About the book: 2017 / This book is about the life of our Jewish grandparents, great-grandparents and even more distant ancestors. The vast majority of Jews living in the Russian Empire were subject to laws that limited their territory to the Pale of Settlement, and their daily life to many prohibitions and regulations. The book was created by a strong team of authors, which included famous historians, cultural experts, collectors, writers, creators of museum exhibitions, and publicists. The difference in their approaches and assessments will enrich the understanding of readers seeking to understand what the world of Russian Jewry was like in the 18th–20th centuries. The book is structured as a full-fledged encyclopedia and consists of 26 articles telling about everyday and religious life in the Pale of Settlement, legislation, military service, slander and pogroms, participation in the revolutionary movement, and also describing Jewish life in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Bessarabia ( Moldova), St. Petersburg and Moscow.