Toleration having been granted to the Jews with a proper financial status, the Government proceeded to extend the same treatment to persons with educational qualifications. The latter class was the subject of protracted debates in the Jewish Committee as well as in the Ministries and in the Council of State. As early as in 1857 the Minister of Public Instruction Norov had submitted a memorandum to the Jewish Committee in which he argued that "religious fanaticism and prejudice among the Jews" could only be exterminated by inducing the Jewish youth to enter the general educational establishments, "which end can only be obtained by enlarging their civil rights and by offering them material advantages." Accordingly, Norov suggested that the right of residence in the whole Russian Empire should be granted to the graduates of the higher and secondary educational institutions. [1] Those Jews who should have failed to attend school were to be restricted in their right of entering the mercantile guilds. The Jewish Committee refused to limit the rights of those who did not attend the general schools, and proposed, instead, as a bait for the Jews who shunned secular education, to confer special privileges in the discharge of military service upon those Jews who had attended the gymnazia [2] or even the Russian district schools, [3] or the Jewish Crown schools, [4] more exactly, to grant them the right of buying themselves off from conscription by the payment of one hundred to two hundred rubles (1859). But the Military Department vetoed this proposal on the ground that education would thus bestow privileges upon Jews which were denied even to Christians. The suggestion, relating to military privileges was therefore abandoned, and the promotion of education among Jews reduced itself to an extension of the right of residence.

[Footnote 1: The latter category comprises primarily the gymnazia (see next note) in which the classic languages are taught, and the so-called real gymnazia in which emphasis is laid on science. The higher educational institutions, or the institutions of higher learning, are the universities and the professional schools, on which see next page, n. 4.]

[Footnote 2: The name applies on the European continent to secondary schools. A Russian gymnazia (and similarly a German gymnazium) has an eight years' course. Its curriculum corresponds roughly to a combined high school and college course in America.]

[Footnote 3: i.e., schools found in the capitals of districts (or counties), preparatory to the gymnazia.]

[Footnote 4: See above, p.58 and below, p.174.]

In this connection the Jewish Committee warmly debated the question as to whether the right of residence outside the Pale should be accorded to graduates of the higher and secondary educational institutions, or only to those of the higher. The Ministers of the Interior and Public Instruction (Lanskoy and Kovalevski) advocated the former more liberal interpretation. But the majority of the Committee members, acting "in the interests of a graduated emancipation," rejected the idea of bestowing the universal right of residence upon the graduates of gymnazia, and lyceums and even upon those of universities and other institutions of higher learning, [1] with the exception of those who had received a learned degree, Doctor, Magister, or Candidate. [2] The Committee was willing, on the other hand, to permit the possessors of a learned degree not only to settle in the interior but also to enter the civil service. The Jewish university graduate was thus expected to submit a scholarly paper or even a doctor dissertation for two purposes, for procuring the right of residence in some Siberian locality and for the right of serving the State. Particular "circumspection" was recommended by the Committee with reference to Jewish medical men: a Jewish physician, without the degree of M.D., was not to be permitted to pass beyond the Pale.

[Footnote 1: Such as technological, veterinary, dental, and other professional schools, which are independent of the universities.]

[Footnote 2: Magister in Russia corresponds roughly to the same title in England and America. It is inferior to the doctor degree and precedes it. Candidate is a title, now mostly abolished, given to the best university students who have completed their course and have presented a scholarly paper, without having passed the full examination.]

In this shape the question was submitted to the Council of State in 1861. Here opinions were evenly divided. Twenty members advocated the necessity of "bestowing" the right of residence not only on graduates of universities but also of gymnazia, advancing the argument that even in the case of a Jewish gymnazist [1] "it is in all likelihood to be presumed that the gross superstitions and prejudices which hinder the association of the Jews with the original population of the Empire will be, if not entirely eradicated, at least considerably weakened, and a further sojourn among Christians will contribute toward the ultimate extermination of these sinister prejudices which stand in the way of every moral improvement."

[Footnote 1: i.e., the pupil of a gymnazium.]

Such was the opinion of the "liberal" half of the Council of State. The conservative half argued differently. Only those Jews deserve the right of residence who have received "an education such as may serve as a pledge of their having renounced the errors of fanaticism. "The wise measures adopted" as a precaution against the influx of Jews into the interior governments" would lose their efficacy, "were permission to settle all over Russia to be granted suddenly to all Jews who have for a short term attended a gymnazium in the Western and South-western region, for no other purpose, to be sure, than that of pursuing on a larger scale their illicit trades and other harmful occupations." Hence only Jews with a "reliable education," i.e., the graduates of higher educational institutions, who have obtained a learned degree, should be permitted to pass the boundary of the Pale.

Alexander II. endorsed the opinion of the conservative members of the Council of State. The law, promulgated on November 37, 1861, reads as follows:

Jews possessing certificates of the learned degree of Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, or Doctor of Medicine, and likewise of Doctor, Magister, or Candidate of other university faculties, are admitted to serve In all Government offices, without their being confined to the Pale established for the residence of Jews. They are also permitted to settle permanently in all the provinces of the Empire for the pursuit of commerce and Industry.

In addition, the law specifies that, apart from the members of their families, these Jews shall be permitted to keep, as a maximum, "two domestic servants from among their coreligionists."

The promulgation of this law brought about a curious state of affairs, the upshot of the genuinely Russian homoeopathic system of emancipation, A handful of Jews who had obtained learned degrees from universities were permitted not only to reside in the interior of t e Empire, but were also admitted here and there to Government service, in the capacity of civil and military physicians. Yet both of these rights were denied to all other persons with the same university education, "Physicians and Active Students," [1] who had not obtained learned degrees. On one occasion the Minister of Public Instruction put before the Council of State the following legal puzzle: A Jewish student, while attending the university of the Russian capital, enjoys the right of residence there. But when he has successfully finished his course and has obtained the customary certificate, without the learned degree, he forfeits this right and must return to the Pale.

[Footnote 1: Both titles are given at the conclusion of the prescribed university course; the former to medical students, the latter to students of other faculties.]

Yet the Government in its stubbornness refused to make concessions, and when it was forced to make them, it did so rather in its own interest than in that of the Jews. Owing to the scarcity of medical help in the army and in the interior, ukases issued in 1865 and 1867 declared Jewish physicians, even without the title of Doctor of Medicine, to be admissible to the medical corps and later on to civil service in all places of the Empire, except the capitals St. Petersburg and Moscow. Nevertheless, the extension of the plain right of domicile, without admission to civil service, remained for a long time dependent on a learned degree. It was only after two decades of hesitation that the law of January 19, 1879, conferred the right of universal residence on all categories of persons with a higher education, regardless of the nature of the diploma, and also including pharmacists, dentists, feldshers, [1] and midwives.

[Footnote 1: From the German Feldscherer, a sort of combination of leech, first-aid, and barber, who frequently gave medical advice.]

The privileges bestowed upon the big merchants and "titled" intellectuals affected but a few small groups of the Jewish population. The authorities now turned their attention to the mass of the people, and, in accordance with its rules of political homoeopathy, commenced to pick from it a handful of persons for better treatment. The question of admitting Jewish artisans into the Russian interior occupied the Government for a long time. In 1856 Lanskoy, the Minister of the Interior, entered into an official correspondence concerning this matter with the governors-general and governors of the Western provinces. Most of the replies were favorable to the idea of conferring upon Jewish artisans the right of universal residence. Of the three governors-general whose opinion had been invited the governor-general of Vilna was the only one who thought that the present situation needed no change. His colleague of Kiev, Count Vasilchikov, was, on the contrary, of the opinion that it would be a rational measure to transfer the surplus of Jewish artisans who were cooped up within the Pale and had been pauperized by excessive competition to the interior governments where there was a scarcity of skilled labor. [1]

[Footnote 1: The official statistics of that time (about the year 1860) brought out the fact that the number of Jews in the fifteen governments of the Pale of Settlement, exclusive of the Kingdom of Poland, but Inclusive of the Baltic region, amounted to 1,430,800, forming 8% of the total population of that territory. The number of artisans in the "Jewish" governments was far greater than in the Russian interior. Thus in the government of Kiev there were to be found 2.06 artisans to every thousand inhabitants, against 0.8 in the near-by government of Kursk, i.e., 2% times more. In reality, the number of Jews in the Western region, without the Kingdom of Poland, exceeded considerably 1 and one-half millions, there being no regular registration at that time.]

A surprisingly liberal pronouncement came from, the governor-general of New Russia, Count Stroganov. In the world of Russian officialdom professing the dogma of "gradation" and "caution" in the question of Jewish rights he was the only one who had the courage to raise his voice on behalf of complete Jewish emancipation. He wrote:

The existence in our times of restrictions in the rights of the Jews as compared with the Christian population in any shape or form is neither in accord with the spirit and tendency of the age nor with the policy of the Government looking towards the amalgamation of the Jews with the original population of the Empire.

