THE "ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM" OF ALEXANDER I.
1. "THE COMMITTEE FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE JEWS."
The liberal breeze which began to stir in the first years of Alexander
I.'s reign sent a refreshing current of air through the stuffy
atmosphere of the St. Petersburg chancelleries, in which Russian
bureaucrats, undisturbed by their utter ignorance of Judaism, were
devising ways and means of turning Jewish life upside down. It took some
time, however, before the Jewish question was taken up again. In 1801
and 1802 the Government was busy rearranging the whole machinery of the
administration. With the formation of the Ministries and of the Council
of State the Senate lost its former executive power, and, as a result,
the material relating to the Jewish question which had been in its
possession had to be transferred to a new official agency.
Such an agency was called into being in November, 1802. By order of the
Tzar a special "Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews" was
organized, and the following were appointed its members: Kochubay,
Minister of the Interior, Dyerzhavin, the "specialist" on Judaism, at
that time Minister of Justice, Count Zubov, and two high officials of
Polish birth, Adam Chartoriski, Assistant-Minister for Foreign Affairs,
an intimate friend of Alexander I., and Severin Pototzki, a member of
the Senate. The Committee was charged with the investigation of all the
problems touched upon in Dyerzhavin's "Opinion," concerning the curbing
of the avaricious pursuits of the Jews in White Russia, with a view to
"extending the amelioration of the Jews also to the other Governments
acquired from Poland."
Rumors to the effect that a special Committee on Jewish affairs had been
instituted at St. Petersburg, and that its work was to follow the lines
laid down in the project of Dyerzhavin, caused considerable alarm among
the Jews of the Northwest, who knew but too well the anti-Semitic
leanings of the former Senator and inspector. The Kahal of Minsk held a
special meeting in December, 1802, which passed the following
resolution:
Whereas disquieting rumors have reached us from the capital, to
the effect that matters involving the Jews as a whole have now
been intrusted to the hands of five dignitaries, with power to
dispose of them as they see fit, be it resolved that it is
necessary to proceed to St. Petersburg and petition our
sovereign not to allow them [the dignitaries] to introduce any
innovations among us.
A public appeal was made for funds to provide the expenses of the
delegates. Moreover, a fast of three days was imposed on all the members
of the community, during which prayers were to be offered up in the
synagogues for averting the calamity which the Government threatened to
bring upon the Jews.
When the Minister of the Interior, Kochubay, learned of the excitement
prevailing among the Jews, he sent, in January, 1803, a circular to the
governors, instructing them to allay the fears of the Jews. The Kahals
were to be informed that "in appointing the Committee for the
investigation of Jewish matters," there was "no intention whatsoever to
impair their status or to curtail any substantial advantage enjoyed by
them," but on the contrary it was proposed to "offer them better
conditions and greater security."
This verbal assurance was not nearly so effective in quieting the minds
of the Jews as action taken by the Government at the same time. In the
beginning of 1803, the "Jewish Committee" resolved to invite deputies
from all the gubernatorial Kahals to St. Petersburg for the purpose of
ascertaining their views as to the needs of the Jewish people, which the
Government had planned to "transform" without its own knowledge. This
was the first departure from the red-tape routine of St. Petersburg.
Towards the end of January, 1803, active preparations were set afoot by
the Kahals for sending such deputies. During the winter and spring the
Russian capital witnessed the arrival of Jewish deputies from the
Governments of Minsk, Podolia, Moghilev, and Kiev, no information being
available about the other Governments. The deputies soon had occasion to
rejoice in Dyerzhavin's retirement from membership in the Jewish
Committee, following upon his resignation from the post of Minister of
Justice. Being a conservative of the "real Russian" type, Dyerzhavin was
out of place in a liberal Government such as ruled the destinies of
Russia in the early years of Alexander's reign. With his retirement his
"Opinion" ceased to serve as an obligatory rule of conduct for the
members of the Committee.
On arriving in St. Petersburg, the deputies from the provinces found
there a small group of Jews, mostly natives of White Russia, who lived
temporarily in the capital, in connection with their business affairs.
Though denied the right of permanent domicile in the capital of the
Empire, this handful of barely tolerated Jews had managed to secure the
right of dying there and of burying their dead in their own cemetery.
The opening of the cemetery in 1802 marks symbolically the inception of
the Jewish community in St. Petersburg. In the same sign of death the
provincial deputies met their metropolitan brethren at a rather strange
"celebration" in the summer of 1803: at the suggestion of the deputies
and in their presence the remains of three Jews who had been buried in a
Christian cemetery were transferred to the newly-acquired Jewish
cemetery.
Among the Jews of St. Petersburg there were several men at that time
who, owing to their connections with high officials and because of their
familiarity with bureaucratic ways, were able to be of substantial
service to the deputies from the provinces. One of these Jews, Nota
Shklover, who about that time received the family name Notkin, the same
public-spirited merchant who in 1800 had submitted his reform project to
Dyerzhavin,[246] acted, it would seem, as the official adviser of the
deputies, having been invited some time previously to participate in the
labors of the Jewish Committee. While on the Committee, he continually
insisted on his scheme of promoting agriculture and manufactures among
the Jews, but he did not live to see the triumph of his ideas. He died
shortly before the enactment of the law of 1804, in which his pet theory
found due recognition. Another St. Petersburg Jew, the wealthy
contractor and commercial councilor Abraham Peretz, took no immediate
part in Jewish affairs. Yet he too was of some service to the deputies,
owing to his business relations with the official world.
In the meantime the Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews, after
scrutinizing the different projects submitted to it, had worked out a
general plan of reform, and communicated it to the Jewish deputies.
