THE RUSSIAN JEWS
In regard to the Jews, thousands of them would return to Russia from
the States were they permitted, like other foreign citizens, to live
outside the pale. In America, crowded together in the ghettoes of the
great cities, competition is infinitely more keen than in Russia, where
they constitute practically the only portion of the population engaged
in commerce. The beginning of a Russian middle class has made itself
evident the past twenty years, and in time this class no doubt will
make an effort to compete with the Jews.
[Illustration: KOMRAT REAL SCHOOL
Where the author received his preliminary education. The village of
Komrat is about sixty miles from Kishinev, Bessarabia.]
If usury, incendiarism and criminal bankruptcy could be made capital
offenses, and if the sluggish nobility of Russia would rid itself of
its anti-commercial tendencies, and its apathy for everything that has
the scent of business, and if the Russian budget could be arranged
so as to make available another $50,000,000 annually for the purpose
of educating all the peasant children, the friction now existing
between Gentiles and Hebrews would remedy itself. In the last four
years Russia has appropriated more money for educational purposes than
in the hundred years before, and since this is the case, I would like
to correct another false impression--namely, that the government is
fighting against the education of the peasants. Those circulating such
falsehoods in this country dare not confront a man who knows Russia.
There are schools, both for boys and girls, all over Russia, north,
south, east and west, where the children of peasants and those just a
notch above them, Jews included, can receive their education together
with the children of the highest nobility in the land. It was in one of
such schools that I received my preliminary education.
Among her bankers, manufacturers, large land-owners, generals,
bishops and archbishops, Russia can show many men whose fathers knelt
with uncovered heads before the great Alexander, listening to the
proclamation which made them free men. Russia’s able and most courteous
minister of railroads, Mr. Ruchloff, who, like Prince Khilkoff, is
making history for his country, is the son of a peasant; so is Bishop
Anatoly, a member of the Douma, and a most distinguished member of the
conservative party, and Tshelisheff, the great prohibition advocate.
Russia’s task, in the major portion of her European domain, is, of
course, easier than ours with the negroes, as her people belong to the
white race, but how does our record with our former slaves compare with
hers? Again, let us not forget that her people were in bondage six
hundred years.
History states that in the time of Vladimir, the Jewish emissaries came
to Russia and asked him to compel his people, who at that time were
heathens, to embrace the Jewish religion. He listened respectfully, but
when they came to relating the rite of circumcision, he spat upon them
and drove them from the country. They persistently returned, and in
less than no time gained control of the commerce of all Russia. This is
true even to-day, for nowhere can the Jews find a more prolific field
for the accumulation of wealth than in Russia. It is the knowledge of
this fact which draws them there, and, as has been said, thousands
of them from everywhere would flock back to Russia, were their
indiscriminate entrance permitted.
[Illustration: MR. KONSTANTIN ALEKSANDROVITCH MIMI
A large land-owner of South Russia, with his family. His wife is
Armenian. Mr. Mimi is typical of the more active titled land-owners.]
When Vladimir came to Kiev, at the close of the tenth century,
the people complained bitterly to him that the Jews were craftily
monopolizing all commerce. He called a meeting of the ruling princes of
the various Russian provinces, and in this convention it was decided to
drive the Jews out of Russia, and, should any of them return secretly,
to kill them.
In the days of Sviatoslav (1016), while fighting the dreaded Khozars,
the Jews were accused of acting as spies for these Mongols. In 1495
Alexander Jakloutshik, the Lithuanian Grand Duke, prohibited the Jews
from accepting any obligatory papers, or any other written acts, and
when this did not help matters he ordered the Jews driven out of the
country. In the sixteenth century, the writer, Michel Litvin, stated:
“To our country have come the Jews, whom we find in all great cities
of Podolia and Volynia. These are the worst people that have ever come
to us. They are fatalists, sly, dangerous in every way, adulterating
our goods, counterfeiting our money, forging signatures and seals,
and having no other art except cheating and blackmailing.” Ivan the
Terrible refused them the right to live in Russia. “They have poisoned
our soul and body,” said he. Even the pious Alexis Michalovitch drove
them out of Moscow, accusing them of being very dishonest.
