JUDAEOPHOBIA TRIUMPHANT
1. INTENSIFIED REACTION
The poisonous Judaeophobia bacilli seemed to thrive more than ever in
the highest Government circles of St. Petersburg. However, not only the
hatred against the Jews but also the fury of general political reaction
became more rabid than ever after the "miraculous escape" of the
imperial family in the railroad accident near Borki on October 17, 1888.
[1] Amidst the ecclesiastic and mystic haze with which Pobyedonostzev
and his associates managed to veil this episode the conviction became
deeply ingrained in the mind of the Tzar that it was the finger of God
which pointed to him the way in which Russia might be saved from
"Western" reforms and brought back into the fold of traditional Russian
orthodoxy. This conviction of Alexander III. led to the counter-reforms
which marked the concluding years of his reign, having for their purpose
the strengthening of the police and Church régime in Russia, such as the
curtailment of rural and urban self-government, the increase of the
power of the nobility and clergy, the institution of Zemstvo chiefs, [2]
and the multiplication of Greek-Orthodox parochial schools at the
expense of secular schools. The same influences also stimulated the
luxurious growth of Judaeophobia which from now on assumed in the
highest Government circles a most malignant character. A manifestation
of this frame of mind may be found in the words of the Tzar which he
penned on the margin of a report submitted to him in 1890 by a high
official, describing the sufferings of the Jews and pleading for the
necessity of stopping the policy of oppression: "_But we must not forget
that it was the Jews who crucified our Lord and spilled his priceless
blood_." Representatives of the court clergy publicly preached that a
Christian ought not to cultivate friendly relations with a Jew, since it
was the command of the gospel "to hate the murderers of the Savior." The
Ministry of the Interior, under the direction of two fanatic
reactionaries, Durnovo and Plehve, [3] set on foot all the inquisitorial
contrivances of the Police Department, of which both these officials had
formerly been the chiefs.
[Footnote 1: Borki is a village in the government of Kherson. Of the
fifteen cars of the imperial train only five remained intact.
Fifty-eight persons were injured, twenty-one fatally. The members of the
imperial family were saved, although their car had been completely
wrecked.
The following quotation from Harold Frederic, _The New Exodus_, p. 168
et seq., is of interest in this connection: "It was reported about that
the Tzar regarded the escape alive of himself and family from the
terrible railway accident at Borki as the direct and miraculous
intervention of Providence. The facts were that the imperial train was
being driven at the rate of ninety versts an hour over a road calculated
to withstand at the utmost a speed of thirty-five versts; that the
engineer humbly warned the Tzar of the danger, and was gruffly ordered
to go still faster if possible, and that the miracle would have been the
avoidance of calamity."]
[Footnote 2: On the Zemstvos compare p. 173, n. 1. The reactionary law
of June 12, 1890 (see later, p. 358 et seq.) puts in place of the
executives formerly elected by the people the "Zemstvo chiefs,"
officials appointed from among the landed proprietors.]
[Footnote 3: Durnovo became Minister of the Interior in 1889, after the
demise of Tolstoi; Plehve was assistant-minister.]
The press was either tamed or used as a tool of the governmental
policies. The most widely read press organs of the capital, with the
exception of the moderately liberal _Novosti_ ("The News") which managed
to survive the shipwreck of the liberal press, became either openly or
secretly the official mouthpieces of the Government. The venal _Novoye
Vremya,_ which the Russian satirist Shchedrin had branded as "the
sewer," embarked, towards the end of the eighties, on the noble
enterprise of hunting down the Jews with a zeal which was clear evidence
of a higher demand for Judaeophobia in the official world. There was no
accusation, however hideous, which Suvorin's paper, steered
simultaneously by the Holy Synod and by the Police Department, failed to
hurl in the face of the Jews. As an organ generally reflecting the views
of the Government, the _Novoye Vremya_ served at that time as a source
of political information for all dignitaries and officials. The
ministers, governors and the vast army of subordinate officials, who
wished to ascertain the political course at a given moment, consulted
this "well-informed" daily, which, as far as the Jewish question was
concerned, pursued but one aim: to make the life of the Jews in Russia
unbearable. Apart from the _Novoye Vremya_, which was read by the Tzar
himself, the work of Jew-baiting was also carried on with considerable
zeal by the Russian weekly _Grazhdanin_ ("The Citizen"), whose editor,
Count Meshcherski, enjoyed not only the personal favor of Alexander III.
but also a substantial Government subsidy. These metropolitan organs of
publicity gave the tone to the whole official and semi-official press in
the provinces, and the public opinion of Russia was systematically
poisoned by the venom of Judaeophobia.
