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from our whole Empire, both from the Great Russian and Little Russian cities, villages, and hamlets, all Jews of the male and female sex, of whatever calling and dignity they may be, shall, at the publication of this our ukase, be immediately deported with all their property abroad, and shall henceforward, under no pretext, be admitted into our Empire for any purpose; unless they shall be willing to accept the Christian religion of the Greek persuasion. Such [Jews], having been baptized, shall be allowed to live in our Empire, but they shall not be permitted to go outside the country.

The ukase was to be printed and promulgated in the whole Empire, so as to gain wide circulation among the people and to inculcate in the Russian masses the proper sentiments towards "the haters of the name of our Savior Christ."

However, the Empress and her exalted prompters calculated wrongly. The cruel expulsion decree did not draw a single Jew into the fold of the Greek Orthodox Church, while the reason given in the ukase for the expulsion, "the extreme injury" inflicted by the enemies of Christ "upon our faithful subjects," failed to carry conviction to the latter. The ukase had been designed in particular to "benefit" the inhabitants of the two border provinces of Little Russia and Livonia by eliminating the Jews from their midst. These inhabitants, however, speaking through their local representatives, declared that such "beneficence" would only result in ruining them. From Little Russia the Greek contractors of the customs duties complained to the Senate that the repressions against the Jews, which hampered their commercial visits to Poland, had caused great losses to the state revenues by lowering the income from imported goods, that a sudden expulsion of Jews, who were bound up with the Christian merchants by business interests and monetary obligations, would ruin both sides, and that it was therefore necessary to allow the Jews to retain their former right of free admission into Little Russia for business purposes.

Even more energetic representations were sent to the Senate from the Baltic province of Livonia. The gubernatorial administration of the province and the magistracy of the city of Riga stated that, in accordance with the promulgated ukase, the Jews living in the suburb of Riga and in the surrounding district had been ordered to leave within six weeks, but that this expulsion was bound to cause great injury to the exchequer and to spell ruin for the whole mercantile class. For the Polish pans and merchants, who had their Jewish brokers in Riga, would stop buying their goods there, and would prefer to import them, with the aid of their expelled Jewish middlemen, from Germany, so that "trade in Riga would fall off, and commerce might be destroyed entirely," the Russian merchants finding themselves unable to secure customers for "the goods imported by sea." The Livonians therefore pleaded to grant the Jews free admission into Riga for carrying on business, though it be only in the capacity of temporary residents.

Impressed by these representations, the Senate submitted a report to the Empress, in which it endeavored to convince her that for the sake of "promoting commerce," increasing the revenues of the exchequer, and guarding the interests of the Christian population in the "border localities," it was necessary to comply with the petitions of the Ukrainians and Livonians and grant the Jews free admission to both provinces and to other localities on the frontier, so that they may carry on temporary business during the time of the fairs, this privilege having been exercised by them in Little Russia since 1728, by virtue of earlier Imperial decrees. Elizabeth Petrovna read these convincing arguments of the Senate, but, blinded by religious fanaticism, refused to pay attention to them. On the reports submitted by the Senate, she put down, in December, 1743, the following laconic resolution²¹⁴: "From the enemies of Christ I desire neither gain nor profit."

The Senate could do nothing but submit to the despotic will of the Empress. A month later, in January, 1744, an ukase was issued, demanding that immediate steps be taken to detect the Jews in Little Russia, Livonia, and other places, and expel all except those who were willing to be baptized.

Henceforward – the Senatorial decree runs – the above Jews shall not by any means, under any conditions, and for any purpose whatsoever, be admitted into Russia, though it be for the fairs or for a short time only; nor shall any representations concerning their admission be further addressed to the Senate, and the Senate shall be duly informed when all the above [Jews] shall have been expelled.

In this manner Elizabeth Petrovna cleared these provinces of their Jewish population, where – for better or for worse – it had lived long before their annexation by Russia. A contemporary historian calculates that up to his time (1753) some 35,000 Jews had been banished from Russia.

