THE LAST YEARS OF ALEXANDER I.
1. "THE DEPUTATION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE"
The great reaction of 1815-1848, which kept the whole of Europe in its
throes, assumed peculiar forms in Russia. Tzar Alexander I., one of the
triumvirs of the Holy Alliance, which had given birth to this reaction,
was eager to atone for the liberal "sins" of his youth, and was
cultivating in Russia the principles of "paternal administration" and
"Christian government." The last decade of his reign paved the way for
the iron-handed absolutism of Nicholas I., which fettered the political
and social life of Russia for thirty years, and stood like an ominous
specter of medievalism before the eyes of Western Europe.
The destinies of the great monarchy of the East determined those of the
greatest Jewish center of the Diaspora. The Vienna Congress of 1815
enlarged the borders of European Russia by including in it almost the
entire territory of the former Duchy of Warsaw, which was renamed
"Kingdom of Poland."[268] About two million Jews were huddled together
on the western strip of the Russian monarchy during the period of
1815-1848,[269] and this immense, sharply marked population served as
the subject of all possible experiments, which assumed the coloring of
the general Russian politics of the time. The last years of Alexander I.
inaugurate the period of patronage and oppression, which reached its
culmination in the following reign.
The attitude of the Russian Government towards the Jews during that
period reflects three successive tendencies: first, in the last years of
Alexander I.'s reign (1815-1825), a mixed tendency of "benevolent
paternalism" and severe restrictions; second, during the first half of
Nicholas I.'s reign (1826-1840), a military tendency, that of
"correcting" the Jews by subjecting their youth, from the age of
childhood, to the austere discipline of conscription and barrack
training, accompanied by compulsory religious assimilation and by an
unprecedented recrudescence of rightlessness and oppression; and third,
during the latter part of Nicholas's reign (1840-1855), the
"enlightened" tendency of improving the Jews by establishing "crown
schools" and demolishing the autonomous structure of Jewish life, while
keeping in force the former cruel disabilities (1840-1855). This endless
"correctional" and "educational" experimenting on a whole people,
aggravated by the resuscitation of ritual murder trials and wholesale
expulsions in approved medieval style, makes the history of Russian Jews
during that period an uninterrupted tragedy.
The beginning of the period did not seem to portend evil. Emperor
Alexander returned from the Vienna Congress without harboring aggressive
plans against the Jews. On the contrary, he remembered the patriotic
services rendered by the Jews in 1812 and the promise given by him at
Bruchsal "to ameliorate their condition."[270] As a matter of fact,
several steps were taken which seemed to point in the direction of
improvement.
The first manifestations of this tendency were certain administrative
changes in the management of Jewish affairs. The ukase of January 18,
1817, ordered the Senate to submit all matters affecting the Jewish
communes, with the exception of legal cases, to the General Manager of
the Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Denominations, a post occupied by
Golitzin, the Tzar's associate in Christian pietism and mystical
infatuation. Later in the same year, the combined Ministry of
Ecclesiastic Affairs and Public Instruction was organized, under the
guidance of Golitzin, symbolizing, as it were, the establishment of
public instruction upon the foundations of "Christian piety." The
charter of the new organization distinctly provides that all "Jewish
matters in charge of the Senate and the Ministers" are to be transmitted
to the head of the new Ministry. In this manner the Jewish question was
officially connected with the department of ecclesiastic affairs, which
at that time occupied a central place in the administration.
The departmental change was followed by a more substantial reform. The
Government recognized the necessity of establishing at the Ministry of
Ecclesiastic Affairs a permanent advisory council composed of elected
Jewish representatives or "deputies of the Jewish communes." The project
was suggested by the ephemeral and accidental endeavors in the way of
popular Jewish representation on the part of the two purveyors,
Sonnenberg and Dillon, who were attached to the headquarters of the
Russian army during the campaign of 1812. At the audience at which
Alexander I. gave these deputies the assurance that the condition of
their coreligionists would be improved,[271] they were also told to
appear in the capital after the conclusion of the war for the purpose of
acquainting the Kahals with the plans of the Government. The deputies
accordingly appeared in St. Petersburg, and entered upon their duties as
Jewish spokesmen, which they exercised during 1816 and 1817. They
realized, however, that they had no right to regard themselves as the
accredited representatives of the Jewish communities of Russia, and
therefore appealed to the Government--Sonnenberg was particularly active
in this direction--to instruct all the Kahals to elect a complete group
of deputies in due form. The Government having agreed to the proposal, a
clause was included in the instructions to the newly-established
Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs, to the effect that "the [names of the]
deputies of the Jewish communes shall after their election be submitted
by the Minister to his Majesty for ratification."
