Russian Jewry: 1860-1917

Citation preview

Russian jezwy {1860-1917)

Union of Russian Jews, Inc. Editorial Board Gregor Aronson, Jacob Frumkin, Alexis Goldenweiser

gussian )ewry (1860-1917)

Edited by

jacob Frumkin Gregor Aronson

Alexis Goldenweiser

Translated by

MIRRA GINSBURG

New York

0

Thomas Yosclofi

0

London

D3 I55

R?

K ”/51 5 '

©1966 by A. s. Barnes and Co., Inc. Library of Congress Catalogue cm Number: 65-24796

Thomas Yooelofi, Publisher

South Brunswick, New Jersey

Thomas Yoselofl Ltd 18 Chasing Crow Road London WC. 2, England

6047 Printed in the United States of America

13806;- 2W

Preface

THE PRESENT COLLECTION 0? ARTICLES WAS PREPARED

under the sponsorship of the Union of Russian Jews, a culturn] and philanthropic organization founded by a group of Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York in 1942. With few exceptions, the authors were active participants in the political and cultural life of Russian Jewry during the period described in the book. This period begins with the earliest steps toward the emancipation of the Jewish population of Russia in the 1860's and ends with the sharp turning point marked by the Revolution of February, 1917. Although the years covered are now a part of history, we feel that a knowledge of the recent past is essential for the understanding of the subsequent dramatic events in the life of Russian Jewry. The present book is intended as a contribution to such knowledge. Fate was never kind to Russian Jewry. In the 1860’s, during the reform era under Alexander II, Russian Jews began to hope that the doors to free participation in general Russian cultural and civic life would finally be opened to them. However, under the succeeding reigns of Alexander III (1881-94) and Nicholas II (1894-1917), the burden of legal restrictions steadily increased. AntiSemitism became the official guideline of government pol: ussran ewsfllived not only in a general state of disfranclfisejient, but also under the ever-present threat persecutions. This led to a mass exodus

Fifi-En

WM

of

almost two million Jews,

fi

mosmwhom settled in the 5

6

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

[fluted States, where the Russo-Jewish immigrants helped to form

what15Wine largestJCWlsrcommunTty 111W went to Palestine, where RussiaP

@6ngsmaler group

Jews have played a significant role in the colonization and development of the land. Nevertheless despite the oppressive legal disabilities and the dire poverty in which the mass of Russian Jews lived at the'tirne,RussianJewry made a remarkable contribution to the social, economic, and cultural life of the country, Mcomprise the present volume shed light not only on the political and legal conditions of Jewish life in Russia and the ordeals suffered by Russian Jews, but also on their active participation in social life, in economic development, in the legal profession, in literature, journalism, and art. They also trace the contribution of Russian Jewry to Yiddish and Hebrew literature and deal with the various spin'tual and intellectual movements among Russian Jewry.

The idea for this volume was first proposed by the late chairman of the Union of Russian Jews, the historian and civic leader Mark Wischnitzer. The Executive Committee of the Union of Russian Jews during the preparation of the present collection consisted of the following: Jacob Frumkin (Chairman), Mrs. Lydia Dan (Secretary; deceased, 1963), David Lewin (Treasurer). Gregor Aronson, Ilja Dijur, Alexis Goldenweiser, Anatole Goldstein, Mrs. Daria Kadinsky, Gershon Swet, Ilya Trotzky, and Mrs. Rachel Wischnitzer. The editorial board for the present volume, appointed by the Executive Committee, consisted of Gregor Aronson, Jacob Frumkin and Alexis Goldenweiser. THE UNION OF RUSSIAN JEWS

Contents 5

Preface

Russian Jews of the 18703 and 1880s, by Mark Aldi

11 /

”Page: from the History of Russian Jewry (Recollections and Documentary Material), by Jacob G. Frumkin 18

Legal Status of Jews in Russia, by Alexis Goldenweiser

V

'

nk>( 85 Jews in the Russian Economy, by I. M. Dijur

C‘- 120

eological Trends Among Russian Jews, by Gregor Aronson

\Bussian Jews in Zionism and in the Building of Palestine, by Gershon Swet

\Labor Zionism in Russia, by Izchak Ben-Zvi

/

\d

144 l\ 172

209v

Jews in the Russian Bar. by Samuel Kucherov

219

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life, by Gregor Aronson

258 v

Russian Jews in Music, by Gershon Swet

300

7

it

__

V/

'3‘“ 1%1. ,

“5“.”

w

111: Russian Jew in Art, by Rachel Wischnitzer

322

Yiddish Literature in Russia. by

332

Jude]

Mark

Literature in Hebrew in Russia, by I. M. Klausner

364

Yeshivahs in Russia, by N. Menes

382

Jews in Russian Schools, by Ilya Trotzky

408

Jewish Institutions of Welfare, Education, and Mutual Assistance, by Ilya Trotzky

416

Russian Jews in the United States, by M. Osherovich

434

Historians of Russian Jewry, by Isaiah Trunk

454

Reminiscences of a Jewish Historian, by Mark Wischnitzer

473

Biographical Notes on the Authors

478

Index

481

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

Russian jews of the 1870’s and 1880’s* by Mark Aldanov PU'rURE HISTORIANs OF THE RUSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA—

whether they are pro-Jewish or anti-Semitic—will have to start a new chapter in its history with the years when Jews began to participate in Russian cultural activity. This new

chapter opened in the late 1870's. The role of the Jews in the cultural and political life of Russia during the half-century that followed was very great indeed.

By the 1870's, Russian Jews were already taking part in the Russian revolutionary movement, although their role in it was insignificant: their number was small and they occupied no leading positions. This was due primarily to the fact that Jews had but recently entered Russian cultural life. But there were other reasons as well. The Russian Jews in those years had far less resentment against the Tsar and the Tsarist government than they came to feel later. ‘This article first appeared in Yiddish in the Jeerh Dally Forward of June 7, 1942. It is presented here in slightly abridged form.

11

12

Russian Jewry (I860-1917)

Alexander 11 (1855-1881) was not an anti-Semite. It may even be said that he was favorably disposed toward e Jews, especially during the first half of his reign. The no aws introducing the trictive clauses agamst the Jews Jewerea m1 €616 hools on equal terms witmonalities. Jews were ligible for ofiicer ranks 1n11e armed forces. They could 150 be elevated to the status of gentry. A Jew who received ,___e title of “active civil councillor" or “privy councillor," or was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir or any other order of the first grade, automatically became a member of the

Wed

a

gentry.

l’)

For a long time Jews had been treated unjustly in connection with military service. Few people know that, under,Nicholas 1the percentage of Jews in thearmy was (greater than it was inthe general population; in the con|scriptions Jews were obliged to provide ten soldiers per J ‘thousand population supplied only seven per thousand. This explains the large number of Jews participatingin the wars of 1828 1830 and 1854-55. However with the introduction of universal military service in 1874 this injustice was eliminated. Most of the subsequent restrictive measures against Jews were promulgated later, during the reign of Alexander 111 (1881-1894). It may safely be said that under Alexander 11 the Jewish {bourgeoisie was entirely loyal to the monarchy. It was during that period that the large fortunes of the Ginzburgs, the Polyakovs, Brodskys Zaitsevs, Balakhovskys, and Ashkenazis were founded. In the early part of the reign of Alexander II, the tax-farmer Evzel Ginzburg established his bank in St. Petersburg. This bank quickly won the leading position in banking circles, hitherto held by the bank of Baron Stieglitz. The owner of the new bank became

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13 Russian Jews of the 1870's and 1880’s the consul for the Duchy of Hesse in St. Petersburg and rendered valuable services to the Grand Duke of HesseDarmstadt. In reward for these services, the Duchy granted him the title of Baron in 1871. The wife of Alexander 11 was a sister of the Grand Duke,'iarid~Al€xa1EIeE, who

reIELIIZEs;san Wan afterward confirmed the baronial title of the Ginzburgs in -_.._

Ruséia ”.INEiLJR compliance

.'.

with the Duke’s expressed

wish. \né hoine of Baron Horace Ginzburg, the second HTT'”

‘

mem-

ber of the baronial dynasty, was frequented by the foremost representatives of the Russian intelligentsia: famous writers like Turgenev, Goncharov, and Saltykov, renowned musicians like the Rubinstein brothers, and others. Horace insburg maintained friendly relations with the highest aristocracy and even with some members of the reigning house, especially with Prince Oldenbourg. roximately the same time, another Jew, Samuil to build railroads. He eventually built six lines. Polyakov and his two brothers became privy councillors and thus members of the hereditary gentry. Both the Ginzburgs and the Polyakovs contributed large sums to various institutions and philanthropies. The Polyakovs contributed some two million rubles for philanthropic purposes. These Jews sincerely loved Tsar Alexander II and wept bitterly when he was assassinated on March 1, 1881‘. Strange as it may seem, these feelings were shared by many poor Jews who enjoyed no honors and received no titles or medals. The Russian-Jewish writerLeLLeyanda— the editor of

mugan

Wms

Q Vilenskr'ye Gubernskr'ye Vedomostr' (“Vilno Province News”) , the official organ of the Govemor-General. Such a post could not have been held by a Jew in subsequent years,

14

Russian Jewry (I860-19I7)

under Alexander 111 or Nicholas II. Levanda wrote extremel conservative, even nacfionan

“Wren. ___t_fl1§\e_tirne"Levand"’§Iressea’Tlte1aermat‘he was“

Defendingthej'e'ws 1n"lfis books and articles, he pointed out their loyalty to the throne, in opposition to the moods and sentiments prevailing among the Poles. One of his articles had even elicited the enthusiastic approval of the well-known reactionary journalist Katkov, who wrote that, in the persons of the Jews, “Russia could gain one and a half or two million devoted and loyal citizens." True, Katkov also appended to this a rather startling demand, too absurd to be made by a man of his intelligence: he proposed that “the Jews should pray in Russian”! '_" One of Levanda's novels concludes with an appeal to the 3 Jews: “Awake under the sceptre of Alexander II!" A short .’ biography of Levanda, published recently in the Soviet r—Union, is, surprisingly, couchedIn a sympathetic tone.‘ It seems to me that even the Jewish revolutionaries of that time did not share the hatred felt toward Alexander 11 by the terrorists who stemmed from the Russian gentry. A social psychologist might say that the revolutionaries who emerged from the lower strata of the population had retained somewhere deep in their hearts the memory that Alexander II had, after all, emancipated the peasants from serfdom. To the Russian gentry, on the other hand, regicide was in some measure a “tradition" (we may recall the fate of Peter III, the husband of Catherine the Great, and Paul I, her son). It is, at any rate, unquestionable that the few Jews who had taken part in preparing the assassination of Alexander 11 found it necessary to stress that their Jew. a

a

1L. O. Levanda later participated in the progressive RussianJewish press and became a Palatinophile. ens.

Russian Jews of the 1870's and 1880's 15 philosophy was primarily socialist, rather than revolution-

'

ary or terrorist. Thus, the well-known member of the People's Will Party, Aronchik, who had participated in the attempt to blow up the Tsar’s train near Moscow in 1879, declared in court: “I have never shared, and I do not share today, the principles of the factions which seek to carry out a revolution in Russia. In my opinion, a revolution can occur as a result of certain conditions; it cannot be made . . . At the same time, I must declare that Iam a socialist by conviction. But, I repeat, I am not a revolutionary.” I believe that this statement was sincere and was not motivated by a desire to win an easier sentence. Aronchik, who died in the Schlusselburg Fortress, was a man of ng character. Evidently, many of the Jewish revolutionaries were inspired above all by the desire for social justice, prompted by the ”mt—plight of the majority of Russian Je . Even the Russian police in those years did not regard ws as a specifically revolutionary element. The Jewish revolutionary, Iokhelson, writes in his memoirs that, in their illegal crossings of the Russian border, he and his friends usually enlisted the aid of Jewish smugglers, particularly the well-known smuggler Zalman. Indeed, whenever he had to take non-Jews across the border, Zalman dressed them up to look like Jews; In this way they aroused less suspicion. I am by no means trying to suggest an idyllic picture. The economic condition of the Jewish masses under Alex-ander II was appalling. But evidently the Jews of that ’period shared two_charaeteflsdrattitudes: a desire for __aLjustice and an absence of any acute'llmtility toward or evenonly tolerance. rulers who showed kindness,'c.

‘

p

'

16

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

Perhaps these attitudes are inherent in the Jewish national character. Thus, for example. before Mussolini launched an anti-Semitic policy and while—as in his conversations with Emil Ludwig and others—he asserted friendliness toward the Jews, there were a good many Fascists among the leading Italian-Jewish intellectuals. In old Austria, Jews were zealous supporters of the Habsburgs. This was true not only under Joseph 11, who was friendly toward Jews, but also during the lifetime of his mother, MariaTheresa, who had little affection for Jews, but whose treatment of them was still tolerable, especially toward the latter part of her reign. The well- known Chief Rabbi of f ‘1 Prague Yekhezkl Landau (the great-grandfather of the ./author of these lines), was a veritable bulwark of conservatism. Both politically and theologically, he was a firm opponent of the liberals, who were led at that time by Moses Mendelssohn, the famous German-Jewish philosopher and father of a dynasty of bankers. At the funeral of the Queen, the Rabbi of Prague delivered a fiery monarchist spwch. (A letter from the Chancellor of MariaTheresa, Count Kaunitz, to the Rabbi of Prague was preserved in my father's library. There exists quite an extensive, though little-known, literature about Rabbi

Viv

Landau.)

__There

are many other examples of Jewish loyalty to the

rulers of the countries where they lived. The Spanish Jews worshipped King Alfonso the Wise, one-third of whose

amryeonsisred of Jews. Jews mourned for the murdered Julius Caesar. And so it was at different times and in different countries. After Alexander 11 was assassinated, he was succeeded by his son, Alexander III. The new Tsar was a narrowminded, limited, poorly-educated man who, to the end

Russian Jews of the 1870's and 1880’s 17 of his days, never learned to write correctly in any language (including Russian). He was a confirmed anti-Semite, amongrheRussian Tsarsandjimperhaps one of the worst perors with the sole wexception of Ivan the Terrible, who had; LuEd [he rLotonousorder to his generals after taking, Llotsk: “Baptize the Jewswho consent _to baptism and gown the rest in Polot Rive'rgilvan, however, was not too discriminating in his choice of victims: he perpetrated even more frightful atrocities against his own people. The reign of Alexander 111 was marked by the beginning. Moms,by anti-semitic laws and bythe imposition of legal restrictions upon Jews. This period brought general"” disillusionmentmtomeTowish bourgeoisie and to other privileged elements among the Jews. Some representatives of these groups tried, though with small success, to preserve their loyalty to the throne. Some of them attempted to blame the repressions on the revolutionary tendencies of Jewish youth. But if such reasoning might have seemed logical under Alexander 11, it became absurd under his successor. Even had the Jewish magnates remained devoted to Alexander 111, their feelings would have been entirely one-sided, without the slightest return of affection. As for the attitude of the Jewish intelligentsia toward the regime, it was even more outspoken. W_ are clearly visible in the work of the Jewish writers of the and Ben-Ami. The latter became a pro_f6Tl'fiU—ifi‘1s'antffrope,_who found his only solace in reli'on, in the erpiece of Jewish liturgy, which moves didre—that able of feeling." _t2_the ve

WOW

Pagesfrom the Histmy of Russian Jewry (Recollections Material)

and Documentary

by jacob G. Frumkin MY PRINCIPAL SUBJECT HERE IS THE STRUGGLE OF THE

Russian Jews for equal rights and for protection from persecutions. When I was a member of the Political Bureau which coordinated the work of the Jewish deputies in the Fourth Duma, Itook an active part in the work of the Information Oflice of the Bureau. From its files came most of the documentary material that I cite. As the title implies, I do not claim to be offering an exhaustive review—merely a record of encounters and events still vivid in my memory.

I FROM THE TURN OF THE CENTURY TO THE CONVOCATION OF THE FIRST STATE DUMA In the spring of 1897 I graduated from secondary school in Kovno and in the fall_n£..tho—eame_yeas—was-18

Pages lrom the History of Russian Jewry l9 admitted to the Law School of St. Petersburg“ UniversLty. some of whose members were to becomeoutétandingJewishTéaHders,scienphilosophersAt the meetings of our group, members delivered reports on various subjects. One of my talks was on cheaers_,_the_ Jewish elementary religious WE}:necessary material Ivisited a number duringa vacation trip to Kovno,for Ihad never of attendedone as a child. Few Russian-Jewish intellectuals showed much interest in these schools despite the fact that most Jewish youngsters were educated in cheders; their general attitude toward cheders was one of indiscriminate disapproval. I found that some cheders had adopted fairly modern methods of instruction. The children were taught grammar, and their study of Hebrew was modeled on the standard course in foreign languages approved for secondary schools. Most cheders. however, held to the ancient, time-hallowed teaching methods. As soon as the children had mastered the mechanics of reading, they were set to studying the B‘ifi in the _orjginal Hebrew. The boy_ mother tongue course Yiddish— , asit was generally referred to in tho ., The melamed taught his pupils to understand what they read. In a few inferior schools the pupils advanced rather slowly. In most cheders, however, the rapid progress of the youthful scholars seemed quite astonishing. In nearly every school, eight-year-old boys not only were able to read and understand the Bible but did equally well with the abstruse texts of Rashi's Commentaries, written in a language other than that of the Bible and set in a totally different type-face.l

Wmn’t‘cmle m chEders

9

#-

‘

The extraordinary attainments of 13-year-old yeshivah students are discussed by A. Menes in an article in the present volume.

20

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

I came to the conclusion that the rate of instruction prevalent in the general secular schools might be too slow for Jewish children. In fact. Jewish boys attending such schools seemed to be suffering from under— rather than over- exertion. When Ishared my observations and conclusions with the other members of the circle, my report, as Irecall, was received with some surprise. In those years, the desire for secular learning was in the air, and, in addition to their strenuous work at the yeshivahs, many of the yeshivah students avidly sought more knowledge. As a high school student, I had tutored young men of the Slobodka yeshivahs (as did most of the Jewish high-school students in Kovno) in Russian and other subjects. We considered this our duty. Later on, such lessons were more systematic in character than they had been in my time. Some of our pupils ultimately took the high-school examinations—either for the entire course, or for the first six years. The latter was a prerequisite to becoming a municipal rabbi. There were also instances when these pupils went abroad and there obtained matriculation diplomas. One of the greatest obstacles to such studies was the opposition of the heads of yeshivahs, who forbade their students to concern themselves with anything except the subjects taught at the yeshivah. Yeshivah students caught taking lessons outside their school were expelled and sent back to their parents. Years later. when Ihad already completed my university studies, Imade one of my periodic trips from St. Petersburg to Kovno and visited again the well-known Jewish leader, Iser Ber Wolf, who had once helped me with my research on cheders. At his home I met a head of a yeshivah, and took the occasion to ask him why there was such strong opposition to yeshivah students taking up Russian, arith-

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 21 metic, and geography. He replied that the yeshivah heads had no objection to their students taking up anything they pleased after they had completed their regular course. At that time they would be suficiently stable in their dedication to the subjects they had studied at the yeshivah and would not be harmed by any other studies. However, until they had finished their course and became entirely firm in their views and outlook, any outside studies might divert and con'upt them. I did not succeed in convincing him of the contrary. As for the argument that the students were free to take up whatever they wished after graduation from the yeshivah. it was entirely spurious, since at that time they returned to their parents in their home towns, where they had no further opportunity to study anything.

The spring of 1902 saw a student strike on the university campus. The trouble started on February 8, when a group of demonstrating students were roughly handled by the police. The student body reacted by manifestations of protest, and I was expelled from the university for taking part in them. The order of expulsion carried a proviso that I was not to be admitted to any other school. Iwent to Heidelberg, where I enrolled at the university for the summer semester. After completing the term, I returned to my home town, Kovno. There I learned that one of its suburbs, Vilyampolskaya Sloboda, or, as it was usually called, “Slobodka", was famine-stricken. This suburb was inhabitated chiefly by Jews; many years later, under the Hitler occupation, it was the site of the Kovno ghetto. The people of Slobodka, almost to a man, earned their living in jobs associated with the rafting of timber. But

22

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

little snow had fallen during the previous winter, and without well-packed sledge-roads timber could not easily be hauled to the rivers. The working people of Slobodka were idle. They had scarcely any food and, with their meager savings depleted, could not buy fuel for the winter. Emergency relief was sorely needed, but nothing was being done to provide it. No independent organ of the press existed in Kovno at that time. The only publication was the Supplement to the Kovno Regional Bulletin, a semi-official bi-weekly whose editor, Beletsky, was also the chief of the govemor’s oflice. I submitted an article to Beletsky describing the distressed condition of Slobodka's population and urging that immediate aid be organized. The article appeared in the next issue. A few days later the governor of the Kovno Province called a conference to discuss the necessary steps to be taken. I—a student expelled from his alma mater— was invited to the conference. Participating in the conference were the Mayor of Kovno; the chief of the governor's office, Beletsky; and a number of prominent Jews, heads of charitable organizations. In his opening address the governor, Emanuil Alexandrovitch Vatatsi, proposed that a committee be organized to aid the people of Slobodka. Iwas made secretary of the committee. A practical relief program was outlined by the governor, whose suggestions were received with enthusiasm. I asked for the floor and shocked those present by criticizing the govemor‘s proposals. Vatatsi replied that he had no intention of forcing his ideas upon the committee, which he expected to evaluate both his proposals and my objections. The next morning I learned from Beletsky that the

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 23 governor discussed the matter with him after the meeting. Regardless of the merits of his proposals, Vatatsi had said to him, they would have been accepted unquestioningly had it not been for me. He welcomed my critical examination of his ideas, since he felt that my objections were to some extent justified. The committee began its work. Large supplies of potatoes and cordwood were purchased, on terms far better than the people of Slobodka could have arranged on their own. A sub-committee formed of local residents distributed the products under my supervision. Necessary funds for the operation came from donations and the “box tax.” The governor authorized the allocation of special sums from the so-called “surplus amounts" of the box tax,’ to aid the project. In the early part of 1901 General Vanovsky was appoint-

"I'he so-called box tax was instituted in Russia in 1844, to provide means for covering expenditures for Jewish community needs. The tax was collected on the sale of kosher meat. The sums obtained were turned over to the city councils, which managed their allocation. The moneys remaining after the allotment of various sums for specific needs were known as the box tax raidues, and were placed at the disposal of provincial administrations. The city councils were empowered to confer with “resident and well-to-do Jews" concerning the allocation of the box tax funds. The suggestions provided by the latter were not, however, binding on the councils. Although the sum obtained through the box tax were. according to law, to be med solely for Jewish nuds, they were frequently applied to purposes which had nothing to do with Jewish life. Thus, it was said that box tax money was sometimes even used for the repair of church buildings. A glaring instance of the diversion of box tax funds was pointed out at a session of the State Duma by the Jewish deputy N. M. Friedman, who stated that 15,000 rubles of the box tax moneys collected in one of the provincm was assigned to rural administrations; 3,000 rubles was applied to the expenses of the governor‘s office; and 2,000 rubles was med for other needs of the provincial administration.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 24 ed Minister of Public Education, to replace Professor Bogolepov, who had been assassinated. The new minister ordered that all university students expelled while completing their fourth and final year of studies be permitted to take State Board examinations. Not much time was left and various formalities had to be attended to. I therefore had to leave for St. Petersburg as soon as Icould get away. It was with regret that I resigned from the Slobodka relief committee. When Iinformed Beletsky of my impending departure, he suggested that I pay my respects to the governor before leaving. Noticing my hesitation, Beletsky argued that this gesture might help the project. More funds were needed, and the allocation of special sums from box-tax surpluses depended on the good will of the governor, whose cooperation in all aspects of the committee’s work was essential. The argument sounded convincing. Beletsky suggested that I call upon the governor on the next official visiting day, assuring me that I would be well received. Ifollowed his advice. Much to my surprise, the governor received me before my turn, although a number of govemment officials were waiting to see him. Vatatsi thanked me for the useful work I had accomplished. What little I could do, I replied, made little difference one way or the other. The committee was trying hard. but its efforts were a mere drop in the bucket. The governor seemed puzzled and asked me why I felt as Idid. Isaid that as long as the Russian Jews were denied equal rights under the law, all measures designed to better their economic lot were bound to fail in achieving lasting results. The governor showed considerable interest in the problem. He then asked me when I was planning to leave.

Pages

from the History of Russian Jewry

25

When I said, “Tomorrow," he asked whether I would join him that evening for a cup of tea. He said he wished to talk with me without worrying about time—and at the moment he had a crowd of people waiting to see him. Iarrived at the govemor’s house at 8 P.M. Our discussion lasted until 1 A.M. Iwas surprised at Vatatsi’s thoughtful probing of the issues involved. He owned a landed estate in the Mogilev Province, and came in contact with Jews who lived in small towns nearby. I was amazed at his attitude toward them. He seemed to realize that they were, for the most part, individuals of a relatively high cultural level. Of course, the _governor remarked. their culture was essEfiTa‘lTyafiéhto the general Eurgpean culture, butone Mdeny that i_ntelle_ctually and morally theywere--mummWieo-eaptams andscmsrabtesm were prone .to 190k 9.1.1.the..Jssvs.ss-uncmuzed.nhb1e......m-mw Let me say in passing that country police were not the only men to hold such notions. The same prejudiced views were occasionally encountered among Jews themselves, particularly those who had been brought up outside the Pale of Settlement. To these gentlemen a Jew able to read only in Yiddish was an illiterate. Later on, I had frequent occasions to return to Kovno. Whenever Vatatsi learned that I was in town he would ask me over to his home for a cup of tea. Our discussions were mostly concerned with the Jewish question, but sometimes we spoke of general political issues. One of my talks with Vatatsi took place some time after the trial involving the perpetrators of the anti-Jewish pogmm at Kishinev. I asked the governor whether he would like to read the attomey’s pleas. (The hearing took place in closed session of the court and the speeches had not

26

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

been reported in the press.) Vatatsi said he was very much interested. Ipulled out of my pocket an issue of Osvobozhdenie (“Liberation")a in which the full text of the speeches was published. Vatatsi read them right then and there and returned the journal to me. Later I met Vatatsi from time to time in St. Petersburg. Vatatsi frequently spoke to Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, Governor General of the Vilno Province, of his conversations with me. He suggested that on my next visit to Vilno I call upon the prince. On one of my trips to Vilno I telephoned the govemor-general's office and asked for an appointment. The date was set for the next day at noon. On that day the morning papers reported the assassination of Plehve.‘ When I called at noontime, the conversation at once turned to the assassination. The prince did not seem greatly upset by the news. He named Serge Witte“ as the most likely successor to Plehve. He added that the Tsar summoned Witte from Berlin, where he had been negotiating a trade agreement. Soon after that I had another occasion to visit Vilno. In the meantime Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky himself had been appointed to succeed Plehve. The prince, however, had not yet left Vilno. I called upon him once more and started by congratulating him on his new appointment. His rejoinder was, “What cause is there for congratulation? Ihave just signed a promissory note for a large amount, but God only knows how I shall pay it." After a short pause, he added, “I organ published abroad in Russian and smuggled Wition into Russia. Its dissemination brought severe penalties.

Reactionary Minister of the Interior (1901—04). ‘ Minister of Finance ( l893-l903). later Prime Minister (I9055

I906).

27 from the History of Russia Jewry think I shall act as a doctor. Russia has a bad case of nerves. What it needs is bromide, and a lot of it.” Bromide, I interposed, was merely a palliative, not a cure. Russia's illness was a serious one; bromide would not be of much help. It would take surgery to save the patient. “Time will tell,” the prince remarked. When Svyatopolk-Mirsky took office, the event was commented upon, both in society and in the press, as a change of the political climate. Perhaps the first notable public action of the new Minister for Internal Afiairs was an interview he granted while still in Vilno to Howard Thomson, of the Associated Press (USA). The minister said, among other things, “There are major domestic problems—the Jewish question, to name one—which are of grave concern to me. I've made a careful study of this most serious matter and I realize how diflicult it is to find a satisfactory solution. His Majesty's recent manifesto has relaxed some of the restrictions with respect to the right of residence and choice of occupation. Nevertheless. the current situation of the poorer classes of Jews remains extremely difficult. They are confined by law to residence in cities and towns within the Pale of Settlement. The most Ican do at this time is to extend the range of occupations open to them." Count Witte in his memoirs tells how seriously this unprecedented act by a high government oflicial, the granting of an interview to a foreign journalist, was frowned upon in influential court circles. Pages

At the request of Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, Vatatsi was appointed to head the Department of General Afiairs in the Ministry of the Interior. When I met him for the first time in the ministry building, he asked me to supply him

28

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

with current issues of Osvobozhdenie. He added that as a matter of routine he could obtain the journal through the Department of Police. but that he preferred not to. Vatatsi remained head of the Department of General Alfairs even after Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky resigned from his post in 1905. Sometime later he became Minister for Internal Affairs and was subsequently appointed ViceRegent of the Caucasus. He died in a Bolshevik prison.

I left Kovno in the spring of 1903 and went to St. Petersburg to take my State Board examinations. At that time civilized men the world over, Jews and Gentiles alike, were deeply shocked by reports of a pogrom in Kishinev that lasted two days (April 6 and 7). It was the first violent anti-Jewish riot in Russia in twenty years, and in savagery and the number of victims far surpassed the anti-Semitic outbreaks of the early eighties. The Kishinev pogrom was inspired by the Minister of the Interior Plehve, who had been head of the Department of Police at the time of the earlier pogroms, in the hope of discouraging Jewish participation in the revolutionary movement.

Plehve had never missed an occasion to complain to Jewish leaders about the growth of the revolutionary movement among Jews. If his listeners argued that the cause of this lay in the legal restrictions aimed at the Jews, Plehve would quote a French minister's comment on the demand for abolition of capital punishment: “Que messieurs les assassins commencent" ("It‘s up to the murderers to make the first step"). By 1903 Plehve had evidently decided that an anti-Jewish pogrom was the best means of weakening the revolutionary movement.

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Kishinev seemed a likely spot for the purpose. As far back as 1897, a viciously Jew-baiting sheet, The Bess-arabian, was published there by a certain Krushevan, a local funtionary of the State Excise Ofice. Anti-Semitic articles appeared regularly in this government-subsidized publication, some of them over the signature of the vice governor of the region. In the spring of 1903, the body of a Russian boy was found in the township of Dubossary near Kishincv. The child appeared to have been stabbed to death. Investigation eventually disclosed that the boy's relatives had killed the youngster. hoping to collect a legacy, and then stabbed the dead body to make it look like a ritual murder. Before this came to light, however, a series of inflammatory articles appeared in The Bessarabian, urging that “the kikes should be wiped out." On the Eve of Russian Easter, rumors were circulated about a Christian servant girl killed by her Jewish employer. What actually happened was that the girl had attempted suicide and died, despite all eflorts on the part of her employer to save her. On April 6th, the first day of Easter, anti-Jewish riots broke out. Forty-five persons were killed and eighty-six seriously wounded; fifteen hundred homes and stores were wrecked and looted. The poorer Jews were the chief victims. The authorities made no attempt to stop the pogrom. A Jewish delegation called upon the governor, von Raaben, who explained that he was awaiting official instructions from St. Petersburg. When these were finally wired, on the third day, the riots were checked without much dificulty. Later it was disclosed that, two weeks before the pogrom,

30

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

the governor had received secret instructions from Plehve directing him not to use am in case of anti-Jewish rioting. It would be unwise, Plehve stressed, to antagonize the loyal elements as yet unafiected by revolutionary propaganda. The text of this letter was printed by The Times of London. Evidently, Plehve had not anticipated either the scope of the pogrom and the number of victims, or the reactions of the press and of public opinion at home and abroad. He soon issued orders, ostensibly in compliance with the Tsar's wishes, that no further anti-Jewish demonstrations be permitted to occur and had the matter publicized in the press. Despite the steps taken by the government, detailed and truthful accounts of the Kishinev pogrom found their way into the press. The criminal laxness of the authorities was bared in the reports. People passed from hand to hand a message from Leo Tolstoy, in which the great writer expressed his horror at what had happened. The chief culprits responsible for “the crime of Kishinev," Tolstoy wrote, “were the government and its clergy.” A particularly strong impression was produced by an article “The Blood Bath of Kishinev," published in Pravo (“The Law") by V.D. Nabokov, the son of a former Minister of Justice. For writing it, Nabokov, who was a professor of criminal law and an eminent civic leader in his own right, was stripped of his rank as an official at the Imperial court. (Soon after this incident, one newspaper published Nabokov‘s eye-catching ad: “For Sale: One Courtier's Uniform. No Longer Needed." Nabokov was subsequently elected a deputy from St. Petersburg to the First State Duma. The court hearing on the Kishinev pogrom was held in Kishinev before a special part of the Odessa Court of

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Appeals. It was closed to the public, at Plehve's request, to make sure that no reports on the hearing would appear in the press. The accused were merely pawns; none of the instigators or organizers were brought to trial. The Russian public learned what took place in the courtroom from Osvobozjrdenie, the journal mentioned earlier, which was published in Stuttgart under the editorship of PB. Struve. There were, however, two public hearings on the pogrom. Both were held in St. Petersburg. The first hearing, on the motion for appeal submitted by civil plaintifis against the decision of the Odessa Court of Appeals, took place on April 20, 1904, in the Criminal Department of the Senate. The second hearing related to a suit against the governor, vice-govemor, and other administration heads, seeking compensation for losses incuned as a result of inaction on the part of the authorities. This hearing took place in a joint session of the Senate on May 8, 1904. The first case was pleaded by O. Gruzenberg, the second by M. Vinaver. The procedural appeal was denied, and the lawsuit instituted against von Raaben and others was dis-

mm.

Less than half a year after the Kishinev pogrom, another riot, resulting in an even greater number of victims, broke in Gomel on August 29, 1903. While the Jews of Kishinev had not resisted the attackers and organized no self-defense, the Jews of Gomel, aided by those of surrounding areas, defended themselves vigorously in a highly organized manner. The Jews would have repelled the attack had not army troops fired upon the self defense squads to protect the attackers. More Jews were killed than Christians—yet more of them were also arrested on criminal charges. The court inout

32

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

vestigation, which took more than two months, was conducted in a manner highly prejudiced against the Jews. To protest the manner in which the hearing was being conducted by the presiding judge, the attorneys acting on behalf of the Jewish defendants finally resigned from the case. The Jews remained without legal counsel. The court, however, convicted a nearly equal number of Christians and Jews, handing sentences to both that were unexpectedly mild.

In 1903 I passed my State Board examinations and served as an assistant attorney before becoming a fullfledged member of the bar in 1909. Soon after Ihad been admitted to the bar as an assistant attorney, Leonty Bramson' invited me to work as secretary for the clandestine organization known as the Defense Bureau. As Irecall, the Bureau membership, besides L. M. Bramson, included G. B. Sliozberg, M. J. Kulisher, A. I. Braudo, M. M. Vinaver. Yu. D. Brutskus, M. V. Pozner, B. F. Brandt, and M. Trivus. The last three held fairly important positions in government offices. A. I. Braudo was also a civil functionary, in charge of the Rossica Department at the St. Petersburg Public Library. Yu. D. Brutskus was a physician. The rest of the Bureau members were attorneys. The Bureau fought for equal rights for Jews, sought to countervail interpretations of statutes in a sense unfavorable to Jews, opposed administrative measures antagonistic to Jews, and generally endeavored to combat anti-Semitism. In trials relating to pogroms. the Bureau organized legal representation for the Jews by enlisting attorneys as defense counsel or as civil plaintilfs. The

' Noted Jewish leader, deputy in the First Duma.

9”; Pages from the History CI}

E-

8-

135 ?

I— n - ‘ J

33 of Russian Jewry Bureau conducted its activities privately, in a semi-clantkstine manner. The Defense Bureau was created in 1900 or thereabout. For several decades before its creation, Russian Jews had tlmost no one to turn to for help when confronted with the need to fight cruel, often illegal, actions of the administration. About the only exception was a man to whom Jews from every part of Russia turned when victimized by administrative abuses, Baron Horace O. Ginzburg. Back in 1881, Baron Ginzburg headed a delegation received by Alexander In on May 11, following a wave of pogroms. The Tsar told the delegation that the Jews in this case served merely as a pretext and that the pogroms had been engineered by anarchists. He added, however, that such outbreaks were also the consequence of the fact that the Jews had been exploiting the native population.’ Baron Ginzburg, one of the founders of the Society for the Dissemination of Education among Russian Jews and its chairman for many years, gave generously of his time and effort to secure legal protection for Jews. A keenly sympathetic man, he almost seemed to devote more attention to this matter than to the afiairs of the bank he owned. Baron Ginzburg employed a secretary especially for Jewish afiairs, but he also frequently sought the help of G. B. Sliozberg. The Baron had connections in government circles and was able at times to persuade the administra-

" One member of the delegation, Alexander Passover, a celebrated

attorney (see the article by S. Kucherov in this volume), stresed the need for improving the legal status of the Jews. “Please submit a memorandum to me coneerning this," the Tsar replied. The

memorandum was never submitted, since it soon became apparent to everyone that nothing would be achieved through such means. 'l'lseintentionofthegovernmentwasnottobetterthelegalatatu oftheJewabuttomakeitworse.

34 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) tion to revoke measures antagonistic to the Jews. In some instances he even succwded in preventing such measures from being approved. Under the Temporary Regulations of 1882, Jews were denied the right of residence in rural areas; an exception, however, was made for those who had settled in such areas prior to May 3, 1882. When Plehve proposed that the ruling be applied to all Jews residing in rural communities, irrespective of the date of settlement. Baron Ginzburg persuaded the Minister of Finance to submit a memorandum to Alexander 111 setting forth objections to such a measure. As a result, Plehve’s proposal was rejected. A rather peculiar relationship developed between Baron Ginzburg and the Defense Bureau. He was, naturally, not a member of the illegal organization. At the same time, in order to see its plans materialize, the Bureau often needed and received support from the Baron. One of the major tasks of the Bureau, at the time when I participated in its work, was to draft a memorandum to Count S. Witte, Chairman of the Council of Ministers,’ stressing the need for granting equal rights to the Jews. The Jews in Russia, with the exception of those residing in former Polish ten'itories. had no legally recognized communal administrative organs of their own. We therefore decided that the memorandum should be signed by memI'On December 12, 1904, the Tsar issued an Imperial Decree instructing the Council of Ministers, presided over by S. Witte, to prepare a draft of revisions in the law which the Tsar had already approved as desirable. This decree was by no means intended to empower the Council of Ministers to consider the proposals of private individuals or institutions for revisions in the existing laws. Nevertheleu. a great number of institutions and individuals, citing the imperial Decree, communicated with Witte, urging changes in various laws.

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 35 bers of the boards of Jewish organizations and synagogues in various towns.’ The memorandum was drafted and, after a detailed discussion in the Defense Bureau, a final versoion was adopted. It was decided that Iwas to visit Vilno, Kovno, Grodno, Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Warsaw, where I would acquaint the local Jewish leaders with the memorandum, explain its contents, and obtain the necessary signatures. Several delegates, as far as I remember, were sent to other cities While working in the Defense Bureau, I also took part in organizing the Jewish Democratic Group, formed by some of the participants of the students' group of which Ispoke earlier and many members of the Defense Bureau. A branch of the Democratic Group was established in Moscow; the Group also had representatives in other cities. Though never strong in numbers, the Group enjoyed a measure of influence in the Jewish community. It carried on its activities up to the time of the February Revolution of 1917. Its representatives were active in various Jewish committees, whose membership, as a rule, was composed of men representing various Jewish political parties. Most members of the Jewish Democratic Group (including myself) were former members of the League for Liberation,” who refused to join the party of Constitutional Democrats" when the latter had been founded.

"The law of December 19, 1844. abolished Jewish Community Councils. declaring that “there must not be any special Jewish ad-

ministrative bodies.” Individual synagogues were permitted to have their own boards. Jewish hospitals, old-age homes, etc., were alv lowed to have special governing boards only if they were approved by the proper authorities. An organization of the liberal democratic intelligentsia (1903-

"

05).

" A large political party of moderate democrats.

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 36 As a representative of the Jewish Democratic Group I participated in the Vilno convention of 1905, and later in the Political Bureau which functioned in connection with the Jewish deputies to the Duma. Along with A. I. Braudo and L. M. Bramson,Irepresented the Group in this Bureau. Eventually an idea evolved among members of the Jewish Democratic Group that it might be necessary not only to submit a memorandum to Witte but also to make a public appeal demanding full citizenship rights for the Jews. The declaration, needless to say, was to be couched in terms different from those used in the memorandum. The appeal was to be signed by a number of Jews as individual citizens of the Russian Empire. The declaration" was drafted by G. A. Landau and discussed in the Group. Weexpecttobegrantedthesamerightsasareenjoyedby the rest of the Russian people. We are prepared. hand-in hand and on equal terms with all the nationals in Russia, to build our future, while freely developing our energies for the benefit of our country and of mankind. This is what we expect—not as a favor, or a generous gesture—not even as a matter of political expediency—but as a matter of honor and justice.

More than 6,000 signatures were collected. The appeal was made public in the press in the early part of 1905. The Jewish Democratic Group suggested that I collect signatures for both the appeal and the memorandum during my trip for the Defense Bureau. Thus, I set out on my way carrying two documents that pursued the same objective but differed in their nature, destination, and source of signatures. Icarried out my mission in Kovno, Grodno, Vitebsk, and

"

The concluding lines of this document will suggest to the readers its general tone and character:

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 37 Mogilev without any difficulties. There were virtually no objections or debates concerning the contents of the appeal for which Iwas collecting signatures. The members of the local democratic intelligentsia of all these cities willingly signed the appeal of the Democratic Group. The only objection I encountered was in Vilno, where a relatively large meeting was called to hear my report. This meeting was attended, among others, by historian S. M. Dubnow and Dr. Shmarya Levin, who was then the Vilno rabbi. (He was elected shortly afterwards to the First State Duma as a deputy from Vilno; after the dissolution of the Duma, he left Russia and became a well-known writer.) Dr. Levin strongly criticized the text of the appeal, urging a “more appropriate" statement. He suggested an appeal more closely resembling the declaration of the Democratic Group, with which, incidentally, he was unfamiliar. Ireplied that such a statement would indeed be desirable, but that the appeal to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers should be along the lines of the document Ihad brought with me. The meeting supported me, and the appeal was signed by the local representatives. To accomplish my mission in Warsaw proved far more complicated. The most influential leader of the local community was Stanislaus Nathanson, a member of a wealthy and highly respected family. Nathanson was one of those Jews who thought of themselves as “Poles of Mosaic faith.” He was the vice-chairman of the Gmina. the Administrative Board of the Warsaw Jewish Community. The meeting that Nathanson called at my request was impressive. It was attended by prominent representatives of Warsaw Jewry. Due to a misunderstanding, there was no Zionist delegate. None of those present supported the pro-

Russian Jewry (I860-I917) 38 posal to sign the memorandum. The reasons given struck me as highly peculiar, since I was little acquainted with the attitudes and trends of thought dominating these Jewish circles. Opinions were voiced that Poland was but formally, and unjustly, incorporated into the Russian Empire. For this reason alone, if for no other, these spokesmen for the Polish Jews considered it improper to join the Russian Jews in any action addressed to the government. It was further pointed out that the status of the Jews in Poland was quite different from that in Russia. Jewish residents of Poland were permitted to live in rural areas and to own realty in such localities. True enough they experienced certain difficulties when they wished to visit St. Petersburg or Moscow. But these cities, from their standpoint, were situated on foreign territory, hence they felt they could not really object to the restrictions. Every country had the undeniable right to refuse admittance to foreigners at its discretion. It was equally true, they conceded, that the enrollment of their children in Russian schools was subject to quota regulations, but this was just as well, since they prefened to have their youngsters educated abroad. The refusal to sign the memorandum was vigourously protested by the less assimilated circles in Warsaw, and even more so in Lodz. As a result, a resolution was issued in the name of “Jewish residents of the Kingdom of P0land," demanding equal rights for the Jews. As far as I know, the initiative in this case stemmed from the Jewish leaders of Lodz rather than those of Warsaw.

On my return to St. Petersburg, I took part in organizing the Vilno convention, which was held on March 25-27, 1905.

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 39 Although the initiative in organizing this conference belonged to the Defense Bureau, the invitations we sent out appeared over the signature of Baron H.0. Ginzburg. At that time this was natural and necessary. We had compiled a list of persons to be invited, selecting several representatives of various political orientations from each city. Baron Ginzburg signed all the invitations. However, in the interval between the issuance of invitations and the actual convention, the political atmosphere, and more specifically the mood dominating the Jewish circles, underwent a sharp change. It became clear to the Defense Bureau that Baron Ginzburg's presence at the convention might be inopportune. From my point of view, the convention was too moderate in its political outlook. Nevertheless, the composition of the convention was too radical for Baron Ginzburg. M. M. Vinaver was chairman of the Vilno convention. He also headed the Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for the Jewish People in Russia, which was formed at the convention. The Vilno convention adopted a resoultion to the efiect that the Jews must be granted not only equal but also full rights. The latter term was interpreted as meaning equal citizenship rights plus the rights of a national minority. The Presidium of the convention submitted a resolution proposing the formation of the Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for the Jewish People in Russia. After the Union for Full Rights had been organized, the Defense Bureau practically discontinued its activities. After hearing the reports of its delegates, L. M. Bram-

" See the article by S. Kucherov in this volume.

40

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

son and myself, the Jewish Democratic Group resolved not to participate in the Union. The Union remained in existence only two years, after which it was dissolved, principally because of the so-called Helsingfors Platform adopted by the Zionists. In keeping with that program, the Zionists decided to work for full rights for the Jews in the name of their own organization, rather than within the framework of the Union. The Jewish People's Group, led by Mr. Vinaver, was formed at an organizational conference held in February, 1907. In November, I909, the Group held a conference in Kovno.

The appointment of Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky as Ministhe Interior in place of Plehve, who has been assassinated, marked the beginning of a “political spring" in Russia. At banquets and public meetings, held in St. Petersburg and throughout the country, the speakers urged a transition to constitutional government and a declaration of personal freedom. Numerous resolutions were passed, most of which also demanded equal rights for all citizens. A. I. Braudo asked me to help organize a meeting on the status of Jews in Russia. It was held in one of the largest halls in St. Petersburg. in the Kalashnikov Exchange Building. The huge hall was packed beyond its normal capacity. Professor M. M. Kovalevsky“ acted as chairman. Of the speeches made at the meeting, I recall a remarkable one by Professor L. O. Petrazhitsky," as well as those by P. Milyukov and by the noted writer and scienter of

Wauthority

on constitutional law; later a member of the First Duma, and afterward of the State Council, where he represented the academic profession. Eminent authority on the philosophy of law.

"

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tist V. Myakotin. The meeting adopted a resolution asking equal rights for Jews. A political resolution was also passed by the oldest Jewish organization, the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews. The resolution stressed the necessity of granting equal rights to the Jews, as well as of summoning a national representative assembly elected by secret ballot by all citizens without distinction, on the bmis of universal, direct, and equal suffrage. I was not particularly active in the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews. On one occasion, however, I had to participate actively. The publishing activities of the Society were limited to editions in Russian. Inthisconnection,aproposalwasmadebysomeofthe members, including myself, that the administration of the Society be persuaded to publish in Yiddish as well. We argued that even if our sole objective were to encourage the masses to study Russian, the best way to reach them was not in a language they did not understand, but in Yiddish. The suggsstion was opposed, not so much by advocates of the Russian language and culture, as by the Zionists, who saw in the Yiddish “jargon" potential competition for Hebrew. I well remember the meeting at which our proposal urging the nwd to begin publication in Yiddish was discussed. We were opposed by the Zionists in so violent a fashion that the chairman was compelled to close the meeting before a decision could be adopted on the issue which had called forth such an outburst of passion. Nearly ten years elapsed before the Society for the Dissemination of Education and its afliliated organizations embarked on the course recommended by our group.

Russian Jewry (I860-]917) 42 On Februray 18, 1905, an Imperial decree was issued concerning a representative legislative assembly with advisory functions. To implement it, a commission was formed which drafted a law establishing the Duma, an advisory legislative body. The draft stipulated that Jews were not to be granted electoral rights. This evoked vehement protests not only among Jews but in Russian political circles as well. In June, 1905, a delegation of leaders representing the urban and rural organs of self-administration called upon the Tsar. Prince Serge Trubetskoy," head of the delegation, declared in his speech that no one should be denied the right to vote in public elections. “What we nwd," he said, “is a society in which there are no disenfranchised or underprivileged individuals." Baron Ginzburg and Sliozberg asked Kokovtsev" to defend the equal rights of Jews under the electoral law. The Council of Ministers subsequently deleted the paragraph denying Jews the right to vote, the Tsar acquiesced in the change, and the final law directing the convocation of an advisory legislative Duma, promulgated on August 6, 1905, contained no sections restricting the excerise by Jews of their voting rights. Events develoPed with unusual rapidity. Under the combined pressure of public opinion and a general strike, an Imperial manifesto was promulgated on October 17, 1905, establishing a constitutional regime, with freedom of conscience, speech, and association, and the inviolability of individual rights. All those who had been fighting for these freedoms were jubilant. During following days the Jews were shocked by reports and political leader; the first Wher Moscow University. '7

elected president of

Minister of Finance, later Prime Minister (191l-l4).

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 43 of pogroms that broke out in hundreds of cities and small towns lying within the Pale of Settlement, and even in some towns outside the Pale. Everywhere, Jews were the principal victims of the riots. But since these outbreaks were anti-revolutionary as well as anti-Jewish, the victims of attack in some places were not only Jews, but also representatives of liberal intellectual circles—in particular, men working in the rural and municipal self-government organs, who gained a reputation as liberals. There was no doubt that the authorities encouraged such pogroms instead of suppressing them. It was later proven that leaflets instigating the populace to anti-Jewish pogroms were printed under the supervision of the Assistant Director of the Department of Police, Rachkovsky, on the premises of the Security Police (Gendarmerie) Headquarters in St. Petersburg, on a hand-press confiscated in a raid on an underground revolutionary group. Later on, when this press was no longer adequate, a hand-rotated drum printing press of an improved design was purchased by the Department of Police. This machine, capable of turning out 1000 copies an hour, was installed in the building of the Police Department. Captain Komissarov was put in charge of the machine, and two typesetters were plawd at his disposal. A number of leaflets were issued, containing monstrous accusations against Jews. When asked about the success of his leaflets, Komissarov said: “We can handle a job of any size—a ten-man pogrom or a ten-thousand man pogrom, whatever you please." This activity of the authorities in organizing pogroms against the Jews became the subject of Parliamentary Inquiry No.Iin the First State Duma. In a session held on May 8, 1906, the Minister for Internal Affairs, Stolypin, delivered the official reply to this inquiry. Counter-argu-

44

Russian JeWry {1860-1917)

ments were presented by Prince Urusov (former governor of Kishinev, who had been appointed to the office after

the Kishinev pogrom) as well as M. M. Vinaver, V. D. Nabokov, F. I. Rodichev, M. I. Sheftel, and others. In a letter dated June 20, 1906, Lopukhin, the former Director of the Department of Police, reported to Stolypin that, at the request of Count Witte, he had investigated the part played by the Department of Police in organizing anti-Jewish pogroms. Lopukhin asserted that the materials which had been submitted to Stolypin and which had served as the basis for his reply to the Duma inquiry had completely distorted the facts of the matter. In his letter, Lopukhin explained in detail what had actually taken place. He cited verbatim the texts of the pogrom leaflets printed by the Department of Police. Among other things, he remarked that, despite a most conscientious investigation concerning alleged participation by government officials in organizing the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, he had been unable to establish the facts with any certainty. although it was clear to him that such participation had indeed taken place. The secret existence of the pogrom-instigating organizations did not come to light until later, when he no longer held at official post in the Ministry for Internal Affairs. Lopukhin stated in the same letter that no one in the Department of Police, or in the police apparatus in general, doubted that Dmitry Trepov, the Palace Commandant, was the real power behind the throne after October, 1905. This firm belief was further strengthened by the fact that special funds and secret documents from the files of the Department of Police were placed at Trepov's disposal. Nor was there any doubt, according to Lopukhin, that Trepov was in sympathy with the pogroms.

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The October pogroms of 1905 were not merely condoned by the authorities but had been organized with their active participation. Characteristically, every pogrom began as a patriotic parade, in response to the Imperial manifesto of October 17, 1905. The marchers carried the Tsar's portrait. Invariably, the portrait was fired at, by persons unknown. Then it was announwd that the shooting had been done by Jews—and an anti-Jewish riot would be launched. In Odessa, the commander of the troops, General Baron Kaulbars (as was later established by the Senator who conducted an investigation) addressed the police captains summoned to his presence in the city governor's office with the following words: “Let us call a spade a spade. The truth is, deep down in our hearts we are all in sympathy with the pogroms." The Odessa City Governor Neidhart, as a matter of record, took his cap off to the rioters looting Jewish shops and told them, “Thanks, fellows." When a Jew, set upon by the rowdies, appealed to him for help, the Governor answered, “Son-y, can't do a thing for you. You Jews yelled for freedom—there’s your freedom for you!” The senator conducting the investigation charged Neidhart with criminal inaction leading to serious consequences. Neidhart was forced to resign, but he was never brought to trial, because the First Department of the Senate," which

minim Senate, which was

founded by Peter Iin the beginning of the 18th century, was not a legislative body. It was divided into several Departments, some of which (the First. Second, Third) high supervisory and acted u administrative agencies. and others (the Fourth, the Civil Cassation Department, and the Criminal Cassation Department) as a High Court of Appeals (a Rumian Supreme Court). The First Department functioned as the highat tribunal for complaints against oflicials.

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 46 had jurisdiction in the matter, could find nothing illegal in his actions. In Kiev, as established by another investigating senator, Police Commissioner Tsikhotsky was present while Jewish shops and homes were pillaged, and clearly approved of what was happening. When he finally called out to the rioters, “That’ll do, fellows,” they were amazed. One of them, in fact, remarked to another, “Can't you see he is joking?" The remark was perfectly logical, since Tsikhotsky was known to encourage rioting, so that whenever he appeared on the scene, the rioters would lift him in the air to express their admiration. General Bessonov, charged with the military defense of three Kiev districts, admonished a rioting mob: “Smash what you please, but no looting!" Yet, when a woman picked up a bolt of cloth tossed out of a shop by the rioters, the general's comment was: “That's not real looting; she just found the thing in the street." In this case, too, the investigating Senator preferred charges against Police Commissioner Tsikhotsky, on grounds of “inaction with particularly grave consequences," but also to no avail, Tsikhotsky was never tried. It is interesting to note that, as far as I remember, pogroms that occurcd after October 18, I905, were not followed by any court trials, unlike the earlier pogroms in Kishinev, Gomel, and other cities. Count Witte," in describing these activities of the government in his memoirs, stated: “Agents of the police were at work behind the scenes; their task was to foment violent anti-Jewish outbreaks. These sinister machinations, begun in the years of Plehve and Trepov, were now more thoroughly and I might say more brazenly engineered."

'° Appointed Prime Minister on October 17, 1905.

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FROM THE FIRST STATE DUMA TO THE PROMULGATION OF THE EQUAL-RIGHTS DECREE BY THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF 1917 The 1905 law regulating elections to the State Duma fell far short of what had been expected. Public opinion demanded an electoral system based on universal, direct, and equal suffrage, with a secret ballot. Only the last requirement was satisfied by the new law. Suffrage was not universal but limited (contingent on education, property holding, etc.). It was not direct, since the citizens did not elect deputies to the Duma but voted for electors. And it did not provide for equality at the polls. The government had felt that a Duma elected according to the provisions of this law was not likely to be in opposition to the regime. The parties of the Left—Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries—had shared this view and even urged their members to boycott the elections, but without much success. Yet the Duma, when elected, was neither what the government had hoped for nor what the Left had feared. It was distinctly an opposition Duma, which went down in history as the “Duma of the people's wrath.” A good many of its members leaned openly to the left. Twelve of the newly elected deputies were Jews. The number was impressive, considering that Jews were a minority in all electoral districts. The roster of Jewish deputies in the First Duma, arranged in alphabetical order, reads as follows: L. M. Bramson (Kovno Province); Dr. G. Ya. Bruk (Vitebsk Province); Dr. M. Chervonenkis (Kiev

48

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Province); Dr. Frenkel (Kiev Province); G. B. Iollos (Poltava Province); Nisan Katsenelson, Ph.D. (Courland Province); Shmarya Levin, Ph.D. (the city of Vilno); M. Ya. Ostrogorsky (Grodno Province); S. Ya. Rosenbaum (Minsk Province); M.I. Sheftel (Ekaterinoslav); M.M. Vinaver (the city of St. Petersburg) and B. P. Yakubson (Grodno Province). Five of these deputies were Zionists: Dr. Bruk, Dr.

Katsenelson, Shmarya Levin, Rosenbaum, and Yakubson. Among the Jewish members of the First Duma there were many outstanding men: M.M. Vinaver, eminent attorney, author of numerous treaties on jurisprudence, editor of the Vestnik Grazhdanskovo Prava (“Courier of Civil Law"). Brilliant orator. Head of the Historic-Ethnographic Commission. Took an active part in the preparation of the compendium Digests and Inscriptions. Joined the Constitutional Democrats when this party was formed in October 1905 and soon rose to prominence in its leadership. Nominated by the party in St. Petersburg as a candidate for the Duma (although equally eligible in Vilno). L. M. Bramson. Member of the St. Petersburg bar. Active in many Jewish organizations. Prominent member of the Defense Bureau. Closely associated with the Society for the Dissemination of Education; later active in the Jewish Colonization Society. Brilliant organizer and one of the founders of the Labor faction in the First Duma.” M. I. Sheftel. prominent St. Petersburg attorney and public figure prominent in Jewish circles. Dr. Shmarya Levin. a fervent Zionist, with a gift for I"Tl-rough more radical than the Constitutional Democrats, the Laborites were neither republicans nor socialists. In the Fourth State Duma they were headed by A. F. Kerensky.

Pages from the History 0! Russian Jewry 49 stirring oratory. His eloquent addresses in the Duma were highly successful. M. Ya. Ostrogorsky, author of a classic treatise on democracy and political party organization, published in 1903 in English and French. An authority on parliamentary law and protocol; valued adviser to Duma Commissions. G. B. Iollos, one of the outstanding Rusian journalists of the time; for many years, Berlin correspondent and later editor, of the Moscow paper Russkiye Vedornosti (“The Russian News”). Iollos had little contact with the Jewish community, and never attended the meetings held by other Jewish members of the Duma. On March 14, 1907, he was assassinated—4 victim of Russia's reactionaries. S. Ya. Rosenbaum, member of the Minsk bar; a Zionist; after 1918, head of various agencies of the short-level Jewish National Autonomy in Lithuania. When the newly elected deputies arrived in St. Petersburg, it was proposed, principally by the Zionists, that the Jewish members of the Duma form a separate faction, as did the Poles. (Only deputies from the provinces of Russian Poland joined the Polish faction, known as Kola, but not the Poles elected from other areas.) The idea of a Jewish faction was opposed by some of the Jewish deputies, as well as by Jewish leaders who had been invited to participate in a discussion of the issue. It was argued that as members of a special group, Jewish repmentatives would find themselves isolated from the party factions they intended to join, according to their political beliefs. A heated controversy ensued. The idea was finally abandoned, and the deputies were advised to join the factions of their choice. This did not of course mean that Jewish members of the Labor faction could not confer with the Constitutional

50 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) Democrats. Such joint conferences, held with the participation of Jewish public leaders, took place throughout the existence of the First State Duma. Three of the Jewish deputies joined the Labor faction; the other nine joined the Constitutional Democrats. The Jewish members of the First Duma assumed their duties in a rather optimistic frame of mind. True enough, on December 23, 1905, the Tsar received a delegation from the Union of the Russian People, a highly reactionary and anti-Semitic organization. What was said by the delegates, and the Tsar‘s reaction, left little room for optimism. (The Tsar accepted two Union insignia, one for himself, the other for the Crown Prince). The Duma, on the other hand was overhelmingly in favor of equal rights for Jews. In its reply to the throne address, the Duma urged equality for all citizens. On June l5 a bill on equal rights was passed by a considerable majority. Two weeks later, on July lst, anti-Jewish riots broke out in Belostok. The next day the first reports of the pogroms reached the Duma. A three-man committee was elected for an on-site investigation of the matter. After the committee’s report was heard, the Duma strongly condemned the actions of the local authorities. The deputies rose to honor the memory of the eighty persons killed in the pogrom. l have already mentioned the inquiry raised in the Duma on May 8. 1906, concerning government participation in the organization of anti-Jewish outbreaks. The explanations offered in this connection by P. A. Stolypin, Minister of the Interior, were thought inadequate. The Duma demanded his resignation. But by that time the dissolution of the First Duma had already been decided upon. For some time prior to that, administration representatives had been

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sounding out certain prominent public leaders on the possibility of their participation in the government. These attempts failed, and the Duma was dissolved by an Imperial Manifesto on July 8, 1906. with a proviso that a newly elected Second Duma would hold its first session on January 20, 1907. The principal reason for the dissolution of the Duma, as given in the manifesto, was that “the people's elected representatives have strayed from constructive legislative activity and turned instead into areas outside their juridiction, investigating the actions of authorities duly appointed by the Crown.” The reference was apparently to the Duma committee sent to Belostok to investigate the pogrom. After the Duma had been dissolved, a number of its former members issued the so-called Vyborg Appeal, urging passive resistance by the people (in the main, refusal to pay taxes or to report for military service). The Jewish deputies, if I remember correctly, had all signed the appeal. They were brought to trial and sentenced to three month's imprisonment, and this barred them from future candidacy to the Duma. The Jewish population hoped to elect a large number of Jewish deputies to the Second State Duma. These hopes were not realized, largely because the Ministry of Internal Affairs interpreted the electoral law in a manner that made election of Jewish deputies less likely. To make things worse, local administrative agencies were instructed to use every available means toward promoting candidates of the rightist camp. As a result, only four deputies of the Jewish faith were elected to the Second Duma. Another representative, I. V. Hessen (St. Petersburg), who had adopted Christianity in order to be able to marry a woman of Christian faith, entered his name in the deputies' roster

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as a Jew by nationality, but a member the Russian Orthodox Church by religion. Hessen, elected chairman of the Judiciary Commission, became one of the most influential members of the Duma. The deputies of the Jewish faith were A. G. Abramson, attorney (Kovno Province), L. G. Rabinovich (Ekaterinoslav Province), Ya. N. Shapiro (Courland), and Dr. V. E. Mandelberg, M.D. (Irkutsk Province), elected as a Social Democrat and a member of the Social Democratic faction in the Duma. The other three deputies became members of the Kadet faction (Constitutional Democrats). A. G. Abramson, noted attorney and competent jurist, was frequently chosen to report on various matters before Duma Commissions. L. G. Rabinovitch was an engineer. A numbers of years later, he was one of the defendants in the notorious trial of technological experts, indicted by the Bolsheviks on trumped-up charges of having “sabotaged" the coal-mining industry in the Donetz basin. Ya. N. Shapiro, whose name became associated with a web he delivered in the Duma on punitive expeditions to the Baltic region, emigrated to London after the October revolution. He was killed in a German air raid during the Second World War. Dr. V. E. Mandelberg, a Social Democrat, went into exile after the dissolution of the Second Duma. The last years of his life were spent in Palestine, where he worked at local dispensaries and health centers. In the Third Duma there were only two Jewish deputies: L. N. Nisselovich (Courland) and N. M. Friedman (Kovno ProVince). Both Nisselovich and Friedman were attorneys at law. Nisselovitch, the author of numerous studies in economics, had been employed by the Ministry of Finance before he was admitted to the bar. A man of independent ideas, he

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joined the Kadet faction in the Duma, but reserved for himself full freedom of action in all matters concerning the Jews. Occasions on which these two deputies conferred with Jewish leaders were few and far between. The Third Duma was dominated by right-wingers, most of them anti-Semites. Nisselovich was nevertheless able to gather 166 signatures in support of a bill which proposed the abolition of the Pale of Settlement as well as the lifting of all restrictions that kept the Jews from moving freely about the country. Among the deputies persuaded to back the bill were a few Oktyabrists (moderate conservatives). The bill never got past the Duma Commission to which it had been submitted for consideration; it was not discussed in plenary session. Nevertheless the number of signatures supporting it seemed impressive. The People's Group headed by M. M. Vinaver was a factor in the shaping of Kadet strategy with regard to the Jewish question, among other matters. L. N. Nisselovich was not a candidate in the elections to the Fourth Duma. His health had been seriously affected by his previous Duma activities. When he died in 1913 at the age of 51, Russian-Jewish periodicals of every political orientation lamented his early end and spoke highly of his distinguished public service. N. M. Friedman (Kovno Province), Dr. M. B. Bomach (Lodz), and Dr. I. B. Gurevich (Courland Province) were the three Jewish deputies elected to the Fourth Duma. Friedman, an attorney, had also been a member of the Third Duma. As a lawyer, he was better equipped for parliamentary work than were his two colleagues. He also had the added advantage of his previous experience in the Third Duma. A man of keen intellect and practical acumen,

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he was well liked and trusted. He was, however, a quiet man and not a fighter. Far from rejecting the cooperation of Jewish public leaders, Friedman welcomed any assistance he could get from representatives of various trends in the Jewish community. The four non-socialist Jewish organizations existing in St. Petersburg at the time set up a Political Bureau for the express purpose of maintaining regular contact with the Jewish deputies in the Duma. These parties—the Jewish People's Group, the Zionists, the Folkspartei and the Jewish Democratic Group—were more or less permanently represented in the Bureau, though there had, of course, been some changes in the Bureau's membership during the five years of its existence. The Band and other socialist groups took no part in the activities of the Bureau. The Jewish People's Group consisted chiefly of Jewish members of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, although G. B. Sliozberg, who stood politically to the right of the Kadets, also belonged to this organization. Other members of the People's Group—L. G. Shtemberg, for example— were to the left of the Kadets in their general political views. The popular Russian-Jewish weekly publication Voskhod was largely a vehicle for ideas maintained by the Jewish Peeple's Group. In the Political Bureau, the People's Group was represented by G. B. Sliozberg, M. M. Vinaver, and L. Ya. Shtemberg. The Zionists were represented by I. A. Rozov, M. S. Aleynikov, and Isak Grunbaum. M. N. Kreynin, S. M. Dubnow, and A. V. Zalkind represented the Folkspartei. O. O. Gruzenberg, I believe, was another member of the Bureau delegated by the same group. Ideologically, the Folkspartei was the party of S. M.

55 from the History of Russian Jewry Dubnow. Stressing the nationalist principle in Jewish policy, it leaned toward the idea of extra-territorial national autonomy. However, the urgent need for demanding cultural autonomy for the Jewish minority in Russia was recognized by all groups participating in the Political Bureau. L. M. Bramson, A. I. Braudo, and I represented the Jewish Democratic Group, the most radical of the nonsocialist political organizations. As stated earlier, it was founded by Jewish leaders who had been active in the League for the Liberation of Russia, and who later refused to join the Constitutional Democrats, whose program and strategy they considered too opportunist. All three deputies in the Fourth Duma were members of the Constitutional Democratic party. The Political Bureau met at least once a week, and sometimes more often. The lengthy session occasionally lasted far into the night. M. M. Vinaver and O. O. Gruunberg were the most eloquent participants in the frequently stormy debates. A. I. Braudo was perhaps the most active and influential of all Bureau members. Born in central Russia, in a social milieu remote from any Jewish concerns, he became one of the most active fighters against anti-Semitism and for full and equal rights for Russian Jews. No orator, he seldom spoke at Bureau meetings, but his opinion was highly valued by the other members. He held an important position at the St. Petersburg Public Library. Well liked by everyone, Braudo had good connections in all circles. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike—and even some members of the Tsar's family—were among his personal friends. The fight for equal rights was his main concern, and his devotion to the cause knew no bounds. Braudo was a prominent Freemason, one of the very few Jews in the movement. To a Pages

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large extent, this may have been the reason behind his influence and important connections. The Masons are also know to have been a major factor in shaping the Provisional Government, both in its original composition and in the subsequent changes of its membership. In 1937, a symposium dedicated to the memory of A. I. Braudo was published in Paris. Jewish and non-Jewish leaders of widely varied political camps contributed to the volume. Some of the material cited reveals the important part played by Braudo in exposing Azef, the notorious double agent and security police spy. What made this possible was that A. A. Lopukhin, the former head of the Police Department (who confirmed the suspicions that Azef was a provocateur) was also a Mason.’I The work of the Political Bureau was aided by an afliliated group, the Information Bureau, whose function was to gather material on the persecution of Jews and on anti-Jewish goverrunent actions. The Information Bureau was served by a permanent staff. A good many reports came from the Jewish organizations active in the area directly behind the front-line, The Jewish War Relief Committee (YEKOPO) and the Society for the Protection of the Health of Jews (OZE). The activities of the Information Bureau greatly increased in scope following the outbreak of war in 1914. Ma-

"

The Masonic organization in Russia carried on its activities under a cloak of absolute secrecy. The extent and efleetivena of this organization defies the imagination. Among the Masons could be found Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, Laborites, Progressives, Cadets, and Oktyabrists. The deputies of the Fourth Duma who belonged to these parties had no inkling that some of their fellow party members were Masons, that is, men pledged to carry out Masonic directives within their respective panic.

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terials from the Bureau files were used not only by Jewish deputies but by other members of the Duma as well. The pres, too, both Jewish and non-Jewish, made use of such information, insofar as this could be done under the wartime censorship. Some of the records and summary reports were mimeographed and sent to high government officials. Among these were summaries of all information deleted by the censors from daily press reports. Such summaries were compiled from galley proofs supplied to the Bureau by various publications. The deletions made it clear that the censors cut out with a heavy hand anything that might show the Jews in a favorable light. Not even the notices of decorations awarded for bravery on the battlefield were allowed to appear as submitted. If the soldier’s second name was typiwa Jewish, the censor left only the first letter, deleting the rest. If the first name appeared Jewish and the surname did not, the censor again substituted an initial. The existence of the Political Bureau and its Information Bureau was doubtless known to the government. No oflicial permission was ever granted, or requested, yet both organizations worked without interference, maintaining, as it were, a semi-legal existence.

When the war broke out in 1914, the Political Bureau found itself confronting exceptionally difficult problems. A wave of sincere and fervent patriotism swept the country. St. Petersburg became the scene of daily patriotic demonstration in which the Jews participated prominently. In August, 1914, deputy N. M. Friedman read a declaration in the Duma, which contained the following passage:

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As Jews, we have been and still are suffering extreme hardships, due to our inferior legal status. Nevertheless, we have always thought of ourselves as Russian citiuns and have indeed at all times remained loyal to our country . . Nothing could ever alienate the Jews from Russia, their native land, to which they feel bound by centuries-old ties. When the Jews rally to the defense of their country, they do so not merely out of a sense of duty but also because of the deep aflection they have for their homeland.

.

Sentiments inspired by wartime patriotism were given expression in the entire Russian-Jewish press, including the Zionist periodicals and those published in Yiddish. Many Jewish youths volunteered for service, among them young Jews who had gone abroad to study because of the quota restrictions that barred them from the universities at home. Russian Jews studying at foreign universities in the Allied countries enlisted in their respective armies. Conscription records for the Jewish sector of the population showed practically no failure to fulfill the draft quotas. The percentage of Jews in the service, as well as of army casualties and servicemen killed in action, exceeded the percentage of Jews in the country's population. And yet the war from the first days brought in its wake untold hardships for the Jews. The local military commanders in front-line zones ordered the total evacuation of Jews a few days after the war began. The commandant of the Mysunsk settlement, near Lodz—to cite one instance— issued orders, ten days after the outbreak of war, for all Jews (nearly 2,000 of them) to leave the area at once. The governor ruled to contravene the order, permitting the Jews to return, but his ruling was ignored by the commandant. Such mass deportations by order of local authorities were particularly frequent in Russian Poland, where anti-Semitic feelings among the Polish population ran high.

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 59 False rumors of treasonable acts allegedly committed by Jews were persistently circulated. Spurious charges against them became an everyday occurence. In September, 1914, anti-Jewish riots broke out in Suwalki (Russian Poland). No less deplorable was the antagonistic attitude of Polish political leaders. Immediately following the outbreak of hostilities, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich, issued his well-known appeal to the population of Russian Poland, promising that Poland would be granted autonomy, contingent on the victorious termination of the war. A Central Citizens' Committee was formed in Warsaw. Its function was to represent the people of Russian Poland before the authorities and to serve as a center of war relief work. The Committee, under the chairmanship of Prince Czetwertinski, had not a single Jew among its members, although the Jews constituted 14 per cent of the total population. The Free Economic Society in St. Petersburg” participated in the fund-raising drive for the relief of war victims in Poland. Representatives of the Jewish residents of St. Petersburg and of the Polish intellectual circles in the city discussed matters at meetings of the Society. We argued that the refusal to include Jews in the membership of the Citizens' Committee was completely unjustifiable; the Poles tried to vindicate this policy. The issue was arbitrated, so to speak, by other members of the Society who took part in the discussion. The Poles insisted that the relief funds collected by the Society be turned over in full to the Citizens' Committee. After a heated debate, the proposal was rejected. It was decided that E. M. Kuskova, a prominent member ”The oldest learned society in Russia, founded in 1765.

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of the Society, would personally deliver the money to Warsaw and would see to it that the funds were justly distributed to aid war victims without prejudice as to race or creed. From what she had seen on her arrival in Poland, Kuskova concluded that turning the money over to Citizens‘ Committee was hardly the thing to do if one wished to ensure the lack of discrimination. She gave 86 per cent of the collected sums to the Committee and 14 per cent (conesponding to the Jewish sector of the population) to the administration of the Warsaw Jewish community, the Gmina.

The manner in which the matter was dispmed of, while embarrassing to our Polish opponents, was a source of considerable moral satisfaction to us. One can readily imagine our embarrassment when we learned that the Warsaw Jewish community, not wishing to isolate itself from the rest of the population in Russian Poland, resolved to turn its allotment of relief funds over to the Citizens' Committee. Nevertheless, the men at the head of the Citizens' Committee, yielding to Russian public opinion and a growing wave of protests, decided to compromise, by creating a separate section for handling Jewish affairs. Six of the ten members of the section were Poles; the Jews were asked to nominate the other four men, with the understanding that they were not to become members of the Committee. The four representatives were Stanislaus Natanson and Eiger, proponents of assimilation, and two Zionists, Rundstein and Weissblatt. It soon became evident however, that the Jewish Section was in effect unable to implement any of its decisions, because of the obstacles put in its way by the leaders of the Citizens' Committee. The nationalistic members of the Section demanded that the entire Jewish group resign.

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A Wartime Committee, under the chairmanship of Abram Podliszewski, was also organized as part of the Jewish community administration. The majority of its members were Zionists, who often found themselves hopelessly at odds with the rest of the membership. When reports of a rift in the Jewish leadership reached us in St. Petersburg, the general reaction was that a delegate must be dispatched to Warsaw to help resolve the difficulties confronting the local leaders. Ihad gone to Warsaw ten years earlier to represent St. Petersburg Jews and more recently had been an active participant in discussions held at the Free Economic Society. This seemed to qualify me for the delegate's job. The situation in Warsaw struck me as vastly difierent from the one I had encountered back in 1904. At that time the Jewish leaders had not been receptive to the idea of joining forces with Russian Jewry. Now I was hailed with genuine warmth. “I am so glad you came,” was the first thing Natanson said as we met. “We are unable to come to any agreement. Our Wartime Committee is now split into two camps whose views cannot be reconciled. It will take an outsider to help us to achieve some concerted effort." Iwas able to convince both Natanson and Eiger that the only proper move, under the circumstances, was to withdraw from the Jewish Section. After drafting a letter that stated the motives for the withdrawal of the Jewish group, I had it signed by Natanson, Eiger, and the two Zionist members. In November, 1914, the short-lived Section for Jewish Affairs ceased to exist. Ialso discussed the matter with Patek, a noted Polish leftwing leader who often appeared in political trials as counsel for the defense. (He later served as ambassador for independent Poland in Moscow.) Though critical of the negative

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stand taken by the leaders of the Citizens' Commtitee, Patek felt that, for reasons of national solidarity, he could not publicly voice his disapproval. The Jews in Poland soon found themselves facing diflicult problems. Warsaw was swamped by refugees deported from the front-line zones. The situation was not much better in other areas, farther removed from the front. Polish Jews had to struggle against adverse administrative rulings, such as deportation orders extending to all Jews who had taken up residence in Warsaw after a certain date. Representatives of the Warsaw Jewish community made frequent trips to St. Petersburg and Moscow, while G. B. Sliozberg came to Warsaw to intercede on behalf of petitioners before the Governor General. Baron Alexander Ginzburg discussed these matters with the Lieutenant Governor General, Prince Obolensky. The petitions and discussions brought some results. Emergency funds for the relief of Jewish refugees were also secured from governmental and semi-official agencies, such as the committee named after the Tsar's daughter Tatiana. In October, 1914, the Warsaw Gmina turned over to the Citizens' Committee all the relief funds it had raised. Within a few months, however, the relations between the Jews and the Committee had deteriorated to a point where in July, 1915, the Gmina urged a separate fund-raising campaign. The Committee, it stressed, gave no financial assistance to Jews, even those who were natives of Poland. In the early part of August, 1915, Warsaw was occupied by the Germans.

From the first days of the war a number of army orders were issued which put Jewish servicemen into an inferior position as compared with non-Jews. Thus, for example, the

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 63 strictly confidential Order No. 6, dated January 4, 1915, from the headquaters of the chief of the Medical Corps attached to the armies of the Southwestern front stated:

To prevent subversive propaganda by Jewish physicians and medical attendants, and to put an end to criminal agitation in ambulance trains, the Quartermaster General for the Armies of the Southwestem front has issued orders ban-ing Jews from assignment to hospital trains and similar outfits. Instead, Jewish physicians and medical attendants must be dispatched to areas where conditions do not favor propaganda activities. They should be sent to the battlefront, assigned to first-aid stations, to stretcher-bearer duty, etc.

The Army Command ordered that Jewish privates, as well as the ex-volunteers who had previously enlisted in the French Army, be put into the first reinforcement units dispatched to the front. Among documents relating to the first year of war, it is necessary to mention the mandatory instructions issued on March 30, 1915, by General Even, of the infantry troops, which ordered “increased severity of punishment for fraudulent acts, and application of more serious paragraphs of the Code in cases where Jews are the offenders and where army units, or individual servicemen, have been victimized." Both at the front and in the front-line areas, military authorities charged Jews with espionage and collaboration with the Germans in the occupied sectors of Russian territory. In many cases the accused were shot without trial or under sentences of courts-martial, where the accused were entirely without defense. Some of them had no knowledge of Russian. They could not understand the charges and, lacking an interpreter, were quite helpless. More often than not, these charges were no more plausible than

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the rumors that some Jews were hiding telephones in their beards and using them to communicate with the enemy. In many areas the military authorities detained some Jews as hostages. On December 4, 1914, twelve hostages were taken at Sokhachev. These were replaced by new men nearly every day. It was suspected that ransom was exacted as the price of release. On December 24 three hostages were executed; the reason was never explained. Jewish hostages were taken also in a number of other localities. The military command insisted on this, requesting that hostages be hanged whenever Jewish spies had been discovered. The military command would stop at nothing so far as the Jewish population of front-line areas was concerned. This is evidenced by combat orders to the 18th Army Corps dated May 14, 1915. One paragraph of these orders read: “The Jews are to be driven out in the direction of the enemy troops.” On the other hand, when trials were held in regular sessions of military courts attached to Army corps, with attorneys handling the defense. the charges were nearly always dropped for lack of evidence. In one exceptional case, Gershonovich, a resident of the city of Mariampol in the Suvalki province, was found guilty, on October 20, 1914, of collaborating with the German occupants and sentenced to six years at hard labor. The charge was based upon the testimony of the Moslem Imam Bayrashevsky, who submitted to the court that the entire Jewish population of Mariampol came out on the streets to welcome the Germans, and that Gershonovich, appointed burgomaster by the occupants, had oflicial announcements posted throughout the city, requesting that the local residents furnish food supplies and horses to the German troops.

65 from the History of Russian Jewry However, within a few weeks following the conviction, it was disclosed by investigation that Bayrashevsky himself had been in the service of the Germans and was responsible for distributing the very announcements supposedly issued by Gershonovich. When Bayrashevsky had been brought to trial, the evidence against him was so conclusive that he pleaded guilty in court and was sentenced to hard labor. The court sentence convicting Gershonovich. whose appeal was pleaded by 0. O. Gruzenberg, was rescinded. Gershonovich was cleared of all charges. Moreover, the investigation ordered by the Army Corps court-martial disproved the charge that the city population had been delivering provisions and horses to the Germans. Another court-martial found officers of one counter-espionage unit guilty of having planted a telephone in a motion picture theater owned by a Jew. The defendants had arrested the owner, accused him of maintaining contact with the enemy, and demanded five thousand rubles for setting him free. At the trial it came to light that eighteen Jews had been hanged on the basis of similar false charges. Before April, 1915, the measures of the military authorities against the Jews were local and sporadic in character and did not originate with the Supreme Command. Such measures became drastic in scope, however, after the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander in Chief had reported a traitorous act allegedly commited by Jewish residents of the township of Kuzhi, in the Kovno province. The communication was circulated among all Army units. Cited below is an excerpt from such a document: Pages

On April 30th, at 12:00 noon, the Corps Commander issued orders requesting that all men, down to the last private, be advised of an incrdent which had taken place on the night of April 25th-26th.

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While carrying out a combat assignment, the lSlst Pyatigorsk regiment captured the village of Kuzhi and was billeted there. According to the testimony of participants in the action, a number of German soldiers had been hidden in cellars by Jewish residents before the village was taken over by our troops. At the sound of a signal shot, several fires broke out simultaneously throughout the village, and the Germans rushed to the house occupied by the Commander of the Pyatigorsk regiment. At the same time the enemy forces (two battalions sup rted by cavalry) launched an advance and broke into the vrl age, after destroying two of our pickets. When the flaming house began to collapse, the commander, Col. Danilov, gave orders to burn the regimental colors, all but the brace. After his order had been carried out, Col. Danilov jumped out of the window, but was shot down. Some units of the Pyatigorsk regiment, which had at that moment arrived on the scene, were able to force the enemy to retreat. The remnants of the burned banners were retreived from the wreckage of the stove.

Reports describing this alleged act of treason appeared in every newspaper, including the PraviteLrtvenny Vestnik (“Official Courier“). Posters carrying the same report were distributed throughout the country. In Tashkent a public prayer was offered to mark the deliverance from the Jewish betrayal. Chance led me to take an active part in what was virtually the first authoritative refutation of these charges. Soon after the Kuzhi incident had been publiciud,Ilearned that Bystritsky, marshal of the landed gentry of the Shavli county, was in St. Petersburg. Bystritsky knew well the tiny hamlet of Kuzhi, situated in his county, and was indignant over the charge of treason. At my request, an interview was arranged at which Bystritsky met with O. O. Gruzenberg and myself. According to Bystritsky, who told us that he knew every house in Kuzhi, very few of them had cellars, and those were suitable for little else but the storage of potatoes. Not even a dozen men could be hidden

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 67 in such cellars. Moreover, only two houses were owned by Jews; the rest belonged to Lithuanians. What had actually happened, in Bystritsky's opinion, was rather obvious. The commanding officer of the unit which had driven out the Germans and occupied the settlement must have neglected to take security measures for the night. The detachment was surprised by the Germans. To cover up, the story of a Jewish betrayal was fabricated, and later public'md by the General Headquarters. At our request, Bystritsky outlined these facts in a letter to the editor, published in the newspaper Rech. Subsequent invesu'gation by civil authorities established the falsity of the accusations relating to the Kuzhi incident. Nevertheless, the alleged case of treason in Kuzhi had already led to wholesale deportations of Jews from large sectors of the Kovno province (on May 5) and Courland (on April 27-28). The deportations were carried out with unprecedented brutality. On the evening of May 3 the police first served notice on the Jewish residents of Kovno that they were to leave the city not later than by nridnight of May 5. Among the deportees were hospitalized patients in grave condition, women about to give birth, insane asylums with all their inmates, wounded soldiers, and the families of men in active service. Needless to say, the entire Jewish population of Russia was shocked by reports of these abuses. Later, after emigration, we learned from the records of secret sessions held by the Council of Ministers from July 16 through September 2, 1915, that the deportations had been strongly condemned even in government circles. According to A. P. Yakhontov, former assistant office chief for the Council of Ministers, who kept the records, “even irreconcilable anti-

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 68 Semites complained to members of the Cabinet, protesting outrageous the handling of the Jews at the front.” Particularly frustrating was the attitude of some noted liberal leaders, who felt that opposing such actions by the military might be unpatriotic. One such incident is still fresh in my memory. It occurred on the day when deportation orders were issued affecting the Jewish residents in some sectors of the Courland and Kovno provinces. Late at night, A. I. Braudo and Icalled at the editorial oflices of Rech. Our intention was to see to it that these developments were appropriately commented upon in that influential liberal paper. I. V. Hessen, to whom we spoke first, said he was not in a position to do anything and suggested that we take up the matter with P. N. Milyukov. “We are at war,” Milyukov rejoined. “This is not the time to criticize the military.” Icalled Milyukov's attention to the particular paragraph of the order which stated that the Jews must be deported from territories now held by he enemy as soon as the German occupants have been driven out. Tire city of Shavli, I remarked, was at this time occupied by the Germans. Whose victory was it, I asked Milyukov, that he would advise the local Jews to be praying for? And did he really think that such measures would help Russia to win the war? Milyukov made a helpless gesture. The question of deportations was never discussed in his paper. There is no doubt in my mind that Milyukov, by no means an anti-Semite, condemned the deportations. Yet, because of tactical considerations—erroneous and extremely harmful as they were—he thought it best to ignore the issue. ”See Archive 0/ the Russian Revolution (published by I. V. Hessen in Berlin), Vol. 18, p. 42.

