Talk:Antisemitism in the Russian Empire

Tabak
Why on earth does Tabak, who seems like an apologist for the Russian Orthodox Church, get such a very long section, right at the beginning of the article, to himself? A much more meaningful initial section would explore directly in which ways traditional Christian, and in particular, traditional Russian Orthodox teachings, attitudes, and popular understanding led directly to pogroms and other abuses. Heavenlyblue (talk) 23:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

RfC
An RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 16:24, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

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Recent changes to the article
Recent changes to the article by user 'My very best wishes' seem like they remove a lot of information, which results in violation of WP:NPOV. I reverted those edits per WP:BRD. --Piznajko (talk) 21:41, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Saying "BRD" and "you removed a lot of information" is not enough. Please explain why exactly my edits were problematic. The entire section was sourced to this. I simply made a shorter and a more logical summary of the same source and another one cited on the page. Please check the version you reverted back to. It tells in the beginning of each paragraph:


 * 1) "Yuri Tabak describes the history of antisemitism in Russia as having ..."
 * 2) "Tabak asserts, however..."
 * 3) "Tabak concedes that the ..."
 * 4) "However, Tabak also notes that ..."
 * 5) "Tabak asserts that..."
 * What? This is not a page about Mr. Tabak. Was it written by someone who wanted to promote Tabak? This is not the way to write WP pages. In addition, in your edit you removed any mentioning of anti-Jewish pogroms and the Pale of settlement from the lead. Why? You did the same on another page. My very best wishes (talk) 01:09, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * "in your edit you removed any mentioning of anti-Jewish pogroms and the Pale of settlement from the lead. Why? You did the same on another " My edit reverted to the last consensus version from 7 July 2017‎, before your edits on April 20, 2018. Regarding the reasons as for why I reverted your proposed updates to the section "Involvement of the Orthodox Church", it is because you removed about 30% of that section; however, since the main source for that section (in the last consensus version from July 2017) was the scholarly article by Yuri Tabak - by removing a big chunk of that section (which extensively quotes Tabak's work to support that section) you made that entire section worse. ps. Please don't engage in WP:EW and instead first discuss your proposed changes to the article on the talk page and find consensus.  --Piznajko (talk) 04:04, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The very heavy reliance on a single guy Tabak is not due, and seems very much like a POV violation- in addition to just looking bad to probably most readers.--Calthinus (talk) 04:13, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that the very heavy reliance on a single guy Tabak (and his source) is not due, however since the current version of that section (Involvement of the Orthodox Church) doesn't have any other sources - I don't think the solution to improving it to simply cut a big chunk of that section and call it a day. To truly improve that section we need additional WP:Reliable sources.--Piznajko (talk) 04:18, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, Calthinus regarding your comment : Well since Tabak is pretty much the only source for the section - he naturally gets to dominate it. That said, I think the section could be improved simply by changing "Tabak said XYZ" everywhere to "According to historian Yuri Tabak, ..."--Piznajko (talk) 04:27, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In general, I think recent changes to the article by user 'My very best wishes' made that section too short - in it a lot of detail that it described is lost.--Piznajko (talk) 04:29, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Hopefully someone will find time to improve this. As it stands right now it could use some improvement for sure.--Calthinus (talk) 04:55, 21 April 2018 (UTC)


 * It doesn't seem reasonable to base the whole article on one single source.Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 12:56, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we all (three of us) agree that the previous version was problematic in several aspects (one of them is wrong summary) and needs to be fixed. But I also wanted to look at the response by Piznajko... My very best wishes (talk) 14:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)