When the Pahlen Commission was discharged, the Tzar having "attached
himself to the opinion of the minority," [1] the Government had no
difficulty in finding a few kind-hearted officials who were eager to
carry the project framed by this reactionary minority into effect. The
project itself, which had been elaborated in the Ministry of the
Interior under the direction of Plehve, the sinister Chief of Police,
was guarded with great secrecy, as if it concerned a plan of military
operations against a belligerent Power. But the secret leaked out very
soon. The Minister had sent out copies of the project to the
governors-general, soliciting their opinions, and ere long copies of the
project were circulating in London, Paris, and Vienna. In the spring of
1890, Russia and Western Europe were filled with alarming rumors
concerning an enactment of some "forty clauses," which was designed to
curtail the commercial activities of the Jews, to increase the rigor of
the "Temporary Rules" within the Pale, and restrict the privileges
conferred upon several categories of Jews outside of it, to establish
medieval Jewish ghettos in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev, and similar
measures. The foreign press made a terrible outcry against these
contemplated new acts of barbarism.
[Footnote 1: See p. 370.]
The voice of protest was particularly strong in England. The London
_Times_ assailed in violent terms the reactionary policies of Russia,
and a special organ, called _Darkest Russia_, was published for this
purpose by Russian political refugees in England. The Russian Government
denied these rumors through its diplomatic channels, though at the very
same time the well-informed _Novoye Vremya_ and _Grazhdanin_ were not
barred from printing news items concerning the projected disabilities or
from recommending ferocious measures against the Jews for the purpose
"of removing them from all branches of labor."
This comedy was well understood abroad. At the end of July and in the
beginning of August interpellations were introduced in both Houses of
the English Parliament, as to whether Her Majesty's Government found it
possible to make diplomatic representations in defence of the persecuted
Russian Jews for whom England would have to provide, were they to arrive
there in large masses. Premier Salisbury, in the House of Lords, and
Fergusson, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the
House of Commons, replied that "these proceedings, which, if rightly
reported to us, are deeply to be regretted, concern the internal affairs
of the Russian Empire, and do not admit of any interference on the part
of Her Majesty's Government." [1] When shortly afterwards preparations
were set on foot for calling a protest meeting in London, the Russian
Government hastened to announce through the British ambassador in St.
Petersburg that no new measures against the Jews were in contemplation,
and the meeting was called off. Rumor had it that the Lord Mayor of
London, Henry Isaacs, who was a Jew, did not approve of this meeting,
over which, according to the English custom, he would have to preside.
The action of the Lord Mayor may have been "tactful," but is was
certainly not free from an admixture of timidity.
[Footnote 1: See _The Jewish Chronicle_ of August 8, 1890, p. 18b.]
2. CONTINUED HARASSING
While anxiously endeavoring to appease public opinion abroad, the
Russian Government at home did all it could to keep the Jews in an
agitated state of mind. The legal drafts and the circulars which had
been sent out secretly by the central Government in St. Petersburg
elicited the liveliest sympathy on the part of the provincial
administrators. Not satisfied with signifying to the Ministry their
approval of the contemplated disabilities, many officials of high rank
began to display openly their bitter hatred of the Jews.