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Although Milyukov's view that the military must not be criticized in wartime was censured by many of his fellow Kadets, he held to it for some time to come. On one occasion, which I remember well, prominent men representing Russia's intellectual circles gathered at the home of Fyodor Sologub, the noted writer. Only three Jews were present— A. I. Braudo, I. M. Bikerman and myself. Milyukov was criticized sharply by other Kadets, including some right-wingers such as P. B. Struve. for the failure of his paper Rech to condemn the deportations of Jews and to protest against the other anti-Jewish measures taken by the authorities. In his reply Milyukov explained that he “had no wish to please Berlin.” A brilliant rebuttal by I. M. Bikerman elicited a highly favorable response from the gathering. The manner in which the military authorities had been handling the Jews, Bikerman argued, was detrimental to the war effort, in more ways than one. “P. N. Milyukov," he concluded, “has no wish to please Berlin, but his tacties surley will. They may, in fact, help Berlin win the war.” M. M. Vinaver, representing the Central Committee of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, delivered a detailed report on the unprecedented anti-Jewish measure at a conference of party delegates and members of the Duma faction, held on June 6-3, 1915. A strongly worded resolution denouncing these measures was proposed by Vinaver and adopted unanimously. The Political Bureau asked A. F. Kerensky, then a member of the Fourth Duma, to visit the sectors of the Kovno province from which Jews had been deported. All of us, at the Political Bureau, were of the opinion that a trip through the area by a member of the Duma, a non-Jew, would be most useful. After an on-site investigation, the

70 Russian Jewry {1860-1917) deputy would become convinced that the charges leveled at the Jews, including the alleged betrayal at Kuzhi, were completely unjustified. Once this had become clear to him, as it was to us, he could on his return acquaint the Duma and the public with the true facts. It was generally conceded that Kerensky's trip brought highly satisfactory results. In his speeches at the Duma, Kerensky consistently disproved the slanderous, fabricated charges, citing the incontrovertible evidence he had obtained. Again and again, he protested vigorously the antiJewish measures introduced by the military. Very soon after the mass deportation of Jews from some sectors of the Courland and Kovno provinces, the military authorities were forced to admit that such measures “involved considerable difficulties" and led to “a great many undesirable complications.” In conceding this point, the military yielded to the pressure from the government, which insisted that the wholesale deportation had serious damaging consequences. The military command, in line with the above, gave orders to “halt" the deportations, advising the civilian authorities of its decision. The orders were given on May 10 and 11, while the deportations had been completed by May S, and could no longer be “halted." The deportees, shipped out in east-bound trains, were on their way, crowded into freight cars, which often bore the mark “SPu-zs” chalked on the outside. The military authorities were surely aware of this. Nor could they have failed to realize that their terms for allowing the deportees to come back were totally unacceptable. The military insisted on taking a number of rabbis and wealthy Jews as hostages, “with a warning that in case of any treasonable acts committed by the Jewish population the hostages would be hang ."

71 from the History of Russian Jewry The taking of hostages was commonly practiced by the Army.“ The earlier hostages, however, had been taken forcibly, and there was little the Jews could do about it. Now they were asked to deliver hostages of their own accord as the price for being allowed to return to their home towns! The issue was taken up by N. M. Friedman, member of the Duma, in a letter addressed to the chairman of the Council of Ministers. The drafting of this document was preceded by a discussion at the Political Bureau. An excerpt from its text follows: Pages

By a recent decision of the competent authorities, Jewish deportees are granted permission to return to their native region, on condition that the deliver hostages. The Jewish population odious terms as those which the governwill never accept ment has proposed to its subjects. The deportees will choose a life of wandering and starvation rather than accede to a degrading request incompatible with their national dignity and selfesteem. The Jews have served their country conscientiously, and will continue doing so to the end. No hardships will prove too great, no persecutions will make them digress from the path of honor. But nothing will force them to uphold a falsehood by complying with the official demand, and thus admitting that a hitbous slander is the truth.

such

Despite their desperate situation, the deportees turned down the humiliating conditions under which they would have been allowed to return to their homes. I have mentioned earlier the historic records published by A. N. Yakhontov in the Archive of the Russian Revolution. As seen from these records, the government, headed by Goremykin, did everything in its power to persuade the Supreme Commander-in-Chief that the brutal anti-Jewish

"

Concerning the hostages taken in Galicia and the orders posted in the fortress of Novogeorgievsk on October 27, 1914, see the article by A. A. Goldenweiser in the present volume.

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 72 measures should be revoked and no further steps taken in this direction. Consistent pressure was exerted by the civil authorities toward this end, but Gen. Yanushkevitch, the chief proponent of such measures, remained intransigent. Nor did he hesitate to let the Council of Ministers know where he stood in the matter. As far as he was concerned, “all measures taken against the Jews were woefully inadequate." “Far more drastic steps" were needed— and he, for one, was prepared to take them. To what extent the efforts exerted by the government proved futile is evident from the statement made by Prince Shcherbatov, Minister of the Interior, at a session of the Council of Ministers, on August 4, 1915 (Archive of the Russian Revolution, p. 43, vol. 18): Our attempts to make the General Headquarters see reason remained fruitless. “We have exhausted all available means of combatting a policy inspired by prejudice . . . All of us, individually and collectively, have consistently spoken, written, pealed, and complained about the matter. But apparently e omnipotent Yanushkevich does not feel bound by considerations of state. It has been his consistent and deliberate policy to foster a general prejudice in the Army against all Jews and to blame them for our military reverses. Such a strategy was bound to have its effect. A current upsurge of violent anti-Semitism is affecting the men in the service. I am reluctant to believe this, but—since we are here among our own—I will admit my suspicion that Gen. Yanushkevich perhaps needs this sort of an alibi, as suggested at the previous meeting by A. V. Krivoshein.

2E-

In point of fact, the less successful the military operations directed by Yanushkevich the more drastic became the anti-Jewish measures taken by the Army command. Trumped-up charges against the Jews increased in scope and number. Krivoshein, the Minister of Agriculture, said at a meeting of the Council of Ministers on August 12:

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“The present indefinite situation [with regard to the expected resignation of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich] cannot be allowed to last much longer, if only because Mr. Yanushkevich lasts along with it. His presence at the General Headquarters is more dangerous than the German divisions, especially if he has already learned of the threat to his position.

It should not be thought, however, that the cabinet, headed by Goremykin, consisted of liberals or men who sympathized with the Jews. All ministers, with the exception of the Minister of Public Education, Ognatiev, and, to some extent, Krivoshein, Minister of Agriculture, were staunch Conservatives. The same can be said of Prince Shcherbatov, who on August 9, 1915, at a session of the Council of Ministers, remarked: “S. V. Rukhlov” is certainly right in calling attention to the destructive influence of the Jews.” Yet these ministers strongly opposed the drastic treatment of Jews by the military authorities, since they realized that such measures, in the final account, were detrimental to the war effort and had damaging consequences for the country as a whole. Reports of excesses attributed to Gen. Yanushevitch reached the Allies, and Russia's prestige abroad sufiered as a result. This was repeatedly brought to the attention of Sazonov, Minister for Foreign Affairs, by ambassadors of the Allied powers, and Sazonov, in his turn, discussed the matter with his colleagues on nearly every occasion when the Council of Ministers met. Most emphatic in stressing the harm caused by the persecution of Jews was the Italian ambassador Carlotti. This was done not in a private conversation with Sazonov

" Minister of Transportation.

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but in an oficial memorandum submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as directed by the Italian Government. A short time before that, Italy had entered the war on the side of the Allies. Meanwhile, Germany made effective use of the antiJewish measures of the Russian military command as a basis for anti-Russian propaganda, especially in the neutral countries. The mass deportations of Jews from front-line areas had created a situation which called inevitably for a revision of existing regulations relative to the Pale of Settlement. According to persistent rumors, the abolition of the Pale was imminent. The Minister for Internal Affairs, Prince Shcherbatov, told G. B. Sliozberg that such a step was in fact being considered. The issue was discussed in the Council of Ministers, but the hopes of the Jewish population were frustrated, inasmuch as the Pale of Settlement was not fully abolished. In the circularized directives issued by Shcherbatov,” some of the restrictions were retained, barring the Jews from rural areas, Cossack regions, both capitals, and areas where the Imperial family had its residences. If the government itself was powerless to stem the tide of anti-Jewish outbreaks directed from the General Headquarters, it goes without saying that the Jews could accomplish little or nothing on their own in this direction. The speeches and proposals made by Jewish members of the Duma elicited a sympathetic response from the leftwing deputies and, as a rule, from the Kadets. Yet, their proposals and amendments were nearly always rejected. The situation continued to deteriorate after August 25, "2° With—respect to the revision of the Pale of Settlement regulations discussed in the Council of Ministers, see the article by A. A. Goldenweiser in the present volume.

75 from the History of Russian Jewry 1915, the day on which the so-called Progressive Bloc had The Jewish treated paragraph formed. in question was been 5. of the program adopted by the Bloc, which proposed “working toward the lifting of legal restrictions against the Jews.” The program outlined further legislative steps toward doing away with the Pale of Settlement, relaxing the quota regulations for Jewish students, and facilitating the free choice of occupations. Yakhontov‘s notes mention a meeting held on August 27, 1915, at which Kharitonov, the State Controller, conferred with representatives of the Progressive Bloc. In his subsequent report on the meeting Kharitonov, according to Yakhontov, remarked: Pages

As far as the granting of equal right to the Jews is concerned, no immediate action was demanded. Our fears that anti-Jewish riots might erupt in rural areas were not refuted. The basic proposals were for liberalization of the legal status of the Jews, gradually, rather than at once.

The Jewish deputies introduced an urgent inquiry concerning irregular actions by military authorities with respect to Jews residing in the combat zone. The urgency of the matter was debated in the Duma on August 8, 1915. Two deputies—Chkheidze, a Social Democrat, and the Laborite Dzyubinsky—argued in favor of recognizing the urgent nature of the inquiry. This position was rejected by a majority vote, and the inquiry was turned over to a Duma commission, which was instructed to submit a report within two weeks. On September 3, 1915, the Duma was adjourned. The next session opened on February 9, 1916, but the inquiry was never placed on the agenda, either before the next adjournment, or after sessions were resumed once more.

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In August, 1915, the Supreme Command was taken over by the Tsar, and the Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich was transferred to the Caucasus, together with Gen. Yanushkevich (at the Grand Duke's request). The general, a rabid Jew-baiter, could scarcely launch a vast and vigorous anti-Semitic campaign in the new setup. Nor were any further anti-Jewish measures by the military on a scale comparable to the excesses inspired by Yanushkevitch reported from the other major fronts. At the same time, explosive anti-Semitic moods continued to spread in the Army, as stated at a meeting of the Council of Ministers by Prince Shcherbatov. The government had vigorously protested against the anti-Jewish acts of general Yanushkevich, yet in a sense it seemed to follow in his footsteps. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Finance circulated two execrable memoranda stigmatizing the Jews. Copies of both circulars were obtained by the Information Office of the Jewish Political Bureau. Copies of the first were brought to St. Petersburg by civic leaders from two different provinces who would not take the chance of sending them by mail. Signed by the Acting Director of the Department of Police,” Kafafov, this document became known as the “Kafafov circular." The Police Department’s memorandum read as follows: Attention of Governors, City Governors, Chief Regional Administrators and Provincial Security Police Headquarters. According to reports received by the Department of Police, the Jews are currently hard at work conducting vigorous revolutionary propaganda through numerous underground organizations. To stir up general unrest in Russia, they have exploited two important techniques, apart from subversive agitation in the Armed Forces and in the major industrial and manufactur8

'7

This-department

was part of the Ministery of Internal Affairs.

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ing centers of the Russian Empire and instigation of strikes. These are: an artificially stimulated rise in the priees of essential consumers’ goods, and the withdrawal of coin currency from circulation. The revolutionaries and the Jews who stand behind them, as well as secret supporters of Germany, realize that neither military reverses nor revolutionary propaganda will seriously influence the population. That is why they prefer to rely on shortages of food and high prices to whip up general discontent and hatred of the war. With this sinister purpose in mind, some merchants unquestionably hoard their wares, delay shipments, and obstruct the unloading of goods at railway terminals. Through exploiting the shortage of coins in circulation, the Jews endeavor to undermine the people‘s confidence in Russia's currency and make it appear worthless, so that depositors will withdraw their savings from the State banks and hoard metal currency, as the only money presumably still of real value. the Jews have been Following the issuance of token spreading persistent rumors that the ussian government is bankrupt, since it has not even enough metal for coining money. Meanwhile Jewish agents have been active in all parts of the country, buying up all available silver and copper coins at inflared prices. According to the same reports, the Jews apparently hope to bring about the abolition of the Pale of Settlement through their extensive participation in these dangerous and subversive activities. The present time, in their estimation, is most favorable for achieving their objectives by means of fomenting unrest in the country. The Department of Police deems it necessary to keep you posted as regards the above developments. Acting Director Kafafov

money,

The second circular, issued by the Ministry of Finance, reads:

The Deputy Minister for Internal Affairs, Major-General Dzhunkovsky, of His Majesty’s Retinue, has advised the Ministry of Finance of the circularized memorandum he has forwarded to the governors of provinces, informing the latter that, according to unverified reports reaching the Department of Police, me Germans are planning, in the summer of the current year, to burn out the standing crops in various parts of the

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Empire, with a view to undermining the welfare of Russia’s peasant population. Specially designed machines will sup-

posedly be used for this purpose. Qualified instructors in safety measures are allegedly being trained at this time, and pertinent leaflets distributed inside Russia, printed in German. According to the same reports, a number of Germans listed ofiicially as Russian subjects are helping to carry out this plan, which is aided also by Jews, recruited for the purpose through bribery. As stated above, these reports have not been verified and are perhaps not fully reliable. Nevertheless, considering the seriousness of the matter, the Department of Police respectfuuy requests that the tax inspectors serving in your Department be advised of these reports, as set forth. Should any information bearing upon the above come to the attention of these men, they must be instructed to report the matter without delay to the local administration. It is further suggested that the tax inspectors, while going on trips in the line of duty, use the occasion to a uaint members of the rural district and village administrations With the contents of this memorandum, and to impress upon them that such subversive activities, should they actually take place, must be immediately suppressed—if need be, by the most drastic means. Original duly aimed.”

An urgent inquiry bearing upon the two circulars was introduced in the State Duma. The Jewish deputies were the first to sign it. The matter was debated in the session of March 8, 1916, and its urgency acknowledged by a vote of 91 against 49. The extreme Right had apparently also voted for the recognition or urgency. Zamyslovsky, speaking on behalf of the rightist camp, was the first to have the floor in the debate. All through his speech he fulminated viciously against “the kikes" and the “kike-inspired inquiry.” Chkhenkeli, a member of the Social Democratic faction, shouted: “Hoodluml”. At this point Protopopov,” Vice Chaiman of the Duma, who presided over the session,

murkeme—mbered ter

for his ill-conceived policies as the last Minisfor Internal Aflairs under the Tsar.

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 79 called Chkhenkeli to order and proposed to have him suspended for the duration of the meeting. The proposal was approved by the Duma, whereupon another Social Democrat, Skobelev, also shouted “Hoodlum!" at Zamyslovsky and was likewise suspended. Among the deputies who voted against the suspension were the Laboritss and Social Democrats, the Jewish members, and some of the Kadets. At the next sesion, explanations were offered by high ofiicials on behalf of both ministers. The Deputy Minister for Finance stated that the circular had been issued without the knowledge of the minister, and was rescinded by the latter as soon as the matter was brought to his attention. The Minister for Finance, Bark, was not known to be an anti-Semite. Yet, characteristically, he did nothing to discipline his subordinates responsible for circulating the memorandum despite the admittedly dubious nature of its contents; at any rate, no information as to any disciplinary action could be obtained. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was represented by Kafafov, the man over whose signature the circular had been drafted. The information set forth in the circular, Kafafov asserted, had been received from “highly authoritative sources." It was obvious that he referred to the Supreme Command. To whitewash his actions, Kafafov brought up the fact that both prior to and subsequent to the issuance of the circular he had been agning orders requesting that measures be taken to prevent anti-Jewish riots. Following these explanations, Count Kapnist II, an Oktyabrist, took the floor. Although he and his associates had spoken against the anti-Jewish measures at the time when the budget of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was debated, be now argued that there was no legal basis for the inquiry (a position which he never explained). The

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previous session, Kapnist went on (referring to the session at which Zamyslovsky delivered his speech), demonstrated how dangerous it was to raise such questions. “In the

interests of peaceful functioning,” he concluded, “we shall vote for rejection of the inquiry." This brief statement made an even more painful

impression on those present, including myself, than Zamyslovsky's attacks. Count Kapnist, a member of the Progressive Bloc, should have been indignant over the circulars, as well as over Zamyslovsky's speech. Instead, this speech was one of the reasons for his decision to vote for rejection of the inquiry. Chkhenkeli and Skobelev, members of the Social Democratic faction, objected. “The Progressive Block is dead!” Skobelev exclaimed. “Long live the Progressive Block.“ “The author of the circular should have been put in the dock," Chkhenkeli cried. “Instead, the man was pennitted to speak here. Shame, shame, shame!" The Labor faction submitted a written protest to the chain-nan, deplon’ng the fact that Protopopov, who had presided over the session of March 8, had permitted the use of the insulting anti-Semitic term “kike” at the session. After the statement made by Kapnist it was inevitable that the inquiry should be rejected by an overwhelming majority vote. Bomash, the Jewish deputy who had been the first to sign the inquiry, then took the floor and declared that since one circular had been rescinded by the Ministry of Finance, and since the author of the second memorandum had signed a number of circulars directing the prevention of anti-Jewish riots, he would withdraw the inquiry. This outcome of the move against the circulars had a highly disconcerting effect upon the Jewish community. In the press, as well as at meetings of the various societies, the Jewish deputies were criticized as lacking in courage.

Pages from the History of Russian Jewry 81 It should be remembered, however, that they had to decide

on the spot whether to let the matter be voted upon, which meant certain rejection, or withdraw the inquiry. The first course would perhaps have been more correct. But in View of the enormous responsibility involved, the deputies could not reasonably be blamed for the decision they had taken. In a brilliant article which appeared in Navy Put (“The New Road"), G. A. Landau, without criticizing the deputies, argued that the logical step to be taken after what had occured would have been to withdraw from the Progressive Bloc. The same opinion was voiced in Yevreyskaya Zhizn (“Jewish Life”) by Aleynikov, a Zionist member of the Political Bureau, who refened to the outcome of the session as disgraceful. /’/\ Shortly before the Revolution of 1917, our Bureau learned of a story told by a Jewish soldier who was then in a St. Petersburg hospital. According to this soldier, whose name was Medvedovsky and who held three St. George crosses for valor, his regiment. had recently been placed under a new commander—a violent anti-Semite. Soon after his appointment, a ceremony was held, in which a number of soldiers received decorations. When the commander learned that some of the decorated men were Jews, he refused to continue the ceremony and walked out abruptly, leaving his subordinate officer to continue the distribution of awards. The soldier related that, following this incident, attempts were made to kill off the Jews who held decorations. One of them, whose name was Dankovsky, had been sent out on reconnaissance duty; before he left, the oflicer had ordered his sergeant to shoot him during this mission, allegedly for attempting to desert. The second man chosen for this fate was Medvedovsky, whose sergeant had received similar

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orders from his officer. The sergeant confessed to him and said that he was unable to carry out the order; he would therefore merely wound him. It was as a result of this wound that Medvedovsky was sent to the hospital. We all thought that this story could not be true, and concluded that the soldier must be suffering delusions. Gnrzenberg was of the same opinion. Nevertheless, he decided to see the soldier.He spoke to the hospital doctors, who assured him that Medvedovsky showed no symptoms of mental derangement. Then szenberg went to visit Medvedovsky at the hospital. Their conversation convinced him that the story was absolutely true. This was confirmed by letters which Medvedovsky received from the regimental priest and his company commander. Gruzenberg went with the story to General Makarenko, chief Military Judge and head of the Military Justice Department, with whom he was on excellent terms. The latter, however, urged Gruzenberg to refrain from any attempts at initiating an investigation. He pointed out that his department had no jurisdiction in the combat areas. The people in charge of those areas were not his subordinates, and pursuing the affair, he said, might result in serious consequences, both for Medvedovsky and for Gruzenberg himself. Nevertheless, Gruzenberg persisted, and General Makarenko, after consultation with the War Minister, instructed General Lykoshin to investigate the matter. A few weeks before the Revolution of 1917, General Lykoshin confirmed to Gruzenberg that Medvedovsky's story had been true. The outbreak of the revolution put an end to this afiair.

Developments in Russia followed one another at a feverish tempo. Less than a year after Kafafov's circular had

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been debated in the Duma, the February Revolution of 1917 swept away all legal barriers against the Jews. No one disputed the principle that all citizens should be equal before the law. The Minister of Justice, A. F. Kerensky, appointed a comrnision to draft the appropriate decree. L. M. Bramson, the only Jewish member of the commission, was constantly in touch with the Political Bureau, which remained in session round the clock. The decree on equal rights was signed on March 20, 1917, less than a month after the revolution, and was made public on March 22 of the same year. The Political Bureau decided to have a delegation call both on the Prime Minister, Prince Lvov, and on the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. The delegates were to congratulate the Provisional Government and the Soviet on the Promulgation of the decree, rather than thank them for it. Such were the explicit instructions of the resolution. We first called at the ofiices of Prince Lvov, where a congratulatory speech was made by N. M. Friedman.” The Premier‘s reply was published in full by the Pravitelstvenny Vestnik (“Official Courier"). Our next visit was to the Presidium of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, where 0. O. Gruzenberg delivered a speech on behalf of the Political Bureau. (This speech was subsequently included in his Essays and Speeches, published in New York in 1944.) The sending of this delegation was the last act of the Political Bureau. Our objectives, it seemed, had been accomplished. More’N. M. Friedman died in l92l, at the age of 58. Shortly before his death, gravely ill, he came to Berlin, where Ivisited him at the hmpital. Those of us who knew how much energy Friedman had given to the defense of Russian Jewry through its most difficult years, and with what distinction he carried out his mission, sincerely mourned his untimely end.

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over, the old political party alignments had now lost their meaning.

After the October Revolution, at the time when most members of the Political Bureau were getting ready to leave Russia, it was decided to make a compilation of the most important materials from the files of the Information Bureau. One copy of this compilation was turned over to the St. Petersburg Public Library through A. I. Braudo. The rest of the copies were to be shipped abroad, and there transmitted to the British Museum, the Paris National Library, and I. A. Rozov in Palestine. Of the sets sent out of Russia, none reached its destination. The set given to A. I. Braudo could not be located in the St. Petersburg Library after his death. By sheer luck, one set was discovered in Finland. Apparently, the person who had underaken to deliver it to London or Paris had at the last moment decided against the risk of smuggling such material out of the country. The set was delivered to me in Berlin. I turned it over to I. V. Hessen, who published the documents in vol. 19 of his Archive of the Russian Revolution.

Legal Status ofjews in Russia by Alexis Goldenweiser I

THE SYSTEM OF LEGAL RESTRICTIONS: ITS AIMS AND ITS RESULTS ON MARCH 20, 1917, 'rHruza WEEKS AFTER THE FALL or the Tsarist regime, the Provisional Government issued a decree on the “Revocation of Religious and National Disabilities." In order to assure its thorough enforcement and prevent any possible loopholes, the decree specifically listed all the restrictive laws subject to revocation—a total of about 140 statutes, spread over twelve volumes of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire. This multitude of restrictive laws, promulgated in the course of 120 years and poorly correlated with each other, produced a vast crop of executive orders and judicial interpretations. In Gimpelson's annotated collection, Statutes Concerning the Jews, published in 1914-15, they occupy nearly 1000 pages.‘

85

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The Russian government's policy in the Jewish question, which found expression in this vast and complex system of legal restrictions, strikes the observer not so much by its injustice or cruelty—our generation, with its experience of the Hitler era, can no longer be astonished by anything along that line—as by its obvious ineptitude. It had no consistency, no guiding idea or uniform objective. It was prompted by diverse motives and pursued diverse, often mutually exclusive aims. In 1856, Tsar Alexander II ordered a review of the laws concerning the Jews “to the end of integrating this people into the basic population." Yet during his own reign, and particularly under his successor, new restrictive laws on the right of residence produced quite the opposite eflect: while upholding the former regulations on the Pale of Settlement, they compelled a further segregation of millions of Jews within cities. All the successive Ministers of Finance strove to extract from the Jews the highest possible revenues for the Imperial Treasury. At the same time, the Ministers of Internal Affairs did everything to restrict the economic activities of the Jews, thus undermining their capacity as taxpayers. To justify the legal restrictions. reference was often made to the “inborn vices” of the Jewish race; nevertheless, despite these “inborn faults", a Jew was automatically granted full legal equality as soon as he changed his religion. The Russian government itself repeatedly admitted the instability and inconsistency of its policy in the Jewish question. In 1905, one hundred years after the promulgation of the first “Statute Concerning Jews," the Council of Ministers summed up the results of this century of experimentation in the following words:

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 87 The attitude of the Government toward the Jewish question does not rest upon a firm and stable guiding principle . . . The question remains incompletely resolved to this day, and still awaits solution.

Among the motives for the limitations on Jewish rights in Russia, the earliest,-and for a long time the predominant one, was the religious motive. When Tsar Ivan the Terrible conquered the town of Polotsk in 1563, the Boyars asked him what to do with the Polotsk Jews. He answered: “Those who consent to baptism are to be baptized; those who refuse are to be drowned in the Polot River.” In the course of the eighteenth century, four Imperial edicts were issued ordering the expulsion of Jews from Russia, all of them based on the charge that the Jews were "haters of the name of Christ the Savior." And, in order to lend further weight to these edicts, their proponents sometimes added the patently false accusation that the Jews sought to “convert the Orthodox to their own faith." The Russian govemrnent at all times gave every encouragement to the conversion of Jews to Christianity. The legal restrictions upon Jews in Russia were based not on race or nationality, but solely on religion; hence, conversion freed any Russian Jew who accepted it from all legal dis-

abilities.’ In the-nineteenth century the principal reasons given for legal restrictions were economic. Jews were accused of “exploiting the rural population” and “undermining the economic well-being of the peasants." One of the numerous government plans for the solution of the Jewish problem proposed the classification of all Jews, according to their occupations, into “useful” and “useless." The “useful" category was to include Jewish artisans and workers. Shop‘keepers and commercial middlemen were to be categorized

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as “useless." Although this fiction of “useless occupations” had no more basis in reality than the charge that Jews subverted Christians into their own faith, the most persuasive refutations advanced against it remained to no avail. In the 1890's, the chief pretext for the discriminatory measures against Jews was the wholesale charge that they were politically subversive. The open anti-Semites and in stigators of pogroms were not the only ones convinced that every Russian Jew was either an active or a potential revolutionary; this view was shared by virtually every representative of the higher administration. It might have seemed self-evident that government persecution could not possibly turn the Jews away from the revolutionary movement. It was obviously illogical to demand loyalty to the regime from people who were humiliated and persecuted under it. Yet attempts to point this out fell on deaf ears. Minutes of the Council of Ministers show that as late as 1915. all the Russian cabinet members, including those who were considered liberal, repeated the same stock phrases about the wholesale revolutionary sympathies of the Russian Jews. Obstinatcly pursuing the policy of legal restrictions upon Jews, the Russian government was fighting against phantoms —the phantoms of religious proselytism. of economic exploitation. of political subversiveness. But all it achieved was the demoralization of its own administrative apparatus and the demoralization of the Jews themselves. The restrictive laws. which embraced every aspect of life, constantly demanded new interpretations. And so we see a picture of the highest dignitaries of the Imperial government assembled in a session of the Supreme Admin-

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 89 istrative Tribunal, discussing in all seriousness the problem of whether the repair of rubber goloshes could be considered a craft, conferring the right of residence.8 At the same time, innumerable doubtful points arising during the day-to-day application of the restrictive laws were left to the discretion of the local police—and it was not secret to anyone that this resulted in the flowering of conuption and graft.‘ The demoralization produced by the restrictive laws among the Jews themselves was equally profound. I have asserted [wrote the famous English constitutional jurist A. V. Dicey in 1910], and do confidently assert, that the worst evil of Russian despotism is that it threatens the Jewish subjects of the Tsar with moral degradation. The existence of the Pale of Settlement, the denial to Russian Jews of the ordinary rights conceded by every civilized government to all its subjects; above all, the absolute dependence of the Russian Jews on the varying caprice of every person in power, degrades, and must degrade, the victims of tyranny . .. The heroic endurrsecutions and ill-usage lasting for centuries is the ance of highest Judaism . . . But no race and no body of men ever as a w le lives up to the level of heroism and martyrdom Despotic power first degrades its victims and then defends its own existence by the plea that its victims are unworthy of freedom and justice.“

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Like any statute which is in contradiction to the moral and legal conscience of the citizenry, the system of antiJewish restrictions created in everyone involved the habit of circumventing and breaking the law. Moreover, by its discriminatory treatment of different groups of Jews, it deepened the gulf between the Jewish rich and the Jewish poor, between the educated and those without opportunities for education. The Jewish merchant who was able to pay one thousand rubles annually for his license could travel freely throughout Russia, while his employee lost the right of residence at the moment of his dismissal. The Jew-

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 90 ish high school student whose wealthy parents could afiord tutors to drill him until he won a gold medal at graduation was able to go on to the university, while his poorer classmate remained overboard. As a result, the privileged classes .of Jews won additional, priceless privileges, and the disfound themselves still more helpless and deprived.

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In the spring of 1881, a wave of pogroms rolled over southern Russia. A year later, the govemment issued “Temporary Regulations,” barring Jews even within the Pale of Settlement from residence outside the limits of cities and small towns. The oflicial reason for these restrictions w an alleged desire to “improve the mutual relations" between the Jews and the native population, and to protect the Jews from the irritation of the latter." However, such assertions betray either the insincerity or the ignorance of the lawmaker. The facts of history and the teachings of social psychology clearly demonstrate that restrictive laws achieve only the opposite results: national restrictions inevitably sharpen national hostility. The martyrology of Russian Jewry has confirmed this in full: the broad masses of the Russian people saw in the policy of restrictions upon Jews an oflicial sanction on anti-Semitism. And it was this legalized discrimination against Jews that, more than anything else, furthered the creation of a psychological atmosphere which found its crudest expression in the anti-Jewish pogroms.“ This was pointed out by Vladimir Nabokov in an article that produced a deep impression in Russia when it appeared in 1903, in the wake of the pogrom in Kishinev. The real explanation of the very possibility of such an event as this pogrom, wrote Nabokov, must be sought ...

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 91 “. .. in the existing legislative and administrative order, under the influence of which the attitudes of the Christian population toward the Jews are formed. From the point of view of this regime, the Jew is a pariah, a creature of a lower order, something inherently noxious. He can only be tolerated, but he must be restricted and kept in check in every possible way, particularly by confinement within the close boundaries of an artificially defined zone. And thus, within the strata of the population which are alien to any genuine culture, the idea of the JewasapersonguiltyoftheveryfactthathewasbornaJew is transmitted from generation to generation.""

This was, perhaps, the greatest evil produced by the system of anti-Jewish restrictions.

Most of the legislation concerning Jews was promulgated, not in the usual manner, through the Council of State, but by Imperial decrees, in the form of “Provisional Regulations.” In most cases, these measures were to be effective only “until the general review of the legislation concerning Jews." However, this often-promised “general review" was continually postponed, and the “provisional measures” remained in efiect for decades. The “Provisional Regulations of 1882," barring Jews from rural areas, remained in force for thirty-five years, and the “temporary" ban against Jews in the legal profession lasted twenty-eight years. Insofar as it is possible to find any consistency in the lamentable history of the restrictive laws, we can only say that, in the last decades preceding the outbreak of World WarI in 1914, the legal position of the Jews steadily deteriorated. This trend continued not only under the reactionary regime of Alexander III (1881-1894), but also during the era of reforms promulgated under pressure by Nicholas H (1894-1917).

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 92 And yet, those were years which witnessed the revolution of 1905, the granting of a constitution, and the convocation of a legislative assembly composed of elected representatives of the people. How was it, then, that despite these profound transformations in Russian political life the same medieval spirit continued to dominate the legislation on the Jews? One of the major reasons that made this historical paradox possible was the personal attitude of Tsar Nicholas II on the Jewish question. One incident, which became known much later from memoirs published after the revolution, provides a vivid illustration of this attitude. A former Minister of Finance, V. N. Kokovtsev, relates in his memoirs (which appeared in Paris in 1933) that in October of 1906 Prime Minister Stolypin proposed to his colleagues that they . . .

. . . take u the question of revocation, by legislative action, of certain pe aps excessive restrictions upon Jews, which were particularly vexing to the Jewish population of Russia and, in any case, yielded no benefits since they were continually circumvented b the Jews and merely encouraged revolutionary moods among e Jewish masses, serving, in addition, as a pretext for the most outrageous anti-Russian propaganda on the part of the most powerful Jewish citadel—in America. At Stolypin's suggestion, every cabinet minister submitted a list of restrictive regulations in matters within his juridiction. The review of these regulations was completed at a single session of the Council of Ministers, and “a number of important restrictions were proposed for deletion from the law." The proposals were then sent to the Tsar for his approval. “The minutes of the Council of Ministers,” continues

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 93 Kokovtsev, remained on the Emperor's desk for a very long time . It was not until December 10, 1906, that they were returned by the Emperor to Stolypin. They were accompanied by a letter which read as follows:

..

“Despite the most persuasive arguments in favor of adopting a positive decision in this matter, an inner voice prompts me more and more insistently not to take this mision upon myself. My conscience has never deceived me. Hence Iintend to follow its dictates in this instance as well. Iknow that you also believe that ‘the Tsar‘s heart is in God's hands.’ So be it. I bear an awful responsibility before God for all the laws by me, and I am at all times prepared to answer to ' ."

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It became known later that the Central Committee of the reactionary and anti-Semitic “Union of the Russian People” had learned about Stolypin's plan and promptly instructed all its chapters to appeal to the Tsar, urging him to refrain from approving it. “Within twenty-four hours," boasted one of the leaders of this group, “205 telegrams were at the feet of His Majesty.” The history of the reign of Nicholas II shows that, with regard to the Jewish question, his “inner voice" invariably prompted decisions in close accord with the wishes of the “Union of the Russian People.” The system of legal restriction existed approximately 125 years. Almost every ten years during this period, beginning with the reign of Alexander I (1801-1325) and until 1905, some special commission, committee, or conference was entrusted with the task of “reviewing the existing laws on this question" and proposing desirable reforms. All these committees and commissions—composed of the

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 94 highest dignitaries who were very far from liberalism of any kind—invariably came to the conclusion that the existing restrictions did not achieve their purpose and should, gradually or immediately, be revoked. Nevertheless, not one of the plans proposed by these committees toward the solution of the Jewish question was ever carried out, and the restrictions continued in full force. Even the advent of representative government in 1906 did not change the situation. In May 1906, the First State Duma unanimously adopted an “Address in Reply to the Speech From the Throne," which included the following paragraph:

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The State Duma is . unalterably convinced that neither freedom nor order founded on law can be firmly established without the aflirmation of the general principle of the equality of all, without exception, before the law. Hence, the State Duma shall draft a law concerning the full equalization of the rights of all citizens and the abolition of all privileges and restrictions based on estate, nationality, religion and sex.

The system of Jewish restrictions was castigated in an eloquent speech of a prominent member of the First Duma, Professor Kokoshkin: The major, the most egregious relic of barbarism, which demoralizes the entire life of the state, is the vast network of restrictions which encumbers the life of the Jewish population in Russia. These legal restrictions add themselves up to a huge polluting stain, and one of our most urgent immediate problems —both from the political and from the moral point of view—is to wash away this dirty, bloody stain . . . There can be no place for anti-Semitism in Russia, which has found its way and is moving forward. Religious intolerance is alien to the Russian people, one of whose finest characteristics is the combination of profound religious feeling with a lack of fanaticism and cleric-

95 of Jews in Russia This was indeed in accord with the traditional humanitarian ideas of the Russian liberals, who held a large majority of seats in the first Russian parliament. But the broad program of liberal reforms outlined in the Address and all the speeches delivered by members of the Duma, had no practical results. The First Duma was dissolved by the Tsar after 70 days of eloquent spwchmaking, and a similar fate was in store for its successor, the Second Duma (1907). In the Third and Fourth Dumas (1907-1917), dominated by right wing majorities, the attitude toward the Jewish problem was quite diflerent. The right-wing politicians of the new type, writes P. N. Milyukov, eminent historian and leader of the liberal Constitutional-Democratic Party in those Dumas, opposed the emancipation of the Jews, which even the old reactionary committees had come to regard as the only possible way out. Anti-Semitism became the favorite stance of all the demagogues on the right, and their leaders found in the Duma a most advantageous rostnun for their anti-Jewish propaganda. Under such conditions, continues Milyukov, any attempt to raise in the Duma the question of abolishing restrictive laws against the Jews would have been doomed to failure. It would have provided only another pretext for an outpouring of pogromprovoking whee Nevertheless, on the initiative of a Jewish member of the Third Duma (Nisselovich), a bill was introduced, proposing the abolition of the Pale of Settlement. The sponsor succeeded in getting this bill signed by 166 deputies belonging to the liberal minorities in the Duma. However, this remained little more than a gesture, since the bill was never acted on by the committee it was refened to. On the other hand, a law on the organization of local courts, which was adopted by the Duma in 1912, included Legal Status

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 96 paragraphs expressly barring Jews from election to the posts of justices of the peace and members of rural courts.

These two articles remained the only contribution of the Russian legislative assemblies to legislation concerning Jews.

II

LEGAL STATUS OF A RUSSIAN JEW IN 1914 The laws which were in force in Russia at the outbreak of World War I imposed restrictions on the Jews in the following areas: The right of residence and freedom of movement. Education. Commerce and industry. Civil service and local government. Military service. Special regulations also existed relating to the admission of Jews to the legal profession.’ THE RIGHT OF RESIDENCE

The most important and most resented restrictions upon the Jews in Russia involved the right of residence and travel. They were also the oldest restrictions. The origin of the so—called Pale of Settlement—that is, the area where Jews were permitted to live—is connected with historic events of the late eighteenth century. At that time all Russian subjects, with the exception of the nobility —i.e., the peasants, townsmen, artisans, and merchants— lacked the right to settle wherever they chose. Each in-

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 97 dividual was “registered" with the local community and was able to practice his occupation only in the given place. In accordance with this system, the Jews who became Russian subjects after the partition of Poland (1791) were registered with the townsmen‘s or merchants' guilds of the former Polish areas where they lived at the time of the transfer of these regions to Russia. Empress Catherine II reaflirmed this system in her decree of 1791. As Milyukov pointed out, the main purpose of this decree was not to restrict the Jews, but on the contrary, to assure them of equal rights with the rest of the population of the annexed territory.’ However, in response to the special appeals of the Moscow merchants, who feared Jewish competion, the decree also provided that “Jews may not register as merchants in interior Russian cities and ports." It was this provision that laid the groundwork for the Pale of Settlement. The oldest statutes giving shape to this notorious institution can be found in the “Law Concerning the Jews," promulgated in 1804 under Tsar Alexander I. From then on and until the abolition of the Pale, brought about by the wartime situation of 1915, its boundaries remained fixed." In the course of the 125 years from the partition of Poland until World War I, Russian political, social, and economic life underwent a radical transformation. Serfdom was abolished, the system of the traditional social classes was shaken, the autocratic Tsar had begun to share his power with a representative body, the country entered upon the path of rapid industrialization and its vast territory was covered by a wide network of railroads. Nevertheless, throughout this entire period, five million Russian Jews remained confined to those parts of the Empire where their forebears had lived during the era of the Polish partitions.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 98 The general boundaries of the Pale of Settlement remained unchanged, but in the 1880's new restrictions were imposed on Jewish residence even within these boundaries. The most important of these was the prohibition on new settlement and the acquisition of real property in rural areas, introduced by the “Provisional Regulations of May 3, 1882.” These Regulations, which opened the dark era under Alexander 111, proclaimed a general ban on the “settlement of Jews outside of cities and townships" (with the exception of existing Jewish agricultural colonies). The regulations also prohibited “the contracting of deeds and mortgages in the name of Jews, as well as the registration of rental agreements involving real property" in rural areas. This created “a pale within the Pale," artificially increasing the concentration of Jews in the cities and compelling them to turn to the “useless" urban occupations of traders and middlemen. A law issued in 1858 prohibited Jewish residence in areas within fifty verst (approximately 40 miles) of the frontier. This law, which was evidently based on the assumption that all Jews were potential smugglers, was not revoked until 1904. Special problems were also presented by the question of the right of residence in four cities situated within the Pale of Settlement, where, for various reasons, it was deemed necessary to impose additional restrictions upon the Jewish inhabitants. Thus, the city of Kiev was excluded from the Pale of Settlement, although the Kiev Province was within the Pale. Permanent residence in Kiev was permitted only to Jews who enjoyed universal rights of residence, while specific categories of Jews were admitted only to “temporary presence."

99 of Jews in Russia In order to “concentrate surveillance over the Jews in Kiev," these categories were allowed to live only within two police precincts. Thus, a Jew could often live on one side of a street, but not on the other. The vagueness of the regulations regarding Jewish rights of residence in Kiev opened a wide field for corruption and the arbitrary rule of the local police." Special restrictions upon Jews were also in efiect in the important Black Sea ports of Nikolaev and Sevastopol, because of their strategic positions. A particular effort was made to keep the city of Yalta and the southern coast of the Crimea, where the Tsar and his family had their summer residence, free of the Jewish contagion.

Legal Status

The fate of the Jews in Moscow deserves a special chapin the history of Russian Jewry. While the restrictive laws, in general, prevented Jews from settling in various places, in 1891 Moscow witnessed the one and only peacetime expulsion of Jews from a place where they had legally resided for many decades. The “Expulsion from Moscow,” initiated and inspired by the governor-general of Moscow, the Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovich, an uncle of the last Emperor, shocked the entire Jewish population of Russia and intensified the wave of Jewish emigration. On the first day of Passover in 1891, the newspapers published an Imperial Decree depriving Jewish artisans of the right of residence in Moscow. The decree condemned tens of thousands of Jews to deportation from the city. January 14, 1892, was set as the final date for the deportation. On this day, reports an observer, the Moscow raih'oad stations presented a picture of hasty evacuation— as on the eve of occupation by an enemy army. In order to provide room for everyone, additional trains had to be ter

100 Russian Jewry {1860-1917) assigned for the deportees. It was a bitterly cold day, and to those who had come bid good-bye to their departing friends “wondered anxiously whether all of them would survive the journey ."

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The right to live wherever they chose and to travel freely throughout Russia belonged only to Jews with university degrees, as well as to dentists and pharmacists. The privileged category also included pharmacist's assistants, male nurses, dentists, and midwives, but these enjoyed only a so-called “conditional right of residence,” restricted to the places where they practiced their professions. Finally, the universal right of residence was also enjoyed by the so-called “soldiers of Nicholas“ (Nikolaevskiye soldaty), retired soldiers who had completed their 24-year terms of service under the old recruiting laws. The regulations governing the residence rights of Jewish merchants were continually changing as a result of the conflict between the general national interest, which was best served by providing the Jewish merchants with opportunities to further the development of commerce throughout the country, and the private interests of local non-Jewish merchants who feared Jewish competition. In its final form, the law permitted Jewish merchants who paid not less than one thousand rubles in taxes annually to be registered as “First Guild merchants" in any Russian city, provided they had formerly been First Guild merchants within the boundaries of the Pale for at least five years. Finally, the right of residence outside the Pale was also granted, under certain conditions. to Jewish artisans. Since artisan trades played a predominant role in Jewish economic life, this category of privileged persons was, naturally, the most numerous. However, the residence right was available

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 101 only to Jewish artisans who were in fact plying their trades in the given place and had a certificate to that effect from the local Trades Board. Thus, this large group of Russian Jewry did not in fact enjoy any frwdom of movement throughout its homeland. A Jewish tailor in Odessa who wished to go to St. Petersburg could not do so by simply buying a railroad ticket, but was required to close his shop in Odessa and then, with the permission of the St. Petersburg Trades Board, open a workshop in the capital. Moreover, in order to obtain the right of residence, the Jewish artisan had to prove not only that he was engaged in his trade, but also that his occupation was indeed a trade. Consequently, the administrative bodies and the courts found themselves before a new problem: they had to investigate and verify thousands of Jewish claims to the status of artisan. In the numerous decisions of the higher courts in such cases, we find elaborate discussions on the economic character of artisan labor and the distinctions between artisanship, petty trade, and industry. On the basis of complicated economic, financial, and juridical considerations, the courts ruled, for example, that such occupations as the production of sealing wax, burlap, and ink, as well as engraving and house-painting, could rightly be regarded as artisan trades. But they denied this status to the manufacture of tobacco, lacquer, and matches, or to such trades as piano tuning and plastering. THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION

Changes in the regulations on admission to educational institutions provide a telling example of the Russian govemment's policy shifts in regard to Jews. The Regulations of 1804 stated that “Jews may be admitted, without distinction

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between them and other nationalities, to all Russian primary schools, gymnasiums [high schools] and universities." Under Nicholas I (1825-55), intensive efiorts were made to attract Jews into general educational institutions, and the Minister of Public Education drew up a plan for a network of schools to “combat Jewish backwardness.” This policy was continued under Alexander H (1855-81). The middle 1880's, however, saw an abrupt change of policy. In 1887 the Minister of Education, Count Delyanov, proposed in a report to Alexander III that “the number of Jewish students be limited to a specific percentage.” Alexander 111 approved the report and, beginning with the 188788 school year, a quota system was initiated in the secondary schools. This system became the source of a great deal of anxiety, bitterness, and despair to several generations of Jewish youth and their parents. The quota established for Jews in schools within the Pale of Settlement was 10 per cent; outside the Pale it was 5 per cent, and in St. Petersburg and Moscow, only 3 per cent. Similar quotas were soon introduced for the admission of Jews to universities and other higher educational institutions. Like all the laws concerning the Jews, these regulations were considered “temporary." However, they remained in force until the Revolution of 1917. Admissions were determined by competitive examinations. The great longing of Jewish youth for education, however, could not find satisfaction within the framework of the percentage system. Thousands of young people studied at home and took the matriculation examinations as socalled “extents” (non-attending students). Then, at the cost of tremendous effort, they made their way abroad to study at foreign universities. The crowning point of the bureaucratic legislation in

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this field was the circular issued by the Minister of Education, L. A. Kasso, on February 7, 1914 (No. 6204). In this circular, the minister ordered that “the admission of Jews to university studies within the established quota must be carried out in no other manner except by lots." Hypocritical reasons were ofiered for this ruling, but they deceived no one. Kasso merely wanted to eliminate the selection of candidates by competitive examinations because it inevitably resulted in the admission of the most brilliant Jewish youths, who subsequently became the best students at the university. This was not to the minister‘s liking and he therefore discarded the Darwinian principle of the “survival of the fittest." He considered it safer to leave the selection to the law of chance. RESTRICTIONS IN TRADE AND INDUSRTY

In the memoirs of the Minister of Finance, Serge Witte, we find a record of his conversation with Alexander III regarding the Jewish question. In the course of this conversation Witte said to the Emperor that, since it was impossible “to throw all the Jews into the Black Sea," it was necessary to give them an opportunity to earn their livelihood. This view was shared by many other Russian Ministers of Finance: by virtue of their position, they had to be concerned with the interests of the state treasury and could not overlook the fact that these interests were injured by the pauperization of the Jewish population resulting from the various restrictions. Russian laws did not impose any general restrictions on the rights of Jews to engage in trade, industry, or crafts. but Jewish economic activities were hamstr'ung by the whole system of legal disabilities.

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The Pale of Settlement prevented the vast majority of Russian Jewry from settling in nine-tenths of the area of the Russian Empire. The right of trading throughout Russia belonged only to Jews who enjoyed the right of universal residence—specifically, in this case, to First Guild merchants, who were only a small privileged portion of Russian Jewry. And thus millions of Jews who were able and willing to make a significant contribution to the country’s economic progress were deliberately deprived of the opportunity to do so. The development of the country's economy [writes 1. M. Bickerman in his book on the Pale of Settlement], “is impossible without freedom of movement. By denying the latter, the Pale of Settlement hampers the former Innumerable sacrifices are made in the name of the Empire's unity, but the law of the Pale is like a wedge splitting the country in two. By reducing economic activit throughout five-sixths of European Russia and in all the Asratic territories, the law of the Pale breeds poverty throughout Russia.

...

A special chapter in the history of legal restrictions upon Jews belongs to Article 1171 of the Russian Criminal Code. This article provided that “Jews trading in places outside the Pale assigned for their permanent residence in any commodity but that specifically permitted to them by the law, shall be punished by the confiscation of their wares and immediate deportation from those places." This Code was published in 1845, and Article 1171 was based on still older legislative acts. The fact that this provision was not formally revoked could have been due only to an oversight: it was obviously obsolete at a time when substantial categories of Jews had come to possess the right of universal residence and when, in the great majority of cases, special permits for trading were no longer required.

105 of Jews in Russia However, despite its anachronistic character, Article courts with increasing 1171 was applied by the Russian frequency during the twenty-five years preceding the revolution. Hundreds of pages of judicial casuistry were devoted to interpretations of this article. For example, a decision of the supreme Russian tribunal found that a Jewish baker who, in addition to bread, also sold flour, was guilty under Art. 1171. A Jewish butcher who had a permit for the preparation of kosher meat was found guilty of violating Art. 1171 if he sold this meat not only “to his coreligionists,” but also to other customers.“ The particular odiousness of Article 1171 lay in the fact that, unlike other restrictive laws, it subjected violators to prosecution as criminal ofienders and imposed penalties as severe as the confiscation of property. The prosecutions under Art. 1171 were discontinued only in 1915. Legal Status

CIVIL SERVICE, PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS, MILITARY SERVICE

“Dilference of religion or race," stated the law, “shall not interfere with appointment to civil service, if the candidate Jews who hold university is qualified for such service . degrees . . shall be accepted for service in all departments.” Like many similar provisions in the Russian law, this article had been issued in the period when the government was still seeking to combat the “segregation" of the Jews and to promote their “fusion with the native population." However, by the time there was a sufficient contingent of Jews qualified to enter civil service, this provision had become a dead letter, and the doors to such service were all but completely closed to them. This was true of all the branches of government.

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Russian Jewry (I860-!917) The Judicial Codes of 1864 did not, in their original form, contain any restrictive clauses based on religion, and during the first decade of the existence of the new courts several Jews were admitted to service in the judicial system. From the later 1870' , however, new appointments were discontinued. The Jews already serving as examining magistrates or in similar inferior positions remained in their posts without any hope of promotion, until, discouraged and disillusioned, they retired to the private practice of law.“ In 1889, twenty-five years after the court reform, further restrictions were imposed on Jews in the legal profession. From now on admission of a Jew to practice as an attorney required the special permission of the Minister of Justice. From 1889 to 1904, such permissions were granted only in a few isolated instances; during the next decade they were somewhat more numerous. Until 1912, the admission of young Jewish lawyers to the practice of law as assistant attorneys proceeded without restrictions. In 1912, however, the Senate announced a new interpretation of the law, according to which restrictions were to be applied also to the admission of Jews to the status of assistant attorneys. During the same year, the Third State Duma passed a law on local courts which included a ban on Jews as justices of the peace and rural district judges." Service in Russian administrative institutions was of two categories: service in posts providing the right to ranks and pensions, and service which did not in any way differ from private employment. With rare exception, Jews were admitted only to the latter category, and even that with various qualifications. Administrative posts of any consequence were given to Jews in extremely rare cases. In effect, the right to government service was enjoyed only by Jewish

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physicians, particularly in the military department, although here, too, a percentage quota was introduced in 1882. Jews were not admitted to teaching positions in secondary schools. Universities and polytechnic colleges admitted very few Jews to teaching posts; however, talented Jewish students were frequently offered access to professorships if they consented to be baptized. Like the Judicial Codes, the laws concerning Zemstvo institutions (local self-government in rural districts), promulgated during the reform era of the 1860’s, contained no discriminatory provisions against Jews. However, under Alexander III, the State Council issued an opinion on the Zemstvo institutions which excluded Jews from participation in Zemstvo Councils and electoral conventions. According to the Municipal Statute of 1870, Jews were permitted to serve as members of City Dumas, but the number of nonChristian members was not to exceed one third of the total membership of the Duma, and no Jew could be elected to the post of mayor. In this area, too, further restrictions were introduced during the reign of Alexander III; the Municipal Statute of 1892 barred Jews entirely from voting in city elections, and permitted Jews within the Pale to serve as members of City Dumas only by appointment by the Governor of the Province and in numbers not to exceed 10 per cent of the total membership. One of the paradoxes of the legal position of the Russian Jews was the fact that, while they lacked the right to participate in city and rural elections, they had the right to take part, on equal terms with the rest of the population, in the politically much more important elections to the State Duma and State Council. Even the electoral law of June 3, 1907, which imposed substantial limitations on the general fran-

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chise, did not specifically restrict the electoral rights of the Jews in this area. Jewish deputies sat in all four State Dumas, and one Jew (Emanuil Weinstein of Odessa) was elected to the State Council. The regulations governing Jews in military service have a history of their own. Before Nicholas 1, Jews were subjected to monetary levies in lieu of actual army service; it was not until 1827 that laws were introduced requiring them to serve in person. The minimum recruiting age for Jews was twelve. The true purpose of recruiting Jewish children—so-called “cantonists"—was compulsory conversion to Christianity. The young recruits were sent to military service in regions where there were no Jewish residents. En route, they were billeted only in Christian homes. During the long winter marches on foot, the unfortunate children perished in great numbers. This tragedy of the Jewish children was eloquently described by Her-sen and other Russian writers. Under the regulations of 1853, Jewish communities were allowed to “present as recruits captured coreligionists who had no passports." This law naturally led to great abuses It was not until after the accession of Alexander II that the Decree of 1856 provided for the “conscription of recruits among Jews on terms equal to those for other estates." It also abolished the recruiting of Jewish minors. The Code on Military Duty, issued in 1874, contained no special provisions relating to Jews. However, it was followed almost at once by a succession of orders and regulations which restricted Jewish rights. Jews could not be promoted to officer ranks. They were not admitted to oflicer training schools and were not eligible for appointment to the posts of army pharmacists. Jewish recruits could not

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 109 be assigned to the navy, the commissariat, to quarantine to and border duty, or clerkships. Jewish soldiers were not eligible for the posts of oflice clerks or for sanitary service with the Red Cross. In the 1870's a series of measures was initiated to combat the alleged mass evasion of military duty by the Jews. In 1876 a law was promulgated “Concerning Measures to Assure the Proper Execution of Military Duty by the Jews.” This law imposed upon Jews a system of so-called “mutual responsibility”: those who failed to report for conscription and physically unfit recruits had to be replawd by other Jews, even—in cases where a Jewish community could not provide a sufficient number of recnrits—at the expense of categories usually exempt for family reasons. In 1886 another long-discarded principle—the principle of family responsibility for offending members—was applied to Russian Jews: under the law of April 12, 1886, the family of every Jew who evaded military service had to pay a fine of 300 rubles.

III

DRAMA OF THE WAR YEARS (1914-1917) In the early days of World War I, in July and August of 1914, Russian Jewry, along with the entire Russian population, was swept with patriotic fervor. It was only natural that, at such a time, many Jews were eager to believe the spreading rumors of imminent revocation of the existing legal restrictions. I remember, however, a skeptical comment which Iheard at the time: “Yes, all the Jews who are killed in the war will be granted full rights."

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Russian Jewry (18604917)

This sinister jest proved to be almost prophetic. During the war years the Russian Jews had indeed received certain rights—but at what a price! After hundreds of thousands of Jews were ruthlessly deported from the frontal zones to interior provinces, and it was obviously impossible to resettle them within the Pale, Jews were at last permitted to reside outside the Pale. Jewish soldiers, demobilized as a result of wounds or illness, were admitted to educational institutions in disregard of the usual quota. However, even in early 1917 the oft-promised “general review of legislation concerning Jews" remained as remote and unreal as ever. During the first months of the war, while afiairs at the front were going relatively well, the government followed the principle of “business as usual" in regard to the Jewish question. At that time, Iheaded the legal aid department of the Society for the .Protection of Women's Rights, and one of my constant duties was to write petitions to “His Excellency, the Governor General of Kiev," in behalf of wives of conscripted reserve men; these unfortunate women lost their right of residence in the city with the departure of their husbands and now pleaded against deportation by the police. In its issue of January 5, 1915, the Jewish magazine Rassvet (“Dawn") reported that “at the order of the Gavemor General of Petrograd, raids were carried out in several sections of the capital, with the aim of expelling passport-less Jews . . . Eighteen persons were apprehended and placed under arrest for one month for unauthorized presence in the capital." On February 8, 1915, the same magazine reported that the furnished rooms operated by a certain Petrova on Ekaterininsky Prospect had been closed for admitting Jews who had no right of residence in the city. And in March, a correspondent from Kiev wrote that the authorities had “denied the request of Jewish refugees from

Legal Status

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111

the Kingdom of Poland for permission to reside" in that a city. In the early days of the war, secret circulars were sent to post oflices, ordering the destruction of all private letters “which contained even a few words in Jewish"—a measure which in other countries was applied only to letters written in the language of the enemy. In July, 1915, all periodicals published in Russia in Yiddish and Hebrew were banned from publication, under the pretext that they created undue dificulties for the censorship office. The situation became really tragic when military defeats brought the war to Russian territory—to the western provinces densely populated by Jews. The defeated army was swept with a hysterical spy mania, and the entire Jewish population of the frontal zone was suspected of treason. The most absurd tales of Jews as spies and German agents were spread among army circles. The high military command, which either believed these tales or pretended that it did, reacted by mass persecution of the Jewish population of the area, which was under its unlimited jurisdiction."

.x.

In April, 1915,Ivisited Galicia, then occupied by Russian troops, as an emissary of a Jewish welfare organization. Ihad a number of conferences with local rabbis and civic leaders in Lvov, Yaroslav, theshov, and Przemysl concerning aid to the Jewish population. Russian official propaganda proclaimed that Galicia had been “liberated,” rather than conquered, by the Russian armies, and was now being rejoined to the Russian Empire as its temporarily lost part. Accordingly, the requisite view was that the local population welcomed the Russians as liberators from the Austrian yoke. The Galician Jews, however, were treated as enemies: an ordinance posted in the streets of Lvov in January,

_J

112

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

1915. spoke of the “openly hostile attitude of the Jews of

Poland, Galicia, and Bukovina." Jewish hostages were taken in every town. These hostages were to answer with their lives for any hostile actions of their fellow-Jews. Soon after my departure from Galicia. the German General Mackensen began his ofiensive, and the Russian troops and administration were hastily withdrawn from the occupied Austrian territory. For some inexplicable reason, the entire Jewish population of the Galician cities was also hurriedly evacuated eastward. In June, 1915, we saw crowds of Galician Jews led through the streets of Kiev like prisoners under military guard. When Ivisited the barracks where they were lodged before their deportation to Siberia, I was shocked to meet many acquaintances, with whom I had but recently visited in their pleasant homes in Lvov and other cities. Soon after the order concerning Jewish hostages was issued in Lvov, it was also posted in the fortress of Novogeorgievsk, in the Russian part of Poland. During the subsequent retreat of the Russian army, a number of mas deportations of Jews were carried out on the orders of commanders of various ranks. Jews were deported from the cities of Zhirardov, Viskidok. Prushkov, from the entire Plotsk Province, and so on. Finally, at the order of the Supreme Commander himself (the Grand-Duke Nicholas), forty thousand Jews were deported in April, 1915, from Riga and the entire Courland Province; in May, 120,000 Jews were deported from the city and province of Kovno. The civil authorities were opposed to these mass deportations. But the local government officials were paralyzed, since the military commanders had unlimited powers throughout the vasr “theatre of military action." Even the central government in St. Petersburg was powerless. One

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 113 document ofl’ers a particularly vivid description of the reaction of the Council of Ministers to the measures of the Supreme Command. When A. N. Yakhontov, assistant to the Secretary of the Council, emigrated from Russia after the Revolution, he brought with him the minutes of the sessions of the Council of Ministers during July and August, 1915. In these minutes he had recorded with almost stenographic completeness the debates that had taken place at those sessions. The minutes, published in Bean in The Archive of the Russian Revolution, contain a great deal of significant material consenting this question. The principal instigator of the anti-Jewish actions was General Yanushkevich, the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander. In an official report to the Council of Ministers, the general stated that he considered all the measures undertaken in regard to Jews still “very mild.” The Minister of War commented on this report at the session of the Council in the following words: “They have lost their heads completely at Headquarters . . We are among ourselves here, and Iwill not conceal my suspicion that Yanushkevich is using the Jews as one of his alibis." After discussing Yanushkevich's report, the Council of Ministers reached the conclusion that “a demonstrative action on the Jewish question" was necessary without delay. However, as the Council members stated quite frankly, their decision was not prompted by humanitarian considerations. A major role was played by the insistent reports of the Minister of Foreign Affairs about the reaction of European public opinion to the persecution of the Jews. Another factor was the complaint of the Minister of Finance that “the widespread indignation over the treatment of the Jews” created “dificulties in the sale of government bonds.” For a long time the ministers could not decide on the

.

114

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

form of the “demonstrative action" they felt compelled to undertake. Afraid of sharp opposition from the Right, they did not think the State Duma was the proper vehicle for such an action. Finally, they recalled an article of the law which had long fallen into disuse and had not been deleted from the Code of Laws by mere oversight. This article invested ministers with the power in extraordinary circumstances to “act with every means at their command.” On the basis of this dubious power, the Minister of Internal Affairs sent the following circular, dated August 15, 1915, to the governors of all the Russian provinces: ThiswillinformYourExcellency . ..thatinviewoftheextraordinary wartime situation and until the general review of the laws governing the Jews, 1 am, according to the resolution of the Council of Ministers . granting permission to Jews to reside in all urban communities, with the exception of the capitals and areas under the jurisdiction of the Mmistry of the Imperial Court and the War Ministry.

..

Thus, the long awaited abolition of the Pale of Settlebut only as a “demonstrative action,” prompted by the “extraordinary wartime situation" and aimed at placating public opinion abroad and facilitating the sale of government bonds. Moreover, the circular of 1915 efl‘ected only a partial abolition of the Pale: Jews were still forbidden to settle outside of cities and townships; they were still barred from St. Petersburg and Moscow, from territories settled by Cosw sacks, and from regions where the Tsar had his residences. On August 10 of the same year, the Council of Ministers had issued a regulation permitting Jewish war veterans, demobilized as a result of war injuries or illness, as well as their children, to enter educational institutions “without taking part in competitive examinations and regardless of ment finally came,

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 115 existing restrictions." Soon after that, the Minister of Justice issued orders on the admission of Jews to the legal profession, relaxing existing restrictions and establishing a Jewish quota. These few measures and half-measures were as far as the government went in easing anti-Jewish restrictions during the First World War. They were all merely “temporary" in character, based on “extraordinary conditions," and holding no promise of a general revocation of the legal restrictions upon Jews. In 1916, when the situation at the front had improved to some extent, the Jewish question faded out altogether. True, the program of the so-called Progressive bloc in the Duma" contained a point which spoke of “entering upon the path of abolishing the restrictions on the rights of Jews and, specifically, of further steps toward the elimination of the Pale of Settlement, facilitation of admission to educational institutions, and abolition of constraints in the choice of professions.” However, no concrete steps were taken toward the realization of these good intentions. Nicholas 11 remained adamant in his decision to allow no extension of Jewish rights in Russia. At the height of the military catastrophe of 1915, be repeated that he would “take nothing upon himself" in the Jewish question. The ministers also ceased to regard this question as urgent as soon as they recovered from the initial panic. In August, 1916, the Minister of Internal Affairs “did not find suficient grounds at the moment for raising the question of review of the laws concerning the Pale of Settlement." And even in the early days of the fateful year of 1917, one of the departmental directors of his Ministry, who had received a memorandum citing newspaper reports that the government was drafting a new law on this question, wrote across the

LotuUw r

cw

w

..

F.._———

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 116 memorandum: “What nonsense! Where do they get such information? The Ministry has taken no steps whatever in this matter."" A report on this comment was published in the magazine Yevreyskaya Nedelya (“Jewish Week") on January 22, 1917. Only a month later, the regime of which the comment was so highly characteristic had disappeared from the scene. The Russian liberals and democrats who assumed power in February, 1917, were fully aware that the system of anti-Jewish restrictions had been one of the major blights of the fallen regime, and that it had to be eliminated completely and without delay from the body politic. The declaration published on March 3, 1917, over the signatures of the Chairman of the State Duma, M. V. Rodzianko, and the Prime Minister of the new govemment, Prince G. E. Lvov, stated that one of the guiding principles of the Provisional Government would be the “abolition of all class, religious and national disabilities." In the Program issued by the Provisional Government three days later, we read: Aware of the full burden of the legal disabilities which oppress the country . . . the Provisional Government deems it necessary, even before the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, to provide the country with firm standards, protecting civil equality.

And on March 20, 1917, the Provisional Government issued a formal decree “On the Revocation of Religious and National Disabilities," which begins with the following declaration: Proceeding from the conviction that all the citizens of a free country should be equal before the law, and that the conscience

Legal Status

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117

of every individual repudiates the idea of restrictions against any citizen on the basis of his religion or origin, the Provisional Government decrees that: All the limitations on the rights of Russian citizens imposed by hitherto existing laws on the basis of religion, creed or nationality are hereby revoked."

The promulgation of this act closed one page in the history of Russian Jewry. Unfortunately, it was to be followed by a new dark page, the end of which will probably be known only to our children.

NOTES

'

The reference book on this subject most widely used by Rmsian jurists we the annotated edition compiled by the St. Petersburg attorney M. Mysh, Rukovodstvo k russkim zakonam o yevreyahh (“Handbook on Russian Laws Concerning Jews"), 4th Edition, 1914. In addition to the comprehensive works of Mysh and Gimpelson, there were ten or twelve other publications of various scope and merit. Mat of the Jewish periodicals appearing in Russian published information on new laws and other material relating to the application of restrictive laws. They also contained special departments, “Answers to Readers' Inquiries,“ in which experienced lawyers answered questions pertaining to this rather unique branch of Russian law. 'A bulky volume by Dr. Richard Maurach, Russia-he Judenpolitih (“Russian Policy in Regard to Jews“), was published in Germany during the Hitler regime (in 1939). Its author declared that the chief shortcoming of the Russian policy in this field was “the failure of the Russian government to adopt the racial point of view in the Jewish questions." This book is a sad illustration of the willingness of even serious German scholars of the time to follow the absurd racist theories of Hitler. (Maurach is still employed as a professor by one of the German universities, and has published several valuable scientific works.) The author seeks to prove that the Russian government issued restrictive laws only as a matter of form. but that these laws were never observed by anyone. In 1898, this question was decided by the highest Rusian court in the negative. A judgment of the same court issued in 1883 had

'

l18

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

recognized the manufacture of vinegar as an artisan craft, and a Jew engaged in it had been granted the right of residence. In 1904. the Governor of Vilno, Count Pahlen, wrote in a report to the Minister of internal Aflairs that the restrictive laws had become “an instrument of corruption among the lower administration." In 1915. during a discussion in the Council of Ministers concerning the abolition of the Pale of Settlement the State Controller Kharitonov declared: “And are you not afraid. dear sirs, of trouble with the police? For all we know. the police inspectors may go out on strike in protest. or else indulge in a pogrom a two." This statement was reported in the minutes published by the secretary of the Council of Ministers after the revolution. The Legal Suflerings 0/ the Jews in Russia. A survey a] the Present Situation and an Appendix of Laws. Edited by Lucien Wolf. with an introduction by Prof. A. V. Dicey (London; FisherUnwin. 1912). 111i: book contains a detailed survey of Russian laws in regard to Jews (pp. [-82). and translations of the principal restrictive laws (pp. 83-97). ‘An interesting analysis of the quation of the effect of legislation on public opinion may be found in the well-known book by Prof. A. V. Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England, 2nd ed., pp. 41-47. Vladimir Nabokov was an eminent Russian jurist and a member of the First State Duma. His article was published in the widely read legal weekly Pravo (“The Law") in the issue of April 27, 1903 (p. 1285). under the title “The Kishinev Blood Bath." IThe latter question is dealt with in detail in S. Kucherov's article, "Jews in the Russian Bar." Milyukov's article. “The Jewish Question in Russia," appeared in Shchir ("The Shield"), a collection of articles published in 1916 by prominent representatives of the Russian liberal intelligentsia as a protest against the persecution of Jews during the war. 1° The Pale of Settlement included fifteen provinces in the southwestern parts of the Russian Empire. as well as the ten province of Russian Poland. About five million Russian Jews (95 per cent of the entire Jewish population of Russia) lived within the limits of the Pale. Dre posts of police commissioners in these precincts were re garded in police circla as the most profitable. and appointments to these posts were usually made as a reward for special services. Decisions 0/ the Criminal Department of the Senate, 1877, Nos. 12 and 20.

‘

'

"

°

"

"

Legal Status of Jews in Russia 119 "Statutes on Government Service (Vol. 111 ofthe Code of laws

of the Russian Empire), Articles 4, 40. and 182.

“The longest to remain in a judicial post was Jacob Teitel. He served as an Examining Judge in Simbirsk for about 20 years, and later as a Member of the District Court in Saratov from 1903 to 1912, when the Minister of Justice. Shcheglovitov, finally “persuaded" him to retire. in his later years, Judge Teitel was active in Jewish philanthropic organizations in Russia and, after 1920, abroad. From 1921 to 1935 he was Praident of the Union of Russian Jews in Germany, later dissolved by the Nazis. He died in France at the age of B9. See article by S. Kucherev. The ordeals suffered by the Russian Jews during World War I are also described in J. Frumkin's article, “Pages from the History of Russian Jewry.” '7 See article by Jacob Frumkin. This is reported in the magazine Yevreyslraya Nedelya No. 3-4, 1917. Only ten days before the revolution, this magazine (No. 10ll, isue of February 14, 1917) reported that dozens of Jews were being held in Moscow police precincts “for violation of residence laws"; among them was a “middleaged Jewem who had traveled via Moscow to Vozneseask. where the intended to visit her wounded son in a military hmpital." "This decree of the Provisional Government was published in the oficial Collection of Laws and Executive Decree: of the Cow ernment on March 22, 1917. The decree is signed by the Chairman of the Provisional Government, Prince G. E. Lvov, and by the Minister of Jmtice, Alexander Kerensky.

"

"

“

jews in the Russian Economy by I. M. Dijur or POLAND IN 1772, BELOrussia became a part of Russia and more than 40,000 Jewish families became Russian subjects. According to the historian S. M. Dubnow, this date marked “the birth of a Jewish center in the Russian Empire.” Subsequently, during the second and third partitions of Poland (in 1793 and 1795 respectively), nearly a million Jews of Lithuania, Podolia, Volhynia, and the larger part of central Poland became Russian subjects. The living body of Polish Jewry was cut into three parts, and each became the object of experimentation. In Russia, this experimentation manifested itself (and this was especially true in economic life) in the form of a strange co bination of attempts at reform and measures that could le (1 to nothing but impoverishment and economic ruin. The attempts to regulate the economic activities of the Jews were chaotic and contradictory. In the “Committee for the Proper Organization of Jewish Life," established by the command of Alexander Iin November, 1802, opinAFTER THE FIRST PARTITION

120

Jews in the Russian Economy 121 ion was divided between those who urged strict regulation of the economic life of the Jewish population of Russia and representatives of a more liberal leading spokesman of the latter was M. M. Speransky,l whose views were recorded in the Committee's minutes of September 1803:

trendBThe

Transformations effected by government action and authority are generally unstable, and are particularly unreliable in cases when the government must combat century-old customs. Hence, the best and most promising method of leading the Jews to the improvement of their lot is to open up paths they can follow to their own benefit. This is best done, not by establishing special rules or institutions, or by acting for them, but by affording opportunities for their own action. The fewest possible prohibitions, the greatest possible freedom—these are the simple elements of order in society.

History, however, did not take this liberal path. The “Statute Concerning the Jews,” issued in 1804, led to the pauperization of a substantial majority of Jews in Russia. Article 34 of the statute forbade Jews to maintain inns [and taverns ‘In the villages, “and even to '\ reside'in them, \ in transit.” This article of the law, stringently ensave I postponements, deprived the Jews of forced after seve occupations by which they had earned a livelihood in the course of centuries, and which had served as a source of primary accumulation, essential for the formation of a healthy middle class that was beneficial both to the Jewish community and to the country. Jews were reduced to such petty enterprises as the manufactureWm, shoe '

\

'

Mikhail Speransky wn an eminent jurist and statesman who lived during the reigns of Alexander 1 and Nicholas 1. He was the author of many plans of liberal reforms, conceived but never carried out by Alexander I, and the editor-in-chief of the “Code of Laws" published in 1832 under Nicholas 1.

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Russian Jewry (I860-] 917)

wax, ink. etc., and the operation of innumerable stalls and shops in market places. These shoestring\enterprises quickly brought their owners to a hopeless impfise. Even without the pogroms, an intolerable—economic situation sooner or later inevitably had to lead to the mass emigration of Jews from Russia. While the ruinous eflects of the statute changed the destinies of hundreds of thousands of Jews, the government measures attempting to draw the Jews into agriculture and industry could obviously affect only a small proportion of the Jewish population.

AGRICULTURE The Statute of 1804 promised the dispossessed Jews who wished to engage in agriculture access to government lands in a number of provinces, monetary loans for starting farms. and tax relief for several years. By 1806, 1,500 families had applied for resettlement on land. The Duke de Richelieu, a nephew of the famous Cardinal, who had come to Russia as a French emigre and became the Governor of Kherson Province, allotted some 30,000 desyatin' in the Steppes of his province for Jewish colonists. Their settlement was supervised by the Novorossiya Resettlement Office.’ The first Jewish agricultural colonies were thus founded in 1807 in southern Russia (Kherson Province). The first group of settlers consisted of 300 families. Soon after that. there was a spontaneous flow of Jews from Belorussian provinces to the Novorossiya region. By 1810, the first

manly 31,000 acres.

3 Novorossiya was the designation for the southern territories acquired during the reign of Catherine 11.

Jews in the Russian Economy 123 eight agricultural colonies in the Kherson Province had a population of 600 families. The government spent 145,000 rubles for the establishment of these colonies. The process of resettlement was vividly described in 1808 in a report from the Vitebsk Governor to the Minister of Internal Aflairs: The rural Jews were driven out, ruined, and plunged into poverty. Most of them are without daily sustenance or a roof to over their heads, and therefore large numbers are go' Novorissi 3. Many, intending to resettle in Novorossiya, ave sold all ir belongings and are insistently pleading to be sent there, if only for residence.

At the same time, the Novorossiya Resettlement Ofiice and the governor of the Kherson Province besieged the Minister of Internal Aflairs with requests to halt the stream of settlers, because neither houses nor any other facilities essential for the establishment of agricultural colonies in the steppe had been prepared for them. The unaccustomed climate of the steppe, the lack of housing and food supplies resulted in various epidemics among the mass of homeless unfortunates, and the government was compelled to call a temporary halt to settling Jews on land. A decree to that efiect was issued on April 6, 1810. With the introduction in 1827 of military service, from which the colonists were automatically exempted, the movement to settle on land gained new impetus. In 1833, Jewish settlers were allotted some 29,000 desyatt'n of land in Siberia, and 1,317 persons were settled there as a group. Jews from the western areas had also begun to move to Siberia, until a new decree was issued in 1837, “stopping forever" the resettlement of Jews to Siberia. Despite all the impediments and interruptions in the settlement of Jews on land, by 1852 the total number of

.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 124 Jews engaged in agriculture had reached 39,115. Of this number. 16,435 lived in the Kherson Province. and 9.471 in the Yekaterinoslav and Bessarabia Provinces. In 1859, an Imperial Decree ordered a halt in the settlement of Jews on state lands in the western provinces, and a law promulgated in 1866 put an end to the allocation of sums from the tax on kosher meat (the so-called “box tax” or korobochny sbor‘) for the development of agricultural activities among the Jews. According to expert estimates, the number of Jews in agriculture in the 1860's was some 80,000. The 1897 census set the number of Jews on land, both in and out of colonies, at 179,400, or twice that of the sixties. Approximately half of this number was concentrated in the colonies of the Kherson and Yekaterinoslav Provinces and Bessarabia. The rest were scattered through the Minsk Province and the formerly Polish ten'itories, with the greatest concentration in the Suvalki Province (7.8 per cent of the total Jewish population of the province) and the smallest number in the Warsaw Province (0.54 per cent of the Jewish population). By the end of the 19th century, the Vilno, Kovno, Grodno, Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Volyn, Kiev, and Chemigov Provinces and Bessarabia had a total of 258 Jewish agricultural settlements, with 5,947 households, a population of 36,153, and 39,710 desyatin of land, according to data compiled by the JCA (YEKO, or Jewish Colonization Association).

At the turn of the century, Russian Poland had 2,509 Jewish families in agriculture, cultivating some 15,000 desyarin of land.

‘See article by Jacob Frumkin.

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Jews in the Russian Economy

As regards Jewish agricultural colonies, figures provided by the JCA set the number of families living there in 189899 at 13,000. According to the data for 1913, the dishibution of Jewish agricultural colonies in the Kherson and Yekaterinoslav Provinces at the time was as follows:

Kheraon Province Yekaterinalav Province Total

Number of Number of Number of Land area (in desyarln) colonies households Persons 21 5145 31.340 60.920

17

1741

10.622

22,931

as

sass

41,962

33,351

_

provinces owned 14,085 work horses, 16,106 cows, 5,759 plows, and 1,710 seeding machines. 0n the whole, the Jewish agricultural population by the beginning of the twentieth century comprised 3.5 per cent of the total Jewish population of Russia. Taken by itself, this percentage appears small. Yet, if we recall that the Jewish agricultural population in 1825 constituted only 1 per cent of the total Jewish population in Russia, and that it rose to 4 per cent by 1914, a certain degree of progm must be admitted. In order to appreciate this progress in full, we must remember that the period in question witnessed a decline in the percentage of agricultural population throughout Russia from 90 per cent in the early years of the 19th century to 74 per cent in 1897. In other words. the number of Jews engaged in agriculture increased while the rest of the country was undergoing a process of urbanization and the labor force flowed from the villages to the cities. Finally, we must also keep in mind that The thirty-eight colonies of these two

Russian Jewry (I860-!917) 126 it was precisely from among the Jewish colonists in Russia that the pioneers of Jewish agriculture in Palestine, South America, the United States, and Canada were recruited in the 1880's and particularly in the 1890‘s.

INDUSTRY

/

The government's attempm to stimulate the development f factory and workshOp industries among the Jews were considerably more successful. We find the beginnings of such industries in the earliest years of the past century. According to the oflicial data for 1806, seven of the twenty factories producing woolen goods in three southwestern provinces at the time belonged to Jews. In the neighboring Minsk Province we find in 1808 a glass factory, a paper factory, a soap factory, a tannery, and a falling mill owned and operated by Jews. Under Alexander I, energetic measures were taken to encourage such industries. In 1811 a senator was assigned to inspect the manufacturing enterprises of the northwestern territory and to “persuade well-to-do Jews to lay the beginnings of clothmaking among their people." A month later, the senator reported from Vitebsk: “The Jews most readily consented, some in companies, and others individually, to acquire ten looms as a first step.” Later he wrote from Mogilev: “I have inspected the eight-loom clothmaking plant in this city established by Khonon Krol and Isar Lurie, which, up to May 20, has produced two thousand arshin‘ of low-grade, coarse cloth .. . The owners of the plant have undertaken to enlarge it within the next three years to forty-loom capacity." It may be expected, adds the senator, that Mogilev and neighbor-

“ An arshln equals 28 inches.

127 ing towns will “in time produce 63,000 arshin of army cloth annually. . . There is no doubt, Your Gracious Majesty, that this beginning. though small, will be followed by other Jews as well, both in the Provincial capitals and in District cities." It should not be forgotten that this was written a year before the war of 1812, which marked the beginning of the government's attempt to enlist Jewish participation in the supply of needed goods. Supplying the army subsequently played an important role in the accumulation of capital in the hands of Jews. These funds were afterwards invested in large factories, and later in extractive industries, transportation, and banking. This was the beginning of the process of formation of a Jewish middle and big bourgeoisie, which, despite all impediments and disabilities, contributed very significantly to the development and modernization of many branches of the Russian economy. Despite their modest beginnings, by 1832 Jews owned 149 factories and plants out of the total of 528 existing at the time in eight provinces in the northwestern and southwestern territories (or 30 per cent of the total number). In 1828, the 78 Jewish-owned textile plants alone employed 3,500 workers out of a total of 13,000 textile workers in these provinces. The sugar industry also became widely developed in the thwestern territories by this time. In 1846-1847, there re 49 sugar refineries in the Kiev Province alone. In 52 there were 223 throughout the Ukraine—one half of all the Russian refineries. In the beginning, these refineries belonged almost exclusively to the local landowners. They were situated in remote country sites and worked with primitive equipment and backward production methods. Such plants required little capital, and the landowners Jews in the Russian Economy

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 128 could easily set up and maintain them with their own funds. But as the methods of sugar refining improved and grew in complexity, and particularly after Count A. A. Bobrinsky had built his model refineries in the town of Smela, in the Kiev Province, the establishment and maintenance of efficient refineries became more costly. Both machines and expert mechanics had to be imported from abroad. and the landowners increasingly began to seek Jewish aid in financing their enterprises. At first. the role of Jewish capital was confined to subsidizing refineries, without any active participation in production itself. The terms of two typical contracts between landowners and the pioneer of the Jewish sugar industry, Izrail Brodsky (father of the future “sugar kings," Lazar and Lev Brodsky), are highly indicative. The earlier agreement, signed in 1844, stipulated that Brodsky had no right to interfere with the landowner’s management or the operation of the plant built with his funds. Under the second agreement, signed in 1847, Brodsky received a five-year lease on the plant. This time, he not only financed the building of the refinery. but was also to be in complete charge of its operation. The development of sugar refining in Jewish hands may be judged from the fact that in 1856 Izrail Brodsky shipped 1,500 poods‘ of sugar from his Ukrainian to his Warsaw warehouse, while in 1861 his shipments reached

40,000 poods. By 1872 there were 27 Jewish-owned beet-sugar refineries in Russia. In the Kiev Province alone, 16 of the 67 existing refineries belonged to Jews. The Jewish refinery owners systematically sought to improve the techniques of production. While the sugar fac-

° A pood equals 40 Russian pounds and 36 pounds avoirdupois.

Jews in the Russian Economy 129 tories owned by the landowners tended to confine themselves to the production of granulated sugar by antiquated methods, the Jewish sugar manufacturers quickly went on to the more complex production of lump sugar. They eagerly acquired the latest foreign machinery and employed foreign chemists and other specialists, such as Karl Fischman, who subsequently became a large sugar manufacturer himself. By modernizing sugar production, the Jews had, incidentally, furthered a revolutionary change in Ukrainian agriculture, connected with the emergence of vast sugar-beet plantations. However, the Jews were unable to derive any direct benefit from this revolution, in view of the ban on Jewish ownership of land, imposed in 1882 and remaining in efiect until the revolution of February, 1917. This ban also applied to joint-stock companies whose boards included Jews, and was largely instrumental in directing Jewish capital into the refining branches of the sugar industry, since refineries could be built in cities and towns.’ Thus, from the 1870's until the First World War, the Jews played a major part in the development of the sugar industry. The report for 1872 of the Governor General of the Southwestern Provinces to the Tsar mentions that one-fourth of all the sugar refineries, with an annual output of 1,200,000 poods, was owned by Jews. According to the data for 1910, 182 out of the 518 joint-stock sugar companies of Belorussia and the southwestern territory (or 31.5 per cent) belonged to Jews. The textile and sugar industries were not the only inadustries in which Russian Jews played an important role. Flour milling was quite widespread among Jews within the

. 'See article by A. Goldenweiser. “Legal Status of Jews in Rus-

“I

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 130 Pale of Settlement. ln northwestern and in southern Russia it attained the proportions of a large industry, operated by steam power and employing European methods. Very often, the flour mills were maintained in conjunction with sawmills. By the early years of the 20th century, Jews owned or leased 365 mills with an annual business of 20 million rubles. Jewish millers were the first to develop the export of flour abroad. They also substantially expanded the domestic market. thus furthering a more equitable distribution of bread products in the country. Jews played a considerable role in beer brewing, chiefly because breweries were easier to transfer from villages to cities and small towns than wine distilleries or sugar refineries. However, the establishment of a government monopoly in the sale of alcoholic beverages in the 1890's led to a sharp decline in Jewish-owned breweries. Thus, in 1887 Jews owned 76 per cent of all breweries in the Vilno Province, 87 per cent in the Grodno Province, and 6 per cent in the Kovno Province; in 1897, after the intltutionhof the monopoTy,'the"general number of breweries in these provinces declined, and the number of Jewishowned enterprises dropped even more sharply. Since most of the breweries were in the cities and small towns of the Pale, a considerable number of Jewish workers were employed in them. The supervising specialists were mostly Germans and Czechs. The same may be said of tobacco production, which had long been concentrated in Jewish hands. According to the data for 1897, out of 110 tobacco factories in fifteen provinces of the Pale. 83. or more than three-quarters, were owned by Jews. Out of the total number of 3,943 workers employed in the tobacco factories of the northwestern ter-

Jews in the Russian Economy

131

ritory, 3,055, or 78 per cent, were Jews. One of the most famous tobacco factories was owned by Szhereszhewsky. in Grodno. In the southwestern territory, 2,714 out of the 3,933 tobacco workers, or 54.5 per cent, were Jews. It must be noted that the tobacco industry made extensive use of women and child workers, so that, in a certain sense, it served as an auxiliary source of income to the Jewish families within the Pale. In the Russian leather industry Jews also played a substantial role. In 1897, Jews owned 287 out of 530 tanneries, i.e., 54 per cent. In addition, 162 tanneries in Russian Poland belonged to Jews. The principal centers of leather production were Shavli, Vilno, Smorgon, Mogilev, Minsk, Dvinsk, and Radom. The largest leather manufacturer was Chaim Frankel and later his son, Yakov Frankel, of Shavli, in the Kovno Province, who developed an enterprise on a European scale. In the woodworking industry, Jews were prominent chiefly in the sawmill business. According to the census of 1897, out of 106 sawmills in the northwestern areas, 69, or 68.3 per cent, were owned by Jews. Almost the same proportion is found in the southwestern areas, where Jews owned 91 out of 154 sawmills, or 60 per cent. It must be noted that the percentage of Jewish labor at these Jewishowned sawmills was very low (only 18.3 per cent in the northwest, and still less in the southwest). This was due, first, to the fact that the sawmills were located outside of cities and towns, and, secondly, to the difiiculties involved in the observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest. Besides, the sawmill workers were usually provided their meals by the employers, and the maintenance of two kitchens— kosher and non-kosher—was obviously unprofitable to the owners.

