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History of Jews in Russia After the partitions of the Commonwealth, the Russian Empire included the lands on which a large number of Jews lived. By the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire had the largest Jewish community in the world (in 1880, 67% of the entire Jewish people lived here). However, as a result of mass pogroms from 1881 to 1906, and then during the Civil War, more than 2 million Jews left the territory of the Russian Empire, who mainly emigrated to the United States. On the territory of the USSR, during the genocide during World War II, approximately 1.5 to 2 million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their accomplices. In the late 1980s - early 1990s, after the abolition of restrictions on emigration, half of Jewish population The USSR left the country, emigrating mainly to Israel, the USA and Germany. But, despite this, the Jewish population of the countries the former USSR is still one of the largest in the world. A significant part of Russian-speaking Jews currently live outside the former USSR (the result of emigration, the waves of which occurred after 1970), in countries such as the USA, Israel, Canada, Germany, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands
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1772-1825 Until 1772, the Jewish population in Russia was practically absent. Efforts to keep Jews out of the Russian Empire turned out to be pointless, since the Polish lands, with their large Jewish population, became part of the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century after the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Jews in Poland were carriers of capitalist tendencies: they were engaged in the lease of agricultural land, individual rights and monopolies, sometimes even in small settlements, at one time dominated in small and medium-sized lending, were very active in all types of trade; in some areas (for example, in the repair of clothes), Jewish artisans were almost monopolists. By the time of the partitions of Poland, the economic influence of the Jews had greatly diminished (especially in the area of finance), but the persistent perception of Jews as "exploiters" dominated the public consciousness. By the end of the 18th century, the Polish state was taking measures to restrict the activities of the Jews. This led in 1775 to the expulsion of the Jews from Warsaw and the subsequent pogrom. Immediately after the partition of Poland, Catherine II, imbued with the idea of urban growth as shopping centers In the Russian Empire, in 1780, by decree, it assigned all Jews to one of the urban estates - merchant or petty bourgeois. Compared with the majority of the population attributed to the peasant class, the urban class had broader rights and privileges.
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Politics towards Jews Like all other Russian subjects of taxation estates, Jews did not enjoy complete freedom in choosing their place of residence: by decree of Catherine II, the territory where they were allowed to live and engage in fishing was determined, which later received the name traits of Jewish settlement. The latter initially covered Lithuania, Belarus, Novorossiya and some other parts of the territory of modern Ukraine. Bessarabia and the Kingdom of Poland were also later attributed to the Pale of Settlement. V different time Jews were forbidden to settle in Nikolaev, Yalta, Sevastopol and in most districts of Kiev. The government attempted to suppress the occupation of the Jews by carving and renting mills, dairy farms, fishing from landowners, as it was believed that this led to the ruin of local peasants. In this regard, Jews were forbidden to live in villages. This ban was immediately deleted from economic life a craft that fed almost half of the Jewish population of the Russian Empire. However, the role of Jews in the economy in rural areas was so significant that the eviction of Jews from villages to cities was suspended from 1809. The result of the restrictions on the choice of occupation and place of residence was the extreme overcrowding and poverty within the line. Most of the Jews were assigned to the bourgeois class or the third, lower guild of the merchant class.
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Solution of the "Jewish question" To resolve the "Jewish question" until 1881, the authorities pursued a consistent policy of "rapprochement" and "merger". Under Alexander I, they tried to achieve this goal by gradual reforms, and later - under Nicholas I - with the help of aggressive intervention in the life of the Jewish community. Under Alexander I, the state codified the legal regulation of the status of Jews. The 1804 decree affected practically all aspects of Jewish life by regulation. The Decree reflected both restrictions and prohibitions and the rights of Jews in economic life in order to stimulate more productive economic activity of the Jewish population. Special attention was given to Jewish producers and sellers of alcoholic beverages, whom the government sought to oust from rural settlements and relocate to cities and workers' settlements. The decree of 1804 allowed Jews in Russia to move to the peasant class to create agricultural settlements (colonies) on specially designated unpopulated lands in Novorossiya. Like other colonists, Jews received temporary tax breaks, exemption from recruiting duties, and subsidies for the acquisition or purchase of land. Several hundred Jewish families from Belarus, who founded the first agricultural colonies in 1808, responded to the government's call, but the Jews' unfamiliarity with agriculture, on the one hand, and the difficulty of settling the undeveloped steppe region, on the other, soon led to the decline of these colonies. In 1794, the poll tax from Jews enrolled in the petty bourgeoisie and merchant class was set at double the tax rate from the bourgeoisie and merchants of the Christian confession. In two Belarusian provinces, some Jews were elected to magistrates. However, the governors of the Ukrainian provinces arbitrarily set a restrictive norm for Jews in the magistrates: in places with a predominantly Jewish population, they allowed Jews to elect only one-third of the members of the magistrate. In 1797, special positions of censors of Jewish books were introduced - they had to thoroughly study works in Hebrew and Yiddish and exclude from them those places that could be considered attacks on Christianity. The censors were personally responsible for the approved books.
