Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910 Part 3

Rubinow, _op. cit._, p. 501.

[14] Margolin puts the number at 600,000.

[15] Ruppin, _Die Sozialen Verhltnisse der Juden in Russland_ (Berlin, 1906), p. 59.

[16] Rubinow, _op. cit._, p. 537.

[17] Rubinow, _op. cit._, p. 542.

[18] _Ibid._, p. 553.

[19] Ruppin, _op. cit._, p. 62.

[20] Rubinow, _op. cit._, p. 556.

[21] Ruppin, _op. cit._, p. 100.

[22] Rubinow, _op. cit._, p. 493.

[23] Ruppin, _op. cit._, p. 19.

[24] Ruppin, _op. cit._, p. 65.

[25] Rubinow, _op. cit._, pp. 577-578.

[26] In a personal communication to the writer, Dr. Rubinow gives it as his opinion that the Jews as a group consisting primarily of artisans and merchants will show a very much higher rate of literacy than a group of factory employes, and, we may add, of unskilled laborers, to which groups the majority of the non-Jews in the towns belong.

[27] Ruppin, _op. cit._, p. 62.

[28] On the economic activities and social characteristics of the Jews in Roumania, _cf._ Ruppin, _Die Juden in Rumnien_, p. 27 _et seq._

[29] _Enqute sur les artisans_ (Bucarest, 1909), p. 157 _et seq._

[30] Thon, _Die Juden in Oesterreich_ (Berlin, 1908), p. 112.

[31] Thon, _op. cit._, p. 124.

[32] Thon, _op. cit._, p. 127.

[33] _Grenzboten: Galizische Wirtschaft_, vol. lxii, p. 402.

CHAPTER IV

THIRTY YEARS OF JEWISH HISTORY IN EASTERN EUROPE

I. RUSSIA

Religious intolerance had been the prime motive of Russia's policy of completely excluding the Jews from her borders. Through the part.i.tions of Poland from 1772 to 1795, she became the unwilling ruler over the destinies of millions of Jews living in Lithuania, Western and Southwestern Russia and Poland proper. The historic medieval principle by which the Jews were regarded as an alien and heretic race living among the Christian peoples--a principle that had, with the growth of modern ideas, been rapidly losing its hold upon the West-European nations--expressed Russia's att.i.tude towards the Jews and conformed to her strongly medieval outlook and organization of this period. Thus, at the time when the emanc.i.p.ation of the Jews had begun to be in Western Europe a concomitant of social progress, Russia set to work to recreate almost typically medieval conditions for a vaster Jewish population than had ever before been a.s.sembled in any European country.

The Jews were placed in the position practically of aliens, whose activities were regulated by special laws. The first and the most far-reaching of these laws limited their right of residence to those provinces in which they lived at the time of the Polish part.i.tions. In this way originated that reproduction on a vast scale of the medieval Ghetto--the Pale of Jewish Settlement. The elementary right of free movement and choice of residence, which was denied to the Jews, has remained the princ.i.p.al restriction to which they are subjected.

The Pale of Jewish Settlement, continued with but few changes to our day, includes the fifteen provinces of Western and Southwestern Russia--Vilna, Kovno, Grodno, Minsk, Vitebsk, Mohileff, Volhynia, Podolia, Kiev (except the city of Kiev), Chernigov, Poltava, Bessarabia, Kherson, Jekaterinoslav, Taurida (except the city of Yalta), and the ten provinces into which Poland is divided--Warsaw, Kalisz, Kielce, Lomza, Lublin, Petrikow, Plock, Radom, Suvalk and Siedlec. From the rest of the eighty-nine provinces and territories--const.i.tuting nearly 95 per cent of the total territory of the Russian Empire--the Jews were excluded.

In the course of a century the special laws relating to the Jews have multiplied greatly until they now consist of more than a thousand articles, regulating their religious and communal life, economic activities and occupations, military service, property rights, education, _etc._, and imposing special taxes over and above those borne by all other Russian subjects. The direct consequence of these laws was to mark the status of the Jews as the lowest in the Empire, placing them in the position of aliens as to rights and citizens as to obligations.[34]

The policy of the Russian government throughout the 19th century has been full of contrasts and contradictions. Attempts at forcible russification and a.s.similation, which with Nicholas I practically spelled conversion, have alternated with methods of repression which sought to prevent closer contact between the Jewish and the native populations.

It was the liberal epoch of Alexander II that gave the first real promise of emanc.i.p.ation to Russian Jewry. The great reforms of this era benefited the Jews along with the other subjects of the Empire.

