THE REACTION UNDER ALEXANDER II.
1. CHANGE OF ATTITUDE TOWARD THE JEWISH PROBLEM
The decided drift toward political reaction in the second part of
Alexander's reign affected also the specific Jewish problem, which the
homoeopathic reforms, designed to "ameliorate" a fraction of the Jewish
people, had tried to solve in vain. The general reaction showed itself
in the fact that, after having carried out the first great reforms, such
as the liberation of the peasantry, the introduction of rural
self-government and the reorganization of the administration of the law,
the Government considered the task of Russian regeneration to be
completed, and stubbornly refused, to use the expression current at the
time, "to crown the edifice" by the one great political reform, the
grant of a constitution and political liberty. This refusal widened the
breach between the Government and the progressive element of the Russian
people, whose hopes were riveted on the ultimate goal of political
reorganization. The striving for liberty, driven under ground by police
and censorship, assumed among the Russian youth the character of a
revolutionary movement. And when the murderous hand of the "Third
Section" [1] descended heavily upon the champions of liberty, the
youthful revolutionaries retorted with political terrorism which
darkened the last days of Alexander II. and led to his assassination.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 21, n. 1.]
The complete emancipation of the Jews was out of place in this
atmosphere of growing official reaction. The same bureaucracy which
halted the march of the "great reforms" for the country at large was not
inclined to allow even minor reforms when affecting the Jews only. Even
the former desire for a "graded" and partial amelioration of the
position of the Jews had vanished. Instead, the center of the stage was
again occupied by the old red-tape activities, by discussions about the
Jewish question--endless no less than fruitless--in the recesses of
bureaucratic committees and sub-committees, by oracular animadversions
of governors and governors-general upon the conduct of the Jews, and so
on. Theory-mongering of the reactionary variety was again at a premium.
Once more the authorities debated the question whether the Jews were to
be regarded as useful or harmful to the State, instead of putting the
diametrically opposite question of simple justice: whether the State
which is called upon to serve the Jews as part of the civic organism of
Russia is useful to them to an extent which may be lawfully claimed by
them.
Under Nicholas I. the Government chancelleries had been busy inventing
new remedies against the "separatism" of the Jews and their "harmful
pursuits." During the first liberal years of Alexander's reign commerce
ceased to be branded as "a harmful pursuit." Yet as soon as the Jewish
merchants, stimulated by the partial extension of their right of
residence and occupation, displayed a wider economic activity and became
successful competitors of the "original" Russian business men, they were
met with shouts of protest demanding that this Jewish "exploitation" be
effectively "curbed."
In this connection it must be pointed out that the economic advancement
of the Jews was not altogether due to the privileges accorded to them by
the Russian legislation, but was rather the effect of general economic
conditions. The great progress in industrial life during "the era of
reforms," more particularly the expansion of railroad enterprises during
the sixties and seventies, opened up a wide field for the energies of
Jewish capitalists. Moreover, the abolition, in 1861, of the old system
of farming out the sale of liquor transferred a part of the big Jewish
capital from the liquor traffic into railroad building. The Jewish
"excise farmers" [1] were converted into railroad men, as shareholders,
supply merchants, or contractors. A new Jewish plutocracy came into
being, and its growth excited jealousy and fear among the Russian
mercantile class. The Government, filled with enthusiasm for the
cultivation of large industries, was not as yet prepared to discriminate
against the Jews whenever big capital was concerned. But it lent an
attentive ear to the "original" Russian merchants whenever they
complained about Jewish competition in petty trade, on which the lower
Jewish classes depended for their livelihood. The Government, which had
not yet emancipated itself from the habit of "assorting" its citizens
and dividing them into a protected and a tolerated class, set out to
elaborate measures for "curbing" the Jews belonging to the latter
category.
[Footnote 1: i.e., those that leased from the Government the collection
of excise on liquor. They were designated as _aktzizniks_, from
_aktziz_, the Russian word for "excise."]
