The attitude of the authorities of the Russian empire to its Jewish citizens was a kind of “administrative paranoia.” It is established knowledge that at certain historical times about a quarter of all legislative activity, including various decrees, orders, and circulars was devoted to the Jews, primarily as various prohibitions. The study of various aspects of the policies of Russian authorities toward the Jewish question is far beyond its local context, and is therefore interesting to a wide range of specialists in Russian history.

Another, no less interesting topic is the colonial policy of the Russian empire in the newly conquered Muslim provinces, primarily in Central Asia. The monograph of Albert Kaganovich Obliged Friends: Russia and Bukharan Jews, 1800–1917, is the intersection of these two subjects and, therefore, of interest not only to specialists in the field of Jewish history and ethnography, but for general understanding of the methods and principles of the Imperial Russian bureaucracy and Russian colonialism in the east.

Kaganovich's monograph is primarily dedicated to the evolution of Russian policy toward the Bukharan Jews. The author discusses not only a number of Russian legislative initiatives in relation to the Bukharan Jews, but also what the concrete reasons for the Russian administration were and what place the “Bukhara Jewish” strategy occupied in general Russian-Jewish politics. The view of the historian is “stereoscopic.” Kaganovich sees as the subject of the historical process not only local and St. Petersburg authorities, but also the Bukharan Jews who were involved in dialogue with the authorities, who reacted to the administrative policies, and who tried to modify them or use in their favor.

One of the primary advantages of this work is its extensive base of sources: published, including periodicals, and unpublished archival documents, including private and personal archives. Sources in many languages were used in the book, including Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Bukhary (Bukharan Jewish language). The thoroughness of the author makes his monograph an indispensable source of bibliography on Bukharan-Jewish history.

The book is structured as a skillful combination of macro- and micro-historical approaches and the discussion of “big” historical subjects and specific cases, such as the Davydov case, the prosecution of a renowned merchant family for usury that provoked the growth of antisemitism in Turkestan. Changing his “scientific optics,” the author makes more visible the major trends in the history of relations between the Russian administration and Bukharan Jews.

The basic idea of the monograph is that from the time of the Russian conquest of Turkestan until the Revolution, the administrative status of Bukharan Jews slowly deteriorated. In its initial period of colonization of Central Asia, the tsarist government saw in the “aboriginal” Jews natural helpers and allies, but later on its anti-Semitic “instinct” attained the upper hand and played an increasingly important role in late-imperial politics. The second problem that plagues the monograph throughout is the difference in the legal status of the “aboriginal” Jews, that is, those who lived in Central Asian cities that were at once included in the empire, and the Jews who migrated to Russian Turkestan as subjects of the Emir of Bukhara. The tsarist government even tried to create for them a special “Central Asian Pale of Settlement.”

In general, the position of Bukharan Jews in tsarist Russia was much better than that of the more numerous Ashkenazim. The author rightly points out that the era from the late 1860s (conquest of Turkestan) until 1917 (the end of the Russian Empire) was the “Golden age” of Bukharan Jews, the period of their national development and their formation as an ethno-cultural community.

Kaganovich pays comparatively less attention to ethnography and the cultural life of Bukharan Jews in this period, but this is quite understandable, as he takes the historical point of view and tries to adhere strictly to this discipline.

Kaganovich notes in the introduction that he prepared his research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem under the supervision of Mikhail Zand, a leading expert in eastern Jewish communities; Shaul Stampfer, whose anthropological approach updated contemporary Jewish historiography; and Mordechai Altshuler, a leading historian of Russian and Soviet Jewry. Kaganovich also notes as his consultants many leading Russian and Israeli historians. All suggestions and criticisms were beneficial, as we have received a clever, fascinating, well-illustrated, and very useful book.