The Phenomenon of Interethnic Tolerance in Bukovyna (1861-1914): the History of the Bukovynian Jews

Abstract

The article analyzes the phenomenon of interethnic tolerance in Bukovyna during the period of 1861-1914 on the example from the history of the Bukovynian Jews. The importance of the concept of «Bukovynism», by which modern scholars consider the phenomenon of interethnic and interconfessional tolerance in Bukovyna, is mentioned. It is proved that mutual understanding in the political and socio-cultural space of Bukovyna was achieved due to the efforts of the Austrian administration during 1861-1914. Among the factors contributing to the establishment of political consensus here, the author names such as the reform of the political system of the Austrian empire in the 1960s of the XIXth century, high intensity of the ethno-cultural communications in Bukovyna (interlingual interference) and the migration policy of the central authorities, as a result of which there was formed the German-Jewish political symbiosis with the «new socio-economic ideology»of the «Middle European economic people».

The Jews, who in the second half of the XIXth century reached a marked level of political influence on the processes of socio-economic life of Bukovyna, at the beginning of the XXth century, found themselves, according to the author, in a unique situation, in which they almost did not feel the manifestations of the policy of anti-Semitism, which became noticeable in other provinces of Austria-Hungary, as well as in Vienna; the Bukovyna Jews proved to be more bearers of imperial loyalty than the Germans themselves; they managed to preserve their traditional culture, focused, first of all, in shtetls (the Jewish towns) and at the same time remained a “demographic reserve” in the production of the cultural values in Bukovyna.

Instead, during the given historical period the Bukovynian Jews did not avoid the negative phenomena in their political life, which were connected, first of all, with the processes of modernization of the Habsburg Empire (urbanization, nationalism of imperial ethnic groups) and strengthening of the Viennese anti-Semitism at the beginning of the XXth century. The Austrian administration in Bukovyna stubbornly denied the Jews as an independent ethno-group, and in the economic life of the region gradually introduced the principles of segregation of the Jews. But such negative phenomena almost did not affect the situation of the Jews of Bukovyna, which, until the beginning of the World War, remained generally satisfactory, and showed, on the one hand, that the general-imperial economic crisis of the 1870s in Bukovyna did not acquire such sharpness, as in other regions of the country, and on the other hand, that alternatives to tolerant relations in the processes of harmonious development of multinational societies do not exist.

Key words: Bukovynism, tolerance, identity, Jews, Bukovуna