COMPULSORY ENLIGHTENMENT AND INCREASED OPPRESSION
1. ENLIGHTENMENT AS A MEANS OF ASSIMILATION
There was a brief moment of respite when, in the phrase of the Russian
poet, "the fighter's hand was tired of killing." The Russian Government
suddenly felt the need of passing over from the medieval forms of
patronage to more enlightened and perfected methods. Among the leading
statesmen of Russia were men, such as the Minister of Public
Instruction, Sergius Uvarov, who were well acquainted with Western
European ways and fully aware of the fact that the reactionary
governments of Austria and Prussia had invented several contrivances for
handling the Jewish problem which might be usefully applied in their own
country. Though anxious to avoid all contact with the "rotten West," and
being in constant fear of European political movements, the Russian
Government was nevertheless ready to seize upon the relics of
"enlightened absolutism" which were still stalking about, particularly
in Austria, in the early decades of the nineteenth century. As far as
Prussia was concerned, the abundance of assimilated and converted Jews
in that country and their attempts at religious reform, which to a
missionary's imagination were identical with a change of front in favor
of Christianity, had a fascination of its own for the Russian
dignitaries. No wonder then that the Government yielded to the
temptation to use some of the contrivances of Western European reaction,
while holding in reserve the police knout of genuine Russian
manufacture.
In 1840 the Council of State was again busy discussing the Jewish
question, this time from a theoretic point of view. The reports of the
provincial administrators, in particular that of Bibikov,
governor-general of Kiev, dwelled on the fact that even the "Statute" of
1835 had not succeeded in "correcting" the Jews. The root of the evil
lay rather in their "religious fanaticism and separatism," which could
only be removed by changing their inner life. The Ministers of Public
Instruction and of the Interior, Uvarov and Stroganov, took occasion to
expound the principles of their new system of correction before the
Council of State. The discussions culminated in a remarkable memorandum
submitted by the Council to Nicholas I.
In this document the Government confesses its impotence in grappling
with the "defects" of the Jewish masses, such as "the absence of useful
labor, their harmful pursuit of petty trading, vagrancy, and obstinate
aloofness from general civic life." Its failure the Government ascribes
to the fact that the evil of Jewish exclusiveness has hitherto not been
attacked at its root, the latter being imbedded in the religious and
communal organization of the Jews. The fountain-head of all misfortunes
is the Talmud, which "fosters in the Jews utmost contempt towards the
nations of other faiths," and implants in them the desire "to rule over
the rest of the world." As a result of the obnoxious teachings of the
Talmud, "the Jews cannot but regard their presence in any other land
except Palestine as a sojourn in captivity," and "they are held to obey
their own authorities rather than a strange government." This explains
"the omnipotence of the Kahals," which, contrary to the law of the
state, employ secret means to uphold their autonomous authority both in
communal and judicial matters, using for this purpose the uncontrolled
sums of the special Jewish revenue, the meat tax. The education of the
Jewish youth is entrusted to melammeds, "a class of domestic teachers
immersed in profoundest ignorance and superstition," and, "under the
influence of these fanatics, the children imbibe pernicious notions of
intolerance towards other nations." Finally, the special dress worn by
the Jews helps to keep them apart from the surrounding Christian
population.
The Russian Government "had adopted a series of protective measures
against the Jews," without producing any marked effect. Even the
Conscription Statute "had succeeded to a limited extent only in altering
the habits of the Jews." Mere promotion of agriculture and of Russian
schooling had been found inadequate. The expulsions from the villages
had proved equally fruitless; "the Jews, to be sure, have been ruined,
but the condition of the rustics has shown no improvement."
It is evident, therefore--the Council declares--that restrictions
which go only half way or are externally imposed by the police are
not sufficient to direct this huge mass of people towards useful
occupations. With the patience of martyrs the Jews of Western Europe
had endured the most atrocious persecutions, and had yet succeeded
in keeping their national type intact until the governments took the
trouble to inquire more deeply into the causes separating the Jews
from general civic life, so as to be able to attack the causes
themselves.
After blurting out the truth that the Government's ultimate aim was the
obliteration of the Jewish individuality, and modestly yielding the palm
in inflicting "the most atrocious persecutions" upon the Jews to Western
Europe, where after all they were receding into the past, while in
Russia they were still the order of the day, the Council of State
proceeds to consider "the example set by foreign countries," and lingers
with particular affection over the Prussian Regulation of 1797 issued by
that country for its recently occupied Polish provinces--the Prussian
Emancipation Edict of 1812 the memorandum very shrewdly passes over in
silence--and on the system of compulsory schooling adopted by Austria.
Taking its clue from the West, the Council delineates three ways of
bringing about "a radical transformation of this people":
1: _Cultural reforms_, such as the establishment of special secular
schools for the Jewish youth, the fight against the old-fashioned
heders and melammeds, the transformation of the rabbinate, and the
prohibition of Jewish dress.
2. _Abolition of Jewish autonomy_, consisting in the dissolution of
the Kahals and the modification of the system of special Jewish
taxation.
3. _Increase of Jewish disabilities_, by segregating from their
midst all those who have no established domicile and are without a
definite financial status, with a view of subjecting them to
disciplinary correction through expulsions, legal restrictions,
intensified conscription, and similar police measures.
In this manner--the memorandum concludes--it may be hoped that by
co-ordinating all the particulars of this proposition with the
fundamental idea of reforming the Jewish people, and _by taking
compulsory measures to aid_, the goal of the Government will be
attained.
As a result of this _exposé_ of the Council of State, an imperial
rescript was issued on December 27, 1840, calling for the establishment
of a "Committee for Defining Measures looking to the Radical
Transformation of the Jews of Russia." Count Kiselev, Minister of the
Crown Domains, was appointed chairman. The other members included the
Ministers of Public Instruction and the Interior, the Assistant-Minister
of Finance, the Director of the Second Section of the imperial
chancellery, and the Chief of the Political Police, or the dreaded
"Third Section." [1] The latter was entrusted with the special task "to
keep a watchful eye on the intrigues and actions which may be resorted
to by the Jews during the execution of this matter."
[Footnote 1: See p. 21, n. 1.]
Moreover, the _exposé_ of the Council of State, which was to serve as
the program of the new Committee, was sent out to the governors-general
of the Western region [1] "confidentially_, for personal information and
consideration." The reformatory campaign against the Jews was thus
started without any formal declaration of war, under the guise of
secrecy and surrounded by police precautions. The procedure to be
followed by the Committee was to consider the project in the order
indicated in the memorandum: first "enlightenment," then abolition of
autonomy, and finally disabilities.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 16, n. 1.]
2. UVAROV AND LILIENTHAL
An elaborate _exposé_ on the question of enlightenment was composed and
laid before the Committee by the Minister of Public Instruction, Sergius
Uvarov. Having acquired the _bon ton_ of Western Europe, Uvarov prefaces
his statement by the remark that the European governments have abandoned
the method of "persecution and compulsion" in solving the Jewish
question and that "this period has also arrived for us." "Nations,"
observes Uvarov, "are not exterminated, least of all the nation which
stood at the foot of Calvary." From what follows, it seems evident that
the Minister is still in hopes that the gentle measures of enlightenment
may attract the Jews towards the religion which derives its origin from
Calvary.
The best among the Jews--he states--are conscious of the fact that
one of the principal causes of their humiliation lies in the
perverted interpretation of their religious traditions, that ... the
Talmud demoralized and continues to demoralize their
co-religionists. But nowhere is the influence of the Talmud so
potent as among us (in Russia) and in the Kingdom of Poland. [1]
This influence can be counteracted only by enlightenment, and the
Government can do no better than to act in the spirit that animates
the handful of the best among them.... The re-education of the
learned section among the Jews involves at the same time the
purification of their religious conceptions.
[Footnote 1: See on the meaning of the latter term Vol. I, p. 390, n. 1.]
