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CHAPTER X: THE
"ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM" OF ALEXANDER I
1. "THE
COMMITTEE FOR THE AMELIORATION OF THE JEWS"
The liberal breeze
which began to stir in the first years of
Alexander L's reign sent a refreshing current ot air through
the stuffy atmosphere of the St. Petersburg chancelleries, in
which Russian bureaucrats, undisturbed by their utter ignorance
of Judaism, were devising ways and means of turning Jewish
life upside down. It took some time, however, before the
Jewish question was taken up again. In 1801 and 1802 the
Government was busy rearranging the whole machinery of
the administration. With the formation of the Ministries
and of the Council of State the Senate lost its former executive
power, and, as a result, the material relating to the Jewish
question which had been in its possession had to be transferred
to a new official agency.
Such an agency was called into being in November, 1802.
By order of the Tzar a special" Committee for the Amelioration
of the Jews" was organized, and the following were appoblted
its members: Kochubay, Minister ot the Interior,
Dyerzhavin, the "specialist" on Judaism, at that time
Minister of Justice, Count Zubov, and two high officials of
Polish birth, Adam Chartoriski, Assistant-Minister for
Foreign Affairs, an intimate friend of Alexander 1., and
Severin Pototzki, a member of the Senate. The Committee
was charged with the investigation of all the problems touched
upon in Dyerzhavin's "Opinion," concerning the curbing of
22
336 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
the avaricious pursuits of the Jews in White Russia, with a
view to "extending the amelioration of the Jews also to the
other Governments acquired from Polanu.."
Rumors to the effect that a special Committee on Jewish
affairs had been instituted at St. Petersburg, and that its work
was to follow the lines laid down in the project of Dyerzhavin,
caused considerable alarm among the Jews of the Northwest,
who knew but too well the anti-Semitic leanings of the former
Senator and inspector. The Kahal of Minsk held a special
meeting in December, 1802, which passed the following resolution:
Whereas disquieting rumors have reached us from the capital,
to the effect that matters involving the Jews as a whole have now
been intrusted to the hands of five dignitaries, with power to dispose
of them as they see fit, be it resolved that it is necessary to
proceed to St. Petersburg and petition our sovereign not to allow
them [the dignitaries] to introduce any innovations among us.
A public appeal was made for funds to provide the expenses
of the delegates. Moreover, a fast of three days was imposed
on all the members of the community, during which prayers
were to be offered up in the synagogues for averting the
calamity which the Government threatened to oring upon the
Jews.
When the Minister of the Interior, Kochubay, learned of the
excitement prevailing among the Jews, he sent, in January,
1803, a circular to the governors, instructing them to allay the
fears of the Jews. The Kahals were to be informed that" in
appointing the Committee for the investigation of Jewish
matters," there was" no intention whatsoever to impair their
status or to curtail any substantial advantage enjoyed by
them," but on the contrary it was proposed to "offer them
better ronditions and greater security."
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER 1. 337
'rhis verbal assurance was not nearly so effective in quieting
the minds of the Jews as action taken by the Government
at the same time. In the beginning of 1803, the" Jewish
Committee" resolved to invite deputies from all the gubernatorial
Kahals to St. Petersburg for the purpose of ascertaining
their views as to the needs of the Jewish people,
which the Government had planned to "transform" without
its own knowledge. This was the first departure fro~ the
red-tape routine of St. Petersburg. Towards the end of January,
1803, active preparations were set afoot by the Kahals
for sending such deputies. During the winter and spring the
Russian capital witnessed the arrival of Jewish deputies from
the Governments 6f Minsk, Podolia, Moghilev, and Kiev, no
information being available about the other Governments.
The deputies soon had occasion to rejoice in Dyerzhavin's
retirement from membership in the Jewish Committee, following
upon his resignation from the post of Minister of
Justice. Being a conservative of thE "real Russian" type,
Dyerzhavin was out of place in a liberal Government such as
ruled the destinies of Russia in the early years of Alexander's
reign. With his retirement his" Opinion ,~ceased to serve as
an oblig~tory rule of conduct for the members of the COlllmittee.
On arriving in St. Petersburg, the deputies from the provinces
found there a small group of Jews, mostly natives of
White Russia, who lived temporarily in the capital, in connection
with their business affairs. Though denied the right
of permanent domicile in the capital of the Empire, this handful
of barely tolerated Jews ~lad managed to secure the right
of dying there and of burying their dead in their own cemetery.
The opening of the cemetery in 1802 marks symbolically
338 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
the inception of the Jewish community in St. Petersburg. In
,e same sign of death the provincial deputies met their metropolitan
brethren at a rather strange" celebration" in the summer
of 1803: at the suggestion of the deputies and in their
presence the remains of three Jews who had been buried in 8
Christian cemetery were transferred to the newly-acquired
Jewish cemetery.
Among the Jews of St. Petersburg there were several men
at that time who, owing to their connections with high officiale
and because of their familiarity with bureaucratic ways, were
able to be of substantial service to the deputies from the provinces.
One of these Jews, Nota Shklover, who about that time
received the family name Notkin, the same public-spirited
merchant who in 1800 had submitted his reform project to
Dyerzhavin: acted, it would seem, as the official adviser of the
deputies, having been invited some time previously to participate
in the labors of the Jewish Committee. While on the
Committee, he continually insisted on his scheme of promoting
agriculture and manufactures among the Jews, but he did
not live to se.~the triumph of his ideas. He died shortly before
the enactment of the law of 1804, in which his pet theory
found due recognition. Another St. Petersburg Jew, the
wealthy contractor and commercial councilor Abraham Peretz,
took no immediate part in Jewish affairs. Yet he too was of
some service to the deputies, owing to his business relations
with the official world.
In the meantime the Committee for the Amelioration of
the Jews, after scrutinizing the different projects submitted
to it, had worked out a general plan of reform, and
communicated it to the Jewish deputies. After" prolonged
'See p. 330.
