History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)

Such is Dyerzhavin's project, a curious mixture of the savage fancies of an old-fashioned Muscovite about an unfamiliar historic culture on the one hand, and notions of reform conceived in the contemporary Prussian barrack spirit and various "philosophic" tendencies on the other hand, a medley of hereditary Jew-hatred, vague appreciation of the historic tragedy of Judaism, and the desire to "render the Jews useful to the state."245 And over it all hovers the spirit of official patronage and red-tape regulations, the curious notion that a people with an ancient culture can, at the mere bidding of an outside agency, change its position like figures on a chess-board, that strange faith in the saving power of mechanical reforms which prevailed, though in less naïve manifestations, also in Western Europe.

Dyerzhavin's "Opinion" was laid before the Senate in December, 1800, and together with the previously submitted recommendations of the West-Russian marshals and governors was to supply the material for an organic legal enactment concerning the Jews.

But the execution of this plan was not destined to take place during the reign of Paul. In March, 1801, the Tzar met his tragic fate, and the cause of "Jewish reform" entered into a new phase, a phase characterized by the struggle between the liberal tendencies prevalent at the beginning of Alexander I.'s reign and the retrograde views held by the champions of Old Poland and Old Russia.

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 I.'s reign sent a refreshing current of 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 appointed its members: Kochubay, Minister of 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 I., 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 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 Poland."

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 bring 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 conditions and greater security."

This 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 from 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 of 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 obligatory rule of conduct for the members of the Committee.

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 had 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 the inception of the Jewish community in St. Petersburg. In the 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 a 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 officials 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,246 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 see 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 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.

The 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 themselves 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-tenure was concerned, which prohibition would undermine the whole economic structure of Jewish life. The Committee paid no heed to the plea of the Kahals, 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 "transformation of Jewish life," and humanitarianism, advocated by the spokesmen of unconditional emancipation. To the latter class belonged Speranski, the brilliant and enlightened statesman who might 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 of 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, 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 I. 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. The 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 have never been allowed to settle in Russia." The Tzar 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, 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 Tzar, 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 Lithuania, 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 future 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:

Beginning with January 1, 1807, in the Governments of Astrakhan and Caucasia, also in those of Little Russia and New Russia, and, beginning with January 1, 1808, in the other Governments, no one among the Jews in any village or hamlet shall be permitted to hold any leases on land, to keep taverns, saloons, or inns, 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 one-half 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.

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,247 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 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. The Jews elected members of municipalities or chosen as rabbis and Kahal members are obliged, within a definite term (1808-1812), to know one of these 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 Jewish cultural life, expressing itself in language, 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 innkepeers 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 concluding 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 with the French Emperor, and had reason to fear the discontent of their Jewish subjects. The Austrian Government went so far as to forbid the Jews to enter into any relations 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 a 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 Synhedrion were opened in Paris, the Minister of the Interior, Kochubay, submitted a report to Alexander I., 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 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.