LEGISLATIVE POGROMS
1. THE "TEMPORARY RULES" OF MAY 3, 1882
During the interval between the pogrom of Warsaw and that of Balta the
Government was preparing for the Jews a series of legislative pogroms.
In the recesses of the Russian Government offices, which served as the
laboratories of police barbarism, the authorities were busy forging a
chain of legal and administrative restrictions in order to "regulate"
Jewish life in the spirit of complete civil disfranchisement. The
Central Committee on Jewish Affairs, attached to the Ministry of the
Interior, which was called for short "the Jewish Committee" but might
far more appropriately have been called "the Anti-Jewish Committee," was
basing its labors upon the opinions submitted by the gubernatorial
commissions and rearing on this foundation a monstrous structure of
disabilities.
The new project was based upon the following theory: The old Russian
legislation was marked by its hostility to the Jews as a secluded group
of alien faith and race. A departure from this attitude was attempted
during the reign of Alexander II., when the rights of certain categories
of Jews were enlarged, and "a period of toleration was inaugurated." But
subsequent experience proved the inexpediency of this tolerant attitude
towards the Jews, as has been demonstrated by the recent manifestation
"of an anti-Jewish movement abroad" (German anti-Semitism) and "the
popular protest" in Russia itself, where it assumed the form of pogroms.
Since Russia has now chosen the path of a "national policy," it follows
also in regard to the Jewish question that this country cannot but "turn
to its ancient tradition, throw aside the innovations which have proved
useless, and follow vigorously the principles, evolved by the whole past
history of the monarchy, according to which the Jews must be regarded as
aliens," and therefore can lay no claim to full toleration.
This barbarous theory, which brought Russia back to the traditions of
ancient Muscovy, was expounded elaborately in the protocol of the
session of the "anti-Jewish Committee," as a sort of preamble to the
legal project submitted by it.
While engaged in these labors, the members of the committee received the
news of the pogrom in Warsaw, and were greatly heartened by it. They did
not fail to make an entry in the protocol to the effect that the
"disorders" which had taken place in the Kingdom of Poland "where the
Jews enjoy equal rights" (i.e., the right of residence) tend to support
the theory of the "injuriousness" of the Jewish people. Official pens
began to scribble more rapidly, and within a short time, by the spring
of 1882, a project was ready, to be inflicted as a severe punishment
upon the Jews for the atrocities perpetrated upon them. The "conquered
foe," represented by the Jewish population, was to be dislodged from a
large area within, the Pale of Settlement, overcrowded though the latter
had become, by forbidding the Jews to settle anew outside of the cities
and towns, i.e., in the country-side. Those already settled there were
either to be evicted by the verdict of the rural communes[1], or to be
deprived of a livelihood by the prohibition to buy or lease immovable
property and to trade in liquor.
[Footnote 1: "To allow the communes to evict the Jews by a verdict,"
according to the exact wording of the law.]
This project was submitted by Ignatyev to the Committee of Ministers,
accompanied by the suggestion that the new disabilities be enacted not
in due legal procedure (by the Council of State) but in the form of
"Temporary Rules" to be sanctioned in an extra-legal way by the Tzar,
with the end in view "to do away with the aggravated relations between
the Jews and the original population."
However, even the members of the reactionary Committee of Ministers were
embarrassed by Ignatyev's project. The Committee felt that it was
impossible to carry out the expropriation of personal and property
rights on so extensive a scale without the due process of law and that
the permission to be granted to rural communes of expelling the Jews
from the villages was tantamount to leaving the latter to the tender
mercies of the benighted Russian masses, which would thus more than ever
be strengthened, in their conviction that the Jews might be expelled and
assaulted with impunity, so that the relations between the two elements
of the population, instead of improving, would only become more
aggravated. On the other hand, the Committee of Ministers went on record
that it considered it necessary to adopt rigorous measures against the
Jews in order that the peasants should not think "that the Tzar's will
in ridding them of Jewish exploitation was not put into execution."
As a result of these contentions, several concessions were made by
Ignatyev, and the following compromise was reached: The clause ordering
the expulsion of the hundreds of thousands of Jews already settled in
the villages was eliminated, and the prohibition was restricted to the
Jews who wished to settle outside of the towns and townlets _anew_. In
turn, the Committee of Ministers yielded to Ignatyev's demand that the
project should be enacted with every possible dispatch, without
preliminary submission to the Council of State.