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 339
indecision" . the Jewish deputies announced that they were
not in a position to submit their conclusions, without previous
consultation with the Kahals by which they had been elected.
They accordingly asked for a half-year's respite" for the purpose
of consultation." The official Jewish Committee, on
the other hand, could not agree to so protracted a delay in
its labors, and resolved to submit, through the medium of the
Government, the principal clauses of the project to the Kahals,
with the understanding that the latter, " without making any
changes in the aforesaid clauses," should confine themselves
to suggestions as to the best ways and means of carrying the
proposed reforms into effect.
'fhe epistolary inquiry failed to produce the "desired
effect." Restricted beforehand in their free expression of
opinion, and having no right to speak their mind as to the
substance of the project, the Kahals in replying limited them~
selves to the request that the "correctional measures" be
postponed for twenty years, particularly as far as the proposed
prohibition of the sale of liquor and land-teuure was concerned,
which prohibition would undermine the whole economic
structure of Jewish life. The Committee paid no heed
to the plea of the Kabals, which was tantamount to a condemnation
of the basic principles of the project, and proceeded
to work in the direction originally decided upon.
Nor was there perfect unanimity within the Committee
itself. Two tendencies, it seems, were struggling for mastery:
utilitarianism, represented by the champions of " correctional
measures" and of a compulsory" transformatiou of Jewish
life," and humanitarianism, advocated by the spokesmen of
unconditional emancipation. '1'0 the latter class belonged
Speranski, the brilliant and enlightened statesman who might
340 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
have succeeded in liberating the Empire of the Tzars a hundred
years ago, had he not fallen a victim to the fatal conditions
of Russian life. At the time we are speaking of he
served in the Ministry of the Interior under Kochubay, and
was engaged in elaborating plans of reform for the various
departments of the civil service.
Speranski took an active interest in the Committee for the
Amelioration of the Jews, and frequently acted as Kochubay's
substitute. There was a time when his influence in the
Committee was predominant. It was evidently under his influence
that the remarkable sentences embodied in the minutes of
the Committee meeting of September 20, 1803, were penned:
Reforms brought about by the power of the state are, as a rule,
unstable, and are particularly untenable in those cases in which
that power has to grapple with the habits of centuries. Hence it
seems both better and safer to guide the Jews to perfection by
throwing open to them the avenues leading to their own happiness,
by observing their movements from a distance, and by removing
everything that might turn them away from this path, without
using any manner of force, without establishing special agencies
for them, without endeavoring to act in their stead, but by merely
opening the way for their own activities. As few restrictions as
possible, as many liberties as possible-these are the simple elements
of every social order.
Since the Government had begun to dabble in the Jewish
question, this was the first rational utterance coming from the
ranks of the Russian bureaucracy. It implied an emphatic condemnation
of the system vf state patronage and "correctional
measures" by means of which Russian officialdom then
and thereafter sought to "transform" a whole nation. Here
for the first time was voiced the lofty precept of humanitarianism:
grant the Jews untrammeled possibilities of development,
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 341
I
give full scope to their energies, and the Jews themselves will
in the end choose the way which leads to "perfection" and
progress. . .• But even the liberalizing statesmen of that'
period could not maintain themselves on that high eminence
of political thought. Speranski's conception was too tender
a blossom for the rough climate of Russia, even in its springtide.
The blossom was bound to wither. As far as the Committee for
the Amelioration of the Jews was concerned, the hackneyed
political wisdom of the age, the system of patronage and compulsory
reforms, came to the fore again. The report submitted
by the Jewish Committee to Alexander 1. in October, 1804,
reveals no trace of that radical liberalism which a year before
had come to light in the minutes of the Committee.
The report begins by determining the approximate size of
the Jewish population, computing the number of registered,
taxable males at 174,385-" a figure which represents less
than a fifth of the whole Jewish population." In other words,
the total number of Jews, in the estimate of the Committee,
approached one million. '1'he report proceeds to point out that
this entire mass is huddled together in the annexed Polish and
Lithuanian provinces and in Little Russia and Courland,
and is barred from the Governments of the interior-a statement
followed by an historical excursus tending to show that
" the Jews havo never been allowed to settle in Russia." '1'he
'l'zar is further informed that the Jews are obliged to pay
double taxes, that, notwithstanding the fact that they are
liable to the general courts and municipalities, and that their
Kahals are subordinate to the gubernatorial police, the Jews
still keep aloof from the institutions of the land and manage
their affairs through the Kahals. Finally it is pointed out that
the sale of liquor, the most widespread occupation among Jews,
342 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
is a source of abuses, calling forth complaints from the surrounding
population. Basing its deductions on these premises,
the Committee drafted a law which in its principal
features was embodied in the "Statute Concerning the Organization
of the Jews," issued, with the sanction of the 'I'zar,
soon afterwards, on December 9, 1804.
2. THE "JEWISH
CONSTITUTION" OF 1804
The new charter, a
mixture of liberties and disabilities, was
prompted, as is stated in the preamble, " by solicitude for the
true welfare of the Jews," as well as for" the advantage of
the native population of those Governments in which these
people are allowed to live." The concluding part of the sentence'
anticipates the way in which the question of the Jewish
area of settlement is solved. It remained limited as theretofore
to thirteen Governments: two in LithuaJ}.ia, two in
White Russia, two in Little Russia, those of Minsk, Volhynia,
Kiev, and Podolia, and finally three in New Russia. A slightly
larger area is conceded by the new statute to the Jut'ure class of
Jewish agriculturists projected in the same statute. They are
permitted to settle in addition in two interior Governments,
those of Astrakhan and Caucasia.