In the bitter struggle between the Poles and the Little Russians the
Jews were said to have plotted against the Poles until the Little
Russians defeated them, and Kridanos, a chief of the famous Cossack
Bogdan Chmelnitsky, wrote the Polish Count Osproshsky advising him to
drive the Jews out of the country, as they were responsible for his
defeat. During the reign of Peter the Great, Catherine the First, and
Elizabeth, edicts were issued banishing the Jews from Russia. During
Elizabeth’s reign a law was passed permitting those Jews to remain in
Russia who embraced the Greek Catholic faith or any other recognized
Christian religion. This senseless law made it possible for converted
Jews to live anywhere in the empire, and is in existence to-day. During
the time of Catherine the Great the Jews were finally permitted to
settle in certain parts of Little Russia and Crimea.
The conquest of Poland added several millions of Hebrews to Russia’s
population. After the division of Poland, Catherine allowed the Jews to
remain there, but did not permit them to visit the central provinces
of Russia. In 1773, Count Kachrosky, Governor of Mogilev, wrote: “The
Jews, although a sober people, are very lazy when it comes to any kind
of physical work and are sly, dishonest and superstitious. They succeed
best where the government is weak and the laws lax; they live entirely
by fraud and on the honest toil of peasants; they borrow where they
can, and then declare themselves bankrupt; by flattery and giving away
free drinks, they corrupt people in all stations of life, and they mock
our courts; they are continually working in conjunction with our worst
class of robbers, many of whom they started in their lawless careers.”
At the end of the eighteenth century, we find Jews in all the large
towns of Great Russia. At first the right of residence had been
granted to business men of the first guild. (In Russia, the class to
which business men belong is determined by the amount and character
of business done annually, and to enter the first guild a business
man must, regardless of his race or nationality, pay $7,500 a year
into the national treasury.) Later, permission was given to college
and university graduates to live outside the pale, and finally this
right was extended to artisans, doctors, lawyers, druggists, midwives
and prostitutes. (In order to better control venereal diseases, Russia
tolerates prostitution.)
During the reign of Alexander II, the era of freedom and emancipation
in Russia, the Jews were permitted to have a share in public and
national life. They were granted the right to enjoy unrestricted
tuition in all schools throughout the empire, to enter the service
of the state, to take part in local self-government, to acquire
real estate in all places where they resided, and to participate in
industrial undertakings of every kind. Everything pointed to the fact
that the Russian Government had the fixed intention gradually to place
the Jews on a footing of equality with those of its other inhabitants.
Then came the assassination of Alexander II. The conservative,
progressive element of Gentiles and Jews suffered alike because of this
crime, which must be laid to the doors of the senseless hot heads
who called themselves Nihilists, and among whom there appeared more
than one nationality.
[Illustration: A HEBREW WOMAN OF BOKHARA
Seldom, if ever, seen unveiled]
The pale of settlement to which Jews are confined consist of fifteen
provinces of west, central and southern Russia, and ten provinces
of Polish Russia. The writer has seen practically every section
of European and Asiatic Russia, and while the pale constitutes
only one-twenty-third part of the Russian Empire, including the
uninhabitable deserts of Central Asia, and the dry steppes of the
Crimea, Caucasus and South Siberia, it does seem that the pale is the
only section of Russia where a white man would really care to live,
outside the two or three north Russian provinces, which include Moscow,
Novgorod and St. Petersburg. Here only a few privileged Hebrews are
supposed to have residential privileges, but a great many of all
classes are encountered. In principle, however, it seems an outrage
that a white man should be refused residence in any part of the earth
where he wishes to live.
That the Jews are permitted to send only seven per cent. of their
children to colleges and universities is of course a great hardship,
and, in my opinion, a great injustice. If the government fears, as I
have often been told, that by contact with the Jewish students the
Russian children are weaned from the Church and initiated into all
forms of Nihilism, which means political ruin for them and exile, why
does not the government force the Jews to build their own schools? The
majority of them are not the poor, downtrodden outcasts pictured in
this country by crafty revolutionists, but by far the most prosperous
people of the land, and many of them would make desirable citizens in
any country. Those Russians who see the urgent necessity of protecting
the peasants from the exploitations of the more commercially qualified
Jew should advocate such stringent laws as we made in the States to
protect the Indian, and then there need be no fear for the welfare of
the peasants.
