The Story of a Life - (Niu Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) by Anna Pavolovna Vygodskaia (Paperback)

About the Book

Anna Pavlovna VygodskaiaÆs autobiography, originally published in 1938, is a rare and fascinating historical account of Jewish childhood and young adult life in Tsarist Russia. At a time when the vast majority of Jews resided in small market towns in the Pale of Settlement, Vygodskaia liberated herself from that world and embraced the...

Book Synopsis

Anna Pavlovna Vygodskaia's autobiography, originally published in 1938, is a rare and fascinating historical account of Jewish childhood and young adult life in Tsarist Russia. At a time when the vast majority of Jews resided in small market towns in the Pale of Settlement, Vygodskaia liberated herself from that world and embraced the day-to-day rhythms, educational activities, and new intellectual opportunities in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. Her story offers a unique glimpse of Jewish daily life that is rarely documented in public sources--of neighborly interactions, children's games and household rituals, love affairs and emotional outbursts, clothing customs, and leisure time.

Most first-person narratives of this kind reconstruct an isolated and self-contained Jewish world, but The Story of a Life uniquely describes the unprecedented social opportunities, as well as the many political and personal challenges, that young Jewish women and men experienced in the Russia of the 1870s and 1880s. In addition to their artful translation, Eugene M. Avrutin and Robert H. Greene thoroughly explicate this historical context in their introduction.

Review Quotes

"This is a unique memoir by a Jewish woman whose life was both unique and 'typical' for the first generation of 'modern Jewish women' in East-Central Europe and Russia. It is fascinating to observe the extent to which Anna absorbs and reflects the ethos of the Russian intelligentsia. Also of note is the fact that her Jewish identity does not appear to mean much to her, though her circle of friends appears to be mainly Jewish. Very often what she does not say is just as noteworthy as the specific biographical details. Anna's description of everyday life, dress, food, and attitudes between men and women in this key period will be of interest to a broad range of readers, both specialists and neophytes."

--Theodore R. Weeks, Professor of History, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

About the Author

Eugene M. Avrutin is assistant professor of modern European Jewish history and Tobor Family Scholar in the Program of Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Jews and the Imperial State. Robert H. Greene is assistant professor of history at the University of Montana and the author of Bodies Like Bright Stars.