Economically the new statute establishes two opposite poles:
a negative pole as far as the rural occupations of innkeeping
and land-tenure are concerned,. which are to be exterminated
ruthlessly, and a positive pole, as far as agriculture is involved,
which on the contrary is to be stimulated and promoted
among Jews in every possible manner. Clause 34, the severest
provision of the whole act, is directed not only against innkeeping
but against rural occupations in general. It reads as
follows:
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER 1. 343
Beginning with January 1, 1807, in the Governments of Astrakhan
and Caucasla, also in those of Little Russia and New
Russia, and, beginning with January 1, 1808,in the other Governments,
no one among the Jew8 in any village or hamlet 8han be
permitted to hold any lease8 on land, to keep tavern8, 8aloon8, or
innt, whether under his own name or under a strange name, or to
sell wine in them, or even to live in them under any pretext whatever,
except when passing through.
With one stroke this clause eliminated from the economic
life of the Jews an occupation which, though far from being
distinguished, had yet afforded a livelihood to almost onehalf
of the whole Jewish population of Russia. Moreover, the
none too extensive territory of the Jewish Pale of Settlement
was still more limited by excluding from it the enormous area
of villages and hamlets.
The economic and legal blow aimed at the Jews in the
Statute of 1804 was to be made good by the privileges held
forth to those willing to engage in agriculture. Such Jews
were accorded the right of buying unoccupied lands in all
the western and in two of the eastern Governments, or of
establishing themselves on crown lands. In the latter case
the settlers were to be assigned definite parcels of land and,
for the first few years, be exempt from state taxes. However,
it soon became evident that the proposed remedy was out of
proportion to the seriousness of the wound that had been
inflicted. While hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven
from the rural occupations with which their economic life
had been bound up for centuries, the new branch of labor
opened to the Jews, the pursuit of agriculture, could, for
some time to come, attract at the utmost only a few insignificant
groups of the Jewish population.
344 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
Among the favored occupations, ranging in importance
beneath agriculture, the new law includes industry and handicrafts.
Manufacturers and artisans are declared exempt from
the double tax imposed on Jews,' and the founders of " the most
needed factories" are promised, in addition, a Government
loan. The Jewish merchants and burghers are placed in the
last rank, being merely" tolerated." Manufacturers, artisans,
and merchants are given permission to sojourn temporarily for
business purposes in "the interior Governments, not excluding
the capitals, but not otherwise than with gubernatorial passports,"
such as are given for going abroad.
In the chapter entitled" On the Civil"Organization of the
Jews," the new charter establishes, on the one hand, the liability
of the Jews to the authority of the municipalities, the
common police, and the common law courts, and grants the
Jews, on the other hand, the right of electing rabbis and
" Kahalmen," who shall be replaced every three years, and shall
be ratified by the gubernatorial administration. Special clauses
provide that the rabbis are obliged "to look after all the
ceremonies of the Jewish faith and decide all disputes bearing
on religion," but they are strictly forbidden to resort to
" anathemas" and excommunications (the so-called herem).
The Kahals in turn are held responsible for the regular payment
of the state taxes. The communal autonomy of the Jews
was thus calculated to serve two masters, religion and the
exchequer, God and mammon, and was expected to adjust
its manifold problems to both.
The "Jewish Constitution" of 1804 is provided as it were
with a European label. Its first chapter bears the heading
" On Enlightenment." Jewish children are granted free access
'·See p. 318.
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 34'"
to all public schools, gymnasiums, and universities in the Russian
Empire. The Jews are also granted the right of opening
their own schools for secular culture, one of three languages,
Russian, Polish, or German, to be obligatory. One
of these languages is also, within a period of two to six years
from the promulgation of the law, to become obligatory for all
public documents, promissory notes, commercial ledgers, etc.
rfhe Jews elected members of municipalities or chosen as
rabbis and Kabal members are obliged, within a definite term
(1808-1812), to know one ofthese three languages to the extent
of being able to write and speak it. Moreover, the Jewish members
of the municipalities are expected to wear clothes of the
Polish, Russian, or German pattern.
This " enlightened" program represents the tribute which
the Russian Government felt obliged to render to the spirit
of the age, the spirit of enlightened Prussian absolutism rather
than that of French emancipation. It was the typical sample
of a Prusso-Austrian Reglement, embodying the very system
of "reforms brought about by the power of the state"
against which Speranski had vainly cautioned. In concrete
reality this system resulted in nothing else than the violent
break-up of a structure built by centuries, relentless coercion
on the one hand and suffering of.the patronized masses on the
other.
3. THE PROJECTED
EXPULSION FROM THE VILLAGES
The legal
enactment of 1804 was appraised by the Russian
Jews at its true value: problematic benefits in the future and
undeniable hardships for the present. The prospect of future
benefits, the attainment of which was conditioned by the
weakening of the time-honored foundations of a stalwart Jew346
THE JEWS tN RUSSIA AND POLAND
ish cultural life, expressing itself in lauguage, school, and communal
self-government, had no fascination for Russian Jews,
who had not yet been touched by the influences of Western
Europe. But what the Russian Jews did feel, and feel with
sickening pain, was the imminence of a terrible economic catastrophe,
the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from
the villages. It soon became evident that the expulsion would
affect 60,000 Jewish families, or about half a million Jews.
Needless to say, within the two or three years of respite which
remained before the catastrophe, this huge mass could not possibly
gain access to new fields of labor and establish itself in
new domiciles, and it was therefore in danger of being starved
to death. In consequence, St. Petersburg was flooded with
petitions imploring the authorities to postpone the expulsion
for a time. These petitions came not only from the Kahals but
also from country squires, for whom the removal of the Jewish
tenants and innkepers from their estates entailed considerable
financial losses. With the approach of the year 1808, the time
limit set for the expulsion, the shouts of despair from the
provinces became louder and louder. It is difficult to say
whether the Russian Government would have responded to the
terrible outcry, had it not been for an event which set all the
political circles of St. Petersburg agog.
