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History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II by S.M. Dubnow

S >> S.M. Dubnow >> History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II




[Footnote 1: See above, p. 16, n. 1.]


5. THE CODIFICATION OF JEWISH DISABILITIES

No sooner had the conscription ukase been issued than the bureaucrats of
St. Petersburg began to apply themselves in the hidden recesses of their
chancelleries to a new civil code for the Jews, which was to supersede
the antiquated Statute of 1804. The work passed through a number of
departments. The projected enactment was framed by the "Jewish
Committee," which had been established in 1823 for the purpose of
bringing about "a reduction of the number of Jews in the monarchy," and
consisted of cabinet ministers and the chiefs of departments. [1]
Originally the department chiefs had elaborated a draft covering 1230
clauses, a gigantic code of disabilities; evidently founded on the
principle that in the case of Jews everything is forbidden which, is not
permitted by special legislation. The dimensions of the draft were such
that even the Government was appalled and decided to turn it over to the
ministerial members of the Committee.

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 407 et seq.]

Modified in shape and reduced in size, the code was submitted in 1834 to
the Department of Laws forming part of the Council of State, and after
careful discussion by the Department of Laws was brought up at the
plenary sessions of the Council. The "ministerial" draft, though smaller
in bulk, was marked by such severity that the Department of Laws found
it necessary to tone it down. The ministers, with the exception of the
Minister of Finance, had proposed to transfer all Jews, within a period
of three years, from the villages to the towns and townlets. The
Department of Laws considered this measure too risky, pointing to the
White Russian expulsion of 1823, which had failed to produce the
expected results, and, "while it has ruined the Jews, it does not in the
least seem to have improved the condition of the villagers." [1] The
plenum of the Council agreed with the Department of Laws that "the
proposed expulsion of the Jews (from the villages), being extremely
difficult of execution and being of problematic benefit, should be
eliminated from the Statute and should be stopped even there where it
had been decreed but not carried into effect."

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 407.]

The report was laid before the Tzar, who attached to it the following
"resolution": [1] "Where this measure (of expulsion) has been started, it
is inconvenient to repeal it; but it shall be postponed for the time
being in the governments in which no steps towards it have as yet been
made." For a number of years this "resolution" hung like the sword of
Damocles over the heads of rural Jewry.

[Footnote 1: See on the meaning of the term "resolution" Vol. I, p. 253,
n. 1.]

Less yielding was the Tzar's attitude on the question of the partial
enlargement of the Pale of Settlement. The Department of Laws had
suggested to grant the merchants of the first guild the right of
residence in the Russian interior in the interest of the exchequer and
big business. At the general meeting of the Council of State only a
minority (thirteen) voted for the proposal. The majority (twenty-two)
argued that they had no right to violate the time-honored tradition,
"dating from the time of Peter the Great," which bars the Jews from the
Russian interior; that to admit them "would produce a very unpleasant
impression upon our people, which, on account of its religious notions
and its general estimate of the moral peculiarities of the Jews, has
become accustomed to keep aloof from them and to despise them;" that the
countries of Western Europe, which had accorded fall citizenship to the
Jews, "cannot serve as an example for Russia, partly because of the
incomparably larger number of Jews living here, partly because our
Government and people, with all their well-known tolerance, are yet far
from that indifference with which certain other nations look upon
religious matters." After marking his approval of the last words by the
marginal exclamation "Thank God!", the Tzar disposed of the whole matter
in the following brief resolution: "This question has been determined by
Peter the Great. I dare not change it; I completely share the opinion of
the twenty-two members."

While on this occasion the Tzar endorsed the opinion of the Council as
represented by its majority, in cases in which it proved favorable to
the Jews he did not hesitate to set it aside. Thus the Department of
Laws, as part of the Council of State, and, following in its wake, the
Council itself had timidly suggested to Nicholas to comply in part with
the plea of the Jews for a mitigation of the rigors of conscription, [1]
but the imperial verdict read: "To be left as heretofore." Nicholas
remained equally firm on the question of the expulsions from Kiev. The
Department of Laws, guided by the previously-mentioned representations
of the local governor, favored the postponement of the expulsion, and
fourteen members of the plenary Council agreed with the suggestion of
the Department, and resolved to recommend it to the "benevolent
consideration of his Majesty," in other words to request the Tzar to
revoke the baneful ukase. But fifteen, members rejected all such
propositions on the ground that, as far as that question was concerned,
the imperial will was unmistakable, the Tzar having decided the matter
in a sense unfavorable to the Jews. In a similar manner, numerous other
decisions of the Council of State were dictated not so much by inner
conviction as by fear of the clearly manifested imperial will, which no
one dared to cross.

