But, though the source of Russian antipathy to the Jew may be a matter of dispute, there is no question as to the sincerity and the depth of the feeling. An authority on the Jewish Question, writing in 1882, expressed the opinion that the disasters of that and the previous year were inevitable, and that, “unless the Jews are removed from the countries in which they have taken place, we may certainly anticipate their recurrence upon a much larger scale.”[172] This anticipation was justified by subsequent events. In 1891 and 1892 new anti-Jewish riots, encouraged by the authorities, were followed by fresh restrictive enactments.
Many Jews who had contrived to settle in towns outside the “pale” were driven back into it, and others within the “pale” were forced to quit the villages and townships in which they had dwelt for years and, leaving their property and business connections, to take up their abode in the over-crowded larger towns. The persecution reached its climax in the winter of 1891–92, when thousands of men, women and little children were heartlessly expelled from Moscow, at a time of the year when even soldiers are not suffered to drill in the open air on account of the cold. These and other measures of unbearable harshness drove, as it was intended that they should, about a quarter of a million of Jews out of the Empire; and then the nations of the West, alarmed by the influx of the destitute refugees, raised a bitter outcry against the barbarity of the Czar.
The Czar, however, in the words of one of his own servants and apologists, “remained deaf to protests of the Lord Mayor of London, for example,” and declared that “he will leave unheeded any and all such foreign remonstrances demanding a change in methods which have been deliberately adopted.” In fact, all the measures of repression and restriction which ignorant foreigners misrepresented as “the barbarous expulsion of the Jews from Russia” had for their virtuous object to prevent collision between the Jews and the peasants, to relieve the latter from what they could not be persuaded was not a Jewish tyranny, and, in one word, to secure good order and to maintain stability in the community.[173] It is interesting to hear the Russian version of the matter. Unfortunately a euphemism does not constitute a refutation.
In 1896 the Jewish Question was re-opened, and the Jews, as well as other sufferers, ventured to hope for an improvement of their lot from Nicholas II.’s reputed zeal for reform. Much also was expected from “the generous and sympathetic instincts of the young Empress.” But these expectations were not realised, and at the present hour the country in which the race is most numerous[174] is also the country in which it suffers most grievously. The treatment of the Jews in Russia can be summed up in one sentence: deliberate starvation of body and soul. The Jew, as has been seen, is loathed not only as a non-Slav and non-Orthodox, but also as a parasite who exhausts the organism on which he lives. Isolation, it is held, by forcing him to feed upon himself, will kill him. The Jews are, therefore, only allowed to reside in certain specified quarters of certain towns in certain districts, and are forbidden to move from place to place without special permission or such a special form of passport as is granted to prostitutes. Overcrowding produces poverty, disease, and all the filthy degradation of ghetto life. A faint conception of what such life means may be formed from a recent petition to the Russian Committee of Ministers signed by many thousands of Russian Jews: “Not less than 20 per cent. of the entire population of the Jewish Pale of Settlement,” say the petitioners, “are reduced to such a condition of wretchedness that they have to be supported from charitable sources. In great Jewish communities like those of Vilna, Berditcheff, and Odessa, the number of the Jewish poor amounts to as much as 25 to 33 per cent. Co-extensive with this widespread poverty there is in all the Jewish communities an enormous labouring and artisan proletariat that knows not to-day wherewith it may exist on the morrow. The simple weapon which the labourer and artisan possesses in his relations with his employer—the power of leaving his work and seeking better conditions of employment elsewhere—has become impossible of use on account of the limitation of freedom of movement and the prohibition of residence elsewhere than in the few towns of the Pale of Settlement. If they do not wish to die of hunger or go begging Jewish workmen must submit unreservedly to the conditions prescribed by the manufacturers. The Jewish capitalists, too, are seriously injured by the burdensome effect of the special regulations which have, owing to the restraints of the May laws, taken from them every freedom of action, and deprived them of the power of disposing of their products in markets outside the Pale of Settlement....”[175]
In addition, the Jews are confined to the most ignoble occupations. They are excluded from the High Schools and the Universities of the Christians, and are forbidden to keep secular schools of their own. The only teaching accessible to the ordinary Russian Jew is Rabbinical teaching. The centre of this education is the Talmudical School of Walosin, known among the Jews as the “Tree of Life College,” founded in 1803 by a disciple of Elijah Wilna, a famous Hebrew scholar, and maintained by contributions collected from all parts of the Russian “pale.” The institution provides spiritual and bodily food—both very primitive in quality and meagre in quantity—to some four hundred hungry students who spend three-fourths of their time poring over the records of the past, and the other fourth is denouncing a present of which they know nothing. Ignorance fosters fanaticism, and the authority of the Synagogue which, under different circumstances, might have been used as an instrument of conciliation, is turned into a source of bitterness. The seed of discord between Jew and Gentile, sown by oppression, is nursed by the benighted Rabbis, who regard thirst for secular knowledge as more sinful than thirst for alcohol; and the poisonous plant is assisted in its growth by the young Jews who, having contrived to obtain abroad an education denied to them at home, intensify the just animosity of their people against the Christian oppressors. The ill-feeling is invigorated further still by the Jewish recruits who, on the expiration of their term of service, return to their families exasperated by the hardships and the insults which they have experienced in the ranks, for the Hebrew soldier in the Russian army is treated exactly as the Christian recruit is treated in the Turkish Gendarmerie. In both cases, not only is promotion out of the question,[176] but the infidels are the victims of unmeasured invective, malice, and injury at the hands of their colleagues and superiors. They are, as a race, considered unclean and unfriendly. They form a small minority. They are powerless to protect themselves, and the officers will not take them under their protection. The less deserved the insult, the more anxious will the victim be to recover his self-esteem by revenge. Is it, then, to be wondered at that the Russian Jews are distinguished among their fellow-slaves for their eager participation in any insurrectionary movement that offers the faintest hope of relief and revenge? To turn a population which, by instinct and interest alike, is the most conservative and peaceful in the world into a people of anarchists is, indeed, the highest triumph hitherto achieved by Russian statesmanship.
The hatred towards the Jew is shared by the Russian’s enemy, the Pole, and for similar reasons—economic preponderance and excessive addiction to usury and the trade in liquor. In 1863 the revolutionary Government of Poland endeavoured to enlist the sympathies of the Jews in the struggle against the common oppressor by conceding to them civic equality. The experiment was crowned with brilliant success. Justice turned the Jews of Poland into Polish patriots. But the reconciliation did not outlive the revolution. After that short spell of liberty the ancient prejudice revived, and now, though legally the Jews of Poland are still Polish citizens, the Catholics of Poland, encouraged by their Orthodox tyrants of Russia, vie with them in their fierce contempt for the race which stood their common fatherland in so good stead in the hour of its need. How intense this feeling is, may be seen from the following account by an English eye-witness:
“To the Jew in Warsaw is meted out a wealth of disfavour and contempt that is hardly pleasant to witness. The British stranger, however, who normally lives far from any personal contact with these huge Jewish populations, is not altogether in a position to pass judgment on this deeply-seated anti-Semitic rancour. It pervades all classes of Polish society, and finds expression in a variety of ways. The youth who obligingly performs my minor marketing for me, in return for a tolerant attitude on my part on the subject of small change, was interested in the fate of an egg which I had pronounced to have passed the age limit of culinary usefulness.
“‘Don’t throw it away,’ he begged; ‘give it to me.’
“‘What do you want it for?’
“‘Oh, it will do to throw at a Jew.’”[177]