The question which confronted the Government next was this: to what
extent have the hopes for a fusion of the Jews with the original
population been justified by the events? Here, too, the reply was
unsatisfactory. The naive expectation that a few gratuities offered to
the Jews in the shape of privileges would fill them with the eager
desire to "fuse" with the Russians did not come true. Strong as was the
trend towards Russification in the new Jewish _intelligenzia_ of the
sixties, the broad masses of Jewry knew nothing of such a tendency. The
authorities became suspicious: what if these crafty Hebrews should fool
us again and refuse to pay for the donated rights by fusing with the
Christians? Russian officialdom received new food for reflection which
was to last it for years, nay, for decades.
2. THE INFORMER JACOB BRAFMAN
Several occurrences were instrumental in determining the Government to
embark upon a new policy, that of investigating assiduously the inner
life of the Jews. At the end of the sixties a man appeared in Vilna who
offered his services to the authorities as a detective and spy among the
Jews. Jacob Brafman, a native of the government of Minsk, had deserted
his race and religion in the last years of Nicholas' conscription,
hoping thereby to escape the nets of the vigilant Kahal "captors" who
wished to draft him into the army. Embittered against the Kahal agents
who had become mere police tools, Brafman desired to wreak vengeance
upon the Kahal as a whole, nay, upon the very idea of a Jewish communal
organization.
When the "fusion," or assimilation, of the Jews became the watchword of
the highest official circles, the astute convert found that he could
make his way by exposing the influences which in his opinion checked the
endeavors of the Government. A memorandum presented by him to Alexander
II., when the latter was passing through Minsk in 1858, opened to him
the doors of the Holy Synod. He was appointed instructor of Hebrew at a
Greek-Orthodox seminary and entrusted with the task of finding ways to
remove the difficulties placed by the Jews in the path of their
coreligionists intending to go over to Christianity. His mission to
facilitate apostasy among the Jews proved a failure, and his services as
detective were not yet appreciated during the liberal years of
Alexander's reign.
However, with the reactionary turn in Russian politics, in the middle of
the sixties, these services were once more in demand. Brafman hastened
to the hot-bed of reactionary chauvinism, the city of Vilna, which was
firmly held in the iron grip of Muravyov, [1] and there began "to expose
the separatism of the inner life of the Jews" before the highest
administration of the province. He contended that the Kahal, though
officially abolished in 1844, [2] continued in reality to exist and to
maintain a widely ramified judiciary (_Bet Din_), that it constituted a
secret, uncanny sort of organization which wielded despotic power over
the communities by employing such weapons as the _herem_
(excommunication) and _hazakah_ (the Jewish legal practice of securing
property rights), [3] that it incited the Jewish masses against the
State, the Government, and the Christian religion, and fostered in these
masses fanaticism and dangerous national separatism. In the opinion of
Brafman, the only way to eradicate this "secret Jewish government," was
to destroy the last vestiges of Jewish communal autonomy by closing all
religious and charitable societies and fraternities. The Jewish
community itself ought to share the same fate, and the Jews forming part
of it should be included among the Christian estates in the cities and
villages. In a word, Judaism as a communal organization should pass out
of existence altogether.
[Footnote 1: Michael Muravyov (see above, p. 183) was appointed in 1863
military governor of the governments of Vilna, Kovno, Grodno, Vitebsk,
Minsk, and Moghilev, which he endeavored to Russify with relentless
cruelty. He died in 1866.]
[Footnote 2: See p. 58 et seq.]
[Footnote 3: More exactly, the acquisition of property by continued and
undisturbed possession for a period of time. This right of acquisition
was formerly granted by the Kahal on the payment of a certain tax; see
Vol. I, p. 190.]
The heads of the Russian administration in Lithuania listened eagerly to
the sinister revelations of the new Pfefferkorn. [1] In 1866
Governor-General Kauffmann appointed a commission, which also included a
few Jewish experts, to look into the material compiled by Brafman. This
material consisted of the minutes of the Kahal of Minsk from the first
half of the nineteenth century, recording the entirely legitimate
enactments which the communal administration had passed by virtue of the
autonomous rights granted to it by the Government. Brafman published his
material in a series of articles in the official organ of the province,
the _Vilenski Vyestnik_, "The Vilna Herald"; the articles were later
republished in a separate volume, under the title _Kniga Kahala_, "The
Book of the Kahal." [2] The data collected by Brafman were embellished
with the customary anti-Semitic quotations from talmudic and rabbinic
literature, and put in such a light that the Government was placed on
the horns of a dilemma: either to destroy with one stroke the entire
Jewish communal organization and all the cultural agencies attached to
it, or to run the risk of seeing Russia captured by the "Universal
Kahal." It may be added that the _Alliance Israélite Universelle_, which
had shortly before been founded in Paris for the purpose of assisting
Jews in various countries, figured in Brafman's indictment as a
constituent society of the universal Jewish Kahal organization.
