The attitude of the Russian Government towards the Jews during that period reflects three successive tendencies: first, in the last years of Alexander I.'s reign (1815-1825), a mixed tendency of "benevolent paternalism" and severe restrictions; second, during the first half of Nicholas I.'s reign (1826-1840), a military tendency, that of "correcting" the Jews by subjecting their youth, from the age of childhood, to the austere discipline of conscription and barrack training, accompanied by compulsory religious assimilation and by an unprecedented recrudescence of rightlessness and oppression; and third, during the latter part of Nicholas's reign (1840-1855), the "enlightened" tendency of improving the Jews by establishing "crown schools" and demolishing the autonomous structure of Jewish life, while keeping in force the former cruel disabilities (1840-1855). This endless "correctional" and "educational" experimenting on a whole people, aggravated by the resuscitation of ritual murder trials and wholesale expulsions in approved medieval style, makes the history of Russian Jews during that period an uninterrupted tragedy.
The beginning of the period did not seem to portend evil. Emperor Alexander returned from the Vienna Congress without harboring aggressive plans against the Jews. On the contrary, he remembered the patriotic services rendered by the Jews in 1812 and the promise given by him at Bruchsal "to ameliorate their condition."[270] As a matter of fact, several steps were taken which seemed to point in the direction of improvement.
The first manifestations of this tendency were certain administrative changes in the management of Jewish affairs. The ukase of January 18, 1817, ordered the Senate to submit all matters affecting the Jewish communes, with the exception of legal cases, to the General Manager of the Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Denominations, a post occupied by Golitzin, the Tzar's associate in Christian pietism and mystical infatuation. Later in the same year, the combined Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs and Public Instruction was organized, under the guidance of Golitzin, symbolizing, as it were, the establishment of public instruction upon the foundations of "Christian piety." The charter of the new organization distinctly provides that all "Jewish matters in charge of the Senate and the Ministers" are to be transmitted to the head of the new Ministry. In this manner the Jewish question was officially connected with the department of ecclesiastic affairs, which at that time occupied a central place in the administration.
The departmental change was followed by a more substantial reform. The Government recognized the necessity of establishing at the Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs a permanent advisory council composed of elected Jewish representatives or "deputies of the Jewish communes." The project was suggested by the ephemeral and accidental endeavors in the way of popular Jewish representation on the part of the two purveyors, Sonnenberg and Dillon, who were attached to the headquarters of the Russian army during the campaign of 1812. At the audience at which Alexander I. gave these deputies the assurance that the condition of their coreligionists would be improved,[271] they were also told to appear in the capital after the conclusion of the war for the purpose of acquainting the Kahals with the plans of the Government. The deputies accordingly appeared in St. Petersburg, and entered upon their duties as Jewish spokesmen, which they exercised during 1816 and 1817. They realized, however, that they had no right to regard themselves as the accredited representatives of the Jewish communities of Russia, and therefore appealed to the Government—Sonnenberg was particularly active in this direction—to instruct all the Kahals to elect a complete group of deputies in due form. The Government having agreed to the proposal, a clause was included in the instructions to the newly-established Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs, to the effect that "the [names of the] deputies of the Jewish communes shall after their election be submitted by the Minister to his Majesty for ratification."
In the autumn of 1815 all the large Kahals received orders from the governors to choose an electoral college, two electors for each Government. In August, 1818, the twenty-two electors chosen from eleven Governments assembled in Vilna to elect from their own midst three deputies and an equal number of substitutes. The choice fell, apart from the former deputies Sonnenberg and Dillon, on Michael Eisenstadt, Benish Lapkovski, and Marcus Veitelson, all from the Government of Vitebsk, and Samuel Epstein from the Government of Vilna. To provide for the expenses of the deputies, who were to live in St. Petersburg, the Vilna conference issued an appeal to all Jewish communities calling upon them to make an "embroidery collection," i. e. to cut off and convert into cash the embroidered collars which well-to-do Jews attached to their "Kittels" (shrouds worn beneath the prayer shawls on the Day of Atonement), though the alternative of donating their value in money was allowed. The Jews, who had been ruined during the war, were evidently not in a position to tax themselves directly.
Soon afterwards followed the establishment of a special department, which was placed at the service of "the Deputation of the Jewish People," the name by which this college of deputies, presided over by the energetic Sonnenberg, was frequently designated. The "college," either as a whole or through its individual members, labored for seven years (1818-1825), but its activity was too limited to justify the expectations of Russian Jewry. The hope of the deputies, that they would be consulted about the general problems bearing on the proposed amelioration of Jewish conditions, failed to materialize. On the contrary, the Government had in the meantime abandoned all thought of legislative reforms, and a little later even began to contrive ways and means of carrying into effect the restrictive clauses of the Statute of 1804, which had been suspended in its operation by the War of 1812.
The deputies, who resided in St. Petersburg and did a great deal of lobbying, frequently managed in their intercourse with the officials to ferret out these "designs" of the authorities and to communicate their findings secretly to the Kahal leaders in the provinces. At the same time they endeavored of their own accord to avert the danger by personal negotiations with the leading officials. While reporting on the one hand to the Kahals, the deputies on the other hand transmitted to Golitzin, the Minister of Ecclesiastic Affairs, the petitions of the Kahals and their complaints against the local administration. The deputies were thus reduced, by the force of circumstances, to mere go-betweens in Jewish matters. In exercising this function, some of them, Sonnenberg in particular, were indefatigable. They tried the patience of the high officials with their petitions and representations, and on one occasion Sonnenberg was even deprived of his post of deputy for "impertinent conduct towards the authorities." The bureaucracy of St. Petersburg began to resent these endless solicitations and this constant meddling with their plans.
Gradually the deputies themselves lost heart, having realized their impotence in grappling with the rising wave of reaction. Some of them left St. Petersburg altogether. The downfall of Golitzin's Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs, which had been undermined by the ultra-reactionary Arakcheyev party,[272] involved, as a natural consequence, the downfall of the curious Jewish representation affiliated with it. Golitzin's successor as Minister of Public Instruction, the obscurantist Shishkov, made representations to the Tzar concerning the necessity of abolishing the institution of Jewish deputies, "numerous instances having demonstrated that their stay here is not only unnecessary and useless but even very harmful, inasmuch as, under the pretext of working for the public interest, they collect money from the Jews for no purpose, and prematurely advertise the decisions and even the intentions of the Government." In 1825 the "Deputation of the Jewish People" was abolished. Thus ended an organization beautifully conceived, but mutilated in execution, one that might well have served as a substitute for Jewish communal representation, and might have softened the régime of caprice and blighting patronage which ate deeper and deeper into the vitals of Russian politics.