What "purification" the author of the memorandum has in mind may be
gathered from his casual remark that the Jews, who maintain their
separatism, are rightly afraid of reforms: "for is not the religion of
the Cross the purest symbol of universal citizenship?" This, however,
Uvarov cautiously adds, should not be made public, for "it would have no
other effect except that of arousing from the very beginning the
opposition of the majority of the Jews against the (projected) schools."
Officially the reform must confine itself to the opening in all the
cities of the Jewish Pale of elementary and secondary schools in which
Jewish children should be taught the Russian language, secular sciences,
Hebrew, and "religion, according to the Holy Writ." The instruction
should be given in Russian, though, owing to the shortage in teachers
familiar with this language, the use of German is to be admitted
temporarily. The teachers in the low-grade schools shall provisionally
be recruited from among melammeds who "can be depended upon"; those in
the higher-grade schools shall be chosen from among the modernized Jews
of Russia and Germany.
The Committee endorsed Uvarov's scheme in its principal features, and
urgently recommended that, in order to prepare the Jewish masses for the
impending reform, a special propagandist be sent into the Pale of
Settlement for the purpose of acquainting this obstreperous nation with
"the benevolent intentions of the Government." Such a propagandist was
soon found in the person of a young German Jew, Dr. Max Lilienthal, a
resident of Riga.
Lilienthal; who was a native of Bavaria (he was born in Munich in 1815)
and a German university graduate, was a typical representative of the
German Jewish intellectuals of that period, a champion of assimilation
and of moderate religious reform. Lilienthal had scarcely completed his
university course, when he was offered by a group of educated Jews in
Riga the post of preacher and director of the new local Jewish school,
one of the three modern Jewish schools then in existence in Russia.[1]
In a short time Lilienthal managed to raise the instruction in
secular and Jewish subjects to such a high standard of modernity that he
elicited a glowing tribute from Uvarov. The Minister was struck by the
idea that the Riga school might serve as a model for the net of schools
with which he was about to cover the whole Pale of Settlement, and
Lilienthal seemed the logical man for carrying out the planned reforms.
[Footnote 1: The other two schools were located in Odessa and in
Kishinev.]
In February, 1841, Lilienthal was summoned to St. Petersburg, where he
had a prolonged conversation with Uvarov. According to the testimony of
the official Russian sources, he tried to persuade the Minister to
abolish all "private schools," the heders, and to forbid all private
teachers, the melammeds, to teach even temporarily in the projected new
schools, and to import, instead, the whole teaching staff from Germany.
Lilienthal himself tells us in his Memoirs that he made bold to remind
the Minister that all obstacles in the path of the desired re-education
of the Russian Jews would disappear, were the Tzar to grant them
complete emancipation. To this the Minister retorted that the initiative
must come from the Jews themselves who first must try to "deserve the
favor of the Sovereign." At any rate, Lilienthal accepted the proffered
task. He was commissioned to tour the Pale of Settlement, to organize
there the few isolated progressive Jews, "the lovers of enlightenment,"
or Maskilim, as they styled themselves, and to propagate the idea of a
school-reform among the orthodox Jewish masses.
While setting out on his journey, Lilienthal himself did not fully
realize the difficulties of the task he had undertaken. He was to
instill confidence in the "benevolent intentions of the Government" into
the hearts of a people which by an uninterrupted series of persecutions
and cruel restrictions had been reduced to the level of pariahs. He was
to make them believe that the Government was a well-wisher of Jewish
children, those same children, who at that very time were hunted like
wild beasts by the "captors" in the streets of the Pale, who were turned
by the thousands into soldiers, deported into outlying provinces, and
belabored in such a manner that scarcely half of them remained alive and
barely a tenth remained within the Jewish fold. Guided by an infallible
instinct, the plain Jewish people formulated their own simplified theory
to account for the step taken by the Government: up to the present their
children had been baptized through the barracks, in the future they
would be baptized through the additional medium of the school.
Lilienthal arrived in Vilna in the beginning of 1842, and, calling a
meeting of the Jewish Community, explained the plan conceived by the
Government and by Uvarov, "the friend of the Jews." He was listened to
with unveiled distrust.
The elders--Lilienthal tells us in his Memoirs [1]--sat there
absorbed in deep contemplation. Some of them, leaning on their
silver-adorned staffs or smoothing their long beards, seemed as if
agitated by earnest thoughts and justifiable suspicions; others were
engaging in a lively but quiet discussion on the principles
involved; such put to me the ominous question: "Doctor, are you
fully acquainted with the leading principles of our government? You
are a stranger; do you know what you are undertaking? The course
pursued against all denominations but the Greek proves clearly that
the Government intends to have but one Church in the whole Empire;
that it has in view only its own future strength and greatness and
not our own future prosperity. We are sorry to state that we put no
confidence in the new measures proposed by the ministerial council,
and that we look with gloomy foreboding into the future."
[Footnote 1: I quote from _Max Lilienthal, American Rabbi, Life and
Writings_, by David Philipson, New York, 1915, p, 264.]
In his reply Lilienthal advanced an impressive array of arguments:
What will you gain by your resistance to the new measures? It will
only irritate the Government, and will determine it to pursue its
system of repression, while at present you are offered an
opportunity to prove that the Jews are not enemies of culture and
deserve a better lot.
When questioned as to whether the Jewish community had any guarantee
that the Government plan was not a veiled attempt to undermine the
Jewish religion, Lilienthal, by way of reply, solemnly pledged himself
to throw up his mission the moment he would find that the Government
associated with it secret intentions against Judaism. [1] The circle of
"enlightened" Jews in Vilna pledged its support to Lilienthal, and he
left full of faith in the success of his enterprise.
[Footnote 1: Op. Cit. p. 266.]
A cruel disappointment awaited him in Minsk. Here the arguments which
the opponents advanced in a passionate debate at a public meeting were
of a utilitarian rather than of an idealistic nature.
So long as the Government does not accord equal rights to the Jew,
general culture will only he his misfortune. The plain uneducated
Jew does not balk at the low occupation of factor [1] or peddler,
for, drawing comfort and joy from his religion, he is reconciled to
his miserable lot. But the Jew who is educated and enlightened, and
yet has no means of occupying an honorable position in the country,
will be moved by a feeling of discontent to renounce his religion,
and no honest father will think of giving an education to his
children which may lead to such an issue. [2]
[Footnote 1: The Polish name for agent. See Vol. I, p. 170, n. 1.]
[Footnote 2: Quoted from Lilienthal's own account in _Die Allgemeine
Zeitung des Judentums_, 1842, No. 41, p. 605b.]
The opponents of official enlightenment in Minsk were not content with
advancing arguments that appealed to reason. Both at the meeting and in
the street, Lilienthal was the target of insulting remarks from the
crowd.
On his return to St. Petersburg, Lilienthal presented Uvarov with a
report which convinced the Minister that the execution of the
school-reform was a difficult but not a hopeless task.
On June 22, 1842, an imperial rescript was issued, placing all Jewish
schools, including the heders and yeshibahs, under the supervision of
the Ministry of Public Instruction. Simultaneously it was announced that
the Government had summoned a Commission of four Rabbis to meet in St.
Petersburg for the purpose of "supporting the efforts of the Government"
in the realization of the school-reform. This Committee was to serve
Russian Jewry as a security that the school-reforms would not be
directed against the Jewish religion.
At the same time Lilienthal was ordered to proceed again to the Pale of
Settlement. He was directed to tour principally through the
South-western and New-Russian governments and exert his influence upon
the Jewish masses in accordance with the instructions received from the
ministry. Before setting out on his journey, Lilienthal published a
Hebrew pamphlet under the title _Maggid Yeshu'ah_ ("Herald of
Salvation") which called upon the Jewish communities to comply readily
with the wishes of the Government. In his private letters, addressed to
prominent Jews, Lilienthal expressed the assurance that the school ukase
was merely the forerunner of a series of measures for the betterment of
the civic status of the Jews.
