The Pale of Settlement: A Foreshadowing of the Jewish Ghettos
A well known Russian proverb states, “The law is like a wagon-tongue —whichever way you point it, there it goes.”1 For the Russians the idea was simple: point the law in Russian direction, for Russian interests, and that is what will be maintained. Such was the case for the undermining of the Jews who found themselves forcibly integrated into Russian life. The legalities for this, characterized by exclusion and discrimination from the government of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, erupted over the mass quantity of Jews entering the Empire after Russia’s expansion into Poland in 1772. With an influx of Jews in Russia, Russian diplomats scrambled to incorporate them into Russian life. However, the integration proved impossible, leading to the degradation of the Jews within Russian society, and thus, the Pale of Settlement that proceeded consequently.
On August 5, 1772, Russia, Prussia, and Austria signed a treaty to partition Poland, as these countries agreed that Poland was wasted potential and each intended to utilize it for their own political benefit. In fact, “Always Russia had resented the creation of this kingdom of Lithuania-Poland,” and taking the land was seen as a great achievement.2 With territory acquired from Poland by Russia, the Russian capital of St. Petersburg obtained a secure border, and the Russian ambition for long-held territorial gains was achieved. However, the Polish state lost nearly 80,000 square miles out of a total pre-partition territory of about 282,000.3 In fact, Russia alone acquired nearly fifty percent of Poland from the initial treaty.4 With two further partitions in 1793 and 1795, Poland was dismantled altogether.5 Although Eastern Poland lay under Russian control, there initially was a dividing line between the border of Russia and Poland over religion, as the Russians were Orthodox and the Eastern Poles were Jews.6 Prior to the Polish partition, Jews were forbidden to reside within Russia.7 However, the Russian Empire had accumulated the largest Jewish population in the world at the time.8 With the taking of Belarusian territories, Russia suddenly had nearly 90,000 Jews not only within their borders, but living among their people and under Russian control.9 How were these Jews supposed to be treated? This issue was one that preoccupied Russian politicians for the next several years.
At first, the Russian government attempted to integrate the Jews through the passing of legislation and charters; however, the legal terminology of these political documents regarding the word “Jew” was tentative and vague. Thus, ruling based upon said terminology resulted in contradictions. In fact, the written law did not even mention the word “Jew.” The terminology had never been necessary. Were Jews legally Russians? If not, how many freedoms should Jews have? The answers were up to Catherine the Great. Inspired by the Enlightenment, she hoped to allow Jews to live cohesively in society, and be legally defined as having equal status to the Russians.10 However, the lack of legal terminology and social understanding of the newly integrated Jews were quick to lead to Jewish despair as Jews expected freedom within Russia, but such freedoms proved impractical.
Observing the initial Russian pushback, Catherine the Great hoped that Jews and Russians might coexist peacefully by working together in politics; however, no matter the legal policies implemented, Russians did not accept the Jews as equals. In hopes that Russians might change their perspective, Catherine encouraged Jews to enroll in the Belarusian Gubernias of Mogilev and Polotsk, the Russian central government in 1781, and also decreed that all Jews enrolled were to be free from the head tax previously required by them. This was revolutionary because it meant that Jews and Christians were to be treated equally under the law: “This was the first significant break in the prevailing view of the Jew as a unitary legal category, and it represented a noteworthy attempt on the part of the central government to tolerate and even to encourage a social integration of the Jews into Russian life.”11 This inclusion of the Jews as well as their initial freedoms under the Charter for the Towns, which aimed to build urban life by allowing members of all religious groups to pursue commerce and participate in urban self-government, gave the Jews the best legal status in all of Europe at the time.12 However, the government had yet to legally define Jews and their legal rights. In March 1785, Catherine asked the Senate to discuss the issue of Russian Jews since they, under her, had been placed in the same positions as the others, and thus it was necessary to declare that everyone was “entitled to the advantages and rights appertaining to his calling or estate without distinction of religion or nationality.”13 This led to the Senate issuing the edict “Concerning the Protection of the Rights of Jews in Russia in Respect of the Legal Responsibility'' in 1786. In essence, Jews were to enjoy the same rights as Russian citizens. This was not practical, however, and Jews continued to be subject to harassment by prejudiced local officials and by other Russians living alongside the Jews.14 The issue for the Russians was simple. While the government was allowing Jews to participate in politics and legally defined them as equal, Jews were not Russian by blood and had only been a part of Russia for 14 years. Thus the practicality of including Jews in both political and social life without discrepancies was irrational. The locals knew this, and the government under Catherine the Great did too.
