The Rabbinic Commission (1848-1910) was a consultative body under the Ministry of Internal Affairs (specifically the Department of Spiritual Affairs for Foreign Faiths), organized to deal with matters of the Jewish faith. Its creation conformed to the general state policy of centralizing the religious administration of foreign confessions in a single department. Its primary duties were to answer inquiries from the state about Jewish laws and customs, to supervise the activities of rabbis, and to examine controversial Jewish divorce suits. While the state had created this institution to gather information about internal Jewish life, the Commission gradually transformed into a higher court of appeals for private divorce cases (which remained under rabbinical jurisdiction until 1917) and a vehicle for preserving traditional religious and family values.
The changing profile of the Commission’s members reflected the transformation in its mission and identity. The first session (1852) included obscure individuals who were well versed neither in the Russian language nor Jewish law: the merchant Bern-shtein (Odessa), D. Orshansky (Poltava), Shimel Merkel (Kovno province), and Dr. Cherolzon (Os-zeisky province). They examined queries about the censorship of Jewish books, Hasidic sects, the Jewish oath, registration, and marriage of Jewish soldiers. The second meeting (1857) involved more prominent Jews: Dr. Abraham Neumann (Riga), the merchant Yekutiel-Zisl Rapoport (Minsk), the merchant Chlenov, (Kremenchug), and Rabbi Yakov Barit (Vilna). Among other topics, they discussed the establishment of state schools for Jewish girls.
In addition to the previous members, the third session (1861-1862) included Itskhok Eliiagu (Eliyahu) Landau (Kiev), German Barats (Vilna), and A. Maidevsky (Poltava), Iosef Evzel Gintsburg, and two learned Jews from the Ministry of the People’s Education-Iosif Zeiberling (St. Petersburg) and Samuel Iosif Fin (Vilna). The Commission examined ten cases on Jewish religious life and its first divorce case.
The fourth session (1879) was an “assembly of rabbis without rabbis.” Apart from state rabbi German Faddeyevich Blyumenfeld (Odessa) and Dr. Avraham Harkavy (an Orientalist), the others were secular professionals: Hirsh Shapiro (Kovno), Zelman Lyubich (Minsk), Meier Levin (Pinsk), Baron Goratsy Gintsburg (Kiev), and I. I. Kaufman (Odessa). They examined eight cases of divorce and bigamy.
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The fifth session (1893-1894) reflected the aggressive campaign of the Jewish Orthodox leadership to reassert their authority and preserve tradition. It involved four enlightened Jews (German Barats, Iakov Gottesman, Samuil Simkhovich, Avraam Katlovker) and three prominent Orthodox leaders: rabbis Tsvi Rabinovich (Vilna), Samuel Mogilever (Grodno), and theologian Yuriya Mileikovsky (Mogilev). They examined twenty-seven cases on marriage, divorce, and religious rituals.
The final sixth session (1910) was a victory for the Orthodox camp, which promised to wean Jews from revolutionary activities. Save for one jurist, Moisie Mazor (Kiev), the others were rabbis: Yehuda Leib Tsirelson (Kishinev), Khaim Soloveichik (Brest-Litovsk), Oizer Grodzensky (Vilna), Sholom Shneer-son (Liubavich), Shmuel Polinkovsky (Odessa), and Mendel Khein (Nezhin). They examined twenty-three cases on marriage and divorce, as well as questions about burials, cemeteries, spelling of Jewish names, oaths, and censorship of books.
Although the Rabbinic Commission only met six times, it addressed key religious and family issues that plagued Russian Jewry. The shift in influence from the enlightened to Orthodox camp brought a reassertion of traditional values, including the refusal to modify Jewish law to suit modern expectations. The state ceased to convene the Rabbinic Commission as the empire descended into war and revolution. See also: JEWS lished December 3, 1917). It was charged with ensuring the effectiveness of government administration and monitoring the implementation of state decrees. The former commisar of state control, Josef Stalin, remained in charge of Rabkrin until he was replaced in April 1922 by A. D. Tsyurupa.
The Soviet leadership soon became concerned that Rabkrin was failing to halt the growth of bu- reaucraticism, mismanagement, and corruption in the government apparatus. In April 1923, Rabkrin was merged with the Communist Party’s Central Control Commission under Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev. The new body was given the broad task of supervising and rationalizing the administration of all party, state, and economic functions. From November 1926 to November 1930, Stalin’s close ally, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, headed the joint control agency, which became a powerful political weapon for the consolidation of Stalin’s power. In 1928, it was charged with overseeing implementation of the First Five-Year Plan, and played a major role in promoting unrealistically ambitious industrial planning and militaristic campaign methods of economic administration. In November 1930, Andrei Andreye-vich Andreyev succeeded as head of the joint control agency until October 1931, when he was replaced by Yan Ernestovich Rudzutak. To strengthen the power of the economic commissariats, the Seventeenth Party Congress (1934) dissolved Rabkrin and transferred its functions to an emasculated Commission for State Control, attached to Sovnarkom and separate from the new Commission for Party Control subordinated to the Central Committee.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Freeze, ChaeRan Y. (2002). Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Rabkrin is the contracted name of Narodnyi Kom-missariat Raboche-Krest’ianskoi Inspektsii (The People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection), the Soviet governmental institution responsible between 1920 and 1934 for overseeing state administration.
On February 7, 1920, the Soviet Central Executive Committee established Rabkrin to succeed the People’s Commissariat for State Control (estabSee also: CENTRAL CONTROL COMMISSION; SOVNARKOM; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
Rees, E. A. (1987). State Control in Soviet Russia. The Rise and Fall of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 1920-1934. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
(1873-1943), one of the most famous of Russian composers.
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov was born in Oneg, Russia. He first established himself with his much- performed Prelude in C Sharp Minor, presented
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with Rachmaninov at the piano in the Moscow Conservatory auditorium in 1892. A few years later he composed his famous Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. Soon after these successes he was appointed conductor at the Bolshoi Theater. Among his other works were an opera (Aleko, 1892), The Bells (a dramatic choral symphony composed in 1910), three instrumental symphonies, three other piano concertos, the Vocalise (two versions, 1916 and 1919) and other songs, the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (1934), and the Symphonic Dances (1940).
With the coming of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917, Rachmaninov exiled himself first to Germany, then to the United States. In the United States he had conducted his first (in 1909) but by no means only concert tour. His several succeeding appearances in New York City’s Carnegie Hall won him early fame. Critics remarked at the unusual span of his hands as his fingers raced through the rich chords and arpeggios.
After his departure from Russia, Rachmani-nov’s writing remained outstanding. Found in the repertoires of orchestras worldwide, the Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (1936) is a stunning work whose structure is studied in music school composition classes. Some of Rachmaninov’s music was included in film scores. Among these was the eerie music of “Isle of the Dead” in a 1945 film with Boris Karloff. Various parts of his other works turn up in many films.
Rachmaninov’s music is considered Romantic while bearing traces of typically Russian themes and style of composition. Although banned in Soviet Russia for more than seventy years, Rach-maninov’s music is as much admired in his homeland as the music of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, or Stravinsky. Beginning just