The count therefore concluded that it was necessary "to permit the Jews to live in all the places of the Empire and engage without any restrictions and on equal terms with all Russian subjects in such crafts and industries as they themselves may choose, in accordance with their habits and abilities." It is scarcely necessary to add that the bold voice of the Russian dignitary, who in a lucid interval spoke up in a manner reminiscent of the civilized West, was not listened to by the bureaucrats of St. Petersburg. Nevertheless, as far as the specific question of Jewish artisans was concerned, the favorable replies were bound to have a decisive effect.

However, red-tape sluggishness managed to retard the decision for several years. In 1863 the question was referred back to the Jewish Committee, only a short time before the dissolution of that body, which for a quarter of a century had perpetrated every conceivable experiment over the "amelioration of the Jews." Thence the matter was transferred to the Committee of Ministers and finally to the Council of State.

In the ministerial body, Valuyev, Minister of the Interior, favored the idea of granting the right of settling outside the Pale to Jewish artisans and mechanics, dependent on certain conditions, "by practising caution and endeavoring to avert the rapid influx into the midst of the population of the interior governments of an element hitherto foreign to it." In reply to Baron Korff, who had advocated the admission of the Jewish artisans beyond the Pale not only with their families but also with Jewish domestics, Valuyev argued that this privilege "will enable Jewish business men of all kinds to reside in the interior governments, under the guise of employes of their coreligionists." "The Jews," according to Valuyev, "will endeavor to transfer their activity to a field economically more favorable to them, and it goes without saying that they will not fail to seize the first best opportunity of exploiting the places of the Empire hitherto inaccessible to them." The Council of State passed the law in the formulation of the Ministry of the Interior, adding the necessary precautions against the entirely legitimate endeavor of Jewish business men "to transfer their activity to a field economically more favorable to them."

After nine years of preparation, on June 28, 1865, Alexander II. finally gave his sanction to the law permitting Jewish artisans, mechanics and distillers, including apprentices, to reside all over the Empire. Both in the wording of the law and in its subsequent application the privilege was hedged about by numerous safeguards. Thus, the artisan who wished to settle outside the Pale had to produce not only a certificate from his trade-union testifying to his professional ability but also a testimony from the police that he was not under trial. At stated intervals he had to procure a passport from his native town in the Pale, since outside the Pale his status was that of a temporary resident. In his new place of residence he was permitted to deal only in the wares of his own workmanship. If he happened to be out of work, he was to be sent back to the Pale.

While opening a valve in the suffocating Pale, the Government took good care to prevent the artificially pent-up Jewish energy from rushing through it. However, heaving cooped up for so long, the Jews began to press through the opening. In the wake of the artisans, who, on account of the indicated restrictions of the law or because of the lack of travelling expenses, emigrated in comparatively small numbers, followed the commercial proletariat, using the criminal disguise of artisans, in order to transfer their energies to a "field economically more favorable to them." The position of these people was tragic. The fictitious artisans became the tributaries of the local police, depending entirely on its favor or disfavor. The detection of such "criminals" outside the Pale was followed by their expulsion and the confiscation of their merchandise.

As a matter of fact, the Russian Government did everything in its power to stem the influx of Jews into the interior. Only with the greatest reluctance did it widen the range of the "privileged" Jewish groups. The Tzar himself, held in the throes of the old Muscovite tradition, frequently put his veto upon the proposals to enlarge the area of Jewish residence. A striking illustration of this attitude may be found in the case of the retired Jewish soldiers, who, after discharging their galley-like army service of a quarter of a century, were expelled from the places where they had been stationed and sent back into the Pale. To the report submitted in 1858 by the Jewish Committee, pointing out the necessity of granting the right of universal residence to these soldiers, the Tzar attached the resolution: "I decidedly refuse to grant it." When petitions to the same effect became more insistent, all he did was to permit in 1860, "by way of exemption," a group of retired soldiers who had served in St. Petersburg in the body-guard to remain in the capital. Ultimately, however, he was obliged to yield, and in 1867 he revoked the law prohibiting retired Jewish soldiers to live outside the Pale. Thus after long wavering the right of domicile was finally bestowed upon the so-called "Nicholas soldiers" and their offspring—a rather niggardly reward for having served the fatherland under the terrible hardships of the old form of conscription.

4. FURTHER ALLEVIATIONS AND ATTEMPTS AT RUSSIFICATION

Nevertheless, the liberal spirit of the age did its work slowly but surely, and partial legal alleviations were granted by the Government or wrested from it by the force of circumstances. The barriers which had been erected for the Jews within the Pale itself were done away with. Thus the right of residence was extended to the cities of Nicholayev and Sevastopol, which, though geographically situated within the Pale, had been legally placed outside of it. The obstructions in the way of temporary visits to the holy city of Kiev were mitigated. The disgraceful old-time privilege of several cities, such as Zhitomir and Vilna, entitling them to exclude the Jews from certain streets, [1] was revoked. Moreover, by the law of 1862, the Jews were permitted to acquire land in the rural districts on those manorial estates in which after the liberation of the peasants the binding relation of the peasants to the landed proprietors had been completely discontinued. Unfortunately, what the Jews thus gained through the liberation of the peasants, they lost to a large extent soon afterwards through the Polish insurrection of 1863, forfeiting the right of acquiring immovable property outside the cities in the greater part of the Pale. For in 1864, after quelling the Polish insurrection, the Government undertook to Russify the Western region, and both Poles and Jews were strictly barred from acquiring estates in the nine governments forming the jurisdiction of the governors-general of Vilna and Kiev.

[Footnote 1: On the medieval privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis see Vol. I, pp. 85 and 95.]

The two other great reforms, that of rural self-government and the judiciary, were not stained by the ignominious label kromye Yevreyev, "excepting the Jews," so characteristic of Russian legislation. The "Statute concerning Zemstvo Organizations," [1] issued in 1864, makes no exceptions for Jews, and those among them with the necessary agrarian or commercial qualifications are granted the right of active and passive suffrage within the scheme of provincial self-government. In fact, in the Southern governments the Jews began soon afterwards to participate in the rural assemblies, and were occasionally appointed to rural offices. Nor did the liberally conceived Judicial Regulations of 1864 [2] contain any important discriminations against Jews. Within a short time Jewish lawyers attained to prominence as members of the Russian bar, although their admission to the bench was limited to a few isolated cases.

[Footnote 1: A system of local self-government carried on by means of elective assemblies and its executive organs. There is an assembly for each district (or county) and another for each government.]

[Footnote 2: Among other reforms they instituted the Russian bar as a separate organization.]

Little by little, another dismal spectre of the past, the missionary activity of the Government, began to fade away. In the beginning of Alexander's reign, the conversion of Jews was still encouraged by the grant of monetary assistance to converts. The law of 1859 extended these stipends to persons embracing any other Christian persuasion outside of Greek Orthodoxy. But in 1864 the Government came to the conclusion that it was not worth its while to reward deserters and began a new policy by discontinuing its allowances to converts serving in the army. A little later it repealed the law providing for a mitigation of sentence for criminal offenders who embrace Christianity during the inquiry or trial. [1]

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 45.]

In encouraging "the fusion of the Jews with the original population," the Government of Alexander II. had in mind civil and cultural fusion rather than religious assimilation, which even the inquisitorial contrivances of Nicholas' conscription scheme had failed to accomplish. But as far as the cultural fusion or, for short, the Russification of the Jews was concerned, the Government even now occasionally indulged in practices which were borrowed from the antiquated system of enlightened absolutism.

The official enlightenment, which had been introduced during the forties, was slow in taking root. The year 1848 was the first scholastic year in the two enlightenment nurseries, the rabbinical schools of Vilna and Zhitomir. Beginning with that year a number of elementary Crown schools for Jewish children were opened in various cities of the Pale. The cruel persecutions of the outgoing regime affected the development of the schools in a twofold manner. On the one hand, the Jewish population could not help turning away with disgust from the gift of enlightenment which its persecutors held out to it. On the other hand, the horrors of conscription induced many a Jewish youth, to seek refuge in the new rabbinical schools which saved their inmates from the soldier's uniform. Many a parent who regarded both the barracks and the Crown schools as training grounds for converts preferred to send his children to the latter, where, at least, they were spared the martyrdom of the barracks. The pupils of the rabbinical schools came from the poorest classes, those that carried on their shoulders the whole weight of conscription. True, the distrustful attitude towards the official schools was gradually weakening as the new Government of Alexander II. was passing from the former policy of oppression to that of reforms. By and by, the compulsory attendance at these schools became a voluntary one, prompted by the desire for general culture or for a special training as rabbi or teacher. Nevertheless the expectation of the Russian Government under Nicholas I. that the new schools would take the place of the time-honored educational Jewish institutions, the heder and yeshibah, remained unfulfilled. Only an insignificant percentage of Jewish children went to the Crown schools, and even these children did so only after having received their training at the heder or yeshibah.

