Old Russia in color

The Boston Globe invites you to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912 in Russia. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time. Look at the photo collection here, made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948. There are also some images connected to local Jewish heritage.

Source: The Boston Globe

Stop your cruel oppression of the Jews

Print shows an aged man labeled Russian Jew carrying a large bundle labeled Oppression on his back; hanging from the bundle are weights labeled Autocracy, Robbery, Cruelty, Assassination, Deception, and Murder.

In the background, on the right, a Jewish community burns, and in the upper left corner, Theodore Roosevelt speaks to the Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II, "Now that you have peace without, why not remove his burden and have peace within your borders?"

Ca. 1904. Source: Library of Congress

Saint Petersburg

In late June 2010 I had the opportunity to visit the synagogue in St. Petersburg, built in Moorish and neo-Byzantine style between 1880 and 1888, after special a permit issued by the Tsar Alexander II, the first to allow Jews to settle in the city officially. Under renovation since 2000 thanks to a donation of $ 5 million by the Safra family, it was reopened five years ago to the public under the name of Great Coral Synagogue Edmond J. Safra.

I had the opportunity also to visit, at the cemetery Tikhvin, next to the Monastery of Alexander Nevski, the tomb of Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) - pianist, composer, conductor and founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In the excellent company of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Glinka, Borodin and Balakirev, I found his tomb covered with pebbles left by visitors who know of his Jewish origin.

Rubinstein was born in a village in the Russian province of Podolia, now part of Transnistria, the breakaway republic from Republic of Moldova. Before he was 5 years old, his grandfather ordered all family members to convert to Orthodox Christianity. Raised in a family that spoke Yiddish, German and Russian, Anton wrote later in his diary: Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew. Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary. My conclusion is that I am neither fish nor fowl – a pitiful individual.