WITHIN THE PALE
WITHIN
THE PALE
_The True Story of Anti-Semitic
Persecution in Russia_
BY
MICHAEL DAVITT
AUTHOR OF “LEAVES FROM A PRISON DIARY,”
“LIFE AND PROGRESS IN AUSTRALASIA,”
“THE BOER FIGHT FOR
FREEDOM,” ETC.
_SPECIAL EDITION_
Philadelphia
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION
SOCIETY OF AMERICA
NEW YORK
A. S. BARNES & CO.
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY A. S. BARNES & CO.,
_Published, October._
PREFACE
It is deemed necessary, for the twofold aim of this book,--to arouse
public feeling against a murder-making legend, and to put forward a plea
for the objects of the Zionist movement,--to tell the story of the
Russian Jew, apropos of recent massacres. This task could only be
partially done in my despatches from Kishineff to Mr. William R.
Hearst’s American papers. Moreover, all the despatches were not
published, for reasons which govern the exigencies of journals that are
concerned much more with a record of daily events in the United States
than with history.
While in Russia I tried to find both sides of the anti-Semitic Question,
so as to give expression to all views which could throw light upon
crimes that had shocked the public mind in America and in Europe no
more than they had pained and scandalised all right-thinking Russians.
To several of the minor representatives of the Tsar’s Government I owe
an acknowledgment for uniform courtesies, and for valuable assistance in
my investigations, and I endeavour, in the chapter on “Russia’s
Attitude,” to let the voice of such exponents of official Russian ideas
and purposes be heard alongside of counter Jewish accusations.
The unwarranted attempts that have been made in some quarters to use the
Kishineff crimes as means of creating an unfriendly feeling between the
two greatest powers in the world to-day--the United States Republic and
the Empire of Russia--are reprehensible. There are very unworthy motives
behind this mischievous endeavour that are not calculated to serve the
cause of the Russian Jew. The writer of these pages can have no sympathy
with nor lend encouragement of any kind to these sinister efforts.
Russia cannot, for her own sake, allow the present state of things to
continue within the Pale of Settlement. Reform or revolution must deal
with an absolutely impossible condition of social and economic life.
I follow Russian, and not Jewish, guidance in the brief sketch I give of
the history of the Russian Jew and of his long and persistent
persecution. The clear and unbiassed opinions, and statement of historic
facts, so courageously and clearly expressed in Prince Demidoff San
Donato’s book, have been the chief source of information from which the
materials for that sketch have been derived.
The Jew, as he is ruled and oppressed by Russian officials, is a far
greater danger to Russian autocracy than anti-Semitism is to the
Israelites of the Pale. The danger was candidly avowed by all
representative Russians from whom I solicited light and information. The
average Russian, however, errs most seriously in believing that measures
of repression, like those of 1882 and 1891, can ever cure the Empire of
its “Semitic malady,” as one high official harshly expressed it. Had
far more drastic and more barbarous methods of coercion than those of
General Ignatieff possessed the power to cure a similar “malady,” or
kill the same race, no Jew would be alive on earth to-day to trouble the
domestic cares of the Tsar’s Government. There can be no stronger
argument against the policy of continued repression found in the
literature or history of liberty than the existence and the marvellous
influence to-day of this, the most persecuted of all peoples among the
civilised races.
Contempt for human rights, even if they be Jewish rights, is an unwise
attitude for an autocratic government. It can only lead to more outrage,
through the example and encouragement it offers to the lowest aims of
anti-Semitism; to more poverty, through the steady increase within the
existing Pale of men and women of the most intellectual of races, who
grow up conscious of the fact that they are made poor by the working of
special laws, because they are Hebrews. Such contempt and neglect are
the best recruiting forces for disloyalty and Socialism among 4,000,000
subjects, having powerful racial friends and political allies in
countries where Russia’s strongest enemies are to be found; and are far
more dangerous to Russia’s internal peace and progress than any measure
of Jewish emancipation could possibly be.
This book is neither inspired by feeling, political or otherwise,
against Russia, nor by any pro-Jewish purpose outside the questions
immediately touched upon by the writer. Where anti-Semitism stands, in
fair political combat, in opposition to the foes of nationality, or
against the engineers of a sordid war in South Africa, or as the
assailant of the economic evils of unscrupulous capitalism anywhere, I
am resolutely in line with its spirit and programme. Where, however, it
only speaks and acts in a cowardly racial warfare, which descends to the
use of an atrocious fabrication responsible for odious and unspeakable
crimes like those that are to its credit in the massacres of Kishineff,
it becomes a thing deserving of no more toleration from right-minded men
than do the germs of some malady laden with the poison of a malignant
disease.
The inquiries made by me in Kishineff convince me that the peculiar
atrocity of most of the crimes perpetrated against the Jews of the city
at Easter were directly attributable to the horrible influence of the
ritual-murder propaganda upon untutored minds possessed of an ignorant
and fanatical conception of religion.