Realizing this, the Government decided to combat the traditional school as the rival of the new. Immediately upon his accession to the throne, Alexander confirmed the following resolution adopted by the Jewish Committee on May 3, 1855: "After the lapse of twenty years no one shall be appointed rabbi or teacher of Jewish subjects, except graduates of the rabbinical schools [1] or of the general educational establishments of a higher or secondary grade."

[Footnote 1: i.e., the Government training schools for rabbis provided by the ukase of 1844. See the preceding page.]

Having fixed a term of twenty years for abolishing the institution of melammeds and religious leaders, the product of thousands of years of development, the Government frequently brandished this Damocles sword over their heads. In 1856 a strict supervision was established over heders and melammeds. A year later the Jewish communities were instructed to elect henceforward as "official rabbis" [1] only graduates of the rabbinical Crown schools or of secular educational establishments, and, in default of such, to invite educated Jews from Germany. But all these regulations proved of no avail, and in 1859 a new ukase became necessary, which loosened the official grip over the heders, but made it at the same time obligatory upon the children of Jewish merchants to attend the general Russian schools or the Jewish Crown schools.

[Footnote 1: Crown (In Russian kazyonny) rabbis in Russia are those that discharge the civil functions connected with their office, in distinction from the "spiritual" or ecclesiastic rabbis who are in charge of the purely religious affairs of the community. This division has survived in Russia until to-day.]

The enforcement of school attendance would scarcely have produced the desired effect—the orthodox managed somehow to give the slip to "Russian learning"—were it not for the fact that under the influence of the inner cultural transformation of Russian Jewry the general Russian school became during that period more and more popular among the advanced classes of the Jewish population, and gymnazium and university took their place alongside of heder and yeshibah. Yet the hundreds of pupils in the new schools faded into insignificance when compared with the hundreds of thousands who were educated exclusively in the old schools. The fatal year 1875, the last of the twenty years of respite granted to the melammeds for their self-annihilation, arrived. But the huge melammed army was not willing to pass out of Jewish life, in which they exercised a definite function, with no substitute to take its place. The Government was forced to yield. After several brief postponements the melammeds were left in peace, and by an ukase issued in 1879 the idea of abolishing the heders was dropped.

Towards the end of this period the Government abandoned altogether its attempts to reform the Jewish schools, and decided to liquidate its former activity in this direction. By an ukase issued in 1873 the two rabbinical schools and all Jewish Crown schools were closed. On the ruins of the vast educational network, originally projected for the transformation of Judaism, only about a hundred "elementary schools" and two modest "Teachers Institutes," [1] which were to supply teachers for these schools, were established by the Government. The authorities were now inclined to look upon the general Russian schools as the most effective agencies of "fusion," and put their greatest trust in the elemental process of Russification which had begun to sweep over the upper layers of Jewry.

[Footnote 1: In Vilna and Zhitomir. The latter was closed in 1885. The former is still in existence.]

5. THE JEWS AND THE POLISH INSURRECTION OF 1863

While the official world of St. Petersburg was obsessed with the idea of the Russification of Jewry, in Warsaw the tendency of Polonization, as applied to the Jews of the Western region, cropped up in the wake of the revolutionary Polish movement in the beginning of the sixties. At the inception of Alexander's reign the Russian Government set out to equalize the legal status of the Jews in the Kingdom of Poland with that of the Empire, and to abolish the surviving special restrictions, such as the prohibition of residing in certain towns, or in certain parts of towns, disabilities in acquiring property, and others. But the highest Polish administration in Warsaw was obstructing in every possible way the liberal attempts of the Russian Government. Prior to the insurrection of 1863, the attitude of Polish society towards the Jews was one of habitual animosity, and this notwithstanding the fact that by that time Warsaw harbored already a group of Jewish intellectuals who were eager to assimilate with the Poles and were imbued with Polish patriotism. When, in 1859, the Warsaw Gazette published an anti-Semitic article in which the Jews were branded as foreigners, the Polish-Jewish patriots, including the banker Kronenberg, a convert, were stung to the quick, and they came forward with violent protests. This led to passionate debates in the Polish press, generally unfriendly to the Jews. The radical Polish organs, published abroad by political exiles, took occasion to denounce bitterly the anti-Semitic trend of Polish society. The veteran historian Lelevel, who had not yet forgotten Poland's historic injustice of 1831, [1] issued a pamphlet in Brussels, calling upon the Poles to live in harmony with the race with which it had existed side by side for eight hundred years.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 105.]

Lelevel's kindly words would scarcely have brought the anti-Semites to reason, had not the Poles at that moment embarked upon an enterprise for the success of which they sorely needed the sympathy and co-operation of their Jewish neighbors. The revolutionary movement which engulfed Russian Poland in 1860-1863 required the utmost exertion of effort on the part of the entire population, in which the half-million Jews played no small part. All of a sudden Polish society opened its arms to those whom it had but recently branded as foreigners, and out of the ranks of Warsaw Jewry came a hearty response, expressing itself not only in patriotic manifestations but also in sacrifices and achievements for the sake of the common fatherland.

At the head of the Warsaw community during this stormy period stood a man who combined Polish patriotism with rabbinic orthodoxy. Formerly rabbi in Cracow, Berush [1] Meisels had as far back as 1848 been sent as deputy to the parliament at Kremsier, [2] and stood in the forefront of the Polish patriots of Galicia. In 1856 he accepted the post of rabbi in Warsaw. When the revolutionary movement had broken out, Meisels endeavored to instruct his flock in the spirit of Polish patriotism. Revered by the Jewish masses for his piety, and by the intellectuals for his political trend of mind, this spiritual leader of Polish Jewry played in the revolutionary Polish movement a role equal in importance to that of the leading ecclesiastics of Poland. The harmonious co-operation of the orthodox Chief Rabbi Meisels, the reform preacher Marcus Jastrow, [3] and the lay representatives of the community lent unity and organization to the part played by the Jews in preparing the rebellion.

[Footnote 1: A variant of the name Baer.]

[Footnote 2: A town in Moravia, where, after the rising of 1848, the Austrian parliament met provisionally till March, 1849.]

[Footnote 3: After the suppression of the Polish insurrection, Jastrow went to the United States, and became a leading rabbi in Philadelphia. He died in 1903.]

The Jews of Warsaw participated in all street manifestations and political processions which took place during the year 1860-1861. Among those pierced by Cossack bullets during the manifestation of February 27, 1861, were several Jews. The indignation which this shooting down of defenceless people aroused in Warsaw is generally regarded as the immediate cause of the mutiny. Rabbi Meisels was a member of the deputation which went to Viceroy Gorchakov to demand satisfaction for the blood that had been spilled. In the demonstrative funeral procession which followed the coffins of the victims the Jewish clergy, headed by Meisels, marched alongside of the Catholic priesthood. Many Jews attended the memorial services in the Catholic churches at which fiery patriotic speeches were delivered. Similar demonstrations of mourning were held in the synagogues. An appeal sent out broadcast by the circle of patriotic Jewish Poles reminded the Jews of the anti-Jewish hatred of the Russian bureaucracy, and called upon them "to clasp joyfully the brotherly hand held forth by them (the Poles), to place themselves under the banner of the nation whose ministers of religion have in all churches spoken of us in words of love and brotherhood."

The whole year 1861 stood, at least as far as the Polish capital was concerned, under the sign of Polish-Jewish "brotherhood." At the synagogue service held in memory of the historian Lelevel Jastrow preached a patriotic sermon. On the day of the Jewish New Year prayers were offered up in the synagogues for the success of the Polish cause, accompanied by the singing of the national Polish hymn Boze cos Polske. [1] When, as a protest against the invasion of the churches by the Russian soldiery, the Catholic clergy closed all churches in Warsaw, the rabbis and communal elders followed suit, and ordered the closing of the synagogues. This action aroused the ire of Lieders, the new viceroy. Rabbi Meisels, the preachers Jastrow and Kramshtyk as well as the president of the "Congregational Board" were placed under arrest. The prisoners were kept in the citadel of Warsaw for three months, but were then released.

[Footnote 1: Pronounce, Bozhe, tzosh Polske, "O Lord, Thou that hast for so many ages guarded Poland with the shining shield of Thy protection!"—the first words of the hymn.]

In the meantime Marquis Vyelepolski, acting as mediator between the Russian Government and the Polish people, had prepared his plan of reforms as a means of warding off the mutiny. Among these reforms, which aimed at the partial restoration of Polish autonomy and the improvement of the status of the peasantry, was included a law providing for the "legal equality of the Jews." Wielding considerable influence, first as director of the Polish Commission of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruction, and later as the head of the whole civil administration of the Kingdom, Vyelepolski was able to secure St. Petersburg's assent to his project. On May 24, 1862, Alexander II. signed an ukase revoking the suspensory decree of 180 1808, [1] which had entailed numerous disabilities for the Jews incompatible with the new tendencies in the political and agrarian life of the Kingdom. This ukase conferred the following rights upon the Jews:

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 299.]

1. To acquire immovable property on all manorial estates on which the peasants had passed from the state of serfs into that of tenants.