This time Lilienthal met with a greater measure of success than on his
first journey. In several large centers, such as Berdychev, Odessa,
Kishinev, he was accorded, a friendly welcome and assured of the
co-operation of the communities in making the new school system a
success. Filled with fresh hopes, Lilienthal returned in 1843 to St.
Petersburg to participate in the work of the "Rabbinical Commission"
which had been convoked by the Government and was now holding its
sessions in the capital from May till August.
The make-up of the Rabbinical Commission did not fully justify its
appellation. Only two "ecclesiastics" were on it, the president of the
Talmudic Academy of Volozhin, [1] Rabbi Itzhok (Isaac) Itzhaki, and the
leader of the White Russian Hasidim, Rabbi Mendel Shneorsohn, [2] while
the South-western region and New Russia had sent two laymen: the banker
Halperin of Berdychev, and the director of the Jewish school in Odessa,
Bezalel Stern. The two representatives of the "clergy" put up a warm
defence for the traditional Jewish school, the heder, endeavoring to
save it from the ministerial "supervision," which aimed at its
annihilation. Finally a compromise was effected: the traditional heder
was to be left intact for the time being, but the proposed Crown school
was to be given full scope in competing with it. The Commission even
went so far as to work out a program of Jewish studies for the new type
of school.
[Footnote 1: In the government of Vilna. See Vol I, p. 380, et seq.]
[Footnote 2: The grandson of Rabbi Shneor Zalman, the founder of that
faction. See Vol. I, p. 372.]
The labors of the Rabbinical Commission were submitted to the Jewish
Committee, under the chairmanship of Kiselev, and discussed by it in
connection with the general plan of a Russian school-reform. It was
necessary to find the resultant between two opposing forces: between the
desire of the Government to substitute the Russian Crown school for the
old-fashioned Jewish school and the determination of Russian Jewry to
preserve its own school as a bulwark against the official institutions
foisted upon it. The Government was bent on carrying out its policy, and
found itself compelled to resort to diplomatic contrivances.
On November 13, 1844, Nicholas signed two enactments, the one a public
ukase relating to "the Education of the Jewish Youth." the other a
confidential rescript addressed to the Minister of Public Instruction.
The public enactment called for the establishment of Jewish schools of
two grades, corresponding to the courses of instruction in the parochial
and county schools, and ordered the opening of two rabbinical institutes
for the training of rabbis and teachers. The teaching staff in the
Jewish Crown schools was to consist both of Jews and Christians. The
graduates of these schools were granted a reduction in the term of
military service. The execution of the school reforms in the respective
localities was placed in the hands of "School Boards," composed of Jews
and Christians, which were to be appointed provisionally for that
purpose.
In the secret rescript the tone was altogether different. There it was
stated that "the aim pursued, in the training of the Jews is that of
bringing them nearer to the Christian population and eradicating the
prejudices fostered in them by the study of the Talmud"; that with the
opening of the new schools the old ones were to be gradually closed or
reorganized, and that as soon as the Crown schools have been established
in sufficient numbers, attendance at them would become obligatory; that
the superintendents of the new schools should only be chosen from among
Christians; that every possible effort should be made "to put obstacles
in the way of granting teaching licenses" to the melammeds who lacked a
secular education; that after the lapse of twenty years no one should
hold the position of teacher or rabbi without having obtained his degree
from one of the official rabbinical schools.
It was not long, however, before the secret came out. The Russian Jews
were terror-stricken at the thought of being robbed of their ancient
school autonomy, and decided to adopt the well-tried tactics of passive
resistance to all Government measures. The school-reform was making slow
progress. The opening of the elementary schools and of the two
rabbinical institutes in Vilna and Zhitomir did not begin until 1847,
and for the first few years they dragged on a miserable existence.
Lilienthal himself disappeared from the scene, without waiting for the
consummation of the reform plan. In 1845 he suddenly abandoned his post
at the Ministry of Public Instruction, and left Russia for ever. A more
intimate acquaintance with the intentions of the leading Government
circles had made Lilienthal realize that the apprehensions voiced in his
presence by the old men of the Vilna community were well-founded, and he
thought it his duty to fulfill the pledge given by him publicly. From
the land of serfdom, where, to use Lilienthal's own words, the only way
for the Jew to make peace with the Government was "by bowing down before
the Greek cross," he went to the land of freedom, the United States of
America. There he occupied important pulpits in New York and Cincinnati
where he died in 1882.
3. THE ABOLITION OF JEWISH AUTONOMY AND RENEWED
PERSECUTIONS
No sooner had the school reform, which was tantamount to the abrogation
of Jewish school autonomy, been publicly announced than the Government
took steps to realize the second article of its program, the
annihilation of the remnants of Jewish communal autonomy. An ukase
published on December 19, 1844, ordered "the placing of the Jews in the
cities and countries under the jurisdiction of the general (i.e.,
Russian) administration, with the abolition of the Kahals." By this
ukase all the administrative functions of the Kahals were turned over to
the police departments, and those of an economic and fiscal character to
the municipalities and town councils; the old elective Kahal
administration was to pass out of existence.
Carried to its logical conclusions, this "reform" would necessarily have
led, as it actually did lead in Western Europe, to the abolition of the
Jewish community, outside the narrow limits of a synagogue parish, had
the Jews of Russia been placed at the same time on a footing of equality
in regard to _taxation_. But such European consistency was beyond the
mental range of Russian autocracy. It was neither willing to abandon the
special, and for the Jews doubly burdensome, method of conscription, nor
to forego the extra levies imposed upon the Jews, over and above the
general state taxes, for needs which, properly speaking, should have
been met by the exchequer. Thus it came about that for the sake of
maintaining Jewish disabilities in the matter of conscription and
taxation, the Government itself was obliged to mitigate the blow at
Jewish autonomy by allowing the institutions of Jewish "conscription
trustees" and tax-collectors, elected by the Jewish communes "from among
the most dependable men," to remain in force. The Government, moreover,
found it necessary to establish a special department for Jewish affairs
at each municipality and town council. In this way the law managed to
destroy the self-government of the Kahal and yet preserve its
rudimentary function as an autonomous fiscal agency which was to be
continued under the auspices of the municipality. In point of fact, the
Kahal, which, through its "trustees" and "captors," had acted the part
of a Government tool in carrying out the dreadful military conscription,
had long become thoroughly demoralized and had lost its former prestige
as a great Jewish institution. Its transformation into a purely fiscal
agency was merely the formal ratification of a sad fact.
Having disposed of the Kahal as a vehicle of Jewish "separatism," the
Government next attacked the special Jewish "system of taxation," not to
abolish it, of course, but rather to place it under a more rigorous
control for the purpose of preventing it from serving in the hands of
the Jews as an instrument for the attainment of specific Jewish ends. It
is significant that on the same day on which the Kahal ukase was made
public was also issued the new "Regulation Concerning the Basket Tax."
[1] The revenue from this tax which had for a long time been imposed
upon Kosher meat was originally placed at the free disposal of the
Kahals, though subject, since 1839, to the combined control of the
administration and municipality. According to the new enactment, the
proceeds from the meat tax which was to be let to the highest bidder
were to be left entirely in the hands of the gubernatorial
administration. The latter was instructed to see to it that the income
from the tax should first be applied to cover the fiscal arrears of the
Jews, then to provide for the maintenance of the Crown schools and the
official promotion of agriculture among Jews, and only as a last item to
be spent on the local charities.
[Footnote 1: The tax is called in Russian _korobochny sbor_, or, for
short, _korobka_, a word related to German _Korb_. It was partly in use
already under the Polish régime.]
In addition to the general basket tax, imposed upon all Jews who use
Kosher meat, an "auxiliary basket tax" was instituted to be levied on
immovable property as well as on business pursuits and bequests.
