Jewish Philosophical Heritage as Baltic Second Culture

Texts by philosophers are not only read, discussed, and creatively engaged with by elites within academia. Intellectual heritage is also disseminated in broader contexts and can inspire people imagining new ways of living, whether as citizens or as members of, for example, an ethno-religious community. During the post-Stalin and late Soviet periods, the Jewry of the Baltic region developed ways of discussing, producing, and circulating texts through samizdat (underground) publishing, which formed part of Soviet Second Culture. This culture constitutes the focus of my research. By “Second Culture” I refer to the parallel cultural and intellectual sphere that emerged among Soviet dissidents. In addition, there were tamizdat publications — works printed abroad and smuggled into the Soviet Union. How did the heritage of post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers influence and inspire Soviet Jewish thought on religion, diaspora, homeland, nationalism, and Zionism? And how did this grassroots process contribute to new experiments with this tradition of thought within Second Culture publications? These questions will be investigated at the disciplinary crossroads of religious studies, philosophy, the sociology of literature, and Eastern European history.