The Jews of Poland survived this calamity, and grew numerous again, as persecuted civilised races somehow do, in their own, or in some other, land. They, however, lent assistance to the designs of the ambitious nobles when the landed aristocracy invaded the recognised prerogatives of the kingly power, and took to themselves all the responsibilities and advantages of government. They became their agents and instruments in the sordid work of harassing the peasant cultivators, who found themselves ground down more remorselessly by class rule than under a semi-republican monarchy. Popular feeling was thus turned against the Jews, and they began to experience, in Poland, as elsewhere, that social and economic antipathy which their greater money-making capacity has always nourished in the commercial minds of the less successful Christians.
As a friend of Polish freedom remarked to the writer in Warsaw in the spring of 1903, “the nobles cultivated their pride, rack-rented their tenants, and lost their independence.” And, with this fall of the one Christian nation in Europe, which had fairly ruled and humanely treated the hunted Hebrew up to the eighteenth century, the era of systematic persecution began for the Polish Jew when a cruel fate compelled him to become a Russian subject.
The early oppression of the Jews in Russia was entirely due to religious feeling. Their exceptional treatment in recent years arises from political and economic more than from sectarian causes. M. Varadinoff, in his history of Russian administration, says: “The history of all the cases since 1649, involving Jewish religious matters, bears on it the stamp of mistrust to the followers of the law of Moses, because the Jews, by their false doctrines, convert to their faith not only Christians, but persons belonging to other religious persuasions; in consequence of this the civil rights of the Jews were more or less restricted, and their settlement in Russia was prohibited. They were also on several occasions entirely expelled across the Russian frontiers. The code of Alexis Mikailovitch provides punishment of death for the perversion of a Christian to the Hebrew faith. In 1676 Jews were prohibited from coming to Moscow from Smolensk, and in 1727 an order was promulgated to the effect that ‘All Jews found to be residing in the Ukraine and in Russian towns shall be immediately expelled beyond the frontier, and not be allowed under any circumstances to enter Russia.’”
Prince Demidoff San Donato, in quoting this expert in his excellent book, says that a proviso to this ukase stipulated that before leaving Russia all the Jews were to be made to exchange their gold and silver for copper money!
It was found practically impossible, however, to carry out decrees of complete expulsion, while, on the other hand, it had to be recognised that the interest of the state and the development of trade required the trained experience of Hebrew craftsmen, merchants, and bankers. They were tolerated for the utilitarian ends of commercial necessity, while being subject to all the possible penalties of an outlawed community.
Nearing the end of the eighteenth century the trend of Russian conquest westwards annexed the Polish regions known as White Russia, and the Lithuanian country, in which Jews had hitherto found shelter when driven out from Russia proper. Catherine II. governed the Empire at this period, and her somewhat liberal views gave her Hebrew subjects a brief respite from persistent injustice. It was necessary to take account of the recognised status of the Jews in what had been a portion of the Kingdom of Poland, and a ukase was promulgated in 1786, decreeing that “Everyone, irrespective of creed, shall enjoy under the laws all the advantages and privileges of his rank and condition.” This enlightened law only extended to the territories acquired from Poland, and even within these the tolerant intention of the ukase was frustrated by the bias of Russian officials. The right to enrol themselves in burgher guilds was curtailed, while double taxes were levied upon the very people whom the law of 1786 had, in words, freed from exceptional burdens.
Other special penalties followed, to be again mitigated as when, in 1804, a ukase declared that “a spirit of moderation and a sincere wish for the amelioration of the condition of the Jews,” should be shown as being in the best interest of the population among whom the Hebrews were allowed to live. This temporary return to reason and justice was also due to the desire to give Russian workers and peasants the advantages of superior Jewish workmanship in arts, and the example of trading competency. Jewish children were to be admitted to Russian schools. Manufacturing industry and the occupation of land were to be thrown open to Jews hitherto denied access to these employments, except in specified places.
These, however, were but Russian good intentions. They lacked the value of application.
CHAPTER II
THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT (1804-1882)
GRADUALLY the provinces along the western frontier, stretching south from Riga to the territories bordering on the Black Sea, became marked off as a Pale of Settlement. Within these regions all the Jews of the Empire were to be domiciled; saving merchants, bankers, scientists, and eminent Hebrews whose wealth or accomplishments would outweigh in the selfish plans of domestic government the anti-Semitic feeling which appealed to the despotic expediency of exceptional laws. Inside this economic Siberia, the poorer Jews would have their chances of employment greatly diminished, while the struggle for existence must become by degrees a contest between a growing population and a narrower area of industrial opportunity.