Should these pages succeed, even to a little extent, in influencing
public feeling in America and Europe, in favour of the suggestions they
contain for the redress of the indefensible wrongs of a long-suffering
people, the writer will be amply rewarded for his small share in the
performance of so worthy and necessary a task.
“The public moral sense of all nations,” wrote Cardinal Manning, on the
same topic, a dozen years ago, “is created and sustained by
participation in a universal common law; when this is anywhere broken,
or wounded, it is not only sympathy, but civilisation, that has the
privilege of respectful remonstrance.”
M. D.
ST. JUSTINS, DALKEY, IRELAND,
_4th July, 1903_.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE STORY OF THE RUSSIAN JEW
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO 1804, 1
II. THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT (1804-1882), 12
III. FROM THE IGNATIEFF LAWS TO THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES, 33
IV. A MURDER-MAKING LEGEND, 52
V. RUSSIA’S ATTITUDE, 64
VI. THE ZIONIST SOLUTION, 82
PART II
THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES
VII. I. ORIGIN AND AGENCY, 91
VIII. II. LETTERS FROM KISHINEFF, 101
IX. III. M. DE PLEHVE’S VERSION, 182
X. IV. AN IMPARTIAL ACCOUNT, 189
XI. V. DOCUMENTS:
(I) PETITION TO THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF POLICE, 207
(II) LIST OF KILLED, 217
(III) EXTRACTS FROM A REPORT BY TWO CHRISTIAN LADIES, 222
XII. NOTES AND COMMENTS, 231
APPENDICES
PAGE
I. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON THE KISHINEFF CRIME AND THE JEWS, 256
II. LETTER FROM TOLSTOY, 268
III. LETTER FROM MAXIME GORKY, 272
IV. FATHER JOHN OF KRONSTADT RECANTS, 276
V. THE STORY OF SIMON OF TRENT, 278
VI. ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF PAPAL BULLS, 291
WITHIN THE PALE
PART I
_THE STORY OF THE RUSSIAN JEW_
CHAPTER I
FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO 1804
The time when Jews first settled in Russia is a subject of mere
historical conjecture. Some accounts assert that colonies of the race
were founded in the country bordering on the Black Sea several centuries
before the Christian era. All the probabilities favour this view. Both
before and after their dispersion by the Romans, a people so intelligent
and resourceful as the Hebrews would learn of the fruitful regions
watered by the four great rivers which flow into the southern
sea-boundaries of the vast territory now under the sway of the Tsar.
They would have a choice of land and sea routes for the voyages of
emigration, trade, or adventure.
The distance from Jerusalem to the mouth of the Volga, through Asia
Minor and the Caucasus, is not much more than from Astrakhan to St.
Petersburg, while the journey by sea from Joppa to where the city of
Odessa stands to-day for Russia’s richest seaport, is much less than
that from Athens to Marseilles. The Caucasus, Taurida (Crimea), Cherson,
and Bessarabia, known in the days of King Solomon by other names, would
be within the zone of trading intercourse with the Kingdom of Israel,
while these rich and interesting parts of Southern Russia would
naturally attract the footsteps of the scattered race after Titus had
destroyed their nation and dispersed its people, as well as during the
existence of the Byzantine Empire.
Whether the race known as the Khazars, who governed the territory
stretching north from Astrakhan over the eastern watershed of the Volga
as far as Kazan, were civilised by Semitic colonists, as alleged by some
writers, is now only an interesting speculation. One fact offered in
support of this theory is that the Israelites were driven out of this
country by its rulers in the eleventh century, at a time when Jews in
Christian Europe began to be objects of race persecution.
The period of the Crusades may be taken as that in which the systematic
oppression of the Jews began. The source of this persecution was the
religious influence upon uneducated minds of the gospel of the
Crucifixion, coupled with legends about ritual murders, and fables
recording the sacrifice of the blood of Christian children and maidens
during the sacred rites of Paschal time.
It is on record that, in the year 1298, a fanatic in a city of Franconia
circulated a story that the Sacred Host in a church had been polluted by
a Jew, and that the Almighty had chosen an avenger of this crime in the
person of the narrator of the act of sacrilege. The populace rose _en
masse_ and burned all the Jews in the city. The massacre extended to the
country, and, before the murderous fury unchained by this fanatic and
his falsehood could be stilled, over 100,000 victims were slaughtered in
Germany, Bavaria, and Austria.
It was following these and similar ferocities that the first great
movement of the Semitic race into Poland occurred. They were encouraged
to move into this country by the toleration extended to smaller colonies
of their race who had settled in Polish dominions in earlier times. All
accounts agree in crediting to this ancient Kingdom a far more
enlightened rule of the proscribed Israelites than to any other
Christian nation during the Middle Ages. Casimir the Great protected
them in both their religious and civil liberties, in return for which
freedom they helped to organise and develop the commerce and crafts of
the country. They flourished and multiplied under such rule, and became
the trading link between producer and consumer, in the economic life of
Poland, as well as tillers of the soil and expert artisans.
