Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii

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СКАЧАТЬ (1861–62) and Den' (The Day, 1869–71),³⁵ were all published there. However, Petersburg would soon replace Odessa as Russia's “Jewish capital.” From 1860 to 1910, twenty-one of the thirty-nine Russian-language Jewish journals and newspapers were published in Petersburg, compared to only seven in Odessa and three in Vilna. Among these were the weekly Rassvet (Dawn, 1879–83) and the monthly Voskhod (Sunrise).³⁶ As early as the 1850s, Petersburg was also to serve as the center of Jewish politics, where the shtadlanut, the representatives to the government, were located. Among the most prominent of these were members of the Gintsburg family, who had been given the title of baron by the Duke Gessen-Darshtadtskii. The founder of this dynasty was Evzel Gintsburg, and his son Goratsii followed in his footsteps.³⁷

      The Russian government was determined to expand the number of Russian Jews studying in secular schools and universities. In 1863, the government set aside 24,000 rubles in subsidies for Jewish students, which were funded by taxes levied on Jews. The educational reforms of 1864 allowed children of “all social status and faiths” to pursue education, which greatly increased the number of Jews enrolled. In 1865, the number of Jews enrolled in gimnaziums was 990 (3.3 percent of all students), by 1870 the number was 2,045 (5.6 percent), and in 1880 the number reached 7,004 (12 percent). In certain areas, such as Odessa and Vilna educational districts, the proportion was naturally much higher. The number of Jews enrolled in universities was 129 (3.2 percent) in 1865, while in 1881 it had grown to 783 (8.8 percent). The rapid growth in numbers led the government to discontinue the stipend program in 1875.³⁸

      Although the Russian government was concerned with economic growth, it also sought to limit the role of foreigners and non-Russians in the domestic economy. The reforms of the 1860s, though they gave all subjects of the Empire the right to pursue education, simultaneously forbid Jewish merchants from registering in guilds outside of the Pale of Settlement.³⁹

      This dual approach to policy can be observed in the laws passed regarding the formation of corporations. A series of laws passed in the 1870s and 1880s had the professed goal of “limiting the ownership of land in certain locations and in certain spheres of industry from invasive elements.” Among the “invasive elements” were foreign subjects, Poles, and Jews. In the 1860s, both Poles and Jews were forbidden from owning land in certain areas, such as the Vilna and Kiev gubernias. In 1872, in order to ensure compliance with these same laws, sugar producers were forbidden from owning more than 200 desiatins of land in the southwest territories.⁴⁰ If a corporation had already succeeded in acquiring additional land, then the stock would have to be held in the individual's own name, and stockholders could not be from amongst the “undesirable elements.” May 22, 1880 saw the passage of a law that forbade Jews from obtaining land in the Don Cossack Oblast (Oblast Voiska Donskogo), which was intended to ensure that Jews would not occupy the territory that had been transferred from the Pale of Settlement to the jurisdiction of the Don Cossacks. On May 3, 1882, Jews were forbidden from acquiring or managing properties outside of urban areas. By all appearances, many tried to circumvent the prohibition, which eventually led to government officials demanding in May of 1892 that corporations owning land in rural areas within the Pale of Settlement refrain from allowing Jews to control or manage such properties. These were hardly the only discriminatory laws.⁴¹

      Jews also played an important role in the economic and social life of Kiev, and formed a significant portion of the Kiev stock market committee by the end of the nineteenth century. On the initiative of the sugar magnate Lazar Brodskii and his brother Lev, a group of university professors, engineers, and industrialists met with the goal of establishing a polytechnical institute in Kiev. At the time, the quickly developing industrial sphere was facing a dearth of technical specialists. The campaign resulted in the founding of the Kiev Polytechnical Institute in honor of Alexander II, with half of the funds coming from government sources, while the other half was collected by Brodskii and the Ukrainian sugar magnate N. A. Tereshchenko.⁴²

      Even in Moscow, the citadel of the Old Believer merchants who were often hostile to “foreign” competition, there were 129 Jewish merchants registered in the First Guild out of 740 members (of which 436 were Russian, 92 of foreign citizenship, and 87 belonged to other ethnic groups). The number of Jewish merchants in Moscow would continue to grow, although many registered as merchants only in order to escape the Pale of Settlement and to gain access to other privileges. By 1911, there were 159 Jewish merchants registered in Moscow's First Guild, of which approximately 35 had registered “for the title.”⁴³

      In the late 1870s and early 1880s, the government seemed determined to continue its mission of “emancipating” the Jewish population. The Minister of Internal Affairs, L. S. Makov, sent a circular to all Governors General on April 3, 1880, stating that Jews who had illegally settled in areas closed to them were not to be forcibly removed. In what was a common pattern for the period, another, secret circular was sent three days later regarding the investigation of P. A. Cherevin, who was charged with the task of examining the activities of the mythological “cosmopolitan Jewish kahal.” The circular stated, “the head of the Third Bureau of his Imperial Majesty informed us that according to information received, nearly all of the Jewish capitalists have joined this organization, which pursues goals that are quite harmful to the Christian population, that they contribute large and small sums to the kahal's organization, and that they even show material support to revolutionary parties.”⁴⁴ The circular had little weight or authority behind it, though it is of some historical interest. Its author was a member of the inner circle of the future Alexander III, and it is thus indicative of the mentality of a certain part of the upper echelons of the Russian bureaucracy.

      The year 1881 marked a watershed in the history of the Russian Jewry. After the assassination of Alexander II in March of 1881, pogroms began in the south and southwestern regions of the Empire and continued with occasional interruptions until 1884. Pogroms against the Jews had occurred earlier in Russia's history, but they had often resulted from economic competition between the Jews and Greeks in Odessa, and had been limited to that area.⁴⁵ The government took a series of measures aimed at stopping the pogroms, but eventually laid responsibility at the feet of the Russian Jews themselves, claiming the riots to be a result of the “abnormal relations between the native populace and the Jewish population of certain gubernias” (i.e., as a result of the Jews' “exploitation” of the native populace). The conservative and Slavophile press (as well as certain official publications) either welcomed or sought to justify the pogroms. Populist revolutionaries even attempted to use the pogroms as a means to instigate a revolt.⁴⁶

      On May 3, 1882, the Russian government enacted the “Temporary Laws Regarding Jews,” which introduced a number of restrictions, as well as measures aimed at preventing further pogroms. For all intents and purposes, the Jewish population were accused of provoking the pogroms through their “exploitation” of the Christian population. At the same time, it should be noted that the government actually did want the pogroms to come to an end, fearing that the pogroms would not be limited to the Jewish population.⁴⁷ According to the new measures, Jews were forbidden to live outside of urban areas, and prohibited from owning or leasing land.⁴⁸ It should also be noted that these restrictions were largely not enforced in the first half of the 1880s, mainly due to opposition from the Ministry of Finance.

      In 1887, the Ministry of Education, with I. D. Delianov at its head, introduced quotas on the number of Jews allowed to enroll at educational institutes (10 percent within the Pale, 5 percent outside of the Pale, and 3 percent in the capitals). Enforcement of these quotas was mostly left to the discretion of the administration of the institution in question. In addition, soon after Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich was appointed to the post of Governor General of Moscow in the beginning of 1891, laws were enacted demanding the forced deportation of Jewish craftsmen and veterans from the time of Nicholas's reign from Moscow and the surrounding areas. In the years 1891–92 nearly 20,000 Jews were forced to leave.⁴⁹

      Jews responded to this crisis by leaving Russia. For the next thirty years, large СКАЧАТЬ