The final cause of the persecution of the Jews, and one which is regarded by many people as the weightiest, is the certain income which legislation against the Jews means for every unscrupulous official. Most of the laws passed against the Jews are quite impossible of execution, or are executed only in a very imperfect way, thanks to the corruptibility of the Russian officials. "Absolutism palliated by corruption"—this bitter saying fits the case of the Jews best. Yet what relieves the situation for them in a certain way renders it worse for them in another. It certainly is a question whether the ransom-money of one generation will not become the purchase-money of the next. The Russian bureaucracy will not be willing to renounce its income from bribes and extortions. Thus it prevents all legislative decrees in favor of the Jews. These poorly paid, much feared, but still despised officials are, in the inclined plane of their evil consciences, quite as much victims of the system as the Jews, but in a different way. We are all human, whether Christian or Jew, and in the long run, under the operation of the most depraved of all rules, neither the one nor the other can keep himself pure. The worst thing that has happened to the Jews, however, is not, as can well be understood, an occasional "pogrom" (riot), in which, to the indignation of all civilized mankind, defenceless people are slain and plundered by command of the authorities. The worst is the restriction to particular zones and to particular callings. That is systematic massacre, a deliberate policy of destruction and extirpation. Even if the misery of the ghetto has, thanks to the strict abstemiousness of the Jews, failed as yet to kill them in the way that the peasantry, weakened by alcoholism, are killed in the famine provinces, nevertheless the moral result is frightful. Even the iron family morality of the Jews is shaken in the western governments. A deplorable percentage of prostitutes is made up of Jewesses. Experience shows that sexual deprivation is the beginning of every other form of degeneration. Moreover, the matter does not generally end with the individual who sinks into prostitution. The ethical ideas of such a morally defective person spread contagion in a wide circle. Families are broken up, or unchastity makes its way into them. The whole conception of life becomes different when the chastity of women becomes an article of trade or an object of ironical scepticism. Still, in comparison with their environment even these Jews may be called chaste, for they are merely stained by the barbarism of the Orient. But it is, nevertheless, monstrous that in a Christian country the hard-won sexual morality of a part of the population, once gained, must be endangered only because malevolent politics will have it so. The moral purity of the Jews and of the Teutonic races has redeemed the world from the deep depravity of the Roman decadence. Now a Christian state policy destroys a part of the iron stability of this moral acquisition of humanity.
It is self-evident that whoever can tries to free himself from the misery of the ghetto. Even Russian legislation has left some small gates open, and through these the struggling Jews squeeze themselves with every exertion of strength and cunning. Then there ensues a battle between brutality and artfulness—one not lacking in elements of humor. The authorities, hostile to the Jews, try of course to prevent too many of them from escaping from the ghetto and from settling in cities which it is desired to keep as free from Jews as possible. The Jews, however, try again and again to evade the prohibitions and the illegally interpreted ordinances and to settle where there is a possibility of a means of livelihood. Such cities are, for example, St. Petersburg and Moscow. The martyrdom which Jews and Jewesses undergo in order to gain the right to stay in these cities borders on the tragic. A non-resident Jewess is not allowed to study in these places, but may live there as a prostitute. An innocent young girl wished to have herself registered as a prostitute, so that she might attend the university, never suspecting what formalities she would have to undergo in consequence. In course of the medical examination, however, the circumstances of the case were immediately discovered, and the young girl was punished for the attempted deception and sent away.
A well-known Orientalist, a man of seventy years, had business to execute in Moscow which he did not succeed in finishing before night. No hotel would have taken him in; and he could not endanger any of his friends, for if in the frequent nocturnal rangings of the police in Jewish dwellings a Jewish guest without a passport should be taken, the host would lose his right of residence. In his difficulty the old man asked a railroad official how he could pass the icy-cold night. The man gave him the good advice that he should seek out the only place where a man is permitted to take a room and spend the night without a passport—a brothel. Accordingly, this man of seventy, in order not to freeze, was obliged to pass the night in a room with a drunken prostitute, and sat until morning in a chair, praying. The man who related these facts to me was a Russian author widely known and honored.
A Jew who for five years has paid the taxes of the first guild in a municipality of the pale receives permission to leave the pale and settle elsewhere. He must, however, gain permission for each member of his family through the strictest formalities. Woe to him if a child has been born to him during that time! It cannot qualify, and it may easily happen that the father must return to the pale. A Jewish merchant of the first guild in Moscow tried to obtain permission to send such a child to school. Admission was refused, because he did not possess the necessary papers. The father appealed to the senate in St. Petersburg, and asked for provisional permission for attendance of his child at school until the passing of a judgment in that place. The minister of justice, Muraviev, however, entered a protest against this. Therefore the father was obliged either to employ private tutors or to let the child grow up without instruction.
Whoever works as assistant to a dentist, and has obtained a certificate, may open an office for himself. The only requirement for this is that it shall be well fitted up and that nobody shall sleep in it. This facilitation is granted because of the fact that in Russia there is a great lack of dentists. Yet a Jewish dentist went to a lawyer and complained that he had fitted up his office and had handed in to the police his request for leave to practise. The police waited three months, then came and explained that, since he had not practised his profession for three months, he must immediately leave Moscow. He was obliged to leave his house immediately, and wander about all night, because he could nowhere find lodging.
Another Jewish dentist, a woman, wished to take her examination. A certificate was demanded testifying to her political blamelessness. When she tried to obtain this it was refused her, since she had no right of residence there, and therefore could not demand a certificate!
The Jews meet these tricks of the authorities with tricks of their own. They pay for a dentist's certificate, fit up an office, and then go into trade in bed-feathers or calico. The police official who wishes to prove whether the dentist's profession is really practised has some ruble notes slipped into his hand. Very recently the Jews have found a means to become known as Christians without baptism, which they shun. Good-natured priests, who receive nothing at all for a baptism but a large price for a written declaration that X. Y. is an orthodox Christian, draw up such declarations. The unbaptized Hebrew comes as an orthodox Christian to Great Russia and carries on business, while the helpful priest receives a little income from him.
In general, the Jew must be able to pay; in that case life is not hard for him in Russia, where, as I have said, no anti-Semitic feeling whatever exists among the people, and the national characteristics of good-nature, of heartiness, helpfulness, and politeness make life easy and pleasant. But woe to the poor wretch who cannot pay at every step! Woe to the struggler who wishes to better his lot! Woe to the lover of justice who dares to fight for his rights or even for the public welfare! One of the special laws for the Jews is that any one may trample him and injure him unpunished. Of all the unfortunate subjects of the Czar, he is the most unfortunate. His intelligence, his sense of justice are offences against the sacred order of things, which demands stupidity and obedience. Thus exists the entirely incomprehensible condition that a great realm steers towards inevitable economic ruin for lack of economic intelligence, while it possesses five million born financiers, who in the lifetime of a man could change Russia into an economic world-power.