A Jewish Woman of Distinction
The Life and Diaries of Zinaida Poliakova
Author: ChaeRan Y. Freeze (translated by Gregory L. Freeze)
Series: Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry and HBI Series on Jewish Women
Zinaida Poliakova (1863-1953) was the eldest daughter of Lazar Poliakov, known as the Russian Rothschild, who dominated Russian finance and railroads in Imperial Russia. Her diaries provide a rare glimpse into the world of the Jewish elites and a “political economy of intimacy” — a complex calculus of capital, aristocratic sociability, cultural patronage and philanthropy. Her aristocratic lifestyle informed her tastes, habits and sociability even as an émigré in France, during World War II in Paris, and in postwar England, after her family perished during the Holocaust. Women’s voices are often lost in the sweep of history, and so “A Jewish Woman of Distinction” is an exceptional, much-needed testament. These newly discovered primary archival sources will change the way we understand the full breadth of the Russian Jewish experience.
Subject: Biography and Letters
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ChaeRan Y. Freeze is the Frances and Max Elkon Professor of Modern Jewish History at Brandeis University. Her books include “Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia” and “Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia, 1772–1914: Select Documents.” Gregory L. Freeze is the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of History at Brandeis University.
- The remarkable diaries of Zinaida Poliakova, deftly edited by ChaeRan Freeze, open onto the world of the “Russian Rothschilds,” a world of high culture, vast privilege and the skillful, constant fashioning of a hybrid Jewish-Russian identity. A superb biographical essay extends Poliakova’s story to fin-de-siècle Paris; the whirlwind of the Holocaust; and the harsh realities, both personal and financial, of her postwar life in England. ... An important contribution to modern Jewish history. — Esther Schor, Princeton University
- This impressively annotated translation of Poliakova’s diaries provides a revealing depiction of the world of the Jewish elite in late Imperial Russia as experienced by a young woman from one of its most prominent families. — William G. Wagner, Williams College
- An essential resource for scholars and students that transforms our understanding of the Jewish business elite in Imperial Russia. The brilliant introduction illuminates the lives of its Russian protagonists and the world of the great Jewish business dynasties in the first age of globalization — and it does so from a shockingly intimate and surprisingly unfamiliar angle. ... A major contribution to the field; it deserves a wide audience. — Abigail Green, University of Oxford
- I expected these books to show that the rise and fall of Jewish business dynasties tracked the great sweep of modern Jewish history – from the faltering hopes of emancipation, first kindled in late 18th-century Europe, to the Holocaust. To my surprise, in most cases, their demise came earlier. Whether in Austria, Russia or China, it was precipitated above all by war and political revolution, not by the expropriation and extermination of Europe’s Jews. After 1917 many of the Poliakovs and Gunzburgs were already stateless. For those who fled Nazi Europe, or died in Auschwitz like many of Zinaida’s family, the Holocaust marked the end point in a long process of decline. — London Review of Books