About the book: 2014 / In the foreground in this study is the meeting of various representatives of the Jewish population with the imperial administration and aristocracy, described as a complex process of interaction of interests, intentions and , of course, the individuals themselves. Olga Minkina traces the dynamics of the entry into the empire of various lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth inhabited by Jews, in parallel with an analysis of changes in the perception of Jews by Russian bureaucrats. The Jewish population itself appears in the book as a heterogeneous and complexly organized conglomerate of communities, riddled with internal conflicts. Without confining himself within the framework of Jewish history itself, the author covers a number of subjects and makes a series of conclusions that are valuable for studying the general problems of class privileges in the empire, mechanisms and languages ​​for describing national and confessional politics.