Such was the genesis of the famous "Temporary Rules" which were
sanctioned by the Tzar on May 3, 1882. Shorn of all bureaucratic
rhetoric, the new laws may be reduced to the following laconic
provisions:
_First_, to forbid the Jews henceforth to settle anew outside of the
towns and townlets.
_Second_, to suspend the completion of instruments of purchase of
real property and merchandise in the name of Jews outside of the
towns and townlets.
_Third_, to forbid the Jews to carry on business on Sundays and
Christian holidays.
The first two "Rules" contained in their harmless wording a cruel
punitive law which dislodged the Jews from nine-tenths of the territory
hitherto accessible to them, and tended to coop up millions of human
beings within the suffocating confines of the towns and townlets of the
Western region. And yet, notwithstanding its tremendous implications,
the law was passed outside the ordinary course of legal procedure--under
the disguise of "Temporary Rules," which, in spite of their title, have
been enforced with merciless cruelty for more than a generation.
2. ABANDONMENT OF THE POGROM POLICY
After imposing a severe and immediately effective penalty upon Russian
Jewry for having been ruined by the pogroms, the Government suddenly
remembered its duty, and dangled the threat of future penalties before
the prospective instigators of Jewish disorders. On the same fateful
third of May, the Tzar sanctioned the decision of the Committee of
Ministers concerning the necessity of declaring solemnly that "the
Government is firmly resolved to prosecute invariably any attempt at
violence on the person and property of the Jews, who are under the
protection of the general laws." In accordance with this declaration, a
senatorial ukase dated May 10 was sent out to the governors, warning
them that "the heads of the gubernatorial administrations would be held
responsible for the adoption of timely measures looking to the
prevention of the conditions leading to similar disorders and for the
suppression of these disorders at the very outset, and that any
negligence in this regard on the part of the administration and the
police authorities would result in the dismissal from office of those
found guilty." This warning was accompanied by the following confession:
In view of the fact that sad occurrences in the past have made it
evident that the local population, incited by evil-minded persons
from covetous or other motives, has taken part in the disorders, it
is the duty of the gubernatorial administration to make it clear to
the local communes that they are obliged to adopt measures for the
purpose ... of impressing upon the inhabitants the gross criminal
offence implied in willfully perpetrating violent acts against
anybody's person and property.
It would almost seem as if the Government, by promulgating on one and
the same day the "Temporary Rules" against the Jews and the circular
against the pogroms, wished to intimate to the Russian people that,
inasmuch as the Jews were now being exterminated through the agency of
the law, there was no further need to exterminate them on the streets.
The originators of the "Temporary Rules" did not seem to realize that
the latter were nothing but a variation of those "violent acts against
person and property," from which the street mob was warned to refrain,
for the loss of the freedom of movement is violence against the person,
and the denial of the right of purchasing real estate is violence
against property. Even the Russian press, though held at that time in
the grip of censorship, could not help commenting on the fact that the
effect of the official circular against the pogroms had been greatly
weakened, by the simultaneous promulgation of the "Temporary Rules."
It would seem as if the terrible atrocities at Balta had made the
highest Government spheres realize that the previous policy of
connivance at the pogroms, which had been practised for a whole year,
could not but disgrace Russia in the eyes of the world and undermine
public order in Russia itself. As soon as this was realized, the
luckless Minister, who had been the pilot of Russian politics throughout
that terrible year, was bound to disappear from the scene. On May 30,
Count Ignatyev was made to resign, and Count Demetrius Tolstoi was
appointed Minister of the Interior.
Tolstoi was a grim reactionary and a champion of autocracy and police
power, but he was at the same time an enemy of all manifestations of mob
rule which tended to undermine the authority of the State. A few days
after his appointment the new Minister issued a circular in which he
reiterated the recent declaration of his predecessor concerning the
"resolve of the Government to prosecute every kind of violence against
the Jews," announcing emphatically that "any manifestation of disorders
would unavoidably result in the immediate prosecution of all official
persons who are in duty bound to concern themselves with the prevention
of disorders."
This energetic pronouncement of the Government had a magic effect. All
provincial administrators realized that the central Government of St.