[Footnote 1: A medieval convert (died ab. 1521) who wrote against
Judaism, especially the Talmud.]
[Footnote 2: The first edition appeared in 1869, the second in 1871.]
The "Book of the Kahal" was printed at public expense and sent out to
all Government offices to serve as a guide for Russian officials and
enable them to fight the "Inner enemy." It was in vain that Brafman's
ignorance of rabbinic lore and his entire distortion of the role played
by the Kahal in days gone-by was exposed by Jewish writers in articles
and monographs; it was in vain that the Jewish members of the commission
appointed by the governor-general of Vilna protested against the
barbarous proposals of the informer. The authorities of St. Petersburg
seized upon Brafman's discoveries as incontrovertible evidence of the
existence of Jewish separatism and as a justification for the method of
"cautiousness" which they saw fit to apply to the solution of the Jewish
problem.
3. THE FIGHT AGAINST JEWISH "SEPARATISM"
Another incident which took place about the same time served in the eyes
of the leading Government circles as an additional illustration of
Jewish separatism. In 1870 Alexander II. was on a visit to the Kingdom
of Poland, and there beheld the sight of dense masses of Hasidim with
their long earlocks and flowing coats. The Tzar, repelled by this
spectacle, enjoined upon the Polish governors strictly to enforce in
their domains the old Russian law prohibiting the Jewish form of
dress. [1] Thereupon the administration of the Kingdom threw itself with
special zest upon the important task of eradicating "the ugly costumes
and earlocks" of the Hasidim.
[Footnote 1: See above p. 144.]
Shortly afterwards the question of Jewish separatism was the subject of
discussion before the Council of State. Under the unmistakable influence
of the recent revelations of Brafman, the Council of State arrived at
the conclusion that "the prohibition of external differences in dress is
yet far from leading to the goal pursued by the Government, _viz_., to
destroy the exclusiveness of the Jews and the almost hostile attitude of
the Jewish communities towards Christians, these communities forming in
our land a secluded religious and civil caste or, one might say, a state
in a state." Hence the Council proposed to entrust a special commission
with the task "of considering ways and means to weaken as far as
possible the communal cohesion among the Jews" (December, 1870). As a
result, a commission of the kind suggested by the Council was
established in 1871, consisting of the representatives of the various
ministries and presided over by the Assistant-Minister of the Interior,
Lobanov-Rostovski. The Commission received the name "Commission for the
Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews." [1]
[Footnote 1: Compare above, pp. 161 and 169.]
While the Government was again engaged in one of its numerous
experiments over the problem of Jewish separatism, an event, unusual in
those days, took place: the Odessa pogrom [1] of 1871. In this granary
of the South, which owed its flourishing commerce to Jews and Greeks, an
unfriendly feeling had sprung up between these two nationalities, which
competed with one another in the corn trade and in the grocery business.
This competition, though of great benefit to the consumers, was a thorn
in the flesh of the Greek merchants. Time and again the Greeks would
scare the Jews during the Christian Passover by their barbarous custom
of discharging pistols in front of their church, which was situated in
the heart of the Jewish district. But in 1871, with the approach of the
Christian Passover, the Greeks proceeded to organize a regular pogrom.
[Footnote 1: _Pogrom_, with the accent on the last syllable, signifies
_ruin_, _devastation_, and was originally applied to the ravages of an
invading army.]