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1825-1856 During the reign of Nicholas I in 1827, a law was issued obliging Jews to serve the recruitment service, from which they had previously been exempted. Jews, unlike Christians, were recruited from the age of 12. Jewish child recruits under the age of 18 were sent to the cantonist battalions, from where most of them ended up in cantonist schools, and a few were assigned to the villages as camps or apprentices to artisans. The conscription quota for Jewish communities was ten recruits from one thousand men annually. In addition, the communities were required to pay with a "penalty" number of recruits for tax arrears, for self-mutilation and escape of a conscript, it was allowed to replenish the required number of conscripts with minors. On May 1, 1850, a ban on wearing traditional Jewish clothes followed: after January 1, 1851, only old Jews were allowed to wear them, subject to the payment of the appropriate tax. In April 1851, Jewish women were forbidden to shave their heads, since 1852 they were not allowed to wear peisiks, and tales and kippahs could only be worn in synagogues. However, most Jews continued to wear traditional clothing, the authorities fought this with brutal measures. One of the most significant transformations of Nicholas I was the creation in the 1840s of the state Jewish educational system including both primary schools, and schools. This educational reform led to the creation of a layer of secular Jewish intellectuals and educators.
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1856-1881 With the accession to the throne of Emperor Alexander II in 1856, the recruitment of Jewish children to the cantonists was stopped. For merchants of the first guild, after a 10-year stay in the guild, as well as for persons with higher education, secondary medical staff, guild craftsmen and retired recruits were granted the right to reside outside the Pale of Settlement. The statute on zemstvo institutions did not have any restrictions on Jews, but the City Statute provided that the number of Jews in city councils and councils should not exceed one third of the total composition of these bodies. The policy of encouraging Jewish agriculture in Russia was curtailed by Alexander II by a new decree that again imposed a ban on the acquisition by Jews land plots... By this time, there were 1,082 Jewish households in the Bessarabian region. The Provisional Regulations of 1882, according to which, after the expiration of the original lease period, land colonies could neither be bought nor rented by the colonists themselves. Despite the ban and active measures to restrict Jewish agriculture, about 20-25% of the inhabitants of the Jewish colonies continued to engage in agricultural activities. Jewish entrepreneurs played a significant role in the rapid economic recovery that began in Russia as a result of the reforms of Alexander II, and, largely thanks to their efforts, Ukraine became one of the most dynamically developing regions of the empire. In the rapidly developing sugar industry, the largest entrepreneurs were the Zaitsevs and Brodskys, in the past, large tax farmers. The development of Odessa as an important port caused the rapid growth of the city's Jewish community, which became one of the largest in the Russian Empire.
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Cultural Contribution Jews also began to make significant contributions to Russian culture. The landscape painter Isaak Levitan and the sculptor Mark Antokolsky received all-Russian fame. In connection with the expansion of the borders of the Russian Empire in the 19th century, Georgian Jews, Mountain Jews and Central Asian Jews also became its subjects. Starting in the 1860s, the cultural isolation of Jews gradually waned. An ever-increasing number of Jews adopted the Russian language and customs. The desire of Jewish youth to enter gymnasiums and universities intensified. The government relaxed the restrictions on the Pale of Settlement for various categories of the Jewish population: on November 27, 1861, persons of the Jewish faith with higher education, with the degrees of candidate, master, doctor, received widespread residence in the territory of the Russian Empire; by 1867 this law had been extended to all Jewish doctors; June 28, 1865 - against Jewish artisans; June 25, 1867 - on retired Nikolaev soldiers; in 1872 - for graduates of the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology; in 1879 - for graduates of all higher educational institutions, as well as for pharmaceutical assistants, dentists, apprentices of pharmacists and paramedics. Jews received the right to enter the civil service, participate in city and zemstvo self-government and courts. But even according to the new laws, the share of Jewish vowels could not be more than 30% of the number of vowels in a given city, even if with a predominant Jewish population, and could not be elected by mayors. Between the two extreme strata - the mass of Orthodox Christians who rejected secular enlightenment and completely assimilated Jews (many of whom converted to Christianity, which freed them from all legal restrictions - in the 19th century, 69.4 thousand Jews converted to Orthodoxy, about 12 thousand (mainly in the Kingdom Polish) converted to Catholicism and about 3 thousand converted to Lutheranism) - an intermediate position was occupied by the so-called Maskilim, that is, supporters of the Haskala. The Jewish poet and writer Lev Gordon sharply denounced the intolerance and inertia of the rabbis and tzaddiks. In the years 1855-1860. there were newspapers "Gamagid", "Gamelitz" and "Gakarmel" in Hebrew. In the early 1960s, Jewish literature appeared in Russian. Periodicals in Russian defended the equality of Jews.
