History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 of 3. From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day

NOTE

The present volume, which concludes Dubnow's "History of the Jews in Russia-Poland," contains, in addition to the text, an extensive bibliography and an index to the entire work. In the bibliography an enormous amount of material has been collected, and it is arranged in such a way as to enable the reader to ascertain the sources upon which the author drew. It is thus in the nature of notes, and is therefore arranged according to the chapters of the book. The index, which has been prepared with the utmost care by the translator, is really a synopsis of Jewish history in Russia and Poland, and its usefulness cannot be over-rated.

Professor Friedlaender, the translator of this work, who left the United States at the beginning of this year, did not see the proof of the bibliography and index.

The tragic news has just reached this country that Professor Friedlaender was murdered under the most revolting circumstances. An eminent scholar and writer has thus been removed from American Jewry, and the entire house of Israel together with the Jewish Publication Society of America, on whose committee Professor Friedlaender served with conspicuous merit for a number of years, mourns this irreparable loss.

July, 1920.

CHAPTER XXXI
THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS II

1. Continued Policy of Oppression

In the course of the nineteenth century every change of throne in Russia was accompanied by a change of policy. Each new reign formed, at least in its beginning, a contrast to the one which had preceded it. The reigns of Alexander I. and Alexander II. marked a departure in the direction of liberalism; those of Nicholas I. and Alexander III. were a return to the ideas of reaction. In accordance with this historic schedule, Alexander III. should have been followed by a sovereign of liberal tendencies. But in this case the optimistic expectations with which the new ruler was welcomed both by his Russian and his Jewish subjects were doomed to disappointment. The reign of Nicholas II. proved the most gloomy and most reactionary of all. A man of limited intelligence, he attempted to play the rôle of an unlimited autocrat, fighting in blind rage against the cause of liberty.

This reactionary tendency came to light in the very beginning of the new reign. During the first few months after the accession of Nicholas II. to the throne – between November, 1894, and January, 1895 – the liberal Zemstvo assemblies of nine governments,¹ in presenting addresses of loyalty to the new Tzar, were bold enough to voice the hope that he would eventually invite the representatives of these autonomous institutions to participate in the legislative acts of the Government. This first timid request for constitutional rights met with a harsh and clumsy rebuff. In his reply to the deputation representing the nobility, the Zemstvos, and the municipalities, which appeared in the Winter Palace on January 17, 1895, to convey to him the greetings of the Russian people, the Tzar made the following pronouncement:

In several Zemstvo assemblies there have been heard lately the voices of men carried away by preposterous delusions concerning the participation of the representatives of the Zemstvos in the affairs of the inner administration. Let everybody know that I shall guard the principle of autocracy as firmly and uncompromisingly as it was guarded by my never-to-be-forgotten deceased parent.

This veiled threat was enough to intimidate the faint-hearted constitutionalists. It was universally felt that the autocratic régime was still firmly entrenched and that the old constitution of "enforced safety"²– this charter of privileges bestowed upon the police to the disadvantage of the people – was still unshaken. The hope of seeing Russia transformed from a state based upon brute force into a body politic resting upon law and order was dashed to the ground.

The Jews, too, were quick to realize that the war which had been waged against them by Alexander III. for fourteen long years was far from being at an end. True, the addresses of welcome presented in 1895 by the Jewish communities of Russia to the young Tzar on the occasion of his marriage elicited an official expression of thanks, which was not marred by any rebuke for harboring "preposterous delusions." But this was purely for the reason that these addresses were not tainted by any allusions to the hopes for emancipation entertained by the Jews. There was nothing, indeed, which might have warranted such hopes. The same dignitaries who, under Alexander III., had stood forth as the champions of savage anti-Semitic policies, remained at the helm of Russian affairs: Pobyedonostzev, the head of the Holy Synod, Durnovo, the Minister of the Interior – towards the end of 1895 he made room for Goremykin, who was not a whit less reactionary – and Witte, the double-faced Minister of Finance, who was anxious at that time to fall in line with the reactionary influences then in vogue. The thoughts which occupied Pobyedonostzev's mind at the beginning of the new reign may be gauged from the report submitted by him to the Tzar in 1895, concerning the state of affairs in the Greek-Orthodox Church. The "Grand Inquisitor" was deeply worried by the alleged fact that the Jews were exercising a dangerous influence over the religious life of their Christian domestics:

The minors, after living among Jews for several years, prove entirely forgetful of the Greek-Orthodox faith. But even the beliefs of the adults are being undermined. The priests who listen to the confessions of the domestics employed in Jewish homes are stricken with horror on learning of the abominable blasphemies uttered by the Jews against Christianity, the Savior, and the Holy Virgin, which, through the domestics, are likely to gain currency among the people.