To arouse the mob the Greeks spread the rumor that the Jews had stolen a
cross from the church fence and had thrown stones at the church
building. The pogrom began on Palm Sunday (March 28). The Jews were
maltreated, and their houses and shops were sacked and looted. Having
started in the immediate vicinity of the church, the riot spread to the
neighboring streets and finally engulfed the whole city. For three days
hordes of Greeks and Russians gave free vent to their mob instincts,
demolishing, burning, and robbing Jewish property, desecrating
synagogues and beating Jews to senselessness in all parts of the city,
undisturbed by the presence of police and troops who did nothing to stop
the atrocities. The appeal of representative Odessa Jews to
Governor-General Kotzebue was met by the retort that the Jews themselves
were to blame, "having started first," and that the necessary measures
for restoring order had been adopted. The latter assertion proved to be
false, for on the following day the pogrom was renewed with even greater
vigor.
Only on the fourth day, when thousands of houses and shops had already
been destroyed, and the rioters, intoxicated with their success,
threatened to start a regular massacre, the authorities decided to step
in and to "pacify" the riff-raff by a rather quaint method. Soldiers
were posted on the market place with wagon-loads of rods, and the
rioters, caught red-handed, were given a public whipping on the spot.
The "fatherly" punishment inflicted by the local authorities upon their
"naughty" children sufficed to put a stop to the pogrom.
As for the central Government in St. Petersburg, the only thing it
wanted to know was whether the pogrom had any connection with the secret
revolutionary propaganda which, beginning with the Jews, might next set
the mob against the nobility and Russian bourgeoisie. Since the official
inquiry failed to reveal any political motives behind the Odessa riots,
the St. Petersburg authorities were set at ease, and were only too glad
to take the word of the satraps of the Pale who reported that the
anti-Jewish movement had started as "a crude protest of the masses
against the failure to solve the Jewish question"--_viz_., to solve it
in a reactionary spirit--and as a manifestation, of the popular
resentment against Jewish exploitation.
The old charge of separatism against the Jews thus found a companion in
a new accusation: their economic "exploitation" of the Christian
population of the Pale. The Committee appointed at the recommendation of
the Council of State was enjoined to conduct a strict inquiry into both
these "charges." Concretely the work of the Committee reduced itself to
a consideration of two questions, one relating to the Kahal, or "the
amelioration of the spiritual life of the Jews," and the other referring
to the feasibility of thinning out the Pale of Settlement with the end
in view of weakening the economic competition of the Jews.
The material bearing on these questions included, apart from Brafman's
"standard work," a "Memorandum concerning the more important
Administrative Problems in the South-west," which had been submitted in
1871 by the governor-general of Kiev, Dondukov-Korsakov, to the Tzar.
The author of the memorandum voices his conviction that "the principal
endeavors of the Government must be concentrated upon the Jewish
question." The Jews are becoming a great economic power in the
South-western provinces. They purchase or mortgage estates, and obtain
control of the factories and mills as well as of the grain, timber, and
liquor trade, thereby arousing the bitter resentment of the Christian
population, particularly in the rural districts. [1] Moreover, the Jewish
masses, refusing to follow the lead of the handful of Russified Jewish
intellectuals, live entirely apart and remain in the throes of talmudic
fanaticism and hasidie obscurantism. They "possess complete
self-government in their Kahals, their own system of finance in the
basket tax, their separate charitable institutions," their own
traditional school in the heders, of which there are in the South-west
no less than six thousand. In addition, the Jews possess an
international organization, the "World Kahal," represented by the
_Alliance Israélite "Universelle_ in Paris, whose president, Adolph
Crémieux, had had the audacity to protest to the Russian Government
against acts of violence perpetrated upon the Jews. For all these
reasons the governor-general is of the opinion that "the revision of the
whole legislation affecting the Jews has become an imperative
necessity."
[Footnote 1: According to the official figures, quoted in the
memorandum, the number of Jews in the three South-western governments,
i.e., Volhynia, Podolia, and the Kiev province, amounted to 721,080. Of
these, 14 per cent lived in rural districts and 86 per cent in cities
and towns. They owned 27 sugar refineries out of 105; 619 distilleries
out of 712; 5700 mills out of 6353; and so forth. The production of the
industrial establishments in the hands of the Jews reached the sum of
seventy million rubles.]