In the autumn of 1815 all the large Kahals received orders from the
governors to choose an electoral college, two electors for each
Government. In August, 1818, the twenty-two electors chosen from eleven
Governments assembled in Vilna to elect from their own midst three
deputies and an equal number of substitutes. The choice fell, apart from
the former deputies Sonnenberg and Dillon, on Michael Eisenstadt, Benish
Lapkovski, and Marcus Veitelson, all from the Government of Vitebsk, and
Samuel Epstein from the Government of Vilna. To provide for the expenses
of the deputies, who were to live in St. Petersburg, the Vilna
conference issued an appeal to all Jewish communities calling upon them
to make an "embroidery collection," _i. e._ to cut off and convert into
cash the embroidered collars which well-to-do Jews attached to their
"Kittels" (shrouds worn beneath the prayer shawls on the Day of
Atonement), though the alternative of donating their value in money was
allowed. The Jews, who had been ruined during the war, were evidently
not in a position to tax themselves directly.
Soon afterwards followed the establishment of a special department,
which was placed at the service of "the Deputation of the Jewish
People," the name by which this college of deputies, presided over by
the energetic Sonnenberg, was frequently designated. The "college,"
either as a whole or through its individual members, labored for seven
years (1818-1825), but its activity was too limited to justify the
expectations of Russian Jewry. The hope of the deputies, that they would
be consulted about the general problems bearing on the proposed
amelioration of Jewish conditions, failed to materialize. On the
contrary, the Government had in the meantime abandoned all thought of
legislative reforms, and a little later even began to contrive ways and
means of carrying into effect the restrictive clauses of the Statute of
1804, which had been suspended in its operation by the War of 1812.
The deputies, who resided in St. Petersburg and did a great deal of
lobbying, frequently managed in their intercourse with the officials to
ferret out these "designs" of the authorities and to communicate their
findings secretly to the Kahal leaders in the provinces. At the same
time they endeavored of their own accord to avert the danger by personal
negotiations with the leading officials. While reporting on the one hand
to the Kahals, the deputies on the other hand transmitted to Golitzin,
the Minister of Ecclesiastic Affairs, the petitions of the Kahals and
their complaints against the local administration. The deputies were
thus reduced, by the force of circumstances, to mere go-betweens in
Jewish matters. In exercising this function, some of them, Sonnenberg in
particular, were indefatigable. They tried the patience of the high
officials with their petitions and representations, and on one occasion
Sonnenberg was even deprived of his post of deputy for "impertinent
conduct towards the authorities." The bureaucracy of St. Petersburg
began to resent these endless solicitations and this constant meddling
with their plans.
Gradually the deputies themselves lost heart, having realized their
impotence in grappling with the rising wave of reaction. Some of them
left St. Petersburg altogether. The downfall of Golitzin's Ministry of
Ecclesiastic Affairs, which had been undermined by the ultra-reactionary
Arakcheyev party,[272] involved, as a natural consequence, the downfall
of the curious Jewish representation affiliated with it. Golitzin's
successor as Minister of Public Instruction, the obscurantist Shishkov,
made representations to the Tzar concerning the necessity of abolishing
the institution of Jewish deputies, "numerous instances having
demonstrated that their stay here is not only unnecessary and useless
but even very harmful, inasmuch as, under the pretext of working for the
public interest, they collect money from the Jews for no purpose, and
prematurely advertise the decisions and even the intentions of the
Government." In 1825 the "Deputation of the Jewish People" was
abolished. Thus ended an organization beautifully conceived, but
mutilated in execution, one that might well have served as a substitute
for Jewish communal representation, and might have softened the _régime_
of caprice and blighting patronage which ate deeper and deeper into the
vitals of Russian politics.
2. CHRISTIANIZING ENDEAVORS
It was quite in harmony with the spirit of the new era that the
solicitude of the Russian Government for the Jews should have manifested
itself in an attempt at saving their souls. Christian pietism was the
fashion of the day, and Alexander I. and Golitzin, the Minister of
Ecclesiastic Affairs, both of whom were mystically inclined, conceived
the idea of becoming the instruments of Divine Providence in converting
the Jews to Christianity. Golitzin, who was the president of the Russian
Bible Society, and was anxious to make it a faithful copy of its English
model, the Missionary Bible Society of London, approached the missionary
problem in his own way. On March 25, 1817, the Tzar published an ukase
calling for the formation of a "Society of Israelitish Christians," for
the purpose of assisting Jews already converted or preparing for
conversion.
We have learned--the ukase reads--of the difficult situation of
those Jews who, having by Divine Grace perceived the light of
Christian truth, have embraced the same, or are making ready to
join the flock of the good Shepherd and the Savior of souls.