Moreover, following the Austrian model, the Government instituted, or
rather reinstituted, the "candle tax," a toll on Sabbath candles. The
proceeds from this impost on a religions ceremony were to go
specifically towards the organization of the Jewish Crown schools, and
were placed entirely at the disposal of the Ministry of Public
Instruction.
Thus in exact proportion to the curtailment of communal autonomy,
voluntary self-taxation was gradually supplanted by compulsory
Government taxation, a circumstance which not only increased the
financial burden of the Jewish masses, but also tended to aggravate it
from a moral point of view. The "tax," as the meat tax was called for
short, became in the course of time one of the scourges of Jewish
communal life, that same life which the "measures" of the Government had
merely succeeded in disorganizing.
Anxious as the Government was to act diplomatically and, for fear of
intensifying the distrust of Russian Jewry towards the new scheme, to
stem the flood of restrictions during the execution of the school
reform, it could not long restrain itself. The third plank in the
platform of the Jewish Committee, the increase of Jewish disabilities,
which had hitherto been kept in reserve, was now pressing forward, and
issued forth from the recesses of the chancelleries somewhat earlier
than tactical considerations might have dictated. On April 20, 1843,
while the "enlightenment" propaganda was in full swing, there suddenly
appeared, in the form of a resolution appended by the Tzar's own hand to
the report of the Council of Ministers, the following curt ukase:
All Jews living within the fifty verst zone along the Prussian and
Austrian frontier are to be transferred into the interior of the
(border) governments. Those possessing their own houses are to be
granted a term of two years within which to sell them. _To be
carried out without any excuses._
On the receipt of this grim command, the Senate was at first puzzled as
to whether the imperial order was a mere repetition of the former law
concerning the expulsion of the Jews from the villages and hamlets on
the frontier,[1] or whether it was a new law involving the expulsion of
all Jews on the border, without discrimination, including those in the
cities and towns. Swayed by the harsh and emphatic tone of the imperial
resolution, the Senate decided to interpret the new order in the sense
of a complete and absolute expulsion. This interpretation received the
Tzar's approbation, except that the time-limit for the expulsion of real
estate owners was extended for two years more and the ruined exiles were
promised temporary relief from taxation.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 40.]
The new catastrophe which descended upon tens of thousands of families,
particularly in the government of Kovno, caused a cry of horror, not
only throughout the border-zone but also abroad. When the Jews doomed to
expulsion were ordered by the police to state the places whither they
intended to emigrate, nineteen communities refused to comply with this
demand, and declared that they would not abandon their hearths and the
graves of their forefathers and would only yield to force. Public
opinion in Western Europe was running high with indignation. The French,
German, and English papers condemned in no uncertain terms the policy of
"New Spain." Many Jewish communities in Germany petitioned the Russian
Government to revoke the terrible expulsion decree. There was even an
attempt at diplomatic intervention. During his stay in England, Nicholas
I. was approached on behalf of the Jews by personages of high rank. Yet
the Government would scarcely have yielded to public protests, had it
not become patent that it was impossible to carry out the decree without
laying waste entire cities and thereby affecting injuriously the
interests of the exchequer. The fatal ukase was not officially repealed,
but the Government did not insist on its execution.
In the meantime the "Jewish Committee" kept up a correspondence with the
governors-general in regard to the ways and means of carrying into
effect the third article of its program, the "assortment," or
"classification" of the Jews. The plan called for the division of all
Russian Jews into two categories, into useful and useless ones. The
former category was to consist of merchants affiliated with guilds,
artisans belonging to trade-unions, agriculturists, and those of the
burgher class who owned immovable property with a definite income. All
other burghers who could not claim such a financial status and had no
definite income, in other words, the large mass of petty tradesmen and
paupers, were to be labelled as "useless" or "detrimental," and
subjected to increased disabilities.
The inquiry of the Ministry of the Interior regarding the feasibility of
such an "assortment" met with a strongly-worded rebuttal from the
governor-general of New Russia, Vorontzov. While on a leave of absence
in London, this Russian dignitary, who had evidently been affected by
English ideas, prepared a memorandum and sent it, in October, 1843, to
St. Petersburg with the request to have it submitted to the Tzar.
I venture to think--quoth Vorontzov with reference to the projected
segregation of the "useless" Jews--that the application of the term
"useless" to several hundred thousand people who by the will of the
Almighty have lived In this Empire from ancient times is in itself
both cruel and unjust. The project labels as "useless" all those
numerous Jews who are engaged either in the retail purchase of goods
from their original manufacturers for delivery to wholesale
merchants, or in the useful distribution among the consumers of the
merchandise obtained from the wholesalers. Judging impartially, one
cannot help wondering how these numerous tradesmen can be regarded
as useless and consequently as detrimental, if one bears in mind
that by their petty and frequently maligned pursuits they promote
not only rural but also commercial life.
The atrocious scheme of "assorting" the Jews is nailed
down by Vorontzov as "a bloody operation over a whole class
of people," which is threatened "not only with hardships, but
also with annihilation through poverty."
I venture to think--with these words Vorontzov concludes his
memorandum--that this measure is both harmful, and cruel. On the one
side, hundreds of thousands of hands which assist petty industry in
the provinces will be turned aside, when there is no possibility,
and for a long time there will be none, of replacing them. On the
other side, the cries and moans of such an enormous number of
unfortunates will serve as a reproach to our Government not only in
our own country but also beyond the confines of Russia.
Since the time of Speranski and the like-minded members of the "Jewish
Committee" of 1803 and 1812[1] the leading spheres of St. Petersburg had
had no chance to hear such courageous and truthful words. Vorontzov's
objections implied a crushing criticism of the whole fallacious economic
policy of the Government in branding the petty tradesmen and middlemen
as an injurious element and building thereon a whole system of
anti-Jewish persecutions and cruelties. But St. Petersburg was not
amenable to reason. The only concession wrested from the "Jewish
Committee" consisted in replacing the term "useless" as applied to small
tradesmen by the designation "not engaged in productive labor."
[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 340.]
The cruel project continued to engage the attention of the "Jewish
Committee" for a long time. In April, 1815, the chairman of the
Committee, Kiselev, addressed a circular to the governors-general in
which he pointed out that after the promulgation of the laws concerning
the establishment of Crown schools and the abolition of the
Kahals--laws-which were aimed at "the weakening of the influence of the
Talmud" and the destruction of all institutions "fostering the separate
individuality of the Jews"--the turn had come for carrying into effect,
by means of the proposed classification, the measures directed towards
"the transfer of the Jews to useful labor." Of the regulations tending
to affect the Jews "culturally" the circular emphasizes the prohibition
of Jewish dress to take effect after the lapse of five years.
All the regulations alluded to--Kiselev writes--have been issued and
will be issued separately, _in order to conceal their interrelation
and common aim from the fanaticism, of the Jews_. For this reason
his Imperial Majesty has been graciously pleased to command me to
communicate all the said plans to the Governors-General
_confidentially_.
It would seem, however, that the Russian authorities had grossly
underestimated the political sense of the Jews. They were not aware of
the fact that St. Petersburg's conspiracy against Judaism had long been
exposed in the Pale of Settlement, if only for the reason that the
conspirators were not clever enough to hide even for a time the
chastising knout beneath the cloak of "cultural" reforms.
4. INTERCESSION OF WESTERN EUROPEAN JEWRY
The mask of the Russian Government was soon torn down also before the
yes of Western Europe. In the initial stage of Lilienthal's campaign,
public-minded Jews of Western Europe were inclined to believe that a
happy era was dawning upon their coreligionists in Russia. At the
instance of Uvarov, Lilienthal had entered into correspondence with
Philippson, Geiger, Crémieux, Montefiore, and other leaders of
West-European Jewry, bespeaking their moral support on behalf of the
school-reform and going so far as to invite them to participate in the
proceedings of the Rabbinical Commission convened at St. Petersburg. The
replies from these prominent Jews were full of complimentary references
to Uvarov's endeavors. The _Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums_,[1] in the
beginning of the forties, voiced the general belief that the era of
persecutions in Russia had come to an end.