Petersburg had ceased to trifle with the promoters of the pogroms, and
the pogrom epidemic was at an end. Beginning with June, 1882, the
pogroms assumed more and more a sporadic character. Here and there
sparks of the old conflagration would flare up again, but only to die
out quickly. In the course of the next twenty years, until the Kishinev
massacre of 1903, no more than about ten pogroms of any consequence may
be enumerated, and these disorders were all isolated movements, with a
purely local coloring, and without the earmarks of a common organization
or the force of an epidemic, such as characterized the pogrom campaigns
of 1881, or those of 1903-1905. This is an additional proof for the
contention that systematic pogroms in Russia are impossible as long as
the central Government and the local authorities are honestly and firmly
set against them.
The stringent measures adopted by Tolstoi were soon reflected in the
legal trials arising out of the pogroms. Formerly, the local authorities
refrained as a rule from putting the rioters on trial lest their
testimony might implicate the local administration, and even when action
was finally brought against them, the culprits mostly escaped with
slight penalties, such as imprisonment for a few months. But after the
declaration of the Government in June the courts adopted a more rigorous
attitude towards the rioters. [1] In the summer of 1882, a number of
cases arising out of the pogroms at Balta and in other cities were tried
in the courts. The penalties imposed by the courts were frequently
severe, though fully deserved, such as deportation and confinement at
hard labor, drafting into penal military companies, etc. In one case,
two soldiers, having been convicted of pillage and murder, were
court-martialled and sentenced to death. When the sentence was submitted
for ratification to Drenteln, governor-general of Kiev, the rabbi of
Balta, acting on behalf of the local Jewish community, betook himself to
Kiev to support the culprits in their petition for pardon. It was
strange to listen to this appeal for mercy on behalf of criminals guilty
of violence and murder, coming from the camp of their victims, from the
demolished homes which still resounded with the moans of the wounded and
with the weeping over lost lives and dishonored women. One finds it
difficult to believe that this appeal for mercy was due entirely to an
impulse of forgiveness. Associated with it was probably the apprehension
that the death of the murderers would be avenged by their like-minded
accomplices who were still at liberty.
[Footnote 1: This, by the way, was not always the case. The court of
Chernigov, which was compelled to bring in a verdict of guilty against
the perpetrators of the pogrom in the townlet of Karpovitchin the same
government, decided to recommend the culprits to the clemency of the
superior authorities, in view of the dissatisfaction of the people with
the "exploitation" of the Jews. There were many instances of these
anti-Jewish political manifestations in the law-courts.]
The Jews of Balta were soon to learn that their humility was
ill-requited by the highly-placed promoters of the riots. In the
beginning of August, Governor-General Drenteln came to Balta. He was
exceedingly irritated, not only on account of the recent circular of
Tolstoi which implied a personal threat against him as one who had
connived at a number of pogroms within his dominions, but also because
of the steps taken by the representatives of the Balta Jewish community
at St. Petersburg in the direction of exposing the spiritual fathers of
the local riots. Having arrived in the sorely stricken city, the head of
the province, who _ex officio_ should have conveyed his expression of
sympathy to the sufferers, summoned the rabbi and the leaders of the
Jewish community, and, in the presence of his official staff, treated
them to a speech full of venomous hatred. He told them that by their
actions the Jews had "armed everybody against themselves," that they
were universally hated, that "they lived nowhere as happily as in
Russia," and that the deputation they had sent to St. Petersburg for the
purpose of presenting their complaints and "slandering the city
authorities and representatives as if they had incited the tumultuous
mob against the Jews" had been of no avail. In conclusion, he branded
the petition of the Balta community for a commutation of the death
sentence passed upon the rioters as an act of hypocrisy, adding
impressively that "these persons have been pardoned irrespective of the
requests of the Jews."
The speech of the bureaucratic Jew-baiter, whose proper place was in the
dock, side by side with the convicted murderers, produced a terrible
panic in the whole region of Kiev. The militant organ of the Jewish
press, the _Voskhod_, properly remarked:
After the speech of General-Adjutant Drenteln, our confidence in the
impossibility of a repetition of the pogroms has been decidedly
shaken. Of what avail can ministerial circulars be when the highest
administrators on the spot paralyze their actions in public by the
living word?