These Jews, whom the Christian religion has severed from their
brethren in the flesh, lose every means of contact with them,
and not only have forfeited every claim to their assistance, but
are also exposed to all kinds of persecutions and oppressions on
their part. Nor do they readily find shelter among Christians,
their new brethren in the faith, to whom they are as yet
unknown.... For this reason we, taking to heart the fate of the
Jews converted to Christianity, and prompted by reverent
obedience to the _Voice of Bliss which calleth unto the
scattered sheep of Israel to join the faith of Christ_, have
deemed it right to adopt measures for their welfare.
The "welfare" held out to the converts was of a rather substantial
nature. Each of their groups was to be allotted free crown lands in the
southern and northern provinces, with the right of founding all kinds of
settlements, townlets, and cities. They were to be granted full civil
equality, extensive communal self-government, and special alleviations
in the payment of taxes. These groups, or colonies, of Jews, after being
converted to the Greek Orthodox, Catholic, or Lutheran faith, were to
form part of the "Society of Israelitish Christians," which was to be
managed by a special committee to be appointed in St. Petersburg under
the patronage of the Emperor. The solemn phraseology of the Imperial
ukase shows unequivocally that the Government was not satisfied with the
modest task of rendering assistance to occasional neophytes. It was
ready to embark upon a vast undertaking, that of encouraging baptism
among the Jewish population, and organizing the converted masses into
separate, privileged communes, to serve as a bait for the Jews still
languishing in their old beliefs. The imagination of the Russian
legislators pictured to them the fascinating spectacle of huge masses of
Jews marching "to join the faith of Christ," drawn to it not only by
heavenly, but also by earthly, "bliss."
The missionary mood of the heads of the Russian Government was speedily
utilized by Lewis Way, a representative of the London Bible Society. Way
was thoroughly imbued with the apocalyptic belief in the approaching
redemption of Israel under the ægis of Christianity. This however did
not prevent him from looking upon present-day unconverted Israel with
sentiments of profound respect, as the banner-bearer of a great Divine
mission in the history of mankind, and he was deeply aroused over the
civil disabilities to which they were subjected in the various
countries of Europe. When the monarchs who had concluded the Holy
Alliance assembled, in the autumn of 1818, with their ministers and
diplomats at the Congress in Aix-la-Chapelle, Way grasped the occasion
to submit to Alexander I. a "Memorandum Concerning the Condition of the
Jews,"[273] in which he appealed to the Russian Tzar to emancipate the
Jews of his dominions and persuade the Prussian and Austrian rulers to
do likewise.
In the course of my protracted travels through the lands of
Poland, for the purpose of gathering information about the Jews,
I came--says Way--to the conclusion that Providence has not in
vain placed so many thousands of Jews under the protection of
three Christian sovereigns. Rather has this taken place in
fulfilment of the promises given to the Patriarchs.
If the Jews are to join the flock of Christ, they ought to be treated
like children, and regarded as equal members of human society. Captive
Israel must be set free materially, before it can be liberated
spiritually. Way therefore implores the Russian Tzar to set the example,
"which will produce its effect upon the whole world."
The Tzar received Way's memorandum, and turned it over to Nesselrode,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, with instructions to submit it to the
Congress for consideration. At a meeting of Ministers-Plenipotentiary,
representing Russia, Austria, Prussia, England, and France, held on
November 21, 1818, Way's memorandum, together with his elaborate,
printed project for a pan-European "reform of the civil and political
legislation" affecting the Jews, came up for discussion. The diplomats,
who were least of all concerned about the Jewish question, and had no
desire to make this "domestic affair" of each Government an object of
international negotiations, agreed upon the following resolution:
Without entering into the merits of the view entertained by the
author of the project, the conference recognizes the justice of
his general tendency, and takes cognizance of the fact that the
plenipotentiaries of Austria and Prussia [Metternich and
Hardenberg] have declared themselves ready to furnish all
possible information concerning the Jewish situation in those
two monarchies in order to clarify a problem which must claim
the attention equally of the statesman and the humanitarian.
By means of this hollow, liberal-sounding phrase, which did not involve
the slightest obligation, the diplomats managed to rid themselves of
this vexatious problem, even the perfunctory attention given to it at
the Congress having been prompted by no other motive than consideration
for the Russian Emperor. For the rest, every one of the three allied
Governments which had distributed Poland among themselves went on to
handle "its" Jews according to the requirements of its domestic policy,
which was frankly reactionary, and was not even disguised by the
fictitious label of humanitarianism.