The history of the flight and deportation of Jews, dictated mainly by anti-Semitism, dates back to ancient times - for the first time Jewish refugees are mentioned in the Bible. Only before the beginning of our era there were several forcible evictions of Jews from the Kingdom of Israel after its capture by Assyria - from Judea, Rome, Palestine, Alexandria. In the Middle Ages, deportations were quite frequent, especially in Europe, where Jews were blamed for crop failures, the spread of diseases and other problems. During the same period, Jews began to be accused of killing Christians for ritual purposes.
At times, the persecution was motivated by religious motives. In Spain, Catholicism was adopted in 589, and in 613 Jews who refused to be baptized were expelled from the country. In 1492, the situation repeated itself: Jews were required to either be baptized or leave the country. Similar requirements were imposed on Jews in France and Austria.
In Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, pogroms and mass executions took place.
In Kievan Rus, the Jewish pogrom took place in 1113 during the unrest associated with the death of Prince Svyatopolk Izyaslavich and the struggle for power.
During the reign of Svyatopolk, Jews "received many liberties before Christians," which was one of the reasons for the discontent of the Kievites.
In the Russian Empire, the first decree on the expulsion of Jews was issued in 1727 by Empress Catherine I. Do not let them enter Russia under any images, ”he said.
On December 13, 1742, the daughter of Catherine I and Peter I, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna issued a new decree -
“About the expulsion from both Great Russian and Little Russian cities, villages and villages of all Zhids, no matter what rank and dignity, with all their estate abroad, and about not allowing them into Russia for the future, except for those who wish to accept the Christian faith of the Greek religion ".
Referring to the decree issued by her mother, Elizabeth noted that “these Jews are still in Our Empire, and especially in Little Russia under different kinds, as if by bargaining and the maintenance of wrists and shinkov they continue their residence, from which not some other fruit, but only, as from those in the name of Christ the Savior of the haters, Our loyal subjects should expect extreme harm. " Therefore, it was proposed that all Jews be evicted abroad along with all their property and not allowed back under any pretext. The empress was ready to make an exception for those who wanted to become Christians - it was proposed to baptize them and allow them to live on the territory of the Russian Empire, but at the same time "they will not be allowed out of the State."
In 1743, the General Military Chancery of Little Russia and the Livonian Provincial Chancellery presented the Empress with a petition in which they asked to allow Jewish merchants to enter the country and told about the enormous benefits of such a decision for the state treasury.
However, Elizabeth refused them with the words: "I do not want an interesting profit from the enemies of Christ."
And in 1791, when, after the Second partition of the Rzecz Pospolita, its eastern territories, together with the local Jewish population, were in the power of the Russian Empire, Empress Catherine II marked the boundaries of the territories beyond which Jews were forbidden to live. The line of permanent Jewish settlement covered more than 1200 thousand km² and included settlements in Lithuania, Belarus, the Kingdom of Poland, part of the territory of modern Ukraine.
With the coming to power of Emperor Alexander II, the merchants of the first guild received permission to live outside the Pale of Settlement (the category depended on the amount of capital that the merchant had). Later, restrictions were lifted from Jews with higher education, doctors, guild craftsmen, and recruits who had served.
By the end of the 19th century, about five million Jews lived on the territory of the Russian Empire. Moreover, only about 200 thousand people had the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement. Difficulties associated with going beyond the Pale of Settlement led to emigration - from 1881 to 1914, about 1.5 million Jews moved from Russia to the United States.
The Pale of Settlement was abolished by the Provisional Government after February revolution 1917 of the year.
Despite the fact that the Jews were equal in rights with other citizens, during the civil war of 1917-1923, they suffered greatly from the wave of pogroms that swept across the country.