[Footnote 1: A weekly founded by Dr. Ludwig Philippson in 1837. It still
appears in Berlin.]
The frontier expulsions of 1843 acted like a cold douche on these
enthusiasts. They realized that the pitiless banishment of thousands of
families from home and hearth was not altogether compatible with
"benevolent intentions." A sensational piece of news made its rounds
through Germany: the well-known painter Oppenheim of Frankfurt-on-the-Main
had given up working at the large picture ordered by the leaders of
several Jewish communities for presentation to the Tzar. The painting
had been intended as an allegory, picturing a sunrise in a dark realm,
but the happy anticipations proved a will o' the wisp, and the plan had
to be given up. Instead, Western Europe was resounding with moans from
Russia, betokening new persecutions and even more atrocious schemes of
restrictions. The sufferings of the Russian Jews suggested the thought
that it was the duty of the influential Jews of the West to intercede on
behalf of their persecuted brethren before the emperor of Russia.
The choice fell on the famous Jewish philanthropist in London, Sir Moses
Montefiore, who stood in close relations to the court of Queen Victoria.
Having established his fame by championing the Jewish cause in Turkey
during the ritual murder trial of Damascus in 1840, Montefiore resolved
to make a similar attempt in the land of the Tzar. In the beginning of
1846 he set out for Russia, ostensibly in the capacity of a traveler
desirous of familiarizing himself with the condition of his
coreligionists. Montefiore, who was the bearer of a personal
recommendation from Queen Victoria to the Russian emperor, was received
in St. Petersburg with great honors. During an audience granted to
Montefiore in March, 1846, the Tzar expressed his willingness to receive
from him, through the medium of the "Jewish Committee," suggestions
bearing on the condition of the Russian Jews, based on the information
to be gathered by him on his travels. Montefiore's journey through the
Pale of Settlement, including a visit to Vilna, Warsaw, and other
cities, was marked by great solemnity. He was courteously received by
the highest local officials, who acted according to instructions from
St. Petersburg, and he met everywhere with an enthusiastic welcome from
the Jewish masses, who expected great results from his intercession
before the Tzar.
Needless to say, these expectations were not realized. On his return to
London, Montefiore addressed various petitions to Kiselev, the chairman
of the Jewish Committee, to Minister Uvarov and to Paskevich, the then
viceroy of Poland. Everywhere he pleaded for a mitigation of the harsh
laws which were pressing upon his unfortunate brethren, for the
restoration of the recently abolished communal autonomy, for the
harmonization of the school-reform with the religious traditions of the
Jewish masses. The Tzar was informed of the contents of these petitions,
but it was all of no avail.
In the same year another influential foreigner made an unsuccessful
attempt to improve the condition of the Russian Jews by emigration. A
rich Jewish merchant of Marseille, named Isaac Altaras, came to Russia
with a proposal to transplant a certain number of Jews to Algiers, which
had recently passed under French rule. Fortified by letters of
recommendation from Premier Guizot and other high officials in France,
Altaras entered into negotiations with the Ministers Nesselrode and
Perovski in St. Petersburg and with Viceroy Paskevich in Warsaw, for the
purpose of obtaining permission for a certain number of Jews to emigrate
from Russia.[1] He gave the assurance that the French Government was
ready to admit into Algiers, as full-fledged citizens, thousands of
destitute Russian Jews, and that the means for transferring them would
be provided by Rothschild's banking house in Paris. At first, while in
St. Petersburg, Altaras was informed that permission to leave Russia
would be granted only on condition that a fixed ransom be paid for every
emigrant.
In Warsaw, however, which city he visited later, in October, 1846, he
was notified that the Tzar had decided to waive the ransom. For some
unexplained reason Altaras left Russia suddenly, and the scheme of a
Jewish mass emigration fell through.
[Footnote 1: A law on the Russian statute books forbids the emigration
of Russian citizens abroad. See later, p. 285, n. 1.]
5. THE ECONOMIC PLIGHT OF RUSSIAN JEWRY AND AGRICULTURAL
EXPERIMENTS
The attempt at thinning the Jewish population by emigration having
failed, the congested Jewish masses continued to gasp for air in their
Pale of Settlement. The slightest effort to penetrate beyond the Pale
into the interior was treated as a criminal offence. In December, 1847,
the Council of State engaged in a protracted and earnest discussion
about the geographical point up to which the Jewish coachmen of Polotzk
should be allowed, to drive the inmates of the local school of cadets on
their annual trips to the Russian capital. The discussion arose out of
the fact that the road leading from Polotzk to St. Petersburg is crossed
by the line separating the Pale from the prohibited interior. A proposal
had been made to permit the coachmen to drive their passengers as far as
Pskov. But when the report was submitted to the Tzar, he appended the
following resolution: "Agreeable; though not to Pskov, but to
Ostrov"--the town nearest to the Pale. Of this trivial kind were
Russia's methods in curtailing Jewish rights three months before the
great upheaval which in adjoining Germany and Austria dealt the
death-blow to absolutism and inaugurated the era of the "Second
Emancipation."
As for the economic life of the Jews, it had been completely undermined
by the system of ruthless tutelage, which the Government had employed
for a quarter of a century in the hope of "reconstructing" it. All these
drumhead methods, such as the hurling of masses of living beings from
villages into towns and from the border-zone into the interior, the
prohibition of certain occupations and the artificial promotion of
others, could not but result in economic ruin, instead of leading to
economic reform.
Nor was the governmental system of encouraging agriculture among Jews
attended by greater success. In consequence of the expulsion of tens of
thousands of Jews from the villages of White Busier in 1823, some two
thousand refugees had drifted into the agricultural colonies of New
Russia, but all they did was to replace the human wastage from increased
mortality, which, owing to the change of climate and the unaccustomed
conditions of rural life, had decimated the original settlers. During
the reign of Nicholas, efforts were again made to promote agricultural
colonization by offering the prospective immigrants subsidies and
alleviations in taxation. Even more valuable was the privilege relieving
the colonists from military service for a term of twenty-five to fifty
years from the time of settlement. Yet only a few tried to escape
conscription by taking refuge in the colonies. For the military regime
gradually penetrated into these colonies as well. The Jewish colonist
was subject to the grim tutelage of Russian "curators" and
"superintendents," retired army men, who watched his every step and
punished the slightest carelessness by conscription or expulsion.
In 1836 the Government conceived the idea of enlarging the area of
Jewish agricultural colonization. By an imperial rescript certain lands
in Siberia, situated in the government of Tobolsk and in the territory
of Omsk, were set aside for this purpose. Within a short time 1317 Jews
declared their readiness to settle on the new lands; many had actually
started on their way in batches. But in January, 1837, the Tzar quite
unexpectedly changed his mind. After reading the report of the Council
of Ministers on the first results of the immigration, he put down the
resolution: "The transplantation of Jews to Siberia is to be stopped." A
few months later orders were issued to intercept those Jews who were on
their way to Siberia and transfer them to the Jewish colonies in the
government of Kherson. The unfortunate emigrants were seized on the way
and conveyed, like criminals, under a military escort into places in
which they were not in the least interested. Legislative whims of this
kind, coupled with an uncouth system of tutelage, were quite sufficient
to crush in many Jews the desire of turning to the soil.