The same domestic policy continued in Russia. The Tzar, who abroad had
listened benevolently to Way's appeal for the civil emancipation of the
Jews, irrespective of the future salvation of their souls, decided, when
at home again, to leave everything untouched, looking for a partial
solution of the Jewish problem to the fantastic endeavors of the Society
of Israelitish Christians. Undeterred by the fact that the solemn appeal
issued by the Tzar in 1817 had, during the three years since its
promulgation, failed to attract a single group of converts, for the
simple reason that such groups were not in existence, there being only
rare isolated instances of baptism, prompted in most cases by
questionable motives, the Government set aside, in 1820, a large tract
of land in the Government of Yekaterinoslav for a future settlement of
"Israelitish Christians." It even appointed a special official, with the
title Curator, to take charge of it.
But year after year passed by and the empty land was waiting in vain for
settlers, while the idle Curator was just as vainly on the lookout for
someone to take care of. At last, in 1823, an obscure group of
"Israelitish Christians" appeared on the scene. It consisted of
thirty-seven families from Odessa, who expressed their willingness to
accept the free lands with all the manifold rights and privileges
attached to them. Subsequent inquiries from the office of the
Governor-General of New Russia revealed the fact, however, that the
claimants to the public pie, though confessing the Greek Orthodox faith,
did not possess certificates of baptism, and could not even produce
passports, with the result that the application of the adventurers was
denied.
At last, realizing the impracticability of the whole missionary scheme,
Count Golitzin advised Alexander I., in 1824, to dissolve the mythical
Society of Israelitish Christians with its Board of Trustees, which by
that time carried a whole staff of Government officials on its budget.
The Tzar refused to liquidate by official action an undertaking which
had been heralded so solemnly, and the society without a membership,
administered by trustees without a trust, continued to figure on the
lists of Government institutions until 1833, when Nicholas I. issued a
curt ukase putting a sudden end to this bureaucratic phantom. The new
ruler had in the meantime discovered entirely different and by no means
fantastic contrivances for driving the Jews into the fold of the
Orthodox Church. These contrivances were the military barracks and the
institution of Cantonists.
3. "JUDAIZING" SECTS IN RUSSIA
While the Russian authorities were dreaming of a wholesale conversion of
Jews to Christianity, their attention was diverted by the ominous
spectacle of huge numbers of Christians embracing a doctrine closely
akin to Judaism. The Russian officials disclosed the existence of a sect
of "Sabbatarians" and "Judaizers" in the Governments of Voronyezh,
Saratov, and Tula, all of them without Jewish residents, who might
otherwise have been suspected of a missionary propaganda among the Greek
Orthodox. The new "Judaizing" heresy first engaged the attention of the
central Government in 1817, when a group of peasants in the region of
Voronyezh addressed a petition to the Tzar in which they naively
complained of "the oppressions which they had had to undergo at the
hands of the local authorities, both ecclesiastic and civil, on account
of their confessing the law of Moses." Acting under Imperial
instructions, Golitzin gave orders "to examine most rigorously" the
origin of the "sect," for the purpose of preventing its further spread
and bringing back the renegades into the fold of Orthodoxy.
The Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Voronyezh reported, in substance, as
follows:
The sect came into existence about 1796[274] "through natural
Jews." It afterwards spread to several settlements in the
districts of Bobrov and Pavlovsk. The essence of the sect,
without being directly an Old Testament form of Jewish worship,
consists of a few [Jewish] ceremonies, such as Sabbath
observance and circumcision, the arbitrary manner of contracting
and dissolving marriages, the way of burying the dead, and
prayer assemblies. The number of avowed sectarians amounts to
one thousand five hundred souls of both sexes, but the secret
ones are in all likelihood more numerous.
To exterminate the sect, the Archbishop of Voronyezh proposes various
measures, to be carried out partly by the ecclesiastic authorities and
partly by the police, among them the deportation of the soldier Anton
Rogov, the propagandist of the heresy.
Similar reports from the ecclesiastic authorities of Tula, Orlov,
Saratov, and other Great Russian Church districts were soon received by
the Synod. The "Judaizing heresy" spread rapidly to the villages and
cities, appealing alike to peasants and merchants. Whenever taken to
task, the sectarians declared that they longed to return to the Old
Testament and "maintain the faith of their fathers, the Judeans."
