THE JEWISH POPULATION OF BELARUS IN THE AGRARIAN POLICY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AT THE END OF XVIII - EARLY XX CENTURY: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE PRESENT STATE OF RESEARCH

Abstract

The article analyzes historiography and present researching of the Belarusian Jews’ history, who were engaged in agriculture at the end of XVIII – the begging of XX centuries. We conclude that the history of this question begins since the second half of the XIX century. The first works devoted to the imperial Jewish agricul-tural policy had journalistic features with the author’s subjective attitude. But since the last third of the XIX cen-tury a scientific researching tradition of Jewish history has been developed. Some factual data has been collect-ed for the period of XIX – beginning of XXI century. A range of works concerning the history of the Jewish agri-culture on the territory of Belarusian and Ukrainian lands in the context of general history of Russian Jewry has appeared. But today there is no one integrated and systematic researching devoted to the history of Jewish farm-ers in Belarus in the context of Belarusian history, which leads to its thorough analysis and extensive lighting.