The fanatical Empress searched with the vigilance of an inquisitor for the slightest trace of Judaism in her Empire. Since 1731 there had lived in St. Petersburg a learned physician, by the name of Antonio Sanchez, evidently a Sephardic Marano, who professed Judaism in secret. Originally invited from Holland, Sanchez occupied in St. Petersburg the post of body-physician at the courts of Anna Johannovna and her successors, and he was at the same time in charge of the medical department of the army. He subsequently became a member of the Academy of Sciences, and wrote a number of medical works, which drew the attention of the scientific world to him. In 1749 Sanchez was suddenly dismissed from the Academy of Sciences, and compelled to transfer his abode to Paris. It seems that Empress Elizabeth had found out the secret "crime" of her body-physician, which was none other than his loyalty to Judaism. "As far as I am aware" – the president of the Academy, Razumovski, wrote to Sanchez – "you have not been guilty of any wrong-doing against her Imperial Majesty or against any of her interests. But she finds it contrary to her conscience to tolerate in the Academy a man who has deserted the banner of Christ, and has joined the ranks of those who fight under the banner of Moses and the Old Testament prophets." When the famous mathematician Euler heard of Sanchez' expulsion, he wrote: "I doubt whether amazing actions of this kind will contribute towards the reputation of the Russian Academy of Sciences."

There was no one perhaps in the contemporary Government circles of Russia who was so ready to condemn this malicious policy, inspired by Byzantine clericalism, as that cultured "Westerner," Empress Catherine II. (1762-1796). Nevertheless in the first years of her reign she found herself unable to change a policy which had already been hallowed by tradition, and was regarded as "national" and truly Russian. Catherine II., in endeavoring to justify the dethronement of her husband, the Prussophil Peter III., was bound, in the first years of her reign, to act against her own convictions and pose as a national ruler, anxious to follow in the footsteps of her Orthodox predecessors. We derive our knowledge of this fact from her own memoirs, in which, speaking of herself in the third person, she makes this confession:

On the fifth or sixth day after her accession to the throne, Catherine II. arrived at the Senate. It happened that on the agenda of that session was the question of the admission of Jews into Russia. The Senators unanimously declared that their admission was useful, but Catherine, in view of the circumstances at the time, found it difficult to give her assent. The Senator Count Odoyevski came to her aid. He rose up and said: "Before making a decision, perhaps your Imperial Majesty will consent to see the autograph decision which on a similar occasion was rendered by Empress Elizabeth." Catherine ordered the documents to be brought, and she found that Empress Elizabeth, prompted by piety, had written on the margin, "From the enemies of Christ I desire neither gain nor profit." It is necessary to observe that less than a week had passed since Catherine's accession to the throne. She had been placed on it for the defense of the Greek Orthodox faith; she had to deal with a pious people and with a clergy to which its estates had not yet been returned, and which, in consequence of this ill-fitting measure, had nothing to live on. The minds, as is always the case after such a great upheaval [the violent death of Peter III.], were in a state of great excitement. To begin her reign by the admission of Jews would not at all have helped to pacify their minds; to declare it as injurious was also impossible. Catherine acted simply: when the Procurator-General collected the votes and approached her for her decision, she said to him, "I desire that this matter be postponed for another time." Thus it often happens that it is not enough to be enlightened, to have good intentions, and even the power to realize them.

In this way, in spite of the unanimous opinion of the Senate, that the admission of Jews was beneficial to Russia, and in spite of her own liberal frame of mind, Catherine II. left the Jewish question in its former state, being afraid of arousing against her the resentment of the reactionary element of the Russian people. In the very same year, on December 4, 1762, the Empress, in issuing a manifesto permitting all foreigners to travel and to settle in Russia, added the fatal formula, kromye Zhydov ("except the Jews").

