Boris Eichenbaum
The history of the Eichenbaum family is unique, as is the history of every Jewish family. But first about the surname itself, although it is not an ancestral name for this family. Eichenbaum means “oak tree” in German. This surname was common in the early 19th century in cities and towns such as Lukow, Siedelz, Helm, Lublin, Radom, Pinchow, Bedzyn, Warsaw. Today we will try to trace one of the branches of this surname, whose fate was surprisingly ambiguous. This path from enlightenment to assimilation was traveled by many Jewish families, which by our time have long since dissolved into the stream of other nations.
So let’s start with Yaakov Eichenbaum, born Yaakov Gelber. He was born on October 12, 1796 in Galicia in the town of Kristinopol (which was later renamed Chervonograd) and was recognized as an absolute prodigy. As they write in “Brockhaus and Ephron”: “as a child Yaakov caused astonishment with his phenomenal abilities; at the age of two he was already reading Hebrew fluently, at the age of four he knew the Pentateuch”.
His father, Moses Gelder son of Joseph, born in Zamość, a town near Lublin, which had been ceded to the Russian Empire by another treaty, made a somewhat unusual decision, even for those times – he not only married off his eight-year-old son, which, in general, was quite common, but, most importantly, sent him to be raised by his future father-in-law. History does not tell us what circumstances caused such a strange act.
The future father-in-law, a tenant (paymaster), lived near Orkhova, in Volhynia. Yaakov came into a family that was rigid, orthodox and categorically opposed to any new trends or anything that went beyond the usual circle of knowledge. The boy was apparently not only extremely inquisitive, but, having a difficult character, always tried to insist on his own. Early enough he began to study the Talmud, and studying it he got acquainted with the basics of mathematics. His thirst for knowledge led him to more and more expansion of the circle of habitual knowledge. The so-called “secular sciences” attracted him more and more. Such a strange passion did not arouse the pleasure of his father-in-law’s family. The end of it all was that Jacob was forced to divorce his wife, and years of wandering began for him.
In 1815, at the age of 19, he returned to his father’s homeland, Zamość. He finally got to the place he had been striving for for many years. The fact is that in Zamość at that time there was a circle of figures of the then extremely fashionable Haskala, oriented towards the Berlin enlightenment in the vein of the school of Mendelssohn, one of the fathers of Haskala. Hundreds, if not thousands of works have been written about Haskala. The famous figures of Haskalah were engaged in enlightenment or in the study of so-called “secular or European” sciences while always, at least in the vast majority of them, self-identifying with the Jewish people. Their thirst for knowledge led them to study not only the “Jewish sciences” but also the cultures, history, and languages of the peoples around them. But by some strange irony of fate, or just by virtue of its regularity, it was their children or grandchildren who, for the most part, either became supporters of assimilation, or simply left their own Jewishness by being baptized, converting to Catholicism, Orthodoxy or accepting Protestantism. And their descendants usually became extremely distant from Jewishness.
Returning to our hero, it should be noted that he would later become a famous “enlightener” and “rationalist”, that is, a supporter of the idea of a rational explanation of the Torah. In Zamość, Yaakov married for the second time, and there for the first time he became seriously acquainted with the enlightenment movement. He studied math, German, philosophy and French. In 1819 he translated Euclid’s “Elements” into Hebrew, but was unable to publish this work – he had no money. In Zamość he changed his name to Eichenbaum. For a number of years he “burdened with a large family, wandered around different cities, taking private lessons. During his years in Uman, he became close to Hirsch Ber Gurvich, later known as Herman Bernard, a professor at Cambridge University, “one of the pioneers of European enlightenment among Jews in Russia, a writer and teacher.
