Читать книгу Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920 - Oleg Budnitskii - Страница 9

CHAPTER 1

Jews in the Russian Empire, 1772–1917

The Jews “arrived” in Russia without having to leave the comfort of their homes.¹ As a result of the three Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795), the Russian Empire suddenly acquired the largest Jewish population of any country in the world. In the year 1800, 22.8 percent of the world's Jewish population resided within Russian territory, a number that was to increase throughout the nineteenth century (46.9 percent in 1834, 50.0 percent in 1850, 53.4 percent in 1880) before decreasing in the beginning of the twentieth century (39.0 percent in 1914). The number of Jews in the Russian Empire also continued to grow in absolute numbers. In 1772, Russia's annexation of the Belorussian territories raised the total of Russian Jews by some 60,000, with the Second and Third Partitions further increasing the number by 500,000, and an additional 300,000 coming under Russian sovereignty after the annexation of the Duchy of Warsaw. Other figures put the post-partition Jewish population of the Russian Empire at 800,000.²

However, the main cause of the increasing number of Jews within the Russian Empire was population growth. Two consequences of strict adherence to the religious norms of Judaism, which had a profound influence on Jewish family life and standards of hygiene, were high birth rates and low mortality rates. Thus, despite the massive emigration that occurred from 1881 to 1914, in 1914 nearly 5.25 million Jews were living in Russia. However, the Jewish population as a percentage of the total population of the Russian Empire, which had grown from 1.5 percent in 1800 to 4.8 percent in 1880, began to steadily decrease, reaching 3.1 percent in 1914. It is worth noting that these figures are approximate; other sources provide different numbers. Concrete data is only available from 1897 onwards, after the first Russian census was carried out. According to this data, 5,189,400 Jews lived in the Russian Empire in 1897, which was approximately 4 percent of Russia's population and 49 percent of the Jewish population of the world.³

At least at first, the Russian authorities' relationship towards the Jews was remarkable for its relative tolerance; in 1772 the first official address to the newly acquired territories stated that those living there, Jews included, were to have the same rights as Russian subjects. It could even be said that most of the Jews in question barely noticed their shifting from one state to another. However, new laws regarding Russia's newest territories were to bring both benefits and problems for their Jewish populations. As a result of Catherine II's reforms in the organizational structure of the Empire in 1778, Jews were included in the “trade and industrial” class. In accordance with Catherine's decree of January 7, 1780, Jews were allowed to register in the merchant class, and were allowed to participate in municipal organizations (such as the ratusha and magistrat) as equals with their Christian compatriots. At the same time, Jews who were not registered as merchants were included among the petty bourgeois (meshchanine), and forced to pay a higher head tax (podushnaia podat' ).

From 1785 onwards, the Charter to the Cities (Gramota na prava i vygody gorodam Rossiiskoi Imperii) allowed Jews to register in any of the six categories of urban inhabitants that were allowed to participate in the city Duma: “Whereas people of the Jewish faith, having already entered the Empire as equals according to the edicts of Her Majesty, are in every case to observe the law, established by Her Majesty, that all are to use these rights and privileges according to their call and station, without regard to either faith or nationality.”

Nevertheless, Jews were not always able to take advantage of the rights they were afforded, and they nearly always faced opposition from the local Christian population in general, and from the Polish gentry in particular. Jews were often prevented from participating in elections, and the imperial authorities proved unable to achieve full compliance with the laws they passed down, despite numerous demands that these laws be observed.

The ability to move freely from place to place was one of the most sought-after privileges for citizens of the Russian Empire. For Russia's Jewish population, this right was also one of the first to be restricted. In this case, the imposition of restrictions resulted from commercial competition between Jewish and Russian merchants in the late eighteenth century. In 1782, the Senate decided to allow merchants living in the newly acquired territories to move from city to city for business purposes. This was no small boon, as they had earlier forbidden merchants from leaving the towns in which they were registered. Apparently, the author of the law had intended to include only the Belorussian territories in the law, but this was not explicitly stated in the text. Taking advantage of this “loophole,” Jewish merchants began to start businesses within Russia itself, with some registering among the merchant guilds of Moscow and Smolensk.⁴ Unused to serious competition, Muscovite merchants were convinced that the Jewish merchants' bargaining skills could be achieved only through dishonest and fraudulent means. The Christian merchants submitted a complaint to A. A. Prozorovskii, then Governor General of Moscow, claiming that the only possible way for the Jewish merchants to set their prices so low was through the use of contraband, and that the Jews had settled in Moscow illegally.

Prozorovskii forced the Jewish merchants to leave Moscow, leading them to submit a complaint to the authorities in St. Petersburg. “Her Majesty's Council” rejected their petition, forbidding them to register as merchants except in the Mogilev and Polotsk gubernias (Belorussia), the Ekaterinoslav region (namestnichestvo) and the Tauride oblast, which had recently been carved out of territories acquired from the Ottoman Empire.⁵ The Council's decision in the matter was approved by Catherine II on December 23, 1791. For all intents and purposes, this decision laid the groundwork for what was eventually to become the Pale of Settlement.⁶

The new territories acquired after the Second and Third Partitions increased the number of areas where Jews were allowed to live. At the same time, the new laws concerning these territories forbid Jews from settling beyond them (i.e., within Russia itself). According to the ukaz of June 13, 1794, Jews were allowed to live in the following territories: the Minsk, Iziaslav (later Volynia), Bratslav (later Podolia), Polotsk, Mogilev, Kiev, Chernigov, and Novgorod-Seversk gubernias, as well as Ekaterinoslav and the Tauride oblasts. In 1795, two newly formed gubernias (Vilna and Grodno) were added. The Pale of Settlement would wax and wane in size over the course of the following century. By the turn of the twentieth century, it would include fifteen gubernias: Bessarabia, Vilna, Vitebsk, Volynia, Grodno, Ekaterinoslav,⁷ Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev, Podolia, Poltava, Tauride,⁸ Kherson, Chernigov, and Kiev (excluding Kiev proper).

While Western European Jews quickly gained political rights and freedoms from the period of the French Revolution onwards, their Russian counterparts remained “distinct from the native population by their religion and their own social institutions, and fulfilled a specific economic role that was separate from the one played by the dominant corporations and trade guilds”⁹ for nearly a hundred years after their “arrival.” Properly speaking, one can only truly conceive of a specifically “Russian” Jewry from the 1870s onwards. Before this point, most of the Empire's Jews were more “Polish” than “Russian.”¹⁰

During their time as subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jews were the bearers of capitalist values. In fact, it was precisely for economic development that they had been “summoned” by the Polish monarchy centuries earlier. Jews occupied positions in management and administration, often completely taking over these tasks from the local gentry. They leased land, estates, and shops, and held monopolies on goods such as salt or spirits. They were also active in other economic spheres, having a large presence in credit markets and trade. Jewish craftsmen had a near monopoly in sectors such as tailoring and shoemaking; some Jews earned their livelihood through agriculture.

In the 1760s, Catherine II attempted to attract Jewish settlers to Novorossiia in order to occupy empty lands, and to increase the paltry numbers of the “Third Estate” in the territories.¹¹ As potential competitors, it is hardly surprising that the Jews were to come into conflict with their Christian neighbors. However, it should be noted that by the time of the Partitions Jewish economic influence had already significantly diminished from its peak in the Middle Ages. This was especially true in the financial sphere, where they had been unable to compete with monasteries and wealthy landowners. Yet despite this, the Jews' reputation for being “exploitative” persisted among the general population, particularly among the peasantry.