Although declared as equal, the legal definition of Jews naturally distinguished them from the Russians, and the Jews were subordinate to other Russians in government. Before being brought under Russian control, Jews had enjoyed freedoms of religion, representation in government, jobs, and other personal freedoms in the Kingdom of Poland. While the Russian government intended to uphold Jewish freedom of religion, confirmation of existing property, and continuation in courts and tribunals enjoyed in the kahal (the self-administered Jewish governmental representation in Poland), the Russian government proved it had a miniscule understanding of what it initially promised. Thus, given the lack of Jewish terminology in Russian law, Jews became a distinct category defined by religion and were given a vague representation of corporate rights: “It was the vagueness of the statutes, and the prevailing ignorance about the true nature of Jewish life, that worked most against the interests of the Jews as a group.”15 Thus in 1785, the participation of Jews in the Russian economy was brought under strict surveillance and any sort of profitable commerce or home relocations had to be approved by the Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great herself. While Catherine was sympathetic to the integration of Jews, she struggled to remain so because in 1775, the Russian government, concerned with the prompt payment of taxes, chose to target Jewish communities for the collection of money. Under this policy, Jews were placed in subordination to the kahal authorities. For the first time politically, Jews saw their freedoms dwindling as they were placed under strict commerce surveillance and targeted for taxes. If the Jews were truly of equal status, this government policy made little sense.
Other concerns for Jews grew because when they first entered Russia, they were given the legal-social status of merchants or petty-bourgeois, which led to competition with Russian merchants. This led to discrepancies over how Jews should earn a living and where they should live. Jews had started to request permission to travel and settle in central Russia which meant that business followed them as they traveled, and merchants complained to Catherine the Great about the increased competition within the merchant sphere. In 1790, a request from Belarusian Jews that they be permitted to enroll in the Kolichestvo of Moscow was rejected. However, the ruling claimed it was not a result of anti-Semitism, but instead the desire to protect the rights of the Moscow merchant guilds.16 This was on account of the Russian governor P.B. Passek, who argued that because Jews were enrolled in the census books of the towns, they should reside in Russian cities. As Jews were profiting greatly from alcohol sales to the disruption of Russian merchant profits, Passek also ruled that Jews no longer had the right to distill alcoholic beverages, nor trade with the provinces of inner Russia. These decrees were intended to serve the national and economic interests of the state by preventing competition between Jews and Russian merchants.17 Naturally outraged, representatives in the Jewish kahals appealed these decisions to the Senate, adding the additional request that the Russian government allow communal courts to continue for the adjudication of legalities involving only Jews. For the first time, the Russian government was forced to declare a legal dwelling status for Russian Jews. Passek urged the Senate that Jews should be forced to live in the urban centers where they were originally registered. The Senate listened tentatively and stated that the Jews should not resettle prematurely, but passports must be given to Jews who wished to live temporarily in the countryside. Catherine was initially against the decrees and issued a charter on May 7, 1786: “Concerning the Protection of the Rights of Jews in Russia in Respect to Their Legal Responsibility, Trade, and Industry.”18 This guaranteed Jews equality with members of the state, regardless of religion, with the right to country life, even while registered as townsmen by precluding premature resettlement and the distillation and sale of alcohol.19 For Catherine and the Jews, however, this charter was never enforced due to stiff Russian opposition in government, and the rights of the Russian Jews slowly vanished before their eyes. Jews were described as, “deceitful commercial competitors…malicious corrupters of the peasantry through the distillation and sale of liquor” from within Russian society and, with such societal pressure, the Russian government removed the Jews from the countryside without Catherine’s approval, and with a separate collective legal status.20 The Jews understood what was happening to them. Catherine the Great had failed to properly integrate the Jews because they were not Russians by blood and no legal document stating their equal status convinced Russians of such equality. When Russians were faced with business competition against the Jews within the merchant sphere, any chance the Jews had at equal treatment was decimated.
