FROM THE IGNATIEFF LAWS TO THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES
Prince Demidoff San Donato was a member of the Pahlen Commission, and in
his admirable work “_La Question Juive en Russie_” (published at
Bruxelles, 1884,) he gives, in his own proposed solution of the problem
of the Russian Jew, the broad and liberal measures which forced
themselves upon the Commission as an essential basis for a settlement of
the question on just and rational lines. He recommended the three
following proposals:
“(1) For the re-establishment of more healthy relations between the Jews
and the other inhabitants and counteracting Jewish industrial and other
exploitation in the western region [the Pale of Settlement], it is
necessary to grant the Jews complete civil equality and freedom of
choice of residence. This would lead to a greater dissemination of the
Jewish population, which is now crowded together in particular
districts; to the alleviation of the poverty and hopeless condition of
the Jewish masses, and would relieve the part of the country they now
occupy from excessive industrial and other competition.
“(2) In order to destroy Jewish exclusiveness and to facilitate the
fusion of the Jews with the rest of the population it is necessary to
incorporate the Jews with the local rural and urban communities, and to
subject them completely in fiscal, administrative, and other respects to
the rules and regulations established for these communities. Those Jews
who would wish to settle in the interior provinces should be allowed to
enjoy the right of joining peasant and burgher communities in the places
of their domicile in the ordinary way.
“(3) It is at the same time necessary that serious attention should be
directed towards the organisation of elementary schools for the juvenile
Jewish population, inasmuch as the school must always be one of the
principal instruments for the moral training and Russification of the
Jewish masses.”
These were the common-sense recommendations of an enlightened mind for
the cure of a growing social and political malady in Russian life. They
would have effected that cure, had there been a statesmanship in the
Government of the Empire capable of rising above anti-Semitic prejudice
in the rendering of a great service to the country. In fact, there are
but three Russian remedies for this growing danger to Russia, and two of
them are impossible; the third being the rational one outlined by Prince
Demidoff San Donato. Extermination cannot be thought of. Emigration is
out of the question, where poverty is almost the normal condition of two
or three millions of people who have inherited the evils associated
with social wretchedness, religious intolerance, and race persecution.
No other country will consent to receive them. The third remedy is,
therefore, that alone which the nature and extent of the evil demand,
and which, if wisely and courageously adopted, would make Russia the
stronger through the only effective remedy applicable to a growing,
deadly danger.
The facts of the economic and social conditions within the Pale of
Settlement are so objective that the warning they give of a coming
catastrophe cannot be ignored. It would be like leaving an epidemic of
smallpox to cure itself by neglect. This condition of things is fully
explained and expressed by the term, unnatural. It is analogous to a
situation which would result from a Federal law compelling every
European-born artisan and labourer within the whole United States to
reside inside of Pennsylvania, and to be forbidden to seek employment
outside the cities and towns of that state. The murderous competition
for employment, the deadly rivalry for existence, the bad blood between
opposing races, the poverty and social wretchedness which such a
condition of things would create--apart from the operation of coercive
laws--can readily be imagined by the American reader. But this is no
overdrawn picture of the economic anarchy prevailing within the Russian
Pale of Jewish Settlement.
The present estimated population of the Tsar’s dominions in Europe and
Asia is 145,000,000. The territory of legal domicile for the Russian Jew
is embraced in the fifteen “governments,” or provinces, of Kovno,
Vitebsk, Vilna, Mohilev, Minsk, Grodno, Volhynia, Chernigov,
Poltava, Kiev, Podolia, Bessarabia, Cherson, Ekaterinoslav, and
Taurida--extending south from near the Gulf of Riga, on the Baltic, to
the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, and forming the western provinces of the
Empire; having Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Roumania as frontier
barriers. Poland is not included in the Pale. The Jews have more
freedom of movement there, and are not subject to some of the coercive
restrictions imposed within the above provinces.
The Pale itself is again narrowed by the law which forbids a Jew to
reside within thirty-three miles of the western frontier. It has a total
area about equal to that of France.
The population of the fifteen provinces of the Pale, including Poland,
will be about 26,000,000. There are some 4,000,000 Jews comprised in
this population, but these, excepting 1,000,000 in Poland, are compelled
under the “May Laws” to reside within the “cities, towns, and townlets”
of the Pale. The united population of these urban centres will probably
not exceed a total of 5,000,000; so that the Jews number three out of
every five of the inhabitants of the urban centres within the fifteen
provinces.
The percentage of Jews to non-Jews in the towns and townships of the
province of Mohilev, is estimated at 94; for those of Volhynia, 71 per
cent.; Minsk, 69; Kovno, 68; Podolia, 62; Vitebsk, 61; Grodno, 60;
Vilna, 56; Kiev, 49; Poltava, 43; Bessarabia, 38; Chernigov, 29;
Cherson, 28; The Taurida, 19; and Ekaterinoslav, 15 per cent.
