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History Of The Jews In Russia And Poland

Simon Dubnow

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HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY

HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY

BY S. M. DUBNOW TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY I. FRIEDLAENDER VOLUME I FROM THE BEGINNING UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I (1825) Philadelphia The Jewish Publication Society of America 1916 Copyright, 1916, by The Jewish Publication Society of America It is not my intention to expatiate in these prefatory remarks on the present work and its author. A history of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the pen of S. M. Dubnow needs neither justification nor recommendation. The want of a work of this kin

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VOLUME II

VOLUME II

FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I. UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III. (1825-1894) PHILADELPHIA THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA 5706—1946 Copyright 1918 by THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA It was originally proposed to give the history of Russian Jewry after 1825—the year with which the first volume concludes—in a single volume. This, however, would have resulted in producing a volume of unwieldy dimensions, entirely out of proportion to the one preceding it. It has, therefore, beco

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CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIII

The era of Nicholas I. was typically inaugurated by the bloody suppression of the Decembrists and their constitutional demands, [1] proving as it subsequently did one continuous triumph of military despotism over the liberal movements of the age. As for the emancipation of the Jews, it was entirely unthinkable in an empire which had become Europe's bulwark against the inroads of revolutionary or even moderately liberal tendencies. The new despotic regime, overflowing with aggressive energy, was

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CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XIV

There was a brief moment of respite when, in the phrase of the Russian poet, "the fighter's hand was tired of killing." The Russian Government suddenly felt the need of passing over from the medieval forms of patronage to more enlightened and perfected methods. Among the leading statesmen of Russia were men, such as the Minister of Public Instruction, Sergius Uvarov, who were well acquainted with Western European ways and fully aware of the fact that the reactionary governments of Austria and Pr

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CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XV

Special mention must be made of the position occupied by the Jews in the vast province which had be n formed in 1815 out of the territory of the former duchy of Warsaw and annexed by Russia under the name of "Kingdom of Poland." [1] This province which from 1815 to 1830 enjoyed full autonomy, with a local government in Warsaw and a parliamentary constitution, handled the affairs of its large Jewish population, numbering between three hundred to four hundred thousand souls, independently and with

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CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVI

The Russian Government had left nothing undone to shatter the old Jewish mode of life. Despotic Tzardom, whose ignorance of Jewish life was only equalled by its hostility to it, lifted its hand to strike not merely at the obsolete forms but also at the sound historic foundations of Judaism. The system of conscription which annually wrenched thousands of youths and lads from the bosom of their families, the barracks which served as mission houses, the method of stimulating and even forcing the co

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CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVII

The beginning of the "Second Emancipation" of 1848 in Western Europe synchronized with the last phase of the era of oppression in Russia. That phase, representing the concluding seven years of pre-reformatory Russia, was a dark patch in the life of the country at large, doubly dark in the life of the Jews. The power of absolutism, banished by the March revolution from the European West, asserted itself with intensified fury in the land of the North, which had about that time earned the unenviabl

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CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XVIII

When after the Crimean War, which had exposed the rottenness of the old order of things, a fresh current of air swept through the atmosphere of Russia, and the liberation of the peasantry and other great reforms were coming to fruition, the Jewish problem, too, was in line of being placed in the forefront of these reforms. For, after having done away with the institution of serfdom, the State was consistently bound to liberate its three million of Jewish serfs who had been ruthlessly oppressed a

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CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XIX

The decided drift toward political reaction in the second part of Alexander's reign affected also the specific Jewish problem, which the homoeopathic reforms, designed to "ameliorate" a fraction of the Jewish people, had tried to solve in vain. The general reaction showed itself in the fact that, after having carried out the first great reforms, such as the liberation of the peasantry, the introduction of rural self-government and the reorganization of the administration of the law, the Governme

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CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XX

In the inner, cultural life of Russian Jewry a radical break took place during this period. True, the change did not affect the rank and file of Russian Jewry, being rather confined to its upper layers, to Jewish "society," or the so-called intelligenzia. But as far as the latter circles are concerned, the rapidity and intensity of their spiritual transformation may well be compared with the stormy eve of Jewish emancipation in Germany. This wild rush for spiritual regeneration was out of all pr

