History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume II Part 29

Round about all is silent and cheerless, Like a lonesome and desert-like plain.

If but one were courageous and fearless And would cry out aloud in his pain!

Neither storm-wind nor starshine by night, And the days neither cloudy nor bright: O my people, how sad is thy state, How gray and how cheerless thy fate!

But in this silence the national idea was slowly maturing and gaining in depth and in strength. The time had not yet arrived for clearly marked tendencies or well-defined systems of thought. But the temper of the intellectual cla.s.ses of Russian Jewry was a clear indication that they were at the cross-roads. The "t.i.tled" _inteligenzia_, reared in the Russian schools, who had drifted away from Judaism, was now joined by that other _intelligenzia_, the product of heder and yeshibah, who had acquired European culture through the medium of neo-Hebraic literature, and was in closer contact with the ma.s.ses of the Jewish people.

True, the Jewish periodical press in the Russian language, which had arisen towards the end of the seventies, had lost in quant.i.ty. The _Razvyet_ had ceased to appear in 1883, and the _Russki Yevrey_ in 1884.

The only press organ to remain on the battlefield was the militant _Voskhod_, which was the center for the publicistic, scientific, and poetic endeavors of the advanced intellectuals of that period. But the loss of the Russian branch of Jewish literature was made up by the growth of the Hebrew press. The old Hebrew organs _ha-Melitz_ and _ha-Tzefirah_ took on a new lease of life, and grew from weeklies into dailies. Voluminous annuals with rightful claims to scientific and literary importance, such as the _ha-Asif_ ("The Harvest") and _Keneset Israel_ ("The Community of Israel") in Warsaw, and other similar publications, began to make their appearance in Russia. New literary forces began to rise from the ground, though only to attain their full bloom during the following years. Taken as a whole, the ninth decade of the nineteenth century may well be designated as a period of transition from the older Haskalah movement to the more modern national revival.

4. AMERICAN AND PALESTINIAN EMIGRATION

As for the emigration movement, which had begun during the storm and stress of the first pogrom year, this pa.s.sive but only effective protest against the new Egyptian oppression proceeded at a slow pace. The Jewish emigration from Russia to the United States served as a barometer of the persecutions endured by the Jews in the land of bondage. During the first three years of the eighties the new movement showed violent fluctuations. In 1881 there were 8193 emigrants; in 1882, 17,497; in 1883, 6907. During the following three years, from 1884 to 1886, the movement remained practically on the same level, counting 15,000 to 17,000 emigrants annually. But in the last three years of that decade, it gained considerably in volume, mounting in 1887 to 28,944, in 1888 to 31,256, and in 1889 to 31,889. The exodus from Russia was undoubtedly stimulated by the law imposing a fine for evading military service and by the introduction of the educational percentage norm--two restrictions which threw into bold relief the disproportionate relation between rights and duties in Russian Jewry. In the Empire of the Tzars the Jews were denied the right of residence and the privilege of a school education, but forced at the same time to serve in the army. In the United States they at once received full civil equality and free schooling without any compulsory military service.

It goes without saying that the emigrants who had no difficulty in obtaining equality of citizenship were nevertheless compelled, during their first years of residence in the New World, to engage in a severe struggle for their material existence. Among the emigrants who came to America in those early years there were many young intellectuals who had given up their liberal careers in the land of bondage and were now dreaming of becoming plain agriculturists in the free republic. They managed to obtain a following among the emigrant ma.s.ses, and founded, in the face of extraordinary difficulties, and with the help of charitable organizations, a number of colonies and farms in various parts of the United States, in Louisiana, North and South Dakota, New Jersey, and elsewhere. After a few years of vain struggling against material want and lack of adaptation to local conditions, a large number of these colonies were abandoned, and only a few of them have survived until to-day.

In the course of time the idealistic pioneer spirit which had animated the Russian intellectuals gave way to a sober realism which was more in harmony with the conditions of American life. The bulk of the emigrant ma.s.ses settled in the cities, primarily in New York. They worked in factories or at the trades, the most important of which was the needle trade; they engaged in business, in peddling, and in farming, and, lastly, in the liberal professions. Many an immigrant pa.s.sed successively through all these economic stages before obtaining a secure economic position.

