Who IS that Russian?

The Empire didn't consider them Russians either. When, in the late 18th century, the Russian Empire absorbed the large Jewish population from the Polish territorie, there were restrictions, distrust, and huge arguments about how to deal with and recognize these aliens. For a number of decades, during the reign of Alexander II, there was an incremental improvement in the conditions and integration of the Jewish population with the general Russian population, but this changed in 1881, when the czar was assassinated. After that, things got worse very quickly.

An interesting book, _Beyond the Pale_, discusses this very rocky improvement and downfall.

One of the odd developments that grew during the good times was that Jewish girls weren't allowed to attend yeshivas, but were allowed to attend the Christian schools, with the result that many Jewish girls in the Pale of Settlement did, indeed get an education in non-Jewish educational establishments. That the families of these girls allowed this indicates how important education was to them.

Actually, I like that it's not Fyedka who sings the line. It shows that he's not the only Russian who thinks the Orthodox Russians and the Jews can live together peacefully, and that there must be many more who share his opinions.

And so the Lion fell in Love with the Lamb...
*~TWILIGHT~*

T~O #1449

I saw a local production of the play back in the 80s (before I saw the film) in which Fyedka is both the Russian singer and the one who bumps into (and then dances with) Tevya. I really liked it because it's a way of establishing Fyedka as a character and also because Fyedka in the play looked like the Russian singer in the movie, not the rather foppish blonde they had in the movie. Even before his first meeting with Chava, you've got the big important piece of how he noticed her and why he was attracted to her. It also makes him very likeable, so I understood why Chava might abandon her family for him.

I suppose they chose not to do it that way in the film because it would have reduced the positive Christian characters to just one, which doesn't really work in such a large film setting (and because it sounds as though that wasn't how the original play went), but I was still disappointed. In the movie, Fyedka kinda appears out of nowhere and he's scarcely in the film.

That said, I think the movie rendition of "To Life" is still brilliant and really sets up the ethnic tensions in the village. As for why the Russian peasants were able to "crash" the party, so to speak, the Russians in the village could do whatever they wanted and the Jews couldn't complain (European Jews, historically, haven't tended to see themselves, or be seen, as citizens of the countries they lived in until very recently).

That's why the Jews look so nervous--it's a precursor to the pogrom at the end of Tzeitel's wedding. For now, the Russians are happy drunk and everything's fine. But if their mood were to turn, if they were to become offended in some way, it would go very badly for the Jews. Think of it as similar to post-Civil War relations between whites and blacks in the American South.

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