After "prolonged indecision" the Jewish deputies announced that they
were not in a position to submit their conclusions, without previous
consultation with the Kahals by which they had been elected. They
accordingly asked for a half-year's respite "for the purpose of
consultation." The official Jewish Committee, on the other hand, could
not agree to so protracted a delay in its labors, and resolved to
submit, through the medium of the Government, the principal clauses of
the project to the Kahals, with the understanding that the latter,
"without making any changes in the aforesaid clauses," should confine
themselves to suggestions as to the best ways and means of carrying the
proposed reforms into effect.
The epistolary inquiry failed to produce the "desired effect."
Restricted beforehand in their free expression of opinion, and having no
right to speak their mind as to the substance of the project, the Kahals
in replying limited themselves to the request that the "correctional
measures" be postponed for twenty years, particularly as far as the
proposed prohibition of the sale of liquor and land-tenure was
concerned, which prohibition would undermine the whole economic
structure of Jewish life. The Committee paid no heed to the plea of the
Kahals, which was tantamount to a condemnation of the basic principles
of the project, and proceeded to work in the direction originally
decided upon.
Nor was there perfect unanimity within the Committee itself. Two
tendencies, it seems, were struggling for mastery: utilitarianism,
represented by the champions of "correctional measures" and of a
compulsory "transformation of Jewish life," and humanitarianism,
advocated by the spokesmen of unconditional emancipation. To the latter
class belonged Speranski, the brilliant and enlightened statesman who
might have succeeded in liberating the Empire of the Tzars a hundred
years ago, had he not fallen a victim to the fatal conditions of Russian
life. At the time we are speaking of he served in the Ministry of the
Interior under Kochubay, and was engaged in elaborating plans of reform
for the various departments of the civil service.
Speranski took an active interest in the Committee for the Amelioration
of the Jews, and frequently acted as Kochubay's substitute. There was a
time when his influence in the Committee was predominant. It was
evidently under his influence that the remarkable sentences embodied in
the minutes of the Committee meeting of September 20, 1803, were penned:
Reforms brought about by the power of the state are, as a rule,
unstable, and are particularly untenable in those cases in which
that power has to grapple with the habits of centuries. Hence it
seems both better and safer to guide the Jews to perfection by
throwing open to them the avenues leading to their own
happiness, by observing their movements from a distance, and by
removing everything that might turn them away from this path,
without using any manner of force, without establishing special
agencies for them, without endeavoring to act in their stead,
but by merely opening the way for their own activities. As few
restrictions as possible, as many liberties as possible--these
are the simple elements of every social order.
Since the Government had begun to dabble in the Jewish question, this
was the first rational utterance coming from the ranks of the Russian
bureaucracy. It implied an emphatic condemnation of the system of state
patronage and "correctional measures" by means of which Russian
officialdom then and thereafter sought to "transform" a whole nation.
Here for the first time was voiced the lofty precept of humanitarianism:
grant the Jews untrammeled possibilities of development, give full
scope to their energies, and the Jews themselves will in the end choose
the way which leads to "perfection" and progress.... But even the
liberalizing statesmen of that period could not maintain themselves on
that high eminence of political thought. Speranski's conception was too
tender a blossom for the rough climate of Russia, even in its
springtide. The blossom was bound to wither. As far as the Committee for
the Amelioration of the Jews was concerned, the hackneyed political
wisdom of the age, the system of patronage and compulsory reforms, came
to the fore again. The report submitted by the Jewish Committee to
Alexander I. in October, 1804, reveals no trace of that radical
liberalism which a year before had come to light in the minutes of the
Committee.
The report begins by determining the approximate size of the Jewish
population, computing the number of registered, taxable males at
174,385--"a figure which represents less than a fifth of the whole
Jewish population." In other words, the total number of Jews, in the
estimate of the Committee, approached one million. The report proceeds
to point out that this entire mass is huddled together in the annexed
Polish and Lithuanian provinces and in Little Russia and Courland, and
is barred from the Governments of the interior--a statement followed by
an historical excursus tending to show that "the Jews have never been
allowed to settle in Russia." The Tzar is further informed that the Jews
are obliged to pay double taxes, that, notwithstanding the fact that
they are liable to the general courts and municipalities, and that their
Kahals are subordinate to the gubernatorial police, the Jews still keep
aloof from the institutions of the land and manage their affairs through
the Kahals. Finally it is pointed out that the sale of liquor, the most
widespread occupation among Jews, is a source of abuses, calling forth
complaints from the surrounding population. Basing its deductions on
these premises, the Committee drafted a law which in its principal
features was embodied in the "Statute Concerning the Organization of the
Jews," issued, with the sanction of the Tzar, soon afterwards, on
December 9, 1804.
2. THE "JEWISH CONSTITUTION" OF 1804
The new charter, a mixture of liberties and disabilities, was prompted,
as is stated in the preamble, "by solicitude for the true welfare of the
Jews," as well as for "the advantage of the native population of those
Governments in which these people are allowed to live." The concluding
part of the sentence anticipates the way in which the question of the
Jewish area of settlement is solved. It remained limited as theretofore
to thirteen Governments: two in Lithuania, two in White Russia, two in
Little Russia, those of Minsk, Volhynia, Kiev, and Podolia, and finally
three in New Russia. A slightly larger area is conceded by the new
statute to the _future_ class of Jewish agriculturists projected in the
same statute. They are permitted to settle in addition in two interior
Governments, those of Astrakhan and Caucasia.
