For this assignment, you are to assume the role of a historical ‘actor’. Your name is Mikael Liberman. You were born in 1891 in the Ukrainian part of the Russian empire to Jewish parents. You spent your early life on the family farm, selling your family’s grain in
the local market. You didn’t have a chance to go to school, and you are illiterate. Your father, who sold the family’s grain, was forced to speak only Russian in public, despite the fact his first language was Yiddish. This was because Tsar Alexander III wanted to ‘Russify’ Russia, and force ethnic minorities (like the Jews) to assimilate. Your older brother, Lev, was not permitted to attend university in St. Petersburg because there was a quota on Jewish students there. In 1899, when you were 8, your uncle was killed during a round of anti-Jewish riots in a nearby town.