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2011-07-22
The VYI's staff members contribute to a new book

The essay collection "A Pragmatic Alliance. Jewish-Lithuanian political cooperation at the beginning of the 20th century" discusses the political cooperation between Jews and Lithuanians in the Tsarist Empire from the last decades of the 19th century until the early 1920s. These years saw the transformation of both Jewish and Lithuanian political life. Within the Jewish community, the previously dominant integrationists were now challenged both by those who believed that the Jews were not a religious but an ethnic or proto-nationalist group and those who believed that only with the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist state would Jewish integration be possible. Among the Lithuanians, the emergence of a modern national identity became increasingly prevalent. Each essay is based on original research, which generalizes not only the published sources, but also a vast, though little known or completely new, archival material held in the archives of Lithuania, Israel, Russia, USA, and Ukraine. The VYI Director Prof. Sarunas Liekis and the VYI Lecturer Dr. Egle Bendikaite contributed their essays to the book. The book is edited by Dr. Darius Staliunas and Dr. Vladas Sirutavicius, both from the Lithuanian Institute of History.

More information: http://www.ceupress.com/books/html/A-Pragmatic-Alliance.htm

The book can be pre-ordered on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pragmatic-Alliance-Jewish-Lithuanian-Political-Cooperation/dp/6155053170