Economically the new statute establishes two opposite poles: a negative
pole as far as the rural occupations of innkeeping and land-tenure are
concerned, which are to be exterminated ruthlessly, and a positive pole,
as far as agriculture is involved, which on the contrary is to be
stimulated and promoted among Jews in every possible manner. Clause 34,
the severest provision of the whole act, is directed not only against
innkeeping but against rural occupations in general. It reads as
follows:
Beginning with January 1, 1807, in the Governments of Astrakhan
and Caucasia, also in those of Little Russia and New Russia,
and, beginning with January 1, 1808, in the other Governments,
_no one among the Jews in any village or hamlet shall be
permitted to hold any leases on land, to keep taverns, saloons,
or inns_, whether under his own name or under a strange name, or
to sell wine in them, or _even to live in them_ under any
pretext whatever, except when passing through.
With one stroke this clause eliminated from the economic life of the
Jews an occupation which, though far from being distinguished, had yet
afforded a livelihood to almost one-half of the whole Jewish population
of Russia. Moreover, the none too extensive territory of the Jewish Pale
of Settlement was still more limited by excluding from it the enormous
area of villages and hamlets.
The economic and legal blow aimed at the Jews in the Statute of 1804 was
to be made good by the privileges held forth to those willing to engage
in agriculture. Such Jews were accorded the right of buying unoccupied
lands in all the western and in two of the eastern Governments, or of
establishing themselves on crown lands. In the latter case the settlers
were to be assigned definite parcels of land and, for the first few
years, be exempt from state taxes. However, it soon became evident that
the proposed remedy was out of proportion to the seriousness of the
wound that had been inflicted. While hundreds of thousands of Jews were
driven from the rural occupations with which their economic life had
been bound up for centuries, the new branch of labor opened to the Jews,
the pursuit of agriculture, could, for some time to come, attract at the
utmost only a few insignificant groups of the Jewish population.
Among the favored occupations, ranging in importance beneath
agriculture, the new law includes industry and handicrafts.
Manufacturers and artisans are declared exempt from the double tax
imposed on Jews,[247] and the founders of "the most needed factories"
are promised, in addition, a Government loan. The Jewish merchants and
burghers are placed in the last rank, being merely "tolerated."
Manufacturers, artisans, and merchants are given permission to sojourn
temporarily for business purposes in "the interior Governments, not
excluding the capitals, but not otherwise than with gubernatorial
passports," such as are given for going abroad.
In the chapter entitled "On the Civil Organization of the Jews," the new
charter establishes, on the one hand, the liability of the Jews to the
authority of the municipalities, the common police, and the common law
courts, and grants the Jews, on the other hand, the right of electing
rabbis and "Kahalmen," who shall be replaced every three years, and
shall be ratified by the gubernatorial administration. Special clauses
provide that the rabbis are obliged "to look after all the ceremonies of
the Jewish faith and decide all disputes bearing on religion," but they
are strictly forbidden to resort to "anathemas" and excommunications
(the so-called herem). The Kahals in turn are held responsible for the
regular payment of the state taxes. The communal autonomy of the Jews
was thus calculated to serve two masters, religion and the exchequer,
God and mammon, and was expected to adjust its manifold problems to
both.
The "Jewish Constitution" of 1804 is provided as it were with a European
label. Its first chapter bears the heading "On Enlightenment." Jewish
children are granted free access to all public schools, gymnasiums, and
universities in the Russian Empire. The Jews are also granted the right
of opening their own schools for secular culture, one of three
languages, Russian, Polish, or German, to be obligatory. One of these
languages is also, within a period of two to six years from the
promulgation of the law, to become obligatory for all public documents,
promissory notes, commercial ledgers, etc. The Jews elected members of
municipalities or chosen as rabbis and Kahal members are obliged, within
a definite term (1808-1812), to know one of these three languages to the
extent of being able to write and speak it. Moreover, the Jewish members
of the municipalities are expected to wear clothes of the Polish,
Russian, or German pattern.
This "enlightened" program represents the tribute which the Russian
Government felt obliged to render to the spirit of the age, the spirit
of enlightened Prussian absolutism rather than that of French
emancipation. It was the typical sample of a Prusso-Austrian
_Reglement_, embodying the very system of "reforms brought about by the
power of the state" against which Speranski had vainly cautioned. In
concrete reality this system resulted in nothing else than the violent
break-up of a structure built by centuries, relentless coercion on the
one hand and suffering of the patronized masses on the other.
3. THE PROJECTED EXPULSION FROM THE VILLAGES
The legal enactment of 1804 was appraised by the Russian Jews at its
true value: problematic benefits in the future and undeniable hardships
for the present. The prospect of future benefits, the attainment of
which was conditioned by the weakening of the time-honored foundations
of a stalwart Jewish cultural life, expressing itself in language,
school, and communal self-government, had no fascination for Russian
Jews, who had not yet been touched by the influences of Western Europe.
But what the Russian Jews did feel, and feel with sickening pain, was
the imminence of a terrible economic catastrophe, the expulsion of
hundreds of thousands of Jews from the villages. It soon became evident
that the expulsion would affect 60,000 Jewish families, or about half a
million Jews. Needless to say, within the two or three years of respite
which remained before the catastrophe, this huge mass could not possibly
gain access to new fields of labor and establish itself in new
domiciles, and it was therefore in danger of being starved to death. In
consequence, St. Petersburg was flooded with petitions imploring the
authorities to postpone the expulsion for a time. These petitions came
not only from the Kahals but also from country squires, for whom the
removal of the Jewish tenants and innkepeers from their estates entailed
considerable financial losses. With the approach of the year 1808, the
time limit set for the expulsion, the shouts of despair from the
provinces became louder and louder. It is difficult to say whether the
Russian Government would have responded to the terrible outcry, had it
not been for an event which set all the political circles of St.
Petersburg agog.