 * One of the most absurd aspects of the section right now is this comparison between the Russian Empire and "the West", as if the latter is some monolithic entity despite the differences between the centuries and the countries involved. Even if you have a basic understanding of European Jewish history, that is incredibly obviously not the case -- Inquisition era Spain treated Jews rather differently than Napoleon.--Calthinus (talk) 14:36, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, this is an absurd statement in the lead for anyone remotely familiar with the subject. It attracted my attention immediately. Note that Piznajko was unable to explain why exactly he reverted to this nonsense. I thought he was making a "revenge revert", but now I am thinking something else. Will comment elsewhere. My very best wishes (talk) 14:47, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I have removed the poorly formulated Whataboutism. As for any feud between yourself and Piznajko, I surely hope it is not the case that this is a motivating factor or this dispute. --Calthinus (talk) 15:15, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Note that Piznajko was unable to explain why exactly he reverted to this nonsense 'My very best wishes', seems like you choose to repeatedly ignore my comment as to why I reverted your latest edits from April 20, 2018. ps. @Calthinus @Estlandia~enwiki the comments regarding the section in question - I also agree that the section shouldn't be based on just 1 source (just like in any other WP article there should be different RS on the subject). Like I said above - "To truly improve that section we need additional WP:Reliable sources."--Piznajko (talk) 16:18, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I am expanding the article right now using RS. If I find anything I can add to this section I will do so. This seems like the most constructive way to handle this. I respect  as I have seen his good work expanding our encyclopedia elsewhere; you two should resolve your differences elsewhere as it is best we all work together with the joint goal of expanding the page here, which I believe we all share.--Calthinus (talk) 16:30, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What can I tell? No one edited this page for a half of a year. This page is in a poor condition. I looked at it and decided to improve. Based on your comments and comments by Miasek, my changes were reasonable. In a matter of hours Piznajko reverted all my edits here. He never edited this page before. He provided this justification for his revert. This is not a reasonable justification. He also followed my edits elsewhere to post a vote opposite to mine. He never edited this subject too. This is wikistalking 101. Of course if he actually wants to improve the content here (as you and me did), he is very much welcome. My very best wishes (talk) 20:36, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I generally agree with User:Piznajko on this thread. While the article is (and was) indeed poor (and I amnot certain that it is at all required when we have a thoroughgoing History of the Jews in Russia), the recent changes by My very best wishes simply push an exceedingly simplistic, utterly unencyclopedic views on the problem, some of which are plain factually incorrect. The statement added by this editor "The anti-Jewish policies by the Russian state were supported by the Ecclesiastical Collegium under Peter the Great and, later by the Holy Synod. These institutions of the Church served essentially as government departments" significantly distorts what the cited source (Tabak) actually says: ″All anti-Jewish decisions were conducted by state administrative organs, acting on the authority of emperors, state committees and ministries. Even if the Ecclesiastical Collegium under Peter the Great and, later, the Holy Synod, agreed with and approved certain measures, it is important to remember that these aforementioned institutions were essentially government departments.″ I find this pattern of wanton handling (including arbitrary deletions) of sources and material quite consistent with this editor from a number of other articles (I leave aside such niceties as incorrect links: the holy synod we talk about here is the Most Holy Synod, which in fact was a state body, pure and simple, headed as it was by the emperor, while the ROC as such did not exist at all: both the name and the entity were made up in 1943). While the long-standing lede was not good, the proposed version is factually inaccurate in saying ″the Pale of Settlement, from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia, unless they converted to the Russian Orthodox state religion″: the statement contains several errors: there were a series of categories of Jews (of Jewish faith) who were allowed to be residents of Moscow and Petersburg, being an orthodox Christian (not Russian orthodox) was never a prerequisite for residence in the capital city, generally. More broadly, saying "Antisemitism in the Russian Empire included .... the designation of the Pale of Settlement" is debatable (one can have a look at a well-sourced article in the Russ Wiki on the Pale - ru:Черта оседлости) and at the very least pitifully simplistic: no one in the Russian Empire had freedom of movement and changing one′s social status was hard, especially for Orthodox clergy′s children, BTW. (Apart from the whole passage in the lede being poor, clumsy and illogical language: "Antisemitism included pogroms", or "pogroms included antisemitism"?).Axxxion (talk) 21:33, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your OR rant where you decide to be the arbiter of RS sources. I strongly advise you take up blogging, a much better outlet for your passion.--Calthinus (talk) 01:53, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Expansion