Two years later, in 1764, Catherine II. received a petition from the Little Russian nobles and elders, who, together with the hetman, pleaded for the restoration of the autonomous "ancient rights" of Little Russia, which had been grossly violated by the Russian Government. Out of the twenty clauses of the document, one refers to the Jews. The representatives of the Little Russian people declare that the law barring Jews from entering their province had inflicted great damage on the local trade, because the Jews, "being inhabitants of a neighboring state, take a very large part in Little Russian commerce, buying the goods of Little Russia at a much larger price, and the foreign goods at a smaller price, as compared with that now prevailing." The petition concludes with these words:

That the above-mentioned Jews be granted domicile in Little Russia, with this we dare not trouble your Imperial Majesty. All we do is to plead most humbly that, for the sake of promoting Little Russian commerce, the Jews be allowed to visit Little Russia for free commercial transactions.

The petition was not granted, for even Catherine II. "dared not" repeal the inquisitorial resolution of Elizabeth Petrovna against "the enemies of Christ."

It was amidst conditions such as these that the event which marks a critical juncture in the history of the Jewish people took place. Starting with the year 1772, Russia began to acquire the inheritance of disintegrating Poland. The country which had stood in fear of a few thousand Jews was now forced to accept them, at one stroke, by the tens of thousands and, shortly afterwards, by the hundreds of thousands. Subsequent history will show in what way Russia endeavored to solve this conflict between her anti-Jewish traditions and the necessity of harboring in her dominions the greatest center of the Jewish Diaspora.

CHAPTER VIII
POLISH JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD OF THE PARTITIONS

1. The Jews of Poland after the First Partition

On the eve of the great crisis which overtook the Jews of Western Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, the vast Jewish center in Eastern Europe was in a state of political and social disintegration. We refer to the position of Polish Jewry during the interval between the first partition of Poland and the second (1772-1793).

The first vivisection had just been performed on the diseased organism of the Polish Republic.²¹⁵ Russia had chopped off one flank – the province of White Russia²¹⁶; Austria had seized Galicia, and Prussia had helped herself to Pomerania and a part of the province of Posen. Correspondingly the compact organism of Polish Jewry was divided among the three Powers. One section of this huge mass, which lived a secluded and thoroughly original life of its own, suddenly became the object of "reformatory" experiments in the laboratory of Joseph II. Another section found itself in the rôle of a "tolerated" population in the royal barracks of Frederick II., who would fain have acquired the Polish provinces minus their Jewish inhabitants. A third portion came under the sway of Russia, a country which had not yet become reconciled to the presence of a handful of Jews on the border of her Empire, in the province of Little Russia.

What was left of Polish Jewry after the surgical operation of 1772 experienced, after its own fashion, all the pre-mortal agonies of the doomed commonwealth, which was destined to undergo two more partitions. Dying Poland was tossing about restlessly, endeavoring to prolong its existence by the enactments of the Permanent Council or by the reforms of the Quadrennial Diet (1788-1791).²¹⁷ In connection with the general reforms of the country the need was felt of curing the old specific ailment of Poland, the Jewish Problem. The finance committee of the Quadrennial Diet gathered all available information concerning the number of Jews in the reduced kingdom and their economic and cultural status.

The following are the results of this official investigation, as embodied in the report of one of the members of the committee, the well-known historian Thaddeus Chatzki, who made a special study of the Jewish problem.

Officially the number of Jews residing in Poland and Lithuania about the year 1788 was computed at 617,032. Chatzki, fortified by an array of additional data, rightly points out that, owing to the fact that fiscal considerations caused the people to evade the official census, the actual number of Jews mounted up to at least 900,000 souls of both sexes. This computation agrees substantially with the authoritative statement of Butrymovich, a member of the "Jewish Commission" appointed by the Quadrennial Diet. For, according to this statement, the Jews of Poland formed an eighth of the whole population, the latter numbering 8,790,000 souls. The Jewish population, thus amounting to practically one million, multiplied rapidly, owing to the custom of early marriages then in vogue. The same custom, on the other hand, was responsible for increased mortality among Jewish children and for an ever-growing physical deterioration of the adolescent generation. The school training received by Jewish children was limited to the study of the religious literature of Judaism, particularly the Talmud.

