Scholarship on the history of Jewish advocacy and political mobilization in the final decades of the Russian empire has made great progress in the last twenty-five years. The work of St. Petersburg historian and bibliographer Viktor Kel΄ner has been part of this wave. He is the author of almost two dozen articles, as well as a biography of the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow (Semen Dubnov), Missioner istorii: Zhizn΄ i trudy Semena Markovicha Dubnova (2008). This book shifts the focus to another major figure of the period, the Jewish lawyer and liberal activist Maxim Vinaver (1863–1926). It takes its title, Shchit (The Shield), from the collection of essays and fiction published in 1915 on the initiative of Vinaver and other Jewish leaders, who engaged the participation of non-Jewish intellectuals and public figures in protesting the rising tide of antisemitism during the First World War. Shchit symbolizes the strategy of collaboration with progressive Russian opinion-makers to advance the cause of Jewish rights. Competing with other forms of Jewish activism—Zionist, socialist, autonomist—liberals such as Vinaver insisted that Jews must defend their place in Russian society and therefore fight for the kind of regime that would grant them the benefits of citizenship. He resolutely opposed any attempt to separate Jewish issues from the broader liberal-democratic movement.

Echoing the findings of other historians, this book argues that the so-called Jewish Question was not incidental to the liberal campaign for the rule of law and civil rights, but central to it, and acknowledged as such not only by Jewish spokesmen, but by their gentile colleagues as well. It documents the rising power of antisemitism, as a (self-defeating) government policy, as well as an instrument of populist mobilization against the revolutionary and liberal tides. At the same time, it demonstrates the increasing complexity and effectiveness of Jewish attempts to influence Russian and international public opinion and exert political pressure, limited as it was, on behalf of the Jewish cause. As Kel΄ner shows, Vinaver played a key role in crafting and leading these campaigns. A native of Warsaw, Vinaver established a career in St. Petersburg as a specialist in civil law, practicing at the highest level permitted for a Jew. A prominent figure in the Kadet Party, he was elected to the Duma as deputy from St. Petersburg. In this role, he represented both sides of what he considered a single fight: for liberal principles and for Jewish rights.

In relation to Kel΄ner's own publications and other recent work, the book delivers few scholarly revelations, but it abounds in good judgments and sharp formulations concerning the course of Jewish politics over these years. While charting the stages of Vinaver's career, it provides an overview of Jewish political initiatives at the level of parties, the press, organs of advocacy and propaganda, and individual personalities, largely in the St. Petersburg context. It concludes with a brief survey of Vinaver's continuing activity in emigration. Despite the liberals’ defeat in the revolution and civil war, he maintained his guiding principles to the end. As Kel΄ner shows, liberalism proved to be both necessary and inadequate for releasing the Jews of imperial Russia from domestic quarantine or, after 1917, establishing the kind of society in which they would not be kept on the margins of public life or threatened in their very existence.

For all its virtues, the book is unfortunately marred by the apparent absence of editorial intervention. Entire passages and phrases are repeated; individual figures and institutions are introduced more than once; excessive quotations and lists of names and publications often impede the narrative flow. An amusing slip involves the title of an émigré publication, given as Straggling Russia (399).