Margolin, Moses

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MARGOLIN, MOSES

MARGOLIN, MOSES (1862–?), Zionist writer. After completing his studies at the University of St. Petersburg, Margolin was appointed secretary of the editorial board of the Russian Entsiklopedicheskiy Slovar ("Encyclopedic Dictionary") of Brockhaus-Efron and of several other Russian encyclopedias. He was active in Jewish public life, in the *Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia, the *Jewish Colonization Association, and other organizations. In 1904 he was one of the editors of the Russian-language Zionist newspaper, Yevreyskaya Zhizn. In his studies in Jewish history Margolin attempted to demonstrate the legitimacy of the historic development of the Jewish people. He deals with this in Osnovye techeniya v istorii yevreyskago naroda ("Basic Trends in the History of the Jewish People," 1900, 19172) and in Yevreyskaya zemlya ("A Jewish Land," 1918). Under the Soviet regime Margolin belonged to the small group of Jewish intellectuals who attempted to continue their research work in Jewish history; he contributed until 1930 to the publications which these circles published. No information about his subsequent fate is known.

[Yehuda Slutsky]