It was in the autumn of 1806. The" Jewish Parliament"
in Paris, which had been assembled by Napoleon, was COllcluding
its sessions, and was sending out appeals to all the
countries of Europe announcing the impending convocation
of the" Great Synhedrion." This new fad of Napoleon disturbed
all the European Governments which were on terms of
enmity ~ith the French Emperor, and had reason to fear
the discontent of their Jewish subjects. The .Austrian GovernENLIGHTENED
ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 347
ment went so far as to forbid the Jews to enter into any rela~
tions with "dangerous" Paris. St. Petersburg too became
alarmed. Napoleon, who had just shattered Prussia, and had
already entered her Polish provinces, was gradually approaching
the borders of hostile Russia. The awe inspired by the
statesmanlike genius of the French Emperor made the Russian
Government suspect that the convocation of a universal Jewish
Synhedrion in Paris was merely 8 Napoleonic device to
dispose the Jewish masses of Prussia, Austria, and Russia in
his favor. In these circumstances it seemed likely that the
resentment aroused in the Russian Jews by their imminent
expulsion from the villages would provide a favorable soil for
the wily agitation of Napoleon, and would create a hotbed
of anti-Russian sentiment in the very regions soon to become
the theater of war. To avoid such risks it seemed imperative
to extinguish the flame of discontent and stop the expulsion.
Thus it came about that in the beginning of February,
1807, at the very moment when the sessions of the Synhedrlon
were opened in Paris, the Minister of the Interior, Kochubay,
submitted a report to Alexander 1., in which he pointed out the
necessity" of postponing the transplantation of the Jews from
the villages into the towns and townlets, so as to guard this
nation in general against the intentions of the French Government."
The Tzar concurred in this opinion, with the result
that a special committee was immediately formed to consider
the practical application of the Statute of 1804. Apart from
Kochubay and other high officials, the committee included the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Budberg, diplomatic considerations
being involved in the question. On February 15, Senator
Alexeyev was directed to inspect the western provinces and
find out to what extent "the military circumstances and the
348 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
present condition of the border provinces as well as the
economic ruin of the Jews, which is inevitable if their expulsion
be enforced," render this expulsion difficult or even impossible
of execution.
At the same time the Minister of the Interior instructed the
administrators of the western Governments to prevent the
slightest contact between the Jews of Russia and the Synhedrion
in Paris, which the French Government was using as
a tool to curry political favor with the Jews. The same circular
letter to the Governors recommends another rather curious
device. It suggests that the Jews be impressed with the idea
that the Synhedrion in Paris was endeavoring to modify the
Jewish religion, and for this reason did not deserve the
sympathy of the Russian Jews.
At the same time the Holy Synod was sending out circulars
instructing the Greek Orthodox clergy to inform the
Russian people that Napoleon was an enemy of the Church
and a friend of the Jews.
That he might the more effectively put the Church of Christ to
shame-so the Holy Synod proclaimed-Napoleon assembled the
Judean Synagogues In France. . . .. and established the Great
Synhedrion of the Jews. that same ungodly assembly which had
once dared pass the sentence of crucifixion upon our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ. and he now planneth to unite the Jews. whom
the wrath of the Almighty hath scattered over the face of the whole
earth. so as to incite them to overthrow the Christian Church and
proclaim the pseudo-Messiah in the person of Napoleon.
By these devices the Government, finding itself at its wits'
end in the face of a great war, shrewdly attempted to frighten at
once the Jewish people by the specter of an anti-Jewish Napoleon
and the Orthodox Russians by Napoleon's leaning
towards Judaism. The former were made to believe that the
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 349
Synhedrion was directed against the Jcwish religion, and the
latter were told that it was established by the Jewish" pseudo-
Messiah" for the overthrow of Christianity.
In this precarious situation the Government once more
decided to ascertain, by means of a circular inquiry, the views
of the representatives of the Jewish communities on the best
ways of carrying the "reform" into effect. The ukase of
February 19, issued by the Tzar on this occasion, is couched ill
surprisingly mild tcrms:
Prompted by the desire to give our subjects of the Jewish
nationality another proof of ou:' solicitude about their welfare, we
have deemed it right to allow all the Jewish communes in the
Governm.ents .... of VUna, Grodno, Kiev. Minsk, Podolia, Volhynia,
Vitebsk, and MoghUev, to elect deputies and to suggest, through
them, to the gubernatorial administrators the means which they
themselves consider best fitted for the most successful execution
of the measures laid down in the Statute of 1804.
The deputies were summoned th is time, not to St. Petersburg,
but to the provincial capitals in order to present their
opinions to the governors.
The expression of opinion on the part of the Jewish deputies,
or, as they were officially styled, "the attorneys of the
Jewish communes," did not limit itself to the fatal thiriyfourth
clause, which all the deputies wished to see repealed
or at least postponed for an indefinite period. Serious objections
were raised also to the other provisions of the " Jewish
Constitution." The deputies advocated the abolition of double
taxation for all classes of the Jewish population; they asked
for a larger range of authority for the rabbinical tribunals and
for a mitigation of the provisions forbidding the use of Hebrew
in legal c1oeumeuts,promissory notes, and commercial ledgers.
Some of them pleaded for a postponement of the law con350
THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
\
cerning Hebrew as being inconvenient to business, while others
suggested permitting the use of Hebrew for promissory notes
up to the sum of one hundred rubels.'
The deputies also called attention to the difficulty, on the
part of the rabbis and Jewish members of the magistracies, of
acquiring the Russian language within so short a period. They
were ready to assent to the change of dress for the magistrates
and those living temporarily outside the Pale. But they
pointed out at the same time that the prescribed Gerllllln
dress was not becoming to Jews, who on account of religious
scruples refused to shave their beards, and that in the case
of magistrates and visitors to the Russian interior they would
prefer to adopt the Russian form of dress. As for the laws
relating to education, the deputies observed that it would be
useless for Jewish children to go to the common Russian
schools as long as they did not understand the Russian language,
and that it would for this reason seem more practicable
first to have them acquire the Russian language in the
Jewish schools, where they are taught the Hebrew language
and the" dogmas of the faith."
