RUSSIAN
JEWRY |
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MAP OF THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT |
Let's first look at nineteenth century
Russia, a time and place that many of those we have known and loved were born
into...In the 1830s there were only six thousand
Jews living in the United States. Most of them were native-born and could speak
English. Within the next fifty years, this number would grow to 250,000. By
1900, the Jewish population would grow to one million, and by 1924, four million
Jews were living in the United States. What accounted for this great increase?
What were the forces that compelled so many Jews, especially those living in
Central and Eastern Europe, to leave their homeland? How did they manage to
travel such long distances, cross borders and make it in time to board the ship that would take most of them
on their first ocean voyage? What were the conditions that they had to suffer
through on this voyage to their new land? What did our immigrant ancestors have to go through
in order to gain official entry to this new land, once they arrived at its
shores? When they were allowed to granted permission to enter, where did they first settle,
ready to begin life anew, and what
was their daily life like? Was it a better life than the one they left?
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We can find many of these answers by reading books (and asking
questions), but each immigrant had their own experiences that formed
their own unique story. We can try to envision what it was like to
live in Russia, in the Pale of Settlement, in the ghettos of the
late nineteenth century, but most of us can never truly know or
comprehend fully the conditions that our ancestors had to suffer
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Stories from the Shtetl:
Srul Gniazdowicz, was born in the mid 1860s. Like many of
the men in his extended family, he worked as a 'milarz,' which is the
Polish word for 'miller.' They all lived in a typical small shtetl that
surrounded a larger town. The flour miller served a very important
function in the community, as they were the ones who would grow such
grains as wheat and rye in their fields. These grains were used to make
the bread that was badly needed to feed and nourish a growing population.
Most of the Gniazdowicz family members chose to remain in Poland rather
than emigrate, and presumably died in the Shoah.
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It is best to remember that
relatively little is known about the lives of our ancestors who lived during the
nineteenth century in Russia. We perhaps can only speculate on the actual
reasons why they decided to emigrate. They are no longer with us, and if we have
no other way of learning the facts that went into them making their decision,
all we can do is try to learn about the state of affairs in Russia during the
time they lived there. Many left for other countries; others decided to stay
where they were. They each saw their situation in their own unique way, whether
rightly or wrongly. We can only try to imagine a world completely different from
the ones in which we live and, by gaining knowledge, can perhaps understand what
made our ancestors who they were, and what dreams they might have had when they
first disembarked from ship to foreign soil. First, we must begin by looking
back into Russian history, beginning with the early 1800s. |
The Czars and the Jews
At the start of the nineteenth
century, Russia was very similar to Europe during the Middle Ages. They still
operated under a feudal system and had serfs, who worked like the slaves once
did in the United States. They made up a large portion of the Russian
population. The Czars (also spelled "Tsars"), those who ruled Russia, were responsible for much that
befell the Jewish population there, and were all part of the Romanov family that ruled Russia by
"divine right."
A very small but
influential minority of nobilities, or gentry controlled power in the empire, and they owned the large tracts
of land that the serfs worked on.
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NICHOLAS I (1825-1855)
In 1835 Czar Nicholas I created a giant, sprawling
ghetto which was named the "Pale of Settlement." This was an area that was
formed by combining regions of what are now Lithuania, Poland, and the western and southern
provinces, along with Byelorussia (White Russia). Three million Jews were forced
to live within its borders until 1917, at which time the Bolshevik Revolution
finally upended the old regime and power structures.
Many restrictions were placed on the Jews by this czarist
government. Jews could not live in most rural areas and certain cities. They
were not allowed to work in agricultural jobs. They were relegated to work that
required unskilled or semiskilled labor, and most were forced to become minor
traders, storekeepers, peddlers, or artisans. They were not permitted to
construct synagogues near churches. They could not even use Hebrew in their
official documents.
photo:
Portrait by Franz Krüger of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, 1852. From
Wikipedia. |
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From 1827 until soon after the end of his reign in
1856, Nicholas I passed a law that allowed for the drafting of Jewish
boys who were as young as twelve years of age, six years younger than for
non-Jewish boys. They could be kept in the Russian army for as long as
twenty-five years. In actuality, Jewish boys as young as eight or nine years of
age were often conscripted into the army. The Russian Army was no place for the
Jew. There was little opportunity for the
Jewish soldier to advance in rank, and much pressure was placed on them to convert
to Russian Orthodoxy. Those that did convert, of course, fared much better than
those who did not.