At one and the same time, during the months of June, July, and August of
1890, the heads of various local provincial administrations published
circulars calling the attention of the police to the "audacious conduct"
of the Jews who, on meeting Russian officials, failed to take off their
hats by way of greeting. The governor of Moghilev instructed the police
of his province to impress the local Jewish population with the
necessity of "polite manners," in the sense of a more reverent attitude
towards the representatives of Russian authority. In compliance with
this order, the district chiefs of police compelled the rabbis to
inculcate their flock in the synagogues with reverence for Russian
officialdom. In Mstislavl, a town in the government of Moghilev, the
president of the nobility [1] assembled the leading members of the
Jewish community, and cautioned them that those Jews who would fail to
comply with the governor's circular would be subjected to a public
whipping by the police. The governor of Odessa, the well-known despot
Zelenoy, issued a police ordinance for the purpose of "curbing the
impudence displayed by the Jews in places of public gathering and
particularly in the suburban trolley cars" where they do not give up
their seats and altogether show disrespect towards "persons of advanced
age or those wearing a uniform, testifying to their high position." Even
more brutal was the conduct of the governor-general of Vilna, Kakhanov,
who, despite his high rank, allowed himself, in replying to the speech
of welcome of a Jewish deputation, to animadvert not only on Jewish
"clannishness" but also on the "licentiousness" of the Jewish
population, manifesting itself in congregating on the streets, and
similar grave crimes.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 303.]
The simultaneous occurrence of this sort of official actions in widely
separated places point to a common source, probably to some secret
instructions from St. Petersburg. It would seem, however, that the
provincial henchmen of the central Government had overreached themselves
in their eagerness to carry out the behest of "curbing the Jews." The
pettiness of their demands, which, moreover, were illegal, such as the
order to take off the hats before the officials, or to give up the seats
in the trolley cars, merely served to ridicule the representatives of
Russian officialdom, giving frequent rise to tragi-comic conflicts in
public and to utterances of indignation in the press. The public
pronouncements of these genteel _chinovniks_ who were anxious to train
the Jewish masses in the fear of Russian bureaucracy and inculcate in
them polite manners aroused the attention both of the Russian and the
foreign press. It was universally felt that these farcical performances
of uncouth administrators were only the manifestations of a bottomless
hatred, of a morbid desire to insult and to humble the Jews, and that
these administrators were capable at any moment to proceed from
moralizing to more tangible forms of ill-treatment. This danger
intensified the state of alarm.
While making preparations for storming the citadel of Russian Jewry, the
Government took good care to keep it meanwhile in its normal state of
siege. The resourcefulness of the administration brought the _technique_
of repression to perfection. The officials were no longer content with
inventing cunning devices for expelling old Jewish residents from the
villages. [1] They now made endeavors to reduce even the area of the
_urban_ Pale in which the Jews were huddled together, panting for
breath. In 1890, the provincial authorities, acting evidently on a
signal from above, began to change numerous little townlets into
villages, which, as rural settlements, would be closed to the Jews. As a
result, all the Jews who had settled in these localities after the
issuance of the "Temporary Rules" of May 3, 1882, were now expelled, and
even the older residents who were exempt from the operation of the May
laws shared the same fate unless they were able (which in very many
cases they were not) to produce documentary evidence that they had lived
there prior to 1882. Simultaneously a new attempt was made to drive the
Jews from the forbidden fifty verst zone along the Western border of the
Empire, particularly in Bessarabia. These expulsions had the effect of
filling the already over-crowded cities of the Pale with many more
thousands of ruined people.
[Footnote 1: There are cases on record when Jewish soldiers who returned
home after the completion of their term of service were refused
admission to their villages, on the ground that they were "new
settlers."]
At the same time the life of the outlawed Jews was made unbearable in
the cities outside the Pale, particularly in the large centers, such as
Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. The governor-general of Kiev
prohibited the wives of Jewish artisans who were legally entitled to
residence in that city to sell eatables in the market, on the technical
ground that under the law artisans could only trade in the articles of
their own manufacture, thus robbing the poor Jewish workman of the
miserable pittance which his wife was anxious to contribute by her
honest labor towards the maintenance of the family.
