Russia acquired the great bulk of her Jewish population through the
partitions of Poland, from 1773 to 1795. Strongly medieval in outlook
and organization as Russia was at that time, she treated the Jews with
the exceptional harshness which the medieval principle and policy
sanctioned and required. By confining them to those provinces where
they happened to live at the time of the partitions, she created a
Ghetto greater than any known to the Middle Ages; and by imposing
restrictions upon the right to live and travel even within this Ghetto,
she has virtually converted it into a penal settlement, where six
million human beings guilty only of adherence to the Jewish faith are
compelled to live out their lives in squalor and misery, in constant
terror of massacre, subject to the caprice of police officials and a
corrupt administration—in short, without legal right or social status.
Only twice within the last century have efforts been made to improve
the condition of the Jews in Russia; and each interval of relief was
followed by a period of greater and more cruel repression. The first
was during the reign of Alexander II; but his assassination in 1881
resulted in the complete domination of Russia by the elements of
reaction, which immediately renewed the persecution policy. The “May
laws” of Ignatieff (1882) which enmesh the Jews to this day, were the
immediate product of this régime. The second period, a concomitant of
the abortive revolution of 1904–5, was followed by a “pogrom policy” of
unprecedented severity which lasted until the outbreak of the present
war.