Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii
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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 numbers of Jews emigrated; between 1881 and 1914,50 1.98 million Jews left the Empire, with 1.5 million heading for the United States.51 A small number emigrated to Palestine; other destinations included Argentina, Europe, and South Africa. The government was in favor of emigration, which it viewed as a way to solve the “Jewish question.” The Minister of Internal Affairs, N. P. Ignatiev, declared in January of 1882 that “the western border of Russia was open for the Jews [to leave].” K. P. Pobedonostsev foresaw the following resolution to the “Jewish question”: “One third of them will die out, another third will emigrate, and the remainder shall dissolve into the surrounding population.”52 Jews who left Russia were forbidden from ever returning.
B. Nathans has recently called attention to the use of the term crisis in historical studies of Eastern European Jewry. “If such a large number of historical events are interpreted as ‘crises,' then the term begins to acquire static properties which then lose their multi-faceted relationship to other dimensions of historical experience.”53 Theoretically, such a formulation is certainly correct, but it is equally correct, in my opinion, that from 1881 onwards the Russian Jewish population had truly reached a stage of crisis. Ten years after the pogroms of the 1880s, Jews were deported from Moscow, and the Kishinev pogrom would take place soon after, in 1903. These events affected the entire Jewish population of the Russian Empire, first and foremost psychologically. The ensuing revolution of 1905, and the European crisis from 1914 to 1921, would lead to a fundamental shift in the fate of Jews living within the Russian Empire.
One objective indicator of the severity of the conditions for Russian Jews was emigration. In 1904, 77,500 Jews emigrated to the United States, 30,000 more than in the previous year. This increase would continue (in 1905, 92,400 would emigrate; in 1906, 125,200; in 1907, 114,900), decreasing only after 1907.54 During the period 1903–7, 482,000 Jews would emigrate to the United States at an average of 96,400 per year, the highest number for any period to that point in the history of the Jews in Russia. Immigration to the United States would spike again in 1914 (102,600) with many leaving to avoid military service or to escape the growing threat of military conflict.55
The pogroms led to a renewed interest in emigration to Palestine. One such response to the pogroms