BARON HIRSCH'S EMIGRATION SCHEME AND
UNRELIEVED SUFFERING
1. NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT
Towards the end of the eighties the plan of promoting Jewish emigration
from Russia, which had been abandoned with the retirement of Count
Ignatyev, was again looked upon favorably by the leading Government
circles. The sentiments of the Tzar were expressed in a marginal note
which he attached to the report of the governor of Podolia for the year
1888. The passage of the report in which it was pointed out that "the
removal of the Jewish proletariat from the monarchy would be very
desirable" was supplemented in the Tzar's handwriting by the words "and
even very useful." In reply to the proposal of the governor of Odessa to
deprive Jewish emigrants of the right to return to Russia, the Tzar
answered with a decided "yes." The official Russian chronicler goes even
so far as to confess "that it was part of the plan to stimulate the
emigration of the Jews (as well as that of the German colonists) by a
more rigorous enforcement of the military duty "--a design which, from
the political point of view, may well be pronounced criminal and which
was evidently at the bottom of the severe military fines imposed upon
the Jews. The same open-hearted chronicler adds:
It may be easily understood how sympathetically the Government
received the proposal of the Jewish Colonization Association in
London, which had been founded by Baron de Hirsch in 1891, to
remove, in the course of twenty-five years, 3,250,000 Jews from
Russia. [1]
[Footnote 1: This figure represents the official estimate of the
number of Russian Jews. In other words, the Government hoped to get
rid of all Jews.]
The name of Maurice de Hirsch was not unknown to the Russian Government.
For a few years previously it had had occasion to carry on negotiations
with him, with results of which it had scant reason to boast. This great
German-Jewish philanthropist, who was resolved to spend hundreds of
millions on the economic and agricultural advancement of his
co-religionists in Eastern Europe, had donated in 1888 fifty million
francs for the purpose of establishing in Russia arts and crafts
schools, as well as workshops and agricultural farms for the Jews. It
was natural for him to assume that the Russian Government would only be
too glad to accept this enormous contribution which was bound to
stimulate productive labor in the country and raise the welfare of its
destitute masses. But he had forgotten that the benefits expected from
the fund would accrue to the Jewish proletariat, which, according to the
catechism of Jew-hatred, was to be "removed from the monarchy." The
stipulation made by the Russian Government to the representatives of
Baron Hirsch was entirely unacceptable: it insisted that the money
should not be handed over to Jewish public agencies but to the Russian
Government which would expend it as it saw fit. Somebody conceived the
shameful idea, which was accepted by the representatives of Baron
Hirsch, of propitiating Pobyedonostzev by a gift of a million francs for
the needs of his pet institution, the Greek-Orthodox parochial schools.
The "gift" was accepted, but Hirsch's proposal was declined. Thus it
came about that the Russian Jews were deprived of a network of model
schools and educational establishments, while a million of Jewish money
went to swell the number of the ecclesiastic Russian schools which
imbued the Russian masses with crass ignorance and anti-Semitic
prejudices. The Hirsch millions, originally intended for Russia, went
partly towards the establishment of Jewish schools in Galicia, a work
which met with every possible encouragement from the Austrian
Government.
The generous Jewish philanthropist now realized that the assistance he
was anxious to render to his Russian coreligionists could not take the
form of improving their condition in their own country but rather that
of settling them outside of it--by organizing the emigration movement.
Hirsch's attention was called to the fact that, beginning with 1889,
several groups of Russian Jews had settled in Argentina and, after
incredible hardships, had succeeded in establishing there several
agricultural colonies. The baron sent an expedition to Argentina, under
the direction of Professor Loewenthal, an authority on hygiene, for the
purpose of investigating the country and finding out the places fit for
colonization. The expedition returned in March, 1891, and Hirsch decided
to begin with the purchase of land in Argentina, in accordance with the
recommendations of the expedition.