This stereotype was given further currency by the senator and poet Gavriil Derzhavin, who in 1799 responded to a petition submitted by the Jews of Shklov, who claimed persecution at the hands of one of Catherine II's former favorites, S. G. Zorich. The following year, Derzhavin went to Belorussia in order to investigate the reasons for a famine, and was shocked by the things he saw. The title of his travel notes speaks for itself: “The Opinion of Senator Derzhavin Regarding the Abominable Lack of Bread Due to the Coercive Designs of the Avaricious Jews, and on Their Reorganization and Other Matters.”¹²

The “need” to protect local populations from Jewish “exploitation” became one of the cornerstones of Russian policy towards its new subjects. It quickly became the justification for expelling Jewish populations from certain towns, forbidding freedom of movement, and limiting the number of professions Jews could enter. Government policy also focused on combating Jewish “fanaticism,” on the one hand, and possible “rehabilitation” on the other. Many considered the “exploitative nature” of the Jews to be a consequence of this “fanaticism,” which largely consisted of the idea that the Jews believed themselves to be a chosen people, and thus despised their non-Jewish neighbors. Equally important was the fear that Jews were not loyal to the local authorities, and that for the Jewish population the religious demands of Judaism were more important than adherence to governmental laws.¹³ The “liberal” and “conservative” approaches to the “Jewish question” differed mainly in the fact that liberals preferred to give Jews rights to help speed the assimilation process, while conservatives insisted on Jewish “reform” before any rights were to be granted.

In general, the Russian authorities strove for the full integration of Jews into Russian society. Various individual authorities differed only in the methods they tried to adopt. More liberal initiatives, such as allowing “useful” Jews to live beyond the Pale, and expanding Jewish access to educational institutions (even to the point of providing subsidies) alternated with more conservative ones, such as forced deportations from certain towns, or prohibitions on traditional clothing. Such contradictory tendencies would occasionally appear together in a single law.¹⁴ The struggle against Jewish “fanaticism” reached its peak during the reign of Nicholas I, who in 1827 subjected the Jewish population of the Empire to military conscription (the armed forces were often used as a vehicle to convert subjects to Orthodoxy), and in 1844 established government institutes for Jews whose faculty and administration were completely composed of Christians.¹⁵ Throughout the nineteenth century, numerous commissions and committees dedicated to the “Jewish question” attempted to advance governmental policy.¹⁶ The initiatives undertaken ranged from the reasonable to the absurd. In the end, the state's attempts to assimilate its Jewish population proved unsuccessful. This fact can be seen in the exceptionally low number of Jews who decided to convert to Christianity, despite the many benefits such a decision offered. Throughout the entire nineteenth century, only 84,500 Jews (or 0.7 percent of the Jewish population) decided to convert to the Christian faith.¹⁷ In this respect at least, the “material” proved too resistant to be shaped to the government's designs.

This program of assimilation differed from the Jewish experience under Polish rule. Many Jews had decided to go to Poland not only because of the many economic rights offered by the Polish monarchy, but also because of additional guarantees that allowed them to follow their own way of life. Under the Poles, Jewish cultural and legal institutions were openly tolerated and had official recognition, although the degree of such tolerance varied, and anti-semitism due to religious reasons or economic competition did occur on a regular basis. At the same time, Jews did not integrate themselves into the native populace. They lived in their own neighborhoods, spoke their own language, and wore “traditional” clothing (which was considered to be purely Jewish but had, in fact, been adopted in Poland around the sixteenth century). Men wore beards and side-locks, while women shaved their heads and wore wigs. It would be naïve to think that this “segregation,” if you will, was resulted solely from the attitude of Christians towards their Jewish neighbors, and that Jews were suffering for the lack of day-to-day interaction with their Christian countrymen outside of their business dealings. As Jacob Katz has shown, the ghetto walls were built from both sides.¹⁸ Jews were able to get along without closely interacting with the surrounding local population, and Jewish dietary laws and other restrictions made simple things such as going to visit one's neighbors problematic.¹⁹ Besides, for most of those living in the shtetl the ongoing debates between the hasidim²⁰ and mitnagdim²¹ were often more engaging and pertinent to their lives than the events taking place in the local Christian community.

The Jewish Enlightenment movement (Haskalah) was not widespread in Russia. Its adherents, the maskilim,²² were few in number and were forced to rely on official support in their reform efforts. The situation of Russian Jews, whose cultural and social status was often higher than their neighbors, was markedly different from the situation in Germany, where Haskalah had originated. At the turn of the nineteenth century, several maskilim who had been educated in Germany or had traveled extensively abroad propagated the idea of expanding secular education within the Jewish population. In 1800, Dr. I. Frank gave Derzhavin an essay in German entitled “Is it Possible for a Jew to Become a Good and Decent Citizen?” which called for the establishment of secular schools with instruction in German and Hebrew. The Russian maskilim Perets, Notkin, and Nevakhovich also strove to overcome the gulf separating the Jewish and Russian communities. In 1803 Nevakhovich was to publish the first work of Russian-Jewish literature, entitled “Lament of the Daughter of Judah” (Vopl'dshcheri iudeiskoi).

The patriarch of the Russian Haskalah was I. B. Levinzon, whose book Mission in Israel (Missiia v Israile, 1828) proposed a program of education reform, including the teaching of European languages and secular subjects to Jews. Levinzon also called for Russian to replace Yiddish as the language of everyday communication.²³ Unlike their European counterparts, Russian maskilim did not call for religious reforms to Judaism, nor were they extreme assimilationists. Their works, for the most part, were published in Yiddish. The only place in the Russian Empire where the maskilim experienced any real success in their efforts was Odessa; by the end of the 1820s, they were a major force within the community there. However Odessa, with its multicultural population, economic and cultural possibilities and rather large Jewish population, was an exception to the rule.²⁴

Jewish entrepreneurship experienced rapid growth throughout the nineteenth century. The first Russian industrialists and bankers were often either Jews or Old Believers. This fact speaks less to the inherent business acumen or capitalist mentality of either religious minority than to the reality of their persecution. Having been forced to flee persecution on a number of occasions, both groups were capable of quickly switching their professions and could adapt their knowledge and abilities to new economic climates, a skill set that was hard to come by in a country that was still very much in a feudal state. Jews were often able to build their capital through loans, alcohol sales, and trade. These moneylenders, store owners, and businessmen would eventually become titans of industry as bankers, sugar barons, and “kings of the railroads.”²⁵ Of course, this kind of success happened only to a few. The vast majority of these small-business owners remained impoverished.

By the beginning of the 1830s, Jews owned 149 of the 528 factories in the eight gubernias of the northwestern and southwestern territories of the Empire. At around the same time, Jews controlled 30 percent of the textile industry of Ukraine. As time progressed, several entrepreneurial groups, such as the Brodskiis, Zaitsevs, Galperins, and Balakhovskiis, were to try their hand at the rapidly expanding sugar industry. By relying on technological innovations, the Jewish collectives were quickly able to take over and expand into new markets. A case in point: Israil Brodskii, the patriarch of the “sugar kings,” was able to increase his production of lump sugar from 1,500 poods in 1856 to 40,000 poods in 1861, an increase of 2,700 percent.²⁶ By 1872, nearly a quarter of the sugar trade was controlled by Jewish companies, with the vast majority concentrated in the Ukraine. The capital for these undertakings, as was often the case for the Russian Jews, was provided by selling liquor licenses.²⁷ Jewish businessmen were also successful in the flour trade, leather-working, brewing, tobacco sales, and a number of other spheres of business.²⁸

I. S. Aksakov's claim that nearly all overland trade in the nineteenth century passed through the hands of the Austrian and Russian Jewry was not far from the truth. By the mid-nineteenth century Jews constituted an overwhelming majority in the Merchant Guilds in nearly all of the gubernias of the Pale of Settlement. These included Bessarabia (55.6 percent), Chernigov (81 percent), Courland (70 percent), Ekaterinoslav (24 percent, and 37 percent of the First Guild), Grodno (96 percent), Kiev (86 percent), Kovno (75 percent), Minsk (87 percent), Mogilev (76 percent), Podolia (96 percent), Poltava (55 percent), Vilna (51 percent, and 73 percent of the First Guild), Vitebsk (38 percent, 91 percent of the First Guild), and Volynia (96 percent). In the Minsk, Podolia, and Chernigov gubernias the First Merchant Guild was 100 percent Jewish, while in Vitebsk, Volynia, and Grodno the number was higher than 90 percent.²⁹

Jews also had a large presence in the bread and timber trades. In the opinion of one scholar,³⁰ they “led Russia into the international market.” They were responsible for 60 percent of Odessa's bread exports in 1878, and according to the 1897 Census, for every 1,000 tradesmen in the Northwestern Territories, 886 were Jews. This number rose to 930 out of every 1,000 in the case of grain traders.