2. To settle freely in the formerly prohibited cities and city districts, [1] not excluding those situated within the twenty-one verst zone along the Prussian and Austrian frontier. [2]

3. To appear as witnesses in court on an equal footing with Christians in all legal proceedings and to take an oath in a new, less humiliating form.

[Footnote 1: See above, pp. 172 and 178.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 95.]

Bestowing these privileges upon the Polish Jews in the hope of bringing about their amalgamation with the local Christian population, the Tzar forbids in the same ukase the further use of Hebrew and Yiddish in all civil affairs and legal documents, such as contracts, wills, obligations, also in commercial ledgers and even in business correspondence. In conclusion, the ukase directs the Administrative Council of the Kingdom of Poland to revise and eventually to repeal all the other laws which hamper the Jews in their pursuit of crafts and industries by imposing special taxes upon them.

This ukase of Alexander II., though revoking only part of the insulting restrictions in the elementary civil rights of the Jews, was given the high-sounding title of an "Act of Emancipation." The secluded hasidic mass of Poland was glad to accept the legal alleviations offered to it, without thinking of any linguistic or other kind of assimilation. On the other hand, the assimilated Jewish intelligentzia, which had joined the ranks of the Polish insurgents, was dreaming of complete emancipation, and confidently hoped to attain it upon the successful termination of the revolutionary enterprise.

In the meantime the revolution was assuming ever larger proportions. The year 1863 arrived. The demonstrations on the streets of Warsaw were succeeded by bloody skirmishes between the Polish insurgents and the Russian troops in the woods of Poland and Lithuania. The Jews took no active part in this phase of the rebellion. As far as Poland proper was concerned, their participation was limited to the secret revolutionary propaganda. In Lithuania again neither the Jewish masses nor the newly arisen class of intellectuals sympathized with the Polish cause. In that part of the country the systematic Jew-baiting of the Polish pans, or noble landowners, was still fresh in the minds, and the Jews, moreover, were pinning all their faith to the emancipation to be bestowed by St. Petersburg. The will o' the wisp of Russification had already begun to lure the Jewish professional class. In many Lithuanian localities the Jews who failed to show their sympathy with the Polish revolutionaries ran the risk of being dealt with severely. Here and there, as had been the case in 1831, the rebels were as good as their word, and hanged or shot the Jews suspected of pro-Russian sympathies.

The reserved attitude of the Lithuanian Jews throughout the mutiny proved their salvation after the suppression of the rebellion, when the ferocious Muravyov, the governor-general of Vilna, took up his bloody work of retribution. As for the Kingdom of Poland, neither the revolution nor its suppression entailed any serious consequences for them. True, the fraternization of the Warsaw Jews with the Poles during the revolutionary years weakened for a little while the hereditary Jew-hatred of the Polish people, and helped to intensify the fever of Polonization which had seized the Jewish upper classes. But indirectly the effects of the Polish rebellion were detrimental to the Jews of the rest of the Empire. The insurrection was not only followed by a general wave of political reaction, but it also gave strong impetus to the policy of Russification which was now applied with particular vigor to the Western provinces, and was damaging to the Jews both from the civil and the cultural point of view.



CHAPTER XIX

THE REACTION UNDER ALEXANDER II.

1. CHANGE OF ATTITUDE TOWARD THE JEWISH PROBLEM

The decided drift toward political reaction in the second part of Alexander's reign affected also the specific Jewish problem, which the homoeopathic reforms, designed to "ameliorate" a fraction of the Jewish people, had tried to solve in vain. The general reaction showed itself in the fact that, after having carried out the first great reforms, such as the liberation of the peasantry, the introduction of rural self-government and the reorganization of the administration of the law, the Government considered the task of Russian regeneration to be completed, and stubbornly refused, to use the expression current at the time, "to crown the edifice" by the one great political reform, the grant of a constitution and political liberty. This refusal widened the breach between the Government and the progressive element of the Russian people, whose hopes were riveted on the ultimate goal of political reorganization. The striving for liberty, driven under ground by police and censorship, assumed among the Russian youth the character of a revolutionary movement. And when the murderous hand of the "Third Section" [1] descended heavily upon the champions of liberty, the youthful revolutionaries retorted with political terrorism which darkened the last days of Alexander II. and led to his assassination.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 21, n. 1.]

The complete emancipation of the Jews was out of place in this atmosphere of growing official reaction. The same bureaucracy which halted the march of the "great reforms" for the country at large was not inclined to allow even minor reforms when affecting the Jews only. Even the former desire for a "graded" and partial amelioration of the position of the Jews had vanished. Instead, the center of the stage was again occupied by the old red-tape activities, by discussions about the Jewish question—endless no less than fruitless—in the recesses of bureaucratic committees and sub-committees, by oracular animadversions of governors and governors-general upon the conduct of the Jews, and so on. Theory-mongering of the reactionary variety was again at a premium. Once more the authorities debated the question whether the Jews were to be regarded as useful or harmful to the State, instead of putting the diametrically opposite question of simple justice: whether the State which is called upon to serve the Jews as part of the civic organism of Russia is useful to them to an extent which may be lawfully claimed by them.

Under Nicholas I. the Government chancelleries had been busy inventing new remedies against the "separatism" of the Jews and their "harmful pursuits." During the first liberal years of Alexander's reign commerce ceased to be branded as "a harmful pursuit." Yet as soon as the Jewish merchants, stimulated by the partial extension of their right of residence and occupation, displayed a wider economic activity and became successful competitors of the "original" Russian business men, they were met with shouts of protest demanding that this Jewish "exploitation" be effectively "curbed."

In this connection it must be pointed out that the economic advancement of the Jews was not altogether due to the privileges accorded to them by the Russian legislation, but was rather the effect of general economic conditions. The great progress in industrial life during "the era of reforms," more particularly the expansion of railroad enterprises during the sixties and seventies, opened up a wide field for the energies of Jewish capitalists. Moreover, the abolition, in 1861, of the old system of farming out the sale of liquor transferred a part of the big Jewish capital from the liquor traffic into railroad building. The Jewish "excise farmers" [1] were converted into railroad men, as shareholders, supply merchants, or contractors. A new Jewish plutocracy came into being, and its growth excited jealousy and fear among the Russian mercantile class. The Government, filled with enthusiasm for the cultivation of large industries, was not as yet prepared to discriminate against the Jews whenever big capital was concerned. But it lent an attentive ear to the "original" Russian merchants whenever they complained about Jewish competition in petty trade, on which the lower Jewish classes depended for their livelihood. The Government, which had not yet emancipated itself from the habit of "assorting" its citizens and dividing them into a protected and a tolerated class, set out to elaborate measures for "curbing" the Jews belonging to the latter category.

[Footnote 1: i.e., those that leased from the Government the collection of excise on liquor. They were designated as aktzizniks, from aktziz, the Russian word for "excise."]

The question which confronted the Government next was this: to what extent have the hopes for a fusion of the Jews with the original population been justified by the events? Here, too, the reply was unsatisfactory. The naive expectation that a few gratuities offered to the Jews in the shape of privileges would fill them with the eager desire to "fuse" with the Russians did not come true. Strong as was the trend towards Russification in the new Jewish intelligenzia of the sixties, the broad masses of Jewry knew nothing of such a tendency. The authorities became suspicious: what if these crafty Hebrews should fool us again and refuse to pay for the donated rights by fusing with the Christians? Russian officialdom received new food for reflection which was to last it for years, nay, for decades.

2. THE INFORMER JACOB BRAFMAN

Several occurrences were instrumental in determining the Government to embark upon a new policy, that of investigating assiduously the inner life of the Jews. At the end of the sixties a man appeared in Vilna who offered his services to the authorities as a detective and spy among the Jews. Jacob Brafman, a native of the government of Minsk, had deserted his race and religion in the last years of Nicholas' conscription, hoping thereby to escape the nets of the vigilant Kahal "captors" who wished to draft him into the army. Embittered against the Kahal agents who had become mere police tools, Brafman desired to wreak vengeance upon the Kahal as a whole, nay, upon the very idea of a Jewish communal organization.

When the "fusion," or assimilation, of the Jews became the watchword of the highest official circles, the astute convert found that he could make his way by exposing the influences which in his opinion checked the endeavors of the Government. A memorandum presented by him to Alexander II., when the latter was passing through Minsk in 1858, opened to him the doors of the Holy Synod. He was appointed instructor of Hebrew at a Greek-Orthodox seminary and entrusted with the task of finding ways to remove the difficulties placed by the Jews in the path of their coreligionists intending to go over to Christianity. His mission to facilitate apostasy among the Jews proved a failure, and his services as detective were not yet appreciated during the liberal years of Alexander's reign.