With the influence of the liberals over the government there came a new att.i.tude regarding the Jews and their value as economic and cultural forces. Partly to relieve the intense compet.i.tion in the Pale, harmful both to the Christian and the Jewish populations, but chiefly to give the provinces of interior Russia the benefit of the superior industrial and commercial, and professional abilities of the Jews, laws were enacted allowing certain cla.s.ses of Jews to live outside of the Pale. These were, chiefly, master-artisans, merchants of the first guild, students and graduates of universities and higher educational inst.i.tutions, and members of the liberal professions.

With these laws and with the opening of the high schools and universities to the Jews, the movement for Russianization received a mighty impetus. Though these reforms, hedged about and limited by onerous conditions, affected comparatively few and hardly touched the life of the Jewish ma.s.ses in a radical way, nevertheless, the impulse which even these relatively slight reforms gave to the current of Jewish life in Russia was far out of proportion to the relief they afforded. Jewish hopes for a final emanc.i.p.ation soared high: it seemed as if the walls of the Pale needed but little more to be broken down.

The reaction that followed the a.s.sa.s.sination of Alexander II fell upon the Jews as a national calamity. To the feudal party which now came into control, the Jews seemed the very embodiment of the forces in the Empire whose progress they were seeking to stem. No other nationality in the Russian Empire concentrated in itself so many characteristics and tendencies opposed to the ideals and interests of the Russian ruling cla.s.ses. To the Church, dominated by a religio-national point of view, they were the very opposite of her ideal type of Russian orthodox, their very existence in Russia being regarded as an anomaly and as an actual and possible influence in disintegrating the religious faith of the orthodox peasants. To the nationalists they were an alien people racially and religiously, whose a.s.similation with the Russian people was neither possible nor desirable. To the autocracy and the bureaucracy there was the added fear from their intellectual superiority and their zeal for education of their playing a powerful part among the liberal forces seeking political freedom.

Indeed, the Jews, whose economic and cultural activities and interests bound them closely to Western Europe and were in themselves modernizing and liberalizing influences, growing all the stronger through the greater freedom offered them during the liberal epoch, excited the deep repugnance of the feudal forces now directing the destinies of the state. To them the Jews spelled anathema. Separated from the great ma.s.ses of the Russian people by race, nationality, religion, occupations and other social and psychological characteristics, they offered an unusually favorable object of attack.

It soon became clear that the new rgime had determined upon making the Jews a central feature in their policy of reaction. At once a many-sided campaign against the Jews was begun. A powerful machinery of persecution was at hand in the existing Jewish laws. All that was necessary was to revive them, to interpret them rigorously, to tighten the legislative screws which had become loosened during the preceding liberal rgime. This, however, seemed insufficient. It was determined that a powerful and definitive blow must be struck at the roots of their very existence in Russia.

The main attack was economic. The industrial and commercial activities of the Jews, especially in the Pale, make them, as we have seen, among the chief industrial producers for the peasants, as well as the chief buyers of their agricultural produce. This contact between the Jews and the peasants was a vital need in the economic life of both. The familiar charge that the Jews were exploiters of the peasantry was revived. Behind this charge lay the medieval economic prejudice, which attributes no really useful rle to the merchant or trader.[35] In a custom-ridden economic order, the compet.i.tive methods of the Jewish traders smacked of commercial deceit. Princ.i.p.ally, however, this charge served for a convenient explanation of the change of policy towards the Jews.

In this wise were introduced the "Temporary Regulations" of May, 1882, or the May Laws, the main clauses of which are the following:

1. As a temporary measure and until a general revision is made of the legal status of the Jews, they are forbidden to settle anew outside of towns and townlets (boroughs), an exception being made only in the case of existing Jewish agricultural colonies.

2. Until further orders, the execution of deeds of sale and mortgage in the names of Jews is forbidden, as well as the registration of Jews as lessees of real estate situated outside of towns and townlets, and also the issuing to Jews of powers of stewards.h.i.+p or attorney to manage and dispose of such real property.

The May Laws may be regarded as an extension of the general principle underlying the creation of the Pale. Through the first clause they were now to be forbidden free movement even within the Pale. As far as possible, their contact with the peasantry was to be cut off. The second clause aimed to put an end to the owners.h.i.+p by Jews of land in rural districts and the employment of Jews as stewards or managers of estates. A further construction of this clause forbade Jews to be connected with any business directly or indirectly depending upon the purchase of landed property outside of the towns of the Pale, thus debarring them from the utilization of land for industrial and commercial, as well as for agricultural purposes.

In the actual execution of these laws, and in the legal interpretations given them by the highest courts, the effect was far greater. A series of wholesale expulsions from the villages into the towns of the Pale began, on the ground of illegal residence. This was increased by the device, which became normal, of renaming towns as villages--easily possible in Russia where towns are frequently only administrative units--the resident Jews then being expelled as illegal settlers. Again, movement within the villages even on the part of Jews who had the right to live in villages was prohibited.

