Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii
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why did some Jews continue to support the movement even after the Volunteer Army began to carry out pogroms? How did the Whites, who had begun the conflict with liberal political slogans, turn into a band of pogromists? What role was played by the liberal members of the Russian intelligentsia (the Kadets in particular), who had always stood for Jewish equality, but who in supporting the White movement tacitly approved of antisemitism? And finally, was there any real choice between the Reds and the Whites for Russia's Jews? Or to put the same question in a slightly different fashion, what was the “correct” course of action for Jews to take in a country that had been torn asunder by internal contradictions, a place where Jews were an undesired and unwanted minority?
In order to find answers to these questions we must refrain from looking at Jews as victims only; Jews were active participants in the political processes taking places on both sides of the front. It is also necessary to examine how the leadership on both sides related to the “Jewish question” within the context of the Revolution and the Civil War. Finally, the relationship between Jews and the leadership of the Whites must be examined, starting at the very origins of the anti-Bolshevik movement.
Only recently has the possibility of gaining an adequate understanding of the Civil War, particularly in regard to events that concerned the Jewish population, become truly feasible. This is largely due to two reasons. First of all, researchers now have access to sources and archival materials that were unavailable during the Soviet period. Second, it is only now that we are able to reevaluate these events within the larger context of the historical legacy of the twentieth century.
CHAPTER 1
Jews in the Russian Empire, 1772–1917
The Jews “arrived” in Russia without having to leave the comfort of their homes.1 As a result of the three Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795), the Russian Empire suddenly acquired the largest Jewish population of any country in the world. In the year 1800, 22.8 percent of the world's Jewish population resided within Russian territory, a number that was to increase throughout the nineteenth century (46.9 percent in 1834, 50.0 percent in 1850, 53.4 percent in 1880) before decreasing in the beginning of the twentieth century (39.0 percent in 1914). The number of Jews in the Russian Empire also continued to grow in absolute numbers. In 1772, Russia's annexation of the Belorussian territories raised the total of Russian Jews by some 60,000, with the Second and Third Partitions further increasing the number by 500,000, and an additional 300,000 coming under Russian sovereignty after the annexation of the Duchy of Warsaw. Other figures put the post-partition Jewish population of the Russian Empire at 800,000.2
However, the main cause of the increasing number of Jews within the Russian Empire was population growth. Two consequences of strict adherence to the religious norms of Judaism, which had a profound influence on Jewish family life and standards of hygiene, were high birth rates and low mortality rates. Thus, despite the massive emigration that occurred from 1881 to 1914, in 1914 nearly 5.25 million Jews were living in Russia. However, the Jewish population as a percentage of the total population of the Russian Empire, which had grown from 1.5 percent in 1800 to 4.8 percent in 1880, began to steadily decrease, reaching 3.1 percent in 1914. It is worth noting that these figures are approximate; other sources provide different numbers. Concrete data is only available from 1897 onwards, after the first Russian census was carried out. According to this data, 5,189,400 Jews lived in the Russian Empire in 1897, which was approximately 4 percent of Russia's population and 49 percent of the Jewish population of the world.3
At least at first, the Russian authorities' relationship towards the Jews was remarkable for its relative tolerance; in 1772 the first official address to the newly acquired territories stated that those living there, Jews included, were to have the same rights as Russian subjects. It could even be said that most of the Jews in question barely noticed their shifting from one state to another. However, new laws regarding Russia's newest territories were to bring both benefits and problems for their Jewish populations. As a result of Catherine II's reforms in the organizational structure of the Empire in 1778, Jews were included in the “trade and industrial” class. In accordance with Catherine's decree of January 7, 1780, Jews were allowed to register in the merchant class, and were allowed to participate in municipal organizations (such as the ratusha and magistrat) as equals with their Christian compatriots. At the same time, Jews who were not registered as merchants were included among the petty bourgeois (meshchanine), and forced to pay a higher head tax (podushnaia podat' ).
From 1785 onwards, the Charter to the Cities (Gramota na prava i vygody gorodam Rossiiskoi Imperii) allowed Jews to register in any of the six categories of urban inhabitants that were allowed to participate in the city Duma: “Whereas people of the Jewish faith, having already entered the Empire as equals according to the edicts of Her Majesty, are in every case to observe the law, established by Her Majesty, that all are to use these rights and privileges according to their call and station, without regard to either faith or nationality.”
Nevertheless, Jews were not always able to take advantage of the rights they were afforded, and they nearly always faced opposition from the local Christian population in general, and from the Polish gentry in particular. Jews were often prevented from participating in elections, and the imperial authorities proved unable to achieve full compliance with the laws they passed down, despite numerous demands that these laws be observed.
The ability to move freely from place to place was one of the most sought-after privileges for citizens of the Russian Empire. For Russia's Jewish population, this right was also one of the first to be restricted. In this case, the imposition of restrictions resulted from commercial competition between Jewish and Russian merchants in the late eighteenth century. In 1782, the Senate decided to allow merchants living in the newly acquired territories to move from city to city for business purposes. This was no small boon, as they had earlier forbidden merchants from leaving the towns in which they were registered. Apparently, the author of the law had intended to include only the Belorussian territories in the law, but this was not explicitly stated in the text. Taking advantage of this “loophole,” Jewish merchants began to start businesses within Russia itself, with some registering among the merchant guilds of Moscow and Smolensk.4 Unused to serious competition, Muscovite merchants were convinced that the Jewish merchants' bargaining skills could be achieved only through dishonest and fraudulent means. The Christian merchants submitted a complaint to A. A. Prozorovskii, then Governor General of Moscow, claiming that the only possible way for the Jewish merchants to set their prices so low was through the use of contraband, and that the Jews had settled in Moscow illegally.
Prozorovskii forced the Jewish merchants to leave Moscow, leading them to submit a complaint to the authorities in St. Petersburg. “Her Majesty's Council” rejected their petition, forbidding them to register as merchants except in the Mogilev and Polotsk gubernias (Belorussia), the Ekaterinoslav region (namestnichestvo) and the Tauride oblast, which had recently been carved out of territories acquired from the Ottoman Empire.5 The Council's decision in the matter was approved by Catherine II on December 23, 1791. For all intents and purposes, this decision laid the groundwork for what was eventually to become the Pale of Settlement.6
The new territories acquired after the Second and Third Partitions increased the number of areas where Jews were allowed to live. At the same time, the new laws concerning these territories forbid Jews from settling beyond them (i.e., within Russia itself). According to the ukaz of June 13, 1794, Jews were allowed to live in the following territories: the Minsk, Iziaslav (later Volynia), Bratslav (later Podolia), Polotsk, Mogilev, Kiev, Chernigov, and Novgorod-Seversk gubernias, as well as Ekaterinoslav and the Tauride oblasts. In 1795, two newly formed gubernias (Vilna and Grodno) were added. The Pale of Settlement would wax and wane in size over the course of the following century. By the turn of the twentieth century, it would include fifteen gubernias: Bessarabia, Vilna, Vitebsk, Volynia, Grodno, Ekaterinoslav,7 Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev, Podolia, Poltava, Tauride,8 Kherson, Chernigov, and Kiev (excluding Kiev proper).
While Western European Jews quickly