This happened at the very moment when the Moscow catastrophe had broken
out, resulting in a panicky flight from "Russia to North and South
America, and partly to Palestine. Baron Hirsch decided that it was his
first duty to regulate the emigration movement from Russia, and he made
another attempt to enter into negotiations with the Russian Government.
With this end in view he sent his representative to St. Petersburg, the
Englishman Arnold White, a Member of Parliament, belonging to the
parliamentary anti-alien group, who was opposed to foreign immigration
into England, on the ground of its harmful effect upon the interests of
the native workingmen. Simultaneously White was commissioned to travel
through the Pale of Settlement and find out whether it would be possible
to obtain there an element fit for agricultural colonization in
Argentina.
White arrived in St. Petersburg in May and was received by
Pobyedonostzev and several Ministers. The martyrdom of the Moscow Jews
was then at its height. Shouts of indignation were ringing through the
air of Europe and America, protesting against the barbarism of the
Russian Government, and the latter was infuriated both by these protests
protests and the recent refusal of Rothschild to participate in the
Russian loan. The high dignitaries of St. Petersburg who had been
disturbed in their work of Jew-baiting by the outcry of the
civilized world gave full vent to their hatred in their
conversations with Baron Hirsch's deputy. White reported
afterwards that the functionaries of St. Petersburg had painted
to him the Russian Jew as "a compound of thief and usurer."
Pobyedonostzev delivered himself of the following malicious observation:
"The Jew is a parasite. Remove him from the living organism in which and
and on which he exists and put this parasite on a rock--and he will
die." While thus justifying before the distinguished foreigner their
system of destroying the five million Jewish "parasites," the Russian
Ministers were nevertheless glad to lend a helping hand in removing them
from Russia, on condition that in the course of twelve years a
large part of the Jews should be transferred from the country--in the
confidential talks with White three million emigrants were
mentioned as the proposed figure. White was furnished with
letters of recommendation from Pobyedonostzev and the Minister of
the Interior to the highest officials in the provinces,
whither the London delegate betook himself to get acquainted with
the living export material. He visited Moscow, Kiev, Berdychev, Odessa,
Kherson, and the Jewish agricultural colonies in South Russia.
After looking closely at Jewish conditions, White became convinced that
the perverted type of Jew which had been painted to him in St.
Petersburg "was evolved from the inner consciousness of certain orthodox
statesmen, and has no existence in fact." Wherever he went he saw men
who were sober, industrious, enterprising business men, efficient
artisans, whose physical weakness was merely the result of insufficient
nourishment. His visit to the South-Russian colonies convinced him of
the fitness of the Jews for colonization.
In short--he writes in his report--if courage--moral courage,--hope,
patience, temperance are fine qualities, then the Jews are a fine
people. Such a people, under wise direction, is destined to make a
success of any well-organized plan, of colonization, whether in
Argentina, Siberia, or South Africa.
On his return to London, White submitted a report to Baron Hirsch,
stating the above facts, and also pointing out that the assistance which
should he rend red to the emigration work by the Russian Government
ought to take the form of granting permission to organize in Russia
emigration committees, of relieving the emigrants of the passport
tax, [1] and of allowing them free transportation up to the Russian
border.
[Footnote 1: The tax levied on passports for travelling abroad amounting
to fifteen rubles ($7.50).]
2. THE JEWISH COLONIZATION ASSOCIATION AND COLLAPSE
OF THE ARGENTINIAN SCHEME
White's report was discussed by Baron Hirsch in conjunction with the
leading Jews of Western Europe. As a result, the decision was reached to
establish a society which should undertake on a large scale the
colonization of Argentina and other American territories with Russian
Jews. The society was founded in London in the autumn of 1891, under the
name of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), in the form of a
stock company, with a capital of fifty million francs which was almost
entirely subscribed by Baron Hirsch. White was dispatched to St.