A great _political_ blow for the Jews was the clause in the new
reactionary "Statute Concerning the Zemstvo Organizations" issued on
June 12, 1890, [1] under which the Jews, though paying the local taxes,
were completely barred from participating in the election of deputies to
the organization of local self-government. This clause was inserted in
the legal draft by the three shining lights of the political inquisition
active at that time, Pobyedonostzev, Durnovo, and Plehve. They justified
this restriction on the following grounds: the object of the new law is
to transform local self-government into a state administration and to
strengthen in the former the influence of the central Government at the
expense of the local Government; hence the Jews, "being altogether an
element hostile to Government," are not fit to participate in the
Zemstvo administration. The Council of State agreed with this
bureaucratic motivation, and the humiliating clause passed into law.
[Footnote 1: The new law invalidated to a large extent the liberties
granted to the Zemstvos by Alexander II. in 1864 (compare p. 173) by
placing them under state control.]
While a large part of the Russian public and of the Russian press had
succumbed to the prevailing tendencies under the high pressure of the
anti-Semitic atmosphere, the progressive elements of the Russian
_intelligenzia_ were gradually aroused to a feeling of protest. Vladimir
Solovyov, "the Christian philosopher," a friend of the Jewish people,
who had familiarized himself thoroughly with its history and literature,
conceived the idea of issuing a public protest against the anti-Semitic
movement in the "Russian Press," [1] to be signed by the most prominent
Russian writers and other well-known men. During the months of May and
June, 1890, he succeeded under great difficulties to collect for his
protest sixty-six signatures in Moscow and over fifty signatures in St.
Petersburg, including those of Leo Tolstoi, Vladimir Korolenko, and
other literary celebrities. Despite its mild tone, the protest which had
been framed by Solovyov [2] was barred from publication by the Russian
censor. Professor Ilovaiski, of Moscow, a historian of doubtful
reputation, but a hide-bound Jew-baiter, had informed the authorities of
St. Petersburg of the attempt to collect signatures in Moscow for a
"pro-Jewish petition." As a result, all newspapers received orders from
the Russian Press Department to refuse their columns to any collective
pronouncements touching the Jewish question.
[Footnote 1: The latter expression was a euphemism designating the
Russian Government and its reactionary henchmen in the press. The
severity of the police made this evasion necessary.]
[Footnote 2: The following extracts from this meek appeal deserve to be
quoted: "The movement against the Jews which is propagated by the
Russian press represents an unprecedented violation of the most
fundamental demands of righteousness and humanity. We consider it our
duty to recall these elementary demands to the mind of the Russian
public.... In all nationalities there are bad and ill-minded persons but
there is not, and cannot be, any bad and ill-minded nationality, for
this would abrogate the moral responsibility of the individual.... It is
unjust to make the Jews responsible for those phenomena in their lives
which are the result of thousands of years of persecution in Europe and
of the abnormal conditions in which this people has been placed.... The
fact of belonging to a Semitic tribe and professing the Mosaic creed is
nothing prejudicial and cannot of itself serve as a basis for an
exceptional civil position of the Jews, as compared with the Russian
subjects of other nationalities and denominations.... The recognition
and application of these simple truths is important and is first of all
necessary for ourselves. The increased endeavor to kindle national and
religious hatred, which is so contradictory to the spirit of
Christianity and suppresses the feelings of justice and humaneness, is
bound to demoralize society at its very root and bring about a state of
moral anarchy, particularly so in view of the decline of humanitarian
ideas and the weakness of the principle of justice already noticeable in
our life. For this reason, acting from the mere instinct of national
self-preservation, we must emphatically condemn the anti-Semitic
movement not only as immoral in itself but also as extremely dangerous
for the future of Russia."]
Solovyov addressed an impassioned appeal to Alexander III., but received
through one of the Ministers the impressive advice to refrain from
raising a cry on behalf of the Jews, under pain of administrative
penalties. In these circumstances, the plan of a public protest had to
be abandoned. Instead, the following device was resorted to as a
makeshift. Solovyov's teacher of Jewish literature, F. Goetz, was
publishing an apology of Judaism under the title "A Word from the
Prisoner at the Bar." Solovyov wrote a preface to this little volume,
and turned over to its author for publication the letters of Tolstoi and
Korolenko in the defence of the Jews. No sooner had the book left the
press than it was confiscated by the censor, and, in spite of all
petitions, the entire edition of this innocent apology was thrown into
the flames. In this way the Russian Government succeeded in shutting the
mouths of the few defenders of Judaism, while according unrestricted
liberty of speech to its ferocious assailants.