The result of all these wanderings and vicissitudes was a well-established community in the United States of some 200,000 Jews, who formed the nucleus for the rapidly growing new Jewish center in America. One of the active partic.i.p.ants and leaders in this movement, who had in his own life experienced all the hardships connected with it, concludes his account of the emigration to the United States at the end of the eighties with the following words:

No one who has seen the poor, down-trodden, faint-hearted inhabitant of the infamous Pale, with the Damocles sword of brutal mob rule dangling constantly over his head, shaking like an autumn leaf at the sight of an inspector or even a plain policeman; who has seen this little Jew transformed, under the influence of the struggle for existence and an independent life, into a free American Jew who holds his head proudly, whom no one would dare to offend, and who has become a citizen in the full sense of the word--no one who has seen this wonderful transformation can doubt for a moment the enormous significance of the emigration movement for the 200,000 Jews that have found shelter in America.

Idealistic influences rather than realistic factors were at work in the Palestinian colonization movement, which proceeded on a parallel line with the American emigration, as a small stream sometimes accompanies a large river. The ideas preached by the first "Lovers of Zion" were but slowly a.s.suming concrete shape. The pioneer colonists in the ancient fatherland met with enormous obstacles in their path: the opposition of the Turkish Government which hindered in every possible way the purchase of land and acquisition of property; the neglected condition of the soil, the uncivilized state of the neighboring Arabs, the lack of financial means and of agricultural experience. Despite all these drawbacks, the efforts of a few men led to the establishment in the very first year of the movement, in 1882, of the colony Rishon le-Zion, near Jaffa. Subsequently a few more colonies were founded, such as Ekron and Ghederah in Judea, Yesod Hama'alah, Rosh-Pinah, Zikhron Jacob in Galilee--the last two founded by Roumanian Jews. Called into life by enthusiasts with inadequate material resources, these colonies would have scarcely been able to survive, had not their plight aroused the interest of Baron Edmond de Rothschild in Paris. Beginning with 1884, the baron, pursuing purely philanthropic aims, gave his support to the colonies, spending enormous sums on cultivating in them the higher forms of agriculture, particularly wine-growing. Gradually, the baron became the actual owner of a majority of the colonies which were administered by his appointees, and most of the colonists were reduced to the level of laborers or tenants who were entirely in the hands of the baron's administration. This state of affairs was unquestionably humiliating and almost too hard to bear for men who had dreamed of a free life in the Holy Land. Yet there can be no doubt that under the conditions prevailing at the time the continued existence of the colonies was only made possible through the liberal a.s.sistance which came from the outside.

The progress of the Palestinian colonization, slow though it was, provided a concrete basis for the doctrines preached by the "Lovers of Zion" in Russia. The propaganda of these _Hobebe Zion_--the Hebrew equivalent for "Lovers of Zion"--who acknowledged as their leaders the first exponents of the territorial restoration of Jewry, Pinsker and Lilienblum, led to the organization of a number of societies in various cities. Towards the end of 1884 the delegates of these societies met at a conference in the Prussian border-town Kattowitz, such a conference being impossible in Russia, in view of the danger of police interference. On that occasion a fund was established under the name of _Mazkeret Moshe_, "A Memorial to Moses," in honor of the English philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, whose hundredth birthday was celebrated in that year. The fund, which formed the main channel for all donations in favor of the Palestinian colonies, was administered by the two _Hobebe Zion_ centers in Odessa and Warsaw. The movement which had been called into life by representatives of the _intelligenzia_ succeeded in winning over several champions of rabbinical orthodoxy, among them Samuel Mohilever, the well known rabbi of Bialystok; their affiliation with the new party was largely instrumental in weakening the opposition of the orthodox ma.s.ses which were inclined to look upon this political movement as a rival of the traditional Messianic idea of Judaism. The lack of governmental sanction hampered the _Hobebe Zion_ societies in Russia in their activities, and the funds at their disposal were barely sufficient for the upkeep of one or two colonies in Palestine. Realizing this, the conference of the "Lovers of Zion" which met at Druskeniki [1] in 1887 decided to apply to the Russian Government for the legalization of the _Hobebe Zion_ organization, a consummation which was realized a few years later, in 1890.

