2. Jewish Legislative Schemes during the Reign of Paul I.
The brief reign of Paul I. (1796-1801) added nothing of moment to the Russian legislation concerning the Jews. The law imposing a double tax was confirmed, and also the other restrictions were left in force. The area of Jewish settlement was increased by the newly-acquired Government of Courland, on the outskirts of the Empire. In this Duchy, which was annexed in 1795, there were several thousand Jewish inhabitants, who had been "tolerated" as foreigners, after the German pattern, and had only partly succeeded in forming a communal organization. The question now arose as to the best way of collecting the taxes from the itinerant chapmen who formed the bulk of the Jewish population, and were enrolled neither among the rural nor the urban estates, and were not even affiliated with Jewish communities. The Russian Government solved this question in 1799, by placing the Jews of Courland in the same position as their coreligionists in the other western Governments, and by granting them the right of enrolling themselves among the mercantile or burgher estates, as well as establishing their own Kahals. In this case fiscal considerations were responsible for the organization of the Jewish masses in the dominion of the German barons.
Having confined the Jewish population within the western pale, the Government could not very well hamper its freedom of transit within that pale, at least as far as moving from city to city was concerned. This elementary right of free transit was resorted to by many Jews of impoverished White Russia, who began to emigrate into the Little Russian provinces, particularly into the Government of Novgorod-Seversk, later the Government of Poltava, which were more prosperous, and less crowded with Jews. The Government became aware of this internal transmigration, and could not abstain from taking it under its fatherly protection. Merchants were allowed to move unhampered from White Russia into Little Russia. Burghers, however, were permitted to emigrate only on the conditions applying to all persons of the taxable estates—they had to obtain certificates of dismissal (December, 1796).
Poor as was the reign of Paul in the field of concrete legislation concerning the Jews, it was rich in preliminary endeavors leading up to it. For his reign abounds in all kinds of projects looking to the regulation of the status of the Jews on the basis of official "investigations." In the outgoing years of the eighteenth century (1797-1800) the Government offices were feverishly busy in this direction. The Government was endeavoring to familiarize itself with the state of the former Polish provinces and particularly with the condition of the Jewish population. The first step in this pursuit after knowledge consisted in sending out a circular inquiry to the nobles and the higher officials of the region under consideration. The stimulus to this inquiry came in 1797, from a report submitted on account of the famine which had been raging in the Government of Minsk. Governor Karnyeyev of Minsk received orders from St. Petersburg to gather the opinions of the local Marshals, or leaders of the nobility, and on that basis supply "an elucidation of the causes of the impoverished condition of the peasants," with plans looking to their amelioration.
The shrewd device of questioning the landed aristocrats as to the causes of the impoverishment of their peasant serfs bore worthy fruit. Needless to say, the Polish magnates who assembled in Minsk at the invitation of the Government did not even for a moment think of reproaching themselves and their own estate of slaveholders for the misery of the people enthralled by them. Instead they preferred to put the blame partly on external circumstances ("the changes and mutinies in the province," bad crops, poor means of communication, etc.), and partly on the Jews, "whom the owners [of the villages] retain as arendars and tavern-keepers, contrary to the orders of the authorities restricting their domicile to the cities." The Jewish tavern-keepers in the country, so the nobles allege, "lure the peasants into drunkenness," by selling them spirits on trust, and thereby "render them unfit to manage their affairs." In order to save the peasants, the Government should insist "that the right of distilling be open exclusively to the landowners, and be withheld from the Jews as well as other arendars and tavern-keepers," and that in the rural public houses "permission to sell hot wine [whiskey] be given only to the squires." To put it in other words, the peasants will thrive and be "fit to manage their affairs," if, instead of Jewish alcohol, they will imbibe the aristocratic alcohol of the landed proprietors.
One need not be a statesman to discover the underlying motive of this "opinion" of the nobles, who were concerned only about retaining the ancient alcohol monopoly which they had enjoyed under the Polish régime ("the right of propination"). This, however, did not prevent the Governor of Minsk from presenting the report of the nobility to the Tzar, who on July 28, 1797, put down the following "resolution":[242] "Measures are to be taken, in accordance with the proposals of the marshals of the nobility, to restrict the rights of the Jews who ruin the peasants." At the same time the Senate called the Governor's attention to Catherine's ukase ordering the transfer of the Jews to the District towns, "so that these people may not wander to and fro to the detriment of society." This was tantamount to giving the authorities carte blanche in expelling the Jews from the villages.