In 1835, having reached Odessa, Yakov, now Eichenbaum, opened a private Jewish school (on the principle of private German schools). But this enterprise did not last long. All this time he was writing and trying to publish. In his collection of poems “Kol Zimra,” which he succeeded in publishing in 1836 in Leipzig, his poems were printed. The critics wrote of it as “a revival of new poetry in Hebrew.” His poem “Arba itot ha-Schanah” (the four seasons) was received with delight by the critics. His largest work is perhaps one of his strangest poems, the poem “Ha-Kerab”, published in London in 1840 and translated 7 years later into Russian. The essence of this poem is that Yakov Eichenbaum, a remarkable chess player, “describes in verse a game of chess in the form of a battle”. In fact, this poem was not only, as the critics wrote “in elegance of form and vividness of imagery a notable stage in the development of New Jewish poetry,” but also a textbook on the game of chess. He wrote several other large poems. As a mathematician he drew attention to himself with his dispute with S. D. Luzzatto over an obscure place in Abraham ibn Ezra. His dispute with the French mathematician Francker caused a sensation. He discovered an error in Francker’s calculations when he translated his famous course into Hebrew. But for all that, his financial situation was extremely difficult. As historians write, “in extreme need,” Yakov turned in 1843 to I. B. Levinzon, “the Mendelssohn of the Russian Jews,” with a request that the latter ask him to take a place for him in one of the public schools that were being opened.
Finally, his endless wanderings came to an end – he was appointed the caretaker of the Jewish school in Kishinev, and from 1850 until his death he was the inspector of the rabbinical school in Zhitomir. Witty, easy-going and sociable, he enjoyed great popularity not only among his students, but also among his contemporaries in general. At the same time, the authors of the article in the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron bitterly state: “unfavorable conditions of the transitional era did not give him the opportunity to normally develop his exceptional gifts.”. At this time, as we know, there was a serious struggle between the orthodox and Hasidim and the Haskalah figures. At the same time there was also a war between the orthodox and Hasidim. In general, there are rare times when Jews did not fight with each other. And very often, unfortunately, the methods of struggle were not always honorable. It is fair to say that, as another encyclopedia writes about Yakov Eichenbaum, he “was universally respected in the Jewish community and never compromised himself by attempting to resolve intra-Jewish differences with the help of the Russian government”. Yakov Eichenbaum, poet and mathematician, died in Kiev on December 27, 1861.
Continuing to restore the genealogical line of his family, we stop at his son, whom we know under the name Michael. Most likely, he was apparently named in honor of his grandfather Moses. As we know from the “Memorable Book of Voronezh Province” in 1890 in the district Zemlyansk near Voronezh moved “doctor Michael Yakov Eichenbaum”, born in 1853, the son of the inspector of Zhitomir rabbinical school. We know about him that he married the Orthodox Nadezhda Dormidontovna Glotova, born in 1858, daughter of Admiral Glotov. We also know of him that he was baptized. What was this connected with? With enlightenment? With love? With an opportunity for prestigious employment? We have no answers to this question. His wife was, as historians write about her, “one of the first women in Russia to become a qualified doctor”. Mikhail himself served as a doctor “in the railroad department”. In 1900 the family moved to Voronezh. Mikhail died during the Russian Revolution, in 1917.
His two sons, Vsevolod and Boris, also grew up in Voronezh. Vsevolod was the eldest, he was born in 1882, Boris was four years younger than him. Both of them graduated from Voronezh gymnasium. And then their fates diverged.
Vsevolod enters St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Law and plunges headlong into the then fashionable revolutionary movement. According to the memories of contemporaries, “and who among the students at that time was not a revolutionary?” In 1905, at the age of 23, he joins the most radical and militant party at that time (except, of course, a small group of marginalized people who united around Ulyanov) in the party of social revolutionaries – SR.
In the same year, his younger brother Boris comes to visit him in St. Petersburg, intending to enter the Military Medical Academy. But during the revolution of 1905, the Academy is closed, and Boris enters the biological department of the Free Higher School of P.F. Lesgaft. However, immediately Boris decides to change his fate and devote it to music. In January, he enters the music school of Professor Raphof and at the same time engaged in piano, violin and vocal. And in the fall he changes his decision again and enters the Slavic-Russian and then the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology at St. Petersburg University.