The central authorities were alarmed, and resorted to extraordinary
measures to check the spread of the schism. The Committee of Ministers
approved the following draconian project submitted by Count Kochubay in
1823:
The chiefs and teachers of the Judaizing sects are to be
impressed into military service, and those unfit to serve
deported to Siberia. All Jews are to be expelled from the
districts in which the sect of Sabbatarians or "Judeans" has
made its appearance. Intercourse between the Orthodox
inhabitants and the sectarians is to be thwarted in every
possible manner. Every outward display of the sect, such as the
holding of prayer-meetings and the observance of ceremonies
which bear no resemblance to those of Christians, is to be
forbidden. Finally, to make the sectarians an object of
contempt, instructions are to be given to designate the
Sabbatarians as a Jewish[275] sect and to publish far and wide
that they are in reality Zhyds, inasmuch as their present
designation as Sabbatarians, or adherents of the Mosaic law,
does not give the people a proper idea concerning this sect, and
does not excite in them that feeling of disgust which must be
produced by the realization that what is actually aimed at is to
turn them into Zhyds.
All these police regulations, in addition to a scheme of disciplinary
ecclesiastic measures, proposed by the Synod for the purpose "of
uprooting the Judean sect," were sanctioned by Alexander I. (February
and September, 1825). The tragic consequences of these reprisals came to
light only during the following reign. Entire settlements were laid
waste, thousands of sectarians were banished to Siberia and the
Caucasus. Many of them, unable to endure the persecution, returned to
the Orthodox faith, but in many cases they did so outwardly, continuing
in secret to cling to their sectarian tenets.
4. RECRUDESCENCE OF ANTI-JEWISH LEGISLATION
As far as the Jews are concerned, the immediate result of these measures
was insignificant. The number of Jews involved in the decree of
expulsion from the affected Great Russian Governments was infinitesimal,
since, owing to the restriction of the Jewish right of residence, the
only Jews occasionally to be found there were a few traveling salesmen
or distillers. Yet, indirectly, the Judaizing movement had a harmful
effect upon the position of Russian Jewry. The Government circles of St.
Petersburg, which were religiously attuned, were irritated by the fact
that so many from the Orthodox fold went over to the camp of the very
people among whom the Government had been hunting vainly for proselytes,
and while the colonies so hospitably prepared for the Israelitish
Christians were clamoring for inhabitants, many Great Russian villages
had to be stripped of their inhabitants, who were deported to Siberia,
on account of their Jewish leanings. In the mind of Golitzin, the
Minister of Ecclesiastic Affairs, the opinion gained ground that "the
Jews are enjoined by their tenets to convert everybody to their
religion." These circumstances produced in Russian official circles a
frame of mind conducive to repressive measures, and helped to provide a
moral justification for them. Accordingly, the last years of Alexander
I.'s reign were marked by a recrudescence of religious oppression, which
at times assumed the dimensions of wholesale persecutions.
Sentiments of this kind were responsible for the medieval prohibition
against keeping Christian domestics. The prohibition was suggested by
Golitzin, a man otherwise far removed from anti-Semitic prejudices, and
was officially justified in the Senatorial ukase of April 22, 1820, by
the alleged proselytism of the Jews. As instances of the latter the
Senate quotes the Judaizing movement in the Government of Voronyezh, the
communication of the Governor of Kherson concerning certain Christian
domestics in Jewish homes, who had adopted Jewish customs and
ceremonies, and so forth.
The same motives, strengthened by the tendency of removing the Jews from
the villages, long since pursued by the Government, suggested harsher
restrictions in letting to Jews manorial estates with the peasant
"souls" attached to them. Ukases issued in 1819 and in subsequent years
enjoin the local administration to prosecute all so-called "krestentzya"
contracts, transactions whereby the squire leased the harvest of a
given year to a Jew, entitling him to employ the peasants for gathering
the grain and hay and for other agricultural labors. Such transactions
were looked upon as a criminal encroachment of the Jews upon the right
of owning slaves, which was the prerogative of the nobles. Orders were
accordingly given, that all such farm leases be taken away from the
Jews, in spite of the complete ruin of the Jewish lessees, who were left
to settle their accounts with the squires.
At the same time the Government set out again to realize its devout
consummation--the expulsion of the Jews from the villages and hamlets
already provided for by the Statute of 1804, though suspended for a time
when the cruelty of the measure spelling ruin to tens of thousands of
Jewish families had become apparent. The arguments by means of which the
Jewish Committee had endeavored in 1812 to convince, and finally did
convince, the Government of the impracticability of such a migration of
nations, were blotted out from memory. The local and central authorities
were again on the war path against the Jews. To renew the campaign
against the rural Jews, the methods which had been tried with success in
the time of Dyerzhavin were again resorted to. When, in 1821, hapless
White Russia was again stricken by a famine, which affected the Jews to
a considerable extent, the local nobility was once more on the alert,
placing the whole responsibility for the ruin of the peasantry on the
Jewish tenants and saloon-keepers. The landlords proposed that the
Government expel all the Jews from the province or at least forbid them
to sell spirits in the rural settlements, since the Jews "lead the
peasants into ruin." The local authorities, in reply to an inquiry of
Senator Baranov, who had been dispatched from St. Petersburg to White
Russia, expressed a similar opinion.
