Kitabı oku: «History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)», sayfa 19

In 1798 came the turn of the nobility of the Southwest, of Volhynia and Podolia, to state their wishes for the benefit of the fatherland. The marshals of Podolia, who met at Kamenetz, elaborated a much more comprehensive scheme of reform than their compeers in Minsk. After expressing their gratitude to the Tzar "for his Imperial benevolence in leaving us the franchise of liquor-dealing," the nobles plead that "neither the right of distilling nor that of selling liquor be let to Jews or even to Christians," and that the nobles themselves be granted the "liberty" of employing people in their "public houses at their own discretion." After securing the monopoly of intoxicating the people through their own bartenders, the nobles propose to transform the bulk of the Jews into export agents, to find foreign markets for the agrarian, i. e. manorial, products, "whence commercial profits will accrue both to the tillers of the soil (?!) and to the nobles." As for the other Jews, part of them were to be retained by the landowners in their public houses, and the rest were "to be forced to engage in agriculture and handicrafts."

This brilliant prospect of becoming the tools of the nobles for the disposal of rural products and the sale of manorial alcohol had evidently little fascination for the Jews themselves. Alarmed by these aristocratic designs, they held a consultation, and even called a conference of delegates. The conference met in Ostrog (Volhynia) in the summer of 1798, and decided to collect a fund and send a deputation to St. Petersburg, to lay before the Tzar the needs and wishes of the Jews of the Southwest, whom the Government had entirely forgotten to ask how they themselves would like to have their affairs arranged. Unfortunately the Governor-General of the Southwest, Count Gudovich, "got wind" of these preparations. Far-sighted statesman that he was, he immediately suspected "that this collection [of money for the deputation] might merely serve as a cover for some wicked Jewish design." He accordingly confiscated the funds already secured, forbade all further collections, and hastened to report his achievement to St. Petersburg. To his astonishment, the overzealous Governor-General received the chilling reply, that the Tzar found nothing criminal in the desire of the Jews to send a deputation to him. At the same time he was instructed to return the confiscated money and not to interfere with the sending of the deputation (September, 1798). Whether the deputation actually proceeded to the capital, and what it achieved, is unknown. But the occurrence in itself bears witness to the fact that even in that unenlightened epoch and in the secluded Hasidic environment of Volhynia and Podolia, the Jews were not altogether insensible of the political and social upheavals which were taking place in Russia.

The last to respond to the Governmental inquiry was the nobility of Lithuania. The marshals of the nineteen Lithuanian districts, who met in 1800, submitted their "opinion," which had been adopted with only three dissenting votes, to Friesel, the Governor of Vilna. The three opposing marshals suggested leaving the Jews in the condition which had prevailed under the Polish régime. All the others drafted a plan of Jewish "reform," which was even more radical than that of the nobles of Minsk and Podolia. The Jews were to be barred not only from distilling and keeping taverns of their own, but also from the sale of spirits in the manorial public houses. The Jewish rural population, which would thus be deprived of all means of subsistence, was to be transferred partly to the cities, partly "to be scattered over the crown and manorial settlements, where they might be allowed to grow corn and to mortgage and farm estates." The economic reform was to be supplemented by one affecting the inner life of the Jews. It was necessary "to abolish the Jewish costume and introduce among the Jews the form of dress customary among the other inhabitants." Altogether the separateness of the Jews was to be broken down, for "they constitute a people by themselves, and as such have their own administration … in the form of synagogues and Kahals, which not only arrogate to themselves spiritual authority, but also meddle in all civil affairs and in matters appertaining to the police." These measures would bring about the amalgamation of the Jews with the surrounding population.

The "reformatory" ardor of the Lithuanian nobles, who thought it necessary to bracket the problem of Kahal autonomy with the sale of alcohol, was the effect of outside interference. Friesel, the Governor of Vilna, who was a cultivated German, and as such was acquainted with the state of the Jewish problem in Germany, found it necessary to address himself to the Lithuanian marshals twice, their first statement having been found "unsatisfactory." Only a second revision of the views of the nobles, which included the plan of inner reforms, satisfied Friesel. In April, 1800, Friesel forwarded these recommendations to the Senate, accompanying them by his own comprehensive memorandum, which to a large extent was obviously based on Chatzki's and Butrymovich's projects submitted some ten years previously to the "Jewish Commission" of the Quadrennial Diet.

