Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii
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remained “distinct from the native population by their religion and their own social institutions, and fulfilled a specific economic role that was separate from the one played by the dominant corporations and trade guilds”9 for nearly a hundred years after their “arrival.” Properly speaking, one can only truly conceive of a specifically “Russian” Jewry from the 1870s onwards. Before this point, most of the Empire's Jews were more “Polish” than “Russian.”10
During their time as subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Jews were the bearers of capitalist values. In fact, it was precisely for economic development that they had been “summoned” by the Polish monarchy centuries earlier. Jews occupied positions in management and administration, often completely taking over these tasks from the local gentry. They leased land, estates, and shops, and held monopolies on goods such as salt or spirits. They were also active in other economic spheres, having a large presence in credit markets and trade. Jewish craftsmen had a near monopoly in sectors such as tailoring and shoemaking; some Jews earned their livelihood through agriculture.
In the 1760s, Catherine II attempted to attract Jewish settlers to Novorossiia in order to occupy empty lands, and to increase the paltry numbers of the “Third Estate” in the territories.11 As potential competitors, it is hardly surprising that the Jews were to come into conflict with their Christian neighbors. However, it should be noted that by the time of the Partitions Jewish economic influence had already significantly diminished from its peak in the Middle Ages. This was especially true in the financial sphere, where they had been unable to compete with monasteries and wealthy landowners. Yet despite this, the Jews' reputation for being “exploitative” persisted among the general population, particularly among the peasantry.
This stereotype was given further currency by the senator and poet Gavriil Derzhavin, who in 1799 responded to a petition submitted by the Jews of Shklov, who claimed persecution at the hands of one of Catherine II's former favorites, S. G. Zorich. The following year, Derzhavin went to Belorussia in order to investigate the reasons for a famine, and was shocked by the things he saw. The title of his travel notes speaks for itself: “The Opinion of Senator Derzhavin Regarding the Abominable Lack of Bread Due to the Coercive Designs of the Avaricious Jews, and on Their Reorganization and Other Matters.”12
The “need” to protect local populations from Jewish “exploitation” became one of the cornerstones of Russian policy towards its new subjects. It quickly became the justification for expelling Jewish populations from certain towns, forbidding freedom of movement, and limiting the number of professions Jews could enter. Government policy also focused on combating Jewish “fanaticism,” on the one hand, and possible “rehabilitation” on the other. Many considered the “exploitative nature” of the Jews to be a consequence of this “fanaticism,” which largely consisted of the idea that the Jews believed themselves to be a chosen people, and thus despised their non-Jewish neighbors. Equally important was the fear that Jews were not loyal to the local authorities, and that for the Jewish population the religious demands of Judaism were more important than adherence to governmental laws.13 The “liberal” and “conservative” approaches to the “Jewish question” differed mainly in the fact that liberals preferred to give Jews rights to help speed the assimilation process, while conservatives insisted on Jewish “reform” before any rights were to be granted.
In general, the Russian authorities strove for the full integration of Jews into Russian society. Various individual authorities differed only in the methods they tried to adopt. More liberal initiatives, such as allowing “useful” Jews to live beyond the Pale, and expanding Jewish access to educational institutions (even to the point of providing subsidies) alternated with more conservative ones, such as forced deportations from certain towns, or prohibitions on traditional clothing. Such contradictory tendencies would occasionally appear together in a single law.14 The struggle against Jewish “fanaticism” reached its peak during the reign of Nicholas I, who in 1827 subjected the Jewish population of the Empire to military conscription (the armed forces were often used as a vehicle to convert subjects to Orthodoxy), and in 1844 established government institutes for Jews whose faculty and administration were completely composed of Christians.15 Throughout the nineteenth century, numerous commissions and committees dedicated to the “Jewish question” attempted to advance governmental policy.16 The initiatives undertaken ranged from the reasonable to the absurd. In the end, the state's attempts to assimilate its Jewish population proved unsuccessful. This fact can be seen in the exceptionally low number of Jews who decided to convert to Christianity, despite the many benefits such a decision offered. Throughout the entire nineteenth century, only 84,500 Jews (or 0.7 percent of the Jewish population) decided to convert to the Christian faith.17 In this respect at least, the “material” proved too resistant to be shaped to the government's designs.
This program of assimilation differed from the Jewish experience under Polish rule. Many Jews had decided to go to Poland not only because of the many economic rights offered by the Polish monarchy, but also because of additional guarantees that allowed them to follow their own way of life. Under the Poles, Jewish cultural and legal institutions were openly tolerated and had official recognition, although the degree of such tolerance varied, and anti-semitism due to religious reasons or economic competition did occur on a regular basis. At the same time, Jews did not integrate themselves into the native populace. They lived in their own neighborhoods, spoke their own language, and wore “traditional” clothing (which was considered to be purely Jewish but had, in fact, been adopted in Poland around the sixteenth century). Men wore beards and side-locks, while women shaved their heads and wore wigs. It would be naïve to think that this “segregation,” if you will, was resulted solely from the attitude of Christians towards their Jewish neighbors, and that Jews were suffering for the lack of day-to-day interaction with their Christian countrymen outside of their business dealings. As Jacob Katz has shown, the ghetto walls were built from both sides.18 Jews were able to get along without closely interacting with the surrounding local population, and Jewish dietary laws and other restrictions made simple things such as going to visit one's neighbors problematic.19 Besides, for most of those living in the shtetl the ongoing debates between the hasidim20 and mitnagdim21 were often more engaging and pertinent to their lives than the events taking place in the local Christian community.
The Jewish Enlightenment movement (Haskalah) was not widespread in Russia. Its adherents, the maskilim,22 were few in number and were forced to rely on official support in their reform efforts. The situation of Russian Jews, whose cultural and social status was often higher than their neighbors, was markedly different from the situation in Germany, where Haskalah had originated. At the turn of the nineteenth century, several maskilim who had been educated in Germany or had traveled extensively abroad propagated the idea of expanding secular education within the Jewish population. In 1800, Dr. I. Frank gave Derzhavin an essay in German entitled “Is it Possible for a Jew to Become a Good and Decent Citizen?” which called for the establishment of secular schools with instruction in German and Hebrew. The Russian maskilim Perets, Notkin, and Nevakhovich also strove to overcome the gulf separating the Jewish and Russian communities. In 1803 Nevakhovich was to publish the first work of Russian-Jewish literature, entitled “Lament of the Daughter of Judah” (Vopl'dshcheri iudeiskoi).
The patriarch of the Russian Haskalah was I. B. Levinzon, whose book Mission in Israel (Missiia v Israile, 1828) proposed a program of education reform, including the teaching of European languages and secular subjects to Jews. Levinzon also called for Russian to replace Yiddish as the language of everyday communication.23 Unlike their European counterparts, Russian maskilim did not call for religious reforms to Judaism, nor were they extreme assimilationists. Their works, for the most part, were published in Yiddish. The only place in the Russian Empire where the maskilim experienced any real success in their efforts was Odessa; by the end of the 1820s, they were a major force within the community there. However Odessa, with its multicultural population, economic and cultural possibilities and rather large Jewish population, was an exception to the rule.24
Jewish entrepreneurship experienced rapid growth throughout the nineteenth century. The