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CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXI

On March 1, 1881, Alexander II. met his death on one of the principal thoroughfares of St. Petersburg, smitten by dynamite bombs hurled at him by a group of terrorists. The Tzar, who had freed the Russian peasantry from personal slavery, paid with his life for refusing to free the Russian people from political slavery and police tyranny. The red terrorism of the revolutionaries was the counterpart of the white terrorism of the Russian authorities, who for many years had suppressed the faintest s

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CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXII

In the beginning of May, 1881, the well-known diplomatist Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatyev was called by the Tzar to the post of Minister of the Interior. At one time ambassador in Constantinople and at all times a militant Pan-Slavist, Ignatyev introduced the system of diplomatic intrigues into the inner politics of Russia, earning thereby the unenviable nickname of "Father of Lies." A programmatic circular, issued by him on May 6, declared that the principal task of the Government consisted in the

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CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIII

The civil New Year of 1882 found the Jews of Russia in a depressed state of mind: they were under the fresh impression of the excesses at Warsaw and were harassed by rumors of new measures of oppression. The sufferings of the Jewish people, far from stilling the anti-Jewish fury of the Government, had merely helped to fan it. "You are maltreated, ergo you are guilty"—such was the logic of the ruling spheres of Russia. The official historian of that period is honest enough to confess that "the en

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CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXIV

During the interval between the pogrom of Warsaw and that of Balta the Government was preparing for the Jews a series of legislative pogroms. In the recesses of the Russian Government offices, which served as the laboratories of police barbarism, the authorities were busy forging a chain of legal and administrative restrictions in order to "regulate" Jewish life in the spirit of complete civil disfranchisement. The Central Committee on Jewish Affairs, attached to the Ministry of the Interior, wh

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CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXV

The catastrophe at the beginning of the eighties took the Jews of Russia unawares, and found them unprepared for spiritual self-defence. The impressions of the recent brief "era of reforms" were still fresh in their minds. They still remembered the initial steps of Alexander II's Government in the direction of the complete civil emancipation of Russian Jewry, the appeals of the intellectual classes of Russia calling upon the Jews to draw nearer to them, the bright prospects of a rejuvenated Russ

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CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVI

The "Temporary Rules" of May 3, 1882, had been passed, so to speak, as an extraordinary "war measure," outside the usual channel of legislative action. Yet the Russian Government could not but realize that sooner or later it would be bound to adopt the customary legal procedure and place the Jewish question before the highest court of the land, the Council of State. To meet this eventuality, it was necessary to prepare materials of a somewhat better quality than had been manufactured by the "gub

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CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVII

In this wise, beginning with the May laws of 1882, the Government gradually succeeded in monopolizing all anti-Jewish activities by letting bureaucratic persecutions take the place of street pogroms. However, in 1883 and 1884, the "street" made again occasional attempts to compete with the Government. On May 10, 1883, on the eve of Alexander III.'s coronation, a pogrom took place in the large southern city of Rostov-on-the-Don. About a hundred Jewish residences and business places were demolishe

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CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXVIII

The poisonous Judaeophobia bacilli seemed to thrive more than ever in the highest Government circles of St. Petersburg. However, not only the hatred against the Jews but also the fury of general political reaction became more rabid than ever after the "miraculous escape" of the imperial family in the railroad accident near Borki on October 17, 1888. [1] Amidst the ecclesiastic and mystic haze with which Pobyedonostzev and his associates managed to veil this episode the conviction became deeply i

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CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXIX

The year 1891 had arrived. The air was full of evil forebodings. In the solitude of the Government chancelleries of St. Petersburg the anti-Jewish conspirators were assiduously at work preparing for a new blow to be dealt to the martyred nation. A secret committee attached to the Ministry of the Interior, under the chairmanship of Plehve, was engaged in framing a monstrous enactment of Jewish counter-reforms, which were practically designed to annul the privileges conferred upon certain categori

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CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXX

Towards the end of the eighties the plan of promoting Jewish emigration from Russia, which had been abandoned with the retirement of Count Ignatyev, was again looked upon favorably by the leading Government circles. The sentiments of the Tzar were expressed in a marginal note which he attached to the report of the governor of Podolia for the year 1888. The passage of the report in which it was pointed out that "the removal of the Jewish proletariat from the monarchy would be very desirable" was

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HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY

HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY

BY S. M. DUBNOW TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY I. FRIEDLAENDER VOLUME III FROM THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS II. UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY WITH BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX Philadelphia The Jewish Publication Society of America 1920 Philadelphia The Jewish Publication Society of America 1920 Copyright, 1920, By The Jewish Publication Society of America...

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NOTE

NOTE

The present volume, which concludes Dubnow's "History of the Jews in Russia-Poland," contains, in addition to the text, an extensive bibliography and an index to the entire work. In the bibliography an enormous amount of material has been collected, and it is arranged in such a way as to enable the reader to ascertain the sources upon which the author drew. It is thus in the nature of notes, and is therefore arranged according to the chapters of the book. The index, which has been prepared with

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1. Continued Policy of Oppression

1. Continued Policy of Oppression

In the course of the nineteenth century every change of throne in Russia was accompanied by a change of policy. Each new reign formed, at least in its beginning, a contrast to the one which had preceded it. The reigns of Alexander I. and Alexander II. marked a departure in the direction of liberalism; those of Nicholas I. and Alexander III. were a return to the ideas of reaction. In accordance with this historic schedule, Alexander III. should have been followed by a sovereign of liberal tendenc

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2. The Martyrdom of the Moscow Community

2. The Martyrdom of the Moscow Community

The attitude which officials of high rank were prone to adopt towards the Jews was luridly illustrated at that time in Moscow. It will be remembered that the small Jewish colony which had been left in the second Russian capital after the cruel expulsions of 1891 was barred from holding religious services in its large synagogue which had been closed by order of Alexander III. [8] In view of the forthcoming festivities in honor of the coronation of Nicholas II., which were to be held in Moscow in

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3. Restrictions in the Right of Residence

3. Restrictions in the Right of Residence

Whereas the régime of Grand Duke Sergius in Moscow represented an acute stage of Judæophobia, manifesting itself in cruelties of an exceptional character, the central Government in St. Petersburg exhibited the same disease in a more "normal" form. Here, the oppression of the Jews was pursued systematically and quietly, and was carried on as one of the most important functions of the public administration. The sacrosanct institution of the Pale of Settlement and the other mainstays of political a

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4. The Economic Collapse of Russian Jewry

4. The Economic Collapse of Russian Jewry

The result of all these persecutions was the complete economic collapse of Russian Jewry. Speaking generally, the economic structure of the Russian Jews experienced violent upheavals during the first years of Nicholas II.'s reign. The range of Jewish economic endeavor, circumscribed though it was, was narrowed more and more. In 1894, the law placing the liquor trade under Government control was put into effect by Witte, the Minister of Finance. Catering to the prejudices of the ruling spheres of

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5. Professional and Educational Restrictions

5. Professional and Educational Restrictions

In the domain of those liberal professions to which the Jewish intellectuals, being barred from entering the civil service, were particularly attracted, the law went to almost any length in its endeavor to keep them closed to the Jews. The legal career had been blocked to them ever since the passage of the law of 1889, which made the admission of a properly qualified Jew to the bar dependent upon the granting of a special permission by the Minister of Justice. In the course of a whole decade, th

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6. Anti-Semitic Propaganda and Pogroms

6. Anti-Semitic Propaganda and Pogroms

The reactionary Russian press, encouraged and stimulated by the official Jew-baiters, engaged in an increasingly ferocious campaign against the Jews. The Russian censorship, known all over for its merciless cruelty, which was throttling the printed word and trembling at the criminal thought of "inciting hatred toward the Government," yet granted untrammeled freedom to those who propagated hatred to Judaism, and thereby committed the equally criminal offence of "inciting one part of the populatio

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1. The Rise of Political Zionism