[Footnote 1: The Kahal of Vilna, in a memorandum submitted in 1835,
pleaded for the abolition of the dreadful institution of cantonists, and
begged that the age limit of Jewish recruits be raised from 12-15 to
20-35.]

Under these circumstances, the entire draft of the statute passed
through the Council of State. In its session of March 28, 1835, the
Council voted to submit it to the emperor for his signature. On this
occasion a solitary and belated voice was raised in defence of the Jews,
without evoking an echo. A member of the Council, Admiral Greig, who was
brave enough to swim against the current, submitted a "special opinion"
on the proposed statute, in which he advocated a number of alleviations
in the intolerable legal status of the Jews. Greig put the whole issue
in a nut-shell: "Are the Jews to be suffered in the country, or not?"
If they are, then we must abandon the system "of hampering them in their
actions and in their religious customs" and grant them at least "equal
liberty of commerce with the others," for in this case "we may
anticipate more good from their gratitude than from their hatred."
Should, however, the conclusion be reached that the Jews ought not to be
tolerated in Russia, then the only thing to be done is "to banish them
all without exception from the country into foreign lands." This might
be "more useful than to allow this estate to remain in the country and
to keep it in a position which is bound to arouse in them continual
dissatisfaction and resentment." It need scarcely be added that the
voice of the "queer" admiral found no hearing.

Nor did the Jewish people manage to get a hearing. Stunned by the
uninterrupted succession of blows and moved by the spirit of martyrdom,
Russian Jewry kept its peace during those dismal years. Yet, when the
news of an impending general regulation of the Jewish legal status began
to leak out, a section of Russian Jewry became astir. For to anticipate
a blow is more excruciating than to receive one, and it was quite
natural that an attempt should be made to stay the hand which was lifted
to strike. Towards the end of 1833 the Council of State received, as
part of the material bearing on the Jewish question, two memoranda, one
from the Kahal of Vilna, signed by six elders, and another from Litman
Feigin of Chernigov, well known in administrative circles as merchant
and public contractor.

The Kahal of Vilna declared that the repressive policy, pursued during
the last few years by the "Jewish Committee," had thrown a large part of
the Jewish people "into utmost disorder," and had made the Jews "shiver
and shudder at the thought that a general Jewish statute had been
drafted by the same Committee and had now been submitted to the Council
of State for revision." The petitioners go on to say that, weighed down
by a succession of cruel discriminations affecting not only their rights
but also their mode of discharging military service, the Jews would
succumb to utter despair, did they not repose their hopes in the
benevolence of the Tzar, who, on his recent trip through the Western
provinces, had expressed to the deputies of the Jewish communes his
imperial satisfaction with the loyalty to the throne displayed by the
Jews during the Polish insurrection of 1831. The Kahal of Vilna,
therefore, implored the Council of State "to turn its attention to this
unfortunate and maligned people" and to stop all further persecutions.

A more emphatic note of protest is sounded in the memorandum of Feigin.
By a string of references to the latest Government measures he
demonstrates the fact that "the Jewish people is hunted down, not
because of its moral qualities but because of its faith."

The Jews, faced by the new statute, have lost all hope for a better lot,
inasmuch as the Government has embarked upon this measure without having
solicited the explanations or justifications of this people, whereas,
according to common legal procedure, even an individual may not be
condemned without having been called upon to justify himself.

The rebuke had no effect. The Government preferred to render its verdict
_in absentia_, without listening to counsel for the defence and without
any safeguards of fair play. In line with this attitude, it also denied
the petition of the Vilna Kahal to be allowed "to send at least four
deputies to the capital as spokesmen of the entire Jewish people for the
purpose of submitting to the Government their explanations and
propositions concerning the reorganization of the Jews, after having
been presented with a draft of the statute." The final verdict was
pronounced in the spring of 1835, and in April the new "Statute
concerning the Jews" received the signature of the Tzar.

