History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume II Part 28

CHAPTER XXVII

RUSSIAN REACTION AND JEWISH EMIGRATION

1. AFTERMATH OF THE POGROM POLICY

In this wise, beginning with the May laws of 1882, the Government gradually succeeded in monopolizing all anti-Jewish activities by letting bureaucratic persecutions take the place of street pogroms.

However, in 1883 and 1884, the "street" made again occasional attempts to compete with the Government. On May 10, 1883, on the eve of Alexander III.'s coronation, a pogrom took place in the large southern city of Rostov-on-the-Don. About a hundred Jewish residences and business places were demolished and plundered. All portable property of the Jews was looted by the mob, and the rest was destroyed. As was to be expected, "the efforts of the police and troops were unable to stop the disorders," and only after completing their day's work the rioters fled, pursued by lashes and shots from the Cossaks. The Russian censorship strictly barred all references to the pogroms in the newspapers, for fear of spoiling the solemnity of the coronation days. The press was only allowed to hint at "alarming rumors," the effect of which extended even to the stock exchange of Berlin. Not before a year had pa.s.sed was permission given to make public mention of the Rostov events.

There was reason to fear that the pogrom at Rostov was only a prelude to a new series of riots in the South. But more than two months had pa.s.sed, and all seemed to be quiet. Suddenly, however, on July 20, on the Greek-Orthodox festival dedicated to the memory of the prophet Elijah, the Russian mob made an attack upon the descendants of the ancient prophet at Yekaterinoslav. The memory of the great biblical n.a.z.irite who abhorred strong drink was appropriately celebrated by his Russian votaries in Yekaterinoslav who filled themselves with an immense quant.i.ty of alcohol and became sufficiently intoxicated to embark upon their daring exploits as robbers.

The ringleaders of the pogrom movement were not local residents but itinerant laborers from the Great-Russian governments, who were employed in building a railroad in the neighborhood of the South-Russian city.

These laborers, to quote the expression of a contemporary, attended to the "military part of the undertaking," whereas the "civil functions"

were discharged by the local Russian inhabitants:

While the laborers and the stronger half of the residents were demolishing the houses and stores and throwing all articles and merchandise upon the street, the women and children grabbed everything that came into their hands and carried them off, by hand or in wagons, to their homes.

The looting and plundering continued on the second day, July 21, until a detachment of soldiers arrived. The mob, intoxicated with their success, attempted to beat off the soldiers, but naturally suffered defeat. The sight of a score of killed and wounded had a sobering effect upon the crowd. The pogrom was stopped, after five hundred Jewish families had been ruined and a Jewish sanctuary had been defiled. In one devastated synagogue the human fiends got hold of eleven Torah scrolls, tearing to pieces some of them and hideously desecrating other copies of the Holy Writ, inscribed with the commandments, "Thou shalt not murder," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery"--which evidently ran counter to the beliefs of the rioters.

The example set by Yekaterinoslav, the capital of the government of the same name, proved to be contagious, for during August and September pogroms took place in several neighboring towns and townlets. Among these the pogrom at Novo-Moskovsk on September 4 was particularly violent, nearly all Jewish houses in that town having been destroyed by the mob.

The year 1884 was marked by a novel feature in the annals of pogroms: an anti-Jewish riot outside the Pale of Jewish Settlement, in the ancient Russian city of Nizhni-Novgorod, which sheltered a small Jewish colony of some twenty families. While comparatively circ.u.mscribed as far as the material loss is concerned, the Nizhni-Novgorod pogrom stands out in ghastly relief by the number of its human victims. A report, based upon official data, which endeavors to tone down the colors, gives the following description of the terrible events:

The "disorders" [a euphemism for excesses accompanied by murder]

began on June 7 about nine o'clock in the evening, due to the instigation of several half-drunk laborers who happened to overhear a Christian mother telling her child, who was playing with a Jewish girl, to stop playing with her, as the Jews might slaughter her. The work of destruction began with the Jewish house of prayer which was crowded with worshippers. It was followed by the demolition of five more houses owned by Jews. In these houses the mob destroyed everything that fell into its hands. The doors and windows were broken and everything inside was thrown into the streets. On this occasion six adults and one boy was killed; five Jews were wounded, two of whom died soon afterwards.