In the provinces of Russia in which Jews are not permitted to reside the
town inhabitants average 59 persons to every 1000 of the rural
population. In the population of the Pale the urban inhabitants average
222 for every 1000 of the rural residents and workers. Within the
industrial centres of the Jewish Pale to which they are confined there
are about 2730 Jews to every square mile of residential area.
These facts and figures show how impossible it is, under such economic
conditions, for any healthy or hopeful prospect of industrial life to
exist. The towns are crowded with artisans and traders, and as these are
out of all proportion to the producers and consumers of an agricultural
country they necessarily become more destitute and wretched as their
numbers increase. They are too poor to emigrate. They are prohibited
from migrating. They cannot seek work on land. They are not permitted to
engage in several occupations. Municipal and Government posts are
practically closed to them. They have to compete with Russian workers
for such means of existence as can be found; and in face of these facts
they are reproached for their poverty and made subject to special
taxation.
It is also a charge against these people that they are exploiters of
labour and not producers. The taunt comes from the apologists for the
Ignatieff laws. The charge is not true. In proportion to population,
there are relatively more artisans among Jews in Russia than among
non-Jews. According to statistics obtained by the Pahlen Commission, the
artisans and labourers averaged 15 per cent. of the total Jewish
population of the Pale. In England the proportion of labourers and
artisans is over 20 per cent.; about 12 per cent. in Belgium; 10 per
cent. in France, and 9 in Prussia.
In Kishineff, where the Jews number 50,000 of the city population, the
Hebrew artisans, and wage-earners generally, would number fully 10,000
before the recent anti-Semitic outrages.
Nor can the injustice of the “May Laws” be defended or explained by the
equally unfounded assertion that the Jew will not work the land. He
refuses to do so in Russia only where he is prohibited. Whenever he has
obtained access to the land, on fair terms, he has readily embraced the
chance, and invariably improved his condition. This has been proved by
the records of the Jewish agricultural colonies in the provinces of
Vilna, Minsk, Grodno, Kovno, Volhynia, Cherson, and in Ekaterinoslav.
There are colonies of more than 50,000 land-workers among the Jews of
the southwestern provinces who have more than held their own in every
branch of agricultural industry with their Russian or Moldavian
neighbours. This taunt is, consequently, no explanation of the Ignatieff
laws.
The evils--both to Russia and to the Jews of the Pale--arising out of
the economic conditions which these laws must stereotype, would have
been swept away or modified in the ten years following the killing and
despoiling of the Jews in 1882, had the proposals of the Pahlen
Commission been acted upon. The recommendations of provincial governors
were preferred instead. Biassed officialism prevailed over the
courageously wise counsels of Count Pahlen, Prince Demidoff San Donato,
Count Strogonoff, and their colleagues, with the result that M.
Pobédonostsev became the virtual administrator of the Ignatieff laws,
and the murders, crimes, and expulsions of 1891 followed, in decadal
sequence, the outrages of 1882; not, by any means, as a desired or
necessary measure of the policy adopted by the famed Procurator of the
Holy Synod. M. Pobédonostsev would be as averse to the killing of Jews
as General Ignatieff. Both are far above suspicion in this respect. The
instigator of the “May Laws” probably believed, as a soldier and
diplomat, that such measures were needed the better to subdue a
suspected revolutionary tendency among a non-Russian race, and thought
they might be enforced according to his plans, without any serious
explosion of anti-Semitic feeling. What followed, however, ought to have
been a warning to the keeper of the Tsar’s conscience on combined
religious and national concerns. The Procurator’s plans would be as
religious in their ultimate object as Ignatieff’s policy was the
reverse; but both sought the accomplishment of a tyrannical purpose by
means which led to such suffering, injustice, and bloodshed as will ever
be associated with their records and names.
The Russian Jew was a domestic menace to the mind of Ignatieff; to M.
Pobédonostsev he was tainted with the unforgivable sins of heterodoxy,
and a religious persecutor is always relentless in proportion to his
fanatical sincerity. No one can justly question the honesty of the
Procurator’s zeal for Church and State in Russia, and this is why the
infidel Israelites have found in him the most implacable of their
powerful foes.
The measures resorted to in 1891, at the instance of the influence
exerted by the Procurator of the Holy Synod, had for their end the
carrying into effect of the provisions of the “May Laws.” Thousands of
Jews were still scattered throughout the provinces beyond the Pale;
tolerated in centres of trade and enterprise for utilitarian reasons.
Most of these were artisans who had by residence, and membership of
trade guilds, acquired the privilege of living and working in various
provinces of the Empire. Large numbers of these had been specially
encouraged in previous years to settle in cities and towns where their
proficiency in crafts was necessary to the development of local
industries or manufacture. Suddenly in 1891 an Imperial decree was
issued, and all these sober, industrious, skilled, and, in many
instances, respected citizens were ordered to quit their homes,
property, or employment, within a given time, and take themselves within
the Pale of Settlement or outside of the Russian Empire.
The orders issued by the Chief of Police of Moscow to his subordinates,
contained the following instructions:
“You must personally verify in all the shops and factories kept by Jews
the number of the assistant artisans; also, what category the Jews
belong to, and the time of their arrival in Moscow for residence; and
then take their signature to a notice of voluntary [!] departure from
the Capital; warning them that the computation of their terms of stay
will begin on the 14th of July next. Also, take a registry of names, in
alphabetical order, of Jewish artisans and, second, of Jews living in
Moscow under the right of Circular No. 30 issued by the Minister of the
Interior in 1880, specifying in separate columns the time of arrival in
Moscow, number of assistant artisans, number in family, and the
expiration of the term of departure. In reference to Jews residing
according to Circular of 1880, specify their occupations, also the names
of commercial houses where they were employed, and present them to me
within two weeks.”
The penalty for refusing to sign the paper suggested by General
Yourkoffsky, was immediate expulsion. The “voluntary” alternative gained
only a little time for preparation. It offered, however, some chances to
wealthy Jews to come to an arrangement with lower police officials,
whereby the general order of expulsion might be evaded, for a
consideration.
The attack by Government and people upon the Jews in 1891 was a
deliberate proceeding. Prince Dolgorouki was an able and a fair-minded
Governor-General of Moscow. Neither Russian nor Jewish complaint had
been lodged against him during his tenure of office. His duties had
been performed with care and competency, and his administration of the
ancient capital and province left no room for official faultfinding at
St. Petersburg.
Coincidently with a notification to all Governors of Provinces in the
Emperor’s name, that all permits to allow Jews to reside outside of the
Pale should be withdrawn on a certain date, an order for the removal of
the Governor-General of Moscow was also made, and the Tsar’s brother,
the Grand Duke Sergius, was nominated to supersede General Dolgorouki.
General Kostanda was to act as Deputy Governor; pending the arrival of
Duke Sergius, and to this officer, along with the equally zealous
anti-Semite, Yourkoffsky, Chief of the Moscow Police, was left the
congenial task of “clearing-out” the Jews. Never was an odious work more
brutally performed. The quarter in which the poorest Jews resided was
surrounded in the night time by the police and fire-brigade forces, and
the unhappy creatures were routed from their dwellings as if they were
so many noxious animals. Some who had been warned a few hours beforehand
fled to the _Cemetaires_ of the city for protection, while it has been
placed on record that several fathers of families took their daughters
to houses of ill-fame for the night, presumably to find protection where
they would be least suspected of seeking refuge.
All this being done in the name of the Tsar, the populace were
encouraged to co-operate in executing what they were led to believe to
be the Emperor’s wish. Massacres, raping, and looting became once more
the direct results of barbarous decrees. Some 3000 Jews were driven from
Moscow after many had been killed. Hundreds of business men were ruined,
being compelled to close their establishments, and to dispose of
valuable stock at prices which could not realise enough to discharge
their obligations. Those who were able to purchase transport to America
emigrated, but the mass of the expelled victims wended their way toward
the Pale, there to add still more to the congestion of life and labour
which had already rendered the vast Ghetto of the Empire the home of
poverty, suffering, and despair.
The example set in Moscow was followed in Kiev and other cities, and
encouraged police and mobs elsewhere to emulate the inhuman work of
hunting the hated race from villages and towns. Throughout the year 1891
outrages were perpetrated in various provinces, despite some apparently
earnest efforts on the part of the Government to stop the more violent
outbreaks which had been provoked by its own orders. Several villages
where Jews resided were burned down. Fully 70,000 Jews emigrated during
the year; this fact confirming, in part only, a saying attributed to a
conspicuous personality in the Tsar’s confidence, that the Russian
Jewish question would be ultimately solved by the action of the “May
Laws” as these would force one-third of the Jews to emigrate; one-third
more would become converted to the Orthodox Church; while the other
third would perish of hunger!
Whatever may be the desire of the more violent anti-Semitic Russians to
see such an unparalleled programme realised in results, there can be no
doubt as to the efficiency of the anti-Jewish code of Russian laws to
work out such a solution, if it were a task legally possible of
accomplishment.
Allusion has already been briefly made to the tangle of contradictory
laws which the ukases, decrees, promulgations, and provisions relating
to the Russian Jew have created. Many of these measures appear to have
been adopted under the pressure of unreflecting prejudice or
apprehension. Some bear the impress of wise and humane intentions, born,
however, in the minds of Ministers or Monarchs too weak to carry out the
enlightened impulse which gave them birth. But the vast proportion of
these repressive and oppressive laws are frankly tyrannical in
inspiration and purpose, and the spirit that could suggest measures
which are a deliberate violation of the fundamental principles and
rights of civilised existence would be a feeling worthy to animate the
task of carrying the above programme into execution.