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GRADUALLY the provinces along the western frontier, stretching south from Riga to the territories bordering on the Black Sea, became marked off as a Pale of Settlement. Within these regions all the Jews of the Empire were to be domiciled; saving merchants, bankers, scientists, and eminent Hebrews whose wealth or accomplishments would outweigh in the selfish plans of domestic government the anti-Semitic feeling which appealed to the despotic expediency of exceptional laws. Inside this economic Siberia, the poorer Jews would have their chances of employment greatly diminished, while the struggle for existence must become by degrees a contest between a growing population and a narrower area of industrial opportunity.

Unnatural social and economic conditions necessarily engender correlative abuses and evils. Poverty, illegal pursuits, the smuggling and sale of liquor, evasion of coercive laws, bribery and corruption, protested against the causes which begot them, until finally an Imperial Commission had to be appointed to inquire into and report upon the measures necessary to remedy this state of things. This Commission issued its report in 1812. The report is so tersely summarised in Prince Demidoff’s book, and the matters dealt with are so intimately connected with the inherited injustices of the Russian Jew, that I cannot forbear adding the following extract to this brief historic sketch of anti-Semitic legislation and its results:

“Firstly, the Commission was of opinion that the impossibility of carrying out the provisions of paragraph 34 of the Law of 1804 ‘did not arise from the obstinacy of the Jews and remissness of the authorities, but from the natural and political condition of those provinces to which residence of the Jews is restricted.’ The report then states that while the Jews retained their political independence and lived in their own country, they were an agricultural people. Subsequently, when they were dispersed over the whole world and everywhere subjected to the bitterest persecution, unrecognised as regular citizens of the countries in which they were domiciled, agriculture became to them an inaccessible pursuit. They were thus necessarily obliged to have recourse to trade as the sole means of occupation according with their new condition of life.

“In Poland the Jews were so numerous that the pursuit of trade alone was insufficient for their subsistence. On the one hand, the Polish landlords, owing to constant wars and internal strife, were not able to manage their own estates in a proper manner. They were, therefore, obliged to seek special means for increasing the revenue of their properties, for instance, by distilling brandy, lease of farms, etc. The correlation of these two causes led to the utilisation of the Jews by the landed proprietors in their domestic concerns. The Jews became indispensable to the landed proprietors, and as they did not possess the right to acquire land and engage in agriculture, they were obliged, while residing in villages, to confine themselves to a retail sale of spirits as a main pursuit.

“When White Russia was annexed to Russia, the Russian Government recognised all the previously existing rights of the Jews. The ukase of the Senate of 1786 confirmed their right of residence in provincial districts, and their faculty of holding estates on lease. The immediate object of this law was the suppression of drunkenness among the rural population. The distillation of brandy, however, is a privilege of all landed proprietors, and forms a necessary adjunct to the process of agriculture. With the departure [expulsion from villages] of the Jews the retail sale of spirits would be carried on by tapsters of the native rural class, so that drunkenness would not diminish, but only a decrease would take place in the number of agriculturists. A peasant had previously been in the habit of selling his corn on the spot to a Jew, but now he was obliged to proceed to the nearest town, at a loss in time and labour, to sell his produce to a Jew, and the money realised he would still spend on brandy, bought from the same Jew. The same result would ensue in the purchase by the peasant of articles required by him, such as iron, salt, etc.

“The Commission also found it unadvisable to allow the Jews to reside in villages under the prohibition of their not engaging in the retail sale of brandy; this opinion being founded on the following consideration: The Jews who inhabit the villages belong to the poorest class, and if not allowed to sell spirits they would be deprived of all means of subsistence. The poverty of the peasantry of White Russia is not caused by the Jews, and this is proved by the fact that there are also many Jews in the southwestern provinces, yet the peasantry there are in a more prosperous condition than those populating White Russia. So long as the landlords of this latter region continue to adhere to their present system of working their estates, which encourages drunkenness, the evil will spread, be the village tapster who he may, either Jew or peasant. This is confirmed by the example of the provinces of Petersburg, Livonia, and Esthonia, where there are no Jews and yet drunkenness is very prevalent.