Along with Poles, Jews were to dominate the western borders of Russia in the explosion of industrial activity that occurred in the years following the Great Reforms of the 1860s. Alexander II's reforms gave Russian Jews the chance to break free from the Pale of Settlement, and thus belatedly laid the foundation for the “Russification” of Russia's Jews. This time around, assimilation was more voluntary than coercive. In 1856, the Emperor ordered that the possibility of greater assimilation be examined, insofar as the “moral attributes of the Jews would make such a thing possible.” In this instance, the “liberal” tendency in official policy proved dominant, with the granting of civil rights preceding “reformation.” Of course, a relatively minor proposal such as allowing members of the Jewish First Guild to leave the Pale (a decision that probably affected only a hundred or so families) proved to be a laborious task for Tsarist bureaucrats, who took three years to decide to grant “Merchants of the First Guild, their families, stewards, and a limited number of servants” freedom of movement.³¹

A number of additional laws enacted over the following twenty years increased freedom of movement throughout the Empire. On November 27, 1861, Jews with a master's degree and higher were allowed to leave the Pale of Settlement. From 1865 to 1867 the law was extended to include Jewish doctors with no formal higher education. In 1872, it was further expanded to graduates of the Petersburg Technical Institute, and by 1879 all those with higher education were allowed to live beyond the Pale, including those who worked in medicine. On June 28, 1865, craftsmen were afforded the same right; and on June 25, 1867, soldiers who had fought during Nicholas's reign were given the same privilege. Jews were likewise granted the right to enter the civil service, and to participate in local governmental organizations and the new courts.³²

These reforms quickly led to the establishment of a number of Jewish communities outside of the Pale. The capital, St. Petersburg, attracted a large number of energetic and successful Jewish industrialists, as did a number of other large cities. Hundreds, and then thousands, of Jewish youths flocked to local gimnaziums, universities, and institutes. This increased access to education gave numerous Russians the opportunity to succeed in careers that would have previously been closed for them; for Russian Jews there was the added incentive of overcoming the restrictions that they were subject to. A degree also gave them the chance to avoid military service, or at the very least to shorten and lighten their service.

During this same period, Jews began to play a significant role in the financial sphere and in railroad construction. The first Jewish bank outside of the Pale of Settlement, I. E. Gintsburg, was founded in Petersburg in 1859. Previously, Jewish financial institutions had been limited to Warsaw, Odessa, and Berdichev, the last of which had more than eight Jewish-run banks in 1849.³³ Among the most prominent Jewish businessmen of this time were the Poliakov brothers (finance and railroads),³⁴ I. Bilokh, the oil magnates Dembo and Kagan, and bankers such as E. Ashkenazi, I. Vavelberg, A. Varshavskii, A. Zak, the Efrussi family, and others.

Odessa served as the cultural capital for Russia's Jews in the 1860s and early 1870s. The first Jewish periodicals, such as the Hebrew-language weeklies Kha-melits (Advocate) and Khashakhar (Dawn), the Yiddish Kol-mevasser ( Voice of the Herald) (1862–71, edited by A. Tsederbaum), and the Russian-language Rassvet (Dawn), Sion (1861–62) and Den' (The Day, 1869–71),³⁵ were all published there. However, Petersburg would soon replace Odessa as Russia's “Jewish capital.” From 1860 to 1910, twenty-one of the thirty-nine Russian-language Jewish journals and newspapers were published in Petersburg, compared to only seven in Odessa and three in Vilna. Among these were the weekly Rassvet (Dawn, 1879–83) and the monthly Voskhod (Sunrise).³⁶ As early as the 1850s, Petersburg was also to serve as the center of Jewish politics, where the shtadlanut, the representatives to the government, were located. Among the most prominent of these were members of the Gintsburg family, who had been given the title of baron by the Duke Gessen-Darshtadtskii. The founder of this dynasty was Evzel Gintsburg, and his son Goratsii followed in his footsteps.³⁷

The Russian government was determined to expand the number of Russian Jews studying in secular schools and universities. In 1863, the government set aside 24,000 rubles in subsidies for Jewish students, which were funded by taxes levied on Jews. The educational reforms of 1864 allowed children of “all social status and faiths” to pursue education, which greatly increased the number of Jews enrolled. In 1865, the number of Jews enrolled in gimnaziums was 990 (3.3 percent of all students), by 1870 the number was 2,045 (5.6 percent), and in 1880 the number reached 7,004 (12 percent). In certain areas, such as Odessa and Vilna educational districts, the proportion was naturally much higher. The number of Jews enrolled in universities was 129 (3.2 percent) in 1865, while in 1881 it had grown to 783 (8.8 percent). The rapid growth in numbers led the government to discontinue the stipend program in 1875.³⁸

Although the Russian government was concerned with economic growth, it also sought to limit the role of foreigners and non-Russians in the domestic economy. The reforms of the 1860s, though they gave all subjects of the Empire the right to pursue education, simultaneously forbid Jewish merchants from registering in guilds outside of the Pale of Settlement.³⁹

This dual approach to policy can be observed in the laws passed regarding the formation of corporations. A series of laws passed in the 1870s and 1880s had the professed goal of “limiting the ownership of land in certain locations and in certain spheres of industry from invasive elements.” Among the “invasive elements” were foreign subjects, Poles, and Jews. In the 1860s, both Poles and Jews were forbidden from owning land in certain areas, such as the Vilna and Kiev gubernias. In 1872, in order to ensure compliance with these same laws, sugar producers were forbidden from owning more than 200 desiatins of land in the southwest territories.⁴⁰ If a corporation had already succeeded in acquiring additional land, then the stock would have to be held in the individual's own name, and stockholders could not be from amongst the “undesirable elements.” May 22, 1880 saw the passage of a law that forbade Jews from obtaining land in the Don Cossack Oblast (Oblast Voiska Donskogo), which was intended to ensure that Jews would not occupy the territory that had been transferred from the Pale of Settlement to the jurisdiction of the Don Cossacks. On May 3, 1882, Jews were forbidden from acquiring or managing properties outside of urban areas. By all appearances, many tried to circumvent the prohibition, which eventually led to government officials demanding in May of 1892 that corporations owning land in rural areas within the Pale of Settlement refrain from allowing Jews to control or manage such properties. These were hardly the only discriminatory laws.⁴¹

Jews also played an important role in the economic and social life of Kiev, and formed a significant portion of the Kiev stock market committee by the end of the nineteenth century. On the initiative of the sugar magnate Lazar Brodskii and his brother Lev, a group of university professors, engineers, and industrialists met with the goal of establishing a polytechnical institute in Kiev. At the time, the quickly developing industrial sphere was facing a dearth of technical specialists. The campaign resulted in the founding of the Kiev Polytechnical Institute in honor of Alexander II, with half of the funds coming from government sources, while the other half was collected by Brodskii and the Ukrainian sugar magnate N. A. Tereshchenko.⁴²