Two years later, in 1907, his older brother Vsevolod was arrested and sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia for his participation in expropriations (expropriations – then common “robberies in the name of revolutionary ideas”).
Boris at this time produces his first article, “Pushkin the Poet and the Rebellion of 1825 (Experience of a Psychological Study)”.
A year later, Vsevolod escapes on his way to exile, and moves illegally to France.
In 1909 his younger brother left professional music studies to devote himself fully to philology and wrote articles on the poetics of Derzhavin and Karamzin.
In 1911, after the famous publicist Burtsev exposed one of the leaders of the SR party, provocateur Azef, Vsevolod left the party and became an anarchist-communist and one of the organizers of the Russian anarchist movement abroad.
In the same year, Boris returns to the Slavic-Russian department, having “an extraordinary and lively interest in the Russian language and in Slavic studies in general”. A year later Boris graduates from the University. In 1913-1914 his articles are printed in many publications, he leads a review of foreign literature in the newspaper “Russkaya Molva”. There are his articles “On the Mysteries of Paul Claudel”, “On Chekhov”, published his translations from French. He is one of the most active participants in the literary life of St. Petersburg: he goes to the meetings of Gumilev’s “shop of poets”, to the evenings of the Futurists, argues in print with Merezhkovsky, proclaims the search for “cultural wholeness.
His older brother Vsevolod joined the anarchist-syndicalist party in 1914.
Boris at this time is invited to teach at the gymnasium Y. Gurevich. He writes “On the principles of studying literature at secondary school”.
The First World War begins. Vsevolod is a member of Russian and French anarchist groups in Paris, a member of the “International Action Committee”. In August 1916, he is arrested for anti-militarist propaganda and put in a concentration camp. He escapes and makes his way to the United States. In July 1917, just after the revolution, he returns to Russia. Immediately he becomes a member of the Petrograd “Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda” and one of the editors of its newspaper, Golos Truda. In October he writes: “We are asked… how we feel about the possible masses with the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’, and whether we will take part in it…. We cannot but be at one with the revolutionary masses, even if they do not follow our path… even if we foresee the failure of the performance. We always remember that the direction and outcome of the mass movement cannot be foreseen in advance. And we consider it our duty to participate in such a movement, striving to contribute to it our content, our idea, our truth”. Vsevolod issues a program article “Lenin and Anarchism” Here is a quote from it: “The path of Marxism inevitably passes through the state, political power and political dictatorship. The path of anarchism passes through the independent organization of the masses….. The Russian Revolution, from the very beginning, followed spontaneously the anarchist path.” At the beginning of March 1918, he organized a partisan detachment and, leading it, went to the front “to defend the October Revolution from the advancing Germans”.
At this time, his younger brother Boris began teaching at Petrograd, future Leningrad, University. He, as it used to be written, “gets closer to the members of OPOJAZ”. OPOJAZ stands for the Society for the Study of Poetic Language. This society was avant-garde and absolutely revolutionary, but not in the social sense, but in the literary sense. What could Vsevolod say to these young people? Perhaps he could repeat Babel’s phrases, “Stop scandalizing at your desk and stuttering in public. Imagine for a moment that you scandalize in the squares and stammer on paper. You are a tiger, you are a lion, you are a cat” But, according to Boris’s recollections, in the Opoyazovtsy, “I saw a craving for a new culture, for a new social order”. This was the famous group of so-called “formalists” – Osip Brik, Yuri Tynyanov, Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson…. All those names who would later create the theory of Russian literature. All those people who would later be reminded of their “formalist past”. Actually, the true manifesto of OPOJAZ was Eichenbaum’s article “How Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ was made”. And soon Boris began writing his famous trilogy on Leo Tolstoy.