“Should the Government adopt the proper measures for making the sale of brandy less lucrative, the Jews would be obliged to turn to other pursuits, perhaps to those of husbandry, especially if they are accorded the right of purchasing land. If the Jews be interdicted to sell brandy such sale would be carried on by the peasants, who, in order to increase their landlord’s revenue, will be obliged to do the same as the Jews. It should also be borne in mind that the Jews, with all their aptitude and experience in matters relating to the sale of spirits, never enriched themselves by this calling, but only earned enough for their subsistence. It would also be impossible to convert all Jews into traders and artisans; firstly, because they would not find sufficient occupation in the towns and hamlets, where there is no demand for a great supply of services of this kind; and secondly, because great injury would be inflicted on those Jews who are unable to find alternative sources of livelihood. As a matter of fact the retail sale of spirits in the western provinces is only carried on by those Jews who are unable to find any other means of existence. The Jews adhere to their present occupations because, owing to the want of means, the Government is unable to effect any radical change in their condition. Lastly, the Commission arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to rescind entirely paragraph 34 of the Law of 1804.”

This paragraph of the law thus cited ordered the removal of all Jews from villages and hamlets into the towns.

The recommendation of the Commission was not acted upon. On the contrary, the law of 1804 was continued. Though not vigorously enforced it remained as a potential agency for rendering residence of employment outside the Pale a source of insecurity to the Jews, and a means by which police, business rivals, and others could at any time put the ukase of expulsion in operation against them. Trading communities were most active in appealing for the application of this law. Petitions calling for expulsion from cities and towns in which Jews were rival workers and dealers are constantly recurring features of the tyranny, official and commercial, to which they were subjected during the next half-century.

General Levashoff, Governor of Kiev, reporting to the Government in 1833 upon a petition asking for the banishment of all the Jews from that important city, laid bare the motives and condemned the selfish purpose of the petitioners, in honestly saying:

“It is desirable on the ground of public utility to allow the Jews to remain in Kiev, where, by the simplicity and moderation of their mode of life, they are able to sell commodities at a cheap rate. It may positively be asserted that their expulsion would not only lead to an enhancement of prices of many products and articles, but that it will not be possible to obtain these at all. Under these circumstances the interests of the mass of the inhabitants must be preferred to the personal advantages which the Christian trading class would derive by the ejection of the Jews.”[1]

Opposed in cities and towns in this manner, after being turned out of country districts in obedience to a similar spirit, the authors of these coercion laws began to find it a serious administrative problem what to do with subjects for whose systematic oppression they were alone responsible. Agricultural colonies were planned in Cherson (Southwestern Russia) and even in Siberia, to which Jews were induced to go in order to escape from the intolerable hardships of incessant wrong. Failure followed these benevolent designs of the Government; not from the reluctance or incapacity of the migrating Jews to work the land, but owing to the corruption and incompetence of officials who were charged with the superintendence of these colonies. Money advanced for the building of dwellings and purchase of stock was disbursed in the erection of unsuitable houses, in most unsanitary places, and in other wasteful and ignorant directions. Great hardships were thus entailed upon the unfortunate victims of this crass official stupidity; a cruelty of deliberate neglect adding, in the instances of the migrations to Siberia, its penalties of suffering and death to the bitter disappointments and the blasting of hopes caused by the callous miscarriage of the well-meant enterprise of the Government by its blundering officials.