By the time the opinions of the deputies were conveyed
by the governors to St. Petersburg, the political sentiment
there had undergone a change. In July, 1807, the Peace
of Tilsit had been concluded. An entente cordiale had been
established between Napoleon and Alexander 1., and Russia
no more stood in awe of Bonaparte's" intrigues." There
was no more reason to fear a secret understanding between
I The insistence on Hebrew in the latter case is connected with
the rabbinical form of promissory note, the so-called Shtar I.ka
[a form of partnership agreement which was designed to obviate
the dimculties arising out of the Biblical prohibition to lend money
on interest. A similar legal fiction was introduced by the medieval
Church].
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 351
the Russian Jews and the Parisian Synhedrion, which had
shortly before been prorogued, and the bureaucratic compassion
for the unfortunate Jews vanished into air. The last
term set for the expulsion from the villages, January 1, 1808,
was drawing near, and two months before this date, on
October 19, 1807, the Tzar addressed an ukase, marked by
extraordinary severity, to the Governor-General of the Western
reglOn:
The circumstances connected with the war--the ukase states in
p~.rt-were of a nature to complicate and suspend the transplantation
of the Jews. . . .. These complications can now, after the
cessation of the war. be averted in the future by means of a gradual
and most convenient arrangement of the work of transplantation.
. . .. For these reasons we deem it right to lay down an arrangement
by means of which the transplantation of the Jews. beginning
with the date referred to above. may be carried Into effect,
without the slightest delay and mitigation.
'rhe "arrangement" alluded to consisted in spread:mg the
expulsion from the villages over three years: one-third of
the Jews were to be expelled in 1808, another third in 1809,
and the last third in 1810. Committees were appointed to
assist the governors in carrying out the expulsion decree.
These eommittees were instructed to make it incumbent upon
the Kahals to render financial assistance to the expelled, to
those whq were being pitilessly ruined by the Government.
. .The horrors of the expulsion began.
Those who did not go willingly were made to leave by force.
Many were ejected ruthlessly. under the escort of peasants and
soldiers. They were driven like cattle into the townlets and
cities. and left there on the public squares in the open air. The
way in which the expulsion from the villages was carried out in the
Government of Vltebsk was particularly ferocious!
1See Nikitln, ••The Jewish Agr;culturtsts" (In Russian), St.
Petersburg, 1887, p. 16.
23
35'a THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
Scores of exiled Jews petitioned the authorities to have them
transferred to New Russia, to the agricultural colonies, in
which several hundred Jewish families had found some kind
of shelter. But the supply of arable land and the funds set
aside for the transfer were found to be exhausted; the appeals
therefore remained unheeded. The distress of the Jewish
masses reached such colossal proportions that the governors
themselves, in their reports to the central Government, ileelared
that it was impossible to carry out the expulsion deeree
without subjecting the Jews to complete ruin. Accordingly
a new ukase was issued in the last days of December, 1808,
to the effect that the Jews be left in their former domicileEl,
pending special Imperial orders.
In the beginning of January, 1809, a new Committee
(chronologically the third) was appointed in St. Petersburg
for the purpose of examining all the phases of the problem of
diverting the Jews from the rural liquor traffic to other
branches of labor. This time the committee consisted of
Senator Alexeyev: who had made a tour of inspection through
the western provinces, Privy-Councilor Popov, Assistant Minister
of the Interior Kozodavlev, and others. In his instructions
to Popov, who was chairman of the Committee, the
'l'zar admits that the impossibility of removing the Jews from
the villages results from the fact that" the Jews themselves,
on account of their destitute condition, have no means which
would enable them, after leaving their present abodes, to
settle and found a home in their new surroundings, while the
Government is equally unable to undertake to place them
all in new domiciles." It has therefore been found necessary
"to seek ways and means whereby the Jews, having been
[' see p. 3.7.]
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 353
removed from their exclusive pursuit of selling wine in the
villages, hamlets, inns, and public houses, may be enabled to
earn a livelihood by labor." At the same time the Committee
was directed to take into consideration the "opinions" submitted
previously by the Jewish deputies. After indulging in
cruel vivisectionist experiments on human beings, the Government
finally realized that mere paper orders were powerless to
remodel an economic order, which centuries of development
had created, and that violent expulsions and restrictions might
result in ruining people, but not in effecting their " amelioration."
'fhe Committee was at work for three years. The results of
its labors were embodied in a remarkable report submitted in
March, 1812, to Alexander 1. Since Speranski's declaration
of 1803, reproduced above: this official document was the first
to utter a word of truth on the Jewish problem.
It is proposed-the report declares-to remove the Jews from
the rural liquor traffic, because the latter is considered harmful
to the population. But it is obvious that the root of the drinking
evil Is not to be found with the saloon-keepers, but in the right of
distilling, or ••proplnation," which constitutes the prerogative of
the sc;uires and their main source of income. Let us suppose the
sixty thousand Jewish saloon·keepers to be turned out from the
vUlages. The result will be that sixty thousand Russian peasants
will take their place, tens of thousands of efficient farm·hands wUl
be lost to the soil, while the Jews cannot be expected to be transformed
into capable agriculturists at a moment's notice, the less 80
as the Government has no resources to effect this lludden transfor·
mation of saloon-keepers into corn-growers. It is not true that the
village Jew enriches himself at the expense of the peasant. On
the contrary, he is generally poor, and ekes out a scanty existence
from the sale of liquor and by supplying the peasants with the
• See p. 340.