The question was first brought up before the Committee which was charged
with the task of giving relief to the Governments of White Russia, and
included several ministers, among them the all-powerful Arakcheyev. The
Relief Committee approved the restrictive project of the nobility, and
so, a little later, did the Committee of Ministers. The result was a
stern ukase of the Tzar, addressed, on April 11, 1823, to the governors
of White Russia, to the following effect:
(1) To forbid the Jews in all the settlements of the Governments
of Moghilev and Vitebsk to hold land leases, to keep public
houses, saloons, hostelries, posts, and even to live in them [in
the villages], whereby all farming contracts of this kind are to
become null and void by January 1, 1824. (2) To transplant all
the Jews in these two Governments from the settlements into the
cities and towns by January 1, 1825.
In signing this ukase, which spelled sorrow and misery for thousands of
families, Alexander I. gave verbal instructions to the Committee of
Ministers, to point out to the White Russian Governor-General Khovanski
"ways and means of obtaining employment and designating sources of
livelihood for the local Jews in their new places of abode." But no
"ways and means" of any kind could mitigate the misery of people doomed
to expulsion from their old nests and reduced to beggary and vagrancy.
Immediately on the receipt of the ukase the local authorities embarked
upon their task with relentless cruelty. By January, 1824, over twenty
thousand Jews of both sexes had been driven from the villages of both
Governments. Hordes of hapless refugees, with their wives and children,
began to flock into the overcrowded towns and townlets. There they
could be seen, stripped almost to their shirts, wandering aimlessly in
the streets. They lived in frightful congestion, as many as ten of them
being squeezed into a single room. They were huddled together in the
synagogues, while many of them, unable to find shelter, remained on the
streets with their families facing the winter cold. Sickness and
increased mortality began to spread among them, particularly in the city
of Nevel. Even the anti-Jewish Governor-General Khovanski, who was
making a tour of inspection through the stricken district, was stirred
by the spectacle, and advised the Committee of Ministers to stop the
disastrous expulsions. But the blow had been dealt. By the beginning of
1825 the majority of rural Jews had been expatriated, and turned out
into the wide world.
The question naturally arises, whether this human holocaust was required
in the interest of the country. The Government itself gave the answer
twelve years later--when it was too late.
As far as White Russia is concerned--quoth the Council of State
in 1835--experience has not justified our anticipations of the
usefulness of the indicated measure [the expulsion from the
villages]. Twelve years have passed since it was carried into
effect, but from the data collected in the Department of Law it
is quite manifest, that, while it has ruined the Jews, it does
not in the least seem to have improved the condition of the
villagers.
The White Russian orgy of destruction was merely the prelude to a new
legislative campaign against the Jews. Almost simultaneously with the
ukase ordering the expulsion of the Jews from the villages, another
ukase was issued on May 1, 1823, calling for the establishment of a new
"Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews." The Committee, which
included among its members the Ministers of Interior, Finance, Justice,
Ecclesiastic Affairs, and Public Instruction, was intrusted with a very
comprehensive piece of work--
to examine the enactments concerning Jews passed up to date and
point out the way in which their presence in the country might
be rendered more comfortable and useful, also what obligations
they are to assume towards the Government; in a word, to
indicate all that may contribute towards the amelioration of the
civil status of this people.
In these soft-spoken terms was couched the _public_ function of the
Committee. But its _secret_ function, which later revealed itself in
action, is correctly defined in the frank admission of the Committee of
Ministers in its report of 1829: "At the very establishment of the
Jewish Committee one of the obligations imposed upon it was to devise
ways and means looking generally towards the reduction of the number of
Jews in the monarchy." This was evidently what "the amelioration of the
civil status" of the Jews amounted to. The new Committee was instructed
to finish its work by the beginning of 1824, but its reactionary
activity was not fully unfolded until the following reign.
In the meantime the legal machinery did not remain idle. The process of
the territorial compression of Jews went on as before. To guard the
western frontier of the monarchy against smuggling, it was decided, at
the suggestion of the Administrator of the Kingdom of Poland, Grand Duke
Constantine Pavlovich, to expel the Jews from the border zone. Two
ukases were issued in 1825 ordering the removal of all the Jews residing
outside the cities within fifty versts from the frontier, with the
exception of those owning immovable property. Once again human beings
were hurled from their lifelong domiciles, when a rational policy would
have been content with instituting a closer watch. To prevent the
undesirable "multiplication of Jews" in the border Governments, Jewish
emigrants from neighboring countries, particularly from Austria, were
forbidden to settle in Russia (1824).