3. THE GUILDHALL MEETING IN LONDON
The cry of indignation against Jewish oppression, which had been
smothered in Russia, could not be stifled abroad. The Jews of England
took the initiative in this matter. On November 5, 1890, the London
_Times_ published a letter from N.S. Joseph, honorary secretary to the
Russo-Jewish Committee in London, passionately appealing to the public
men of England to intercede on behalf of his persecuted coreligionists.
The writer of the letter called attention to the fact that, while the
Russian Government was officially denying that it was contemplating new
restrictions against the Jews, it was at the same time applying the
former restrictions on so comprehensive a scale and with such
extraordinary cruelty that the Jews in the Pale of Settlement were like
a doomed prisoner in a cell with its opposite walls gradually
approaching, contracting by slow degrees his breathing space, till they
at last immure him in a living tomb.
The writer concludes his appeal in these terms:
It may seem a sorry jest but the Russian law, in very truth, now
declares: The Jew may live here only and shall not live there; if he
lives here he must remain here; but wherever he lives he shall not
live--he shall not have the means of living. This is the operation
of the law as it stands, without any new edict. This is the sentence
of death that silently, insidiously, and in the veiled language of
obscurely worded laws has been pronounced against hundreds of
thousands of human beings.... Shall civilized Europe, shall the
Christianity of England behold this slow torture and bloodless
massacre, and be silent?
The appeal of the Russo-Jewish Committee and the new gloomy tidings from
Russia published by the _Times_ decided a number of prominent Englishmen
to call the protest meeting which had been postponed half a year
previously. Eighty-three foremost representatives of English society
addressed a letter to the Lord Mayor of London calling upon him to
convene such a meeting. The office of Lord Mayor at that time was
occupied by Joseph Savory, a Christian, who did not share the
susceptibilities which had troubled his Jewish predecessor. Immediately
on assuming office, Savory gave his consent to the holding of the
meeting.
On December 10, 1890, the meeting was held in the magnificent Guildhall,
belonging to the City of London, and was attended by more than 2000
people. The Lord Mayor who presided over the gathering endeavored in his
introductory remarks to soften the bitterness of the protest for the
benefit of official Russia.
As I hear--he said--the Emperor of Russia is a good husband and a
tender father, and I cannot but think that such a man must
necessarily be kindly disposed to all his subjects. On his Majesty
the Emperor of Russia the hopes of the Russian Jews are at the
present moment fixed. He can by one stroke of his pen annul those
laws which now press so grievously upon them and he can thus give a
happy life to those Jewish subjects of his who now can hardly be
said to live at all.
In conclusion, the Lord Mayor expressed the wish that Alexander III. may
become the "emancipator" of the Russian Jews, just as his father
Alexander II. had been the emancipator of the Russian serfs.
Cardinal Manning, the warm-hearted champion of Jewish emancipation, who
was prevented by illness from being present, sent a long letter which
was read to the meeting. The argument against interfering with the inner
politics of a foreign country, the cardinal wrote, had found its first
expression in Cain's question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" There is a
united Jewish race scattered all over the world, and the pain inflicted
upon it in Russia is felt by the Jewish race in England. It is wrong to
keep silent when we see six million men reduced to the level of
criminals, particularly when they belong to a race "with a sacred
history of nearly four thousand years."
The speakers who followed the Lord Mayor pictured in vivid colors the
political and civil bondage of Russian Jewry.
The first speaker, the Duke of Westminster, after recounting the
sufferings of Russian Jewry, moved the adoption of the protest
resolution, notwithstanding the fact that the "great protest of 1882"
(at the Mansion House meeting)[1] had brought no results. "We read in
the history of the Jewish race that 'God hardened the heart of Pharaoh
so that he would not let the people of Israel go'; but deliverance came
at last by the hand of Moses."
