The Department of Middle Eastern Studies and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, cordially invite you to a guest lecture by Dr. Semion Goldin from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The lecture, titled “Russian Army and Jewish Population during WWI: Some Lessons for Ukraine“, will take place on Tuesday, 15 April 2025 at 14:10 in Celetná street 20, Prague 1, room 240.

Dr. Semion Goldin is a senior research fellow at the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also serves as the Chair of the Russian and Slavic Studies Department at the university. His latest book “The Russian Army and the Jewish Population, 1914 1917 Libel, Persecution, Reaction” was published in 2022 as a part of the Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism.

Abstract:

The brutal violence of Russian troops towards civilians in Ukraine recently shocked the world. However, looking back one hundred years, we can see a similar picture: the Jewish population in Russia’s World War I frontal zone directly experienced various forms of hostility from the Russian army. Local deportations, executions on trumped-up charges, humiliations, lootings, and beatings by soldiers and officers became daily tribulations. In this lecture, we will discuss the reasons for such violence by the Russian military, and we will see the approach to the civilian population during the war in Ukraine as a direct continuation of a well-established “tradition” in the Russian military mindset and behavior.