The governor of Nizhni-Novgorod reported that the disorders could not possibly have been foreseen. Yet there can be no doubt that the people were to a certain extent prepared for them. The investigations of the police and the judicial inquiry both converged to prove that the Nizhni-Novgorod excesses were prompted primarily, if not exclusively, by the desire for plunder. In all demolished houses not a single article of value that could be removed was destroyed, and not only money but anything at all that was fit for use was looted. That the disorders broke out on the seventh of June was, in the opinion of the governor, entirely accidental, but that they were directed against the Jews was due to the fact that the _people had been led to believe that even the the gravest crimes were practically unpunishable, so long as they were were committed against the Jews, and not against other nationalities_.

An additional reason for the pogrom was the reputed wealth of a goodly number of the Jewish families of Nizhni-Novgorod. The judicial investigation brought out the fact that before attacking the offices of Daitzelman, a big Moscow merchant, the mob was directed by shouts: "Let us go to Daitzelman; there is a lot to be gotten there." The murder of Daitzelman, who was beloved by his Russian laborers, and that of other Jews, was not prompted by revenge, but by mere purposeless savagery. It is impossible to a.s.sume that the mob was moved to action by the rumor which had been spread by the ringleaders of the rioting hordes concerning the kidnapping of a Christian child by the Jews--the more so since at the very beginning of the excesses the police produced the supposedly kidnapped child whole and intact, and showed it to the crowd.

The pogrom was due primarily to the savagery of brutal and unenlightened mobs, who found an opportunity to vent their beastly instincts, fortified by the conviction of complete immunity, which is referred to in the report of the governor.

Even the central Government in St. Petersburg was alarmed by the St.

Bartholemew night which had been enacted at Nizhni-Novgorod. At the recommendation of Governor Baranov, the murderers were tried by court-martial and suffered heavy punishment. Nevertheless, the same governor thought it his duty to appease the Russian popular conscience by ordering the expulsion of those Jews whom the police had found to live outside the Pale "without a legal basis." In this wise, the Russian administration once more managed to follow up a street pogrom by a legal one, not realizing the fact that the atrocities perpetrated upon the Jews by the mob were merely a crude copy of the atrocities perpetrated upon them by the Government, and that the outlawed condition of the Jews bred the lawlessness and violence of the mob, which was fully aware of the anti-Semitic sentiments of the official world. The b.l.o.o.d.y saturnalia of Nizhni-Novgorod had, however, the beneficent effect that the Government, fearing the spread of the conflagration outside the Pale and even outside Jewry, took energetic steps to prevent all further excesses. As a matter of fact, the Nizhni-Novgorod pogrom was the last in the annals of the eighties--with the exception of a few unimportant occurrences in various localities. For six years "the land was quiet,"

and the monopoly of "silent pogroms," in the shape of the systematic denial of Jewish rights, remained firmly in the hands of the Government.

2. THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE PAHLEN COMMISSION

Whilst the Russian bureaucrats who had been ordered by the Tzar to take "active" measures towards solving the Jewish problem abandoned themselves entirely to a policy of repression, those of their fellow-bureaucrats who had been commissioned to consider and judge the same question from a purely theoretic point of view came to the conclusion that the repressive policy pursued by the Government was not only injurious but even dangerous. Contrary to expectations, the "High Commission" under the chairmanship of Count Pahlen, consisting of aged dignitaries and members of various ministries, approached the Jewish question, at least as far as the majority of the Commission was concerned, in a much more serious frame of mind than did the promoters of the "active" anti-Jewish policies, who had no time for contemplation and were driven by the pressure of their reactionary energy to go ahead at all cost. In the course of five years the Pahlen Commission succeeded in investigating the Jewish question in all its aspects. It studied and itself prepared a large ma.s.s of historic, juridic, as well as economic and statistical material. It probed the labors of Ignatyev's gubernatorial commissions, quickly ascertaining their biased tendency, and examined the entire history of the preceding legislation concerning the Jews. It finally came to the conclusion that the whole century-long system of restrictive legislation had failed of its purpose, and must give way to a system of emanc.i.p.atory measures, to be carried out gradually and with extreme caution. The majority of the members of the Commission concurred in this opinion, including Count Pahlen, its chairman. In the following we present a few brief extracts from the conclusions formulated by this conservative and bureaucratic commission in its comprehensive "General Memoir" which was written in the beginning of 1888:

Can the att.i.tude of the State towards a population of five millions, forming one-twentieth of its subjects--though belonging to a race different from that of the majority--whom that State itself had incorporated, together with the territories populated by them, into the Russian body politic, differ from its att.i.tude towards all its other subjects?.... Hence, from the political point of view, the Jew is ent.i.tled to equality of citizenship. Without granting him equal rights, we cannot, properly speaking, demand from him equal civic obligations.... Repression and disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, discrimination and persecution have never yet leaded to improve groups of human beings and make them more devoted to their rulers. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Jews, trained in the spirit of a century-long repressive legislation, have remained in the category of those subjects, who are less accurate in the discharge of their civic duty, who shirk their obligations towards the State, and do not fully join Russian life. _No less than six hundred and fifty restrictive laws directed against the Jews may be enumerated in the Russian Code_, and the discriminations and disabilities implied in these laws are such that they have naturally resulted in making until now the life of an enormous majority of the Jews in Russia exceedingly onerous....

The prejudice against the Jews is largely nurtured by the dislike which the common people secretly harbor towards them until to-day as non-Christians.... The names "Non-Christian" and "Christ-killer" may often be heard from the lips of the Russian common man as abusive terms directed against the Jew. The att.i.tude of our Church and of the law of the State towards the Jewish religion is different. For, while they designate the Jewish religion as a "pseudo-doctrine,"

they nevertheless sanction religious toleration on as large a scale as possible [?!], and refrain from carrying on a compulsory and official missionary propaganda.

In the course of the last twenty-five years a new accusation has been brought forward against the Jews in Russia and those outside of Russia. The Jews have been found to form a considerable percentage among the champions of anarchistic and revolutionary doctrines, consisting mostly of half-educated youngsters who have drifted away from one sh.o.r.e and have not succeeded in reaching the other. This extremely deplorable fact is used as evidence for the purpose of showing that Judaism itself contains within it a destructive force, and is, therefore, doubly dangerous to State and society. The Jewish progressives and socialists are wont to speak of their mission to reconstruct the world and of their innate love of mankind.... These statements need hardly be taken seriously, for present-day Jewry, by the very essence of its nature, professes strictly conservative principles, which to a large extent are egotistic and have for their aim the practical welfare of its adherents. The interpretation of the spirit of Judaism in a directly opposite sense is but an unsuccessful attempt on the part of Jewish anarchists who wish to proclaim themselves as the apostles of a new national mission invented by them. The fact of their forming a large percentage in the camp of those opposed to the Russian civic order may be explained by the artificial manner in which vast numbers of pupils from among the lowest cla.s.ses of the Jewish population are attracted into the secondary and elementary educational establishments. These pupils are without means of a livelihood, and they lack, moreover, all religious beliefs; they are embittered not only by their personal unfortunate position but also by the pressure of the restrictive laws which weigh heavily upon their fellow-Jews in Russia.

The defects which should be truly combated by Government and society are: a) Jewish exclusiveness and separatism; b) the endeavor of the Jews to bring the economic forces of the population, in the midst of which they live, under their influence (i.e., exploitation)....

Having established the true dimensions and characteristics of the "Jewish evil," we are naturally expected to answer a question of an opposite nature: are the Jews to any extent useful to State and society? This question, though very frequently heard, is not quite intelligible, for every subject, who fulfils his obligations, is useful to State and society. It would be strange to put a similar question concerning other nationalities of Eastern origin in Russia, such as the Greeks, Armenians, and Tartars. And yet this question is raised with great frequency in the case of the Jews, for the purpose of proving the need of repressive measures and framing a stronger indictment against the Jewish population. There is no doubt that in certain lines of endeavor the Jews are extremely useful. This was already realized by Catherine, who admitted them to the South-Russian coast in order to introduce commercial activities and bring life into the country,.... The peculiar nature of their commerce and credit is useful to the State, because they connect the remotest regions by commercial ties and are satisfied with considerably smaller profits than are the Christian merchants....

We must not, first of all, engage in too comprehensive plans of reform and imagine that the Jewish question can be considered in all its aspects and solved at one stroke.... Gradation and cautiousness must above all become the guiding principles of the future activity of the legislator.