The apprehensions voiced by the Jewish organ were fortunately unfounded.
True, the Minister Tolstoi was not able to punish the criminal harangue
of the savage governor-general who had powerful connections at the
Russian court. But the firm resolution of the central Government to hold
the heads of the administration to account for their connivance at
pogroms had the desired effect. All that the snarling dogs could do was
to bark.
3. DISABILITIES AND EMIGRATION
The pogrom machinery was thus stopped by a word of command from St.
Petersburg. As a counterbalance, the machinery for the manufacture of
Jewish disabilities continued in full operation. The "Temporary Rules"
of May third established a system of legal persecutions which were
directed against the Jews on the ground of their "economic
injuriousness," The fact that the Jewish population was in many regards
outside the operation of the general laws of Russia opened up a wide
field for the grossest forms of arbitrariness and lawlessness. At one
stroke, all the exits from the overcrowded cities into the villages
within the Pale of Settlement were tightly closed. All branches of
industry connected with Jewish land ownership outside the cities were
curtailed and in some places entirely cut off. In many villages the
right bestowed on the rural communes of ostracising "vicious members" by
a special verdict [1] was used as a weapon to expel those Jews who had
long been settled there.
[Footnote 1: The official term applied to the resolutions passed by the
village communes. Compare p. 310.]
It will be remembered that Ignatyev had proposed to encourage the
peasants officially in the use of this weapon against the Jews, and that
the Committee of Ministers had rejected his proposal. There were now
administrators who did the same thing unofficially. Prompted by selfish
motives, the local _Kulaks_ [1] or "bosses," from among the Russian
tradesmen, acting in conjunction with the rural elders, would convene
peasant assemblies which were treated to liberal doses of alcohol. The
intoxicated, half-illiterate _moujiks_ would sign a "verdict" demanding
the expulsion of the Jews from their village; the verdict would be
promptly confirmed by the governors and would immediately become law.
Such expulsions were particularly frequent in the governments under the
jurisdiction of Drenteln, governor-general of Kiev, and no one doubted
but that this ferocious Jew-baiter had passed the word to that effect
throughout his dominions.
[Footnote 1: Literally "Fists."]
The economic misery within the Pale drove a number of Jews into the
Russian interior, but here they were met by the whip of the law, made
doubly painful by the scorpions of administrative caprice. Wholesale
expulsions of Jews took place in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov,
and other forbidden centers. The effect of these expulsions upon the
commercial life of the country was so disastrous that the big Russian
merchants of Moscow and Kharkov appealed to the Government to relax the
restrictions surrounding the visits of Jews to these cities.
The civil authorities were now joined by the military powers in hounding
the Jews. There were in the Russian army a large number of Jewish
physicians, many of whom had distinguished themselves during the
preceding Russo-Turkish war. The reactionary Government at the helm of
Russian affairs could not tolerate the sight of a Jewish physician
exercising the rights of an army officer which were otherwise utterly
utterly unattainable for a Jewish soldier. Accordingly, the Minister of
War, Vannovski, issued a rescript dated April 10, 1882, to the following
effect:
_First_, to limit the number of Jewish physicians and _feldshers[1]_
in the Military Department to five per cent of the general number of
medical men.
_Second_, to stop appointing Jews on the medical service in the
military districts of Western Russia, and to transfer the surplus
over and above five per cent into the Eastern districts.
_Third_, to appoint Jewish physicians only in those contingents of
the army in which the budget calls for at least two physicians, with
the proviso that the second physician must be a Christian.
[Footnote 1: See p. 167, n. 2.]
The reason for these provisions was stated in a most offensive form:
It is necessary to stop the constant growth of the number of
physicians of the Mosaic persuasion in the Military Department, in
view of their deficient conscientiousness in discharging their
duties and their unfavorable influence upon the sanitary service in
the army.
This revolting affront had the effect that many Jewish physicians handed
in their resignations immediately. The resignation of one of these
physicians, the well-known novelist Yaroshevski, was couched in such
emphatic terms, and parried the moral blow directed at the Jewish
professional men with such dignity that the Minister of War deemed it
necessary to put the author on trial. Among other things, Yaroshevski
wrote:
So long as the aspersions cast upon the Jewish physicians so
pitilessly are not removed, every superfluous minute spent by them
in serving this Department will merely add to their disgrace. In the
name of their human dignity, they have no right to remain there
where they are held in abhorrence.
