Abstinence (conscription)
The Abstinence (Hebrew: הִסתַגְפוּת, Ashkenazi pronunciation: Histagfus) tactic of draft evasion was a type of hunger strike (or other forms of self-harm, such as sleep deprivation, tending to cause tachycardia, or self-inflicted wound), employed by young men in the Russian Empire's Jewish Pale of Settlement (and in neighboring Austria-Hungary's Galician community), in order to be found unfit for military service by the Imperial authorities.
Russian Empire
The "Abstension" resistance by self-harm was most extreme in the Russian Empire under the Cantonist system implemented for Jews from 1827 - 1856,[1] though self-harm actions continued afterward. An 1835 secret report by the chief of the Special Corps of Gendarmes in Vilnius expressed the government's difficulty in preventing self-mutilations.[2]
The phenomenon was covered in the Russian Hebrew press, and Ha-Melitz warned against the practice as violating Jewish law as well as Russian law.[3] The phenomenon of self-induced hernia received attention in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1891.[4]
Just before World War I, the Jewish author and folklorist S. Ansky conducted an ethnographic survey of Russian Empire regions of Volhynia and Podolia, devoting a section of his large questionnaire to conscription-related cultural practices.[5]
Austro-Hungarian Empire
Concription among Jews in Galicia was introduced by Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor in 1788.
In some Galician communities (e.g. Tlumach,[6] Liuboml,[7] Kalush[8]), deprivation efforts among young men became a rite of passage, when fasting during the day was followed by communal all-night sessions of excessive caffeine, excessive exercise, chain smoking, and sometimes taking on a pranking Mischief Night character.
Further reading
Memoirs
- Fass, Paula S. (2008). Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second-Generation Memoir. Rutgers University Press.
- Miller, Andrew (2006). The Earl of Petticoat Lane. Random House. p. 49.
- Elliott, Geoffrey (2004). From Siberia with love: a story of exile, revolution and cigarettes. Methuen. p. 57.
- Spiegelman, Art (1980). Maus. I.
- Cohen, Joseph Jacob (1954). The House Stood Forlorn: Legacy of Remembrance of a Boyhood in the Russia of the Late Nineteenth Century. Éditions polyglottes. p. 127.
Stories
- "Grandfather and Grandson" - Isaac Bashevis Singer
- "The Conscription of Troops" and "A Hunger Artist" (Jewish self-degradation themes) - Franz Kafka
- "Out of the Depths" - Yosef Haim Brenner
- "The Automatic Exemption" - Sholem Aleichem
History
- 1890s account - Budnitskii, Oleg (2012). Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 129–130.
See also
References
- ↑ Dubnow, Simon. "Chapter XVII. The Last Years of Nicholas I, 3. New Consciption Horrors". History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II.
- ↑ Freeze, ChaeRan Y.; Harris, Jay M., eds. (2013). "Self-Mutilation to Avoid Military Service". Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Select Documents, 1772-1914. Brandies University Press. pp. 520–521.
- ↑ Penslar, Derek (2013). Jews and the Military: A History. Princeton University Press. pp. 31, 48–49.
- ↑ "Medical Items: Hernia Among Russian Army Recruits". Journal of the American Medical Association. XVI: 560. 18 April 1891. doi:10.1001/jama.1891.02410680018007.
- ↑ Deutsch, Nathaniel (2011). "O. Military Conscription". The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement. Harvard University Press. pp. 191–194.
- ↑ Blond, Shelomoh (1976). "The Abstinence (English translation)". Tlumacz: sefer ʻedut ṿe-zikaron (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Yotsʼe Ṭlumats be-Yiśraʼel. pp. 67–68.
- ↑
- Kagan, Berl (1997). "Early Days: Mortifications of the Flesh and Fistfights". Luboml: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl (PDF). KTAV Publishing House. pp. 55–56.
- ↑ Kalusz: Amusing Memories
External links
- "The Conscript" - from the diary of Russo-Japanese War veteran Jacob Marateck