The state of the page was embarrassing to the project for such an important topic to Russian and Jewish history. Therefore I expanded the page by 11K []. However my edits were rushed as I have a real life and relied mostly on one online source. It would be very, very helpful if someone were to add relevant sources in, and clean up any typos that I'm sure I've made. Thanks all and cheers,--Calthinus (talk) 17:54, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the section about involvement of Orthodox Church should be more brief (I made an effort - welcome to improve this further). Should it also be moved elsewhere on the page? What do you think? My very best wishes (talk) 20:17, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 'My very best wishes', with your edit from April 21, 2018, diff you've done the exact same thing you did yesterday (and what I reverted), paying 0% heed to my concerns regarding you removing a big chunk of important information from the section "Orthodox church", especially given we currently have virtually only the scholarly article by Tabak as the source for that section.--Piznajko (talk) 21:26, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What exactly "big chunk of important information" did I remove? Please be specific. I think I did not remove any important information (I simply made more concise and logical summary). But if I did, and you can explain it here, let's put it back - no problem. My very best wishes (talk) 21:38, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If you can't see it for yourself (e.g., compare left and right sides of the screen), I'm not sure how to help you rather than just doing a huge dump of text from the article of "before-your-edits-version" and "after-your-edits-version".--Piznajko (talk) 21:43, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Everyone can see that texts on the left and right are different, and the text on the right is much shorter. I asked you a simple question: which facts or other information (that would be important for a reader to know) is missing on the right? Can you answer? My very best wishes (talk) 21:58, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, but reverting without providing any adequate explanation here will not work. My very best wishes (talk) 18:33, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * One thing I will say about this spat. Discussion should be about content. BRD and consensus are not relevant arguments on the talk page. Those rules exist for a reason, and that reason is not preventing actual engagement and comparison of the different versions.--Calthinus (talk) 18:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, absolutely. That is exactly what I tell. How can I fix something if another contributors just blindly reverts everything, cites BRD and does not explain what was the problem? But you can help here, given that you are familiar with the subject better than me. Could you please fix this section in any way you like? I agree with your version in advance. My very best wishes (talk) 19:00, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Spat aside, imo, the part about Orthodox involvement should be moved to the bottom. Typically we put History at the top, analysis at the bottom for things like this. Agree?--Calthinus (talk) 19:02, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree with moving it to the bottom or any other place per my previous comment. My very best wishes (talk) 19:03, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅--Calthinus (talk) 19:14, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, and welcome to fix whatever you want to fix in my edits. BTW, what was intended here. I think this quotation is fine, but it probably should go to the body of page, not to footnote. My very best wishes (talk) 19:27, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Definitely agree with your point above that the part about Orthodox involvement better belongs to the bottom. Thanks for genuinely improving the article, !--Piznajko (talk) 19:46, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Great. Would you agree with Calthinus being the "judge" here, so he would choose and fix whatever version of this section he wants? My very best wishes (talk) 19:50, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Whoa, wait, I'm about to take a break from wiki. If you guys agree on that, can you give me at least a day or two? Thanks, --Calthinus (talk) 19:58, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, I can wait a few days until you or someone else can fix it. My very best wishes (talk) 20:19, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * reverting without providing any adequate explanation here will not work 'My very best wishes', seems like you choose to repeatedly, consciously or unconsciously, ignore my concerns expressed on the talk page and which were the reason as to why I reverted your edits to the article from April 20, 2018 