Abstinence (conscription)

The Abstinence (, Ashkenazi pronunciation: Histagfus) tactic of draft evasion was a type of hunger strike (or other forms of self-harm, such as sleep deprivation, tending to cause tachycardia, or self-inflicted wound), employed by young men in the Russian Empire's Jewish Pale of Settlement (and in neighboring Austria-Hungary's Galician community), in order to be found unfit for military service by the Imperial authorities.

Russian Empire
The "Abstension" resistance by self-harm was most extreme in the Russian Empire under the Cantonist system implemented for Jews from 1827 - 1856, though self-harm actions continued afterward.  An 1835 secret report by the chief of the Special Corps of Gendarmes in Vilnius expressed the government's difficulty in preventing self-mutilations.

The phenomenon was covered in the Russian Hebrew press, and Ha-Melitz warned against the practice as violating Jewish law as well as Russian law.  The phenomenon of self-induced hernia received attention in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1891.

Just before World War I, the Jewish author and folklorist S. Ansky conducted an ethnographic survey of Russian Empire regions of Volhynia and Podolia, devoting a section of his large questionnaire to conscription-related cultural practices.

Austro-Hungarian Empire
Concription among Jews in Galicia was introduced by Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor in 1788.

In some Galician communities (e.g. Tlumach, Liuboml, Kalush), deprivation efforts among young men became a rite of passage, when fasting during the day was followed by communal all-night sessions of excessive caffeine, excessive exercise, chain smoking, and sometimes taking on a pranking Mischief Night character.

Further reading
Memoirs

Stories
"Grandfather and Grandson" - Isaac Bashevis Singer
"The Conscription of Troops" and "A Hunger Artist" (Jewish self-degradation themes) - Franz Kafka
"Out of the Depths" - Yosef Haim Brenner
"The Automatic Exemption" - Sholem Aleichem

History
1890s account -

See also
Segula

References

External links
"The Conscript" - from the diary of Russo-Japanese War veteran Jacob Marateck

Category:Hunger strikes
Category:Draft evasion
Category:Self-harm
Category:Jews and Judaism in the Russian Empire
Category:Military of the Russian Empire
Category:Military of Austria-Hungary
Category:Jewish Galician (Eastern Europe) history