It is an error to assume that the Jews have not thriven anywhere in
agricultural industry. Wherever they were sure of protection against
spoliation, they took to land labour as readily as to other pursuits,
and succeeded. This was so in Poland during the two centuries in which
they shared in the general rights guaranteed by the state. Accounts of
Jewish agricultural colonies in various parts of Russia, in later days,
also support the same testimony. In fact there was no better foundation
for this charge in times anterior to our own than the circumstance that
a people who were not permitted to own land anywhere, or even to
cultivate it in some countries, were, in consequence, subjected to the
imputation of having a racial prejudice against this means of obtaining
a livelihood.
The halcyon period of Jewish freedom in Poland came to an end in the
middle of the seventeenth century. That proud and ancient nation was
itself the victim of invasion and oppression, and its Semitic population
lost over 200,000 men, women, and children in the ferocious campaigns
waged by the conquering Cossack Hetman, and his Tartar and Russian
allies, against Poles and Jews alike.
The Jews of Poland survived this calamity, and grew numerous again, as
persecuted civilised races somehow do, in their own, or in some other,
land. They, however, lent assistance to the designs of the ambitious
nobles when the landed aristocracy invaded the recognised prerogatives
of the kingly power, and took to themselves all the responsibilities and
advantages of government. They became their agents and instruments in
the sordid work of harassing the peasant cultivators, who found
themselves ground down more remorselessly by class rule than under a
semi-republican monarchy. Popular feeling was thus turned against the
Jews, and they began to experience, in Poland, as elsewhere, that social
and economic antipathy which their greater money-making capacity has
always nourished in the commercial minds of the less successful
Christians.
As a friend of Polish freedom remarked to the writer in Warsaw in the
spring of 1903, “the nobles cultivated their pride, rack-rented their
tenants, and lost their independence.” And, with this fall of the one
Christian nation in Europe, which had fairly ruled and humanely treated
the hunted Hebrew up to the eighteenth century, the era of systematic
persecution began for the Polish Jew when a cruel fate compelled him to
become a Russian subject.
The early oppression of the Jews in Russia was entirely due to religious
feeling. Their exceptional treatment in recent years arises from
political and economic more than from sectarian causes. M. Varadinoff,
in his history of Russian administration, says: “The history of all the
cases since 1649, involving Jewish religious matters, bears on it the
stamp of mistrust to the followers of the law of Moses, because the
Jews, by their false doctrines, convert to their faith not only
Christians, but persons belonging to other religious persuasions; in
consequence of this the civil rights of the Jews were more or less
restricted, and their settlement in Russia was prohibited. They were
also on several occasions entirely expelled across the Russian
frontiers. The code of Alexis Mikailovitch provides punishment of death
for the perversion of a Christian to the Hebrew faith. In 1676 Jews were
prohibited from coming to Moscow from Smolensk, and in 1727 an order was
promulgated to the effect that ‘All Jews found to be residing in the
Ukraine and in Russian towns shall be immediately expelled beyond the
frontier, and not be allowed under any circumstances to enter Russia.’”
Prince Demidoff San Donato, in quoting this expert in his excellent
book, says that a proviso to this ukase stipulated that before leaving
Russia all the Jews were to be made to exchange their gold and silver
for copper money!
It was found practically impossible, however, to carry out decrees of
complete expulsion, while, on the other hand, it had to be recognised
that the interest of the state and the development of trade required the
trained experience of Hebrew craftsmen, merchants, and bankers. They
were tolerated for the utilitarian ends of commercial necessity, while
being subject to all the possible penalties of an outlawed community.
Nearing the end of the eighteenth century the trend of Russian conquest
westwards annexed the Polish regions known as White Russia, and the
Lithuanian country, in which Jews had hitherto found shelter when driven
out from Russia proper. Catherine II. governed the Empire at this
period, and her somewhat liberal views gave her Hebrew subjects a brief
respite from persistent injustice. It was necessary to take account of
the recognised status of the Jews in what had been a portion of the
Kingdom of Poland, and a ukase was promulgated in 1786, decreeing that
“Everyone, irrespective of creed, shall enjoy under the laws all the
advantages and privileges of his rank and condition.” This enlightened
law only extended to the territories acquired from Poland, and even
within these the tolerant intention of the ukase was frustrated by the
bias of Russian officials. The right to enrol themselves in burgher
guilds was curtailed, while double taxes were levied upon the very
people whom the law of 1786 had, in words, freed from exceptional
burdens.
Other special penalties followed, to be again mitigated as when, in
1804, a ukase declared that “a spirit of moderation and a sincere wish
for the amelioration of the condition of the Jews,” should be shown as
being in the best interest of the population among whom the Hebrews were
allowed to live. This temporary return to reason and justice was also
due to the desire to give Russian workers and peasants the advantages of
superior Jewish workmanship in arts, and the example of trading
competency. Jewish children were to be admitted to Russian schools.
Manufacturing industry and the occupation of land were to be thrown open
to Jews hitherto denied access to these employments, except in specified
places.
These, however, were but Russian good intentions. They lacked the value
of application.