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 132 A specifically Jewish industry was that of bristle-making. In 1897, Jews owned 39 bristle-making factories (21 in Russian Poland, and 18 in the northwestern tenitories). Bristle production was a typically small-town industry. Many towns in the Kovno and Suwalki Provinces became :Ifamous for their bristle products. It is characteristic that both the owners and the workers in these enterprises were Jewish. By the end of the 19th century, the processing of textile fibers (wool and cotton) held an important place in the manufacturing activities of Jews. The principal centers of this industry were Belostock and Lodz. At first, the role of the Jews was limited to the supply of raw materials and the sale of finished products. But little by little Jews began to take a direct part in production as well. In the early days, Jewish manufacturers in Lodz and Belostock employed chiefly hand weaving methods. With the spread of mechanical methods of production, hand-weaving declined. In the 1890's there were several thousand Jewish handweavers in Belostock; by 1904 their number dropped to 1,200, and by 1909 there were only 563. At first, both non-Jewish and Jewish factory owners refused to employ Jewish weavers, considering them incapable of working mechanical looms. This led to a widespread movement among Jewish workers, known as the “fight for the factory." As a result of this movement, the factory owners began to accept Jewish weavers in their plants. In the Russian-Polish textile centers, the preponderant majority of weaver were Jewish. This brief survey clearly shows that, despite all the obstacles raised in their way. the I played a prominent part in the development of facto industries in the northwestern, southwestern, and southern parts of Russia, as

.Xexclusively

133 Jews in the Russian Economy Moreover, in all the branches well as in Russian of industry, Jewish entrepreneurs rapidly progressed from primitive or backward methods of production to modernized and technologically advanced methods, thus contributing to the general economic development of the country.

Poland!

COMMERCE In the field of commerce, Jews in Russia were pioneers

in the full sense of the word. In the grain and timber trade, Jews attained enormous sum in a relatively short time and may be said to have brought Russia into the world market. They greatly improved and reduced the costs of cereal and timber products within the country. Hence, these economic activities of Russian Jews merit a somewhat more detailed examination. According to the data collected by I. M. Bickerman' (1912), the average annual grain output of the fifty provinces of European Russia alone was up to two and a half million poods. In the first five years of our century (19001905), the export of grain products took up some 21-22 per cent of the net crop of fifty provinces of European Russia. However, as Bickerman points out correctly, “both crops and prices acquire their concrete economic significance only in the grain trade." Jews took a very active part in this trade. Already in 1878, 60 per cent of the grain export from Odessa was in Jewish hands. Jews were the first to develop the grain trade in Nikolayev, transforming this city into an independent center. The same was true of Kherson and Rostov 'Aleadingjom'nalistandauthorofanumberofbooksonJewiah economiclife.

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Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

on the Don. After the building of railroad communication with the Orlov and Kursk Provinces, Jews became the pioneers in stimulating and modernizing grain trade in these provinces as well. Before this, the grain trade of these provinces had been conducted in antiquated ways. Wealthy buyers dictated extremely low prices to the helpless peasants and even landowners. The subsequent resale of the grain went on at a leisurely pace; the turnover of the investment was slow, and profits often were as high as 30 per cent. “With the appearance of Jews on the scene (and they appeared literally with the first trains to Kursk and Orel),” we are told by Bickerman, “competition lowered the profits to less than a fourth of what they had been, and the grain did not remain in storage more than a month or two." Similar revolutionary changes in the grain trade were wrought by Jews in the Chernigov Province, and in the export trade via the Baltic ports. Jews were also active in the Petersburg grain trade, and particularly in the corn exchange. According to the census of 1897, 886 out of every 1,000 persons engaged in commerce in the northwestern provinces were Jews. The percentage of Jewish grain merchants was vcn higher—930 out of every 1,000. In other words, most the entire grain trade of this area was in Jewish hands. Summing up his findings, Bickerrnan draws the following conclusions: If the Russian grain trade, so basically significant to the entire economy of the country, . . . became a part of world trade . this was due chiefly to the Jews, who carried on this complex and important work despite all the obstacles raised in their way.

..

Jews in the Russian Economy

135

The middleman's share in the grain trade was reduced by the Jews to the lowest possible minimum; and if . . monopoly still exiss throughout the greater part of Russia, and the producer receives less than he might under given conditions in the world market, the blame for this lies squarely on the laws regarding the Pale of Settlement, which have cut the land in two and which prevent the Western commercial experience from reaching the central regions of Russia and thus encourage the persistence of immobility and stagnation.

.

The timber trade was also one of the major branches of commerce in which Jews were active in Russia. Timber export developed steadily and was second only to grain in the Russian export trade. In 1913 more than 140 million rubles’ worth of timber was shipped abroad. Despite all legal obstacles, Jews contributed importantly to the steady development of timber export. Jewish lumber merchants, for instance, were prevented from freely engaging in felling and processing timber by the local authorities' arbitrary interpretation of the right of residence outside of cities and towns. As a result of this, Jews were forbidden in many areas to build and operate sawmills, and were compelled to ship timber abroad in the form of logs. This was not only less profitable to the Jewish merchants, but also deprived the local populations of considerable potential earnings. Jewish timber merchants were forbidden to use the ports of Libava, Vindava, Riga, Revel, and Petersburg, and were therefore compelled to export their timber through Prussian ports. Barred from the right to lease land from the railroads for storing timber near railway stations prior to shipment, the Jewish merchants were unable to ship their timber by rail and had to specialize in river floatage, mainly along the Dnieper, Neman, and Dvina. It is a matter for astonishment that, in the face of all

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 136 these difliculties, the Jewish timber merchants nevertheless succeeded in contributing so significantly to the development and improvement of the Russian timber trade and industry. A very substantial role was also played by Jews in such leading branches of the Russian national economy as banking, railroad construction, and the extracting industries (coal, oil, and gold).

BANKING

\

I

Jews played a prominent part in Russian banking. In 1859 one of the major banking enterprises in Petersburg was that of chzel Ginzburg. This bank not only undertook large-scale financing of railroad construction, but also became one of the major institutions for discounting bills, both domestic and foreign. It succeeded in expanding its operations chiefly thanks to its ties with the Rothschilds, Mendelssohns, and other large Jewish financial firms in Western Europe. By the early 1870's, the Paw (Samuil, Yakov, and Lazar) established a whole network of bankses. Their banks participated primarily in railway construction, but they also aided the founding of a large number of commercial, industrial, and insurance businesses. The Polyakovs founded mortgage banks in Moscow and Rostov and large commercial banks in Kiev and Orel. which later merged into the United Bank. The Azov-Don Bank was headed by B. A. Kaminka, a banker with an international reputation. Another Jewish banker who gained prominence at about this time was A. M. Soloveychik, who founded the Siberian Commercial Bank. The president of the board of the Petersburg Discount and Loan Bank was

Jews in the Russian Economy

137

A. I. Zak. In the Russo-Asiatic Bank an important role was played by P. Khesin. In various provincial branches of the largest Russian banks there were many Jewish employees and members of the directing personnel, such as A. Rathaus and A. Yu. Dobry in Kiev. For many years, Krillichevsky was a member of the Executive Committee of the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade in St. Petersburg. Ivan Bliokh (1836-1901), the founder and large stockholder of a number of railroad companies, had also founded the Warsaw Commercial Bank, the Warsaw Fire Insurance Company, the Credit Company, and other enterprises. I. Bliokh wrote a book about the Russian railroads, for which he was awarded a gold medal at the Geographic Exposition in Paris. He also published a study, Future War and Its Economic Consequences, in which he painted a picture of economic ruin resulting from war. His work played a certain part in prompting the convocation of the Hague Peace Conference in 1899. Among Jewish provincial banks we may mention the banking houses of Wawelberg, Landau, the Epsteins, and Krongold in Warsaw. These banks aided very substantially in the integration of Poland into Russian economic life, despite the fact that many of their owners were fervent Polish patriots. In the first years of the Russo-French friendship of the 1880's, the banking house of Efrussi & Co. in Paris, with a branch in Odessa, stimulated the flow of French capital to Russia, to be invested chiefly in railway construction. Later, G. A. Benenson furthered the expansion of trade relations with England through the Anglo-Russian Bank he founded in 1911. But it was not only the talents and achievements of individual Jewish financiers that furthered the rapid growth

138

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

and development of the credit business in Russia. The Jewish middle and even petty bourgeoisie as a whole took an active part in the organization and development of cooperative credit associations in the Pale of Settlement. In 1910 there was a total of 472 Mutual Loan Societies in Russia. Of these, more than half (264) were in the Pale of Settlement (204 in fifteen provinces of the Pale, and 60 in Russian Poland). Forty Jewish delegates took part in the All-Russian Convention of Mutual Loan Societies held in Petersburg in 1910. A still greater role was played by Jews in the creation of Savings and Loan Associations. By January 1, 1911, the number of these associations throughout Russia was 599, with a membership of 300,000, of which Jews constituted 86.2 per cent. Especially popular among the Jewish population, besides the credit cooperatives, were non-interest loan societies (the so-called Gmilas Khesed). By the early years of the 20th century, there were more than 350 such societies in Russia.

TRANSPORTATION took an active part in the During the same period, J development of rail and water transpo ation. Beginning most of the Russian railways were built with the 1860‘s. by large concessionaires, among whom Jews occupied a prominent place. One of the first concessionaires was the “Main Company for the Construction of Russian Railroads," founded in 1857 by the Pereira brothers (French Jews), with the participation of Stiglitz in Petersburg, Frankel in Warsaw, and Mendelssohn in Berlin. This company received a concession to build a network of rail-

Jews in the Russian Economy 139 roads in Russia, with an aggregate mileage of 4,000 verst.’ The Polyakov brothers became especially prominent in railroad construction in the 1870‘s. The most capable member of the family was Samuil Polyakov, who died early in his career. The Polyakovs built railway lines between major cities of central Russia; during one of their construction jobs, they achieved the record speed of laying 763 verst of rails in 22 months. Jews participated in railroad construction not only as concessionaires, but also as contractors and suppliers of various building materials. An equally important role was played by Jews in the development of shipping along rivers flowing through the the Neman, Wisla, Dvina. and, parPale of Settlement ticularly, the Dnieper. The “First Shipping Line on the Dnieper and its Tributaries,” founded in 1858, had no Jews among its members; it owned a small number of steamships and did not strive for expansion. In 1883, David Margolin organized a “Second Shipping Line on the Dnieper and its Tributaries," financed chiefly with Jewish capital. After ten years of fierce competition, the two lines merged in 1893. Under Margolin's management (1883-1918), the united company attained considerable results. Jews played a prominent part in the development of shipping, and also of allied insurance enterprises, outside the Pale of Settlement as well. Thus, in 1876, Baron Ginzburg organized the Sheksna River Steamship Line (Sheksna is a tributary of the Volga). In the 1870's, Grigory Polyak founded a company in Nizhny-Novgorod for passenger and freight shipping on the Volga; in the 1880‘s, he was the first to build a fleet of

—

'A vent is approximately two-thirds of a mile.

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 140 tanker ships for transporting oil products from the Caspian Sea up the Volga. The activities of Jewish capital in the fields of water transportation and insurance were at their highest during World War I. In 1914 a group of Jewish financiers in Petrograd bought up a majority of the stock of the Volga Insurance Company. A short time later this Company formed a syndicate with two principal passenger ship lines on the Volga, under the general management of N. B. Glazberg. The principal objective of this trust during the war years was to force foreign capital out of the insurance field, particularly German capital, which concentrated in its hands the largest insurance operations. Under the direction of the Hessen brothers, this trust succwded in absorbing the shipping systems along the waterways between Rybinsk and Petrograd.

MINING INDUSTRIES ,

§

'

Jews were largely barred from access to mining industries both by the temporary laws of 1882,” and by the special regulations of 1887, which prohibited Jewish parin these industries on state lands. Nevertheless, Jews took an active part in mining within the‘Pl‘lrch—SEttlement. In Russian Poland, one-fourteenth of e total coal mining was in Jewish hands. In the Yekateri oslav Province there were about one hundred coalmini enterprises (twenty of them were joint-stock companies) in which Jews were active. In the oil business, Jews owned some ten large companies, both individual and joint-stock, chiefly in the Baku region. Barred from direct exploitation of oil resources,

‘jcipation

'° See article by A. Goldenweiser.

Jews in the Russian Economy

141

Jews engaged in processing and transporting oil products, first to the central Russian provinces, and later abroad. The pioneer Jewish oil company of Dembo and Kagan (A. Dembo, of Kovno, and Rh. Kagan of Brest) laid the first pipeline in Russia in 1870. One of the large oil firms in Baku was owned by the sons of the shipline owner, G. Polyak—the brothers Savely and Mikhail Polyak— and the engineer Arkady Beylin. Together with the Rothschilds, they founded the Mazut Company, which was later incorporated into the Shell Company. The Batum Oil Association, formed after the construction of the Trans-Caucasus Railroad, was owned almost entirely by Jews. It was succwded in the 1890’s by the Caspian-Black Sea Industrial Association in Baku. Like the Mazut Company, this firm also had the financial backing of Rothschild. A prominent role was also played by Jews in gold mining. Jewish descendants of penal exiles and settlers in Siberia were pioneers in the development of gold mining in this region. In 1913 the director and manager of the largest Russian gold mining enterprise, the Lena Goldfields Company, was Baron Alfred Ginzburg. This company mined one-fourth of the entire Russian gold output. Jews also participated in the Gold Mining Company, which had a capital of seven million rubles, and the Russian Gold Mining Company, with mines in the Urals, the Maritime Region, and the Trans-Baikal region. In addition to these, Jews took an active part in the first Russian platinum mining enterprise, “Platinum.” Such were the most important branches of trade and industry in which Jews played a signifith role. This role was creative and positive. In all fields of activity, Jewish

142

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) energetically furthered progress from primitive and simple forms of economic endeavor to more complex and advanced methods. ut, of course, wholesale trade, industry, and transportation were fields of activity open only to the middle and big Jewish bourgeoisie. In their mass, Russian Jews ' n industries. were engaged in rmer served as a source of income to 37.5 per cent of Russian Jewry; the, per cent. However, the , restrictions on thd,\r_ight of resi ce resulted in incredible “crowding of the JewishIpOpulation within the Pale of Setcreated an unhealthy condition of tlement, and this in turn intense competition both in petty trade and in artisan industries, eading to extreme pauperization An inevitable consequence of th' paupe ' ation was mass emigration, chiefly to the United a

businessmen

\

masses/l

:«hjwish

We have attempted in this survey to show the active part played by Jews in Russian economic life in spite of the innumerable restrictions and handicaps to which they were continuously subjected. This role might have been even more beneficial if the anti-Jewish policy of the old regime had not set up legal obstacles to the participation of Jewish commercial initiative in Russian economic life at every stage of its development.“ In conclusion, we may quote the words written by the eminent Russian economist, Prof. M. Bematsky, in 1916: The Jews constitute more than one third (35 per cent) of the Russian mercantile class . . . The role of the Jews in the commercial life of Russia is enormous, and they contribute greatly to its progress and efficient functioning. Every obstacle

-“ See article by A. Goldenweiser.

143 Jews in the Russian Economy to the manifestation of the commercial energies of the Jews hurts the national economic body of Russia.

Bematsky cites the memorandum submitted to the Council of Ministers in 1912 by the Moscow Manufacturers' Association, which included the following passage: The Jews perform in the economic organism of the country the functions of an intermediary link between the consumers and the producers of goods. In the northwestern, southern and southwestern provinces, these functions are carried out almost exclusively by Jews. Under these conditions, the separation of the commercral and industrial population of a large part of the count from the centers of production is enormously damaging not only directly to Jewis merchants, but also to the many millions of non-Jews. Dividing the village from the city, the cities of the west and the south from the cities and vii! of central and eastern Russia means a virtually deliberate ' ruption of the economic life of the country, the undermining of credit and the devaluation of the people's labor.

factoryl

But the Tsarist regime remained deaf to such pleas, even when they came from the most moderate representatives of the Russian intelligentsia and bourgeoisie. At a meeting of the Council of Ministers held during World War I, the Minister of Trade, Prince V. Shakhovskoy, vainly demanded the admission of Jews not only to all Russian cities, but also to rural areas. “The solution of the Jewish question,” he said, “is particularly important from the point of view of the interests of the Russian economy.” Thus, a member of the Tsarist govemment had joined his voice to that of the Russian liberal intelligentsia and businessmen. But it was already too late. The regime had by that time reached a point of no return.

Ideological Trends Among Russian jews

by Gregor Aronson 1 rue GREAT aeroams OF THE 1860‘s ABOLISHED scardom, laid the foundation for proper administration of justice, and created the beginnings of local self-government in Russia. They also left their mark on the destinies of Russian Jewry, which suffered from lack of rights, arbitrary treatment at the hands of authorities, and material privations. Within the mass of the Jewish population in the cities and townships of the Pale of Settlement, which lived in an atmosphere of strict religious tradition and discipline, the process of participatiom'n-the'general contemporary cultural life was extremely slow. But in the capital and in the larger Russian centers. the nascent Russo-Jewish intelligentsia increasingly came under the sway of assimilationist moods. Many members of the Jewish intelligentsia of that time

develoFrREt-ioward

144

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews

145

felt that they were duty bound, in the greater interest of the state, to relinquish their national characteristics and merge into the dominant nationality of the country in which they lived. One Jewish “progressive" wrote that “there is no such thing as a Jewish nation," and that the Jews “regard themselves as Russians of Mosaic faith.” In an Odessa newspaper of 1860, we read that “the Jews know that their salvation lies in fusion with the Russian people. . . ." “Complete identification and fusion with the dominant native population—that is the Messiah whose arrival is awaited by the best, the most enlightened portion of our Jewry." In the 1870's, the well known Jewish civic leader and writer, I. Orshansky, argued in his articles for “total integration of the entire foreign population with the predominant nationality.” He was certain that, once the Jews became free citizens, “the process of assimilation with the basic Russian population would come about of itself." It took the pogroms to shatter these assimilationist illusions. A certain corrective counter-influence was exerted by the small circles of Hebraists and their modest publications, but these were too slight an obstacle in the path of denationalization; besides, they were themselves drawn to German or Russian models. Thus, Russification, “integration” with the Russian people and “dissolution" within their larger mass—to use the terms current at the time—became the decisive trends molding the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia of that period. However, the broad popular masses—the artisans, tradesmen, workers, melameds, brokers, lessees, owners of modest hotels and taverns, as well as the “luftmenschen.” who had l'I‘he numerous small-time operators engaged in brokerage and an endless variety of ephemeral bruineas ventures, who were said to “live on air."

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 146 already emerged upon the scene in considerable numbers by the 1860's and 1870's—remained for many years to come \/ quite alien to assimilationist influences. And it can safely be said that even at the time when the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia was at the height of its assimilationist heyday, the masses of the people, who suffered from the estrangement of the intellectuals and the danger of their complete alienDation, had never viewed the assimilationist processes as a threat to the existence of Jewry as such. The failure of the assimilationist trends among the RussoJewish intelligentsia was predetermined by many factors-— and most of all by the fact that Russian Jewry was a closelyknit multi-million population group. The census of 1897 set the number of Jews in Russia at 5,063,000; by 1908, this number had risen to 5,973,000. Such a great popular mass made impossible any lasting separation between the intelligentsia and the people. This was especially so since, along with the intelligentsia of the capitals and big cities, which had access to higher educational institutions, there emerged contingents of a new, popular, grass-roots intelligentsia. bred in the yeshivahs and synagogues. This new intelligentsia was inspired with the ideals of service, not only to general humanity or to Russia, but to its own dispossessed people. It was bound with the people. not by abstract concepts or ideologies, but by language, by sharing their poverty-stricken existence and their emerging secular culture. “The collapse of the hopes for “fusion" and “identification” with the Russian majority became apparent in the late 1860's, when instead of producing all the expected reforms, the regime turned sharply to the right. The revolutionary kmovement gained new momentum throughout the country.

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews

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“Entertaining no illusions” about the Jewish masses,’ the Jewish revolutionaries of the 70's brought all their youthful enthusiasm and idealism to the altar of illusions about the Russian peasantry as the potential liberators of all the oppresed. This was one of the last flare-ups of the assimilationist wave, and it perished together with the revolutionary movement of the 1870's and the victory of political reaction which followed the assassination of Alexander II (1881).

II

The pogroms of the 1880’s, which inflicted so many wounds upon Russian Jewry, brought about profound changes in the psychology and general mood both of the Jewish popular masses and of wide strata of the intelligentsia. Assimilators continued to exist; there were many instances during the ensuing decades when they felt firmly rooted in certain specific comers of Russian life. However, assimilation as a serious factor in Jewish life in Russia had been dealt an irreparable blow by the pogroms. After a period of resignation and despair, a search began for a way out, for new directions. The popular masses, which lived without ideologies but also without illusions, found a solution in flight from hated Russia: this was the beginning of mass emigration to America. Concurrently, the ancient, romantic dream of Zion was rekindled for the ~-.

'AL Zundelevich wrote in 1870‘s: “To all of us, Jewry, as a national entity, was not a phenomenon timing of support. It seemed to us that, as a distinct nationality, Jewry had no reason for existence. And we regarded religion, the principal element that bound the Jews into an integrated whole, as an unquestionably regrusive factor.”

148 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) first time in Jewish intellectual circles in Russia. The Palestinophile movement sprang up and the first detachments of settlers set out for Palestine. However, it was clear that emigration could offer no substantial relief to the millions remaining in Russia.’ As for the Palestinophile movement, its limits and possibilities were obvious to everyone: nobody regarded it as a panacea. Under these conditions, the 80's witnessed a profound shift in mood, which played an exceptionally important role in the history of Russian Jewry. Paradoxical as it may seem, it was precisely at this period—when the Jews were made to feel most sharply and insistently that they were nothing but a pliant and helpless object in the hands of history, that they could be dealt with arbitrarily, without respect or consideration—that Russian Jewry, perhaps for the first time in its long years of suffering, came to conceive of itself as a subject rather than an object, as the shaper of its own destiny and its own future. It was precisely at this time that social and national self-awareness began to take tremendous strides among the Jews. While formerly the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia had faced the choice of a return to the ghetto or assimilation, this dilemma now lost its hold over people's minds. A new formula emerged: neither the ghetto, nor assimilation, but national self-assertion. Even many assimilated members of the Jewish intelligentsia were moved—whether consciously or not—by the idea that the only valid road and the only possible perspective lay in a return to their own people, in service to the masses living disfranchised,

i/R/ussian

'

In the 1880's. emigration from Russia involved an avenge of some l$,000 persons a year; in the l890‘s the figure rose to 30,000.

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crowded, and in acute material need within the Pale of Settlement.‘ But where did the desire to serve the people find an application? In close accord with the moods prevailing among wide circles in the Russian milieu, especially among the elected local administrations, the Jews also developed a tendency toward “small-time” politics, the polities of patches and palliatives. A great response was elicited by the launching of efforts to raise the economic and cultural level of the Jewish masses. The desire for closer contact with the masses also expressed itself in the work of the oldest organization of Russian Jewry, the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews, which gradually began to be infiltrated by democratic elements. Another move in the direction of work with the people was the establishment of the so-called Handicraft Fund (Remeslenny Fond)—the future ORT‘—which attracted the sympathy of wide circles of the Jewish population of the cities and small towns of the Pale of Settlement. Regardless of the practical results of these “small-time" activities, they left their ace in the ideological field as well. Thanks to them, the J 'sh intelligentsia succeeded in discovering the newly emerging forces among the people, mobilizing them in the public interest, and building a bridge between the erstwhile assimilationist groups, divorced from the masses, and the people themselves. This very first step toward democratization of Jewish life held the promise of many new developments during the ensuing decades, des-

‘

A “Memorandum on the Jewish Question,” drawn up by a government commission in l883, stated that up to 90 per cent of the Jewish population of Russia lived in poverty. in unhygienic conditions and poor housing. “Currently known as Organization for Rehabilitation Through Training.

Russian Jewry (I860-I9I7) 150 pite the innumerable obstacles raised in their path by the police regime and its anti-Jewish policies.

III In the words of the historian Simon Dubnow, the growth of national awareness among the Jews—both in Russia and elsewhere—was furthered both by social progress and social reaction. Pogroms, anti-Semitism, persecution, and restrictions on Jewish rights were always segregating and nationalizing factors. Other influences in the same direction during the last decades of the nineteenth century were the growth of capitalism in Russia and the social differentiation within Jewry itself, with the development of an ever more pronounced class structure. This led to the emergence from the formerly solid and almost undiflerentiated Jewish mass of a bourgeoisie, professional strata, and a working (and partially even industrial) proletariat. This transformation of the social structure of Russian Jewry was also furthered by demographic processes: internal migration, the decline of the small towns, the flight of the more prosperous elements (and particularly of the youth) to cities, and the tendency toward urbanization which had already become evident among wide strata of Russian Jewry in the 1890's. The process of formation of a Jewish bourgeoisie and a Jewish proletariat also stratified the Jewish intelligentsia and posed a number of new demands in the socio-political and cultural fields. Just as the ideology of assimilation had lost its hold over the intelligentsia, so was religion gradually beginning to lose its formerly exclusive sway over the Jewish masses. Occasional sentimental idealization of the small town with its patriarchal existence and respect for traditional religious

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews 151 observance were countered by the very decline of the small towns and the urbanization which dealt an inoperable blow to the old ways of life. Many scores of yeshivah students, who had devoted their entire youth to poring over the

Torah and the Talmud, were gradually drawn away into active Jewish secular life. They became teachers at the Talmud-Torahs, and many of them became revolutionaries. New contingents of Jewish revolutionaries, sensing these new trends, sought to recruit followers by all available methods, even including proclamations in Hebrew. By this time, the language of the popular masses, Yiddish, was also coming into its maturity. In the 1890's the idea of the secularization of culture and the schools began to come to the fore and gain adherents. The idea of solidarity with the finest aspirations of the Russian liberation movement and general human progress swept the minds of the youth, the intelligentsia, and the progressive workers. Jewish workers, toiling in their workshops 16 to 18 hours a day, were reshaping the messianic dream of their grandfathers into a new messianism—the dream of socialism. They were maximalists in their demands, without any recognition of the limits of the possible and without any sense of measure. But then, their forebars in the spiritual realm had also refused to be confined to narrow realities and soared the heights of ecstatic aflinnation. What could be expected of their young, inexperienced, and idealistic grandsons? If we attempt to sum up the processes of the 1890's, we must admit that those years witnessed the grandiose transformation of the amorphous Jewish popular mass into a nation. Orthodox Jews who had always conceived of Jewry "as a “theocracy” remained adament, ignoring the profound changes. The Jews, they continued to insist, are not a na-

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 152 tion, but a religion. So it was, and so it shall be! It is interesting to note that in this respect they were echoed by their opposites, the assirnilationists of various camps. The latter, in essence, also said that the Jews were only a religious community. But they added that, when the people developed culturally, learned the Russian language, and came to participate in Russian culture, the relics of medieval customs and ideas would be eliminated from their life and minds. And this, they continued, would lead to the “dissolution“ and “fusion” they advocated, and the disappearance of anti-Semitism. Citing European authorities, the last Mohicans of assimilationism only shrugged their shoulders at the proponents of the idea of a Jewish renaissance. From their point of view, it was impossible to speak seriously of Jewry as a nation because the Jews lacked the necessary attributes of nationhood: they had no territory and no national language. Hebrew was as dead as Latin, and Yiddish—who could take this “jargon” seriously? In the early 90‘s under the influence of the first Russian Marxists and the German Social Democratic movement, circles of Jewish Social Democrats, who dreamed of creating a Jewish workers' party in Russia, sprang up in Vilno, the “Lithuanian Jerusalem." They themselves were far from realizing that they were bringing to the Jewish working masses the idea of Jewish nationalism. On the contrary, they were imbued by a strong spirit of cosmopolitan, international socialist solidarity. But they searched for paths that would bring them close to Jewish artisans and workers and open to them some avenue of approach to the heart of the Jewish masses. Here the Jewish socialists were faced with the full problem of can-ying the be-

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ginnings of education to the masses, and this problem raised the question of language. Bringing the propaganda to the masses meant that it had to be conducted in Yiddish. Meeting a wave of sympathy from below, the idea of bringing culture to the people in its own language quickly took root. There arose a network of so-called “Jargon Committees.” The first pamphlets in Yiddish were published. The pioneers of the Jewish labor movement set up a clandestine printing shop and began to publish the first underground organ in Russia in Yiddish, the Arbeirer Shrime (“Workers' Voice”). At the same time, a group of talented Jewish writers, such as I. L. Peretz, Dovid Pinsky, and others sympathetic to the Jewish labor movement, began to publish works and periodicals addressed to the popular masses. In 1897, the first Russian Jewish political party was founded. This was the Bund—the General Jewish Workers’ Union of Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. Having set itself the aim of serving as the Jewish detachment of the revolutionary and socialist movement, it was obliged to lead a clandestine existence deep in the underground, and naturally laid stress on general political tasks and problems. But at the same time, the Bund, organically bound with the Jewish workers and the popular intelligentsia, was from the very first days of its existence a nationalizing factor in Jewish life. This was true even at the time when its national program had not yet been developed and its Jewish demands had not yet crystallized, and when its leaders abhorred nationalism like the plague.

IV Zionism has been from the very first a nationalizing fac-

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tor in the life of Russian Jewry. The fact that the goals set by Theodore Herzl aimed, despite all obstacles, at the realization of the maximal Jewish aspirations did not daunt the

followers of Zionism. Nor were they discouraged by the charge of utopianism, for the advocates of Zionism believed, with Herzl, that one must only want it strongly enough for the most incredible utopia to become a reality. Zionism succeeded in winning the sympathy of the most diverse strata of the people: groups of the intelligentsia which entertained a particular interest in the language of the Bible and its literature and were remote from Russian politics and social life and skeptical of the revolution; workers who were not canied away by the Marxist movement in Russia; rabbis and orthodox Jews, who discovered in Zionism a certain synthesis of synagogue and society; the middle and petty bourgeoisie, which had already broken away from the total grip of religious tradition and longed for a vague, new ideal, an ideal which at the same time was free of the risk of entanglement in the dangerous affairs of the Russian political struggle. In the by-laws of the Grodno Zionist organization ( 1902) we read: “The Zionist Union and its organs do not concern themselves with general politics, either domestic or foreign." Such was the character of Zionism from the beginning of the 20th century until 1905. It would be wrong, however. to say that the Zionists did not take an energetic part in internal work among the Jewish population. On the contrary, the Zionists, like others, were active builders of all forms of Jewish social life. Ahad Haarn (O. Ginzberg), the father of “spiritual Zionism," who sought only to create a spiritual center in Palestine, felt—as opposed to the political Zionists—that even with the establishment of a Jewish state, the majority of

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Jews would remain in gaiut and should therefore take the liveliest interest in the political regime and the socio-economic conditions of the country where they lived. One of the problems of interest to the Zionists was that of Jewish primary schools in Hebrew. The propaganda for Hebrew as one of the means of preparing for the future Jewish state was widely successful among the followers of Zionism. But, of course, Hebrew could not possibly replace either Yiddish, the language involved in the process of cultural deveIOpment among the Jewish masses in Russia, or Russian, the language backed by the Russian state, society and culture. In order to become an efiective social force among Russian Jews, the Zionist elements working with the people had to shift to Yiddish in their propaganda and agitation. This closer relation to the people resulted not only in the increasing alignment of labor and democratic Zionism with the nwds and demands of the struggle for equal rights, but also in a general political radicalization of these Zionist groups. In consequence, the ever-vigilant police state, which had formerly been fairly lenient toward Zionism (thanks to its “neutrality" in politics and refusal to become involved in the revolutionary movement), now sharply altered its tactics: it began to discern in Zionism, as in all the other Jewish social movements, the same “Jewish danger" to the stability of the monarchy and the empire. V

The Kishinev and the Gomel pogroms of 1903, which started a wave of mass emigration among the Jews, were decisive in shaping the national awareness of the new generation of Jewish leaders who came to the fore in the early

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years of the 20th century, succeeding the leaders of the 1880's and 1890‘s. The feeling of dissatisfaction with the existing formulations of the national demands put forward in behalf of Russian Jewry was widespread in all Jewish groupings of that time. Thus, the Bund, which at its Fourth Congress (1901) adopted a resolution against the “fanning of national feelings leading to chauvinism," declared in the same breath that “the concept of ‘nationality’ is applicable to the Jewish people as well." The Bund published its first version of a national program; according to it, the future free Russia was to be a “federation of nationalities with full national autonomy for each, regardless of the territory it inhabits." It was in 1901, too, that,Simon Dubnow published the fourth of his “Letters About the Old and the New Jewry” in the magazine Voskhod. hi this letter he formulated his idea of a culturally and historically self-governing nation and spoke in favor of the formation of secularized Jewish communities consisting of both religious and nonreligious elements. These communities, he felt, should combine into a union of communities and these, in turn, should be afliliated into a world union of Jewish communities. The Kishinev pogrom, which shocked the entire Jewish (and non-Jewish) world gave great impetus to the development of national Jewish demands. The subsequent Gomel pogrom contributed a new page to modern Jewish history with the formation of Jewish self-defense units. The selfdefense was organized by Jewish youth and workers under the leadership of the Bund, the Labor-Zionists and others. _‘Ma—rk~Liber (M. l. Goldman), then a 20-year-old youth, fervently urged the congress to adopt this resolution. He said: “We have until now been in large measure cosmopolites. We must become national. There is no need to fear this word. National does not mean nationalist.”

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews 157 The militant readiness of these groups to defend the national honor and form fighting detachments for self-defense against looters and hoodlums communicated itself to the rest of the Jewish population. It is characteristic that one of the appeals for self-defense was written in Hebrew by Ahad Ham and was distributed among Zionists and religious circles. In the winter of 1903-1904, when the irnminence of the revolution was clearly in the air, the entire situation acquired an increasingly political coloration. Labor strikes, peasant disorders, and student unrest made the atmosphere more and more explosive and prepared the revolutionary soil. A particularly great stimulus to revolutionary moods, at the height of the disastrous Russo-Japanese war, was the massination of the Minister of the Interior Plehve, in whom the Jews saw one of their most stubborn enemies. By this time the revolutionary movement had gathered force among the Jewish population as well. It was the period of the first demonstrations in streets and theatres. Clandestine meetings on the outskirts of towns often attracted thousands of workers. Economic strikes assumed political character and were brutally suppressed by the police. Political unrest aflected all strata of the Jewish community, and many prominent Jewish leaders, even among those of strongly national bent, belonged to general Russian organizations, such as the illegal Union for Liberation. At this time the active circles of Russian Jewry were united in the feeling that Jewish demands should not be confined to the field of civil rights, but should be pressed with equal insistence in the area of national rights. This idea dealt the final blow to the ideology of assimilation and the vague cosmopolitan notions that still lingered in the

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 158 minds of some elements. It was so dificult to withstand the impact of the growing national moods that, in the words of one of the ideologists of the Bund, Vladimir Medem, “in the winter of 1904, the central committee of the Bund was compelled, in formal violation of the resolution of the Bund convention, to introduce the slogan of national autonomy into the daily agitation work."

VI

Within the non-socialist sector of the Jewish community, the era of the first revolution, from 1905 to 1907, also refiected itself in the creation of a wide range of political parties and groups, which put forward their own national programs. The “political spring" of 1904-1905 laid the foundation for the coalition of several parties, which called a number of congresses of Jewish leaders and established the “Union for the Attainment of Full Rights for the Jewish People in Russia." This coalition included the group which later called itself the Jewish People’s Group (the future Jewish Constitutional Democrats, headed by M. M. Vinaver), the Jewish People's Party (Folkspartei), ideologically close to' Dubow and his ideas on the national question, and the Zionists. The Union for Full Rights strove to “achieve full civil, political and national rights for the Jewish people in Russia." Its statement on national rights enunciated the principle of “freedom of national and cultural self-determination, expressed in the widest autonomy of the communities," and demanded freedom of language and school instruction. To the end of establishing the foundations of national selfdeterrnination and the principles of the internal organization of Russian Jewry. the Union urged the convocation of

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an All-Russian Jewish National Assembly on the basis of a universal, free and secret ballot. In connection with the coating elections to the First State Duma, the Union urged the Jewish deputies in the Duma to form “a Jewish group for common action in all questions relating to full rights for Jews . The members of this group should not be bound by mandatory discipline." This passage of the resolution rejected the idea, widely held in Zionist circles, that the Jewish deputies should organize an independent faction bound by discipline. When the Union began to prepare its election campaign for the Second State Duma, a conflict developed within the coalition as a result of the position taken by one of its component groups—the Zionists. Under the impact of the stormy events of 1905, which stirred up wide circles of Rusm'an Jewry, the Zionists had undergone a significant change. At their convention in Helsingfors in November, 1906, the Russian Zionists adopted a so-called Gegenwartsprogramm. Under this program, the Russian Zionists recognized the nwessity—independent of their ultimate goal, which was the establishment of a Jewish state—not only of facing the daily needs and demands of Russian Jewry, but also of close participation in its political and social struggles. This new position of the Russian Zionists, adopted under the influence of the “younger elements” (I. Grinbaum, V. Jabotinsky, and others), prompted them to come forward in a new role—as an independent political party of Russian Jews. The Russian Zionist Organization, the new program declared, “sanctions Zionist participation in the movement and urges the necessity of a union of for liberation Russian Jewry, based on recognition of the Jewish nationality and a legally established self-government in all mat-

. .

...

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ters relating to Jewish national existence." The Zionists

also supported the slogan calling for a convocation of an All-Russian Jewish National Assembly and proclaimed “the rights of the national (Hebrew) and the spoken (Yiddish) languages in the schools, the courts and public life.” The functions of national self-government, according to the Zionist position, should be fulfilled by local community councils and all-Russian congresses of communities. The Zionist decision to take an active part in the election campaign under their own party banner led to violent conflicts Within the Union for Full Rights and caused its eventual collapse, followed by the formation of the Jewish People's Group. In December, 1906, a proclamation against the Zionists was issued over the signatures of M. Vinaver, G. Sliozberg, M. Kulisher, L. Shtemberg, and others. In February, 1907, the Jewish People‘s Group held its organizational convention and drew up a program, with which the new party appeared on the public scene. It should be stressed that, in contrast to other parties, the followers of Vinaver were distinguished by the moderation of their demands. They favored the reorganization of the communities and felt that “the sphere of the community's competence should properly include the schools, as well as welfare activities and institutions serving religious needs." They did not, however, support other slogans popular at the time—such as the organization of a Union of Jewish Communities and the calling of a Jewish National Assembly. The Jewish People‘s Group was also rather reserved on the question of language, taking a position of so-called “nonpredetermination" and favoring generally “the right to choose the language of instruction." The Jewish People's Party, organized somewhat earlier (at the end of 1906), supported the ideas of spiritual or

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews 161 cultural nationalism formulated by S. M. Dubnow. In its program, the Jewish People‘s Party demanded “freedom of national self-determination" for all the nationalities of Russia, adding that “the rights of national autonomy should be granted ... to the national minorities as well." The future Russian parliament, it stated, should “guarantee every national minority absolute inviolability of its civil, political, and national rights." According to this program, Jewish national autonomy should be expressed in community organizations, united into a “Union of Jewish communities, representative of united Russian Jewry.” The law, it went on, should guarantee “the right of Jews to use their language everywhere in public life" and “equality of the Jewish language with all others." The primary education of Jewish children, it maintained, should be under the jurisdiction of the communities, whose functions were to include a variety of other services to meet Jewish needs. The Party favored the calling of a Jewish National Constituent Assembly which would then establish the forms of the autonomous Jewish organization. A special place among the groups of that time was held by the Jewish Democratic Group (L. Bramson, A. Braudo, G. Landau, J. Frumkin, and others), which originated in 1904. The Democratic Group came to the fore with a campaign to collect signatures under an “Appeal" to Russian society, which vividly described the condition of Jews in Russia. In contrast to the Jewish People's Group, closely linked with the moderately liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) party, the members of the Democratic Group belonged to the more radical populist sector of Russian public opinion. Both in the State Duma and in their general activities they went hand in hand with the Labor Group (Trudoviki).

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Among the socialist parties of the period of the first revolution national programs were also undergoing a process of crystallization. At the Fifth Congress of the Bund (1903) there was as yet no unity. and, in view of an almost equal division of opinion, the congress decided to adopt no two-1: lutions on the national question. However, as we pointed out earlier, in the winter of 1904 the central committee of the party, basing itself on the realignments which had taken place in Bundist ranks, raised the slogan of cultural-national autonomy. At its Sixth Congress in the autumn of 1905, the Bund offered a broad national program. This Program demanded civil and political equality for Jews and “legal guarantees making it possible for the Jewish population to use its native language in its dealings with the courts, govemment institutions and organs of local and regional selfgovernment." It also defined cultural-national autonomy in the following words: “Removal from the jurisdiction of the state and the local and regional governments of all functions connected with cultural questions (public education, etc.). and the transfer of these functions to the nationality, as represented by special institutions—local and central—elected by the people by universal, equal. direct and secret ballot." (The ideologists and populariurs of the Bund's national demands were Vladimir Medem, V. Kosovsky and R. Abramovitch. R. Abramovitch-Rein (18804963) became prominent after the Russian revolution of 1917 both in Russia and abroad as one of the foremost leaders of the Menshevik movement; in addition to his political activities, he contributed widely to the Russian and Yiddish press. The desire of the Bund to limit the sphere of competence of the Jewish autonomous organization solely to questions

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of culture and education was prompted by the fear that broader autonomy might “weaken the class consciousness" of Jewish workers and artisans. This position, however, elicited neither understanding nor sympathy among the other Jewish parties and groups. The Folkspartei, the Democratic Group, The Poale-Zionists, and the Seirnovrsy were all opposed to such self-delimitation. In contrast to the Bund, they advocated national autonomy embracing all aspects of Jewish life, including socioeconomic problems, public health, and so on. The Jewish Socialist Workers' Party (the Seirnovrsy) stated in its program that “every nationality, comprising all its parts scattered in various regions and localities within the country, should together form a single national union, with completely autonomous jurisdiction over all its national affairs." Regarding the community as the basic unit of the autonomous organization, the party proposed the formation of regional unions of communities and urged the convocation, on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret ballot, of a Jewish National Seim (Parliament) as “the supreme organ of Jewish national self-government and spokesman for the united Russian Jewry." The party also supported the convocation of a National Constituent Assembly, the principle of equality of language, etc. (The ideologists of the Seirnovrsy were Dr. Chaim Zhitlovsky, M. B. Ratner, Ben-Adir, A. Rozin, M. Zilberfarb, and others. The party published a magaa'ne, Vozrozlrdenie [“Rebirth"], two anthologies under the title of Serp [“Sickle"], and the weekly Folksshrime [“People‘s Voice"] in Vilno. As regards other Jewish socialist parties, they did not. in essence, offer any broad national programs, although both the Zionist-Socialists and the Poale Zion contributed their share to the formulation of the national demands of Rus-

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 164 sian Jewry. The Zionist-Socialist Workers' Party, formed in 1904, was at first represented at the Zionist congresses. However, after the Seventh Congress in Basic it broke with the “Palestinians"; in 1907 it amalgamated with the Jewish Territorialist Workers‘ Party.’ (The leaders 'of the ZionistSocialists were the economist J. D. Lestschinsky, V. Latsky-Bartoldi, and others. The theoretical basis for the party's activities was formulated in J. D. Lestschinsky's work, The Jewish Worker in Russia. The Zionist-Socialists published a magazine, Der Weg [“T'he Road"], and other publications.) In the resolution of the First Congress of the party in February 1906, dealing with national demands, we read: “The Jewish proletariat in the countries of the Diaspora can satisfy only those of its national needs which relate to education in its own language. Institutions generally necessary for the fulfillment of national needs cannot, however, acquire effective binding force under the present realities of Jewish life." The Zionist-Socialists stressed the demand for instruction in Yiddish and favored Jewish school unions; at the same time, they rejected national autonomy as “a reactionary utopia nurtured by bourgeoisassimilationist and reactionary-nationalist elements." The Poale-Zion movement. which originated from small circles scattered throughout Russia as early as 1900-1902, remained generally true to Zionist philosophy. although later it joined its voice to the demand for national auton-

‘7'111? TErritorialists

(rs-rap) resolved at their congress in the spring of 1905 that “No political changes in Russia can sufficiently improve our condition to lessen the need for an independent territory." The Territorialist: in Russia were led by one of the pioneers of Zionism and a close friend and comrade-in-arms of Herzl, Dr. Max Mandelshtam and. after his death in I912, by Dr. lokhelman and Arnold Margolin. This party never enjoyed wide popular appeal among Russian Jewry.

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omy. In its draft program of 1906. we read: “The Party demands national-political autonomy with all-embracing political, cultural and financial jurisdiction in all internal The party stresses, however, that until national affairs territorial autonomy is achieved, no national rights in the Diaspora can solve the Jewish question." (The leaders of the Poale-Zionists were B. Borochov, Ben-Zvi, and others. The Poale-Zionists published the Yevreyskaya Rabochaya Khronika [“Jewish Labor Chronicle"] in Poltava, Molar, [“T'he Hammer"] in Sirnferopol, and a number of publications in Yiddish.) Thus, all the Jewish political parties which sprang up in Russia at the beginning of 20th century were united in a number of areas: (1) all of the groups repudiated assimilation as an ideology or a perspective for Russian Jewry; (2) along with the struggle for equality and political rights, Russian Jewry came to regard itself as a nation which had to be assured certain national rights; (3) the constructive idea which summed up within itself all the national demands was that of Jewish autonomy, with the community as its basic unit; (4) not all the political parties accepted the principle of a seculariud community, but none insisted on the preservation of a purely religious community; (5) in conformity with the spirit of the time, the principles of democracy and equality were recognized by all the programs; (6) the rights of Yiddish in the schools and in public life were recognized and supported by wide circles of Jewish public opinion, including both the Zionists, who insisted on equal status for Hebrew, and the moderate groups, which confined themselves to the formula of “freedom of choosing the language of instruction."

...

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VIII After the upsurge of 1905-1907. Russian Jewry found itself in a new political situation. The very fact of the existence of the State Duma, as well as the development of an extensive and comparatively free political press and the presence of certain liberties under a constitution (however shadowy it may have been), gave rise to entirely new forms of public life in the country. Yet, when Russian Jewry tallied its national gains, the balance was not encouraging. After the October strike of 1905 and the ensuing Manifesto granting certain frwdoms and the convocation of a legislative Duma, the local authorities and the reactionaries took their usual revenge: beginning on October 18, 1905, a wave of pogroms against the intelligentsia and the Jews swept across the country. There were outbreaks of violence in 150 places. During the existence of the First State Duma there were pogroms in Belostock and Siedletz. After the dissolution of the First Duma, the Jewish deputies Herzenstein and Iollos were murdered by members of the “black hundreds." The system of Jewish disfranchisement was still unshaken and the Pale of Settlement remained in force—and with them, the old ordeals relating to the right of residence and the Jewish quota system in the schools. Arbitrary police rule, organically bound with these conditions and encouraged by the government‘s anti-Semitic policies, was as oppressive as ever. Resistance to anti-Semitism was becoming one of the chief slogans of the entire progressive camp and the most important organs of the Russian press. However, during the period of [907-1914, an “a-Semitic," if not openly anti-Semitic mood occasionally swept certain liberal elements among the Russian intelligentsia as well. Moveover,

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews 167 disillusion with the maximalist tendencies of the first Russian revolution gave some people a pretext to blame them on the all-too-obvious participation of Jews in the revolutionary movement. The growing anti-Semitism of the Court, the administration and, to an extent, within society led to the increasing moral disintegration of the regime, until it sank to the all-time low of staking its bid on the infamous marked card of the ritual murder trial in Kiev. We are referring to the Beylis case of 1911-1913. This card, however, was defeated: the Russian jurors acquitted Beylis, saving the honor of Russian justice and the Russian courts. Yet it was precisely during the years between the first revolution and the First World War that the great latent forces within the Jewish national community in Russia had ripened and emerged to the surface. It was during those years that a number of old Jewish social organizations were infused with new life. These years also witnessed the formation of the Jewish Literary Society, which became widely popular and developed 55 branches in various localities. The Society arranged lectures on diverse Jewish topics, both literary and political. Other social and cultural groups which emerged and attracted wide attention at the time included the Jewish Folk Music Society, organizations to encourage literature and folk arts, and groups investigating Jewish folklore and linked with the name of S. Ansky, author of the famous play, The Dybbuk. We must particularly keep in mind the importance acquired in those years by the Yiddish press. During 190507, the very successful daily socialist newspaper, Folkszeirung (“People's Paper”), was openly published by the Bund in Vilno. The Zionist-Socialists and Poale-Zion had their own press organs, and the democratic Fraind

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(“Friend") moved to Warsaw from St. Petersburg. The Newspaper Hainr (“Today"), and later the Moment and

certain other newspapers which sprang up in Warsaw attained mass circulations. a new experience for the Yiddish press. Russo-Jewish publications also continued to appear. These included Novy Voskhod (“New Sunrise"), Yevreysky Mir (“Jewish World"), the Zionist Rassvet (“Dawn"), and others. A very special place at the time was occupied by the question of the legalization of the Jewish community and the related problem of its reconstitution. In essence, ever since the government of Nicholas 1 had first completely neutralized and later banned the Jewish kahal (community), Russian Jewry had no legal community organization. In every city and town there were isolated philanthropic and related organizations, but any legal or stable association or centralization of these bodies was out of the question. The problem of the legalization of the Jewish community had now gained urgent significance both for practical reasons and as a matter of principle. Jewish deputies to the Third State Duma (Friedman and Nisselovich) were preparing to introduce bills on these questions. In 1909 a Jewish congress was called in Kovno; it was attended by 120 delegates from 46 cities, and the central problem under discussion was the question of the legalization of the community. G. B. (Henri) Sliozberg, who delivered the main report in the name of the initiators of the congress (in effect, the Jewish People's Group). spoke in favor of a religious community. Representatives of the Bund were among those who advocated a secularized community. But whatever the character of the community, the congress was unanimously in favor of seeking its legalization as an ad-

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews

169

ministrative body, with the right of taxing its members. The congress elected a permanent executive committee, but it was short-lived and enjoyed little influence. Far more important was the Political Bureau established as an advisory board assisting the Jewish deputies to the Fourth State Duma. The Political Bureau, which consisted of representatives of four Jewish parties (the Jewish People's Group, the Zionists. the Folkspartei, and the Jewish Democratic Group), existed until the Revolution of 1917 and was particularly active during the years of World War I.‘ D(

The war opened new tragic pages in the history of Russian Jewry. The initial German victories resulted in the occupation of Poland and the western provinces, dividing a Russian Jewish population of six million virtually in half. In addition, the disasters of war led to a vicious upsurge of anti-Semitism at the front, encouraged and fanned by the inept command which sought to shift the blame for its failures upon the Jews; the Jews were subjected to deportations, charges of spying and treason, and so on. In 1915, Jewish relief committees had to support more than 250,000 refugees and deportees. Under the impact of these ordeals, Russian Jewry did not yield to panic or despair. It sought to mobilize sympathy among friends in the State Duma, the press. and Russian society. and organized energetic relief and assistance activities. Faced with disasters, Russian Jewry proved itself capable of uniting all its political groups on the basis of ac‘For more information about the activities of the Political Bureau see article by J. Frumkin.

170 Russian Jewry (I860-I917) tive self-help. Already in the early period of the war, in 1914, November, the Political Bureau, which functioned in connection with the Jewish deputies to the Duma. called a large clandestine congress of Jewish communities in St. Petersburg. The socialists were represented at this congress only by a few isolated individuals; the majority of the delegates belonged to bourgeois-democratic groups represented in the Political Bureau. Later in the war, during the period of the worst persecutions. tactical differences were put aside and all efforts were devoted to the cause of Jewish national self-defense against the increasingly brazen forces of anti-Semitism. The new central organization, YEKOPO (The Jewish Committee for Assistance to the Victims of the War), became the focal point of this activity. It set up a wide network of agents assigned to carry on work in various localities. Most of these agents were members of Jewish socialist and democratic groups. Other groups and institutions also sought to draw new. active elements into their work and to democratize their organizations. The CRT launched a wide program of helping refugee workers and artisans to find employment. The Revolution of February, 1917, gave the Jews full and equal rights, abolishing all restrictions and creating conditions under which the Jewish national body could attempt to find the form of autonomy answering the demands and aspirations of the people. The Jews hailed the Russian democratic revolution and took an active part in all the free institutions created by it. Russian Jewry held a number of elections to democratic community organizations. made preparations to convene an All-Russian Jewish Congress, and so on.

Ideological Trends Among Russian Jews 171 However, the hopes that the Russian Jews had pinned on the revolution were not to be realized—for the same reasons that prevented the revolution from fulfilling the expectations of all democratic strata of the population and the hopes of all the other nationalities living in Russia.

Russian jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine by Gershon Swet

HISTORIANS USUALLY DATE THE BEGINNING OF ORGANIZED

Palestinophilism among Russian Jewry to the fall of 1884, when the first congress of Palestinophiles was held in Katowice, in Prussian Silesia. This date, of course, is arbitrary, for the first group of settlers, members of the so-called BILU movement, had arrived in Palestine in the summer of 1882, a year and a half before the Katowice congress. It was not with the BILU, however, that the Palestinophile movement began among Russian Jews. If we define Palestinophilism as the close spiritual bond that links Jews to their historic homeland, the longing of the Jews for their lost statehood and a full national life, and the maintenance of actual ties with Palestine in the form of pilgrimages, regular aid to the social institutions of the Palestine Jewry, and constant contact with the rabbis and scholars residing in Palestine. then we may say that Palestinophilism had always existed in the Jewish community in Russia. 172

Rum'an Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 173 Ties with Palestine had been maintained for centuries in a variety of ways. They were kept alive through prayers which mentioned Jenrsalem and Zion daily in morning. midday, and evening services, and particularly often on holidays; through religious customs and traditions, such as the celebration of the fifteenth day of the month of Shebat by all Jews in dispersion in honor of the day celebrated in Palestine as the New Year for Trees, or the fast and recitation of the Eicho on the Ninth of Ab, to mark the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem thousands of years ago. Regular contacts with Palestine were, further, maintained through the shadan'm (or skin'cher‘ derabanim emissaries of the Palestine rabbis), who visited the Jews in Russia and Poland to collect contributions for yeshivahs, charity homes, and hospitals in Pale-

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The longing of the Russian Jews, especially of those who lived in southern Russia, for Palestine expressed itself both in their literature and in action: they made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, collected money throughout southern Russia and Eastern Europe, and turned it over to a so-called Nasi (President), whose residence was in Lvov. In literature, the yearning for a return to Palestine evidenced itself as long ago as during the Kiev era of Russian history. as in the works of Moyshe ben Yankif of Kiev. The Shadan‘m. From the extensive memoirs of the shadarim, (see A. Yaari, Sheluchey Ererz Israel. pub. in Jerusalem by Mossad Kuk), we learn of numerous missions of such shadarr'm to Russia and Poland in the 18th century. Aaron ben Itzchak spent more than three years in Russia and Poland (1785-1788). He was sent there by the Hassidic leader Menachem-Mendel of Vitebsk, who had settled in Tiberias, Palestine, in 1777 with the aim of tram-

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 174 forming Palestine into a center of Hassidism. Shlomo Zalman ben Reb Zvi Hirsh Kogen, originally of Vilno, spent five years in Poland and Russia (1780-1785). In 1787, the shadar Shmuel Groynem Hakogen visited Russia. A year later, Zvi Hirsh Segal came to Russia, where he spent three years. Yoel ben Moshe visited Russia at approximately the same time; in 1801 he was sent once again to collect money from Russian Jews. Immigration 0! Hassidim and Perushim to Palestine. From the very inception of the Hassidic movement, its ideologists and leaders formed a plan to organize a world center of Hassidism in Palestine. The idea of linking Hassidism with Palestine, writes the historian of Hassidism, Dr. S. Gorodetsky, struck deep roots both among the Hassidic masses and among the tsadiks themselves. This plan began to assume concrete form after the immigration to Palestine in I774 of two pupils of the Besht —Nachman and Menachem-Mendel —with a number of Hassidim from Galicia and the Ukraine. Nine years later they were followed by Mendel of Vitebsk, Avrom of Kalissk and lsroel of Plotsk, with more than 300 Hassidim. The center of the Hassidic movement in Russia at that time was in the Polish town of Grudek-Gorodok. The settlement in Palestine of the famous Reb Nachman of Bratslav. one of the most vivid figures in the Hassidic movement. produced a strong impression among the Hassidic masses. The large-scale emigration of Hassidim to Palestine prompted their opponents, the followers of the Vilno Gaon (known as Perushim), to follow their example. Their objective was the establishment of a center for combatting Hassidism in Palestine. Eliahu. the Vilno Gaon himself, also intended to visit Palestine in his old age; however, on

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 175 reaching Konigsberg he changed his plans and returned to Vilno. It is not clear what caused his return. It is assumed that the Gaon had learned on the way that the Hassidim in Tiberias and Saphed were well organized, while his own followers were in a minority. In 1806 the Penis-him began to settle in Palestine on a mass scale. A special committee (vaad) was organized in Vilno to give them financial assistance. Haluka. This word means “distribution, allocation.” It refers to the allocation among various institutions social, cultural, religious, and so on—of funds regularly collected for this purpose among the Jews in the Diaspora. The Hassidic leaders who settled in Palestine organized the haluka on a regular basis. In the Ukraine, Volhynia, and Lithuania, haluka came to involve the entire Jewish communities. Its treasuries were filled not by the rich and not by special patrons, but chiefly by the wide masses of Hassidim. The metal boxes used for collecting contributions, known as boxes of “Reb Meir Baal Nes" (Reb Meir the Miracle-Maker), were to be found in 300,000 Jewish homes in Europe. A copy of an appeal issued in 1796, urging the Jewish population of Poland to contribute weekly for the nwds of those residing in Palestine, is extant. This appeal was highly successful. For participating in this work, Shneur-Zalman of Lyada was accused of “relations with Turkey" and virtually of state treason. In 1801 Isroil Shklovsky traveled throughout Belorussia and Lithuania to collect moneys for the Perushim. During the latter half of the 19th century, the Jews formed socalled kolelim, the forerunners of the landsmanshaft in America. A central committee, Vaad Hakolelim, which

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sent its representatives or shelichim throughout the Jewish

communities in the Disaspora, was formed in 1878. Haluka received a great deal of attention in the Jewish press of its time. It had many negative aspects, encouraging parasitin, idleness, and begging among those who lived at public expense in Palestine. Among its positive aspects was the fact that this institution served for many years as the binding link between Palestine and the Jews of Russia, Ukraine, Podolia, Volhynia, Galicia, and Rumania. In 1821, as we are told by the Polish-Jewish historian Shimon Ashkenazi. the censorship office in Warsaw intercepted two letters from Turkey. In these letters Solomon Plonsky informed his son-in-law in Warsaw of his safe arrival in Palestine, and asked to send him a certain sum of money for the return journey. A number of phrases in the letter, written in Hebrew, in a flowery, oriental style, seemed suspicious to the Warsaw censors, who transmitted the letters to the censorship office of the Imperial Commissioner. The latter ordered that a French translation of the letters he prepared, and sent it on to the Tsar’s Viceroy in Poland, the Grand Duke Constantine. The latter also discerned special meanings in the letters, and sent them, with a confidential memorandum, to his brother, Emperor Alexander I. The excessively zealous police spies read into the letters of the pious Jew to his son-in-law a secret political plot “of extreme seriousness, threatening the security of the state and even touching upon the realm of great current problems of general European policy." The Polish and Russian Jews, they reported to their superiors, had initiated a secret conspiracy with the aim of reestablishing a Jewish state in Palestine, with the assistance of the Padishah, Sultan Mah-

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine I77 moud H. According to these police agents, Solomon Plonsky camoufiaged himself as a pious pilgrim, but was really an emissary of a secret society with branches in Russian Poland, in the western provinces (with a center in Vilno), and in southern Russia (with a center in Odessa). The relevant records in the archives of the General Stafi are collected under the heading, “Documents About the Jew Solomon Plonsky, who joumeyed to Jerusalem with the aim of promoting the reestablishment of a Jewish state .. ." His con'espondence led to tragic consequences for Plonsky himself. After he returned to Warsaw, via Odessa, in December, l821, he was arrested and sent to a prison where the most important state criminals were confined. He died in that prison a short time later. Among the Jewish correspondence found in Plonsky's possession, writes Ashkenazi, there were several letters— with others of a purely personal nature—which cast an interesting light on the internal organization of Polish Jewry relating to pilgrimages to Palestine. Every community appointed directors of charity societies and collectors of contributions for the Holy Land. Through Plonsky, the Polish Rabbi in Jerusalem appealed to the Polish Jews to collect money for the construction of a synagogue in Jerusalem, in which the services were to be conducted in accord with traditional German-Polish ritual. He appealed to them in the name of “the holy city of Jerusalem, which shall be rebuilt in the near future," and fervently pleaded with them to “be strong and courageous, and return to the crown its ancient sanctity." The flowery and pompous phrases typical of the epistolary style of the period and interspersed with quotations from the Psalms and the Prophets, were interpreted by the Tsarist oflicials as proof that the Jews, dispersed among the nafions of the world, have their own

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secret government, consisting of rabbis, collectors for the

Holy Land, elders, and so forth. In Odessa, says the official memorandum on this question, two thousand Jews maintained constant correspondence with the Palestine Jews aided by them, and also presumably with Jews residing in Constantinople and acting as intermediaries. It should be taken into account, we read further, that these two thousand Odessa Jews will constitute a dangerous army of spies if occasion arises to sell their services to the Turks. The assertion that two thousand Odessa Jews maintained constant correspondence with Palestine Jews was unquestionably based on pure fantasy. But the tragic episode with Solomon Plonsky was an indication of the reaction of 0115cial circles to the very fact of the attachment of Russian Jews to Palestine. The Pogroms of the 1880's. The period of the Haskalah and of naive faith in the miraculous powers of assimilation afiected only a relatively thin stratum of Jewish intelligentsia. The assirnilationists of that time sincerely believed that it was enough for Jews to master in sufficient measure the art of mimicry, to learn to be “like everybody else," to speak the language of the country without an accent, to shave off their beards and wear the same clothing as the rest of the population; anti-Semitism and the age-old hatred of Jews would dissipate like smoke. However, the broad masses of the people, who lived their own lives within the framework of century-old traditions, largely ignored the Haskalah, while rabbis and religious authorities regarded it as apostasy. The pogroms of the 1880’s, which swept wide territories in Russia, sobered a good many—though not all—of the romanticists of emancipation and advocates of assimilation.

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 179

A number of publicists went to the opposite extereme: they began to deny all possibility of living among other peoples as a stateless minority. The publicist M. L. Lilienblum (1843-1910) concluded after the pogroms of 1881 that the Jews “would always be regarded as aliens everywhere," and that “the rebirth of the Jewish people is possible only on the historic soil of their forebears in Palestine.” A similar evolution occurred in the mind of another Russo-Jewish writer of that period—L. O. Levanda (1836-1888). For many years he had believed in the salutary power of immersion in Russian culture. But after the pogroms Levanda wrote that “when the common people were attacking the Jews, the fine folk were standing at a distance, relishing the picture of their destruction.” Toward the end of his life he became a fervent advocate of the Palestine movement, to which he had previously responded with ironic disapproval, describing the dream of rebuilding the Jewish state as an attempt to “galvanize a mummy.” A passionate adherent of the Palestine movement after the pogroms of the 1880’s was Peretz Smolenskin, who had long been an irreconcilable opponent of assimilation. In a number of brilliant articles in Hebrew, Smolenskin preached the idea of a “spiritual and political rebirth of the Jewish people on the soil of Palestine." With this objective in mind, he conducted a correspondence with the wellknown English Palestinophile Laurence Oliphant (18291883), a Christian who advocated the colonization of Palestine by Jews, and particularly by Russian Jews. Smolenskin's activity as a journalist and writer of ficu’on played an important role in awakening the national consciousness of Russian Jewry. BILU. The word “Bilu” was derived from Verse 5,

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 180 Isaiah 2: “0 house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord." BILU, the first letters of the four Hebrew words, were taken by the members of a student circle of Kharkov University as their device in agitating for mass emigration to Palestine. The circle established contact with Oliphant and appealed to the well-known philanthropist Moses Montefiore for financial aid. A BILU delegation was received by the Grand Vizier of Turkey, and in June, 1882, the first BILU group, consisting of fourteen persons, arrived in Jafia. By this time, the BILU movement in Kharkov and other Russian cities already had a membership of more than five thousand. During their early years in Palestine, the BILU settlers sufl’ered great hardships. Some of them returned to Russia, unable to endure the stresses and privations. The majority, however, remained. They founded the new colony of Heder and also joined the existing colonies of Rishon le Zion, Mikveh Yisroel, and others. Some of the BILU colonists, such as the agronomist Menashe Meirovich, lived to a deep old age and were greatly venerated as the pioneers of the colonization of Palestine by Russian Jews. The BILU movement marks one of the most honorable chapters in the history of the Jewish settlement of Palestine during the 1880's. Hovevey Zion. This term, meaning “Lovers of Zion," was used to designate the Zionist movement which emerged, chiefly among Russian Jews, in the early 1880’s. The idea of returning to Zion had, of course, existed long before. Already in 1840, the magazine Orient published the appeal of an anonymous Jewish author from Constanza, calling upon the Jews of the world not to depend on “paltry emancipation," but to seek a return to the historic home-

land.

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However, a serious forward step took place in the Hovevey Zion movement only after the pogroms of the 1880' , when Russian Jews began to seek for a way out. For many of them, this search resulted in emigration to America and Palestine. A mood in favor of emigration to Palestine developed among many prominent Jewish writers and journalists, as well as within wide strata of the Jewish community. A great many groups and circles supporting this idea were formed in various places. The Russo-Jewish weekly Rarsvet warmly supported the Palestine movement. The poet S. Frug became an enthusiastic advocate of emigration to Palestine, and many prominent rabbis assumed leading roles in the movement. This period witnessed the first practical steps as well. Zalman-David Levontin emigrated to Palestine in 1882. There, together with other settlers (from Rumania), he founded the colony Rishon le Zion in May of the same year. Levontin subsequently became the director of the Jewish Colonial Bank in London and the founder of the Anglo-Palestinian Bank in Jaffa, later renamed HannLeumi, or National Bank. The first BILU group arrived in Palestine in 1882. Baron Edmond de Rothschild began to aid colonists during the same period, providing funds which purchased most of the land that was owned by Jews in the spring of 1948, the year when the state of Israel was established. Dr. Leo Pinsker and his "A uto-Ernancipation.” In 1882, a pamphlet by Dr. Leo Pinsker of Odessa was published in German in Berlin, under the title of Auto-Emancipation— An Appeal of a Russian Jew to his Fellow Jews. Translated into Russian, English, and other languages, it greatly stimulated the further development of the movement which later came to be known as Zionism. Dr. Theodor Herzl

182 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) first heard about Pinsker and read his Auto-Emancipation after his own book, A Jewish State, had been completed. “HadIknown about Pinsker's pamphlet earlier,” Herzl said to his friend David Wolfson, who later succeeded him as president of the world Zionist movement, “I might not have written A Jewish State." The Jews, wrote Dr. Pinsker in his Auto-Emancipation, are an alien element among the peoples with whom they live. They cannot assimilate with any other nationality, and consequently they cannot be tolerated by other nationalities. The problem is to find some method of fitting this isolated element into the family of nations, so that the Jewish question would finally cease to exist. The Jewish people, he said, lacks that distinctive life which is impossible in the absence of a common language, common customs, and a common territory. It does not have its own homeland, although it knows many homelands. It does not have its own focal point, its own center of gravity. It has neither a government nor a representative body. It is scattered everywhere, but is nowhere at home. Among the living peoples of the earth, the Jews are a nation that has long outlived its day. With the loss of their homeland, wrote Pinsker, the Jews lost their independence and underwent a process of disintegration which precluded the existence of a whole, living organism. And yet, though crushed by the weight of Roman rule and deprived of its own state and its own political life, the Jewish people was not totally destroyed, but continued to exist as a nation spiritually. The world has come to regard this people as a sinister ghost wandering among the living. The mysterious survival of the wandering corpse-nation, devoid of unity and internal organization. lacking a scrap of land, yet lingering among the

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 183

living nations, was a strange phenomenon, unprecedented in history, and could not but disturb the imagination. And if fear of ghosts is an emotion native to man, with understandable roots in his psychic world, it is no wonder, said Pinsker, that it rises with particular force in the presence of this dead, yet still living nation. Analyzing the nature of anti-Semitism, Dr. Pinsker came to the conclusion that salvation could be found only “in the reestablishment of a unified national body." “The Jewish people," he wrote, “is more closely involved in international cultural life than many others, and has done more for humanity. Jews have behind them their past, their common origin, an unquenchable vitality, unshakable faith, and an unequalled martyrology. The nations of the world have sinned against us more than against any other nation We must, at last, have our own homeland ." Speaking of the md to find a “national house of our own," Pinsker nevertheless felt that “we should not dream of restoring ancient Judea." “We need not settle,” he wrote, “in the place where our statehood was once shattered and destroyed. The object of our aspirations should not be a ‘holy land.‘ but a land of our own, where we shall bring our own idea of God and the Bible which we saved from the ruins of our old fatherland, for it is only these, rather than Jordan or Jerusalem, that made our home a Holy Land. It may be that the Holy Land will indeed become our own. All the better. But first and foremost we must determine what country in the world is accessible and at the same time capable of serving as a trustworthy, unchallenged refuge for all the Jews who are compelled to leave their native lands." From this abstract theory of territorialism, Pinsker later went on to Palestinophilism, publishing an open letter in

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the anthology, Palestine, which appeared in St. Petersburg in 1884. After that, during the last seven years of his life, he was one of the most influential and active leaders of the Palestinophile movement. The Katowice congress was held at his initiative and under his chairmanship. Dr. Pinsker died on December 21, 1891. Thirty-five years later a Zionist fanatic, whose name remains unknown, managed to move Pinsker's remains from Soviet Russia to Jerusalem, where they were laid to rest in the so-called Nicanor Cave on Mount Scopus. Since 1948, the only persons to have had access to the site have been police guards under the supervision of United Nations oficials. The Katowice Congress. This congress became something of a turning point in the history of Jewish participation in the building of Palestine. It was attended not only by Palestinophiles from Russia, but also by delegates of pro-Palestine groups and organizations in Rumania, Germany, England, and France. It laid the foundations for a world-wide Jewish Palestinophile organization. The congress was, however, dominated by delegates from Russia. In addition to Dr. Pinsker, they included Rabbi S. Mogilever; the editor of Hamagid, D. Gordon; the editor of Hamelits, A. Tsederbaum; the Moscow millionnaire, Z. Vysotsky; the historian Shefer (S. P. Rabinovich, translator of Graetz‘s Hebrew writings); and Dr. I. Khazanovich of Belostock, whose efforts were later instrumental in the creation of the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem. The congress allocated funds for assistance to members of the BILU movement and to other colonists in Palestine. It also set up directing centers—in Warsaw and Odessa. The Odessa center formed the so—called Odessa Committee. At that time nine colonies were already in existence in

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 185 Palestine. The Katowice congress sent 2. Vysotsky to Palestine; he conducted negotiations in Constantinople concerning a “charter" along the Herzl model. Two and a half years later, a second congress of Palestinophiles was held in the resort town of Druskeniki, in the Grodno Province, where it was possible for a large group to memble without attracting the notice of the police. Among the delegates to the Druskeniki congress, two men drew attention to themselves for the first time. They were Meir Dizengof and Menachem-Mendel Ussishkin. Twenty-two years later Dizengof became one of the founders of Tel Aviv and its first mayor. Ussishkin remained for more than fifty years one of the leaders of the world Zionist movement. He spent the last twenty-odd years of his life in Jerusalem, where he died in 1941. The Odessa Committee elected Yechiel-Michel Pines, who had settled in Palestine in the latter 1870's, to be its representative in that country. In 1890, after extended efforts and petitions to the authorities, the Odessa Committee was finally legalized and henceforth continued its actiVities as the Society for Assistance to Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine. Until World War I the Odessa Committee was the directing center of the entire Hovevey Zion movement, headed by L. Pinsker and M. L. Lilienblum. The Odessa Committee provided the funds for the establishment of the Rehovoth and Cheder colonies in Palestine. Until the outbreak of World War I, the Committee bought lands for Jewish colonization, subsidized existing colonies, stimulated the founding of new ones, organized schools, and so on. In the autumn of 1890 the Committee sent to Palestine the engineer Vladimir I. Temkin, whose tasks included the purchase of land for Jewish colonization. Although he

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knew only Russian and was unable to speak either Yiddish or Hebrew, Temkin was able to win the friendship of the local Jewish leaders who spoke Russian by his oratorical talents, impressive appearance, and deep devotion to the cause of Palestine. He produced an equally great impression on the Arabs, who called him Malk al Yakhud (The Jewish King). In effect, however, Temkin's mission was unsuccessful. As a result of his activities, the Turkish government forbade the sale of land to foreigners, and the considerable sums paid by Temkin as advances under a number of agreements were lost. After his return to Russia, Temkin took up the post of community rabbi in Elisavetgrad. He played a prominent role in the Zionist movement and participated in all its congresses. As an emigre after the Revolution of 1917, Temkin remained an active Zionist leader, first in Berlin and later in Paris, where he died in the late 1920's. Ahad-Haam and "Bnei Mosheh.” In his article, Lo ze Haderach (“Not in These Ways"), Ahad-Haam (O. I. Ginzberg) of Odessa criticized the system of Jewish colonization followed by the Odessa Committee. After his visit to Palestine in 1891, he declared in an article, “The Truth About Palestine," that such colonization activities were “unsystematic and groundless." In his article, “Slavery and Freedom," he sharply attacked the assimilationist tendencies of Western European Jewry. Ahad-Haam, the founder of “spiritual Zionism,” regarded Palestinophilism as "integral Judaism" and preached the creation of a Spiritual Jewish center in Palestine, to serve as a symbol of “the unification of the nation and its free development in the national spirit, but on universally human foundations.” Ahad-Haam's works have been published in Hebrew, Yid-

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 187

dish, German, Russian, and English. Hundreds of his letters have also been published. Ahad-Haam was the head of the Bnei Mosheh order, which was founded in 1889 and existed for eight years, until the first Zionist congress. The ceremonial of adoption into this order was modeled along Masonic rites. Among the most active branches of the order was the Warsaw Yeshurun, which collected large sums for the Rehovoth colony, established the Ahiasaf publishing house, and so forth. In 1893 the center of Bnei Mosheh was transfened to Jafla. With the beginning of Dr. Herzl's activity and the convocation of the first Zionist congress, the semi-legal work of Bnei Mosheh was no longer needed and the organization was dissolved. Sh. Chemovits (his literary pen-name was Slog, or Sponge) published a small book before World War Iabout Bnei Mosheh. which exerted considerable influence on the activity of Russian members of Hovevey Zion in Palestine. The study was based on a number of generally unavailable sources. The 1890 congress of Bnei Mosheh was attended by 166 delegates from all parts of Russia. Branches (Lishkot) existed in Grodno, Minsk, Brest-Litovsk, Mezerich, St. Petersburg, Lublin, Saratov, and other places. There were also several branches outside of Russia—in Berlin. Liverpool, and Baltimore. The Bnei Mosheh manifesto, published in Palestine, proclaimed the basic principles of the order as national consciousness and love for the Jewish people—a clear and disinterested love, unifying and transcending all party distinctions. National consciousness, stated the manifesto, was above religious feelings, and individual interests were subordinate to national interests. In the Diaspora the

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Jewish people can have no future. If we want to live as a people, says the manifesto, we must build a national homeland in a trustworthy place—and that is possible only in the land of our fathers. First it is necessary to awaken national awareness in the people, to instill in it a high morality. Then a movement will emerge among the people that will lead to national rebirth, to chayey kavod in the land of our forebears. Accordingly, Bnei Mosheh undertook as its central task the effort to deepen the feelings of selfless love and devotion to Jewry. It was necessary, the leaders of the order felt, to exert great spiritual effort to awaken national awareness in pure and unblemished form. Hence, they introduced strict selectiveness and a complicated ritual in the admission of new members. Tire initiators of the order dreamed of turning it into a caste of high priests. Ahad Haam's conception was based fundamentally on the idea of spiritual Zionism. However, most of the members of Bnei Mosheh actively believed in colonization activities in Palestine. The abyss between the high ideals toward which the members of Bnei Mosheh strove and the petty deeds they had to encounter in practice, created friction and conflicts, especially with religious circles, and undermined the existence of the order. But its ideas influenced the thinking and activities of the Palestinophile movement in Russia. Nor should we underestimate the practical results of the colonizing and publishing activities of the members of Bnei Mosheh. They created a new type of Jewish school, the so-called cheder metukan, which was adopted in a number of Jewish centers; they organized the first school in Hebrew; and they rendered considerable aid to colonists in Palestine in their struggle with the Rothschild adminis-

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 189 tration. Bnei Mosheh brought a fresh new stream into the ideology of Jewish nationalism. In summing up the results of the eight years of the order's existence, one must conclude that Bnei Mosheh played a beneficial role in the history of the Palestinophile movement among the Russian Jews. It prepared the soil for the acceptance of political Zionism, born with the appearance of Dr. Herzl, who issued the call and convened the first world Zionist congress in Basel in August of 1897. Russian Zionists at Congresses During Herzl's Lifetime. The Palestinophiles in Russia knew relatively little about the preparations for the first Zionist congress. It was not until June, 1897, that a number of leaders received invitations from the Vienna committee to take part in the congress. M. M. Ussishkin relates that he received a copy of Herzl's pamphlet, A Jewish State, from an acquaintance, who asked him to help to distribute it in Russia. His reply was that he saw no reason to do so. “In its theoretical aspect,” said Ussishkin, “the Russian Zionists, who have read the earlier pamphlets by Pinsker and Lilienblum, will find nothing new. As for its practical aspect, it is quite superficial.” In June of 1896 Ussishkin visited Vienna. At Herzl's invitation, the two men met and spoke for more than two hours. Ussishkin was charmed by Herzl. In 1897, when he received a letter from Herzl describing his plan for convening a Zionist congress and asking Ussishkin's help in organizing it, the latter replied by telegram without a moment's hesitation: Iam at your service! The task of visiting the centers of the Palestinophile movement in Russia and conducting propaganda in favor of the congress was entrusted by Herzl to the young student Ioshua Buchmil (who died in Jerusalem in 1937). The

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 190 best we can expect, Buchmil was told during his stay in Kishinev, is five or six delegates from the entire territory of Russia. However, among the 197 registered delegates of the first congress, Russian Zionists were represented not by five or six, but by sixty-six delegates. In reality, their number was even larger—perhaps even constituting one half of all the delegates in attendance. According to one of the last surviving participants in the first congress, Saul Lurye, who now resides in California, many delegates and guests prefened to remain unlisted, fearing reprisals from the Russian authorities when they returned home. Thus, for example, the well-known publicist and publisher of Voskhod, Adolf Landau, who entertained no sympathies for Zionism, was present at the first congress. Also present was B. F. Brandt, a writer and economist who worked in the Finance Ministry. Brandt even took an active part in a number of committees of the first congress. However, neither Landau nor Brandt are mentioned in the lists of participants or guests at the congress. There were a number of skeptics among Russian Jews, who considered Herzl “a superficial feuilletonist in the Viennese style.” The same critics said of Max Nordau, author of the widely read book Paradoxes, that he “juggled paradoxes even in connection with so tragic a problem as the Jewish question." There were also people who feared that speeches against the Russian government, which would probably be made at the congress, would aggravate the already diflicult position of Russian Jewry. But Herzl assured them in a letter that he was aware of the complexity of the political situation in Russia and w0uld do everything in his power to give the Tsarist government no pretext for repressions against Jews. Reports on the situation of the Jews in various countries were delivered at the congress,

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 191 but it was agreed that the congress would forego a report on Russian Jewry. This question was dealt with briefly only in Nordau’s general survey of the condition of world Jewry. According to the writer Mordechai ben Hilel Hakogen, the Russian delegation did not make itself particularly prominent at the congress, despite its considerable size. In later years, he adds, when the Russian Jews learned more “Congress-Deutsch," in which the sessions were conducted, and became accustomed to parliamentary procedure, technique, and terminology, they no longer were such “model boys" as they had been at the first congress. The only Russian delegates to address the congress were David Farbshtein of Warsaw, who reported on the economic condition of the Jews, and Prof. Belkovsky, who reported on the condition of Jews in Bulgaria. Other Russian delegates, including L. Motzkin, Prof. Herman Shapiro, David Wolfson, V. Temkin, Dr. Shlyapnikov, and Dr. Bernshtein-Kogan, took part only in the discussions, speaking primarily in Russian. Before the close of the congress, a short but emotional speech in German was made by the well known Kiev eye specialist, Prof. Max Mandelshtam. The Russian delegates to the first congress produced a very strong impression on Herzl. Although Herzl had traveled a great deal in Western Europe, his knowledge of the eastern European Jews was limited to hearsay. He included them in his plans, but they remained to him little more than an abstraction. In Basel, Herzl encountered a type of Jew that was entirely new to him. “We were all ashamed," he wrote after the first congress, “that we had regarded ourselves superior to our brothers in eastern Europe. The spiritual level of the delegates from

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 192 Russia, who included many professors, physicians, lawyers, engineers, and manufacturers, is in no way lower than ours. All of them are Jewish nationalists. They provide an effective answer to the idle tongues who insist that the Jew’s national consciousness inevitably puts a distance between him and European culture. Russian Jews,” wrote Herzl, “did not lose their identity in Russian culture. Seeing them, one begins to understand what gave our ancestors strength to endure all persecutions and remain Jews.” At a later date, when Wolfson told Herzl on a certain occasion that “only the Russian Zionists" would support him, the latter replied, “Only? That would be quite enough for me!" The second Zionist congress was attended by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow (who had been present at the first congress as a conespondent), Dr. Chlenov, and Dr. Shmarya Levin. At the sixth congress, Vladimir Jabotinsky began to play a prominent role in the Zionist movement.

On their way to the first congress, the delegates from Russia exercised great caution. While they were still on Russian territory, they conducted themselves like travelers on the way to foreign health resorts and avoided any mention of the congress. It was only after they had crossed the frontier that they began to make each other's acquaintance and to discuss the problems before the congress. During the preparatory work for the second congress, Russian Zionists were already active participants. After the first congress, L. Motzkin was sent as a representative to Palestine. His detailed report on this journey was one of the central items on the agenda of the second congress. A long speech was also delivered at this congress by Prof. M. Mandelshtam.

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The fourth congress, held in London, was attended by more than two hundred delegates from Russia. At the fifth congress, a Democratic Faction was organized, consisting principally of Russian Zionists headed by Chaim Weizmann and Leo Motzkin and aiming “to strengthen the democratic foundations of the movement and deepen its program in the area of national education and national culture.” At the initiative of Herman Shapiro, a Lithuanian-born professor of mathematics at Heidelberg University, the fifth congress set up the Jewish National Fund. This Fund was under the direction of M. Ussishkin from the years following World War Iuntil his death. The Minsk Congress. This congress of the Russian Zionist Organization was held in September, 1902, immediately after the London Zionist congress. It was attended by more than five hundred delegates, representing 75,000 shekel contributors. The chairman of the congress was Dr. Chlenov. Ahad-Haam and Nahum Sokolow spoke on the problems of Jewish culture, and were sharply opposed by the Misrachi leaders, Rabbis Reines and Rabinovich. The congress split into three factions: the "progressists" (led by Weizmann and Motzkin), the “neutralists,” and the Misrachi. A peace resolution, recognizing the existence of two schools of thought concerning national education—the traditional and the progressive—was adopted by a majority of votes. The congress produced no practical results, but it played an important role in promoting the Zionist idea in Russia. Theodor Herzl in Russia. Meetings with Plehve and Witte. A wave of protests and criticism within the Zionist movement both in Russia and abroad was provoked by Dr. Herzl's journey toSt. Petersburg in the summer of 1903, soon after the Kishinev pogrom, in order to meet with

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 194 Plehve and Witte.‘ The direct reason that prompted this secret circular of the Ministry of the Injourney was the terior, dated June 24, 1903, instructing the local authorities to take strict measures for the suppression of the national and Zionist movement among Russian Jews. They were to forbid meetings, grant no permission for the organization of congresses, prevent the "magidim" (the word was used in the circular) from conducting Zionist propaganda even in the synagogues, close all organizations in Russia, make it impossible for Zionist leaders to travel abroad to attend Zionist congresses and conventions, and ban the dissemination and sale of shares of the Jewish Colonial Fund. If such shares were found anywhere, they were to be confiscated. The circular particularly instructed the local authorities to watch Jewish schools and cheders and to withhold official confirmation of persons connected with the Zionist movement in the posts of chairmen of Jewish communities or community rabbis. The purpose of the circular was clearly the destruction of the Zionist movement in Russia. Yet the Russian Zionist leaders were nOt excessively disturbed over the circular. Russian Jews had long since become accustomed to such measures on the part of the government and had learned to circumvent them. Herzl, on the other hand, when he learned of the circular, saw it as a serious threat to the entire Zionist movement in Russia. In his opinion, the repressions against Zionism were caused by the government's disillusionment with the movement. The Russian govemment, he felt, had evidently expected a mass exodus of

firrefi‘wu the Minister of the Interior and an extreme reactionary who was considered to be the chief instigator of the pogrom. The Minister of Finance, Witte, was a man of moderateliberal convictions (he was married to a Jewish woman).