Although still legally defined as equal to the Russians, the law of 1794 drew the clearest divide between the Jews and Russians and began to outright discriminate against the Jews within urban centers. This law established a set rate of 500 rubles as a recruit tax to be paid by the members of the Russian cities for military recruitments. However, Jews were charged this price despite being ineligible to even enlist for military service. Thus, they paid the recruit tax without the right to recruitment, paying double in taxes for no reason, a phenomenon that came to be known as the double-tax. Alas it should be noted that a great irony began to emerge: “The Russian Tsars from the time of Catherine the Great did attempt to ‘transform’ their Jewish population into ‘useful subjects.’”21 And as a result, “The Jews began to function as a featureless entity which could be utilized as a tool for economic change by swelling in the ranks of the urban classes, or burdened with collective guilt for the distress of the rural peasantry.”22 In other words, the Jews, defined legally as being of equal status to the Russians, were only viewed as Russian citizens when their legality benefited Russian diplomats (taxes, services, etc.). In addition, while Jews were permitted full exercise of rights under the Charter of Towns, they were forbidden to utilize their rights without the specific consent of Catherine the Great. Thus, the slow deprivation of Jewish rights became disturbingly obvious during the 1790s: “The period between 1791 and 1796 can be said to represent the failure of the initial attempt at integration.”23 These mildly progressive restrictions upon the legality of the Jews under Catherine’s rule paved the way for the onerous Pale of Settlement, which placed further restrictions on where Jews could live, and how they could make money.
In addition, while the Jews were losing freedoms, the legal powers of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, were brought under question. While she was the head of government, her opinion and enactment of laws were greatly restricted by the Senate directly operating under her. Although she received much praise from men outside of politics, “Neither of these depredations nor hell’s hatred itself can obscure Russia’s splendor of the glory of the great Catherine.”24 However, her opinion in regards to the equality of the Jews was not favorable in government. Before she was faced with the issue of Jewish legal status, Catherine the Great was a beloved ruler and when she first gained the throne, Catherine won the hearts of Russians everywhere as she immediately opened several schools, sought desired reform, and comforted a nation grieving with smallpox.25 Yet her hesitant approach to ruling on difficult political issues became evident and at one point in her reign, she pleaded with the government, “I request you to tell me in conscience whom you think best to place in the council of which we spoke. Write a list now at least as a first draft.”26 Thus it is likely that within politics, the Senate knew that she was ill-fit for tough decisions. In regards to handling the Jewish issue, that is why her attempted policies to welcome Jews into Russia failed. The men in the Senate argued that she was thinking too much with her heart and that Jewish integration was not possible. Instead of convincing her, they undercut her: “although she put forward at great length some sophisticated ideas on law, she said almost nothing of the organs which would administer it in the provinces.”27 Thus, when Catherine responded to the Jewish issue with a decree restricting Jewish residency to the cities of their registration, it was assumed that its enactment was purely the result of pressure from the Senate.28 Regardless, this decree in 1791 led to the beginning of the Pale of Permanent Jewish Settlement.29
Despite all attempts to integrate Jews, the fact that it all failed makes historians believe that the Pale was inspired by anti-Semitism after all. The Pale, where all Jewish citizens were forced to reside within, but still separate from, Russia included within its boundaries part of present day Poland and much of what is now Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.30 But in 1794, the Pale included Minsk, Izyaslav, Bratslav, Polotsk, Mohilef, Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversk, and Yekaterinoslav, and the territory of Taurida. To these were soon added the Lithuanian governments of Wilna and Grodno, and in 1799 the Pale was further augmented by the addition of Courland.31 The living conditions within the Pale were poor and grew worse with time. A short excerpt from a poem written years later about the Pale, captured the agony that grew from the restricted space and loss of freedom:
The face of the twenty-year-old martyr
bobs on place cards above the crowd.