and brought back the latest consensus version of the section "Involvement of the Orthodox Church" from July 2017. I've explained to you already (see numerous times I've said it above on the TP) that your edits have resulted in a big chunk of important information being completely removed from the section on "Orthodox church involvement", including (i'm providing only the most important points here, you've removed more than that) an important point that was previously mentioned in that section that "Russian church can be criticized for "its inability to express an independent opinion and for its failure to demonstrate love for one's neighbour and defence of the persecuted in accordance with the basic teachings of the Gospel" also an important point how the rights of Jews did not improve much over time in the Russian empire in contrast to the gradual expansion of religious and social rights for Western European Jews, "no such movement took place in Russia." [...because of...] "weakness of any liberal and democratic tendencies" in the course of Russian history and notes that "the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Reformation... bypassed Russia. In general if someone studies the version of that section "before-your-edits-version" and "after-your-edits-version", one clearly sees that you've ever so not-so-slightly changed the overall tone of the section, from being more neutral (before there were passages describing points/arguments as to why one could view the Orthodox church as anti-Semitic and also why one could not do so) to being pretty much just one-sided.--Piznajko (talk) 20:11, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It is very difficult to understand what you are saying here. However, if you simply think we should include a phrase "in contrast to the gradual expansion of religious and social rights for Western European Jews..." etc., I certainly do not mind. Let's include it. OK? My very best wishes (talk) 20:36, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you just blankly choosing not to hear what I'm saying? It's not just one phrase "in contrast to the gradual expansion of religious and social rights for Western European Jews..." that's now missing after your significant changes to the section on April 20, 2018 - it's other details too. Please see my note about it above.--Piznajko (talk) 20:41, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * BTW, the phrase "in contrast to the gradual expansion of religious and social rights for Western European Jews..." does not tell anything about Russian Orthodox Church. So it must be placed elsewhere if we are going to use it at all. As about your "other points", I do not see them in your comments above. Sorry. I gave you my advice on your talk page. My very best wishes (talk) 20:49, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, so... can you two agree on what it is exactly that you disagree about? Because I can't seem to identify it. Btw the section has never been about whether the Orthodox Church "is" anti-Semitic (that would be essentialist anyways), it is about how it behaved historically. --Calthinus (talk) 01:54, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I can see three problems with old version . (a) it is based on a single source, and each paragraph stars from "Yuri Tabak describes the history of antisemitism in Russia as having ...", "Tabak asserts, however...", "Tabak concedes that the ...", "However, Tabak also notes that ..." "Tabak asserts that...", (b) it is internally contradictory on the subject of how exactly ROC was involved in the Russian state policies about Jews, (c) it does not really describe what was the role of ROC. I do not have a slightest idea why P. does not want this to be fixed, except that he simply wikistalks my edits. My very best wishes (talk) 02:04, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I am comparing the two versions that each of you prefers []. What I am mostly getting is that MVBW's version very much abbreviates what Tabak says, while Piznajko's version also abbreviates but does elaborate significantly for very specific points of comparison between "the West" and "Russia" (interestingly enough "the West" is not portrayed as monolithic in Tabak's original, see here :[]-- but was on this page) as well as various other specific points. One could argue either that these points were placed there because they are the 'happier' aspects of his paper or because they tend to be in the top half and someone lacks time; I will prefer to WP:AGF for now. A lot of points raised by Tabak are missing at the same time, such as his analysis that the Orthodox hierarchy typically viewed Jews "not as brothers but as enemies that had to be loved", that the Orthodox church saw the "solution to the Jewish question" in the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity, et cetera. Additionally, if you read Tabak's original, you don't get the sense that Tabak is saying that the ROC is somehow less anti-Semitic than the Catholic or "Byzantine Orthodox" churches, but in the pre-MVBW version, you do, as a specific sentence is plucked out of its context which discussed the latter more in-depth.