A similar tone was adopted in the other official documents which came
into the hands of the "Committee for the Amelioration of the Condition
of the Jews." The communications of the governors and the reports of the
members of the Committee were all animated by the same spirit, the
spirit that spoke through Brafman's "Book of the Kahal." This was but
natural. The officials, to whom this book had been sent by the central
Government "for guidance," drew from it their whole political wisdom in
things Jewish, and in their replies endeavored to fall in with the
instructions of the Council of State, conveyed to them by the Committee,
_viz_., "to consider ways and means to weaken the communal cohesion
among the Jews."
In the Kingdom of Poland the governors complained similarly in their
reports that the Jews of the province, though accorded equal rights by
Vyelepolski, [1] had not complied with the conditions attached to that
act, to wit, "to abandon the use of their own language and script, in
exchange for the favors bestowed upon them." Outside of a handful of
assimilated "Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion," who were imbued with
Polish chauvinism, [2] the hasidic rank and file was permeated by
extreme separatism, fostered by "the Kahal through its various agencies,
the Congregational Boards, the rabbinate, the heders, and a host of
special institutions."
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 181.]
[Footnote 2: And hence objectionable from the Russian point of view.]
These and similar communications formed the groundwork of the reports,
or more correctly, the bills of indictment in which the members of the
Committee charged the Jews with the terrible crime of constituting "a
religio-political caste," in other words, a nationality. Following the
lead of Brafman, the members of the Committee laid particular emphasis in
their reports on the obnoxiousness of the Talmud and the danger of
Jewish separatism. Needless to say, the conclusions offered by them were
of the kind anticipated in the instructions of the Council of State: the
necessity of wiping out the last vestiges of Jewish self-government,
such as the Jewish community, the school, the mutual relief societies,
in a word, everything that tends to foster "the communal cohesion among
the Jews."
The barbarism of these proposals was covered by the fig-leaf of
enlightenment. When the benighted Jewish masses will have fused with the
highly cultured populance of Russia. In other words, when the Jews will
have ceased to be Jews, then will the Jewish question find its solution.
In the meantime, however, the Jews are to be curbed by the bridle of
disabilities. The referee of the Committee on the question of the Pale
of Settlement, Grigoryev, frankly stated: "What is important in this
question is not whether the Jews will fare better when granted the right
of residence all over the Empire, but rather the effect of this measure
on the economic well-being of an enormous part of the Russian people."
From this point of view the referee finds that it would be dangerous to
let the Jews pass beyond the Pale, since "the plague, which has thus far
been restricted to the Western provinces, will then spread over the
whole Empire."
For a long time the Committee was at a deadlock, held down by
bureaucratic reaction. It was only toward the end of its existence that
the voice from another world, the posthumous voice of dead and buried
liberalism, resounded in its midst. In 1880 the Committee was presented
with a memorandum by two of its members, Nekhludov and Karpov, in which
the bold attempt was made to champion the heretic point of view of
complete Jewish emancipation. The language of the memorandum was one
which the Russian Government had not heard for a long time.
In the name of "morality and justice" the authors of the memorandum call
upon the Government to abandon its grossly utilitarian attitude towards
the Jews who are to be denied civil rights so long as they do not prove
useful to the "original" population. They expose the selfish motive
underlying the bits of emancipation which had been doled out to the Jews
during the preceding spell of liberalism: the desire, not to help the
Jews, but to exploit their services. First-guild merchants, physicians,
lawyers, artisans were admitted into the interior for the sole purpose
of developing business in those places and filling the palpable shortage
in artisans and professional men. "As soon as this or that category of
Jews was found to be serviceable to the Russian people, it was relieved,
and relieved only in part, from the pressure of exceptional laws, and
received into the dominant population of the Empire." But the millions
of plain Jews, abandoned by the upper classes, have continued to
languish in the suffocating Pale. [1] The Jewish population is denied the
elementary rights guaranteeing liberty of pursuit, freedom of movement
and land ownership, such as only a criminal may be deprived of by a
verdict of the courts. As it is, discontent is rife among these
disinherited masses. "The rising generation of Jews has already begun to
participate in the revolutionary movement to which they had hitherto
been strangers." The system of oppression must be set aside. All the
Jewish defects, their separatism and one-sided economic activity, are
merely the fruits of this oppression. Where the law has no confidence in
the population, there inevitably the population has no confidence in the
law, and it naturally becomes an enemy of the existing order of things,
"Human reason does not admit of any considerations which might justify
the placing of many millions of the Jewish population, on a level with
criminal offenders." The first step in the direction of complete
emancipation ought to be the immediate grant of the right of domicile
all over the Empire.