Friesel urges the necessity of a "general reform," and professes to take Western Europe as a model, but all he adopted thence was the most objectionable tactics of "enlightened absolutism." In his opinion "the education of the Jewish people must begin with their religion." It is necessary "to wipe out all Jewish sects with their superstitions and to forbid strictly the introduction of any innovations whereby impostors might seduce the masses and plunge them into ever greater ignorance," a veiled allusion to the Hasidim and in particular to their Tzaddiks, whose strife with the anti-Hasidic rabbis was engaging the attention of the Russian Government at the time. He further recommends that the Jews be forced to send their children to the Government schools, to conduct all their business in Polish, to wear the customary non-Jewish form of dress, and not to marry before the age of twenty. Finally the Jews are to be classified in three categories, merchants, artisans, and tillers of the soil, these three estates to form part of the general class stratification of the Empire. In this way the fiscal services of the Kahals could be dispensed with, and the Kahals themselves would pass out of existence automatically.

The suggestions of the leaders of the nobility as well as the proposals of the governors were turned over in the spring of 1800 to the Senate, whose function was to examine and utilize them for a new legal enactment or "statute." Here they happened to fall into the hands of one of the Senators, Gabriel Dyerzhavin, the celebrated Russian poet, who by the whim of fate was soon to blossom forth into a "specialist" in rebus Judaicis.

3. Dyerzhavin's "Opinion" on the Jewish Problem

Dyerzhavin was born in one of the remote eastern provinces of Russia, and spent the greater part of his life in the Government offices of St. Petersburg. He had never come in contact with the Jewish population, until, in 1799, he was dispatched to the little town of Shklov in White Russia, to look into the case of the owner of the town, a retired general by the name of Zorich. The latter had been one of the favorites of Catherine, and lived the fast and extravagant life of a Russian country squire in the town which was his private property. His typically Russian devil-may-care conduct was not calculated to spare the large Jewish population of the town. Zorich evidently fancied that the Jews living on his land were just as much his serfs as were the peasants, and he handled them in the way serfs were dealt with in those days. He expelled several of them from the town, and seized their houses. Others he beat with his own hands, and still others he forced to supply him with drink free of charge. The Jews appealed to the Government against this attempt to turn them into serfs, and it was in response to their appeal that Emperor Paul dispatched Senator Dyerzhavin, with instructions to curb the violence of the boisterous squire. Dyerzhavin, who was imbued with the spirit of serfdom, could not but take a mild view of the high-handed methods of Zorich, and came to the conclusion that the Jews were partly to blame for the disorders that had taken place. The death of Zorich in 1800 put a stop to the case, but theoretically the Senate decided that, according to Russian law, the Jews, by virtue of their being members of the merchant and burgher class, could not be regarded as serfs even in the towns and settlements owned by squires.

A year later Dyerzhavin was again dispatched to White Russia, this time invested with very large powers. The province was in the throes of a terrible famine, brought about not only by bad crops but also by the outrageous conduct of the landed proprietors. These gentlemen, instead of supplying their peasants with foodstuffs, preferred to send large quantities of grain either abroad, for sale, or into their distilleries, for the production of whiskey, which, instead of feeding the peasants, poisoned them. In dispatching Dyerzhavin to White Russia, Emperor Paul gave him full power to put a stop to these abuses and to inflict severe penalties on the squires, who, "moved by unexampled greed, leave their peasants without assistance." They were to be dispossessed, and their estates placed under state control (June 16, 1800). In a supplementary instruction added by the Procurator-General of the Senate, Obolanin, the following clause was added: "And whereas, according to information received, the exhaustion of the White Russian peasants is to a rather considerable extent caused by the Zhyds, it is his Majesty's wish that your Excellency may give particular attention to their part in it and submit an opinion how to avert the general damage inflicted by them." This unmistakably anti-Semitic postscript, to which Dyerzhavin was in all likelihood a party, to which at all events he gave his approval, was designed to mitigate the blow aimed at the squires and turn it against the Jews. The conspiracy of these two bureaucrats, who believed in serfdom and sided with the squires, put an altogether different complexion on Dyerzhavin's mission.