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 195 Jews from Russia as a result of Zionist propaganda. However, when it became convinced that the Turkish government would not permit Jewish colonization in Palestine, it came to the conclusion that the Zionist movement, like any other social movement, was merely harmful and should be “extirpated.” Herzl was, of course, aware of the fact that Plehve had been the initiator and the chief architect of the Kishinev pogrom. He knew that many Jews, both in and outside Russia, were against his meeting with Plehve, whtne hands were red with the blood of the victims. Nevertheless, Herzl regarded it as his duty, in the interest of Zionism, to attempt to persuade Plehve to revise the position taken by the Russian government. The journalist and historian Benzion Katz has told us in the magazine Heovar about a hitherto unreported meeting between Herzl and a group of Jewish writers in St. Petersburg. In reply to someone’s remark that the Turkish regime, from which he was seeking to obtain a charter for Palestine, was essentially even worse than the government of Tsarist Russia, Herzl said, “With a watch in our hands, we can foretell the collapse and partition of Turkey.” Herzl also hoped to obtain the backing of the authorities in St. Petersburg in his efforts to win a charter from the Sultan. Four years earlier, Herzl had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain an audience with Nicholas II. Plehve granted him an audience only thanks to the intervention of the Austrian pacifist and writer Bertha von Suttner and the Polish civic leader Polina Corwin-Crukowska. In his diaries, Herzl relates the details of his trip to Russia, his conversations with Plehve/and Witte, his meetings with the adjutant-general of the‘ Tsarist court, Kireyev, and with the director of the Asiatic Department of the For-

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eign Ministry, Gartwig. He also describes his visit to Vilno, where thousands of Jews besieged the railroad station and filled the streets to welcome him, and his meeting with the Vilno Zionists at the summer home of I. L. Goldberg. After their first meeting, Plehve sent Herzl an official letter, whose text. according to him, was approved by the Tsar. This letter was made public during the sixth congress. The letter states that, insofar as Zionism aimed at establishing an independent state in Palestine, which would lead to the emigration of a “certain number of Jewish subjects from Russia," the Russian government might have looked upon it favorably. However, Zionism had begun to diverge from its direct goal and to engage in the propaganda of Jewish national unity within Russia proper; the government could not countenance such a tendency. This tendency, it felt, would lead to the emergence in the country of groups of people who were alien and hostile to the patriotic sentiments on which every state is based. If Zionism returned to its former program, it could expect to enlist the moral and _material support of the Russian government, particularly aft er its practical measures had reduced the size of the Jewish population in Russia. In such an event, the Russian govemmtant was prepared to support the Zionist appeals to Turkey, to facilitate Zionist activities, and even to issue subsidies It" emigration societies, if not from the state treasury, then from special Jewish levies. At the second au’lience with Plehve, the topics discussed included the extensit r of the Pale of Settlement to include Courland and Riga, the granting of permission to Jewish cooperatives to buy land, the oflicial recognition of Dr. Nisan Katzenelson as Hé rzl‘s representative in Russia, and 't so on. The Petersburg Zionistts held a banquet in honor of

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Her7J. at which the guest delivered a brilliant speech. When

a member of the Poale-Zion faction raised the question of the attitude of the socialist world to Zionism, Herzl replied that anyone who believed that the socialist movement would improve the position of Jews in the Diaspora was merely repeating the error of the western European Jews who had vested their hopes in the liberals. Although the meeting with Plehve produced no tangible results, Herzl felt that his mission was a success and hoped that a great deal would come of the Minister’s vague promises. He was less pleased with his interview with Witte, who had spoken of himself as “a friend of the Jews.” Witte had been rude and sharp, declaring that the six million Jews, out of a total Russian population of 136 million, had produced 50 per cent of Russia’s revolutionary leaders. Toward the end of the interview, however, Witte admitted that the life of the Jews in Russia was diflicult indeed. If he were a Jew, he said, he would also be against the government.

In Vilno, where Dr. Herzl came from St. Petersburg, the police constantly had to disperse the thousands of Jews who gathered before the hotel where Herzl was staying and in the streets wherever he passed. Secret service men watched every step he made and listened in to all his telephone conversations. The banquet planned in his honor, his visit to the synagogue, and his drive through the city were all forbidden by the police. The only gala reception that could be organized for him was tendered by the Vilno community council. At this reception, moving speeches were delivered, calling him “the greatest son of the Jewish people," and a Torah scroll was presented to him. In the evening of the same day, Herzl was taken to a secret meeting with representatives of the Vilno Zionists at I. L. Gold-

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berg's summer home, about six miles from the city. Several dozen young men came from the city on foot, sunounded the villa, sang Jewish songs till late into the night, and shouted “Long live King Herzl!" When Herzl rode to the railway station after midnight, the streets he passed were filled with people, who shouted “Hurrah” at his approach. At the station, the police used their sabers to disperse the crowd. “Don't despair!" were Herzl‘s parting words to the Vilno Jews. “We shall yet see better times!” After his Vilno visit, Herzl proceeded to the sixth Zionist congress in Basel—the last congress held during his lifetime. Ten months later he died. And two weeks after Herzl's death, on July 15, 1904, his erstwhile host, Plehve. was killed by a bomb thrown by a Russian Socialist-Revolutionary. EI-Arish and Uganda. Between the fifth and sixth eongresses. a passionate struggle developed in the Zionist movement in connection with the British offer of Uganda territory in Equatorial East Africa for Jewish settlement. Until then, Herzl had consistently rejected all non-Palestinian colonization plans. But when the British government in 1904 made the offer of the Uganda territory, where the Jewish colonists would enjoy autonomous self-goven'unent, Herzl hailed the offer as “a great historic act." Of course. he said, this was not Zion. Nevertheless, it was a proposal for Jewish colonization on the basis of national statehood. At the sixth congress, Herzl proposed that a commission be sent to Uganda to study the country. The Russian Zionists were almost unanimous in their opposition to the Uganda plan, but the majority supported the sending of a commission to Uganda. The Zionist movement split into two camps—Ugandists and anti-Ugandists. At the time of the congress, Ussishkin was in Palestine.

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 199 When he returned to Russia, he convened a congress of Russian Zionists in Kharkov, where the Uganda plan and Herzl's entire policy were sharply attacked. The Kharkov congress sent Herzl an ultimatum, demanding an immediate revocation of the resolution to send a commission to Uganda and an outright rejection of the plan. A delegation was sent to Herzl in Vienna to convey to him the decisions of the Kharkov congress. Herzl died at the height of the struggle around the Uganda plan. He was only forty-four years old. The Uganda plan was finally rejected at the seventh congress in 1905, after which a group split away from the Zionist camp and formed the Territorialist Society, headed by Israel Zangwill. The former Zionist, Prof. M. Mandelshtam. joined Zangwill. Among the other Russian Jews to join the society were the non-Zionist civic leaders L. A. Lev, Arnold Margolin, and I. Yokhelman. The latter lived in London during World War I; after Zangwill's death, he became the leader of the Territorialist movement. The Second Aliya and A. D. Gordon. The pogroms which swept over Russia in 1903-1905 produced a phenomenon known in the history of the building of Palestine as the Second Aliya. This “second” wave of emigration of Jewish youth from the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland (the first was the BILU movement) played an enormous role both in the economic and the spiritual development of Palestine Jewry. The Second Aliya accounted for the arrival in Palestine of some 35,000 persons during the decade 1904-1914 and the establishment of approximately twenty-five new agricultural settlements. Among the immigrants who came with the Second Aliya were Izchak BenZvi and Ben-Gurion, the ideologist of labor Zionism Berl Katzenelson, the Chertok family (the family of Moshe

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 200 Sharett, the future first foreign minister of the state of Is rael), future Prime Minister Levi Eshkol (Shkolnik), and others who later became leaders of Palestine Jewry in various fields of endeavor. The Second Aliya launched an immediate struggle to make the Jewish building of Palestine truly Jewish. It insisted that all manual work—cultivation of the fields, gardens, and orange groves, the planting of woods, the draining of swamps, the building of roads and highways, dwellings, and public buildings be done not with the aid of hired Arab labor, as in most of the colonies founded in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century, but by Jews themselves. The Second Aliya originated the so-called kibbutz —a new type of agricultural settlement whose members live together on a cooperative basis. After the Kishinev pogrom, Iosif Witkin, a Russian Jew who worked as a teacher in Palestine, issued a fiery appeal to Jewish youth in Russia, urging resettlement in Palestine, where there was “an acute nwd for labor." Witkin's appeal stimulated the Second Aliya, whose slogan was Kibush avoda, or the principle that Palestine must be built by Jewish labor, Jewish sweat and blood, and not by exploitation of hired Arab labor. Before the Second Aliya, the guards protecting Jewish colonies were Arabs. The Second Aliya created the Hashomer, an organization for the guarding of Jewish settlements by Jews. The Second Aliya also brought to Palestine A. D. Gordon, a gifted and original man. a thinker, publicist, and ascetic. There was something in him of the Russian populists, of the Tolstoyan philosophy (despite material need, he never accepted payment for his writings), and the pacifism of Mahatma Gandhi. These characteristics were cornbined in him with fanatical Hebraism and an almost reli-

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 201 gious worship of physical labor. In creative manual work Gordon saw the only way to the formation of a new type of Jew, organically bound to the land, a man of the soil “who had achieved the ideal fusion of matter and spirit." At the same time, he was a vehement Opponent of the Marxist philosophy and the idea of class war. A native of the Podolsk Province, Gordon emigrated to Palestine from Russia in 1904. Although he was fortyeight years old at the time, he became a manual laborer and remained one almost to the end of his days, throughout the eighteen years of his life in Palestine. Gordon exerted enormous influence on the young people of Palestine, as well as on Jewish youth in the countries of the Jewish dispersion. His works were published in several languages. There are “Gordon Streets" in many cities and colonies in Israel. Gordon's ideas, his idealization of physical labor as a path to “spiritual self-improvement," and his personality served as an example to the entire Second Aliya, which was dominated by a spirit of high idealism and selfsacrifice in the name of the social and national ideal. The Helsingfors Congress-—-a Turning Point in Zionist Policy in Russia. There were five Zionist deputies in the First State Duma: Dr. G. Bruk, the attorneys A. Yakubson and S. Rozenbaum, Dr. N. Katzenelson, and Dr. Shmarya Levin.’ After the closing of the First Duma, the Russian Zionists convened in a congress in Helsingfors (November 21-27, 1906) for the purpose of developing the Zionist program for the coming elections to the Second Duma. This congress was attended by 72 Zionist leaders from various parts of Russia. Among them were Leo Motzkin, I. Grinbaum, Dr. D. Pasmanik, and Valdimir Jabotinsky. The latter's two speeches became the central points of the

'See article by J. Frumkin.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 202 congress. Jabotinsky was the author of the final draft of the so-called Helsingfors Program—a program of active struggle for the improvement of the legal and economic conditions of the Jewish masses in the Diaspora. The slogan of “Gegenwartsarbeit,” proclaimed at the Helsingfors Congress, later became an accepted term among the Zionists, denoting a new form of so-called Galut Zionism. Twenty-five years after the Katowice congress and almost ten years after the first Zionist congress, the unsuccessful Russian revolution of 1905 and the wave of pogroms in Russia made it imperative for the Zionist movement in Russia to give an immediate answer to the question of Zionist participation in the struggle for the civil right of Russian Jewry. The ideology of Zionism was based on the premise that a radical solution of the Jewish problem on a world scale was possible only through the restoration of the long—lost independent statehood on the territory of the historic homeland of the Jewish people—Palestine. But after twentyfive years of practical experience in attempting to develop Palestine under Turkish rule. even the most optimistic of Zionists realized that the ultimate goal of Zionism could not be achieved before several decades had passed. (Herzl predicted that the Jewish state would become a reality “at most within fifty years." And so the question of the immediate situation had to be faced. Should the Jews reconcile themselves to the dismal present, passively accepting all misfortunes, or should they wage an energetic struggle against the trampling of the rights and human dignity of the Jewish citizens in Tsarist Russia? The basic postulates of the “Helsingfors Program" were developed before the congress by Itzchak Grinbaum. Work

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 203 for a mass exodus from the countries of the Diaspora to Palestine, Grinbaum stressed in his speech, was and remained the fundamental task of the Zionist movement in the Diaspora. In contrast to the Bund, the “Folkists” and the “Autonomists,” the Zionist movement would seek the improvement of the legal and economic conditions of the Jewish masses in Russia for reasons other than helping those mases to take firmer root in exile. The anti-Zionist parties and their ideologists, Grinbaum said, regarded Jewish life in the Diaspora as the normal form of existence for the Jewish people. To the Zionists, such a life was a historical anomaly, which must be ended. Zionist policy in the Diaspora, he went on, should be aimed not at weakening, but at strengthening the desire for an exodus. In fighting for equal rights for the Jews in Russia and other countries of the dispersion, the Zionist movement felt that the struggle for national and civil rights would awaken in the Jews the realization that, until they had their own territory and independent statehood, they would not be able to live a free national life. And even should the Gegenwartsarbeir attain maximum succes, it would merely strengthen in the Jewish masses the understanding that a full national life was possible only in a national homeland, where the people were the masters of their own destiny. V. Jabotinsky maintained that equal rights and constitutional frwdoms were the necessary conditions for the conquest by Zionism of firm positions within Russian Jewry. The program adopted at the Helsingfors congress contained seven basic demands, calling for: (1) Democratization of the regime in Russia, preservation of representative government, the granting of political hudoms, autonomy and guarantees for national minorities; (2) Full legal equal-

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 204 ity for the Jewish population of Russia; (3) The guarantee of national minority rights in elections to the Duma and to municipal bodies; (4) Recognition of the right of Russian Jewry to self-administration in all areas of its national existence; ( 5) Convocation of an All-Russian Jewish National Assembly for the purpose of drafting a statute for a national organization; (6) The right to use the Yiddish language in courts, schools. and public life; (7) The right to observe the Sabbath in commercial establishments, stores, and offices. These basic demands were reaffirmed in their entirety at the first All-Russian Zionist Congress, held after the fall of the Tsarist regime in St. Petersburg in May, 1917. Soon after the October Revolution, however, all that Russian Jewry had managed to create in the area of community organization during the short months of Russia’s revolutionary spring was crushed and destroyed. But the ideas of the Helsingfors Program remained alive in the Zionist movement in Poland, Lithuania, and Rumania— wherever the struggle for the improvement of legal and economic conditions for the Jewish minorities continued to be waged—up until the outbreak of World War II. Summation. Political Zionism was called to life by Theodor Herzl. who earned an undying place for himself in the recent history of the Jews. Together with Max Nordau, he brought the Zionist movement out onto the main highway of world politics. Both leaders were products of Western and central European Jewry. Among Russian Jews there were many men of great wealth in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. But only a few isolated individuals among them joined the Zionist movement. A true patron and backer of large-scale Jewish colonization of Palestine was Baron Edmond de

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building 0] Palestine 205 Rothschild, head of the Paris House of Rothschild. He provided means for the building of a number of colonies in Palestine, for development of agriculture, milling, and other activities. Nevertheless, the contribution of Russian Jewry to the building of Jewish Palestine, as well as its role in the general Zionist movement, was very considerable. Through the shadarim, the immigration of the Hassidim and Perushim, the Haluka, BILU, Hovevey Zion, Pinsker's “AutoEmancipation," the Katowice congress, the Bnei Mosheh, the Odessa Committee and so on, Russian Jewry invested great spiritual and material energies in Palestine as it strove toward the attainment of the cherished dream which the Jewish people have carried through twenty centuries of their history. Russian Jewry enriched the world Zionist movement by contributing a host of eminent political and civic leaders, writers, poets. and thinkers who might easily have been the pride of peoples far more numerous than the Jews. These included, to name but a few, Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel; Izchak Ben Zvi, second president of Israel; Zalman Shazar, third president of Israel; Moshe Sharett, former prime minister and foreign minister; David BenGurion, former premier of Israel. We may also name the following members of the Israeli Cabinets: Levi Fshkol, Golda Meir, Bar-Yehuda, Mordecai Namir-Nemirovsky, Zalman Aran-Aronovich, I. Barzillai, Mordekhai Karmon, and Kadish Luz. All of the above were Russian Jews— from the Ukraine, Volhynia, Podolia, and Russian Poland. The president of the Israeli parliament, I. Shprintsak, was also a Russian Jew and a native of Moscow. The Keren Hayesod, was headed by Lev Yafie of Grodno, a poet and prose writer. Keren Kayemet (The Jewish National Fund)

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was founded at the initiative of Herman Shapiro, a Lithuanian Jew, and headed, until the very last days of his life, by M. M. Ussishkin, who played a prominent role in the Zionist movement and in Palestine for almost forty-five years. Among the members of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, we may name Meir Grossman, who died in 1964; Ilya Dobkin of Byelorussia, comrade-in-arms of Jabotinsky, journalist, and eminent political and civic leader; and others. Another Russian Jew is the philologist and publicist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda Perelman, who rendered inestimable service in reviving Hebrew and bringing it back as the language of everyday life. Russian Jewry also contributed to the Zionist movement the brilliant leader and writer V. E. Jabotinsky. and numerous journalists and editors active in the Jewish press in Israel. These include A. Idelson, Dr. M. Glikson, Dr. M. Beylinson, Abu Achi-Meir, G. Rosenblum, Arye Disenchik, and many others. We must also mention the poet and feuilletonist Natan Alterman; Avraam Shlionsky, translator of the Russian classics into Hebrew; and the writer Azaz. Russian Jewry gave Zionism the philosopher Ahad Haam; Nahum Sokolow, president of the world Zionist organization for a number of years; and the philologist and scholar Ber Borochov. Chaim Nachman Bialik, a native of Odessa. became the singer of national rebirth from his very first steps in Jewish poetry. The same was true of the Russian Jews Saul Tchernichowsky and Zalman Shneur. Also among the Zionists were S. Frug and Sholom Aleichem—active propagandists of the Zionist idea. Leo Motzkin, a native of Kiev, devoted thirty-five years

Russian Jews in Zionism and the Building of Palestine 207 of his life to Zionist activity. From the time of the Versailles Conference in 1919 until his death in Paris in 1933, Motzkin was a Resh Haluga—a champion of Jewry in the Diaspora; he served as president of Zionist congresses and of the Zionist Action Committee. P. M. Rutenberg, formerly a Russian Socialist-Revolutionary, declared to Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi after hearing their talks on the situation in Palestine during World War I, “I am with you!” He settled in Palestine and became the major force in the work of supplying the country with electric power. At one time he was president of the Vaad Leumi, the representative body of Palestine Jewry during the period of the British mandate. Conclusion. After the Revolution of 1917, the first allRussian Zionist Congress was held in St. Petersburg in the latter part of May. It was attended by 522 delegates, representing 340 Zionist organizations from various parts of Russia. During the period of the February Revolution—and even somewhat longer in the Ukraine—the Zionist movement was an important and active factor in the socio-political and national life of Russian Jewry. At the elections to the community organizations and municipal governments the Zionists usually obtained a large vote—sometimes even the majority of the Jewish vote. We may point in this connection to the Jewish elections in the Ukraine. In the elections to the so-called Provisional Jewish National Assembly in the Ukraine (November 3-11, 1918), the Zionists offered three slates. Of these, the Algemeine received 70,584 votes and elected 42 deputies; the ZeireZion received 23,851 votes and elected l4 deputies; and the Peale-Zion meived 18,416 votes and elected 11 deputies.

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Of the 209,128 votes cast in these elections, the Zionists polled 112,851 votes, or a little more than half the total. According to the figures for elections to Jewish community organizations in the Ukraine (held in the spring of 1919), the Algemeine Zionists polled 81,722 votes and elected 1,400 deputies; the Peale-Zion, 15,092 votes and 253 deputies; and the Zeire-Zion, 5,261 votes and 103 deputies. The Zionists received 102,075 votes (54.4 per cent out of the total of 187,485 votes cast. The number of Zionist deputies elected to the communities was 1,756 out of a total of 2,951 (59 per cent). The Bolshevik Revolution of October, 1917, and the subsequent destruction of all democratic organizations of the Russian Jewry and persecution of Zionism, struck a heavy blow at the Russian Jews. Jewish Palestine and the present state of Israel would have been far richer both spiritually and materially if the events of October, 1917, and the ensuing years had not taken place.

labor Zionism in Russia by Izchak Ben-Zvi LABOR zromsm, on socrALrsr zromsu, wr-ncrr BECAME known as Peale-Zionism, originated in Poltava, the capital of the Poltava Province in the Ukraine. Poltava was a city without factories or industrial plans. Instead, there were numerous mills. as well as many artisans and petty merchants. In my days, the traditional summer fairs were already on the decline. The population lived mainly by the sale of products brought from surrounding villages. The Jews engaged in petty commerce and artisan trades; occasionally, they earned a livelihood as unskilled laborers. Because there were no factories and large plants, there was no labor movement, either Jewish or general. However, this was redressed by the Tsarist goverrunent, which selected quiet, idyllic Poltava as a place of exile for revolutionaries. It thus happened that a number of prominent representatives of the progressive Russian intelligentsia found themselves in Poltava. These included such men as Dr. Wolkenstein of the People's Will Party and the famous writer Vladimir Korolenko, whose home became the natural gath-

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Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 210 ering place for the local intelligentsia. Among the exiled political leaders, I recall Yuly Martov (grandson of A. Tsederbaum, editor of Hamelits), Boruch Stolpner, and others. Through chance and Tsarist whim. Poltava suddenly became the center of leading intellectual forces, representing various Russian revolutionary trends which came to exert a great deal of influence among the local youth, especially among the Jewish youth and students of the gymnasium and reaLs-chule. Iremember numerous lectures and talks on philosophical, economic, and political topies, some of them held openly, some in private homes, schools, and synagogues, and all of them drawing eager young audiences. Poltava, with its active atmosphere of struggle for socialist and humanitarian ideals. also became the center of a national movement among Jewish youth. Hibbat Zion, or Palestinophilism, struck roots in Poltava as early as the 1880's. Along with the practical work of promoting emigration to Palestine, there was a great deal of cultural activity, wide interest in the study of Jewish history and the contemporary national movement, concern with the Jewish spiritual heritage, with the education of children in the Jewish spirit, Hebrew schooling, reformed cheders, and so on. This was the atmosphere in which Ber Borochov, the founder of the Poale-Zion party, grew up. He was an exceptionally gifted man. With the help of political exiles, he quickly mastered the theories of socialism; his profound interest in the Jewish national movement was derived from his family and immediate milieu. His own public activities were dedicated to the service of a combination of socialdemocratic ideals and those of Hovevey Zion (the Palestinophiles). These ideals were followed by many of Boro-

211 Labor Zionism in Russia chov's contemporaries, as well as by young people of the pmeding generation. Some of them had ultimately turned right, others left, but on the whole few of them had any broad grasp of the problems of Jewish life. Advocates of assimilation generally ignored the existence of the national problem. Like ostriches in the face of danger, they preferred to hide their heads in the sand, refusing to face realities. The nationalistically-oriented Jewish intelligentsia, on the other hand, ignored the existence of class contradictions, postponing this problem to a later time, to a vague indefinite future. As a result, neither the assimilationists nor the nationalists were able to meet the needs of the Jewish youth which sought answers to the pressing problems of the day. No wonder, then, that a new movement, a third grouping, arose out of this situation, answering much more closely to the demands of current Jewish life. This movement responded to both the national and the social factors, and became known as Poale-Zion or Socialist-Zionism. Poltava was one of the points of origin of this movement, and Borochov was one of its founders and leaders. The Kishinev pogrom in the spring of 1903 was a profound shock to the Jewish youth of the time. It compelled many young people to take a closer look at the national problem and to turn resolutely away from the ideology of neutralism, abandoning the middle of the road positions which led, in essence, to assimilation. Borochov's talks and lectures stimulated deeper discussion of the problem of nationalism. He clearly formulamd the conflict between nationalism and internationalim. He also offered exhaustive analyses of the basic lines of thought on the national problem, such as cosmopolitanism, mimilation, class and national consciousness, and so on. Boro-

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 212 chov's talks exerted tremendous influence among Jewish youth. When the Uganda settlement plan was proposed as a solution to the Jewish problem, Borochov unheaitatingly expressed himself in favor of Zion and against territorialism. At the end of the summer of 1904 Ihad made my first visit to Palestine, traveling the length and breadth of the country and observing its life, its Jewish community, and particularly the new immigrants who had come with the so-called Second Aliya, or second wave of immigration. When I returned to Poltava, I had a number of long talks with Borochov, who asked many questions about the country and particularly about its working class elements. Ibelieve that Ihad reinforced his “Palestinism,” and helped to expand his knowledge of Palestine life. With all the fire of his youthful energy, Borochov dedicated himself to Zionist propaganda. He quickly distinguished himself as an excellent speaker and a skilled debater. Borochov traveled throughout Lithuania and Poland, visited all the cities and small towns of the Ukraine, Podolya, and Volhynia. At that time, he still lectured in Russian, even in the big synagogue in Vilno, as he had not yet sufficiently mastered the Yiddish language. His travels in the provinces brought Borochov into contact with the broad masses of the people, with whom he had little connection in Poltava. During his journeys he made his first acquaintance with the oldest Jewish workers' organization. the Bund, toward which he was rather cool, since the Bund was hostile to the idea of national rebirth and the longing of many Jewish workers for a free national life in the ancient homeland. In the thick of the Jewish milieu, Borochov found a fertile soil for the spiritual synthesis he had nurtured so long in his mind.

213 Labor Zionism in Russia His close contact with the masses of Jewish workers in Poland, Lithuania, and southwestern Russia also expanded his knowledge of the economic structure of the Pale of Settlement. In the light of the experience thus gained, Borochov became prominent in the latter half of 1905 as one of the founders of the Peale-Zion party. The ideology of Socialist-Zionism was being crystallized at that time. Groups and party organizations sprang up everywhere in Russia: in Vilno, Warsaw, Odessa, Minsk, the Crimea and Yekaterinoslav, in Rostov and the Ukraine. Some ideological disagreements still existed among these groups, but they were united on the fundamental principles of Labor Zionism, combining the Zionist and the socialist ideologies in one movement. This fundamental approach unified and consolidated these groups, dividing them both from other movements among the Jewish workers, which went along with assimilationist moods, and from the general bourgeois front in the national movement, which ignored the social and class factors. The Socialist-Zionist movement adopted the name of Poale-Zion. During the Seventh Zionist Congress, held in Basel in 1905, representatives of Peale-Zion groups in various countries met in a conference of their own. This conference laid the foundations for a united party. Borochov took part in the Basel conference and it was there, it seems to me, that he made the final decision to link his destiny with the Palestine movement of the Peale-Zion. Borochov returned to Russia from the Seventh Zionist Congress at the height of the first revolution, when a wave of anti-Jewish progroms was sweeping the country. He had gone abroad as a “general Zionist"; when he returned, he joined the Labor Zionist movement and set himself the task of working for the consolidation of the new party, for

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its unity and cohesion. He plunged into this work wellarmed with theoretical knowledge and became the creator of the original theory of Poale-Zionism, which became known as “prognostic Palestinism." Borochov delivered an address at the district conference held in Poltava in November, 1905, and took an active part in drafting a specifically Jewish socialist program. The Poltava conference became the turning point in the history of his party. It formed a new strategic center for the struggle against “Seimism” and the strengthening of “proletarian Palestinism"; it raised a number of demands and slogans and founded its own organ, Yevreyskaya Rabochaya Khronika (“Jewish Labor Chronicle"), which began by being a regional newspaper and later became the central organ of the entire Poale-Zionist movement in Russia. As one of the initiators and organizers of the Poltava conference, Imet Borochov again at this time and, in addition to being childhood friends, we now became party comrades as well. After the Poltava conference, Borochov plunged with the full vigor of his youth into preparations for an allRussian conference of the party and into completing the work of organization. In December, 1905, Borochov and I attended the district conference in Berdichev as delegates from the Poltava conference. The Berdichev conference was also attended by delegates from party groups in the Kiev, Podolya, Volnynia, and Bessarabian Provinces. The conference was held under highly adverse conditions, for Cossacks were rampaging in the streets and it was dangerous to be out in the evenings. We spent days and nights in meetings and discussions in a small room illuminated by candlelight. After this conference, Borochov continued to do party work in Lithuania and in southwestern Russia. The center

215 Labor Zionism in Russia established in Poltava maintained constant contact with all the groups organized by Borochov, as well as with groups in Poland, the Crimea, and Central Russia. The ground was thus being prepared for a nationwide congress, better known as the “Poltava Conference," held on Purim of 1906. This congress laid the foundation for a united Poale-Zion party in Russia. The Poltava Conference marked a new stage in the history of Peale-Zion. The party apparatus established there was capable of offering the necessary resistance to the attacks of our opponents. The continued existence of the worldwide united Poale-Zion party to our day is owed primarily to the Poltava Conference of 1906. The conference formulated the basic principles of Poale-Zionist philosophy and elected central and provincial leaders. The work went on for ten days, under conditions of martial law in the country, wholesale searches, and widespread fear of betrayal and provocation. The central committee elected at the conference was entrusted with the task of carrying out the resolutions adopted at the sessions and also of developing further the theoretical basis of PoaleZionism. The police learned about the conference only after it had ended. Some of the active leaders, including Borochov, were arrested. Nevertheless, the members of the central committee had managed to escape from Poltava and to reconvene in Konstantinograd in order to begin work on the main task—the drafting of “theses" which were to serve as the basis of the party program. A day or two after convening in Konstantinograd, we realized that this small provincial town was entirely unsuitable for our clandestine conference. We went on to Simferopol, the capital

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of Crimea, and there we worked for three weeks at drafting “Our Platform." We organized our sessions in such a way as to avoid arousing suspicion on the part of the police. We held our meetings throughout the day, but we were careful to take our meals in restaurants separately. Our work proceeded in approximately the following manner: Borochov would deliver a report; after that, there was discussion and a vote. All the speeches and debates were carefully recorded. The principal problems discussed were: nationalism and internationalism; nation and class; the paths of nationalism in their static and dynamic aspects; the problem of assimilation; socio-economic analyses of proletarian movements among the Jews; the foundations of cultural autonomy for Jews as a national minority, and the foundations of autonomy in Palestine, when Jews became a majority there; and, finally, the realization of Zionist goals by the working class. The realization of these goals was envisaged in the form of gradual stages on the way to social and national achievements, won as a result of the strengthening of working class positions in the Diaspora, and later in the land of our national future. The entire exchange of views in response to Borochov's reports served as a foundation for the edifice which he, as its builder, erected under the modest title of “Our Platform." This ideological edifice, built chiefly on the basis of analysis of the realities of Jewish life in the Diaspora, was guilty of a single important omission: it gave virtually no consideration to the coming Jewish construction in Palestine; it omitted taking into account the achievements and perspectives of the future. By that time, contacts were already being established between us in the Diaspora and the early chalutzim (pioneers) in Palestine. Dozens of new pioneers had gone to

217 Labor Zionism in Russia Palestine from Poland, Lithuania, and southern Russia. They were the first swallows of a new wave of immigration, which served as a practical answer to the “liquidationist” theories of the territorialists. The appeals of Ussishkin and Witkin had played a certain part in stimulating this movement; many participants of the self-defense organizations in Russia emigrated to Palestine after the wave of pogroms. A particularly large number came from southern Russia. During the Poltava conference, and even before it. we maintained active contact with our chalurzim in Palestine. We printed their letters in the party publications in Yiddish and in Russian. I recall our correspondence with the chalutzim from Rostov, who had emigrated to Palestine after the pogroms, and our contact with D. Grin, the present Ben-Gurion. However, our party positions in Palestine itself were still weak, and our information concerning developments there was quite inadequate. All this gave rise to a number of serious shortcomings in our program. It was precisely our insufficient knowledge that led to such facts as Borochov's stubborn opposition to Oppenheimer's cooperative plans. But the basic principle that Jewish Palestine would be built by Jewish labor, and that the building of Palestine as such could be achieved only by the Jewish working class—a principle that has long since become generally accepted—was first proclaimed in “Our Platform." “Our Platform" was published in several installments. First, a part of the platform appeared in three issues of Yevreyskaya Rabochaya Khronika in Poltava. The next installment was published in the second issue of Molar (“Hammer") in Simferopol. Both publications were in Russian, and “Our Platform" consequently first saw the light of day in the Russian language. At that time there

218 Russian Jewry {1860-1917) was no nwd for its publication in Yiddish, since the majority of the leading elements of the party in those years used Russian exclusively. In 1907, parts of “Our Platform" were published in Yiddish in the Vilno Forverrs (“Forward"). It was only several years after Borochov's death that “Our Platform" was translated in full into Yiddish and included in its author's collected works. The Poltava period of our movement ended in total rout. The police discovered a cache of self-defense weapons belonging to the Poale-Zion. A stringent investigation followed. The author of these lines was forced to escape from Poltava. The police took revenge by arresting my father and other members of my family. Also arrested were L. Maltser, editor of the Chronicle, and Ber Borochov. The other members of the Poltava Conference managed to disappear. The party center was transferred to Vilno, a move advocated by Borochov even before his arrest.

Characteristically, Borochov managed to carry on party work even during his stay in the Poltava prison. Among the prisoners there were many Ukrainian peasants, arrested in connection with agrarian riots. and Borochov lectured before them on political and social topics, on national, socio-economic and political problems. Few people know of the special trend that emerged in those years within the Ukrainian social—democratic movement, a trend which combined social and national aspirations and was based on ideas developed in Borochov‘s articles. In fact, this trend called itself “Borochovist.” Borochov spent some five months in prison. Throughout these months he maintained contact with us. Despite enormous difficulties, we finally succeeded in obtaining his release and in getting him out of Russia.

few: in the Russian Bar by Samuel Kucherov

ONE OF THE GREATEST REFORMS or 'l'l-IB REIGN OF Alexander II was the reform of the judiciary, enacted in the “Judicial Codes of November 20, 1864." This reform initiated one of the most beneficient developments of the whole Imperial period of Russian history. The old courts, with their secret procedures, formal methods of evidence, and complete dependence of the judiciary upon the administration, were abolished. The judicial system established in their place was based on public hearings, open debate, and the principle of separation of powers. It eliminated the widespread corruption and bribery of the earlier courts. The former venal judges were replaced by men of moral integrity. The fate of defendants accused of serious crimes was submitted to the decision of juries, representing all classes of the population. Elected justices of the peace heard less important criminal and civil cases. The Judicial Reform of 1864 also created the Russian Bar.

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Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 220 Of course, this reform did not transform Russia into a state. constitutional Russia remained autocratic in the legislative and executive areas. And it was by his own decision that the Tsar relinquished all his judicial powers, retaining only the right of pardon. Between 1864 and 1906, Russia was the only nation in history where two major facets of power—the legislative and the executive —were autocratic, while the third—the judicial—was based on democratic principles. In court, the Russian citizen found himself under the protection of firm legal guarantees. He was promised a “speedy, just and clement trial," and his interests were defended by an attorney at

law.1 During important criminal trials, the speeches of attorneys for the defense were publicized by the press throughout the vast country. The free Russian legal profession regarded it as its mission to defend the rights of the individual. And this mission was carried out by the Russian Bar with unswerving dedication throughout the short fifty years of its existence. This devotion to the goals of the Russian Bar was fully shared by its Jewish members. “Struggle for the rights of the individual." wrote the prominent Russian-Jewish attorney M. M. Vinaver, “the defense of the individual against the unrestricted rule of the state—this is the arena of action of a free legal profession." A similar idea was expressed by another famous Jewish lawyer, O. O. Gruzenberg. in his speech at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Bar in 1916: “With all their energies, and often disregarding their own interests, our colleagues throughout Russia have rendered service—perhaps inconspicuous, but nevertheless great— ‘1he Russian term was “Sworn Attorney."

Jews in the Russian Bar 221 in the defense of the individual against the pressure of the state." The Frenchman Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu wrote in 1881 in his book, The Empire of the Tsars: Every Russian who has been brought to court can now see a man rise by his side who dares to oppose, in his behalf, the representative of the government who has brought charges against him. In this vast empire which has no political assemblies, the honor of having been the first to speak freely belongs to the la ers. In a country where military courage is quite lawyers were the first to be called upon to give an common, example of something hitherto unknown: civic courage.‘

However, the scope and depth of the reform of November 20, 1864, were also the very reasons that led to its subsequent curtailment. The "coexistence” of autocratic power on the one hand, and a democratic institution on the other, inevitably generated acute conflicts. Hence, during the years of reaction which followed the reforms of the 1860's, the judicial reform was in great measure curtailed and distorted. One such distortion was the limitation on the admission of Jews to the bar. The assassination of Alexander 11 brought to the throne the arch-reactionary Alexander 111, and under his reign the restrictions on Jewish rights were extended also to the legal profession. In 1889, the Minister of Justice submitted a report to the Tsar, proposing that every admission of a Jew to the bar be made dependent on the special consent of the Minister. He argued, in support of his proposal, that the legal profession was “flooded with Jews," who, by virtue of their specific char‘Anatole Leroy-Beadieu, L'Empr're der Tears er 1:: Rusres (Paris, 1881), 11, p. 364.

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 222 acteristics, were tarnishing the moral purity of the bar.‘ The report was approved by the Tsar and the Minister’s proposal was introduced into the Statute of Judicial Institutions as a footnote to Article 380. The attitude of the press and the legal profession to the restrictive measures was not uniform. Thus, one legal journal stated that “the influx of Jews into the legal profession is an abnormal phenomenon” and that “even without being an anti-Semite, one cannot but see certain traits in the Jews which make it undesirable that Jews should occupy a dominant place in any group or estate." On the other hand, the Moscow liberal journal, Russkaya Mysl (“Russian Thought“), openly declared that the true reason for the restrictive measures was the fear of competition, although lawyers concealed this reason behind allegations of the doubtful moral character of the Jews. The Councils of the Bar, particularly those in Moscow and St. Petersburg, also took a somewhat vacillating position in this matter. It later became a matter of public knowledge that, while presenting his report on the advisability of restrictive measures, the Minister of Justice promised the Tsar to admit no more Jews to the practice of law until the establishment of a fixed quota for Jewish attorneys. This promise was kept for fifteen years. Until 1904, even such pillars of the profession as Vinaver, Sliozberg, and Gruzenberg were not granted the status of full-fledged attorneys and were obliged to practice as “assistant attorneys.” 1n 19l2, the Senate (the highest Russian court) ruled that the law restricting the admission of Jews to the bar also applied to the status of assistant attorney, to which Jews had until ’8 However, with typical inconsistency, the ratriction was not to be applied to Jews converted to Christianity.

Jews in the Rum-ian Bar 223 then been admitted without hindrance. During the period of 1905-1915, a number of Jews who had already gained the rank of assistant attorney were admitted by the Ministers of Justice to the full rank of attorney. However, from the time of the above Senate ruling until the Revolution of 1917, no new Jewish graduate of a Law School was admitted to practice, even in the rank of assistant attorney.

In 1915, at the height of World War I, when the government was compelled to abolish the Pale of Settlement and allow some relaxation in the anti-Jewish restrictions, the admission of Jewish assistant attorneys to full status in the legal profession was also facilitated to a limited degree. Approval of each Jewish candidate by the Minister was still required, but quotas were established (from 5 per cent to 15 per cent, depending on the region), and a certain number of Jews consequently gained admission to the bar in every district. One of the first actions of the Provincial Government, formed after the revolution of 1917, was the revocation of all religious and national restrictions. From March 20, 1917, until the abolition of the bar by the Bolsheviks in December of that year, Jews were freely admitted to the legal profession. Despite all the restrictions and persecution, Jews— thanks to the legal talents of many of their representatives —-sucmded in winning an honorable place in the very first ranks of the Russian Bar. Jewish lawyers delivered many eloquent, fiery speeches within the walls of Russian courts; many selfless deeds marked their activity, and their contribution to the treasure-trove of Russian jurisprudence was great indeed. Russian Jews had no access to professorships, civil service posts, employment in the Justice Depart-

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ment, or elective posts in local government bodies. The popular representative body, the State Duma, to which Jews were admitted, did not come into existence until 1906. It was natural, therefore, that the most talented members of the Jewish intelligentsia turned to the legal profession, to which access was severely limited, but nevertheleas

possible. Below, we offer some portrait sketches of the most eminent Jewish lawyers in Russia: Passover, Vinaver, Sliozberg, Goldenweiser, and Gruzenberg. Many other famous and gifted Jewish lawyers deserve attention, but space precludes mention of more than a few.

A. YA. PASSOVER

...

The moment to speak arrives. Until now, the small, thin man in the closely buttoned frock coat and gray suede gloves, with his lawyer's insignia not in the buttonhole, as the custom was, but pmned to his chest, sat somewhere in the crowd with lowered head and closed eyes—a gaunt, sallow, inconspicuous figure. But his turn comes. In an angular walk he approaches the podium and begins in an indistinct, scarcely audible, timid whisper. Every ear involuntarily strains to listen. But soon there is no longer any need to strain: a few moments later, the small timid man has disappeared; his movements become animated, his voice swells in strong, resonant sounds, his eyes are open and glittering like gray steel—a glitter that is often angry, pitiless, mocking; the face flushes warmly as though young blood were coursing through it. It is the animation of thought.‘

In his youth, Alexander Yakovlevich Passover had hOped for an academic career, but he refused to accept a professorship ofi‘ered to him on condition that he be baptized. The reform of 1864 opened for Jews the doors to the _f

This quotation is from an article on Passover written by Vin-

aver.

225 Jews in the Russian Bar judiciary, and Passover received the post of assistant prosccutor, first in the Vladimir, and later in the Odessa Circuit Court. In 1872 Passover settled in St. Petersburg and registered as an attorney; before long, he won a place of altogether special eminence. He possessed extraordinary erudition in the fields of jurisprudence, philosophy, sociology, natural sciences, and languages, modern and ancient. Until the end of his days, he tirelessly sought to acquire new knowledge and had an inextinguishable love for books. His apartment literally overflowed with books. He also had another apartment in Berlin, where he received everything of consequence that appeared in print in any European country. His memory was phenomenal. He arrived in court without a briefcase or a single page of notes, and delivered his spwch, often lasting for hours and abounding in references to court decisions and complicated tables of figures, without consulting any notes or documents. Passover's spwches were not directed to the feelings of the judge or the juror. He operated solely with logical argumentation. Specializing chiefly in civil cases, Passover occasionally—and with extraordinary brilliance—undertook criminal cases as well. Thus, in the case concerning the abuses at the Taganrog custom house, Passover participated in the defense side by side with the greatest Russian criminal lawyers and, by general consensus, outshone them all. However, criminal defense was not his real vocation. With his spiritual make-up and rationalist approach, Passover was not entirely suited to the role of a criminal attorney. His true service to the cause of justice was in the field of civil law. There he had no equal. His influence upon the practice of the highest Russian civil court, the Civil

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Cessation Department of the Senate, was very considerable. Apart from the practice of law, his favorite activity, the work nearest to his heart, was direction of the Conference of Beginning Lawyers, at which young attorneys were trained under his guidance for future independent practice.‘ On the twenty-fifth anniversary of his legal activity his colleagues wished to honor him in the customary manner, by a delegation to his home and a banquet, with gala spwches and abundant libations. He flatly refused. It was impossible to persuade him but he finally consented to a brief celebration in his honor during one of the meetings of the Conference. After the congratulatory speeches at a gala combined meeting of all the conferences and their instructors, the official part of the celebration was closed, and the conference. under Passover's chairmanship, proceeded to its usual work: the reading and discussion of the scheduled report. Among his students in these conferences were M. I. Kulisher, M. M. Vinaver, G. B. Sliozberg, M. I. Sheftel, and others who subsequently became famous lawyers. The main interest of the participants in the conferences was centered on the report with which Passover ended each session. These closing analyses revealed the astonishing range of his knowledge, his incredible speed in grasping the essential point, and the power of his argumentation. In these conferences Passover undoubtedly created for himself a substitute for the professorship he had longed for but was unable to obtain. They provided an outlet for his pedagogical talent. For a long time Passover refused the title of a member of the Council of the Bar. Yielding to the pleading of his

'

In order to be admitted to the bar, an assistant attorney had to present at least three reports to such a conference.

Jews in the Russian Bar 227 colleagues, he finally consented to accept membership in the Council. However, when the chairman of the Council submitted to the Minister of Justice statistical data concerning the number of Jews in the profession, which led to the drafting of a plan for new restrictions on the admission of Jews to the bar, he resigned, condemning the action of the chairman. Despite all urging and appeals, he never returned to the Council. Compromises were alien to Passover’s character. As the famous leader of the Russian bar, Spasovich, said of him, he had “a back incapable of bending, or even bowing." One of Passover's peculiarities was his dislike of writing; even the briefs, submitted in his name to the Courts, were written under his direction by associates. He did not leave a single printed line. His whole vast erudition, the colossal work of his saber-sharp mind remained unrecorded for future generations and merely flashed like a firework with its bright cold light across a number of court sessions and conference meetings. Passover said of himself: “I am a professonial reader, not a writer.” When asked why he did not write, he answered: “I do not want to write a bad third book about two good ones, and I am not able to write a new, independent one." Perhaps the true reason why Passover left no publismd works lay in the extraordinary reserve of his character. An author invests himself in his works, he exposes his soul to the reader, he does precisely the things that Passover was incapable of. Everyone who worked closely with him attests that he had never revealed his private feelings to anyone; he never put down the shield behind which he jealously concealed his inner life from alien eyes. In his very appearance, he gave the impression of a man withdrawn into himself, and the gray suede gloves which he always wore,

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 228 removing them only before beginning his speech in court, seemed to symbolize his avoidance of even so fleeting a contact with others as a handshake would involve. A solitary man, a “worldly hermit" as he was called by Vinaver, he proudly followed the path he had been compelled to choose. “The strongest man is he who remains alone,” proclaimed Ibsen’s Dr. Stockman. Unquestionably, there was great strength in Passover's proud isolation. But it is doubtful whether this isolation had given him satisfaction or fulfillment. Passover brought to the service of law his extraordinary abilities and the vast stores of knowledge he had accumulated and was constantly renewing. But what did life give him in exchange? The restrictions on Jewish rights deprived him of the opportunity to devote himself to the work he was most strongly drawn to, and an unhappy love of his youth had deprived him of personal happiness. All that was left to him was proud solitude. No one was truly on close terms with him, and no one loved him, although he had everyone’s admiration. And he did not choose to bequeath anything of his intellectual wealth to these unloved strangers. In contrast to Pushkin’s Miser Knight, he left this world carrying with him all his uncounted treasures of intellect and knowledge. But his fame lived on in the memory of his contemporaries, and his image, as one of the greatest Russian lawyers, was engraved for posterity by his colleagues. Russian Jewry may be justly proud of contributing a man like A. Ya. Passover to the Russian legal profession.

M. M. VINAVER Maxim Vinaver was born in 1862 in Warsaw, where he

Jews in the Russian Bar 229 completed his university studies in 1886. Moving to St. attorney. Because Petersburg, he registered as an assistant of the restrictive laws, he remained an assistant for eighteen years. until 1904. As a civil attorney, he was able to win a leading place among Russian lawyers. He was retained in the most diflicult cases, chiefly as a consultant or an advocate before the highest Russian tribunal, the Senate. He exerted great influence on this tribunal both by his speeches and his writings. In the Vestnik Grazhdanskogo Prava (“Courier of Civil Law"), which he edited, he conducted a “Civil Chronicle" department, where he brilliantly commented on the current decisions of the Civil Cassation Department of the Senate. And the Senate not only listened to Vinaver’s opinion, but often followed it. It is true, of course, that judicial decisions in Russia never attained equality with legislation as a source of law, as it has in Anglo-Saxon countries. The Senate's judgment was binding only in the specific case in which it had been passed. Nevertheless, the role of the Senate in creating law was considerable, particularly at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when the rapid growth of the Russian economy gave rise to complex legal relations which did not fit into the framework of the obsolete civil and trade codes. On many occasions the Senate was compelled to fill in the gaps in the existing law. This naturally lent the Senate decisions (and, hence, the influence exerted on them by practicing lawyers) particular significance. There was another field of legal activity where Vinaver was invaluable: the field of consultations. He was frequently consulted by other lawyers in the most complex civil cases. On these occasions, Vinaver—according to B. L. Gershun, a well-known St. Petersburg civil attorney

230 Russian Jewry {1860-1917) —approached the case like a stern and merciless judge, regardless of the side which consulted him. Vinaver saw the mission of an attorney in the defense of the individual’s rights, and in this defense he did not set the attorney any narrow limits. He rejected the principle that an attorney should accept only cases of whose justice he is convinced. It was the function of the court, he felt, and not of the attorney, to discover and establish the truth. But, left to their own resources, even the most talented judges would be unable to fulfill this task. Vinaver assumed that an attorney must honestly and truthfully present to the court everything he can produce in favor of his client. It is then the function of the court to decide which side is in the right. The attorney, wrote Vinaver, “in following his own path, is building, in conjunction with other forces, the future rule of law." The defense of Jewish rights was especially close to his heart. Like many Russian lawyers, both Christian and Jewish, he took an active part in the organization of legal representation for Jewish interests in the pogrom trials. In 1904, neglecting his own practice, Vinaver, together with Sliozberg, spent more than a month in the small provincial city of Gomel, taking part in the trial of the participants in the bloody pogrom in that city as attorney for the Jewish victims. Especially significant was his address before the Senate in the case concerning the Governor of Kishinev, who was indicted for his failure to take action during the notorious pogrom of 1903. In I906, the pogrom-instigating activity of the police department of the Ministry of the Interior became a matter of public knowledge. On February 15, 1906, a report was submitted to Minister of the Interior, Dumovo, concerning the pogrom-provoking proclamations written and printed

231 Jews in the Russian Bar in the police department under the direction of Komissarov, an oflicial in charge of special assignments, and distributed by the department in thousands of copies.‘ In this connection, the State Duma submitted an inquiry to the government. In the discussion of this inquiry, Vinaver, a member of the Duma from St. Petersburg, delivered a fervent and brilliant speech. Vinaver quoted from the report of a government oficial, Budagovsky, who was spreading appeals among the people calling for the formation of militia units, armed with pitchforks and scythes, to fights against “Jews and revolutionaries." “In the struggle against the revolutionary movement,” wrote Budagovsky to his superiors, “these appeals, distributed in large numbers, should prove very useful . . . I am convinwd that the appeals will have a favorable influence on the peasants and will divert them from violence against landowners.” “These quotations,” said Vinaver, “are not from a private correspondence or a political confession; they are from an official document, filed under a regular number, addressed to a superior and delivered into the appropriate hands." The persons who received this report “knew that their subordinates were distributing proclamations, setting one part of the p0pulation against another, and infecting the air with the poison of murder. Aware of all this, they nevertheless remained silent." Besides his legal and political work, Vinaver participated in the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews in Russia, headed the Jewish Historico-Ethnographic Society, which was gathering materials on the history of the Russian Jews, contributed to the Russo-Jewish magazine Voskhod (“Sunrise”), presided at the congress of Jewish 'See article by J. Frumkin.

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public leaders in Vilno in March, 1905, and served as chairman of the non-partisan Union for Equal Rights for the Jewish People in Russia, founded at this congress. Along with his legal talent, Vinaver also possessed outstanding literary ability and consummate skill in presenting dry, narrowly professional subjects in a lively and brilliant style. His mind was a striking combination of formal logic and common sense. In contrast to Passover, Vinaver wrote a great deal. He was the author of a number of scholarly and literary monographs and articles, the mere list of which occupies eight large printed pages. Vinaver devoted a considerable part of his life to political activity. He was one of the founders of the ConstitutionalDemocratic Party (known as K-D, or “Kadets”), and a member of its central committee. A deputy to the First State Duma from St. Petersburg, Vinaver was one of the principal leaders of the Kadet faction in the Duma. He was one of the signatories of the Vyborg Proclamation, issued by deputies of the First Duma after its dissolution by the Tsar; he paid for this with a three-month prison term and loss of the right to be elected to subsequent Dumas. However, he continued to take an active part in the work of his party's central committee and congresses. The Provisional Government appointed him a justice of the Civil Cassation Department of the Senate. After the dispersion of the Constituent Assembly, of which he was a member, Vinaver went to the southern part of Russia, where he participated in the struggle against the Bolsheviks and was appointed Minister of External Relations in a short-lived Crimean Regional Government. In 1919 Vinaver left Russia and settled in Paris. In exile, he continued his political work: in 1920, together

233 Jews in the Russian Bar with Milyukov, he founded the Democratic Group of the Constitutional Democratic Party, and in 1921 he participated in the organization of the Conference of Members of the Constituent Assembly. In Paris he resumed his legal work as a consultant, and also engaged in teaching: he conducted a systematic course in Civil Law at a Russian Institute. In 1923 he became editor of the literary journal, Zveno (“The Link"). Heart disease led to his death on October 10, 1926. Attorney, scholar, politician, and writer, Vinaver distinguished himself in all these fields by his extraordinary ability, high intelligence, wide knowledge, and oratorical talent. He belonged to the select few whose gifts find expression in any field of endeavor they may enter and whose varied talents harmoniously merge into a single creative whole. Nevertheless, it may be asked in which area of activity Vinaver had won the greatest distinction. M. L. Cantor, a close associate of Vinaver in the legal field, reports that Vinaver used to say that he had three major interests: law, politics, and literature, and that, by the will of fate, he had given his best energies to the former, although he was most strongly attracted to the latter. This was, perhaps, true. Literature was closest to his taste and inclinations, but his fame was won in law. As a jurist he attained the heights of his profsssion and gained one of the foremost plases among the great masters in his field. And his literary talent made it possible for him to record his ideas on paper.

G. B. SLIOZBERG G. B. (Henri) Sliozberg, as we read in M. Goldstein's Portraits of Lawyers, was

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not only a leader of his people, but also its servant. And it seems to me that this is something he should be proud of most of all. It is said that the son who takes 06 his weary father's boots shall be blessed for eternity. The name of Henri Sliozberg will be blessed. Thousands of small deeds have gone into the building of a monument which has no equal either in greatness or in beauty, or in the rivers of blood and tears that

cement it.

G. B. Sliozberg was born in the small town of Mir, in the province of Minsk, in 1863. When he was less than a year old, his father moved with the family to Poltava, where Sliozberg spent his childhood and youth, until his graduation from the gymnasium. In 1882 he entered the law school of St. Petersburg University. Awarded a gold medal for his paper on criminal law, he expected to be invited to remain at the university as a candidate for a professorship, of which he dreamed. Professors Foynitsky and Sergievsky, great authorities in the field of criminal law, supported him in this aspiration, but the Superintendent of the Educational District refused to present his application to the Ministry of Education. Sliozberg's attempts to enter civil service as an employee of the Senate also proved fruitless. Despite these setbacks, he clung to the hope that the teaching field would not remain closed to him forever. He felt that, if he wrote a serious work and received a higher academic degree, he might still be granted an exception and admitted to a professorship. To continue his education, he went abroad, where he studied under the leading juridical lights of the period at the universities of Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Lyon. However, after his return to St. Petersburg in 1888, it became obvious that the road to a professorship was irrevocably closed to him. Despite these bitter disappointments, Sliozberg never

Jews in the Russian Bar

235

considered the idea of changing his religion. An interesting incident in this connection is related in Gruzenberg‘s memoirs. When Gruzenberg had completed his studies at the University of Kiev and, armed with numerous recommendations, arrived in St. Petersburg, he came to see Prof. Foynitsky. The professor carefully read his letter of recommendation and said: “M-m-yes. The old story the same stubborn clinging to the ancestral religion, so typical of the whole Jewish intelligentsia, although it is quite as ineligious as ours ... We don’t have to go far for examples. You may have heard of Sliozberg? He is also a Jew. .. Talented, bright, a diligent scholar. .. He had even gone abroad to study for two years at his own expense .. Fully qualified for a chair at the university . And he could serve with distinction. But no .. he insists on remaining a Jew .. Very well, then, remain one, but change your documents .. .” When he abandoned all hopes of obtaining a university. post, Sliozberg registered as an assistant attorney and received a license allowing him to practice in civil cases. He did not, however, discontinue his work as a legal scholar, which was too close to his talents and aspirations to be given up. He was active in the criminal law division of the St. Petersburg Juridical Society, serving as the secretary of its editorial committee. In the 1890's, Sliozberg lectured before the Society on a number of major problems of the theory and practice of criminal law. He also actively participated in the legal press and served for several years as the editor of the authoritative organ, Vesmik Prava

...

.

.

.

..

(“Courier of Law"). The St. Petersburg legal world was particularly impressed with his report on new trends in criminal law, which provoked lively discussion among criminologists.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) The need to earn a livelihood brought Sliozberg to emlegal counsel division of the Ministry of ployment with the the Interior. The Ministry‘s legal adviser was looking for a young jurist to assist him in handling the Ministry's affairs. Sliozberg was referred to him and became his unofficial assistant. This laid the groundwork for Sliozberg's subsequent juriducal activity as an expert in administrative law. In the course of his work, Sliozberg had the opportunity to acquaint himself in every detail with the legislation and the administrative orders which entangled Russian Jewry in a thick web of discrimination. And Sliozberg devoted all his energies to the fight against this discrimination. The traditional representative of Russian Jewry at that time was Baron Horace Ginzburg,’ who devoted a great deal of time and attention to Jewish affairs. Sliozberg was invited to serve as legal counsel with Ginzburg's ofice, and, together with his employer, he gave himself up entirely to the defense of Jewish interests. He brought to this work an exhaustive knowledge of the laws, circulars, and Senate interpretations bearing on the Jews. The restrictive laws, frequently vague and contradictory, left room for interpretation. often leading to new restrictions. In almost every case it was necessary to plead for an interpretation of the law more favorable to the Jews, to use endless resourcefulness and ingenuity, to cover incalculable quantities of paper with arguments and persuasion. Especially diflicult was the struggle for the right of residence, or, as Sliozberg called it, “the right to live." Every deportation case which drew an unfavorable decision in the Senate could serve as a precedent for further deporta~ tions. Hence, each individual case became a matter of 236

’For more information on Baron Ginzburg see the article by Jacob Frumkin in this volume.

237 Jews in the Russian Bar crucial importance to a number of people, and, in defending the interests of a single petitioner, Sliozberg was in effect defending the entire Jewish population. In the three volumes of his Afiairs o] Bygone Days: Recollections of a Russian Jew. written much later in Paris, Sliozberg wrote of the vise of restrictions which gripped Russian Jewry ever more tightly during the reigns of Alexander III and, particularly, Nicholas II. He also described the unceasing and desperate struggle waged by Russian Jewry against government oppression. It was necessary to defend with utmost stubbornness the few rights that still remained to Russian Jews, since the progressive loss of rights threatened the very possibility of existence of the Jewish masses unless the scanty legal resources still at their disposal were fully utilized and fought for at every step. Sliozberg was flooded with cases of Jews seeking protection and justice from all comers of Russia. He strove to defend them against oppression by local authorities, interceded for persons threatened with deportation by overzealous governors, headed delegations, pleaded major Jewish cases before the Senate, appeared at the pogrom trial in Gomel, and presented pleas to the Ministers of the Interior Plehve and Dumovo. He never made any distinction between “important" and “trivial" Jewish cases; to him, they were all “simply and only Jewish cases." Sliozberg was a true defender of the Jewish people, their constant champion before the powers that be. Into this exhausting, daily work, unostentatious but grandiose in its scope and significance, which he himself called “titanic on the one hand, and Sisyphean on the other," he invested his whole heart, the heart of a great sufferer for his people. And it is as such a sufferer that he will take his place in the history of Russian Jewry.

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Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

A. S. GOLDENWEISER May 25, 1915, saw the funeral of Alexander S. Goldenweiser in Kiev. A great and varied crowd followed the coflin on its way to the Jewish cemetery. Two-horse earriagas, elegant droshkies, and ordinary cabs stretched in a long procession. But most of the mourners escorted the coffin on foot. In the crowd I noticed an elderly Jew, poorly dmed, a typical artisan. Iwanted to know why he had come to the funeral and asked whether he had known the dead man. “No,” he answered in Yiddish, “but he was one of our own, our Goldenweiser!"

Alexander Goldenweiser was born in Kanev in 1855. After graduation from the University of St. Petersburg he settled for a short time in Moscow. Later he moved to Kiev, at the invitation of the well-known lawyer L. A. Kupernik, whose assistant he remained during the early years of his legal career. He spent the rest of his working life in Kiev, where he rapidly won a leading position in the local bar and the reputation of one of the best civil lawyars in Russia. In characterizing Passover and Goldenweiser, Goldstein writes that “they had reputations in depth rather than breadth. They enjoyed more respect than popularity, and were known not by the wide public, but by a narrower circle. Yet those who knew them held them in infinite regar ." This may have been true of Passover, but it was by no means true of Goldenweiser, whose popularity in the southwestern part of Russia extended as far in “breadth" as it did in “depth." There was not a single Jew throughout this region who did not know his name.

239 But his popularity was not confined to Jews. He was highly regarded by Christians and Jews alike, and for many years he was the uncontested leader of the Kiev bar. The special position occupied by Alexander Goldenweiser in Kiev was due not only to his achievements in the legal profession, but also to his great personal charm. He was a “gentleman” in the best sense of the word, and inspired unbounded respect in everyone he dealt with, including the judges. He was annually oflered by his colleagues the chairmanship of the Executive Committee of the Bar Association, an institution taking the place of a Lawyer's Council, which had not yet been established in Kiev. He invariably refused, feeling that this post should not be cccupied by a Jew, and was yearly elected vice-chairman. However, he was the de facto head of the committee, and remained in this responsible post—“the living conscience of his profession"—until his death in 1915.‘ As M. Vinaver wrote in Goldenweiser’s obituary, Jews in the Russian Bar

There was a special quality in his entire life, his views, his ple, and even in the nobility and dignity of relations with his bearing, w ich attracted everyone who came into contact with him. There are such people: they do not merge into the crowd, however huge and varied it may be. They seem to bear a of the elect on their brows. And every gesture, eve wo reveals that everything about them is their own, individu , unique.

stall-:3)

But under the outer shell of his proud bearing and aristocratic reserve in dealing with people, there was a warm heart, full of sympathy for the suffering of his neighbor. He reacted most keenly to everything relating to the condition of the Jews in Russia. Despite his lifelong interest in

'

After the February Revolution of I917, Goldenweiser's younger brother, Yakov, also a well-known jurist, was elected chairman of the Council.

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social and political problems, Goldenweiser had no leanings toward active political work. He joined no party, did not participate in elections, and always remained an individualist, instinctively recoiling from all mass activities. A man of broad philosophic education, Alexander Goldenweiser was in his younger years an enthusiastic student of metaphysics and an admirer of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov; later he went over to the camp of the positivists of the English type and became an ardent follower of Herbert Spencer. Soon after Spencer's death he published a large work under the title, Herbert Spencer: Problems of Liberty and Law in His Philosophical System ( 1904) .° An an avowed individualist, Goldenweiser was particularly concerned with personal frwdom, and it can easily be understood why he chose the only profession which afforded an opportunity in his day to defend the rights of the individual. He appeared with great success in criminal cases, bringing to the defense of the accused his characteristic nobility of tone, subtle intellectual analysis and grace of foam However, civil cases soon took the central place in his activity as a lawyer. The fact that he concentrated his attention on civil, rather than criminal cases was not accidental; it was deeply rooted in his views on punishment and criminal courts. In one of his early defense speeches in 1883, he voiced the view that a criminal should be regarded as an ordinary man who had manifested certain deviations from normal

'

Goldenweiser also published the following books: Social Security Legislation in Germany (I890); Social Trends and Reform: of the XIX Century in England (l89l); and The Modern System of Punishment and its Future (1895)

.

Jews in the Russian Bar 241 human behavior. He cited the French physiologist Claude Bernard, who held that most morbid phenomena were in effect nothing more than expressions of extreme intensification of essentially normal physiological processes, and that a mental patient nwded only to be placed in normal, wholesome surroundings to be cured. “This view," said Goldenweiser, “is quite applicable to most of the moral illnesses of man which are called crimes." In this speech the young Goldenweiser already gave clear expression to his ideas concerning the inadequacy of punishment as remedy for crime. When Leo Tolstoy‘s great novel Resurrection appeared in 1899, Goldenweiser delivered a lecture before the Conference of Kiev Attorneys, under the title, “Crime a Punishment, and Punishment a Crime (Leading Thoughts in Tolstoy's Resurrection)." This title itself suggests his view that crime is a punishment of society for its indifference and neglect; that, therefore, society, and not the criminal’s “ill will," is in most cases responsible for its commission; and that, in punishing the criminal in such cases, society is itself committing a crime. Those who impose the punishment and those who carry it out—the judges, the police, the jailers, the executioners— are all participants in this collective crime. Goldenweiser's lecture was published in Vestnik Prava and was later reprinted in collections of his works. It was also translated into German, French, Spanish, Polish, and English.‘° gave high praise to Goldenweiser's work on his Resurmy rectlon. In a letter to E. A. Goldenweiser, the jurist’s son who had tnmlated his father’s work into English, Tolstoy wrote: “. . .Icannot

refrain from saying that your father's study illuminates with

great force and vividness the ideas, so close to my heart, of the un-

wisdom and immorality of the strange institution which is called

appeared as a preface to the English Edition (Crime a Punishment, and Punishment a Crime: Leading Thought: in Tolstoy's "Resurrection," New York, 1908). a court of law." This letter from Tolstoy

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 242 The problem of crime and punishment haunted GoldenAfter later well. his first visit to America in as weiser years in 1900, he presented a report at a meeting of the Kiev Juridical Society on “Correctional Institutions in the United States.” In 1902, he lectured at the Russian School for Advanced Social Studies in Paris on “The Problems of Crime and Punishment in the Light of Positivist Philosophy." He regularly participated in International Penitentiary Congresses (in Budapest, Paris, and Washington). Despite his boundless admiration of Tolstoy, Goldenweiser did not follow him in his teaching of “non-resistance to evil." He did not wish to leave the violators of the rights of others free of all responsibility for their criminal actions; he merely rebelled against the system of inflicting suflering by punishment, which he would have preferred to replace by the principle of re-education and care. Goldenweiser did not offer any complete or practical method for dealing with lawbreakers that might be applied at the present stage of civilization as an alternative to the existing penal system. But his ideas attest to an extraordinary humanity and nobility of spirit. Before his open grave, the attorney I. N. Peresvet-Soltan, speaking in behalf of the Kiev Bar, said: Your participation lifted our collective work from the bog of philistinism. You imparted to everything you touched the breath of high ideals. Wherever you appeared, forgotten great words began to echo in our souls. Each of us felt better and nobler in our presence. Always and everywhere, you wakened eternal v ues within us.

0. O. GRUZENBERG The life of Oskar Osipovich Gruzenberg was one of tireless struggle: for existence, against the Jewish lack of rights, and for the rights of the individual in court.

Jews in the Russian Bar

243 Gruzenberg was born in Yekaterinoslav in 1866, in a fairly well-to-do family. When he was thirteen his father's sudden death left the large family without means. Shortly before that, the Gruzenbergs had moved to Kiev, where the children entered school. Although the province of Kiev lay within the Pale of Settlement, the city itself was closed to all but certain privileged categories of Jews, and the police carried out frequent night raids in order to catch those who had no right of residence. One night the police came to the Gruzenberg home as well. Although his mother had the right, under the law, to live in the city “for the purpose of educating her children,” she was arrested and led OH to the police precinct. This first-hand encounter with persecution and Jewish disfranchisement left an ineradicable mark on the soul of the young szenberg. In his memoirs, published in Paris in 1938 under the title Yesterday, he wrote: “To forget how they humiliated my mother, who had never ofiended anyone, would have meant to forget that life, to be worth anything at all, must be lived in freedom, not in slavery." When he was graduated from the gymnasium, Gruzenberg faced the problem of choosing a profession. The study of philology, to which he was drawn most strongly (he was an enthusiastic student of Russian literature), held no promise of a future, since the professions of a school teacher or a professor were closed to him as a Jew. The only field which was still open at the time and which afforded him an opportunity to utilize his vast talents and militant temperament was the legal profesion. On completing law school, he rejected an invitation to remain at the university as an aspirant for a professorship,

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 244 refusing to “buy a ticket into history at the price of apostasy.” He went to St. Petersburg and registered as an assistant attorney. This was in 1889, when restrictions were imposed on Jews in the legal profession; Gruzenberg was to remain an “assistant attorney" for sixteen years. From the earliest beginnings of his legal career, Gruzenberg followed the path of the “great defender of the Jews,” as he was described many years later by an unknown youth on Gruzenberg Street in Tel-Aviv when a passer-by inquired for whom the street was named. In 1900, the Vilno Jew David Blondes was accused of wounding his Christian servant girl in order to use her blood in the preparation of matzos for the Passover holidays. The jury pronounced Blondes guilty, but the court passed a relatively lenient sentence: one year and four months of penal confinement. The Vilno Jews hesitated to advise Blondes to appeal, fearing that a second sentence might be more severe. Gruzenberg was indignant. He felt that it was inadmissible to allow such a charge to hang over the Jewish religion without using every available means of refutation and defense. On Gruzenberg's insistence, the sentence was appealed; the case was reviewed, and the defendant acquitted. In accomplishing this, Gruzenberg rendered an invaluable service to Russian Jewry: had he not cleared Blondes of the charge of using Christian blood, it could have served as a dangerous precedent for other cases, and notably for the Beylis case. In 1903 the Minister of the Interior, Plehve, declared Zionism an “anti-government movement.” A series of trials followed; the defendants included the editor of the weekly paper Rassvet and others. The defense of the Zionists was conducted under Gruzenberg's direction. Later he took part in the case growing out of the Kishinev

Jews in the Russian Bar 245 pogrom as counsel for Peter Dashevsky, who had attempted to assassinate one of the instigators of the pogrom. In 1911-1913 came the Beylis case. In addition to Gruzenberg, the defense team consisted of Karabchevsky, Maklakov, Zarudny, and Grigorovitch-Barsky. Gruzenberg was the only Jew in the group, and he felt profoundly the enormous responsibility to the Jewish people that rested on his shoulders, for his task was to defend not only Beylis, but also the Jewish religion and the entire Jewish people. Gruzenberg's fiery speech in court lasted six hours. He analyzed and disproved all the testimony against Beylis, and concluded with the following words: It requires no courage to tell the guilty villain that he is a villain. But to say of an innocent man, despite all evidence, that he is is not an exercise of courage, but a violation of the judge's oa . May God preserve a Russian judge from such “courage." . . . I firmly hope that Beylis will not perish. But what if I am mistaken? What if you, gentlemen of the jury, will accept the frightful accusation, despite the evidence? What's to be done! It is barely two hundred years since our forebears died on bonfires under similar charges. Unprotesting, with a prayer on their lips, they went to the unjust punishment. In what way are you, Beylis, better than they? You will have to go as they did. And if despair and grief should overwhelm ou in the days of your penal servitude, take courage, Beylis. epeat the prayer for the dying: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One".

guilty;

After the revolution of February, 1917, the Provisional Government established an Extraordinary Commission to investigate the crimes of the overthrown regime and opened the secret files of the security police pertaining to the Beylis case. The documents in these files clearly showed that the Minister of Justice, Shcheglovitov, and his subordinates had conspired with oflicials of the security police to create a

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Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

ritual murder case and place Beylis under accusation. They knew that the Jewish religion contained no ritual demanding the use of Christian blood. They also knew that Beylis was innocent. To achieve their purpose, they falsified medical testimony (the professor of forensic medicine who supplied the testimony favorable to the prosecution received a fee of four thousand rubles from the chief of the security police, Beletsky); they also suppressed testimony by witnesses, and kept certain witnesses out of the courtroom. A letter with important information, sent to Gruzenberg from Siberia, was not delivered to him, but was diverted into the police files, where Gruzenberg found it after the revolution. The chief prosecutor of the Kiev Court of Appeals, Chaplinsky, protected Vera Chebyryak and her gang of murderers in order to give her an opportunity to support the charges against Beylis. However, the simple, ordinary people who served on the jury withstood the extraordinary pressure exerted upon them by the prosecuting side and acquitted Beylis. With the outbreak of World War I Gruzenberg once more had to come out in defense of his people. In 1915, after the great setbacks at the front, the Russian military command raised a number of groundless accusations against the Jews living in border areas, charging them with espionage and treason. Orders were issued to deport all the Jews from the western provinces to the interior of the country, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were uprooted and ruined. In the frontal zone, trials were instituted against members of Jewish communities, accused of relations with the enemy. Most of these trials were held before military field tribunals, without counsel for the defense. It was essential to find some way of protecting the accused. Gruzenberg took upon himself the organization

Jews in the Russian Bar 247 of defense in the cases of alleged espionage and treason. In the words of the well-known Russian Zionist, Isaak Naydich,

Gmnberginveatedinthistaskallofhistalentallofhia anxre'ty. Only those who W the angurahed' intensity dedication of his work at close range could have any contion of the word “selflessness.” Gruzenberg rushed from one chief prosecutor to another, from one army headquarters to another, seeking wherever possible to find protection and help, without sparing himself, his strength or his health.

m

Gnrzenberg succeeded in saving the miller Chekhovsky, accused of signalling to the Germans; he won a commutation of the death sentence passed on the tailor Goltsman, and proved the innocence of the Mariampol Jew, Gershonovich, sentenwd to penal labor. The trial of Gershonovich was particularly crucial: the military authorities accused Gershonovich of persuading the Mariampol Jews to supply the Germans with forage and horses. Thus, the charge was indirectly aimed at the entire Jewish community of Mariampol. Gruzenberg spent a whole year gathering materials in this case. In 1916 he succeeded in obtaining a review of the case by the Supreme Military Tribunal; Gershonovich, and with him the entire Jewish community, were vindicated. This removal of a dangerous stigma from an entire Jewish community was one of Gruzenberg’s greatest services to Russian Jewry. The defense of Jews was only one aspect of Gruzenberg's activity as a lawyer. He gained nationwide fame by his work in political and general criminal cases. He defended the editors of the liberal daily Rech (“Speech”) and the radical monthly Russkoye Bogatstvo (“Russian

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Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

Wealth"). He also defended Trotsky in the case of the St.

Petersburg Soviet of Workers Deputies in 1906.“ The period of liquidation of the first Russian Revolution (1906-1916) witnessed many trials before regular courts, military tribunals, and the higher courts of appeal—the Senate and the Supreme Military Tribunal. The defendants were represented by attorneys most of whom neither shared their clients' political convictions nor sympathized with their activities. Thus, Sazonov, who assassinated Plehve, was defended by N. P. Karabchevsky, a very moderate liberal, who could scarcely have been suspected of harboring sympathies for Sazonov's terrorist act. Gruzenberg later wrote: How did it happen that I, no longer a young attorney, with a firm reputation as a specialist in appeal cases, joined the ranks of defense attorneys in political cases? What brought me to this? Political passions? No. Iwas as far from politics then as Iam now. Ambition, desire for honor? Still less: the ambitious usually travel through polities to fame, but never the reverse. I was led into this work by chance, and was impelled to remain in it by the experiences of my youth. Painful, humiliating, they flared up in my mind after so many years with irresistible force, burning off the thin surface layer of prosperous contentment.

Another reason that brought Gruzenberg to work in political cases was his belief in the role of the attorney as a

"

In this connection. A. Ya. Stolkind relata a curious incident in his reminiscences about Gruzenberg. In I917, Gruzenberg, who was then a member of the Senate. Russia's Supreme Court. met Trotsky again at a conference at which the latter called for an immediate cessation of the war. When Trotsky later asked how he liked his speech, Gruzenberg replied: “During the years you have spent abroad you lost neither your erudition. nor your brilliant talents as an orator. But as a Senator, I would sentence you to penal labor." To which Trotsky replied: “You evidently want to rectify your past mistake in defending me!"

Jews in the Russian Bar 249 defender of the individual against pressure by the government; and where did this pressure find its strongest manifestation if not in the political trials? In one of his speeches Gruzenberg said:

The attorney may be a mere pawn in his mtivities outside the courthouse. But when he defends those who are persecuted by the state, he fulfills his duty and works in a great cause! The political order changes. Governments come and go. Parties come into being and dissolve. But the principles of law and frwdom, in the name of which the lawyer rises In defense of the individual, remain immutable.

Gruzenberg took part in many of the most important criminal cases of his time, appearing either in the initial trial or during the appeal stage. As an appeals attorney in criminal cases before the Criminal Department of the Senate he had no equal in Russia. He achieved eminence in this field thanks to his rare knowledge of procedure, his oratorical talent and, most important of all, his astonishing resourcefulness and speed in legal fencing. However, he was by no means a coolly rational man with a good mind; his was an extraordinarily emotional nature, and he gave himself up completely to the work at hand. The famous Russian lawyer Potekhin aptly called him “a fighter by the grace of God.” Much later, in exile, Gruzenberg reminisced about his experiences at the time when he had served as an attorney for defense in military courts: Irecall how my colleagues and I rushed from one end of the country to the other. I remember the oomy courtrooms, the sullen judges, indiflerently computing t e sums of human sinfulness. Behind my back, facing the judges, young life pulsed feverishly, full of the joy of sacrifice. merciless to itself. Iknew that, any moment now, this life might be strangled by the hang-

250

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

man's noose. Any moment, these eyes. which strangely had become so precious to me, might close forever, the temples shrink, the nose grow sharp in death—and terror gripped my heart

. ..

Gruzenberg also recalled his overwhelming joy whenever he succeeded in averting the death blow from those he defended: “Listen to me—all of you, wise, even-tempered, cold people—have you ever felt such happiness? To cut the noose from the neck of a total stranger! Is there a joy on earth deeper and more beautiful?” Before the eyes of the sick, aged Gruzenberg, who had tasted the bitter bread of exile but who still grieved for the destinies of his “unhappy, infinitely beloved homeland," rose familiar images and memories. One after another, the men he defended passed before his mind's eye—“all those restless and sleepless worriers about human happiness. Were they good or bad? Good or evil—how can Ijudge? Igave them all of myself, piece by piece.” Yes, Gruzenberg had not lived his life for himself alone. He was himself one of the tireless “worriers about human happiness."

.. .

It would be wrong to close these sketches of Jewish lawyers in Russia without stressing one feature common to all these essentially very diflerent people: their love for Russia. "Zwei Seelen wahnen, ach.’ in meiner Brust!"" each one of these men could have cried out in Goethe’s words. Devoted sons of the Jewish people, they also had a fervent love for their native Russia and served her with dedication. The anti-Semitism that was fomented and supported by the government as a means of combatting the movement for liberation did not reach the core of the Russian people, and

—“ "Two souls, alasl live in my breast!" (Faust).

251 Jews in the Russian Bar did not prevent the close and friendly contact between the Jews and the more liberal and cultural strata of the Russian population. The Jewish masses of the Pale of Settlement had lived at peace with their Christian neighbors until they were made the butt of attack by the dregs of society. It was only after such grim events as the pogroms and the charges of ritual murder that a gulf had opened between Jews and Christians. “What of it,” said Gruzenberg at the Beylis trial, “that I grew up among you, went to your schools, studied from your books, and had you, Christians, as my friends? I shared your pain, your sorrows, your grief. But now, as you see, the terrible hour has struck, the bloody slander has been uttered, and we are divided and stand as enemies against each other.” But those were only separate anguished moments. In ordinary times, being Jewish was easily combined with recognition of oneself as a Russian citizen. “While loving my people and valuing it above else," wrote Sliozberg, “I have always loved Russia . . . Participation in Russian culture .. . was entirely compatible with loyalty to the Jewish national culture." And Gnrzenberg remembered with warm emotion his childhood years, when he was first learning to love Russia. “The earliest words to reach my mind were Russian. Songs, fairy tales, the comrades of my first games —all of them Russian." And later, the university years: “Russian books, Russian friends—that whole wonderful world of young dreams and selfless enthusiasm possessed us utterly, swept us, and raised us high over the earth." When asked the reasons for this love—“For what? For lack of rights, humiliations, pogroms?"—Gruzenberg answered:

Those who put the question in this way do not know the meaning of true love. Why do we love Russia? How explain

252 Russian Jewry {1860-1917) it? We love Russia because there the sun pours out its light and warmth diflerently; the clouds float in the sky, the river sings, the sand creaks underfoot—all of it difierently and even the conscience there is a different kind of conscience

...

...

True love is unreasoning, and the “feeling of Homeland.” as Jabotinsky aplty defined it, “is not mere acceptance or sympathy, but an elemental emotion with which you cannot argue.”

jews in Russian Literary and Political Lifia by Gregor Aronson

THE RUSSO-JEWISH PRESS I THE APPEARANCE OF A Russo-JEWISH PWCLng-n

Iy linked wi

ussian”

_

-.[ewish intelligentsia. In the er ence of a 1840's no one could have foreseen thisphgggmenon. The maifiéfiiwaskmm) of that

ew

'

period were predominantly Jews from the Baltic regions, who were wholly under the influence of German Jews. They were brought up on German culture and lived in its borrowed light. The Maskilim did not think in terms of participation in Russian culture, especially since the Russian language was alien to them at the time. As for Russian social life and the liberal, or even radical, tendencies which in the 1840’s had already affected rather wide circles of the 253

.—-—

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 254 younger generation of the Russian gentry, these existed in a world outside the ken of the Russian Jews. The Jewish intellectuals probably knew little of them, and that only by hearsay, for they had no direct contact with the centers of nascent political opposition in Russia. It was not without reason that one of the first RussianJewish writers, L. O. Levanda, wrote about the Jewish intelligentsia of the 1840's in the following words: Brought up in the traditions of the 18th century school of Mendelssohn, it had no definite character of its own. It was international, partly Jewish, partly German. strongly infected with superficial dilletantism, and still involved with points of view long discarded in the West. In short, this intelligentsia. for all its honorable qualities, was an utter anachronism and totally unfit for life.

,/ mw era began in the late 1850's, after Russia's defeat

the Crimean War. In the 1860's, Russiaanlic opinion Ii inbegan recognize the existence of the Jewish mm to

i

Russia and

to

discuss the destimeW~

Jews who knew Russian and um~Educated meanifigm‘fi‘e soCIal changes taking place in the country

increasingly felt the need for a Jewish press in Russia, for a new stratum was emerging in Russian society—the L—Jlusso-Jewish intelligentsia. Below we shall attempt to trace the principal lines of development of the hopes and aspirations of the RussoJewish intelligentsia, as expressed in the history of the Russo-Jewish periodical press. At first—and this period lasted for (Lite 3 long time—— ./ the EWIsh intelligentsia which. had-Who-mainstreamof Russifigaorfisianculture labgmdmdentheillusion "on, of fu5Ion with the Russian people and far-reaching

aSSImIlatIon 'rhéirr’afiéfié'fit;~of.“Enlightenment"':ssl"IfiI'fl'E'ti"‘ the idea of Jewish national consciousness and rested their_

255 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life hopes chiefly on the kind intentions of the Russian government. The shock of the pogroms of the 1880’,s followed and the rampant anti- Semitism of the 1890’s, shatteredthese illusions. By the opening years of the presentcentury it was clear that only a fight for equal rights, undertaken as the central and militant task of Russian Jewry, could lead to a consolidation of the Jewish positions in the country, and release the inner national energy of the Jews themselves. press—i.e., the The

Mlitmmin

periodicals published

Russo-Jewish

with. the- progressivelorcegnffiussiansocietx,_thegreater part of the Russo-Jewish

press advocated _deep

and serious

changesInRusSIan ponc‘y'. This,itfelt.”wafls‘oIn the best interests of RuSsian Jewry. At the same time, reflect-

ing the growing

national awareness of RuSSIan Jewry, tur~

press evolved into

an

effective factor for bringing the

Russo-Jewishintemgmtsiajntoclnsercontact withtheJeIIIb ish popular.Inasses _and their vital needs. Such was the press in the 19th and 20th course of I

theRusso-Jewish

1860-1861)_,_ wasfoundedIn Odessaat the initiative of the ‘local Jewish intelligentSIa—mh“the active support of the famous Russian physician and pedagogue N. I. Pirogov, who was then the superintendent of the Odessa Educational District. On December 23, 1856, Osip Rabinovich (18171869), a writer of fiction, and Ioakhim TamOpol (18101900), an economist and statistician, submitted a memorandum to the appropriate government agency requesting permission to publish a Russo-Jewish weekly, Rassvet.

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 256 The aims of the new journal were essentially to disseminate education in Russian and to combat the “fanatical” elements among the Jews. It was characteristic of assimilationist and Russification moods among the Jewish intelligentsia of that period that numerous attacks were made on Yiddish as a “'ar 0 be called a anguage.” “—‘OFM'a—y'm, the authorities “recommended" the publication of a journal in “the Jewish tongue (i.e., Hebrew) or the Yiddish-German tongue used in Russia." However. this provision elicited emphatic objections on the part of the initiators of the project, Rabinovich and Tamopol. “Neither the dead Jewish language." they wrote. “nor the semi-primitive Jewish-Gennan jargon are capable of generating the light of dawn on the dark horizon of ignorance." Without Russian. their entire project lost its “W516ve —he Russian language as we love our

meanin

W

-

Finally, on October 22. 1859. Imperial permission was granted for the publication of Rassver in Russian. The first issue of the first Russo-Jewish journal appeared on May 27, 1860. Rassvet was short-lived. At every step the journal was harassed by the censors. It also failed to Win success among the readers, and the journal very soon discontinued publication. Mew magazine. Sion (“Zion"). succeeded it on Edited by E. SJoveychik and L. Pinker, and later by N. Bernshtein. In its contents and position. Sion was similar to Rassver, although it carried less joumalistic material and more popular-scientific articles. Sion also lasted a short time and was discontinued after only ten months. Seven years later a new Russo-Jewish organ, Den

W175

”

'

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 257 (“Day”), was founded. Its lifetime (1869-1871) was longer than those of its predecessors, and it succeeded in establishing itself as an important landmark in the history of the Russo-Jewish press. This was due primarily to the presence among its editorial forces of Ilya G. Orshansky (1846-1875), an outstanding jurist, an expert on Jewish economic life, and a vivid and talented journalist. By this time, public opinion in Jewish circles had gradually crystallized itself around a central task: the struggle for the abolition of anti-Jewish restrictions. These demands inspired many of the articles published in Den. The well-known Jewish scholar and public leader, M. Kulisher, wrote about Den: For the first time, it drew upon the entire exiting le ‘ latIve material to characterize the legal position of the Jews. or the first time, use was made of the numerous data available in Russian literature to describe the economic condition of the Jews. This was chiefly the contribution of I. G. Orshansky. We find here both a new method of dealing with the Jewish question, and new valuable material throwing light on it.

