[Footnote 1: Popularly known by his middle name as Yozel.]
Were—the petitioners declare—the new generation which has been brought up in the spirit and under the control of the Government, were the higher mercantile class which for many years has diffused life, activity, and wealth in the land, were the conscientious artisans who earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, to receive from the Government, as a mark of distinction, larger rights than those who have done nothing to attest their well-meaningness, usefulness, and industry, then the whole Jewish people, seeing that these few favored ones are the object of the Government's righteousness and benevolence and models of what it desires the Jews to become, would joyfully hasten to attain the goal marked out by the Government. Our present petition, therefore, is to the effect that our gracious sovereign may bestow his kindness upon us, and, by distinguishing the grain from the chaff, may be pleased to accord a few moderate privileges to the most educated among us, to wit:
1. "Equal rights with the other (Russian) subjects or with the Karaite Jews [1] to the educated and well-deserving Jews who possess the title of Honorary Citizens, to the merchants affiliated for a number of years with the first or second guild and distinguished by their business integrity, to the soldiers who have served irreproachably in the army."
2. The right of residence outside the Pale of Settlement "to the best among the artisans" who possess laudatory certificates from the trade-unions. The privileges thus accorded to "the best among us" will help to realize the consummation of the Government "that the sharply marked traits which distinguish the Jews from the native Russians should be levelled, and that the Jews should in their way of thinking and acting become akin to the latter." Once placed outside their secluded "Pale," the Jews "will succeed in adopting from the genuine Russians the praise-worthy qualities, by which they are distinguished, and the striving for culture and useful endeavor will become universal."
[Footnote 1: On the emancipation of the Karaites see Vol. I, p. 318.]
The petition reflects the humiliating attitude of men who were standing on the boundary line between slavery and freedom, whose cast of mind had been formed under the régime of oppression and caprice. Pointing to the example of the West where the bestowal of equal rights had contributed to the success of Jewish assimilation, the St. Petersburg petitioners were not even courageous enough to demand equal rights as the price of assimilation, and professed, perhaps from diplomatic considerations, to content themselves with miserable crumbs of rights and privileges for "the best among us." They failed to realize the meanness of their suggestion to divide a nation into best and worst, into those worthy of a human existence and those unworthy of it.
3. THE EXTENSION OF THE RIGHT OF RESIDENCE
After some wavering, the Government decided to adopt the method of "picking" the best. The intention of the authorities was to apply the gradual relaxation of Jewish rightlessness not to groups of restrictions, but to groups of persons. The Government entered upon the scheme of abolishing or alleviating certain restrictions not for the whole Jewish population but merely for a few "useful" sections within it. Three such sections were marked off from the rest: merchants of the first guild, university graduates, and incorporated artisans.
The resuscitated "Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews" [1] displayed an intense activity during that period (1856-1863). For fully two years (1857-1859) the question of granting the right of permanent residence in the interior governments to merchants of the first guild occupied the attention of that Committee and of the Council of State. The Committee had originally proposed to restrict this privilege by imposing a series of exceedingly onerous conditions. Thus, the merchants intending to settle in the Russian interior were to be required to have belonged to the first guild within the Pale for ten years previously, and they were to be allowed to leave the Pale only after securing in each case a permit from the Ministers of the Interior and of Finance. But the Council of State found that, circumscribed in this manner, the privilege would benefit only a negligible fraction of the Jewish merchant class—there were altogether one hundred and eight Jewish first-guild merchants within the Pale—and, therefore, considered it necessary to reduce the requirements for settling in the interior.
[Footnote 1: Compare above, p. 49.]