In the late 1920s, preparations began in the Amur region for the creation of a Jewish national autonomy. Jewish Autonomous region was formed in 1934. It borders on China, the Amur Region and the Khabarovsk Territory. Despite the fact that the region was created as a territory for settlers, by now the bulk of the Jewish population has left it due to the extremely low standard of living (in 1994-1998 more than half of the Jews left the Jewish Autonomous Region for Israel).
In 2010, 1,628 Jews lived in the region - less than 1% of the population. There are projects for the accession of the Jewish Autonomous Region to the Khabarovsk Territory and the Amur Region.
The first surviving authentic document of Kievan Rus was a letter written in Hebrew. By the end of the 19th century, there were already five and a half million Jews living in Russia, which accounted for 80 percent of the total number in the world.
New hypotheses
Until recently, the main version of how the Jews ended up in Eastern Europe was the Rhine hypothesis, according to which Eastern European Jews descended from the descendants of Israeli-Canaanite tribes who migrated from the Holy Land under the influence of Islamic expansion in the 7th century in the middle reaches of the Rhine. 
Before that, there were already small communities that moved to these lands in the late Roman era. Further, already at the beginning of the 15th century, a large group of Jews migrated to the East. However, the latest major studies of genomes conducted by American geneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik from Johns Hopkins University showed that the genetic map of Jewish communities is far from monolithic, moreover, it is dominated by South European and Caucasian ancestral signatures with a small admixture of Middle Eastern ones.
Dr. Elhaik's research was published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution. Similar studies have been carried out by other scientists. In 2013, 17 out of 12 researchers scientific organizations studied more than 3.5 thousand mitochondrial DNA in Jews from Europe, the Caucasus and the Middle East and came to the conclusion that more than 80% of them come from the Old World, and not from Western Asia or the Caucasus. According to the author of the study, Englishman Martin Richards (Center for the Study of Archeogenetics at the University of Huddersfield) and his colleagues, among whom there are Russian scientists from the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Rychkov and Oksana Naumova, this suggests that about 2000 years ago a large group of Jews migrated from Palestine, and these were predominantly men, which is important, since Jewishness is transmitted through the maternal line.
Thus, today we can say that Jewish migration on the territory of Russia went, firstly, in several stages, and secondly, it went from different places: from the territory of Palestine and from the territory of the Khazar Kaganate, and the number of Palestinian Jews was smaller.
The first Jews in the future territory of Russia
The first Jews on the future territory of Russia appeared in 1st-2nd centuries... They lived in Greek island colonies. This is evidenced by the tombstone of a Jewish warrior found in Taman dating back to the 1st century, as well as numerous monuments with Jewish symbols and Jewish symbols (images of the menorah, shofar, lulav and etrog).
It is also known that a significant number of Jews lived in the Bosporus kingdom at the end of the 4th century, they were the descendants of the participants in the Bar-Kokhba uprising and those who were expelled during the Assyrian and Babylonian captivity. In the 7th century, the Taman Peninsula was a major center of concentration of Jews. This is evidenced by the entry of the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes, which he made in 671: "... in the city of Phanagoria and its environs, many other tribes also live near the Jews living there." Researcher of Jewish history of Eastern Europe Julius Brutskus wrote that part of the Palestinian Jews from Persia through the Derbent passage migrated to the lower Volga, where in the 8th century the city of Itil appeared - the capital of the Khazar Kaganate.
As you know, Judaism became one of the religions of the Kaganate in the second half of the 8th and early 9th centuries, which evidently took root there under the influence of Jewish communities. At that time, Jewish merchants-Radanites, under the patronage of the Khazar rulers, were engaged in trade and controlled the circulation of fur, weapons, silk and spices between the West and the East. After the collapse of the Khazar Kaganate, Jews were forced to migrate to the west. This is confirmed by the chronicles of 1117 about the resettlement of the Khazars from Belaya Vezha (Sarkel) near Chernigov, as well as numerous place names like Zhidovo, Zhidichev, Zhidova vila, Kozari, Kozara, Kozarzevek in the territory Ancient Rus and Poland.
Jews in Kievan Rus
Also in early period Jewish communities of Kievan Rus were already in Smolensk, Chernigov, Przemysl and Volodymyr-Volynskiy.
