Volume II Part 21 (1/2)
[Footnote 1: It may be added that Kutaysov recognized that the Russian ma.s.ses were equally the victims of the commercial exploitation of the Russian ”bosses,” but was at a loss to find a reason for the pogroms perpetrated in the Jewish agricultural colonies, i.e., against those who, according to this theory, were themselves the victims of exploitation.]
Ignatyev seized upon this flimsy theory, and embodied it in a more elaborate form in his report to the Tzar of August 22. In this report he endeavored to prove the futility of the policy hitherto pursued by the Russian Government which ”for the last twenty years [during the reign of Alexander II.] had made efforts to bring about the fusion of the Jews with the remaining population and had nearly equalized the rights of the Jews with those of the original inhabitants.” In the opinion of the Minister, the recent pogroms had shown that ”the injurious influence” of the Jews could not be suppressed by such liberal measures.
The princ.i.p.al source of this movement [the pogroms], which is so incompatible with the temper of the Russian people, lies--according to Ignatyev--in circ.u.mstances which are of an exclusively economic nature. For the last twenty years the Jews have gradually managed to capture not only commerce and industry but they have also succeeded in acquiring, by means of purchase and lease, a large amount of landed property. Owing to their clannishness and solidarity, they have, with few exceptions, directed their efforts not towards the increase of the productive forces [of the country] but towards the exploitation of the original inhabitants, primarily of the poorest cla.s.ses of the population, with the result that they have called forth a protest from this population, manifesting itself in deplorable forms--In violence.... Having taken energetic means to suppress the previous disorders and mob rule and to s.h.i.+eld the Jews against violence, the Government recognizes that it is justified in adopting, without delay, no less energetic measures to remove the present abnormal relations that exist between the original inhabitants and the Jews, and to s.h.i.+eld the Russian population against this harmful Jewish activity, which, according to local information, was responsible for the disturbances.
Alexander III. hastened to express his agreement with these views of his Minister, who a.s.sured him that the Government had taken ”energetic measures” to suppress the pogroms--which was only true in two or three recent cases. At the same time he authorized Ignatyev to adopt ”energetic measures” of genuine Russian manufacture against those who had but recently been ruined by these pogroms.
The imperial ukase published on August 22, 1831, dwells on ”the abnormal relations subsisting between the original population of several governments and the Jews.” To meet this situation it provides that in those governments which harbor a considerable Jewish population special commissions should be appointed consisting of representatives of the local estates and communes, to be presided over by the governors. These commissions were charged with the task of finding out ”which aspects of the economic activity of the Jews in general have exerted _an injurious influence_ upon the life of the original population, and what measures, both legislative and administrative, should be adopted” for the purpose of weakening that influence. In this way, the ukase, in calling for the appointment of the commissions, indicated at once the goal towards which their activity was to be directed: to determine the ”injurious influence” of the Jews upon Russian economic life.
The same thought was expressed even more directly by Ignatyev, who in his circular to the governors-general, dated August 25, reproduced his report to the Tzar, and firmly established the dogma of ”the harmful consequences of the economic activity of the Jews for the Christian population, their racial separatism, and religious fanaticism.”
We are thus made the witnesses of a singular spectacle: the ruined and plundered Jewish population, which had a right to impeach the Government for having failed, to protect it from violence, was itself put on trial.
The judges in this legal action were none other than the agents of the ruling powers--the governors, some of whom had been guilty of connivance at the pogroms--on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the representatives of the Christian estates, urban and rural, who were mostly the appointees of these governors. In addition, every commission was allotted two Jewish representatives, who were to act in the capacity of experts but without voting power; they were placed in the position of defendants, and were made to listen to continuous accusations against the Jews, which the; were constantly forced to deny. Altogether there were sixteen such commissions: one in each of the fifteen governments of the Pale of Settlement--exclusive of the Kingdom of Poland--and one in the government of Kharkov. The commissions were granted a term of two months within which to complete their labors and present the results to the Minister.
The sessions of all these ”gubernatorial commissions” [1] took place simultaneously during the months of September and October.
[Footnote 1: In Russian, _Gubernskiya Kommissit_, literally, ”Government Commissions,” using ”Government” in the sense of ”Province.”]
The prisoner at the bar was the Jewish people which was tried on the charges contained in the official bill of indictment--the imperial ukase as supplemented and interpreted in the ministerial circular. A well-informed contemporary gives the following description of these sessions in an official memorandum:
The first session of each commission began with the reading of the ministerial circular of August 25. The reading invariably produced a strong effect in two different directions: on the members from among the peasantry and on those from among the Jews. The former became convinced of the hostile att.i.tude of the Government towards the Jewish population and of their leniency towards the instigators of the disorders, which, according to an a.s.sertion made in Ignatyev's circular, were due exclusively to the Jewish exploitation of the original inhabitants. Needless to say, the peasants did not fail to communicate this conviction, which was strengthened at the subsequent sessions by the failure to put any restraint upon the wholesale attacks on the Jews on the part of the anti-Semitic members, to their rural communes.
