History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume II Part 24

At the same time the conference took occasion to refute the old accusation, which had again been brought up in the gubernatorial commissions, that the Jews still retained their ancient autonomous Kahal organization, and that the latter was operating secretly and was fostering Jewish separatism to the detriment of the other elements of the population.

The resolution of the conference on this score read as follows:

We, the undersigned, the representatives of various centers of Jewish settlement in Russia, rabbis, members of religious organizations and synagogue boards, consider it our sacred duty, calling to witness G.o.d Omniscient, to declare publicly, in the presence of the whole of Russia, that there exists neither an open nor a secret Kahal administration among the Russian Jews; that Jewish life is entirely foreign to any organization of this kind and to any of the attributes ascribed to such an organization by evil minded persons.

The signers of this solemn p.r.o.nouncement were evidently unaware of the degrading renunciation of national rights which was implied in the declaration that not only had the Jews lost their former comprehensive communal organization--this was in accordance with the facts--but that, were such an inner autonomous organization to exist, they would regard it as a criminal offence, subversive of the public order and punishable by the forfeiture of civil rights.

CHAPTER XXIV

LEGISLATIVE POGROMS

1. THE "TEMPORARY RULES" OF MAY 3, 1882

During the interval between the pogrom of Warsaw and that of Balta the Government was preparing for the Jews a series of legislative pogroms.

In the recesses of the Russian Government offices, which served as the laboratories of police barbarism, the authorities were busy forging a chain of legal and administrative restrictions in order to "regulate"

Jewish life in the spirit of complete civil disfranchis.e.m.e.nt. The Central Committee on Jewish Affairs, attached to the Ministry of the Interior, which was called for short "the Jewish Committee" but might far more appropriately have been called "the Anti-Jewish Committee," was basing its labors upon the opinions submitted by the gubernatorial commissions and rearing on this foundation a monstrous structure of disabilities.

The new project was based upon the following theory: The old Russian legislation was marked by its hostility to the Jews as a secluded group of alien faith and race. A departure from this att.i.tude was attempted during the reign of Alexander II., when the rights of certain categories of Jews were enlarged, and "a period of toleration was inaugurated." But subsequent experience proved the inexpediency of this tolerant att.i.tude towards the Jews, as has been demonstrated by the recent manifestation "of an anti-Jewish movement abroad" (German anti-Semitism) and "the popular protest" in Russia itself, where it a.s.sumed the form of pogroms.

Since Russia has now chosen the path of a "national policy," it follows also in regard to the Jewish question that this country cannot but "turn to its ancient tradition, throw aside the innovations which have proved useless, and follow vigorously the principles, evolved by the whole past history of the monarchy, according to which the Jews must be regarded as aliens," and therefore can lay no claim to full toleration.

This barbarous theory, which brought Russia back to the traditions of ancient Muscovy, was expounded elaborately in the protocol of the session of the "anti-Jewish Committee," as a sort of preamble to the legal project submitted by it.

While engaged in these labors, the members of the committee received the news of the pogrom in Warsaw, and were greatly heartened by it. They did not fail to make an entry in the protocol to the effect that the "disorders" which had taken place in the Kingdom of Poland "where the Jews enjoy equal rights" (i.e., the right of residence) tend to support the theory of the "injuriousness" of the Jewish people. Official pens began to scribble more rapidly, and within a short time, by the spring of 1882, a project was ready, to be inflicted as a severe punishment upon the Jews for the atrocities perpetrated upon them. The "conquered foe," represented by the Jewish population, was to be dislodged from a large area within, the Pale of Settlement, overcrowded though the latter had become, by forbidding the Jews to settle anew outside of the cities and towns, i.e., in the country-side. Those already settled there were either to be evicted by the verdict of the rural communes[1], or to be deprived of a livelihood by the prohibition to buy or lease immovable property and to trade in liquor.

[Footnote 1: "To allow the communes to evict the Jews by a verdict,"

according to the exact wording of the law.]

This project was submitted by Ignatyev to the Committee of Ministers, accompanied by the suggestion that the new disabilities be enacted not in due legal procedure (by the Council of State) but in the form of "Temporary Rules" to be sanctioned in an extra-legal way by the Tzar, with the end in view "to do away with the aggravated relations between the Jews and the original population."