This "Charter of Disabilities," which was destined to operate for many
decades, represents a combination of the Russian "ground laws"
concerning the Jews and the restrictive by-laws issued after 1804. The
Pale of Settlement was now accurately defined: it consisted of Lithuania
[1] and the South-western provinces, [2] without any territorial
restrictions, White Russia [3] minus the Villages, Little Russia [4]
minus the crown hamlets, New Russia [5] minus Nicholayev and Sevastopol,
the government of Kiev minus the city of Kiev, the Baltic provinces for
the old settlers only, while the rural settlements on the entire
fifty-verst zone along the Western frontier were to be closed to
newcomers. As for the interior provinces, only temporary "furloughs"
(limited to six weeks and to be certified by gubernatorial passports)
were to be granted for the execution of judicial and commercial affairs,
with the proviso that the travellers should wear Russian instead of
Jewish dress. The merchants affiliated with the first and second guilds
were allowed, in addition, to visit the two capitals, [6] the sea-ports,
as well as the fairs of Nizhni-Novgorod, Kharkov, and other big fairs
for wholesale buying or selling. [7]

[Footnote 1: The present governments of Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, and Minsk.]

[Footnote 2: The governments of Volhynia and Podolia.]

[Footnote 3: The governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev.]

[Footnote 4: The governments of Chernigov and Poltava.]

[Footnote 5: The governments of Kherson, Yekaterinoslav, Tavrida, and
Bessarabia.]

[Footnote 6: St. Petersburg and Moscow.]

[Footnote 7: The time-limit was six months for the merchants of the
first guild and three months for those of the second.]

The Jews were further forbidden to employ Christian domestics for
permanent employment. They could hire Christians for occasional services
only, on condition that the latter live in separate quarters. Marriages
at an earlier age than eighteen for the bridegroom and sixteen for the
bride were forbidden under the pain of imprisonment--a prohibition which
the defective registration of births and marriages then in vogue made it
easy to evade. The language to be employed by the Jews in their public
documents was to be Russian or any other local dialect, but "under no
circumstances the Hebrew language."

The function of the Kahal, according to the Statute, is to see to it
that the "instructions of the authorities" are carried out precisely and
that the state taxes and communal assessments are "correctly remitted."
The Kahal elders are to be elected by the community every three years
from among persons who can read and write Russian, subject to their
being ratified by the gubernatorial administration. At the same time the
Jews are entitled to participation in the municipal elections; those who
can read and write Russian are eligible as members of the town councils
and magistracies--the supplementary law of 1836 fixed the rate at
one-third, [1] excepting the city of Vilna where the Jews were entirely
excluded from municipal self-government.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 368.]

Synagogues may not be built in the vicinity of churches. The Russian
schools of all grades are to be open to Jewish children, who "are not
compelled to change their religion" (Clause 106)--a welcome provision in
view of the compulsory methods which had then become habitual. The
coercive baptism of Jewish children was provided for in a separate
enactment, the Statute on Conscription, which is declared "to remain in
force." In this way the Statute of 1835 reduces itself to a codification
of the whole mass of the preceding anti-Jewish legislation. Its only
positive feature was that it put a stop to the expulsion from the
villages which had ruined the Jewish population during the years
1804-1830.


6. THE RUSSIAN CENSORSHIP AND CONVERSIONIST ENDEAVORS

With all its discriminations, the promulgation of this general statute
was far from checking the feverish activity of the Government. With
indefatigable zeal, its hands went on turning the legislative wheel and
squeezing ever tighter the already unbearable vise of Jewish life. The
slightest attempt to escape from its pressure was punished ruthlessly.
In 1838 the police of St. Petersburg discovered a group of Jews in the
capital "with expired passports," these Jews having extended their stay
there a little beyond the term fixed for Jewish travellers, and the Tzar
curtly decreed: "to be sent to serve in the penal companies of
Kronstadt." [1] In 1840 heavy fines were imposed upon the landed
proprietors in the Great Russian governments for "keeping over" Jews on
their estates.