The pacification of White Russia was speedily accomplished. Dyerzhavin placed the estate of one Polish magnate under state control, and personally closed up a Jewish distillery in the town of Lozno, the residence of the famous Hasidic Tzaddik, Rabbi Zalman Shneorsohn. He proceeded with such energy that one Jewish woman complained of having received blows at his hands. After having "installed order," Dyerzhavin set out to do what he considered to be his main task – prepare an elaborate memorandum concerning the Jews, under the characteristic title, "Opinion of Senator Dyerzhavin Concerning the Averting of the Want of Foodstuffs in White Russia by Curbing the Avaricious Pursuits of the Jews, also Concerning Their Re-education, and Other Matters."

The very title betrays the underlying motive of the writer, to make the Jews the scapegoat for the economic ruin of the province, in which the squires had always been the masters of the situation. But Dyerzhavin did not confine himself to the evaluation of the economic activity of the Jews. He was no less anxious to depict their inner life, their beliefs, their training and education, their communal institutions, their "moral situation." For all these purposes he drew upon a multitude of sources. While writing his memorandum in Vitebsk, in the fall of 1800, he gathered information about the Jews from the local anti-Jewish merchants and burghers, and from the "scientific" instructors at the Jesuit College in the same city, in the court-houses, and – from "the very Cossacks themselves."

It must be added that Dyerzhavin also had in his possession two projects from the pen of "enlightened Jews." The author of one of them, Nota Shklover by name, a wealthy merchant, who had served as purveyor to Potemkin's army, and, living at that time in St. Petersburg, knew the drift of opinion in Government circles, proposed to attract the Jews to manufacturing, which should be introduced, in connection with agriculture and cattle-breeding, into colonies set apart for this purpose "in the neighborhood of the Black Sea ports." The originator of the second project, a physician from Kreslavka, in the Government of Vitebsk, by the name of Frank, – evidently a German Jew of the Mendelssohnian type – suggested that the Government through Dyerzhavin focus its attention on the reform of the Jewish religion, which "in its original purity rested on unadulterated Deism and the postulates of pure morality," but in the course of time was distorted by "the absurdities of the Talmud." Frank accordingly proposes to follow the example set by Mendelssohn in Germany, to throw open the Russian public schools to the Jews, and to teach their children Russian, German, and Hebrew, implying of course that the Jew thus educated will not fail to prove himself of unquestionable benefit to the country.

Aside from these projects, Dyerzhavin had before him specimens of several Prussian Juden-Reglements, as well as the recommendations of the marshals and governors of Western Russia referred to above, and similar documents.²⁴³ This material sufficed for the Russian official, who had caught no more than a fleeting glimpse of the Jews while passing through White Russia, to elaborate a most comprehensive "Opinion" demanding a complete transformation of Jewish life.

The somber picture which Dyerzhavin draws of the life of the Jews suffices to show how superficial was his acquaintance with the conditions he describes. The naïveté with which he judges and completely distorts many aspects of Jewish life is astounding. The economic pursuits of the Jews, such as trading, leasing of land, innkeeping, brokerage, are nothing but "subtle devices to squeeze out the wealth of their neighbors, under the guise of offering them benefits and favors." The Jewish school is "a hotbed of superstitions." Moral sentiments are entirely absent among Jews: "they have no conception of lovingkindness, disinterestedness, and other virtues." All they do is "to collect riches in order to erect a new temple of Solomon or [to satisfy] their fleshly desires."

This curious bit of characterization forms the preamble to a vast scheme, consisting of no less than eighty-eight clauses, looking to the "transformation of the Jews." The Jews are to be placed under "Supreme [i. e. Imperial] protection and tutelage" and to be supervised by a special Christian official, a "Protector," who, with the assistance of committees to be appointed by the gubernatorial administrations, shall carry out this work of "transformation," shall take a census of all the Jews, and provide them with family names. Thereupon the Jews shall be divided into four categories: merchants, urban burghers, rural burghers, and agricultural settlers, and every Jew shall be forced to register in one of these categories. All this mass of Jews is to be evenly distributed over the various parts of White Russia, and the surplus transferred to the other Governments.