[Footnote 1: The narrow utilitarianism of the governmental policy in the
Jewish question may also be illustrated by the official attitude towards
the promotion of agriculture among the Jews. Under Alexander I. and
Nicholas I. Jewish agricultural colonization in the South of Russia was
encouraged by the grant of special privileges, though the Jewish
settlers were subjected to the stern tutelage of bureaucratic
inspectors. But under Alexander II., when Southern Russia was no longer
in need of artificial colonization, the Government discontinued its
policy of promoting Jewish colonization, and an ukase issued in 1866
stopped the settlement of Jews in agricultural colonies altogether. A
little later the Jewish colonies in the South-west were deprived of a
large part of their lands, which were distributed among the peasants.]
These bold words which turned the Jews from defendants into plaintiffs
ran counter to the fundamental task of the Committee, which, according
to the original instructions received by it, was expected to draft its
plans in a spirit of reaction. At any rate, these words were uttered too
late. A new era was approaching which in solving the Jewish question
resorted to methods such as would have horrified even the conservative
statesmen of the seventies: the era of pogroms and cruel disabilities.
4. THE DRIFT TOWARD OPPRESSION
During the last decade of Alexander's reign, the machinery of Jewish
legislation was working at a slow rate, pending the full "revision" of
Jewish rights. Yet the steps of the approaching reaction could well be
discerned. Thus in 1870, during the discussion of the draft of the new
Municipal Statute by a special committee of the Ministry of the
Interior, which included as "experts" the burgomasters of the most
important Russian cities, the question arose whether the former
limitation of the number of Jewish aldermen in the municipal councils to
one-third of the whole number of aldermen [1] should be upheld or not.
The cities involved were those of the Pale where the Jews formed the
majority of the population, and the committee was searching for ways and
means to weaken "the excessive influence" of this majority upon the city
administration and to subordinate it to the Christian minority.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 41.]
One solitary member, Novoselski, the burgomaster of Odessa, advocated
the repeal of the old restriction, with the one proviso that the Jewish
aldermen should be required to possess certain educational
qualifications, inasmuch as educated Jews were "not quite as harmful" as
uneducated ones.
A minority of the members of the Committee favored the limitation of the
number of Jewish aldermen to one-half, but the majority staunchly
defended the old norm, which was one-third. The representatives of the
majority, in particular Count Cherkaski, the burgomaster of Moscow,
argued that the Jews constituted not only a religious but also a
national entity, that they were still widely removed from assimilation
or Russification, that education, far from transforming the Jews into
Russians, made them only more successful in the struggle for existence,
that it was inadvisable for this reason "to subject the whole Russian
element (of the population) to the risk of falling under the domination
of Judaism."
The curious principle of municipal justice by virtue of which the
majority of house owners and tax-payers were to be ruled by the
representatives of the minority carried the day. The new Municipal
Statute sanctioned the norm of one-third for "non-Christians," and
reaffirmed the ineligibility of Jews to the post of burgomaster.
The law of 1874, establishing general military service and abolishing
the former method of conscription, proved the first legal enactment
which imposed upon the Jews equal obligations with their
fellow-citizens, prior to bestowing upon them equal rights. To be sure,
the new regulation brought considerable relief to the Jews, inasmuch as
the heavy burden of military duty which had formerly been borne entirely
by the poor burgher class, [1] was now distributed over all estates,
while the burden itself was lightened by the reduction of the term of
service. Moreover, the former collective responsibility of the community
for the supply of recruits, which had given rise to the institution of
"captors" and many other evils, was replaced by the personal
responsibility of every individual conscript. All this, however, was not
sufficient to change suddenly the attitude of the Jewish populace
towards military service.
[Footnote 1: On the "burghers" see Vol. I, p. 308, n. 2. Concerning the
military duty imposed on them see above, p. 23.]
The formerly privileged merchantile class could not reconcile itself
easily to the idea of sending their children to the army. The horrors of
the old conscription were still fresh in their minds, and even in its
new setting military service was still suggestive of the hideous horrors
of the past. Those who but yesterday had been dragged like criminals to
the recruiting stations could not well be expected to change their
sentiments over night and appear there of their own free will. The
result was that a considerable number of Jews of military age (21)
failed to obey the summons of the first conscription. Immediately the
cry went up that the Jews evaded their military duty, and that the
Christians were forced to make up the shortage. The official pens in St.
Petersburg and in the provincial chancelleries became busy scribbling.
The Ministry of War demanded the adoption of Draconian measures to stop
this "evasion," As a result, the whole Jewish youth of conscription age
was registered in 1875. At the recruiting stations the age of the young
Jews was determined by their external appearance, without regard to
their birth certificates. Finally, in the course of 1876-1878, a number
of special provisions were enacted, by way of exception from the general
military statute, for the purpose "of insuring the regular discharge of
their military duty by the Jews."
According to the new legal provisions, the Jews who had been rejected as
unfit for military service were to be replaced by other Jews and under
no circumstances by Christians. For this purpose, the Jewish conscripts
were to be segregated from the Christians after the drawing of lots, the
first stage in the recruiting process. [1] Moreover, in the case of Jews
a lower stature and a narrower chest were required than in that of
non-Jews. In the case of a shortage of "unprivileged" recruits,
permission was given to draft not only Jews enjoying, by their family
status, the third and second class privileges, but also those of the
first class, i.e., to deprive Jewish parents of their only sons. [2]
[Footnote 1: Since the number of men of military age greatly exceeds the
required number of recruits, the Russian law provides that lots be drawn
by the conscripts to determine the order in which they are to present
themselves for examination to the recruiting officers. When the quota is
completed, the remaining conscripts, i.e., those who, having drawn a
high number, have not yet been examined, are declared exempt from
military service.]
[Footnote 2: "According to Russian law, the following three categories
of recruits are exempt from military service: 1) the only sons; 2) the
only wage-earning sons, though there be other sons in the family; 3)
those who have an elder brother or brothers in the army. The first
category is exempt under all circumstances; the last two on condition
that the required number of recruits be secured out of the
"unprivileged" conscripts. Only in the case of the Jews is the first
category drawn upon in the case of a shortage.]
In this manner the Government sought to "insure" with ruthless vigor the
discharge of this most onerous duty on the part of the Jews, without
making any attempt to insure at the same time the rights of this
population of three millions which was made to spill its blood for the
fatherland. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, many Jewish soldiers
fought for Russia, and a goodly number of them were killed or wounded on
the battlefield. Yet in the Russian military headquarters--the post of
commander-in-chief was occupied by the crown prince, the future Tzar
Alexander III.--no attention was paid to the thousands of Jewish
victims, but rather to the fact that the "Jewish" firm of army
purveyors, Greger, Horvitz & Kohan [1] was found to have had a share in
the commissariat scandals. When at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 a
resolution was introduced calling upon the Governments of Roumania,
Servia, and Bulgaria to accord equal rights to the Jews in their
respective dominions, and was warmly supported by all plenipotentiaries,
such as Waddington, Beaconsfield, Bismarck, and others, the only one to
oppose the emancipation of the Jews on principle was the Russian
chancellor Gorchakov, In his desire to save the prestige of Russia,
which herself had failed to grant equal rights to the Jews, the
chancellor could not refrain from an anti Semitic sally, remarking
during the debate that "one ought not to confound the Jews of Berlin,
Paris, London, and Vienna, who cannot be denied civil and political
rights, with the Jews of Servia, Roumania, and several Russian
provinces, where they are a regular scourge to the native population."
[Footnote 1: Greger was a Greek, and Horvitz a converted Jew. See later,
p. 244.]