354 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
goods they need. Moreover, by buying the corn on the spot, the
Jew saves the peasant from wasting his time in traveling to the
city. Altogether in rural economic life the Jew plays the rOle of
a go-between, who can be spared neither by the squire nor by the
peasant. To transfer all village Jews to the cities and convert
them into manufacturers, merchants, and artisans, is a matter of
impossibility, for even the Jewish population already settled in the
cities is scarcely able to make a living, and to create factories and
mills artificially would be throwing money into the water,
especially as the exchequer has no free millions at its disposal to
enable it to grant subsidies to manufacturers. The recent experiments
of the Government have had no effect. On the contrary, the
Jewish people ••has not only remained in the same state of
poverty, but has even been reduced to greater destitution, as a
result of having been forced out of a pursuit which had provided
it with a livelihood for several centuries." Hence," the Commit·
tee, realizing this situation of a whole people, and being afraid
that the continuation of compulsory measures, in the present
political circumstances, may only exasperate this people, already
restricted to the utmost, deems it necessary .... to put a resolute
stop to the now prevailing methods of interference by allowing
the Jews to remain in their former abodes and by setting free the
pursuits suspended by Clause 34."
The Government submitted. In yielding it was moved
not so much by the clear and incontrovertible arguments
of the Committee, which amounted to a deadly criticism of
the current system of state patronage, as by the "political
circumstances" alluded to in the concluding sentences of the
report. Napoleon's army was marching towards the Russian
frontier. The war which was to embroil the whole of Russia
and subsequently the whole of Europe had broken out. At
such a moment, when the French army was floodingthe whole
of Western Russia, it seemed far more dangerous to create
groups of persecuted and embittered outcasts than it had been
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF' ALEXANDER I. 355
in 1807, when the French invasion was merely a matter of
apprehension. In these circumstances the question whether
the Jews should be left in the villages and hamlets found a
favorable solution of itself, without any special ukase. Stirred
to the core, Russia, in the moment of national danger, had to
rely for her salvation upon the strenuous exertions of all her
inhabitants, Jews included.
4. THE PATRIOTIC ATTITUDE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE WAR OF 1812
The part played by
the Jews in the War of 1812 was not
so insignificant as historians are generally disposed to assume,
being misled by the fact that the Jews of Russia were not
yet drafted into the army. It must be borne in mind that
the great war was enacted in western Russia, more particularly
ill northwestern Russia, on territory inhabited
by a compact Jewish population scattered all over the cities,
townlets, and villages. The sympathy of this population
with one or the other of the belligerents frequently decided
the success or failure of the detachment situated in that
locality. It is a well-known fact that the Poles of the
western region were mostly on the side of Napoleon, from
whom they expected the restoration of the Polish kingdom.
As for the Russian Jews, their attitude towards the belligerent
parties was of a more complicated character. The
recent persecutions of the rural Jews were apt, on the one
hand, to set their hearts against the Russian· Government,·
and, had these persecutions continued, the French would haTe
beenhailed by the oppressedJews as their saviors. But the expulsions
from the villages had been stopped three years before
the war, and the Jews anticipated the complete repeal of
356 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLANO
the cruel law, which had been so severely condemned in the
official report of the Committee laid before the Tzar in the
beginning of 1812. Moreover, the deputies of the Kahals,
who had been summoned twice to share in the work of the
Government (in 1803 and 1807), had an opportunity to convince
themselves that Alexander I.'s Government was on the
whole favorably disposed towards the Jews, and its mistakes
were merely the outcome of the wrong system of state patronage,
of the desire of the Government to make the Jews happy,
according to its own lights, by empioying compulsory and" correctional
" measures.
On the other hand, Napoleon's halo had been considerably
dimmed even in the eyes of the Jews of Western Europe, now
that the results of his" Jewish Parliaments" had come to
light. The Jews of Russia, who were all Orthodox, regarded
Napoleon's reform schemes as fraught with danger, and looked
upon the substitution of Kahal autonomy by a consistorial
organization as subversive of Judaism. The Hasidic party,
again, which was the most conservative, felt indebted to Alexander
I., who, in a clause of the Statute of 1804, bearing on
Jewish sects, had bestowed upon the Hasidim the right of
segregating themselves in separate synagogues within the communities.
The leader of the White Russian Hasidim, Rabbi
Shneor Zalman, who at first had suffered from the suspiciousness
of the Russian Government, but was afterwards declared
.to be politically" dependable," voiced the sentiments of the
influential
Jewish circles towards the two belligerent sovereigns
in the followiI!g prediction:
Should Bonaparte win, the wealth of the Jews wlll be increased,
and their [civic] position wlll be raised. At the BaDletime their
hearts wlll be estranged from our Heavenly Father. Should howENLIGHTENED
ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 357
ever our Tzar Alexander win, the Jewish hearts will draw nearer
to our Heavenly Father. though the poverty of Israel may become
greater and his position lower.
This was tantamount to saying that civic rightlessness was
prefera~e to civic equality, inasmuch as the former bade fair to
guarantee the inviolability of the religious life, while the latter
threatened to bring about its disintegration.
All these circumstances, coupled with the unconscious resentment
of the masses against the invading enemy, brought
about the result that the Jews of the Northwest everywhere
gave tokens of their devotion to the interests of Russia, and
frequently rendered substantial services to the Russian army
in its commissary and reconnoitring branches. The well-known
Russian partisan 1 Davidov relates that
the frame of mind of the Polish inhabitants of Grodno was
very unfavorable to us. The Jews living in Poland were. on the
other hand, all so devoted to us that they refused to serve the
enemy as scouts, and often gave us most valuable information
concerning him.
As Polish officials could not be relied upon, it became
necessary to intrust the whole police department of Grodno to
tqe Jewish Kahal. The Governor of Vilna testified that" the
Jewish people had shown particular devotion to the Russian
Government during the presence of the enemy."
