The People of the Book in the World of Books is a Russian bimonthly publication for serious readers with Jewish interests. Our English website includes only the summaries of the published articles. To access the complete text of them, please visit the Russian version of this website.


41

October 2002

This issue of the magazine includes:


• Review: About Solzhenitsyn


St. Petersburg historian Evgeny Moroz analyzes different responses to the Nobel Prize laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book on the history of Russian-Jewish relations. There have been more than a hundred such responses now, both from Russian nationalists and from the liberal side. The reviewer points out that even some of Solzhenitsyn's supporters see his book as anti-Jewish. At the same time, many liberal authors, including Jewish ones, respect Solzhenitsyn's attempts to reconcile the two neighboring peoples and are able to ignore the obvious historical mistakes and anti-Semitic stereotypes in his book. At the end of his article Evgeny Moroz writes: “I am sure that 15 years from now, when someone wants to tell young people about present realities, it will be very difficult for him to explain why this strange book provoked so many passions and arguments. One will have to tell them that, for some reason, the Jewish theme became very important for Russian society, that Solzhenitsyn was a symbolic figure and that people paid special attention to every word he wrote or spoke. Then young people will go to a square to look at the memorial to the great writer. Obviously there will be such a memorial... Children will look at it with surprise. Other books will concern them, other problems...”


• Looking Through Russian Literary Magazines: Novels and Articles of Jewish Interest


• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: November–December 2002


• Bibliography: 60 New Books