[Footnote 1: See p. 288 et seq.]
After brilliant speeches by the Bishop of Ripon, the Earl of Meath, and
others, the following resolution was adopted:
That in the opinion of this meeting the renewed sufferings of the
Jews in Russia from the operation of severe and exceptional edicts
and disabilities are deeply to be deplored, and that in this last
decade of the nineteenth century religious liberty is a principle
which should be recognized by every Christian community as among the
natural human rights.
At the same time a second resolution was adopted to the following
effect:
That a suitable memorial be addressed to his Imperial Majesty the
Emperor of all the Russias, respectfully praying his Majesty to
repeal all the exceptional and restrictive laws and disabilities
which afflict his Jewish subjects; and begging his Majesty to confer
upon them equal rights with those enjoyed by the rest of his
Majesty's subjects; and that the said memorial be signed by the
Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, in the name of the citizens of London,
and be transmitted by his Lordship to his Majesty.
A few extracts from the memorandum may be quoted by way of illustrating
the character of this remarkable appeal to the Russian emperor:
We, the citizens of London, respectfully approach your Majesty and
humbly beg your gracious leave to plead the cause of the afflicted.
Cries of distress have reached us from thousands of suffering
Israelites in your vast empire; and we Englishmen, with pity in our
souls for all who suffer, turn to your Majesty to implore for them
your Sovereign aid and clemency.
Five millions of your Majesty's subjects groan beneath the yoke of
exceptional and restrictive laws. Remnants of a race, whence all
religion sprung--ours and yours, and every creed on earth that owns
one God--men who cling with all devotion to their ancient faith and
forms of worship, these Hebrews are in your empire subject to such
laws that under them they cannot live and thrive....
Pent up in narrow bounds within your Majesty's wide empire, and even
within those bounds forced to reside chiefly in towns that reek and
overflow with every form of poverty and wretchedness; forbidden all
free movement; hedged in every enterprise by restrictive laws;
forbidden tenure of land, or all concern in land, their means of
livelihood have become so cramped as to render life for them
well-nigh impossible.
Nor are they cramped alone in space and action. The higher education
is denied them, except in limits far below the due proportion of
their needs and aspirations. They may not freely exercise
professions, like other subjects of your Majesty, nor may they gain
promotion in the Army, however great their merit and their
valour....
Sire! we who have learnt to tolerate all creeds, deeming it a
principle of true religion to permit religious liberty, we beseech
your Majesty to repeal those laws that afflict these Israelites.
Give them the blessing of equality! In every land where Jews have
equal rights, the nation prospers. We pray you, then, annul those
special laws and disabilities that crush and cow your Hebrew
subjects....
Sire! your Royal Sister, our Empress Queen (whom God preserve!)
bases her throne upon her people's love, making their happiness her
own. So may your Majesty gain from your subjects' love all strength
and happiness, making your mighty empire mightier still, rendering
your Throne firm and impregnable, reaping new blessings for your
House and Home.
The memorial was signed by Savory, who was Lord Mayor at that time, and
forwarded by him to St. Petersburg. It was accompanied by a letter,
dated December 24, from the Lord Mayor to Lieutenant-General de Richter,
aide-de-camp of the Tzar for the reception of petitions, with the
request to transmit the document to the emperor.
It is almost unnecessary to add that this touching appeal for justice by
the citizens of London failed to receive a direct reply. There were
rumors that the London petition threw the Tzar into a fury, and the
future court annalist of Russia will probably tell of the scene that
took place in the imperial palace when this document was read. An
indirect reply came through the cringing official press. The mouthpiece
of the Russian Government abroad, the newspaper _Le Nord_ in Brussels,
which was especially engaged in the task of whitewashing the black
politics of its employers, published an article under the heading "A
Last Word concerning Semitism," in which the rancor of the highest
Government circles in Russia found undisguised expression:
The Semites--quoth the semi-official organ with an impudent
disregard of truth--have never yet had such an easy life in Russia
as they have at the present time, and yet they have never complained
so bitterly. There is a reason for it. It is a peculiarity of
Semitism: a Semite is never satisfied with anything; the more you
give him the more he wishes to have.