Information about them is contained in the documents of the XI-XIII centuries. There was also a significant Khazar-Jewish colony in Kiev at this time. In the annals of Kievan Rus there are references to the Zhidovsky quarter and the Zhidovsky gates. One of the oldest authentic manuscripts of Kievan Rus, the so-called Kiev letter, was written in Hebrew. It was a letter of recommendation issued to Yaakov ben Hanukkah by the Jewish community in Kiev. It dates back to the 10th century. There are other historical confirmations of the activity of the Jewish population of Kievan Rus in X-XII centuries... So, in 1094 and 1124 in Kievan Rus commentaries to the Pentateuch were compiled. In 1156 the Greek monk Theodosius mentioned the Karaites who lived in Kiev. The Kiev rabbi of the late 12th century, Moshe ben Yamanikakov from Kiev, was personally acquainted with the French rabbi Tam Yamanikakov and was in correspondence with the head of the Baghdad yeshiva, Shmuel ben Ali ha-Levi Gaon (he died around 1194), the head of the yeshiva in Baghdad. Binyamin from Tudela, who visited Kiev in 1173, called it “the great city”.
Pale of Settlement
The term “Pale of Settlement” today has a negative connotation, and is often perceived incorrectly, as some kind of narrow demarcation border. Let's define the terms. The Pale of Settlement was the name of the border of the territory of the Russian Empire, outside of which it was prohibited from 1791 to 1915 permanent residence Jews. It is important to understand that this was not a narrow strip of land, the Pale of Settlement was 1,224,008 sq. km, that is, it was a whole country, which is larger in area than the territory of Moldova, or Belarus, or Ukraine. For comparison: the territory of Israel: 22,072 sq. km. It is known that Napoleon, recruiting the militia, turned to the Jews of France: "Who are you, citizens, or outcasts?".
Jews living within the Pale of Settlement on the territory of the Russian Empire rarely cooperated with Napoleon, perceiving the invasion as a threat to their culture, traditions and faith, that is, they did not feel like outcasts, but began to actively help the Russian army in the fight against the invaders. The Pale of Settlement was not only a form of discrimination (and not on a national, but on a religious basis), but also a form of protecting Jewish society from external influences... Jews were not taken into the army for a long time, they did not pay taxes. They were allowed many types of activities, including distilling, brewing, and were allowed to work as artisans and artisans.
After the Pale of Settlement appeared, not all Jews were restricted in their rights. An exception was made for Jews of non-Jewish faith, for merchants of the first guild, dentists, pharmacists, paramedics, mechanics, the same distillers and brewers, graduates of universities, clerks of Jewish merchants of the 1st guild.
Partitions of Poland
The largest part of the Jews ended up in the Russian Empire after the partitions of Poland (1772-1794). After the first partition of the Commonwealth in 1772, about 200 thousand Jews turned out to be on the territory of Russia.
The Russian government took into account the specifics of the tradition. The Jews retained the right to exercise their faith in public and own property. The Senate decree of 1776 legalized the existence of the kagala. Catherine II began to restrict the rights of the Jews, but it was still far from reactionism of the late 19th century and the pogroms. In 1795, the Pale of Settlement included 15 provinces: Volyn, Yekaterinoslav, Kiev, Podolsk, Poltava, Tauride, Kherson, Chernigov ( modern Ukraine), Vitebsk, Grodno, Minsk, Mogilev (modern Belarus), Vilna, Kovno (modern Lithuania) and Bessarabian (modern Moldova).
Jews in Russia by the end of the 19th century
Some statistics. At the end of the 19th century, in 1897, there were 7.5 million Jews in the world, 5, 25 million of them lived on the territory of the Russian Empire. Of these, 3.837 million lived in European Russia, 105 thousand Jews - in the Caucasus, Siberia and Central Asia. Jews accounted for over 50% of the urban population of Lithuania and Belarus. In the cities of Ukraine lived: Russians - 35.5%, Jews - 30%, Ukrainians - 27%.
The Jewish question itself arose in 1772 under Catherine II, when, as a result of the partition of Poland, territories with a significant Jewish population were ceded to Russia. It was then that the first legislative acts appeared, regulating the status of Jews in the Russian Empire. Over the next century public policy in relation to this distinctive religious-ethnic group ranged from the provision of full equality in rights with other persons filed to severe restrictive measures. 15
It is known that since the 17th century a “Pale of Settlement” was established for the Jewish population, within which they were allowed to live; it included Bessarabia, Vilna, Volyn, Grodno, Yekaterinoslav, Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev, Podolsk, Poltava, Tauride, Kherson, Chernigov and Kiev provinces. However, this restriction did not apply to Jews of certain social categories: merchants of the 1st guild, persons with higher education, artisans and soldiers. sixteen
In this regard, the Jewish question has always been a difficult problem, not only The Russian state but also many others. It is, perhaps, impossible to establish unequivocal reasons for anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire. But the fact of his apparent presence in the country is beyond doubt.
The Jewish question in the context of the national policy of Alexander III cannot be assessed unambiguously. Of course tough national policy the emperor could not ignore the Jewish population.