As for the Jewish members (of the commissions), the effect of the ministerial circular upon them was staggering. In their own persons they beheld the three millions of Russian Jewry placed at the prisoner's bar: one section of the population put on trial before another. And who were the judges? Not the representatives of the people, duly elected by all the estates of the population, such as the rural a.s.semblies, but the agents of the administration, bureaucratic office-holders, who were more or less subordinate to the Government. The court proceedings themselves were carried on in secret, without a sufficient number of counsel for the defendants who in reality were convicted beforehand. The att.i.tude adopted by the presiding governors, the speeches delivered by the anti-Semitic members, who were In an overwhelming majority, and characterized by attacks, derisive remarks, and subtle affronts, subjected the Jewish members to moral torture and made them lose all hope that they could be of any a.s.sistance in attempting a dispa.s.sionate, impartial, and comprehensive consideration of the question. In the majority of the commissions, their voice was suppressed and silenced. In these circ.u.mstances the Jewish members were forced, as a last resort, to defend the interests of their coreligionists in writing, by submitting memoranda and separate opinions. However, the instances were rare in which these memoranda and protests were dignified by being read during the sessions.
This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the commissions brought in their ”verdicts” in the spirit of the indictment framed by the authorities. The anti-Semitic officials exhibited their ”learning”
in ignorant criticisms of the ”spirit of Judaism,” of the Talmud and the national separatism of the Jews, and they proposed to extirpate all these influences by means of cultural repression, such as the destruction of the autonomy of the Jewish communities, the closing up of all special Jewish schools, and the placing of all phases of the inner life of the Jews under Government control. The representatives of the Russian burghers and peasants, many of whom had but recently co-operated or, at least, sympathized with the perpetrators of the pogroms, endeavored to prove the economic ”injuriousness” of the Jews, and demanded that they should be restricted in their urban and rural pursuits, as well as in their right of residence outside the cities.
Notwithstanding the prevailing spirit, five commissions voiced the opinion, which, from the point of view of the Russian Government, seemed rank heresy, that it was necessary to grant the Jews the right of domicile all over the empire so as to relieve the excessive congestion of the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement.
4. THE SPREAD OF ANTI-SEMITISM
While the gubernatorial commissions--gubernatorial in the literal sense of the word, because entirely dominated by the governors--were holding their sessions, the satraps-in-chief of the Pale of Settlement, the governors-general, were busy sending their expressions of opinion to St.
Petersburg. The governor-general of Kiev, Drenteln, who himself was liable to prosecution for allowing a two days' pogrom in his own residential city, condemned the entire Jewish people in emphatic terms, and demanded the adoption of measures calculated ”to s.h.i.+eld the Christian population against so arrogant a tribe as the Jews, who refuse on religions grounds to have close contact with the Christians.” It was necessary, in his opinion, to resort to legal repression in order to counteract ”the intellectual superiority of the Jews,” which enables them to emerge victorious in the straggle for existence.
Similar condemnations of Judaism came from the governors-general of Odessa, Vilna, and Kharkov, although they disagreed as to the dimensions which this repression should a.s.sume. Totleben, the master of the Vilna province, who had refused to countenance the perpetration of pogroms in Lithuania, nevertheless agreed that the Jews should henceforth be forbidden to settle in the villages, though he was generous enough to add that he found it somewhat inconvenient ”to rob the whole Jewish nation of the possibility of earning a livelihood by its labor.” The impression prevailed that militant Judaeophobia was determined to deprive the Jews even of the right of securing a piece of bread.
The Government was well aware beforehand that the labors of the gubernatorial commissions would yield results satisfactory to it. It, therefore, found it unnecessary to wait for their reports and resolutions, and proceeded to establish in St. Petersburg, on October 19, ”a Central Committee for the Revision of the Jewish Question.” The committee was attached to the Ministry of the Interior, and consisted of several officials, under the chairmans.h.i.+p of a.s.sistant-Minister Gotovtzev. The officials were soon busy framing ”temporary measures” in the spirit of their patron Ignatyev, and, as the resolutions of the gubernatorial commissions were coming in, they were endeavoring to strengthen the foundations for the projected enactment. In January, 1882, the machinery for the manufacture of Jewish disabilities was in full swing.
This organized campaign of the enemies of Judaism, who were preparing administrative pogroms as a sequel to the street pogroms, met with no organized resistance on the part of Russian Jewry. The small conference of Jewish notables in St. Petersburg, which met in September in secret session, presented a sorry spectacle. The guests from the provinces, who had been invited by Baron Gunzburg, engaged in discussions about the problem of emigration, the struggle with the anti-Semitic press, and similar questions. After being presented to Ignatyev, who a.s.sured them in diplomatic fas.h.i.+on of the ”benevolent intentions of the Government,”
they returned to their homes, without having achieved anything.
The only social factor in Jewish life was the press, particularly the three periodicals published in Russian, the _Razsvyet_ (”the Dawn”), the _Russki Yevrey_ (”the Russian Jew”), and the _Voskhod_ (”the Sunrise”), [1] but even they revealed the lack of a well-defined policy.
[Footnote 1: See on these papers, p. 219 et seq.]
The political movements in Russian Jewry were yet in an embryonic stage, and their rise and development were reserved for a later period. True, the Russian-Jewish press applied itself a.s.siduously to the task of defending the rights of the Jews, but its voice remained unheard in those circles of Russia in which the poisonous waters of Judaeophobia gushed forth in a broad current from the columns of the semi-official _Novoye Vremya_, the pan-Slavic _Russ_, and many of their anti-Semitic contemporaries.
While the summer pogroms were in full swing, the _Novoye Vremya_, reflecting the views of the official spheres, seriously formulated the Jewish question in the paraphrase of Hamlet: ”to beat or not to beat.”