Russia acquired the great bulk of her Jewish population through the partitions of Poland, from 1773 to 1795. Strongly medieval in outlook and organization as Russia was at that time, she treated the Jews with the exceptional harshness which the medieval principle and policy sanctioned and required. By confining them to those provinces where they happened to live at the time of the partitions, she created a Ghetto greater than any known to the Middle Ages; and by imposing restrictions upon the right to live and travel even within this Ghetto, she has virtually converted it into a penal settlement, where six million human beings guilty only of adherence to the Jewish faith are compelled to live out their lives in squalor and misery, in constant terror of massacre, subject to the caprice of police officials and a corrupt administration—in short, without legal right or social status.
Only twice within the last century have efforts been made to improve the condition of the Jews in Russia; and each interval of relief was followed by a period of greater and more cruel repression. The first was during the reign of Alexander II; but his assassination in 1881 resulted in the complete domination of Russia by the elements of reaction, which immediately renewed the persecution policy. The “May laws” of Ignatieff (1882) which enmesh the Jews to this day, were the immediate product of this régime. The second period, a concomitant of the abortive revolution of 1904–5, was followed by a “pogrom policy” of unprecedented severity which lasted until the outbreak of the present war.
THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT
At the beginning of the war the number of Jews in the Russian Empire was estimated at six million or more, comprising fully half of the total Jewish population of the world. Ninety-five per cent. of these six million people were confined by law to a limited area of Russia, known as the Pale of Settlement, consisting of the fifteen Governments of Western and Southwestern Russia, and the ten Governments of Poland, much of which territory is now under the German occupation. In reality, however, residence within the Pale was further restricted to such an extent that territorially the Jews were permitted to live in only one two-thousandth part of the Russian Empire.[1] No Jew was permitted to step outside this Pale unless he belonged to one of a few privileged classes. Some half-privileged Jews might, with effort, obtain special passports for a limited period of residence beyond the Pale; but the great majority could not even secure this privilege for any period whatsoever. A tremendous mass of special, restrictive legislation converted the Pale into a kind of prison with six million inmates, guarded by an army of corrupt and brutal jailers.
The Recent “Abolition” of the Pale
In August, 1915, the Council of Ministers issued a decree permitting the Jews of the area affected by the war to move into the interior of Russia. This act has been supposed in some quarters to constitute the virtual abolition of the Pale, this interpretation being chiefly attributable to the extensive publicity given the measure by the Russian government; but the evidence, official and otherwise, clearly indicates that far from being a generous act of a liberal Government toward an oppressed people, it is in reality only a temporary expedient, dictated mainly by military necessity and partly by the need of a foreign loan; it is evident that it was granted grudgingly, with galling limitations which served to emphasize the servile state of the Jews; that it is in practice ignored or evaded at the convenience of the local authorities; and that it has been utilized, if not designed, to mislead the public opinion of the world.
Evidence in support of this view will now be considered:
1. It is a temporary measure dictated by military necessity. It does not remove any of the disabilities to which the Jews in Russia are legally subject.
This is admitted officially in the Minute of the Council of Ministers for August 4 (17), 1915, at which session the abolition decree was promulgated. This Minute reads as follows: