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

by Michael Davitt

These were the common-sense recommendations of an enlightened mind for the cure of a growing social and political malady in Russian life. They would have effected that cure, had there been a statesmanship in the Government of the Empire capable of rising above anti-Semitic prejudice in the rendering of a great service to the country. In fact, there are but three Russian remedies for this growing danger to Russia, and two of them are impossible; the third being the rational one outlined by Prince Demidoff San Donato. Extermination cannot be thought of. Emigration is out of the question, where poverty is almost the normal condition of two or three millions of people who have inherited the evils associated with social wretchedness, religious intolerance, and race persecution. No other country will consent to receive them. The third remedy is, therefore, that alone which the nature and extent of the evil demand, and which, if wisely and courageously adopted, would make Russia the stronger through the only effective remedy applicable to a growing, deadly danger.

The facts of the economic and social conditions within the Pale of Settlement are so objective that the warning they give of a coming catastrophe cannot be ignored. It would be like leaving an epidemic of smallpox to cure itself by neglect. This condition of things is fully explained and expressed by the term, unnatural. It is analogous to a situation which would result from a Federal law compelling every European-born artisan and labourer within the whole United States to reside inside of Pennsylvania, and to be forbidden to seek employment outside the cities and towns of that state. The murderous competition for employment, the deadly rivalry for existence, the bad blood between opposing races, the poverty and social wretchedness which such a condition of things would create—apart from the operation of coercive laws—can readily be imagined by the American reader. But this is no overdrawn picture of the economic anarchy prevailing within the Russian Pale of Jewish Settlement.

The present estimated population of the Tsar’s dominions in Europe and Asia is 145,000,000. The territory of legal domicile for the Russian Jew is embraced in the fifteen “governments,” or provinces, of Kovno, Vitebsk, Vilna, Mohilev, Minsk, Grodno, Volhynia, Chernigov, Poltava, Kiev, Podolia, Bessarabia, Cherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Taurida—extending south from near the Gulf of Riga, on the Baltic, to the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, and forming the western provinces of the Empire; having Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Roumania as frontier barriers. Poland is not included in the Pale. The Jews have more freedom of movement there, and are not subject to some of the coercive restrictions imposed within the above provinces.

The Pale itself is again narrowed by the law which forbids a Jew to reside within thirty-three miles of the western frontier. It has a total area about equal to that of France.

The population of the fifteen provinces of the Pale, including Poland, will be about 26,000,000. There are some 4,000,000 Jews comprised in this population, but these, excepting 1,000,000 in Poland, are compelled under the “May Laws” to reside within the “cities, towns, and townlets” of the Pale. The united population of these urban centres will probably not exceed a total of 5,000,000; so that the Jews number three out of every five of the inhabitants of the urban centres within the fifteen provinces.

The percentage of Jews to non-Jews in the towns and townships of the province of Mohilev, is estimated at 94; for those of Volhynia, 71 per cent.; Minsk, 69; Kovno, 68; Podolia, 62; Vitebsk, 61; Grodno, 60; Vilna, 56; Kiev, 49; Poltava, 43; Bessarabia, 38; Chernigov, 29; Cherson, 28; The Taurida, 19; and Ekaterinoslav, 15 per cent.

In the provinces of Russia in which Jews are not permitted to reside the town inhabitants average 59 persons to every 1000 of the rural population. In the population of the Pale the urban inhabitants average 222 for every 1000 of the rural residents and workers. Within the industrial centres of the Jewish Pale to which they are confined there are about 2730 Jews to every square mile of residential area.

These facts and figures show how impossible it is, under such economic conditions, for any healthy or hopeful prospect of industrial life to exist. The towns are crowded with artisans and traders, and as these are out of all proportion to the producers and consumers of an agricultural country they necessarily become more destitute and wretched as their numbers increase. They are too poor to emigrate. They are prohibited from migrating. They cannot seek work on land. They are not permitted to engage in several occupations. Municipal and Government posts are practically closed to them. They have to compete with Russian workers for such means of existence as can be found; and in face of these facts they are reproached for their poverty and made subject to special taxation.

It is also a charge against these people that they are exploiters of labour and not producers. The taunt comes from the apologists for the Ignatieff laws. The charge is not true. In proportion to population, there are relatively more artisans among Jews in Russia than among non-Jews. According to statistics obtained by the Pahlen Commission, the artisans and labourers averaged 15 per cent. of the total Jewish population of the Pale. In England the proportion of labourers and artisans is over 20 per cent.; about 12 per cent. in Belgium; 10 per cent. in France, and 9 in Prussia.

In Kishineff, where the Jews number 50,000 of the city population, the Hebrew artisans, and wage-earners generally, would number fully 10,000 before the recent anti-Semitic outrages.