Freedom of movement of the individual is the very essence of the life of modern states and the basis of their economic, social and political institutions. The lack of this freedom, especially to the extent created by the May Laws, bars the Jews from the possibilities of normal economic growth and progress. The Jewish manufacturers and capitalists are prevented from participating in the industrial and commercial development of Russia, which is so rapidly proceeding and to which, owing to their economic position and capacities, they could powerfully contribute. Legal interference with economic activities, so frequently the rule in Russia, is emphasized in the case of the Jews.

A far more serious situation confronts the great mass of the Jewish artisans, petty merchants and factory workers, to which the vast majority of the Jews belong. Largely prevented access to their natural customers, the peasants, by the prohibition of rural residence, and confined to the relatively few towns of the Pale, where over-crowding and over-competition are the necessary and unavoidable results, the Jewish artisans and petty merchants have a bitter struggle to maintain a position of economic independence.

Added to this, there is the social pressure to which the Jews have been subjected. Not until this period has the century-long position of the Jews as the "pariahs of the Empire" been so sharply emphasized. Enmeshed in a net of special laws and regulations, at the mercy of ministerial decree, secret circular, arbitrary administrative act, law has lost all meaning for the Jews. In this atmosphere they exist mainly through bribery, at once their bane and their salvation.

The unusual economic and social pressure exerted by the reactionary régime upon its Jewish subjects, through the new restrictive laws that were put into operation during the last thirty years, the administrative harrying that became the order of the day and the introduction of the hitherto unused method of physical repression, the pogrom, becomes clear in the light of its policy. Beginning as a movement to suppress the Jews in their economic and cultural activities, and to separate them as far as possible from their Russian neighbors, the anti-Jewish program became in its final form the expulsion and extermination of the Jews from Russia. The historic sentence of Count Ignatiev, author of the May Laws, at the very beginning of this period, "the Western borders are open to you Jews", strikes the keynote of this policy. And, in fact, for practically the first time in its history, the Russian government relaxed in 1892 its rigorous rules forbidding emigration, and gave its sanction to Baron de Hirsch's plan of organizing a vast emigration of Jews from Russia, which its author hoped would, at the end of a quarter of a century, result in the complete transplantation of the Jews from Russia. The famous principle of the Russian government, "once a Russian always a Russian", was for once put aside in favor of the Jews. They were given one right not enjoyed by other Russians, that of leaving Russia under the obligation of abandoning Russian citizenship forever.[39]

II. ROUMANIA

Up to very recent years, the history of the Jews in Roumania centers about those resident in Moldavia. Its proximity to ancient Poland and close association with Bessarabia, naturally made for a back-and-forth movement of the Polish and Russian Jews, whose settlement was invited by the boyars or landed nobility because of resulting industrial and commercial advantages.

The position of the Jews in Moldavia up to the middle of the nineteenth century did not differ to any extent from that of their brethren in Russia. Moldavia, as a Christian state, denied civil and political rights to all non-Christians. The Jews in Moldavia were regarded as aliens, whose activities were subject to special regulation. The beginning of the last century witnessed the first special Jewish laws. The Jews were forbidden to buy the products of the soil, to acquire real property; non-resident Jews were debarred unless they could prove an occupation and show the possession of property. Definite restrictions as to occupation, residence in the villages, the ownership, in villages, of houses, land, vineyards, etc., existed. As vagabonds they could be expelled from the country by administrative decree. Thus was their legal status fixed.

The emancipation of Jews was first demanded by the liberal party during the revolutionary days of 1848. But no practical change resulted until the Convention of Paris in 1856, which, in granting autonomy to the two provinces, guaranteed civil rights to all Moldavians, regardless of creed. Though political rights were granted only to Christian Moldo-Wallachians, the provision was made that, by legislative arrangements, the enjoyment of political rights could be extended to other creeds. Thus was established the possibility of a gradual emancipation of the Jews, foreshadowed in the communal law of 1864, which granted the right of naturalization to certain classes of native Roumanian Jews. Those who had passed through college or had a recognized foreign degree, or who had founded a factory in the land employing at least fifty workmen were among the favored classes.

Shortly afterwards, this section was abrogated, and, with the abdication of the liberal Couza and the accession of Charles Hohenzollern, the present king, to the throne, the situation changed. Article VII of the constitution of the newly-created kingdom read that foreigners not of the Christian faith could not be naturalized. As within the term foreigner the great mass of the Jews residing in the land was included, this was a denial of the conditions laid down in the Treaty of Paris. At the same time, old laws against the Jews which had fallen into abeyance were revived, expulsions of the Jews from the villages into the towns began to take place with great frequency, laws requiring all sellers of liquor in rural communes to be naturalized Roumanians deprived many Jewish families of a livelihood—in short, the usual symptoms of anti-Jewish activity became the order of the day.

It was at the famous Berlin Congress, convened to decide questions created by the Russo-Turkish war of 1877, that the subject of the Jewish disabilities in Roumania was brought up, in connection with the demand of Roumania for recognition as an independent state. The chief objection made especially by the representatives of three of the European powers—France, England and Germany—was Roumania's treatment of the Jews. It was finally decided by the Congress to recognize her independence on the condition that she grant civil and political equality to all her citizens without distinction of race or creed. This was expressed in Article 44 of the historic Berlin Treaty, which read as follows: