Use of the word "Zhid"

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

21 Aug 98

Colleagues,
I am glad to see that Jim Rice will be publishing his study on Dostoevsky's
use of the word "zhid."  In the meantime I feel obliged to object to his
negative evaluation of Felix Dreizin's book, and in particular to his
reluctance to translate Dostoevsky's "zhid" as "yid" or "kike."

Dostoevsky resorted to denial as one way to deal with his anti-Semitism.
In his 1877 essay on "The Jewish Question" in _Diary of a Writer_ he
declares that "in my heart this hatred has never existed."  Yet he then
asks: "Is it because I sometimes call a Jew a 'yid' [nazyvaiu inogda evreia
'zhidom'] that I am accused of 'hatred'?  But, in the first place, I didn't
think this was so offensive, and in the second place, as far as I can
recall, I always used the word 'yid' in reference to a certain idea: 'yid,'
'yidism,' 'the reign of the yids,' and so on.  This was a reference to the
well-known notion, orientation, or characteristic of the times.  One can
dispute this idea, or disagree with it, but one shouldn't be offended by a
word" (Dostoevskii 1972-88, vol. 25, p. 75).  However, Dostoevsky knew
perfectly well that the word was offensive, and he used the word in an
openly contemptuous way in his private correspondence (see Dreizin).  It is
not as if Dostoevsky were operating in a semantic vacuum.  He knew about
the anti-Semitism around him ("well-known notion").  Even here he says that
he doesn't think the term "zhid" is SO offensive ["TAK obidno"] - which is
to say that he admits that it is at least SOMEWHAT offensive.

In my previous posting I mentioned how the anti-Semitism fit in with
Dostoevsky's projective tendencies.  Here is an example, again from _Diary
of a Writer_: the jews are guilty of  "mercilessness" and of "disrespect
for every people and race, and for every human creature who is not a Jew"
(p. 84).  Since this claim is manifestly false (only an anti-Semite would
believe it), then it must originate not in external reality (real Jews),
but in some split-off portion of Dostoevsky's own mind.  It must, in short,
be projected from within from some internal source - and what more likely
source than Dostoevsky's own "mercilessness" and "disrespect" for Jews?
(Dreizin, Rosenthal, Breger, and others have written about projective
mechanisms in Dostoevsky).

Jim Rice objects to my use of the term "paranoid tendencies" to
characterize Dostoevsky.  Yet Rice himself writes of Dostoevsky's "episodes
of paranoid delusion" (_Dostoevsky and the Healing Art_, 1985, p. 81;
quoted by Dreizin, 106).  Clinicians generally agree that sporadic paranoia
is common in the lives of epileptics.  Anti-Semitism is a form of paranoia.
 It is a paranoid delusion to believe that Jews as a class are hostile to
you.  Of course anti-Semitic beliefs became increasingly common in the
second half of the nineteenth century in Russia, and not everyone who held
such a belief was epileptic.  But there are historical contexts which
foster ethnic hatred and make it almost "normal," e.g., anti-Negro
hostility among whites in the antebellum south.  Indeed, as psychologists
Robert Robins and Jerrold Post observe in a recent book: "No one is ever
completely free from the paranoid dynamic.  It is an innate human tendency,
and under stress, otherwise psychologically healthy individuals, groups,
and societies are susceptible to the paranoid appeal."

There is nothing shameful about Dostoevsky's paranoid tendencies when they
grace the pages of his literary art (let us call it the Golyadkin
phenomenon, or let us even agree with Bakhtin's notion of "polyphony").
But real life is something else, and in _Diary of a Writer_ Dostoevsky was
making falsifiable (and false, and hateful) claims about reality.

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
Professor of Russian
Director, Russian Program
University of California, Davis
darancourlaferriere at ucdavis.edu