Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised Read no history: nothing but biography for that is life without theory. With Jews in Service to the Tsar Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europes Jews illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.The 28 individuals profiled in these pages are bound by a single thread: each served a Russian tsar emperor or empress sometime between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Beyond that they were an exceptionally diverse lot - in addition to businessmen diplomats scholars and doctors there was a police chief one of Russias most effective ministers of finance and two very different court jesters. Taken together their influence on the course of Russian history was profound.Berdnikovs book which has enjoyed considerable popularity in Russia has been called a weighty document of historical truth and been acclaimed for its calm impartiality for the sincerity of the authors voice and for the depth and breadth of Berdnikovs research into archives and other historical sources that have only recently become accessible.