CHAPTER IX
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE RUSSIAN RÉGIME
1. The Jewish Policy of Catherine II. (1772-1796)
The quarantine which Russia, prior to Catherine II., had established for the "enemies of Christ," was broken through in 1772 by the first partition of Poland. At one stroke the number of Russian subjects was swelled by the huge Jewish masses of White Russia. The Russian Empire was augmented by a new province adjoining its central possessions, and together with the new region and its variegated population it acquired hundreds of thousands of subjects of the kind it had hitherto ruthlessly driven beyond its borders.
What was to be done with the unwelcome heritage bequeathed by Poland? The primitive policy of an Elizabeth Petrovna might have dictated some barbarous measure, such as the wholesale expulsion of the Jews from the newly-acquired territory. But the statesmanlike intellect of a Catherine could not, during the formulation of the liberal "Instructions,"[234] admit such barbarism, which moreover would have been incompatible with the new pledges the Russian Government had found it necessary to give to the heterogeneous population of White Russia at the time of annexation. In the "Placard" issued on this occasion by Count Chernyshev, the first Governor-General of White Russia, all residents, "of whatever birth and calling," were "solemnly assured by the sacred name and word of the Empress," that their religious liberty as well as their personal rights, and the privileges attaching to property and estate, would remain inviolate.
This "assurance" included the Jews, though not without qualification, as is shown by this passage:
From the aforesaid solemn assurance of the free exercise of religion and the inviolability of property for one and all, it follows of itself that also the Jewish communities residing in the cities and territories now incorporated into the Russian Empire will be left in the enjoyment of all those liberties which they possess at present, in accordance with the [Russian] law and [their own] property. For the humaneness of her Imperial Majesty will not allow her to exclude the Jews alone from the grace vouchsafed to all and from the future prosperity under her beneficent rule, so long as they on their part shall live in due obedience as faithful subjects, and shall limit themselves to the pursuit of genuine trade and commerce according to their callings.
To be sure, the Jews, in contradistinction to the rest of the population, are promised the high Imperial favor on condition of "due obedience." Yet the inviolability of their former rights was solemnly guaranteed, and Russian politics had henceforward to be guided by it.
Immediately on the annexation of the new province a general census was ordered. According to the testimony of a contemporary, the number of Jews in White Russia was found to amount to over forty thousand families, about two hundred thousand souls. An ukase of 1772 imposed upon them a per capita tax of one rubel (50c.). The annexed territory was divided into two Governments, those of Moghilev and Polotzk, or, as it is called at present, Vitebsk. In the interest of the regular collection of taxes, the administration from the very beginning gave instructions "to have all Jews affiliate with the Kahals and to institute such [Kahals] as the governors may suggest or as necessity for them may arise."
The problems connected with the inner organization of the Jews were of a more complicated character. Far-reaching changes were taking place at that time in the provincial and the social organization of the Russian Empire. In 1775 was promulgated the "Regulation Concerning the Governments."[235] In 1785 was issued the "Act Concerning Municipal Administration,"[236] and the authorities were confronted by an alternative: either to place the Jews under the general laws, according to the estate to which they belonged (in the cities the mercantile class, the burghers, and the trade-unions), or, in view of their peculiar conditions of life and the Kahal autonomy inherited from Poland, allow them to retain their own institutions as part of their communal and spiritual self-government. It was a difficult problem, and Russian legislation at first wavered between these two ways of solving it, with the result that matters became muddled. The interference of the local administration and the old rivalry among the various estates made confusion worse confounded.