| Abstrakt: |
Presents, with commentary, previously unpublished personal papers of Aleksei A. Goldenweiser (1890-1979), a Russian Jewish lawyer and public figure, and examines these documents from the point of view of "imperial" life strategies. Goldenweiser was an archetypal Russian émigré who, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, continued to employ imperial strategies of socialization and integration. By imperial is meant the multiplicity of loyalties that cannot be reduced to ethnic, professional, or other dominant criteria. These loyalties were situational, and the fact of their multiplicity and even mutual exclusivity did not bother Goldenweiser. His life was always situated in many contexts simultaneously, and his personal writings illuminate his reactions to different challenges. Goldenweiser's imperial worldview is traced to his family, social, and professional experiences in Kiev. The documents presented in this article stem from Kiev, Berlin, and, later, the United States and date from 1918 to 1945. The letters are preserved in the Goldenweiser collection in the Bakhmet'ev Archive in New York, while the diaries are preserved in a private archive and had not been published or known to historians of Russian emigration. |
