Finberg and the Kiev Institute of Jewish Studies.

FIGURE 6.6. The Ophthalmology Ward of the Jewish Hospital (undated).

Photograph courtesy Leonid Finberg and the Kiev Institute of Jewish Studies.

FIGURE 7.1. "Board of the Podolia-Kiev Zionist Socialists," 1905. Standing (l-r): Shmuel, Berta the Nurse, Khayem the Hatmaker, Noyme, Isak the Orator. Seated: Khayem the Tailor, Yankl Holtsman, Arn the Purveyor, Dovid Miller, Nokhum.

Courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (Collection R1).

FIGURE 7.2. Studio portrait of participants at the General Meeting of the Jewish Emigration Society, Kiev, Feb. 23-25, 1911. From the Archive of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York (Collection Rl).

FIGURE 7.3. Ginzburg House (headquarters of the business operations of industrialist L. B. Ginzburg), on Nikolaevskaia street. Photograph courtesy Leonid Finberg and the Kiev Institute of Jewish Studies.