After reviewing developments in Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union in the interwar period the volume considers Polish–Jewish relations during the Second World War and examines the Soviet record on the Holocaust. A survey of developments since 1945 concludes with an epilogue on the situation of the Jews since the collapse of communism.

General Introduction I The Polish-Lithuanian Background Introduction 1 Jews and Christians in early modern Poland-Lithuania 2 Jewish Autonomous Institutions 3 Jewish Places: Royal Towns and Noble Towns 4 Jews in Economic Life 5 Religious and Spiritual Life II Governmental Attempts to Transform and Integrate the Jews and the Jewish Response, 1750-1880 Introduction 1 The Last Years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 2 The Jews in the Prussian Partition of Poland 3 The Jews in Austrian Poland (Galicia) down to the mid-1870s 4 The Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1815-1881 5 The Jews in the Tsarist Empire, 1772-1825 6 Nicholas I and the Jews of Russia, 1825-1855 7 The Reign of Alexander II, 1855-1881 III The Deterioration of the Position of the Jews and the New Jewish Politics, 1881-1914 Introduction 1 The Deterioration of the Position of the Jews in the Tsarist Empire after 1881 2 The Revolution of 1905-7 in the Tsarist Empire and its Consequences 3 The Kingdom of Poland, 1881-1914 4 Galicia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century 5 Prussian Poland from 1869 to 1914 6 The Emergence of Modern Jewish Literature in the Tsarist Empire and Galicia 7 Jewish Religious Life in the Nineteenth Century 8 Jewish Spaces: Shetlakh and Towns in the Nineteenth Century 9 Women in Jewish Eastern Europe 10 The Rise of Jewish Mass Culture: Literature, Press, Theatre IV War, Revolution, and Totalitarianism, 1914-1939 Introduction 1 The Impact of the First World War on Jewish Life in Eastern Europe 2 The Jews in Polish Political and Social Life 3 Jewish Life in the Towns and Shtetlakh of Interwar Poland 4 Jewish Cultural and Intellectual Life in Independent Poland 5 Religious Life in Interwar Poland 6 Jews in Interwar Lithuania 7 Jews in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union, 1921-1941 8 Jews in Towns and Shtetlakh in the USSR 9 Jewish Culture in the Soviet Union down to 1941 V The Twilight of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1939 to the present day Introduction 1 Jews under Nazi and Soviet Occupation, September 1939 - June 1941 2 The Nazi Holocaust in Eastern Europe 3 Jews in Poland, 1944-1989 4 Jews in the Soviet Union, 1944-1991 5 Jews in Poland since the end of communism 6 Jews in Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus since 1991