Petersburg a second time to obtain permission for organizing the
emigration committees in Russia and to secure the necessary privileges
for the emigrants. The English delegate, who was familiar with the frame
of mind of the leading Government circles in Russia, unfolded before
them the far-reaching plans of Baron Hirsch. The Jewish Colonization
Association was to transplant 25,000 Jews to Argentina in the course of
1892 and henceforward to increase progressively the ratio of emigrants,
so that in the course of twenty-five years, 3,250,000 Jews would be
taken out of Russia.
This brilliant perspective of a Jewish exodus cheered the hearts of the
neo-Egyptian dignitaries. Their imagination caught fire. When the
question came up before the Committee of Ministers, the Minister of the
Navy, Chikhachev, proposed to pay the Jewish Colonization Association a
bonus of a few rubles for each emigrant and thus enable it to transfer
no less than 130,000 people during the very first year, so that the
contemplated number of 3,250,000 might be distributed evenly over
twenty-five years. A suggestion was also made to transplant the Jews
with their own money, i.e., to use the residue of the Jewish meat tax
for that purpose, but the suggestion was not considered feasible. The
official chronicler testifies that "the fascinating proposition of Baron
Hirsch appeared to the Russian Government hardly capable of
realization." Nevertheless, prompted by the hope that at least part of
the contemplated millions of Jews would leave Russia, the Government
sanctioned the establishment of a Central Committee of the Jewish
Colonization Association in St. Petersburg, with branches in the
provinces. It further promised to issue to the emigrants free of charge
permits to leave the country and to relieve them from military duty on
condition that they never return to Russia.
In. May, 1893, the constitution of the Jewish Colonization Association
was ratified by the Tzar. At that time the emigration tide of the
previous year was gradually ebbing. The flight from Russia to North and
South America had reached its climax in the summer and autumn of 1891.
The expulsion from Moscow as well as alarming rumors of imminent
persecutions, on the one hand, and exaggerated news about the plans of
Baron Hirsch, on the other, had resulted in uprooting tens of thousands
of people. Huge masses of refugees had flocked to Berlin, Hamburg,
Antwerp, and London, imploring to be transferred to the United States or
to the Argentinian colonies. Everywhere relief committees were being
organized, but there was no way of forwarding the emigrants to their new
destination, particularly to Argentina, where the large territories
purchased by Hirsch were not yet ready for the reception of colonists.
Baron Hirsch was compelled to send out an appeal to all Jewish
communities, calling upon they to stem for the present this disorderly
human avalanche.
Ere long Baron Hirsch's dream of transplanting millions of people with
millions of money proved an utter failure. When, after long
preparations, the selected Jewish colonists were at last dispatched to
Argentina, it was found that the original figure of 25,000 emigrants
calculated for the first year had shrunk to about 2500. Altogether,
during the first three years, from 1892 to 1894, the Argentinian
emigration absorbed some six thousand people. Half of these remained in
the capital of the republic, in Buenos Ayres, while the other half
managed to settle in the colonies, after enduring all the hardships
connected with an agricultural colonization in a new land and under new
climatic conditions. A few years later it was commonly realized that the
mountain had given birth to a mouse. Instead of the million Jews, as
originally planned, the Jewish Colonization Association succeeded in
transplanting during the first decade only 10,000 Jews, who were
distributed over six Argentinian colonies.
The main current of Jewish emigration flowed as heretofore in the
direction of North America, towards the United States and Canada. In the
course of the year 1891, with its numerous panics, the United States
alone absorbed more than 100,000 emigrants, over 42,000 of whom
succeeded in arriving the same year, while 76,000 were held back in
various European centers and managed to come over the year after. The
following two years show again the former annual ratio of emigration,
wavering between 30,000 to 35,000.
The same fateful year of 1891 gave rise to a colonization fever even in
quiet Palestine. Already in the beginning of 1890 the Russian Government
had legalized the Palestinian colonization movement in Russia by
sanctioning the constitution of the "Society for Granting Assistance to
Jewish Colonists and Artisans in Syria and Palestine," which had its
headquarters in Odessa. [1] This sanction enabled the _Hobebe Zion_
societies which were scattered all over the country to group themselves
around a legalized center and collect money openly for their purposes.
