Overall, the Jewish population of the Russian Empire was more law-abiding than the population at large. In 1907, 144,143 people were convicted of crimes. Of these, 4,167 (2.89 percent) were Jews. There were 93.6 convicted criminals per 100,000 subjects, whereas the number for Jews was 74.3 per 100,000. The percentage of Jews convicted of political offenses was higher (10.6 percent, or 477 men and 69 women, for a total of 546). This was less than the number of Jews convicted of theft (716, 680 men and 36 women) although as a percentage of the entire population the number convicted was well within the average (4.02 percent). However, Jews were the most likely to be convicted for infractions against the Trade and Credit Code (27.12 percent), although in absolute numbers this only amounted to 32 individuals (24 men and 8 women).⁸¹

      This is not to say that the Jewish population did not contain its share of criminals, including thieves and murderers (56 men and one woman, or 1.11 percent of all those convicted), and even horse thieves (30 individuals, or 1.45 percent of Russia's total). From 1903 to 1913, the percentage of Jews convicted of crimes hovered between 3.4 and 3.9 percent, less than the rate of Russians, Poles, Latvians, and Lithuanians. In 1913, the national average was 104 convicted criminals for every 100,000 individuals, whereas the corresponding number for Jews was 97 per 100,000. However, statistics are a relative science, and the relatively high rates of conviction speak more to the effectiveness of judicial and police structures in European Russia as opposed to, say, the Central Asian territories, where conviction rates were much lower (55 per I00,000).⁸²

      Dry statistics often contradict widespread stereotypes and myths, one of which is the belief that Odessa was the “criminal capital” of the Russian Empire. In 1913, there were 224 convicts for every 100,000 inhabitants in Odessa, compared with 353 in Baku, 384 in Kazan, and 400 in Nizhnii Novgorod. Before 1917 there were no large-scale criminal organizations in Odessa. The infamous bandit Mishka Iaponchik spent most of the decade preceding the Revolution in prison for his participation in anarchist “expropriations.”⁸³ Even the most famous examples of Odessan banditry were more myth than fact: the prototype for Isaac Babel's Benia Krik (from his collection of short stories, entitled Odessa Tales) had far less in common with his literary counterpart than military commander S. K. Timoshenko had with his (Savitskii in Babel's Red Cavalry).

      The gulf between the “spearhead” portion of Russian Jewry, who were becoming more and more integrated into Russian society, and their less fortunate fellow Jews was steadily increasing. Soon enough they would literally be speaking different languages. In 1897, 96.9 percent (5,054,300) of all Jews claimed Yiddish as their native language,⁸⁴ followed by the Russian language (1.28 percent, 67,063), Polish (0.90 percent, 47,060), and German (0.44 percent, 22,782). Less than half (45 percent) of all adult men and only 25 percent of adult women were literate in Russian.⁸⁵ Though the rate of Russian literacy among the Jews was lower than that of the German minority living in Russia, it was higher than that of the Russian population. In addition, a majority of Jews living in the Pale of Settlement were conversant in either Ukrainian or Belorussian.⁸⁶

      In St. Petersburg the process of assimilation occurred rapidly. In 1855 there were less than 500 Jews in the capital; by 1910 the number was 35,000. In 1869, Yiddish was the native tongue of 97 percent of St. Petersburg's Jews, but the number who spoke Russian as their native language was to grow quickly (to 28 percent in 1890, 36 percent in 1900, 42 percent in 1910). Over the same period, the percentage of native Yiddish speakers decreased to approximately 54 percent of the Jewish population.⁸⁷ The children of the Jewish elite attended Russian schools and universities and began to identify more closely with Russian culture. This did not always entail a break with Jewry. Aleksei Goldenveizer (son of the lawyer A. S. Goldenveizer) studied in the First gymnazium of Kiev alongside the future theologian V. N. Ilin and Sergei Trubetskoi (son of the philosopher and journalist), as well as Petliura's future Minister of Foreign Affairs, A. Ia. Shulgin.⁸⁸ A lawyer like his father, Goldenveizer took an active role in Jewish politics, and understood the language of the Jewish “street” (though he himself admitted that he didn't know Yiddish very well).⁸⁹

      In the twenty years between the 1897 census and the 1917 revolution, the cultural dynamics of Russian life were to have a profound effect on Jewish assimilation. Indirect proof of this can be found in the 1926 Soviet census, in which 70.4 percent of Jews considered Yiddish to be their native language, although only 42.5 percent of literate Jews in the Ukraine and 56.4 percent of those in Belarus were literate in Yiddish. Russian had now become the literary language for more than half of the Jewish population. As one might imagine, these changes were even more evident outside of the Pale of Settlement. It is highly unlikely that this shift took place in the ten years preceding the Soviet census.⁹⁰

      Jews played a significant role in Russian literature and literary criticism at the turn of the century, as they did in journalism and publishing.⁹¹ They also had a large presence in the legal profession. By 1888, Jews comprised 21 percent of St. Petersburg lawyers, as well as 39 percent of apprentice lawyers.⁹² Among the “stars” of the legal profession were A. Ia. Passover, G. B. Sliozberg, M. M. Vinaver, O. O. Gruzenberg (all in Petersburg), as well as A. S. Goldenveizer (Kiev) and others.⁹³ However, towards the end of the 1880s the government began to restrict the access of Jews to the legal profession at the behest of their Christian colleagues. In 1889, the Emperor approved a proposal by then Minister of Justice N. A. Manasein that allowed Jews to pass the bar only upon explicit approval of the Ministry of Justice, following a recommendation by a committee of other lawyers. On a practical level, this meant that Jews could become full lawyers only in exceptional circumstances. Thus, Vinaver and Gruzenberg, who were well-known in legal circles, were forced to serve as solicitors for 15 and 16 years, respectively. In 1915, quotas were imposed (15 percent in the Warsaw, Vilna, and Odessa okrugs,⁹⁴ 10 percent for Petersburg and Kiev and surrounding territories, and 5 percent for all other legal districts).⁹⁵