Shortly after accession to the throne Alexander III against his will he faced the Jewish question. In mid-April 1881, in the city of Elizavetgrad (Kremenchug), and then in many other places, anti-Jewish demonstrations took place - pogroms that then broke out for many months. The reason for them was the rumors widely spread among the masses that it was the Jews who were supposedly guilty of the murder of Tsar Alexander II.
The government of Russia and Tsar Alexander III personally will then many times be completely unproven accused of almost indulging in such violent actions. In reality, everything looked very different.
After the beginning of the pogroms, which led to the ruin of houses, shops, shops, to the theft of property and victims (for all the time, 2 Jews and 19 peasants who participated in the pogroms died), the tsar insisted on the use of tough measures against the troublemakers. The troops were used without hesitation to end the riots. It was to prevent such unrest on August 14, 1881 that the "Regulation on Measures to Protect State Order and Public Peace" appeared. It provided for the possibility of introducing in a particular locality a position or "enhanced" or "emergency" protection. Governor-generals and the Minister of Internal Affairs received the right to dismiss officials from their duties, close meetings and press organs, arrest and expel troublemakers without trial. 17
Also, after the Jewish pogroms, the Minister of Internal Affairs N.P. Ignatiev published the Provisional Rules for the Jews, which came into force on May 3, 1882. These rules significantly limited the civil rights of Jews in the provinces of the "Jewish Pale". Jews were forbidden to settle outside cities and towns, and the execution of all merchant fortresses, mortgages and leases in the name of Jews, powers of attorney for real estate were also stopped. Further more. The number of cities where Jews were allowed to live was constantly decreasing. Jewish craftsmen and retired Nikolaev soldiers were prohibited from living in Moscow and the Moscow province. This demand came from the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and led to the expulsion of 17 thousand families from Moscow alone. The freedom of economic activity of Jews was also limited. The charters of exchanges and credit societies were supplemented, according to which "the number of members of the exchange committee from non-Christians should not exceed one third of the total number of members," and the chairman of the committee must necessarily be "from Christians"; Jews were forbidden to hold the positions of directors of city public banks.
Getting a good education for “non-Christians” also became problematic. In 1887, the Ministry of Public Education established a percentage rate for Jews in educational institutions... Within the Pale of Settlement, the number of Jewish students should not exceed 10%, in the rest of the empire - five, and in the capitals - three. In 1889, Jews were denied access to the number of attorneys at law.
Of course, all these measures had negative consequences for the Jewish population. But fundamental research Mironova N.B. gives an objective assessment of the situation of Jews in Russia at the end of the 19th century. His estimate is dated to 1897 because it was the year of the general census. The UN uses the so-called index to assess the well-being of the population human development(Human Development Index), which includes three indicators - longevity (average life expectancy), education (adult literacy and the proportion of children in school) and material well-being (gross product per capita); each indicator has an equal value for the index. By the end of the XIX century. the average life expectancy of a newborn Jew was 39.0 years, a Bashkir - 37.3 years, and a Russian - 28.7, i.e., 10.3 and 8.6 years less, respectively. The relatively low mortality rate ensured a higher rate of natural increase among Jews and Bashkirs in relation to Russians. For 1795-1897 the number of Jews increased from 750-800 thousand to 5,216 thousand - about 6.7 times. No other ethnic group in Russia knew such a growth rate - 1.9% per year. Thanks to this, in the 19th century. the share of Jews in the country's population increased from 2 to 4.15%, despite the fact that Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia were annexed to Russia. At the end of the 18th century. Jews were the ninth largest nation of Russia (after Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Tatars and Finns), and at the beginning of the XX century. - the fifth, ahead of the Finns, Lithuanians, Latvians and Tatars. Literacy among Jews was much higher than among Russians and other Slavic peoples. As for literacy in Yiddish, it was almost universal among men, due to the fact that the overwhelming number of boys passed through the primary Jewish religious school (cheder). Apparently, literacy in Yiddish was quite high among women, but there is no reliable data on this. What is more surprising is that even in terms of literacy in Russian, the Jews outnumbered the Russians themselves, as well as the Ukrainians and Belarusians. In 1897, among the male Jews, literacy was 31.2%, among the female - 16.5%, and among the three Slavic peoples - 29% and 8.2%, respectively. eighteen
Thus, the position of Jews in the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century can be assessed from two sides. One of them is a tough policy aimed at reducing the civil liberties of the Jewish population. The second side of this question can be both a cause and a consequence of the first. The Jews, despite this very harsh policy and discrimination, were more economically successful people than the Russians. So, K.P. Pobedonostsev, the mentor of Alexander III, saw a danger for Russia in the "quiet offensive" of Russian Jewry, which gradually established control over everything. a large number spheres of public life. 19 The Jews of the Russian Empire, although many of their rights were violated, did not know the problems of the Russian peasant. In many ways, this fact aroused hatred of the general population towards them.
