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5. Social and Political Dissolution

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The process of disintegration which had seized the feudal and clerical structure of the Polish body politic assumed appalling proportions under the kings of the Saxon dynasty, Augustus II. and Augustus III. (1697–1763). The political anarchy, which, coupled with the failures in the Swedish war at the beginning of the eighteenth century, surrendered Poland into the hands of rejuvenated Russia under Peter the Great, was only the external manifestation of the inner decay of the country, springing from its social order, which was founded on the arbitrariness of the higher and the servitude of the lower estates.149 In a land in which every class had regard only for its own selfish interests, in which the Diets could be broken up by the whim of a single deputy (the so-called liberum veto), the Government did not concern itself with the common weal, but pursued its narrow bureaucratic interests. In these circumstances the Jews, being oppressed by all the Polish estates, were gradually deprived of their principal support, the authority of the king, which had formerly exercised a moderating influence upon the antagonism of the classes. True, at the Coronation Diets of Augustus II. and Augustus III. the old Jewish privileges were officially ratified, but, in consequence of the prevailing chaos and disorder, the rights, confirmed in this manner, remained a scrap of paper. Limited as these rights were, their execution depended on the constant watchfulness of the supreme powers of the state and on their readiness to defend these rights against the encroachments of hostile elements. As a matter of fact, the heedless "Saxon kings," being neglectful of the general interests of the country, had no special reason to pay attention to the interests of the Jews. The only concern of the Government was the regular collection of the head-tax from the Kahals. This question of taxation was discussed with considerable zeal at the "pacific" Diet of 1717, which had been convened in Warsaw for the purpose of restoring law and order in the country, sorely shaken by the protracted war with the Swedish king Charles XII. and the inner anarchy accompanying it. Despite the fact that the Jews had been practically ruined during that period of unrest, the amount of the head-tax was considerably increased.

The local representatives of the Government, the voyevodas and starostas,150 whose function was to defend the Jews, frequently became the most relentless oppressors of the people under their charge. These provincial satraps looked upon the Jewish population merely as the object of unscrupulous extortion. Whenever in need of money, the starostas resorted to a simple contrivance to fill their pockets: they demanded a fixed sum from the local Kahal, and threatened, in case of refusal, imprisonment and other forms of violence. All they had to do was to send to jail some member of the Jewish community, preferably a Kahal elder or an influential representative, and the Kahal was sure to pay the demanded sum. Occasionally this well-calculated exploitation was relieved by the aimless mockery of these despots, who were unable to restrain their savage instincts. Thus the Starosta of Kaniev, in the Polish Ukraina, desiring to compensate a neighboring landowner for the murder of his Jewish arendar, gave orders to load a number of Jews upon a wagon, who were thereupon carried to the gates of his injured neighbor and thrown down there like so many bags of potatoes. The same Starosta allowed himself the following "entertainment": he would order Jewish women to climb an apple-tree and call like cuckoos. He would next bombard them with small shot, and watch the unfortunate women fall wounded from the tree, whereupon, laughing merrily, he would throw gold coins among them.

The most powerful estate in the country, the liberty-loving, or, more correctly, license-loving Shlakhta, protected the Jews only when in need of their services. Claiming for himself, in his capacity as slaveholder, the toil of his peasants, the pan laid equal claim to the toil of the Jewish business man and arendar who turned the rural products of his master and the right of "propination," or liquor-selling, into sources of income for the latter. At one time the Polish landowners even made the attempt to enslave the Jews on their estates by legal proceedings. At the Diet of 1740 the deputies of the nobility brought in a resolution, that the Jews living on Shlakhta estates be recognized as the "hereditary subjects" of the owners of those estates. This monstrous attempt at transforming the rural Jews into serfs was rejected solely because the Government refused to forego the income from Jewish taxation, which in this case would flow into the pockets of the landowners.

Nevertheless the rural Jew was to all intents and purposes the serf of his pan. The latter exercised full jurisdiction over his Jewish arendar and "factor"151 as well as over the residents on his estates in general. During the savage inroads, frequent during this period, of one pan upon the estate of another, the Jewish arendars were the principal sufferers. The meetings of the local Diets (or Dietines) and the conferences of the Shlakhta or the sessions of the court tribunals became fixed occasions for attacking the local Jews, for invading their synagogues and houses, and engaging, by way of amusement, in all kinds of "excesses." The Diet of 1717 held in Warsaw protested against these wild orgies, and threatened the rioters and the violators of public safety with severe fines. The "custom" nevertheless remained in vogue.

As far as the cities are concerned, the Jews were engulfed in endless litigation with the Christian merchant guilds and trade-unions, which wielded a most powerful weapon in their hands by controlling the city government or the magistracy. Competition in business and trade was deliberately disguised beneath the cloak of religion, for the purpose of inciting the passions of the mob against the Jews. The Christian merchants and tradesmen found an enthusiastic ally in the Catholic clergy. The seed sown by the Jesuits yielded a rich harvest. Religious intolerance, hypocrisy, and superstition had taken deep root in the Polish people. Religious persecution, directed against all "infidels," be they Christian dissidents or Jews "who stubbornly cling to irreligion," was one of the mainsprings of the inner politics of Poland during its period of decay.

The enactments of the Catholic synods are permeated by malign hatred of the Jews, savoring of the spirit of the Middle Ages. The Synod of Lovich held in 1720 passed a resolution "that the Jews should nowhere dare build new synagogues or repair old ones," so that the Jewish houses of worship might disappear in the course of time, either from decay or through fire. The Synod of 1733 held in Plotzk repeats the medieval maxim, that the only reason for tolerating the Jews in a Christian country is that they might serve as a "reminder of the tortures of Christ and, by their enslaved and miserable position, as an example of the just chastisement inflicted by God upon the infidels."

History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Vol. 1-3)

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