Volume I Part 21 (1/2)
The Jews--a contemporary who had himself been affected by these measures informs us--were driven from their breweries and distilleries, their toll-houses, hostelries, etc., which formed their princ.i.p.al means of livelihood. Thousands of families were reduced to beggary. In addition, new restrictions were introduced affecting business, handicrafts, and so forth.
The acuteness of the economic and social crisis among the Jews of White Russia during that period of transition is evidenced by the pet.i.tion which their delegates submitted in 1784 to Catherine II.
The pet.i.tion, consisting of six points, is permeated with a profound feeling of despair. The Jews complain that the administration has deprived them completely of their main sources of income: distilling, brewing, and liquor-selling in the cities. They furthermore point out that Governor-General Pa.s.sek has forbidden the landed proprietors to lease the inns on their estates to Jews, and that in consequence a large number of families, who depended for their livelihood on some form of liquor-selling and innkeeping, had been brought to the verge of ruin.
They also contend that the Jews had not reaped the expected benefits from the equal munic.i.p.al rights conferred upon them, for where the Jews are in a minority not a single Jewish candidate is admitted to a munic.i.p.al or judicial office, ”so that whenever a Jew goes to law against a Christian, he is liable to become the victim of a partial verdict, because there is no coreligionist to intercede on his behalf in the courts, and he is not familiar with the Russian language.” Their further grievances relate to the arbitrariness of the landed proprietors, who ”from sheer caprice, contrary to agreement,” impose an excessive land rent on the Jews who have erected houses on their property, so that they are forced to abandon their houses. Sometimes houses are requisitioned for Government purposes, or are torn down ”to be rebuilt according to [new official street] plans,” without the slightest compensation to their owners. The magistracies, on the other hand, often compel the Jews who are domiciled in the townlets and villages, but are enrolled among the merchants or burghers of some city, to build houses in that city, ”whereby the Jews are liable to be reduced to extreme poverty, inasmuch as by spending their capital on building they have no capital wherewith to run their business.”
The pet.i.tion was received by the Empress, who, in forwarding it, in 1785, to the Senate for consideration, deemed it necessary to indicate her general att.i.tude in the following ”resolution”:
Her Majesty desires to have it pointed out that, inasmuch as the aforesaid persons of the Jewish religion have been placed by the ordinances of her Majesty in the same position as the others, it is necessary in every case to observe the rule that everyone is ent.i.tled to the advantages and rights appertaining to his calling or estate, without distinction of religion or nationality.
The Senate had to comply with the comprehensive and liberal-minded injunction of the Empress in endeavoring to solve the burning problems affecting Jewish life. The solution finally arrived at was a feeble compromise between the economic, national, and cla.s.s interests which were contradictory to one another. In its ukase of May 7, 1786, the Senate partly fulfilled and partly declined the demands of the White Russian Jews. The right of pursuing freely the liquor trade in the cities was refused, in view of the fact that, according to the new law, liquor-dealing const.i.tuted a monopoly of the city administration. On the other hand, the Jews were accorded the rights of partic.i.p.ating on equal terms with non-Jews in the public bids for the lease of the pothouses.
Pa.s.sek's rescript forbidding the landowners to let out distilleries and inns to the Jews was declared an illegal infringement of the rights of the landowners, and therefore ordered to be countermanded.
The complicated question as to the compatibility of munic.i.p.al self-government with Jewish Kahal autonomy was equally solved by a compromise. With respect to the magistracies, town councils, boards of aldermen, and law courts, the Jews were accorded proportionate representation in agreement with the general provisions of the new city government. The common munic.i.p.al courts, in which Jews were to be represented by elective jurymen of their own, were to handle both civil and criminal cases, not only between persons of different denominations, but also between Jew and Jew. The District and Government Kahals were to deal with spiritual affairs only. They were also to be charged with the distribution of the state and communal taxes in the various Jewish communities.
As for the complaints of the Jews against the oppression of the administration as well as of the magistracies and the landowners, all the Senate did was to point to the principle by which all the members of a given estate are equally vouchsafed the rights appertaining to it. The Senate even went so far as to bar all references to the former Polish laws with their discriminations against the Jews, ”for, inasmuch as they [the Jews] are enrolled among the merchants and burghers on the same terms, and pay equal taxes to the exchequer, they ought in all circ.u.mstances to be given the same protection and satisfaction as the other subjects.” Yet in the very same ukase the Senate refuses to grant the pet.i.tion of several White Russian Jews who asked to be enrolled in the merchant corporation of Riga, basing its refusal on the absence of a special Imperial permit allowing the Jews to register as merchants outside of White Russian territory.
