page_title: Blank family
section_title: Moshko (Dmitry) Blank
hierarchical_section_title: Blank family / Moshko (Dmitry) Blank
caption_attribution_description: English: Map showing the percentage of Jews in the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland, c. 1905.
context_page_description: The Blank family is in the Russian Empire, mostly notable as the immediate ancestry of the maternal grandfather of Vladimir Lenin. Some researchers suggest that Lenin's maternal grandfather was a Jewish convert to Christianity. Whether or not Lenin, whose matrilineal "Blank" surname also traces to non-Jewish German roots, was actually partly descended from a Jewish Blank family remains contested. Some researchers argue the family was of German origin, and invited to Russia by Catherine the Great. It is possible that such debated concern that Alexander Blank may have had Jewish origin were spread for partly political reasons. An important contribution into Lenin’s genealogical and political connections to East European Jews were done by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern who reveals the indisputable evidence that Lenin’s maternal grandfather was a Jew. Petrovsky-Shtern also uncovered the continuous efforts of the Soviet communists to suppress Lenin’s Jewishness and the no less persistent attempts of Russian nationalists to portray Lenin as a Jew.
context_section_description: Moshko (or Moshe) Itzkovich Blank (Russian: Мойша Ицкович Бланк)  baptized as Dmitry Blank (c. 1760-after 1844) was a Jewish vodka-franchised tavern keeper from Shtetl Starokonstantynów, Volhynian Voivodeship (now Ukraine). 
  He was born between 1758 and 1763. His place of birth is unknown. No doubt he was an Ashkenazic, Yiddish-speaking Jew, born to a traditional Jewish family in the pre-partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Blank was not a normative Polish-Jewish last name, but not a rarity either: quite a number of Jews in Starokonstantinovo had that last name. Miriam Froimovich, Moshko’s wife and Lenin’s greatgrandmother, was a native of Starokonstantinov, born about 1763. She also came from an Ashkenazic Jewish family. Her last name is an adaptation of her patronymics, as her father’s first name, Froim, Yiddish for Efraim. Miriam Blank most likely gave birth to a number of children, but only three of them survived: Abel, born in 1794, Liba, born around 1798, and Yisroel born in 1804.
  Moshko claimed that his tavern in Starokonastantinovo brought him around 10 silver roubles per week  that was probably a strong exaggeration. He also rented a plot of land in Novohrad-Volynskyi uyezd, Volhynian Governorate where he grew chicory. He sent his sons into a secular Russian school instead of a traditional religious Jewish cheder which was unusual in those times.
  Most of his life story is known through the documents related to his complicated feud with the local kahal. In 1803, the kahal accused Moshe of stealing hay; in 1805, they accused him of selling cheaper ordinary vodka as a more expensive "fruit vodka" brand. The official courts cleared Moshe on both counts. In 1806, Moshe, in turn, accused the kahal of shielding local Jews from taxes and their children from conscription into the Russian Army. In 1808, 22 local Jews accused Moshe Blank of arson that destroyed or damaged many houses in Starokonastantinovo, including the Blanks' own house. Some researchers believe that the arson charges were true and that Blank indeed was a pyromaniac, while others consider the charges as a false report done as a revenge for his reports. In 1809, Novohrad-Volynian magistrate cleared Blank from the arson charges, but the family had to move to Zhitomir.
  In August 1816, Blank wrote a letter to the Emperor Nicholas complaining that he was persecuted by the kahal because of his fight for the true Judaism, free from what he saw as superstitions and nationalistic excesses. The letter was intercepted by the local administration and was not delivered to the addressee. In November 1816, Moshe Blank sued his son, Abel Blank, alleging that his son had beaten and verbally abused him over a monetary dispute - Moshe promised to pay some dowry after Abel's marriage but changed his mind afterwards. Abel was arrested and threatened with exile to Siberia, but eventually after the Blanks neighbors gave the best possible character assessment of the son and the worst possible of the father, Abel was cleared from the charges and Moshe fined for the false report.
  On 10 July 1820, in Saint Petersburg, two sons of Moshe: Abel and Srul were baptized into Orthodox Christianity. At the time in Russia, conversion of Jews was a rare and a high profile event. The godfathers of the sons were senator Dmitry Baranov and the Actual Privy Counsellor Alexander Apraksin. Both of the sons were named after their godfathers and received patronymics after Dmitry Baranov. Thus Abel Moshevich became Dmitry Dmitrievich and Srul Moshevich became Alexander Dmitrievich. The same year, the brothers were admitted to the Saint Petersburg Academy of Medical Surgeons (Петербургская Медико-Хирургическая Академия). According to the customs of the time, conversions to Christianity meant breaking of the family connections.
  In 1825, Moshe Blank finally won his litigation with the Starokonstantinovo Jews; he received more than 15 thousand roubles distributed among the 22 plaintiffs as a compensation for his losses, while 11 of the plaintiffs were imprisoned for libel. The lucky turn of the l
caption: Concentration of Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement
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