One unexpected good result followed both to Russia and to large numbers of Jews by the failure of these contemplated agricultural settlements in the Governments of Cherson and Ekaterinoslav; where, at a later time, similar colonies grew and flourished. Odessa, to-day the richest and busiest maritime city of the Empire, owes its prosperity and progress largely to Jewish enterprise. Both the forced and voluntary migration from the north to the south of the Pale brought this resourceful race near where they were to find an outlet in a young and rising commercial centre for qualities essential to its rapid development which Russians do not themselves possess in any marked degree,—commercial genius. The city and its varied opportunities attracted both those who succeeded and those who had obtained no fair chance of thriving as agriculturists, and to-day over two hundred thousand of the Jewish population of Odessa embrace the wealthiest and most enterprising bankers, merchants, brokers, contractors, and business men of the Empire.

From the codification of the ukases and laws relating to Jews in 1835, down to the Ignatieff or “May Laws” of 1882, the treatment of the Jews, as regulated by these measures, is consistent with their experience as already briefly described. In some of these laws, Jews would appear from the text to be on a footing of theoretic equality with other citizens, while again special provisions are made to limit the application of these general rights to residence within the selected sphere of domicile, and to be further curtailed within this area, in the light and meaning of the law of 1804. There is a bewildering mass and maze of contradictory purpose in this code of special laws which no summary can hope intelligently to disentangle. It is obvious, however, that the vigour of direct persecution is meant to be modified to the extent of promoting the utilities of the State by Jewish abilities, while reserving all the powers necessary to dispense with the objectionable artisan, trader, or mechanic when his services or example are no longer needed in hamlet or village. This is one of the most objectionable features of indefensible laws. It wears a character of state meanness which can well compare in odious rivalry with the methods and morals of Jewish usury. The spirit of fair play is totally absent from regulations which give the state, by virtue of permissive coercion, the benefits of subjects’ services which are ultimately repaid in penalties and expulsion.

In 1843 the Pale of Settlement was further contracted by a law forbidding Jews to reside within a distance of fifty versts (about thirty-three miles) of the Austrian or German frontiers. The necessity for this regulation was said to be the smuggling operations of the Jews. They probably excelled in this as in other illegal practices, to which they were driven on being denied the chances of living by more reputable means. The injustice of punishing thousands of families who had resided in these frontier districts for generations, for the wrongdoing of a few people, would not be calculated to lessen the feeling of settled disloyalty which persistent oppression must inevitably create in the minds of an intellectual race. And, these accumulating measures of an insensate injustice are now responsible for the existence of four millions of disaffected subjects adjacent to the frontiers of Russia’s two most formidable rival powers, Germany and Austro-Hungary. The Pale of Settlement has thus become, by the lex talionis of a poetic justice, the most vulnerable part of the Russian Empire. It is not alone the seed-bed and centre of Socialism, born of persecution, it is a military weakness well measured and noted in the army bureaus of Berlin and Vienna.

Under the Emperor Alexander II., the emancipator of the serfs, the Jews obtained a respite from many of the most oppressive and vexatious of the penal ukases. Schools hitherto closed to Hebrew children were thrown open to their admission. Restrictions upon attendance at fairs in the interior were removed, while in many other respects the original plan and purpose of the Pale were forgotten, and the dawn of happier days began to rise above the troubled and darkened horizon of the Russian Jew. The freedom of the peasants gave rise to the hope that the same liberal-minded Tsar would break the bonds of his Semitic subjects, when there fell upon all this promise of brighter times the bolt of Nihilist vengeance, in the assassination of the best of Russia’s rulers. The abominable deed, which shocked the world by its terrible character and results, shattered the hopes of Hebrew emancipation, and led to the savage onslaught which was made upon the objects of peasant fury in 1881 and 1882, in many parts of the Empire.