However, with the reactionary turn in Russian politics, in the middle of the sixties, these services were once more in demand. Brafman hastened to the hot-bed of reactionary chauvinism, the city of Vilna, which was firmly held in the iron grip of Muravyov, [1] and there began "to expose the separatism of the inner life of the Jews" before the highest administration of the province. He contended that the Kahal, though officially abolished in 1844, [2] continued in reality to exist and to maintain a widely ramified judiciary (Bet Din), that it constituted a secret, uncanny sort of organization which wielded despotic power over the communities by employing such weapons as the herem (excommunication) and hazakah (the Jewish legal practice of securing property rights), [3] that it incited the Jewish masses against the State, the Government, and the Christian religion, and fostered in these masses fanaticism and dangerous national separatism. In the opinion of Brafman, the only way to eradicate this "secret Jewish government," was to destroy the last vestiges of Jewish communal autonomy by closing all religious and charitable societies and fraternities. The Jewish community itself ought to share the same fate, and the Jews forming part of it should be included among the Christian estates in the cities and villages. In a word, Judaism as a communal organization should pass out of existence altogether.

[Footnote 1: Michael Muravyov (see above, p. 183) was appointed in 1863 military governor of the governments of Vilna, Kovno, Grodno, Vitebsk, Minsk, and Moghilev, which he endeavored to Russify with relentless cruelty. He died in 1866.]

[Footnote 2: See p. 58 et seq.]

[Footnote 3: More exactly, the acquisition of property by continued and undisturbed possession for a period of time. This right of acquisition was formerly granted by the Kahal on the payment of a certain tax; see Vol. I, p. 190.]

The heads of the Russian administration in Lithuania listened eagerly to the sinister revelations of the new Pfefferkorn. [1] In 1866 Governor-General Kauffmann appointed a commission, which also included a few Jewish experts, to look into the material compiled by Brafman. This material consisted of the minutes of the Kahal of Minsk from the first half of the nineteenth century, recording the entirely legitimate enactments which the communal administration had passed by virtue of the autonomous rights granted to it by the Government. Brafman published his material in a series of articles in the official organ of the province, the Vilenski Vyestnik, "The Vilna Herald"; the articles were later republished in a separate volume, under the title Kniga Kahala, "The Book of the Kahal." [2] The data collected by Brafman were embellished with the customary anti-Semitic quotations from talmudic and rabbinic literature, and put in such a light that the Government was placed on the horns of a dilemma: either to destroy with one stroke the entire Jewish communal organization and all the cultural agencies attached to it, or to run the risk of seeing Russia captured by the "Universal Kahal." It may be added that the Alliance Israelite Universelle, which had shortly before been founded in Paris for the purpose of assisting Jews in various countries, figured in Brafman's indictment as a constituent society of the universal Jewish Kahal organization.

[Footnote 1: A medieval convert (died ab. 1521) who wrote against Judaism, especially the Talmud.]

[Footnote 2: The first edition appeared in 1869, the second in 1871.]

The "Book of the Kahal" was printed at public expense and sent out to all Government offices to serve as a guide for Russian officials and enable them to fight the "Inner enemy." It was in vain that Brafman's ignorance of rabbinic lore and his entire distortion of the role played by the Kahal in days gone-by was exposed by Jewish writers in articles and monographs; it was in vain that the Jewish members of the commission appointed by the governor-general of Vilna protested against the barbarous proposals of the informer. The authorities of St. Petersburg seized upon Brafman's discoveries as incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Jewish separatism and as a justification for the method of "cautiousness" which they saw fit to apply to the solution of the Jewish problem.

3. THE FIGHT AGAINST JEWISH "SEPARATISM"

Another incident which took place about the same time served in the eyes of the leading Government circles as an additional illustration of Jewish separatism. In 1870 Alexander II. was on a visit to the Kingdom of Poland, and there beheld the sight of dense masses of Hasidim with their long earlocks and flowing coats. The Tzar, repelled by this spectacle, enjoined upon the Polish governors strictly to enforce in their domains the old Russian law prohibiting the Jewish form of dress. [1] Thereupon the administration of the Kingdom threw itself with special zest upon the important task of eradicating "the ugly costumes and earlocks" of the Hasidim.

[Footnote 1: See above p. 144.]

Shortly afterwards the question of Jewish separatism was the subject of discussion before the Council of State. Under the unmistakable influence of the recent revelations of Brafman, the Council of State arrived at the conclusion that "the prohibition of external differences in dress is yet far from leading to the goal pursued by the Government, viz., to destroy the exclusiveness of the Jews and the almost hostile attitude of the Jewish communities towards Christians, these communities forming in our land a secluded religious and civil caste or, one might say, a state in a state." Hence the Council proposed to entrust a special commission with the task "of considering ways and means to weaken as far as possible the communal cohesion among the Jews" (December, 1870). As a result, a commission of the kind suggested by the Council was established in 1871, consisting of the representatives of the various ministries and presided over by the Assistant-Minister of the Interior, Lobanov-Rostovski. The Commission received the name "Commission for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews." [1]

[Footnote 1: Compare above, pp. 161 and 169.]

While the Government was again engaged in one of its numerous experiments over the problem of Jewish separatism, an event, unusual in those days, took place: the Odessa pogrom [1] of 1871. In this granary of the South, which owed its flourishing commerce to Jews and Greeks, an unfriendly feeling had sprung up between these two nationalities, which competed with one another in the corn trade and in the grocery business. This competition, though of great benefit to the consumers, was a thorn in the flesh of the Greek merchants. Time and again the Greeks would scare the Jews during the Christian Passover by their barbarous custom of discharging pistols in front of their church, which was situated in the heart of the Jewish district. But in 1871, with the approach of the Christian Passover, the Greeks proceeded to organize a regular pogrom.

[Footnote 1: Pogrom, with the accent on the last syllable, signifies ruin, devastation, and was originally applied to the ravages of an invading army.]

To arouse the mob the Greeks spread the rumor that the Jews had stolen a cross from the church fence and had thrown stones at the church building. The pogrom began on Palm Sunday (March 28). The Jews were maltreated, and their houses and shops were sacked and looted. Having started in the immediate vicinity of the church, the riot spread to the neighboring streets and finally engulfed the whole city. For three days hordes of Greeks and Russians gave free vent to their mob instincts, demolishing, burning, and robbing Jewish property, desecrating synagogues and beating Jews to senselessness in all parts of the city, undisturbed by the presence of police and troops who did nothing to stop the atrocities. The appeal of representative Odessa Jews to Governor-General Kotzebue was met by the retort that the Jews themselves were to blame, "having started first," and that the necessary measures for restoring order had been adopted. The latter assertion proved to be false, for on the following day the pogrom was renewed with even greater vigor.

Only on the fourth day, when thousands of houses and shops had already been destroyed, and the rioters, intoxicated with their success, threatened to start a regular massacre, the authorities decided to step in and to "pacify" the riff-raff by a rather quaint method. Soldiers were posted on the market place with wagon-loads of rods, and the rioters, caught red-handed, were given a public whipping on the spot. The "fatherly" punishment inflicted by the local authorities upon their "naughty" children sufficed to put a stop to the pogrom.

As for the central Government in St. Petersburg, the only thing it wanted to know was whether the pogrom had any connection with the secret revolutionary propaganda which, beginning with the Jews, might next set the mob against the nobility and Russian bourgeoisie. Since the official inquiry failed to reveal any political motives behind the Odessa riots, the St. Petersburg authorities were set at ease, and were only too glad to take the word of the satraps of the Pale who reported that the anti-Jewish movement had started as "a crude protest of the masses against the failure to solve the Jewish question"—viz., to solve it in a reactionary spirit—and as a manifestation, of the popular resentment against Jewish exploitation.

The old charge of separatism against the Jews thus found a companion in a new accusation: their economic "exploitation" of the Christian population of the Pale. The Committee appointed at the recommendation of the Council of State was enjoined to conduct a strict inquiry into both these "charges." Concretely the work of the Committee reduced itself to a consideration of two questions, one relating to the Kahal, or "the amelioration of the spiritual life of the Jews," and the other referring to the feasibility of thinning out the Pale of Settlement with the end in view of weakening the economic competition of the Jews.

The material bearing on these questions included, apart from Brafman's "standard work," a "Memorandum concerning the more important Administrative Problems in the South-west," which had been submitted in 1871 by the governor-general of Kiev, Dondukov-Korsakov, to the Tzar. The author of the memorandum voices his conviction that "the principal endeavors of the Government must be concentrated upon the Jewish question." The Jews are becoming a great economic power in the South-western provinces. They purchase or mortgage estates, and obtain control of the factories and mills as well as of the grain, timber, and liquor trade, thereby arousing the bitter resentment of the Christian population, particularly in the rural districts. [1] Moreover, the Jewish masses, refusing to follow the lead of the handful of Russified Jewish intellectuals, live entirely apart and remain in the throes of talmudic fanaticism and hasidie obscurantism. They "possess complete self-government in their Kahals, their own system of finance in the basket tax, their separate charitable institutions," their own traditional school in the heders, of which there are in the South-west no less than six thousand. In addition, the Jews possess an international organization, the "World Kahal," represented by the Alliance Israelite "Universelle in Paris, whose president, Adolph Cremieux, had had the audacity to protest to the Russian Government against acts of violence perpetrated upon the Jews. For all these reasons the governor-general is of the opinion that "the revision of the whole legislation affecting the Jews has become an imperative necessity."