As regards commerce, the Jews figured in it in the following proportions: 75 % of the whole export trade of Poland and 10 % of the imports lay in their hands. The living expenses of the Jewish business man were half as large as those of his Christian fellow-merchant, which fact enabled the Jew to sell his goods at a much lower figure. Bankruptcy was more frequent among Jewish business men than among Christians. In the provinces outside of Great Poland half of all the artisans were Jews. Shoemakers, tailors, furriers, goldsmiths, carpenters, stone-cutters, and barbers, were particularly numerous among them. In the whole country only fourteen Jewish families were found to engage in agriculture. Wealth among Jews was but very seldom retained for several successive generations within the same family, owing to frequent bankruptcy and to a propensity towards risky speculations. A twelfth part of the Jewish population was made up of "idlers," that is, people without a definite occupation. A sixtieth part consisted of beggars.

To these deductions, based on official findings, as well as on outside observation, the important fact must be added that one of the main pursuits of the Jews at that time was the liquor traffic, that is, the keeping of taverns in the towns and villages. As far as the manorial estates were concerned, the sale of liquors was closely connected with land-leasing and innkeeping. In leasing from the noble landowner the various items of agrarian wealth, such as dairies, pastures, timber, etc., the Jew farmed at the same time the "propination," the right of distilling and selling spirits in the taverns and inns. These pursuits often resulted in a clash between the Jew and the peasant, that outlawed serf who was driven to the tavern, not by opulence, but by extreme poverty and suffering, brought upon him by the heavy hand of the aristocratic landlord. The final stage in the economic breakdown of the peasant was reached at the door of the tavern, and the Jewish liquor-dealer was in consequence looked upon as the despoiler of the peasant. This accusation against the Jews was brought forward by the slaveholding magnates, who were the real cause of the impoverishment of their peasant serfs, and pocketed the proceeds of the "propination" which they let out to the Jews.

As for the Jews themselves, there is no doubt that the traffic in liquor had a demoralizing effect upon them. The position of the Jewish arendar, sandwiched between the spendthrifty and eccentric pan, on the one hand, and the downtrodden khlop, on the other, was far from enviable. In the eyes of the landowner the arendar was nothing but a servant, who received no better treatment at his hands than the khlop. If perchance the roads or bridges on the estate were found in bad condition, the arendar would sometimes be subjected to corporal punishment for it. When the pan engaged in one of his frequent orgies, the first victims of his recklessness were the arendar and his family. A good illustration is afforded by an entry in the diary of a Volhynian country squire, from the year 1774:

The arendar Hershko²¹⁸ has remained ninety-one thaler in arrears from last term. I was forced to attach his goods. According to the clause of the contract I have the right, in case of non-payment, to keep him with his wife and children in prison as long as I like, until he pays up. I gave orders to have him put in chains and locked up in the pig-sty together with the swine; the wife and the bahurs [young sons] I left in the inn, except for the youngest son Layze [Lazarus]. The latter I took to the manor, and I had him instructed in the [Catholic] catechism and the prayers.

The boy in question was forced to make the sign of the cross and to eat pork. Only the arrival of Jews from Berdychev, who remitted the debt of the arendar, saved the father from imprisonment and the son from enforced conversion.

It is interesting to inquire into the causes which drove the Jewish populace into the unenviable pursuits of land-leasing and rural liquor-dealing. Although forming but one-eighth of the population of Poland, the Jews furnished 50 % of the whole number of artisans in the realm and 75 % of those engaged in the export trade – the export, be it noted, of agricultural products, such as timber, flax, skins, and all kinds of raw material. All these occupations were obviously insufficient for their maintenance. In Poland no less than in Western Europe neither the mercantile guilds nor the trade-unions, which to a considerable extent were made up of Germans, admitted Jewish artisans and merchants into their corporations, and as a result the sphere of Jewish activity was extremely limited.