1. The Rise of Political Zionism

For two decades the sledge hammer of Russian reaction had been descending with crushing force upon the vast community of the six million Russian Jews. Yet in the end it was found that the heavy hammer, to use the well-known simile of Pushkin, instead of shattering the national organism of Jewry, had only helped to steel it and to harden its indestructible spiritual self. The Jewry of Russia showed to the world that it was endowed with an iron constitution, and those that had hoped to crush it by

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2. Spiritual Zionism, or Ahad-Ha´amism

2. Spiritual Zionism, or Ahad-Ha´amism

And yet, political Zionism viewed as a theory failed to offer a satisfactory solution of the great Jewish problem in all its historic complexity. Born of the reaction against anti-Semitism, and endeavoring to soothe the pain of the wounded Jewish heart, it was marked by all the merits and demerits of a theory which was substantially Messianic in character and was entirely dependent on subjective forces, on faith and will-power. "If you only will it, then it is no fairy tale" [19] —in these words

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3. Spiritual Nationalism, or National-Cultural Autonomism

3. Spiritual Nationalism, or National-Cultural Autonomism

Both political and spiritual Zionism have their roots in the same common ground, in "the negation of the Golus ": in the conviction that outside of Palestine—in the lands of the Diaspora—the Jewish people has no possibility of continuing its existence as a normal national entity. Both political and spiritual Zionists have their eyes equally fixed upon Zion as the anchor of safety for Judaism, whether it be in its material or in its spiritual aspect. Neither doctrine had formulated a clear idea o

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4. The Jewish Socialistic Movement

4. The Jewish Socialistic Movement

On a parallel line with the nationalistic ideology, which formed a counterbalance to the assimilationist theory of Western Europe, the doctrine of Socialism came gradually to the fore, emphasizing the principle of the class struggle in a more or less intimate connection with the national idea. The Jewish labor movement was born at the end of the eighties in Lithuania—in Vilna, and other cities; its adherents were recruited from among the Jewish workingmen who were mainly engaged in handicrafts.

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5. The Revival of Jewish Letters

5. The Revival of Jewish Letters

This national revival of Russian Jewry found its expression also in Jewish literature. The periodical press, particularly in the Hebrew language, exhibited new life and vigor, and in other domains of literary productivity various big talents made their appearance. As early as the end of the eighties, the two weekly Hebrew organs, the ha-Melitz in St. Petersburg, and the ha-Tzefirah in Warsaw, were transformed into dailies. The Hebrew annuals pursuing purely literary and scientific aims, such as

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1. Pogroms as a Counter-Revolutionary Measure

1. Pogroms as a Counter-Revolutionary Measure

The frenzy of political reaction, which raged for two decades, was grist to the mill of the Revolution. Stunned by the blow it had received at the beginning of the eighties, the Russian revolutionary movement came back to consciousness at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the hopes for a change of policy on the part of Nicholas II. had been completely blasted. The agitation among the students and the workingmen, the "disorders" at the universities, the strikes at the factories, the re

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2. The Organized Kishinev Butchery

2. The Organized Kishinev Butchery

Needless to say, there was plenty of inflammable material for such an anti-Jewish conflagration. One of the criminal haunts of these incendiaries was situated at that time in Kishinev, the capital of semi-Moldavian Bessarabia. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the fifty thousand Jews of that city had lived in peace and harmony with their Christian neighbors who numbered some sixty thousand. At the beginning of the new century, these friendly relations were severed, owing to the untrammell

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3. Echoes of the Kishinev Tragedy

3. Echoes of the Kishinev Tragedy

A cry of horror rang throughout Russia and the more or less civilized countries of the world when the news of the Kishinev butchery became known. The entire liberal Russian press voiced its indignation against the Kishinev atrocities. The most prominent Russian writers expressed their sympathy with the victims in letters and telegrams. Leo Tolstoi voiced his sentiments in a letter which could not be published on account of the censorship. [37] The humanitarian writer Korolenko portrayed the horr

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4. Doctor Herzl's Visit to Russia