This reform having been accomplished, the Kahals shall be dispensed with. To provide for the management of the spiritual affairs of the Jews, "synagogues," with rabbis and "schoolmen," are to be organized in the various Governments. A supreme ecclesiastic tribunal is to be established at St. Petersburg, under the name "Sendarin,"²⁴⁴ which shall be presided over by a chief rabbi, or "patriarch," after the pattern of the Mohammedan mufti of the Tatars.

Suggestions of various repressive and compulsory measures supplement these positive proposals. The Jews are to be forbidden to keep Christian domestics; they are to be deprived of their right of participating in the city magistracies; they are to be compelled to give up their distinct form of dress and to execute all deeds and business documents in Russian, Polish, or German. The children shall be allowed to go to the Jewish religious schools only up to the age of twelve, and shall afterwards be transferred to the secular schools of the state. Finally the author proposes that the Government establish a printing-office of its own, to publish Jewish religious books "with philosophic annotations." In this way, Dyerzhavin contends, will "the stubborn and cunning tribe of Hebrews be properly set to rights," and Emperor Paul, by carrying out this reform, will earn great fame for having fulfilled the commandment of the Gospels, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you."

Such is Dyerzhavin's project, a curious mixture of the savage fancies of an old-fashioned Muscovite about an unfamiliar historic culture on the one hand, and notions of reform conceived in the contemporary Prussian barrack spirit and various "philosophic" tendencies on the other hand, a medley of hereditary Jew-hatred, vague appreciation of the historic tragedy of Judaism, and the desire to "render the Jews useful to the state."²⁴⁵ And over it all hovers the spirit of official patronage and red-tape regulations, the curious notion that a people with an ancient culture can, at the mere bidding of an outside agency, change its position like figures on a chess-board, that strange faith in the saving power of mechanical reforms which prevailed, though in less naïve manifestations, also in Western Europe.

Dyerzhavin's "Opinion" was laid before the Senate in December, 1800, and together with the previously submitted recommendations of the West-Russian marshals and governors was to supply the material for an organic legal enactment concerning the Jews.

But the execution of this plan was not destined to take place during the reign of Paul. In March, 1801, the Tzar met his tragic fate, and the cause of "Jewish reform" entered into a new phase, a phase characterized by the struggle between the liberal tendencies prevalent at the beginning of Alexander I.'s reign and the retrograde views held by the champions of Old Poland and Old Russia.

CHAPTER X
THE "ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM" OF ALEXANDER I

1. "The Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews."

The liberal breeze which began to stir in the first years of Alexander I.'s reign sent a refreshing current of air through the stuffy atmosphere of the St. Petersburg chancelleries, in which Russian bureaucrats, undisturbed by their utter ignorance of Judaism, were devising ways and means of turning Jewish life upside down. It took some time, however, before the Jewish question was taken up again. In 1801 and 1802 the Government was busy rearranging the whole machinery of the administration. With the formation of the Ministries and of the Council of State the Senate lost its former executive power, and, as a result, the material relating to the Jewish question which had been in its possession had to be transferred to a new official agency.

Such an agency was called into being in November, 1802. By order of the Tzar a special "Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews" was organized, and the following were appointed its members: Kochubay, Minister of the Interior, Dyerzhavin, the "specialist" on Judaism, at that time Minister of Justice, Count Zubov, and two high officials of Polish birth, Adam Chartoriski, Assistant-Minister for Foreign Affairs, an intimate friend of Alexander I., and Severin Pototzki, a member of the Senate. The Committee was charged with the investigation of all the problems touched upon in Dyerzhavin's "Opinion," concerning the curbing of the avaricious pursuits of the Jews in White Russia, with a view to "extending the amelioration of the Jews also to the other Governments acquired from Poland."