Even in Moscow, the citadel of the Old Believer merchants who were often hostile to “foreign” competition, there were 129 Jewish merchants registered in the First Guild out of 740 members (of which 436 were Russian, 92 of foreign citizenship, and 87 belonged to other ethnic groups). The number of Jewish merchants in Moscow would continue to grow, although many registered as merchants only in order to escape the Pale of Settlement and to gain access to other privileges. By 1911, there were 159 Jewish merchants registered in Moscow's First Guild, of which approximately 35 had registered “for the title.”⁴³

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, the government seemed determined to continue its mission of “emancipating” the Jewish population. The Minister of Internal Affairs, L. S. Makov, sent a circular to all Governors General on April 3, 1880, stating that Jews who had illegally settled in areas closed to them were not to be forcibly removed. In what was a common pattern for the period, another, secret circular was sent three days later regarding the investigation of P. A. Cherevin, who was charged with the task of examining the activities of the mythological “cosmopolitan Jewish kahal.” The circular stated, “the head of the Third Bureau of his Imperial Majesty informed us that according to information received, nearly all of the Jewish capitalists have joined this organization, which pursues goals that are quite harmful to the Christian population, that they contribute large and small sums to the kahal's organization, and that they even show material support to revolutionary parties.”⁴⁴ The circular had little weight or authority behind it, though it is of some historical interest. Its author was a member of the inner circle of the future Alexander III, and it is thus indicative of the mentality of a certain part of the upper echelons of the Russian bureaucracy.

The year 1881 marked a watershed in the history of the Russian Jewry. After the assassination of Alexander II in March of 1881, pogroms began in the south and southwestern regions of the Empire and continued with occasional interruptions until 1884. Pogroms against the Jews had occurred earlier in Russia's history, but they had often resulted from economic competition between the Jews and Greeks in Odessa, and had been limited to that area.⁴⁵ The government took a series of measures aimed at stopping the pogroms, but eventually laid responsibility at the feet of the Russian Jews themselves, claiming the riots to be a result of the “abnormal relations between the native populace and the Jewish population of certain gubernias” (i.e., as a result of the Jews' “exploitation” of the native populace). The conservative and Slavophile press (as well as certain official publications) either welcomed or sought to justify the pogroms. Populist revolutionaries even attempted to use the pogroms as a means to instigate a revolt.⁴⁶

On May 3, 1882, the Russian government enacted the “Temporary Laws Regarding Jews,” which introduced a number of restrictions, as well as measures aimed at preventing further pogroms. For all intents and purposes, the Jewish population were accused of provoking the pogroms through their “exploitation” of the Christian population. At the same time, it should be noted that the government actually did want the pogroms to come to an end, fearing that the pogroms would not be limited to the Jewish population.⁴⁷ According to the new measures, Jews were forbidden to live outside of urban areas, and prohibited from owning or leasing land.⁴⁸ It should also be noted that these restrictions were largely not enforced in the first half of the 1880s, mainly due to opposition from the Ministry of Finance.

In 1887, the Ministry of Education, with I. D. Delianov at its head, introduced quotas on the number of Jews allowed to enroll at educational institutes (10 percent within the Pale, 5 percent outside of the Pale, and 3 percent in the capitals). Enforcement of these quotas was mostly left to the discretion of the administration of the institution in question. In addition, soon after Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich was appointed to the post of Governor General of Moscow in the beginning of 1891, laws were enacted demanding the forced deportation of Jewish craftsmen and veterans from the time of Nicholas's reign from Moscow and the surrounding areas. In the years 1891–92 nearly 20,000 Jews were forced to leave.⁴⁹

Jews responded to this crisis by leaving Russia. For the next thirty years, large numbers of Jews emigrated; between 1881 and 1914,⁵⁰ 1.98 million Jews left the Empire, with 1.5 million heading for the United States.⁵¹ A small number emigrated to Palestine; other destinations included Argentina, Europe, and South Africa. The government was in favor of emigration, which it viewed as a way to solve the “Jewish question.” The Minister of Internal Affairs, N. P. Ignatiev, declared in January of 1882 that “the western border of Russia was open for the Jews [to leave].” K. P. Pobedonostsev foresaw the following resolution to the “Jewish question”: “One third of them will die out, another third will emigrate, and the remainder shall dissolve into the surrounding population.”⁵² Jews who left Russia were forbidden from ever returning.

B. Nathans has recently called attention to the use of the term crisis in historical studies of Eastern European Jewry. “If such a large number of historical events are interpreted as ‘crises,' then the term begins to acquire static properties which then lose their multi-faceted relationship to other dimensions of historical experience.”⁵³ Theoretically, such a formulation is certainly correct, but it is equally correct, in my opinion, that from 1881 onwards the Russian Jewish population had truly reached a stage of crisis. Ten years after the pogroms of the 1880s, Jews were deported from Moscow, and the Kishinev pogrom would take place soon after, in 1903. These events affected the entire Jewish population of the Russian Empire, first and foremost psychologically. The ensuing revolution of 1905, and the European crisis from 1914 to 1921, would lead to a fundamental shift in the fate of Jews living within the Russian Empire.

One objective indicator of the severity of the conditions for Russian Jews was emigration. In 1904, 77,500 Jews emigrated to the United States, 30,000 more than in the previous year. This increase would continue (in 1905, 92,400 would emigrate; in 1906, 125,200; in 1907, 114,900), decreasing only after 1907.⁵⁴ During the period 1903–7, 482,000 Jews would emigrate to the United States at an average of 96,400 per year, the highest number for any period to that point in the history of the Jews in Russia. Immigration to the United States would spike again in 1914 (102,600) with many leaving to avoid military service or to escape the growing threat of military conflict.⁵⁵

The pogroms led to a renewed interest in emigration to Palestine. One such response to the pogroms was the formation of Hovevei Zion, which was led by Leon Pinsker. A doctor from Odessa and a social activist, Pinsker published a German-language pamphlet entitled “Auto-emancipation,” which examined the living conditions of Jews in the diaspora.⁵⁶ He reached the conclusion that assimilation, which he had previously supported, was impossible, and that the only possible solution for the Jewish people was the acquisition of their own territory. In 1882, a group of youths in Kharkov created the organization Bilu, which was dedicated to resettling Jews in the Promised Land. The first group of Bilu members reached Palestine in 1882. A second group, which attempted to secure rights for Jews from the Ottoman government, arrived in Palestine in 1884. Difficult physical labor and conflicts with their Jewish supervisors led several members to return to Russia, and the movement gradually petered out. At an 1884 meeting of Hovevei Zion groups in Katowice, Pinsker called for the Jews to return to Palestine and to focus on farming and agriculture, anticipating the kibbutz movement. In 1890, the Society for the Assistance of Jewish Farmers and Craftsmen in Palestine and Syria was founded.

The first Zionist Congress took place in Basel in 1897. One third (66 of 197) of the delegates came from Russia. There were 373 Zionist organizations in Russia in 1897; by 1903–4 the number had risen to 1,572. Russian Jews actively participated in the Zionist movement, whose leaders included: Ia. Bernshtein-Kogan, M. Usyshkin, V. Temkin, M. Mandelshtam, L. Motskin, I. Chlenov, H. Syrkin, B. Borokhov, V. Zhabotinskii, and others. The scale of participation on the part of Russian Jews is evident in the fact that when the Jewish Colonial Bank was established in accordance with the Second Zionist Congress in London, with 200,000 shares priced at one pound sterling (ten gold rubles) a share, 75 percent of the shares were bought by Russian Zionists. In 1897 the Odessa Zionist organization alone had 7,500 members. Russian authorities tolerated the activity of Zionist organizations at first, as they served the interests of the state. However, as it became clear that relocation to Palestine would not happen any time soon, Zionists began to agitate for the improvement of living conditions for Jews in the here and now. Five Zionists were elected to the first State Duma. At a conference of Russian Zionists in Helsingfors in November 1906, I. Grinberg, acknowledging the crisis in the Zionist movement, expressed his reluctance to fight for Jewish rights within Russia. But, at Zhabotinskii's instigation, a platform was passed that called for democratic reforms within the country, including the guarantee of civil liberties and status as a recognized minority, as well as the right for Jews to observe the Sabbath and use their native languages. This transformation of the Zionist movement into a liberal-democratic political party soon led the Senate to repeal their legal status. As a result of government persecution and the general decrease in democratic activity following 1907, by 1915 there were only 18,000 active Zionists in Russia.⁵⁷

According to the 1897 Census, there were 5,215,805 Jews living in Russia. Of these, 1,965,852 (38.65 percent) were involved in trade, while 1,793,937 (35.43 percent) were in industry. Next in number were the 334,827 in the service industries (6.61 percent), 278,095 individuals who did not declare a profession (5.49 percent), and 264,683 in the civil service or “free” professions (5.22 percent), followed by 201,027 in transportation (3.98 percent) and 179,400 in agriculture (3.55 percent).