The Palestinian propaganda gained a new lease of life. This propaganda,
which was intensified in its effect by the emigration panic of the
"terrible year," resulted in the formation of a number of societies in
Russia with the object of purchasing land in Palestine. In the beginning
of 1891 delegates of these societies suddenly appeared in Palestine _en
masse_, and, with the co-operation of a Jaffa representative of the
Odessa Palestine Society, began feverishly to buy up the land from the
Arabs. This led to a real estate speculation which artificially raised
the price of land. Moreover, the Turkish Government became alarmed, and
forbade the wholesale colonization of Jews from Russia. The result was a
financial crash.
[Footnote 1: The first president of the Society was the exponent of the
idea of "Antoemancipation," Dr. Leon Pinsker, who occupied this post
until his death, at the end of 1891.]
The attempt at a wholesale immigration into destitute Palestine with its
primitive patriarchal conditions proved a failure. During the following
years the colonization of the Holy Land with Russian Jews proceeded
again at a slow pace. One colony after another rose gradually into
being. A large part of the old and the new settlers were under the
charge of Baron Rothschild's administration, with the exception of two
or three colonies which were maintained by the Palestine Society in
Odessa. It was evident that, in view of the slow advance of the
Palestinian colonization, its political and economic importance for the
Russian-Jewish millions was practically nil and that its only advantage
over and against the American emigration day in its spiritual
significance, in the fact that on the historic soil of Judaism there
there rose into being a small Jewish center with a purer national
culture than was possible in the Diaspora. This idea was championed
by Ahad Ha'am[1], the exponent of the neo-Palestine movement, who had
made his first appearance in Hebrew literature in 1889 and in a
short time forged his way to the front.
[Footnote 1: "One of the People," the Hebrew pen-name of Asher
Ginzberg.]
3. CONTINUED HUMILIATIONS AND DEATH OF ALEXANDER III.
In the meantime, in the land of the Tzars events went their own course.
The Moscow tragedy was nearing its end, but its last stages were marked
by scenes reminiscent of the times of the inquisition. After banishing
from Moscow the larger part of the Jewish population, the
governor-general, Grand Duke Sergius, made up his mind to humble the
remaining Jewish population of the second Russian capital so thoroughly
that its existence in the center of Greek Orthodoxy might escape public
public notice. The eyes of the Russian officials at Moscow were offended
by the sight of the new beautiful synagogue structure which had been
finished in the fateful year of the expulsion. At first, orders were
given to remove from the top of the building the large cupola capped
by the Shield of David, which attracted the attention of all
passers-by. Later on, the police, without any further ado, shut
down the synagogue, in which services had already begun to be held,
pending the receipt of a new special permit to re-open it. Rabbi Minor
of Moscow and the warden of the synagogue addressed a petition to
the governor-general, in which they begged permission to hold
services in the building, the construction of which had been duly
sanctioned by the Government, pointing to the fact that Judaism was
one of the religions tolerated in Russia. In answer to their
petition, they received the following stern reply from St.
Petersburg, dated September 23, 1892:
His Imperial Majesty, after listening to a report of the Minister of
the Interior concerning the willful opening of the Moscow Synagogue
by Rabbi Minor and Warden Schneider, was graciously pleased to
command as follows:
_First_. Rabbi Minor of Moscow shall be dismissed from his post and
transferred for permanent residence to the Pale of Jewish
Settlement.
_Second_. Warden Schneider shall be removed from the precincts of
Moscow for two years.
_Third_. The Jewish Synagogue Society shall be notified that,
unless, by January 1, 1893, the synagogue structure will have been
sold or transformed into a charitable institution, it will be sold
at public auction by the gubernatorial administration of Moscow.