Rumors to the effect that a special Committee on Jewish affairs had been instituted at St. Petersburg, and that its work was to follow the lines laid down in the project of Dyerzhavin, caused considerable alarm among the Jews of the Northwest, who knew but too well the anti-Semitic leanings of the former Senator and inspector. The Kahal of Minsk held a special meeting in December, 1802, which passed the following resolution:

Whereas disquieting rumors have reached us from the capital, to the effect that matters involving the Jews as a whole have now been intrusted to the hands of five dignitaries, with power to dispose of them as they see fit, be it resolved that it is necessary to proceed to St. Petersburg and petition our sovereign not to allow them [the dignitaries] to introduce any innovations among us.

A public appeal was made for funds to provide the expenses of the delegates. Moreover, a fast of three days was imposed on all the members of the community, during which prayers were to be offered up in the synagogues for averting the calamity which the Government threatened to bring upon the Jews.

When the Minister of the Interior, Kochubay, learned of the excitement prevailing among the Jews, he sent, in January, 1803, a circular to the governors, instructing them to allay the fears of the Jews. The Kahals were to be informed that "in appointing the Committee for the investigation of Jewish matters," there was "no intention whatsoever to impair their status or to curtail any substantial advantage enjoyed by them," but on the contrary it was proposed to "offer them better conditions and greater security."

This verbal assurance was not nearly so effective in quieting the minds of the Jews as action taken by the Government at the same time. In the beginning of 1803, the "Jewish Committee" resolved to invite deputies from all the gubernatorial Kahals to St. Petersburg for the purpose of ascertaining their views as to the needs of the Jewish people, which the Government had planned to "transform" without its own knowledge. This was the first departure from the red-tape routine of St. Petersburg. Towards the end of January, 1803, active preparations were set afoot by the Kahals for sending such deputies. During the winter and spring the Russian capital witnessed the arrival of Jewish deputies from the Governments of Minsk, Podolia, Moghilev, and Kiev, no information being available about the other Governments. The deputies soon had occasion to rejoice in Dyerzhavin's retirement from membership in the Jewish Committee, following upon his resignation from the post of Minister of Justice. Being a conservative of the "real Russian" type, Dyerzhavin was out of place in a liberal Government such as ruled the destinies of Russia in the early years of Alexander's reign. With his retirement his "Opinion" ceased to serve as an obligatory rule of conduct for the members of the Committee.

On arriving in St. Petersburg, the deputies from the provinces found there a small group of Jews, mostly natives of White Russia, who lived temporarily in the capital, in connection with their business affairs. Though denied the right of permanent domicile in the capital of the Empire, this handful of barely tolerated Jews had managed to secure the right of dying there and of burying their dead in their own cemetery. The opening of the cemetery in 1802 marks symbolically the inception of the Jewish community in St. Petersburg. In the same sign of death the provincial deputies met their metropolitan brethren at a rather strange "celebration" in the summer of 1803: at the suggestion of the deputies and in their presence the remains of three Jews who had been buried in a Christian cemetery were transferred to the newly-acquired Jewish cemetery.

Among the Jews of St. Petersburg there were several men at that time who, owing to their connections with high officials and because of their familiarity with bureaucratic ways, were able to be of substantial service to the deputies from the provinces. One of these Jews, Nota Shklover, who about that time received the family name Notkin, the same public-spirited merchant who in 1800 had submitted his reform project to Dyerzhavin,²⁴⁶ acted, it would seem, as the official adviser of the deputies, having been invited some time previously to participate in the labors of the Jewish Committee. While on the Committee, he continually insisted on his scheme of promoting agriculture and manufactures among the Jews, but he did not live to see the triumph of his ideas. He died shortly before the enactment of the law of 1804, in which his pet theory found due recognition. Another St. Petersburg Jew, the wealthy contractor and commercial councilor Abraham Peretz, took no immediate part in Jewish affairs. Yet he too was of some service to the deputies, owing to his business relations with the official world.

In the meantime the Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews, after scrutinizing the different projects submitted to it, had worked out a general plan of reform, and communicated it to the Jewish deputies. After "prolonged indecision" the Jewish deputies announced that they were not in a position to submit their conclusions, without previous consultation with the Kahals by which they had been elected. They accordingly asked for a half-year's respite "for the purpose of consultation." The official Jewish Committee, on the other hand, could not agree to so protracted a delay in its labors, and resolved to submit, through the medium of the Government, the principal clauses of the project to the Kahals, with the understanding that the latter, "without making any changes in the aforesaid clauses," should confine themselves to suggestions as to the best ways and means of carrying the proposed reforms into effect.