In 1798 came the turn of the nobility of the Southwest, of Volhynia and Podolia, to state their wishes for the benefit of the fatherland. The marshals of Podolia, who met at Kamenetz, elaborated a much more comprehensive scheme of reform than their compeers in Minsk. After expressing their gratitude to the Tzar "for his Imperial benevolence in leaving us the franchise of liquor-dealing," the nobles plead that "neither the right of distilling nor that of selling liquor be let to Jews or even to Christians," and that the nobles themselves be granted the "liberty" of employing people in their "public houses at their own discretion." After securing the monopoly of intoxicating the people through their own bartenders, the nobles propose to transform the bulk of the Jews into export agents, to find foreign markets for the agrarian, i. e. manorial, products, "whence commercial profits will accrue both to the tillers of the soil (?!) and to the nobles." As for the other Jews, part of them were to be retained by the landowners in their public houses, and the rest were "to be forced to engage in agriculture and handicrafts."
This brilliant prospect of becoming the tools of the nobles for the disposal of rural products and the sale of manorial alcohol had evidently little fascination for the Jews themselves. Alarmed by these aristocratic designs, they held a consultation, and even called a conference of delegates. The conference met in Ostrog (Volhynia) in the summer of 1798, and decided to collect a fund and send a deputation to St. Petersburg, to lay before the Tzar the needs and wishes of the Jews of the Southwest, whom the Government had entirely forgotten to ask how they themselves would like to have their affairs arranged. Unfortunately the Governor-General of the Southwest, Count Gudovich, "got wind" of these preparations. Far-sighted statesman that he was, he immediately suspected "that this collection [of money for the deputation] might merely serve as a cover for some wicked Jewish design." He accordingly confiscated the funds already secured, forbade all further collections, and hastened to report his achievement to St. Petersburg. To his astonishment, the overzealous Governor-General received the chilling reply, that the Tzar found nothing criminal in the desire of the Jews to send a deputation to him. At the same time he was instructed to return the confiscated money and not to interfere with the sending of the deputation (September, 1798). Whether the deputation actually proceeded to the capital, and what it achieved, is unknown. But the occurrence in itself bears witness to the fact that even in that unenlightened epoch and in the secluded Hasidic environment of Volhynia and Podolia, the Jews were not altogether insensible of the political and social upheavals which were taking place in Russia.
The last to respond to the Governmental inquiry was the nobility of Lithuania. The marshals of the nineteen Lithuanian districts, who met in 1800, submitted their "opinion," which had been adopted with only three dissenting votes, to Friesel, the Governor of Vilna. The three opposing marshals suggested leaving the Jews in the condition which had prevailed under the Polish régime. All the others drafted a plan of Jewish "reform," which was even more radical than that of the nobles of Minsk and Podolia. The Jews were to be barred not only from distilling and keeping taverns of their own, but also from the sale of spirits in the manorial public houses. The Jewish rural population, which would thus be deprived of all means of subsistence, was to be transferred partly to the cities, partly "to be scattered over the crown and manorial settlements, where they might be allowed to grow corn and to mortgage and farm estates." The economic reform was to be supplemented by one affecting the inner life of the Jews. It was necessary "to abolish the Jewish costume and introduce among the Jews the form of dress customary among the other inhabitants." Altogether the separateness of the Jews was to be broken down, for "they constitute a people by themselves, and as such have their own administration ... in the form of synagogues and Kahals, which not only arrogate to themselves spiritual authority, but also meddle in all civil affairs and in matters appertaining to the police." These measures would bring about the amalgamation of the Jews with the surrounding population.
The "reformatory" ardor of the Lithuanian nobles, who thought it necessary to bracket the problem of Kahal autonomy with the sale of alcohol, was the effect of outside interference. Friesel, the Governor of Vilna, who was a cultivated German, and as such was acquainted with the state of the Jewish problem in Germany, found it necessary to address himself to the Lithuanian marshals twice, their first statement having been found "unsatisfactory." Only a second revision of the views of the nobles, which included the plan of inner reforms, satisfied Friesel. In April, 1800, Friesel forwarded these recommendations to the Senate, accompanying them by his own comprehensive memorandum, which to a large extent was obviously based on Chatzki's and Butrymovich's projects submitted some ten years previously to the "Jewish Commission" of the Quadrennial Diet.