[Footnote 1: A watering-place in the government of Grodno.]

Thus did, during the first decade of the war waged by the Tzars against their Jewish subjects, the tide of Russian-Jewish emigration slowly roll towards various sh.o.r.es, until a fresh storm in the beginning of the new decade whipped its waves to unprecedented heights. Whereas in the course of the eighties the Russian Government wished to give the impression as if it merely "tolerated" the departure of the Jews from Russia--although in reality it was the ultimate aim of its policies--in the beginning of the nineties it suddenly cast off its mask and gave its public sanction to a Jewish exodus from the Russian Empire. As if to strengthen the effect of this sanction, the Jews were to taste even more fully the whip of persecution and expulsion than they had done during the preceding decade.

CHAPTER XXVIII

JUDAEOPHOBIA TRIUMPHANT

1. INTENSIFIED REACTION

The poisonous Judaeophobia bacilli seemed to thrive more than ever in the highest Government circles of St. Petersburg. However, not only the hatred against the Jews but also the fury of general political reaction became more rabid than ever after the "miraculous escape" of the imperial family in the railroad accident near Borki on October 17, 1888.

[1] Amidst the ecclesiastic and mystic haze with which Pobyedonostzev and his a.s.sociates managed to veil this episode the conviction became deeply ingrained in the mind of the Tzar that it was the finger of G.o.d which pointed to him the way in which Russia might be saved from "Western" reforms and brought back into the fold of traditional Russian orthodoxy. This conviction of Alexander III. led to the counter-reforms which marked the concluding years of his reign, having for their purpose the strengthening of the police and Church regime in Russia, such as the curtailment of rural and urban self-government, the increase of the power of the n.o.bility and clergy, the inst.i.tution of Zemstvo chiefs, [2]

and the multiplication of Greek-Orthodox parochial schools at the expense of secular schools. The same influences also stimulated the luxurious growth of Judaeophobia which from now on a.s.sumed in the highest Government circles a most malignant character. A manifestation of this frame of mind may be found in the words of the Tzar which he penned on the margin of a report submitted to him in 1890 by a high official, describing the sufferings of the Jews and pleading for the necessity of stopping the policy of oppression: "_But we must not forget that it was the Jews who crucified our Lord and spilled his priceless blood_." Representatives of the court clergy publicly preached that a Christian ought not to cultivate friendly relations with a Jew, since it was the command of the gospel "to hate the murderers of the Savior." The Ministry of the Interior, under the direction of two fanatic reactionaries, Durnovo and Plehve, [3] set on foot all the inquisitorial contrivances of the Police Department, of which both these officials had formerly been the chiefs.

[Footnote 1: Borki is a village in the government of Kherson. Of the fifteen cars of the imperial train only five remained intact.

Fifty-eight persons were injured, twenty-one fatally. The members of the imperial family were saved, although their car had been completely wrecked.

The following quotation from Harold Frederic, _The New Exodus_, p. 168 et seq., is of interest in this connection: "It was reported about that the Tzar regarded the escape alive of himself and family from the terrible railway accident at Borki as the direct and miraculous intervention of Providence. The facts were that the imperial train was being driven at the rate of ninety versts an hour over a road calculated to withstand at the utmost a speed of thirty-five versts; that the engineer humbly warned the Tzar of the danger, and was gruffly ordered to go still faster if possible, and that the miracle would have been the avoidance of calamity."]

[Footnote 2: On the Zemstvos compare p. 173, n. 1. The reactionary law of June 12, 1890 (see later, p. 358 et seq.) puts in place of the executives formerly elected by the people the "Zemstvo chiefs,"

officials appointed from among the landed proprietors.]

[Footnote 3: Durnovo became Minister of the Interior in 1889, after the demise of Tolstoi; Plehve was a.s.sistant-minister.]

