Julius Brutzkus

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Julius Davidovich Brutzkus or Judah Loeb Brutzkus (Hebrew: יהודה ליבּ בֶּן־דָּוִד ברוצקוס‎, Yehuda Loeb ben David Brutzkus, Russian: Юлий Давидович Бруцкус) (1870-?) was a Lithuanian Jewish historian, scholar, and politician.

He was born in 1870 in Polangen, in the governorate of Courland. He was the brother of the economist Boris Brutzkus. Julius studied at the gymnasium and University of Moscow, from which city his family, along with thousands of other Jewish families, was expelled in 1892. (See May Laws) He received his doctorate in 1894. Brutzkus took part in the Russian Jewish bibliographical work, "Систематический Указатель Литературы о Евреях" (Systematic Index of Literature concerning Jews, "Sistematicheskiy Ukazatel Literatury o Yevreyakh). Beginning in 1895 Brutzkus contributed to the Russian-Jewish periodical Voskhod. In 1899 he was appointed assistant editor on that periodical.

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Brutzkus authored a vast array of articles and books in Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, English, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, and French languages on the history of the Jews in Russia; he was particularly intrigued with the history of the Khazars and the early Rus' Khaganate. He also wrote numerous works on the economic and political history of Eastern Europe and the cultural history of Mizrahi Jewry.

For a short time in 1923 he served as Minister for Jewish Affairs in the Lithuanian government. Later, in November 1923, he was elected to the Seimas.

Brutzkus was an ardent Zionist and encouraged Jews to engage in political action and self-defense.

[edit] Selected works

"Pershi zvistki pro Evreev n Polshchi ta na Rusi". Nankovyi Zbirnyk. 24 (1927), 3-11
"Bukhara." Encyclopaedia Judaica. vol. 4. Berlin, 1929. p. 1126.
Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland. Berlin, 1931.
"Di Geshikhte fun di Bergyiden oyf kavkaz." (History of the Jewish Mountaineers in Dagestan, Caucasia), YIVO Studies in History, vol.2. Vilna, 1937. (in Yiddish)
"The Khazar Origin of Ancient Kiev". Slavonic and East European Review, XXII, 108-124. 1944.