These charges, which might have been bodily quoted from the sinister writings of the mediæval guardians of the Church, were intended as a means of preparing the young sovereign for a proper understanding of the Jewish problem. They were brought forward by the procurator-in-chief of the Holy Synod, the same ecclesiastical functionary who inflicted severe persecutions on the Russian dissidents and soon afterwards forced the Dukhobortzy, an Evangelistic sect, to leave their native land and to seek refuge in Canada. Having failed to realize his great ambition – to clear Russia of its Jewish population, with the help of Baron Hirsch's millions³– Pobyedonostzev resumed his professional duties, which were those of a procurator⁴ of Jewry on behalf of the Holy Synod, the sanctum officium of the militant Greek-Orthodox Church.

Not content with brandishing his rusty ecclesiastical sword, Pobyedonostzev resorted to secular weapons in his fight against the hated tribe. When, in 1898, the Council of the Jewish Colonization Association in Paris sent a delegation to St. Petersburg to apply to the Government for permission to settle Russian Jews as agricultural farmers in Russia itself, Pobyedonostzev replied: "Nos cadres ne sont pas prêts pour vous recevoir,"⁵ and he went out of his way to explain to the delegates that the Jews were a very clever people, intellectually and culturally superior to the Russians, and, therefore, dangerous to them: "The Jews are displacing us, and this does not suit us." When questioned as to the future of Russian Jewry under the system of uninterrupted persecutions, Pobyedonostzev on one occasion made the following candid statement: "One-third will die out, one-third will leave the country, and one-third will be completely dissolved in the surrounding population."

Such being the attitude towards the Jewish problem of the ruling spheres of Russia, any improvement in the situation of Russian Jewry was manifestly out of the question. Even where such an improvement might have been found to tally with the anti-Semitic policies of the Government, it was ruled out as soon as it bade fair to benefit the Jews. Thus, when in 1895, the governor of Vilna, in his "most humble report" to the Tzar, advocated the desirability of abrogating the Pale of Settlement for the purpose "of weakening the detrimental influence of Jewry," since the latter constituted a majority of the population in the cities of the Western region,⁶ Nicholas II. penned the following resolution:⁷ "I am far from sharing this view of the governor." The leaders of Russian Jewry knew full well that the wind which was blowing from the heights of the Russian throne was unfavorable to them, and their initial hopefulness gave way speedily to a feeling of depression. A memorandum drafted at that time by prominent Jews of St. Petersburg, with the intention of submitting it to one of the highest functionaries at the Russian court, mirrors this pessimistic frame of mind:

The Russian Jews are deprived of that powerful lever for intellectual and moral advancement which is designated as the hope for a better future. They are fully aware of the fact that the highest authority in the land, influenced by the distorted information concerning the Jews, which is systematically presented to it by officials acting from avaricious or other selfish motives, is exceedingly unfavorable to the Jews. They must resign themselves to the fact that there is actually no possibility of directing the attention of the Tzar and Sovereign to the true state of affairs, and that even those dignitaries who themselves act justly and tolerantly towards the Jews are afraid of putting in a good word for them for fear of being charged with favoritism towards them.

2. The Martyrdom of the Moscow Community

The attitude which officials of high rank were prone to adopt towards the Jews was luridly illustrated at that time in Moscow. It will be remembered that the small Jewish colony which had been left in the second Russian capital after the cruel expulsions of 1891 was barred from holding religious services in its large synagogue which had been closed by order of Alexander III.⁸ In view of the forthcoming festivities in honor of the coronation of Nicholas II., which were to be held in Moscow in the spring of 1896, the representatives of the Jewish community of the second Russian capital petitioned the governor-general of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovitch, to secure for them the Tzar's permission to have their synagogue open at least during the coronation days, "as a special act of grace, in order that the Jews of Moscow may be given a chance to celebrate the joyful event with due solemnity." But the grand duke, maddened by Jew-hatred, notified the petitioners through the Chief of Police that their petition was "an insolent violation of the imperial will" and could not be considered.