A further effect of this change in policy was upon the position of the Jews outside of the Pale, who enjoyed the right of residence in the interior of Russia, through the laws of the preceding rgime. A stricter interpretation of these laws, added to a change in the administrative policy, had the effect not only of stopping the comparatively slight current of Jewish artisans into the interior of Russia, but also of starting a never-ending series of expulsions from the interior to the Pale. These expulsions have since continued, with individuals, families and whole groups, until they have become a constant phenomenon of Jewish life in Russia and a familiar item of world news.

While the May Laws thus touched to the quick the economic life of the Russian Jews, another series of laws sought to break down their cultural life by barring them from the higher educational and professional inst.i.tutions. The contrast with the policy of the preceding rgime was here as complete as possible. The principle of liberal a.s.similation with regard to the Jews had dictated the policy of opening wide to them the doors of the secondary schools and universities, and the liberal professions. The new rgime, however, not only opposed education generally, and higher education particularly, as the means by which the reform and westernization of Russia was being accomplished, but it regarded the russification of the Jews as a special evil. Culturally as well, the Jews were to be separated from the Russian people.

Hence the introduction of the "percentage rule" in 1886 and 1887, restricting the proportion of Jewish students admitted to the secondary and high schools, and universities, within the Pale, to 10 per cent of the total number of students admitted. Outside of the Pale, the proportion was 5 per cent, except in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where it was placed at 3 per cent. In addition, the Jews were completely barred from a number of these inst.i.tutions. As the Jews const.i.tuted so large a part of the populations in the towns of the Pale and had distinguished themselves in Russia as elsewhere by the eagerness with which they grasped the educational and professional opportunities offered them, the introduction of the "percentage rule"

meant that the vast majority of the Jewish youth were to be deprived of the normal chances for education. Thus the "percentage rule", which was extended to inst.i.tutions founded by the Jews themselves, was almost as great a blow as the May Laws. It threatened the cultural ruin of Russian Jewry. Bound up as the admission to these schools was with the liberal professions and with the opportunity of escaping from the limits of the Pale, it meant that one of the main highways to freedom in Russia had been closed to the Jews.

The most striking method of repression introduced by the new rgime and its feudal supporters was that combination of murder, outrage and pillage--the _pogrom_. The revival of this characteristic expression of the antisemitism of the middle ages was not the result of spontaneous outbreaks of fury on the part of the Russian ma.s.ses, but a deliberate and calculated awakening of latent racial and religious prejudices, evoked as powerful aids to inflame against the Jews the Russian ma.s.ses, who are, religiously speaking, a tolerant people and whose relations to the Jews had been marked, on the whole, with friendliness.

The first _pogroms_ began a month after the accession of Alexander III to the throne, and extended in the course of a year to 160 places in Southern Russia. Though the connivance of the local authorities was clearly established, the originators of the _pogroms_ were never found.[36] However, moral support was lent by the government in the promulgation of the May Laws which closely followed. The doctrine that the misery of the peasants was due to their exploitation by the Jews, and that the _pogroms_ were the instinctive expression of the fury of the peasants, was officially sanctioned. The _pogroms_ of 1881-2 served as notice to all Russia and particularly to Russian Jewry, that the old order had given place to the new. Apart from the loss of life and damage to property they left the Russian Jews in a state of stupefaction and horror, with the sense of living on the brink of a precipice.

The first decade of Alexander III's reign had opened with these _pogroms_. The second decade opened with the wholesale expulsions from Moscow. Within six months, more than ten thousand Jews were expelled from the city on the ground of illegal residence. So vast a number of Jewish families was affected and so summary was the manner of executing the decree of expulsion, that several governments, among them our own, protested to the Russian government. President Harrison, discussing this protest in his message to Congress, frankly stated that

the banishment, whether by direct decree or by not less certain indirect methods, of so large a number of men and women is not a local question. A decree to leave one country is in the nature of things an order to enter another--some other. This consideration, as well as the suggestion of humanity, furnishes ample ground for the remonstrances which we have presented to Russia.[37]

The expulsions were preceded by a year of ominous rumors of a program of new restrictions beside which the May Laws would pale into insignificance. An offer of ten million dollars for the cause of Jewish education made by Baron de Hirsch to the Russian government was refused. His scheme, however, for the organization of a ma.s.s-emigration of Jews to Argentine was sanctioned. All these facts lent strength to the feeling of the Jews that they had nothing to hope for under the existing rgime. Thus closed the reign of Alexander III and a memorable chapter in Russian Jewish history.