This treatment of the Jews did not improve even in the new Russia, in which Peter the Great, the Tzar-Reformer, "had broken through a window into Europe." True, Peter's reforms effected a change for the better in the attitude of the isolated, unenlightened Empire towards foreigners, but this change did not extend to the Jews. We know of no laws enacted during his reign which might illustrate the views of the new Government on the Jewish question. There is reason to believe that the Tzar, in allowing the former enactments against the admission of Jews into Russia to remain in force, took into account the primitive habits and prejudices of his people. A contemporary witness narrates that, in 1698, during Peter's stay in Holland, the Jews of Amsterdam requested the burgomaster Witsen to petition the Tzar concerning the admission of their coreligionists into Russia. After listening to the convincing arguments of Witsen, with whom he was on a very friendly footing, Peter replied:
My dear Witsen, you know the Jews, and you know their character and habits; you also know the Russians. I know both, and believe me, the time has not yet come to unite the two nationalities. Tell the Jews that I am obliged to them for their proposition, and that I realize how advantageous their services would be to me, but that I should have to pity them were they to live in the midst of the Russians.
Discounting the element of anecdote in this story, we may reasonably assume that Peter did not think it entirely harmless for the Jewish emigrants to settle among the benighted Russian masses, which had been accustomed to look upon the Jew as some kind of sea-monster, and as an infidel and Christ-killer. It is possible that Peter was prompted by similar considerations when he refused to admit the Jews into the central provinces of Russia.
However, from another source we learn that the "reformer" of Russia was not free from anti-Jewish prejudices, though they were not always of a religious nature.
While inviting skilful foreigners from all over—says the Russian historian Solovyov—Peter made a permanent exception but for one people—the Jews. "I prefer," he was wont to say, "to see in our midst nations professing Mohammedanism and paganism rather than Jews. They are rogues and cheats. It is my endeavor to eradicate evil and not to multiply it. They shall not be allowed either to live or to trade in Russia, whatever efforts they may make, and however much they may try to bribe those near me."
Of course, only a goodly dose of anti-Semitic bias could prompt a view which regards in this light the economic activity of the Jews among the Russian merchants, those same merchants who had of yore given expression to their commercial principles in the well-known Russian dictum, "If you don't cheat, you don't sell."
It is possible that Peter was not unfamiliar with anti-Jewish prejudices of a more objectionable kind. In 1702 reports were received in Moscow from Little Russia, that in the town of Gorodnya, near Chernigov, "the Jews had tortured a Christian to death, and had sent his blood to a number of Jews in Little Russian towns." The descendants of Khmelnitzki had evidently succeeded in importing into Russia what was at that time a fashionable article in Poland, the charge of ritual murder, and these obscure rumors may have affected injuriously the attitude of the Russian Tzar towards the Jews.
On the other hand, we are informed that, during the Russo-Swedish War, when the Russian army was operating on the Polish border territory, populated by Jews, Peter the Great refrained from repeating the pogrom experiments of his father, Alexis Michaelovich. In August, 1708, shortly before the celebrated battle at Lesnaya, in White Russia, he checked a military riot against the Jews which had been started in Mstislavl. A brief Hebrew entry in the local Kahal journal, or Pinkes, runs as follows:
On the twenty-eighth of Elul, in the year 5468, there came the Cæsar, who is called the Tzar of Muscovy, by the name of Peter, the son of Alexis, with his whole suite, an immense, numberless host. Robbers and murderers from among his people fell upon us, without his knowledge, and it almost came to bloodshed. And if the Lord Almighty had not put it into the heart of the Tzar to enter our synagogue in his own person, blood would certainly have been shed. It was only with the help of God that the Tzar saved us, and took revenge for us, by giving orders that thirteen men from among them [the rioters] be immediately hanged, and the land became quiet.
During the last years of his reign, Peter began to admit Jewish financial agents to his new capital, St. Petersburg. One of the most energetic financial agents at that time was the "court Jew" Lipman Levy, a banker from Courland, who attained to particular prominence under Peter's successors.