Altogether the growth of anti-Semitism in the Government circles and in
certain layers of Russian society, towards the close of the seventies,
became clearly pronounced. The laurels of Brafman, whose "exposure" of
Judaism had netted him many personal benefits and profitable connections
in the world of officialdom, were apt to stimulate all sorts of
adventurers. In 1876 a new "exposer" of Judaism appeared on the scene, a
man with a stained past, Hippolyte Lutostanski. He was originally a
Roman Catholic priest in the government of Kovno. Having been unfrocked
by the Catholic Consistory "on account of incredible acts of lawlessness
and immoral conduct," including libel, embezzlement, rape committed upon
a Jewess, and similar heroic exploits, he joined the Greek-Orthodox
church, entered the famous Troitza Monastery near Moscow as a monk, and
was admitted as a student to the Ecclesiastical Academy of the same
city.
As a subject for his dissertation for the degree of Candidate [1] the
ignorant monk chose a sensational topic: "Concerning the Use of
Christian Blood by the Jews." It was an unlettered and scurrilous
pamphlet, in which the author, without indicating his sources,
incorporated the contents of an official memorandum on the ritual murder
legend from the time of Nicholas I., supplementing it by distorted
quotations from talmudie and rabbinic literature, without the slightest
knowledge of that literature or the Hebrew language.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 165, n. 1.]
The monastic adventurer, finding himself in financial straits, brought
his manuscript to Rabbi Minor of Moscow, declaring his willingness to
forego the publication of his brochure, which no doubt would cause great
harm to the Jews, for a consideration of 500 rubles ($250). His
blackmail offer was rejected Lutostanski thereupon published his hideous
book in 1876, and travelled with it to St. Petersburg where he managed
to present it to the crown prince, subsequently Alexander III., and to
secure from him a grateful acknowledgement. The book also found the
approval of the Chief of Gendarmerie, [1] who acquired a large number of
copies and distributed them among the secret police all over Russia.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 21, n. 1.]
Encouraged by his success, Lutostanski issued a few years later, in
1879, another libellous work in two volumes, under the title "The Talmud
and the Jews," which exhibits the same crudeness in style and content as
his previous achievement--a typical specimen of a degraded back-yard
literature. The editor of the Hebrew journal _ha-Melitz_, Alexander
Zederbaum, demonstrated clearly that Lutostanski had forged his
quotations, and summoned him to a public disputation, which offer was
wisely declined.
Nevertheless, the agitation of this shameless impostor had a
considerable effect on the highest official spheres in which an ever
stronger drift toward anti-Semitism was clearly noticeable. In 1878 this
anti-Semitic trend gave rise to a new ritual murder trial. The discovery
in the government of Kutais, in the Caucasus, of the body of a little
Gruzinian girl, named Sarra Modebadze, who had disappeared on the eve of
Passover, was deemed a sufficient reason by the judicial authorities to
enter a charge of murder against ten local Jews, although the ritual
character of the murder was not put forward openly in the indictment.
The case was tried before the District Court of Kutais, and the counsel
for the defence succeeded by their brilliant speeches not only to
demolish completely the whole structure of incriminating evidence but
also to deal a death-blow to the sinister ritual legend. The case ended
in 1879 with the acquittal of all the accused.
Withal, the "ritual" agitation left a nasty sediment in the Russian
press. When in 1879 the famous Orientalist Daniel Chwolson, a convert to
Christianity and professor at the Greek-Orthodox Ecclesiastical Seminary
of St. Petersburg, who had written a learned apologetic treatise
"Concerning the Medieval Accusations against the Jews," published a
refutation of the ritual myth under the title "Do the Jews use Christian
Blood?," he was attacked in the _Novoye Vremya_ by the liberal historian
Kostomarov who attempted to disprove the conclusions of the defender of
Judaism. The paper itself, hitherto liberal in its tendency, changed
front about that time, and, steering its course by the prevailing moods
in the leading Government circles, launched a systematic campaign
against the Jews. The anti-Semitic bacilli were floating in the social
atmosphere of Russia and preparing the way for the pogrom epidemic of
the following decade.