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

by Michael Davitt

The Jews are thus numerically in excess of the Russians and of all other Christian sects combined, excepting the Moldavians, who are equally strong in numbers, and even more bitter in their anti-Semitic feeling than those of Russian blood.

Fully fifty per cent. of the Jews of Kishineff are artisans and labourers, and in the great majority of cases they are wretchedly poor. The stern needs of daily life, the want of bread and the shelter of a home, compel them to work for any pay that may be offered to them.

The Jewish artisan is far and away more intelligent and skilled than his Moldavian or Russian neighbour of like occupation. He is more expert in technical details, and more ambitious to do better and to perform more work for his employer. Poor as he may be he reads more newspapers, and is an all-round formidable rival to workers who dislike him for his race, and who dread him as an increasing and competing factor in the industrial world of Kishineff.

These facts will account to some extent for the part which Christian workers took in the organised riots of April.

One fact more in this connection has an important bearing upon another feature of the outbreak—the pillaging of shops and saloons. Kishineff is the capital of Bessarabia, and is its largest trading and commercial centre. There are rival Christian and Jewish interests at work in catering for the needs of so large a place, and these interests collide in competitive activity in almost every branch of business life.

There are shops, warehouses, and saloons where Christian and Jewish rivalry conflicts, and in such a combat the Gentile is nowhere, in trade competition, with the fertile and adroit Jew. Hence, there is as strong a commercial antipathy toward the unpopular Hebrew in fairly educated Russian and Moldavian circles as is found on other grounds among the anti-Semitic artisans and labourers.

These circumstances account for the complacency—to put it no stronger—with which merchants and leaders of the Christian community looked on at the pillaging of shops and the destruction of saloons which belonged to their Jewish rivals. And they also explain why saloons and stores of Jewish ownership were alone the objects of the mob’s attention; for the riot was not an affair of blind, popular fury, bent upon indiscriminate lawlessness. Nothing of the kind. It was deliberately organised and intelligently directed from start to finish by leaders who knew what they were about, and how to discriminate between Russian and Moldavian property and Semitic belongings, in the matter of looting, and between Jewish and Christian women in another and more infernal business.

Kishineff, in its central and chief business parts, is a handsome town. Its leading boulevard, Alexandra Street, would do credit to any American city. It is more than twice the width of Broadway, New York; is planted on both sides with acacia trees, and can boast of imposing public buildings, substantial shops, banks, and jewellers’ stores.

The municipal headquarters, built, like most of the prominent structures of the city, with a whitish stone, is situated near the middle of the leading thoroughfare and wears a stately and striking appearance. The streets are all wide and run as in American cities, at right angles to each other in uniform arrangement. They are nearly all planted; a feature which adds greatly to the beauty of the city, in combining the light green foliage of the acacia trees with the bright, clean look of the houses and public buildings.

The Royal Gardens and People’s Park are in the centre of the city. Military bands play each evening in the former, and attract large crowds of well-dressed citizens, officers of the garrison, youth, and particularly ladies.