Russian Empire Discovers Two Queens: How Wives of Ahasuerus and Kazimir destabilized the state

• In Event: Spotlighting Forgotten Women

Abstract

The reign of Nicholas I (1825—1855) was a dark time in Imperial Russia’s history – the tsar, who was obsessed with order and discipline, saw any expressions of liberalism and shift towards modernization (which was understood as adapting Western European values such as individualism, freedom of speech) as dangerous for his regime and state. Nicholas I saw the gaining of Jewish civil rights as the especially dangerous tendency of “Fallen Europe,” hence, the policies of his Empire at the time were concentrated on the oppression of Imperial Russia’s Jewry. Promotion of blood libel, restrictions of Jewish mobility, abolition of Jewish self-governance, prohibition of wearing traditional Jewish dress, forced draft in the Imperial army – all these oppressive measures were aimed to stimulate Jews to baptize, assimilate, and become (in Nicholas I’s understanding) useful for the state. The Imperial literature of the period rediscovers the image of two queens – Esthers – who saved Jewish people from annihilation in ancient Persia and the Medieval Polish kingdom. This paper concentrates on how the “Esterka” by Faddei Bulgarin (1828) and “Hever’” by Vladimir Sokolovskii (1836), throughout the usage of Esthers’ images, destabilized Nicholas I’s regime and promoted liberalism and modernization. The discovery I made is that in both Bulgarin’s novella and Sokolovskii’s drama Jewish women destabilize the males’ strong rule and subvert gender normativity patterns, even though the aim of “Esterka” was to be a propaganda of Slavic superiority over Western Europeans, in contrast to “Hever’”, written by a writer who was exiled for mocking tsar in an epigram. I will demonstrate how these two texts corresponded with Imperial Russia’s philosophical thought on the “Jewish question” of Nicholas I’s time, and how they follow the pattern, established by Jewish Russophone writer and advocate of Jewish rights Leyb Nevakhovich (1776—1831).

Author

• Elena Petrova-Libgober, \