Vsevolod goes to Ukraine and fights on the battlefields of the Civil War. To his surname Eichenbaum he adds a revolutionary-romantic pseudonym – Volin. In the autumn he participates in the creation of the Confederation of Anarchist Organization of Ukraine. In 1919 he became a member of its secretariat and one of the editors of the newspaper “Nabat” Soon he is the closest associate of Nestor Makhno, deputy chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council of the Rebel Army, head of its Cultprosvet and one of the main ideologists of the Makhnovist movement. By the way, Makhno is the only, perhaps, military commander of that time out of all Red, White, Green and Zhevtoblokidniki, who shot his own and strangers for Jewish pogroms. As historian Moshe Goncharok, one of the greatest contemporary researchers of anarchism, writes: “Volin-Eichenbaum was called ‘the pillar of anarchy’, he was, in fact, ‘the intellectual leader of the Makhnovist movement’.” Volin-Eichenbaum’s name, along with Makhno’s, rattled throughout then Russia. In December 1919, in the army newspaper “Shlyakh do Voli” Vsevolod published an article “Shame”, directed against the anti-Semitic sentiments of the rebels. Vsevolod was called “the ideologist of the Makhnovist movement”. His disputes with Makhno on theoretical and practical issues were well known. At one point he even resigned because of his disagreement with Nestor.
Boris, the younger brother, at this time, in the 20th year, begins to work at the State Institute of Art History, where he receives the title of Doctor of Philological Sciences, and then Professor.
In January of the same twentieth Vsevolod is arrested in the city of Krivoy Rog by the “Soviet authorities” and in March he is transferred to Moscow. For half a year he sits in a Moscow prison, but after an agreement between the Bolsheviks and the Makhnovists, he is released. Two months later, on November 25, he was arrested again in Kharkov, this time for preparing an anarchist congress. Once again arrested, he was again taken to Moscow. But at the request of the delegates of the Red Profintern Congress to the Council of People’s Commissars, he was released again and among ten anarchists was sent abroad on January 5, 1922. As Moshe Goncharok writes “according to the story of the prominent Israeli philologist-slavist Ilya Serman (Jerusalem), on the eve of Volin’s expulsion from Soviet Russia in 1922, he came to his brother to say goodbye, and they talked all night. Among other things, Wolin said: “If these people start talking about the horrors of the Makhnovshchina, don’t believe a word of it.”
Boris at this time publishes article after article, and his literary and philological activities become more and more famous. He creates fundamental works on Lermontov, on Tolstoy, writes a program article “The Theory of the Formal Method”, argues that literature is inseparable from the personality of the writer, that philology should become literature. Gradually he becomes more and more famous and universally recognized historian of literature. And suddenly, unexpectedly in 1924, as if remembering his brother, he confesses to Shklovsky in a letter: “History has bored me, and I do not want to rest and do not know how. I have a longing for deeds, a longing for biography”. In the same year he writes an article about his grandfather Yakov Eichenbaum, and a year later in his diary he writes: “Scientific work of the former type does not attract – boring and unnecessary. There is nothing to say about pedagogical work – it should have been abandoned, leaving only a circle of close students. In all its acuteness and simplicity is the question – what should I do next in life? Where to direct my temperament, mind, strength?” At this time, Vsevolod in Paris speaks in anarchist organizations and also writes, writes, writes….
Boris says in his diary about his life – “literature was not conceived in it”. As the KJE notes – all his life Boris felt a “spiritual genetic connection to his Jewish grandfather” – “the law of heredity … led me … to the Faculty of History and Philology.” He works tirelessly. He writes about Saltykov-Shchedrin, about Polonsky, publishes the unrecognized book “Route to Immortality. Life, exploits of Chukhloma nobleman and international lexicographer Nikolai Petrovich Makarov”.
In his diary he writes: “I am all alone”. According to Shubinsky’s testimony, cited by A. Gordon “in 1937 Eichenbaum called his daughter daily in the morning and, reporting that he was alive and free, said the word “underflight” or “flight” (almost every night came to take someone from his literary neighbors in the apartment)”. Shubinsky notes that, in an atmosphere of fatal fear of authority, Eichenbaum was among the few who managed to “avoid disaster while avoiding dishonor.