Under these circumstances it seemed quite natural that the tendency
toward emigration, which had called forth a number of emigration
societies as far back as the beginning of 1882 [1], took an ever
stronger hold upon the Jewish population of Russia. The disastrous
consequences of the resolution adopted by the conference of notables in
St. Petersburg [2] were now manifest. By rejecting the formation of a
central agency for regulating the emigration, the conference had
abandoned the movement to the blind elemental forces, and a catastrophe
was bound to follow. The pogrom at Balta called forth a new outburst of
the emigration panic, and in the summer of 1882 some twenty thousand
Jewish refugees were again huddled together in the Galician border-town
of Brody. They were without means for continuing their journey to
America, having come to Brody in the hope of receiving help from the
Jewish societies of Western Europe. The relief committees established in
the principal cities of Europe were busily engaged in "evacuating" Brody
of this destitute mass of fugitives. In the course of the summer and
autumn this task was successfully accomplished. A large number of
emigrants were dispatched to the United States, and the rest were
dispersed over the various centers of Western Europe.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 297 et seq.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 307.]
Aside from the highway of American emigration went, along a tiny
parallel path, the Jewish emigration to Palestine. The Palestinian
movement which had shortly before come into being [1] attracted many
enthusiasts from among the Jewish youth. In the spring of 1882, a
society of Jewish young men, consisting mostly of university students,
was formed in Kharkov under the name _Bilu_, from the initial letters of
their Hebrew motto, _Bet Ya'akob leku we-nelka_"O house of Jacob, come
ye, and let us go." [2] The aim of the society was to establish a model
agricultural settlement in Palestine and to carry on a wide-spread
propaganda for the idea of colonizing the ancient homeland of the Jews.
As a result of this propaganda, several hundred Jews in various parts of
Russia joined the _Bilu_ society. Of these only a few dozen pioneers
left for Palestine --between June and July of 1882.
[Footnote 1: See later, p. 268.]
[Footnote 2: From Isa. 2.5.]
At first, the leaders of the organization attempted to enter into
negotiations with the Turkish Government, with a view to obtaining from
it a large tract of land for colonizing purposes, but the negotiations
fell through. The handful of pioneers were obliged to work in the
agricultural settlements near Jaffa, in _Mikweh Israel_, a foundation of
the _Alliance Israélite_ in Paris, and in the colony _Rishon le-Zion_,
which had been recently established by private initiative. The youthful
idealists had to endure many hardships in an unaccustomed environment
and in a branch of endeavor entirely alien to them. A considerable part
of the pioneers were soon forced to give up the struggle and make way
for the new settlers who were less intelligent perhaps but physically
better fitted for their task. The foundations of Palestinian
colonization had been laid, though within exceedingly narrow limits, and
the very idea of the national restoration of the Jewish people in
Palestine was then as it was later a much greater social factor in
Jewish life than the practical colonization of a country which could
only absorb an insignificant number of laborers. At those moments, when
the Russian horrors made life unbearable, the eyes of many sufferers
were turned Eastward, towards the tiny strip of land on the shores of
the Mediterranean, where the dream of a new life upon the resuscitated
ruins of gray antiquity held out the promise of fulfilment.
A contemporary writer, in surveying recent events in the Russian valley
of tears, makes the following observations:
Jewish life during the latter part of 1882 has assumed a
monotonously gloomy, oppressively dull aspect True, the streets are
no longer full of whirling feathers from torn bedding; the
window-panes no longer crash through the streets. The thunder and
lightning which were recently filling the air and gladdening the
hearts of the Greek-Orthodox people are no more. But have the Jews
actually gained by the change from the illegal persecutions [in the
form of pogroms] to the legal persecutions of the third of May?
Maltreated, plundered, reduced to beggary, put to shame, slandered,
and dispirited, the Jews have been cast out of the community of
human beings. Their destitution, amounting to beggary, has been
firmly established and definitely affixed to them. Gloomy darkness,
without a ray of light, has descended upon that bewitched and narrow
world in which this unhappy tribe has been languishing so long,
gasping for breath in the suffocating atmosphere of poverty and
contempt. Will this go on for a long time? Will the light of day
break at last?