4. Doctor Herzl's Visit to Russia

The alert bureaucratic mind of Plehve was quick to make its deductions from the Dashevski case. He realized that the Kishinev massacre would inflame the national Jewish sentiment and divert the national or Zionist cause into the channel of the revolutionary movement. Accordingly, on June 24, 1903, Plehve issued a circular to the governors, which was marked "strictly confidential," and sent out through the Police Department, ordering the adoption of energetic measures against "the propaganda of t

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1. The Pogrom at Homel and the Jewish Self-Defence

1. The Pogrom at Homel and the Jewish Self-Defence

No sooner had the Zionist Congress, at which the heated discussions concerning the salvation of Judaism were intermingled with sobs bemoaning the martyrs of Kishinev, concluded its sessions than a new catastrophe broke out in the dominions of the Tzar—the pogrom at Homel, in the Government of Moghilev. In this lively White-Russian town, in which the twenty thousand Jews formed fully one-half of the population, public Jewish life was marked by great vigor. There existed in the city important soci

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2. The Kishinev Massacre at the Bar of Russian Justice

2. The Kishinev Massacre at the Bar of Russian Justice

In the fall of 1903 the judicial investigation in connection with the spring pogrom in Kishinev was nearing its end. The investigation was conducted with a view to obliterating the traces of the deliberate organization of the pogrom. The representatives of Government authority and of the better classes whose complicity in the Kishinev massacre had been clearly established were carefully eliminated from the trial, and only the hired assassins and plunderers from among the lower classes, numbering

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3. The Jews in the Russo-Japanese War

3. The Jews in the Russo-Japanese War

On the day following the declaration of war, the organ of Russian Jewry, the Voskhod , wrote as follows: This is not the time to irritate the old wounds. Let us endeavor, as far as it is in our power, to forget also the recent expulsion from Port Arthur, [42] the pogroms of Kishinev and Homel, and many, many other things.... Let the Jewish parents not think of the bitter fate of their children who had been thrown overboard [by being barred from the educational establishments]. The Jews will go f

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4. The "Political Spring"

4. The "Political Spring"

On the morning of July 15, 1904, the square before the Warsaw depôt in St. Petersburg presented a terrible sight. Upon the pavement lay the blood-stained body of Plehve, who had been smitten by the bomb of the Russian terrorist Sazonov while on his way to Peterhof where he was to report to the Tzar. This meant that the revolution had again raised its head. After two years of frenzied police terrorism, and in spite of all attempts to divert the attention of the public from the neces sity of refor

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5. The Homel Pogrom Before the Russian Courts

5. The Homel Pogrom Before the Russian Courts

In the same month of October, 1904, the case of the Homel pogrom of the previous year came up before the Court of Appeals of the Government of Kiev, which held its sessions at Homel. The department of justice had taken a whole year to prepare the evidence, prompted by the desire not so much to investigate the case as to entangle it and present it in a perverted political interpretation. The investigation which had started in the lifetime of Plehve and proceeded under the pressure of the anti-Sem

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1. The Jews in the Revolutionary Movement

1. The Jews in the Revolutionary Movement

The "political spring," manifesting itself in the attempt of the Government, headed by Svyatopolk-Mirski, to establish friendly relations with the liberal elements of Russia, gave the first impetus to an open movement for political emancipation. The liberal "conspirators," who had hitherto been secretly dreaming of a constitution, gave public utterance to this tabooed aspiration. In November, 1904, the conference of Zemstvo workers, assembled in St. Petersburg, adopted a resolution pointing out

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2. The Struggle for Equal Rights

2. The Struggle for Equal Rights

Notwithstanding these pleas, the Government was slow in realizing even the moderate reforms which had been outlined in the imperial ukase. In the meantime the representatives of Russian Jewry had decided to place before it their own more comprehensive demands. In February, 1905, several mass petitions, demanding equal rights for Jews, were addressed to Witte. A petition signed by thirty-two Jewish communities—St. Petersburg, Vilna, Kovno, Homel, Berdychev, and others—began with these words: The

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3. The "Black Hundred" and the "Patriotic" Pogroms