Here we have the first application of the ignominious principle of subsequent Russian legislation, that everything is forbidden to Jews unless permitted by special law. The ukase of 1786, with all its liberal phrases about the equality of the members of all cla.s.ses irrespective of religion, imperceptibly inst.i.tuted a Pale of Settlement by attaching the Jews to definite localities, which had been wrested from Poland, and refusing them the right of residence in other parts of Russia. The implied criticism of the Senate, directed against ”the former Polish laws with their discriminations against the Jews,” could with far greater justice be leveled in much sharper form against the Russian legislation which subsequently curtailed the Jewish right of transit and commerce to an extent undreamt-of even by the fiercest anti-Jewish restrictionists of Poland.
While in the first two decades after the occupation of White Russia the Russian Government observed a comparatively liberal, at least a well-intentioned, att.i.tude towards the Jewish question, in later years it openly embarked upon a policy of exceptional laws and restrictions.
The general reactionary tendency, which was partly the result of the ”ominous” successes of the great French Revolution, and gained the upper hand in Russia towards the end of Catherine's reign, was mirrored also in the position of the Jews. At that juncture the second and third part.i.tions of Poland (1793, 1795) were effected, and hundreds of thousands of Jews from Lithuania, Volhynia, and Podolia were added to the numbers of Russian subjects. The country, which barely a generation before had not tolerated a single Jew within its borders, now included a territory more densely populated by Jews than any other. Some means of reconciliation had to be found between these historic opposites, the traditional anti-Jewish policy of Russia, on the one hand, and the presence of millions of Jews within its dominions, on the other, and such means were found in that system of Jewish rightlessness which since that time has become one of the princ.i.p.al characteristics of the political genius of Russian autocracy. The ancient Muscovite policy peeped out with ever greater boldness from beneath the European mask of St. Petersburg.
On the very eve of the second part.i.tion of Poland, when the Russian Government merely antic.i.p.ated an influx of Jews, it had a fatal gift in store for them: the law of the Pale of Settlement, which was to create within the monarchy of peasant serfs a special cla.s.s of territorially restricted city serfs. It should be added that the impulse towards the creation of this disability did not come from above but from below, from the influential Christian middle cla.s.s, which, fearing free compet.i.tion, began to shout for protection.
The first step in robbing the Jews of Russia of their freedom of movement was made a few years after the occupation of White Russia. The Jewish merchants of the White Russian Governments Moghilev and Polotzk (or, as the latter is called at present, Vitebsk) which border on the Great Russian Governments of Smolensk and Moscow, began to visit the two cities of the same name and carry on trade, wholesale and retail, in imported dry goods. They did a good business, for the Jewish merchants sold goods of a higher quality at a lower figure than their Christian compet.i.tors. This set the merchants of Moscow agog, and in February, 1790, they lodged a complaint with the commander-in-chief of Moscow against the Jews who sell ”foreign goods by lowering the current prices, and thereby inflict very considerable damage upon the local trade.” The complainants point to the ancient tradition of the Muscovite Empire excluding the Jews from its borders, and a.s.sure the authorities that Jewish rivalry will throw the trade of Moscow into complete ”disorder,”
and bring the Russian merchants to the verge of ruin.
The pet.i.tion, which at bottom was directed not alone against the Jews, but also against the interests of the Russian consumer, who was exploited by the ”real Russian” trade monopolists, found a sympathetic echo in Government circles. Accordingly, in the autumn of the same year, the Council of State, after considering the counter-pet.i.tion of the Jews asking to be enrolled in the merchant corporations of Smolensk and Moscow, rendered the decision that it did not deem it expedient to grant the Jews the right of free commerce in the inner Russian provinces, because ”their admission to it is not found to be of any benefit.” A year later this verdict was reaffirmed by an Imperial ukase issued on December 23, 1791, to the effect that ”the Jews have no right to enroll in the merchant corporations in the inner Russian cities or ports of entry, and are permitted to enjoy only the rights of townsmen and burghers of White Russia.” To mitigate the severity of this measure the ukase ”deemed it right to extend the said privilege beyond the White Russian Government, to the vice-royalty of Yekaterinoslav and the region of Tavrida,” _i. e._ the recently annexed territory of New Russia, where the Government was anxious to populate the lonely steppes.
In this way the first territorial ghetto, that of White Russia, was established by law for the purpose of harboring the Jewish population taken over from Poland. When again, two years later, the second part.i.tion of Poland took place, the northwestern ghetto was increased by the neighboring Government of Minsk and the southwestern region--Volhynia with the greater part of the Kiev province and Podolia. The ukase of June 23, 1794, conferred upon this enlarged Pale of Settlement the sanction of the law. The Jews were granted the right ”to engage in the occupations of merchants and burghers in the Governments of Minsk, Izyaslav (subsequently Volhynia), Bratzlav (Podolia), Polotzk (now Vitebsk), Moghilev, Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversk, Yekaterinoslav, as well as in the region of Tavrida.”