The martyrdom of the Moscow community, the heritage of the past reign, stood out like a black stain even upon the gloomy background of the new era. An imperial ukase issued in 1892 had decreed that the structure of the sealed-up Moscow synagogue should be sold to the highest bidder unless it was converted into a charitable institution.⁹ The community was naturally anxious to prevent the desecration of its sanctuary and to preserve the edifice for better days to come. With this end in view it placed in the synagogue building the trade school for Jewish children which had been established in memory of Alexander II. The anti-Semitic authorities of Moscow scented in this step a wicked design. The governor-general got into communication with the Ministers of the Interior and of Public Instruction, and, as a result, on May 27, 1896, the executive board of the Moscow community received the following order: To stop the admission of pupils to the trade school and to close the school altogether after the completion of the prescribed course of studies by the present contingent of students. Thereupon the Jews of Moscow made another attempt to save their synagogue by transferring hither their school and asylum for poor and orphaned children, the so-called Talmud Torah. This attempt, too, was frustrated by the Muscovite Hamans. On October 28, 1897, the governor-general announced that, after consultation with the Minister of the Interior, the decision had been reached to close the asylum, which sheltered about one hundred poor children, on the fanciful ground that these children might just as well receive their instruction in Russian educational establishments. The underlying motive of the new order was unmistakably revealed in its latter part: Unless in the course of two months the building of the synagogue will be reconstructed and so altered as to be fitted for a hospital or a similar charitable institution, it will be sold at public auction.

Once more the Jewish community endeavored to save its sanctuary, which its enemies had made up their minds to destroy. The synagogue structure was rebuilt to meet the purposes of a hospital and a shelter. But the commission appointed by the governor-general to examine the alterations found that they were not sufficiently extensive and therefore suggested that the interior of the synagogue should be entirely remodelled so as to exclude the possibility of its ever being used for devotional purposes. The struggle centering around the alterations dragged on for another eight years – until the revolution of 1905 and the assassination of the ferocious governor-general. It was then that the Jews finally succeeded in releasing their sanctuary from the death sentence which had been passed upon it.

The motive which animated the Muscovite Jew-haters was perfectly evident: it was their fervent desire to wipe out the last remnants of the local Jewish community by subjecting the Jews to religious and administrative persecutions and thereby compelling them to flee from the center of Greek Orthodoxy. The growth of the Jewish settlement at Moscow was checked in ruthless fashion. The Jewish artisans had been expelled as far back as 1891, but the Jewish merchants who purchased their right of residence in the second Russian capital at the annual cost of one thousand rubles – the tax levied on first guild members – had been allowed to remain. Moreover, as the largest industrial center of Russia, Moscow naturally attracted a goodly number of Jewish merchants who came there temporarily on business. These "newcomers" were handled more severely than are alien enemies in war-time. Police detectives prowled about on the streets and at the railroad stations, seizing passers-by who happened to exhibit a "Semitic" countenance, and dragging them to the police stations, "with a view to the examination of their right of residence in Moscow." The unfortunate Jews, whose documents did not comply with all the technicalities of the law, were expelled at once. The Moscow Police News carried a regular advertisement offering a reward for the capture of "rightless" Jews. In October, 1897, the Moscow Chief of Police announced a premium of equal amount for the capture of one Jew or of two burglars.¹⁰

Finally, the Russian Government took a most effective step towards preventing the increase of the Jewish population of Moscow. On January 22, 1899, an imperial ukase was issued forthwith prohibiting Jewish merchants of the first guild from settling in Moscow, unless they shall have obtained special permission from the Minister of Finance and from the governor-general of Moscow, it being beforehand agreed that no such permission should be granted. The same ukase enacted a number of offensive discriminations against the Jewish merchants already settled in Moscow by depriving them of their vote in the commercial associations, and by other similar devices. On a subsequent occasion the admission was candidly made that all these measures were prompted by the desire "to rid as far as possible the government of Moscow of the Jews already settled there on a legal basis."