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ALEXANDER II (1855-1881)
When Nicholas' son and successor Alexander
II took the reign of power in 1855, he showed that he was much different than
his father. He instituted many reforms that were favorable to the Jews, and relaxed some of the restrictions that his father had previously imposed. Poor
economic conditions still existed for many Jews, and most still lived in
poverty. Advances for Jews, though, were made only during the years of his reign. Jews
could now travel outside the Pale, and thus were exposed to new ideas, and
became "enlightened." They were now allowed to attend high schools and
universities, and when they did, performed very well.
Alexander II also reformed the military
and the judiciary system. He formed a system of representative institutions that
he hoped would lead to an all-Russian parliament.
On March 3, 1861, Czar Alexander II freed
more than fifty million serfs with his "Emancipation Edict," much like Abraham
Lincoln did just eighteen months later when he signed the "Emancipation
Proclamation." The Czar did not do this from some idealistic bent, but more for
practical reasons. Russia had very much wanted to partake in the new Industrial
Revolution that had begun in the Midlands in England and was spreading all
throughout the European continent and the United States. In order to do this,
serfdom had to be abolished because it was a very inefficient system. It created
a deficiency of capital and a lack of well-skilled labor.
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Photo
of Tsar Alexander II by J. Bajetti. 1880
From Wikipedia. |
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The newly freed serfs were supposed to receive a plot of land
from the gentry, who had owned the land and were to be
compensated for their loss. This plan, however, was poorly thought out and
poorly executed, and things did not work out to either's benefit. There
was no crop rotation that would have kept the land more fertile, and poor
fertilization techniques were used. Over time, the land that was to feed a large
nation of people could not produce enough food for all and many starved. The
masses, which had been increasing in number, became discontent. The serfs, because of the above reasons, could not
fully feed the nation, let alone their own families. This meant that they could
not earn enough money to pay the taxes that were imposed upon them. All of this
would create a great deal of unrest in the country and would help instigate the eventual uprising among the Russian peasantry,
and thus help propagate the Russian Revolution of 1917.
When the Industrial Revolution finally
took root in Russia, more people prospered and the middle class grew. This was
at the expense of the gentry who once owned most all the land, whose numbers
lessened. The laborers, however, were not paid well, nor were they
well skilled. The advancements that would have led to greater factory production
were not there, as it had been in Europe and the United States.
The good fortune that improved the lives of the Jews under Alexander II all but disappeared the day that a terrorist bomb
killed the Czar in March 1881. There was a feeling that he was killed by a group
of revolutionaries, secretly sponsored by a clandestine group within the
government. The successor to Alexander II, who would now become the head of the Russian regime, was called Alexander III.
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ALEXANDER III (1881-1894)
Alexander III was neither the benefactor
nor emancipator that his predecessor was. He was greatly influenced by his
advisor Konstantin Pobiendonostzev, his former teacher from his boyhood days.
Pobiendonostzev was the official lay leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. His
influence on the Czar was great, and he has been quoted as having said:
"One-third [of the Jews] should emigrate, one-third become Christianized, and
one-third should perish." This obviously bode poorly for the Jews who, once
again as throughout history, would be made the scapegoat for the ills within
Russian society, in order to deflect criticism from the poor decisions or
judgments of others.
photo: Ivan Kramskoi
(1837-1887) oil on canvas painting Portrait of Alexander III (1845-1894), the
Russian Tsar. 1886. From Wikipedia. |
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During the year that followed the
assassination of Alexander II, the Jews were beset by a series of pogroms that
were carried out in more than two hundred communities. This resulted in many
houses being burned down, leaving many Jews both homeless and destitute. During these
wanton acts of violence, women were raped and others were
robbed or killed. It has been suggested that the Russian government actually
endorsed and encouraged such actions in hopes of diverting the revolutionary
ferment that was sweeping through a hungry nation. "Barefoot brigades" as they
were called, were made up of the proletariat middle class and peasants. They
would rampage through Jewish communities, plundering synagogues, burning houses,
until Russian troops finally decided to quell the rioting. Later, in December
1881, the Jewish community of Warsaw was ravaged. This time there were 20,000
Jews that were made homeless, and many of them fled and sought refuge in neighboring Galicia, a region that had
been part of Poland but at the time was divided up and given to the Austrian Habsburg
Empire.