It was in the autumn of 1806. The "Jewish Parliament" in Paris, which
had been assembled by Napoleon, was concluding its sessions, and was
sending out appeals to all the countries of Europe announcing the
impending convocation of the "Great Synhedrion." This new fad of
Napoleon disturbed all the European Governments which were on terms of
enmity with the French Emperor, and had reason to fear the discontent of
their Jewish subjects. The Austrian Government went so far as to forbid
the Jews to enter into any relations with "dangerous" Paris. St.
Petersburg too became alarmed. Napoleon, who had just shattered Prussia,
and had already entered her Polish provinces, was gradually approaching
the borders of hostile Russia. The awe inspired by the statesmanlike
genius of the French Emperor made the Russian Government suspect that
the convocation of a universal Jewish Synhedrion in Paris was merely a
Napoleonic device to dispose the Jewish masses of Prussia, Austria, and
Russia in his favor. In these circumstances it seemed likely that the
resentment aroused in the Russian Jews by their imminent expulsion from
the villages would provide a favorable soil for the wily agitation of
Napoleon, and would create a hotbed of anti-Russian sentiment in the
very regions soon to become the theater of war. To avoid such risks it
seemed imperative to extinguish the flame of discontent and stop the
expulsion.
Thus it came about that in the beginning of February, 1807, at the very
moment when the sessions of the Synhedrion were opened in Paris, the
Minister of the Interior, Kochubay, submitted a report to Alexander I.,
in which he pointed out the necessity "of postponing the transplantation
of the Jews from the villages into the towns and townlets, so as to
guard this nation in general against the intentions of the French
Government." The Tzar concurred in this opinion, with the result that a
special committee was immediately formed to consider the practical
application of the Statute of 1804. Apart from Kochubay and other high
officials, the committee included the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Budberg, diplomatic considerations being involved in the question. On
February 15, Senator Alexeyev was directed to inspect the western
provinces and find out to what extent "the military circumstances and
the present condition of the border provinces as well as the economic
ruin of the Jews, which is inevitable if their expulsion be enforced,"
render this expulsion difficult or even impossible of execution.
At the same time the Minister of the Interior instructed the
administrators of the western Governments to prevent the slightest
contact between the Jews of Russia and the Synhedrion in Paris, which
the French Government was using as a tool to curry political favor with
the Jews. The same circular letter to the Governors recommends another
rather curious device. It suggests that the Jews be impressed with the
idea that the Synhedrion in Paris was endeavoring to modify the Jewish
religion, and for this reason did not deserve the sympathy of the
Russian Jews.
At the same time the Holy Synod was sending out circulars instructing
the Greek Orthodox clergy to inform the Russian people that Napoleon was
an enemy of the Church and a friend of the Jews.
That he might the more effectively put the Church of Christ to
shame--so the Holy Synod proclaimed--Napoleon assembled the
Judean Synagogues in France ... and established the Great
Synhedrion of the Jews, that same ungodly assembly which had
once dared pass the sentence of crucifixion upon our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, and he now planneth to unite the Jews, whom
the wrath of the Almighty hath scattered over the face of the
whole earth, so as to incite them to overthrow the Christian
Church and proclaim the pseudo-Messiah in the person of
Napoleon.
By these devices the Government, finding itself at its wits' end in the
face of a great war, shrewdly attempted to frighten at once the Jewish
people by the specter of an anti-Jewish Napoleon and the Orthodox
Russians by Napoleon's leaning towards Judaism. The former were made to
believe that the Synhedrion was directed against the Jewish religion,
and the latter were told that it was established by the Jewish
"pseudo-Messiah" for the overthrow of Christianity.
In this precarious situation the Government once more decided to
ascertain, by means of a circular inquiry, the views of the
representatives of the Jewish communities on the best ways of carrying
the "reform" into effect. The ukase of February 19, issued by the Tzar
on this occasion, is couched in surprisingly mild terms:
Prompted by the desire to give our subjects of the Jewish
nationality another proof of our solicitude about their welfare,
we have deemed it right to allow all the Jewish communes in the
Governments ... of Vilna, Grodno, Kiev, Minsk, Podolia,
Volhynia, Vitebsk, and Moghilev, to elect deputies and to
suggest, through them, to the gubernatorial administrators the
means which they themselves consider best fitted for the most
successful execution of the measures laid down in the Statute of
1804.
The deputies were summoned this time, not to St. Petersburg, but to the
provincial capitals in order to present their opinions to the governors.
The expression of opinion on the part of the Jewish deputies, or, as
they were officially styled, "the attorneys of the Jewish communes," did
not limit itself to the fatal thirty-fourth clause, which all the
deputies wished to see repealed or at least postponed for an indefinite
period. Serious objections were raised also to the other provisions of
the "Jewish Constitution." The deputies advocated the abolition of
double taxation for all classes of the Jewish population; they asked for
a larger range of authority for the rabbinical tribunals and for a
mitigation of the provisions forbidding the use of Hebrew in legal
documents, promissory notes, and commercial ledgers. Some of them
pleaded for a postponement of the law concerning Hebrew as being
inconvenient to business, while others suggested permitting the use of
Hebrew for promissory notes up to the sum of one hundred rubels.[248]
The deputies also called attention to the difficulty, on the part of the
rabbis and Jewish members of the magistracies, of acquiring the Russian
language within so short a period. They were ready to assent to the
change of dress for the magistrates and those living temporarily outside
the Pale. But they pointed out at the same time that the prescribed
German dress was not becoming to Jews, who on account of religious
scruples refused to shave their beards, and that in the case of
magistrates and visitors to the Russian interior they would prefer to
adopt the Russian form of dress. As for the laws relating to education,
the deputies observed that it would be useless for Jewish children to go
to the common Russian schools as long as they did not understand the
Russian language, and that it would for this reason seem more
practicable first to have them acquire the Russian language in the
Jewish schools, where they are taught the Hebrew language and the
"dogmas of the faith."