By comparison, 76.5 percent of Russians were in agriculture, as were 62.9 percent of all Poles. In industry the numbers were 10 percent and 14.1 percent, respectively; 2.2 percent of Russians, 1.7 percent of all Poles, and 7.5 percent of the Armenian population were involved in trade professions; and 1.7 percent of Russians and 2.5 percent of Poles were in the civil service or “free professions.”⁵⁸

On the whole, Jews tended to live in urban areas. They composed a majority of the urban population in eight gubernias (Minsk, Grodno, Mogilev, Vitebsk, and Volynia, as well as three from the former Polish territories). In six additional gubernias, Jews were the largest ethnic group among city-dwellers. In the Kherson gubernia, Jews composed 28.4 percent of the urban population, and 25.9 percent of the urban population of Ekaterinoslav. By 1910, nine cities (Warsaw, Odessa, Lodz, Vilna, Ekaterinoslav, Kishinev, Berdichev, Bialystok, and Kiev) had a Jewish population over 50,000. The largest Jewish population was in Warsaw (310,000), followed by Odessa (172,608), while the smallest of these populations, in Kiev, numbered 51,000. Together, these cities contained nearly a million Jews, or one-fifth of the entire Jewish population of the Empire. Fifteen other cities had populations between 25,000 and 50,000, for a total of 500,000.⁵⁹ From 1897 to 1910 the Jewish urban population grew by nearly a million people (38.5 percent), totaling 3,545,418 by 1910. In 1910 there were 229 towns and cities with a Jewish population above 10,000. Within the Pale of Settlement, the number of Jewish communities with a population greater than 5,000 people grew from 130 in 1897 to 180 in 1910 (communities with more than 10,000 people grew from 43 to 76).⁶⁰

The number of Jewish “settlements” beyond the Pale was insignificant in comparison with the number of Jews living within it. However, the rate of growth of these populations was higher than in the Pale; Jews were more concentrated in the larger cities, and material and educational conditions were better, a result of the government's program of “voluntary integration.” In 1897, 43,000 Jews lived in cities whose populations were greater than 100,000 (Petrograd, Moscow, Nizhnii Novgorod, Tula, Samara, Kursk, Tiflis, Taganrog). By 1910 these populations had doubled to approximately 75,000–80,000 individuals. These, in the words of Ia. Leshchinskii, were the main points of concentration of “the Jewish bourgeoisie and professional intelligentsia.”⁶¹ There were a significant number of Jewish craftsmen in these cities who enjoyed a higher standard of living than their counterparts in the Pale. There were Jews living outside of these cities as well; Jews composed 7.2 percent of the population of Rostov-on-Don in 1914 (about 16,000 individuals).⁶²

Life within the Pale was more traditional than outside of it, though the rapid modernization of cities within the Pale left little chance of preserving traditional ways of life, irrespective of religious beliefs. As Leshchinskii described the situation, “The Jewish communities of Odessa and Ekaterinoslav consisted of large numbers of Jews who had broken with the traditional patriarchal Jewish way of life, and quickly adopted both the good and bad aspects of urban civilization. Among them one can see marked contrasts, with fully assimilated Jewish bourgeois living side-by-side with the impoverished Jewish proletariat.”⁶³

The Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth century resulted in the financial ruin of many Jewish craftsmen, leading many of them to emigrate abroad. The “proletarianization” of the Jewish populace had reached a grand scale by the outbreak of World War I. According to Leshchinskii, 600,000 Jews (30 percent of the working population) had become part of the proletariat by the beginning of the war. Half of these were workers and apprentices in workshops, while 75,000 worked in factories, mostly concentrated in the Polish territories, in cities such as Warsaw, Bialystok, and Lodz. An additional 110,000 Jews were employed as porters, longshoremen, and in similar professions.⁶⁴

By the end of the nineteenth century, 39.7 percent of those engaged in commerce in Russia were Jewish (72.8 percent in the Pale of Settlement). They owned mostly small-scale enterprises, and the profits of the Jewish “merchant class” were often barely enough to make ends meet. Löwe claims that Jews suffered as a result of industrialization, perhaps more than any other ethnic group in Russia, as they were deprived of those advantages they had earlier enjoyed. In his view, the stereotype of the Jews as the “spearhead” of capitalism (as Russian conservatives often viewed them) was more an ideological construct than a reflection of reality.⁶⁵

Both industrialization and rapid population growth hit Jewish craftsmen (remeslenniki) and traders hard. In the Kursk and Yaroslav gubernias (where Jews were forbidden to live) there was less than one craftsman per 1,000 inhabitants, whereas there were 2.6 for every 1,000 in the Kiev gubernia. Of these the majority were Jews. At the turn of the century, a craftsman's income was often less than half that of a peasant (150–300 rubles, as opposed to 400–500 rubles respectively). Many would not survive market conditions and became unemployed, and turned to haunting market squares in the hope of finding work. In some communities, unemployment went as high as 40 percent. In 1898, nearly 20 percent of Jews within the Pale received charitable assistance for Passover. In 1900, nearly two-thirds of Jewish funerals in Odessa were paid for by the community. According to some sources, at the turn of the century 30–35 percent of the Jewish population was unable to make ends meet without relying on assistance from charitable institutions.⁶⁶

By 1914 nearly half of Russia's 5.6 million Jews belonged to the lower middle class, while another quarter could be considered members of the proletariat, a fact that casts doubt on the conservatives' claim that Jews served as the “spearhead of capitalism.”⁶⁷ At the same time, such a claim did contain a kernel of truth. Of course, it was not the unemployed Jews of the shtetl that conservatives had in mind, but rather other Jews—the successful financiers, wholesale traders, and industrialists. The liberal economist M. V. Bernatskii, who was later to become the Finance Minister of the Provisional Government (and later served in the same capacity for Denikin and Vrangel), would concur with the conservative opinion, though he viewed the situation as a positive one. Taking into account that Jews composed more than a third of the “merchant class,” he wrote, “If we can put aside the ideals of subsistence production and see the successes of our country's development in trade, we are forced to admit that Jews have played an enormous role in the Russian economy. Enormous, as they are the ones who are making such trade possible.” Bernatskii was also of the opinion that if there were no Jews in Russia, it would be necessary to invite them in, to stimulate trade and industry.⁶⁸

Unfortunately, Bernatskii was in the minority, and the restrictions placed on Jews, motivated by fears of “Jewish domination,” slowed economic development. These fears were completely irrational. Productive citizens (or “subjects”) serve as the foundation of civil order; the fruits of their collective labors decrease poverty; so by extension, the authorities' ire at their presence should logically also decrease. Yet the authorities, or at least most of them, preferred to have Jews leave the country if they refused to “perish or assimilate,” instead of allowing them to work for the “economic prosperity of Russia,” to use Witte's formulation. Even as the Ministry of Finance attempted to prove that “our industry is as yet unable to get by without foreign and Jewish capital,” the Ministry of War, the Ministry of the Interior, and several others, up to and including Nicholas II, were not inclined to repeal the numerous restrictions placed on Jews.⁶⁹

The Russian government closely followed popular opinion, and derived much of its support from the more conservative portions of society. Those in charge of policy concerning the Jews in Imperial Russia increasingly came from the conservative camp. While liberals considered Jewish “emancipation” to be a component of their main goal of liberating Russian society from backwards absolutism, “patriotic guardians” of various types believed that Jewish activities, be they intellectual or economic in nature, were leading to the impoverishment of the nation and to a perilous break with the spiritual values of the Russian Orthodox state.