Vsevolod at this time in Paris, then re-unites with Makhno, then quarrels with him. Makhno dies in 1934, and gossipmongers persistently spread rumors about Vsevolod’s affair with his widow – Galina Kuzmenko (who after World War II found herself together with her daughter back in Russia, was, of course, put in a camp (the mother was given eight years of camps, After Stalin’s death she was amnestied and spent her last years in the Kazakh town of Dzhambul, where she died in 1978, and her daughter from Nestor Makhno, Elena Mikhnenko, died in Russia quite recently, in the 90s of the 20th century). Vsevolod became an editor, as well as the author of the preface and notes to two volumes of Makhno’s books, published after his death. During the Spanish Civil War he actively cooperates with Spanish anarchists. At the outbreak of World War II, he goes into hiding in France and participates in underground resistance groups, the Makhnos. He dies in 1945.
Boris continues to work on books about Tolstoy, as the Russian Encyclopedia writes, “seeing in this work ‘salvation and cure’ from the terrible events in public life.” As the KEE points out, “in 1949, during the campaign against cosmopolitans, he was harassed, dismissed from the university and the Pushkin House, and for five years was deprived of any possibility of scientific and literary work”. His works practically ceased to be published. He suffered a severe heart disease. He died in Leningrad, 14 years after his older brother, in November 1959. According to the critic Zolotonosov “he was always attuned to the tragic motif of strangeness, needlessness, loneliness, marginality and irrelevance, feeling as such both in his childhood in Voronezh and in his youth in St. Petersburg.” “You should have lived in the time of Pushkin or the Moscow salons of the era of Chaadaev, Herzen, Belinsky. Then you would long ago have been a representative of revolutionary democracy, and not the pope of OPOYAZ. However, history will decide what is better and what is worse,” his friend Julian Oxman wrote to Boris after returning from the camps.
Both brothers became world famous during their lifetimes. The elder became one of the most famous anarchists of the era, the younger one one one of its most famous literary critics. Did they feel themselves to be Jews? It is difficult to answer this question. In any case, and we have no doubt about it, they were considered Jews by everyone around them, from Nestor Makhno to Joseph Stalin, the mastermind of the “homeless cosmopolitans”.
Vsevolod was left with three sons – Igor, Yuri and Leo. Igor, as recalled by writer Eugenia Taratuta, “served in Madagascar. When World War II broke out, he and a comrade hijacked an airplane and flew to Somalia, to the British military base in Djibouta, to join the resistance movement of General de Gaulle. In 1943 Igor Eichenbaum as part of the squadron “Normandy-Neman” was again in Russia. As it is written in the site of the museum “Normandie-Neman”, created by a Moscow school: “Having entered the regiment in September 1943, he participated in many offensive operations of the Soviet Army. He finished the war with the rank of junior lieutenant. Igor Eichenbaum received numerous French and Soviet awards.” In one of the German air raids he was concussed, and he was almost deaf. More recently, Igor lived near Marseille and was general secretary of the Normandie-Neman Squadron Veterans Association.
Boris’s son, “a brilliant boy”, died at the front, daughter Olga, a librarian by profession, became a writer, she died recently in 1999, granddaughter Lisa, who, as journalists write, “cared for – and the genius Joseph Brodsky, and inimitable Sergei Dovlatov, and director Leonid Kvinikhidze, and many others,” married actor Oleg Dahl, she died in 2003.
These are the main fates of the members of this Jewish family. By the way, if we go back to the beginning, to the time when the Eichenbaums were not yet Eichenbaums, but were Gelbers from Zamość, we can trace another vector of hobbies, but, however, also public and research. The Gelbers became famous Zionists from Galicia, participated in the creation of the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Encyclopedia Diaspora, wrote many works on the Jewish history of Galicia, Poland, Austria and Bukovina, and their descendant, Nathan Michael Gelber, became “one of the fathers of Jewish genealogy”.