By the time the opinions of the deputies were conveyed by the governors
to St. Petersburg, the political sentiment there had undergone a change.
In July, 1807, the Peace of Tilsit had been concluded. An _entente
cordiale_ had been established between Napoleon and Alexander I., and
Russia no more stood in awe of Bonaparte's "intrigues." There was no
more reason to fear a secret understanding between the Russian Jews and
the Parisian Synhedrion, which had shortly before been prorogued, and
the bureaucratic compassion for the unfortunate Jews vanished into air.
The last term set for the expulsion from the villages, January 1, 1808,
was drawing near, and two months before this date, on October 19, 1807,
the Tzar addressed an ukase, marked by extraordinary severity, to the
Governor-General of the Western region:
The circumstances connected with the war--the ukase states in
part--were of a nature to complicate and suspend the
transplantation of the Jews.... These complications can now,
after the cessation of the war, be averted in the future by
means of a gradual and most convenient arrangement of the work
of transplantation.... For these reasons we deem it right to lay
down an arrangement by means of which the transplantation of the
Jews, beginning with the date referred to above, may be carried
into effect, without the slightest delay and mitigation.
The "arrangement" alluded to consisted in spreading the expulsion from
the villages over three years: one-third of the Jews were to be expelled
in 1808, another third in 1809, and the last third in 1810. Committees
were appointed to assist the governors in carrying out the expulsion
decree. These committees were instructed to make it incumbent upon the
Kahals to render financial assistance to the expelled, to those who were
being pitilessly ruined by the Government.
The horrors of the expulsion began.
Those who did not go willingly were made to leave by force. Many
were ejected ruthlessly, under the escort of peasants and
soldiers. They were driven like cattle into the townlets and
cities, and left there on the public squares in the open air.
The way in which the expulsion from the villages was carried out
in the Government of Vitebsk was particularly ferocious.[249]
Scores of exiled Jews petitioned the authorities to have them
transferred to New Russia, to the agricultural colonies, in which
several hundred Jewish families had found some kind of shelter. But the
supply of arable land and the funds set aside for the transfer were
found to be exhausted; the appeals therefore remained unheeded. The
distress of the Jewish masses reached such colossal proportions that the
governors themselves, in their reports to the central Government,
declared that it was impossible to carry out the expulsion decree
without subjecting the Jews to complete ruin. Accordingly a new ukase
was issued in the last days of December, 1808, to the effect that the
Jews be left in their former domiciles, pending special Imperial orders.
In the beginning of January, 1809, a new Committee (chronologically the
third) was appointed in St. Petersburg for the purpose of examining all
the phases of the problem of diverting the Jews from the rural liquor
traffic to other branches of labor. This time the committee consisted of
Senator Alexeyev,[250] who had made a tour of inspection through the
western provinces, Privy-Councilor Popov, Assistant Minister of the
Interior Kozodavlev, and others. In his instructions to Popov, who was
chairman of the Committee, the Tzar admits that the impossibility of
removing the Jews from the villages results from the fact that "the Jews
themselves, on account of their destitute condition, have no means which
would enable them, after leaving their present abodes, to settle and
found a home in their new surroundings, while the Government is equally
unable to undertake to place them all in new domiciles." It has
therefore been found necessary "to seek ways and means whereby the Jews,
having been removed from their exclusive pursuit of selling wine in the
villages, hamlets, inns, and public houses, may be enabled to earn a
livelihood by labor." At the same time the Committee was directed to
take into consideration the "opinions" submitted previously by the
Jewish deputies. After indulging in cruel vivisectionist experiments on
human beings, the Government finally realized that mere paper orders
were powerless to remodel an economic order, which centuries of
development had created, and that violent expulsions and restrictions
might result in ruining people, but not in effecting their
"amelioration."
The Committee was at work for three years. The results of its labors
were embodied in a remarkable report submitted in March, 1812, to
Alexander I. Since Speranski's declaration of 1803, reproduced
above,[251] this official document was the first to utter a word of
truth on the Jewish problem.
It is proposed--the report declares--to remove the Jews from the
rural liquor traffic, because the latter is considered harmful
to the population. But it is obvious that the root of the
drinking evil is not to be found with the saloon-keepers, but in
the right of distilling, or "propination," which constitutes the
prerogative of the squires and their main source of income. Let
us suppose the sixty thousand Jewish saloon-keepers to be turned
out from the villages. The result will be that sixty thousand
Russian peasants will take their place, tens of thousands of
efficient farm-hands will be lost to the soil, while the Jews
cannot be expected to be transformed into capable agriculturists
at a moment's notice, the less so as the Government has no
resources to effect this sudden transformation of saloon-keepers
into corn-growers. It is not true that the village Jew enriches
himself at the expense of the peasant. On the contrary, he is
generally poor, and ekes out a scanty existence from the sale of
liquor and by supplying the peasants with the goods they need.
Moreover, by buying the corn on the spot, the Jew saves the
peasant from wasting his time in traveling to the city.
Altogether in rural economic life the Jew plays the rôle of a
go-between, who can be spared neither by the squire nor by the
peasant. To transfer all village Jews to the cities and convert
them into manufacturers, merchants, and artisans, is a matter of
impossibility, for even the Jewish population already settled in
the cities is scarcely able to make a living, and to create
factories and mills artificially would be throwing money into
the water, especially as the exchequer has no free millions at
its disposal to enable it to grant subsidies to manufacturers.