[Footnote 1: According to the official figures, quoted in the memorandum, the number of Jews in the three South-western governments, i.e., Volhynia, Podolia, and the Kiev province, amounted to 721,080. Of these, 14 per cent lived in rural districts and 86 per cent in cities and towns. They owned 27 sugar refineries out of 105; 619 distilleries out of 712; 5700 mills out of 6353; and so forth. The production of the industrial establishments in the hands of the Jews reached the sum of seventy million rubles.]

A similar tone was adopted in the other official documents which came into the hands of the "Committee for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews." The communications of the governors and the reports of the members of the Committee were all animated by the same spirit, the spirit that spoke through Brafman's "Book of the Kahal." This was but natural. The officials, to whom this book had been sent by the central Government "for guidance," drew from it their whole political wisdom in things Jewish, and in their replies endeavored to fall in with the instructions of the Council of State, conveyed to them by the Committee, viz., "to consider ways and means to weaken the communal cohesion among the Jews."

In the Kingdom of Poland the governors complained similarly in their reports that the Jews of the province, though accorded equal rights by Vyelepolski, [1] had not complied with the conditions attached to that act, to wit, "to abandon the use of their own language and script, in exchange for the favors bestowed upon them." Outside of a handful of assimilated "Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion," who were imbued with Polish chauvinism, [2] the hasidic rank and file was permeated by extreme separatism, fostered by "the Kahal through its various agencies, the Congregational Boards, the rabbinate, the heders, and a host of special institutions."

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 181.]

[Footnote 2: And hence objectionable from the Russian point of view.]

These and similar communications formed the groundwork of the reports, or more correctly, the bills of indictment in which the members of the Committee charged the Jews with the terrible crime of constituting "a religio-political caste," in other words, a nationality. Following the lead of Brafman, the members of the Committee laid particular emphasis in their reports on the obnoxiousness of the Talmud and the danger of Jewish separatism. Needless to say, the conclusions offered by them were of the kind anticipated in the instructions of the Council of State: the necessity of wiping out the last vestiges of Jewish self-government, such as the Jewish community, the school, the mutual relief societies, in a word, everything that tends to foster "the communal cohesion among the Jews."

The barbarism of these proposals was covered by the fig-leaf of enlightenment. When the benighted Jewish masses will have fused with the highly cultured populance of Russia. In other words, when the Jews will have ceased to be Jews, then will the Jewish question find its solution. In the meantime, however, the Jews are to be curbed by the bridle of disabilities. The referee of the Committee on the question of the Pale of Settlement, Grigoryev, frankly stated: "What is important in this question is not whether the Jews will fare better when granted the right of residence all over the Empire, but rather the effect of this measure on the economic well-being of an enormous part of the Russian people." From this point of view the referee finds that it would be dangerous to let the Jews pass beyond the Pale, since "the plague, which has thus far been restricted to the Western provinces, will then spread over the whole Empire."

For a long time the Committee was at a deadlock, held down by bureaucratic reaction. It was only toward the end of its existence that the voice from another world, the posthumous voice of dead and buried liberalism, resounded in its midst. In 1880 the Committee was presented with a memorandum by two of its members, Nekhludov and Karpov, in which the bold attempt was made to champion the heretic point of view of complete Jewish emancipation. The language of the memorandum was one which the Russian Government had not heard for a long time.

In the name of "morality and justice" the authors of the memorandum call upon the Government to abandon its grossly utilitarian attitude towards the Jews who are to be denied civil rights so long as they do not prove useful to the "original" population. They expose the selfish motive underlying the bits of emancipation which had been doled out to the Jews during the preceding spell of liberalism: the desire, not to help the Jews, but to exploit their services. First-guild merchants, physicians, lawyers, artisans were admitted into the interior for the sole purpose of developing business in those places and filling the palpable shortage in artisans and professional men. "As soon as this or that category of Jews was found to be serviceable to the Russian people, it was relieved, and relieved only in part, from the pressure of exceptional laws, and received into the dominant population of the Empire." But the millions of plain Jews, abandoned by the upper classes, have continued to languish in the suffocating Pale. [1] The Jewish population is denied the elementary rights guaranteeing liberty of pursuit, freedom of movement and land ownership, such as only a criminal may be deprived of by a verdict of the courts. As it is, discontent is rife among these disinherited masses. "The rising generation of Jews has already begun to participate in the revolutionary movement to which they had hitherto been strangers." The system of oppression must be set aside. All the Jewish defects, their separatism and one-sided economic activity, are merely the fruits of this oppression. Where the law has no confidence in the population, there inevitably the population has no confidence in the law, and it naturally becomes an enemy of the existing order of things, "Human reason does not admit of any considerations which might justify the placing of many millions of the Jewish population, on a level with criminal offenders." The first step in the direction of complete emancipation ought to be the immediate grant of the right of domicile all over the Empire.

[Footnote 1: The narrow utilitarianism of the governmental policy in the Jewish question may also be illustrated by the official attitude towards the promotion of agriculture among the Jews. Under Alexander I. and Nicholas I. Jewish agricultural colonization in the South of Russia was encouraged by the grant of special privileges, though the Jewish settlers were subjected to the stern tutelage of bureaucratic inspectors. But under Alexander II., when Southern Russia was no longer in need of artificial colonization, the Government discontinued its policy of promoting Jewish colonization, and an ukase issued in 1866 stopped the settlement of Jews in agricultural colonies altogether. A little later the Jewish colonies in the South-west were deprived of a large part of their lands, which were distributed among the peasants.]

These bold words which turned the Jews from defendants into plaintiffs ran counter to the fundamental task of the Committee, which, according to the original instructions received by it, was expected to draft its plans in a spirit of reaction. At any rate, these words were uttered too late. A new era was approaching which in solving the Jewish question resorted to methods such as would have horrified even the conservative statesmen of the seventies: the era of pogroms and cruel disabilities.

4. THE DRIFT TOWARD OPPRESSION

During the last decade of Alexander's reign, the machinery of Jewish legislation was working at a slow rate, pending the full "revision" of Jewish rights. Yet the steps of the approaching reaction could well be discerned. Thus in 1870, during the discussion of the draft of the new Municipal Statute by a special committee of the Ministry of the Interior, which included as "experts" the burgomasters of the most important Russian cities, the question arose whether the former limitation of the number of Jewish aldermen in the municipal councils to one-third of the whole number of aldermen [1] should be upheld or not. The cities involved were those of the Pale where the Jews formed the majority of the population, and the committee was searching for ways and means to weaken "the excessive influence" of this majority upon the city administration and to subordinate it to the Christian minority.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 41.]

One solitary member, Novoselski, the burgomaster of Odessa, advocated the repeal of the old restriction, with the one proviso that the Jewish aldermen should be required to possess certain educational qualifications, inasmuch as educated Jews were "not quite as harmful" as uneducated ones.

A minority of the members of the Committee favored the limitation of the number of Jewish aldermen to one-half, but the majority staunchly defended the old norm, which was one-third. The representatives of the majority, in particular Count Cherkaski, the burgomaster of Moscow, argued that the Jews constituted not only a religious but also a national entity, that they were still widely removed from assimilation or Russification, that education, far from transforming the Jews into Russians, made them only more successful in the struggle for existence, that it was inadvisable for this reason "to subject the whole Russian element (of the population) to the risk of falling under the domination of Judaism."

The curious principle of municipal justice by virtue of which the majority of house owners and tax-payers were to be ruled by the representatives of the minority carried the day. The new Municipal Statute sanctioned the norm of one-third for "non-Christians," and reaffirmed the ineligibility of Jews to the post of burgomaster.

The law of 1874, establishing general military service and abolishing the former method of conscription, proved the first legal enactment which imposed upon the Jews equal obligations with their fellow-citizens, prior to bestowing upon them equal rights. To be sure, the new regulation brought considerable relief to the Jews, inasmuch as the heavy burden of military duty which had formerly been borne entirely by the poor burgher class, [1] was now distributed over all estates, while the burden itself was lightened by the reduction of the term of service. Moreover, the former collective responsibility of the community for the supply of recruits, which had given rise to the institution of "captors" and many other evils, was replaced by the personal responsibility of every individual conscript. All this, however, was not sufficient to change suddenly the attitude of the Jewish populace towards military service.

[Footnote 1: On the "burghers" see Vol. I, p. 308, n. 2. Concerning the military duty imposed on them see above, p. 23.]

The formerly privileged merchantile class could not reconcile itself easily to the idea of sending their children to the army. The horrors of the old conscription were still fresh in their minds, and even in its new setting military service was still suggestive of the hideous horrors of the past. Those who but yesterday had been dragged like criminals to the recruiting stations could not well be expected to change their sentiments over night and appear there of their own free will. The result was that a considerable number of Jews of military age (21) failed to obey the summons of the first conscription. Immediately the cry went up that the Jews evaded their military duty, and that the Christians were forced to make up the shortage. The official pens in St. Petersburg and in the provincial chancelleries became busy scribbling. The Ministry of War demanded the adoption of Draconian measures to stop this "evasion," As a result, the whole Jewish youth of conscription age was registered in 1875. At the recruiting stations the age of the young Jews was determined by their external appearance, without regard to their birth certificates. Finally, in the course of 1876-1878, a number of special provisions were enacted, by way of exception from the general military statute, for the purpose "of insuring the regular discharge of their military duty by the Jews."