[Footnote 1: A fortress in the vicinity of St Petersburg.]

Considerable attention was bestowed by the Government on placing the
spiritual life of the Jews under police supervision. In 1836 a
censorship campaign was launched against Hebrew literature. Hebrew
books, which were then almost exclusively of a religious nature, such as
prayer-books, Bible and Talmud editions, rabbinic, cabalistic, and
hasidic writings, were then issuing from the printing presses of Vilna,
Slavuta, [1] and other places, and were subject to a rigorous censorship
exercised by Christians or by Jewish converts. Practically every Jewish
home-library consisted of religious works of this type. The suspicions
of the Government were aroused by certain Jewish converts who had
insinuated that the foreign editions of these works and those that had
appeared in Russia itself prior to the establishment of a censorship
were of an "injurious" character. As a result, all Jewish home-libraries
were subjected to a search. Orders were given to deliver into the hands
of the local police, in the course of that year, all foreign Hebrew
prints as well as the uncensored editions, published at any previous
time in Russia, and to entrust their revision to "dependable" rabbis.
These rabbis were instructed to put their stamp on the books approved by
them and return the books not approved by them to the police for
transmission to the Ministry of the Interior. The regulation involved
the entire ancient Hebrew literature printed during the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, prior to the establishment of the
Russian censorship. In order to "facilitate the supervision" over new
publications or reprints from older editions, all Jewish printing
presses which existed at that time in various cities and towns were
ordered closed, and only those of Vilna and Kiev, [2] to which special
censors were attached, were allowed to remain.

[Footnote 1: A town in Volhynia.]

[Footnote 2: The printing-press of Kiev was subsequently transferred to
Zhitomir.]

As the Hebrew authors of antiquity or the Middle Ages did not fully
anticipate the requirements of the Russian censors, many classic works
were found to contain passages which were thought to be "at variance
with imperial enactments." By the ukase of 1836 all books of this kind,
circulating in tens of thousands of copies, had to be transported to St.
Petersburg under a police escort to await their final verdict. The
procedure, however, proved too cumbersome, and, in 1837, the emperor,
complying with the petitions of the governors, was graciously pleased to
command that all these books be "delivered to the flames on the spot."
This _auto-da-fe_ was to be witnessed by a member of the gubernatorial
administration and a special "dependable" official dispatched by the
governor for the sole purpose of making a report to the central
Government on every literary conflagration of this kind and forwarding
to the Ministry of the Interior one copy of each "annihilated" book.

But even this was not enough to satisfy the lust of the Russian
censorship. It was now suspected that even the "dependable" rabbis might
pass many a book as "harmless," though its contents were subversive of
the public weal. As a result, a new ukase was issued in 1841, placing
the rabbinical censors themselves under Government control. All
uncensored books, including those already passed as "harmless," were
ordered to be taken away from the private libraries and forwarded to the
censorship committees in Vilna and Kiev. The latter were instructed to
attach their seals to the approved books and "deliver to the flames" the
books condemned by them. Endless wagonloads of these confiscated books
could be seen moving towards Vilna and Kiev, and for many years
afterwards the literature of the "People of the Book," covering a period
of three milleniums, was still languishing in the gaol of censorship,
waiting to be saved from or to be sentenced to a fiery death by a
Russian official.

It is almost unnecessary to add that the primitive method of solving the
Jewish problem by means of conversion, was still the guiding principle
of the Government. The Russian legislation of that period teems with
regulations concerning apostasy. The surrender of the Synagogue to the
Church seemed merely a question of time. In reality, however, the
Government itself believed but half-heartedly in the sincerity of the
converted Jews. In 1827 the Tzar put down in his own handwriting the
following resolution: "It is to be strictly observed that the baptismal
ceremony shall take place unconditionally on a Sunday, and with all
possible publicity, so as to remove all suspicion of a pretended
adoption of Christianity." Subsequently, this watchfulness had to be
relaxed in the case of those "who avoid publicity in adopting
Christianity," more especially in the case of the cantonists, "who have
declared their willingness to embrace the orthodox faith"--under the
effect, we may add, of the tortures in the barracks. Sincerity under
these circumstances was out of the question, and, in 1831, the battalion
chaplains were authorized to baptize these helpless creatures, even
"without applying for permission to the ecclesiastical authorities."