However, even the members of the reactionary Committee of Ministers were embarra.s.sed by Ignatyev's project. The Committee felt that it was impossible to carry out the expropriation of personal and property rights on so extensive a scale without the due process of law and that the permission to be granted to rural communes of expelling the Jews from the villages was tantamount to leaving the latter to the tender mercies of the benighted Russian ma.s.ses, which would thus more than ever be strengthened, in their conviction that the Jews might be expelled and a.s.saulted with impunity, so that the relations between the two elements of the population, instead of improving, would only become more aggravated. On the other hand, the Committee of Ministers went on record that it considered it necessary to adopt rigorous measures against the Jews in order that the peasants should not think "that the Tzar's will in ridding them of Jewish exploitation was not put into execution."

As a result of these contentions, several concessions were made by Ignatyev, and the following compromise was reached: The clause ordering the expulsion of the hundreds of thousands of Jews already settled in the villages was eliminated, and the prohibition was restricted to the Jews who wished to settle outside of the towns and townlets _anew_. In turn, the Committee of Ministers yielded to Ignatyev's demand that the project should be enacted with every possible dispatch, without preliminary submission to the Council of State.

Such was the genesis of the famous "Temporary Rules" which were sanctioned by the Tzar on May 3, 1882. Shorn of all bureaucratic rhetoric, the new laws may be reduced to the following laconic provisions:

_First_, to forbid the Jews henceforth to settle anew outside of the towns and townlets.

_Second_, to suspend the completion of instruments of purchase of real property and merchandise in the name of Jews outside of the towns and townlets.

_Third_, to forbid the Jews to carry on business on Sundays and Christian holidays.

The first two "Rules" contained in their harmless wording a cruel punitive law which dislodged the Jews from nine-tenths of the territory hitherto accessible to them, and tended to coop up millions of human beings within the suffocating confines of the towns and townlets of the Western region. And yet, notwithstanding its tremendous implications, the law was pa.s.sed outside the ordinary course of legal procedure--under the disguise of "Temporary Rules," which, in spite of their t.i.tle, have been enforced with merciless cruelty for more than a generation.

2. ABANDONMENT OF THE POGROM POLICY

After imposing a severe and immediately effective penalty upon Russian Jewry for having been ruined by the pogroms, the Government suddenly remembered its duty, and dangled the threat of future penalties before the prospective instigators of Jewish disorders. On the same fateful third of May, the Tzar sanctioned the decision of the Committee of Ministers concerning the necessity of declaring solemnly that "the Government is firmly resolved to prosecute invariably any attempt at violence on the person and property of the Jews, who are under the protection of the general laws." In accordance with this declaration, a senatorial ukase dated May 10 was sent out to the governors, warning them that "the heads of the gubernatorial administrations would be held responsible for the adoption of timely measures looking to the prevention of the conditions leading to similar disorders and for the suppression of these disorders at the very outset, and that any negligence in this regard on the part of the administration and the police authorities would result in the dismissal from office of those found guilty." This warning was accompanied by the following confession:

In view of the fact that sad occurrences in the past have made it evident that the local population, incited by evil-minded persons from covetous or other motives, has taken part in the disorders, it is the duty of the gubernatorial administration to make it clear to the local communes that they are obliged to adopt measures for the purpose ... of impressing upon the inhabitants the gross criminal offence implied in willfully perpetrating violent acts against anybody's person and property.

It would almost seem as if the Government, by promulgating on one and the same day the "Temporary Rules" against the Jews and the circular against the pogroms, wished to intimate to the Russian people that, inasmuch as the Jews were now being exterminated through the agency of the law, there was no further need to exterminate them on the streets.

The originators of the "Temporary Rules" did not seem to realize that the latter were nothing but a variation of those "violent acts against person and property," from which the street mob was warned to refrain, for the loss of the freedom of movement is violence against the person, and the denial of the right of purchasing real estate is violence against property. Even the Russian press, though held at that time in the grip of censorship, could not help commenting on the fact that the effect of the official circular against the pogroms had been greatly weakened, by the simultaneous promulgation of the "Temporary Rules."