The po_s_it_i9_r_I_of Den was shaken. when thehopes“of the JewTIicommunity were shattered by the Odessa pogromm _ of I811_._De'nprovmapabmcflfigadequately to .this event. Conflicts developed among the editors. The issue of Den which appeared following the pogrom contained only M. Kulisher‘s brief report about it, mutilated by the censorship. On June 8, 1871, Den was closed by order of the authorities. After Rassver and Den, several other Russo-Jewish publications appeared in Russia. Among them we may mention the weekly, Vesrnik Russkikh Yevreyev (“Herald of Russian Jews”), published in St. Petersburg in 1871-73 by the well-known editor of the Hebrew HamelI'ts, Alexander

258

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

Tsederbaum (1816-1893). A man of extraordinary energy and capacity for work, endowed With the instinct of a true publicist and considerable literary and critical talent, Tsederbaum enjoyed great popularity. However, his attempt to publish Vesrnik Russkikh Yevreyev ended in failure. Soon afterward came the period of the growing revolutionary movement in Russia, which drew into its orbit the Jewish intelligentsia as well. National consciousness was rare among Jewish socialists at that time. Among its infrequent expressions were the “Appeal to Jewish Intellectual Youth," published by A. Liberman in 1876 in the revolutionary organ, Vperyod (“Forward"), which appeared abroad, and the “Appeal of a Group of Jewish Socialists,” published in Geneva in 1880. The latter was connected with the name of L. Tsukennan, an active figure in the People's Will movement, and urged Jewish socialists for the first time to conduct their propaganda in Yiddish. By that time, the center of the Jewish intelligentsia had ofthe

shWWfid reforms in thrarea of

4A period of

theJeWishquestion.

'

'

greater pubII‘C'acti'vi‘ty‘begari'.1ccorflThE't'6'Tnany memoirs, the winter of 1879 was a time of innumerable meetings and I

‘-

gatherings, at which speeches were made and toasts proclaimed, hailing a variety of plans for social improvement. A nu h come to the ers and foreIn Russo-Jewish intellectual_cIICIes. ere regarded . as the future leaders cheWIsh public 0 IIninn. The need to rebufl the increasingly brazen and to de. anti— . mitism velop constructive solutions to the pressing. problems of Jewish life prompted ever more insistently the idea of establishing a Russo-Jewish publicatinnthaumuld uni“? Wide

writers

_-

'

259 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life Jewish circles. It must also be noted that a lively interest in Yiddish was evident at the meetings and gatherings of that period. However. it was eelxjaths sateen 9f.,1.819. thatitpe. cammake use of the permission, obtained by A. Tsederbaum, to publish Rassvet. The new magazine Eisted until’JanUary, 1883: Its editOrial board included M. Kulisher, the poet N. Minsky, the prose writer, G. Bogrov, the literary historian S. Vengerov, and others. Rassvet formulated its aims in an eloquent programmatic article, written by M. Kulisher: The basic objective and the prime t3$_k,‘0f_Olll.2.l!§1i§§§l§l1 is ' Themds 'and"aspirations of Russran Jews . . . ev 'tsTfine'io the fulfillment of the needs and wants of Jews, the Jewish intelligentsia will not thereby be isolat3:35:39 i Itself IrOm the general body _of IRussian_.citizens. It will merely fiworkingTdf‘a'cau'se and pefi'ormrhg tasks “mich‘ are are any can Russian citizens.

EL

h”‘— "

‘

-

Individual contributors to Rassvet continued to maintain the position of the Odessa Den in regard to the benefit and Wisdom of assimilation. On the whole, however, the leaders of Rassvet no longer believed in assimilation. Participation in Russian culture and the propaganda of civic consciousness among the Jewish masses no longer signified to them the perspective of the dissolution of the Jewish intelligentsia in the Russian milieu or “fusion” with the Russian people. Rassvet gave increasingly greater evidence of contact with the life of the people and the needs of the masses, which, in their still inchoate and unformulated ways, were moving in the direction of new modes of life, independent activity, and self-help. The distinct national tendency of the time found par-

260

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) ticularly strong expression in a plan for the formation of a Labor Fund, which subsequently developed into the CRT. Rassvet, as well as the second organ of the Russo-Jewish press, Russlry Yevrey ("Russian Jew"), founded during the same period by L. Berman and G. Rabinovich, supported the development of economic self-help activities, which were initiated largely in connection with the Labor Fund. The Russo-Jewish press became an institution with flesh and blood when it made itself a part of a practical cause and began to fulfill a vital social function. Rassvet considered it necessary to combat not only the anti-Semites but also the socialist moods that continued to spread among the Jewish youth. Nerd-West (the journalistic pen-name of the poet N. Minsky) declared in the columns of Rassvet that the slogans of the socialists were “dead words to the Jewish people, devoid of any vital significance." This first flowering of the Russo-Jewish press was shortlived. Rassvet and Russky Yevrey continued publication for several years. But the expectation of imminent reforms that had inspired them in the beginning soon gave way to despair. After the regicide of March 1, 1881, came a period of utter darkness. The pogrom in Elisavetgrad on April 15, 1881, signalled the beginning of the great catastrophe that struck at Russian Jewry—the pogroms of 1881-1883 and the Temporary Regulations of May 3, 1882, barring Jewish residence in rural areas Within the Pale. This grim era shook the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia to the very foundations. Palestinophile moods became prevalent in the circles around Rassvet and Russky Yevrey, moods eloquently voiced by M. L. Lilienblum (18431910). The first waves of mass emigration to Palestine and America followed.

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 261 An important place in the history of the Russo-Jewish press is occupied by A. E. Landau (1842-1915), who published ten volumes of the historical-literary Jewish Library (Yevreyskaya Biblioteka) in St. Petersburg (from 1870 to 1880 and from 1901 to 1903). For eighteen years Landau was also the editor of Voskhod (“Sunrise”), which appeared monthly from 1881 to 1906, with weekly supplements, Nedelnaya Khronika Voskhoda (“Voskhod Weekly Chronicle”). The last two books of the Jewish Library were published by A. E. Landau’s son, Gregory Landau, who later became a prominent journalist and political writer. The program of Voskhod called for: “Progress outside and within Jewry... Resolute and free an I'Estrument“6f"struggle_IrgaiInIstI all 6bstac10s,_exte_rnaLand. internal,“t6 the ijoperI development: of Russian Jeer'L. undertaken by Voskhod was the struggle for the equality of Jews in Russia and against legal disabilities and persecutions of Jews. Voskhod also fought against cultural backwardness among the Jews and supported all activities aimed at educating the Jewish masses. In questions of internal Jewish life, Voskhod opposed the Palestinophiles. While supporting the mass emigration to America that began after the pogroms, it argued against emigration to Palestine. Hermann: principal task of the-Russo-Jewish pleas in. the 1890's was the struggle against manifestations of antion the part of the government. The _new decade _ was marked by a brutal anti-Semitic act—.thg_deportation. of Jews from Moscow in 1891,_But even before this act, as er It, e bounding of Russian Jewry became, as it were, a specialty of the Russian official press. The progressive circles in the country decided to issue a protest

Wines

mannerisms

EfiIitism

l/

262

Russian Jewry {1860-1917)

against the systematic persecution of the Jews. The text of this protest was drafted by Vladimir Solovyov (18531900), the famous Russian philosopher and humanist. S. Dubnow writes in Vol. X of his World History of the Jewish People: Vladimir Solovyov wanted to publish a protest against the anti-Semitic tendency of the “Russian press"—but in reality against the Russian government and the venal writers in its service. This protest was to be signed by prominent Russian writers and civic leaders. He succeeded in collecting more than a hundred signatures in Moscow and St. Petersburg during May and June, 1890. The signatories included Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Korolenko and other famous writers . . But despite the moderate tone of the protest, it proved impossible to publish it. The Moscow professor, Ilovaysky, informed St. Petersburg that signatures were being collected in Moscow under “a pro-Jewish petition," and the Chief Oflice for the Affairs of the Press forbade the newspaper editors to publish any collective declarations on the Jewish question. Solovyov addressed an impassioned letter to Alexander III, but immediately received a clear warning from the police, suggesting that he refrain from raising any public outcry concerning the Jews under threat of adminireprisals. The idea of an open protest had to be abando .

.

stranns'e

In 1899, a group of civic leaders and writers in St. Petersburg, including L. Bramson, Yu. Brutskus, S. Ginzburg and others, bought Voskhod from A. E. Landau and formed a new editorial board consisting of young men of fairly radical mood and great devotion to the interests of the popular masses. The influex of new, young forces also resulted in the considerable revitalization of the central Jewish institutions in St. Petersburg. The leaders of these institutions realized the necessity of having a press organ as an instrument for the promotion of their plans. The program of the new editors of Voskhod gave expression to

263 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life a number of ideas in the spirit of the era-at the turn of the century.

At one time Voskhod published Zionist articles as well, but the majority of its editorial board maintained that the solution of the Jewish question depended solely on the national-political activity of the Jews in their countries of residence. The Zionists left the Voskhod editorial board, which was taken over by M. M. Vinaver and L. A. Sev (1867-1922). M. L. Trivus was also intimately connected with the editorial work. Voskhod became the organ of Jewish liberalism, maintaining a close relationship with Russian liberal circles, especially the Kadet party. At the time of the first Russian revolution (1905), Voskhod had not less than five thousand subscribers. In the history of the Russo-Jewish press, Voskhod holds a unique place not only because it existed uninterruptedly for a quarter of a century, but also because it was chiefly thanks to Voskhod that generations of Russo-Jewish fiction writers and poets, eminent historians, sociologists, economists, literary critics, and talented publicists were given an opportunity to participate in Jewish literature in Russian. There was scarcely a single prominent Jewish writer (including those who later moved away from Jewry and Judaism) whose writings did not, at one time or another, appear in Voskhod or its weekly supplement. Voskhod also considered it one of its tasks to introduce the Jewish reader who knew only Russian to all the talented new works that appeared in Hebrew and, later, in Yiddish. Voskhod systematically published these works in translation, as well as critical surveys and reviews of cunent Jewish fiction. Voskhod brought a marked improvement into the style and language of the Russo-Jewish press, which had been in considerable nwd of improvement. In the caliber and

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 264 scope of its contents, Voskhod was superior to its predecesgreat deal of attention to reports from nusors. It paid a merous European countries and America, thus expanding the horizon of its readers and providing a bond between Russian Jews and world Jewry. This also served to strengthen the national awareness of the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia. The “great schism” in the Jewish intelligentsia led to the appearance of a new category of publications—namely, Zionist organs in Russian. The first of these was the weekly Budushchnost (“The Future”), published in St. Petersburg under the editorship of S. 0. Gruzenberg from December. 1889, to April, 1904. M. D. Ryvkin published a weekly, Yevreyskaya Zhizn (“Jewish Life") with supplements in St. Petersburg from 1904 to 1906. Yevreyskaya Mysl (“Jewish Thought") appeared in Odessa in 1906-07. And, finally, the weekly Zionist party organ, Rassvet (“Dawn”), began publication in 1907 under the editorship of A. I. Idelson (1865-1921) and with the close collaboration of Vladimir Jabotinsky, Julius Brutskus, and S. Yanovsky, and continued to appear in Russia until the shutdown of all independent publications by the Bolsheviks in June, 1918. After that, it was revived abroad and appeared, with interruptions, in Berlin and Paris from 1922 to 1935 under the editorship of V. Jabotinsky. In the area of party publications, the Bund (“The Jewish Socialist Labor Union," a revolutionary social-democratic organization in Russia, Poland, and Lithuania, founded in 1897) was the most active group. It published its organs in Russian, partly to supplement its Yiddish publications, and partly in order to reach the student youth which knew no Yiddish. Among the illegal Bund publications, minted in Geneva and smuggled into Russia, were Posledniye No-

265 Jews in Run-tan Literary and Political Life vosti (“The Latest News,” 256 issues of which appeared to (“Bund 1905), from 1901 Herald,” Vestnik Bunda 1904), Otkliki Bunda (“Bund Echoes,” 1909-1911), and others. In Vilno the Bund legally published Nashe Slovo (“Our Word”) and later Nasha Tribuna (“Our Tribune") from 1906 to 1908. Other Jewish socialist groups also published their organs in Russian. Thus, the Seimovtsy (or Serpovtsy) published abroad two double issues of the Journal Vozrozhdeniye (“Rebirth,” London-Paris, 1904). The Poalc-Zionists published Yevreyskaya Rabochaya Khronika (“Jewish Labor Chronicle") in Poltava in 1906. At one period, in connection with the electoral campaign for the State Duma, the Jewish People‘s Group published a journal, Svoboda i Ravens-No (“Liberty and Equality," 1907), with the close participation of M. L. Trivus and S. V. Pozner. The years from 1900 to 1914 were a period of rapid growth of national movements among Russian Jews, and of the ideological crystallization of the national programs of the various groups of Russo-Jewish intelligentsia. A great impetus in this direction was provided by the Russian Revolution of 1905, which activated wide masses of people. and also by the pogroms of the first decade of the new century (the Kishinev and Gomel pogroms of 1903 and the wave of pogroms immediately following the Manifesto of October 17, 1905, as though in reply to this manifesto, which promiaed the citizens of Russia certain political rights and a Duma with legislative powers). During the years between the first revolution and World War I, new elements emerged in the life of the Jewish popular masses: a popular (folkstimlikhe) intelligentsia came into being; Yiddish literature developed greatly and produced many new talents; a daily press in Yiddish made its

266

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

appearance, first in St. Petersburg and later in Vilno and Warsaw, and won a wide reading public. The Russo-Jewish press also reflected new phenomena in Jewish life: the democratization of public opinion; the Jewish cultural and literary renascence, attended by increased interest in Jewish folklore, history, ethnography, and music; the appearance of a number of literary societies and branches of the Society for the Dissemination of Edncation; the activation of the Society for Artisan Labor (Obshchestvo Remeslennogo Truda, or ORT); the formation of the Society for the Protection of Health Among the Jews (Obshchestvo _Zdravookhraneniya Sredi Yevreyev, or OZE); the struggle for public schools in Yiddish; and the struggle for the rights of Yiddish in Jewish public life. Finally, the press also reflected the social conflicts, which expressed themselves in the striving of democratic and labor elements to restrict the power of conservative and privileged circles in the life of the communities, the reform of which became an ever more pressing necessity. At the same time, the Russo-Jewish press also served to inform Russian progressive circles about the condition, problems, and demands of Russian Jewry. In this respect alone, the Russo-Jewish press was of great significance during these years. Voskhod, which ceased publication in 1906, was succwded by Navy Voskhod (“New Sunrise"), which later appeared (1910-1918) as Yevreyskaya Nedelya (“Jewish Week"). This publication became the official organ of the Jewish People's Group, headed by M. M. Vinaver (18631926). A number of spokesmen for Jewish liberalism who were close to the Kadet Party contributed to it. Its editor was L. A. Sev. During this period, the political differentiation of the

267 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Lite Jewish groups and parties, which followed not only general at political lines but also the national line, proceeded an accelerated pace. After the Revolution of 1905, the question was not only that of full civil rights for Jews, but also of national rights. This reflected itself in the magazine Yevreysky Mir ("Jewish World”), founded in St. Petersburg in 1909 by a coalition of representatives of several Jewish political groupings (including S. Dubnow, S. Ansky, L. Sev, A. Braudo, and others). The coalition, however, was short-lived. Already in 1910 disagreements led to an editorial crisis. The spokesmen for the Vinaver group resigned, and the journal remained in the hands of members of the Jewish Democratic Group. The new editors adopted a more left-wing orientation, and this made it possible for Jewish socialists to collaborate in Yevreysky Mir and its successor, Yevreyskoye Oboveniye (“Jewish Survey,” 1910).

In subsequent years the attention of the Russo-Jewish press was centered on the question of relations between Poles and Jews in connection with the so-called economic boycott and later the Beylis case (1911-1913), which poisoned the atmosphere by the attempt of the government and particularly, of the Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov to spread abroad the legend of the ritual use of Christian blood by the Jews. During World War I, the organs of the Russo-Jewish press (augmented by the left-wing democratic journal, NoVy Put [“New Road"], published in Moscow in 19161917, and the Bund organ Yevreyskiye Vesri [“Jewish News”], published in St. Petersburg in 1916-1917) played a notable role despite the carping interference of the military censors. This was especially important under the tragic conditions in which the Jewish masses found themselves

268 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) throughout western Russia in those years. The war brought the Jews a multitude of disasters: deportations from the frontal areas on orders of the military authorities, hundreds of thousands of refugees, wholesale slander of the Jews, accusations of espionage, and so forth. Under these circumstances, complicated still further by economic collapse, speculation, etc., the Russo-Jewish community was faced with a number of diflicult and responsible tasks. Organizations were formed to help the war victims, refugees, and deportees. Special organizations were set up to provide work for people uprooted from their normal lives and occupations. A number of new publications were founded to facilitate the work of these special agencies. These included the magazines Pomoshch (“Aid"), Delo Pomoshchi (“The Cause of Aid," organ of the YEKOPO), Vestnik Trudovoy Pomoshchi (“Labor Aid Herald," organ of the CRT), and Yevreysky Ekonomichesky Vesrnik (“Jewish Economic Herald," 1917). Of course, journals devoted to special fields had existed previously as well. Among these we may name Vestnik Obshchestva Rasprosrraneniya Prosveshcheniya (“Herald of the Society for the Dissemination of Education," 1910-1912) and Vestnik Yevreyskogo Prosveshcheniya (“Jewish Education Herald," 1913-1917), both connected with OPE, or Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews; there was also the St. Petersburg Vestnik Yevreyskoy Obshchiny (“Jewish Community Herald," 1913-1914). These earlier publications, however, had never faced such diflicult tasks as those which the war and its ordeals imposed on the Jewish press. A special place in the history of the Russo-Jewish press is held by the journal founded by S. M. Dubnow and devoted to Jewish history, Yevreyskaya Starina (“Jewish An-

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 269 tiquity"), which appeared from 1909 to 1930. Of the thirteen volumes of this journal, ten were published by Dubnow. We must also mention the historical collections, Perezhitoye (“Our Past"), four volumes of which were published by S. M. Ginzburg and others from 1909 to 1913. The October Revolution, which closed all independent publications in Russia, also put an end to the Russo-Jewish press. The disappearance of the independent press was attended by the forcible liquidation also of that stratum of the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia which Russian Jewry had borne on its shoulders for sixty years the struggle for free expression, and which at every stage had spoken in defense of the civil and national rights of the Jews. To illustrate this tragic culmination of the long years of self-sacrificing effort on the part of the Jewish intelligentsia, we shall cite but one name in the long list of martyrs of that period and the years that followed. It is the name of S. L. Tsinberg (1873-1939), the literary historian and critic who had participated for many years in Russo-Jewish publications, from Voskhod on through numerous others. Tsinberg, a chemical engineer by profession, worked at the Putilov plant in Petrograd during the day and spent his evenings writing a history of the world Jewish press. In the 1930's, Tsinberg “disappeared" from his home. News of his death reached us during World War II. By rare luck, his friends succeeded in bringing the manuscripts of ten large volumes of his studies out of Russia, and subsequently published them abroad. Tsinberg‘s tragic fate symbolizes the indivisible link between the fate of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia and that of the Russo-Jewish press under the terrorist dictatorship of the Bolsheviks.

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II

JEWS IN THE RUSSIAN PERIODICAL PRESS After the beginning of the 20th century, and particularly after the revolution of 1905, Russian newspapers came to fulfill with outstanding success the social function formerly performed chiefly by the traditional “thick journals."l In Tsarist Russia the periodical press served, in a sense, as a substitute for all the diverse political activities which, in democratic countries, are normally the function of political parties and groupings. Hence the enormously important role of the press in old Russia. It was quite natural, therefore, that the active elements of the Russian intelligentsia of various nationalities were drawn to journalism, regarding this activity as, perhaps, the only means for putting their energies and talents to the service of their social cause. Despite the stringent censorship prevailing before 1905 and the continuing government surveillance of the press, there were moments when the journalist became a factor of major importance. The work of the journalists, conducted at the very nub of Russian political life, helped to mold public opinion as effectively as did the speeches of the Zemstvo leaders (and later the deputies of the State Duma) and the statements of popular professors. The newspaper rostrum naturally held particular attraction for representatives of the Jewish intelligentsia, whose rights were so painfully restricted by special discriminatory laws. The role of Jews in the periodical press was at times very considerable, and this caused extreme irritation among —'Thi§Tas the general term for monthly reviews, which offered their readers the latest works of fiction, as well 3 articles on scientific, literary, and political subjects.

271 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life right-wing and anti-Semitic groups and led them to raise the cry that Jews “dominated" the Russian press. The participation of Jews in the Russian periodical press was indeed quite extensive and energetic. There were few editorial posts in which Jewish journalists failed to distinguish themselves. We find Jewish journalists at the head of a number of major Russian newspapers; among prominent correspondents — foreign, Duma, municipal and provincial; among publicists and political writers — idealogical leaders of the press; among columnists, book reviewers, drama critics, and reporters. Below, the reader will find brief data on the activities of some of the most prominent Russian-Jewish journalists: Joseph Hessen (1866-1943), founder of the most widely read weekly legal journal, Pravo (“Law"), editor of the large St. Petersburg neWSpaper Rech (“Speech"), author of a number of books, and member of the Second State Duma from St. Petersburg. At first a member of the Union for Liberation, he was later a Constitutional Democrat (Kadet). He left Russia after the Revolution and edited a Russian newspaper in Berlin. Died in New York in 1943. Isaak Shklovsky (“Dioneo," 1866-1935). For many years (beginning with 1896), he served as the English correspondent of a large liberal newspaper in Moscow, Russkiye Vedomosti (“Russian News”), one of the best Russian dailies. His articles, which acquainted the Russian reading public with English political life, were later published in separate volumes. Grigory Iollos (1859-1907). Long-time contributor and later editor of Russkiye Vedomosti. Gained fame for his letters from Berlin, in which he provided a picture of German political life during the reign of Wilhelm II and ac-

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quainted the Russian reader with German political parties (especially the Social Democrats) and the German system of social legislation. Served as a member of the First Duma. On March 14, 1907, Iollos was murdered on his way home from his editorial office by an assassin hired by the reactionary Black Hundred. Osip Notovich (1849-1914). Journalist, editor of Novosti (“News"), one of the first liberal newspapers in Russia, published in St. Petersburg, with a wide circulation in the cities of the Pale of Settlement. Alexander Izgoyev-Landa (born in 1872). Contributor to a number of newspapers and journals and author of several books. Alexander Kugel (“Homo Novus,” 1864-1928). Editor of Teatr I‘ lskusstvo (“Theatre and Art"), the leading theatre journal in Russia, and a brilliant political columnist. Iona Kugel, Alexander's brother; edited large newspapers, first in Kiev and later in St. Petersburg. I. M. Kheifets. Editor of the largest newspaper in Odessa. Mikhail Kulisher. Founder and editor of the liberal newspaper, Zarya (“Dawn"), published in Kiev in the 1880‘s. Kulisher was also a prominent lawyer and scholar, and the author of original studies on the migration of

reorien-

Solomon Polyakov-Litovtsev ( 1875-1945), prominent journalist. During World War II, he contributed to the New York newspaper, Novoye Russkoye Slovo (“New Russian Wor ”). He was also the author of an historical novel, Messiah Without a People, dealing with the life of Sabbatai Zevi. Yosif Bikerman (born 1867). Contributor to a number of newspapers in the Russian capital and author of studies

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 273 on the life of Russian Jewry (“The Pale of Settlement,” “Jews in the Grain Trade," and others). Pavel Berlin (1877-1962). Contributor to a number of journals and newspapers, and author of several books. Pyotr Zvezdich (1868-1944). Contributed to large Russian newspapers. After 1897, he served as a correspondent from Vienna and published articles in journals. Zvezdich was killed by the Nazis during World War II, after deportation from France. Isaak Levin (1867-1944) . Commentator on internationa1 politics; contributed to important Russian newspapers and journals. After his emigration from Russia, he wrote for the emigre press. Author of The Emigres of the French Revolution. Levin also died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Yuly D. Engel (born 1886). Music critic for Moscow newspapers until the Bolsheviks clwed all independent publications in 1918. Nikolay Efros (1867—1923). Drama critic and author of monographs on the actors Stanislavsky, Kachalov, and others. Lev Klyachko, or L. Lvov. Had the reputation of “king of reporters” in St. Petersburg. Recorded the life of the bureaucratic circles and ministries, and won fame for his sensational exposes. Ilya M. Trotsky (born 1879). Contributor to various periodical publications; correspondent of the largest Russian newspaper, Russkoye Slovo (“Russian Word,” published in Moscow), first from Germany and later from the Scandanavian countries. Translator. After 1917, he wrote for the Russian emigre press and Yiddish newspapers. Ashkenazi, or V. A. Azov (born 1873). Contributor to

Russian Jewry {1860-1917) 274 major newspapers, cohunnist. Published a volume of feuilletons, Colored Panes (1912). Alexander Polyakov (born 1879). Contributor to Odessa, Moscow, and St. Petersburg newspapers. In emigration, served for many years as secretary of the editorial oflice of Posledniye Novosri (“Latest News") in Paris and later of Novoye Russkoye Slovo in New York. Lev Nemanov. Began his journalistic career in 1902 in the Russian provinces. Later worked for newspapers in the capital. Duma correspondent. Contributor to Posledniye Novosti in Paris after emigration from Russia. Solomon Pozner (1880-1945). Contributor to various publications, beginning with Osvobozhdeniye (“Liberation") in 1903. Author of Jews in the Russian SchooLt. Adolphe Cremieux (in French), and other books. Semyon Portugeis (1881-1944, wrote under the pen name of Stepan Ivanovich). Publicist. Contributed to newspapers and journals. In emigration, edited Social Democratic journals. contributed to Posledniye Novosti and the monthly Sovremennye Zapiski (“Contemporary Annals") in Paris. Author of a number of studies, including VKP (All-Union Communist Party), The Red Army, A. N. Potresov, and others.

III

JEWISH-RUSSIAN WRITERS The appearance of a Russo-Jewish literature —created by Jewish writers and poets in Russian — coincided with the emergence of a Russo-Jewish periodical press. This press naturally devoted itself chiefly to publicistic and sociopolitical tasks. But the very fact of its appearance and ex-

275 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life istence stimulated the talents and latent creative energies of representatives of the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia which had come to maturity in fruitful contact with Russian culture. Through the special medium of fiction, the Jewish writers sought to convey their experience, knowledge, and observation of Jewish life, and thus to serve the people in their own way, as validly and effectively as did the political journalists in the Russo-Jewish publications. This sense of duty to the people lent the Russo-Jewish literature a specific character, especially during its early, pioneering period. The Jewish writer of that time was acutely aware of the fact that his works would be read not only by Jews, but also by readers from among the Russian mileu, to whom the Russian Jew was an unknown, mysterious entity, envisaged either as the majestic but abstract image of The Wandering Jew, or as the wretched, grotesque, and repellent figure which many famous Russian writers had associated with the Jews who led an impoverished, disfranchised, and toilridden existence within the Pale of Settlement.’ The Russo-Jewish writer spoke, naturally, primarily to Jews. His face was turned to his own reader. But the fact that he wrote in Russian imposed upon him the need for caution and restraint, particularly in depicting the old and crumbling orthodox way of life and the negative aspects of this life. As a result, Russo-Jewish fiction always faced the danger of lapsing into — and, indeed, often did lapse into — tendentiousness. All this should be kept in mind in tracing and evaluating the facts of the history of Russo-Jewish ’We may recall Turgenev's story. “The Spy,” the figure of sake! and the description of a pogrom in Gogol's Taras Bulba, Dostoyevsky's Isay Fomich, and the “contemptible Jew" in Pushkin‘s “The Miser Knight."

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The link between the work of Russo-Jewish writers and the periodical press made itself felt from the beginning. Sufice it to say that one of the originators and the first editor of the earliest Russo-Jewish journal, the Odessa Rassvet (“Dawn"), was the Russo-Jewish writer 0. A. Rabinovich. Similarly, another fiction writer and one of the pioneers of Russo-Jewish literature, L. O. Levanda, was the editor of Russky Yevrey (“The Russian Jew”). Moreover, Rassvet, Voskhod. and A. E. Landau's Yevreyskaya Biblioteka systematically published novels, stories, and poems by Russo-Jewish writers. Later, the participation of Jewish writers in Russian literature spread far beyond the specifically Russo-Jewish press. It is enough to name Semyon Yushkevich. Osip Dymov, D. Aizman, the poet N. Minsky, and others. It was, however, neither simple nor easy for the pioneers of RussoJewish literature to win the recognition of the Russian literary world. One of the pioneers of Russo-Jewish fictions was Osip Rabinovich (1817-1869). His writings enjoyed considerable success, and some of them were translated into German and English. His works, later collected in three volumes, were characterized by profound, subtle melancholy and showed the influence of Gogol. A more significant role fell to Lev Levanda (18351888), whose novel, The Busy Season ("Goryacheye Vremya"), is considered his best. He began as a man of assimilationist-cosmopolitan views, but after the pogroms of the 1880‘s he became a Palestinophile. The liveliness and humor of his Pioneers, Sketches of the Past, and A vranr Yozelovich made him the most popular Jewish writer of his day. Grigory Bogrov ( l825-1885) also enjoyed wide popu-

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277

larity. Such works as The Captive, The Jewish Manuscript (dealing with the epoch of Bohdan Chmielnicki), and The Maniac attracted attention despite their limited literary value. His works showed the influence of Ostrovsky. His most popular work was A Jew's Memoirs. For family reasons, he adopted Christianity several months before his death. High praise was won by the book of V. I. Nikitin (Grinbaum), Jewish Peasants. Nikitin had been a so-called “cantonist,” and his sketches (From the Life of the Cantonists) were both a strong protest against the customs prevailing in the army of Tsar NicholasIand a serious contribution to literature. Among the Russo-Jewish writers of the 1880’s we must also mention Sergey Yaroshevsky, author of the novels The People From Mezhepol and On the Way. Also successful with the readers were the short stories of Ben Ami (M. Rabinovich), who idealized Hassidic motifs and who subsequently stressed Zionist ideas in his writings. Considerable response was won by the pamphleteering novels of Grigory Lifshits, who wrote under the pen name of Gershon ben Gershon. These novels, which appeared in the journals of the 1880's and 1890's, included The Jew Comes, Confessions of a Criminal and Their Price has Fallen. Others who enjoyed success in their time included: Gershon Badanes, author of Notes of cm Apostate, which appeared in Voskhod (Numbers 2, 5, and 6, 1884); N. Naumov (pen name of Naum Kogan, 1863-1893), who, at the age of thirty, shortly before his death, published a book,

'

The “cantonists” were Jewish boys forcibly mobilized for a 25year term of military service under Nicholas 1. This shocking institution was repealed in 1858.

278 Russian Jewry {1860-1917) In a Remote Little Town, which elicited a sympathetic response from the Russian press; Rachel Khin (born in 1864), who published her stories, "The Misfit” and “Makarka,” in Voskhod and later contributed to Russian journals. Her stories subsequently were collected into a separate volume. The prolific N. Pruzhansky (pen name of N. Linovsky, born in 1846) began to write in Hebrew (in 1863), but later wrote in Russian. His numerous stories and novels include The New Moses ( 1897), The Rejected One ( 1897), and Life’s Abyss. Voskhod published his The Hero of a Lite (1899) and many of his stories and essays. S. Ansky (pen name of Semyon Rapoport, 1863-1920) made his debut with the novel In a Jewish Family, written in Yiddish and translated into Russian. Later he wrote in Russian. His works include The Pioneers (1904-1905) and In a New Channel. His collected works were published in six volumes. He was prominent in the SocialistRevolutionary Party. After a stay in Europe, he returned to Russia in 1905 and took active part in Jewish social and literary life. In 1912-1913, Ansky led an expedition to study Jewish folklore in the Pale of Settlement. Soon afterward, he began to write in Yiddish and won fame with his play, The Dybbuk, which was produced only after his death. Myron (Meyer) Ryvkin (born 1869) was the author of feuilletons on social themes under the pen name of “Makar." He also published a collection of stories, Sultry Heat. and a novel, Calumny, dealing with the ritual murder case in Velizh under Alexander 1 and Nicholas 1. We must also mention Naum Osipovich (born 1870), the author of stories from Jewish life, whose works in four volumes appeared in 1910. Osipovich was active in revo-

279 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life lutionary organizations and spent eighteen years in prison and penal exile. Vladimir Tan-Bogoraz (born 1865) wrote stories and verse, but was chiefly a publicist and ethnographer. After his release from penal exile in Yakutia, Bogoraz published a monograph about the Chukchi (in New York). Later he was converted to Christianity. He edited a collection, The Jewish Small Town and the Revolution (Moscow, 1926). While the above list of writers is not exhaustive, it represents the major body of the Russo-Jewish fiction writers who made their appearance on the literary scene, chiefly in the 1880‘s. These men were the pioneers of Russo-Jewish belles-lettres. In their approach to literature, they were loyal pupils and followers of the Russian realist school. Their place in the Jewish community was among the advocates of enlightenment, who firmly believed in a Jewish future based on participation in Russian culture. In their literary methods they were, primarily, genre writers, often quite primitive and crude. It was this specific character of Russo-Jewish literature, particularly in its pioneering stage, that elicited the severe criticism of the well-known Hebrew poet S. Tchemichowsky, who wrote as follows: Although many literary talents have emerged during the past years, Russo-Jewish fiction still cannot boast of a single work of true literary merit. Russo-Jewish literature does not serve as a vehicle for free Jewish creative expression, for at the time of its birth the Russian language was generally alien to the Jewish masses; the writers themselves, moreover, did not learn Russian until they were fairly mature, and they never assumed that their works were of literary value, as such, to the Jews.

Some of the Jewish poets writing in Russian won a place in the rosters of Russian literature and became an organic part of its history.

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The Jewish origin of such poets as Nadson and Minsky left but a slight imprint on their works, which were very popular in the 1880's and 1890's. However, these poets, who had broken away from the mainstream of Jewish life, may be contrasted with many others in whom the Jewish strain was far stronger. Among these, the first place belongs to S. Frug, who was followed by a whole school of pupils and imitators. N. Minsky (pen name of Nikolay Vilenkin, 1855-1937) at first belonged to that sector of the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia which hoped for a speedy end to Jewish disfranchisement in Russia. Under the impact of the pogroms of 1881-83, he soon turned away from Jewish life and interests. His poems often rang out with optimistic challenge, but the ambivalence of his feelings, evident in his historical drama, The Siege of Tulchin (from the period of Bohdan Chmielnicki), increasingly gave way to religio-philosophic questings in the spirit of Christianity. Minsky's literary heritage consists of four volumes of poems (St. Petersburg, 1907), several collections of philosophic essays (1n the Light of Conscience, The Religion of the Future, etc.), and numerous translations, including an excellent version of Homer‘s Iliad in Russian hexameters. Semyon Nadson (1862-1887) was one of the favorite poets of several generations of youth in Russia. He received the Pushkin Prize of the Academy of Sciences. His death of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five lent a special aura to his work. The shameless hounding of Nadson in the antiSemitic newspaper Novoye Vremya (“New Time") poisoned the poet’s last days. By birth, S. Nadson was a half-Jew. In his autobiography, the poet wrote: “I suspect that my great grandfather or great-great grandfather was a Jew. Ihave little recollec-

281 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life tion of my father and grandfather.” A biographer writes more definitely: “On his father's side, he was of Jewish origin. His grandfather, who adopted Christianity, lived in Kiev. His father died young.” With a single exception, there are no Jewish motifs in Nadson's poetry. Nadson's only “Jewish" poem, written in 1885 and published in 1901 in the anthology Help (“Pomoshch”) is quoted below: Igrew up alien to thee, outcast people, And it was not to the Isang in hours of inspiration. The world of thy traditions, the burden of thy sadness Are foreign to me as thy torments.

If thou wert strong and happy, as of old, Not bounded and humbled by the world, Then, warmed and enthralled by other aspirations, Iwould not come to thee with greetings. But in our days, when weighted down by 50mm Thou bowest low thy head, awaiting vainly the coming of salvation, In these days, when the very word “a Jew" Re-echoes in the mouths of the rabble, a symbol of rejection,

When all thine enemies, like ravening hounds, Are tearing thee to pieces, reviling thee— Then let me, too, take up my modest place among thy champions, 0 people wronged by fate!"

While Minsky and Nadson left no significant trace in

Russo-Jewish poetry, Semyon Frug (1860-1917) held a

leading place in it as a Jewish poet who was imbued with a deep sense of kinship with the history, ordeals, and destiny of the Jewish people. In his early days, Frug was in-

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fluenced by the great Russian poet Nekrasov, and populist motifs, reflecting the sufferings of the Russian peasantry, colored his work. Frug's great poetic gift found recognition among wide circles of readers, and his collection of poems, published in 1885, was welcomed as a significant event in Russian poetry. Like many representatives of his generation who lived through the tragic period of pogroms, Frug responded with deep emotion to the suffering of the Jewish masses. His faith in Russia was shaken, and songs of exodus gained a central place in his work. Dreams of a new life on the ancient soil of Palestine, dreams permeated with sorrow over the pain and grief endured by Jews in the present, became the dominant theme in Frug's poetry and made him the spokesman for Zionist ideals. The Hebrew poet Bialik responded to Frug’s death in these words: Reading Frug. even in a language alien to me. I felt the kindred soul of a Jew, the fragrance of the Bible and the Prophets. Reading his Russian poems, Iheard in every word the language of our forebears, the language of the Bible, and sensed the soul of a man who suffered for the Jewish people.

In the struggle for existence, Frug experienced many difliculties. In order to obtain the right of residence in St. Petersburg, he was obliged to register as a butler, and in order to earn a livelihood he had to publish verse feuilletons in a newspaper with the reputation of a “yellow sheet.” His enormous popularity among the Jewish intelligentsia could not provide him with his daily bread. Frug‘s poems in Yiddish were, according to critics, in no wise inferior in their airy lightness and spirituality to the best of his Russian poems, and were indeed, superior to the latter in their folk quality.

283 Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life Another Zionist poet who wrote in Russian was Lev Yafl‘e (born 1875). He published a great deal in journals and issued several collections (The Future, and others). He also edited a Jewish Anthology, devoted to “the young Jewish poetry" (Moscow, and later Berlin, 1922). We have until now discussed writers most of whom retained close ties with the Jewish milieu and who, even when they entered areas of culture and literature inaccessible to the Jewish masses, never broke their common roots. We shall now go on to the contribution to Russian belles-lettres and poetry of Jews who became Russian writers in the full sense of the word, regardless of whether or not they remained true to Jewish themes. Such transformations of Russo-Jewish writers into Russian writers were already encountered in the 1880's, and were characteristic not only of completely assimilated half-Jews, such as Nadson, but also of Minsky, who had at one time been closely bound in his ideological interests and literary activity with Jewish problems. By the end of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th, we see for the first time the appearance of genuinely Russian writers recruited from the Jewish milieu. The contribution of these writers to Russian poetry, literary scholarship, philosophy, and the theatre is often quite astonishing, revealing as it does the ability of the Jewish intelligentsia to immerse itself profoundly, inwardly, intimately in the sphere of Russian thought, Russian history, and Russian creative genius. Most of the earlier Russo-Jewish works were of small literary value. They were principally genre works, socially tendentious and nationally apologetic. But when we examine the work of the next generation of Jewish-Russian writers, we find that these characteristics are no longer

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true. Even a cursory review of the output of the generation that followed the pioneers will show that the Jewish contribution to Russian literature was quite significant. Semyon Yushkevich (1868-1927) made his literary debut with the story, “The Tailor.” But his entry into Russian literature came somewhat later, coinciding in time with the appearance on the literary scene of Gorky, Andreyev, Bunin, and others. Yushkevich‘s work became a recognized part of the Russian literature of his period, and his Jewish themes in no way interfered with his being organically rooted in Russian soil. The Moscow Art Theatre presented with great success his play, Miserere. After the revolution, Yushkevich lived abroad as an emigre, but pro-

duced little. Osip Dymov (pen name of Osip Perelman, 1878-1959) published his first story at the age of fourteen. He quickly found a place for himself in Russian literature as a fiction writer, playwright. and humorist. His collection of lyrical novellas, which appeared in 1905, brought him fame. In the theatre, he won prominence with a number of plays, including plays on Jewish themes (Hear, 0 Israel! [1909] and others). Later Dymov‘s plays were produced in European theatres as well (by the famous German director Max Reinhardt among others). Some of them were also made into films. Dymov contributed to a number of journals of the “esthetic” school. In l9l3 he settled in the United States, where he played a prominent role in Jewish literature and the Jewish theatre. David Aizman (born in I869). author of stories from Jewish life, was concerned with problems of the relations between the intelligentsia and the people, as well as between Jews and Christians. His work was published in leading Russian journals and in separate collections.

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 285 Andrey Sobol (or Yuly Sobol, 1888-1926) was the author of the novel, Dust, and collections of novellas and short stories, Lounge Car, Memoirs of a Freckled Man, A Man and his Passport, When Cherries are in Bloom, and others. A four volume edition of his collected works appeared in Moscow in 1926-27. Before the revolution, Sobol served a term at penal labor as a Socialist Revolutionary. He committed suicide abroad in 1926. Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940) published a nrunber of novels as an emigre. He also translated into Russian a collection of poems by Ch. N. Bialik. which enjoyed wide success. Jabotinsky was a brilliant contributor to major Russian newspapers, a foreign correspondent, and the editor of the Zionist Rassvet. Ilya Ehrenburg (born in 1891), who has always stressed his Jewish nationality. belongs almost entirely to Russian literature. He has also functioned prominently as a Communist journalist and propagandist. Ehrenburg began his literary career before the revolution. In 1909, while living in Paris, he published a book of poems of a Christianmystical bent. During World War I he was a war correspondent and wrote patriotic articles. Jewish themes and Jewish heroes are occasionally encountered in his works. (Protochny Alley, The Adventures of Lazik Roitshwants, and others). Isaak Babel (1894-1941) wrote stories which dealt chiefly with Jewish life. His first published stories appeared in 1915 in the journal Letopis (“Annals"). The rest of his works appeared after the revolution. His brilliant Odessa tales on Jewish themes include “Benya Krik,” “The King,” and others. One of the memorable heroes of his Horse Army, a collection of stories which won him wide fame, is the Jew Gedali. Babel perished during the Stalin purges.

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A news item, published in 1958 in connection with his posthumous “rehabilitation," stated, “In 1939 Babel was arrested on a false denunciation. None of the manuscripts of his unpublished works were found. Babel died in 1941 at the age of 47.” Among Jewish-Russian poets, who emerged in large numbers during the period of 1905-1917 and published their works both in periodicals and in separate collections, we shall mention the following: Mikhail Zetlin (1882-1946), who wrote at one time under the pen name of Amari, published his first book of verse in Paris in 1905. Many of his poems appeared in magazines. He was also the author of the historical studies The Decembrists and The Five and Others, which dealt with the Russian musical group led by Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Muni (pen name of Samuil Kissin). Published poems in various journals. He committed suicide in 1916. Osip Mandelshtam (1891-19417) first published a poem in 1909. Later he contributed poems to the famous journal A pollon. His first book of verse, The Stone, appeared in 1913. He was active throughout the early revolutionary decades, until his arrest and death. Boris Pasternak (1890-1961). First collection of verse, in the futurist vein, appeared in 1912. but the greater part of his literary life was spent under the Soviet regime. In 1958 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he was obliged under pressure to refuse. His novel. Dr. Zhivago, which was barred from publication in Soviet Russia, sold in hundreds of thousands of copies in foreign translations and won him world fame. Samuil Marshak (1887-I964) began to publish poetry and translations from the English in 1907. He began to

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Lite 287 write poems for children in 1923 and gained prominence in this field. Lolo (pen name of Leonid Munshtcin, 1866—1947) was a poet, translator, playwright, satirist, and librettist, as well as the editor of a theatre journal, Rampa i Zhizn (“Footlights and Life,” [907-1917). His translations in verse or plays by Rostand, Fulda, and other famous European playwrights were very popular on the Russian stage. In emigration, he published a book of verse, The Dust a!

Moscow. Sasha Chorny (pen name of Alexander Glikberg, 18801932). Talented humorist poet and satirist, author of several collections of satires, children's books, and a book of “Soldiers’ Tales." IV

JEWISH-RUSSIAN LITERARY CRITICS AND LITERARY HISTORIANS Russian Jewry produced a number of eminent writers and scholars in the fields of literary criticism and literary history. Below are some brief data on Russian Jews who won recognition in these areas. Semyon Vengerov (1855-1920) grew up in a family that produced a number of writers. His mother, Paulina Vengerova, became famous for her book in German, Memoirs of a Grandmother, which served for a long time as a source book on the life of Russian Jews in the mid-19th century.

S. A. Vengerov devoted himself to the collection of bib-

liographic materials on Russian literature and literary history. He compiled a Critico-Biographical Dictionary of

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Russian Writers and Scholars (in six volumes) and Sources of the Vocabulary of Russian Writers. In 1891 Vengerov became the editor of the literary department of Brockhaus and Efron's encyclopedia. After his conversion to Christianity, Vengerov became a lecturer and later a professor at the University of St. Petersburg. Vengerov is the author of a number of monographs on Russian writers (Turgenev, Pisemsky, Belinsky, and others), a study on the Heroic Character of Russian Literature, and other works. He edited standard editions of the collected works of Pushkin, Belinsky, Goncharov and Alexey K. Tolstoy and of Russian translations of Shakespeare, Byron, Schiller, and Moliere. Before World War I, Vengerov conducted a seminar on Pushkin at the University of St. Petersburg. This seminar produced most of the famous Pushkin scholars of the subsequent period. In late 1916 he founded a Literary-Bibliographical Institute and in 1917 the Book Chamber. The core of these institutions for literary research consisted of a card index compiled by Vengerov and consisting of some two million bibliographic cards. Akim Volynsky (Flexer, 1863-1926) began his literary activity in the 1880's. He published books on Frug, Spinoza, The Bible in Russian Poetry, monographs on Levanda, Minsky, and other subjects. At one time he was a Palestinophile and published an anthology, Palestine, in collaboration with V. L. Bennan. Later, Volynsky wrote a number of books on Russian literature. including Russian Criticism. The Struggle for Idealism, The Karamazov Kingdom, A Book of the Great Wrath, and others. His study, Leonardo do Vinci, which appeared in Italian and was translated into Russian and other languages, brought him world fame. Arkady Gomfeld (born in 1867). In 1904 he became

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 289 a member of the editorial staff and chief literary critic of one of the leading Rusian monthlies, Russkoye Bogatstvo (“Russian Wealth"). Gornfeld is the author of a number of books, including Torments of the Word, Books and Men, In the West, The Paths of Creation, New and Old Words, and others. Gornfeld was regarded as an extremely keen and subtle critic, and his articles and books enjoyed great success. He also wrote for Russo-Jewish publications. Mikhail Gershenzon (1869-1925) was a prominent literary historian and the author of many books on the history of Russian intellectual development in the 19th century. His principal works were P. Ya. Chaadayev, A History of Young Russia, Historical Notes, Griboyedov's Moscow, and The Decembrist Krivtsov and His Brothers. His Russian translation of Julius Beloch's History of Greece was widely read. Gershenzon was one of the leading experts on Slavophilism. He also won wide fame with his books Pushkin's Wisdom, The Dream and the Thought of l. S. Turgenev, and a pamphlet, “A Correspondence From Two Comets,” written during the Soviet period in collaboration with the Russian poet Vyacheslav Ivanov. A special place in Gershenzon's career belongs to his leading role in the publication of the anthology Landmarks (“Vekhi," 1909). This anthology opposed the traditional views of the Russian democratic and socialist intelligentsia and preached the principles of philosophic idealism. Gershenzon was a man of poor health, and he broke down under the privations of the Bolshevik era. His untimely death was given the following brief comment in the Soviet press: “The housing section of TSEKUBU (the Central Commission for the Improvement of the Living Conditiom of Scholars) knows of several instances when the worries, sufferings, and ordeals caused by the housing prob-

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 290 lem led to the untimely deaths of our scholars (such as the well-known professor of literature Gershenzon)." The doctoral thesis of Yuly Aikhenwald (1872-1929) was philosophic in character and dealt with Locke and Leibnitz. Aikhenwald also translated Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea. Later he became a prolific writer of literary criticism. Aikenwald was a contributor to major Russian journals and a successful lecturer. For many years he conducted the literary column of the newspaper Rech. His three-volume Silhouettes of Russian Writers was awarded a prize by the Academy of Sciences. He was also the author of Essays on Western Literature. Exiled from Soviet Russia in 1922, Aikhenwald died in Berlin in 1929, the victim of an accident. Nikolay Lerner (born in 1877), son of the Hebrew writer and critic Yoisef-Yehuda Lerner, published works on Belinsky, Chaadayev, and Pushkin. He received the Pushkin Society prize for his study, Pushkin's Life and Works (1910). Lerner adopted Christianity, but, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, which quoted his own words, he was “proudly aware of his spiritual and blood ties with his people.” Boris Eikhenbaum (1886-1959) published works on Derzhavin and Schiller in l9l6-l9l7. During the Soviet period he published important studies on Lennontov and Tolstoy. In his latter years he was considered one of the outstanding Russian literary historians. Another literary scholar, Victor Shklovsky (born in 1893), published Revived Words (1914). Poetry and Unintelligible Language ( 1916), and Art as Method (1917). Under the Soviet regime, he has written a number of works on Pushkin. Tolstoy, and others.

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V

RUSSO-JEWISH PHILOSOPHERS Jewish thinkers have made a relatively small but notable contribution to Russian philosophy. Russian philosophy, in its mainstream, is essentially religious and bound by the closest ties to Christianity and the Orthodox Church; much of it is permeated by mystical strains, as in the school of Vladimir Solovyov. Many Russian philosophers regard themselves as the pupils of Dostoyevsky, and their religiophilosophic teachings have had little attraction for representatives of the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia. Nevertheless, it must be noted that even in this specifically Russian world of primarily religious philisophy, the Jews have made their contribution. Many Russo-Jewish philosophers, to quote N. Berdyaev, gradually “entered the mainstream of our religio-philosophic thought." Suffice it to name S. L. Frank and Lev Shestov, both of whom left a profound mark on the history of Russian philosophy. Semyon Frank (1877-1950) was a Marxist in his youth, but even his first work, The Marx Theory of Value (1900), reflected a departure from Marxism. His first philosophic book, Nietzsche and Love of the Distant, appeared in 1902. Later, S. L. Frank produced a number of philosophic works, including The Object of Knowledge, The Unknowable, Introduction to Philosophy, Living Knowledge, and The Meaning of Life, as well as literary studies (particularly on Pushkin). He was also a publicist. V. Zenkovsky, author of the comprehensive History of Russian Philosophy, recently published in Paris, notes that Frank “has done profound work in the fields of logic,

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) gnosiology, metaphysics, anthropology, and ethics." “In his validation of metaphysics," writes Zenkovsky, “Frank reveals great originality and philosophical strength.” Some of Frank's original theories, the commentator continues, “constitute an invaluable acquisition for Russian philosophy. Frank's books are essential for the study of Russian philosophy." Noting “the profundity of his philosophic thought," Zenkovsky even comes to the conclusion that “in the power of his philosophic vision, Frank can unhesitatingly be called the most eminent Russian philosopher." S. L. Frank was the son of a Jewish doctor who moved to Moscow from the western territories after the Polish uprising of 1863. However, in 1912 Frank adopted Chrisfianity, and his subsequent philosophic work followed the general stream of Russian religious philosophy. In 1922 he was exiled from Soviet Russia. After that, he pursued his scholarly work in Berlin, Paris, and London. Lev Shvartsman-Shestov (1866-1938) was the author of literary-philosophic studies on Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. He also wrote Good in the Teachings of Tolstoy and Nietzsche, The A potheosis of Groundlessness, Beginnings and Ends, The Power of Keys, 0n the Scales of Job, Athens and Jerusalem, and works on Husserl and Kierkegaard. Lev Shestov is considered one of the most vivid spokesmen for existentialism. The historian of Russian philosophy, V. Zenkovsky, quoted earlier, has a high regard for Shestov’s philosophical activity. He describes him as “far more profound and significant than Berdyaev," Shestov, he says, is characterized by “philosophic passion and fervor in the quest for tnrth." Very important, too, is Shestov's “exceptional literary talent: Shestov‘s writing is not only lucid and engrossing, but also chamrs the reader with its simplicity. Grace and 292

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 293 strength are combined in it with purity and strictness of verbal form, hence the irresistible impression of genuineness and truth." In his works, Shestov frequently turns to the Bible. In his characteristically aphoristic and paradoxical manner, he writes: “Biblical philosophy is far more profound and penetrating than modern philosophy. Iwill go even further and say that the story of the Fall was not invented by the Jews; it came to them by one of the methods of which you will not learn anything in the latest theories of knowledge." Shestov's religiosity was original. He opposed faith to reason, to the autonomy of the rational, and saw faith as “a new dimension in thought." He wrote: “Within the limits of pure reason it is possible to build science, a high morality, and even religion, but it is not possible to find God." In the Bible, according to his interpreter, A. Lazarev, “Shestov sees a source not only of religious, but also of philosophical truth.” Among philosophers who did not attain the fame and influence of Frank and Shestov, we may note the following Russo-Jewish thinkers: Sergey Hessen (born in 1881) author of a comprehensive work on pedagogy and a number of monographs on literary-philosophical topics. M. O. Gershenzon (mentioned earlier), was the author of two philosophical works on the problems of Jewish history and religion, The Destinies of the Jewish People and The Key of Faith (1922). Grigory Landau (1877-1941), author of a philosophical meditation on modern history, The Twilight of Europe, as well as a prominent publicist and jurist. Landau was a contributor to Yevreyskaya Biblioteka, Voskhod and Yevrey-

Russian Jewry (18604917)

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sky Mir, and author of a book, Aphorisms. He was killed during the early days of the Soviet occupation of Latvia. Abram Deborin (Yoife, born in 1881). A Marxist and a follower of Plekhanov, active in the Jewish Labor Bund, author of An Introduction to the Philosophy of Dialectic Materialism (1916). In the 1920's Deborin became one of the leading Marxist theoriticians in the USSR. A member of the Academy of Sciences after 1929, he was the editor of the journal Pod Znamenem Marxisma (“Under the Banner of Marxism") and the author of a book on Marx and

Hegel.

VI

JEWS IN RUSSIAN POLITICAL LIFE In the 1860's. the rapidly developing Jewish intelligentsia joined the general surge of cultural, social, and political progress that was sweeping the country. A number of participants in the liberation movements of the 70's and 80's (P. Axelrod, A. Zundelevich. 0. Aptekman, V. Iokhelson, nd others) describe their experiences of that period in their memoirs. They sympathized with the sulferings of the Jewish labor masses and sought to help them to overcome their disfranchisement, cultural backwardness, and lack of organization, but could find no common language with these masses. no paths to their minds and lives. The powerful attraction of Russian culture, the influence of the Rus'an language. and the new social movements embracing wide strata of the freedom-loving Russian intelligentsia irresistibly drew the Jewish intellectuals toward the enticing vistas of Russian life. Later, during the period of reaction in the 1890's and again in the 20th century, a great many

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 295 representatives of the Jewish intelligentsia participated actively in Russian political movements. We find Jewish names among the leaders of all the Russian political parties which included in their programs the demand for equal rights for Jews, from the Bolsheviks to the Kadets. Even during periods of the most virulent persecution, ussian Jews never lost their strong sense of being citizens of their country. The general consensus of the Jewish intelligentsia was that Russia's fut e lay in freedom and dec all the other minority mocracy, and that the Jews, peoples of their multi-nationa country, had as much of a the stake in this future as dominant Russian people. Russian Jews loved Russia and were bound to it by close ties. These feelings have persisted for decades and were handed down from generation to generation, not only among the millions of Jews in Russia but even among Russo-Jewish emigrants in America, Europe, and Palestine. The Jewish intelligentsia participated in the Russian revolutionary movement, if only on a small scale, already in the 1860‘s. A prominent role in Zemlya i Volya (“Land and Freedom," a revolutionary populist party active during the 1860's and 1870's) was played by Nikolay Utin, who was sentenced to death but managed to escape abroad. Utin was the secretary of the Russian Section of the First International and was close to Karl Marx, whom he actively supported in his struggle against Mikhail Bakunin, the leader of the Russian anarchists. One of the most famous revolutionaries of that early period was Mark Natanson, also a leader in Zemlya i Volya. He was arrested in 1872 but was able to return to political activity many years later. He joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, in which he played a prominent role. A significant contribution to the revolutionary move-

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ment was made by Aron Liberman, the founding father of the Jewish socialist movement in Russia, and Aron Zun-

delevich, who organized the clandestine printing shop of Zemlya i Volya. We must also mention Gessya Gelfrnan, a participant in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on March 1, 1881. In 1883, the Social-Democratic movement emerged among Russian revolutionaries. Among the founders of the Group for the Liberation of Labor, which adopted the banner of Marxism, were P. B. Axelrod and L. G. Deutsh. In the 1890's, when the Social-Democratic movement struck roots in Russia, its pioneers included D. B. Goldendakh (Ryazanov), Yu. M. Nakhamkes (Steklov), B. A. Ginsburg, A. Kremer, I. L. Ainenshtadt-Yudin, Yu. 0. Tsederbaum (Martov), F. I. Gurvich (Dan), A. S. Piker (Martynov), and M. G. Grinevich (Kogan). In the early years of 20th century, the surviving elements of the Populist movement formed the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, whose pioneers included S. A. Rapoport (S. Ansky), Ch. Zhitlovsky, O. S. Minor, Ilya Rubanovich, Mikhail Gots, Grigory Gershuni, and Yu. Delevsky. With the upsurge of revolutionary events in Russia in the early years of the 20th century—student unrest, peasant uprising, labor strikes leading to the Revolution of 1905— the number of Jews in the two socialist parties, the Social Democratic Party and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, increased. In the leading committees of these parties, both in the capital and in the provinces. there were considerable numbers of Jewish revolutionaries. Many of them became famous during the Revolution of 1917, when they returned after years of imprisonment, penal exile. or emigration, to a brief period of free political activity. Among those who gained prominence during the Febru-

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 297 ary Revolution of 1917 and occupied leading posts in their party and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies were the SocialDemocrats (Mensheviks) F. I. Dan-Gurvich, M. I. LiberGoldman, Yu. 0. Martov-Tsederbaum, R. A. AbramovitchRein, H. M. Erlich and B. 0. Bogdanov. The leadership of the Socialist-Revolutionaries included Abram R. Gots, I. I. Fundaminsky (Bunakov), Ya. Gendelman, and M. V. Vishniak. The latter served as the Secretary of the shortlived Constituent Assembly of 1918. In the Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic Party the only Jewish revolutionaries to play a leading role were Yu. Kamenev (L. B. Rosenfeld), and G. Zinoviev (Radomyslsky), who had become Lenin's chief lieutenants during the period between the two revolutions. Among the other old Bolsheviks we can name Maxim Litvinov (M. M. Vallakh), Gusev (S. I. Drabkin) and Taratuta (Victor), all of them men of small importance in the party. In the Bolshevik coup of October, 1917, only some ten Jewish Bolsheviks were prominently active: the old Bolsheviks Zinoviev and Kamenev, as well as Yakov Sverdlov and G. Sokolnikov (Brilliant); four men who switched over from the Menshevik camp, including Leon Trotsky (L. D. Bronstein), M. S. Uritsky, Yu. Larin (M. Lurye) and A. A. Yofie; and two rather unstable Bolsheviks, N. Ryazanov and A. Lozovsky (S. A. Dridzo). During the period of the February Revolution, an important role in the Soviet of Workers' Deputies was played by L. M. Bramson, a Laborite and a close collaborator of A. F. Kerensky's. He was an active participant in the legislative work of the Provisional Government (particularly as a member of the Committee on the Electoral Law for the Constituent Assembly). Several of the Jewish leaders active in the February Rev-

298 Russian Jewry (I860-1917) olution of 1917 were offered posts in the Provisional GovM. Bramson, M. M. Vinaver, F. I. Dan and M. I. Liber). However. they declined the ofiers, evidently feeling that in that critical time Jews should not assume ministerial posts. Nevertheless. a number of Jews participated in the work of the Provisional Government as experts. Thus, A. Ya. Galperin (a Menshevik) served briefly as Secretary of the Provisional Government, S. M. Schwarz, I. M. Lyakhovetsky (Maysky), D. Yu. Dallin (Levin), and Ya. 5. Novakovsky (all of them Mensheviks) held prominent posts in the Ministry of Labor. Equally deserving of attention is the participation of a number of Jewish leaders in the trade union movement in Russia. These included the Mensheviks, Grinevich (M. G. Kogan), who was chairman of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions in 1905 and 1917, Batursky (B. S. Zetlin), Garvi (P. A. Bronstein), Kefali (M. S. Kamermakher), and also N. Ryazanov and A. Lomvsky (who later became Bolsheviks). Already after the October Revolution, several left-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries became prominent on the Russian political arena: M. A. Natanson, who was mentioned earlier, B. Kamkov (Kats), and I. Z. Steinberg, who became the People‘s Commissar of Justice in the first Bolshevik cabinet. Jewish leaders also participated in Russian liberal and radical (non-socialist) parties in the 20th century. A number of Jews belonged to the Union of Liberation, an illegal organization formed in 1902 and very active in the preparation of the Revolution of 1905. Among the leaders of the Constitutional-Democratic Party (Kadets), founded in 1905, were M. M. Vinaver (one of the most influential men

ernment (L.

Jews in Russian Literary and Political Life 299 in his party), G. B. Sliozberg, M. L. Mandelshtam, J. V. Hessen and J. Sheftel. Many other Jews were prominently active in the Kadet party in the provinces. We must also mention the political activity of certain individual figures who had no permanent ties with any party but were active in Russian political life. This group included the famous criminal lawyer O. O. Gruzenberg, the political scientist R. M. Blank, the economist Boris D. Brutskus, and others. It was one of the paradoxes of Russian law that Jews, who had no right to participate in local rural and urban government bodies, enjoyed the same rights as the rest of the population (in both voting and running for office) in elections to the State Duma and the State Council. In all Russian cities, Jews took an active part in election campaigns and in elections proper. The slates of candidates for the oifices of electors and deputies put forward by the Kadets and the parties to the left usually included a good many Jewish names. There were Jewish members in all four State Dumas (twelve in the First Duma, four in the Second, two in the Third, and three in the Fourth), and one Jew (E. Weinstein of Odessa) was elected a member of the State Council.

Russian Jews in Music

by Gershon Swet

IN 1938, one OF THE lSSUES or THE MAGAZINE Severnaya Pchela (“Northern Bee”) carried an advertisement announcing that “young Yulia Greenberg, ten years old, will have the honor of offering a morning musicale”:

The inspired playing of the young virtuoso has charmed audiences in Odessa and Kharkov on many occasions. The fidelity and richness of her technique, emotion and style have so outdistanced the tender age of the pianist that her listeners were enchanted. It seemed as though the keys were touched not by the hands of a weak young girl, but by the hands of masters; as though Meyer, Henselt, Mosheles and Thalberg themselves took turns at the instrument. The vast hall of the Nobles' Assembly was filled to overflowing.

Such were the reviews the young girl‘s playing elicited the time. Yulia Greenberg was a pupil of Henselt, and later studied with Fischof at the Vienna Conservatory. She concertized in many European cities. In Germany she was nicknamed “the Russian Klara Wieck."‘ In 1845 she played at

1The famous pianist who later became the wife of Robert Schumann.

300

301 Rusian Jews in Music again in Petersburg, this time as a young woman of seventeen, and won even greater praise than she had as a child

prodigy. The daughter of a Jewish physician, she later married Senator Turin and evidently converted to Christianity. The concerts in the big cities of Russia and the Ukraine of “young Yulia Greenberg," who was a frequent guest at the home of the parents of Anton Rubinstein, took place in the late 1830's and middle 40's. Another Russian Jewish musician to win spectacular laurels in western Europe was the so-called “virtuoso on a straw harmonica,” Mikhail Guzikov. A native of Shklov, he was born in 1806 (or 1809, according to other sources) and died on October 21, 1837, in Aachen, Germany. Guzikov played on an instrument of his own construction, made of wood and straw. His playing was enthusiastically praised by the Polish violinist Lipinski. On the advice of the French poet Lamartine, who chanced to hear him in Odessa, Guzikov undertook a tour of Europe, producing a sensation wherever he performed. Guzikov is long forgotten. His name is preserved only in musical encyclopedias. Yet he was an extraordinary artist, whose performance so impressed Felix Mendelssohn that the great composer wrote to his mother about it, calling Guzikov “a true genius." In Vienna, Guzikov was described as “a Paganini on an instrument of wood and straw." Guzikov was a religious Jew and wore a beard and sidelocks. He appeared on the stage in a black Hassidic caftan and a satin Skullcap. When he was in Vienna, he was invited one day to perform at the Imperial Palace. However, the invitation was for a Friday evening. Gun'kov, who faithfully observed religious ritual, declined. “Young Yulia Greenberg" and Guzikov were exceptional instances of Jewish virtuosi participating in Russian musi-

Russian Jewry (“360-1917) 302 cal life of the period. In the 1840’s concert activities were generally very limited in Russia. Nevertheless, top-ranking foreign artists, as well as performers of lesser magnitude and prodigies like Yulia Greenberg, drew capacity audiences. These audiences included some Jews, but usually in very small numbers. In the 1840's there were few Jewish intellectuals, wellto-do merchants, or industrialists living in the Jewish centers. Half a century later, however, Jews already constituted a significant proportion, if not a majority, of concertgoers, music teachers, and performers in cities like Kiev, Odessa and Kharkov.

ANTON AND NIKOLAY RUBINSTEIN In organizing the Imperial Russian Musical Society in 1859 and the first Russian conservatory in Petersburg three years later, the great pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein laid the foundation for Russia's musical culture, which produced many composers of genius and brilliant virtuoso performers. Anton Rubinstein and his younger brother Nikolay, the founder of a branch of the Russian Musical Society and a conservatory in Moscow, were pioneers in this field. Anton Rubinstein had been baptized by his patermercifn't oman vanovrch ‘ Rubinstein. Anton’s sister wrote in a letter that “our grand"i'a'fhcr'eviden'tiy sought to win the favor of Emperor Nicholas I by baptizing the whole family." Roman Rubinstein had been a clever, energetic and enterprising man; later, however, he lost his fortune and left his large family of thirty-five persons penniless. The baptism had taken place in July, 1831, when Anton was only two years old. Nikolay was born in 1835.

Wflhfimm

303 Russian Jews in Music Both Rubinstein brothers were musicians of high caliber. As a pianist, Anton had only one rival in his day—Franz Liszt. There were music lovers who asserted that Rubinstein was an even greater performer than Liszt. As a conductor, Rubinstein evidently did not possess an equally high technique, but even in this field he was an outstanding artist. Symphony concerts under his baton were great events in the musical life of Petersburg. The orchestra of the Russian Musical Society was not a permanent organization. It was assembled anew each season, and was given only one or two rehearsals before a concert. Under such conditions. organizing ten symphonic concerts every season was an extremely difficult undertaking. Nevertheless, Rubinstein managed to obtain excellent results. As a composer, Rubinstein is not regarded very highly today. His operas and oratories are rarely performed, if at all. Pianists occasionally play one or another of his piano concertos. Soviet opera houses sometimes present The Demon, although in the 1890's and early 1900‘s this opera was one of the chief drawing cards at all Russian opera theatres. Only his beautiful “Persian Songs" continue to live in the concert repertory, thanks chiefly to the unforgettable performances of Chaliapin. Rubinstein was a prolific composer. He left more than 200 works, including a number of monumental compositions—operas, oratorios, symphonies, piano concertos, chamber music pieces, and so on. Forever burdened by numerous duties, concertizing extensively in Russia and abroad both as a pianist and conductor, traveling throughout the world, and at the same time remaining the director of the Musical Society and the Petersburg Conservatory, Rubinstein wrote most of his compositions in great haste

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and did not always allow them sufficient time to mature and ripen properly. There are, therefore, many flaws in his music; side by side with remarkable and inspired pages, we often find platitudes, tedious passages, and lack of form. The present low judgment of Rubinstein as a composer will be revised some day, for all his works, even the weakest, contain genuine musical gems. In The Demon, in his oratorios (“Babel," “Paradise Lost,” and “Moses"), his “Ocean Symphony," and other works there is a great deal of magnificent, sincere, and inspired music, such as only the elect can create. It was Rubinstein, and not, as is customarily assumed, Rimsky-Korsakov who must be credited as the creator of the first symphony in Russia. His concertos for piano and orchestra introduced this form also into Russian music. They were the forerunners of the piano concertos of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and later of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Tchaikovsky, who had studied with Rubinstein, admired him greatly as a composer. He also admired Nikolay Rubinstein, at whose invitation he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, and to whose memory he dedicated his famous trio, “On the Death of a Great Artist.” The genius of Rubinstein as a pianist is undisputed. The comments of such musicians as Liszt, Mendelssohn, SaintSaens and others leave no doubt as to his mastery. The well-known pianist and music teacher, A. B. Goldenweiser. who died in 1962, wrote as follows about Rubinstein's playing: From the very first notes, Rubinstein irresistibly captured his listeners, as though hypnotizing them by his powerful artistic personality. The listener lost all capacity for reasoning or analysis; he submitted utterly to the elemental sweep of the performer's inspired art. In the wealth of his chromatic scale, Anton

Russian Jews in Music 305 When he was Rubinstein had no equal among pianists playing Liszt's “Le Source," you heard the fluid, transparent, silvery plashing of water

...

...

During the 1857-58 season in Vienna, music critics rated his performances as superior to those of Liszt and Klara Schumann-Wieck. Rubinstein was Jewish by birth on both his father's and his mother's side. Did this affect his music in any way? His biographer, Barenboym, writes:

creative-[Legacy

In Rubinstein's works that rested on national 'tions stood best against the test of foundations and national time. These include his “Persian Songs" with their oriental color, the choruses from the opera The Demon, arias and chorIn Rubinstein's uses from his biblical oratorios, and so on. intonational complex of Oriental tome you heard a modes, a musical 0y incorporating Moldavian and Jewish Bessarabia]. songs and danees [Rubinstein was born in

apeculiar

...

Such a “near-Eastem musical substratum" was very widespread in the southern parts of Russia. In childhood, Rubinstein often heard from his mother, a fine musician, a song of distinctly Jewish style, which he later used in his opera The Maccabees. “I was certain," he wrote to his mother, “that this was a Jewish folk melody. If it was your composition, forgive my mistake!” “Unquestionably,” writes the biographer, “Rubinstein's mother, who compmed music based on Jewish melodic patterns, must have played for him many other folk songs and dances as well." Rubinstein was not indifferent to his Jewish origin. In his later years he planned to compose an opera on a contemporary, rather than Biblical, Jewish theme, and advertised in newspapers, inviting persons writing on such themes to submit librettos to him. The late philosopher Itelson, who subsequently died as a result of an attack by Hitlerites

Russian Jewry (I860-I9l7) 306 in Berlin, told me that he had brought the composer a libretto on the subject of Jewish persecutions during the Crusades. However, Rubinstein rejected it. He asked Itelson, who was then a young student, to write another libretto, around a central Jewish character of the type of Figaro in The Barber of Seville. It’s time for us to stop whimpering and recalling the honors of the past. After all, we have no way out, we have to live side by side with “them." What is the good of this eternal wailing and complaining, of constant recollection of the inquisition and the ghettos, the pogroms and persecutions? No, give me a cheerful, joyous Jew who ridicules “them"!

His oflicial position in Petersburg, his association with circles and the fact that he lived in the palace of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, made it necessary for Rubinstein to attend church. But he was drawn to such subjects as The Maccabees and The Tower of Babel, and toyed with the idea of a Jewish “Figaro." His brother Nikolay, the favorite of Moscow, was completely assimilated and his attitude toward his Jewish origins is not known. No one has touched upon it in any of the works published about him. court

THE LATTER HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY In the 1860‘s the Jews had not yet become participants in European musical culture. The Jewish masses in Russia lived in a segregated existence. Their musical needs were filled principally by singing and music-making at home (fiddle playing was very widespread in the Hassidic milieu), by wedding orchestras and their famed virtuosi, such as Pedatsur and others, and by synagogue singers-_the famous Jewish cantors. The latter toured the cities and towns of the Pale of Settlement with their choirs during the winter

Russian Jews in Music 307 months, and often in summertime as well, performing in services that attracted large numbers of listeners. In the life of the Jewish popular masses, these visits of the cantors and their choirs and the playing of the wedding orchestras served a function closely similar to that of Rubinstein’s symphonic concerts or the visits of Italian singers and virtuoso instrumentalists in the life of the Russian intelligentsia of the capitals and other large centers.

CHAZANS AND CANTORS In vocal equipment, talent and mastery, the popular chazans and cantors of the first half of the nineteenth century in Russia could easily vie with the popular Italian singers, even singers of the caliber of Manini, Tamberlick, Rubini and others, who performed at that time in Russia. A cantor was usually the chazan of a so-called choral synagogue, where the service was to a certain extent reformed and conducted in a modern manner, similar to that employed in Vienna and Berlin, although without organ accompaniment. Among the chazans famous in Russia during the first half of the 19th century were Bezalel-Shulsinger, Sender Minsky, “Der Vilner Balebesl,” Baruch Carliner, Yeruchom Hakoton, Nisan Beldzer, Nisan Blumenthal, Velvele Shestopal, and the Weintraubs, father and son. In the latter half of the century, the famous names were Yakov Bakhman, Pizi Abros, Pinkhas Minkovsky, Baruch-Leib Rozovsky, Eliezer Gerovich, and Moshe Shteinberg. All were the permanent cantors of large synagogues in cities within the Pale. Among the famous cantors, many of whom were truly phenomenal singers, there were men of great creative talent. They were masters of improvisation— an art which is becoming all too rare in musical life.

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“Der Vilner Balebesl" belonged to the latter category. His actual name was Yoel-Dovid Levenstein. “Balebesl” means a newly-married man. He was given this nickname after his marriage at the age of fourteen. With his choir he toured the centers of the Jewish Pale, singing in synagogue services on Sabbaths and giving concerts on weekdays. These often took place in concert halls, where his audiences included many non-Jews. He died in 1850 in an insane asylum. The “Balebesl” possessed a lyric tenor of rare beauty, a “pearly" coloratura, an excellent vocal technique, and a great gift for improvisation. At moments of high inspiration, his improvisations moved his listeners to the very depths of their hearts. He was a pupil of the famous Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, with whom he had studied composition. About ten of his compositions have survived in manuscript. The cantors were usually tenors, but occasionally they were bassos, bass-baritones, and even basso profirndos, like Yosif Slonimer-Altshul. There were also almost voiceless cantors, paradoxical as this may seem. One of these “voiceless" cantors was Nisan Beldzer-Spivak, an original composer and a great conductor. For almost half a century he toured the Pale, everywhere attracting masses of listeners. Beldzer-Spivak created his own unique style of liturgical music, in which ancient prayer themes were sometimes interwoven with secular melodies from Italian operas and the rhythms of military marches. A self-taught man, he managed to write canons and fugues, and to grasp intuitively a number of other intricacies of composition, especially in the field of harmonic modulations. There is no doubt that had “Nissi,” as he was known, received a musical education, he would have developed into an outstanding composer and conductor.

Russian Jews in Music 309 The cantors of the latter half of the 19th century commanded better composition technique and were more educated musically than their predecessors. Nissan Blumenthal, the cantor of an Odessa synagogue and an inspired singer, was familiar with the music of Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn, from whom he often “borrowed" fragments of themes, adapting them to the text of a psalm or prayer. Wolf Shestopal (born in Kherson in 1832), whose compositions were widely sung in Russian synagogues, adapted a part of Violetta's aria from Verdi's La Traviara to the text of Psalm 115. It must be remembered that all the famed old cantors were deeply religious men. It never entered their heads to attend a concert or an opera. This was to them an alien and hostile world. But their successors already ventured to go to concerts and even, occasionally, to the opera, although they usually sat in the gallery, with skullcaps covering their heads. How, then, did musical phrases from Donizetti, Bellini, or Rossini find their way into the works of Yeruchom Hakoton, Nisan Beldzer or Bezalel Shatz? These men could not read scores or play the piano; many of them could barely read notes. The phrases from Italian operas reached these pious and God-fearing cantors chiefly through the military bands which played in city squares and parks of the towns within the Pale on summer evenings and on gala state occasions. Frequently led by Jewish military conductors, many of whom won wide renown, such bands were fond of performing medleys from popular operas. These medleys, often crudely assembled, nourished the musical imagination of the Jewish chazans and cantor-composers. The operatic themes absorbed by them made their way often

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310 Russian Jewry (l860-I9I7) without conscious intent on the part of the composers— into their own liturgical works. In 'sumrnertime cantors often visited health resorts— Marienbad, Karlsbad, Franzensbad, and other favorite resting places of Galician, Polish, and Ukrainian Hassidic rzadiks. In the evenings, the visitors at these resorts were entertained by open-air concerts, their programs consisting chiefly of overtures from operas and operettas, marches, and medleys. There was no rule of piety forbidding a member of the tzadik's retinue, or even the most devout of the chazans, to relax on a park bench, listening to the melodies of the resort band. And eventually some of the musical phrases, harmonic patterns, or rhythmic figures heard by the chazan at the resort would emerge to the surface— often in distinctly “Jewished” form — in a synagogue performance of “Min Harnersar" or "Mo Oshiv." In the prayer “Ara Nigleiso" from the Rosh Hashonah "Musal," created by one of the greatest old cantors. the opening verses were sung to music in the manner of Wagner, which then flowed directly into a waltz rhythm in three-quarter time. “Ato nigleiso baanan kvodekha" (“You were revealed to us in the smoke of your greatness"), from the Rosh Hashonah liturgy— sung to the rhythms of a frivolous waltz! And this was far from the only stylistic curio in the liturgical literature of that period. Imay mention that, even in New York, I heard the melodies of "K0! Slaven" (“How Glorious“), by the Russian composer Bortnyansky, at a Friday evening service in the magnificent Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue. This passage was only recently deleted from the Sabbath service. David Novakovsky, conductor and composer in a large Odessa synagogue, was an educated musician, with a mastcry of polyphony and a good knowledge of European classi-

Russian Jews in Music 311 cal music. His works are formally very effective and were designed more for liturgical concerts than for the usual service. Eliezer Gerovich (1844-1913), from Rostov, the teacher of the composer M. F. Gnesin, had studied composition and singing at the Petersburg Conservatory. His liturgical works are almost ideal examples of synagogue music based on ancient melodies and clothed in contemporary musical form. The same is true of the works of B. L. Rozovsky, the father of the composer and musicologist S. B. Rozovsky. The elder Rozovsky ponessed a beautiful tenor and was, by the standards of his time, a cultivated musician. Two singers in Rozovsky's choir in Riga, Herman Yadlovker and Joseph Schwarts, later became famous opera singers in Berlin and New York. Pinkhas Minkovsky, who served nearly thirty years as cantor of the famed Brodsky Synagogue in Odessa, received his musical education in Vienna. Minkovsky was a cultivated and highly musical singer, who possessed a very pleasant lyric tenor. Together with Novakovsky (one of the most important Jewish liturgical composers in Russia and, for that time, an excellent choral conductor), Minkovsky introduced into the service a number of moderate reforms, including the use of an organ, the only one in any Russian synagogue. Both men performed the best of Jewish liturgical music. In 1920, under the Bolshevik regime, they often gave synagogue concerts on weekdays. The Odessa Jews found respite from the ordeals of the time under the roofs of synagogues, listening to the singing of Minkovsky, Moshe Shteinberg. David Roitrnan, Shulman, and their choirs. The principal centers of synagogue music during the second half of the 19th century were Odessa, Berdichev, Vilno, and, to some extent, Warsaw. The first quarter of the 20th century was the golden age of cantorial art in

Russian Jewry (1860-19] 7) 312 Rumia and eastern Europe, although we were to witness its decline in subsequent years. The galaxy of virtuoso cantors who were prominent during the latter 19th and early 20th centuries included Solomon Razumny (died in 1904), Pizi

Abras (1820-1883), and Yakov Bakhman (1840-1903), who had a voice of the widest range and a great gift for improvisation. When Mussorgsky visited Odessa a short time before his death, he heard one of the leading cantors of the city (either Abras or Bakhman, or perhaps both), and was enormously enthusiastic. Gershon Sirota of Vilno, and later of Warsaw, was a singer on a level with Mazzini. Mordekai Hershman, Zanvil Kvartin, David Roitman, Moshe Shteinberg. and Yosele Rounblat emigrated to America after World War Iand spent the rest of their lives there. The only cantors of this caliber alive today are P. Pinchik-Segal, an extraordinarily talented singer and musician, and L. Glanz, who cunently lives in Israel, where he enjoys great success. The liturgical literature created by the chazans and cantors is quantitatively vast. Not everything in it is of equal value, but it contains many gems of vivid, original Jewish musical expression. Just as many operatic melodies found their way into synagogue music, so were many elements of the latter carried into the Jewish theatre. The late Jewish musicologist A. Idelson, author of Jewish Music and Its Historical Developrnent (published in English in New York, 1944), analyzed a number of melodies in Abraham Goldfaden’s popular historical operettas, such as Bar Kochba, Shularnite, and others, and traced their origins. Goldfaden, as he pointed out, derived his themes from various Jewish folklore sources, from Ukrainian and Rumanian songs, from operas by Verdi and Halevi, and, quite extensively, from

Russian Jews in Music 313 liturgical chants by Shestopal, Naumburg, and others. Goldfaden, who died in New York in 1908, was in a sense a diamond in the rough, a natively gifted but unschooled musician. But what he did is true of the Jewish theatre as a whole.

KLEZMERS AND JEWISH WEDDING ORCHESTRAS During the past three decades, several works on Jewish folk musicians and orchestras have appeared in the Soviet Union. Their author, M. Beregovsky, a native of Kiev, was in the past connected with the League for Jewish Culture. An excellent study of Jewish folk musicians was also published by Joachim Stuchevsky, the well-known cellist, composer, and musicologist, who has lived in Tel Aviv since 1938. In his book, Jewish Folk Musicians, Their Life and Works (in Hebrew, Jerusalem, 1959), Stuchevsky says that at the end of the 19th century there were up to 5,000 professional Jewish musicians—so-called klezrners—in eastern Europe. M. Beregovsky sets the number of klezrners, members of Jewish orchestra, in the beginning of the 20th century in Russia alone (exclusive of Poland and Galicia) at some 3,000. These musicians played at non-Jewish weddings and balls as well. More than two thousand of them lived in the cities and towns of the Kiev, Podolsk, Volyn, Poltava, and Novorossiisk Provinces. Each of these provinces had 50-60 Jewish orchestras. Stuchevsky says that these figures are probably lower rather than higher than the actual ones. In his native city of Romny, in Poltava Province, there were twenty-six klezmer families; in Berdichev there were more than fifty, and they had their own synagogue.

Russian Jewry (18604917) Among these klezmers there were some brilliant virtuosos cantors, who, like the chazans and were gifted improvisers. The most famous of these was “Pedatsur,“ whose name later became generic for famous folk fiddlers. His true name was Aron-Moshe Kholodenko. A native of Berdichev, he died in 1902 at the age of 74. Stuchevsky tells us that he had a good deal of the eccentricity and artistic temperament characteristic of the virtuoso violonists of his day. He was fond of imitating a nightingale‘s song on his violin, showing off his virtuoso passages and flageoletto. He was a well-infonned musician, but he played mainly pieces of his own composition, of which only a few survive. Especially popular was his “Cradle Song." Another famous folk musician was Alter ChudnoverGuzman (1846-1912) of Chudnov, in the Volyn Province). This violinist's choice piece was “The Railroad," which imitated the sounds of a moving train, to the enormous delight of his audience. For all the naivete of their style, the pieces of Pedatsur, Chudnover, and others astonished the listener with their virtuosity and technical tricks. It was said that Chudnover owned a precious Amati violin. Yosl Druker ( 1822-l870), was the model or “Stempenyu,” whom Sholom-Aleichem immortalized in his novel of the same name. The Druker family boasted of seven generations of musicians: the father played the double bass; the grandfather had played the trombone; the great-grandfather, the cymbal; and the great-great-grandfather, the flute. “Stempenyu‘s brother-in-law was Chernyavsky, whose family also produced several generations of musicians—violinists, cellists, pianists, and conductors. Thanks to Beregovsky and Stuchevsky, we know the names of many Jewish folk musicians, among whom there were many remarkable virtuosi and composers. These mu314

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315 Russian Jews in Music sicians usually married girls of their own circle. The musi- ' cal profession among the Jewish klezrners was transmitted from generation to generation. These musical families included the Shpilbergs, Hofrneklers, Zissermans, and others. Some of their members were literate musicians; others did not even know how to read notes, yet were able to play the most complex pieces with an orchestra by ear and from memory. Jascha Heifetz’s father played in an orchestra in Vilno. The grandfather and father of Harry Grafman, one of the most talented among the younger American pianists, were also professional musicians. Other descendants of musical families are Naoum Blinder, first violinist of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and the Malkins the cellist Joseph, the pianist Manfred, the violinist Jack, and the fine opera singer Beata. Mikhail Taube, who had his own chamber orchestra in Berlin and who now lives in Israel, is a son of a klezrner family. The violinist Frances Magnes is a descendant of a klezmer family, whose oflicial family name in Russia was “Muzikantsky.” A study of the history of Jewish klezrners in Russia and Galicia makes it clear that the appearance, at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, of a large number of Jewish virtuoso violinists, cellists, and pianists was not an accident. Their remarkable art was an outgrowth of a long musical tradition, evolved during the past two or three hundred years by thousands of Jewish klezmers, instrumentalists among whom there may have been many potential Heifetzes and Oistrakhs. Without access to European musical culture, they were confined to the towns of the Pale and had to content themselves with fame and success among the Jewish masses. During the latter half of the 19th century there were great pianists in Russia, among them the Jewish Rubinstein

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Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 316 brothers and Nikolay Metner (who was part Jewish). In quarter of the 19th century, a number of Jewish the last pianists came to the fore: Isabella Vengerova, Leopold Godovsky, the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. In the first half of the 20th century, Jewish pianists in Russia included Artur Rubinstein, Alexander Borovsky, Osip Gabrilowich, Alexander Brailowsky, Simon Barere, Leonid Kreitzer, Joseph Lhevinne, Benno Moiseewich, Vladimir de Pachmann, Alexander Uninsky, Vladimir Horowitz and

others. In the l8th century Russia had an outstanding violinist, Ivan Khadoshkin (1747-1804). But almost all the famous violinists who followed him were Jews. The first of them to win world fame was Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880). In the late 1860's, Leopold Auer, a pupil of Joseph 10achim, came to live in Petersburg. For decades, Auer taught the violin class at the Petersburg Conservatory, where promising young violinists from all ends of Russia came to study. Among the graduates of Auer's class are Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elrnan, Efrem Zimbalist, Toscha Seidel, Myron Polyakin, the Piastro brothers, Joseph Achron, and other famous violinists. After the Revolution, Auer, then already an old man, emigrated to the United States; here, too, he was regarded as one of the best music teachers in the country. He died near Dresden in 1930. Auer's contemporary and, in part, his successor as a violin teacher was Pyotr Stolyarsky of Odessa. Auer was a highly schooled musician and an outstanding violinist. Stolyarsky belonged neither to the one, nor to the other category. He had little education and he was a mediocre player. But he was evidently an outstanding teacher. He taught Nathan Milstein, who later went on to Auer. Graduates of Stolyarsky‘s class include David Oistrakh, Lisa

Russian Jews in Music 317 Gilels, Busya Goldstein, Misha Fikhtenholtz. and other famous violinists active in Russia today.

JEWS ON THE OPERA STAGE At the first performance of Eugene Onegin in Moscow, the part of Lensky was sung by “a certain Medvedev," as Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter of March 16, 1879, “with a pretty good voice, but a novice, and with a poor Russian pronunciation." This “certain Medvedev" later became a famous opera singer in Russia. At the Mariinsky Opera, Lensky was sung by Mikhailov-Zilberstein, the possessor of a “diamond voice.” In subsequent years, there were many Jewish opera singers on the Russian stage. The baritone Joachim Tartakov enjoyed tremendous success, first in Kiev and later in Petersburg, at the Mariinsky Theatre, where he subsequently became the director-in-chief. The basso L. Sibiryakov, who had begun his career accompanying one of the traveling cantors and singing in synagogues, also sang in Kiev and later in Petersburg. Wide fame was also won by the baritones Oscar Kamionsky and BraginBraginsky, the tenors Zinoviev, Rozanov-Rozenkerer, and Arnold Georgievsky-Shteinberg, and the soprano Clara Brun. Other famous Jewish opera singers were Maria Brian, Maria Davydova (who was considered the best Carmen of her day on the Russian opera stage), the contralto Anna Meychik, and Yevgenia Foresta. In their time, Medvedev and Tartakov were the best performers of the roles of Lensky and Onegin in Russia. Tartakov was also brilliantly successful in the title role of The Demon, in which, by common judgment, he had no equal. He was highly successful, too, as a performer of lyrical romances on the concert stage. A. Davydov was

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considered the best Herman (“Pique Dame") in Russia. Medvedev was also an outstanding Herman. A great many Jewish singers performed in the provincial opera houses in Russia. Prominent among them were the baritone Yaroslavsky, the basso Shmundak-Yarov, and the tenors Brainin and Letichevsky. Beata Malkin was for many years a prima donna of the Berlin Opera; she was a singer of great musicianship, who possessed a beautiful voice. Jennie Tourel is another Russian-Jewish singer to have won great fame as a concert and opera performer.

JEWISH COMPOSERS AND THE JEWISH SCHOOL IN MUSIC There is a widespread idea that Jews are gifted performers, but lack musical creativeness. The Jews, say the advocates of this theory, have not produced their Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart. But what other people, apart from the

Germans and the Austrians, have given the world musical titans of the stature of Bach and the other great composers? The list of composers who follow Bach, Mozart, Handel, etc., in order of importance contains many names which prove that the Jews are not lacking in musical creativeness. Suffice it to recall Mendelssohn, Offenbach, Meyerbeer, Goldmark, Halevi, Mahler, Schoenberg, Korngold, Castelnuovo«Tedesco, Milhaud, Dukas, Nikolai Lopatnikolf, Ernst Toch. Ernest Bloch, Gershwin, Copland, and so on. Russian Jewry produced Anton Rubinstein, whose talent as a composer and debt to his Jewish background were discussed earlier in this chapter. Musical creativity among the Jewish masses in Rubinstein's day manifested itself primarily in synagogue music, in pieces for wedding and ball orchestras, and the violin

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showpieces of Pedatsur, Chudnover, and others. It was only at the turn of the century that Jews began to attend composition classes in Russian conservatories. In 1908, the Jewish Folk Music Society was organized in Petersburg. Space forbids a detailed account of the work of the composers grouped around the branches of this Society in Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. These groups produced such composers as Achron, Milner, Gnesin, the Krein brothers, Engel, Rozovsky, Saminsky, and Veprik. The Kiev attorney Mark Varshavsky, author of the popular song, “Afn Pripechok," was a talented amateur. His songs were widely beloved among the Jewish masses in Russia. Mikhail Gnesin, Alexander Krein, Mikhail Milner, and Joseph Achron were musical creators with their own distinct Shor, Krein and Erlich personalities. The chamber trio —were highly popular. In Soviet Russia, Jewish composers occupy an important place in light music. Isaak Dunayevsky (died in 1955), whose songs are sung throughout Russia, was the son of a famous liturgical composer and choir director of a large synagogue in Odessa and possessed a great melodic gift and a native talent for folk style. Only a deaf man will fail to hear the Jewish melodic elements in his widely popular songs, such as “01' Tsveter Kalina."' ("The Guelder Rose is Bloomingl") from the film The Cossacks of Kuban. Other well-known Jewish composers of light music are the Pokras brothers, natives of Kiev, who have written hundreds of songs for the Red Army. An important contribution to Russian and world musicology was made by a number of scholars, including I. Eiges. E. Braudo, D. Zhitomirsky, Yu. Engel, A. Barenboim, I. Shillinger (who emigrated from Russia), N. Slonimsky, Yosif Yasser, S. Rozovsky (who distinguished himself as

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a student of synagogue “tropes” and cantillation marks which guide the Torah reading in the synagogue), L. Saminsky (author of several books about music), Beregovsky, and Stuchevsky. Gdalya Zalessky, a cellist, wrote a voluminous work on famous musicians of Jewish origin. In America, a number of Jewish musicians from Russia have gained renown as composers, conductors, and instrumentalists. The late Serge Koussevitsky, who had won fame while still in Russia, became world-famous after emigration abroad. Great success is enjoyed by the husband-and-wife piano duo, Babin and Vronsky, the outstanding violinist Szymon Goldberg of Lodz, the husband and wife Nikolai and Hansi Graudan (he is a cellist and she is a pianist, both of them musicians of high caliber), the excellent pianist Nadia Reisenberg, the cellist Joseph Schuster, and the pianist Nadia Eitington in Israel. Isabella Afanasievna Vengerova, who died recently, had long occupied an eminent position among the music teachers of New York and Philadelphia. The pianist Alexander Liberman, a graduate of the Kiev conservatory, is highly successful as a music teacher in California. Lev Pyshnov, a native of flritomir who had studied with Esipova at the Petersburg Conservatory, and who lived in London from 1920 until his death in 1958, enjoyed wide fame in England both as a teacher and as a pianist. M. I. Levin of Kiev has followed a successful career as a composer in Hollywood under the name of Mikhail Mishelet. In the field of Jewish music in America, the list of wellknown conductors and composers who were born in Rusia includes Leo Lyov and S. Secunda, as well as the late Ya. Weinberg and I. Rumshinsky. Isa Kremer, one of the most popular singers of folk songs, died abroad. Sidor Belarsky

321 Russian Jews in Music of Odessa is active in America as a concert performer and cantor.

It can thus be seen that the contribution of Russian Jews to the musical culture of Russia and the West is very considerable indwd.

The Russian few in Art

by Rachel Wischnitzer

THE FIRST JEWS 'ro SEEK INSTRUCTION IN THE FINE ARTS

in Russian schools came from the trades and crafts. To a youth in Vilno apprenticed to a wood carver, admission to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg was the culmination of his dreams. Mark Antokolski (18431902), who had no formal Russian education and no right of residence in the capital, owed his admission to the Academy to the patronage of the wife of the governor-general of the Vilno Province. Antokolski‘s first little studies in wood and ivory, “The Jewish Tailor Threading a Needle" and the “The Miser," earned him medals and a scholarship. But the Academy expected him to do something more important in the tradition of classical art and rejected his “Oflicers of the Inquisition Surprising Marranos at the Celebration of Passover," submitted at a test. Antokolski was faced with a dilemma. The Academy was interested in furthering heroic and historic subjects, whereas the trend among younger artists was toward commonplace subjects from everyday life. 322

The Russian Jew in Art 323 After his clash with the Academy, Antokolski went abroad (1868). He visited Berlin and must have seen Christian Rauch's sculpture “Moses Watching the Battle with the Amalekites" in Sans-Souci at Potsdam. This work was highly praised by the Potsdam rabbi, Tobias Cohn, in a pamphlet published in 1867. Back in St. Petersburg, Antokolski pondered a biblical theme, a figure of Moses, but nothing came of it. He attributed his failure to his alienation from Jewish life. He felt that he was losing touch with his Jewish antwedents. Then he began to work on a statue of Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1870). This subject was to exert a strange fascination on many Russian artists, but Antokolski was, it seems, the first to tackle it. Repin painted his “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan" in 1885. The year 1870 was a turbulent one in the life of the artistic community. The rebels against established norms banded into a group known as the Peredvizhniki, with objectives similar to those of the American Ashcan School. Antokolski’s treatment of the Tsar was in line with the democratic tendencies in literature and art. He portrayed the Tsar, a Shakespearean character and a murderer of his own son, as a guilt-laden wretched being rather than the proud conqueror of Tartar kingdoms. The statue was received with reserve by the Academy, but was liked by the Court and the intelligentsia alike. Alexander H acquired the bronze cast of the statue for the Hermitage Museum. V. V. Stassov, the critic, and the novelist I. S. Turgenev acclaimed the work. It was followed in 1887 by the “Dying Socrates," and in 1881 by “Spinoza,” the latter commissioned by Baron Horace O. Ginzburg. The accent here was again on the expression of suffering, or rather of resig-

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nation, which reflected the mood characteristic of Antokolski's later years. The sculptor had devoted friends, and we see him in 1878 in Abramtsevo, the country estate of the Moscow art patron Savva Mamontov, with his old fellow students, the painters Serov, Vasnetsov, Surikov, Korovin, Nesterov, Ilya Repin, and the Jewish painter Isaac Levitan. He also had enemies, and this ultimately drove him to take up residence in Paris. His exhibitions abroad and his oficial successes— he was made a commander of the Legion of Honor—were begrudged him by those Russians who resented seeing a Jew honored as a representative of their country. The attacks of the anti-Semitic press on the occasion of his exhibitions in St. Petersburg in 1881 and 1893 embittered him. He died in Hamburg, a German spa, and was buried in St. Petersburg at the Jewish Preobrazhensky Cemetery. Also from the crafts came the seal engraver Avenir Grilliches (1820-1904), like Antokolski a native of Vilno. He became a stafi medalist of the Imperial mint. His son, Sergei Avraam Grilliches (18494911), who was admitted to the Academy in 1869, also became a medalist and rose to the position of chief medalist of the mint in 1910. He produced medals for the Court and the universities, a medal for French President Felix Faure, and a portrait of Baron O. Ginzburg cut on a topaz. Members of the generation born in the 1850‘s received their art training at the Academy from the outset. Ilya Ginzburg (1859-1939) was brought to St. Petersburg at the age of eleven; he graduated from secondary school and the Academy in that city. His little genre scenes, “A Boy Cheating in Class“ and “A Mother Telling Her Child a Story," were full of humor and easy charm. In 1919, under the Soviets, the diminutive artist, a popular figure in St.

The Russian Jew in Art 325 Petersburg, organized the “Jewish Society for the Promotion of the Arts," in an effort to give artists some means of support in a period of general confusion and turmoil. The painter Isaac L. Asknasy (1856-1902), born in Drissa, Vitebsk Province, entered the Academy at the age of fourteen. Moses L. Maimon (b. 1860) came from Volkovyski, in the Polish province of Suwalki. He was one of the very few Jewish artists in Poland who chose to study in St. Petersburg. He had been trained in Vilno and Warsaw art schools, and in 1880 was admitted to the Irnperiai Academy. While the title of academician undoubtedly added to the prestige of these artists, the training provided by the Academy was not conducive to experimentation and originality. In Moscow, away from St. Petersburg's oflicialdom and bureaucratic formalism, art found a more favorable atmosphere. Isaac I. Levitan ( 1860-1900) was born in Kibarty, near Verzhbolovo, a railway station at the Prussian border where his father was employed. The family moved to Moscow, and Isaac and his older brother Adolph were enrolled at the Imperial School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Before long, Isaac‘s paintings attracted the attention of the art collectors Savva Mamontov and Pavel M. Tretyakov. Isaac Levitan painted stage sets for Mamontov's theater, but his real vocation was landscape painting. On a visit to Paris in 1889 he was impressed by the silvery landscapes of J. B. Corot. Levitan's landscapes, often compared with Corot's, are lighter in color and portray the poorer and more monotonous countryside around Moscow, with its melancholy mood so congenial to the mood of the Russian intelligentsia. Levitan liked to roam the countryside with his dog Vesta and a rifle, hunting and sketching. His frequent companion

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was Anton Chekhov. Some incidents and figures in Levitan‘s life were portrayed in Chekhov’s “Grasshopper” (1892) and “The Seagull" (1895). Levitan held and still holds a special place in the aflections of the Russian people. A whole literature has recently arisen in Soviet Russia devoted to his personality, his sensitive landscapes, his friendships, and his loves. He was regarded as “the Chekhov of

the Russian landscape.” In 1898, two years before he died of a lung hemorrhage, Levitan obtained an instructorship in landscape painting at his alma mater, the Imperial School of Painting in Moscow. Leonid O. Pasternak (1862-1945) taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. A nau've of Odessa, he had studied law at the Novorossiisk University and art in Munich. He started as a genre painter with his “Letter from Home” (1880) and “Jewish Musicians." In Moscow the house of Leonid Pasternak and his wife, a pianist, was a center of intellectual and artistic life. Pasternak was well received at Yasnaya Poliana, Leo Toltoy‘s country estate. His oil portraits of Tolstoy and his charcoal sketches of the Tolstoy family were extremely popular. His illustrations for Tolstoy's novel, Resurrection, which first appeared in installments in the magazine Niva, were known to everyone in Russia. Pasternak created a portrait gallery of figures prominent in Russian public life. The great basso Fcodor Chaliapin. the political leader V. A. Maklakov, the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, the Moscow rabbi Jacob Mase, and the famous author of The Dybbuk, S. Ansky, all sat for him in his studio. In 1912 Pasternak visited his son Boris (the future author of Dr. Zhivago) in Marburg, Germany. There he made a sketch of the famous professor of philosophy, Hermann Cohen, whose courses Boris was attending. The

327 The Russian Jew in Art lithograph of this sketch gives us a lively picture of the old professor, with his long white hair and wide-brimmed hat, as he was walking, accompanied by his faithful students, through the streets of the quiet university town. In 1921, shortly after the Civil War in Russia, Leonid Pasternak left Moscow, never to return. In Berlin his home became the gathering place of the intellectual elite. He painted the president of the Academy of Fine Arts, Max Liberman, Lovis Corinth, Gerhardt Hauptrnann, Albert Einstein, and the Zionist leaders Weimrann and Sokolow, as well as the poets Bialik and Tchernichowski. In 1924 Max Osborn, the noted critic, published a monograph on Pasternak. With the advent of Hitler, Pasternak moved to London, where he later died. The center of gravity in art began to shift from Russia to the West long before the Bolshevik revolution. Already in 1912 Wassily Kandinsky, who was then in Munich, founded an art group, the “Blue Rider," with Franz Mark, a German, and Paul Klee, a Swiss. Among the Jewish artists who did not aspire to the laurels of the Imperial art schools in St. Petersburg and Moscow was Naum L. Aronson (1872-1943) who was born in Kreslavka, Latvia. He went to Paris and studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. He is best remembered for his sensitive, broadly-treated portrait busts and statues of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Pasteur and Beethoven. In 1905 he did a Beethoven monument for the Beethoven House in Bonn. During World War II he came to New York, where he remained until his death. The cultural climate in Russia changed considerably with the coming of the 20th century. Realism in art had run its course. The magazine World of Art, founded in St. Petersburg in 1898 by Serge Diaghilev, struck an entirely new note: the accent was now on sensuous beauty of line and

328 Russian Jewry (I860-1917) luxuriant intensity of color. Stage design and the graphic acquired particular importance. In 1909 Diaghilev took his Russian ballet to Paris, where it won tremendous acclaim. A considerable share of the praise went to the sets and costumes designed by Leon S. Bakst (1867-1924). Bakst was at that time still connected with St. Petersburg, where he conducted an art school together with the painter and graphic artist Dobuzhinsky. Some time in 1910 the young Marc Chagall (b. in Vitebsk, 1889) came to see Bakst. In St. Petersburg since l907, Chagall was having a difiicult time. A critic recently wrote that Chagall was a graduate of the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg “founded by Tsar Nicholas II." If Chagall read this nonsense, he must have been greatly amused. In his exquisite little book, My Life (written in 1922; English edition. 1960), Chagall told the story of his two years at the School for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts conducted by Nikolai Roerich (a private school not authorized to confer the right of residence in the capital). Registered as a domestic servant with a friendly attorney, provided at last with shelter on the premises of a publishing house and a small allowance from a well-wishing patron, Chagall went to see Bakst and became his student. Gaining self-confidence from the successful painter's guarded encouragement, and armed with a stipend from another friendly lawyer (Maxim M. Vinaver), he ultimately set out for Paris. In Paris, where Chagall arrived at the end of 1910, the poets Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire, who had a flair for new ideas and budding talents, became Chagall's mentors. The contrast between St. Petersburg and Paris was overwhelming. It is true that the leaders of the various post-impressionist trends in Paris were not unknown in arts

The Russian Jew in Art 329 Russia. Henri Matisse had just painted his sensational “fauvist” decorative panels for the Moscow house of the wealthy tea merchant Sergei Shchookin (in the years 190810). However, in Russia the general mood and atmosphere were very different. As Chagall tells us in My Life, stylization, estheticism, and all sorts of mannerism were typical of Russian art at that time. But, on the other hand, the elements for a renewal in Russian art, which, indwd, took place in the following years, were there. These elements included Russian folk art, ancient ikon painting, and the truly prophetic work of Mikhail Vrubel (d. 1901). In his reminiscences, Chagall tells of his dreams which show that he identified himself with this strange, mystic painter. What Chagall drew from his own Jewish heritage was Hassidic mysticism and that “huge tearful laughter" which Michael Ayrton, the British critic, in his study on Chagall associates with Gogol and, less convincingly, with Pushkin, and which we would be rather inclined to trace to Sholem Aleichem and Jewish folk humor. It was in a mood of humor that Chagall painted his murals for the Jewish Chamber Theater in Moscow (1919). He had returned from Paris at the outbreak of the First World War and remained in Russia until 1922, trying without success to adjust to Soviet life. In contrast to Antokolski, who lamented his lack of touch with Jewish life, the generation of Chagall—I have in mind Ryback, Lissitzky, Mane Katz—never lost contact with Jewish reality. The interest in Jewish folk art and the efforts to collect surviving examples of synagogue art and illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, which started at the end of the 19th century in western Europe and Poland, had an impact on the young Jewish artists. Chagall was unquestionably stimulated by these activities, whether consciously or not. His

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 330 basic set of symbols reflects these influences. But, of course, he went beyond this original cycle of images, enriching and deepening it with his Paris experience and the traumatic visions of the Hitler massacres. What is perhaps Chagall's main characteristic is his avidity to learn and expand in new directions. To his work in oil, water color, and gouache, he added book illustration: Gogol, La Fontaine, the Bible. Then came the stage sets for AIeko and Firebird. Then murals again (the Watergate Theatre in London). A period of ceramics was followed by work with stained glass. The windows for the church at Assy, Savoie (1958), were preceded by experiments in stained glass for the Cathedral of St. Etienne at Metz. While this work was in progress, there came the commission from the Hadassah Zionist Organization of America to do twelve windows for the synagogue of its hospital in Jerusalem. These windows were completed in 1961. And new commissions soon followed. Andre Malraux, French Minister of State for Cultural Aflairs, commissioned a Chagall ceiling for the Paris Opera; the government of Israel wanted windows, tapestries, and floor mosaics for the Parliament building, and Catholic circles at Beauvais also seem to be planning a commission for their cathedral. It would be a mistake, however, to regard Chagall's work out of context with anything attempted or achieved by other Jewish artists. None, it is true, has had such a spectacular career. None has had a postage stamp issued in his honor by the government of his adopted country. Nevertheless, the level of artistic achievement among Jews, and particularly Russian-born Jews, is very high indeed. Russian-bom Jewish artists are very actively present on the international contemporary art scene, making a major contribution in the realm of ideas, in the forging of forms, and the launching of thematic concepts.

331 The Russian Jew in Art The Jewish artist first emerged in the late 18th century in Germany. In the second half of the 19th century, Camille Pissarro, a Sephardic Jew in Paris, had no equal anywhere in central or eastern Europe. Then, in the 20th century, Jewish artists of stature began to appear everywhere. The Russian Jews caught up with the West in a spectacular advance, and with an overwhelming impact. What they needed in order to emerge was evidently only freedom and a friendlier climate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alpatov, Mikhail. Russian Impact on Art, translated by I. Litvinov (New York, 1950). Aronson, Chil. Scenes er Visages de Monmartre (in Yiddish, Paris, 1936) Brahm, Clara. “Levitan, Landscape Painter," The Menorah Journal, XL, No. 1 (Spring, 1952), 86-97. Chagall, Marco. My Lite, translated by E. Abbott (New York, 1960).

Lake, Carlton. “Artist at Work: Marc Chagall," The Atlantic Monthly (Special Supplement), 212, No. 1 (July, 1963), 85-112. Lozowick, Louis. Modern Russian Art (New York, 1925). 100 Contemporary American Jewish Painters and Sculptors, with an essay by Louis Lozowick (New York, 1947). Magarahack, David. Chekhov Peissi, Pierre. Antoine Pevsner. chatel, 1951). Wischnitzer. Rachel. “Jewish (New York, 1952), Jewish Vol. 111, pp. 268-323.

(London, 1952).

Tribute by a Friend (NeuArt," The Jewish People Encyclopedic Handbooks,

Yiddish Literature in Russia

by Judel Mark A

suavav

0F YIDDISH

LITERATURE IN TSARIST

RUSSIA

from the 1860's to the Bolshevik revolution is a gratifying enterprise, since it embraces an era of rich cultural expansion. Yet it encompasses only one facet of a world-wide phenomenon. The flowering of Yiddish literature in Russia was paralleled by a similar development in the United States. In both countries its emergence was the outgrowth of an awakening Jewish consciousness, both social and cultural. The new Yiddish literature not only reflected Jewish life as it was, but also served as a leavening force which stimulated both the spiritual and material progress of the people. Moreover, the very fact of its development was indicative of a changing attitude toward the Yiddish language, long held in low esteem by the Jewish intelligentsia. By the beginning of the 19th century, a small group of Maskilim (“the Enlightened") sought, under the leadership of Moses Mendelssohn's disciple, Mendel Satanover, to raise the prestige of Yiddish. Their plan was to translate the Bible into the spoken language of the people. How-

332

333 Yiddish Literature in Russia ever, the opposition of other Maskilim, who shared their German mentors' disdain for the “jargon,” as Yiddish was contemptuously called, prevented them from realizing their project in toto. Nevertheless, throughout the 19th century a succesion of Maskilim continued to create literary works in Yiddish and to use the Yiddish language to communicate and spread their ideas. Their influence was limited; only some of their works were published during their lifetime. The rest remained in manuscript form and were circulated only among a small group. The Jewish masses were unquestionably devoted to their Yiddish tongue. But lack of rights, material privation, and the low social status of the Jews impeded the development of self-esteem among the people. This, in turn, kept down the prestige of Yiddish, as the people's language. The only language of secular education was Russian. Men who wished to raise their social or cultural level discarded Yiddish and adopted Russian or Hebrew, which the Maskilim had begun to use as a secular medium by the end of the eighteenth century. The Jewish populists and socialists of the second half of the last century did not share the contempt for Yiddish. They asserted its value and assigned it a new role. For them, it became the instrument for educating the people and for awakening the desire for a better life among the youth. But Yiddish was not yet regarded as a vehicle for the spiritual aspirations of the Jews, or as a language suitable for literary work. The change in the attitude toward Yiddish awaited the development of Yiddish literature. Until the 1860's, the only works in Yiddish that were widely popular among the masses of the people were religious books and Hassidic tales about saintly rabbis and heroes. Only one secular writer achieved fame—Isaac

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Meyer Dick of Vilno (1814-1893), whose stories captured the imagination of the people. When the Tsarist regime at last permitted the publication of a periodical in Yiddish in October, 1862, the picture changed rapidly. The first Yiddish weekly, Kol Mevasser, was published in Odessa by Alexander Tsederbaum as a supplement to his Hebrew journal Hamelits. It became independent in 1869 and continued to appear in Odessa, while Hamelits was transferred to St. Petersburg. In those last two years of its decade of existence, the magazine was edited by M. Beilinson. Kol Mevasser was an influential and effective publication which aroused the interest of the readers and called for reforms in Jewish life. Imbued with the spirit of the Haskalah, it advocated modern Jewish education and systematically voiced the protests of enlightened, progressive, and public-spirited individuals against the decaying system of community institutions. The contributors to this weekly included Yehoshua Lifshits, Mendele Moycher Sforim, I. Y. Linetsky, I. L. Gordon, and others. The issues of K0! Mevasser contained a wealth of material on the history of the decade in which the journal appeared. Moreover, its pages carried the first literary works of writers such as Mendele and Linetsky. The magazine gradually introduced the reading public to a more mature literary style. Its very success proved that the people were ready to be interested in literary and social publications. Since it was impossible to obtain permission to publish Jewish periodicals in the 1870's, several attempts were made to print them outside Russia. I. Y. Linetsky and Avrom Goldfaden published a weekly, Yisrolik, in Lemberg from September, 1875, to February, 1876. Similarly, Louis Rodkinson published Kai-Loam in Konigsberg from August, 1876, until the middle of 1879. This journal

335 Yiddish Literature in Russia sought to reconcile tradition with the Enlightenment movement. The platform of the magazine altered radically when it came into the hands of the socialist Vinchevsky. The Tsar's censors immediately recognized the change and forbade the distribution of the journal in Russia. This sounded the death knell of Kai-Loam. Yiddish literature in the last third of the 19th century centered around Mendele Moycher Sforim. He established the standards of form, style, literary technique, and language, thereby laying the foundation for a modern literature. With Mendele, Yiddish literature enters the sphere of world literature. From this time on, European literary trends find their Yiddish equivalents in the realist genre of Mendele's work and the new romanticism of the next generation of writers. His works represent the culmination of an earlier era. All contemporary and future literary movements evolved from the circles that either surrounded or opposed him. He attracted within his orbit both older colleagues and younger disciples. On the other hand, he was opposed by those who wished to perpetuate older forms and themes. A cursory survey of some of the poets and prose writers who were Mendele's contemporaries in time, but whose work belonged in character to an earlier era, may serve as a starting point for an analysis of Mendele’s circle and his work. The Jewish poets of that period formed, as it were, a transitional link between folk song and a more individualized poetry. The most outstanding example of the poetry of that period was the work of Michl Gordon (1823-1892), a native of Vilno. A man of rare sensitivity who had wandered about a great deal and had seen much suflering, Gordon was a Maskil who criticized in his writings the

336 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) negative aspects of Jewish life. The language of his poems is simple and rhythmic; his meanings are clear and transparent. His favorite form was the ballad; his favorite theme, incidents from daily life. Many of his lyrics became a part of the folk song repertory. As he grew older, Gordon became disillusioned with the ideals of the Haskalah. Wearied by his poverty-stricken existence as a private teacher, he wrote a cycle of elegies which express his bitterness and his deep sense of lonelinss. Michl Gordon's brother-in-law, the well-known Hebrew poet Yehuda Leib Gordon (1829-1892), published a book of poems in Yiddish in 1886 under the title of Siohas Chu(in. The poems in this book dealt predominantly with social problems and were written in the spirit of the Haskalah. While the poet himself did not rate his Yiddish verses too highly, they are superior in their grace of form to those of other poets of the Haskalah. Considerable perfection of form was also achieved by Sh. I. Katsenelenbogen, a native of Vilno, whose work was distinguished by its versatility. He wrote lyric poetry, verse on national themes, and satirical couplets, as well as prayers. He also translated the works of Heine and some Russian poets into Yiddish. In Lithuania, the most popular of the minstrel-poets was Eliokum Zunser (1835-1913). He was the last of the famous Badchens, or singers who, in accordance with ancient custom, entertained the guests at weddings and celebrations in wealthy homes. His poems appealed to the masses. Following the Badchen tradition, Zunser is invariably didactic and tends to moralize. His works exemplify the spirit of both the Haskalah and the “Lovers of Zion." As with other “minstrels” and poets of a theatrical bent, he makes frequent use of personification, as in “The Ferry" and

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“Summer and Winter.” His most popular poems were "The Plow" and “The Aristocrat." Avrom Goldfaden (1840-1908), who came to be called “the father of the modern Yiddish theatre," worked in the theatre not only as a playwright, but also as an organizer, director, and composer. His operettas, such as Shmendrik and Tsvei Kunelemlach, may be described as comedy-grotesques, in which he rather crudely satirized the negative aspects of Jewish life. He also wrote sentimental and melodramatic plays on historical themes. These include his Bar Kochba and Shulamit. Goldfaden raised to a high level the traditional heritage of the Purim play and refined the genre of tavern entertainers known as the “singers from Brody.” He attained great mastery also as a writer of verses composed in the folk style. In tone and theme, his lyrics share in the spirit of the Haskalah and romantic nationalism. On the ladder leading up from folk song to contemporary poetry, Goldfaden indisputably occupies the first rung. That many writers of the era of the 1860's and 1870’s inclined to dramatic forms is hardly surprising. The short story and novel forms had not yet been sufliciently developed in Yiddish literature. Hence, in an attempt to convey a sense of life and to recapture the natural dialogue of the people, the writers turned to drama. Mendele Moycher Sforim, the first central figure of Yiddish literature, emerged out of this background of Haskalah literature. The example of his life and work is in a sense symbolic. We see Sholom Yankif Abrarnovich (18361917), an advocate of the Haskalah and modern educational methods and a recognized writer in Hebrew, transforming himself, as soon as he begins to write in Yiddish, into a man of the people, a simple book peddler. “Mendele Moycher Sforim” is not only a pen name; it represents a

338 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) well defined image in the writer's rich gallery of Jewish types. He stands before us as a living man, this old Jew, with his cart loaded with books and drawn by a skinny

nag, with his eternally wry smile—a wise wanderer through the towns of the Pale. Later, when he won the honorary title of “Grandfather of Yiddish Literature” (given to him by his “grandson," Sholom Aleichem), the image of the “Grandfather" remained indissolubly bound with the mask in which Sholom Yankif Abramovich presented himself to the Yiddish reader. He was the first great writer in Yiddish who had succeeded in winning the warm affection and profound respect of wide circles of readers. During the first twenty years of his literary activity in Yiddish, Mendele Moycher Sforim was a fighter and satirist, as in The Little Man, Fishke the Lame, and in the first version of The Magic Ring. Gradually, his work became more serene. His satire mellowed into humor. From tendentiousness. prompted by a desire for social reform, he went on to greater objectivity. From the early struggle against the darker aspects of Jewish life, he went on to record and immortalize the Jewish life of the past, especially in the later version of The Magic Ring and in Shloyme, the Son of Reb Chaim. Although he began as a Maskil, Mendele never attacked Hassidism and never offended the religious feelings of his readers. His social satire was aimed at the masters of the community who set themselves up over the masses of the people. He inveighed against economic rootlessness, idleness, contempt for physical labor, provinciality, the willingness to be satisfied with too little, and spiritual narrowness. In The Travels of Benjamin the Third he depicted the hollowness of isolation from the surrounding world. Mendele's ideas were avant-garde. His play, The Tax (1869), seems to continue the theme of Itzchok-Ber Levin-

339 Yiddish Literature in Russia son's Lawless World. Yet, along with a merciless indictment of the corrupt machine of the community politicians, Mendele also presents the image of Shloyme Veker, a forerunner of the future Jewish revolutionary, whom he invests with certain features of his own character. In the symbolic novel, The Mare, (1873), which may be viewed as a sequel to The Tax, the author, ten years in advance of his generation, proclaims the national idea which was adopted in the Jewish milieu only in the 1880's. Mendele rightly holds a place of honor not only in the history of Jewish literature, but also in the history of Jewish social thought and development. And, indwd, this is entirely in keeping with one of the basic features of Yiddish literature: the importance of the social theme and the simultaneous development of literary forms and of new social thought within the Jewish community. Mendele Moycher Sforim was a synthetic realist. He created a typical small town, the name of which, Kabtsansk, he derived from the word Kabtsn, or poor man. Its scenes depict characteristic situations in the life of the Jewish small town in the middle of the nineteenth century. Mendele pomayed men and women of all social strata. He wrote of the home and the synagogue, the bath-house and the poorhouse, the poverty of everyday life and the richnea and beauty of the Sabbath. The dwellings, the food, and the minds of his heroes, their various customs and manners all come to life in Mendele's novels. In a similar vein, he portrays the types of the big Jewish city of Glupsk, or “Foolstown.” The model for Glupsk was Berdichev, just as the model for Kabtsansk was his native town of Kapulya in the province of Minsk. The events which transpire in Glupsk belong to the 1860‘s and 1870's. The subsequent changes in Jewish life are absent from Mendele’s works. In

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 340 his later life he sought to perfect and deepen the gallery of types which struck his imagination during the years of his youth and early maturity. The life he depicted was almost immobile, static. This approach was somewhat detrimental to the plots of his works. However, the want of action and drama in his novels was more than made up for by masterful delineation of characters and situations, mores and institutions. His works are further enhanced by extraordinary descriptions of nature, which he seems to “clothe in prayer vestrncnts, in a talles." Mendele may have borrowed from the best examples of contemporary Russian realist literature, but he invested all his borrowings with purely Jewish substance and color. Mendele had begun to write in Yiddish under the prompting of idealistic and populist motives. However, like Shloyme Etlinger before him during the Haskalah period, he was soon caught up in the sheer joy of creative work, which led him to perfect and polish every phrase and every word. His carefully weighed and chiselled prose became a model not only to his followers, but also to writers who belonged to other literary schools. In the realm of language, they all remained true to the “grandfather.” Chaim-Nachman Bialik once remarked that Mendele was not only the founder of the realist school in Yiddish literature, but also the creator of the language itself. He gave shape to literary Yiddish and, by rising above local dialects, he established its linguistic foundations. Mendele sought to instill in Jewish writers a sense of the profound responsibility that went hand in hand with their profession. He was himself a living embodiment of the ideal of serving the people through literature. To him this ideal also implied the development of esthetic taste among the

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Jews. He tirelessly revised his works, so that their later versions often became altogether new works. Mendele was the central link that united the entire Jewish literary life of the nineteenth century. In him, the populist tendencies of the Haskalah found their crowning expression; he performed the task of creating a literary language —a task urged in the early years of the century by the Maskil Mendel Satanover. Heir to the old didactic literature, the tradition of the magids (preachers) and of the authors of popular books for the people, he became the mentor of two generations of realist writers. The roots of his art went far back into the past, while his influence extended into the twentieth century. Mendele's contemporary, Itzchok-Yoel Linetsky (18391916), was, like Mendele, a keen observer of Jewish life and a pungent satirist. His autobiographical novel, A Polish Boy (called A Hassidic Boy in its second edition), in which he mercilessly criticized Hassidism, provoked great excitement. His popularity, however, was short-lived. His best work was his first novel. He never matured as a writer. Yankev Dineson (1859-1919), like Linetsky, opposed Mendele's conception of style and language. From the beginning, he tried to write simply, in the language of the people, and without refinement or literary device. His first novel, melodramatically entitled The Loving and the Tender, or the Dark Young Man (1877), enjoyed sensational success. The world of this novel is peopled with angelic creatures who become the victims of heartless villains. Dineson’s novel Even Negef (“Stumbling Block") and his stories of the 1890's, “Hershele” and “Yoselc,” reveal an attempt at some refinement of form and language. The latter is the most tear-jerking, sentimental story in Yiddish. Mendele's works were addressed to readers with literary

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which reveled in detail, were not easy to read and hence could not become popular among the simpler readers. These readers, particularly women, provided a wide public for the “entertaining novels" published in large numbers in the 1870's and 1880's. Abounding in improbable adventures, such novels described the tragic loves between yeshivah students and princesses, counts and cooks. Their pathetic effusions and dramatic episodes made the women readers shed copious tears over the heroes and, at the same time, over their own bitter lot. They painted pictures of luxury and magical happiness, leading their readers into a world far removed from their own gray lives. Dozens of such novels were written by Shomer (the pen name of A. Shaykevich), who founded a whole school of back writers, which included Bloshtein and Bukhbinder, among others. Although this literature vulgarized the reader’s taste and entertained him by cheap devices, it also had a positive effect in that it expanded the circle of Yiddish readers. Moreover, it presented a challenge to Mendele's pupils, taching them that it was necessary to write not only artistically valid, but also entertaining works which could appeal to various strata of readers. What Mendele accomplished in the development of Yiddish prose style, S. Frug (1860-1916), helped to achieve in poetry. He was well-known as a Russo-Jewish poet before he began to write in Yiddish. While he often complained of the primitiveness and crudeness of Yiddish, he succeeded nevertheless in creating graceful and melodious poems in this language. Especially fine are his lyrical, flowing verses describing nature. Frug often adopts an elegiac tone, but he does not grieve over personal misfortunes; he bewails the people's bitter lot in the Diaspora. A lover of Zion, he dreamed of a happy future for the Jewish people taste. His novels,

343 Yiddish Literature in Russia in the land of its ancestors and drew inspiration from biblical themes. Nor was he alien to militant social emotions, as in his poems of 1905. Frug's work is rich and varied, yet there is something amorphous in his general character as a writer. His principal contribution is that he worked persistently to develop the formal aspects of Yiddish verse and brought to Yiddish poetry both new forms and new content. In the latter half of the 1880's a new movement appeared on the Jewish scene. Its adherents deliberately and consistently preached the ideas of Yiddishism and openly called themselves “Jargonists.” The movement was nourished by the national revival of the 1880‘s, the years when the intelligentsia developed a lively interest in the destinies of the people and, most importantly, when a new intelligentsia, emerging from among the people themselves, assumed an ever larger role in Jewish life. Closely bound to the people, they strove to serve them, rather than rise above them. There was still no outright struggle for the rights of the people. But the task of improving their diflicult lot and of bringing them hepe and solace was already clearly invisaged and defined. There was a new interest in folk lore and a new concern with the richness and purity of the Yiddish language, as well as a growing desire to spread the influence of Yiddish literature to the widest possible circles. Yiddish began to attract writers who had until then felt that only Hebrew or Russian was suitable for literary work. This new approach resulted in the publication of excellent anthologies in Yiddish, which contained journalistic and popular articles and, more significantly, large sections devoted to literature and literary criticism. Foremost among these anthologies were two collections of the Yiddishe Folks Bibliorek (“Jewish People‘s Library") issued by Sholom

344 Russian Jewry (18604917) Aleichem in 1888 and 1889. Their appearance proved to be a significant event in Jewish literary life. Sholom Aleichem, at that time a man of considerable wealth, paid the contributors good royalties. He enlisted the cooperation of Mendele Moycher Sforim, I. Y. Linetsky, M. A. Shatskes (author of the satiric Before Pesach), M. Spector, S. Frug, Paltiel Zamonshchin, the literary critics I. Lerner and I. Kh. Ravnitsky, and others. In the late 1880’s the Yiddish language entered a period of rapid development, and new literary forces were drawn into its orbit. In 1888 and 1896, anthologies entitled A Friend of the Home appeared in Warsaw under the editorship of M. Spector. They were poorer in content than the collections published by Sholom Aleichem, but more readily accessible to less cultured readers of that time. Another series of anthologies, The Yiddish Library, edited by I. L. Peretz from 1891-1893, appeared biannually. Sholom Aleichem and M. Spector entered Jewish literature at the same time. in 1883. Their first stories appeared in the Yiddishes Folksblat (“Yiddish Folk Page”), the first Yiddish weekly in Russia to model itself on European publications. Edited at first by Alexander Tsederbaum, and later by I. L. Cantor and Israel Levy, it appeared from I881 until 1890. It advocated ideas of national revival which adumbrated the Zionist ideology. Moreover, it dealt with the problem of emigration, which had become painfully urgent in the 1880's, and reported on life abroad as well. Writers who had previously written in Russian or Hebrew found the Yiddishes Folksblat eager to publish their new Yiddish works. Thus. it offered Sholom Aleichem and M. Spector, as well as other young writers, the opportunity to make themselves known to the public. Spector's Novel Without a Title already reveals the char-

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aeteristic traits of this writer, who knew the life of the people and deeply sympathized with the fate of his luckless heroes. M. Spector (1859-1925) was a realist with a tendency toward sentimentality and good-natured humor. In his novels The Jewish Peasant, Beggars and Paupers, and Reb Trayti and in his numerous stories he depicted the dificult life of the Jewish poor—chiefly the bitter lot of the women and children—in a tone of calm resignation and passive sympathy. His style is often as colorless as the life of his heroes, and his language is far poorer than Mendele’s, although he emulated the latter‘s realistic approach and attention to details. Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916), the most popular of all Yiddish writers, entered the literary scene under his gay pen name. His real name, Sholom Rabinovich, has been nearly forgotten. His first literary experiments betrayed a certain insecurity; nevertheless, they immediately attracted the attention of such a serious literary critic as the historian S. M. Dubnow, who wrote under the pseudonym Criticus in Voskhod. During Sholom Aleichem's early period, before he had evolved his own style, he remained a faithful pupil of Mendele. His early novels included Stempenyu and Yosele Solovey. Sholom Aleichem's favorite literary form was the monologue; sometimes he gave it up for dialogue or the epistolary form. He seldom used narrative in the third person. Characteristically, this was the form used in the autobiographical novel, From the Fair. Sholom Aleichem‘s language is simple and conversational. His characters are tireless speakers, and their speech is endlessly rich in nuance. Their colorful Yiddish, especially its Ukrainian dialect, sparkles and shimmers. The writer’s style often conveys a nervous dynamism, a passionate in-

346 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) volvment, infused with faith. He does not trouble about external details and does not like to dwell too long on any siutation. Using an impressionist technique, he selects one vivid feature of the character portrayed in order to bring into full relief his unique and comic qualifies. Such a method may at times result in grotesques, but Sholom Aleichem manages to avoid this. In his best works, he raises his images to the level of symbols. Sholom Aleichem's work is equally great in breadth and in depth. All strata of the people are represented in it— small-town Jews, city merchants, village residents, actors. He creates a striking diversity of types belonging to the purely Jewish milieu, existing under the singular conditions of Jewish life. The only character absent from his works is the refined individualist who loves to probe into his spiritual sufferings. At times, as one reads Sholom Aleichem, it seems as though the characters are not the creations of a writer‘s mind, but arise spontaneously and independently from their own words. Sholom Aleichem has collected a wealth of material which can serve as a key to the soul of the people. Sholom Aleichem‘s humor brings pleasure not only to the common reader, who laughs over amusing expressions and situations, but also to the subtle connoisseur of literature, who discovers in his works penetrating psychological insights and a symbolism rarely encountered in world literature. Sholom Aleichem's popularity was overwhelming. It would be difficult to find a single Yiddish reader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who was not acquainted with his work. Reading aloud from his works was a favorite pastime within every family circle. This popularity was due chiefly to his varied and colorful humor. His laughter is often fresh and carefree; at other times, it is

347 Yiddish Literature in Russia what Gogol called “laughter through tears.” In some of his stories we find the subtlest, most delicate humor veiled with lyricism; in others, we find crudely comic situations. The most original characteristics of Sholom Aleichem’s talent is his ability to treat situations that are by no means gay, and, indeed, are sometimes even tragic, with a lightheartedness born of faith in man's capacity to overcome the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Even his “little men with little ambitions" find within themselves the strength to resist despair in moments of sorrow. In contrast to many humorists, Sholom Aleichem rejects pessimism: his work is an inexhaustible source of faith and hope. We must, he tells us, learn the art of laughing at our own misfortunes. His motto is “laughter is good for the health; doctors prescribe laughter.” Sholom Aleichem achieved what his teacher, Mendele, had not been able to do: be compelled the culturally backward reader to abandon the vulgar novels of Shomer and his school. He became a writer most intimately beloved, nuded, and accepted by all strata of the people. He seemed to belong to all. The humor which had always found expression in Jewish folk jokes and proverbs shone in Sholom Aleichem's works and was embodied in his panorama of characters, whose collective types may be reduwd to four basic models: 1. The inhabitant of Kasrilovke, the never-despairing poor man with an unquenchable thirst for life. 2. Menachem Mendel, hero of the novel of the same name and of dozens of short stories, the “man of air,” without a specific occupation, eternally in search of earnings, an enterpriser of endless ingenuity and inexhaustible devices, and a failure with a vast reserve of hope for ultimate success. 3. The hard-working and philosophic “Tevye the Milk-

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man," a reincarnation of Reb Itzchok Berdichever, whose heart is filled with love for the whole world. 4. The child, painted in soft hues, mostly against the background of a holiday. To this category belongs the wonderful boy of “Motl Peise the Cantor's," who has a “good and happy life” because he is an orphan. On evaluation, all these characters appear to be embodiments of the author himself. Sholom Aleichem, like Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, and other creators of epic works, was a lyric subjectivist, who drew as much material from his personal experiences as from surrounding life. The popular figures created by Sholom Aleichem offered the readers criteria for appraising life's events and, often, their own selves. The critic Baal-Machshoves remarked that Menachem Mendel, in whom the writer had revealed the very essence of his character, could himself have become the ideal reader of Sholom Aleichem. Baal-Machshoves also said that Sholom Aleichem had taught his fellow Jews to laugh. This is an exaggeration: Sholom Aleichem’s chosen goal was not to make his people laugh, but to bring them consolation and to increase their zest for life. And this was a task that could be realized only by a writer intimately bound up with the life of eastern European Jewry. The influence of the third pillar of classical Yiddish literature, Itzchok Leibush Peretz (1852-1915), on art and social life was in another direction. Peretz made his debut as the author of Hebrew poetry. His first work in Yiddish, the poem “Monish,” appeared in the anthology published by Sholom Aleichem, Yiddishe Folks Bibliotek. He was active as a Yiddish writer for only twenty-five years. Yet during this relatively short time he gave expression to his extraordinary multi-faceted talent, which was attended by rest-

349 Yiddish Literature in Russia less shifts, contradictions, and zigzags. He created genuine literary gems in diverse literary forms and styles. His early period, in which poetry held the dominant place, was strongly influenced by Heine and Charnisso. Peretz drew inspiration from the Prophets, and combined social and individualist motifs in his own unique way. In his next period, he wrote a number of short stories in the realist genre. These have as little in common with Mendele’s passion for detail as with Sholom Aleichem's discursiveness. His pictures of the life of the poor, as in the short story, “In the Basement,” and his moving silhouettes of Jewish women, as in “Tire Mail Coach," are written in a spare style, without a single unnecessary word. His stories dealing with social themes are often sentimental. Where the writer touches upon the influence of the Haskalah and its ideas, he becomes sarcastic. During the period when he was drawn to social radicalism and socialist ideas, Peretz came forward in his Yontev Bletlach (“Holiday Pages," 1894-1895) as a propagandist and popularizer of scientific knowledge. He won the hearts of new readers, members of workers' circles, and became the voice of social protest and of the growing socialist movement. His Hassidic attests to the dominance of romanticism in his later work. In his stories written for the modern, freethinking reader, he presented idealized Hassidic rabbis as the exemplars of the highest moral conduct. The tendency toward symbolism became increasingly pronounced in this period, as did a growing interest in folk lore. In his Folk Tales, Peretz’s most poetic and original work, men of the people are shown as saints, and the author himself appears to have attained spiritual peace and a luminous serenity. In his symbolic dramas—The Golden Chain, A Night in the Old Market, and others—Peretz sought to express the basic

350 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) features of his philosophy. At the same time, he became enthusiastically involved in the dream of a modern Yiddish theatre. Peretz also wrote a number of stirring, trenchant, and aphoristic feuilletons, which gave expresion to his hope for the realization of human dignity. He preached frwdom of thought, which to him was indivisibly bound with profound religious feeling. Moveover, he argued for the national significance of the Yiddish language and urged the establishment of new forms of a creative Jewish life embodying the ideal of social emancipation. In his later life, as though the whole colorful diversity of his literary output were not quite enough, Peretz devoted himself to writing verse for children. The Jewish sources of Peretz‘s creative activity can be traced back to the centuries-old epic stream of Jewish literature. To this he added his own restless search for truth and justice, and his keen awareness of the disparity between the impoverished spirit of contemporary Jewish radicals, whose lives were devoid of traditional values and concerns, and the incomparable greatness of the men and the works of earlier epochs. In his literary techniques, Peretz followed western European models. The world of his ideas, however, was profoundly Jewish, although it, too, was molded by modern influences. In his most original and mature works—his Hassidic and Folk Tales—we find the. influence of folk lore and a kinship with the symbolic tales of Nachman Bratslaver. With all his zigzags, Peretz nevertheless pursued his own true path, from realism to romanticism, from romanticism to symbolism. He was always an experimenter. There was a poetic logic in his inconsistencies. Despite his philosophic shifts, he always remained a re-

351 Yiddish Literature in Russia ligiously oriented seeker, an optimist, a prophetically inthe above and, transformer of world spired revolutionary all, a fiery preacher against indifference and stagnation. To him, literature was a means for the transformation of man. His readers were chiefly intellectuals, but he was also read by workers and the radical youth. Although Peretz was a populist, he did not try to adapt himself to the mass reader; he sought, instead. to raise the reader to his own level. In this he did not always succeed: Peretz, indeed, was more respected than read, and more read than understood. But he had fervent admirers, and exerted a great personal influence which was not confined to literature alone. During the first fifteen years of the present century, when such a close relationshop prevailed between literature and social life, Peretz was both the creator of classies of Yiddish literature and a spiritual leader of that sector of the Jewish intelligentsia which sought, with the aid of Yiddish, to modernize Jewish life and to achieve a national-cultural renascence throughout the countries of Jewish dispersion. The triad—Mendele, Sholom Aleichem, and Peretz— established a happy combination of complementary temperaments. Mendele recorded in his works the characteristic features of the old Jewish way of life, partly in order to overcome them, and partly in order to preserve their memory for posterity. Sholom Aleichem looked for curious, amusing, comical phenomena, without troubling about changing the world. Peretz found in the past, extraordinary qualities, which, he felt, should serve as models for coming generations. Mendele was drawn to the established way of life. In the works of Sholom Aleichem and Peretz, life is more dynamic. Sholom Aleichem based himself on Mendele, and Mendele on his predecessors. Peretz, more than either of these, was influenced by European literature, but

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the same time his roots went deep into the soil of historic Jewry. at

In the Russia of the 1890‘s, it was impossible to obtain a license to publish a magazine in Yiddish. Peretz's Yontev Bletlech served as a substitute for a periodical press. Those years also witnessed the appearance of the clandestine publications of socialist groups. During 1896-1904, Der Yiddisher Arbeirer (“The Jewish Worker") was published abroad by the Jewish Labor Bund and distributed in Russia. Inside Russia, the organ of the Band, Arbeiter Shtirne (“The Workers' Voice") was printed secretly. There were also clandestine and irregularly published organs of other revolutionary parties. All of these reflected social and political moods, but made no significant contributions to literary developments. An important role in the development and dissemination of Yiddish literature was, however, played by the fortnightly Der Yid (“The Jew"), published in Cracow (1899-1902). It was edited at first by I. Ch. Ravnitsky, and later by Dr. Yoisef Lurie. This popular magazine carried works by older writers side by side with those of the younger generation: Avrom Reizin, Sholem Asch, H. D. Nomberg. Baal Machshoves, and others. While its editorials advocated Zionism, the devotion to Yiddish literature manifested itself throughout the magazine. The first Yiddish daily in Russia. Der Fraind (“The Friend“) began to appear in St. Petersburg on January 14, 1903. This first and most influential Jewish newspaper was to play a great role in the social and literary life of Russian Jewry. Every issue of the newspaper was promptly sold out in the cities and small towns of the Pale of Settlement. Der Fraind, a non-partisan publication, supported all the creative elements in the Jewish community. Edited by Saul

353 Yiddish Literature in Russia Ginzburg and published by Sh. Rapoport, its contributors included Chaim-Dov Gurvich, Yoysef Lurie, Chaim Zhitlovsky (under the pen name of Gaydarov), Shmuel Rosenfeld, and a number of young journalists. The literary section presented works by all the best writers of the period. Among its younger contributors were Sholem Asch, A. Reizin, Reb Mordchele, and others. Although in principle the attitude of the editors toward the Yiddish language remained inconsistent, the language of Der Fraind was polished, and much attention was given to orthography. The editors, however, hesitated to adopt a definite position in the struggle which developed between Yiddish and Hebrew. Der Fraind was aware of its moral and social responsibility to the reading public and, despite the censorship, sought to educate its readers politically. The circulation of the newspaper, which began with 15,000, reached 50,000 in 1905. In Member, 1905, an order of the Government halted its publication. For a short time, from December, 1905, to July, 1906, it appeared under the name of Dos Leben (“Life"). In 1908 it was again banned. It became increasingly clear that St. Petersburg, far removed from the Jewish masses, was not the most suitable of places for the publication of an organ such as Der Fraind. In 1909 the newspaper was moved to Warsaw, where it appeared under the editorship of Sh. Rosenfeld. In 1913 the authorities once more forbade its publication, and it became Dos Leben for a second time. The war dealt the final blow to this excellent newspaper, which had attained its greatest popularity during the period of 1903-07. As the first daily in Yiddish, Der Fraind marked out the directions followed by the subsequent development of the Yiddish press. It was remem-

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 354 bered by those who followed as an exemplary newspaper, which vigilantly guarded the true interests of the community. A number of new periodicals appeared during the revolutionary years of 1905-07, when the publication of polifical journals became legally possible. These included two weeklies published in Vilno: the Zionist-Socialist Der Nayer Veg (“The New Road"), among whose contributors were Jacob Lestschinsky, M. Litvakov, W. Bertoldi, and Sh. Niger; and the Folksshtime (“The People's Voice"), organ of the “Seimists,” whose contributors included Ch. Zhitlovsky, M. Ratner, Ben-Adir (A. Rosin), and N. Shtif. In 1905 and the following years. a number of Yiddish dailies appeared in Poland. These included Zvi Prilutsky‘s Der Veg (“The Road”), the first Yiddish daily to be published in both morning and evening editions, and Nahum Sokolow's Der Telegral. ln Vilno. the Bund began publication of its organs Der Veker (“The Awakener") and Di Folkszaitung (“The People's Paper"). The Yiddishes Folksblat (“The Yiddish Folk Paper"), edited by Sh. N. Yatskan from 1906 to 1911, enjoyed great popularity. Its price was only one kopek, and its circulation reached 80,000. In 1908, the newspaper Haint (“Today") appeared in Warsaw. It systematically carried sensational material and cheap novels, and gained a wide following. Side by side with this material, Hainr printed serious articles with a lionist point of view. In 1910, Zvi Prilutsky began to publish a newspaper. Moment. in competition with Haint. Both newspapers attained their highest circulation during the years preceding World War I. Yiddish periodicals also appeared in other cities. In l912, M. Spector moved his magazine, Unzer Leben (“Our Life"), which had been published in Warsaw since 1907,

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to Odessa. In Vilno, Benzion Katz launched the publica-

tion Di Tsait (“Time," 1905-06). In 1912, the Lodzer Folksblat made its appearance under the editorship of I. Uger. From time to time, other publications appeared in Vilno, Minsk, Belostock, Berdichev, Czenstochow, and other places. The Yiddish press was in a period of flourishing expansion when on July 5, 1915, the military censorship ordered the suspension of all Yiddish periodicals within the borders of the Empire. At a time when the country was ravaged by the war, when Jews had become the victims of cruel persecutions and deportations, the Yiddish press was condemned to silence. The growth of Yiddish literature (and periodical press) was characteristic of the entire epoch under review. Its progress was most rapid in the 1880’s. but its greatest flowering occurcd during the fifteen years preceding World War I (1899—1914). During those years, the Jewish community became the arena of a battle of ideologies: Zionism, socialism and autonomism. This spiritual and intellectual struggle within the Jewish milieu was reflected in Yiddish literature as well. The literature of the period was fired with dreams of a coming rebirth. It was caught up in the storms of the Revolution of 1905. After 1907, it experienced a temporary lapse into resignation and melancholy. Soon, however, the reinvigorated Yiddishist movement drew a substantial part of the intelligentsia into the orbit of the cultural revival that followed the decline. A conference held in Czemowitz in 1908 gave expression to this revival. This conference, in which I. L. Peretz and Dr. Nathan Birnbaum were active participants, proclaimed Yiddish to be “a national language of the Jewish people,” and urged the translation of the centuries-old Jewish cultural heritage into Yiddish.

356 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) The Czemowitz conference provided an impetus for a number of new literary ventures. In 1908, the magazine Literarishe Monatsshrift (“Literary Monthly”) began to appear in Vilno. Sh. Gorelick, A. Vaiter, and Sh. Niger closely participated in its work. Shortly before the war, in 1913, Der Pinko: (“The Chronicle"), an annual publication devoted to “the history of Yiddish literature and language, folklore, criticism and bibliography," appeared. The monthly, Di [dishe Velt (“The Yiddish World”), edited by Sh. Niger, well deserved the central place it held in the literary life of Jewry in both hemispheres. This period also witnessed the modernization of old publishing houses and the emergence of B. Kletzkin's publishing house in Vilno. The young writers mentioned earlier had by now reached maturity and new forces were flowing into the literary field. Journalism became more serious and its style more refined and sophisticated. Literary tendencies and schools proliferated. Yiddish literature became a powerful force, attracting many Hebrew writers. The greatest Hebrew poet, Ch. N. Bialik, translated his Hebrew Songs of Grief and Wrath, inspired by the sufferings of the Kishinev pogroms, into Yiddish. He also wrote a number of poems in Yiddish. Yankif Fichman also wrote lyrical verse in Yiddish. Yehuda Shteinberg gave the reader idyllic pictures of Hassidic life, and also wrote stories for children. M. I. Berdichevsky wrote warm and tender stories in Yiddish. Tire approach of Berdichevsky and Yehuda Shteinberg to Hassidic themes was very different from that of Peretz. Z. Onoykhi created the original and moving figure of Reb Abo, an old philosophizing Hassid. Neo-Hassidism came into frequent contact with the broad movement for the study of folklore, which originated in the

Yiddish Literature in Russia 357 1880's. Tire minstrel and Badchen still lived in the memory of the people. Sholom Aleichem discovered a Jewish Beranger in the person of the Kiev attorney Mark Warshavsky (1848-1907), the author of a collection, Fifty Genuine Folk Songs. In a few short years, these songs achieved great popularity and gained a firm place in the repertory of Yiddish folk songs. These included Mark Warshavsky’s “Oifn Pripechok," “Di Mizinke Oisgegbn,” and others. Folklore and the manner in which Peretz used it became the prime inspiration of an entire group of writers. Berl Shafir drew images of the cheerful poor in verse and in prose. Another poet and prose writer, A. Litvin, sang of the gentle spirit of men of the people. An honored place among the folklorists belongs to Sh. Ansky (S. A. Rapoport, 1863-1920), a tireless collector and student of the folk heritage. Under the influence of Peretz, he turned from Russian to Yiddish. In his retelling, folk legends gain a new and unique charm. Later, he became famous as the author of The Dybbuk. The collections of Yiddish Folk Songs published by S. Ginzburg and P. Marek (1901), were followed by the collections compiled by N. Prilutsky. Y. L. Cahan also began to collect folk songs in Warsaw; they were published in 1912 in New York. The light satirical verse and fables of Reb Mordchele (pen name of Chaim Chemerinsky, 1862-1917) were based on the Yiddish idiom and the author's careful recording of folk speech. His rendition of traditional fables is an example par excellence of Yiddish humor. He made his literary contribution primarily within the framework of the folklore movement. Tlre influence of folk songs proved more lasting than that of folk tales. The best illustration of this is the work of

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Avrom Reizin (1876-1953), who quickly gained wide popularity and affection. The roots of his poetry lay in folk song, although his verse is also stamped with the influence of Heine and the Russian populist poets. His best and most original poems are short, melodious, and deeply emotional. They express sorrow and hope, the poet's compassion for the lonely and suffering, and a profound Weltschmerz colored by national sentiments. Reizin’s lyrics are restrained and chaste. Tire misery of his people often made him forget his personal difliculties and misfortunes. His poems, simple and transparent in content and form, were soon transformed into virtual folk songs. A. Liesin (1872-1938) began his literary activity at approximately the same time as Reizin, He was a leader of the nationally-conscious opposition within the labor movement. The first poet to deepen revolutionary lyricism and give it a personal, individual tone, he looked upon the dedicated young conspirators as the bearers of the old tradition of Jewish martyrdom. A. Liesin‘s talent matured during his years in the United States. His contemporary. Yehoash (1871-1927), also attained his artistic maturity after his emigration to America. In his earlier years in Russia, Yehoash wrote ballads suffused with national moods, retold folk legends in his own way, and transpmd passages from the Bible into verse. The mood of resignation brought on by the failure of the Revolution of 1905 left its imprint on the poems of Dovid Einhorn (b. 1886) in his collection, Quiet Melodies. Romantic melancholy colored the work of the young poet who witnessed the agony of the Jewish small town, from which the younger elements were fleeing to big cities or across the ocean. Tender. idyllic tones are heard in his poems which sing of chaste and shy young Jewish girls.

359 Yiddish Literature in Russia Another poet of the same period, 2. Segalovich (18841949), author of the collections Quiet Dreams and In Kazirnierz. sings of the beauty of the picturesque small town. Erotic themes are found in the collection Rose Petals by Sh. I. lnber. Despite the notable development of Yiddish poetry, the greatest achievements of Yiddish literature during the period preceding World War Iwere in the field of fiction. Tire short story was brought to perfection, and the latter part of this period witnessed the appearance of large novels. One of the outstanding prose writers of this time was the poet Avrom Reizin. In his stories, set against a background sketched with a few apt strokes, we find a gallery of small-town characters, as well as the laboring and oppressed of the big city. The more tragic the fate of his heroes, the more sympathy the author lavishes upon them. His attention is drawn to the small daily needs and simple emotional conflicts of these meek and helpless people. The author’s humor glimmers in an infrequent smile. His lyrical prose is marked by a pessimistic feeling that man is far indeed from being the crowning glory of creation. Sholem Asch, who subsequently became the leading Yiddish novelist and whose works, translated into Russian, German, English and other languages, won him wide recognition, began by writing short stories. These stories reveal a love of nature and a warm affection for the life of the small town. The critic Sh. Niger called Asch a “prophet of the earth," because he eulogized in his works everything earthly and ordinary. Asch brought into literature the idealized Jewish small town with its simple inhabitants. The best examples of these are to be found in his stories: “A Small Town,” “Reb Schloyme Nogid," and “Koyler Street." Asch's early work is clearly in the tradition of Men-

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 360 dele and Peretz. Before World War I, he managed to complete the first two novels of a series, Mary and The Road to

Oneself.

H. D. Nomberg (1876-1927) was a master of close and keen psychological analysis. His heroes, discontented semiintelleetuals, are constantly probing their own souls. They cannot find a place in the life of the big city and safer in solitude. In Be Silent, Sister, the tendency toward analysis is combined with muted lyricism. Such qualities as precision of language and mastery of structure won for Nomberg an honored place in literature. His output was small, however, and somewhat marred by monotony. The strong, earthy work of M. Vaisenberg (1881-1937), a ruthless naturalist, whose images are distinguished by their vivid plasticity, was a reaction to Asch's mannerism and Nomberg‘s psychological analysis. Vaisenberg‘s heroes were lusty full-blooded men moved by strong passions. These appear in The Small Town and Father and Sons. He occasionally also wrote of meek. peaceful toilers, victims of adversity. A worker himself, Vaisenberg portrays working people without a trace of sentimentality, with a clear discernment of their ordinary and sometimes brutal characteristics. Another writer to emerge from the working class milieu was Yoineh (Jonah) Rosenfeld. whose first stories were closely autobiographical. His later works tend toward morbid psychologizing. The talented fiction writer. L. Shapiro, described the horrors of pogroms in his early stories, which express his anger and thirst for vengeance. The goodhumored I. Y. Berkovich portrayed, to use Niger's words, “ordinary people in extraordinary situations." Mention should also be made of the fine sketches of domestic animals in the stories of M. Stavsky.

361 Yiddish Literature in Russia The literary debut of Dovid Bergelson immediately revealed his originality and brilliance of style. Around the Railway Station and All Over (1913), placed him in the ranks of the best Yiddish writers. In his work, the influence of Mendele and Peretz is interwined with that of Knut Hamsun, so alien in spirit to the other two. The dramatic genre lagged far behind other forms of literary expression. One of the pioneers in this field was Dovid Pinsky, the first Yiddish writer to depict the life of Jewish workers in his stories of the 1890’s. In his plays, he concentrated chiefly on the conflicts arising from the disintegration of the traditional patriarchal family. Pinsky had emigrated to America as a young man, but his plays on social and national themes were highly successful in his old homeland. Sholem Asch also entered the field of drama. His first play, The Times of the Messiah, portrayed the struggle among diverse social outlooks in the Jewish milieu. It was followed by his God of Vengeance and a number of attempts to dramatize historical events. A combination of elements of realism and symbolism characterized the work of A. Vaiter (1878-1919). In his play The Mute he described the intellectual milieu. Sholom Aleichem's Scattered Over the World and H. D. Nomberg's The Family are examples of dramas dealing with family life. The best Yiddish comedy was unquestionably Sholom Aleichem‘s The Great Winning. Peretz Hirshbein (1880-1948), was not only a playwright, but also the organizer of a Yiddish art theatre, in which he participated as an actor as well. His early, purely realistic plays depict the lives of lonely people. Later, influenced by Maeterlinck, he wrote a number of “mood plays.” He also drew some of his characters from among simple village Jews, as in The Empty Inn.

Russian Jewry (18604917) 362. The vast popularity of lectures on literary subjects atto tested the vital role of literature during this period. These lectures were presented not only by writers; virtually all civic and party leaders deemed it their duty to talk about literature, drawing conclusions in accord with their particular ideological positions. Almost all editors of periodical publications and most of the writers wrote occasional articles on literary topics. A prominent critic, Baal Machshoves (18714-1924), approached literature with purely esthetic criteria. He did not seek to pronounce judgments or to be regarded as an expert. He was enamored of Yiddish literature and wanted to serve it and further it. He endeavored to prove that modern Yiddish literature was a single, unified whole. A follower of Hippolyte Taine, he was most warmly sympathetic in his analysis of the works of realist writers. His literary reviews and impressionist sketches were written with great verve. Another critic who won early recognition was Sh. Niger (1883-1955), a product of the Yiddishist school. He provided a carefully reasoned analysis of classical and contemporary Yiddish literature. Even in his earliest works, he showed himself to be cautious and restrained in his evaluations. He became the foremost Yiddish literary critic of his time. The study of folklore and research into the Yiddish language, as expressed, particularly, in the eflorts of B. Borochov, were characteristic of the period of 1908-1915. A number of scholarly works in Yiddish appeared during those years, and the way was paved for the work of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO), which was organized in Vilno many years later. During the period between 1864 and 1914, Yiddish literature assumed an increasingly secular tone and a variety of

Yiddish Literature in Russia 363 forms approximating those of European writing. Realism, initially the dominant style, was soon modified by a propensity toward romanticism. In the early 20th century. Yiddish writers tended more and more in the direction of symbolin. The geographic center of Yiddish literature was the Pale of Settlement: Warsaw, Odessa, and Vilno. Small literary groups existed in St. Petersburg as well, and later also in Kiev. Toward the end of this period the Yiddish writers, chiefly under the influence of Peretz, became increasingly conscious of the role—or, as they saw it, the mission—of literature in the life of the people. And indeed, the part played by Yiddish literature in helping to organize Jewish social life and public opinion, in awakening the people to a desire for a better life. and in providing new ties between the intelligentsia and the people, cannot be overestimated. An instrument for social progress and, and the same time, a powerful factor for the development of national awareness and cohesion, Yiddish literature created a bond among Yiddish-speaking Jews throughout the world. It succeeded in combining dynamism with intimate warmth, and did much to fill the gaps that were inevitable in the existence of a people living in wide dispersion. Through the medium of literature, the Jewish people addressed the world and also itself. With the aid of literature it sought to clarify its own true spiritual identity.

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Literature in Hebrew in Russia by Dr. I. L. Klausner I 1785, the year when the first Hebrew periodical publication, Hameassef (“Anthology") was founded. The objectives of Hameassel were the dissemination of education among Jews, the revival of the Hebrew language, and the improvement of literary taste. The first stimuli for the revival of the Hebrew language and literature came to Russian Jewry from the Jews of Germany and Austria. The new movement of the Maskilim (maskil means enlightened, educated) originated in Volhynia, near Galicia, and in Lithuania, near Germany. In Volhynia, the first proponent of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) was ltzchok Ber Levinson (1788-1860). In Lithuania, active pioneering work was done by M. A. Ginzburg (1795-1846). He popularized secular sciences in Hebrew, a language which he, like I. B. Levinson, enriched and augmented with post-biblical words and forms. M. A. GinzMODERN LITERATURE IN HEBREW DATES BACK TO

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Literature in Hebrew in Russia 365 burg wrote a General History. translated into Hebrew novels and stories of secular content, and illustrated in his autobiography the shortcomings of the old Jewish upbringing. In order to bring Russian Jews into closer contact with the country where they lived, he wrote a short History of Russia, the first of its kind, and also a book about the war of 18l2 against Napoleon. The poet A. B. Lebenzon (1794-1878), began to write in Lithuania at about the same time. A romantic poet, he published his work under the pen name of Adam Hakogen. His son, Mikhail Lebenzon (1828-1852), was a poet in the fully modern sense of the word. A highly gifted young man, who died of tuberculosis in his twenty-fourth year, he left behind him translations of Books Three and Four of Virgil's Aeneid and two small books of verse, Songs of Zion and Zion's Harp. The former contains six poems on biblical themes. The latter is a collection of short poems. both original and translated. Mikhail Lebenzon's original poems are lyrical gems. His love poems breathe sincerity and direct emotion. Yehuda-Leib (Lev Osipovich) Gordon (1830-1882), a friend of the younger Lebenzon, elaborated on historical themes in a romantic spirit. His later works were quite noteworthy. One of these is a long poem on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Another, “In the Lion's Maw," draws pictures of the Judeo-Roman war of the times of Vespasian and Titus (70 A.D.). Another development in Hebrew literature was the appearance of the historical novel. Ahavat Zion (“Love of Zion"), published in 1853, was the first Jewish novel generally, and its author. Avrom Mapu (l808-l867), was the father of the Jewish novel. Both in its content and its language, Ahavat Zion succeeds in capturing the ancient

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Russian Jewry (18604917) Hebrew spirit. With remarkable powers of intuition, the poor Lithuanian teacher who was its author brought to life an era remote and vastly diflerent from his own. Ahavat Zion exerted enormous influence on Jewish youth, both in its reconstruction of the brilliant Jewish past and in the inevitable contrast it presented to contemporary realities of Jewish life in Russia. From the dismal present, the reader escaped to the romantic past, and Mapu's novels became a second Bible, as it were, to the Jewish advocates of Enlightenment. They generated in their readers a revulsion against the darker aspects of life in dispersion and roused them to civic and national consciousness. The movements for enlightenment and liberation, as well as the Zionist movement, owed a great deal to Mapu's works.

II The first Hebrew periodicals came into being during the era of reforms in Russia (1860-1877). Already in 1857, the first Hebrew weekly newspaper Harnagid began publication. Two other weekly newspapers in Hebrew—Hacarmel in Vilno and Hamelits in Odessa—were founded in 1860. The second, later transferred to Petrograd, existed, with interruptions, for forty-four years (1860-1904). In 1862, a fourth newspaper, Hazefira, began to appear in Warsaw. The birth of a Hebrew periodical press meant also the beginning of Hebrew journalism, responsive to and concerned with current problems. During this initial period, Jewish literature was markedly influbnced by Russian literature. The new liberal trends brought about closer contact between the Jewish and the Russian intelligentsia, and Russian realism, even in its more extreme expression, made its influence felt throughout

Literature in Hebrew in Russia 367 the Jewish writings of the time. This influence was particularly noticeable in the works of the best representatives of the educative and critical trend in Jewish literature. A literature of self-criticism emerged in Hebrew, u practiced by Kovner, Paperno, Abramovich, and Smolenskin. A number of books published in Hebrew dealt with natural science, history, geography (Shulman), and the Russian history (Mandelkern). These works manifest a desire to go forward hand in hand with progresive Russia and to “earn" equal rights, the attainment of which at that time seemed imminent. Hebrew fiction began to undergo a radical change. In 1857, Avrom Mapu, who in his early novels had seemed completely immersed in the past, began publication of a new novel, The Bigot, dealing with contemporary life. In this novel, be portrayed the life of Lithuanian-Russian Jewry with unprewdented realism, castigating sanctimonious hypocrites, community bigwigs. and parasites who cloaked themselves in the dignity of Talmudic scholarship. S. M. Abramovich, who later became famous as Mendele Moycher Sforim, published a novel on a similar theme. In his Fathers and Children, he depicted the life of Volhynian and Podolian Hassidim, exposing the damaging effects of the religious superstitions and social prejudices rampant among this particularly backward section of the Jewry of that period. Like Mapu, the poet Gordon also turned to new themes. Whereas in the 1850's and early 1860's he had dealt principally with historic subjects, he now became a stern critic and indictor of traditional Jewish ways of life. After 1869, Gordon launched into journalism as well, joining the struggle for reform in Jewish religion waged under the leadership of one of the best Jewish publicists, M. L. Lilienblum

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(1843-1910). In 1876. Lilienblum published a remarkable book, Hatot Neurim (“Youthful Sins"), in which he exposed, with Rousseau-like sincerity, the wounds of a

soul maimed and crippled, in his view, by ultra-traditional upbringing. The poet Yehuda-Leib Gordon published a number of poems criticizing Jewish life in the monthly Hashachar, which existed for fifteen years (1869-84). Dealing with the contemporary life of Russian Jewry, these poems mercilessly ridiculed many antiquated rituals and customs, as well as the manners and mores of certain Jewish community leaders and quasi-intellectuals. The aspects of Jewish life which were excoriated by the journalist Lilienblum and the poet Gordon in their articles and poems were also the subject of a novel, Religion and Life, by R. A. Braudes (1851-1902). The most interesting phenomenon of this period was perhaps the fact that the influence of Russian literature on Jewish writing expressed itself in the emergence of a socialist literature in Hebrew. The first socialist proclamation addressed to Jewish youth in Hebrew appeared in London in 1875. In 1876, a socialist monthly in Hebrew, Haemes, was published in Vienna under the editorship of A. Liberman-Freeman. The participants in this magazine included Ben-Hets (Morris Vinchevsky), who later became famous in American-Jewish socialist circles, and M. Lilienblum. Thus, Hebrew literature in the 1860's and 1870's expressed almost all the trends in European thinking. But one of the most powerful strains that found a response within it was the idea of nationalism, especially prominent at the time thanks to the unification of'Italy and the national movements in the Balkans. Its father in Hebrew literature was the founder of the magazine Hashachar, Peretz Smol-

Literature in Hebrew in Russia 369 enskin (1842-1885), whose literary work formed a transitional bridge from realism to neo-romanticism. Smolenskin is a central figure in modern Hebrew literature. He is equally significant as a journalist and as a fiction writer. In addition to numerous short stories, he wrote six novels. In almost all of them, he wrote as a realist, depicting the less attractive aspects of Jewish small-town life and customs. His four-volume novel, A Wanderer on the Roads of Life, is a broad panorama of old Jewish life; against this background. he traced the story of a restless Jewish youth who found his final peace in death for his people during a pogrom in Odessa. In the novel A Donkey's Burial, Smolenskin showed the inevitability of a clash between the individual Jew who longs for light and freedom and the Jewish society, ossified within the old way of life. A new point of view colors the novel Reward of the Upright: the author demonstrates, through the example of the Polish rebellion, how little the Jews can rely on outside forces and how necessary it is for Jews to create their own history. In a story, “Cherished Revenge," written shortly before his death, Smolenskin depicts the sharp change in the psyche of assimilated Jewry under the impact of the anti-Semitic persecutions and pogroms of the 1880's. Smolenskin himself contributed to this change by his journalistic writings. The realistic period gave rise to the educational-critical trend which preached the nwd for closer contact with general European and Russian culture. However, in its striving after universal culture, it overlooked the valuable elements in specifically Jewish culture. P. M. Smolenskin fought this failure with all the passion characteristic of him. In The Eternal People, published in 1872, he formulated for the first time the doctrine of Jew-

370 Russian Jewry (18604917) ish progressive nationalism. This nationalism by no means contradicted the idea of equality and fraternity. No one valued more than Smolenskin the great prophetic universalism which was Jewry‘s most precious gift to mankind. Smolenskin’s nationalism was a striving toward the preservation and free development of the diverse forms of cultural life evolved by human societies, unified by common origin and common historic experience—40m whose combination made possible a harmonious spiritual life for all mankind. And the culture of the Jews, Smolenskin felt, deserved an honored and equal place in the gamut of national cultures. The Jews, he wrote, are a nation, not merely a religious group within other nations. They have a common origin, a common history, and a common language. Promding from this premise, Smolenskin sharply attacked in his next book everyone who held that the Jews were merely “sparks of the Mosaic law." It was not religion, he argued, that had preserved the Jewish people, but national awareness. This line of reasoning brings us to the next period in Hebrew literature, the neo-romantic (1880-1900).

III

The ideas of political nationalism, which gained impetus from the unification of Italy and the liberation movements of the Balkan Slavs, found expression in the Jewish milieu in the striving toward a restoration of Jewish national freedom through the colonization of Palestine and toward a restoration of Jewish national culture through the revival of Hebrew as a daily language. One of the leading spokesmen for this trend was L. Ben-Yehuda (born in 1858). He

371 Literature in Hebrew in Russia settled in Palestine, where he founded the first newspaper of the European type to be published in Jerusalem, and was the first to introduce Hebrew as the daily language both in the home and the school. The shortage of new words, expressions, and technical terms was remedied both by neologisms and by the revival of forgotten words, found in abundant numbers in the 3,000-year-old treasury of Jewish writings. This marked the beginning of the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. The growing interest in Palestine could not but bring about the emergence of an entire literature eulogin'ng the “Promised land" and wakening a love for antiquity general1y. The poets M. M. Dolitsky (born in 1856), and N. G. Imber (1856-1909), sang of their longing for “the fair daughter of Zion." And, ironically, the converted Jew, K. A. Shapiro (1841-1900), revived the Jewish folk legends connected with the idea of redemption and h'beration through the Messiah. M. G. Mane (1860-1887), in his brief writing career combined a fiery love for Zion with a passionate devotion to nature and a great longing for beauty. David Frishman (1865-1922), a talented critic and essayist, preached in his writings the eternally beautiful and eternally human; in his stories, distinguished by their graceful form and style, he was a complete romantic. A. V. Yavef (born in 1847), author of a History of Israel in many volumes. written in the spirit of orthodoxy, as well as of numerous articles and semi-fictional sketches, urged national distinctiveness and strict adherence to religion; in his view, the Jews needed to borrow from Europe nothing but external forms. A figure quite apart from all these was Mendele Moycher Sforim (pen name of S. M. Abramovich, 1836-1917). After many years devoted almost entirely to Yiddish, he

372 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) returned to Hebrew literature, creating a number of outstanding fictional works. Mendele was an extraordinary genre writer. His pictures of Jewish life form a true epic— a grandiose panorama of the patriarchal life of Russian Jewry at the time of Nicholas I. In the 1880's, Hebrew literature assumed a new character. Until 1886, the Hebrew periodical press consisted only of monthlies and weeklies. In 1886, Dr. L. 0. Kantor (1848-1915), launched publication of the first Hebrew daily, Hayom. Soon after that, the weekly Hamelits and Hazefira also began to appear daily. The emerging joumalistic literature dealt with all general problems in the same way as the European press. A number of talented journalists came to the fore, including Nahum Sokolow (18591936), editor of Hazefira, Dr. L. O. Kantor, D. Fishman, the scholar-publicists Dr. S. Bemfeld and Dr. L. I. Katzenelson, the feuilletonist E. L. Levinsky, the poet-publicist Z. Epstein, and others. Various annual almanacs appeared somewhat before the dailies. to be followed later by literary anthologies. There were translations into Hebrew of Pushkin and Lermontov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekhov, as well as of Shakespeare and Byron, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, Goethe and Heine, Knut Hamsun and Strindberg. Philosophers such as Nietzsche. Herbert Spencer, Emerson. and others were also published in Hebrew translation. In the later 1880‘s, a major writer appeared in Hebrew literature. He was 0. I. Ginzberg (1856-1927), who wrote under the pen name of Ahad-Haam. The founder of so-called “spiritual Zionism," Ahad-Haam held a central place in Hebrew literature for a quarter of a century (18891914), he was the founder also cf the monthly Hashiloach, which was later edited by the author of the present article.

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An eminent publicist and thinker, Ahad-Haam arrived upon the literary scene at a time when the Jewish patriarchal order described by Mendele was beginning to crumble. The writers of the Enlightenment had done their work. Despite the restrictions of the reign of Alexander III, “Enlightenment" reached every pore of the Jewish community, leading to a veritable “flight from the ghetto.” There were now two distinct camps in Jewish life: the adherents of orthodoxy, rigidly clinging to tradition and ritual, and the intelligentsia, which, having lost contact with religion, also turned away from the masses and their national heritage. It was under these conditions that Ahad-Haam came upon the scene. He devoted his many years of literary and public activity to the search for a synthesis between the old and the new Jewry. He saw the “Jewish problem" in the fact that the orthodox Jew, who piously preserved all the national and religious values of his people, rejected everything universally human, while the Jew who adopted universal culture shunned everything specifically national and Jewish. This, as he saw it, was the tragedy of a people without a territory, without a national policy, and without a national-historical spoken language. What could be done to counteract this? Preach segregation and chauvinism? But that, aside from being alien to the spirit of Judaism and the spirit of the time, could lead only to the ossification of Judaism itself. Hence, AhadHaam reached the conclusion that the only thing that could save Jewry as a nationality and create a synthesis between the specifically Jewish and the universally human was the establishment of a Jewish spiritual-national center in Palestine. While such a center would not solve either the purely economic or the purely political aspects of the Jewish question in the Diaspora, it would, he felt, solve the national

374 Russian Jewry (18604917) question as it aflected all Jews. Gradually, there would be created one small corner in the world where the Jews would have their own home—even though limited by the sovereign rights of another state—where they would develop their own national culture, speak their own language, and, generally, live like all other nations. Such was the “spiritual Zionism” of Ahad-Ham. In distinction to the “political Zioni-” of Herzl, it would strive —to quote Ahad-Haam himself—to “put at the center of everything the living aspiration of the heart toward national unification and rebirth, and toward the free development of the nation in accord with its spirit. along universal

foundations.”

This interesting doctrine placed the problem of the old and the new Jewry, and the problem of the Jewish and the universal, in their fullest and broadest perspective. It aho served as a stimulus for new ideas and aspirations, which were interwoven most intimately with the newest trend in Jewish literature—modernism. IV

The first Jewish modernist was I. L. Peretz (18511915). Already in 1894 he published a small book of love poems, The Flute. which strikes the reader with its novelty of poetic forms, subtlety of mood, and originality of language. Somewhat later, Peretz became a master of the short, artistically realized story, the quick, graceful sketch, the symbolic tale and allegoric fable. Like Mendele, he wrote both in Hebrew and in the spoken Yiddish language. And if Mendele was the “grandfather of Jewish literature,” the modernist Peretz is its “father." In contrast to Mendele, who depicts group typos, Peretz paints individuals.

Literature in Hebrew in Russia 375 And while Mendele reveals the Jew in man, Peretz reveals the man in the Jew. Nevertheless, Peretz also contributed widely to Jewish neo-romanticism. Along with M. I. Berdichevsky and the talented short-story writer Yehuda Shteinberg (18631908), he captured the finest features of Hasidism, which was then under attack by the Jewish advocates of “Enlightenment." He stressed the poetic philosophy at the root of this offspring of Jewish mysticism. Peretz’s Hassidic Tales are pure neo-romanticism, which raised the outlived Hassidism to the level of a new “philosophic-poetic world view.” His Folk Tales attain the heights of the symbolic works of the best modern writers. The ambivalence and inner conflict of the Jewish intellectual of his day were expressed in soft, lyrical tones by M. Z. Feierberg (1874-1899) in a number of marvelous sketches and in his novel, Where? His writing is infused with that specific Judenschmerz which had replaced the general Weltschmerz in the young Jewish literature. A quiet but profound sorrow possesses the young dreamer who seizes upon the synthesis of Ahad-Haam, seeking a solution in territorial nationalism based on universal human principles. An entirely different approach to the solutions oflered by Ahad-Haam and reflected in Feierberg's works may be found in the writings of the journalist and fiction writer M. I. Berdichevsky (born in 1865). Berdichevsky felt that the earliest Prophets had committed a fatal error. By stressing ethics and the service of God, they had destroyed in the Jewish people the love of mundane things and hence also of statehood. They had transformed the Jews into a people without a homeland; they had made God the Jewish home, the Torah the Jewish state. And that which the

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Prophets had begun was completed by the Pharisees and the creators of the Talmud. Judaim, said Berdichevsky, had swallowed up Jewry. And until the Jews ceased to live by unearthly ideas and regard themselves as “the chosen people," they would be incapable either of reviving Palestine or of leading the full cultural-economic and political life of a people that has found its land and struck roots in it. It was essential, urged Berdichevsky, to re-examine all values. It was essential to replace the book by life, reason by feeling, and abstract ideas by earthly beauty and healthy earthly emotions. Only then would it be possible to revive the land for the people and to overcome flabbines, wounded souls, the sense of incompleteness and spiritual anemia. In numerous fictional works, Berdichevsky depicted Jewish youth as bloodless young men incapable of strong passion or enjoyment of nature. The children of a bookish people, they were nothing but walking ideas, whose substance had been corroded and destroyed by too much reflection and rationalization. It was only among the Hassidim and among the common Jewish people, said Berdichevsky, that healthy natures could still be found. The clash between Ahad-Haam and Berdichevsky stemmed from the antagonism between the “Hellene” and the “Jew." This antagonism was profoundly reflected in Hebrew literature. The struggle for and against “Hellenism" also affected the work of three of the greatest modern Jewish poets: Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934), Saul Tchernichowsky (1875-1943), and Z. Schneur (18871959).

Bialik was the only Jewish poet to win world fame. Collections of his poems were published in translation in Russian, Italian, German, and English, and individual

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poems have been translated into French, Polish, and Hungarian as well. Bialik's literary work falls into two periods. In the first he was a neo-romantic. Passionately in love with the Jewish past, he sang of the Jewish beth-hamr‘drash, the temple or synagogue, which he considered to be the source of the eternal life of the Jewish people. He mourned that all the former holiness and grandeur of the Jewish spirit were disintegrating under the impact of an alien culture. But already in this period, in his poem “The Martyr," he glorifies the people‘s heroism but passionately laments over the endless sacrifices, which had not saved the ancient Judaism but had deprived its bearers of light, beauty, earthly love, and the fullness of national life. In his poem “How Dry the Grass,” he cries out like a prophet, scourging the Jewish people for so submerging itself in religious ritual, on the one hand and the greed for gold on the other that its spirit had wilted and wasted away until it was no longer capable of rising against its fate even when “God's voice thundered out.” During his later period, Bialik abandoned neo-romanticism. The Kishinev pogrom of 1903 moved him to write the “Tale About a Pogrom,” a long poem of prophetic vision. It struck out not against the hoodlums and their inspirers, but against the flabbiness and passivity of the Jewish people, whose ancestors included the Maccabees and other great fighters and martyrs. The poet was appalled by the futility and senselessness of the new Jewish sacrifices, in which he saw neither religious martyrdom, nor any attempt to defend the national dignity of the people. After 1905, the poet turned away from purely Jewish themes and began to sing of light and love. Many of the poems of this period, particularly the “Winter Songs,"

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 378 which painted vivid pictures of the Russian winter, were remarkably rich in color and profound elegiac feeling. But Bialik's songs of light merely reflected the poet’s insatiable thirst for light, and his songs of love were merely an expression of his longing for an unknown feeling. The old Judaism held Bialik in an inescapable grip. The true singer of light, beauty, and love was Saul Tchernichowsky, the most Hellenic of Jews. He brought into Hebrew literature, which had known nothing but wailing and laments for many centuries, a powerful stream of Hellenic joy in life and an almost Dionysiac delight in the earthly and the sensual. There was not a trace of lugubriousness or sentimentality in his writing. “Fiery passion” was his element, the joy of living his deity. His every line breathes the cool fragrance of Ukrainian forests and the steppes of his native Crimea. Tchernichowsky was a pantheist. In his poem "Nocturne" he appeals to the terrestrial elements to grant him some of their own powers. He was enamored of Hellas. No one in Hebrew literature spoke of the land of Homer and Anacreon as ecstatically as he did in his poem “Dejanira." And no one knelt as he did “before the image of Apollo" or called as loudly and imperiously to his sick and weary people to worship the god of beauty. This Jewish Hellene depicted specifically Jewish sufferings in an entirely new light. In his historical poem, “Baruch of Mainz." he shows us the poisoned soul of the persecuted Jew with all its accumulated anger and thirst for vengeance. Tchernichowsky knew and felt the tragedy of his scattered people. But this tragedy did not darken the clear eyes of the Jewish priest of Apollo. He never for a moment lost his great faith in life. This is particularly evident in his “Idylls"—an epic of modern Hebrew poetry. Something

Literature in Hebrew in Russia 379 of Homer seems to permeate these majestic poems, which fuse into a single harmony, nature and man, human existence and mother earth, Jews and Christians. And this unity, this peaceful, neighborly life of the Jewish and the Christian masses is envisaged here without the slightest trace of didacticism. The third of the great poets, Zalman Schneur, was a poet of the big city, always restless and seeking. In his poem “A Vision of Boredom,” he painted the satiety of modern man: women, fame, the resuscitated cult of Apollo and Venus, he felt, could not save the big-city dweller from the boredom that eternally pursued him. Contemporary man's realization of the relative and passing nature of morality, knowledge, truth, and beauty robbed him of God, of the ideal and the absolute. Like Baudelaire, the poet sought salvation in sin. But sin, too, produced satiety, and he turned to nature. His lyrical poem, “In the Mountains," is a symphony of music and color. Another poem, “To the Sounds of a Mandolin," is a bitter attack on religion, which banished joy from life. Addresing himself to Rome, the destroyer of Judea, the poet says that Jenrsalem had cruelly avenged itself: it gave Rome God. And with this God, Jerusalem “Judaized” the entire Graeco-Roman culture and its heir, the culture of Europe. Modern Hebrew literature also produced a number of lesser poets. The finest of these, Yakov Kogan, was a lyric poet of rare tenderness and musicality. He was followed by D. Shirnenovich, Ya. Fichman, I. Katsenelson, Ya. Shteinberg, and others. Among the later prose writers we must mention I. Bershadsky (1870-1908), whose novels were influenced by contemporary Russian literature; I. Ch. Brenner (18811921), who vividly portrayed types of inwardly divided and

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troubled Jewish dreamers—both revolutionaries and Zionists—and who was obviously influenced by Dostoyevsky; S. Ben-Zion, a tender and warm painter of daily life who could write with subtle insight about children and describe in bright, rich colors the sumptuous nature of Bessarabia; G. Shofrnan, who knew how to create a character with a few quick strokes and who was a unique combination of certain features of Chekhov and Knut Hamsun; U. N. Gnesin (1880-1913), the most individualistic of Jewish writers; D. G. Nomberg. a typical representative of the modernist school, and many others.

This brief survey of Hebrew literature in Russia from mid-nineteenth century to 1917 should dispel the erroneous notion that the Hebrew language was at that time solely a vehicle for religious writing. A language used in daily and weekly newspapers and in monthly journals, a language into which dozens of works by leading European writers were translated can scarcely be designated as purely an instrument of religious thought. The Jews of the time took part in all the political and social movements of contemporary Europe. And all the trends existing in European thought and European art found their expression in the Hebrew literature of the period. Nevertheless, this literature also preserved a character all its own. It not only reflected the experience of the Jewish people, but it dealt with all the specifically Jewish problems resulting from the unique conditions in which this scattered and persecuted people had to live. At the center of these problems was that of the inter-relations between the specifically Jewish and the universally human. The Hebrew literature of the period under review sought for a synthesis of the Hellenic and the Judaic, the Aryan and the Semitic.

381 Literature in Hebrew in Russia And, essentially, this is a synthesis that is sought by all thinking mankind. [Editor’s Note.- The above article by the well-known Jewish historian and literary scholar Dr. I. L. Klausner first appeared in a symposium, Homeland, published in Petrograd in 1916 under the editorship of Boris Gurevich, a prolific Russo-Jewish writer and civic worker who died in New York in 1964. We ofler this article in English translation, in slightly abridged form and with some dates added]

Yeshiva/rs in Russia by A. Mencs THE COMMANDMENT, “THou SHALL nor MAKE UNTO THEE any graven image," has had a tremendous effect upon the spiritual development of the Jewish people. The Holy Scripture, the Book, is central in Jewish religious life, and the study of the Torah holds a place of special significance. In the study of the Torah, man meets his Creator. It is only of secondary importance that the Torah gives men an opportunity to obtain necessary instructions regarding their conduct. The study of the Torah is vastly important in itself. In the same degree as prayer, it is a dialogue be-

[Editor‘r Note: The yeshivahs in Russia referred to by A. Metres had an entirely difl‘erent character from the schools for Jewish children in this country and Canada which are also called yeshivahs. In order to avoid misconceptions, the reader should keep in mind that the yeshivahs in the United States are private day schools for Jewish and general education. They ofl'er a course of genus! studies which meets the requirements established by the government. All the American yeshivahs teach elementary school subjects and some teach high school subjects. Generally, these yeshivahs devote the first half of the school day to Jewish studies and the second half to general studies. The Jewish studies are almost exclusively in the Chumash and the Talmud]

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tween God and man. The Torah brings the word of God to man; in prayer. man addresses his own word to God,

his Heavenly Father. The boundary between the Torah and prayer is not clear-cut, for the study of the Torah is also a way of serving God, also a sacred ritual. It has often been said that the study of the Torah is the highest way of serving the Creator. In the study of the Torah there has always been a mystical clement. Poring over the Torah. Jews forgot their exile, poverty, and wordly cares: “Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage” (Ps. 119). Especially inspiring was the study of the Talmud. In the Bible, the Jew hearkens to the word of God. and his only answer can be, "naasse venishmah"—“We will hear and obey.” The study of the Talmud, however, is quite different in character. The student of the Talmud comes into contact with men, with interpreters of the word of God. True. they are extraordinary men, tannins and amorar'm, yet they are no more than men. In the Talmud we find numerous disputes concerning methods of interpreting the Torah, a variety of opinions and commentaries. And the student discovers that the Torah was not given in finished form, that later generations had been able to add and introduce new ideas into the Torah. And since diverse opinions had existed in the past in the yeshivahs of Israel and Babylon, why could not similar differences exist in the yeshivahs in Russia and Poland? The discussions found in the Talmud stirred the imagination of its young students. They did not content themselves with the dry interpretation of the texts. Talmudic literature is the product of the creative work of many generations, and it reflects the moods and views of people of various epochs and diflerent schools of thought. Further-

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more, the meaning of the texts is not always entirely clear; it was therefore necessary to compare texts and collate laws. This gave rise to the dialectical method, a method of interpreting unclear texts and drawing independent conclusions. Known as “pilpul,” this method has been subject to much criticism. Yet, unquestionably, it is thanks only to pilpul that it was possible to evolve the only procedures that could have assured the normal development of Talmudic Halakah. or Jewish traditional law. It is true that the employment of the pilpul method was sometimes carried too far. But then, every philosophical system in time becomes an object of dialectic interpretation by the pilpul method. This method proved to be a necessity to those who set themselves the goal of preserving the continuity of a great religious tradition. Those who engaged in the study of the Talmud needed serious preparation and great zeal, for the first requirement was a good command of the language and the specific terminology of Talmudic literature. Nevertheless, the study of the Torah was never a monopoly of a small privileged group. The Torah was considered the property of the entire people, and everybody felt, in greater or lesser degree, his close relationship to the Torah. The study of the Torah attained its highest development in Eastern Europe. In the cities and small towns of Lithuania, Russia. and Poland there were vast numbers of people studying the Torah, as well groups dedicated to such study. The well-known Yiddish writer, Mendele Moycher Sforim, gives us a picture of a group of Torah students in the 1850's in his native town of Kopyl:

as

The synagogue is filled with people poring over the Torah— oldcr and younger men, yeshivah students who left their wives and children in other towns to spend their days over the Talmud

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andeatinthehomesofstrangers. Andintheeveninp,between the Minolta and the Maarr'v pra ers, workingmen and other members of the congregation assem 1e here to listen to the wise words of those most deeply versed in the Talmud. At one table a grou is reading the Midrm'h, at another the Err-Jacob, at a third, Pursuit, at a fourth, the Hoives Haivoves and other learned and instructive books.

The Jewish women who knew no Hebrew did not remain Without spiritual nourishment either. A fairly rich literain the language of the people, Yiddish, was available in the Jewish centers of eastern Europe, dating back for centuries. The first edition of the so-called “women’s Torah,” the Tseno Ur'eno, appeared in the early part of the 17th century. By 1832, this book had gone through thirty-four editions. As time went on, there were more and more translations of books of moral admonition, collections of prayers, the Midrash, and so on. Along with translations came a large number of books written in Yiddish—collections of tales, stories, rkhinor (women's prayers), etc. There were also many bilingual publications—with texts in both Yiddish and Hebrew. evertheless, little attention was given to the education of girls. True, there existed cheders and special teachers for girls. Frequently, the wife of the mlamed who taught the boys would teach girls to read and write. But in most cases, daughters were taught to read at home by the mother, or by older brothers and sisters. Study was a traditional part of life in the Jewish milieu. However, in poor families there were sometimes women who were illiterate. The education of boys was quite another matter. It was a rare exception when a boy did not study or knew no prayers. In cases when parents were too poor to pay the melamed, the obligation was assumed by the community. The community also saw to it that orphans were given an ture

Russian Jewry (18604917) 386 opportunity to attend cheder, at least until the age of thirteen, when they attained Bar-Mirsvah. or religious majority. As a rule, even the poorest parents made every ctfort to pay for the education of their children. The system of education in the yeshivahs was of a different character. Only well-to-do families could keep their sons at home and give them an opportunity to continue the study of the Torah after they came of age. It must be remembered that families at that time were large, and parents had to pay for the education of several children at the same time. It was necessary, therefore, to find a way of making it possible for young men to continue their education without burdening the parents. In contrast to other peoples, the Jews developed a system which made it easier to send sons to yeshivahs than to cheder. Higher education was free. The yeshivahs were maintained by communal funds, while Cheder tuition had to be paid for by the parents. This free higher education became possible primarily thanks to the system based on the initiative and independent work of the student himself. Study of the Gemara (Talmud) was begun in the Cheder very early; boys were introduced to the world and the spirit of the Talmud at the age of eight or nine. They learned at a tender age to understand the language of the Talmud, the complex tenninology and methods of the Halakah. The central task of the teacher was to train the student to find his own way in Talmudic writings, to teach him to “swim freely and without outside help in the sea of the Talmud." A diligent student was already capable of independent study of the Gemara by the time he reached the age of 13 or 14. And if he encountered passages he could not understand, he tumed for assistance to a fellow student of his own age, or somewhat older. In the yeshivahs, the head of

Yeshr'vahs in Russia 387 the school, or Rosh-Yeshivah, gave lectures (shiur) only twice or three times a week, each lasting an hour or an hour and a half. The rest of the time, the students worked independently. There were also yeshivahs where attendance at lectures was optional. In small yeshivahs, the lectures were frequently given by the local rabbi, who received no compensation. In yeshivahs with large student bodies, the head of the yeshivah was paid by the community. Such large centers of Talmudic study as the yeshivahs in Volozhin, Mir, and Slobodka had their own independent funds. But providing free education was not enough. It was also necessary to give the students some means of subsistence. Hence, a system was evolved for aiding out-of-town students which came to be known as “es-n reg" (literally, “eating days," or getting daily sustenance). Under this system, local residents undertook the obligation to feed at least one yeshivah student one day in the week. More prosperous people fed several students. Thus, in order to eat every day, the yeshivah student had to take his meals in seven homes in the course of the week. On days when the student could obtain no board, the yeshivah supplied him with bread and hot food or a small sum of money.

LITHUANIAN YESHIVAHS Large yeshivahs were founded in the early part of the 19th century in Volozhin, Mir, and Eishyshki. Most famous of these was the Volozhin yeshivah. It may safely be said that the founding of this yeshivah opened a new chapter in the spiritual life of eastern European Jewry. Reb Chaim Volozhiner, the founder of this yeshivah, which was soon to gain world renown, was a pupil of the Gaon of Vilno. The principal aim of Reb Chaim Volo-

388 Russian Jewry (18604917) zhiner was to revive the significance of studying the Torah for its own sake, of study for the sake of study. A pupil of the Gaon, he began by abolishing the old custom of “eating days.” Instead, the students were given modest financial assistance from the yeshivah's treasury. Thanks to this reform, the special position of the yeshivah students was radically changed. Reb Chaim Volozhiner succeeded in collecting a substantial sum of money outside Volozhin. Later, the collection of funds for the needs of the yeshivah was the task of several special emissaries who traveled throughout the world for this purpose. Thus, the yeshivah was not only independent of the local community, but even became a source of income for Volozhin. Here, the students were no longer referred to as “yeshivah boys” or “young paupers," but as “men of the yeshivah." This alone was indication that the study of the Torah had acquired a new status in Volozhin. It was not accidental that the new seat of Torah learning originated, not in Vilno, but in a small town virtually unknown before the founding of the yeshivah. Other Lithuanian yeshivahs also originated in small towns. In these towns, the Jews felt more free, and the yeshivah students were more protected against the influence of the Haskalah (the secular Enlightenment movement) and the outside world generally. The Volozhin Yeshivah attained its highest flowering, both as regards prestige and the size of its student body, in the latter half of the last century, under the leadership of Reb Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1817-1892). The number of its students at that time was more than four hundred. They had come to Volozhin from many countries. Lectures were given daily (except on the Sabbath) from half past twelve till two in the afternoon. Three times a week

389 Yeshivah: in Russia these lectures were delivered by the first Rash-Yeshivah, Reb Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin himself, and the other three days by the second head of the yeshivah. In the 1880's, the second head was Reb Chaim Soloveychik, who later served as a rabbi in Brest-Litovsk and was also known as Reb Chaim Brisker. The lectures of Reb Chaim Soloveychik were particularly beloved among the students. His teaching was distinguished by logical analysis of the Halakah; his unique method of instruction was subsequently adopted in all Lithuanian yeshivahs. The greatest emphasis in the Volozhin Yeshivah was placed on developing in the students the ability to engage in independent study. Attendance at lectures was not obligatory, and the students were not given formal examinations. From time to time the Rash-Yeshivah conducted discussions with the students and reviewed their work with them. This gave him a sufficient picture of the students’ achievements. In the yeshivah there were no sections or classes, although its student body consisted of men of varying age and knowledge. Despite these difierences, the yeshivah was permeated with the spirit of a single, large, harmonious family. There was a great deal of study in groups and in pairs. At times, a young student would pay an older colleague for studying with him. From time to time the students gathered in groups to discuss the materials of study. The lectures of the head of the yeshivah were usually followed by discussion, which provided an opportunity for the use of the pilpul method, the formulation of new interpretations, and the elucidation of problems which seemed insufliciently clear. Thus, the work at the yeshivah was both individual and communal. Every student was left to his own initiative and pace, and his success depended on his ability and diligence.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 390 At the same time, all the students were imbued with the spirit of their school and the sense of complete spiritual community. This community manifested itself in practical matters as well, for the students aided one another financially. There was a society of “Supporters of the Torah." Its functions included assistance to needy yeshivah students and the granting of loans. The raising of funds for the maintenance of the school and its students was one of the tasks of the head of the yeshivah. Among the students there were young men of well-to-do families who needed no assistance, but they were usually in the minority. The majority needed help, and received from 50 kopcks to one ruble per week.‘ The student’s breakfast and supper consisted of tea and bread. Hot food was eaten only at lunch; meat dishes were rare, and were served, as a rule, only on the Sabbath. The student's entire budget did not exceed one and one half rubles per week, with 30 or 40 kopcks of this sum being spent on rent. Two or three yeshivah students shared one room, and nobody dreamed of such a luxury as a separate room. The Volozhin yeshivah existed for approximately I40 years. It was founded in 1802, soon after the partition of Poland, and was closed in 1939, at the outbreak of World War II. In the course of its long history, the yeshivah knew both periods of flourishing activity, and years of decline. Until 1892, the Volozhin yeshivah was regarded as the most authoritative center for the study of the Torah in the world. It attracted young men from everywhere, from all ends of Russia and from many Jewish communities of other countries. But even later, when the “Musar yeto

OTemsle was equivalent to approximately 50 cents, one kopek 'approximately 0.5 cents.

391 Yeshivah: in Russia shivahs" came to the fore, promoting the teachings of Reb Israel Salanter, the name of “Volozhin" continued to be spoken with reverence and affection. Large yeshivahs were also founded in the early years of the 19th century in the small towns of Mir and Eishyshki. The Mir yeshivah was organized along the same lines as Volozhin; however, it had less prestige and was poorer in material resources. The poorest among the students were obliged to take some meals at the homes of prosperous members of the Jewish community, at least on Saturdays. During the latter half of the 19th century, when the yeshivah was headed by Reb Chaim-Leib Tiktinsky, the Mir yeshivah had a student body of 300. The yeshivah attained its highest flowering during the period between the two world wars, when it held the foremost place among Poland’s yeshivas. The yeshivah in Eishyshki, a small town in poverty-ridden Lithuania, had its own history. It was not widely famed, for it did not send out emissaries into the world, but its heads could vie in scholarship with those of the largest, most renowned yeshivahs. The small Lithuanian town of Eishyshki maintained more than one hundred students by its own resources. Among these students were many who were preparing for the rabbinate. The Eishyshki yeshivah found its own way of upholding the prestige of the Torah and the dignity of its students. The traditions of the Vilno Gaon and his disciples were as closely observed here as they were in Volozhin. The students of the Torah in the Eishyshki yeshivah did not have to go to the homes of strangers for their meals: the house-

Tusaris the

Hebrew for ethies: the Musar movement was a religious-ethical movement which set personal morality at the cornerstone of its teaching.

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holders themselves brought food to the yeshivah. They took care of the other needs of the yeshivah as well, supplying it with books and with the necessary heat and light. This was done by special societies, which managed to raise considerable sums for the yeshivah among the far-from-prosperous local Jews. The Rash-Yeshivah was also supported by the community. The zeal of the residents of this poor Lithuanian town was so great that the community gained wide admiration as an example of devotion to the Torah.

MEDIUM AND SMALL YESHIVAHS The number of students able to attend the large yeshivahs was relatively small. Most of the yeshivah students attended small and medium yeshivahs. Although these smaller schools enjoyed little fame, their role in spreading the study of the Torah in eastern European countries was as great as that of the more illustrious centers of learning. The small and medium yeshivahs did not send emissaries into the world to collect contributions. They were obliged, therefore, to obtain the necessary funds locally, and this made it impossible for their students to escape the old system of “eating days.” The students at the small yeshivahs were primarily the sons of local residents. In some cases, the more prosperous parents paid for their sons' tuition. In the medium yeshivahs there were many students from other towns, and poverty was in greater evidence there. Mendele Moycher Sforim, who attended the Slutsk yeshivah as a young man in the late 1840's, provides the following description of his school in his memoirs (Shloyme Reb Chaim's): Among the Lithuanian towns which the Almighty has rewarded with a yeshivah, there is the small town of S—k. The

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only thing that distinguishes this town from others and that has brought it fame is the eshivah, which hu won wide renown far beyond the boundanes of the town itself. Its professors are simple men, not much more than poor melameds, despite their title of Rash-Yeshivah. The students are young men without a kopek in their pockets. Most of them have come here without belongings, save for a sack with one or two old, patched-up shirts and a pair of well-worn, darned socks. And thrs wretched little town, weighed down by its own poverty, takes upon inelf the care of the new arrivals, providing them with whatever it can muster. For the sake of the Torah, the poorest man is ready to share his last piece of bread, if he himself has it.

Small yeshivahs existed in a great number of towns in Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine. There were also yeshivahs maintained by synagogues, philanthropic societies, and even private individuals. In Vilno, for example, at the end of the last century, the butchers’ synagogue supported a yeshivah attended by eighty students. Another school of the same type found a home in the hatters’ synagogue in Minsk. This yeshivah was described in the folIOWing words in the memoirs of Isroel-Iser Katsovich (Sixty Years of Life): Our yeshivah was founded and is maintained by hat-makers, that is, by poor people. The Rash-Yeshivah owns a dry goods store. The business is conducted by his wife. He spends only a few hours at the store, devoting the rest of his time to the stu of the Torah and the teaching of others. All week he teac the yeshivah students; on Sabbaths he teaches the Torah to the hatters.

Despite the large number of yeshivahs, however, most of the Jewish young men in the countries of eastern Europe belonged to the category of so-called “kloyzniks,” a term applied to those who studied the Torah in the synagogue on their own. The entire system of advanwd religious study

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 394 in and out of yeshivahs was based on the principle of independent work. Even the large yeshivahs could not have met the financial requirements if they had not employed the method of independent study. The students, therefore, were not divided into groups or classes according to age and level of achievement. All the students heard the same lectures, and all studied the same chapters, although they were free to select the chapter of their choice, and each strove for the best results he could attain. As a result, even so large a yeshivah as that in Volozhin was able to function with only two instructors, the Rash-Yeshivah and his assistant. As a rule, youths began to study “on their own” at the age of thirteen or fourteen. The children of well-to-do parents often studied with melameds after that age as well. Exceptionally gifted boys of poor families began to study independently even before their Bar-Mitsvah, since their parents were unable to pay their tuition. A young man who was unable to gain admission to a yeshivah usually studied at the synagogue of his own or a neighboring town, which owned enough books for the use of the students and which provided an opportunity for discussion of the texts with other students or with learned members of the congregation. The custom of independent study was transmitted from generation to generation. Men like Israel Baal Shem Tov, the Gaon of Vilno, and Solomon Maimon had, in fact, never studied at a yeshivah. They had all begun to pore over the Torah on their own in their earliest youth. This was made possible by the educational system which trained the boy for independent work from early adolescence. Naturally, the system of study of the texts without a teacher‘s guidance had its own hazards: not every boy of

395 Yeshivah: in Russia thirteen or fourteen was capable of finding his way in the Talmud using only his own resources. Many failed, and not every self-taught man succeeded in becoming a scholar. But in view of the economic condition of eastern European Jews in those years, the system of independent study was the only feasible way to the acquisition of learning. A young man usually sought out a synagogue where he could find other students, both of his own age and older. In many cities and small towns, one large synagogue or house of prayer usually became a center of Torah study. Older scholars and so-called “eidems oil kesr'“ would meet there to discuss debatable points, and the younger men listened to them and frequently joined the discussion, asking questions or voicing their own ideas. Quite often, they studied in groups of two and three; this stimulated their minds and gave them an opportunity for an exchange of opinions. The students in the synagogues and houses of prayer were not always local residents. This was especially true in Lithuania. It was traditionally held that it was best to study away from home. The students included a good number of married men. There were certain synagogues and prayer houses—like that of the Gaon of Vilno—which had been famous for many years as centers of study. The students here were regarded as scholars of a superior category, and had to take their meals in private homes only on the Sabbath. The synagogue itself usually provided the students with modest support. _‘A; “cit—tem oil [res-r," or "son-inolaw on maintenance,” was a young man who, after his marriage, went to live at the home of the bride's father; the latter supported him and thus made it possible forhimtodevoteallhistimetostudy.

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The principal advantage of independent study in a synagogue was the freedom enjoyed by the student, who had access to any book he wished to examine—the Cabbala, philosophical tracts, and so on. He established his own order of study, and if he was diligent and able, he learned more than the yeshivah students. However, many of the latter also devoted given periods to independent study in prayer houses. In some instances, a young man would select some little-used synagogue in order to be entirely on his own, to “study for himself" and “think for himself." This independence and solitude left a strong imprint on the life and thought of yeshivah students and kloyzniks. In Jewish literary works, both in Yiddish and Hebrew, we often find echoes of such years of melancholy and solitude. The poet Chaim Nachman Bialik wrote about this in the following passage: When Ireached the age of thirteen, Iwas withdrawn from the supervision of teachers and, left to my own resources, devoted myself to independent study in the synagogue. I was a solitary student, for I was the in our district to pore over the books in the synagogue. e synagogue was deserted, save for the "dayan" who s nt the mornings there, studying the Talmud and praying of study in the synagogue hours y solitary had an immeasurable effect upon my character and inner world. Alone with ideas, old and new, with my doubts and intimate reflections, Ispent entire days in the vicmity of the synagogue bookcases. At times I interrupted my studies and sank into a world of dreams and images. At those moments I took reckoning of the universe and sought to fathom the meaning of my own existence, and the existence of mankind.

onlylylouth

...

In such creative solitude, many other young students of the Torah strove to find the measure of their lives and the surrounding world. This profound introspection and medi-

397 Yeshivah: in Russia tation frequently diverted them from their chosen path. It is no wonder that it was precisely among the kloyznlks that the Haskalah found so many fervent followers. The crisis of ideas in the 1870‘s and 1880's, which made itself felt even in such an established center of study as Volozhin, was especially great among the students in the synagogues. It became necessary to bring a new spirit into the study of the Torah to give the young men strength and will to resist the impact of the ideas of secular enlightenment. This historical task was undertaken by Reb Israel Salanter (18101883), the founder of the Musar movement.

THE MUSAR MOVEMENT AND MUSAR YESI-IIVAHS To the Russian Jews, as to the rest of European Jewry, the nineteenth century was a period of spiritual unrest and soul-searching. The new bourgeois secular culture held great attraction for the Jewish intelligentsia. The young people who studied the Torah had always entertained a profound respect for reason; this was precisely why the pilpul method played such an important role in the yeshivahs. And this was why modern culture, permeated as it was with rationalism, attracted and enchanted these young men. Among the representatives of religious orthodoxy there were many people who were not, in principle, opposed to secular education. But many of them were troubled by the question of whether it was possible, within the relatively short period allotted to study in cheders and yeshivahs, to provide the students with a general education along with the traditional Jewish one. There was also another problem, still more serious. Experience had shown that a general

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 398 education frequently led to alienation from Jewish traditions. It was not easy to achieve a harmonious combination of Jewish tradition and contemporary secular culture. Nor did Israel Salanter succwd in finding this harmonious combination, despite his search for it. Indeed, no way was discovered in eastern Europe throughout the 19th century of bringing Jewish religious traditionalism and the widening stream of secularized culture into closer relation with one another. The influence of the Haskalah upon the youth studying in yeshivahs could be attributed in large measure to the fact that the Haskalah introduced a new approach to the world and to contemporary problems. It was permeated with a spirit of naive optimism. It regarded man as innately good. All that he lacked was education and enlightenment. In its faith in man, the Haskalah almost ignored the diabolic elements in man, the beast in him. This was why the Maskilim placed such a high value on science and expected so much from education. Reb Israel Salanter, on the other hand, felt that man was naturally both good and evil; hence education alone was not sufficient as a means of awakening his moral sensibilities. He therefore stressed the importance of man's activity, for “the distance between knowledge and ignorance is less than the distance between knowledge and deeds." The same idea is expressed in the aphorism often quoted among the Musarists and attributed to Israel Salanter: “It would be good if the greatest man acted in accordance with what is known to the least man." A characteristic feature of the Musar movement was its profound faith in man. True, Salanter and his pupils did not share the naive conception of man as natively good. The Musarists were pessimists and felt it necessary to stress the difliculty of the struggle that man was compelled to

399 Yeshivahs in Russia wage with himself. But they wholeheartedly believed that for the and the his strength attaining means man possesses cherished goal in this struggle. Reb Israel Salanter warned to utmost fatalist against insistence with a approach human sinfulness. It is said that Reb Israel Salanter had noticed that one of his pupils used a great deal of water during the prescribed ritual of handwashing before meals. He called the young man and asked him to use water more sparingly in the future: the water carrier was not obliged, he said, to carry additional pails of water to the synagogue in order that the students might exercise undue zeal in fulfilling the ritual of handwashing; observance of the ritual was quite enough. There was little merit in piety at the expense of a poor water carrier. Israel Salanter did not write much. He usually expounded his Musar teachings orally. The founder of the Musar movement felt that the manner of teaching was more important than what was taught. Hence the teacher's personality gained prime importance in the Musar movement. Israel Salanter made every efiort to find adherents for his teaching among students who gave promise of future leadership. In this, he was quite successful. In the late 1870's, the famous Kola! Ha-Prushr‘m was founded at the initiative of Reb Israel Salanter and Reb Yitzhok-Elchonon Spector, the Kovno rabbi. This academy set itself the task of making it possible for young married men to study for the rabbinate. In 1880, Isaac Blazer, the former rabbi of Petersburg and an eminent disciple of Isreal Salanter, was appointed mashgiach (inspector) of this new center of study. A year later, in 1881, another pupil of Israel Salanter, Reb Eliezer Gordon. became the rabbi of Telshi, in Lithuania. Under his leadership, the formerly

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modest Telshi yeshivah soon became famous as a center of Torah studies. At about the same time, the Musar yeshivah, Knesset Israel, which subsequently gained wide fame, was founded in Slobodka, a suburb of Kovno. Since many of Israel Salanter’s friends and pupils who lived in Lithuania took an active part in the work of the recently established yeshivahs, a wide field of activity opened up to the Musarists. The Musar movement entered a period of lively growth in the yeshivahs. The Musar teaching inspired the Jewish youth with the philosophy of Judaism. It furthered the growth of selfrespect and respect for the Torah. This upsurge of pride among the Musarists and their belief that they had made the light of the Torah shine anew, were enormously important factors in the revival of the yeshivahs. The yeshivahs needed Musar even more than Musar needed the yeshivahs. The pride and even arrogance of the Musarists, and their aggressiveness in advocating their teaching, aroused protests among rabbis and scholars. The opponents of the militant wing of the Musarist movement included so authoritative a figure as Reb Yitzhok Elchonon Spector. After bitter debates, Reb Isaac Blazer was obliged to resign from his post at the Kola! Ha-Prushim. But by this time the militant Musarists had succeeded in winning positions in yeshivahs. A leading place in the Musar movement was taken by Slobodka. The founder of the Knesset Israel yeshivah in Slobodka was Reb Note-Hirsh Finkel, an original thinker, a brilliant organizer and a man of subtle psychological insight. Note-Hirsh Finkel possessed all qualities essential for becoming a teacher and guide of young men with high intellectual demands and ambitions. He was not a Rash-Yeshivah but only a mashgiach. Nevertheless, for more than forty years he was the guiding spirit of the

401 Yeshivah: in Russia yeshivah, and his influence spread far beyond the bounds of Slobodka. He had barely reached middle age when the students began to refer to him as “the old man," and he gained wide fame in the world of the yeshivah students as “the old man of Slobodka." Reb Note-Hirsh was a pupil of Reb Simkha-Zisel Broyde of Chelm. Chelm occupied a special place in the Musar movement. Simkha-Zisel was one of the oldest disciples of Israel Salanter. He was the first to make a systematic attempt to introduce the Musar teaching into Jewish education. Already in the 1860‘s Simkha-Zisel founded a TalmudTorah in Chelm. It should be stressed that the curriculum of this school included secular studies as well. Particular attention was given to discipline and the general conduct of the students. They were required to practice the greatest promptness and exactitude in their daily lives—in everything relating to tidiness, order, and punctuality at meal times. Similar discipline was, naturally, observed during the hours devoted to prayer and study. Simkha-Zisel's basic tenet was that a man must devote his entire life to study and to the effort at self-improvement. Whatever a man has learned in his youth, no matter how thorough his education, there are always gaps. There is always a great deal he had not understood, especially in the area of relations between the individual and society, the individual and other people. As a result of this, we often carry throughout our lifetimes the immature conceptions of reality that we had acquired in our younger days. Hence the adult must begin his study afresh, as though he had never learned anything and was encountering the outside world for the first time. It is essential therefore to delve into problems without relying on what has been assirniliated in one’s youth. Musar

402

Russian Jewry (18604917)

means coming to know oneself, and that, Simkha-Zisel reminds us, is a very diflicult task. Man is given his body and his “I" for his whole lifetime; he eats and sleeps with them, and does not make a single step without them, yet in the end he knows absolutely nothing about himself. An exception to this may be found only in a great sage, who has worked long and intensively to understand and discipline

himself. In the 1880's, the Chelm Talmud-Torah was considered the most advanced school of Musar. Some of the pupils of Simkha-Zisel of Chelm subsequently became heads of the most famous Lithuanian yeshivahs. The Musar movement was thus strongly influenced by the methods employed in Chelm. It must, however, be admitted that Simkha-Zisel’s pedagogical method was not always in harmony with the spirit prevailing in the yeshivahs. Their students were accustomed to great freedom and independence. Naturally, they needed help, but they were not willing to transform the yeshivah into a Cheder, even according to the ideal model of the Chelm Talmud-Torah. Far more acceptable to the yeshivahs was the method practiced in Slobodka. Reb Note-Hirsh Finkel showed that it was possible to direct a yeshivah without occupying the official post of Rash-Yeshivah. In time, the example of Knesset-Israel was followed by other large yeshivahs. They included Musar in their curriculum, and the teachers of Musar gained wide influence in the world of the yeshivahs. In Slobodka, the thirty minutes before maariv (evening prayer) was devoted daily to Musar. This period was given over to a summing up of the entire day. Every student selected his own text and did his own stock-taking. 0n Sabbath evening the studies were particularly serious. and the entire week's work was sununed up and evaluated. The

403

Yeshivah: in Russia

moments of spiritual stock-taking deepened still further the melancholy of these evenings, that twilight mood which descends upon the Jew during the hours when the Sabbath holiness is about to depart, taking with it the spirit of holiday peace and beatitude.

Every day between mincha and maariv, and particularly on Sabbath evenings, the yeshivah is plun d into a mood of profound melancholy. The holiness of the abbath is departing, and every man is filled with the desire to prolong the serenity and peace for at least a little while. But darkness deepens with every passing minute; shadows grow longer and more dense. The ordinary workdays are drawing nearer. It is still forbidden to light a lamp or open a book, and everyone immerses himself in Musar meditations. Some confess their sins in loud laments, others clap their hands on the altar to drive away sinful thoughts, still others are borne far away on their thoughts, as on wings ... And after the evening prayer, everyone reads with tears in his eyes and sobs in his throat a cha ter from Psalms, from Mas/til Le David. One man intones e words in such soul-tending rhythms that it seems he could move stones. All the rest respond in unison, with pain and lamentation. Eve one bewails his fate . . And suddenly the figure of the “o d man” looms before them. He performs the Havdalah with extraordinary gentleness, and a calm descends on everyone present. He hurriedly goes from w to pew, greeting every man with, “A good week to you!” I. Hertz, The MuswistsJ

.

The teacher played an important role in Musar. Talks devoted to Musar held a special place in the life of the yeshivahs. The purpose of these talks was to teach the youths to delve more deeply into problems which might appear simple at first glance. Hence, the mashgiach repeatedly returned to a chosen theme, in order to bring to greater clarity the various aspects of the problem of Musar and to prove that it merited application and effort. During the talks and the discussions, the teacher was also able to clarify his own approach to Musar.

404

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) The central theme in the teaching of the “old man of Slobodka" was the greatness of man. Man is not merely a single book, he frequently repeated; man contains the whole of the Torah. This is the meaning of the Talmudic precept that respect for man and humaneness are worth more than the study of the Torah. The entire Torah is contained in the perfection of man, which is higher than the Torah. This perfection was not given to us in testaments and laws; it lies at the basis of man's very being. And if we learn to understand man. we shall gain a deeper understanding of the Torah, which was given to us on Mount Sinai. Therefore, we must first attain a height that will make us worthy of the name of man. And then we shall become worthy of studying the Torah. Man is the crown of creation. This is why it is so important to guard the honor and dignity of man. We must keep a strict watch over ourselves. so that our acts may not cast a shadow on the name of man. Selft respect and awareness of the greatest responsibility for every step constitute a particularly important point in the Musar teaching as expounded in Slobodka. The precepts of the Torah, asserted the “old man," must serve to safeguard human dignity. It is an mm to think that the benedictions we pronounce as we enjoy the gifts of life are an obligatory tribute to the Creator, a payment, as it were, for pleasures enjoyed. The true significance of the benedictions is quite different: these prayers were given by God to man in order that he learn to perceive the beauty and splendor of God’s world. Men are usually moved only by something new. As soon as he becomes accustomed to a thing. man loses his sense of joy and his delight in using it. Yet, in truth, man should respond to the world every day as though he were newly

405 Yeshivahs in Russia created. Every day he should marvel at the grandeur and beauty of God's creation. This is the purpose of the benedictions: man should daily approach the world as though he were newborn, as though tasting for the first time the joy of coming into contact with all that was created by God— blessed be His name! The “old man's” teaching about joy and the fear of God was characteristic of the spirit that reigned in Slobodka. It is customary to think, he remarked one day as he talked with his pupils, that joy and the fear of God are mutually exclusive. People think that he who lives in the fear of God is incapable of enjoyment, and that he who enjoys life does not know fear. This idea is false. The Torah teaches us that fear and joy are not contradictory. Quite the reverse is true: the fear of God contains within itself the joy of acceptance of the Torah and of God's commandments. The man who does not rejoice over God's gift of the Torah can attain nothing in the realm of the fear of God. This is proved by the law concerning tithes: our forebears were commanded to bring their tithe to Jerusalem and there to use it for their food, in order to become truly God-fearing men. It might be thought that the Jews came to Jerusalem troubled, oppressed in spirit, frightened, because they feared God. But we see that it was not so. The Holy Writ says that the people arriving in Jemsalem on holidays should rejoice; indeed, it speaks of Jenrsalem as “the joy of the world.” In the Midrash we read that no one should be sad in Jerusalem. Commercial activities were confined to a special place outside the city boundaries, for fear that conduct of financial operations—which sometimes cause unhappineu —in the city proper might reflect adversely on the holy city, which was meant to be “the joy of the world." The “old man‘s" teaching was far from asceticism. The

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 406 Slobodka school of Musar did not repudiate the world. Virtues, it held, were not given for the enslavement of man, but for his ennoblement and illumination. The world was created for man's sake. The Torah was given to man. “And if man lacks anything, then the Torah lacks it too." The Novogrudsk school, on the other hand, was dominated by a spirit of asceticism and aggressiveness. The world, it taught, could be changed; all that was needed was suficient will. The yeshivah students often repeated the following tenet: “It is usually said that, if you cannot go up. then you have to go down. But Reb Yoisef-Yuzl‘ says that, if you cannot go up. then you must go up." The same spirit permeates other sayings by Reb Yuzl, such as: “I never ask whether a thing can be done; I ask whether it needs to be done.” Or: “Where there is no way, I'll make it.” In the Musar philosophy, man, his personality, holds the central place. The Novogrudsk trend remains true to this principle. “Man,“ Reb Yuzl said to his pupils. “is the only creature in the world capable of sin. Therein lies his greatw." Hence, man's whole life is a constant struggle. His task is to rise higher and higher. And if a man does everything necessary and possible, he has no reason to worry. He should not worry about possible failure. The most important thing in life is to fulfill one‘s duty. Hope, therefore, plays an enormously important role in the Novogrudsk teaching. Man must never lose faith in himself, asserts Reb Yuzl, citing the Rambam (Maimonides): “Every man has the opportunity of becoming righteous like Moses, or an evildoer like Jeroboam." It is essential, above all else, “that everyone should be a

_ ‘ Reb Yoisef-Yul

Hurwitz, founder of the Novogrudsk yahivah.

Yeshivah: in Russia

407

man; he should not glance constantly around him to see whether others are marching along with him, but cling to his own truth, and then the people will ultimately follow

him.” These words of Reb Yoisef-Yuzl found a lively echo in the hearts of his pupils. The Novogrudsk center was distinguished by its special dynamism. Its expansion had begun even before World War I. Yeshivahs along the Novogrudsk model sprang up in many Russian cities. During the war years, when the Novogrudsk Yeshivah was evacuated to Gomel, Reb Yoisef-Yul] founded yeshivahs in Kiev, Kharkov, and other cities. During the years between the two world wars, more than seventy yeshivahs bearing the name of Beth-Yoisef were established in Latvia and Poland. They were attended by nearly four thousand students. In the history of the yeshivahs for the last several centuries we find no other example of such dynamic growth. The period between two world wars was also one of flourishing success for other Musar yeshivahs as well. These included the yeshivahs in Slobodka, Telz, Mir, Kamentz, Kletzk, and many others. The Musar movement, which placed such great emphasis on the ideas of human dignity and man’s tremendous moral responsibility, helped to strengthen in the hearts of the yeshivah students a deep faith in themselves and their vocation. The philosophy which called for attaining knowledge of the meaning of the Torah by seeking knowledge above all of man himself, developed in the yeshivah students the moral strength needed for coping with the grave crises of our time.

jews in Russian Schools by Ilya Trotsky AS A RESULT OF THE PARTITIONS or POLAND, THE Rum/IN

Empire acquired also the millions of Jews who inhabited the formerly Polish territories—a population group with its own unique way of life. The Russian bureaucracy which had to govern these new subjects of the Tsars proceeded from the assumption that this peculiarly Jewish way of life should be entirely refashioned, and decided to begin this process by bringing the Jews into the general educational system. During the early, liberal years of the reign of Alexander I, a “Statute Concerning the Jews” was issued in 1804. One of the paragraphs of this statute declared that Jewish children had the right, along with children of other faiths, to education ' in n primary and secondary schools and universities. owever, the broad Jewish masses of that time did not want The cheders and their melameds continued or a long time to dominate the field of primary education of Jewish youth despite all persecution by Russian authorities. In the Russian schools, Jewish children

Wehools.

408

Jews in Russian Schools 409 were found in extremely small numbers. In 1840, for in-

stance, the total number of Jewish pupils in all the primary

and secondary schools of Russia was only 48. Under Nicholas I (1825-1855), Minister of Education Count Uvarov ordered the establishment of special schools for Jews. What this extreme reactionary and Russian nationalist had in mind, however, was not so much the dissemination of education among Jews, as their Russification. The Jewish masses, true to their religious tradition, regarded such Russification by means of secular Russian education as a step toward conversion to Christianity. The results of Uvarov's school plan proved negligible. In 1858, according to the report of the Minister of Public Education, the student body of all the official Jewish schools totaled only 2,476. The Jewish masses continued sending their sons to cheders. Moreover, the number of unregistered (clandestine) cheders was considerably higher than that of officially permitted ones, and it is therefore impossible to estimate the number of children attending them. The liberal early years of the reign of Alexander 11 (1855-1881) affected the fate of Jewish education as well. In 1864 new regulations were issued for high schools and preparatory schools, opening these schools to all children regardless of religion. The new spirit also touched the OE“\l’cialJewish schools. In 1867 their Christian inspectors were “replaced by Jews, and in 1873 the entire system of oficial schools was reorganized. The so-called “literacy schools" were renamed Jewish public schools, and the “First-degree schools" now became Jewish elementary schools. Each school was to be headed by a director who was a graduate of a teachers college. Rabbinical schools were closed and replaced by two teachers colleges. Among the teaching

410

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

personnel of the new schools and colleges we find a number of prominent Jewish writers. This was also a period marked by a change in the attitude of Jewry and its intelligentsia toward the Russian schools. The Jewish intelligentsia warmly welcomed the new school policies of the government, cooperating with them in every possible way. The progressive strata of Russian Jewry were swept by the emancipation ideas which dominated the minds of the best elements of the Russian intelligentsia. “Among Jewish youth," writes S. M. Dubnow about this period, “the aspirations toward a renewal of life were linked with the ideal of assimilation and Russification. The strongest factor for a cultural revival was the general school. A stream of young people poured from all of the Pale to gymnasiums, universities, and higher technical schools, inspired with rosy hopes of a free human life amidst a free Russian People." The gravitation of Jewish youth toward Russian schools was further stimulated by loans and scholarships granted to students by the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews. Nevertheless, the school reform affected only the relatively thin upper stratum of the nascent Jewish bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. The broad masses remained true to the

corners

_.

Whivahs.

In contrast to the situation in high schools and univerpercentage of Jewish pupils in elementary Russian schools was very low, showing virtually no signs of increase. While the children of well-to-do Jewish families strove toward secondary and higher education, which promised various advantages, such as the right of residence outside the Pale, reduction of the term of miltary service. and other privileges, their contemporaries from the

sities. the

Jews in Russian SchooLs 411 poor strata were not drawn to the elementary schools, which promised no such privileges. The Russification which penetrated into the life of the upper Jewish strata did not reach the broad Jewish masses. tremendous " ./ Nevertheless, the 1870's were a period wthrn the number of Jewish students'rn general educati al institutions and saw the emergence of a large stratum of ucated Jews. e assassination of Alexander 11 in 1881 and the ac' n to the throne of his son, Alexander HI, was followed by a long period of reaction. Beginning with 1883, the opening of official Jewish schools was halted almost everywhere except the Odessa district. The introduction in 1887, of a quota system limiting the admission of Jewish youth to secondary and higher education dealt a severe blow not only to Jewish education, but to the very idea of the integration of Jewry into the Russian family of peoples.‘ e quota system provided for the admission of 10 per " ‘ cent of Jewish students in the Pale of Settlement. 5 per cent outside the Pale. and 3 per cent in Petersburg and Moscow. It transformed the entrance examinations to high schools, and the competitive examinations for admission to some of the higher educational institutions, into painful ordeals for ,Jowish young people who dreamed of an education. Only those few who won perfect grades could hope for admission. This led to a sharp decline in the number of Jewish students. During the period of 1887-91, the number of Jews in the secondary schools of the Warsaw school district declined by 42 per cent; of the Vilno district by 51 per cent; the Kiev district by 18 per cent; and the Odessa district by 48 per cent. Between 1892 and 1896 the number of Jew-

/

of

'

For more about the quota system see the article by A. Goldenweiser in the present volume.

Russian JeWry (18604917) 412 ish students in the above districts declined by a further 14 per cent, 21 percent, 7 per cent, and 30 per cent respectively. The situation in higher educational institutions was equally bad. During the period of 1887-99 the number of Jewish university students dropped from 14.8 per cent to 10.9 per cent. The number of Jewish students in the universities of Petersburg and Moscow showed an even sharper decline, dropping from 12.7 per cent to 4.4 per cent. The restrictions on the admission of Jews to secondary and higher educational institutions brought great distress to the Jewish community and led to corruption among the local school administrations. Success in gaining admission to a gymnasium or reaLs-chule now depended not only on the applicant's intensive preparation for the entrance examinations, but often on overt or covert bribes to the school authorities. Many well-to-do Jewish families were obliged to maintain Christian boys at school in order to increase the quota opportunities for Jewish children. The beginnings of constitutional rule under Nicholas II in 1906 brought no significant changes in the school situation. In 1909. however, the quota for Jewish students was raised to 15 per cent within the Pale of Settlement, 10 per cent outside the Pale, and 5 per cent in the capitals. According to the data of the Jewish Colonization Society, the number of Jewish students attending the general, national. and municipal primary schools within the Pale of Settlement during the period of 1878-1899, was 69,358, or 25.7 per cent of all Jewish children of school age. The number of Jews attending secondary schools in 1886 comprised 9,225 boys, or l0 per cent of the total student body, and 5,213 girls, or 8.1 per cent of the total number. In 1911 the number of Jewish boys in the same schools rose

Jews in Russian SchooLs

413

to 17,597, or 9.1 per cent, and the number of girls to 34,981, or 13.5 per cent. The trend with regard to Jewish students in higher Russian educational institutions was altogether different. In 1886 there were 1,856 Jewish students, or 14.5 per cent; in 1902, 1,250 Jewish students, or 7 per cent; in 1907, 4,266, or 12.1 per cent; and in 1911, 3,602, or 9.4 per

cent.

,

During these years, Jewish youth in large numbers turned to private institutions of higher learning which were not subject to the quota system. Thus, the Kiev Commercial Institute was attended by 1,875 Jewish students in 1912. Thousands of young Jews were also studying at the Petersburg Psychoneurologic Institute. The extremely limited opportunities for admission to ussian educational institutions also resulted in a mass exodus of Jewish young people to Germany, France, and Delgium. After completing their education abroad, the young people returned home and took their final examinations in Russian gymnasiums and universities as “non-attending students", (so-called “extems”). A few words are in order here concerning women’s edution among the Russian Jews. Since the 1860’s, more and more Jewish girls were sent to general schools. The opposition of the broad Jewish masses to Russian schools, dictated by the fear of Russification and alienation from religious traditions, was much less stringent in regard to women. Moreover, Jewish mothers were increasingly concerned with giving their daughters both Jewish and Russian schooling. Already in the early sixties Odessa prided itself on the free model secondary school for girls, attended by 350 pupils. In 1862, 53 Jewish girls attended three women’s schools in the Vitebsk Province. Two boarding schools

Russian Jewry (18604917) 414 in Berdichev had 102 pupils; 198 Jewish girls were enrolled in 1863 in eight secondary schools in the Kiev Province; and 590 Jewish girls attended eleven schools in the Vilno school district during the same year. In following years the expansion of private schools raised the number of Jewish girls attending elementary, secondary, and higher schools, as well as business and trade schools, to tens of thousands. Faced with limitations on admission to secondary and higher education, the Jewish population found a solution in the establishment of private schools of various types, including primary, secondary, occupational, and Sabbath schools. There sprang up many educational institutions with gymnasium and realschule curricula. The first Jewish gymnasiums were founded in Odessa, Petersburg, Vilno, Gomel, and Belostock. Private Jewish gymnasiums for women were maintained in many cities in the Pale of Settlement. Their teaching personnel, methods, and programs were all equal to contemporary educational standards. Very popular also were the commercial schools under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, which did not place limitations on the admission of Jews. After the introduction of the quota system, new commercial schools were established, including the Feig Commercial School in Odessa (with Jewish students constituting 40 per cent of the total student body), as well as the Natanson School and the model Commercial School, (founded by local merchants) in Kiev. In some of the commercial schools Jewish students accounted for up to 50 per cent of the total student body. Schools of dentistry, nursing, and obstetrics were subject to trictions and were operated under the special supervi on of the Ministry of the Interior. The War Ministry so restricted the admission of Jews to schools for male

Jews in Russian SchooLr

415 nurses ("leidshers"). A number of privileged educational institutions—such as law schools, the Lyoee in Tsarskoye Selo and the Moscow Lycee, the Page Corps and others, as well as the Military-Medical Academy—were entirely closed to Jews. A year before the outbreak of World War I, the Fourth State Duma adopted a law introducing general compulsory education. Rural and municipal administrations and Jewish cultural institutions took a number of steps to assure the inclusion of the Jewish population in the compulsory educational network, as well as the incorporation of existing Jewish schools in this network. The plan was to be completed by 1922, but the war disrupted all the projected developments in the field of education. In June, 1914, a law was issued regarding private educational institutions which did not enjoy the rights and privileges of government schools. It granted the peoples of Russia the right to choose the language of instruction in such schools, opening broad possibilities for the development of Jewish education in Yiddish and Hebrew. World War I halted the realization of these laws, and the subsequent revolution opened an entirely new chapter in the history of Russian Jewry, in the field of education as in all other fields.

jewisb Institutions of Social

Welfare, Education, and Mutual Assistance

by Ilya Trotsky I

THE SOCIETY FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF EDUCATION (OPE) IN THE 1860's, 51'. Parnassunc BECAME SOMETHING or A center of Jewish commercial, industrial, and intellectual circles. The leading representatives of these circles conceived the idea of creating a central educational organization in St. Petersburg, with the aim of introducing wide strata of the Jewish population to Russian culture. A group of influential businessmen, who had important contacts with the St. Petersburg bureaucracy, undertook to put this idea into practice and drew up a plan for a “Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews.“ The leader of this group was Evzel Ginzburg, who later became a baron.

416

Jewish Institutions of Education, Social Welfare 417 According to the Society's by-laws, adopted in 1863, its to tasks were “further the knowledge of Russian among Jews; to publish and to help others to publish useful works, translations and periodicals both in Russian and in the Jewish languages, with the aim of disseminating education among Jews; and to encourage and subsidize young people who devoted themselves to study and education." One of the first publications of the OPE was a Russian translation of the Pentateuch, edited by I. G. Herzenstein and L. 0. Gordon. The OPE leaders felt that this was a step of great importance. However, the guardians of orthodoxy raised a sharp protest, regarding the translation of the Bible as a sacrilege against the holiness of the Jewish Torah. During the early period of its acti\ity, the OPE not only published books in Russian, but also encouraged writers to publish popular scientific books in Hebrew. Particular stress was made on the natural sciences. The society also isued scholarship grants to a large number of Jewish students throughout Russia. In late 1867, an OPE branch was opened in Odessa; it gradually became one of the centers of local Jewish life. In 1874, the OPE began to give regular support to Jewish schools, establishing a special fund for this purpose consisting chiefly of contributions from the family of Baron Ginzburg. One of the conditions for eligibility for a subsidy was the teaching of Russian. After the death of Baron Evzel Ginzburg in 1878, his son Horace Ginzburg succeeded to the chairmanship of the OPE. At his initiative, the organization set up a fund for aiding Jewish students. The OPE began to attract new cultural forces, which raised its prestige and social influence. At the initiative of the well-known scholar A. Y_a. Harkavi, the Society prepared for publication five volumes of Graetz's History of the

418 Russian Jewry (1860-1917) Jews in translation from the German, as well as materials on the history of Jews in Russia. The social differentiation of Russian Jewry was in its initial stage at that time. The Jewish province was still under the sway of orthodox religious moods, but the Jewish social circles in the capital were convinced that participation in Russian culture and mastery of the Russian language offered the only path to progress. The OPE leaders were willing to make substantial concessions in regard to Hebrew, but they unequivocally rejected the “jargon," as Yiddish was called in those days. Russification was still the alpha and omega of the cultural work of that period. The political reaction which set in during the 1880's precluded all opportunity for even the most modest efforts toward self-betterment among Jews for a number of years. In 1893-94, however, the OPE was able to expand its work to some extent. A special camission of the society began to collect and systematize data on the status of Jewish public education in Russia. Soon afterwards, the OPE began to establish its own schools, in which Jewish subjects were taught in Hebrew along with the teaching of other subjects in Russian. In the early part of 1898, an OPE branch was opened in Riga, and somewhat later in Kiev. Beginning with 1890, the OPE extended its sphere of activities to include the training of Jewish teachers, and set up a system of traveling representatives who functioned as school instructors. At the end of 1902, the OPE convened the first nationwide conference of leaders in the field of Jewish popular education. In 1901-04, it gave a number of summer courses for teachers in the Jewish schools. In the early years of the new century, interest in OPE

419 Jewish Institutions of Education, Social Welfare activities and the prestige of the organization grew rapidly among the Jewish intelligentsia. The idea of including Yiddish in the school curriculum came increasingly to the fore. This question was formally raised for the first time at the general meeting of OPE members in 1903, at which an influential group of St. Petersburg intellectuals advocated the inclusion of Yiddish. The spokesmen for this group insisted that the work of drawing the Jewish masses into participation in general and in Russian culture could best be done in their own language, i.e., in Yiddish, which was used by the Jewish masses in their daily lives. These arguments were opposed by Zionists and orthodox Jews, who championed the language of the Bible. The meeting of 1903 did not adopt any specific resolution on this question, but in the following years the Yiddishist trend began to gain ground among the leaders of the OPE. In 1906-07, the OPE was able to alter its by-laws and expand its activities. The number of its branches was steadily increasing. In many cities. the OPE branches gradually gained places of importance among the centers of local Jewish public life. In 1911 its membership reached 5.800. By this time, the society included among its members broad democratic elements of the intelligentsia— teachers, white collar employees, artisans, and others. In 1910, the OPE subsidized 98 schools. In the same year, the society began to publish a pedagogical monthly, Vestnik (“Courier"), devoted to discussion of basic problems of educational work. The OPE initiated systematic conferences in St. Petersburg, convening educational leaders from various localities. These conferences attracted a good deal of public attention. Both the Russian-Jewish and the Jewish press published regular reports of their proceedings,

420

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

and they played a major role in promoting the cause of Jewish education. At these conferences, the voices favoring Yiddish first began to be supported by the spokesmen for the Jewish socialist movements. The conference of 1911 adopted a resolution stipulating: ( 1) that all Jewish schools must include in their programs the study of the Bible and of the Hebrew language; and, (2) that schools in areas where the language of the Jewish masses was Yiddish must use this language both as the language of instruction and as one of the subjects. At the third conference of local representatives of the OPE, held in December, 1912, the central problem under discussion was the position to be taken toward cheders. One of the major spwches at this conference was delivered by the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, who defended the traditional cheders. He was supported by the historian S. Dubnow. The conference adopted a resolution friendly to cheders. At the next conference, held in December, 1913, there was a marked difference in mood. This conference, the fourth, coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the existence of the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews. The demands of radical and democratic groups resulted in a number of clashes at the conference, relating chiefly to the problem of the language of instruction at the schools. A compromise resolution was finally adopted, stating that the general conditions of Jewish life demanded that instruction in the Jewish elementary schools be conducted in Yiddish. At the same time, it insisted that adequate attention must be given to the study of Jewish subjects. such as the Bible, Jewish history, and the Hebrew language.

Jewish Institutions 0] Education, Social Wellare 421 The adoption by the State Duma in 1914 of a law providing for universal education created more favorable general and legal conditions for the establishment of schools with instruction in Yiddish. It was not long after that, however, that the war broke out, bringing a succession of misfortunes and ordeals to Russian Jews and turning vast numbers of them into homeless refugees. In February, 1916, a fifth OPE conference was called in connection with the new situation. According to the resolution adopted at this conference, all subjects except Russian, Russian history, and geography were to be taught in Yiddish. In the study of Hebrew, both Yiddish and Hebrew could be used. Jewish history was to be taught in Yiddish, and only under certain specified conditions in Hebrew. Religious instruction was to be a part of the curriculum in the schools. Yiddish, the language of the people, was to be among the subjects of study; Hebrew was to be taught sufficiently to enable the graduate to read Hebrew books. At the time of the outbreak of World War I, the OPE had twenty-five branches in Russia, in addition to the branches in Odessa, Riga, Kiev, and Moscow. The war years sharply affected OPE work. While it continued its normal activities in areas which remained relatively untouched by the dislocations brought about by the war, the Society had to follow the streams of refugees from the frontal zones in order to organize new schools in new localities. In the course of 1915 and 1916, the OPE opened evening courses in St. Petersburg and Kharkov. At the same time, OPE representatives, working among refugees both in the old Pale and in their new places of settlement, established a number of schools in these areas. In early 1917,

Russian Jewry (I860-I9I7) 422 on the eve of the outbreak of revolution, the number of refugee children and adolescents attending OPE schools and courses reached 25,000. The OPE maintained 260 schools of various types in 159 cities. In forty cities, the OPE also subsidized cheders attended by more than 2,500 children. One of the most noteworthy organizations created by the Society for the Dissemination of Education among Jews was the Jewish Historico-Ethnographic Commission. Established in 1891, the Commission played an important role in initiating and carrying out the work of collecting materials on the history of Jews in Russia. The Commission was later transformed into the Historico-Ethnographic Society.

II

THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF ARTISAN AND AGRICULTURAL LABOR (ORT) The Society for Artisan, Industrial and Agricultural Labor, widely known as ORT, was founded in the last years of the reign of Alexander 11. This period witnessed the first timid steps in organized Jewish activity. Propaganda for Jewish participation in agriculture, the development of artisan trades, trade education, and the need for assistance in industrial and technical training of Jewish labor were all questions which stirred the minds of the public and were widely discussed at meetings and gatherings of Jewish intelligentsia in St. Petersburg. The Jewish population of the Pale of Settlement was suffocating in the crowded cities and towns, suffering

Jewish Institutions of Education, Social Welfare 423 acutely from competition and poverty. Objective circumstances dictated the need to relieve the conditions in the Pale, to develop agriculture and artisan trades, to raise the productive energies of the Jews. All this was seen as the first step toward the alleviation and elimination of poverty. These ideas, which ripened among intellectual circles, were able to elicit a response among influential Jewish businessmen in the capital, who had contacts in government circles. One of the founders of the Society for Artisan and Agricultural Labor Among Jews was the famous “railroad king," Samuel Polyakov. On September 30, 1880, the government ratified the regulations concerning a Provisional Committee to administer an Industrial Fund, which was to function until the organization of the Society. This Committee issued subsidies (not to exceed 200 rubles) to individuals and schools. The circular letter sent out by the founding group reached the remotest comers of Russia and everywhere met the same enthusiastic response. The collection assumed the character of a major social action: 12,457 persons in 407 cities and towns raised more than 200 thousand rubles for the Industrial Fund. It seemed that the CRT came into being under a lucky star and faced the prospect of the broadest and most useful social activity. These dreams were soon to be dashed. The assassination of Alexander II, the political reaction that ensued, the new Tsar, Alexander 111, who set out to eradicate all remnants of the liberal heritage of the preceding reign, the pogroms that struck at the Jewish population of Russia—all these could not but cut down at the root the new social experiment.

Under the new government policy all efforts and appeals

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 424 of the Provisional Committee to obtain approval for the transformation of the Committee into a Society proved futile. These efforts continued for twenty-five years, and it was only the Revolution of 1905 that finally gave the ORT an opportunity to reorganize as a regular society. The by-laws of the Society were finally approved in 1906. In 1909, at a Jewish conference in Kovno, L. M. Bramson proposed a broad program, prepared by the ORT with the aim of drawing the Jewish masses into various forms of productive labor. Two years later, at an allRussian industrial congress in St. Petersburg, Bramson, who headed the Jewish delegation, was able to cite a number of facts testifying to the ORT's achievements on the labor front. In doing this, he also urged the need for abolishing the Pale of Settlement and for giving Jews equal civil rights. David Lvovich, who was to become one of the leading spirits of the ORT, was in America in 1916. He succwded in arousing the interest of the American Jewish community in the plight of the Russian Jews. As a result of his efforts, the Workmen's Circle contributed $15,000 to the ORT program of occupational aid. At that time, Russian Jewry faced the problem of aiding the more than 200,000 deportees and refugees from P0land, Lithuania, and the Baltic regions. At this tragic moment, the ORT launched an energetic program of activity and played a major role in organizing the needed assistance. Its representatives accompanied the refugees and deportees in their wanderings. The first step was the opening of free food kitchens. Free employment bureaus were set up in 72 localities, helping the refugees to orient themselves and use their skills in their new homes. The St. Petersburg branch of the ORT f0unded a journal. Vestnik Trudovoy Pomoshchi (“Labor Aid Courier"). devoted to urgent eco-

425 Jewish lnstitutions of Education, Social Welfare nomic problems. Along with this, the ORT continued its work in the field of occupational training and raising the levels of artisan labor. Nor did the ORT forget the disabled Jewish war veterans, whom it taught various trades in special workshops. The ORT also supported cooperative enterprises among artisans, helping them in the sale of their products and the purchase of raw materials, and supplying them with necessary tools. The budget of the ORT rose from 54,000 rubles in 1914 to 436,527 rubles at the end of 1916. The number of ORT branches in the provinces rose to thirty-seven. The revolution which broke out in 1917 gave new hope to the ideologists and leaders of the ORT. The collapse of the old regime and the abolition of all restrictions on national minorities opened far-reaching prospects. New practical plans were developed, in line with a reorganization of the socio-economic structure of Jewish life under new conditions of civil and national equality. It was hoped to draw the formerly disfranchised Jewish masses into agriculture and various branches of industrial labor. The ORT leaders also envisioned the convocation of a new conference, which would transform the ORT into a powerful democratic organization based on effective self-help among the masses. Alas, neither the conference nor the plan were to be realized. The October Bolshevik coup swept away all the plans and hopes of the ORT leaders. The ORT was able to continue a phantom existence for a few years longer under the Soviet regime, but its center of activity shifted across the borders of Russia. Today, the ORT, in its 85th year, is the largest nongovernmental vocational system in the world. It has an annual budget of $9,000,000. Many governments support the ORT by special allocations. Its annual student enroll-

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with training units in 21 countries. Its largest program is in Israel, where ORT schools in 35 localities instruct between 18,000 and 20,000 persons a year. David Ben-Gurion has said that no one has done more in the field of vocational education in Israel than the ORT. The government of Israel has enrolled in the Israeli ORT schools a number of Africans, in order to give them vocational training. In Anieres, Switzerland, the ORT maintains an international institute for training vocational teachers, technicians, engineers, and other specialists. The Swiss government has placed a number of Africans and Iranians in this institute for training. The United States has engaged the ORT to plan and conduct large vocational training schools in some of the new African nations. ment exceeds 40,000,

III

SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF HEALTH AMONG THE JEWS (OZE) The first reports about the organization in St. Petersburg of the Society for the Protection of Health Among the Jews, appeared in the press in February 1912. On October 28, 1912, the new Society held its first general membership meeting, which elected its first governing body. This general meeting was addressed by Dr. M. M. Gran, a physician with wide experience in the field of public health. Speaking on the problems of maintaining health among the Jewish population of Russia, he devoted particular attention to the special conditions of Jewish existence— the disfranchisement and poverty of the Jewish masses, the

Jewish lnstitutions of Education, Social Welfare 427 crowded living conditions within the Pale of Settlement, the lack of sanitation in the cities and small towns, and so on. These special conditions, he pointed out, compelled every physician and public-spirited person to attach the broadest importance to the task of health protection among the Jews. The new society, said Dr. Gran, should not regard itself as a merely academic institution. The second speaker, Dr. M. Schwamnan, urged the society to set itself a number of general tasks. Among these, he said, an important place should be given to cornbatting the physical degradation of the Jewish population, the epidemics which struck down both adults and children, and the high rate of mortality. Dr. Schwamnan suggested the development of a broad program for the improvement of sanitary and hygenic conditions, and action stressing not only therapeutic, but also prophylactic goals. During its first three years of existence, l912-15, the OZE organized branches in Kiev, Kharkov, Minsk, and Odessa which launched intensive programs of action. These included the establishment within the Pale of Settlement, of consultation and health centers for mothers and babies, day camps for children, children's colonies, nurseries, sanitary public baths, dispensaries, clinics, and mobile medical units. Another facet of OZE activity was free milk distribution to children—the so-called "Drop of Milk" program. By the outbreak of World War I, the OZE had already covered a significant portion of the Pale of Settlement with a network of institutions, and had become an important factor in Jewish life. This made itself felt with particular force during the war years of 1915-16, which brought so much tragedy to the Jews. The mass deportations and the Jewish refugee problem in the midst of general disruption and ruin posed new, grave problems for the OZE. Through-

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Russian Jewry (1860-1917) the length of the refugee itinerary, the OZE set up dining rooms, flying medical units, mobile clinics, and pharmacies to serve the uprooted wanderers. During the period of l912-l918, the OZE organized 160 children's homes and kindergartens serving more than 50,000 children of preschool age, and 17 medical consultation units for mothers, equipped with “milk kitchens” which fed 5,000 infants. The OZE provided meals for 20,000 school children in 87 schools. It organized 115 day camps and 66 summer camps providing vacations for 33,000 children. The 105 OZE clinics served more than 50,000 patients. Thousands of other patients received free medical aid in 23 hospitals. Out of the 200,000 refugees and deportees who were scattered throughout the internal provinces of Russia, up to 40,000 were helped by various OZE institutions. A decree issued by the Soviet government in 1921 compelled the OZE to liquidate its activity within the borders of the Soviet Union. However, some of its prominent leaders who succeeded in emigrating abroad or settling in the Baltic countries prompted the organization of OZE work on a world-wide scale. In August, 1923, the OZE held its first conference in Berlin, which led to the establishment of the World OZE Union, which still exists and which developed broad programs of action in eastern European countries (particularly in Poland, Lithuania, and Bessarabia), as well as in Western Europe. out

IV

THE JEWISH COLONIZATION ASSOCIATION (ICA) The prehistory of the Jewish Colonization Association

Jewish Institutions of Education, Social Welfare 429 (ICA), which had centers in London and Paris, began in the 1880's. In 1888, the well-known Jewish-French philanthropist, Baron Maurice de Hirsch, wishing to aid his coreligionists in Russia, assigned the sum of fifty million francs for the establishment of farms and trade schools and the development of artisan trades among Russian Jews. During the negotiations with the Russian government conceming this matter, it transpired that Baron de Hirsch was expected as a first step to present one million francs to the then all-powerful Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod Pobedonostsev—to be used for Orthodox Christian parochial schools. Moreover, the government agreed to consent to the de Hirsch proposal only on condition that the allocation of the sum be entrusted to its hands, rather than those of the representatives of Russian Jewry. In addition, it was made clear that the Russian government preferred to encourage and assist in the emigration of Jews from Russia. A few years later, when the Russian government learned about Baron de Hirsch‘s plan for the resettlement of Jews on free Argentinian land, it withdrew its original systematic opposition to his proposals and expressed itself as willing to permit his activity in the country, provided it was aimed chiefly at the emigration of Jews from Russia. However, the far-reaching plans for the resettlement of three and a half million Russian Jews in Argentina in the course of 25 years proved entirely unattainable. The as tablishment of Jewish colonies in Argentina turned out to be an extremely diflicult and slow process. Instead of the 25,000 Jewish emigrants to Argentina which the ICA had promised the Russian government for the first year, only 3,500 Jews had actually left Russia to settle in Argentina. It was not until May 6, 1892, that the ICA had finally obtained the Russian government's permission to establish

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itself as an organization. An ICA Committee was formed in St. Petersburg, with Baron Horace Ginzburg as chairman and D. F. Fainberg as general secretary. Actual work among the Russian Jews was begun only in 1897. The ICA Committee launched a study of the economic status of Russian Jewry in connection with the census of 1897. During 1897-98, questionnaires were distributed in 1,400 cities and towns. A leading role in this work was played by Leon Bramson, managing director of the ICA in Russia. The ICA provided Jews with agricultural training. helped existing colonies to introduce improved agricultural machinery and methods, stimulated the development of new branches of agriculture, and granted low-interest credit for land improvement. In the area of occupational training, the ICA established a network of 28 schools for boys, attended by 1,600 students, and 19 schools for girls, with a student body of 2,900. Statistical data set the number of Jewish farmers in Russia on the eve of World War I at some 180,000 persons cultivating a land area of 225,000 acres. From 1901 to 1914, the ICA provided long-term credits totalling 800,000 rubles to Jewish colonists of the Yekaterinoslav and Kherson Provinces alone. However, the greatest success achieved by the ICA was in the field of cooperation and in the organization of loan associations. The principal task of the savings and loan associations was to supply artisans and petty tradesmen with low-interest credit. Credit cooperation and the organization of cooperative marketing of the products of artisan labor came to occupy an increasingly important place in ICA activity.

431 Jewish Institutions of Education, Social Welfare It must be pointed out that this cooperative movement developed in an atmosphere of antagonism and suspicion on the part of the government. Every permission to establish a savings and loan association within the Pale of Settlement was obtained at the cost of endless effort. In 1904, the ICA organized a system of cooperative marketing of artisan products. To this end, it established special warehouses and issued loans against artisan products. By early 1914, the ICA had succeeded in organizing 635 savings and loan associations within the Pale, and 16 outside the Pale, with a total membership of some 400,000. If we consider that the family of every member consisted on an average of six persons, the total number of persons served by the Jewish cooperative movement will thus have been some two and a half million. The financial operations of the loan associations involved tens of millions of rubles. In 1911 alone, 34,155,104 rubles were loaned to 220,000 members of these associations. Of enormous importance to Russian Jewry also, were the approximately four hundred information offices set up by the ICA to serve prospective emigrants, providing them with information, protecting their interests, and helping them to communicate with the countries where they intended to settle. The outbreak of World War Idealt a major blow to the achievements of the ICA in Russia; after October, 1917, the ICA shared the tragic fate of all other independent self-help organizations. In assessing the ICA work in Russia, we must stress that, launched as a philanthropic enterprise under the sponsorship of Baron dc Hirsch, the ICA came to be widely

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 432 utilized by the Jewish intelligentsia as an instrument for stimulating the social energy of a large strata of Jewish artisans and petty tradesmen, and for channeling this energy in the direction of self-help activities. V

JEWISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE RELIEF OF WAR VICTIMS (YEKOPO) In 1915, in response to the wartime disasters which had struck at Russian Jewry, resulting in mass deportations and flight from the frontal zones, the YEKOPO, or Jewish Association for the Relief of War Victims, was founded in St. Petersburg. It soon became the universally acknowledged center for assistance to Jewish war victims and, especially, to Jewish deportees and refugees from the war zone. The first step toward aiding the refugees was the attempt to bring order into the evacuation of Jews from frontal zones. YEKOPO representatives accompanied the trains bringing the evacuees to central provinces. The next step was to help the refugees in their new homes, providing them with food, clothing, and medical aid. Subsequent action consisted of finding them permanent lodgings and work, and creating a network of children's homes and schools. The YEKOPO organized a wide system of local committees and representatives. In addition to collecting funds in the Jewish community, it received subsidies from the government's Special Conference on Refugee Affairs, the Committee of the Grand Duchess Tatyana, and the AllRussian Union of City and Rural District Councils.

Jewish Institutions of Education, Social Welfare 433 On February 1, 1917, the number of refugees maintained by the YEKOPO was more than 200,000; the semiannual budget of expenditures of the Association was approximately ten million rubles. The YEKOPO also received substantial subsidies from Jewish organizations in western Europe and the United States.

Russian Jews in the United States by M. Osherovich I JEWISH IMMIGRATION To THE UNITED STATES IS USUALLY

divided into three periods: Spanish-Portuguese, German, and Russian. The Russo-Jewish immigration began much later than the others, but its significance was greater, both in numbers and in character. This significance is no longer questioned even by those who have tended to stress the influence of the German Jews. Today everyone acknowledges the imprint made by the Russian Jews on what can be called Jewish life in America. It is to the Russian Jews that American Jewry owes its role and influence. Without the Russo-Jewish immigrants, Jewish life in America would have taken a different course and would present an entirely difl‘erent picture today. Instead of expressing the creative energies, initiative, and specific character inherent in it and nurtured

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Russian Jews in the United States 435 by many generations, it would gradually have severed itself from its roots and would have shrunk to insignificance; the individual Jewish immigrants would have withdrawn to their separate comers in the illusory hope of merging totally and completely with the alien milieu. Neither the Jewish press nor the rich Yiddish literature would have come into being without the active participation of the Russian-Jewish immigrants. Without them, the Jewish masses would not have been raised to higher cultural levels. It was they who, inspired with deep faith in justice, worked with skill and devotion to organize the Jewish workers into trade unions which served as models to the rest of the American labor force. It was they who led the way in the persistent struggle against exploitation, and for the right of the laboring masses to a better life. Moreover, were it not for the influence of the Russian Jews, American Jewry would not have been so closely bound with the Jewry of other countries, nor so ready to help whenever help was needed. The mass emigration of Russian Jews began after the pogroms of 1881, and 1882, although individual families and groups had come here earlier. The impetus to emigration was usually provided by oppression at the hands of the Tsarist government and by difficult economic conditions. In 1852, some thirty years before the beginning of this mass emigration, Russo-Jewish immigrants built the first synagogue in New York. The Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, which came into being at that time, consisted partly of Russian and partly of Polish Jews. During the period of the pogroms which broke out in the 1880's after the assassination of Alexander 11, creating panic among the Jewish population and Jewish student youth, a movement sprang up known as Am-Oilom. Its

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members were inspired by faith in the idea that the Jews were an “eternal people," and hence that, whatever happened to them, they would always find within themselves, the strength to start anew. The best and most idealistic representatives of the younger generation, who shared this conviction, launched an agitation for resettlement in America, a free country where it would be possible to begin a new life and, most important of all, to engage in productive labor. A simultaneous development was the BILU movement, which urged settlement in Palestine and the founding of Jewish agricultural colonies there. The adherents of the BILU movement, whose ranks produced the pioneers who built the first colonies in Palestine, came to be known as “Palestinians," while the participants in the Am-Oilom movement were called “Americans." The Am-Oilom group from Kiev, which arrived in America on May 30, 1882, consisted of young men and women students who knew no language except Russian. The leader of this group was a young student of Kiev University, Nikolay Aleynikov. The majority of the group were socialists; at the same time, they were imbued with the spirit of Jewish nationalism and had brought with them Torah scrolls and a large banner with the Hebrew inscription. Am-Oilom. Stopping in various cities on their way, they marched along the streets, as though seeking to demonstrate to all onlookers that the Jewish nation possessed inexhaustible strength, derived from an eternal source. They staged a triumphal march through the streets of New York, carrying the Torah scrolls and the banner with its Hebrew inscription. A short list of the Russo-Jewish leaders who came to America with the first wave of mass emigration as soon after-

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wards, gives us a clear idea of those who were to be at the head of the Jewish masses in their search for a new way of life in America. These men won renown in various fields, such as litertaure, journalism, science, and politics. Some of them won recognition and prominence beyond the limits of the Jewish milieu as well. Each of them deserves a place in the front ranks of our public life. Among the men who played important parts in Jewish life during a fateful era in American history we must name Abraham Cahan, Dr. Ab. Kaspe, Alexander Harkavy, Hillel Zolotarov, Mikhail Zametkin, David Edelstadt, Dr. C. Y. Rayevsky, Dr. Chaim Spivak, Nikolay Aleynikov, B. Weinstein, Dr. J. Merison, Louis Miller, Morris Hillquit, Sh. Yanovsky, and Morris Rosenfeld. Other eminent Russo-Jewish leaders who came to the United States during the last decade of the nineteenth century were B. Feigenbaum, Philip Krantz, Dr. Itzchok-Isaac Hourwich, Jacob Gordin, Yehoash, Z. Libin, Leon Kobrin, Abraham Lesin, and Dr. Isser Ginsburg. Thanks to the eflorts of these emigrants from Russia, the Jewish masses, who had until then been treated as mere “greenhoms,” became an active factor in American social life. All these leaders firmly believed that the thousands and thousands of Jews who were arriving in America from all ends of Russia could become on the free soil of their adopted country, a potent instrument for social and cultural progress. The emigrant leaders stressed from the very first the' importance of the revolutionary idealism which had prompted their activities in Russia. They knew that a struggle would have to be waged on the new soil as well—a struggle, above all, for the improvement of the economic condition of the workers. And whenever this was demanded by cir-

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cumstances, the Jewish pioneers and idealists threw them-

selves passionately into the battle. The dream of founding agricultural communes in America which was at first entertained by members of the AmOilom movement proved unrealizable, and they quickly became aware of this. Several efforts in this direction had failed. Imagination drew the young idealists into realms remote from reality, and resulted in a waste of energy. Communal colonies were organized in New Jersey, Connecticut, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Kansas, and Oregon. The colonists received substantial monetary assistance from wealthy German Jews, who helped the Russian immigrants in every possible way and whose philanthropic activities assumed an increasingly organized character.

The colonies, however, gradually disintegrated—some sooner, others later. After the collapse of the dream of agricultural communes, the Jewish immigrants found themselves before the realities of urban life in all its diversity. II ,

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Among the worst misfortunes that descended upon the immigrants were the so-called “sweatshops," characterized by merciless exploitation and inhuman treatment of workl ers. toWhen we read about these workshops today, it is difficult believe that men could inflict such suffering on their brothers. condemning them in many cases to lingering dis/ease and early death. However, such were the facts in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and numerous other cities where the largest concentrations of RussoJewish immigrants were to be found. The sweatshops reached out their tentacles and engulfed thousands of new-

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Russian Jews in the United States 439 comers before they were able to find their way in the new country.

In Jewish literature, and particularly in the sketches of Z. Libin, we find vivid descriptions of the ordeals of Jewish immigrants, doomed to slave laborIn the life was also reflected in the poems of Morris R sweatshop system who experienced the full bitterness of thew himself. In one of his poems, he places the sweatshop at the symbolic “crossroads of sorrow and misfortune.” Depicting the tragedy of people compelled to work in these shops to the point of utter exhaustion, he notes yet another tragic aspect of the Jewish life of that period—its chaos and hopelessness. The building that houses a sweatshop on one floor has a small synagogue on another and a tavern downstairs, where men drink themselves to a stupor, for life has nothing to offer anyway. Jewish memoirs also provide a graphic picture of life in the sweatshops. One of these sfiwritten by B. Weinstein,l who had himself endured during the period ,of mass emigration.

sweatshom /

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The sweatshop is both a factory and a dwelling. It is the home of the owner and his family. The front room and the kitchen serve as the workshop. The family itself sleeps in the dark bedroom. In the front room there are sewing machines, worked by “operators." Chairs set out along the walls are intended for the “basters.” The middle of the room, filthy and dusty, is piled with bundles of materials. These bundles are used as seats by the “finishers", who put the final touches to coats, skirts, pants and other articles of clothing. They, in turn, transmit the garments to the pressers, who are usually old men. The ressers beat their irons and press the ready garments on boards In the light of a gas lamp. The employer often spreads kerosene over the tables used by the “finishers” to prevent them from keeping food there. Generally, the employers are constantly ’lfibrished by the United Jewish Trade Unions.

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inventing new torments for their workers. There may be a sudden order that henceforth the “operators" must themselves drag upstairs the heavy bales of materials brought from the warehouses. In another factory, the workers are suddenly told that their wages will be paid every two weeks, instead of every week. The size of the wages also depends on the employer‘s will. The sweatshop owners are usually rude and ignorant men, who suck the blood of their brothers and sisters who came to seek a happier life in rich America.

No one has ever undertaken the task of collecting statistical data on the victims of the sweatshop system who were driven to an untimely death. Unquestionably, they number in the tens of thousands. During those difficult years, the Jewish workers were not yet organized; there were no trade unions among them. But attempts to combat exploitation were occasionally made, and ultimately paved the way for the formation of trade unions, which soon won the confidence of the workers. From the moment of their appearance, the struggle assumed an organized character, and the strikes that ensued convinced even the most diehard skeptics of the existence of consolidated forces which were prepared to defend the workers' interests with selfless devotion. People risked their lives on picket lines; old and young marched fearlessly together. Strikes followed one another and the workers finally won the abolition of the sweatshops. The leading role in this movement was played by emigrants from Russia who had already begun to acclimatize themselves in America. Young intellectuals of the AmOilom group worked side by side with manual workers. Thanks to their efl’orts, the needle workers developed in time two such powerful and influential organizations as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and the International Ladies' Gan'nent Workers‘ Union.

Russian Jews in the United States 441 Jacob Potofsky. Among the leaders of the “International," important roles were played by Benjamin Schlesinger and Morris Siegman. And if the “Intemational” became the powerful organization it is, wielding a degree of influence of which its founders could not even have dreamed, this was due above all to David Dubinsky, who had served a term of penal exile in Siberia in his younger years for revolutionary activities in Russia. This was in 1908, but Dubinsky still retains vivid memories of the period, when he was inspired with genuine enthusiasm—an enthusiasm which, he says, helped him later in his work in the American 1abor movement.

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In the early years, the inhabitants of the Jewish sections of New York and other big cities usually spent their leisure hours in the street. Among the workers, the concept of “home” was a fiction. Every inch of space in apartments had to be utilized for practical purposes. People earned pennies, but children had to be fed and dressed, and payments for furniture bought on the installment plan had to be made on time. In addition, every immigrant considered it his duty to save up money for boat fare for relatives remaining in Russia. Therefore, the occupants of every shabby dwelling rented out “comers” to numerous tenanm. At night, folding cots were set up in every available place, and the floors were covered with mattresses and pallets for the “tenants." fl, Filth and disorder reigned in the apartments. It was difli5 cult to tell the people apart from the heaps of rags, not only at night, when they lay on the floor helter-skelter, but even in the scanty light filtering through in the day-time.

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Russian Jewry (l860-l917) 442 The sun never reached these dismal habitations. A heavy burden of hopelessness weighed on the hearts of the immigrants; their entire surroundings bred despair. On hot days, the people literally sufiocated for want of air. No wonder the residents of these dwellings escaped outdoors and the sidewalks always teemed with people. Old men, mothers of families, and often the fathers as well, sat on the stairs in the “fresh air," talking about anything that came to mind. The children, who felt caged in the stufly, dirty houses, also spent their lives in the street. The streets became particularly lively when peddlers came with their wares on trays and pushcarts. An endless variety of wares was sold and bought in Jewish immigrant blocks in New York and other cities. Tasty hot peas, knishes of every kind, even songbirds—mostly canaries. All the selling and buying was attended by shouts and loud lamentations. People rushed about, evidently thinking that it was impossible to earn a living in America without the atmosphere of feverish hubbub. And all the noise would be merely about a few bananas, three or five cents, or socks, five cents a pair! The Jewish newspaper vendors also sang out the names of their papers, nished about trying to out-shout one another—"Forwerts."', “Warheit."', "Togblattl", "MorgenZhurnal!" The street commerce was often attended by the melodies of a Russian hurdy-gurdy, which was as popular among the Jewish children in America as it was in Russian cities and small towns. Here no one would be startled by a sudden transition from a melancholy Russian song to a warm religious melody. Shortly before Word War I, this custom of trading in the street gradually began to disappear. Some of those who

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One of the founders and leaders of the “Amalgamated" was Sidney Hillman. After his death, he was succeeded by had hawked their wares in the Jewish blocks had succeeded in opening stores of their own. Some had gone as far as Broadway or even Fifth Avenue. Successful businessmen began to move away from the blocks populated by the Jewish poor to comfortable big houses “uptown,” and soon Jewish blocks sprang up in distant parts of New York and Brooklyn. The Jews had already struck firm root in American soil. The immigrants began to feel that they were citizens of the new country. This is attested by the successful socialist campaigns waged on a wide scale from year to year and contributing to the improvement of the general atmosphere on the East Side. Corrupt politicians were gradually driven out from the area. Meyer London was elected to Congress —the first Jewish Congressman, a socialist who held in high regard both the cultural heritage he had brought with him from Russia and the ideas of freedom and democracy he found in America. His speeches in Congress raised the prestige of New York Jews throughout the rest of the country. The Jewish population of America increased rapidly and became a factor to be reckoned with. During the years of 1881-1917, two million Jews emigrated to the United States from Russia alone.

IV In discussing the achievements of Russian Jews in America, we must speak first of all about the press. The Jewish press played an enormously important role, especially in helping newcomers to adjust themselves to the new conditions, in which they felt lost and alien. Nowhere else in the world did the Jews succeed in creat-

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peri‘ 1

ress of such scope and influence as the press. Their newspapers left their imAm print on the entire Jewish life in this country and became the foundation of the edifice of Yiddish literature. Newspapers founded by members of various parties to the end of influencing the Jewish laboring masses, gradually became the refuge of whole groups of talented Jewish novelists and short story writers. Some of these writers began their literary careers in America; others had won fame in Russia before emigrating. 1 Specifically have in mind the Jewish socialist organ, For-wens, founded in 1897. The Forwerts introduced the system of paying its contributors on a weekly basis; this was an innovation in the Jewish-American press. The other newspapers soon followed suit. When the famous writer, Sholom Aleichem, came to America, the Tag placed him on its staff, paying him a salary at the end of each week, and began to publish his autobiography. This was in 1915. A year later, when Sholom Aleichem left the Tag for the Warheit, both the Forwerts and the Tag continued to adhere to the system which assured fiction writers of a weekly salary. This system was retained even later, when the Tag and the Morgen Zhurnal were combined into the TagMorgen Zhurnal. The best works of the Jewish writers. such as Sholem Asch, Abraham Reisen, Z. Shneur. I. I. Singer, David Pinski, Leon Kobrin, Z. Libin, and Joseph Opatoshu, were first published in the daily press. This list was later augmented by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The very fact that prominent Jewish writers became regular staff members of the Jewish daily press, either as contributors of fiction or in other editorial capacities, was of utmost importance in the development of the Yiddish press in America. Novelists and poets raised the stylistic

ng a

'

2%

Russian Jews in the United States 445 level of the newspapers, improved the language, introduced the carefully polished phrase, and added imagery, expressiveness, and depth to journalistic writing. The greatest contribution in this respect was made by Abraham Liesin and Morris Rosenfeld, as well as other journalists who succeeded them in the periodical press, such as Zivyon (Dr. B. Hofrnan), Dr. Isser Ginsburg, and Dr. Abraham Koralnik. All of them placed considerable stress on literary form and felt that not only the what, but the how was important in writing. Hayim Greenberg, editor of the Poale-Zion journal Yid— disher Kemfer, also contributed significantly in this area. Others who must be mentioned are Chaim Liberman, David Einhorn, Jacob Glatstein, A. Lestschinsky, Aaron Zcitlin and B. Sheffner. Characteristically, a number of Jewish journalists in America began their careers as fiction writers. One of these is Dr. L. Fogelman, who came to the United States after World War 1. He had begun his writing career as a Russian writer in Russia, and it was only after coming to America that he shifted to journalistic work in Yiddish, quickly drawing attention to himself by his lucid and readable style. In the late 1940's he became an assistant editor of the Forwerts. After Hillel Rogolf, the editor, died, Fogelman succeeded him in this post. Few newspapers in the world devote as much space to fiction and poetry as the Yiddish press in America. This was due, to begin with, to the influence of Ab. Cahan, who was himself both a fiction writer and a journalist. The role of Cahan, editor of the Forwerts, a newspaper which helped the Jewish workers to create trade unions and to maintain the spirit of militancy in diflicult periods, merits special attention. This is so not only because Ab. Cahan played an important part in the life of American Jewry, but also be-

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cause he remained all his life a typical Russo-Jewish intellectual—which nevertheless did not interfere with his regarding himself a true American, closely bound with American cultural and social life. At the same time, none of his associates among the Jewish socialists had such a keen sense of Jewish identity as did Cahan. A man who plunged himself heart and soul into all causes and activities dear to him, he was deeply concerned with everything affecting the destinies of Jewry, both in periods of historic change and in times of relative quiet. Cahan served as the editor-in-chief of the Forwerts for over fifty years. In effect, he was the acknowledged leader of the entire Jewish-American press. He died at the age of 91, after a long life, rich in service and achievements that won him undisputed fame in the Jewish milieu. Emigrants from Russia played an important role in the entire Jewish press in America. Anyone who troubles to glance at the history of such dailies as the Warheit, Tag and Morgen Zhurnal, such monthlies as the Zukunft and Freie GezeLshaft, and such non-periodical publications as the Freie Arbeiter Shtirne, the Wecker and Yiddisher Kemfer will easily detect the influence of Russian literature, brought into these publications by the Russian-Jewish novelists and poets, journalists, and memoirists who contributed to them. The growth of the Yiddish periodical press in America was paralleled by the emergence and flowering of Yiddish fiction and poetry, which, in their scope and richness, created a genuine golden age of Yiddish literature. In this Yiddish literature in America, emigrants from Russia held eminent places in the very front ranks. Although it was on American soil that the remarkable talent of H. Leivick came to maturity, his Siberian poems carried a distant echo of

Russian Jews in the United States 447 the eternal melancholy of Russia's vast expanses. Another poet who matured in America was Mane Leib, whose tender lyrical talent sang the beauty of the Russian landscape. The poet and critic A. Tabachnik, whose monographs on the work of Jewish-American poets revealed a profound knowledge and understanding of poetry, was also an emigrant from Russia. Two eminent literary critics, Shmuel Niger and Dr. A. Mukdoini, found a home in the United States after emigrating from Russia. They exerted great influence on Yiddish literature, and Jewish writers always listened to their voices with respect, whether they agreed with their judgments or not. At the time when the famous novelist Sholem Asch published his sensational “Christian novels," and Jewish public opinion was stirred and often indignant, Sh. Niger was the only critic to defend Asch. Many people resented Niger's views, but the incident did not damage his prestige as a literary critic.

The members of the Am-Oilom group, exiles who had suffered many bitter disappointments, had brought with them in the early years of the mass emigration the spirit of Russian culture. They were permeated with aspirations for moral and artistic perfection and with the zeal of the Russian liberation movement, as embodied in the noble figures of the idealists and martyrs of the fight for freedom. These moods were shared by subsequent generations of emigrants. One of the leaders who organized the collection of contribtuions to aid the revolutionary movement was Dr. Chaim Zhitlowsky. In 1904 he came to the United States as a representative of the Socialist-Revolutionary party. Some time later Zhitlowsky became a propagandist of “Yiddishism" and a prominent Jewish cultural leader. His

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articles provoked heated controversies and often gave rise to sharp polemics. During his later years, he was a contributor to the newspaper Tog, then under the editorship of Sh. Mekler. When power in Russia had been taken over by the B01sheviks, Jewish immigrants helped the American reading public to achieve an understanding of recent events. They explained the meaning of the events and offered Americans keys to the analysis of the political situation. This was done principally in the press organs, which reached hundreds of thousands of readers. Among the ideologists and journalists who tirelessly pointed out the nature and the threat of Bolshevism, an important place was taken by R. Abramovitch, a leader in the Russian Bund and for many years the representative of the Mensheviks in the Socialist International. The problems of Bolshevism were also dealt with in a number of books published by D. Dallin during and after World War 11. David Shub's book, Lenin, translated from English into several languages, remains a valuable source for all who follow contemporary political events and seek to understand the nature of Bolshevism. The Jews in the Soviet Union, published in English by Solomon Schwarz, is another book in the same category. V

Jewish-Russian immigrants contributed as much to the history of the Jewish theatre as they did to the Jewish literature and press. Here, too, they assumed the leading position. The organizer of the first production in America in Yiddish was Boris Tomashevsky. He produced Goldfaden's play, The Sorceress. The date of this production was probably 1882, although neither Tomashevsky's memoirs nor

Russian Jews in the United States 449 the memoirs of others who wrote about the period mention a definite date. This production marked the beginning of the Jewish theatre in America; however, for many years, this theatre, which produced a number of talented actors, could not boast of a high intellectual level. Its level began to rise with the influx of the mass immigration, which brought in its ranks, a considerable number of well-known Jewish actors. The most prominent among them were Sigmund Mogulescu, David Kessler, Jacob P. Adler, Morris Moscowitz, Leon Blank, Sara Adler, Kenny Liptsin, Bina Abramovich, and Bessie Tomashevsky. The artistic and social prestige of the Jewish theatre in America rose visibly when Maurice Schwartz founded the Jewish Art Theatre. This event seemed to herald a new era, which was to create the soil for great artistic achievements. Schwartz enlisted the participation of such outstanding actors as Muni Weisenfreund, who later won wide fame as Paul Muni. The performances of Schwartz himself, also contributed a great deal to raising the prestige of the Yiddish theatre. The heroes of many of Sholom Aleichem‘s works, beloved among the masses of readers, particularly the writer's “little people with little aspirations,” acquired new value and dimensions on the stage in Schwartz's interpretation and under his direction. This was the period of the highest cultural flowering in the history of American Jewry, in the theatre and elsewhere. Many Jewish actors bccame prominent on the English stage—on Broadway, in opera, and in films. These also included a high percentage of immigrants from Russia, or children of immigrants. Among them were Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and the famous opera singers Richard Tucker, George London,

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Robert Merrill, Jan Peerce, Roberta Peters, and Regina

Resnick. Russian-Jewish immigrants did pioneering work in the American movie industry as well. Their efl’orts contributed a great deal toward making Hollywood what it is today. Thanks to their energy, the film industry expanded so enormously that it came to hold a prominent place in the economic life of the United States, and became a source of earnings for a large number of people. Another native of Russia is one of the leading American impressarios, Sol Hurok, who has brought to America many of the most famous perforating artists of the world. Among these were Chaliapin and Anna Pavlova. Hurok's predeceesor in this field was also a Rusian Jew—Maurice Guest, who brought the Moscow Art Theatre company to the United States during the 1923-24 season. Its performances elicited genuine enthusiasm in America, and its influence can be felt in the work of the best American theatres to this day. IV

The former sweatshops, those hopeless nests of exploitation, grew into the vast clothing industry we see in America today. Here, too, the Russian Jews made their contribution, helping to raise the industry to heights unequalled in any other country in the world. The men's and women's tailors, nicknamed “Jacks of all trades" in their Russian home towns, were the true pioneers of the powerful American needle trades industry. Russian Jews and their American-born children have also worked in large numbers in the building industry, which has given American cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific a

Russian Jews in the United States 451 new look. Bridge-building is another field in which Jewish engineers have made their presence felt. Among the latter we may name M. Leontiev-Moisseiefi, also known as an essayist and literary critic. Russian immigrants have played an important role in the organization of so-called “landsmanshaften.” Thousands of these “fellow-townsmen’s" organizations provided newcomers to this country with a familiar and friendly atmosphere. The “landmanshaften,” which soon developed into an organized force, also rendered important aid to victims of groms, wars, and other disasters in the distant cities and townships which their members had left, but which they still remembered with affection and nostalgia. Russian Jews showed great energy in creating large mutual aid organizations, and philanthropic societies, which left a distinct imprint on Jewish life in America. The founders of the Joint Distribution Committee, organized in 1914, included many Russian Jews. One of these was the eminent socialist Alexander Kahn, later the manager of the For-wens. The “Joint" has since been widely active in aiding Jews throughout the world. The founder of the Jewish Labor Committee, which represents more than half a million Jewish workers in America, was the Russian Jew, B. Vladeck. Its wide political and aid activities have won for the Jewish Labor Committee an honored place in the social life of American Jewry and the respect of American labor circles. In 1900, the well-known Russian-Jewish socialist leader and writer Benjamin Feigenbaum became the first secretary general of the Workmen's Circle. In its best period, this organization had a membership of 70,000 and wielded an influence that easily placed it at the very center of the Jewish labor movement in the United States. Feigenbaum's

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 452 successors included other emigrants from Russia, among them N. Chanin, a leading figure in the Jewish socialist movement. Another prominent leader of the Workmen's Circle is I. Jeshurin, a native of Vilno, who is also well known as a tireless bibliographer of Jewish literature. The general secretary of the Jewish National Workers' Alliance (Farband), an influential Labor-Zionist organization in America, was, until his recent death, Louis Segal, another native of Russia.

VII

There is no need to dwell at length on the active part played by Russian Jews in American political life. We may, instead, quote an excerpt from the memoirs of Morris Hillquit, relating the story of how the Socialist Party selected him in 1906 as a candidate to Congress from the densely populated Ninth Congressional District on New York’s East Side: Ever since the advent of Tammany Hall, that organization had reigned supreme in the lower East Side. The Ninth Congressional District was a sort of a feudal fief of the notorious Tammany Chieftains Christie and Timothy Sullivan, “the Sullivan's" for short. Politics in the district was frankly and boastfully corrupt. On election days votes were openly purchased in front of polling places at an established price of two dollars each. “Floaters" and “repeaters" did a thriving business, and the count bore a remote relation to the vote cast. The local Republican organization worked in cynical complicity with the Tammany machine. Only when the socialists began developing appreciable political strength were the shameless practices somewhat curbed.’

By the early years of the twentieth century, the socialists succeeded in improving the political atmosphere of the East "iLoose Leaves from a Busy Life (New York, 1934), p. 108.

Russian Jews in the United States 453 Side, forcing corrupt politicians and their shady retinue to leave the scene. This achievement raised the prestige not only of the socialists, but also of American Jewry, since the leadership of the socialist movement, which played an important role both in Jewish life in America and in the country as a whole, included many Russian Jews, who had brought with them from their old home the experience gained in the underground socialist movement and often in prisons and penal exile. Along with the growth of radical moods in the Jewish milieu, we must also note the presence of religious traditions among wide circles of immigrants from Russia. In 1888, a famous Russian rabbi, Reb Yankif-Yoisef, came to the United States at the invitation of fifteen orthodox synagogues. He became the head of the rabbinate in America, and a yeshivah which exists to this day was named after him (Rabbi Jacob-Joseph Yeshivah). Reb Yankif-Yoisef was highly popular among pious Jews.

In years of catastrophes, which have descended upon Jews at various times and in various places—during the period when Jews fought for equal rights in Russia, during the frightful pogroms following October, 1905, and the persecutions during World War I—American Jewry responded with profound sympathy and liberal assistance to Russian Jews. Among those in this country who spearheaded and inspired the organization of aid, the front ranks were always composed largely of Jewish immigrants from Russia, who consistently retained a profound and intimate bond with their old homeland.

Historians of Russian jewry by Isaiah Trunk

THE YEAR 1960 MARKED THE HUNDRBDTH ANNIVERSARY of the first work on the history of Russian Jews—S. I. Fin's monograph on the Jewish community of Vilno.‘ In the course of the past century, Jewish historiography has undergone a complex process of development and produced a vast quantity of studies and documents bearing on the history of Jews in Poland and Russia. Most of the books and magazine articles which make up this rich historical-literary heritage were written in Russian, and hence are largely inaccessible to English readers. The history of Jewish historiography in Russia may be divided into three periods: (1) from the early 1860's to the establishment of the Historico-Ethnographic Commission of the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews in 1892; (2) from 1892 to the Revolution of 1917; and (3) the Soviet period. We shall deal here with the first two periods. The Soviet period lies outside the scope of the present volume.

‘ Kirlo Nemonoh.

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FIRST PERIOD (1860-1892) S. I. Fin's attempt to trace the history of the Vilno community can scarcely be considered succeuful. In essence, it is not so much a monograph as a compilation of materials: the author publishes fragments of old community chronicles (pinkoses) gravestone inscriptions. and genealogical lists of Vilno rabbis. This work remained without successors for twenty years. Sh. Friedenstein's study of the Jewish community of Grodno, which appeared twenty years later (1r Giborirn, 1880), and L. Fainstein's work on the Brest-Litovsk community (1r Tegilo, 1886), were even less satisfactory than Fin's monograph. Both Friedenstein and Fainstein confined themselves to Jewish sources—pinkoses and epitaphs. The most outstanding personality during the early period of Jewish historiography was S. A. Bershadsky (18501890). Strangely enough, the originators and “fathers" of Jewish historiography in Poland and Russia were non-Jews —the economist and political leader Tadeusz Czacky in Poland, and the grandson of an Orthodox priest, Sergey Bershadsky, in Russia. T. Czacky's book, Rosprawa o Zydach i Karaitach (1806), the first monograph on the history of Polish Jews, is written in a more or less objective tone on the basis of documentary data. Its value today is chiefly as an historical document characterizing the attitude toward Jews among some of the more liberal elements of Polish society in the early nineteenth century. For the next fifty years, until the publication of Alexander Krausgar's work, Czacky had no followers in the field of research into the history of Polish Jews. In Russia, Bershadsky proved to be the first genuine his-

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torian of Lithuanian and Belorussian Jewry and the founder

of Jewish historical science. Before Bershadsky there had been no Jewish historiography in the proper sense of the word. His predecessors in this field were interested primarily in socio-juridical aspects of the “Jewish question" in Russia, subordinated to concerns of the political moment. Inspired with the desire for objective historical knowledge, Bershadsky was far from having any apologist or political tendencies. The most serious and talented member of the group of Jewish historical writers of that time was Ilya Orshansky (1846-1876), author of The Jews in Russia—Essays on the Economic and Social Life of Russian Jews (1872) and Russian Legislation Concerning Jews (1877). He was a brilliant publicist and a worthy champion of Jewish equality, and his argumentation drew on history merely as one of the weapons to serve his ends. Orshansky, who grew up under the influence of the epoch of “great reforms" of the 1860‘s, envisaged the future of the Jews as a complete fusion with the Russian people and regarded the civil equality of Jews as a guarantee of the success of this process. In his historical excursions, he attempted to find historical justification for differentiating between Polish and Russian Jews. arguing that the Polish "Zyd" was the product of special conditions which furthered his demoralization. A fervent Russian patriot, with strong anti-Polish feelings, Orshansky wanted the Jewish population of the western provinces wrested from Poland, to become the bearers of Russification and the bulwark of Russia's national interests. Orshansky was the first Russo-Jewish historian to set himself the task of studying the economic position of the Jews on the basis of primary sources and of carefully analyzing the economic aspect of the Jewish question. Orshansky

457 Historians of Russian Jewry diflered from the spokesmen of the “enlightenment" movement (maskilim) of his own generation, as well as from those of the older generation, in his warm affection for his fellow-Jews. He often stresses the positive aspects of Jewish life (such as “the high moral level of the Jews”). In his capacity as a skilled champion of his people, he tries to find mitigating circumstances to explain its faults. In the introduction to his essay, “Folks Songs of the Russian Jews," he voices regret that Russian society knows nothing about the Jews except the external, material aspect of their life. If Orshansky's works are not yet a history of Russian Jewry, they are nevertheless a valuable aid in the study of the so-called Jewish question of his time, as well as of the legal status of Jews in Russia. The legal status of the Jews had also interested Orshansky’s predecessor, the non-Jewish historian F. I. Leontovich (born in 1833), author of A Historical Survey of Decrees Concerning Jews in Russia ( 1862), and “A Historical Study a] Lithuanian-Russian Jews" (1864), a dissertation for a master’s degree. Leontovich derived his materials from new, hitherto unfamiliar archival sources, which gave him an opportunity to establish the basic lines of the legal and social position of Jews within the Pale of Settlement. 0f similar character is V. O. Levanda‘s A Chronological Collection of Laws Concerning Jews in Russia from I649 to 1873, which stimulated a number of studies of the legal status of the Jews. The anti-Semitic book of N. Golitsyn, A History of Russian Legislation Concerning Jews (1885), should also be mentioned. To this early period of Jewish historiography belong some lesser works, as well as critical studies in related historical sciences, ethnography and philology, and studies

Russian Jewry (l860-I9l7) 458 devoted to the Khazars. Mr. Berman’s book, Essays on the Ethnography o] the Jewish Population, appeared in 1861. In 1863 A. Ya. Harkavi (1835-1919), published his historical-linguistic study On the Language of Jews Who Lived in Ancient Times. In another work, written in Hebrew, Hayehudim u Sfas Ha-Slavim (1867), Harkavi attempts to prove, chiefly by citing Shaalot u Tshuvot. that Jews in the 16th and 17th centuries used Slavic languages, and principally Russian. Harkavi began his researches into the history of the Khazars as early as 1864. Some time later he published a number of critical works on the Khanrs and his sources in Russishe Revue (1874-77), and in The Jewish Library (Yevreyskaya Biblioteka, 1879, book 7). In the series, Masai Nidokhim (16 issues, 1878-80), Harkavi published a number of historical and historical-literary essays dealing with individual epochs in Jewish history. These include materials on the Karaites, in connection with the first Jewish settlements on Russian territory. Most of the historical works of the period were quite modest in their scholarly caliber. Before Bershadsky, no one had understood that the prerequisite for a Russo-Jewish historiography was the creation of an archival base. In his introduction to the first volume of the Russo-Jewish Archive (1882), Bershadsky writes:

paucity

of literature on the Jewish question—the The extreme negligible quantrty of nown legislative acts concerning the Jews for the 17th and l8th centuries, and their almost total lack for the 15th and l6th centuries—prompted me five years ago to undertake the laborious and slow task of collecting documents concerning Jews in various archives. The result of this work is a collection of more than two thoust documents bearing on the history of the juridicial and social position of Jews in Lithuania and southwestern Russia from the time of Witowt (1388), until the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom.

Historians of Russian Jewry 459 For decades, until his untimely death, Bershadsky devoted his energies to research in the field of Jewish history. especially the history of Jews in Belorussia and Lithuania. His first work appeared in [879-80, in the 7th and 8th volumes of The Jewish Library under the title “MateriaLr Toward a History of the Jews in Southwestern Russia and Lithuania." This work contained forty-three documents of major importance, characterizing the social position of the Jews in Lithuania and the Ukraine during the period of 1561-1758. In the two volumes of his Russo-Jewish Archive, which appeared in 1882, Bershadsky published 662 documents (both in the form of abstracts and in full) bearing on the history of the Lithuanian Jews from 1388 to 1569. The third volume, which also included materials on the history of Jews in Poland during the period of 13641569, was published in 1903 by the Jewish Historico-Ethnographic Commission of the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews in Russia. Bershadsky turned over his entire enormously valuable archive to this Commission. A portion of these documents was used by Bershadsky in writing his dissertation for a master's degree, which was published under the title, The Lithuanian Jews. A History of Their Juridical and Social Status in Lithuania from the Time of Witowt until the Lublin Union (1883 ). This work, attesting to the author’s vast erudition. cites a great number of hitherto unknown facts, which shed new light on the socio-economic and cultural history of the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom. Similar erudition and objectivity distinguished the historian's later works: “An Essay on the History of the Jewish Community of Vilno (Voskhod [“Sunn'se"], No. 7, 1881; Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7-8, 1886), the first study to utilize

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the wealth of non-Jewish sources in national and municipal archives; “In Exile," dealing with the expulsion of Jews from Lithuania in 1495 (Voskhod. Nos. 1-8, 1895); “Toward a History of the Jewish Community in Lublin" (Voskhod, No. 10, 1895); “Saul—the Jewish King of Poland; Yudicz Val of Brest-Litovsk, Successor to Stefan Batory—an Historical Legend” (Voskhod, Nos. 1-5, 1899); “An Old Device: The Charge of Infanticide Against Jews in Lithuania and Poland in the XVIth-XVIIIth Centuries" (Voskhod, Nos. 1, 9, 11, 12, and others, 1894). Noting Bershadsky's contribution to Jewish historical science, S. M. Dubnow wrote in 1891: “Mr. Bershadsky is indefatigable in his historical labors, and Jewish historiography may well count on his continued elforts in the same direction as its principal mainstay.” The literary-scholarly Russian-Jewish journals of the period—Yevreyskaya Biblioteka, which began publication in 1871 under the editorship of A. E. Landau (years of publication: l87l-80 and l90l-03), and Voskhod (18811906), with its literary-scientific supplement, Voskhod Books—willingly published historical materials. In the last issues of Voskhod, these materials account for almost one half of the contents. Yevreyskaya Biblioteka published Orshansky's articles, which later were included in the two volumes of his works mentioned earlier. The same journal carried Harkavi's critical notes on the Khazars (1880, No. 8) and an article by Morgulies, “Toward a History of the Origin of the Russian Jews," Vol. 1. Almost all RussianJewish historians contributed to Voskhod, which existed for twenty-five years. 8. Bershadsky published virtually all his works there; Yu. Hessen and P. Marek were also regular contributors. The same journal published the first essays of S. M. Dubnow about Hassidism, and, somewhat

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later, the cycle of his “Letters About Jewry, Old and New.” The young historiographer wrote a regular column for the joumal—“Historical Reports"—which offered a great number of hitherto unknown facts and materials on the history of Jews in Poland and Lithuania. In concluding the sketch of the first period of Jewish historiography, we must note the work of Ch. V. Gurland, which appeared outside of Russia in Przemysl and Cracow (1887-92). Published in five installments it consisted of chronicles (Tit Hayovon, Tzoyk Hoitim, and Zaar Bas Rabim), laments (kinos), penitent prayers (slikhos), accounts of the Jewish disasters of the Chmielnicki era, the Polish-Swedish war, and the Uman massacre (1768). They were published under the general title of Lekorot ha-gzerot al Israel by the publishing house of Beth oitsor ha-salrut, Przemysl-Cracow.

SECOND PERIOD ( 1892-1918) The establishment of the Jewish Historico-Ethnographic Commission of the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews’ was a turning point in the evolution of Russian-Jewish historiography. After ten years of its existence, this Commission was reorganized into an independent Historico-Ethnographic Society. Until 1892, Russian Jewry possessed no organization for coordinating and clarifying the objectives of the study of Jewish history in Russia. Everything published in this field before the early 1890's had been the work of individual historians. The first attempt to enlist active public in_' For more information about the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among the Jews see I. Trotsky's article, “Jewish Institutions of Social Welfare, Education, and Mutual Assistance” in

the present volume.

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terest in the cause of Russian-Jewish historiography was

made by S. M. Dubnow. In his article, “On Studying the History of Russian Jews" (Voskhod, April-September, 1891), he points out the importance of history for national self-knowledge. Analyzing the condition of Jewish historiography in western Europe, Dubnow asks: is there a Jewish historiography in Russia? Replying in the negative, Dubnow suggests ways and means toward the organization of research, and reviews the sources containing materials on the history of Jews in Russia and Poland. Dubnow concludes his long article (91 pages) by calling for the establishment of a Russian-Jewish historical society. This article was published in condensed form in Hebrew as a separate pamphlet in Odessa in 1892 under the title, Let Us Search and Study. It urges the Jewish intelligentsia to take an interest in the Jewish past in Russia and to collect materials of various kinds—chronicles (pinkoses) of communities and societies (khevros), appeals, letters, etc., in order to build a foundation for the future edifice of RussoJewish historiography. The pamphlet, written in Hebrew, elicited an even greater response than the original Russian version, published in Voskhod and later also issued as a pamphlet. It awakened wide strata of the Jewish intelligentsia to an interest in the past—in history as recorded in historical documents. S. M. Dubnow based his argument for the need to study history not so much on the interests of pure scholarships as on motives of a socio-national character. Russian Jewry, he felt, should turn to its past for solace and strength to cope with its tragic present. He writes: The past of the Jewish people possesses marvelous healing

for the sufiering Jewish soul . . . But apart from solace, flowers w much light, clarity and awareness is brought into our minds

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by the knowledge of our past! We no longer feel cut off and isolated. but know ourselves as the successors of many generations, which did not live merely to think and to sufier.

Dubnow's appeal soon brought concrete results. The Historico-Ethnographic Commission, formed in 1892 in Petersburg by a group of representatives of the Jewish intelligentsia, undertook a task of utmost importance; the purpose of its efforts was to extract and collect in one place documentary data hitherto scattered in dozens of volumes of historical studies in state and public archives for the pmding fifty years. The result of this work was the series Abstracts and Inscriptions [Regesty i Nadpist'j. Materials Toward a History of the Jews in Russia. The first volume, covering the period of 1760-80, appeared in 1899. The second volume, for 1671-1739, appeared in 1910, and the third, for 1740-99, was published in 1913. (The last two volumes were published by the successor of the Commission, the HistoricoEthnographic Society, founded in 1908). The editorial board of the Abstracts and Inscriptions included M. M. Vinaver, A. G. Gornfeld, L. A. Sev, M. G. Syrkin and, later, M. L. Wischnitzer. The three-volume work was a valuable contribution to the young RussoJewish historiography. It contained more than 2,450 abstracts and fragments of inscriptions. documents, and reports, which helped the student of the field to orient himself in regard to the extensive printed docrunentation. However, the editors of the Abstracts did not succeed in realizing their plan for the publication of a complete collection of documents, as proposed by S. Bershadsky, who had himself partially achieved this goal in the three volumes of his Russo-Jewish Archive.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 464 S. M. Dubnow's appeal furthered the creation by the Historico-Ethnographic Commission of a substantial archive, which was gradually augmented by the pinkoses of communities and societies (both in originals and in copies), individual documents, letters, and genealogical lists, as well as a wealth of folklore materials—folk tales and songs (some of which were published by S. Ginzburg and P. Marek in 1901, in the anthology Jewish Folk Songs in Russia [Voskhod, St. Petersbursl). The awakening of interest in history cannot, of course, be attributed to the influence of a single individual, however great this influence may have been. Nevertheless, S. M. Dubnow succwded in finding a convincing approach, and couching it in fervent words in harmony with the moods that prevailed at the time in the Jewish milieu. He was thus able to formulate a national program for the study of Jewish history on the basis of contemporary historical science. The rise of national movements is usually attended in the life of peoples by the development of historiography. We have seen this in Poland after the failure of the uprising of 1863, among the Czechs after the unsuccessful revolution of 1848, and among the Ukrainians in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An analogous process took place in the 1880's among the Russian Jews. The pogroms of the 1880‘s provoked a burst of national feelings; they not only failed to produce defeatist moods, but gave an impetus to the awakening of national energy. It is to this period that we must trace the roots of such social movements among the Russian Jews as Palestinophilism, territorialism, and socialism. It is almost symbolic that Voskhod, which served so long as the rostrum of the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia, first appeared in the pogrom year of 1881.

Historians of Russian Jewry 465 Living under the attacks of oflicial anti-Semitism, which denied the Jewish population equality and civil rights, the nationally awakened Russo-Jewish intelligentsia turned to the distant past for arguments in support of its historic dignity and its historic roots in Russian soil, drawing from this past the weapons for its difficult struggle. The principal landmarks in the evolution of RussoJewish historiography were the founding of the HistoricoEthnographic Society and the publication of its journal, The Jewish Past ("Yevreyskaya Starina"). The Society, headed by S. M. Dubnow, M. M. Vinaver, Mikhail Kulisher, S. Goldstein, M. L. Wischnitzer and others, stimulated and organized the collection of historical documents and materials, arranged public lectures, and in 1911 financed an expedition to collect folk materials, under the direction of S. Ansky. The museum of the Historico-Ethnographic Society contained, chiefly thanks to the work of Ansky's expedition, nearly one thousand religious and artistic exhibits, as well as more than one thousand photographs of historically important monuments. We have already mentioned the publication by the Society of Volumes 2 and 3 of the Abstracts and Inscriptions and the journal, Yevreyskaya Starina, issued every three months under the editorship of S. M. Dubnow. The first special journal devoted to Jewish history in Russia, it performed a role in the field of historic research similar to that of the Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschalt des Judentums in Germany and the Revue des études iuives in France. However, in distinction to these scholarly publications, Yevreyskaya Starina was imbued with a national and progressive secular spirit. It set itself the task of “critical revision of the past, not in order to repudiate it, but in order to understand it

466

Russian Jewry (I860-1917)

and analyze it with the aid of the dialectic method,” as Jacob Shatzky wrote in 1955.’ Preservation of the historical heritage seemed essential in view of the fear that the wave of gradual assimilation might destroy the living traces of the Jewish past. Ten volumes of Yevreyskaya Starina appeared during the period 1909-18. Volume 10, published in 1918, was still edited by S. M. Dubnow. The decade that witnessed the activity of the HistoricoEthnographic Society and its organ (1909-18), was generally marked by the flowering of Jewish historiography. In the course of those years there appeared a multitude of new' materials, studies, monographs, and memoirs, the importance of which far exceeds that of everything created by contemporary Jewish historical scholarship in western Europe. The bibliographical study of Abraham Duker, devoted to the twelve volumes of Yevreyskaya Starina (Hebrew Union College Annual, Vols. 8-9, 1931-32, pp. 525-603), provides data on the number of monographs, documents, reports, and reviews published in this journal. The author of the study counted 594 items in the fields of history, sociology, statistics, ethnography, folklore, linguistics, the history of literature and culture, archeology, art history, memoirs, etc., which appeared in the pages of the journal. Yevreyskaya Starina was a genuine treasure-trove of Jewish scholarship, containing materials of exceptional value. The number of its contributors was about 140. In its pages we encounter the names of the most eminent specialists in the history of Jews in Poland and Russia. All the works published in the journal bear the imprint _"a’r’éc‘ofshauky, “Problems of Jewish Historiography," Zulrunlt (March, 1955). p. 122.

Historian of Russian Jewry 467 of scientific objectivity. We find in them no trace of the apologetic tendencies characteristic of preceding years. The historians do not address themselves to Russian society with an attempt to justify the Jews or boast of Jewish achievements, but speak to their fellow Jews. They are concerned primarily with the internal cultural and economic processes of Jewish life. The external politico-legal problem which had only recently claimed all the attention of historians was now treated as merely one chapter in the history of Russian Jewry. The interminable recapitulation of discussions on the so-called “Jewish question," which had filled the pages of Yevreyskaya Biblioteka and the first issues of Voskhod, now gave way to attempts to reconstruct the past in its historio-cultural and socio-economic aspects. Not only the material had changed, but also the methods of historical research. Along with legal state documents, historians made wide use of pinkoses, appeals, letters, and memoirs. There was an increase in the level of scientific specialization: research was no longer in the hands of jurists and publicists, but was pursued by qualified and competent historians, economists, and other scholars who employed strict scientific methods. The national element appears ever more distinctly in their work, and it is insistently stressed by its fervent propagandist S. M. Dubnow, who already in 1891 had written, in the work cited earlier: We cannot and we must not condem ourselves to intellectual stagnation . . We must not deprive ourselves of that inner strength which only self-stu can give us. To think otherwise would mean a deliberate c aining of the people's spirit, a narrowing and obscuring of our national idea, which is essentially identical for us with national consciousness . . The general Jewish national idea is based primarily on historical consciousness. [Italics Dubnow’s.]

.

.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 468 In his programmatic speech at the meeting of the Historico-Ethnographic Society on February 21, 1910, Dubnow critically evaluated the achievements of western European historiography and reproached it for conservatism and limited capacity for synthesis. He said: Reform of historical methodology is closely linked with the national movement which has swept Jewry in recent times. The epoch of religious reforms in the West transformed the history of the people into a history of Judaism; the newest national movement must restore the history of the people in all its manifestations. We need only int out the interaction between the awakening of the nation spirit and the new understanding 0! Jewish history . . . We shall be the creators of both the new history and the new historiography.

In Yevreyskaya Starina we also find studies of social antagonisms in the Jewish milieu and the history of the Jewish labor movement. Among the serious synthesizing works of the period were Yu. I. Hessen's books, The Jews in Russia (1906) and A History of Jews in Russia (l9l4). These books, however, suffer from a certain one-sidedness, centering attention chiefly on the politico-legal history of Russian Jews. A major event in the field of Jewish historiography was the appearance of the collective work, A History of the Jewish People ( 1914). Only the first volume of this work was published, bringing the history of the Jews in what was then Poland to 1795. It contributors included the leading Jewish and non-Jewish scholars. specialists in various branches of history. Unfortunately, the First World War brought the work to a halt. The only published volume is still a most valuable aid in the study of the history of Polish Jews until the end of eighteenth century. A great deal of material on the cultural and social his-

Historians of Russian Jewry

469

tory of the Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

is provided by the four anthologies issued under the title of Perezhitoye (the full title was Perezhitoye [“Our Experience"], a Collection 0! Papers on the Social and Cultural History of the Jews in Russia). These appeared in 1908, 1910, 1911, and 1913. They were edited by S. M. Ginzburg, with the active assistance of S. A. Ansky, A. I. Braudo, N. P. Botvinnik, Yu. Hessen, S. L. Kamenetsky, P. S. Marek and S. L. Tsinberg. In the introduction to the first volume, the editors stress the socio-national tendencies of the project, declaring that “while this task and this objective [the collection of materials bearing on the internal all the more life of Jewry] were always timely, they are appropriate today, when Jewish society is increasingly becoming aware of the need for self-study and cultural selfevaluation." The introduction goes on to say that time destroys not only the material monuments of the past, but also the living substance of history, and the disappearance of the old Jewish way of life renders it imperative to record and preserve what is still retained of the recent past in the memory of the people. The point at issue, however. is not the romanticizing and idealizing of the past, and a critical approach to the material must always be maintained in recording the values of the national past which are threatened with oblivion. The four volumes of Perezhitoye contain more than fifty extensive monographs and memoirs, devoted to the social and cultural life of the Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as a number of documents, historical essays, and reviews related to this period. Of great interest among these are the archival documents pertaining to the time of Alexander I and to Jewish home ownership in Vilno in the 1830's. The rich collection of documentary

. ..

470

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

materials and memoirs of persons who played a prominent role in Jewish social life in the nineteenth century is also extremely valuable. During the same period, numerous materials devoted to the labor movement were also published both in Russia and abroad by the Central Committees of the Socialist Bund and of the “Bund Abroad.” In 1906 the MateriaLs Toward a History 0] the Jewish Labor Movement in Russia appeared in St. Petersburg. Somewhat earlier, in 1900, the History of the Jewish Labor Movement in Russia and Poland was published in Yiddish in Geneva. Other documentary publications were also issued at the initiative of the Committee of the Bund Abroad. These publications, reflecting the general situation of the Jewish population, included The Secret Memorandum of the Governor of Vilno Concerning the Status of the Jews in Russia (Geneva, 1904), The Kishinev Massacre, Materials and Documents (London, 1903), and others. Essays on history appeared not only in Yevreyskaya Starim and Perezhitoye, but also in the Petersburg journal Budushchnost (“The Future," 1899-1904), edited by S. Gruzenberg, and the literary-scientific annual supplement to this journal (the three volumes that appeared were issued in 1900, 1901, and 1903). A wealth of material on the history of Jews in Russia and Poland is contained in the sixteen volumes of the Jewish Encyclopedia published in Petersburg in 1909-14 under the editorship of Dr. L. Katsenelson and Baron D. H. Ginzburg. Contributors to this Encyclopedia included a number of historians, both Jewish and non-Jewish. The Jewish Encyclopedia is still of great value today as an important reference source on the history of eastern European Jewry.

471 of Russian Jewry A characteristic feature of the period under review was the appearance of a number of new historical works in Hebrew. The leading historian writing in this language was Saul-Pinchos Rabinovich (1845-1910), who withdrew from active participation in the Palestinophile movement in the early 90's in order to devote his energies to the study of the historic past. His first work, Moytsey-Goylo (1894), was devoted to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal. Later works included his monographs, Yoisef ish Rusgeym (1902), Yam-tov Lipman Zunz (1896), and Zchan'a Frenkel (1898). Rabinovich translated and expanded the eight-volume history of the Jewish people by Graetz (1890-99). Especially extensive are his additions to the chapters on the Jews in old Poland, in which the translator becomes an independent scholar (we may note that A. Harkavi also provided numerous notes and additions to the 7th volume). S. Rabinovich also devoted a great deal of energy to an ambitious work on the history of Jews in Russia under the Romanov dynasty; this work was never published, and the manuscript has been lost. Some of his writing was done in Russian; in 1911 The Jewish Past published his “Traces of Free-Thinking in Polish Rabbinism in the 16th Century.” In 1899, Benzion Katz published his Toward a History of the Jews in Russian Poland and Lithuania. It was valuable chiefly from the point of view of methodology, since the author employed materials from Shaalot u Tshuvot, stimulating other scholars to work in this direction. In 1918, M. M. Bieber published a monograph in Berdichev, dealing with Shloyme Lurie (Ra-shal) and other prominent leaders of the city of Ostrog. The monograph contains some historical data on the Jewish community of this city. Historians

Russian Jewry (18604917) 472 We also find historical works of considerable value in Hebrew publications: Measef, edited by L. Rabinovich (St. Petersburg, 1903), the historical-literary collections Selerha-Shono (four issues, Warsaw, 1900-1903; editor, Nahum Sokolow), and the magazine Hashiloach (1896-1925), edited at first by Ahad-Haam, and later by Ch. N. Bialik and I. Klausner. In summing up, it may be said that, in the relatively short period from 1860 until the Revolution of 1917, Russo-Jewish historiography, represented by a bevy of eminent Jewish scholars, succeeded in building a solid scientific edifice and achieving a number of monumental works. These works hold an important place in the treasury of historic knowledge concerning the past of the large and richly creative Jewish community of Russia.

Reminiscence: of a jewisb Historian by Mark Wischnitzer MY DECISION TO DO RESEARCH IN JEWISH HISTORY DATES

from the time of my arrival in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1907. When Still in high school, Ihad avidly read Graetz, Ludwig Geiger, and L. Herzfield. And despite the fact that my Studies at Vienna University were taken up with the general history of the Middle Ages and the modern period. and that my major field at Berlin University was Russian history, Ihad never given up my interest in Jewish history and literature. Upon my arrival in St. Petersburg, Iwent to see Simon Dubnow, who had Shortly before moved to the capital. I was familiar with his books and had read his articles in Voskhod (“Sunrise"). His volume of Jewish history, based on the German works of Graetz and Marcus Brann, was widely read by the younger generation. I had studied it closely during my “Talmudic” year (1900-01) in Rovno, my home town, together with several other young men. We regarded Dubnow as our teacher. 473

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 474 And so there Iwas, visiting with Dubnow, sitting in his modest apartment on Vasilievsky Island. Dubnow listened to me as Ioutlined my plans for work in St. Petersburg. But he had something else in mind for me. “Go back to your sources,” he urged me. “We need people for Jewish historical research. You will find the warmest welcome in our group.” He was referring to the Historico-Ethnographic Society which was in process of formation and to his pet project, Yevreyskaya Starina (“The Jewish Past"), a pcriodical to be devoted to Jewish history. Jewish historical research, which in eastern Europe dates from the 1860's, was making rapid strides in Poland and in Russia. In method and subject matter it difiered from the Wissenschaft des Judentums as pursued in western Europe. Here there was a Stronger feeling of closeness to the life of the people. Community records, Statutes of craft guilds (tailors, cobblers, hatters, etc.) offered a wealth of material to students. Municipal archives yielded data on the history of Jewish merchants. Among the most significant discoveries were the records of the Council of Jewish Communities in Lithuania for the period of 1623-1764. The student of Jewish history in Eastern Europe found ample incentives and rewards in his work of exploring the economic and social aspects of the Jewish past. Dubnow was the initiator and organizer of this work. He urged his associates to confine themselves to historical research, leaving aside problems of philosophy, literature, and philology. The immediate task, he felt, was to collect materials, rescuing them from oblivion and destruction. In a pamphlet. published in Russian and, in somewhat abridged form, in Hebrew, Dubnow made an appeal to “men of good will, Jews and non-Jews.” to help set up a society for Jewish historical research.

Reminiscences of a Jewish Historian 475 In the 1890's, a group of Jewish lawyers and writers in St. Petersburg began to meet on Sundays to discuss problems, mostly of a legal nature, concerning the position of the Jews. The most prominent among them were Maxim Vinaver, Henri Sliozberg and A. Ya. Passover. Other members of the group were David Levin, Mikhail Kulisher, Emanuil Blank, and Mikhail Mysh, author of a compilation of Russian laws bearing on Jews. Many years later, Vinaver recalled one of these meetings, held in November, 1891. At this meeting, Vassily Berman drew from his pocket a copy of Dubnow's pamphlet, spoke about it, and outlined a plan for the organization of a Jewish historical society. The plan was enthusiastically acclaimed. At subsequent meetings a program was drawn up, providing for the establishment of eleven sections, or committees. These included a committee on history, one on Jewish law, another on emigration, and so on. The committee on history, under the chairmanship of Vinaver, was to head and coordinate the entire project. It functioned as an affiliate of the Society for the Dissemination of Education Among Jews—the only Jewish cultural organization permitted by the Russian govenunent. The committee on history examined and sifted hundreds of records, abstracting significant data. This material was then compiled chronologically and published under the title of Regesty i Nadpisi (“Abstracts and Inscriptions"). The first volume of Regem I“ Nadpisi appeared in 1899; two more followed a 1910 and 1913. The committee on history assembled a valuable library of materials and documents, including the collection of Jewish archives turned over to it by the noted Russian historian Sergey A. Bershadsky and the previously mentioned records of the Council of Jewish Communities in Lithuania.

476

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

Papers on various topics were read at the meetings of the committee. Among the speakers were the eminent scholar A. Y. Harkavi, L. I. Katsenelson (Buki-ben-Iogli), Mikhail Kulisher and Yuly Brutskus. In November, 1908, an independent Jewish HistoricoEthnographic Society could at last be legally organized. It took over the archives and publications of the committee on history. In 1908, the Society had 350 members in St. Petersburg and other cities. Its chairman was M. Vinaver, a deputy of the First State Duma and a leading figure in the life of Russian Jewry. This striking and brilliant man remains vivid in my memory to this day. S. Dubnow was first vice-chairman and M. Kulisher, dean of our group, was second vice-chairman. Kulisher's studies in ethnography and anthropology were well known in Russia and abroad. His papers at the meetings of the Society dealt with such topics as “Jews in the Ukraine in the 17th Century," “The Attitude of the Old Muscovite Government Toward the Jewish Question in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” and “Legislation under the Tsarist Regime." The archivist of our society was Salvian Goldstein, an unassuming, modest man who, despite his being a Jew, was a member of the faculty of the Archaeological Institute. Another member of the Society was Alexander I. Braudo, chief librarian of the Rossica division of the Public Library at St. Petersburg. Owing to his wide connections, he was a mine of infomation on cunent political events. Our “ethnographer” was Lev Stcmberg, a strikingly capable man who had made use of his years as a political prisoner on the penal island of Sakhalin by studying the native languages. On his release, he became associated With the Imperial Academy of Sciences. When Vinaver and

477 Reminiscences of a Jewish Historian Dubnow left St. Petersburg, Stemberg became the chairman of the Historico-Ethnographic Society. Imust also mention Leopold Sev, a man of refined taste, a lover of literature and the arts. He was one of the editors of Regesty iNadpisi. Later, when we were all living abroad, he collaborated with my wife, Rachel Wischnitzer. in organizing the publication of the art magazines Rimon and Milgrorn. Another member of the Society was Yuly Hessen, a colleague of mine on the editorial board of the Yevreyskaya Entsiklopedia (“Jewish Encyclopedia") and author of a number of studies on the history of the Jews in Russia. Also active in the Society were Arkady Gornfeld, a literary critic, Mikhail Syrkin, who worked on the Regesty, and Moisey Trivus, an able journalist. Trivus contributed to the journal Voskhod under the pen name of Shmee. Iwas the youngest member of the Society's publication committee, and it is with the warmest afiection that Ithink of my older colleagues, particularly S. M. Dubnow. Dubnow was the editor of the ten volumes of the quarterly, Yevreyskaya Starina. This publication was a monumental contribution to the Study of Russian Jewry, but it was not the achievement of Russian Jews alone. Dubnow had enlisted the collaboration of Moses Schorr and Meyer Balaban of Galicia and of Ignaz Shiper of Warsaw. Thus it was truly the product of team work, an organizational masterpiece, as Dubnow had conceived of it from the out-

set.1 '[Ediror's Note: The importance of Yevreyskaya Starina for Jewish historical research was realized by Abraham G. Duker, who undertook to compile a bibliography of the periodical. See A. G. Duker, "Evreiskaia Starina. A Bibliography of the Russian-Jewish Historical Periodical." Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. VIIIrx (1931-32), pp. 525-601. Dr. Wischnitzer’s articles are listed under his full name and appear also under the initials, M.W.] (Ed)

Biographical Notes on the

Authors

ALDANOV, MARK (1886-1957). Well-known novelist and essayist. His historical novels have been translated into 24 languages; a number of them appeared in English translations. ARONSON, GREGOR. Journalist and author. Contributor to Yiddish and Russian periodicals. Books: Jews in Soviet Russia (1949), The Russian-Jewish Intelligentsia (1962), Russia on the Eve of the Revolution (1962), and others.

BEN-ZVI, IZCHAK. Late President of the State of Israel. DIJUR, lLJA M. Author, lecturer. Director of Research at HIAS. Author of books and articles on Jewish emigration.

FRUMKIN, JACOB C. Attorney in St. Petersburg (190417). Member of the Political Bureau attached to Jewish representatives on the Fourth State Duma (1912-1917). Connected with the Society for Promotion of Artisan and Agricultural Labor (ORT) since 1906; now Director of World ORT Union, New York Office. Chairman, Union of Russian Jews, Inc., New York. 478

Biographical Notes on the Authors 479 GOLDENWEISER, ALEXIS. Attorney and instructor in law in Kiev. Since 1921, expert in Russian law in Berlin and New York. Books: Evolution of Moral Principles in Law (1920), In Defense 0! the Law. Essays and Speeches (1952), Impressions of a Russian Lawyer in America (1954). President, Association of Russian Lawyers in New York.

KLAUSNER, JOSEPH (I.L.). Historian, author, editor. Professor of Jewish History in Berlin and in Jerusalem. Numerous historical works.

KUCHEROV, SAMUEL. Attorney in Kiev and Berlin. Stafl member, Library of Congress (1948-64). Author of Courts, Lawyers and Trials Under the Last Three Tsars (1953) and numerous articles in law reviews. MARK, JUDEL. Specialist in Jewish philology and literature. Editor Yiddishe Shprach (YIVO), Groiser Werterbuch fun der Yiddisher Shprach. Chief, School Section, Jewish Education Committee, New York. MENES, ABRAHAM. Historian and economist. Coeditor, Zukunft and Jewish Encyclopedia. Author of books on Jewish spiritual life in eastern Europe.

OSHEROVICH, MENDEL (1888-1965). Noted Yiddish journalist and author of books on Jewish history and historical fiction. For fifty years on the editorial stafi of the Jewish Daily Forward. SWET, GERSHON. Journalist. Editor, Musica Hebraica (Jemsalem). Correspondent and contributor to Russian, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew periodicals.

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) 480 TROTSKY, ILYA. Journalist. Foreign correspondent of largest Russian newspaper (1912-17). Worked for ORT in Europe and South America. Contributor to Yiddish and Russian newspapers in New York and Buenos Aires.

TRUNK, ISAIAH. Historian, author of many works on Jewish history, including A History of the City of Flock, The Lodz Ghetto. a textbook on Jewish history, and others. Associated with the YIVO Documentary Project on the Holocaust. WISCHNITZER, MARK (1882-1955). Historian. Secretary-General and later President, Hilfsverein der Deutschen Judcn, Berlin (1921-38). Professor, Yeshiva University, New York. Books: To Dwell in Freedom: History of Jewish Emigration (1948), A History of Jewish Crafts and Guilds (1965, posthumous publication).

WISCHNITZER, RACHEL. Art historian, Professor of Fine Arts, Yeshiva University, New York. Books: Synagogue Architecture in the United States (1955), Architecture of the European Synagogue (1964), and others.

Index A

Asch. Sholem, 352, 353, 359,

Abramovic. Bina, 449 Abramovitch, It... 162,297, 448 Abramovitch, S. M. (see Mendele Moycher Sforim)

Abramson, A. G.. 52 Abros, Pizi, 307, 312 Achi-Meir, Abu. 206 Achron, Joseph, 316, 319 Adler, Jacob, 449 Adler, Sara, 449 Ahad-Hum (O. Ginzberg), 154, 186-188. 193. 206. 372-376, 472 Aikhenwald, Yuly, 290 Aiunshtadt-Yudin, 1.1., 296 Aizman. David, 276, 284 Aleynikov, M. S.. 54, 81 Aleynikov, Nikolay, 436, 437 Alterman, Natan, 206 Ansky, S. (Semyon Rapoport), I67, 267, 278, 296, 326, 357, 465, 469 Antokolski, Mark, 322-324. 329 Ann-Aronovich, Zalman, 205 Aronchik, 15 Aronson, Naum L, 327

361, 444, 447 Ashkenazi, Simon, 12, 176. 177, 273 Asknasy, Isaac L, 325 Auer, Leopold. 316 Avrom (of Kalissk), 174 Axelrod, P. B.. 296 Azaz. 206 Azov, V. A. (Ashkenazi). 297

Baal-Machshoves, 348, 352, 362 Baal Shem-Tov, 394 Babin and Vronsky, 320 Badanes, Gershon, 277 Bakhman, Yakov, 307, 312 Bakst, Leon S., 328 Balaban, Meyer, 477 Balakhovsky, 12 Barenboim, A., 319 Barere, Simon, 316 Bar-Yehuda, 205 Bar-zillai. 1., 205

481

482 Batursky (B. S. Zetlin), 298

Beilinson. M., 334 Belarsky, Sidor. 320

Beldzer, Nisan, 307-309 Belkovsky, Prof., 191 Ben-Adir (A. Rosin), 163, 354 Ben Ami (M. Rabinovich), 17, 277 Benenson, G. A., 137 Ben-Gurion. David. 199, 205 207, 217. 426 Ben-Hets (Morris Vinchevsky), 335, 368 Ben-Yehuda. L., 370, 371 Ben-Zion, S., 380 Ben-Zvi. lzchak, 165, 199, 205, 207 Berdichevsky, M. 1., 356. 375, 376 Beregovsky, M., 313, 314, 320 Bergelson. David, 361 Berkovich, 1. Y., 360 Berlin, Naftali Zvi Yehuda, 388. 389 Berlin, Pavel, 273 Berrnan. L., 260. 458 Bennan, Vassily. 475 Bemfeld, S.. 372 Bernshtein-Kogan, 191 Bernshtein. N., 256 Bershadsky, 1., 379 Bershadsky, Sergey A., 455-460, 463, 475 Beylin, Arkady, 141 Beylinson, M., 206 Bezalel-Shulsinger, 307 Bialik. Chaim Nachman. 206 327, 340. 356, 376-378, 396, 420. 472 Bieber, M. M., 471 Bikerman, Y. M., 69, 104. 133. 134, 212, 272 Birnbaum, Nathan, 355 Blank, Emanuil, 475

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) Blank, Leon. 449 Blank, R. M., 299

Blazer. Isaac. 399. 400 Blinder. 315

Bliokh,1van, 137 Blondes. David, 244 Blumenthal, Nisan. 307, 309 Bogdanov. B. 0., 297 Bogrov, Grigory. 17, 259, 276 Bomash, M. B., 53. 80 Borochov, Bet, 165. 206. 210-218, 362 Borovsky, Alexander, 316 Botvinnik, N. P., 469 Bragin-Braginsky, 317 Brainin, 318 Bramson, Leonty, 32, 36. 40. 47, 48, 55. 83, 161, 262, 297, 298, 424, 430 Brandt, B. F., 32. 190 Brann. Marcus, 473 Bratslaver, Nachman, 350 Braudes. R. A., 368 Braudo, A. J., 32, 36, 40. 55. 56. 68, 69, 84, I61, 267, 469. 476 Braudo, E., 319 Brenner, Ch., 379 Brian, Maria, 317 Brodsky, Izrail, 12. 128 Brodsky, Lazar, 12, 128 Brodsky. Lev, 12, 128 Bronstein, L. D. (Leon Trotsky). 248 Bronstein, P. A. (Garvi), 298 Broyde. Simkha-Zisel. 401, 402 Bruk, G. Ya.. 47, 48, 201 Brun, Clara. 317 Brutskus, Boris D., 299 Brutskus, Yuly, 32, 262, 264. 476 Buchmil, loshua, I89. 190 Bunakov (l. 1. Fundaminsky).

297

483

Index C Cahan, Abraham, 437, 445, 446 Cahan, Y. L., 357 Cantor, I. 1..., 344 Cantor, M. L, 233 Carliner, Baruch, 307 Chagall, Marc, 328. 329 Chaliapin, Feodor, 450 Chemerinsky, Chaim (Reb Mordchele), 357 Chemovits, Ch. ($108). 187 Chernyavsky, 314 Chertok, 199 Chervonenkis, M., 47

Chkheidze. 75

Chkhenkeli, 78-80 Chlenov, E., Dr.. 192, 193 Chorny. Sasha (Alexander Glikberx). 287 Chudnover-Guzman, Alter, 314 Cohn, Tobias, 323 D Dallin, D. Yu. (Levin), 298, 448 Dan (Gurvich), F., 297, 298 Datnovsky, 81 Davydov, A., 317 Davydova, Maria, 317 de Hirsch, Maurice, 429, 431 Delevsky. Yu., 296 Dembo, A., 141 de Pachmann, Vladimir, 316 Deutsh. L. G., 296 Dick, Isaac Meyer, 333, 334 Dineson, Yankev. 341 Disenchik, Arye, 206 Dizengof, Meir, 185 Dobkin, llya, 206 Dobry, A. Yu., 137 Dolitsky, M. M., 371

Drabkin, S. 1., (Gusev), 297 Dridzo, S. A. (A. Lozovsky). 297, 298 Druker, Yosl, 314 Dubinsky, David, 441 Dubnow, S. M., 37, 54. 55. 120, 150, 156, 158, 161, 262. 267269, 345, 410, 420, 460. 462468, 473-477 Duker, Abraham, 466 Dunayevsky, Isaak, 319 Dymov. Osip (Osip Perelman), 276. 284 Dzyubinsky, 75

E

Edelstadt, David, 437 Efros, Nikolay, 273 Eiger, 60. 61 Eigas. 1., 319 Eikhenbaum, Boris, 290 Einhorn, Dovid, 358, 445 Eitington, Nadia, 320 Eliahu (Vilno Gaon), 174 Elman, Mischa, 316 Engel, Yuly D., 273. 319 Epstein, 137 Epstein, Z... 372 Erlich, H. M., 297 Eshkol, Levi (Shkolnik), 200, 205 F Fainberg, D. F., 430 Fainstein. L., 455 Farbshtein, David, 191 Feierberg, M. 2., 375 Feigenbaum, 437, 451 Fichman, Yankif, 356, 379 Fikhtenholtz., Misha, 317

484

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

Fin, S. T., 454. 455 Finkel, Note-Hiish, 400-406 Fischman, Kari, 129 Fishman, D., 372 Fogelman, L., 445 Foresta. Yevgenia, 317 Frank. Semyon L, 291. 292 Frankel, Haim, 131 Frankel, Yakov, 131 Frenkel, Dr.. 48 Friedenstein, Sh., 455 Friedman, N. M., 23 n, 52-54, 57, 71, 83,168 Frishman, David, 371 Frug, Semyon, 181, 206, 280282, 342-344 Frumkin, J., 161 Fundaminsky, I.l. (Bunakov), 297

Ginzburg, D. H., 470 Gimburg. Evzel, 12, 136. 416. 417 Ginzburg, Horace, 13. 33. 34. 39, 42, 139, 141, 236, 323. 324, 417, 430 Ginzburg, Ilya, 324 Ginzburg, M. A., 365 Ginzburg, S., 262, 269, 353.

G

Galperin. A. Ya.. 298 Garvi (P. A. Bronstein). 298 Geiger, Ludwig, 473 Gelfman, Gessya, 296 Gendelman, Ya.. 297 Georgievsky-Shteinberg, Arnold, 317 Gerovich, Eliaer, 307, 311 Gershanovich. 64, 65. 247 Gershenzon, Mikhail, 289, 290 Gershon ben Gershon (Grigory Lifshits). 277 Gershun, B. L., 229 Gershuni, Grigory, 296 Gilels, Lisa, 317 Ginsburg. B. A., 296 Ginsburg. Isser, 437, 445 Ginsberg, O. 1. (Ahad-Hiram). 154. 186-188, 193, 206, 372376, 472 Ginzburg, Alexander, 62

357. 464. 469 Glanz. L.. 312

Gladstein, Jacob, 445 Glazberg, N. B., 140 Glikberg, Alexander (Sasha Chomy)r 287 Glikson, M., 206 Gnain. Mikhail, 311, 319 Gnesin, U. N., 380 Godovsky, Leopold, 316 Goldberg, 1. L., 196, 198 Goldberg, Szymon, 320 Goldendakh, D. B. (Ryannov), 296-298 Goldenweiser, Alexander S., 224. 238-242 Goldfaden. Abraham, 312, 313. 334, 337 Goldman, M. 1. (Mark Liber). 156 n. 298 Goldstein, Busya, 317 Goldstein, M., 233, 238 Goldstein S.. 456, 476 Gordin, Jacob, 437 Gordon, A. D., 184, 199-201 Gordon, Eliezer, 399 Gordon, Michl. 335. 336 Gordon. Yehuda-Leib (Lev Osipovich), 334, 336. 365368, 417 Gorelick, Sh., 356 Gornfeld, A., 288. 289, 463. 477 Gorodetsky, S., 174 Gots, Abram R., 297

485

Index Gots, Mikhail, 296 Graetz. 471, 473 anman, Harry, 315 Gran, M. M., 426, 427 Graudan, Hansi and Nikolai, 320 Greenberg, Hayim, 445 Greenberg, Yulia, 300-302 Grilliches, Avenir, 324 Griliiches, Sergei Avraam, 324 Grin, D. (Ben-Gurion). 199, 205, 207, 217, 426 Grinbaum, Itzchak, 159, 201-203 Grinevich. M. G. (Kogan), 296, 298 Grossman, Meir, 206 Grunbaum. Isak, 54 Gruzenberg, Oskar 0., 31, 54,

55. 65. 66, 82, 83, 220, 222, 224, 235, 242-252. 299 Gnrzenberg. S., 264, 470 Guest, Maurice. 450 Gurevich. Chaim-Dov, 353 Gurland, Ch. V., 461 Gurvich, F. I. (Dan), 296 Gusev (S. l. Drabkin), 297 Guzikov, Mikhail, 301 H

Hakogen, Adam (A. B. Lebenzon). 365 Hakogen, Mordechai ben Hilel, 191 Hakogen. Shmuel Groynem. I74 Hakoton, Yeruchom, 307. 309 Harkavi, A. (and Harkavy), 417, 437, 458, 460, 471, 476 Heifetz, Jascha, 315, 316 Hershman, Mordekai, 312 Hertz, I., 403

Hem-stein, U.. 166 Herzenstein, I. G., 417 Herzfeld, L., 473 Herzl, Theodor, 154, 164 n, 181-199, 202, 204 Hasen, I. V., 51. 52, 68, 84, 271, 299 Hessen, Yu., 460. 468. 469. 477 Hillman. Sidney, 440 Hillquit, Morris, 437, 452 Hofman. B. (Zivyon), 445 Horowitz, Vladimir, 316 Hourwich, Itzchok-Isaac, 437 Hurok, Sol, 450 Humitz, Yoisef-Yuri, 406, 407

Idelson, A., 206, 264, 311 Imber, N. G., 371 Inber, Sh. 1., 359 lokhelman, Dr.. 164 n Iollos, G. B., 48, 49, 166, 271, 272 Israel (of Plotsk), 174 ltzchak, Aaron ben, 173 Ivanovich, Stephan (Semyon Portugies), 274 lzgoyev (Landa). Alexander, 272 J Jabotinsky, V., 159, 192, 201-203, 206, 264 Jeshurin, I., 452 Joachim, Joseph, 316 K

Kagan, Kh., I41 Kahn, Alexander, 451

486

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

Kamenetsky, S. L., 469 Kamenev, Yu. (L. B. Rosenfeld), 297 Kaminka, B. A., 136 Kamionsky, Oscar, 317 Kamkov, B. (Kata), 298 Kantor, L. 0.. 372 Karmon, Mordekhai, 205 Kaspe, Ab., 437 Katsenelenbogen, Sh. 1., 336 Katsenelson, Nisan (also Katunelson). 48, 196, 201 Katsovich, Israel-Iser, 393 Katz, Benzion, 195, 355, 471 Katz, Mane, 329 Katzenelson, L, 372, 379, 470, 475 Kefali (M. S. Kamennakher), 298 Kerensky, A. F., 48 n, 69, 70, 1 19 n, 297 Kessier, David, 449 Khazanovich, 1., I84 Kheifets, I. M., 272 Khesin, P., 137 Khin, Rachel, 278 Kholodenko. Aron-Moshe, 314 Klausner, I., 472 Kletzkin. B., 356 Klyachko, Lev (L. Lvov), 273 Kobrin, Leon, 437 Kogan, M. G. (Grinevich). 296. 298 Kogan, Naum (N. NaumOV). 277 Kogan, Yakov, 379 Kogan, Zvi Hirsh, I74 Koralnik. Abraham, 445 Korbin, Leon, 444 Korolenko, Vladimir, 209 Kosovsky, V., 162 Koussevitsky. Serge. 320 Kovalevsky. M. M., 40 Kovner, 36

Krantz, Philip, 437 Krausgar, Alexander, 455 Krein, Alexander, 319 Kreitzer. Leonid, 316 Kremer, A., 296 Kremer, Isa, 320 Kreynin. M. N., 54 Krillichevsky, A. V., 72, 73 Ktol, Khonon, 126 Krongold, 137 Kugel. Alexander. 272 Kugel. Iona, 272 Kuk, Messed, 173 Kulisher, M., 32, I60, 226, 257, 259. 272. 465, 475, 476 Kupernik, L. A., 238 Kuskova, E. M., 59, 60 Kvartin, Zanvil, 312

L Landau, Adolf E... 190, 261. 262, 276, 460 Landau, G. A., 36,81,161, 261 Landau, Yekhezkl, 16 Landowska. Wanda, 316 Latin, Yu. (M. Lurye), 297 Latsky-Banoldi, V., 164 Lebenzon, A. B., (Adam Hakogen), 365 Lebenzon, Mikhail, 365 Leib, Mane, 446 Leivick, H., 446 Leontiev-Moiaseiefl. M., 451 Lerner, 1., 344

Lerner, Nikolay. 290 Lesin, Abraham, 437, 445 Lestchinsky, A., 445 Lestchinsky, J., 164, 354 Letichevsky. 318 Lev, L. A., 199 Levanda, Lev, 13, 14, 179, 254, 276

487

Index Levanda, V. 0., 457 Levenstein. Yoel-Dovid, 308 Levin, David, 475 Levin, Isaak, 273 Levin, M. I. (Mikhail Mishelet), 320 Levin, Shmarya, 37, 48, 49, 192, 201 Levinsky, E. L, 372 Levinson, Itzchok-Ber, 339. 364 Levitan, Isaac, 324-326 Levontin, Zalman-David, 181 Levy, Israel, 344 Lhevinne, Joseph, 316 Liber, Mark (M. I. Goldman), 156 n, 297, 298 Liberman, Alexander, 320 Liberman, Aron, 258, 296 Liberman, Chaim, 445 Libennan-Fteeman, A., 368 Libin, Z... 437. 439, 444 Liesin, A., 358 Lifshits. Grigory (Gershon ben Gershon), 277 Lifshits, Yehoshua, 334 Lilienblum, M. L, 179, 185, 189, 260, 367, 368 Linetsky, I. Y., 334, 341, 344 Linovsky, N. (N. Pr'uzansky). 278 Liptsin, Kenny, 449 Litvakov, M., 354 Litvin A., 357 Litvinov, Maxim (M. M. Vallakh), 297 L010 (Leonid Munshtcin), 287 London. Meyer, 443 Lopukhin, A. A., 44, 56 Luzovsky, A. (S. A. him), 297, 298 Ludwig, Emil, 16 Lurie, Isar, 126 Lurie, Shloyme (Ra-shal), 471 Lruie, Yoisef, 352, 353

Lurye, M. (Yu. Latin). 297 Lurye, Saul, 190 Luz, Kadish, 205 Lvov, L (Lev Klyachko), 273 Lvovich, David, 424 Lyakhovetsky. I. M. (Maysky),

298

Lyov, Leo, 320

M Magnus (Muzikantsky), 315 Maimon, Moses 1... 325 Maimon, Solomon, 394 Malkin. Beata, 315. 318 Maltser, L., 218 Mandelberg, V. B., 52 Mandelshtam, Max, 164 n, 191, 192, 199, 299 Mane, M. G., 371 Mapu. Avrom. 365-367 Marek, P., 357, 460, 464, 469 Margolin, Arnold, 164, 199 Margolin, David, 139 Martov, Yuly, 210, 296, 297 Marx, Karl, 295 Mase, Jacob, 326 Medem, Vladimir, 158, 162 Medvedev, 317, 318 Medvedovsky, 81, 82 ' Meir, Golda, 205 Meir, Reb, the Miracle-Maker,

175

Meirovich, Menashe, 180 Mekler. Sh., 448 Menachem-Mendel, 173, 174, 185 Mendel (or Vitebsk), 174 Mendelnohn, 136, 138 Mendelssohn, Moses, 16, 254, 332 Merison, J., 437 Metner, Nikolay, 316

488

Russian Jewry (1860-1917)

Meychik, Anna, 317

Naumberg. 313 Naumov, N. (Naum Kogan). 277 Naydich, Isaak. 247 Nemanov, Lev, 274 Niger, Shmuel, 354, 356. 359, 360, 362, 447 Nikitin, V. 1. (Grinbaum), 277 Nisselovich, L. N., 52, 53, 168 Nomberg. D. 0., 380 Nomberg. H. D., 352, 360. 361 Nordau, Max, 204 Notovich, Osip, 272 Novakovsky, David, 310, 31l Novakovsky, Ya. S.. 298. 311

Mikhailov-Zilberstein. 317 Miller, Louis, 437 Milner. Mikhail, 319 Milstein. Nathan, 316 Milyukov, P. N., 40, 68, 69, 95, 233 Minkovsky. Pinkhas. 307, 311 Minor, 0. S., 296 Minsky, N. (Nikolay Vilenkin), 259, 260, 276. 280, 281. 283 Minsky, Sender, 307 Mogilever, S.. 184 Mogulescu, Sigmund, 449 Moiseewich, Benno, 316 Montefiore, Moses, 180 Morgulies. 460 Mordchele. Reb (Chaim Chemerinsky). 353. 357 Moscowitz, Morris, 449 Moshe, Yoel ben, 174 Motzkin, Leo, 191-193, 201. 206, 207 Mukdoini, A., 447 Muni, Paul (Weisenfreund). 449 Munshtcin, Leonid (L010). 287 Mussorgsky, 312 Myakotin, V., 41 Mysh, Mikhail, 475 N

Nabokov, V. D., 30, 44, 90 Nachman (of Bratslav), 174 Nadson, Semyon, 280, 281. 283 Nakhamkes, Yu. M. (Steklov),

296 Namir-Nemitovsky, Mordecai, 205 Natanson, Mark, 295, 298 Nathanson, Stanislaus, 37, 60, 61

O Oistrakh, David. 315. 316 Onoykhi, 1., 356 Opatoshu. Joseph. 444 Orshansky, Ilya, I45, 257. 456. 457, 460 Osipovich, Naum, 278 Ostrogorsky, M. Ya.. 48, 49

P

Paperno, 367 Passover, Alexander Ya.. 33 n. 224-228, 232. 238, 475 Pasternak. Boris. 326 Pasternak, Leonid 0., 326. 327 Pasmanik, D.. 201 Patek, 61, 62 Pavlova, Anna, 450 Pereira, I38 Perelman, Eliezer, BenYehuda, 206 Perelman. Osip (Osip Dymov). 284 Peresvet-Soltan, 1. N., 242

489

Index Peretz, Hirshbein. 361 Peretz, ltzchok Leibmh. 153. 344, 348-357, 361-363, 374,

375 Petrazhitsky, L. 0.. 40 Piastro, 316 Piker, A. S. (Martynov), 296 PinchikSegal, P., 312 Pines, Yechiel-Michel, 185 Pinsker, Leo. 181-185, 189, 205, 256 Pinski, David, 444 Pinsky, David. 153. 361, 444 Plonsky, Solomon. 176-178 Podliszewski, Abram, 61 Polyak. Grigory. 139, I41 Polyak, Mikhail, 141 Polyak, Savely, 141 Polyakin, Myron, 316 Polyakov, Alexander, 274 Polyakov, Lazar, 136. 139 Polyakov-Litovtsev, Solomon, 272 Polyakov, Samuil, 12. 136, I39, 423 Polyakov, Yakov, 136, 139 Portugeis, Semyon (Stephan Ivanovich), 274 Potofsky. Jacob, 44! Pozner, M. V., 32 Pozner, S., 265, 274 Prilutsky. N., 357 Pruzhansky, N. (N. Linovsky). 278 Pyshnov, Lev, 320 R

Rabinovich, 0., 260 Rabinovich, L., 472 Rabinovich, L. G., 52, 193 Rabinovich, M. (Ben Ami), 277

Rabinovich, Osip. 255, 276 Rabinovich. Saul-Pinchoe, 471 Rabinovich, S. P. (Shefer), 184 Radomyslsky (G. Zinoviev), 297 Rapoport, Semyon (S. Ansky), 167, 267, 278, 296, 326, 357, 465, 469 Rapoport. Sh., 353 Ra-shal (Shloyme Lurie), 471 Rathaus, A., 137 Ratner, U., 163, 354 Ravnitsky, I. Kh., 344, 352 Rayevsky, C. Y., 437 Razumny. Solomon, 312 Reines. 193 Reisenberg, Nadia, 320 Reizin, Avrom, 352. 353, 358, 359, 444 Repin, Ilya, 323 Rodichev, F. I., 44 Rodkinson, Louis. 334 Rogofi', Hillel, 445 Roitman, David, 311. 312 Rosenbaum, S. Ya.. 48, 49 Rosenblum, G., 206 Rosenfeld. L. B. (Yu. Kamenev), 297 Rosenfeld. Monis, 437, 439. 445 Rosenfeld, Shmuel, 353 Rosenfeld. Yoineh (Jonah), 360 Rosin, A. (Ben-Adir), 163, 354 Rothschild, 136, 141, 188 Rothschild, Edmond de. 181, 204, 205

Ronnov-Rozenkeret, 317 Rozenbaum, S.. 201 Rozenblat. Yosele, 312 Rozov, 1. A., 54. 84 Rozovsky, Baruch-Leib, 307. 311 Rozovsky, S., 311, 319, 320

490 Rubanovich, Ilya, 296

Rubinstein. Anton.

13, 301-

306, 315. 318

Rubinstein. Artur, 316 Rubinstein. Nikolay, 13, 302306. 315

Rubinstein, Roman, 302 Rumshinsky, 1., 320 Rundstein, 60 Rutenberg, P. M., 207 Ryazanov, N. (Goldendakh). 296-298 Ryvkin. M. D., 264. 278 S

Salanter, Israel. 397-401 Saminsky, L. 320 Satanover, Mendel, 332 Schlesinger, Benjamin, 441 Schorr, Moses, 477 Schuster, Joseph, 320 Schwarts, Joseph, 311 Schwartz, Maurice. 449 Schwarz, S. M., 298, 448

Schwarzman, M., 427

Secunda, S., 320 Sega]. Louis, 452 Sega], Zvi Hirsh, 174 Segalovich. V., 359 Seidel, Toscha, 316

Sev, L. A., 263. 266. 267. 463. 477 Sforim, Mendele Moycher (S. M. Abramovich), 334347, 351, 360. 367. 372-375, 384, 392 Shafir, Berl. 357 Shapiro. Herman, 191. 193. 206 Shapiro. K. A., 371 Shapiro, L.. 360 Shapiro. Ya. N., 52 Sharett, Moshe, 199. 205

Russian Jewry (1860-1917) Shatskee. M. A., 344

Shatz, Bezalel, 309 Shamky, Jacob. 466 Shaykevich, A. (Shomer), 342. 347 Sham, Zalman, 205 Shefer (S. P. Rabinovich), 184 Sheflner, B., 445 Sheftel. M. 1., 44, 48. 266 Shestopal, Wolf (Velvele), 307, 309. 313 Shestov, Lev, 291, 292 Shillinger, I.. 319 Shimenovich, D., 379 Shiper, Ignaz, 477 Shklovsky, (Dioneo). Isaak, 271

Shklovsky. Victor, 290 Shkolnik (Levi Eshkol), 200, 205 Shlionsky. Avraam. 206 Shlyapnikov, Dr.. 191

Shmundak-Yarov, 318

Shneur. blman, 175, 206, 376, 379, 444

Shofman. G., 380 Sholom-Aleichem (S. Rabino-

vich), 206, 314. 329. 338. 344-349, 351, 357. 361, 444 Shpilberg. 315 Shprintsak, 1., 205 Shteinberg, Moshe, 307, 311,

312

Shteinberg. Yehuda, 356, 375. 379 Shtemberg, L. 0., 54. I60 Shtif. N., 354 Shub, David, 448 Shulman, 311 Sibiryakov, L., 317 Siegman. Morris, 441

Singer, 1. 1.. 444 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 444 Sirota, Gershon, 312

Index Skobelev. 80

Sliaberg. G. B. (Henri), 32,

33.42. 54. 62. 74. 160. 168. 222-226, 233-237, 251. 299. 475 Slonimer-Altshul. Yosif, 308

Slonimsky, N., 319

491 Teitel. Jacob. 119 n Temkin. Vladimir. 185, 186,

191 Tiktinsky. Chaim-Leib. 391 Tomashevsky. Beanie. 449 Tomashevsky. Boris, 448 Tourel. Jennie, 318

Smolenskin. Peretz M.. 179.

Trivus. 32. 263. 265. 477

Sokolnikov. (Brilliant) G., 297 Sokolow. Nahum, 192, 193, 206. 354, 372. 472

Trotsky, Leon. 248 Tsederbaum. A., 184. 210. 258. 259. 334, 344 Tsederbaum. Yu. 0. (Martov). 210, 296. 297 Tsinberg. S. L.. 269. 469 Tsukerman. L., 258

367-370

Soloveychik, A. M., 136 Soloveychik, Chaim (Brisker). 389 Soloveychik, B., 256 Spector. M., 344, 345. 353 Spector. Yitzhok-Ichonon, 399. 400 Spivak, Chaim. 437 Stavsky. M., 360 Steinberg. I. Z, 298 Stemberg. Lev. 476 Stieglitz. Baron. 12. 138 Stolkind, A. Ya.. 248 n Stolpner, Baruch. 210 Stolyarsky. Pyotr, 316 Stuchevsky. Joachim, 313, 314.

320

SVerdlov. Yakov, 297 Syrkin. M., 463. 477 Mereazhmky. 131

T

Tabachnik, A., 447 Tan-Bogaraz, Vladimir. 297 Taratuta (Victor), 297 Tarnopol. Ioakhim. 255 Tartakov. Joachim, 317 Taube, 315 Tchernichovuky, Saul, 206. 279, 376, 378

Trotsky. Ilya M., 273

U

User. 1.. 355

Uninsky, Alexander. 316 Uritsky. M. S.. 297 Ussishkin. M. M., 185. I89, 193. 198. 206. 217 Utin. Nikolay, 295 V

Vaisenberg, M., 360 Vaiter, A., 356. 361 Vallakh. M. M. (Maxim Litvinov). 297 Vengerov, Semyon. 259. 287 Vengerova, Isabella. 316. 320 Vilenkin, Nikolay (N. Minsky). 259. 260, 276. 280. 281. 283 Vinaver. M. M., 31, 32. 39 E. 69. 158. 160. 220 E. 239. 263. 266. 298. 328, 463. 465, 475, 476 Vinchevsky, Morris (Ben-Hem). 335, 368

492

Russian Jewry ((860-1917)

Vishniak. M. V., 297 Vladeck. B., 451 Volozhiner. Chaim, 387-340

Yanovsky, 8.. 264, 437 Yaroshevsky, Sergey. 277 Yaroslavsky, 318 Yuser. Yosif, 319 Yatskan. Sh. N., 354 Yavef, A. V., 371 Yehoash, 437 Yoifee. A. A.. 297 Yushkevich, Semyon. 276. 284

Volynsky. Akim (Fleur). 288 Vysotsky. Z, 184. 185 W

Wawelberg, 137 Weinberg. Ya.. 320 Weinstein, B., 437. 439 Weinstein, G. B., 108, 299

Weintraub. 307 Weissblatt. 60 Weizmann. Chaim, 192. 193. 205

Wieniawski. Henryk, 316 Wischnitzer. M. L.. 463. 465 Wischnitzer. Rachel, 477 Witkin. losif. 200, 217

Wolf. Iser Ber, 20 Wolfson. David. 182. 191

Wolkenstein. 209

Y

Yaari. A.. 173 Yadlovker, Herman. 311 Yafl’e, Lev, 205. 283 Yakhontov. A. P., 67, 71. 75. 1l3 Yakubson. A.. 201 Yakubson, B. P., 48 Yankif-Yoisef. 453

Z Zaitsev, 12 Zak. A. 1.. 137 Zaleasky, Gdalya. 320 blkind, A. V., 54 Zalman. 15 Zametkin. Mikhail. 437 Zangwill. Israel. 199 Zeitlin, Aaron, 445 Zetlin. B. S. (Batursky). 298 Diitlovsky. Chaim. 163, 296. 353. 354, 447 Diitomirsky. D., 319 Zilberfarb, M., 163 Zimbalist, Efrem, 316 Zinoviev. G. (Radomyslsky). 297, 317 Zisserman. 315 Zivyon (B. Holman). 445 anotarov. Hillel. 437 Zundelevich. Aron. 296 Zunser. Eliokum. 336 Zvezdich, Pyotr, 273