The Jews in the Eastern War Zone

by American Jewish Committee

The attitude of “Kolokol,” the organ of the Holy Synod, reflects this with perfect frankness:

“Power has gradually passed from the mailèd knights, from heroes of the battlefield to the counting house, because in gold there is more power than in fearless argonauts. If Germany excels us in armament and was better prepared in every other way it is because her nation is older than ours, older in its culture by several hundred years. Herein lies our weakness. But the Jews are the oldest people on earth. Their cult is the cult of gold and of brains. It does not matter that they have forgotten their glorious epoch of military heroism, have forgotten how they defended their Jerusalem. It does not matter that they are no longer accustomed to bear arms and to decide with the sword their differences and quarrels. This people has learned to draw to itself the gold of the world. It is like a sponge.... It has learned caution and foresight and is organized into a powerful international force. Under the conditions of the present war the Jews are a power not to reckon with which is to be politically blind. Would it not be advantageous to Russia to throw into its scales these nuggets of gold, these billions of the international bankers?...”[7]

The naïveté of these statements is ridiculed by the liberal press, led by the Petrograd “Retch,” with the comment that “It is difficult for the anti-Semites of yesterday to pour new wine into old flasks. The scare-crows of ‘Jewish freemasonry,’ the ‘universal Kehillah’ and other myths still terrify the editors of ‘Kolokol’; but instead of screaming: ‘The Jews are strong; crush them!’ the cry now is ‘The Jews are strong; yield to them!’ It does not seem to occur to these new converts that the Jewish question is merely one of elementary civic decency.”[8]

The significance of this will be appreciated when it is recalled that the liberal press reflects the ideals of the Russian masses just as “Kolokol” reflects the hopes and fears of the Russian government.

3. The measure was granted grudgingly, with galling limitations which emphasize the humiliating position of the Jews.

The Jews are even under the provisions of the new decree still debarred from all villages, from the two capitals Petrograd and Moscow, from the vicinities where royal residences happen to be located and from the districts of the Don and Turkestan which happen to be under the jurisdiction of the ministry of war. These restrictions were denounced as senseless by all the liberal elements of the Empire. “Russkoe Slovo,” August 13 (26), 1915, declares:

“Hereafter a Jew may live in Kaluga, but is excluded from Tashkent; in Yekaterinodar he may not live; in Nizhni he may. It is very hard to find any sense in such distinctions, even from the point of view of the Black Hundreds. If you should ask Markov 2d [the leader of the Black Hundreds.—Tr.] into what cities we ought to admit Jews—whether into Nizhni, or into Tashkent, he would answer at first, of course, that we ought not to admit them into either; but confronted with ‘dire necessity’ he would hardly give preference to Tashkent, already full of alien nationalities.

“And yet to whom, except Markov 2d and his kind, would all these exceptions and limitations give any aid or comfort? Suppose we do allow the Jews perfect freedom of travel within the country; suppose we do find villages where so much as a whole Jew—and not a fractional Jew—exists statistically per hundred of peasant population; suppose we do find a Jewish tailor, a blacksmith or a merchant in a Russian village—would that be such a calamity?”

4. In practice the act is often ignored or evaded by local officials.

The Governor of Smolensk has continued to expel Jews entering his province, entirely regardless of the law. The government of Kiev even refused to permit the publication of the ministerial decree until the middle of September, some six weeks after its official promulgation, and has consistently ignored it since. In practically all the other governments of the Empire the administration of the act is entirely dependent upon the whims of the local governors. Late advices bring reports of the expulsions of Jews from the Caucasus, Tomsk, Vladivostok, Siberia, and many other cities and provinces in which, under the terms of the abolition decree, Jews are permitted to reside.[9]