3. The "Black Hundred" and the "Patriotic" Pogroms

In this wise did the Jewish people, though chafing under thraldom and well-nigh crushed by it, strive for the light of liberty. But the forces of reaction were preparing to wreak terrible vengeance upon the prisoner for his endeavor to throw off his bonds. As the revolutionary tide, which had engulfed the best elements of the Russian people, was rolling on, it clashed with the filthy wave of the Black Hundred, which the underlings of Tzardom had called to the surface from the lowest depths of th

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4. The Jewish Franchise

4. The Jewish Franchise

In the midst of the noise caused by the revolution on the one hand and by the pogroms on the other, the question of popular representation, promised in the ukase of February 18, 1905, was discussed in the highest Government spheres of Russia. A committee, which met under the chairmanship of M. Bulyghin, was drafting a scheme of a consultative popular assembly; as far as the Jews were concerned, it was proposed to exclude them from the franchise, on the ground that the latter would not be compati

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1. The Fiendish Designs of the "Black Hundred"

1. The Fiendish Designs of the "Black Hundred"

Soon afterwards, on August 6, 1905, the so-called "Bulyghin Constitution" was made public, providing for a truncated Imperial Duma with a system of representation based on class qualifications and limited to advisory functions but without any restrictions as far as the franchise of the Jews was concerned. "Now," wrote the Voskhod , "the Jew has the right to be a popular representative, but he has no right to reside in the place in which the Imperial Duma assembles—in the capital." Russian Jewry,

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2. The Russian St. Bartholomew Night

2. The Russian St. Bartholomew Night

The principal victims of this protracted St. Bartholomew night were the new Huguenots of the emancipation movement—the Jews. They were to pay the penalty for having assisted in wresting from the despotic Government the manifesto with its promise of liberties. In the course of one week, nearly fifty anti-Jewish pogroms, accompanied by bloodshed, took place in various cities (Odessa, Kiev, Kishinev, Kalarash, Simferopol, Romny, Kremenchug, Chernigov, Nicholayev, Yekaterinoslav, Kamenetz-Podolsk, Y

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3. The Undaunted Struggle for Equal Rights

3. The Undaunted Struggle for Equal Rights

The terrible October calamities were faced by Russian Jewry in a spirit of courage and fortitude. It stood alone in its sorrow. The progressive elements of Russian society which were themselves in the throes of a great crisis reacted feebly upon the sufferings of the Jewish people which had become the scape-goat of the counter-revolution. The indifference of the outside world, however, was counteracted by the rise of the Jewish national sentiment among the better classes of Russian Jewry. One mo

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4. The Jewish Question Before the First Duma

4. The Jewish Question Before the First Duma

The first Duma was convened on April 27, 1906, and barely three months later, on July 8, it was dissolved, or rather dispersed by the Tzar, for having displayed a spirit of excessive opposition. The prevailing element in the first Duma was the Constitutional-Democratic majority to which, by their political sympathies, the bulk of Russian Jewry and ten of its twelve representatives in the Duma—the other two stood a little more to the Left—belonged. It was natural for the Jews to expect that a Par

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5. The Spread of Anarchy and the Second Duma

5. The Spread of Anarchy and the Second Duma

Two days later, when the deputies appeared before the Duma, they found the building closed, and on the doors was displayed an imperial manifesto dissolving the Duma which "has encroached upon a domain outside its jurisdiction, and has engaged in investigating the acts of the authorities appointed by us." The sudden dissolution of the Duma was answered by the "Vyborg Manifesto" which was signed by the entire parliamentary Opposition, calling upon the people to refuse to pay taxes to furnish soldi

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1. The New Alignments Within Russian Jewry

1. The New Alignments Within Russian Jewry

The terrible quadrennium of 1903-1906 had an extraordinarily quickening effect upon the national and political thought of the classes as well as of the masses of Russian Jewry. The year of Kishinev and Homel, when the rightless Jews were made defenceless; the year of the Russo-Japanese War, when these rightless and defenceless pariahs were called upon to fight for their fatherland against the enemy from without; the year of the revolution when after the sanguinary struggle for liberty the Jews r