The ukase thus enlarges the former pale of Jewish settlement by including Little Russia, or the portion of the Ukraina which had been wrested from Poland as far back as 1654,[238]--in short, the territory from which the Jews had been a.s.siduously driven ”beyond the border” in the reign of the three Empresses preceding Catherine. The organic connection of Little Russia with the portion of the Ukraina on the right bank of the Dnieper which had just been annexed from Poland, left the Russian Government no other choice than to allow the Jews who had lived in those parts from time immemorial to remain there. Even the holy city of Kiev opened its gates to the Jews. The Dnieper became thereby the central river of the Jewish Pale of Settlement.
The third part.i.tion of Poland, in 1795, added to the Dnieper system that of the Niemen, the territory of Lithuania, consisting of the Governments of Grodno and Vilna.[239] This completed the process of formation of the Pale of Settlement, at the end of the eighteenth century. As for Eastern Russia, she was just as vigilantly on her guard against the penetration of the Jewish element as she had been in the time of the ancient Muscovite Empire.
The same ukase of 1794, which circ.u.mscribed the area of the Jewish right of residence, laid down another fundamental discrimination, that of taxation. The Jews, desirous of enrolling themselves in the mercantile or burgher cla.s.s in the cities, were to pay the inst.i.tuted taxes ”doubly in comparison with those imposed on the burghers and merchants of the Christian religion.” Those Jews who refused to remain in the cities on these conditions were to leave the Russian Empire after paying a fine in the form of a double tax for three years. In this way the Government exacted from the Jews, for the privilege of remaining in their former places without the right of free transit in the Empire, taxes twice as large as those of the Christian townspeople enjoying the liberty of transit. This punitive tax did not relieve the Jews from the special military a.s.sessment, which, by the ukases of 1794 and 1796, they had to pay, like the Russian mercantile cla.s.s in general, in exchange for the personal discharge of military service.
It is interesting to observe that at the solicitation of Count Zubov, the Governor-General of New Russia, the Karaites of the Government of Tavrida were released from the double tax. They were also granted permission to own estates, and were in general given equal rights with the Christian population, ”on the understanding, however, that the community of Karaites should not be entered by the Jews known by the name of Rabins (Rabbanites), concerning whom the laws enacted by us are to be rigidly enforced” (ukase of June 8, 1795). Here the national-religious motive of the anti-Jewish legislation crops out unmistakably. The handful of Karaites, who had for centuries lived apart from the Jewish nation and its spiritual possessions, were declared to be more desirable citizens of the monarchy than the genuine Jews, who were on the contrary to be cowed by repressive measures.
A decided bent in favor of such measures is manifested in the ukase of 1795, which prescribes that the Jews living in villages be registered in the towns, and that ”endeavors be made to transfer them to the District towns, so that these people may not wander about, but may rather engage in commerce and promote manufactures and handicrafts, thereby furthering their own interests as well as the interests of society.” The effect of this ukase was to sanction by law the long-established arbitrary practice of the local authorities, who frequently expelled the Jews from the villages, and sent them to the towns under the pretext that Jews could be enrolled only among the townsfolk. The expelled families, deprived of all means of livelihood, were of course completely ruined, as the mere bidding of the authorities did not suffice to enable them ”to engage in commerce and promote manufactures and handicrafts” in the towns in which even the resident merchants and artisans failed to make a living. The system of official tutelage had the effect of fettering instead of developing the economic activity of the Jews.
Experiments were now made to extend this tutelage to the communal self-government of the Jews. In 1795 the edict was repeated whereby the Government and District Kahals, in view of the right, conferred upon the Jews, of partic.i.p.ating in the general city administration, in the magistracies and town councils, were to be deprived of their social and judicial functions, and not to be allowed ”to concern themselves with any affairs except the ceremonies of religion and divine service.”[240]
As a matter of fact, the active partic.i.p.ation of the Jews in the munic.i.p.alities, owing to the hostile att.i.tude of the Christian burghers, was extremely feeble. Yet, in the interest of the exchequer, the Kahals were preserved for fiscal purposes, and, on account of their financial usefulness, they continued to function as the organs of Jewish communal autonomy, however curtailed and disorganized the latter had now become.
In this wise the restrictive legislation against the Jews appears firmly established towards the end of the reign of Catherine II. A ”Muscovite”
wall had been raised between the west and east of Russia, and even within the circ.u.mscribed area of Jewish settlement the tendency was discernible to mark off a still smaller area and, by forcing the Jews out of the villages, to compress the Jewish ma.s.ses in the towns and cities. It fell to the lot of the successors of Catherine to consolidate this tendency into law.
In conclusion, the historian cannot pa.s.s over in silence the solitary ”reform” of this period. In the legislative enactments of the last decade of Catherine's reign the formerly current contemptuous appellation ”Zhyd” gave way to the name ”Hebrew” (Yevrey).[241] The Russian Government found it impossible to go beyond this verbal reform.
2. JEWISH LEGISLATIVE SCHEMES DURING THE REIGN OF PAUL I.