The press was either tamed or used as a tool of the governmental policies. The most widely read press organs of the capital, with the exception of the moderately liberal _Novosti_ ("The News") which managed to survive the shipwreck of the liberal press, became either openly or secretly the official mouthpieces of the Government. The venal _Novoye Vremya,_ which the Russian satirist Shchedrin had branded as "the sewer," embarked, towards the end of the eighties, on the n.o.ble enterprise of hunting down the Jews with a zeal which was clear evidence of a higher demand for Judaeophobia in the official world. There was no accusation, however hideous, which Suvorin's paper, steered simultaneously by the Holy Synod and by the Police Department, failed to hurl in the face of the Jews. As an organ generally reflecting the views of the Government, the _Novoye Vremya_ served at that time as a source of political information for all dignitaries and officials. The ministers, governors and the vast army of subordinate officials, who wished to ascertain the political course at a given moment, consulted this "well-informed" daily, which, as far as the Jewish question was concerned, pursued but one aim: to make the life of the Jews in Russia unbearable. Apart from the _Novoye Vremya_, which was read by the Tzar himself, the work of Jew-baiting was also carried on with considerable zeal by the Russian weekly _Grazhdanin_ ("The Citizen"), whose editor, Count Meshcherski, enjoyed not only the personal favor of Alexander III.

but also a substantial Government subsidy. These metropolitan organs of publicity gave the tone to the whole official and semi-official press in the provinces, and the public opinion of Russia was systematically poisoned by the venom of Judaeophobia.

When the Pahlen Commission was discharged, the Tzar having "attached himself to the opinion of the minority," [1] the Government had no difficulty in finding a few kind-hearted officials who were eager to carry the project framed by this reactionary minority into effect. The project itself, which had been elaborated in the Ministry of the Interior under the direction of Plehve, the sinister Chief of Police, was guarded with great secrecy, as if it concerned a plan of military operations against a belligerent Power. But the secret leaked out very soon. The Minister had sent out copies of the project to the governors-general, soliciting their opinions, and ere long copies of the project were circulating in London, Paris, and Vienna. In the spring of 1890, Russia and Western Europe were filled with alarming rumors concerning an enactment of some "forty clauses," which was designed to curtail the commercial activities of the Jews, to increase the rigor of the "Temporary Rules" within the Pale, and restrict the privileges conferred upon several categories of Jews outside of it, to establish medieval Jewish ghettos in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev, and similar measures. The foreign press made a terrible outcry against these contemplated new acts of barbarism.

[Footnote 1: See p. 370.]

The voice of protest was particularly strong in England. The London _Times_ a.s.sailed in violent terms the reactionary policies of Russia, and a special organ, called _Darkest Russia_, was published for this purpose by Russian political refugees in England. The Russian Government denied these rumors through its diplomatic channels, though at the very same time the well-informed _Novoye Vremya_ and _Grazhdanin_ were not barred from printing news items concerning the projected disabilities or from recommending ferocious measures against the Jews for the purpose "of removing them from all branches of labor."

This comedy was well understood abroad. At the end of July and in the beginning of August interpellations were introduced in both Houses of the English Parliament, as to whether Her Majesty's Government found it possible to make diplomatic representations in defence of the persecuted Russian Jews for whom England would have to provide, were they to arrive there in large ma.s.ses. Premier Salisbury, in the House of Lords, and Fergusson, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the House of Commons, replied that "these proceedings, which, if rightly reported to us, are deeply to be regretted, concern the internal affairs of the Russian Empire, and do not admit of any interference on the part of Her Majesty's Government." [1] When shortly afterwards preparations were set on foot for calling a protest meeting in London, the Russian Government hastened to announce through the British amba.s.sador in St.

Petersburg that no new measures against the Jews were in contemplation, and the meeting was called off. Rumor had it that the Lord Mayor of London, Henry Isaacs, who was a Jew, did not approve of this meeting, over which, according to the English custom, he would have to preside.

The action of the Lord Mayor may have been "tactful," but is was certainly not free from an admixture of timidity.

[Footnote 1: See _The Jewish Chronicle_ of August 8, 1890, p. 18b.]