The same burghers and business men were also the predominating element in the composition of the magistracies, and in the majority of cities it lay in their power to grant or refuse licenses to their Jewish competitors for pursuing commerce or handicrafts. The clause in the Polish parliamentary Constitution of 1768, which placed the economic activity of the Jews in the cities under the control of the magistracies, might have been literally dictated by the latter. It ran as follows:

Whereas the Jews inflict intolerable damage upon the cities and the burghers, and rob them of their means of subsistence… be it resolved that in all towns and townlets in which the Jews have no special, constitutionally guaranteed privileges, they be forced to conduct themselves according to the agreements entered into with the municipalities, and be forbidden, on pain of severe fines, to arrogate to themselves any further rights.

It goes without saying that these "agreements" with the Christian business men consisted as a rule in nothing else than the prohibition or limitation of local Jewish competition. In this manner the originators of the parliamentary Constitution, the landed proprietors and townspeople, were those who forced the Jews out of the cities, and drove them into land-leasing and liquor-dealing.

The parliamentary Constitution of 1775, which was promulgated after the first partition of Poland, and instituted a supreme administrative body, the Permanent Council, increased the Jewish per capita tax from two gulden to three, to be levied on both male and female, and including the new-born. It also made the attempt, though not after the cruel pattern of Western Europe, to place certain restrictions on Jewish marriages. The rabbis were interdicted from performing the marriage service for the Jews who were not engaged in one of the legitimate occupations, such as handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, or manual labor, or who were unable to indicate their sources of livelihood. Parenthetically it may be remarked that this law was never applied in practice.

Ancient Poland never had a "Pale of Settlement," the Jews being merely barred from residing in several so-called "privileged" towns. One of these forbidden places was the capital, Warsaw.²¹⁹ The Jews had long been refused the right of permanent settlement in that city. They were only allowed to sojourn there temporarily during the sessions of the various Diets, simultaneously with which the commercial fairs were generally timed to take place.

The parliamentary Constitution of 1768, in sanctioning this "ancient custom" of admitting the Jews temporarily into Warsaw, gave as its reason "the common welfare and the necessity of reducing the high cost of merchandise," this high cost resulting invariably from the absence of Jewish competition. In the capital the following procedure became customary: two weeks prior to the opening of the Diet the Crown Marshal informed the inhabitants of Warsaw by trumpet blasts that visiting Jews were permitted to engage in commerce and handicrafts, and two weeks after the conclusion of the session of the Diet trumpet blasts again heralded the fact that it was time for the Jews to take to their heels. Those who were slow in leaving the city were expelled by the police. As a rule, however, the exiles managed, under all sorts of pretexts, to return the day after their expulsion, in the capacity of new arrivals, and they continued to reside in the city for several weeks by "persuading" the inspectors of the marshal. As a result, Crown Marshal Lubomirski established a system of tickets for visiting Jews, each ticket costing a silver groschen, which granted the right of a five days' sojourn in the capital. Without such a ticket no Jew dared show himself on the street. The collection from these tickets netted an annual income of some 200,000 gulden for the marshal's treasury.

When some of the high Polish dignitaries, who owned entire districts in Warsaw, made the discovery that it was possible to convert Jewish rightlessness into cash, they began, for a definite consideration, to accord permission to the Jews to settle on their estates, which lay beyond the city ramparts. In this way there gradually came into being a settlement known under the name of New Jerusalem. The Christian burghers of Warsaw raised a terrible outcry demanding the literal application of the law which barred the Jews from settling permanently in the capital. Thereupon Lubomirski adopted stringent measures against the Jews, notwithstanding the protests of the highly-placed house-owners and regardless even of the intervention of the King. On January 22, 1775, the Jews were expelled from Warsaw; their homes in New Jerusalem were demolished, and all their goods were transferred to the armory or the barracks, where they were sold at public auction.

This was a severe blow to the mercantile Jewish population, which was now cut off from the political and industrial center of the country. The Jews had to content themselves again with temporary visits during the short term of the parliamentary sessions. In the course of time the former evasion of the law came into vogue again. In 1784 the administration, appealed to by the magistracy, once more undertook to clear the capital of Jews. The situation was modified somewhat towards the end of 1788, when the Quadrennial Diet began its sessions. The Jews were inclined to assume that, inasmuch as the Diet was sitting permanently, their right of residence in the capital was no longer subject to a time limit. Accordingly the Jews began to flock to Warsaw, and several thousands of them were soon huddled together in the center of the city. This of course aroused the ire of the burghers and the magistracy against the new-comers, resulting subsequently in a sanguinary conflict.