The slogan “The Jew [zhid ] is coming!” which appeared on the pages of the newspaper New Times (Novoe Vremia) in 1880,⁷⁰ could be found, in one form or another, in nearly every conservative or reactionary publication. Thirty years after this phrase graced New Times's pages, an even worse variant would appear: the “Jewish Invasion.”⁷¹ Antisemitism in Russia contained its own peculiar combination of a hatred for Judaism, which was deeply entrenched in Orthodox culture,⁷² along with the anti-capitalist reaction to modernization, whose main perpetrators, it was claimed, were Jews. Parts of Russia's intelligentsia were likewise heavily influenced by European antisemitism, particularly of the German variety.⁷³

Turgenev's Huntsman's Sketches encapsulate the relationship of “the people” to the Jews, which is based on fundamental religious differences. The protagonist, the landowner Chertopkhanov, hears the rumblings and shrieks of a crowd as he is passing through a local village. Someone is being beaten. He asks a local woman about what is taking place:

“The Lord knows, batiushka,” answered the old woman…“you can hear that our lads are beating a Yid [zhid].”

“A Yid? What Yid?”

“The Lord knows, batiushka. A Yid appeared among us; and where he's come from—who knows?”

“So, you see, they're beating him, sir.”

“Why beating him? What for?”

“I don't know, batiushka. No doubt, he deserves it. And, indeed, why not beat him? After all, batiushka, he crucified Christ!”⁷⁴

This story, entitled “The End of Chertopkhanov,” was published in 1872. Thirty years afterwards, the economist and journalist M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii was serving his exile in the Poltava gubernia. He discovered that Ukrainian peasants and the local Jews would get along well and would cooperate to their mutual benefit. “Yet despite all this,” he wrote, “the Jew can never be completely sure that this Russian neighbor, whom he lives next to in peace and harmony year in and year out, won't someday attack him, steal his property, commit foul acts against him, or even possibly kill him…He might be an ‘OK Jew' but…from the point of view of the Russian peasant he will always be an outsider and moreover a proponent of a repulsive faith. ‘Did the Jews not crucify our Lord?' This universal source of antisemitism, consecrated by the passage of centuries, particularly in Russia, cannot help influencing social opinion.”⁷⁵ Tugan-Baranovskii also argued that the basis of Russian antisemitism was not to be found only in the archaic worldview of the peasants, but also in the upper and middle classes and parts of the intelligentsia. He believed that antisemitism was a result of increased nationalism and economic competition; in his opinion, those unable to compete economically with the Jews would often become nationalists and antisemites.

The integration of the Jewish population under the conditions of a growing nationalism (or nationalisms, as the Jews were caught between growing Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish nationalism) only served to strengthen anti-semitic tendencies. The Jews were accused of facilitating the development of industry at the expense of agriculture. Witte's introduction of the gold standard was also blamed on the Jews, as many knew it would lessen the value of agricultural goods. Such a situation, in the opinion of many journalists, would benefit only a small number of bankers and Jews who did not concern themselves with production through labor. New Times attributed the rise of the Bund, the beginnings of the Zionist movement, and increased Jewish interest in Marxism to the notion that the Jews were planning on carving out their own state from Russia. If an earlier revolutionary slogan had been “all lands to the peasants!” then in the current climate Jews were accused of transforming peasants into proletarians, thus freeing up the land for its new owners.⁷⁶

Russian business owners and journalists, particularly in Moscow, were the most fervent in attacking their foreign and non-Christian competitors. For example, the newspaper Russian Review (Russkoe Obozrenie), founded in 1890 by the merchant D. I. Morozov and edited by Prince D. N. Tsertelev, frequently targeted Jews, Poles, and Germans. The paper claimed, among other things, that Jews considered themselves to be “above the law.” Some of the articles bear an eerie resemblance to the denunciations of later eras.⁷⁷

Attempts to push Jews out of one or another sphere of social activity could not always be explained by the purely “materialist” concept of competition. The nationalist credo that the Russian land was tied to its people also served as a common theme for radical right-wing journalists, as well as certain government administrators. In 1909 N. P. Muratov, the governor of Tambov, removed S. M. Starikov from his position as head of the local music academy, basing his decision on the belief that “the state of music in Tambov has suffered in the hands of the Jews,” as well as on the more abstract idea that a city “which is truly the center of a Russian gubernia is well deserving of a ‘Russian' music academy.”⁷⁸

At the turn of the century, a small but significant portion of the Russian intelligentsia fell under the influence of European racial theory. The famous conservative journalist M. O. Menshikov popularized the racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, as well as racist German theoreticians.⁷⁹ Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, one of the ideological bases for Nazism, was published in Russia by A. S. Suvorin in five separate editions between 1906 and 1910 under the title The Jews: Their Origins and the Reasons for Their Influence in Europe (Evrei, ikh proiskhozhdenie i prichiny ikh vliianiia v Evrope). The neo-Slavophile S. F. Sharapov criticized “liberal dogma” for its belief that the Jews were as white as the Germans, the English, or the Slavs. In his opinion, the “Jewish question” was not a legal one, but rather a question of race. Right-wing organizations began to renew their demands that even christened Jews should be forbidden from occupying government posts. In 1912, students entering the Military Medical Academy were forced to provide proof that there were no Jews in their family in the past three generations, and those who had Jewish fathers or grandfathers were forbidden from joining the Cadet Corps. These were hardly the only cases of discrimination based on ethnicity, as opposed to religion.⁸⁰

Overall, the Jewish population of the Russian Empire was more law-abiding than the population at large. In 1907, 144,143 people were convicted of crimes. Of these, 4,167 (2.89 percent) were Jews. There were 93.6 convicted criminals per 100,000 subjects, whereas the number for Jews was 74.3 per 100,000. The percentage of Jews convicted of political offenses was higher (10.6 percent, or 477 men and 69 women, for a total of 546). This was less than the number of Jews convicted of theft (716, 680 men and 36 women) although as a percentage of the entire population the number convicted was well within the average (4.02 percent). However, Jews were the most likely to be convicted for infractions against the Trade and Credit Code (27.12 percent), although in absolute numbers this only amounted to 32 individuals (24 men and 8 women).⁸¹

This is not to say that the Jewish population did not contain its share of criminals, including thieves and murderers (56 men and one woman, or 1.11 percent of all those convicted), and even horse thieves (30 individuals, or 1.45 percent of Russia's total). From 1903 to 1913, the percentage of Jews convicted of crimes hovered between 3.4 and 3.9 percent, less than the rate of Russians, Poles, Latvians, and Lithuanians. In 1913, the national average was 104 convicted criminals for every 100,000 individuals, whereas the corresponding number for Jews was 97 per 100,000. However, statistics are a relative science, and the relatively high rates of conviction speak more to the effectiveness of judicial and police structures in European Russia as opposed to, say, the Central Asian territories, where conviction rates were much lower (55 per I00,000).⁸²

Dry statistics often contradict widespread stereotypes and myths, one of which is the belief that Odessa was the “criminal capital” of the Russian Empire. In 1913, there were 224 convicts for every 100,000 inhabitants in Odessa, compared with 353 in Baku, 384 in Kazan, and 400 in Nizhnii Novgorod. Before 1917 there were no large-scale criminal organizations in Odessa. The infamous bandit Mishka Iaponchik spent most of the decade preceding the Revolution in prison for his participation in anarchist “expropriations.”⁸³ Even the most famous examples of Odessan banditry were more myth than fact: the prototype for Isaac Babel's Benia Krik (from his collection of short stories, entitled Odessa Tales) had far less in common with his literary counterpart than military commander S. K. Timoshenko had with his (Savitskii in Babel's Red Cavalry).