The repressive policy, taken by itself, has been and will always be the first and main source of the clannishness of the Jews and their aloofness from Russian life.... The prohibitive laws have not improved the Jews. On the contrary, they have developed in them the spirit of opposition, and have prompted them to devise all the time most dexterous means of evading the law, thereby corrupting the lower executives of the State power. These laws affect the daily doings of every member of the Jewish population, and they extend to such spheres of life and activity in which State control is almost impossible. They touch the domain of private contract law (the prohibition of land leases), the domain of physical liberty and the need of human locomotion (the prohibition to transgress the Pale of Settlement, or to live in villages within fifty versts of the border), the domain of daily pursuits and earnings (the prohibition of several professions), and many others.

No law will ever be able to check effectively the legal violations in these hourly acts and common relations of life. It is impossible to attach a policeman or a public prosecutor or a justice of the peace to every Jew. And yet it is perfectly natural that, being restricted in the most elementary rights of a subject--to take as one instance only the right of free movement--every Jew should daily attempt to violate and evade such burdensome regulations. This is perfectly natural and intelligible....

About ninety per cent of the whole Jewish population form a ma.s.s of people that are entirely unprovided for, and come near being a proletariat--a ma.s.s that lives from hand to mouth, amidst poverty, and most oppressive sanitary and general conditions. This very proletariat is occasionally the target of tumultuous popular uprisings. The Jewish ma.s.s lives in fear of pogroms and in fear of violence. It looks with envy upon the Jews of the adjacent governments of the Kingdom of Poland, who are almost entirely emanc.i.p.ated, though living under the jurisdiction of the same State.

[1] The law itself places the Jews in the category of "alien races,"

on the same level with the Samoyeds and pagans. [2] In a word the abnormal condition of the present position of the Jews in Russia is evidenced by the instability and vagueness of their juridic rights.

[Footnote 1: The law of 1862 conferred upon the Jews of "the Kingdom of Poland," i.e., of Russian Poland, the right of unrestricted residence throughout the Kingdom, including the villages (see p.

181). This privilege was practically annulled by the enactment of June 11, 1891, which severely restricts the property rights of the Polish Jews.]

[Footnote 2: The Russian Code of Laws cla.s.sifies the Jews as follows (Volume IX., Laws of Social Orders, Article 762): "Among the Aliens inhabiting the Russian Empire are the following: 1) The Siberian Aliens; 2) The Samoyeds of the Government of Archangel; 3) The nomadic Aliens of the Government of Stavropol; 4) The Kalmycks leading a nomadic life in the Governments of Astrakhan and Stavropol; 5) The Kirgiz of the Inner Ord; 6) The Aliens of the Territories of Akmolinsk, Semipalatinsk, Semiryechensk, Ural, and Turgay; 7) the alien populations of the Trans-Caspian Territory; 8) The Jews."]

Looking at the problem, not at all as Jewish apologetes or sympathizers, but purely from the point of view of civic righteousness and the highest principles of impartiality and justice, we cannot but admit that the Jews have a right to complain about their situation.... However unpleasant it might sound to the enemies of Judaism, it is nevertheless an axiom which no one can deny that the whole five million Jewish population of Russia, unattractive though it may appear to certain groups and individuals, is yet an integral part of Russia and that the questions affecting this population are at the same time purely Russian questions. We are not dealing with foreigners, whose admission to Russian citizenship might be conditioned by their usefulness or uselessness to Russia. The Jews of Russia are not foreigners. For more than one hundred years they have formed a part of that same Russian Empire, which has incorporated scores of other tribes many of which count by the millions....

The very history of Russian legislation, notwithstanding the fact that this legislation has developed largely under the influence of a most severe outlook on Judaism, teaches us that there is only one way and one solution--to emanc.i.p.ate and unite the Jews with the rest of the population under the protection of the same laws. All this is attested not by theories and doctrines but by the living experience of centuries.... Hence the final goal of any legislation concerning the Jews can be no other than its abrogation, a course demanded equally by the needs of the times, the cause of enlightenment, and the progress of the popular ma.s.ses.

The fitness of the Jews for full civil equality, to be attained by degrees and in the course of many long years, will be the final goal of the reforms, and will lead at last to the disentangling of that age-long knot. In saying this, we do not mean to imply that by that time the Jews will have cast off or transformed all those obnoxious qualities which are at present responsible for the fight in which all are engaged against them. But, as in the case of Europe, this fight can only be terminated by according them full emanc.i.p.ation and equal citizenship. To place obstacles in the way of this solution would be nothing more than a fruitless attempt to check the course of development of human society and Russian civil life. Unsympathetic as the Jews may be to the Russian ma.s.ses, it is impossible not to agree with this axiomatic truth.