2. CONTINUED HARa.s.sING

While anxiously endeavoring to appease public opinion abroad, the Russian Government at home did all it could to keep the Jews in an agitated state of mind. The legal drafts and the circulars which had been sent out secretly by the central Government in St. Petersburg elicited the liveliest sympathy on the part of the provincial administrators. Not satisfied with signifying to the Ministry their approval of the contemplated disabilities, many officials of high rank began to display openly their bitter hatred of the Jews.

At one and the same time, during the months of June, July, and August of 1890, the heads of various local provincial administrations published circulars calling the attention of the police to the "audacious conduct"

of the Jews who, on meeting Russian officials, failed to take off their hats by way of greeting. The governor of Moghilev instructed the police of his province to impress the local Jewish population with the necessity of "polite manners," in the sense of a more reverent att.i.tude towards the representatives of Russian authority. In compliance with this order, the district chiefs of police compelled the rabbis to inculcate their flock in the synagogues with reverence for Russian officialdom. In Mstislavl, a town in the government of Moghilev, the president of the n.o.bility [1] a.s.sembled the leading members of the Jewish community, and cautioned them that those Jews who would fail to comply with the governor's circular would be subjected to a public whipping by the police. The governor of Odessa, the well-known despot Zelenoy, issued a police ordinance for the purpose of "curbing the impudence displayed by the Jews in places of public gathering and particularly in the suburban trolley cars" where they do not give up their seats and altogether show disrespect towards "persons of advanced age or those wearing a uniform, testifying to their high position." Even more brutal was the conduct of the governor-general of Vilna, Kakhanov, who, despite his high rank, allowed himself, in replying to the speech of welcome of a Jewish deputation, to animadvert not only on Jewish "clannishness" but also on the "licentiousness" of the Jewish population, manifesting itself in congregating on the streets, and similar grave crimes.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 303.]

The simultaneous occurrence of this sort of official actions in widely separated places point to a common source, probably to some secret instructions from St. Petersburg. It would seem, however, that the provincial henchmen of the central Government had overreached themselves in their eagerness to carry out the behest of "curbing the Jews." The pettiness of their demands, which, moreover, were illegal, such as the order to take off the hats before the officials, or to give up the seats in the trolley cars, merely served to ridicule the representatives of Russian officialdom, giving frequent rise to tragi-comic conflicts in public and to utterances of indignation in the press. The public p.r.o.nouncements of these genteel _chinovniks_ who were anxious to train the Jewish ma.s.ses in the fear of Russian bureaucracy and inculcate in them polite manners aroused the attention both of the Russian and the foreign press. It was universally felt that these farcical performances of uncouth administrators were only the manifestations of a bottomless hatred, of a morbid desire to insult and to humble the Jews, and that these administrators were capable at any moment to proceed from moralizing to more tangible forms of ill-treatment. This danger intensified the state of alarm.

While making preparations for storming the citadel of Russian Jewry, the Government took good care to keep it meanwhile in its normal state of siege. The resourcefulness of the administration brought the _technique_ of repression to perfection. The officials were no longer content with inventing cunning devices for expelling old Jewish residents from the villages. [1] They now made endeavors to reduce even the area of the _urban_ Pale in which the Jews were huddled together, panting for breath. In 1890, the provincial authorities, acting evidently on a signal from above, began to change numerous little townlets into villages, which, as rural settlements, would be closed to the Jews. As a result, all the Jews who had settled in these localities after the issuance of the "Temporary Rules" of May 3, 1882, were now expelled, and even the older residents who were exempt from the operation of the May laws shared the same fate unless they were able (which in very many cases they were not) to produce doc.u.mentary evidence that they had lived there prior to 1882. Simultaneously a new attempt was made to drive the Jews from the forbidden fifty verst zone along the Western border of the Empire, particularly in Bessarabia. These expulsions had the effect of filling the already over-crowded cities of the Pale with many more thousands of ruined people.

[Footnote 1: There are cases on record when Jewish soldiers who returned home after the completion of their term of service were refused admission to their villages, on the ground that they were "new settlers."]