In all this noise you cannot hear
the sound of tears,
only a requiem of rage.32
The Pale began in 1791 and lasted until the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 during World War I. Thus the Jews, who initially thought that Russian submission might lead to sustained freedom, found themselves wrong, and wrong for a long time.
With the law pointing to the self-interest of the Russians, the Jews found themselves slowly secluded from Russian politics and from Russian life. Although there were initial attempts to sustain Jewish freedoms, Jews were not Russians by blood. The failure to properly define a Jew and a Jewish role in society only further led to the disapproval of their governmental participation, and right to profit as merchants. With Passek’s command that the Jews be forced to live where they were first registered, Jews found themselves losing homes and their ability to trade and travel. Although Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, did not favor much of these policies, her political power dwindled as the Senate pushed for the Pale of Settlement, and with little freedom to disprove, she enacted the Senate's commands. Jews were forced into present-day Ukrainian territories and the Pale came to smell of poverty, frustration, and revenge. Although it seemed as though life within Russia might have brought promise, the equal treatment of Jews within Russian politics and culture proved impossible, and once again, the Jews were cast out of society to the Pale of Settlement which went on to last for over one hundred years.
Footnotes
John D. Klier, “The Ambiguous Legal Status of Russian Jewry in the Reign of Catherine II.” Cambridge University Press 35, no. 3 (2017): 504-506.
Antony Polonsky, Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 91.
Randall Lesaffer, “The First Polish Partition of 1772.” Oxford Public International Law. https:// opil.ouplaw.com/page/934 (accessed on October 19, 2022).
Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization. (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012), 550.
Lesaffer.
Gladys Scott Thomson, Catherine the Great and the Expansion of Russia (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 92.
Klier, 504-506.
Grosfeld Irena, Alexander Rodnyansky, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. “Persistent Antimarket Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement after the Holocaust”, American Economic Association 5, no. 3 (2013): 189-226.
David Sorkin, “Partition and Parity.” Oxford Academic (2019): 80-85.
Polonsky, 75-76.
Klier, 507-508.
Sorkin, 85-88.
Ibid.
Polonsky, 78.
Ibid.
Ibid., 516.
Herman Rosenthal, “Pale of Settlement,” Jewish Encyclopedia. 2021. https://www.jewish encyclopedia. com/articles/11862-pale-of-settlement.
Klier, 515.
Sorkin, 90.
Unnamed Russian official in Klier, 516.
Polosky, 75.
Klier, 509-510.
Klier, 517.
Gavriil Derzhavin in G.M. Hamburg, “Gavriil Derzhavin: Poetry and True Belief,” Oxford Academic (2016): 483.
Vincent Cronin, Catherine Empress of All the Russias: An Intimate Biography (New York:
William Morrow and Company Inc., 1978), 167.
Catherine the Great in David L Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia (Binghamton, N.Y.: Vail-Ballou Press, 1975), 136.
Russian politician in Paul Dukes, Catherine The Great and the Russian Nobility (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 168.
Klier, 517.
Polosky, 78.
“The Pale of Settlement,” Global Security. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world /russia/ pale-of-settlement.htm (accessed on October 20, 2022).
Rosenthal.
Deir Yassin, On the Front Page in Marot Singer, The Pale of Settlement: Stories (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2008), 113.