In the evident desire to fool its readers, _Le Nord_ declared that the
protesters at the London meeting might have saved themselves the trouble
of demanding "religious liberty" for the Jews--which in the London
petition was understood, of course, to imply civil liberty for the
professors of Judaism--since nobody in Russia restricted the Jews in
their worship. Nor did the civil disabilities weigh heavily upon the
Jews. On the contrary, they felt so happy in Russia that even the Jewish
emigrants in America dreamt of returning to their homeland.
4. THE PROTEST OF AMERICA
The same attitude of double-dealing was adopted by the smooth-tongued
Russian diplomats toward the Government of the United States. Aroused
over the inhuman treatment of the Jews in Russia, and alarmed by the
effects of a sudden Russian-Jewish immigration to America, which was
bound to follow as a result of this treatment, the House of
Representatives adopted a resolution on August 20, 1890, requesting the
President--
To communicate to the House of Representatives, if not incompatible
with the public interests, any information in his possession
concerning the enforcement of proscriptive edicts against the Jews
in Russia, recently ordered, as reported in the public press; and
whether any American citizens have, because of their religion, been
ordered to be expelled from Russia, or forbidden the exercise of the
ordinary privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants.
In response to this resolution, President Harrison laid before Congress
all the correspondence and papers bearing on the Jewish question in
Russia. [1]
[Footnote 1: The material was printed as _Executive Document_ No. 470,
dated October 1, 1890. It reproduced all the documents originally
embodied in _Executive Document_ No. 192 (see above, p. 294, n. 1), in
addition to the new material.]
A little later, on December 19 of the same year, the following
resolution of protest was introduced in the House of Representatives and
referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs:
_Resolved_, That the members of the House of Representatives of the
United States have heard with profound sorrow, and with feelings
akin to horror, the reports of the persecution of the Jews in
Russia, reflecting the barbarism of past ages, disgracing humanity,
and impeding the progress of civilization.
_Resolved_, That our sorrow is intensified by the fact that such
occurrences should happen in a country which has been, and now is,
the firm friend of the United States, and in a nation that clothed
itself with glory, not long since, by the emancipation of its serfs
and by its defense of helpless Christians from the oppression of the
Turks.
_Resolved_, That a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the
Secretary of State, with a request that he send it to the American
Minister at St. Petersburg, and that said Minister be directed to
present the same to his Imperial Majesty Alexander III., Czar of all
the Russias. [1]
[Footnote 1:_Congressional Record_, Vol. 22, p. 705.--The resolution
was reported back on February 5, 1891, in the following amended form
(loc. cit., p. 2219):
_Resolved_, That the members of the House of Representatives of the
United States have heard with profound sorrow the reports of the
sufferings of the Jews in Russia; and this sorrow is intensified by
the fact that these occurrences should happen in a country which is,
and long has been the friend of the United States, which emancipated
millions of its people from serfdom, and which defended helpless
Christians in the East from persecution for their religion; and we
earnestly hope that the humanity and enlightened spirit then so
strikingly shown by His Imperial Majesty will now be manifested in
checking and mitigating the severe measures directed against men of
the Jewish religion.]
In the meantime the Department of State was flooded with protests
against the Russian atrocities.
Almost every day--Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, writes to Charles
Emory Smith, United States Minister at St. Petersburg, on February 27,
1891--communications are received on this subject; temperate, and
couched in language respectful to the Government of the Czar; but at the
same time indicative and strongly expressive of the depth and prevalence
of the sentiment of disaprobation and regret. [1]
[Footnote 1: _Foreign Relations of the United States_, 1891, p. 740.]