Needless to say, the Governments of the interior, where the Jews could
sojourn only temporarily, and where they had to produce gubernatorial
passports, like foreigners, were carefully guarded against the invasion
of the residents of the Pale. On his last trip from St. Petersburg to
Southern Russia in September, 1825, Alexander I. espied, in a little
village near Luga,[276] a Jewish family, which was engaged in making
tin-plate, and he at once inquired "on what ground" it lived there. The
Governor of St. Petersburg was frightened, and gave orders to have the
family deported immediately from the district, to censure the local
_ispravnik_[277] and to warn the gubernatorial authorities, "that the
rules concerning the Jews must be observed with all possible
stringency."
5. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE JEWS
Such was the attitude of the Russian _Government_ towards the Jews. But
what was the attitude of the Russian _people_? Considering the character
of the age, in which public opinion was not able to express itself even
in political literature, an answer to this question would be entirely
impossible, had not the revolutionary movement of the Decembrists[278]
disclosed the frame of mind of the most progressive section of Russian
society in its relation to the Jewish question. Taken as a whole it was
an unfriendly attitude. It reflects the utter estrangement in language,
in manners, and in culture between Jews and Russians at that time, an
estrangement which breeds suspicion and hostility. The Russian knew no
more of the life of the secluded Jewish populace than he did of the life
of the Chinese. The educated Russian looked with suspicion upon the
exclusiveness of patriarchal Jewish life, the unintelligible religious
ceremonies which surrounded it, the rigorism of the rabbis, the ecstasy
of the Tzaddiks, the strange emotionalism of the Hasidic masses. If he
turned to books for an explanation of these strange phenomena, he would
find it in the current pamphlet literature of Germany or Poland, with
its hackneyed phrases about the fanaticism of the "chosen people," a
"state in a state," etc.
The attitude of the Decembrists[279] towards the Jewish problem
reflects the conventional ideas of an age of reaction. The "Russian
Truth" by Pestel contains a chapter entitled "On the Tribes Populating
Russia," in which the Jewish problem is described as an almost
indissoluble political tangle. Pestel enumerates the peculiar Jewish
characteristics which, in his opinion, render the Jews entirely unfit
for membership in a social order. The Jews "foster among themselves
incredibly close ties"; they have "a religion of their own, which
instils into them the belief that they are predestined to conquer all
nations," and "makes it impossible for them to mix with any other
nation." The rabbis[280] wield unlimited sway over the masses; they keep
the people in spiritual bondage, "forbidding the reading of all books
except the Talmud" and other religious writings. The Jews "are waiting
for the coming of the Messiah, who is to establish them in their
kingdom," and therefore "look upon themselves as temporary residents of
the land in which they live." Hence their passion for commerce and their
neglect of agriculture and handicrafts. Since commerce alone is unable
to provide the huge masses of Jews with a livelihood, cheating and
trickery are considered permissible, to the injury of the Christians.
Pestel has no eye for the heavy burden of Jewish disabilities, and even
considers the Jews a privileged class of the population, since they do
not furnish any recruits, have their own rabbinical tribunals, possess
"the right of educating their children in whatever principles they
like," and "moreover enjoy all the rights of the Christian nations"(!).
Such was the vein in which a Russian revolutionary leader wrote, not
knowing, or perhaps not caring to know, of the iron vise of the Pale of
Settlement, of the pitiless expulsions which were taking place just at
that time, ignorant altogether of the whole mesh of legal restrictions
which placed the Jews on the lowest rung of Russian rightlessness.
After presenting this picture of Jewish life, Pestel suggests to the
future revolutionary Government ("The Supreme Provisional
Administration") two ways of solving the Jewish problem. One consists in
breaking up "the influence of the close relationship among the Jews so
injurious to the Christians," because it keeps them apart from the other
citizens. For this purpose he advises convoking "the most learned rabbis
and the most intelligent Jews"--Pestel had evidently heard of Napoleon's
Synhedrion--"listening to their representations," and thereupon adopting
measures for eradicating Jewish exclusiveness, for, "inasmuch as Russia
does not expel the Jews, they ought to be the more careful not to adopt
an unfriendly attitude towards the Christians."
