In signing this ukase, which spelled sorrow and misery for thousands of families, Alexander I. gave verbal instructions to the Committee of Ministers, to point out to the White Russian Governor-General Khovanski "ways and means of obtaining employment and designating sources of livelihood for the local Jews in their new places of abode." But no "ways and means" of any kind could mitigate the misery of people doomed to expulsion from their old nests and reduced to beggary and vagrancy.
Immediately on the receipt of the ukase the local authorities embarked upon their task with relentless cruelty. By January, 1824, over twenty thousand Jews of both sexes had been driven from the villages of both Governments. Hordes of hapless refugees, with their wives and children, began to flock into the overcrowded towns and townlets. There they could be seen, stripped almost to their shirts, wandering aimlessly in the streets. They lived in frightful congestion, as many as ten of them being squeezed into a single room. They were huddled together in the synagogues, while many of them, unable to find shelter, remained on the streets with their families facing the winter cold. Sickness and increased mortality began to spread among them, particularly in the city of Nevel. Even the anti-Jewish Governor-General Khovanski, who was making a tour of inspection through the stricken district, was stirred by the spectacle, and advised the Committee of Ministers to stop the disastrous expulsions. But the blow had been dealt. By the beginning of 1825 the majority of rural Jews had been expatriated, and turned out into the wide world.
The question naturally arises, whether this human holocaust was required in the interest of the country. The Government itself gave the answer twelve years later—when it was too late.
As far as White Russia is concerned—quoth the Council of State in 1835—experience has not justified our anticipations of the usefulness of the indicated measure [the expulsion from the villages]. Twelve years have passed since it was carried into effect, but from the data collected in the Department of Law it is quite manifest, that, while it has ruined the Jews, it does not in the least seem to have improved the condition of the villagers.
The White Russian orgy of destruction was merely the prelude to a new legislative campaign against the Jews. Almost simultaneously with the ukase ordering the expulsion of the Jews from the villages, another ukase was issued on May 1, 1823, calling for the establishment of a new "Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews." The Committee, which included among its members the Ministers of Interior, Finance, Justice, Ecclesiastic Affairs, and Public Instruction, was intrusted with a very comprehensive piece of work—
to examine the enactments concerning Jews passed up to date and point out the way in which their presence in the country might be rendered more comfortable and useful, also what obligations they are to assume towards the Government; in a word, to indicate all that may contribute towards the amelioration of the civil status of this people.
In these soft-spoken terms was couched the public function of the Committee. But its secret function, which later revealed itself in action, is correctly defined in the frank admission of the Committee of Ministers in its report of 1829: "At the very establishment of the Jewish Committee one of the obligations imposed upon it was to devise ways and means looking generally towards the reduction of the number of Jews in the monarchy." This was evidently what "the amelioration of the civil status" of the Jews amounted to. The new Committee was instructed to finish its work by the beginning of 1824, but its reactionary activity was not fully unfolded until the following reign.
In the meantime the legal machinery did not remain idle. The process of the territorial compression of Jews went on as before. To guard the western frontier of the monarchy against smuggling, it was decided, at the suggestion of the Administrator of the Kingdom of Poland, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, to expel the Jews from the border zone. Two ukases were issued in 1825 ordering the removal of all the Jews residing outside the cities within fifty versts from the frontier, with the exception of those owning immovable property. Once again human beings were hurled from their lifelong domiciles, when a rational policy would have been content with instituting a closer watch. To prevent the undesirable "multiplication of Jews" in the border Governments, Jewish emigrants from neighboring countries, particularly from Austria, were forbidden to settle in Russia (1824).
Needless to say, the Governments of the interior, where the Jews could sojourn only temporarily, and where they had to produce gubernatorial passports, like foreigners, were carefully guarded against the invasion of the residents of the Pale. On his last trip from St. Petersburg to Southern Russia in September, 1825, Alexander I. espied, in a little village near Luga,[276] a Jewish family, which was engaged in making tin-plate, and he at once inquired "on what ground" it lived there. The Governor of St. Petersburg was frightened, and gave orders to have the family deported immediately from the district, to censure the local ispravnik[277] and to warn the gubernatorial authorities, "that the rules concerning the Jews must be observed with all possible stringency."
5. The Russian Revolutionaries and the Jews