The recent experiments of the Government have had no effect. On
the contrary, the Jewish people "has not only remained in the
same state of poverty, but has even been reduced to greater
destitution, as a result of having been forced out of a pursuit
which had provided it with a livelihood for several centuries."
Hence, "the Committee, realizing this situation of a whole
people, and being afraid that the continuation of compulsory
measures, _in the present political circumstances_, may only
exasperate this people, already restricted to the utmost, deems
it necessary ... to put a resolute stop to the now prevailing
methods of interference by allowing the Jews to remain in their
former abodes and by setting free the pursuits suspended by
Clause 34."
The Government submitted. In yielding it was moved not so much by the
clear and incontrovertible arguments of the Committee, which amounted to
a deadly criticism of the current system of state patronage, as by the
"political circumstances" alluded to in the concluding sentences of the
report. Napoleon's army was marching towards the Russian frontier. The
war which was to embroil the whole of Russia and subsequently the whole
of Europe had broken out. At such a moment, when the French army was
flooding the whole of Western Russia, it seemed far more dangerous to
create groups of persecuted and embittered outcasts than it had been in
1807, when the French invasion was merely a matter of apprehension. In
these circumstances the question whether the Jews should be left in the
villages and hamlets found a favorable solution of itself, without any
special ukase. Stirred to the core, Russia, in the moment of national
danger, had to rely for her salvation upon the strenuous exertions of
all her inhabitants, Jews included.
4. THE PATRIOTIC ATTITUDE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE WAR OF 1812
The part played by the Jews in the War of 1812 was not so insignificant
as historians are generally disposed to assume, being misled by the fact
that the Jews of Russia were not yet drafted into the army. It must be
borne in mind that the great war was enacted in western Russia, more
particularly in northwestern Russia, on territory inhabited by a compact
Jewish population scattered all over the cities, townlets, and villages.
The sympathy of this population with one or the other of the
belligerents frequently decided the success or failure of the detachment
situated in that locality. It is a well-known fact that the Poles of the
western region were mostly on the side of Napoleon, from whom they
expected the restoration of the Polish kingdom.
As for the Russian Jews, their attitude towards the belligerent parties
was of a more complicated character. The recent persecutions of the
rural Jews were apt, on the one hand, to set their hearts against the
Russian Government, and, had these persecutions continued, the French
would have been hailed by the oppressed Jews as their saviors. But the
expulsions from the villages had been stopped three years before the
war, and the Jews anticipated the complete repeal of the cruel law,
which had been so severely condemned in the official report of the
Committee laid before the Tzar in the beginning of 1812. Moreover, the
deputies of the Kahals, who had been summoned twice to share in the work
of the Government (in 1803 and 1807), had an opportunity to convince
themselves that Alexander I.'s Government was on the whole favorably
disposed towards the Jews, and its mistakes were merely the outcome of
the wrong system of state patronage, of the desire of the Government to
make the Jews happy, according to its own lights, by employing
compulsory and "correctional" measures.
On the other hand, Napoleon's halo had been considerably dimmed even in
the eyes of the Jews of Western Europe, now that the results of his
"Jewish Parliaments" had come to light. The Jews of Russia, who were all
Orthodox, regarded Napoleon's reform schemes as fraught with danger, and
looked upon the substitution of Kahal autonomy by a consistorial
organization as subversive of Judaism. The Hasidic party, again, which
was the most conservative, felt indebted to Alexander I., who, in a
clause of the Statute of 1804, bearing on Jewish sects, had bestowed
upon the Hasidim the right of segregating themselves in separate
synagogues within the communities. The leader of the White Russian
Hasidim, Rabbi Shneor Zalman, who at first had suffered from the
suspiciousness of the Russian Government, but was afterwards declared to
be politically "dependable," voiced the sentiments of the influential
Jewish circles towards the two belligerent sovereigns in the following
prediction:
Should Bonaparte win, the wealth of the Jews will be increased,
and their [civic] position will be raised. At the same time
their hearts will be estranged from our Heavenly Father. Should
however our Tzar Alexander win, the Jewish hearts will draw
nearer to our Heavenly Father, though the poverty of Israel may
become greater and his position lower.
This was tantamount to saying that civic rightlessness was preferable to
civic equality, inasmuch as the former bade fair to guarantee the
inviolability of the religious life, while the latter threatened to
bring about its disintegration.
All these circumstances, coupled with the unconscious resentment of the
masses against the invading enemy, brought about the result that the
Jews of the Northwest everywhere gave tokens of their devotion to the
interests of Russia, and frequently rendered substantial services to the
Russian army in its commissary and reconnoitring branches. The
well-known Russian partisan[252] Davidov relates that
the frame of mind of the Polish inhabitants of Grodno was very
unfavorable to us. The Jews living in Poland were, on the other
hand, all so devoted to us that they refused to serve the enemy
as scouts, and often gave us most valuable information
concerning him.
As Polish officials could not be relied upon, it became necessary to
intrust the whole police department of Grodno to the Jewish Kahal. The
Governor of Vilna testified that "the Jewish people had shown particular
devotion to the Russian Government during the presence of the enemy."
The Poles were irritated by this pro-Russian attitude of the Jews. There
were rumors afloat that the Poles had made ready to massacre all Jews
and Russians in the Governments of Vilna and Minsk and in the province
of Bialystok. There were numerous instances of self-sacrifice. It
happened more than once that Jews who had sheltered Russian couriers
with dispatches in their houses, or had escorted them to the Russian
headquarters, or who had furnished information to the Russian commanders
as to the position of the enemy's army, were caught by the French, and
shot or hanged. Alexander I. was aware of these deeds. While on a visit
to Kalish, he granted an audience to the members of the Kahal, and
engaged in a lengthy conversation with them. Among the Jews of the
district appeals written in the Jewish vernacular were circulated, in
which the Jews were called upon to offer up prayers for the success of
Alexander I., who would release the Jewish people from bondage.
Altogether the wave of patriotism which swept over Russia engulfed the
Jewish masses to a considerable extent.
The headquarters of the Russian army, which was now marching towards the
West, harbored, during the years 1812-1813, two Jewish deputies, Sundel
Sonnenberg of Grodno and Leyser (Eliezer) Dillon of Neswizh. On the one
hand they maintained connections with the leading Government officials,
and conveyed to them the wishes of the Jewish communities. On the other
hand they kept up relations with the Kahals, which they informed
regularly of the intentions of the Government. Presumably these two
public-spirited men played a twofold rôle at headquarters: that of large
purveyors, who received orders directly from the Russian commissariat,
and forwarded them to their local agents, and that of representatives of
the Kahals, whose needs they communicated to the Tzar and the highest
dignitaries of the crown. In those uneasy times the Government found it
to its advantage to keep at its headquarters representatives of the
Jewish population, who might sway the minds of their coreligionists, in
accordance with the character of the political instructions issued by
it. In June, 1814, during his stay abroad in Bruchsal (Germany),
Alexander requested these deputies to assure "the Jewish Kahals of his
most gracious favor," and promised to issue shortly "an ordinance
concerning their wishes and requests for the immediate amelioration of
their present condition." It seems that Alexander I., who was still
under the spell of the accounts of Jewish patriotism, was inclined at
that moment to improve their lot. But the general reaction which, after
the Vienna Congress of 1815, fell like a blight upon Europe and Russia
proved fatal also to the Russian Jews.
5. ECONOMIC AND AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS
The political upheavals of the transition period (1789-1815) were bound
to react violently on the economic status of Russo-Polish Jewry. The
vast Jewish population of Western Russia was at that time divided into
two parts: the larger part resided in the towns and townlets, the
smaller lived in the villages. The efforts made by the Russian
Government during that period, to squeeze the whole Jewish population
into the urban estates and to single out from its midst a new class of
agriculturists, failed to produce the desired effect. Instead it
succeeded in disturbing the former equilibrium between the urban and the
rural occupations of the Jews.
The urban Jew was either a business man or an artisan or a
saloon-keeper. In many cities the Jewish mercantile element was
numerically superior to the Christian. The increased Jewish activity in
the export trade is particularly noticeable. Jewish merchants traveled
annually in large numbers to the fairs abroad, particularly to that of
Leipsic, to buy merchandise, principally dry goods, at the same time
exporting the products of Poland and Russia, such as furs, skins, etc.
The gradual absorption of Polish territory by Russia opened up a new,
immense market, that of the central Russian provinces, for the goods
imported from abroad. It was natural that the Jews began to flock to
those provinces. But their way was at once blocked by the local Russian
merchants, who began to clamor against Jewish competition, and forced
the Government to recognize the monopoly of native "interests," to the
detriment of the consumer.[253]
True, the monopolists did not succeed altogether in shutting the Russian
interior to foreign cheap goods and finery, which the Jewish merchants
still continued to import, under the clause in the Statute of 1804 which
granted Jews the right of visiting the interior Governments on special
gubernatorial passports. Yet an untrammeled development of Jewish
commerce was rendered impossible by this artificial barrier between
Western and Eastern Russia.
The second urban profession, handicrafts, was considered of lower rank
than commerce. It was pursued by the poorest class of the population.
Artisan labor commanded very low prices. Purely Jewish trade-unions were
rare, and when a Jewish artisan summoned enough courage to leave his
native townlet and seek employment in a large city, he was sure to
encounter the animosity of the organized Christian guilds. We have seen
that before the second partition of Poland such an "encounter" assumed
the shape of a pogrom in the Polish capital.[254]
By the side of the store and the workshop stood the public house or
saloon, which was generally connected with an inn or a hostelry. The
sale of liquor in the cities depended primarily on the peasants arriving
from the villages on festival and market days. On the whole the liquor
traffic occupied a subordinate place in the cities. Its mainstay was in
the villages.
All serious observers of the economic status of the Jews at that time
bear witness to the fact that in the majority of cities Jewish labor
formed the corner-stone of a civilized economic life, that without the
Jew it was impossible to buy, or to sell, or to have any kind of article
made. The Jew, who was satisfied with small wages and profits, was
thereby able to lower both the cost of production and the price of
merchandise. He was content with a pittance, his physical needs being
extraordinarily limited. Thanks to the mediation of the ubiquitous
Jewish business man, the peasant was able to dispose of his products on
the spot, even those which because of their small value would not be
worth carrying to the city. In spite of all his indefatigable, feverish
labors, the Jew was on the average as poor as the peasant, except that
he was free from the vice of drunkenness, one of the sources of the
peasant's economic misery. The poverty of the Jew was the artificial
result of the fact that the cities and townlets were overcrowded with
petty tradesmen and artisans, and this congestion was further aggravated
by the systematic removal of the Jews from their age-long rural
occupations and the consequent influx of village Jews into the towns.
It is necessary to point out that when the official records harp on the
"liquor traffic" in the villages as the sole occupation of Jews, they
fail to appreciate the many-sidedness of the rural pursuits of the Jews,
which were connected with the liquor traffic, to be sure, but were by no
means identical with it. While leasing from the squire or the crown the
right of distilling, the Jew farmed at the same time other items of
rural economy, such as the dairies, the mills, and the fishing ponds. He
was furthermore engaged in buying grain from the peasants and selling
them at the same time such indispensable articles as salt, utensils,
agricultural tools, etc., imported by him from the town. He often
combined in his person the occupations of liquor-dealer, shopkeeper, and
produce merchant. The road leading from the village to the city was
dotted with Jewish inns or public houses, which, before the age of
railroads, served as halting-places for travelers. This whole economic
structure, which had been built up gradually in the course of centuries,
the Russian Government made its business to demolish. As early as the
reign of Catherine II. the governors frequently drove the Jewish
villagers into the cities, acting under the "organic law" which makes it
incumbent upon Jews to "register among the merchants or burghers." The
ambiguous ukase of 1795, to the effect, that "endeavors be made to
transplant the Jews into the District towns, so that these people may
not wander about to the detriment of society," gave the zealous
bureaucrats a free hand. When the Law of 1804 ordered the expulsion of
all Jews from the villages at the end of three years, many squires,
without waiting for the time limit to expire, refused their Jewish
tenants the right of residence and trade in their villages. The Jews
began to rush into the cities, where even the long-settled residents
could not manage to make a living.
True, the Government was luring the persecuted Jews into two new
vocations, the establishment of factories and of agricultural colonies.
But the impecunious village Jew had neither the capital nor the capacity
for opening factories. Moreover, it was of no conceivable use to call
industries artificially into being, without having first secured a
market for the manufactured products. Several woolen mills had been
founded by Jews in Lithuania and Volhynia, but all they could do was to
provide work for a few thousand people. It was thus natural that all
eyes turned towards agricultural colonization.
The Statute of 1804 promised to provide impecunious Jews desirous of
engaging in agriculture with free land in several Governments, to grant
them loans for their equipment, and exempt them from taxation for a
number of years. The exiled village Jews clutched at this promise as an
anchor of salvation. In 1806 several Jewish groups in the Government of
Moghilev appealed to the governor to transfer them to New Russia, there
to engage in corn-growing. The delegate of one of these groups, Nahum
Finkelstein, even traveled to St. Petersburg to lay the matter before
Minister Kochubay, and was dispatched by the latter to the Government of
Kherson for the purpose of inspecting and selecting the land. The
Minister, acting in agreement with the Governor of Kherson, Duke
Richelieu, decided to set aside separate parcels of land in the steppes
of that region and to settle Jews on them under the auspices of the New
Russian "Immigration Bureau." Scarcely had the two Moghilev groups
completed the arrangements for their emigration, when scores of similar
applications began to come in from Jewish groups in other Governments of
the Pale. By the end of 1806 the number of applicants mounted up to
fifteen hundred families, numbering some seven thousand souls. The
Russian authorities found themselves in an awkward position. They were
caught unprepared for the transfer of so many persons at the expense of
the state. In 1807 four colonies of Jewish agriculturists were
established in the Government of Kherson, the first among the Jewish
colonies of South Russia. The number of settlers amounted to some three
hundred families, consisting of two thousand souls.
The number of applicants desirous of settling on the land continued to
increase. In the course of 1808, when the expulsion from the villages
was in full swing, the White Russian governors bombarded the Minister of
the Interior with petitions to allow as many Jewish families as possible
to proceed to New Russia. The Governor of Vitebsk reported that the
rural Jews
have been unseasonably expelled, ruined, and reduced to beggary.
A large part of them is without daily bread and without shelter,
and they emigrate in considerable numbers to New Russia. Many
Jews, in the expectation of being transplanted to New Russia,
have sold all their belongings and beg leave persistently to go
there, though it be only for a domicile.
At the same time reports from the New Russian Immigration Bureau and
from Duke Richelieu were constantly reaching St. Petersburg. They
emphasized the necessity of stemming the tide of emigrants, in view of
the fact that even the first parties of colonists had found it difficult
to establish themselves, while the new ones could not expect to find
either huts or any other accommodations. By the beginning of 1808 the
Immigration Bureau was in charge of about one thousand colonist
families, and, in addition, several thousand immigrants who had arrived
"voluntarily" were waiting for their turn to be settled. As a result of
the unaccustomed climatic conditions and the lack of housing
accommodations and provisions, disease began to spread among the
new-comers. All these circumstances decided the Government to put a
temporary stop to the settling of Jews in the New Russian colonies
(ukase of April 6, 1810).
The attempt to convert a part of the Jewish population into
agriculturists would undoubtedly have met with huge success, had the
Government been sufficiently prepared for such a momentous economic
transformation. Ten thousand emigrants had already gone to New Russia,
and the compact starving masses were rushing after them. But the
Government was overwhelmed by the difficulties of the task, and brought
the whole movement to a standstill. Simultaneously a stop was put to the
expulsion from the villages in the western Governments, which threatened
to lead to an unparalleled economic catastrophe. Thus, after many
vacillations and upheavals, the economic structure of Jewish life was
re-established on its old foundations--commerce, handicrafts, and rural
occupations.
FOOTNOTES:
[246] See p. 330.
[247] See p. 318.
[248] The insistence on Hebrew in the latter case is connected with the
rabbinical form of promissory note, the so-called _Shtar Iska_ [a form
of partnership agreement which was designed to obviate the difficulties
arising out of the Biblical prohibition to lend money on interest. A
similar legal fiction was introduced by the medieval Church].
[249] See Nikitin, "The Jewish Agriculturists" (in Russian), St.
Petersburg, 1887, p. 16.
[250] [See p. 347.]
[251] See p. 340.
[252] [The word is used here in the sense of leader of partisan, _i. e._
irregular, troops. Davidov attained to great fame during the War of
1812, in which he interfered effectively with the communications of the
French.]
[253] Compare the prohibition barring Jews from registering in the
mercantile guilds of Moscow and Smolensk, p. 315.
[254] See p. 286 and p. 287.