The epistolary inquiry failed to produce the "desired effect." Restricted beforehand in their free expression of opinion, and having no right to speak their mind as to the substance of the project, the Kahals in replying limited themselves to the request that the "correctional measures" be postponed for twenty years, particularly as far as the proposed prohibition of the sale of liquor and land-tenure was concerned, which prohibition would undermine the whole economic structure of Jewish life. The Committee paid no heed to the plea of the Kahals, which was tantamount to a condemnation of the basic principles of the project, and proceeded to work in the direction originally decided upon.

Nor was there perfect unanimity within the Committee itself. Two tendencies, it seems, were struggling for mastery: utilitarianism, represented by the champions of "correctional measures" and of a compulsory "transformation of Jewish life," and humanitarianism, advocated by the spokesmen of unconditional emancipation. To the latter class belonged Speranski, the brilliant and enlightened statesman who might have succeeded in liberating the Empire of the Tzars a hundred years ago, had he not fallen a victim to the fatal conditions of Russian life. At the time we are speaking of he served in the Ministry of the Interior under Kochubay, and was engaged in elaborating plans of reform for the various departments of the civil service.

Speranski took an active interest in the Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews, and frequently acted as Kochubay's substitute. There was a time when his influence in the Committee was predominant. It was evidently under his influence that the remarkable sentences embodied in the minutes of the Committee meeting of September 20, 1803, were penned:

Reforms brought about by the power of the state are, as a rule, unstable, and are particularly untenable in those cases in which that power has to grapple with the habits of centuries. Hence it seems both better and safer to guide the Jews to perfection by throwing open to them the avenues leading to their own happiness, by observing their movements from a distance, and by removing everything that might turn them away from this path, without using any manner of force, without establishing special agencies for them, without endeavoring to act in their stead, but by merely opening the way for their own activities. As few restrictions as possible, as many liberties as possible – these are the simple elements of every social order.

Since the Government had begun to dabble in the Jewish question, this was the first rational utterance coming from the ranks of the Russian bureaucracy. It implied an emphatic condemnation of the system of state patronage and "correctional measures" by means of which Russian officialdom then and thereafter sought to "transform" a whole nation. Here for the first time was voiced the lofty precept of humanitarianism: grant the Jews untrammeled possibilities of development, give full scope to their energies, and the Jews themselves will in the end choose the way which leads to "perfection" and progress… But even the liberalizing statesmen of that period could not maintain themselves on that high eminence of political thought. Speranski's conception was too tender a blossom for the rough climate of Russia, even in its springtide. The blossom was bound to wither. As far as the Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews was concerned, the hackneyed political wisdom of the age, the system of patronage and compulsory reforms, came to the fore again. The report submitted by the Jewish Committee to Alexander I. in October, 1804, reveals no trace of that radical liberalism which a year before had come to light in the minutes of the Committee.

The report begins by determining the approximate size of the Jewish population, computing the number of registered, taxable males at 174,385 – "a figure which represents less than a fifth of the whole Jewish population." In other words, the total number of Jews, in the estimate of the Committee, approached one million. The report proceeds to point out that this entire mass is huddled together in the annexed Polish and Lithuanian provinces and in Little Russia and Courland, and is barred from the Governments of the interior – a statement followed by an historical excursus tending to show that "the Jews have never been allowed to settle in Russia." The Tzar is further informed that the Jews are obliged to pay double taxes, that, notwithstanding the fact that they are liable to the general courts and municipalities, and that their Kahals are subordinate to the gubernatorial police, the Jews still keep aloof from the institutions of the land and manage their affairs through the Kahals. Finally it is pointed out that the sale of liquor, the most widespread occupation among Jews, is a source of abuses, calling forth complaints from the surrounding population. Basing its deductions on these premises, the Committee drafted a law which in its principal features was embodied in the "Statute Concerning the Organization of the Jews," issued, with the sanction of the Tzar, soon afterwards, on December 9, 1804.