In this manner law and life were constantly at odds, life turning law into fiction whenever in opposition to its demands, and law retaliating by dealing occasional blows at life.

The million Jews pressed their way into the eight millions of the native population like a wedge, which, once having entered, could not be displaced. For by occupying the originally empty place of the mercantile estate, the Jews had for many centuries served, so to speak, as a tie between the bipartite nation of nobles and serfs. Now a new wedge, the Christian middle class, was endeavoring to displace the Jewish element, but it failed in its efforts. For the Jewish population had become inextricably entwined with the economic organism of Poland, though remaining a stranger to its national and spiritual aspirations. This was the tragic aspect of the Jewish question in Poland in the period of the partitions.

Deeply stirred by the catastrophe of 1772, Poland fell to making reforms as a means of salvation. She was anxious to expiate her old sins and turn over a new leaf. Here she found herself face to face with the Jewish problem: a huge and compact population of different birth and creed, with an autonomous communal life, with a separate language, and with customs and manners of its own, was scattered all over the realm and interwoven with all branches of economic endeavor. This secluded population, which Polish legislation no less than the arrogance of the nobility and the intolerance of the Church had estranged from political and civil life, survived as a relic of the old order, which was now tottering to its fall. The ruling class, which had brought about this state of things, was naturally loth to acknowledge its responsibility for the decomposition of Poland, and so the guilt was thrown on the shoulders of the Jews, in spite of the fact that their position was merely the product of the general caste structure of the nation. And when, in a fit of repentance, Poland began to dig down into her past, she discovered that one of her "sins" was the Jewish question, and she was bent on solving it.

Two solutions presented themselves at that moment. The one was of a repressive character, permeated with the old spirit of the nobility and clergy. The other was of a comparatively liberal character, and bore the impress of the policy of "compulsory enlightenment" pursued by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II. The former found its expression in the parliamentary project of Zamoiski (1778-1780); the latter was represented by the proposals of Butrymovich and Chatzki, who submitted them to the liberally inclined Quadrennial Diet in 1789.

One of the Polish historians rightly observes that "the celebrated ex-Chancellor [Andreas Zamoiski] drafted this law more for the purpose of getting rid of the Jews than of bringing about their amalgamation with the national organism [of Poland]." Zamoiski's project is semi-clerical and semi-bureaucratic in character. The Jews are to be granted the right of residence in those towns into which they had been admitted by virtue of former agreements with the municipalities, while other places are to be open to them only for temporary visits, to attend markets and fairs. In the cities the Jews are to settle in separate streets, away from the Christians. Every Jewish adult is to present himself before the local administration and produce a certificate to the effect that he is either a tradesman owning property of the minimum value of a thousand gulden, or an artisan, arendar, or agriculturist. Those who cannot prove that they belong to one of these four categories shall be obliged to leave the country within a year. In case they refuse to leave voluntarily, they are to be placed under arrest, and sent to a penitentiary. Moreover, the author of the project, repeating the old ecclesiastic regulations, proposes to bar the Jews from those financial and economic functions, such as the leasing of crown lands, public contracts, and collection of revenues, in which they might exercise some form of control over Christians. For the same reason the Jews are to be interdicted from keeping Christian help, and so forth. Compulsory conversion of Jews is to be discountenanced; yet those already converted are to be removed from their old environment, and not to be allowed even to see their former coreligionists, except in the presence of Christians.

The Catholic clergy was so well pleased with Zamoiski's project that the Archbishop of Plotzk attached his signature to it. Having fortified himself by ecclesiastical and police safeguards, Zamoiski was at liberty to pay a scant tribute to the spirit of the age by including in his project the principle of the inviolability of the person and property of the Jew. After binding the Jew hand and foot by these draconian regulations there was indeed no necessity for further insulting him.