This study is an innovative and controversial study of how the best-known Jews writing in Russian in early Soviet period attempted to resolve the conflict between their cultural identity and their place in Revolutionary Russia. Babel, Mandelstam, Pasternak and Ehrenburg struggled to form creative selves out of the contradictions of origins, outlook and social or ideological pressures. Comparison of literary texts and the visual arts reveals unexpected correspondences in the response to political and cultural change. Sicher provides a fascinating view of intercultural and intertextual connections and contrasts.

List of illustrations; Preface; 1. Burning embers; 2. Modernist responses to war and revolution: the Jewish Jesus; 3. The Jewishness of Babel; 4. The 'colour' of Judaism: Osip Mandelstam's Noise of Time; 5. The Father, the Son and holy Russia: Boris Pasternak, Hermann Cohen and the religion of Doctor Zhivago; 6. Ilia Ehrenburg: the eternal chameleon; Epilogue: hope betrayed; Notes; Index.