What was said about the Jews that made
others turn against them so horrifically? Why were the Jews singled out for such
outrages? The Jews were a foreign people. They kept to themselves and spoke a
different language. Jewish businessmen, who were often in contact with the
non-Jewish peasants, were accused of taking advantage of them and oppressing
them. They were made the enemies of the Russian people. The Russian Orthodoxy
spread the rumor that the Jews were the killers of Christ. They were supposed to
be using the blood of
Christian children in their religious rites and to make matzoh.
All of this hatred and
violence forced more than one-third of the Russian Jews to emigrate, in fear for
their lives. More than ninety percent of them immigrated to the United States,
where they felt there was a good opportunity to be free of persecution and have
a chance for advancement. Also, many Jews from the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and Romania, where life had been as bad as it was for Jews in the Pale, followed
the emigration trail. In 1881, 13,000 Jews left Russia for the U.S., an amount
almost equal to the number that had done so over the previous decade.
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This is not to say that the Jews of Eastern Europe had not been emigrating for many years, even before Alexander III took the reign of power. More than
65,000 Jews had already said goodbye to Russia and Galicia, with about sixty
percent immigrating to the United States. Between the years of 1881, the year
that Alexander III took power, and 1890, 240,000 Jews left Russia and came to
live in the United States.
As mentioned previously, the Jews of the Pale would suffer a great
deal in 1882, the year following the assassination of Czar Alexander II. In
order to "protect" the native citizenry from falling victim to the
"dangerous" Jewish people, Czar Alexander III invoked the "May Laws," which was
supposed to have been only a temporary measure, but lasted until 1917. Jews were now
forbidden to live in "villages," even if these villages existed within the Pale
of Settlement. Jews could not rent land (all leases were cancelled) nor could
they buy land. This forced Jews by the hundreds of thousands to leave these
villages and head to the cities, having now to find work within the framework of
the poorly managed Russian Industrial Revolution.
Much devastation occurred to the Jews until the reign of Alexander III ended.
There were many outbreaks of violence, still spurred on by a corrupt government,
and more than 30,000 Jewish families in the northwest provinces fell victim to
rioting. In 1885, more laws were enacted that affected and reversed the previous
access that the Jews had to high schools and universities. Within his reign, all
the liberal policies, and all the stringent Anti-Jewish laws that had been
relaxed under his predecessor Alexander II, had disappeared.
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NICHOLAS II (1894-1917)
Nicholas II ruled
from 1894 until he abdicated in 1917. He reigned in a time when there was
tremendous unrest and political upheaval in Russia. The military fell out of his
control. All of this chaos ended with the Russian Revolution in 1917 when,
forced to abdicate, he and his family members were imprisoned and eventually
murdered by the Bolsheviks on 17 July 1918. The death of Czar Nicholas II marked
the demise of the Romanov dynasty.
As for his relationship
with the Jews, his administration published anti-Semitic literature that urged
his citizens to riot in parts of the Russian Pale of Settlement. Because of this
propaganda, pogroms
against the Jews occurred. The Minister of Interior paid a Kishinev newspaper to
print such anti-Semitic propaganda (resulting in the infamous Kishinev pogrom).
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Jews were further accused of seeking to
undermine the Czarist government. This too encouraged the populace to riot and
form pogroms against the Jews, especially after the Russians lost the war....
Photo
taken by A. A. Pasetti of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, near age 30, at St.
Petersburg, Russia, 1898. From
Wikipedia. |
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FAMILY MATTERS
When you consider all
of what befell the Jews during that period of Russian history, you must realize
that this was a precursor of what was to come. Most of our families had at least
spent part of their lives there, either during the last quarter of the
nineteenth or the first quarter of the twentieth century. There were many
threats from near and far that gave them cause to be gravely concerned. Imagine
reading the local newspaper and hearing of all the violence that had been
occurring against their own elsewhere, wondering if they would be next. Some
felt a false sense of security, perhaps feeling that violence against the Jews
only occurred in the bigger cities. Others believed that it was time to escape
from their life of restrictions and feelings of despair, so they sought to
travel to a land where they and their families could have a better life, free
from religious and economic persecution. Such a journey would be an arduous one,
but hundreds of thousands dared to try....
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