It would seem as if the terrible atrocities at Balta had made the highest Government spheres realize that the previous policy of connivance at the pogroms, which had been practised for a whole year, could not but disgrace Russia in the eyes of the world and undermine public order in Russia itself. As soon as this was realized, the luckless Minister, who had been the pilot of Russian politics throughout that terrible year, was bound to disappear from the scene. On May 30, Count Ignatyev was made to resign, and Count Demetrius Tolstoi was appointed Minister of the Interior.

Tolstoi was a grim reactionary and a champion of autocracy and police power, but he was at the same time an enemy of all manifestations of mob rule which tended to undermine the authority of the State. A few days after his appointment the new Minister issued a circular in which he reiterated the recent declaration of his predecessor concerning the "resolve of the Government to prosecute every kind of violence against the Jews," announcing emphatically that "any manifestation of disorders would unavoidably result in the immediate prosecution of all official persons who are in duty bound to concern themselves with the prevention of disorders."

This energetic p.r.o.nouncement of the Government had a magic effect. All provincial administrators realized that the central Government of St.

Petersburg had ceased to trifle with the promoters of the pogroms, and the pogrom epidemic was at an end. Beginning with June, 1882, the pogroms a.s.sumed more and more a sporadic character. Here and there sparks of the old conflagration would flare up again, but only to die out quickly. In the course of the next twenty years, until the Kishinev ma.s.sacre of 1903, no more than about ten pogroms of any consequence may be enumerated, and these disorders were all isolated movements, with a purely local coloring, and without the earmarks of a common organization or the force of an epidemic, such as characterized the pogrom campaigns of 1881, or those of 1903-1905. This is an additional proof for the contention that systematic pogroms in Russia are impossible as long as the central Government and the local authorities are honestly and firmly set against them.

The stringent measures adopted by Tolstoi were soon reflected in the legal trials arising out of the pogroms. Formerly, the local authorities refrained as a rule from putting the rioters on trial lest their testimony might implicate the local administration, and even when action was finally brought against them, the culprits mostly escaped with slight penalties, such as imprisonment for a few months. But after the declaration of the Government in June the courts adopted a more rigorous att.i.tude towards the rioters. [1] In the summer of 1882, a number of cases arising out of the pogroms at Balta and in other cities were tried in the courts. The penalties imposed by the courts were frequently severe, though fully deserved, such as deportation and confinement at hard labor, drafting into penal military companies, etc. In one case, two soldiers, having been convicted of pillage and murder, were court-martialled and sentenced to death. When the sentence was submitted for ratification to Drenteln, governor-general of Kiev, the rabbi of Balta, acting on behalf of the local Jewish community, betook himself to Kiev to support the culprits in their pet.i.tion for pardon. It was strange to listen to this appeal for mercy on behalf of criminals guilty of violence and murder, coming from the camp of their victims, from the demolished homes which still resounded with the moans of the wounded and with the weeping over lost lives and dishonored women. One finds it difficult to believe that this appeal for mercy was due entirely to an impulse of forgiveness. a.s.sociated with it was probably the apprehension that the death of the murderers would be avenged by their like-minded accomplices who were still at liberty.

[Footnote 1: This, by the way, was not always the case. The court of Chernigov, which was compelled to bring in a verdict of guilty against the perpetrators of the pogrom in the townlet of Karpovitchin the same government, decided to recommend the culprits to the clemency of the superior authorities, in view of the dissatisfaction of the people with the "exploitation" of the Jews. There were many instances of these anti-Jewish political manifestations in the law-courts.]

The Jews of Balta were soon to learn that their humility was ill-requited by the highly-placed promoters of the riots. In the beginning of August, Governor-General Drenteln came to Balta. He was exceedingly irritated, not only on account of the recent circular of Tolstoi which implied a personal threat against him as one who had connived at a number of pogroms within his dominions, but also because of the steps taken by the representatives of the Balta Jewish community at St. Petersburg in the direction of exposing the spiritual fathers of the local riots. Having arrived in the sorely stricken city, the head of the province, who _ex officio_ should have conveyed his expression of sympathy to the sufferers, summoned the rabbi and the leaders of the Jewish community, and, in the presence of his official staff, treated them to a speech full of venomous hatred. He told them that by their actions the Jews had "armed everybody against themselves," that they were universally hated, that "they lived nowhere as happily as in Russia," and that the deputation they had sent to St. Petersburg for the purpose of presenting their complaints and "slandering the city authorities and representatives as if they had incited the tumultuous mob against the Jews" had been of no avail. In conclusion, he branded the pet.i.tion of the Balta community for a commutation of the death sentence pa.s.sed upon the rioters as an act of hypocrisy, adding impressively that "these persons have been pardoned irrespective of the requests of the Jews."

