Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius (1869-1945)
Reflections on the 'mission' of the Jewish people. 1939
Autograph manuscript of an article, 'O evreyah i statia Felsena' ('About Jews and Felsen's article'), n.p., 22 August 1939.

In Russian. 15 pages, 220 x 164 mm, in black and green ink, apparently unfinished, pencil pagination. Provenance: Temira Pachmuss (1927-2007, professor of Russian literature at Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign and leading Gippius scholar).

'Voyna bila ili ne voyna, evreyskiy vopros ostayetsia': reflections on the 'mission' of the Jewish people. Gippius considers the position of the Jewish people in a historical perspective ('without looking back at the entire history of the Jews it is impossible to understand the Jews of today'), noting 'the distinctiveness of their fate, their exceptional strength and solidarity through the centuries', and considering what has changed in the Jewish identity over 2,000 years of coexistence with Christianity. She reflects on whether Jews may be considered inherently 'conservative' in politics, and considers potential differences in attitudes towards the concept of 'motherland' or 'fatherland' in different ethnic groups, suggesting that 'Jewish "nationalism" is therefore not quite ordinary "nationalism"', and reflecting on the fact that there has not yet been a major Russian Jewish writer. Finally, she considers what might be the fate or 'mission' of the Jewish people, concluding with a reflection of Ternavtsev that the continued distinct existence of the Jewish people may be 'a sign' sent to the world. The manuscript concludes in the middle of the first sentence of an intended second section.

The manuscript is a response to an article by the author and critic Yuri Felsen (pseudonym of Nikolai Bernhardovich Freudenstein, 1894–1943).

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