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2. The Triumph of the "Black Hundred"

2. The Triumph of the "Black Hundred"

All these strivings and slogans were severely hit by the coup d'état of June 3, 1907, when a large part of what the revolution had achieved was rendered null and void. Owing to the amendment of the suffrage law by this clumsy act of autocratic despotism, the constitution became the handmaid of Tzardom. The ruling power slipped into the hands of the Black Hundred, the extreme monarchistic groups, which were organized in the "League of the Russian People" and openly advocated the restoration of au

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3. The Third, or Black, Duma

3. The Third, or Black, Duma

Such was the atmosphere which surrounded the elections to the third Imperial Duma in the fall of 1907. The reactionary electoral law of June 3 barred from the Russian Parliament the most progressive and democratic elements of the Empire. Moreover, by splitting the electoral assemblies into class and national curias, the Government succeeded in preventing the election of any considerable number of Jewish deputies. The elections took place under severe pressure from the authorities. Many "dangerou

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4. New Jewish Disabilities

4. New Jewish Disabilities

Spurred on by the reactionary Duma, the Government went to even greater lengths in its policy of Jewish discrimination. Premier Stolypin, who was getting constantly nearer to the Right, was entirely oblivious of the promise, made by him in 1905, to remove immediately all restrictions which are "the source of irritation and are manifestly obsolete." On the con trary, the Ministry presided over by him was systematically engaged in inventing new grievous disabilities. The Jewish deputy Friedman was

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5. The Spiritual Revival of Russian Jewry

5. The Spiritual Revival of Russian Jewry

This new blow was aimed right at the heart of Judaism. For after the revolution, when the political struggle had subsided, the Jewish intelligenzia directed its entire energy into the channel of national-cultural endeavors. Profiting by the law of 1906, granting the freedom of assemblies and meetings, they founded everywhere cultural, educational, and economic (co-operative and credit) societies. In 1908, the Jewish Literary Society was established in St. Petersburg, which soon counted over a hu

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VOLUME I

VOLUME I

[ Yevr. Bibl. = Yevreyskaya Bibliotyeka ; Yevr. St. = Yevreyskaya Starina .] (pp. 13-38) Latyschew, Inscriptiones antiquae orae Septentrionalis Ponti Euxini, vols. I-II. St. Petersburg, 1885, 1890 [R]. Reghesty i Nadpisi. Svod materialov dla istoriyi yevreyev v Rossiyi ("Documents and Inscriptions. Collection of Materials for the History of the Jews in Russia"). Vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1899, Nos. 1-218 [R]. Dubnow, "The Historical Mystery of the Crimea," Yevr. St. , 1914, No. 1. Harkavy, Skazani

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VOLUME II

VOLUME II

(pp. 13-45) Yevr. St. , 1911, p. 589 (Nicholas' Opinions of the Jews). ----, 1909, p. 236 ff., (an account of Tziprinus, a Russian official, about the introduction of military service). Levanda, Sbornik zakonov, Nos. 153, 154, 159, etc. (see Index s. v. "Recruits"). Volhynian Legends, Yevr. St. , 1911, p. 389. Ginzburg and Marek, Yevreyskiya Narodniya Pyesni ("Jewish Folk-Songs"), St. Petersburg, 1901, p. 42 et seq. [R]. Recollections of former Cantonists in Yevr. St. , 1909, vol. II, pp. 115 et

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VOLUME III

VOLUME III

(pp. 7-39) Voskhod , 1896, Book I, p. 38 (II part). Yevr. St. (1914), VIII, p. 400. Judenpogromen in Russland, vol. I, p. 98. "Memoirs of the commission on the Jewish question under Plehve" (1903-1904), pp. 6-7 (not published). Archives of Jew. Hist. Soc. , coll. S. P. E., No. 134, I. Byloye (1907), Book IX, p. 162. Levine, Svornik Zakonov o Yevreyakh ("Collection of Laws about Jews"), St. Petersburg, 1902. Voytanski, Yevreyi v Irkutskie ("Jews in Irkutsk"), 1915, pp. 30, 264. Yevr. Bibl. , IX,

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