As for Emperor Alexander III, a number of historians ascribe to him an open Judeophobia, in which they see the origins of the so-called anti-Semitic policy. Whether this was true is difficult to say.
However, no matter how the emperor treated the Jews, he resolutely stopped the monstrous wave of Jewish pogroms that took place in the fall of 1881 and which had especially tragic consequences in the southwestern provinces of Russia. It seems that Alexander III himself did not have any personal prejudice against the Jews. Under him, Anton Rubinstein headed the conservatory, the emperor highly appreciated the work of M.A. Vrubel and I.I. Levitan, was benevolent towards Jewish industrialists and merchants and did not see them as a threat to Russian identity at all. twenty
Conclusion
The national policy of Russia at the end of the 19th century was not only a whim of the sovereign. Still, the legislative system of the state was a system, and although the last word it was for the king, at a meeting with the ministers, all the pros and cons were weighed.
1 Mironov B.N. Social history of Russia during the period of the empire. Vol. 1. Page XXVIII
2 Bokhanov A.N. Emperor Alexander III
3 Tolmachev E.P. Alexander III and his time. Pp. 304-305.
4 Ibid. P. 305.
5 Richard S. Wortman Power Scenarios. Myths and ceremonies of the Russian monarchy. T.2. From Alexander II to the abdication of Nicholas II. P. 251.
6 Yu.V. Kudrina Alexander III and the culture of Russia
7 Tolmachev E.P. Alexander III and his time. Page 305.
8 Bokhanov A.I. Emperor Alexander III
10 Bokhanov A.I. Emperor Alexander III
12 Mironov B.N. Social history of the period of the empire Vol. 1. Page XXVIII
15 Bokhanov A.I. Emperor Alexander III. P.
16 Tolmachev E.P. Alexander III and his time. P. 308-309
17 Bokhanov A.I. Emperor Alexander III. P.
18 Mironov B.N. Social history of the period of the empire Vol. 1. Page XXIX.
19 Tolmachev E.P. Alexander III and his time. P. 308.
After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century, the territories in which Jews had lived for several centuries became part of the Russian Empire. According to the 1897 census, the Jewish community numbered more than 5 million people living within the Pale of Settlement established by Catherine II. It was this territorial restriction on the residence of the Jewish population that predetermined their further compact settlement in shtetls or townships. The idea of the necessary Europeanization of Jews and their integration into social structures (“the Germans of the Mosaic Law”), proposed by the leaders of the Prussian Haskala (educational movement), led to the formation of the foundations of national identity and projects to create an independent Jewish state.
By annexing Poland, the Russian Empire became the country with the highest Jewish population: by the end of the 19th century, more than half (56%) of all Jews in the world lived here. Over the past century, Jews have been chaotically inhabiting European countries, and governments tried not to interfere in their internal life. Therefore, such Jewish communities became a kind of miniature states, which sometimes suffered a lot from oppression and social injustice.
There is an opinion in society that Jews have lost their loyalty to the state.
The movement for national identity and equality was formed in Prussia in the middle of the 18th century by the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who put forward the ideology of "all rights as citizens, no special rights as Jews." This slogan was taken up by German educators, including the playwright and theorist Lessing, and this is how the movement for Jewish rights, the Haskala, was born, whose influence subsequently led to a significant expansion of civil liberties of European Jews.
Having significantly expanded the territory of his empire, Alexander I was forced to face the solution of the Jewish question, however, it did not come to concrete actions, mired in conflicts both within the Jewish community itself and associated with the resistance of the bureaucracy and high dignitaries. The next emperor, Nicholas I, was more determined and even proposed a project for the resettlement of all Jews to Siberia, which, however, received a sharp rebuke from two prominent ministers of the 1830s-40s, Pavel Dmitrievich Kiselev (the author of the reform of the state village) and Sergei Semenovich Uvarov (the creator of the "theory of official nationality"). On the other hand, still fearing possible reprisals, part of the Jews took advantage of a loophole in Russian legislation that nationality was established in accordance with religion, which means that by adopting Christianity, a Jew was freed from all legal and civil restrictions and became a capable subject of the empire. This is how the "cross" appeared - the Jews who abandoned the faith of their ancestors and converted to Orthodoxy or Lutheranism.