Nevertheless, the colonization made slow progress, gradually spreading
from the government of Kherson to the neighboring governments of
Yekaterinoslav and Bessarabia. Stray Jewish agricultural settlements
also appeared in Lithuania and White Russia. But a comparative handful
of some ten thousand "Jewish peasants" could not affect the general
economic make-up of millions of Jews. In spite of all shocks, the
economic structure of Russian Jewry remained essentially the same. As
before, the central place in this structure was occupied by the liquor
traffic, though modified in a certain measure by the introduction of a
more extensive system of public leases. Above the rank and file of
tavern keepers, both rural and urban, there had arisen a class of
wealthy tax-farmers, who kept a monopoly on the sale of liquor or the
collection of excise in various governments of the Pale. They functioned
as the financial agents of the exchequer, while the Jewish employees in
their mills, store-houses, and offices acted as their sub-agents,
forming a class of "officials" of their own. The place next in
importance to the liquor traffic was occupied by retail and wholesale
commerce. The crafts and the spiritual professions came last. Pauperism
was the inevitable companion of this economic organization, and "people
without definite occupations" were counted by the hundreds of thousands.
6. THE RITUAL MURDER TRIAL OF VELIZH
The "ordinary" persecutions under which the Jews in Russia were groaning
were accompanied by afflictions of an extraordinary kind. The severest
among these were the ritual murder trials which became of frequent
occurrence, tending to deepen the medieval gloom of that period. True,
ritual murder cases had occurred during the reign of Alexander I., but
it was only under Nicholas that they assumed a malign and dangerous
form. In the year 1816, shortly before Passover, a dead body was found
in the vicinity of Grodno and identified as that of the four year old
daughter of a Grodno resident, Mary Adamovich. Rumors were spread among
the superstitious Christian populace to the effect that the girl had
been killed for ritual purposes, and the police, swayed by these rumors,
set about to find the culprit among the Jews. Suspicion fell on a member
of the Grodno Kahal, Shalom Lapin, whose house adjoined that of the
Adamovich family. The only "evidence" against him were a hammer and a
pike found in his house. A sergeant, named Savitzki, a converted Jew,
appeared as a material witness before the Commission of Inquiry, and
delivered himself of a statement full of ignorant trash, which was
intended to show that "Christian blood is exactly what is needed
according to the Jewish religion"--here the witness referred to the
Bible story of the Exodus and to two mythical authorities, "the
philosopher Rossié and the prophet Azariah." He further deposed that
"every rabbi is obliged to satisfy the whole Kahal under his
jurisdiction by smearing with same (with Christian blood) the lintels of
every house on the first day of the feast of Passover." Prompted by
greed and by the desire to distinguish himself, the sergeant declared
himself ready to substantiate his testimony from Jewish literature, "if
the chief Government will grant him the necessary assistance."
The results of this "secret investigation" were laid before the governor
of Grodno and reported by him to St. Petersburg. In reply, Alexander I.
issued a rescript in February, 1817, ordering that the "secret
investigation be cut short and the murderer be found out" intimating
thereby that search be made for the criminal and not for the tenets of
the Jewish religion. However, all efforts to discover the culprit
failed, and the case was dismissed.
This favorable issue was in no small measure due to the endeavors of the
"Deputies of the Jewish People," [1] in particular to Sonnenberg, the
deputy from Grodno. These deputies, who were present in St. Petersburg
at that time, addressed themselves to Golitzin, the Minister of
Ecclesiastical Affairs, protesting against the ritual murder libel. The
trial at Grodno and the ritual murder accusations which simultaneously
cropped up in the Kingdom of Poland made the Minister of Ecclesiastical
Affairs realize that there was in the Western region a dangerous
tendency of making the Jews the scapegoats for every mysterious murder
case and of fabricating lawsuits of the medieval variety by bringing
popular superstition into play. Golitzin, a Christian pietist, who was
nevertheless profoundly averse to narrow ecclesiastic fanaticism,
decided to strike at the root of this superstitious legend which was
disgracing Poland in her period of decay and was about to fall as a dark
stain upon Russia. He succeeded in impressing this conviction upon his
like-minded sovereign Alexander I. In the same month in which the ukase
concerning "the Society of Israelitish Christians" was published [2]
Golitzin sent out the following circular to the governors, dated March
6, 1817:
[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 394.]
[Footnote 2: Compare Vol. I, p. 396.]
In view of the fact that in several of the provinces acquired from
Poland, cases still occur in which the Jews are falsely accused of
murdering Christian children for the alleged purpose of obtaining
blood, his Imperial Majesty, taking into consideration that similar
accusations have on previous numerous occasions been refuted by
impartial investigations and royal charters, has been graciously
pleased to convey to those at the head of the governments his
Sovereign will: that henceforward the Jews shall not be charged with
murdering Christian children, without any evidence and purely as a
result of the superstitious belief that they are in need of
Christian blood.
One might have thought that this emphatic rescript would suffice to put
a stop to the efforts of ignorant adventurers to resuscitate the bloody
myth. And, for several years, indeed, the sinister agitation kept quiet.
But towards the end of Alexander's reign it came to life again, and gave
rise to the monstrous Velizh case.
In the year 1823, on the first day of the Christian Passover, a boy of
three years, Theodore Yemelyanov, the son of a Russian soldier,
disappeared in the city of Velizh, in the government of Vitebsk. Ten
days later the child's body was found in a swamp beyond the town,
stabbed all over and covered with wounds. The medical examination and
the preliminary investigation were influenced by the popular belief that
the child had been tortured to death by the Jews. This belief was
fostered by two Christian fortune-tellers, a prostitute beggar-woman,
called Mary Terentyeva, and a half-witted old maid, by the name of
Yeremyeyeva, who by way of divination made the parents of the child
believe that its death was due to the Jews. At the judicial inquiry,
Terentyeva implicated two of the most prominent Jews of Velizh, the
merchant Shmerka [1] Berlin, and Yevzik [2] Zetlin, a member of the
local town council.
[Footnote 1: A popular form of the name Shemariah.]
[Footnote 2: The Russian form of _Yozel_, a variant of the name Joseph.]
Protracted investigations failed to substantiate the fabrications of
Terentyeva, and in the autumn of 1884 the Supreme Court of the
government of Vitebsk rendered the following verdict:
To leave the accidental death of the soldier boy to the will of God;
to declare all the Jews, against whom the charge of murder has been
brought on mere surmises, free from all suspicion; to turn over the
soldier woman Terentyeva, for her profligate conduct, to a priest
for repentance.
However, in view of the exceptional gravity of the crime, the Court
recommended to the gubernatorial administration to continue its
investigations.
Despite the verdict of the court, the dark forces among the local
population, prompted by hatred of the Jews, bent all their efforts on
putting the investigation on the wrong track. The low, mercenary
Terentyeva became their ready tool. When in September, 1825, Alexander
I. was passing through Velizh, she submitted a petition to him,
complaining about the failure of the authorities to discover the
murderer of little Theodore, whom she unblushingly designated as her own
child and declared to have been tortured to death by the Jews. The Tzar,
entirely oblivious of his ukase of 1817,[1] instructed the White-Russian
governor-general, Khovanski, to start a new rigorous inquiry.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 74.]
The imperial order gave the governor-general, who was a Jew-hater and a
believer in the hideous libel, unrestricted scope for his anti-Semitic
instincts. He entrusted the conduct of the new investigation to a
subaltern, by the name of Strakhov, a man of the same ilk, conferring
upon him the widest possible powers. On his arrival in Velizh, Strakhov
first of all arrested Terentyeva, and subjected her to a series of
cross-examinations during which he endeavored to put her on what he
considered the desirable track. Stimulated by the prosecutor, the
prostitute managed to concoct a regular criminal romance. She deposed
that she herself had participated in the crime, having lured little
Theodore into the homes of Zetlin and Berlin. In Berlin's house, and
later on in the synagogue, a crowd of Jews of both sexes had subjected
the child to the most horrible tortures. The boy had been stabbed and
butchered and rolled about in a barrel. The blood squeezed out of him
had been distributed on the spot among those present, who thereupon
proceeded to soak pieces of linen in it and to pour it out in
bottles.[1] All these tortures had been perpetrated in her own presence,
and with the active participation both of herself and the Christian
servant-girls of the two families.