At the same time the life of the outlawed Jews was made unbearable in the cities outside the Pale, particularly in the large centers, such as Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. The governor-general of Kiev prohibited the wives of Jewish artisans who were legally ent.i.tled to residence in that city to sell eatables in the market, on the technical ground that under the law artisans could only trade in the articles of their own manufacture, thus robbing the poor Jewish workman of the miserable pittance which his wife was anxious to contribute by her honest labor towards the maintenance of the family.

A great _political_ blow for the Jews was the clause in the new reactionary "Statute Concerning the Zemstvo Organizations" issued on June 12, 1890, [1] under which the Jews, though paying the local taxes, were completely barred from partic.i.p.ating in the election of deputies to the organization of local self-government. This clause was inserted in the legal draft by the three shining lights of the political inquisition active at that time, Pobyedonostzev, Durnovo, and Plehve. They justified this restriction on the following grounds: the object of the new law is to transform local self-government into a state administration and to strengthen in the former the influence of the central Government at the expense of the local Government; hence the Jews, "being altogether an element hostile to Government," are not fit to partic.i.p.ate in the Zemstvo administration. The Council of State agreed with this bureaucratic motivation, and the humiliating clause pa.s.sed into law.

[Footnote 1: The new law invalidated to a large extent the liberties granted to the Zemstvos by Alexander II. in 1864 (compare p. 173) by placing them under state control.]

While a large part of the Russian public and of the Russian press had succ.u.mbed to the prevailing tendencies under the high pressure of the anti-Semitic atmosphere, the progressive elements of the Russian _intelligenzia_ were gradually aroused to a feeling of protest. Vladimir Solovyov, "the Christian philosopher," a friend of the Jewish people, who had familiarized himself thoroughly with its history and literature, conceived the idea of issuing a public protest against the anti-Semitic movement in the "Russian Press," [1] to be signed by the most prominent Russian writers and other well-known men. During the months of May and June, 1890, he succeeded under great difficulties to collect for his protest sixty-six signatures in Moscow and over fifty signatures in St.

Petersburg, including those of Leo Tolstoi, Vladimir Korolenko, and other literary celebrities. Despite its mild tone, the protest which had been framed by Solovyov [2] was barred from publication by the Russian censor. Professor Ilovaiski, of Moscow, a historian of doubtful reputation, but a hide-bound Jew-baiter, had informed the authorities of St. Petersburg of the attempt to collect signatures in Moscow for a "pro-Jewish pet.i.tion." As a result, all newspapers received orders from the Russian Press Department to refuse their columns to any collective p.r.o.nouncements touching the Jewish question.

[Footnote 1: The latter expression was a euphemism designating the Russian Government and its reactionary henchmen in the press. The severity of the police made this evasion necessary.]

[Footnote 2: The following extracts from this meek appeal deserve to be quoted: "The movement against the Jews which is propagated by the Russian press represents an unprecedented violation of the most fundamental demands of righteousness and humanity. We consider it our duty to recall these elementary demands to the mind of the Russian public.... In all nationalities there are bad and ill-minded persons but there is not, and cannot be, any bad and ill-minded nationality, for this would abrogate the moral responsibility of the individual.... It is unjust to make the Jews responsible for those phenomena in their lives which are the result of thousands of years of persecution in Europe and of the abnormal conditions in which this people has been placed.... The fact of belonging to a Semitic tribe and professing the Mosaic creed is nothing prejudicial and cannot of itself serve as a basis for an exceptional civil position of the Jews, as compared with the Russian subjects of other nationalities and denominations.... The recognition and application of these simple truths is important and is first of all necessary for ourselves. The increased endeavor to kindle national and religious hatred, which is so contradictory to the spirit of Christianity and suppresses the feelings of justice and humaneness, is bound to demoralize society at its very root and bring about a state of moral anarchy, particularly so in view of the decline of humanitarian ideas and the weakness of the principle of justice already noticeable in our life. For this reason, acting from the mere instinct of national self-preservation, we must emphatically condemn the anti-Semitic movement not only as immoral in itself but also as extremely dangerous for the future of Russia."]