The second way consists in an honorable expulsion of the Jews or, to use
his words, "in assisting the Jews to form a separate commonwealth of
their own in some portion of Asia Minor." To this end Pestel makes the
proposal to choose a rallying-point for the Jewish people and to supply
them with some troops so as to reinforce them. For, as Pestel continues,
were all the Russian and Polish Jews to congregate in one place,
they would number over two millions. Such a mass of people,
being in search of a fatherland would not find it difficult to
overcome all obstacles which the Turks might place in their way,
and, after traversing the whole of European Turkey, might pass
over into Asiatic Turkey, and, having occupied an adequate area,
form a separate Jewish State.
Pestel himself felt more attracted towards the latter alternative of
solving the Jewish problem,[281] but, being fully aware that "this
gigantic undertaking depends on particular circumstances," he did not
formulate it as "a special obligation upon the Supreme Administration."
Accordingly, if Pestel's first plan had materialized, the Jews of Russia
would have received from the Supreme Provisional Administration, not
civil equality, but a stern _Reglement_ of the Austrian or Old Prussian
type, made up of a long string of "correctional measures" aiming at
compulsory assimilation or Russification, at the demolition of the whole
cultural autonomy of Russian Jewry, not excluding "the right of
educating their children in whatever principles they like," and finally
culminating in the economic "curbing of Jewry," perhaps in the spirit of
that very Government against which the Decembrists were fighting.
Pestel's views on Judaism were shared by many Decembrists, but not by
all. The constitution drafted by the leader of the "Northern Society,"
Nikita Muravyov, originally proposed to grant political rights to the
Jews only within their Pale of Settlement, but in the second draft this
limitation was replaced by the principle of perfect equality.
The Lord Baltimore Press
BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.
FOOTNOTES:
[268] [In Russian, _Tzarstvo Polskoye_. The names Congress-Poland and
Russian Poland are also frequently used.]
[269] The statistics of the period are far from being accurate. They are
nevertheless nearer the truth than those of the preceding age. The
official "revisions" of 1816-1819 brought out the fact that a large
number of Jews had not been entered on the lists, and the Government
took severe measures against those evading the census. Relying upon
official information, Jost (see his _Neuere Geschichte der Israeliten_,
ii. 122) computed, in 1845, the total number of Jews in Russia,
including those of the Kingdom of Poland, at 1,600,000, but he was
careful to point out that, in his opinion, the actual number of Jews was
considerably larger.
[270] [See p. 359.]
[271] [See p. 359.]
[272] [Alexis Arakcheyev (b. 1769) had been prominent in Russian
military affairs under Paul and Alexander, and had attained to fame on
account of his iron discipline. Beginning with 1814, he gradually gained
the complete confidence and friendship of Alexander. He died in 1834.]
[273] It was written in French, under the title _Mémoires (sic!) sur
l'état des Israélites_.
[274] According to subsequent accounts the date was 1806.
[275] [In the original, _Zhydovskaya_, adjective derived from _Zhyd_.
See p. 320, n. 2.]
[276] [A town in the Government of St. Petersburg.]
[277] [Police inspector.]
[278] [See next note.]
[279] [In Russian, _Dyekabristy_, the name by which the revolutionaries
of that period are generally designated. They first organized themselves
into a secret league consisting of Russian army officers in the latter
part of Alexander I.'s reign. Their open revolt took place in December
(hence the name), 1825, immediately after the accession of Nicholas I.
The league was divided into a "Northern Society," led by Nikita
Muravyov, and a "Southern Society," of which Paul Pestel was the head.
The latter wrote "The Russian Truth," a work in which he expounded the
revolutionary program.]
[280] Pestel evidently has in mind the Tzaddiks, whom he had occasion to
observe specifically in Tulchyn, his Podolian place of residence, and
more generally in the territory controlled by the "Southern Society."
[281] It has been conjectured that Pestel was influenced by his
fellow-Decembrist Gregory Peretz, a son of the converted tax-farmer
Abraham Peretz in St. Petersburg (see p. 333 and p. 388). Peretz
advocated on numerous occasions the necessity of organizing a society
for the purpose of liberating the scattered Jews and settling them in
the Crimea or in the Orient, "in the shape of a separate nationality."
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious errors of punctuation and diacritics repaired.
There are a few words in Hebrew, Greek and Polish that may not be displayed
correctly on your reader.
Both "pot-houses" and "pothouses" appear and have not been changed.
P. 15: "συναγογῆς" changed to "συναγωγῆς".
P. 65: "ecomonic" changed to "economic" (a big economic and social
factor).
P. 267: "orginators" changed to "originators" (the originators of the
parliamentary Constitution).
P. 313: "betwen" changed to "between" (between Jew and Jew).
P. 346: "innkepers" changed to "innkeepers" (Jewish tenants and
innkeepers).
P. 374: "Irsael" changed to "Israel" (restoring peace in Israel).