The American Minister was therefore instructed to exert his influence
with the Russian Government in the direction of mitigating the severity
of the anti-Jewish measures. He was to point out to the Russian
authorities that the maltreatment of the Jews in Russia was not purely
an internal affair of the Russian Government, inasmuch as it affected
the interests of the United States. Within ten years 200,000 Russian
Jews had come over to America, and continued persecutions in Russia were
bound to result in a large and sudden immigration which was not
unattended with danger. While the United States did not presume to
dictate to Russia, "nevertheless, the mutual duties of nations require
that each should use his power with a due regard for the other and for
the results which its exercise produces on the rest of the world." [1]
[Footnote 1: _Loc. cit_., p. 737.]
The remonstrances of the American people which were voiced by their
representatives at St. Petersburg were received by the Russian
Government in a manner which strikingly illustrates the well-known
duplicity of its diplomatic methods. While endeavoring to justify its
policy of oppression by all kinds of libellous charges against the
Russian Jews, it gave at the same time repeated assurance to the
American Minister that no new proscriptive laws were contemplated, and
the latter reported accordingly to his Government. [1] On February 10,
1891, the American Minister, writing to Secretary Blaine, gives a
detailed account of the conversation he had had with the Russian
Minister for Foreign Affairs, de Giers. The latter went out of his way
to discuss with him unreservedly the entire Jewish situation in Russia,
and, while making all kinds of subtle insinuations against the character
of the Russian Jew, he expressed himself in a manner which was
calculated to convince the American representative of the conciliatory
disposition of the Russian Government. [2] Less than three weeks later
followed the cruel expulsion edict against the Jews of Moscow.
[Footnote 1: Compare in particular his dispatch, dated September 25,
1890, published in _Executive Document_ No. 470, p. 141.]
[Footnote 2: _Foreign Relations_, 1891, p. 734.]
While the Russian Government, abashed by the voices of protest, made an
effort to justify itself in the eyes of Europe and America and perverted
the truth with its well-known diplomatic skill, the _Russkaya Zhizn_
("Russian Life"), a St. Petersburg paper, which was far from being
pro-Jewish, published a number of heart-rending facts illustrating the
trials of the outlawed Jews at Moscow. It told of a young talented Jew
who maintained himself and his family by working on a Moscow newspaper
and, not having the right of residence in that city, was wont to save
himself from the night raids of the police by hiding himself, on a
signal of his landlord, in the wardrobe. Many Jews who lived honestly by
the sweat of their brow were cruelly expelled by the police when their
certificates of residence contained even the slightest technical
inaccuracy. By way of illustrating the "religious liberty" of the Jews
in the narrower sense of the word, the paper mentioned the fact that
after the opening of the new synagogue in Moscow, which accommodated
five hundred worshippers, the police ordered the closing of all the
other houses of prayer, to the number of twenty, which had been attended
by some ten thousand people.
The governor of St. Petersburg, Gresser, made a regular
sport of taunting the Jews. One ordinance of his prescribed
that the signs on the stores and workshops belonging to
Jews should indicate not only the family names of their
owners but also their full first names as well as their fathers'
names, exactly as they were spelled in their passports, "with
the end in view of averting possible misunderstandings." The
object of this ordinance was to enable the Christian public
to boycott the Jewish stores and, in addition, to poke fun at
the names of the owners, which, as a rule, were mutilated
in the Russian registers and passports to the point of ridiculousness
by semi-illiterate clerks.
Gresser's ordinance was issued on November 17, 1890, a
few days before the protest meeting in London. As the
Russian Government was at that time assuring Europe that
the Jews were particularly happy in Russia, the ordinance
was not published in the newspapers but nevertheless applied
secretly. The Jewish storekeepers, who realized the malicious
intent of the new edict, tried to minimize the damage resulting
from it by having their names painted in small letters so as
not to catch the eyes of the Russian anti-Semites. Thereupon
Gresser directed the police officials (in March 1891) to see to
it that the Jewish names on the store signs should be indicated
"clearly and in a conspicuous place, in accordance with
the prescribed drawings" and "to report immediately" to
him any attempt to violate the law. In this manner St. Petersburg
reacted upon the cries of indignation which rang at that
time through Europe and America.