3. Restrictions in the Right of Residence

Whereas the régime of Grand Duke Sergius in Moscow represented an acute stage of Judæophobia, manifesting itself in cruelties of an exceptional character, the central Government in St. Petersburg exhibited the same disease in a more "normal" form. Here, the oppression of the Jews was pursued systematically and quietly, and was carried on as one of the most important functions of the public administration. The sacrosanct institution of the Pale of Settlement and the other mainstays of political anti-Semitism were zealously guarded by the faithful watchdogs of Russian reaction – the various Ministers of the Interior who followed one another between the years 1895 and 1904: Durnovo (until the autumn of 1895), Goremykin (1896-1899), Sipyaghin (1899-1902), and Plehve (1902-1904). True, during the régime of the last two Ministers the anti-Semitic temperature rose above normal, but it was only due to the fact that the increased revolutionary propaganda of those days had generally stimulated the powers of reaction to a greater display of energy. Quite aside from these exceptional conditions, the rigid consistency in enforcing the restrictive laws was sufficient to account for many tragedies in the life of the Jews, while the despotism of the provincial authorities aggravated the situation still further and turned the tragedies into catastrophes.

As far as the Pale of Settlement is concerned, the Government continued its old-time policy of cooping up the Jews within the area of the cities and towns by shielding the villages carefully against the influx of Jews. Since the promulgation of the "Temporary Rules" in 1882, the authorities of St. Petersburg had been aiming at the gradual elimination of those rural Jewish "old timers" who had been allowed under those rules to remain in the villages.¹¹ They had been looking forward to the time when the eyes of the Russian moujik would no more be offended by the sight of a Jew. But this pious wish did not materialize quickly enough. Several governors put forth the simple proposition to expel all Jews from the villages, not excluding those who had been settled there for a long time. This step, however, was deemed too radical. The Minister of Finance, Witte, wished to solve the problem in a different way. He sought to persuade the Tzar that the introduction of the state liquor monopoly would automatically have the effect of forcing the Jews to leave the country-side, inasmuch as the liquor traffic formed the principal occupation of the village Jews.

Witte's conjecture was to a certain degree borne out by the facts. By the end of the nineties the Jewish country population of Russia had been considerably reduced. Nevertheless there was no relief in sight. For the lust of the administration had grown in proportion. The governors and the other gubernatorial authorities resorted to all kinds of cunning devices to force the Jews out of the villages or out of the railroad stations which were situated outside the town limits. The Christian land-owners frequently complained about these deportations, and petitioned the governors to permit the Jewish grain merchants, who were engaged in buying and shipping the grain from the manorial store-houses, to reside at the railroad stations. The Senate was compelled over and over again to pass upon the appeals of illegally deported Jews and to enter into an examination of all kinds of hair-splitting questions involved in the manipulation of the anti-Jewish laws by the lower courts, whether, for instance, an old-time Jewish villager who returns to his home after a brief absence is to be regarded as a new settler who has no right to live in the country, or whether a Jew who lives on an estate which happens to be situated in two contiguous villages is allowed to remove from the one to the other. As a rule the authorities decided these questions against the Jews, though the most revolting decisions of this kind were later reversed by the Senate.

In connection with the prohibition of residence outside the cities, a new problem had arisen in Jewish life – the "summer resort question." The authorities frequently prohibited Jewish families from spending the summer in the outskirts of the cities if a particular resort or cottage was found to be situated outside the city line. Thousands of Jewish families were thus deprived of an opportunity to rest in God's free nature during the summer months, and to breathe the fresh air of the fields and forests, for no other reason than that they were Jews – a new variety of territorially affixed city serfs.

The law was just as merciless in the case of Jews afflicted with disease. The watering-places situated outside the towns were barred to Jewish sufferers who wished to take a cure there. The Crimean watering-place Yalta, in the neighborhood of the imperial summer resort Livadia, was the object of particular vigilance, having been barred to the Jews by order of the dying Alexander III.¹² The Jewish consumptives who had managed to obtain "illegal" access to this spa were pitilessly expelled. The following incident, which was reported at that time in the Russian press, may serve as an illustration of this ruthless policy:

The wife of a [Jewish] physician had come to Yalta to improve her shattered health. While she was suffering from severe bloodspitting, a policeman invaded the bedroom of the sick woman, insisting on her giving a written pledge to leave the place within twenty-four hours. The patient was terribly frightened. On the following day the deportation was stopped, in consequence of the testimony of her physician that the slightest motion was fraught with danger to the invalid. But the fright and uncertainty had intensified the cough; the young woman became worse, and soon afterwards died.