[Footnote 1: According to her testimony, the Jews are in the habit of
using Christian blood to smear the eyes of their new-born babies, since
"the Jews are always born blind," also to mix it with the flour in
preparing the unleavened bread for Passover.]
It may be added that Terentyeva did not make these statements at one
time, but at different intervals, inventing fresh details at each new
examination and often getting muddled in her story. The implicated
servant-girls at first denied their share in the crime, but, yielding to
external pressure--like Terentyeva, they, too, were sent for frequent
"admonition" to a local priest, called Tarashkevich, a ferocious
anti-Semite--they were gradually led to endorse the depositions of the
principal material witness.
On the strength of these indictments Strakhov placed the implicated Jews
under arrest, at first two highly esteemed ladies, Slava Berlin and
Hannah Zetlin, later on their husbands and relatives, and finally a
number of other Jewish residents of Velizh. In all forty-two people were
seized, put in chains, and thrown into jail. The prisoners were examined
"with a vengeance"; they were subjected to the old-fashioned judicial
procedure which approached closely the methods of medieval torture. The
prisoners denied their guilt with indignation, and, when confronted with
Terentyeva, denounced her vehemently as a liar. The excruciating
cross-examinations brought some of the prisoners to the verge of
madness. But as far as Strakhov was concerned, the hysterical fits of
the women, the angry speeches of the men, the remarks of some of the
accused, such as: "I shall tell everything, but only to the Tzar,"
served in his eyes as evidence of the Jews' guilt. In his reports he
assured his superior, Khovanski, that he had got on the track of a
monstrous crime perpetrated by a whole Kahal, with the assistance of
several Christian women who had been led astray by the Jews.
In communicating his findings to St. Petersburg, the White Russian
governor-general presented the case as a crime committed on religious
grounds. In reply he received the fatal resolution of Emperor Nicholas,
dated August 16, 1828, to the following effect:
Whereas the above occurrence demonstrates that the Zhyds[1] make
wicked use of the religious tolerance accorded to them, therefore,
as a warning and as an example to others, let the Jewish schools
(the synagogues) of Velizh be sealed up until farther orders, and
let services be forbidden, whether in them or near them.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p, 320, n. 2.]
The imperial resolution was couched in the fierce language of the new
reign which had begun in the meantime. It rose in the bloody mist of the
Velizh affair. The fatal consequences of this synchronism were not
limited to the Jews of Velizh. Judging by the contents and the harsh
wording of the resolution, Nicholas I. was convinced at that time of the
truth of the ritual murder libel. The mysterious and unloved tribe rose
before the vision of the new Tzar as a band of cannibals and evil-doers.
This sinister notion can be traced in the conscription statute which was
then in the course of preparation in St. Petersburg and was soon
afterwards to stir Russian Jewry to its depths, dooming their little
ones to martyrdom.
While punishment was to be meted out to the entire Jewish population of
Russia, the fate of the Velizh community was particularly tragic. It was
subjected to the terrors of a unique state of siege. The whole community
was placed under suspicion. All the synagogues were shut up as if they
were dens of thieves, and the hapless Jews could not even assemble in
prayer to pour out their hearts before God. All business was at a
standstill; the shops were closed, and gloomy faces flitted shyly across
the streets of the doomed city.
The stern command from St. Petersburg ordering that the case be
"positively probed to the bottom" and that the culprits be apprehended
gladdened only the heart of Strakhov, the chairman of the Commission of
Inquiry, who was now free to do as he pleased. He spread out the net of
inquiry in ever wider circles. Terentyeva and the other female
witnesses, who were fed well while in prison, and expected not only
amnesty but also remuneration for their services, gave more and more
vent to their imagination. They "recollected" and revealed before the
Commission of Inquiry a score of religious crimes which they alleged had
been perpetrated by the Jews prior to the Velizh affair, such as the
murder of children in suburban inns, the desecration of church utensils
and similar misdeeds.
The Commission was not slow in communicating the new revelations to the
Tzar who followed vigilantly the developments in the case. But the
Commission had evidently overreached itself. The Tzar began to suspect
that there was something wrong in this endlessly growing tangle of
crimes. In October, 1827, he attached to the report of the Commission
the following resolution: "It is absolutely necessary to find out who
those unfortunate children were; this ought to be easy if the whole
thing is not a miserable lie." His belief in the guilt of the Jews had
evidently been shaken.
In its endeavors to make up for the lack of substantial evidence, the
commission, personified by Khovanski, put itself in communication with
the governors of the Pale, directing them to obtain information
concerning all local ritual murder cases in past years. The effect of
these inquiries was to revive the Grodno affair of 1818 which had been
"left to oblivion." A certain convert by the name of Gradlnski from the
townlet of Bobovnya, in the government of Minsk, declared before the
Commission of Inquiry that he was ready to point out the description of
the ritual murder ceremony in a "secret" Hebrew work. When the book was
produced and the incriminated passage translated, it was found that it
referred to the Jewish rite of slaughtering animals. The apostate, thus
caught red-handed, confessed that he had turned informer in the hope of
making money, and was by imperial command sent into the army. The
confidence of St. Petersburg in the activity of the Velizh Commission of
Inquiry vanished more and more. Khovanski was notified that "his Majesty
the Emperor, having observed that the Commission bases its deductions
mostly on surmises, by attaching significance to the fits and gestures
of the incriminated during the examinations, is full of apprehension
lest the Commission, carried away by zeal and anti-Jewish prejudice, act
with a certain amount of bias and protract the case to no purpose."
Soon afterwards, in 1830, the case was taken out of the hands of the
Commission which had become entangled in a mesh of lies--Strakhov had
died in the meantime--, and was turned over to the Senate.
Weighed down by the nightmare proportions of the material, which the
Velizh Commission had managed to pile up, the members of the Fifth
Department of the Senate which was charged with the case were inclined
to announce a verdict of guilty and to sentence the convicted Jews to
deportation to Siberia, with the application of the knout and whip
(1831). In the higher court, the plenary session of the Senate, there
was a disagreement, the majority voting guilty, while three senators,
referring to the ukase of 1817, were in favor of setting the prisoners
at liberty, but keeping them at the same time under police surveillance.
In 1834 the case reached the highest court of the Empire, the Council of
State, and here for the first time the real facts came to light. Truth
found its champion in the person of the aged statesman, Mordvinov, who
owned some estates near Velizh, and, being well-acquainted with the Jews
of the town, was roused to indignation by the false charges concocted
against them. In his capacity as president of the Department of Civil
and Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Council of State, Mordvinov, after
sifting the evidence carefully, succeeded in a number of sessions to
demolish completely the Babel tower of lies erected by Strakhov and
Khovanski and to adduce proofs that the governor-general, blinded by
anti-Jewish prejudice, had misled the Government by his communications.
The Department of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs was convinced by the
arguments of Mordvinov and other champions of the truth, and handed down
a decision that the accused Jews be set at liberty and rewarded for
their innocent sufferings, and that the Christian women informers he
deported to Siberia.
The plenary meeting of the Council of State concurred in the decision of
the Department, rejecting only the clause providing for the reward of
the sufferers. The verdict of the Council of State was submitted to the
Tzar and received his endorsement on January 18, 1835. It read as
follows:
The Council of State, having carefully considered all the
circumstances of this complex and involved case, finds that the
depositions of the material female witnesses, Terentyeva, Maximova,
and Koslovska, containing as they do numerous contradictions and
absurdities and lacking all positive evidence and indubitable
conclusions, cannot be admitted as legal proof to convict the Jews
of the grave crimes imputed to them, and, therefore, renders the
following decision:
1. The Jews accused of having killed the soldier boy Yemelyanov and
of other similar deeds, which are implied in the Velizh trial, no
indictment whatsoever having been found against them, shall be freed
from further judgment and inquiry.
2. The material witnesses, the peasant woman Terentyeva, the soldier
woman Maximova, and the Shiakhta woman[1] Kozlovsta, having been
convicted of uttering libels, which they have not in the least been
able to corroborate, shall be exiled to Siberia for permanent
residence.