Beyond doubt there were some Jews concerned in Nihilist plots. The man who attempted to kill General Loris Melikoff was of Jewish blood. The women Lewinsohn and Helfman, who were sent to Siberia for complicity in murder conspiracies, were Jewesses, while several prominent Nihilists were believed to be half Hebrew in parentage. But the history of human oppression always explains, even where it may not justify, deeds of savage political vengeance. No race can be denied the ordinary franchises of personal freedom—the right to live secure from the insult and intrusion of a tyrannical law, and the unfair infliction of exceptional burdens—without rousing into dangerous activity passions which appeal to the wild impulse of revenge. The assassination of Alexander II. had nothing to do with the coercion of the Jews. He was not their enemy; he was their friend. But the revolutionary spirit which germinates under despotic rule is generally blind in selecting the objects of its unreasoning fury; just as many Governments are deaf to the pleadings of an enlightened justice in the rule of a country until the shock of some desperate deed compels them to think of that which, if listened to in time, would protect both subjects and monarchs from the fear and consequences of criminal acts. If some Jews were guilty accomplices in the murder of a humane Emperor, so were Russians. And it would have been no greater wrong to punish guiltless peasants for the acts of the Nihilists than to wreak vengeance upon equally innocent Jews.

In Warsaw, Kiev, Rostov, and elsewhere Jews were killed, their houses wrecked, and their shops looted. Outrages occurred throughout the whole Pale of Settlement, and thousands of terrified people fled across the frontiers into Germany, Bohemia, and Roumania. These outbreaks occurred near the end of 1881 and early in the following year and, like the recent massacres in Bessarabia, aroused a widespread expression of sympathy in Europe and America for the hapless objects of Russian popular fury. Manifestations of international feeling greatly impressed the Tsar’s Government, and earnest efforts appeared to have been made to curb the lawless conduct of the mobs. This action, however, instead of being a promise of better things, turned out to be but a prelude to sterner measures than ever against the victims of exceptional laws.

On the 3d of May, 1882, General Ignatieff obtained the Emperor’s sanction and signature to what have since been known as the “May Laws”; the purpose of these being to add more rigorous provisions, as a supplement to the law of 1804. This latter law ordered all the Jews of the Empire to retire within the Pale of Settlement, excepting those who possessed special permits, passports, or privileges to live outside. The May Laws ordered Jews living inside the Pale to remove from the villages into the towns within that area. In a word, General Ignatieff created a Pale within a Pale, and contracted the territory of life and livelihood for upwards of four millions of people within the boundaries of the cities and towns inside the already limited domain of legal domicile. These measures read as follows:

“The Committee of Ministers, having heard the report of the Minister of the Interior on the execution of the temporary orders concerning the Jews, resolved:

“1. As a temporary measure, and until a general revision has been made in a proper manner of the laws concerning the Jews, to forbid the Jews henceforth to settle outside the towns and townlets, the only exceptions admitted being in those Jewish colonies that have existed before and whose inhabitants are agriculturists.

“2. To suspend temporarily the completion of instruments of purchase of real property mortgages in the name of Jews; as also the registration of Jews as lessees of landed estates, situated outside the precincts of towns and townlets, and the issue of powers of attorney to enable them to manage and dispose of such property.

“3. To forbid Jews to carry on business on Sundays and on Christian holidays, and that the same laws in force, about the closing on such days of places of business belonging to Christians, shall, in the same way, apply to places of business owned by Jews.

“4. That the measures laid down in paragraphs 1, 2, and 3, apply only to the Governments within the Pale of Jewish Settlement. His Majesty the Emperor was graciously pleased to give his assent to the above resolutions of the Committee of Ministers, on the 3d of May, 1882.”

These Laws did not apply to the Jews of Poland.

These “temporary measures” remain to-day the potential law of Russia regarding Jews. They were not immediately enforced. Russia is never in a hurry in matters of this kind. She waits and notes the material results of such enactments at home, and the moral effects upon opinion abroad. In the case of the May Laws, there was a universal chorus of condemnation in Western Europe. It was felt everywhere that any attempt to put such savage measures into operation must either lead to the flight of hundreds of thousands of wretched Jews over the borders, or to their death within the crowded towns of the Pale, from starvation induced by an overwhelming congestion of labour without means of employment. The laws were, therefore, left inoperative, but in terrorem; General Ignatieff being conveniently superseded, while a Commission presided over by Count Pahlen was appointed by the Emperor to prepare a report upon the whole Jewish question.