The Poles were irritated by this pro-Russian attitude of the
Jews. There were rumors afloat that the Poles had made
ready to massacre all Jews and Russians in the Governments
of Vilna and Minsk and in the province of Bialystok. There
were numerous instances of self-sacrifice. It happened more
P The word is used here in the sense of leader of partisan.
i. e. irregular, troops. Davldov attained to great fame during the
War of 1812, in which he interfered et'fectivelywith the communications
of the French.]
358 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
than once that Jews who had sheltered Russian couriers \vith
dispatches in their houses, or had escorted them to the Russlan
headquarters, or who had furnished information to the Russian
commanders as to the position of the enemy's army, were
caught by the French, and shot or hanged. Alexander 1. was
aware of these deed-s. While on a visit to Kalish, he granted
an audience to the members of the Kahal, and engaged in a
lengthy conversation with them. Among the Jews of the district
appeals written in the Jewish vernacular were circulated,
in which the Jews were called upon to offer up prayers for the
success of Alexander 1., who would release the Jewish people
from bondage. Altogether the wave of patriotism which swept
over Russia engulfed the Jewish masses to a considerable
extent.
The headquarters of the Russian army, which w'as now
marching towards the West, harbored, during the years 1812-
1813, two Jewish deputies, Sundel Sonnenberg of Grodno and
Leyser (Eliezer) Dillon of Neswizh. On the one hand they
maintained connections with the leading Government officials,
and conveyed to them the wishes of the Jewish communities.
On the other hand they kept up relations with the Kahals,
which they informed regularly of the intentions of the Government.
Presumably these two public-spirited men played a
twofold role at headquarters: that of large purveyors, who
received orders directly from the Russian commissariat, and
forwarded them to their local agents, and that of representatives
of the Kahals, whose needs they communicated to the
Tzar and the highest dignitaries of the crown. In those uneasy
times the Government found it to its advantage to keep at its
headquarters representatives of the Jewish population, who
might sway the minds of their coreligionists, in accordance
ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 359
with the character of the political instructions issued by it.
In June, 1814, during his stay abroad in Bruchsal (Germany)
, Alexander requested these deputies to assure" the Jewish
Kahals of his most gracious favor," and promised to issue
shortly" an ordinance concerning their wishes and requests for
the immediate amelioration of their present condition." It
seems that Alexander 1., who was still under the spell of the accounts
of Jewish patriotism, was inclined at that moment to
improve their lot. But the general reaction which, after the
Vienna Congress of 1815, fell like a blight upon Europe and
Russia proved fatal also to the Russian Jews.
5. ECONOMIC AND
AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS
The political
upheavals of the transition period (1789-
1815) were bound to react violently on the economic status
of Russo-Polish Jewry. The vast Jewish population of Western
Russia was at that time divided into two parts: the
larger part resided in the towns and town lets, the smaller
lived in the villages. The efforts made by the Russian Government
during that period, to squeeze the whole Jewish population
into the urban estates and to single out from its midst
·a new class of agriculturists, failed to produce the desired
effect. Instead it succeeded in disturbing the former equilibrium
between the urban and the rural occupations of the Jews.
The urban Jew was either a business man or an artisan or a
saloon-keeper. In many cities the Jewish mercantile element
I was numerically superior to the Christian. The increased
Jewish activity in the export trade is particularly noticeable.
Jewish merchants traveled annually in large numbers to the
fairs abroad, particularly to that of Leipsic, to buy merchandise,
principally dry goods, at the same time exporting the
360 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
products of Poland and Russia, such as furs, skins, etc. The
gradual absorption of Polish territory by Russia opened up
a new, immense market, that of the central Russian provinces,
for the goods imported from abroad. It was natural that the
Je~ began to flock to those provinces. But their way was at
once blocked by the local Russian merchants, who began to
clamor against Jewish competition, and forced the Government
to recognize the monopoly of native" interests," to the detriment
of the consumer:
True, the monopolists did not succeed altogether in shutting
the Russian interior to foreign cheap goods and finery, which the
Jewish merchants still continued to import, under the clause
in the Statute of 1804 which granted Jews the right of visiting
the interior Governments on special gubernatorial passports.
Yet an untrammeled development of Jewish commerce was rendered
impossible by this artificial barrier between Western
and Eastern Russia.
The second urban profession, handicrafts, was considered
of lower rank than commerce. It was pursued by the poorest
class of the population. Artisan labor commanded very low
prices. Purely Jewish trade-unions were rare, and when a
Jewish artisan summoned enough courage to leave his native
townlet and seek employment in a large city, he was sure to
encounter the animosity of the organized Christian guilds.
We have seen that before the second partition of Poland such
an "encounter" assumed the shape of a pogrom in the
Polish capital."
By the side of the store and the workshop stood the public
house or saloon, which was generally connected with an inn
I
1 Compare the prohibition barring Jews from registering in the
mercantile guilds of Moscow and Smolensk. p. 316.
• See p. 286 and p. 287.
ENLlGH'rmNED ABSOLUTlsM aI<' AL1!1XANDER 1. ;)61
or a hostelry. rrhe sale of liquor in the cities depended
primarily on the peasants arriving from the villages on festival
and market days. On the whole the liquor traffic occupied
a subordinate place in the cities. Its mainstay was in the
villages.
All serious observers of the economic status of the Jews
at that time bear witness to the fact that in the majority
of cities Jewish labor formed the corner-stone of a civilized
economic life, that without the Jew it was impossible to
buy, or to sell, or to have any kind of article made. The
Jew, who was satisfied with small wages and profits, was
thereby able to lower both the cost of production and the price
of merchandise. He was content with a pittance, his physical
needs being extraordinarily limited. Thanks to the mediation
of the ubiquitous Jewish business man, the peasant was able to
dispose of his products on the spot, even those which because
of their small value would not be worth carrying to the city.