3. The peasant maid Yeremyeyeva, having posed among the common
people as a soothsayer, shall be turned over to a priest for
admonition.
[Footnote 1: i.e., a member of the Polish nobility; comp. Vol. I, p. 58,
n. 1.]
After attaching his signature to this verdict. Nicholas I. added in his
own handwriting the following characteristic resolution, which was not
to be made public:
While sharing the view of the Council of State that in this case,
owing to the vagueness of the legal deductions, no other decision
than the one embodied in the opinion confirmed by me could have been
reached, I deem it, however, necessary to add that I do not have,
and, indeed, cannot have, the inner conviction that the murder has
not been committed by the Jews. Numerous examples of similar
murders.... go to show that among the Jews there probably exist
fanatics or sectarians who consider Christian blood necessary for
their rites. This appears the more possible, since unfortunately
even among us Christians there sometimes exist such sects which are
no less horrible and incomprehensible. In a word, I do not for a
moment think that this custom is common to all Jews, but I do not
deny the possibility that there may be among them fanatics just as
horrible as among us Christians.
Having taken this idea into his head, Nicholas I. refused to sign the
second decision of the Council of State, which was closely allied with
the verdict: that all governors be instructed to be guided in the future
by the ukase of 1817, forbidding to stir up ritual murder cases "from
prejudice only." While rejecting this prejudice in its full-fledged
shape, the Tzar acknowledged it in part, in a somewhat attenuated form.
Towards the end of January of 1835 an imperial ukase reached the city of
Velizh, ordering the liberation of the exculpated Jews, the reopening of
the synagogues, which had been sealed since 1826, and the handing back
to the Jews of the holy scrolls which had been confiscated by the
police. The dungeon was now ready to give up its inmates, whose strength
had been sapped by the long confinement, while several of them had died
during the imprisonment. The synagogues, which had not been allowed to
resound with the moans of the martyrs, were now opened for the prayers
of the liberated. The state of siege which for nine long years had been
throttling the city was at last taken off; the terror which had haunted
the ostracized community came to an end. A new leaf was added to the
annals of Jewish martyrdom, one of the gloomiest, in spite of its
"happy" finale.
7. THE MSTISLAVL AFFAIR
The ritual murder trials did not exhaust the "extraordinary" afflictions
of Nicholas' reign. There were cases of wholesale chastisements
inflicted on more tangible grounds, when misdeeds of a few individuals
were puffed up into communal crimes and visited cruelly upon entire
communities. The conscription horrors of that period, when the Kahals
were degraded to police agencies for "capturing" recruits, had bred the
"informing" disease among the Jewish communities. They produced the type
of professional informer, or _moser_[1], who blackmailed the Kahal
authorities of his town by threatening to disclose their "abuses," the
absconding of candidates for the army and various irregularities in
carrying out the conscription, and in this way extorted "silence money"
from them. These scoundrels made life intolerable, and there were
occasions when the people took the law into their own hands and secretly
dispatched the most objectionable among them.
[Footnote 1: The Hebrew and Yiddish equivalent for "informer."]
A case of this kind came to light in the government of Podolia in 1836.
In the town Novaya Ushitza two _mosers_, named Oxman and Schwartz, who
had terrorized the Jews of the whole province, were found dead. Rumor
had it that the one was killed in the synagogue and the other on the
road to the town. The Russian authorities regarded the crime as the
collective work of the local Jewish community, or rather of several
neighboring Jewish communities, "which had perpetrated this wicked deed
by the verdict of their own tribunal."
About eighty Kahal elders and other prominent Jews of Ushitza and
adjacent towns, including two rabbis, were put on trial. The case was
submitted to a court-martial which resolved "to subject the guilty to an
exemplary punishment." Twenty Jews were sentenced to hard labor and to
penal military service, with a preliminary "punishment by _Spiessruten_
through five hundred men." [1] A like number were sentenced to be
deported to Siberia; the rest were either acquitted or had fled from
justice. Many of those who ran the gauntlet died under the strokes, and
are remembered by the Jewish people in Russia as martyrs.
[Footnote 1: Both the word and the penalty were introduced by Peter the
Great from Germany. The culprit was made to run between two lines of
soldiers who whipped his bare shoulders with rods. The penalty was
abolished in 1863.]
The scourge of informers was also responsible for the Mstislavl affair.
In 1844, a Jewish crowd in the market-place of Mstislavl, a town in the
government of Moghilev, came into conflict with a detachment of soldiers
who were searching for contraband goods in a Jewish warehouse. The
results of the fray were a few bruised Jews and several broken rifles.
The local police and military authorities seized this opportunity to
ingratiate themselves with their superiors, and reported to the governor
of Moghilev and the commander of the garrison that the Jews had
organized a "mutiny." The local informer, Arye Briskin, a converted Jew,
found this incident an equally convenient occasion to wreak vengeance on
his former coreligionists for the contempt in which he was held by them,
and allowed himself to be taken into tow by the official Jew-baiters.
In January, 1844, alarming communications concerning a "Jewish mutiny"
reached St. Petersburg. The matter was reported to the Tzar, and a swift
and curt resolution followed: "To court-martial the principal culprits
implicated in this incident, and, in the meantime, as a punishment for
the turbulent demeanor of the Jews of that city, to take from them one
recruit for every ten men." Once more the principles of that period were
applied: one for all; first punishment, then trial.
The ukase arrived in Mstislavl on the eve of Purim, and threw the Jews
into consternation. During the Fast of Esther the synagogues resounded
with wailing. The city was in a state of terror: the most prominent
leaders of the community were thrown into jail, and had to submit to
disfigurement by having half of their heads and beards shaved off. The
penal recruits were hunted down, without any regard to age, since,
according to the Tzar's resolution, a tenth of the population had to be
impressed into military service. Pending the termination of the trial,
no Jew was allowed to leave the city, while natives from Mstislavl in
other places were captured and conveyed to their native town. A large
Jewish community was threatened with complete annihilation.
The Jews of Mstislavl, through their spokesmen, petitioned St.
Petersburg to wait with the penal conscription until the conclusion of
the trial, and endeavored to convince the central Government that the
local administration had misrepresented the character of the incident.
To save his brethren, the popular champion of the interests of his
people, the merchant Isaac Zelikin, of Monastyrchina, [1] called
affectionately Rabbi Itzele, journeyed to the capital. He managed to get
the ear of the Chief of the "Third Section" [2] and to acquaint him with
the horrors which were being perpetrated by the authorities in
Mstislavl.
[Footnote 1: A townlet in the neighborhood of Mstislavl.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 21, n. 1.]
As a result, two commissioners were dispatched from St. Petersburg in
quick succession. On investigating the matter on the spot, they
discovered the machinations of the over-zealous officials and
apostasized informers who had represented a street quarrel as an
organized uprising. The new commission of inquiry, of which one of the
St. Petersburg commissioners, Count Trubetzkoy, was member, disclosed
the fact that the Jewish community as such had had nothing whatsoever to
do with what had occurred. The findings of the commission resulted in an
"Imperial Act of Grace": the imprisoned Jews were set at liberty, the
penal conscripts were returned from service, several local officials
were put on trial, and the governor of Moghilev was severely censured.
This took place in November, 1844, after the Mstislavl community had for
nine long months tasted the horrors of a state of siege. The synagogues
were filled with Jews praising God for the relief granted to them. The
community decreed to commemorate annually the day before Purim, on which
the ukase inflicting severe punishment on the Jews of Mstislavl was
promulgated, as a day of fasting and to celebrate the third day of the
month of Kislev, on which the cruel ukase was revoked, as a day of
rejoicing. Had all the disasters of that era been perpetuated in the
same manner, the Jewish calendar would consist entirely of these
commemorations of national misfortunes, whether in the form of
"ordinary" persecutions or "extraordinary" afflictions.