Tsar-reformer Alexander II was inclined towards the idea of liberalizing legal norms in relation to the Jewish population. So, in 1859, the Pale of Settlement (the border beyond which Jews were forbidden to settle) was eliminated for the most prosperous representatives - merchants of the 1st guild and foreigners.
Jews were allowed to live in special cities and towns.
In 1861, Jews received the right to get jobs in government positions, and the richest city of Kiev became the center of Jewish trade. The solution of the Jewish question is carried out progressively: in 1865 all Jewish artisans and their families can move beyond the Pale of Settlement, and in 1867 all those who have served in the army receive such privileges. However, the emperor did not dare to take the most anticipated measure - a complete abolition of the Pale of Settlement.
After accession to the throne new emperor Alexander III significantly limits all the privileges granted by the previous ruler. A prerequisite began to live within the Pale of Settlement without the right to own land, in isolated settlements - shtetls or townships. A strict quota was introduced for education in higher educational institutions and gymnasiums of the empire - 10% within the Pale of Settlement, 5% - throughout the rest of the country, with the exception of St. Petersburg and Moscow, where the quota was set at a paltry 3%. Against the background of the infamous circular “on cook's children” adopted in the same year (restricting the possibility of education for “ignoble” strata of the population and children of commoners), conservative sentiments in Russian society intensified, giving rise to a lot of acts of resistance and violent discontent among the intelligentsia.
Increased taxes and persecution led to the impoverishment of the Jewish population
Having lost the opportunity to receive higher education in their homeland, the children of many wealthy Jews left for European universities, then returning to Russia in the status of well-educated specialists, determined to achieve equality and civil liberties for their compatriots. Perhaps this circumstance can partially explain why many talented Jewish youths became strongly radicalized and began to accept Active participation in the activities of various revolutionary groups and circles. In response to this, the government adopts a number of restrictions for the Jewish population: the issuance of licenses to practice law is stopped, Jews are prohibited from participating in zemstvo elections. Of course, all obligations towards the state (collection of taxes and taxes) were fully preserved. A number of the most liberal dignitaries, led by a member State Council Count Konstantin Ivanovich Palen presented a report to the emperor in 1888, in which they insistently recommend granting 5 million Jews full civil rights in order to avoid radicalization of their mood. However, Alexander III did not heed the advice of his entourage and ignored the recommendations set out in the report.
Against this reactionary and negative background among the Jews, social and political organizations are beginning to form, in particular, the General Jewish Workers' Union (Bund), which has many Jewish artisans in the western provinces of the empire. The ideological basis of the nascent national movement was the “Zionism” spread from Austria-Hungary, preaching the idea of creating an independent Jewish state on the territory of Palestine, and many Jewish intellectuals inclined towards a socialist basis for building the future of Israel. After the creation of the Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion) organization to defend the rights of Jewish workers in 1899, it entered into open confrontation with the more conservative Bund, thereby causing a split in the Jewish movement. This confrontation ended in the defeat of radical ideas about building a socialist society in favor of the struggle for the safety of the Jewish population and the right to practice their religion.
A series of Jewish pogroms (the most tragic of them in Chisinau in 1903), which caused a widespread public outcry, became an important stage that significantly strengthened the revolutionary sentiments in the ranks of Russian Jewry. There were two further ways in the final solution of the Jewish question: either the use of the most cruel methods to win back their rights, including terrorist ones, or active participation in the activities of the emerging estate-representative body - in the State Duma.
Leader of Jewish intellectuals in the liberal strata political elite there was Maxim (Mordechai) Moiseevich Vinaver - a talented lawyer and public speaker. After becoming a member of the First State Duma from the Cadet Party, he began to advocate for the widespread education of Jews, collecting various materials about the traditions and life of Russian Jewry under the auspices of the "Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society". By the way, it was thanks to Vinavera's donations that the young genius Marc Chagall received a scholarship to study in Paris, which was the impetus for his career as a painter. Until 1919, Vinaver participated in the activities of the white movement, working as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Crimean government. However, disappointed, he emigrated to Paris, where he published the popular newspaper "Latest News", which tried to refute the then prevailing opinion about the massive support of the Bolshevik government by Jews. Later, a lawyer and active figure in the Jewish movement of the early 20th century, Heinrich Sliozberg, wrote: "Since childhood, I used to think of myself primarily as a Jew, but from the very beginning of my adult life I felt myself a son of Russia ... Being a good Jew does not mean being a good Russian citizen." ...