Within the Pale: The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia

by Michael Davitt

Nor can the injustice of the “May Laws” be defended or explained by the equally unfounded assertion that the Jew will not work the land. He refuses to do so in Russia only where he is prohibited. Whenever he has obtained access to the land, on fair terms, he has readily embraced the chance, and invariably improved his condition. This has been proved by the records of the Jewish agricultural colonies in the provinces of Vilna, Minsk, Grodno, Kovno, Volhynia, Cherson, and in Ekaterinoslav. There are colonies of more than 50,000 land-workers among the Jews of the southwestern provinces who have more than held their own in every branch of agricultural industry with their Russian or Moldavian neighbours. This taunt is, consequently, no explanation of the Ignatieff laws.

The evils—both to Russia and to the Jews of the Pale—arising out of the economic conditions which these laws must stereotype, would have been swept away or modified in the ten years following the killing and despoiling of the Jews in 1882, had the proposals of the Pahlen Commission been acted upon. The recommendations of provincial governors were preferred instead. Biassed officialism prevailed over the courageously wise counsels of Count Pahlen, Prince Demidoff San Donato, Count Strogonoff, and their colleagues, with the result that M. Pobédonostsev became the virtual administrator of the Ignatieff laws, and the murders, crimes, and expulsions of 1891 followed, in decadal sequence, the outrages of 1882; not, by any means, as a desired or necessary measure of the policy adopted by the famed Procurator of the Holy Synod. M. Pobédonostsev would be as averse to the killing of Jews as General Ignatieff. Both are far above suspicion in this respect. The instigator of the “May Laws” probably believed, as a soldier and diplomat, that such measures were needed the better to subdue a suspected revolutionary tendency among a non-Russian race, and thought they might be enforced according to his plans, without any serious explosion of anti-Semitic feeling. What followed, however, ought to have been a warning to the keeper of the Tsar’s conscience on combined religious and national concerns. The Procurator’s plans would be as religious in their ultimate object as Ignatieff’s policy was the reverse; but both sought the accomplishment of a tyrannical purpose by means which led to such suffering, injustice, and bloodshed as will ever be associated with their records and names.

The Russian Jew was a domestic menace to the mind of Ignatieff; to M. Pobédonostsev he was tainted with the unforgivable sins of heterodoxy, and a religious persecutor is always relentless in proportion to his fanatical sincerity. No one can justly question the honesty of the Procurator’s zeal for Church and State in Russia, and this is why the infidel Israelites have found in him the most implacable of their powerful foes.

The measures resorted to in 1891, at the instance of the influence exerted by the Procurator of the Holy Synod, had for their end the carrying into effect of the provisions of the “May Laws.” Thousands of Jews were still scattered throughout the provinces beyond the Pale; tolerated in centres of trade and enterprise for utilitarian reasons. Most of these were artisans who had by residence, and membership of trade guilds, acquired the privilege of living and working in various provinces of the Empire. Large numbers of these had been specially encouraged in previous years to settle in cities and towns where their proficiency in crafts was necessary to the development of local industries or manufacture. Suddenly in 1891 an Imperial decree was issued, and all these sober, industrious, skilled, and, in many instances, respected citizens were ordered to quit their homes, property, or employment, within a given time, and take themselves within the Pale of Settlement or outside of the Russian Empire.

The orders issued by the Chief of Police of Moscow to his subordinates, contained the following instructions:

“You must personally verify in all the shops and factories kept by Jews the number of the assistant artisans; also, what category the Jews belong to, and the time of their arrival in Moscow for residence; and then take their signature to a notice of voluntary [!] departure from the Capital; warning them that the computation of their terms of stay will begin on the 14th of July next. Also, take a registry of names, in alphabetical order, of Jewish artisans and, second, of Jews living in Moscow under the right of Circular No. 30 issued by the Minister of the Interior in 1880, specifying in separate columns the time of arrival in Moscow, number of assistant artisans, number in family, and the expiration of the term of departure. In reference to Jews residing according to Circular of 1880, specify their occupations, also the names of commercial houses where they were employed, and present them to me within two weeks.”

The penalty for refusing to sign the paper suggested by General Yourkoffsky, was immediate expulsion. The “voluntary” alternative gained only a little time for preparation. It offered, however, some chances to wealthy Jews to come to an arrangement with lower police officials, whereby the general order of expulsion might be evaded, for a consideration.

The attack by Government and people upon the Jews in 1891 was a deliberate proceeding. Prince Dolgorouki was an able and a fair-minded Governor-General of Moscow. Neither Russian nor Jewish complaint had been lodged against him during his tenure of office. His duties had been performed with care and competency, and his administration of the ancient capital and province left no room for official faultfinding at St. Petersburg.

Coincidently with a notification to all Governors of Provinces in the Emperor’s name, that all permits to allow Jews to reside outside of the Pale should be withdrawn on a certain date, an order for the removal of the Governor-General of Moscow was also made, and the Tsar’s brother, the Grand Duke Sergius, was nominated to supersede General Dolgorouki. General Kostanda was to act as Deputy Governor; pending the arrival of Duke Sergius, and to this officer, along with the equally zealous anti-Semite, Yourkoffsky, Chief of the Moscow Police, was left the congenial task of “clearing-out” the Jews. Never was an odious work more brutally performed. The quarter in which the poorest Jews resided was surrounded in the night time by the police and fire-brigade forces, and the unhappy creatures were routed from their dwellings as if they were so many noxious animals. Some who had been warned a few hours beforehand fled to the Cemetaires of the city for protection, while it has been placed on record that several fathers of families took their daughters to houses of ill-fame for the night, presumably to find protection where they would be least suspected of seeking refuge.

All this being done in the name of the Tsar, the populace were encouraged to co-operate in executing what they were led to believe to be the Emperor’s wish. Massacres, raping, and looting became once more the direct results of barbarous decrees. Some 3000 Jews were driven from Moscow after many had been killed. Hundreds of business men were ruined, being compelled to close their establishments, and to dispose of valuable stock at prices which could not realise enough to discharge their obligations. Those who were able to purchase transport to America emigrated, but the mass of the expelled victims wended their way toward the Pale, there to add still more to the congestion of life and labour which had already rendered the vast Ghetto of the Empire the home of poverty, suffering, and despair.