In spite of all his indefatigable, feverish labors, the Jew was on
the average as poor as the peasant, except that he was free from
the vice of drunkenness, one of the sources of the peasant's
economic misery. The poverty of the Jew was the artificial
result of the fact that the cities and townlets were overcrowded
with petty tradesmen ,and artisans, and this congestion was
further aggravated by the systematic removal of the Jews
from their age-long rural occupations and the consequent
influx of village Jews into the towns.
It is necessary to point out that when the official records
harp on the" liquor traffic" in the vilJages as the sole occupation
of Jews, they fail to appreciate the many-sidcdness of the
rural pursuits of the Jews, which were connected with the
liquor traffic, to be sure, but were by no means identical with it.
362 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
While leasing from the squire or the crown the right of distilling,
the Jew farmed at the same time other items of rural
economy, such as the dairies, the mills, and the fishing ponds.
He was furthermore engaged in buying grain from the peasants
and selling them at the same time such indispensable
articles as salt, utensils, agricultural tools,etc., imported by him
from the town. He often combined in his person the occupations
of liquor-dealer, shopkeeper,and produce merchant. The
road leading from the village to the city was dotted with
Jewish inns or public houses, which, before the age of railroads,
served as halting-places for travelers. This whole
economic structure, which had been built up gradually in the
course of centuries, the Russian Government made its business
to demolish. As early as the reign of Catherine n. the governors
frequently drove the Jewish villagers into the cities,
acting under the "organic law" which makes it incumbent
upon Jews to "register among the merchants or burghers."
The ambiguous ukase of 1795, to the effect, that" endeavors
be made to transplant the Jews into the District towns, 80 that
these people may not wander about to the detriment of
society," gave the zealous bureaucrats a free hand. When the
Law of 1804ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the villages
at the end of three years, many squires, without waiting for
the time limit to expire, refused their Jewish tenants the right
of residence and trade in their villages. The Jews began to
rush into the cities, where even the long-settled residents
could not manage to make a living.
True, the Government was luring the persecuted Jews into
two new vocations, the establishment of factories and of agricultural
colonies. But the impecuniousvillageJew had neither
the capital nor the capacity for opening factories. Moreover,it
ENLIG;HTENED ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER I. 363
was of no conceivable use to call industries artificially into
being, without having first secured a market for the manufactured
products. Several woolen mills had been founded by
Jews in Lithuania and Volhynia, but all they could do was to
provide work for a few thousand people. It was thus natural
that all eyes turned towards agricultural colonization.
The Statute of 1804 promised to provide impecunious Jews·
uellirous of engaging in agriculture with free land in several
Governments, to grant them loans for their equipment, and
exempt them from taxation for a number of years. The
exiled village Jews clutched at this promise as an anchor of
salvation. In 1806 several Jewish groups in the Government
of Moghilev appealed to the governor to transfer them to New
Russia, there to engage in corn-growing. The delegate of
ORe of these groups, Nahum Finkelstein, even traveled to
St. Petersburg to lay the matter before Minister Kochubay,
and was dispatched by the latter to the Government of
Kherson for the purpose of inspecting and selecting the land.
The Minister, acting in agreement with the Governor of Kherson,
Duke Richelieu, decided to set aside separate parcels of
land in the steppes of that region and to settle Jews on
them under the auspices of the New Russian "Immigration
Bureau." Scarcely had the two Moghilev groups completed
the arrangements for their emigration, when scores of similar
applications began to come in from Jewish groups in other
Governments of the Pale. By the end of 1806 the number of
applicants mounted up to fifteen hundred families, numbering
some seven thousand souls. The Russian authorities found
themselves in an awkward posi.tion. They were caught unprepared
for the transfer of so many persons at the expense of the
state. In 1807 four colonies of Jewish agriculturists were
364 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
established in the Government of Kherson, the first among
the Jewish colonies of South Russia. The number of settlers
amounted to some three hundred families, consisting of two
thousand souls.
The number of applicants desirous of settling on the land
continued to increase. In the course of 1808, when the expulsion
from the villages was in full swing, the White Russian
governors bombarded the Minister of the Interior with petitions
to allow as many Jewish families as possible to proceed
to New Russia. The Q-overnor of Vitebsk reported that the
rural Jews
have been unseasonably expelled, ruined, and reduced to beg·
gary. A large part of them is without daily bread and without
shelter, and they emigrate in considerable numbers to New
Russia. Many Jews, in the expectation of being transplanted to
New Russia, have sold all their belongings and beg leave persistently
to go there, though it be only for a domicile.
At the same time reports from the New Russian Immigration
Bureau and from Duke Richelieu were constantly reaching
St. Petersburg. They emphasized the necessity of stemming
the tide of emigrants, in view of the fact that even the
first parties of colonists had found it difficult to establish
themselves, while the new ones could not expect to find either
huts or any other accommodations. By the beginning of 1808
the Immigration Bureau was in charge of about one thousand
colonist families, and, in addition, several thousand immigrants
who had arrived" voluntarily" were waiting for their
turn to be settled. As a result of the unaccustomed climatic
conditions and the lack of housi:q.gaccommodations and provisions,
disease began to spread among the new-comers. All
these circumstances decided the Government to put a temENLIGHTENED
ABSOLUTISM OF ALEXANDER t. 365
porary stup to the settling of Jews in the New Russian colonies
(ukase of April G, 1810).
'l'he attempt to convert a part of the Jewish population
into agriculturists would undoubtedly have met with huge
success, had the Government been sufficiently prepared for
such a momentous economic transformation. Ten thousand
emigrants had already gone to New Russia, and the compact
starving masses were rushing after them. But the
Government was overwhelmed by the difficulties of the task,
and brought the whole movement to a standstill. Simultaneously
a stop was put to the expulsion from the villages in
the western Governments, which threatened to lead to an
unparalleled economic catastrophe. Thus, after many vacillations
and upheavals, the economic structure of Jewish life
was re-established on its old foundations-eommerce, handicrafts,
and rural occupations.
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