Turning now to the execution of its task, the High Commission has up to the present been able to carry out but a very small part of the program indicated. It was tied down by that gradation and cautiousness which it considers an indispensable condition for every improvement in the status of the Jews.... The princ.i.p.al task of the legislation, as far as it affects the Jews, must consist in uniting them as closely as possible with the general Christian population.

It is not advisable to frame a new legislation in the form of a special "Statute" or "Regulation," since such a course would be fundamentally subversive of the efforts of the Government to remove Jewish exclusiveness. _The system of repressive and discriminating measures must give way to a graduated system of emanc.i.p.atory and equalizing laws_. The greatest possible _cautiousness_ and _gradation_ are the principles to be observed in the solution of the Jewish question.

3. THE TRIUMPH OF REACTION

With all their moderate and cautious phraseology, the conclusions of the Pahlen Commission, whose members, as hide-bound conservatives, were forced to reckon with the anti-Semitic trend of the governing circles, implied an annihilating criticism of the repressive policy of that very Government by which the Commission had been appointed. From the loins of Russian officialdom issued the enemy who opposed it in its manner of dealing with the Jewish question.

It must be added, however, that the opinions voiced by the Commission in its memorandum were by no means shared by its entire membership. For while the majority of the Commission were in favor of gradual reforms, the minority advocated the continuation of the old repressive policy.

Owing to these internal disagreements, the Commission was slow in submitting its conclusions to the Government. One more attempt was made to procrastinate the matter. At the end of 1888 the Commission invited a group of Jewish "experts," being desirous, as it were, to listen to the last words of the prisoner at the bar. The choice fell upon the same Jewish notables of St. Petersburg, who had displayed so little courage at the Jewish conference of 1882. [1] The cross-examination of these Jewish representatives turned on the question of the internal Jewish organization, the existence of a secret Kahal, the purposes of the "basket tax," [2] and so on. Needless to say the replies were given in an apologetic spirit. The Jewish "experts" renounced the idea of a self-governing communal Jewish organization, and pleaded merely for a limited communal autonomy under the strict supervision of the Government. True, a few of the questions referred besides to the legal position of the Jews, but this was done more as a matter of form.

Everybody knew that the opinion of the majority of the Commission, favoring "cautious and gradual" reforms, did not have the same prospects of success as the views of the anti-Semitic minority which advocated the continuance of the old-time repressive policy.

[Footnote 1: See p. 304 et seq. In addition to those mentioned, M.

Margolis was invited as an expert.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 61, n. 1.]

Soon the worst apprehensions proved to be true. Count Tolstoi, the reactionary Minister of the Interior, blocked the further progress of the plans formulated by the Pahlen Commission which should have been submitted in due course to the Council of State. There were persistent rumors to the effect that Alexander III., being decidedly in favor of continuing the policy of oppression towards the Jews, had "attached himself to the opinion of the minority" of the Pahlen Commission.

According to another version, the question was actually brought up before the Council of State, and there, too, the anti-Semites proved to be in the minority, but the Tzar threw the weight of his opinion on their side. The project of the Commission, being out of harmony with the current Government policies, was disposed of at some secret session of leading dignitaries. The labor of five years was buried in the official archives.

As for the Jews themselves, they were at no time deceived about the effects that were likely to attend the work of the High Commission. They clearly understood that, if the Government had been genuinely desirous of "revising" the system of Jewish disabilities, it would have stopped, for a time at least, to manufacture new legislative whips and scorpions.

The dark polar night of Russian reaction reigned supreme. There seemed to be no end to these orgies of the Russian night owls, the Pobyedonostzevs and Tolstois, who were anxious to resuscitate the savagery of ancient Muscovy, and who kept the people in the grip of ignorance, drunkenness, and political barbarism. Every one in Russia kept his peace and held his breath. The progressive elements of the Empire were held down tightly by the lid of reaction. The press groaned under the yoke of a ferocious censorship. The mystic doctrine of non-resistance preached by Leo Tolstoi was attuned to the mood prevailing among educated Russians, for, in the words of the Russian poet, "their hearts, subdued by storms, were filled with silence and la.s.situde."

In Jewish life, too, silence reigned supreme. The sharp pangs of the first pogrom year were now dulled, and only suppressed moans echoed the uninterrupted "silent pogrom" of oppression. These were years of which the Jewish poet, Simon Frug, could sing: