The ascendency of Russia as a power making for democracy is one of the
miracles of the present War. Who could have foreseen five years ago
that the country suffering under the most despotic autocracy of modern
times would so suddenly become the champion of a most radical
democracy? Yet, this is what is actually happening today.
Notwithstanding the vacillations and frightful uncertainties that
still beset Russia, she seems destined to play an enormous part in the
future definition and direction of democracy, and the world may yet
learn many a lesson from her. This is one of the miracles of the War.
Under these circumstances, we, as Jews, must be doubly interested in
the story of the relation that has existed between Russia and the
Jews.
Only yesterday the name of Russia was the synonym of nothing so much
as Jewish suffering. Persecution has been the well-nigh universal lot
of the Jew. In even the freest and fairest countries he has had to
endure outlawry and disability. But in no other country was he called
upon to bear persecution so continuous and variegated as in old-time
Russia. There all the persecutions of the past seemed to gain
repetition and culmination. Wherever the Jew turned, he found himself
hedged in by restrictions and humiliations. His dwelling, his
education, his occupations--everything was under the ban. For
centuries he was driven from pillar to post and forced to drink the
cup of calamity to the very dregs.
When we think of all the misery that the Russian Jew had to undergo,
we cannot but marvel that he should have been able to survive it all,
and thus to belie the prediction of that arch-enemy, Pobiedonostseff,
that as a result of the laws against them, one third of the Jews of
Russia would emigrate, one third would be baptized, and the rest would
perish. Thank Heaven, the contrary has come to pass: Pobiedonostseff
and his kind are gone, the autocracy is dead, and the Jew of Russia
is still there, with a new era before him, destined, let us hope, to
surpass in grandeur and glory any that has gone before.
When we consider the story of those horrible persecutions, we find
that the chief excuse for them was the charge that the Jew was not a
true Russian, but a stranger. Yet, this charge was fundamentally
false. It is only necessary to think of the Jew's history, to realize
that he is as little a stranger in Russia as any other part of the
population.
The Jew's beginnings in many parts of Russia go back to the very
earliest times--in some instances beyond the records of history. It is
true that a large part of her Jewish population Russia acquired in the
year 1772, and subsequent years, as a result of the division of
Poland. But in other parts of Russia, the presence of Jews is of much
more ancient date.
In Kieff, the mother of cities to the Russian, Jews were settled as
far back as the eighth or ninth century--some holding that they came
there with the Khazars, who are supposed to have founded Kieff. In
the centuries following the Jews worked and traded and flourished
there and held important official positions, so much so that by the
sixteenth century Kieff became a centre of Jewish learning, with the
motto: "From Kieff shall go forth the law."
As for the Crimea--the beautiful province to which the deposed Czar
was so eager to be sent--its Jewish settlements date back to Hellenic
days, when the Greeks began to found commercial centres on the shores
of the Black Sea, and Jews from the Byzantine Empire, as well as from
Persia and the Caucasus, came along with them, establishing
communities with synagogues and cemeteries and other institutions, as
we know from recently discovered inscriptions, which go back to the
first century.
Similarly, we have early accounts of Jews going and coming in Novgorod
and Moscow--Jews speaking the Slavic dialect and antedating by many
years those from Western Europe who came to Russia as a result of
persecutions in Germany and elsewhere, and who brought with them their
German speech. When we examine these records, we can see how ancient
is the lineage of the Jew in Russia and how groundless, as well as
vicious, was the theory of those who maintained that the Jew of Russia
had to be repressed and oppressed for the reason that he was a
stranger in the land.
There has never been a more complete, nor a more wonderful,
transformation than the one wrought by the Russian Revolution in the
condition of the Jew. One of the first consequences of the Revolution
was the abolition of Jewish disabilities, the specific abrogation of
all Jewish restrictions, the repudiation of all the laws and
regulations against them that centuries had accumulated--the instant
recognition of the Jew. It is nothing short of marvellous to think
that today Jews are found in the highest positions in Russia--in the
Senate, which means their Supreme Court, in the police administration,
in the army, and on most responsible commissions to foreign lands.
Magic could have wrought no more marvellous change.
Yet, it would be wrong to think that all this has no connection with
the previous life and conduct of the Jew of Russia. On the contrary,
the student of the history of the Russian Jew cannot help recognizing
the intimate relation between the life and the achievements of the
Russian Jew in the past and the recognition that has come to him at
the very dawn of the new age. Here, too, there has been no exception
to the normal operation of historic law.
If the Jew of Russia has been adopted so promptly and so fully into
the new-born Russian democracy, it is because in the past he has shown
his mettle, because his whole record has demonstrated his civic worth,
and because his character and his attainments even under the worst
possible conditions demonstrated what he was capable of being and
doing once he was given that boon of recognition and opportunity which
it is the aim of democracy to bring to all men.
This the Jew of Russia has shown, first of all, by his spiritual life.
The Russian poet Pushkin has said that glass is shattered by blows,
but iron is thus made the stronger. This saying has been properly
applied to the effect of persecution upon the character of the
Russian Jew.
Nothing is more remarkable than the spiritual history of the Jew in
Russia. The Russian Jew has been proud of his Judaism, and devoted to
it. Nowhere else do we find from the very beginning so great a
readiness to propagate his ideas. It is remarkable that in Russia, of
all countries, we find the Jewish influence reaching out the farthest
into the non-Jewish world.
Nestor, the old Russian chronicler, relates that in the tenth century
the Jews came to Kieff in order to convert to their religion the Grand
Duke Vladimir. As a matter of fact, the Khazars, a people living in
southern Russia, did become Jews in the eighth century, and remained
such for a couple of centuries. In the sixteenth century the Judaistic
sect sprang up in Novgorod and spread to the very monasteries of
Moscow, and in one form or another, in spite of many efforts to
suppress it, it has not ceased to this very day. Perhaps it is this
persistence of the Jewish spirit and spread of Jewish influence that
made the autocracy fear the Jew as a menace to Christianity.
Even more important, however, has been the spiritual life of the
Jewish community itself. It has thrived despite persecution. It has
created centres of learning, scholars, saints, and above all masses of
learned and saintly men and women, which both in number and character
have never been surpassed in the whole heroic range of Jewish history.
It is this spiritual life of the Jew of Russia--devout, loyal,
God-intoxicated--that could not help but excite the admiration, and
ultimately to gain the recognition, of the world.
Then, there is the contribution that the Jew has made to the life and
civilization of Russia and of other countries. One of the charges of
his enemies was that the Jew of Russia was not a useful subject--that
he was a menace to his neighbors. In vain writers and statesmen of
enlightenment sought to expose the falsehood of this charge; in vain
they insisted that whatever was wrong with the Jew was due to the
restrictions and discriminations that were placed upon him; in vain
did such men as Count Uvarov, as far back as the year 1841, and
Alexander Stroganov, in 1858, demand the creation of educational
facilities, and even complete emancipation, for the Jews in their
interest as well as for the common good. The dread and the tyranny of
the autocracy could not be overcome.
Fortunately, the Jew did not allow himself to be wholly crushed by
these calumnies and calamities. He went on using his powers to the
utmost. He grasped education where-ever he could find it. He became an
important factor in the literary, in the artistic, in the musical, in
the commercial and industrial life of Russia--producing an Antokolsky,
Rubinstein, a Frug, the Polyakoffs and the Ginzburgs, and no end of
others, to say nothing of the vast new Hebrew literature he has
created, including the names of such genuine poets as Lebenson,
Gordon, and Byalik, while the rest of the world has been so vastly
enriched by the work of Russian Jewish exiles that it is no
exaggeration to say that they have covered the face of the earth with
the fruits of their spirit.
Nor must we forget the ineradicable patriotism of the Russian Jew.
Often under the old regime people asked how it was possible for the
Jew of Russia to be patriotic. The answer is that no matter what made
it possible, the Jew of Russia was patriotic. Though he may have had
grievances against the autocracy and its agents, he loved his country
none the less and in war and in peace he was there to show it.
As far back as the Russian War of Liberation, in 1812, the Jew so
distinguished himself in the Russian army, that he evoked the praise
and satisfaction of Alexander I, who was fortified thereby in his good
intentions toward the Jew; unfortunately thwarted later on by hostile
influences and religious apprehensions.
Similar patriotism the Jews have shown on all other occasions,
including the present War. As for the fight for liberty and the
Russian revolutionary movement, the Jews have played a leading part in
it, shrinking not from its severities and hardships, and this they
have done not only for their own sake, but for the common good.
Thus, we can see that the vindication and recognition of the Jew of
Russia today are not without their roots in the life of yesterday.
They are the efflorescence of his spiritual life--of his contribution
to the life of his country and other countries--of his inalienable
patriotism. "The Revolution," Kerensky has said, "is the expiation of
the past and its sins." It may well form such an expiation to the Jew!
How about the future? It would be idle to deny that the peril is not
yet past. The Jew of Russia is not yet out of the woods. But neither
is Russia as a whole. As long as reaction and anarchy threaten, there
is danger for the Jew. But in this regard the Jew of Russia must take
his chance with the rest. His fate is bound up with the complete
triumph of democracy in Russia--democracy founded on self-discipline,
self-sacrifice, and service, toward the firm establishing of which she
is still struggling. If we would help the Jew, we must do what we can
toward the help of Russian democracy. Let democracy triumph in Russia,
and it will mean the triumph of the Jew!