The barrack missionaries were frequently successful among these
unfortunate military prisoners. In the imperial rescripts of that period
the characteristic expression "privates from among the Jews _remaining
in the above faith_" figures as a standing designation for that group of
refractory and incorrigible soldiers who disturbed the officially
pre-established harmony of epidemic conversions by remaining loyal to
Judaism. But among the "civilian" Jews, who had not been detached from
their Jewish environment, apostasy was extraordinarily rare, and law
after law was promulgated in vain, offering privileges to converts or
leniency to criminals who were ready to embrace the orthodox creed. [1]

[Footnote 1: Under Clause 157 of the Russian Penal Code of 1845, the
penalty of the law was softened, not only in degree but also in kind,
for those criminals who had embraced the Greek-Orthodox faith during the
investigation or trial.]




CHAPTER XIV


COMPULSORY ENLIGHTENMENT AND INCREASED OPPRESSION

1. ENLIGHTENMENT AS A MEANS OF ASSIMILATION

There was a brief moment of respite when, in the phrase of the Russian
poet, "the fighter's hand was tired of killing." The Russian Government
suddenly felt the need of passing over from the medieval forms of
patronage to more enlightened and perfected methods. Among the leading
statesmen of Russia were men, such as the Minister of Public
Instruction, Sergius Uvarov, who were well acquainted with Western
European ways and fully aware of the fact that the reactionary
governments of Austria and Prussia had invented several contrivances for
handling the Jewish problem which might be usefully applied in their own
country. Though anxious to avoid all contact with the "rotten West," and
being in constant fear of European political movements, the Russian
Government was nevertheless ready to seize upon the relics of
"enlightened absolutism" which were still stalking about, particularly
in Austria, in the early decades of the nineteenth century. As far as
Prussia was concerned, the abundance of assimilated and converted Jews
in that country and their attempts at religious reform, which to a
missionary's imagination were identical with a change of front in favor
of Christianity, had a fascination of its own for the Russian
dignitaries. No wonder then that the Government yielded to the
temptation to use some of the contrivances of Western European reaction,
while holding in reserve the police knout of genuine Russian
manufacture.

In 1840 the Council of State was again busy discussing the Jewish
question, this time from a theoretic point of view. The reports of the
provincial administrators, in particular that of Bibikov,
governor-general of Kiev, dwelled on the fact that even the "Statute" of
1835 had not succeeded in "correcting" the Jews. The root of the evil
lay rather in their "religious fanaticism and separatism," which could
only be removed by changing their inner life. The Ministers of Public
Instruction and of the Interior, Uvarov and Stroganov, took occasion to
expound the principles of their new system of correction before the
Council of State. The discussions culminated in a remarkable memorandum
submitted by the Council to Nicholas I.

In this document the Government confesses its impotence in grappling
with the "defects" of the Jewish masses, such as "the absence of useful
labor, their harmful pursuit of petty trading, vagrancy, and obstinate
aloofness from general civic life." Its failure the Government ascribes
to the fact that the evil of Jewish exclusiveness has hitherto not been
attacked at its root, the latter being imbedded in the religious and
communal organization of the Jews. The fountain-head of all misfortunes
is the Talmud, which "fosters in the Jews utmost contempt towards the
nations of other faiths," and implants in them the desire "to rule over
the rest of the world." As a result of the obnoxious teachings of the
Talmud, "the Jews cannot but regard their presence in any other land
except Palestine as a sojourn in captivity," and "they are held to obey
their own authorities rather than a strange government." This explains
"the omnipotence of the Kahals," which, contrary to the law of the
state, employ secret means to uphold their autonomous authority both in
communal and judicial matters, using for this purpose the uncontrolled
sums of the special Jewish revenue, the meat tax. The education of the
Jewish youth is entrusted to melammeds, "a class of domestic teachers
immersed in profoundest ignorance and superstition," and, "under the
influence of these fanatics, the children imbibe pernicious notions of
intolerance towards other nations." Finally, the special dress worn by
the Jews helps to keep them apart from the surrounding Christian
population.

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