As it happened, the action of the police was subsequently found to be entirely unwarranted; for, as the wife of a physician, this victim of bureaucratic heartlessness was, even according to the letter of the law, entitled to the right of residence in Yalta.

A similar case was that of a sick Jewish student who had been sent by his physicians to Yalta to cure his lungs. He was expelled in the dead of winter and deported under a police convoy, together with a batch of prisoners, to Sevastopol, notwithstanding the fact that he was in a feverish condition. The correspondent of a local paper in Sevastopol reported that "along the entire road from the harbor to the prison, which was traversed by the batch, passers-by would stop in their walk, staggered by the extraordinary spectacle." The sufferer appealed to the Senate, but the latter found that the orders of the police "contained nothing contrary to the law." The highest tribunal of the empire went with equanimity on record that a Jewish student was liable to the penalty of being arrested and marched under a police escort, together with criminal offenders, for an attempt to heal his lungs in the warm southern climate.

But no place in the empire could vie as regards hostility to the Jews with the city of Kiev – this inferno of Russian Israel. Though surrounded on all sides by a string of towns and townlets with a dense Jewish population, the southwestern metropolis was guarded by a host of police watchdogs against the invasion of "aliens." Apart from the "privileged" Jews who formed part of the permanent population, the police were forced to admit into the city Jewish visitors who came to Kiev for a few days to attend to their affairs. Yet, haunted by the fear lest these visitors might stay there too long, the police arranged oblavas, or raids, to hunt them down like stray dogs. About once a week, during the night, the police would raid certain hostelries in which the Jews were wont to stop, put those that were caught under arrest, and then expel them from the confines of the city. This additional heavy "night work" called for a larger police staff, and to meet this increased expenditure, an annual sum of 15,000 rubles was appropriated – from the proceeds of the Jewish meat tax. This revenue, collected from the Jews for the purpose of maintaining the charitable and educational institutions of the Jewish communities, was now used to pay the police agents to enable them to hunt down these Jews and expel them in merciless fashion. To put it more plainly, the convict, after being sentenced to be hanged, was forced to buy the rope. The methods of the Russian inquisition gradually reached the top notch of efficiency. Even the "Kievlanin" ("The Kievian"), the anti-Semitic official organ of Kiev, was bound to confess on one occasion that "in the course of the month of July (of the year 1901) things have taken place in Kiev which are hardly conceivable."

As far as the general disabilities are concerned, the entire area of the Russian empire outside the Pale of Settlement, though open to foreigners of all nationalities, remained hermetically closed to the Jewish citizens of Russia, and the borders of that prohibited area were guarded even more rigorously than they had been during the previous reign. In the consistent enforcement of this principle the Government did not shrink from the most revolting extremes. A law passed in 1896 interdicted Jewish soldiers from spending outside the Pale of Settlement even the brief leave of absence which they were granted during their term of military service. A Jewish soldier serving in a regiment which was stationed, let us say, in St. Petersburg, Moscow, or even in far-off Siberia, was forced, under this law, to travel hundreds and even thousands of miles to the Pale of Settlement to spend his month of furlough there, being denied the right to remain in the city in which he was discharging his military duty, and it made no difference even if the furlough was granted to him for the purpose of recuperating his health.

In many places of the empire, the whimsicality of the local authorities in construing the law of residence was of a nature to suggest that they had no other end in view except that of making sport of the Jews. The administration of Siberia, for instance, invented the following regulation: a Jewish merchant or artisan who is registered in one of the Siberian cities shall have the right only to live in the particular city of his registration, and in no other. Since very many Jews resided outside the localities of their accidental registration, a transmigration of Siberian Jewry was the result. The Jews registered, e. g., in Tomsk, though they might have lived from the day of their birth in Irkutsk, were deported in batches to Tomsk, meeting on the way parties of exiled Jews from Tomsk who had the misfortune of having their names entered upon the records of Irkutsk. Human beings were shuffled like a pack of cards. This revolting practice of the Siberian authorities, which had begun at the end of the preceding reign, was sustained by the Senate in a decision handed down in 1897.