[Illustration: “GORODOVOY”--RUSSIAN POLICEMAN, IN FOREGROUND
At right is a cabman or “izvostshik” on his “droshka”]
It is realized that to permit the Jews to own land everywhere in Russia
now would mean the reversion of many peasants to serfdom, due largely
to the peasant’s insobriety. The same condition is said to exist in
Hungary, where the Jews were treated as liberally as in America,
with the result that the political supremacy and the land slipped
into the hands of the Jews. This compelled many natives to emigrate,
for what chance has the shiftless Hun against the hardworking, sober
and shrewd Hebrew? Students of political economy say that in New York
Gentiles are being gradually driven out of business and forced to go
West by the erstwhile Russian Jews.
It is true that Russians as well as Americans when condemning the Jews
often do not recognize the fact that among them, as in every race
or creed, are grades and classes of individuals. It is true that a
great number who swarm to the ghettoes of our big cities are by their
presence and questionable business methods a thorn in the side of the
nation. Their own co-religionists of the better class--those thoroughly
Americanized Hebrews who are among our best citizens--suffer greatly
because of this element. There is nothing against the Jew racially, and
to hear an American speak of excluding him from this or that club or
society indicates a mind not free from ignorant prejudice.
Great responsibility rests with the better Hebrews, for upon them
devolves the task of freeing a large percentage of their brethren from
those traits which arouse the animosity of the Aryans.
In Russia as elsewhere the better class of the Hebrews will continue
to suffer from the wrongdoings of the worse, until they have taken
radical steps to instill into the minds of their weaker brethren a
proper standard of business morality. Instead of shielding Jewish
culprits and putting forward efforts to protect them from the laws they
have outraged, they should always refuse the wrong-doers any moral
or financial support, decline to tolerate guilt, and see to it that
justice was administered to every criminal. Surely, every right-minded
Gentile would aid in this work of correction. That the advanced Jews
fully recognize their responsibility in this regard I have been assured
by the eminent Hebrew, Rabbi Simon, of Washington.
[Illustration: THE “PRISTAV”--DISTRICT CHIEF OF POLICE]
With such men as Schmakoff, Purishkevitch and other prominent members
of the Union of Russian People, there prevails the mistaken idea
that to give the Jew equal rights would mean eternal slavery for the
peasant. This should not be the case if proper laws are enforced for
his protection, and especially if pressure is brought to bear upon
the authorities executing the law which regulates the rate of interest
for lending money, and if in some way the crookedness of the police and
gendarmerie could be bridled, there would be less of Jewish dishonesty.
Every member of the Union knows that practically all the money of the
country is in the hands of the Hebrews, and though they control its
commerce almost entirely, not every peasant is in the clutches of the
Hebrew money-lenders.
Just prior to the war, before any one thought of the great conflict,
the Tzar returned through Kishinev and Odessa from Constanza, Roumania,
where he had met the king of the country and where the finishing
touches were put to a previously arranged entente. The simplicity and
cordiality of the reception of the Tzar staggered me, and the behavior
of the Jews was above reproach. The Hebrews, forming a large majority
of the population, lined the streets on both sides, and any one of them
desiring to harm the Emperor could easily have done so. I remarked to
a friend of mine at Kishinev, known to be an unreasonable Jew-hater,
that apparently the Tzar seemed highly pleased with the assistance
the Semitics gave the local authorities, and he answered, “If the Jews
had always been loyal and had fought their battles by themselves, and
had not tried to induce your nation to poke its nose into our internal
affairs, they might have gotten what they so greatly coveted long ago.”
I resented the insinuation, but felt that there might possibly have
been more truth than poetry in the remark.
Everywhere in Russia it is evident that the conduct of the Jews in the
past few years has been such as to merit serious consideration by the
government of their demands for equal rights. It is to be regretted
that their cause received a considerable setback on account of the
Beiliss case, which the Jewish press all over the world tried and
passed judgment upon before giving the jury at Kiev a chance to render
its decision. Doubtless the Jews will soon attain the right they are
contending for, if they can subdue the zeal of their co-religionists in
other countries, that incites senseless attacks upon the Emperor and
the Church.
[Illustration: ACTING GOVERNOR KARAUL BEGI
Of the kishlack (town) of Karaul, capital of the district of Karaul,
Bokhara, and his staff]
[Illustration: THE ATACHADJA MIRACHUR
Aide-de-camp to His Excellency the Kushbegi, Vice Emir of Bokhara, who
drove with me through Old Bokhara City and its vicinity in this very
vehicle, imported to Bokhara from Moscow]