The speech of the bureaucratic Jew-baiter, whose proper place was in the dock, side by side with the convicted murderers, produced a terrible panic in the whole region of Kiev. The militant organ of the Jewish press, the _Voskhod_, properly remarked:

After the speech of General-Adjutant Drenteln, our confidence in the impossibility of a repet.i.tion of the pogroms has been decidedly shaken. Of what avail can ministerial circulars be when the highest administrators on the spot paralyze their actions in public by the living word?

The apprehensions voiced by the Jewish organ were fortunately unfounded.

True, the Minister Tolstoi was not able to punish the criminal harangue of the savage governor-general who had powerful connections at the Russian court. But the firm resolution of the central Government to hold the heads of the administration to account for their connivance at pogroms had the desired effect. All that the snarling dogs could do was to bark.

3. DISABILITIES AND EMIGRATION

The pogrom machinery was thus stopped by a word of command from St.

Petersburg. As a counterbalance, the machinery for the manufacture of Jewish disabilities continued in full operation. The "Temporary Rules"

of May third established a system of legal persecutions which were directed against the Jews on the ground of their "economic injuriousness," The fact that the Jewish population was in many regards outside the operation of the general laws of Russia opened up a wide field for the grossest forms of arbitrariness and lawlessness. At one stroke, all the exits from the overcrowded cities into the villages within the Pale of Settlement were tightly closed. All branches of industry connected with Jewish land ownership outside the cities were curtailed and in some places entirely cut off. In many villages the right bestowed on the rural communes of ostracising "vicious members" by a special verdict [1] was used as a weapon to expel those Jews who had long been settled there.

[Footnote 1: The official term applied to the resolutions pa.s.sed by the village communes. Compare p. 310.]

It will be remembered that Ignatyev had proposed to encourage the peasants officially in the use of this weapon against the Jews, and that the Committee of Ministers had rejected his proposal. There were now administrators who did the same thing unofficially. Prompted by selfish motives, the local _Kulaks_ [1] or "bosses," from among the Russian tradesmen, acting in conjunction with the rural elders, would convene peasant a.s.semblies which were treated to liberal doses of alcohol. The intoxicated, half-illiterate _moujiks_ would sign a "verdict" demanding the expulsion of the Jews from their village; the verdict would be promptly confirmed by the governors and would immediately become law.

Such expulsions were particularly frequent in the governments under the jurisdiction of Drenteln, governor-general of Kiev, and no one doubted but that this ferocious Jew-baiter had pa.s.sed the word to that effect throughout his dominions.

[Footnote 1: Literally "Fists."]

The economic misery within the Pale drove a number of Jews into the Russian interior, but here they were met by the whip of the law, made doubly painful by the scorpions of administrative caprice. Wholesale expulsions of Jews took place in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, and other forbidden centers. The effect of these expulsions upon the commercial life of the country was so disastrous that the big Russian merchants of Moscow and Kharkov appealed to the Government to relax the restrictions surrounding the visits of Jews to these cities.

The civil authorities were now joined by the military powers in hounding the Jews. There were in the Russian army a large number of Jewish physicians, many of whom had distinguished themselves during the preceding Russo-Turkish war. The reactionary Government at the helm of Russian affairs could not tolerate the sight of a Jewish physician exercising the rights of an army officer which were otherwise utterly utterly unattainable for a Jewish soldier. Accordingly, the Minister of War, Vannovski, issued a rescript dated April 10, 1882, to the following effect:

_First_, to limit the number of Jewish physicians and _feldshers[1]_ in the Military Department to five per cent of the general number of medical men.

_Second_, to stop appointing Jews on the medical service in the military districts of Western Russia, and to transfer the surplus over and above five per cent into the Eastern districts.