The rabbi and the warden went into exile, while the dead body of the
murdered synagogue--its structure--was saved from desecration by placing
in it one of the schools of the Moscow community.
The fight against the places of Jewish worship was renewed by the police
a few years later, during the reign of Nicholas II. The principal
synagogue being closed, the Jews of Moscow were compelled to hold
services in uncomfortable private premises. There were fourteen houses
of prayer of this kind in various parts of the city, but, on the eve of
the Jewish Passover of 1894, the governor-general gave orders to close
nine of these houses, so that the religious needs of a community of ten
thousand souls had to be satisfied in five houses of worship, situated
in narrow, unsanitary quarters. The Government had achieved its purpose.
The synagogue was humbled into the dust, and its sight no longer
offended the eyes of the Greek-Orthodox zealots. The Jews of Moscow were
forced to pour out their hearts before God in some back yards, in the
stuffy atmosphere of private dwellings. As in the days of the Spanish
inquisition, these private houses of worship would, on the solemn days
of Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur, be stealthily visited by the
"marranos" of Moscow, those Jews who had saved themselves from the
wholesale expulsions by fictitious conversion to Christianity. The
passionate prayers of repentance of these involuntary apostates rose up
to heaven as they had done in centuries gone-by from the underground
synagogues of Seville, Toledo, and Saragossa.
By and by, the attempt to take the Jewish citadel by storm gave way to
the former regular state of siege, which had for its object to starve
out the Jews. The municipal counterreform of 1892 dealt a severe
political blow to Russian Jewry. Under the old law, the number of Jewish
aldermen in the municipal administration had been limited to one-third
of the total number of aldermen, aside from the prohibition barring the
Jews from the office of burgomaster [1]. Notwithstanding these
restrictions, the Jews played a conspicuous part in municipal
self-government, and could boast of a number of prominent municipal
workers. This activity of the Jews went against the grain of the
inquisitorial trio, Pobyedonostzev, Durnovo, and Plehve, and they
decided to bar the Jews completely from participation in the municipal
elections.
[Footnote 1: See p. 198 et seq.]
The reactionary, anti-democratic "Municipal Regulation" of 1892
proclaimed publicly this new Jewish disfranchisement. The new law
deprived the Jews of their right of passive and active election to the
municipal Dumas, merely granting the local administration the right to
_appoint_ at its pleasure a number of Jewish aldermen, not to exceed
one-tenth of the total membership of the Duma. Moreover, these Jewish
aldermen "by the grace of the police" were prohibited from serving on
the executive organs of the Duma, the administrative council, and the
various standing committees. As a result, even there where the Jews
formed sixty and seventy per cent of the total urban population, their
only representatives in the municipal administration were men who were
the willing tools of the municipal powers and who, moreover, were
quantitatively restricted to five or ten per cent of the total number of
aldermen.
In this wise, the law providing for an inverse ratio of popular
representation came into effect: four-fifths of the population were
limited to one-tenth of the number of aldermen, while one-fifth of it
were granted nine-tenths of aldermen in the city government. The law
seemed to tell the Jews: "True, in a given city you may form the
overwhelming majority of tax-payers, yet the city property shall not be
managed by you but by the small Christian, minority which shall do with
you as it pleases."
It goes without saying that the Christian minority, which was not
infrequently hostile to the Jews, managed the city affairs in a manner
subversive of the interests of the majority. Even the imposts on special
Jewish needs, such as the meat and candle tax, were often used by the
the municipal Dumas towards the maintenance of institutions and schools to
to which Jews were admitted in an insignificant number or not admitted at
at all. This condition of affairs was in full accord with the medieval
medieval Church canons: A Jew living in a Christian country has no right to
to dispose of any property and must remain in slavish subjection to his
his Christian fellow-citizens.