According to the new legal provisions, the Jews who had been rejected as unfit for military service were to be replaced by other Jews and under no circumstances by Christians. For this purpose, the Jewish conscripts were to be segregated from the Christians after the drawing of lots, the first stage in the recruiting process. [1] Moreover, in the case of Jews a lower stature and a narrower chest were required than in that of non-Jews. In the case of a shortage of "unprivileged" recruits, permission was given to draft not only Jews enjoying, by their family status, the third and second class privileges, but also those of the first class, i.e., to deprive Jewish parents of their only sons. [2]

[Footnote 1: Since the number of men of military age greatly exceeds the required number of recruits, the Russian law provides that lots be drawn by the conscripts to determine the order in which they are to present themselves for examination to the recruiting officers. When the quota is completed, the remaining conscripts, i.e., those who, having drawn a high number, have not yet been examined, are declared exempt from military service.]

[Footnote 2: "According to Russian law, the following three categories of recruits are exempt from military service: 1) the only sons; 2) the only wage-earning sons, though there be other sons in the family; 3) those who have an elder brother or brothers in the army. The first category is exempt under all circumstances; the last two on condition that the required number of recruits be secured out of the "unprivileged" conscripts. Only in the case of the Jews is the first category drawn upon in the case of a shortage.]

In this manner the Government sought to "insure" with ruthless vigor the discharge of this most onerous duty on the part of the Jews, without making any attempt to insure at the same time the rights of this population of three millions which was made to spill its blood for the fatherland. In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, many Jewish soldiers fought for Russia, and a goodly number of them were killed or wounded on the battlefield. Yet in the Russian military headquarters—the post of commander-in-chief was occupied by the crown prince, the future Tzar Alexander III.—no attention was paid to the thousands of Jewish victims, but rather to the fact that the "Jewish" firm of army purveyors, Greger, Horvitz & Kohan [1] was found to have had a share in the commissariat scandals. When at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 a resolution was introduced calling upon the Governments of Roumania, Servia, and Bulgaria to accord equal rights to the Jews in their respective dominions, and was warmly supported by all plenipotentiaries, such as Waddington, Beaconsfield, Bismarck, and others, the only one to oppose the emancipation of the Jews on principle was the Russian chancellor Gorchakov, In his desire to save the prestige of Russia, which herself had failed to grant equal rights to the Jews, the chancellor could not refrain from an anti Semitic sally, remarking during the debate that "one ought not to confound the Jews of Berlin, Paris, London, and Vienna, who cannot be denied civil and political rights, with the Jews of Servia, Roumania, and several Russian provinces, where they are a regular scourge to the native population."

[Footnote 1: Greger was a Greek, and Horvitz a converted Jew. See later, p. 244.]

Altogether the growth of anti-Semitism in the Government circles and in certain layers of Russian society, towards the close of the seventies, became clearly pronounced. The laurels of Brafman, whose "exposure" of Judaism had netted him many personal benefits and profitable connections in the world of officialdom, were apt to stimulate all sorts of adventurers. In 1876 a new "exposer" of Judaism appeared on the scene, a man with a stained past, Hippolyte Lutostanski. He was originally a Roman Catholic priest in the government of Kovno. Having been unfrocked by the Catholic Consistory "on account of incredible acts of lawlessness and immoral conduct," including libel, embezzlement, rape committed upon a Jewess, and similar heroic exploits, he joined the Greek-Orthodox church, entered the famous Troitza Monastery near Moscow as a monk, and was admitted as a student to the Ecclesiastical Academy of the same city.

As a subject for his dissertation for the degree of Candidate [1] the ignorant monk chose a sensational topic: "Concerning the Use of Christian Blood by the Jews." It was an unlettered and scurrilous pamphlet, in which the author, without indicating his sources, incorporated the contents of an official memorandum on the ritual murder legend from the time of Nicholas I., supplementing it by distorted quotations from talmudie and rabbinic literature, without the slightest knowledge of that literature or the Hebrew language.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 165, n. 1.]

The monastic adventurer, finding himself in financial straits, brought his manuscript to Rabbi Minor of Moscow, declaring his willingness to forego the publication of his brochure, which no doubt would cause great harm to the Jews, for a consideration of 500 rubles ($250). His blackmail offer was rejected Lutostanski thereupon published his hideous book in 1876, and travelled with it to St. Petersburg where he managed to present it to the crown prince, subsequently Alexander III., and to secure from him a grateful acknowledgement. The book also found the approval of the Chief of Gendarmerie, [1] who acquired a large number of copies and distributed them among the secret police all over Russia.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 21, n. 1.]

Encouraged by his success, Lutostanski issued a few years later, in 1879, another libellous work in two volumes, under the title "The Talmud and the Jews," which exhibits the same crudeness in style and content as his previous achievement—a typical specimen of a degraded back-yard literature. The editor of the Hebrew journal ha-Melitz, Alexander Zederbaum, demonstrated clearly that Lutostanski had forged his quotations, and summoned him to a public disputation, which offer was wisely declined.

Nevertheless, the agitation of this shameless impostor had a considerable effect on the highest official spheres in which an ever stronger drift toward anti-Semitism was clearly noticeable. In 1878 this anti-Semitic trend gave rise to a new ritual murder trial. The discovery in the government of Kutais, in the Caucasus, of the body of a little Gruzinian girl, named Sarra Modebadze, who had disappeared on the eve of Passover, was deemed a sufficient reason by the judicial authorities to enter a charge of murder against ten local Jews, although the ritual character of the murder was not put forward openly in the indictment. The case was tried before the District Court of Kutais, and the counsel for the defence succeeded by their brilliant speeches not only to demolish completely the whole structure of incriminating evidence but also to deal a death-blow to the sinister ritual legend. The case ended in 1879 with the acquittal of all the accused.

Withal, the "ritual" agitation left a nasty sediment in the Russian press. When in 1879 the famous Orientalist Daniel Chwolson, a convert to Christianity and professor at the Greek-Orthodox Ecclesiastical Seminary of St. Petersburg, who had written a learned apologetic treatise "Concerning the Medieval Accusations against the Jews," published a refutation of the ritual myth under the title "Do the Jews use Christian Blood?," he was attacked in the Novoye Vremya by the liberal historian Kostomarov who attempted to disprove the conclusions of the defender of Judaism. The paper itself, hitherto liberal in its tendency, changed front about that time, and, steering its course by the prevailing moods in the leading Government circles, launched a systematic campaign against the Jews. The anti-Semitic bacilli were floating in the social atmosphere of Russia and preparing the way for the pogrom epidemic of the following decade.



CHAPTER XX

THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER II.

1. THE RUSSIFICATION OF THE JEWISH INTELLIGENZIA

In the inner, cultural life of Russian Jewry a radical break took place during this period. True, the change did not affect the rank and file of Russian Jewry, being rather confined to its upper layers, to Jewish "society," or the so-called intelligenzia. But as far as the latter circles are concerned, the rapidity and intensity of their spiritual transformation may well be compared with the stormy eve of Jewish emancipation in Germany. This wild rush for spiritual regeneration was out of all proportion to the snail-like tardiness and piecemeal character of civil emancipation in Russia. However, the modern history of Western Europe has shown more than once that such pre-emancipation periods, including those that evidently prove abortive, offer the most favorable conditions for all kinds of mental and cultural revolutions. Liberty as a hope invariably arouses greater enthusiasm for self-rejuvenation, than liberty as a fact, when the romanticism of the unknown has vanished.

Hurled into the abyss of despair by the last events of Nicholas' regime, the Russian Jews suddenly received what may be called an earnest of civil emancipation. The Jewish "Pale" knew but vaguely what was taking place in the recesses of the St. Petersburg chancelleries during the decade of reforms, but that a striking change in the attitude of the Government had taken place was seen and felt by all. Freedom had been granted to the victims of the military inquisition, the cantonists. The gates of the Russian interior had been opened to Jews possessing certain qualifications with regard to property, education, or labor. The educated Jews, in particular, were smiled upon benevolently "from above": they were regarded by the Government as a factor making for assimilation and as a connecting link with the lower Jewish classes. The vernal sun of Russian liberty, which flooded with its rays the social life of the whole country, just then emerging from serfdom, shone also for the hapless Jewish people, and filled their hearts with cheer and hope. The blasts of the reveille which had been sounded in the best circles of Russian society by such humanitarians as Pirogov, [1] and such champions of liberty as Hertzen, [2] Chernyshevski, [3] and Dobrolubov, [4] were carried through the air into the huge Jewish ghetto of Russia. True, the Jewish question received, during the decade of reforms, but scanty attention in the Russian press, but the little that was said about it was permeated by a friendly spirit. The former habit of making sport of the Zhyd was energetically repudiated.