The gulf between the “spearhead” portion of Russian Jewry, who were becoming more and more integrated into Russian society, and their less fortunate fellow Jews was steadily increasing. Soon enough they would literally be speaking different languages. In 1897, 96.9 percent (5,054,300) of all Jews claimed Yiddish as their native language,⁸⁴ followed by the Russian language (1.28 percent, 67,063), Polish (0.90 percent, 47,060), and German (0.44 percent, 22,782). Less than half (45 percent) of all adult men and only 25 percent of adult women were literate in Russian.⁸⁵ Though the rate of Russian literacy among the Jews was lower than that of the German minority living in Russia, it was higher than that of the Russian population. In addition, a majority of Jews living in the Pale of Settlement were conversant in either Ukrainian or Belorussian.⁸⁶

In St. Petersburg the process of assimilation occurred rapidly. In 1855 there were less than 500 Jews in the capital; by 1910 the number was 35,000. In 1869, Yiddish was the native tongue of 97 percent of St. Petersburg's Jews, but the number who spoke Russian as their native language was to grow quickly (to 28 percent in 1890, 36 percent in 1900, 42 percent in 1910). Over the same period, the percentage of native Yiddish speakers decreased to approximately 54 percent of the Jewish population.⁸⁷ The children of the Jewish elite attended Russian schools and universities and began to identify more closely with Russian culture. This did not always entail a break with Jewry. Aleksei Goldenveizer (son of the lawyer A. S. Goldenveizer) studied in the First gymnazium of Kiev alongside the future theologian V. N. Ilin and Sergei Trubetskoi (son of the philosopher and journalist), as well as Petliura's future Minister of Foreign Affairs, A. Ia. Shulgin.⁸⁸ A lawyer like his father, Goldenveizer took an active role in Jewish politics, and understood the language of the Jewish “street” (though he himself admitted that he didn't know Yiddish very well).⁸⁹

In the twenty years between the 1897 census and the 1917 revolution, the cultural dynamics of Russian life were to have a profound effect on Jewish assimilation. Indirect proof of this can be found in the 1926 Soviet census, in which 70.4 percent of Jews considered Yiddish to be their native language, although only 42.5 percent of literate Jews in the Ukraine and 56.4 percent of those in Belarus were literate in Yiddish. Russian had now become the literary language for more than half of the Jewish population. As one might imagine, these changes were even more evident outside of the Pale of Settlement. It is highly unlikely that this shift took place in the ten years preceding the Soviet census.⁹⁰

Jews played a significant role in Russian literature and literary criticism at the turn of the century, as they did in journalism and publishing.⁹¹ They also had a large presence in the legal profession. By 1888, Jews comprised 21 percent of St. Petersburg lawyers, as well as 39 percent of apprentice lawyers.⁹² Among the “stars” of the legal profession were A. Ia. Passover, G. B. Sliozberg, M. M. Vinaver, O. O. Gruzenberg (all in Petersburg), as well as A. S. Goldenveizer (Kiev) and others.⁹³ However, towards the end of the 1880s the government began to restrict the access of Jews to the legal profession at the behest of their Christian colleagues. In 1889, the Emperor approved a proposal by then Minister of Justice N. A. Manasein that allowed Jews to pass the bar only upon explicit approval of the Ministry of Justice, following a recommendation by a committee of other lawyers. On a practical level, this meant that Jews could become full lawyers only in exceptional circumstances. Thus, Vinaver and Gruzenberg, who were well-known in legal circles, were forced to serve as solicitors for 15 and 16 years, respectively. In 1915, quotas were imposed (15 percent in the Warsaw, Vilna, and Odessa okrugs,⁹⁴ 10 percent for Petersburg and Kiev and surrounding territories, and 5 percent for all other legal districts).⁹⁵

Emigration, secular education, and the “proletarianization” of a significant portion of Russia's Jews all served to weaken the system of traditional Jewish values that had previously gone unchallenged. As a result, Jews were increasingly drawn toward politics. This was particularly true of the younger generation. In 1897, the United Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (or Bund) was founded at an illegal congress in Vilna. It was both the first social democratic political party in Russia and also the largest Jewish political party. Three Bund members would go on to be founding members of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1898. The Bund opposed Zionism, and although it espoused a class-based ideology, it also agitated for Jewish cultural autonomy, an issue that was to lead to its split with the Social Democrats in 1903, though they reunited in 1906.

The year 1899 saw the formation of several Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion) groups, which attempted to combine socialism with Zionism; this was followed in 1903 by the founding of Tseirei Zion (Youth of Zion), which pursued a non-Marxist socialist agenda. In January of 1905, a group of Poalei Zionists who were committed to the creation of a Jewish state (in Palestine or elsewhere) founded the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party, with N. Syrkin at its head. Their more “classical” Zionist counterparts formed the Social Democratic Party Poalei Zion (headed by B. Borokhov) in February of 1906. April of the same year witnessed the founding of the Socialist Jewish Workers Party, headed by Kh. O. Zhitlovskii, which opposed “territorialism” and Zionism. In 1906, the Jewish People's Party (Folkspartei) united the followers of historian and thinker S. M. Dubnov, who believed that Jews were “one people united in spirit” who must agitate for “wide cultural and communal autonomy.” Dubnov believed that Zionism was an opiate for the spiritually feeble and was opposed to emigration to Palestine. Finally, that same year also saw the founding of the Jewish People's Group, with Vinaver at its head. Its membership included most of the Jewish “Kadets.” The members of this group also held anti-Zionist beliefs.⁹⁶

A number of Jews were also among the leadership of the Russian revolutionary parties, including the Social Democrats (Iu. O. Martov-Tsederbaum, P. B. Aksel'rod, and others), the Social Revolutionaries (G. A. Gershuni, the Gots brothers, and others). Russian anarchism first appeared within the Pale of Settlement (it was centered in Bialystok, Ekaterinoslav, and Odessa) and Jews often constituted a majority in anarchist groups.⁹⁷ The radicalization of Jewish politics was accompanied by the continued integration of the Jewish population into Russian society.⁹⁸ Over the previous half-century, a small but growing segment of Russian Jewry had come to consider themselves “Russian keepers of the Torah.” This relatively small, yet influential, group was more educated and prosperous than the general Jewish population, and was deeply involved in the economy and politics of the Empire. For members of this group, Russian culture was as important as Jewish culture; if the Russian language was not their native tongue (though it often was), they at least used it for professional communication. A number of them played significant roles in the development of Russian culture as well. Not all of the members of this group should be considered assimilationists; adopting Russian culture no longer necessarily entailed disowning one's Jewish heritage or a refusing to participate in issues affecting the Jewish community. Business owners, lawyers, doctors, writers, scientists, and publishers, they believed that liberalization and reforms would allow Jews to live in Russia as well as they did in Western Europe, and they actively collaborated with Russians to that end. They were often just as fervently patriotic as their Russian counterparts.