A number of laws passed during that period are of such a nature as to
admit of but one explanation, the desire to insult and humiliate the Jew
and to brand him by the medieval Cain's mark of persecution. The law,
issued in 1893, "Concerning Names" threatens with criminal prosecution
those Jews who in their private life call themselves by names differing
in form from those recorded in the official registers. The practice of
many educated Jews to Russianize their names, such as Gregory, instead
of Hirsch, Vladimir, instead of Wolf, etc., could now land the culprits
in prison. It was even forbidden to correct the disfigurements to which
the Jewish names were generally subjected in the registers, such as
Yosel, instead of Joseph; Srul, instead of Israel; Itzek, instead of
Isaac, and so on. In several cities the police brought action against
such Jews "for having adopted Christian names" in newspaper
advertisements, on visiting cards, or on door signs.
The new Passport Regulation of 1894 orders to insert in _all_ Jewish
passports a physical description of their owners, even in the case of
their being literate and, therefore, being able to affix their signature
to the passport, whereas such description was omitted from the passports
of literate Christians. In some places the police deliberately tried to
make the Jewish passports more conspicuous by marking on them the
denomination of the owner in red ink. Even in those rare instances in
which the law was intended to bring relief, the Government managed to
emphasize its hostile intent. The law of 1893, legalizing the Jewish
heder and putting an end to the persecutions, which this traditional
Jewish school had suffered at the hands of the police, narrowed at the
same time its function to that of an exclusively religious institution
and indirectly forbade the teaching in it of general secular subjects.
There are cases on record in which the keepers of these heders, the
so-called melammeds, were put on trial for imparting to their pupils a
knowledge of Russian and arithmetic.
However, the most effective whip in the hands of the Government remained
as theretofore the expulsion from the governments of the interior. In
1893, this whip cracked over the backs of thousands of Jewish families.
Durnovo, the Minister of the Interior, issued a circular, repealing the
old decree of 1880, which had sanctioned the residence outside the Pale
of Settlement of all those Jews who had lived there previously.[1] That
decree had been prompted by the motive to prevent the complete economic
ruin of the Jews who were settled in places outside the Pale and had
created there industrial enterprises. But such a motive, which even the
anti-Semitic Ministry of Tolstoi had not been bold enough to disregard,
did not appeal to the new Hamans. Many thousands of Jewish families, who
had lived outside the Pale for decades, were threatened with exile. The
difficulties attending the execution of this wholesale expulsion forced
the Government to make concessions. In the Baltic provinces the
banishment of the old settlers was repealed, while in the Great Russian
governments it was postponed for a year or two.
[Footnote 1: Compare p. 404.]
There was a particularly spiteful motive behind the imperial ukase of
1893, excluding the Crimean resort place Yalta from the Pale of
Settlement, [1] and ordering the expulsion from there of hundreds of
families which were not enrolled in the local town community. No
official reason was given for this new disability, but everybody knew
it. In the neighborhood of Yalta was the imperial summer residence
Livadia, where Alexander III. was fond of spending the autumn, and this
circumstance made it imperative to reduce the number of the local Jewish
residents to a negligible quantity. To avert the complete ruin of the
victims, many were granted reprieves, but after the expiration of their
terms they were ruthlessly deported. The last batches of exiles were
driven from Yalta in the month of October and in the beginning of
November, 1894, during the days of public mourning for the death of
Alexander III. On October 20, the Tzar was destined to die in the
neighborhood of the town which was purged of the Jewish populace for his
benefit. While the earthly remains of the dead emperor were carried on
the railroad tracks to St. Petersburg, trains filled with Jewish
refugees from Yalta were rolling on the parallel tracks, speeding
towards the Pale of Settlement.
[Footnote 1: The Crimean peninsula, forming part of the government of
Tavrida, is situated within the Pale.]
Such was the symbolic _finale_ of the reign of Alexander III. which
lasted fourteen years. Having begun with pogroms, it ended with
expulsions. The martyred nation stood at the threshold of the new reign
with a silent question on its lip: "What next?"