[Footnote 1: Nicholas Pirogov (1810-1881), famous as pedagogue and administrator. He was a staunch friend of the Jews, and was deeply interested in their cultural aspirations.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 24, n. 1.]

[Footnote 3: Famous publicist and author, died 1889.]

[Footnote 4: A famous literary critic, died 1861.]

This change of attitude may well be illustrated by the following incident. In 1858 the magazine Illustratzia ("Illustration") of St. Petersburg published an anti-Semitic article on "the Zhyds of the Russian West." The article was answered by two cultured Jews, Chatzkin and Horvitz, in the influential periodicals Russki Vyestnik ("The Russian Herald") and Atyeney ("Athenaeum"). In reply to this refutation, the Illustratzia showered a torrent of abuse upon the two authors who were contemptuously styled "Reb Chatzkin" and "Reb Horvitz," and whose pro-Jewish attitude was explained by motives of avarice. The action of the anti-Semitic journal aroused a storm of indignation in the literary circles of both capitals. The conduct of the Illustratzia was condemned in a public protest which bore the signatures of 140 writers, including some of the most illustrious names in the Russian literary world. The protest declared that "in the persons of Horvitz and Chatzkin an insult has been offered to the entire (Russian) people, to all Russian literature," which has no right to let "naked slander" pass under the disguise of polemics.

Though the protesting writers were wholly actuated by the desire to protect the moral purity of Russian literature and did not at all touch upon the Jewish question, the Jewish public workers were nevertheless enchanted by this declaration of literary Russia, and were deeply gratified by the implied assumption that the Jews of Russia formed part of the Russian people.

Several sympathetic articles in influential periodicals, advocating the necessity of Jewish emancipation, seemed to complete the happiness of the progressive section of Russian Jewry. Even the Slavophile publicist Ivan Aksakov, who subsequently joined the ranks of Jew-baiters, recognized at that time, in 1862, the need of a certain measure of emancipation for the Jews. The only thing that worried him was the danger that the admission of the Jews to the Russian civil service "in all departments," might result "in filling with Jews" the Senate and Council of State, not excluding the possibility of a Jew occupying the post of Procurator-General of the Holy Synod. Unshakable in his friendship for the Jews was the physician and humanitarian N. Pirogov, [1] who, in his capacity of superintendent of the Odessa School District, was largely instrumental in encouraging the Jewish youth in their pursuit of general culture and in creating a Russian Jewish press.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 207, n. 1.]

The most efficient factor of cultural regeneration was the secular school, both the general Russian and the Jewish Crown school. A flood of young men, lured by the rosy prospects of a free human existence in the midst of a free Russian people, rushed from the farthermost nooks and corners of the Pale into the gymnazia and universities whose doors were kept wide open for the Jews. Many children of the ghetto rapidly enlisted under the banner of the Russian youth, and became intoxicated with the luxuriant growth of Russian literature which carried to them the intellectual gifts of the contemporary European writers. The masters of thought in that generation, Chernyshevski, Dobrolubov, Pisaryev, Buckle, Darwin, Spencer, became also the idols of the Jewish youth. The heads which had but recently been bending over the Talmud folios in the stuffy atmosphere of the heders and yeshibahs were now crammed with the ideas of positivism, evolution, and socialism. Sharp and sudden was the transition from rabbinic scholasticism and soporific hasidic mysticism to this new world of ideas, flooded with the light of science, to these new revelations announcing the glad tidings of the freedom of thought, of the demolition of all traditional fetters, of the annihilation of all religious and national barriers, of the brotherhood of all mankind. The Jewish youth began to shatter the old idols, disregarding the outcry of the masses that had bowed down before them. A tragic war ensued between "fathers and children," [1] a war of annihilation, for the belligerent parties were extreme obscurantism and fanaticism, on the one hand, and the negation of all historic forms of Judaism, both religious and national, on the other.

[Footnote 1: The title of a famous novel by Turgenieff, written in 1862, depicting the break between the old and the new generation.]

In the middle between these two extremes stood the men of the transitional period, the adepts of Haskalah, those "lovers of enlightenment" who had in younger years suffered for their convictions at the hands of fanatics and now came forward to make peace between religion and culture. Encouraged by the success of the new ideas, the Maskilim became more aggressive in their struggle with obscurantism. They ventured to expose the Tzaddiks who scattered the seeds of superstition, to ridicule the ignorance and credulity of the masses, and occasionally went so far as to complain of the burdensome ceremonial discipline, hinting at the need of moderate religious reforms. Their principal task, however, was the cultivation of the Neo-Hebraic literary style and the rejuvenation of the content of that literature. They were willing to pursue the road of the emancipated Jewry of Western Europe, but only to a certain limit, refusing to cut themselves adrift from the national language or the religious and national ideals.

On the other hand, that section of the young generation which had passed through a Russian school refused to recognize any such barriers, and rushed with elemental force on the road of self-annihilation. Russification became the war cry of these Jewish circles, as it had long been the watchword of the Government. The one side was anxious to Russify, the other was equally anxious to be Russified, and the natural result was an entente cordiale between the new Jewish intelligenzia and the Government.

The ideal of Russification was marked by different stages, beginning with the harmless acquisition of the Russian language, and culminating in a complete identification with Russian culture and Russian national ideals, involving the renunciation of the religious and national traditions of Judaism. The advocates of moderate Russification did not foresee that the latter was bound, by the force of circumstances, to assume a radical form, while the champions of extreme Russification saw no harm for Jewry in following the example of complete assimilation set by Western Europe. To the former all that Russification implied was the removal of the obnoxious excrescences of Judaism but not the demolition of the national organism itself. Progressive Jewry was rightly incensed against the obsolete forms of Jewish life which obstructed all healthy development; against the fierce superstition of the hasidic environment, against the charlatanism of degenerating Tzaddikism, against the impenetrable religious fanaticism which was throttling the noblest strivings of the Jewish mind. But this struggle for freedom of thought should have been fought out within the confines of Judaism, by means of a thorough-going cultural self-improvement, and not on the soil of assimilation, nor in alliance with the powers that be, which were aiming not at the rejuvenation but at the obliteration of Judaism, in accordance with the official program of "fusion."

At any rate, the league between the new Jewish intelligenzia and the Government was an undeniable fact. The "Crown rabbis" [1] and school teachers from among the graduates of the rabbinical schools of Vilna and Zhitomir played the role of Government agents who were apt to resort to police force in their fight against orthodoxy. Feeling secure beneath the protecting wings of the Russian authorities, they often went out of their way to hurt the susceptibilities of the masses by their ostentatious disregard of the Jewish religious ceremonies. When the communities refused to appoint rabbis of this class, the latter obtained their posts either by direct appointment from the Government or by bringing the pressure of the provincial administration to bear upon the electors.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 176, n. 1.]

Needless to say, the "enlightenment" propagated by these Government underlings did not win the confidence of the orthodox masses who remembered vividly how official enlightenment was disseminated by the Government of Nicholas I. during the era of juvenile conscription.

The new Jewish intelligenzia showed utter indifference to the sentiments of the Jewish masses, and did not hesitate to induce the Government to interfere in the affairs of inner Jewish life. Thus by a regulation issued in 1864 all hasidic books were subjected to a most rigorous censorship, and Jewish printing-presses were placed under a more vigilant supervision than theretofore. The Tzaddiks were barred from visiting their parishes for the purpose of "working miracles" and "collecting tribute," a measure which only served to surround the hasidic chieftains with a halo of martyrdom and resulted in the pilgrimage of vast numbers of Hasidim to the "holy places," the "capitals" of the Tzaddiks. All this only went to intensify the distrust of the masses toward the college-bred, officially hall-marked Jewish intellectuals and to lower their moral prestige, to the detriment of the cause of enlightenment of which they professed to be the missionaries.

A peculiar variety of assimilationist tendencies sprang up among the upper class of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, more especially in Warsaw. It was a most repellent variety of assimilation, exhibiting more flunkeyism than pursuit of culture. The "Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion," as these assimilationists styled themselves, had long been begging for admission into Polish society, though rudely repulsed by it. During the insurrection of 1861-1863, when they were graciously received as useful allies, they were indefatigable in parading their Polish patriotism. In the Polish Jewish weekly, Jutrzenka, [1] "The Dawn," the organ of these assimilationists, the trite West-European theory, which looks upon Judaism as a religious sect and not as a national community, was repeated ad nauseam. One of the most prominent contributors to that journal, Ludwig Gumplovich, the author of a monograph on the history of the Jews in Poland, who subsequently made a name for himself as a sociologist, and, after his conversion to Christianity, received a professorship at an Austrian university, opened his series of articles on Polish-Jewish history with the following observation: "The fact that the Jews had a history was their misfortune in Europe.... For their history inevitably presupposes an isolated life severed from that of the other nations. It is just this which constitutes the misfortune alluded to."