Government policy toward the Jews at the turn of the twentieth century continued to demonstrate the same lack of consistency as in earlier periods. On the one hand, decisions undertaken by the Senate and favorable rulings by the Ministry of the Interior resulted in a number of restrictions from the “Temporary Laws” being eased or removed during the period 1897–1907. Surprisingly, these rulings had little to do with political orientation, and Prime Ministers of varying political beliefs (Sviatopolk-Mirskii, Stolypin, Plehve) all softened the authorities' stance towards Jews. Among the restrictions that were lifted were the laws forbidding Jews to live outside of cities and the prohibitions on distilling alcohol.⁹⁹

However, some restrictions remained, such as those limiting access to education, as well as the laws aimed at keeping Jews out of certain professions. In 1894, seven years after the law imposing quotas on Jews in educational institutions was enacted, Jews still comprised 13.3 percent of all university students (1853 total), while by 1902 the number had dropped to 1250 (7 percent of all students). As a result, many Jewish students went abroad. In 1902 and 1903, between 1,895 and 2,405 Russian Jewish students studied abroad in European institutions (nearly twice the number enrolled in Russia). During the revolutionary years of 1905–7, the number of Jewish students enrolled in Russia increased to 4,266 (12 percent). Restrictive measures were reinstated soon after, and in 1913 there were 2505 enrolled Jewish students (7.3 percent).¹⁰⁰ In 1915 the government passed an initiative granting educational privileges to those who had served in the war (as well as their children) regardless of faith or ethnic status. This increased the percentage of Jewish students to nearly 8 percent (approximately 2,000) of all students enrolled in state universities and institutes in 1916. During the war it was impossible for Jews to study abroad, and studying in private institutes of higher education became the only available option. As the number of Jewish students in private institutions increased, the government considered instituting quotas for Jewish students at private institutions as well. Officials were split into two more or less even camps, and the Emperor eventually decided the matter, siding with those in favor of quotas on May 21, 1916.¹⁰¹ Given the extreme measures taken in government education policy towards the Jews from the mid-1880s to 1914 one cannot help agreeing with Nathans' claim that these events were a kind of “silent pogrom.”¹⁰²

In 1886, 9,255 Jewish students were enrolled in gimnaziums. In 1911, the number had increased to 17,538, but the percentage had fallen, from 10.2 percent to 9.1 percent of all students enrolled. The number of university students during the same period increased from 1,856 to 3,602, but in terms of percentage there was a decrease from 14.5 percent to 9.4 percent.¹⁰³ Taking into account overall population growth, and the increase in education and numbers of spots for students in universities, it becomes clear that thousands of young people whose parents were unable to pay for their education were prevented from realizing their educational goals.¹⁰⁴ This situation increased the numbers of the “thinking proletariat” that was to produce future revolutionaries.

The beginning of the twentieth century greeted Russian Jews with another wave of pogroms, which were even more bloody than those of years past. Unchecked antisemitic propaganda found fertile ground among a population whose culture already contained numerous antisemitic aspects. The result was the Kishinev pogrom, which took place during Easter in 1903. The cold-blooded murder of nearly 50 Jews in peacetime shocked both Russian society and the international community at large.¹⁰⁵ This new wave of pogroms was to continue through the years of the 1905 revolution.

Even under the “constitutional monarchy” Jews did not receive full civil rights. According to Russian law, Shmariagu Levin, a Jewish Duma deputy, did not have the right to live in Petersburg. Attempts to address the issue of Jewish rights met with little success. The persistence of the Pale of Settlement and the numerous restrictions on Jews in this newly “free” country seemed barbaric to Western countries, whose own citizens were not immune from persecution while in Russia. In 1911, the United States government withdrew from its trade agreement with Russia, due to the fact that its citizens of Jewish heritage were subjected to the same restrictions as local Jews.¹⁰⁶

In 1913, an event occurred that seemed to come straight out of the annals of medieval history. Menahem Mendel Beilis, a resident of Kiev, was indicted for the murder of a 13-year-old Ukrainian Christian boy. A number of antisemitic organizations and far-right Duma deputies called for his conviction based on the accusation that Beilis had engaged in ritual murder, though there was no evidence to support the ludicrous claim. Though he was eventually acquitted, the very possibility of such a show trial speaks volumes as to how the Jewish populace was treated in the last years of the Russian Empire.¹⁰⁷

Despite the numerous restrictions in place, the number of Jews in the Russian elite continued to grow. German, Jewish, and Polish subjects comprised 20 percent, 11 percent, and 11 percent (respectively) of all founders of corporations from 1896 to 1900.¹⁰⁸ The Imperial government, for whom nationalism was a matter of policy, introduced measures aimed at limiting the presence of “foreign” actors in the domestic economy. In 1911, Stolypin instructed the Ministry of Industry to push Jews out of the bread trade. From 1913 to 1914, laws were enacted that prohibited Jews from controlling real estate or serving as directors of corporations.¹⁰⁹ In 1914, the Ministry was shocked to discover that in the Northwestern Territory only 8 percent of those employed in banks and corporations were Russian, compared to 35 percent Jews, 26 percent Germans, and 19 percent Poles. The Ministry insisted on the imposition of quotas based on ethnicity in order to redress the situation, both in the Northwestern Territories and in the rest of the Empire.¹¹⁰ Despite these measures, Jews would continue to comprise approximately 20 percent of the “business elite” in Russia.¹¹¹

As we can see, during these three decades government policy towards the Jews was more concerned with the placing of restrictions than with any kind of “emancipation,” even though the government considered the latter its official policy and would occasionally take steps in that direction. According to J. Klier, Jews were persecuted because of their connection to the “Polish question.” His claim rests on the notion that the government considered Jews to be in league with the Poles due to their close economic ties, and, as the latter presented a threat to the Empire as a whole, both groups were subjected to discrimination. The result was that Russia's Jews, who could have become “obedient” subjects much like the Jews of Austria-Hungary or Germany, were instead pushed towards the opposition, eventually joining liberal or revolutionary movements in accordance with their social position or temperament.¹¹²

Even if the government initially associated the Jews and the Poles, the situation had changed drastically by the outbreak of the First World War. Soon after the beginning of the war, Grand Duke Nicholas's manifesto to the Poles promised the creation of a Polish state, whereas Jews were automatically considered to be potential traitors.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, only two countries (Russia and Romania) had placed legal restrictions upon their Jewish citizens. Of course, Russia had no monopoly on antisemitism, which had been growing in other countries such as France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. Nevertheless, the first pogrom of the twentieth century was to occur in Russia. The Kishinev tragedy, which took place during a time of peace under the delinquent watch of a negligent government, exposed Russia's treatment of its Jews to the world, as did the show trial of Mendel Beilis. While the latter was not the only antisemitic show trial of the era to gain notoriety, it is worth remembering that the Alfred Dreyfus case involved an accusation of espionage, not ritual murder. And although Dreyfus was convicted, he was eventually pardoned. Beilis, however, was exonerated by the jury on the basis that he had not killed the boy in question. This did not mean that the Russian population at large did not believe the accusations against the Jews.

One can only guess as to what course the Jews of the Russian Empire would have taken had the Russian Empire continued its existence. Given the rate of emigration, it is quite possible that the Jews would have largely abandoned the country. On the other hand, it is also possible that “voluntary integration” would have eventually succeeded, and the Russian Jews could have come to resemble their French and German counterparts as “Russian keepers of the Torah.” Yet such thoughts are outside of the realm of history, existing only in the kingdom of hypothetical speculation.

The World War—which at the time nobody thought to call “the first”—did take place. It is highly unlikely that in the patriotic furor of August 1914 (or, in the Russian context, July, according to the Gregorian calendar still used at the time) anybody could have considered the possibility that the three-hundred-year history of the Romanov Empire was drawing to a close, that it had only three years to live. And it seemed just as impossible that the man in charge of negotiating the peace, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Republic (called “the people's commissar” according to the French tradition), would turn out to be a certain Lev Trotsky, a former exile and a Jew.