History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Vol. 1-3). Dubnow Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ became a second time the victims of typical Russian pogroms, the outgrowth of national and caste antagonism, which was rending Poland in twain. The year 1768 was a miniature copy of the year 1648. A commonwealth in which for many centuries the relationship between the various groups of citizens was determined by mutual hatred, could not expect to survive as an independent political organism. A country in which the nobility despised the gentry, and both looked down with contempt upon the calling of the merchant and the burgher, and enslaved the peasant, in which the Catholic clergy was imbued with hatred against the professors of all other creeds, in which the urban population persecuted the Jews as business rivals, and the peasants were filled with bitterness against both the higher and the lower orders—such a country was bound to perish. And Poland did perish.

The first partition of Poland took place in 1772, transferring the Polish border provinces into the hands of the three neighboring countries, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Russia received the southwestern border province: the larger part of White Russia, the present Governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev. Austria took the southwestern region: a part of present-day Galicia, with a strip of Podolia. Prussia seized Pomerania and a part of Great Poland, constituting the present province of Posen. The annexed provinces constituted nearly a third of Polish territory, with a population of three millions, comprising a quarter of a million Jews.170 The great Jewish center in Poland enters into the chaotic "partitional period" (1772–1815). Out of this chaos there gradually emerges a new Jewish center of the Diaspora—that of Russia.

      FOOTNOTES:

120 [Pronounced Ookraïna. The spelling "Ukraine" is less correct. The meaning of the word is "border," "frontier."]

121 [The author refers to the compulsory establishment of the so-called Uniat Church, which follows the rites and traditions of the Greek Orthodox faith, but submits at the same time to the jurisdiction of the Roman See. The Uniat Church is still largely represented in Eastern Galicia among the Ruthenians.]

122 [A contemptuous nickname for Pole.]

123 [The word "Cossack," in Russian, Kazak (with the accent on the last syllable), is derived from the Tataric. "Cossackdom"—says Kostomarov, in his Russian standard work on the Cossack uprising (Bogdan Khmelnitzki, i. p. 5)—"is undoubtedly of Tataric origin, and so is the very name Kozak, which in Tataric means 'vagrant,' 'free warrior,' 'rider.'" Peter Kropotkin (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, vii. 218) similarly derives the word from Turki Kuzzãk, "adventurer," "freebooter."]

124 [Derived from the German word Hauptmann.]

125 [From the Russian word Za porogi, meaning "beyond the Falls" (scil. of the Dnieper).]

126 [Literally, "cutting," i.e. the cutting of a forest. Originally the Cossacks entered those regions as colonists and pioneers.]

127 According to legend, the chief of the district had pillaged Khmelnitzki's tent, carried off his wife, and flogged his son to death.

128 [In Polish, Pokucie, name of a region in the southeast of the Polish Empire, between Hungary and the Bukowina. Its capital was the Galician city Kolomea.]

129 The clause in question runs as follows: "The Jews, even as they formerly were residents and arendars on the estates of his Royal Majesty, as well as on the estates of the Shlakhta, shall equally be so in the future."

130 [See p. 98, n. 2.]

131 [Allusion to Amos v. 19.]

132 ["Mire of the Deep," from Ps. lxix. 3.—The Hebrew word Yeven is a play on Yavan, "Greek," a term generally applied to the Greek Orthodox.]

133 See p. 130.

134 ["Scroll of Darkness" (comp. Amos iv. 13), with a clever allusion to the similarly sounding words in Zech. v. 1.]

135 [In Polish Szczebrzeszyn, a town in the region of Lublin.]

136 ["Troublous Times," allusion to Dan. ix. 25.]

137 ["Door of Repentance."]

138 [See p. 98, n. 1.]

139 [I.e. son of Mark, or Mordecai. On "syndics" see p. 111, n. 2.]

140 [Twenty per cent was the legalized rate of interest in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. See Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, p. 242.]

141 We quote the following in abbreviated form. [For the complete text see the article cited in the next note.]

142 From the Hebrew text it is not clear whether they offered themselves voluntarily as victims, or whether they were picked out by others. According to the local tradition in Ruzhany, the former was the case. [See Dubnow in the Russian Jewish monthly Voskhod, July, 1903, p. 19, n. 1.]

143 The corresponding word in Hebrew (שלומים), which is marked with dots in the original, represents the year of the event: [5]420 aera mundi, which equals 1659 C. E.

144 I.e. they tried to convert the martyrs to Catholicism.

145 [Allusion to Judges ix. 9, where the English version translates differently. The Hebrew word for "tree" also signifies "wood," and is used in polemic literature for "cross."]

146 [See p. 91, n. 1.]

147 [See p. 96, n. 1.]

148 [The Senate formed the upper chamber of the Polish parliament.]

149 In СКАЧАТЬ