 * I think we must either (a) summarize Tabak and shorten the section accordingly especially avoiding simplified and monolithicized comparisons to "the West" (MVBW's version accomplishes a lot of this) or (b) we give an actually representative account of Tabak's findings. There are some issue's with Tabak's writing and he is only one author to consider; however his original piece does have a fair amount of balance, analyzing different aspects of the historical relationship, and treats the Orthodox Church as a complicated entity composed of admittedly flawed humans. --Calthinus (talk) 02:18, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Like I said, welcome to fix it any way you like or even delete whole section if you think it is unnecessary. But I think it is necessary, and like you said, yes, main idea was to convert all Jews to Christianity, and ROC was a part of this "campaign". My very best wishes (talk) 03:00, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I am not really interested in this subject and have no intention of editing it. This is just one of many more or less random pages I tried to fix after seeing some kind of nonsense or other problems. I quickly fixed the lead and the section in this series of edits, and anyone is welcome to fix it further or do not fix anything at all. The only issue here was wikistalking by Piznajko. My very best wishes (talk) 15:19, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Wishes, as I noted above, the article was in poor state but your edits made it considerably worse, above all factually incorrect. I noted a few errors in question above, I will not go into details to avoid being accused of OR and being advised to take up blogging, but I will point up just one uncontested fact to demonstrate the incorrectness of the claims in the lede: the Moscow Choral Synagogue was established in the 1880s, long prior to the revolution of 1905, when religious restrictions were eased by the 17 April Decree. HOW could this tally with the statement in the lede saying ″the designation of the Pale of Settlement, from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia, unless they converted to the Russian Orthodox state religion″? The real picture was much more complex and nuanced. BTW, for those not in the know, the synagogue in question is not in some remote neighbourhood on the edge of the then Moscow such as the other current major Jewish religious hub in Moscow′s Maryina roshcha District — the Moscow Jewish Community Centre, which was conceived in the 1920s. The old Moscow synagogue is a huge (by the standards of the 19th century Moscow), in-your-face building situated right in the very city centre, literally two blocks away from the Kremlin (6-7 minute walk down Varvarka str from the Spasskaya Tower, the tsar′s road).Axxxion (talk) 22:23, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Welcome to fix this page! I have little interest in this subject, so gladly leaving it to you and whoever else wants to improve the page. My very best wishes (talk) 03:38, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Axxxion, my apologies for the blogging comment, it came from a place of irritation and was not my best moment. Yes I agree the real picture is more nuanced. Actually there were many Jews who had long lived in areas outside the Pale of Settlement but within the Russian Empire-- in the Caucasus, in Bukhara, and they were not forbidden from continuing to live in those places nor were other Jews from the Pale forbidden from moving to these places, which they did. Also, "useful" Jews got exceptions -- as the article alludes to. However, the synagogue in question had its construction challenged numerous times and received its final permit in 1906, so the Choral Synagogue might not be the best example for your case I think.--Calthinus (talk) 11:35, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Calthinus, apologies accepted. Yes, the Moscow synagogue is not the best illustration (just more familiar to me personally); the Grand Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg, the then capital of Russia, that opened in 1893 is a better one. The foot-dragging with the opening in Moscow was mainly due to the exceptionally hardline attitude of the Moscow governor Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who is viewed as antisemitic by some (I shall not adjudicate on the issue). But I mentioned the Moscow synagogue not to illustrate absence of antisemitism but to disprove the statement in the lede that Jews could migrate beyond the Pale only if they became Christians. Generally, I dislike such articles as this one, whose title already presupposes a certain premise that is not entirely obvious and in effect is an opinion. I would suggest we have a simple definition that stems from the Antisemitism article′s definition: "is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews" - in the Russian Empire. There were acts of outright religious persecution of Jews in the 18th century, but the situation in the 19th century was different in that after the absorption of Poland there was a huge Jewish diaspora inside the Empire, which was viewed as a genuine problem for the government rather than the target of persecution as such. As for Tabak, I amnot certain he should be regarded as an RS: to the best of my knowledge, he does not have any serious scholarly credentials.Axxxion (talk) 01:42, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 15% of the article to Yuri Tabak is UNDUE - this is not an article aabout Tabak.Icewhiz (talk) 04:50, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Jewish virtual library and texas jewish post
Many of the citations, especially but not limited to the forced conscription section, link to this website: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/russia-virtual-jewish-history-tour. It seems to no longer be functioning, however. Also, this website: https://tjpnews.com/lone-stars-of-david-%E2%80%98the-immigrant%E2%80%99-from-czarist-russia-to-small-town-texas/ is up, but the article is not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:4C0:8180:21F0:D1A6:5F05:179F:480D (talk) 20:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Quote from Peter the Great about Muslims, Jews and pagans
The editor of the article refers to the book "The Jewish Community in Russia, 1772–1844", in turn, the author of this book refers to another - "History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 1" by Simon Dubnow. I found this book, and there this quote is presented not as a quote from Peter the Great, but as a quote from “Russian historian Solovyov” without reference to a specific source of the quote or the specific name of the historian. Search deadlock. I propose to remove this quote from the article, because it is not confirmed by verifiable primary sources of the quote. 176.59.168.174 (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2024 (UTC)