The Empire of Muscovy, shut off from Western Europe by a Chinese—or, more correctly, Byzantine—wall, maintained during the sixteenth century its attitude of utmost prejudice towards the Jews, and refused to admit them into its borders. This prejudice was part of the general disfavor with which the Russian people of that period, imbued as it was with the traditions of Tataric-Byzantine culture, looked upon foreigners or "infidels." But the prejudice against the Jews was fed, in addition, from a specific source. The recollection of the "Judaizing heresy" which had struck terror to the hearts of the pious Muscovites at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century[208] had not yet died out. The Jews were regarded as dangerous magicians and seducers, superstitious rumors ascribing all possible crimes to them. The ambassador of the Muscovite Grand Duke, Basil III., at Rome, observed in 1526 to the Italian scholar Paolo Giovio: "The Muscovite people dread no one more than the Jews, and do not admit them into their borders."
Jewish merchants of Poland and Lithuania visited occasionally, in connection with their business affairs, the border city Smolensk, but they had no permanent residence there. From time to time they would carry their goods even into the capital, Moscow, although such daring did not always pass unpunished. About 1545 the goods imported by Jewish merchants from Brest-Litovsk to Moscow were burned there, on which occasion the Muscovite ambassador called the attention of the Polish Government to the fact that the Jews had imported forbidden merchandise to Russia, though they had not even the right to travel thither. In 1550 the Polish King Sigismund Augustus addressed a "charter" to Tzar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV.), demanding the admission of Lithuanian Jews into Russia for business purposes, by virtue of the former commercial treaties between the two countries. Ivan IV. rejected this demand in resolute terms:
It is not convenient to allow Jews to come with their goods to Russia, since many evils result from them. For they import poisonous herbs [medicines] into our realm, and lead astray the Russians from Christianity. Therefore he, the [Polish] King, should no more write about these Jews.
Ivan the Terrible soon had occasion to demonstrate concretely that he was not inclined to tolerate Jews in his domains. When, in 1563, the Russian troops occupied the Polish border city Polotzk,[209] the Tzar gave orders to have all local Jews converted to the Greek Orthodox faith, and those who refused baptism drowned in the Dvina. His attitude towards the Poles was more indulgent. He contented himself in their case with taking them captive and demolishing their churches. Fortunately a few years later, in 1579, Polotzk was restored to Poland through the bravery of Stephen Batory, the protector of the Jews.
These primitive forms of denominational politics continued for a long time to prevail in Muscovy. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania managed, though illegally, to visit the capital in the interest of their business. With the influx of Poles into Moscow during the so-called "period of unrest," the interregnum preceding the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613, a goodly number of Jews penetrated into Russia. The Muscovites became alarmed, and their apprehensions found expression in 1610, when the noblemen of Moscow were conducting negotiations with Poland looking to the election of the Polish Crown Prince Vladislav to the Russian throne. An agreement was concluded, consisting of twenty clauses, setting forth the conditions on which the noblemen were willing to vote for Vladislav. The fourth clause of this agreement runs as follows:
No churches or temples of the Latin or any other faith shall be allowed in Russia. No one shall be induced to adopt the Roman or any other religion, and the Jews shall not be allowed to enter the Muscovite Empire either on business or in connection with any other affairs.
In these circumstances the Jews were deprived of all opportunity to develop commercial life in the reactionary Empire. Forty years later this same Empire pushed its way into the territories of Poland and Lithuania, which were populated by Jews, and the policy of Muscovy was destined to reveal its creative genius in the domain of the Jewish question.
The first contact of the Muscovite Empire with large Jewish masses took place when the province of Little Russia was annexed by Tzar Alexis Michaelovich in 1654. When the Russian troops, allied with the Cossacks, overran White Russia, Lithuania, and the Ukraina, they were struck by the undreamed-of spectacle of cities in which entire quarters were populated by Jews, a strange people about which the unenlightened Muscovites knew nothing except that once upon a time they had crucified Christ, and for this reason were not allowed to enter pious, Greek Orthodox Russia. Alexis Michaelovich and his military commanders began after their own fashion to play the masters in the temporarily occupied Polish provinces. In Vilna and Moghilev the Jews were murdered, and those who survived were expelled. In Vitebsk the Jews were made prisoners of war, while in other cities they were assaulted and plundered.[210]
As a result the Muscovite Empire soon found within its precincts a strangely composed Jewish population, consisting of prisoners of war, who had been carried off principally from the border towns of the Government of Moghilev, and had been deported to the central provinces of Russia, and in some cases even as far as Siberia. By the Peace of Andrusovo, concluded in 1667 between Russia and Poland, the prisoners of war of both countries were given their freedom, but the captive Jews were allowed to remain in Muscovy. These Jews formed the nucleus of a small Jewish colony in Moscow, which grew up gradually, and in which occasionally even converts were to be found. It seems that with the aid of these "legal" Jewish residents other "illegal" Jews, from the neighboring regions of Lithuania and White Russia, managed to penetrate to Moscow. A few Jewish merchants, particularly those trading in cloth, succeeded in obtaining an official permit, the so-called "red ticket," to visit the capital. However, in 1676 the prohibition against Jews entering Moscow was renewed. Only in the portion of the Ukraina which had been annexed by Russia, in the provinces of Chernigov and Poltava, and a part of the province of Kiev, there could still be found small groups of Jews who had survived the Cossack massacres of 1648. Moreover, from the Polish section of the Ukraina, Jews occasionally came on business into these Cossack districts, notwithstanding the fact that, according to Russian law, the Jews were barred from residing within the borders of Little Russia.