NATIONALITIES 117 the others, especially as it affects not only possible revenue but also employment.

Figures published by the Soviet Government in 1929 establish that the workers (the proletariat proper) were 2.75% of the total population of the Union. In the R.S.F.S.R. they were 3.570, in the Uk.S.S.R. 2.50%, in the B.S.S.R. 1.25% and in the Z.S.F.S.R. 1.5%. The proportion was less than i% in all other Republics. Since 1929 condi tions have changed still more in favour of the R.S.F.S.R. CONCLUSION In conclusion, let it once more be emphasized that Soviet Federalism differs greatly from any other kind of federal system in the world. It is a transitory stage in the evolution towards a purely Communist society; and the federation of national proletarian minorities is merely a tactical variation in applying the principle of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The national aspirations of the many races and nationalities of the U.S.S.R. forced the Communist leaders to adopt this method as far back as 1918. Hence the federal structure of the Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R., as well as many other concessions to federal ideas in the field of politics, culture and even economics. But while preserving an appearance of federation, the Communists persistently strengthen the central authority by every available means. In the political sphere the authorities of the Federal Republics merely execute instructions received from Moscow, which alone controls foreign relations and trade, questions of defense, the financial policy of the Union and its police force (OGPU). In the cultural sphere (education), under cover of regional autonomy, Moscow supervises programmes elaborated by the Central Government; in the economic field, local interests are everywhere subordinated to those of the Union. And behind all stand the Communists, the true rulers of the U.S.S.R. The Communist Party a "formidable guardian in the strictest sense of the word, of the unity of the U.S.S.R. is the chief force that at present holds it together. In this task it utilizes the natural bonds that unite the peoples of the Soviet State no less than it does measures of administrative and political compulsion. Yet Communism appears, at the same time, to be the Union's prin cipal weakness. The proportion of the proletariat (proper) to the population in general is so small that the only safe method of govern ment for the rulers of the U.S.S.R. is an absolute dictatorship. The attitude of the bulk of the population (of all nationalities) remains, if not openly hostile, at least definitely distrustful of the Communist regime, and jealous of the vast privileges enjoyed by the proletariat. In spite of all measures of severity, anti-Communist feeling manifests itself in every form and shape. In the Federal Republics this, very often, takes a nationalist character. In certain instances it may even take an II8 RUSSIA/U.S.S.K

anti-Russian turn; although, quite apart from theoretical Communism, the perpetual community of political, economical and cultural interests emphasizes the necessity of union between the nationalities ot the TT C Q T? Note:' A few words must be said about the peculiar position of Bessarabia. This Province of the Empire was ceded to Russia by Turkey in 1812. Its population at that time consisted of some 240,000 Mol davians, Bulgars, Greeks and Russians. In 1856, by the Treaty of Pans Russia was compelled to restore Lower Bessarabia (the estuaries ot the Danube and Pruth) to Turkey, but recovered it again after the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-78. ^ . By the returns of the census of 1897 the population of the Province was about 2,000,000 and in 1917 it was estimated at 2,700,000 the Moldavians constituting about half and the Russians about a quarter Bessarabia had greatly prospered under Russian rule; a century ot peaceful development with the assistance of^Russian capital had made of it one of the richest Provinces of the Empire. ^ mm After the March, 1917 Revolution a Provincial Council Sfatul lam was established in Kishinev; this body displayed federalist tendencies but was decidedly hostile to Rumanian pretensions to the Province. At the end of 1917 the Rumanian Government, profiting by the dis integration of the Russian army and by the presence of Rumanian troops in Bessarabia (reorganized in the Russian rear after their defeat by Mackensen), occupied the Province with the assent of a minority m the Sfatul Tarii. A Rumanian proclamation to the people gave the assurance that no annexation of the Province was contemplated. On March 27, 1918, however, Rumanian soldiers occupied the Council Chamber and the members of the Sfatul Tarii were coerced into^passmg a resolution in favour of incorporation with the Rumanian Kingdom, the vote being taken openly and by name. A few hourc later the whole administration was taken over by the Rumanian military, while the few members of the Council who had had the courage to protest against this action were summarily executed. The occupation of South Russia by Bolshevik troops in the spring of 1918 forced the Rumanians to agree to return the Province to Russia, the treaty being signed by General Averescu on behalf of the Rumanian Government. The Reds were, however, obliged to retreat north of the Ukraine by the advance of the Germans; the Rumanians, who had concluded a separate peace with the Central Empires in 1917, abrogated their agreement with the Reds. In 1920 (Oct. 28) Belgium, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan recognized the Rumanian annexation of Bessarabia; the United States, however, refused to be party to this transaction. No Russian Govern ment has ever recognized the Rumanian claim to Bessarabia and there is no difference of opinion on the subject among the Russians at home or abroad. The anti-Russian policy pursued by the Rumanians in the Province

NATIONALITIES 119 is well known and has led over a hundred thousand people to emigrate into the U.S.S.R. where they were settled in the so-called Moldavian Autonomous Republic. Several popular risings occurred in the Province, the most serious being that of Akkerman in 1924. Thus Bessarabia remains to this day a sore point of Eastern European politics. Torn between the Rumanian oppression and the fear of a Red regime the Province still awaits the decision of its destinies. THE JEWISH QUESTION THE HISTORICAL PAST OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND THE ORIGIN OF RUSSIAN LEGISLATION RESPECTING THE JEWS THE catastrophic collapse of the Russian Empire, and the formation of independent States on its Western borders, brought about the dispersal of the hitherto united six million Russian Jews, and made a sudden break in the long line of their historical development a break which reduced this people to a state of unprecedented cultural and economic decline. The Jews came into contact with Russia as early as the tenth century, when Jewish settlers from the Judaic Kingdom of the Khozars (the Black and Caspian Sea littoral) came to Kiev. However, until the end of the eighteenth century there was no Jewish problem in the strict sense of the word. The Jews settled in the Russian and Ukrainian towns suffered occasional persecutions, owing to religious fanaticism; there were occasional pogroms in the Ukraine (under Russian rule since the middle of the seventeenth century) ; but on the whole the relations be tween the Jews and the Christians were satisfactory and the former suffered no legal limitations. Jews occasionally rose to important posi tions in the Russian State, i. e. the Vice-Chancellor under Peter the Great was a Jew, Shafirov, who was subsequently raised to a barony. The position changed radically when Russia in the reign of Catherine the Great, acquired large Polish territories, thickly inhabited by Jews. The latter had come to settle in Poland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, flying from persecutions generally meted against them under the guidance of the Roman Church in the Iberian Peninsula, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. The Jews suffered various legal dis abilities under the Polish regime and it is this that Russia inherited in the three successive partitions of Poland. The first took place in 1772 when Russia obtained the ancient Russian province of Polotzk (White Russia) thus, for the first time, adding to her possessions a territory which had been inhabited for centuries by a large, settled Jewish population. Empress Catherine approached the Jewish question with the tolerant ideas prevalent in that age of en lightenment; and the only reason which kept her from granting the Jews full permission to live where they liked in the Empire, and equal rights with the Christian population, was her wish not to make sensational 120 THE JEWISH QUESTION 121

changes in internal policy. This was very natural in the case of a monarch who realized that her own legal position was anomalous. In an Imperial manifesto to the inhabitants of White Russia announcing the new order, and confirming the old rights of all classes of the popu lation, special mention was made of the Jews; who, however, were promised only the same rights which were indeed few as they had enjoyed under Polish rule. The words of the manifesto, however, speaking of her Majesty's humanity and the impossibility of excluding "only them" (L e. the Jews) "from the general act of grace," raised radiant hopes among many of the Jews. The Councils of the Elders The peculiar autonomous organization of the Jews found expression in the so-called Councils of the Elders (Kahal), constituted in every town or hamlet possessing a Jewish community. The Council of the Elders had jurisdiction over its own race in matters of litigation (pro vided both parties were Jews), as well as in fiscal transactions relating to the collection and payment of State taxes (e. g. poll-tax, land tax, etc.). Later, this right of distributing and collecting taxes was much abused by the local Councils of Elders, and this resulted in the decline and final abolition of this institution (1844). When, in 1778, the provincial constitution was introduced into White Russia, by which the legal position of the urban population was regu larized and guilds of merchants brought into being, some of the richer Jews enrolled in these guilds with a view to gradually freeing themselves from the strict and troublesome authority of the Councils. Many of them were honoured by being elected to public positions by their fellow citizens; but this provoked the opposition of their trade rivals and of the Roman Catholic clergy, leading to appeals in St. Petersburg. In spite of this, the Empress held firmly to her broad, liberal views with regard to the Jews and paid no attention to complaints ; thus encouraged, the Councils of the Elders frequently petitioned the Empress, begging particularly for the removal of the disabilities which forbade their living in the villages. In her anxiety to form a strong and solid middle-class in Russia, Catherine had forbidden (1782) the urban population to settle in rural districts. The whole Jewish population came automatically under this edict. By the irony of fate this comparatively innocent decree of the Government, although at the time not put into effect, was destined to be the origin of one of the most serious restrictions upon the Jewish community and lasted until the Revolution of 1917. The Distilleries To the same period may be referred the notorious question of the distilleries. This industry had been in Jewish hands for many genera tions, since it was customary for the Polish nobility to farm out many of their seignorial prerogatives to the ubiquitous Jews. One of the most important, that of distilling and selling spirits, thus fell entirely into 122 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. the hands of the Jews. The latter were apparently attracted to this business by its quick returns: a very important factor, considering that the Jew lacked the usual rights of citizenship and was entirely dependent

on the landowner who was quite capable of breaking the contract, seizing the Jew's earnings, and turning him off the estate. In many cases the farming-out of distilleries, owing to keen competition, ceased to be remunerative; but it was difficult for them to obtain release from their obligations to the landowners. The landowner might oblige his distiller to sell a minimum quantity of vodka for which he was made liable. The Government, in order to end this and also the publicans' activities as money lenders, forbade the Jews to sell spirits in the villages, but allowed them to do so in the towns. * The Pale of Settlement The Jews were not at liberty to settle in every locality of the Empire. In addition to the Polish provinces and parts of the Ukraine the Pale of Settlement had at that "time been extended to include the Provinces of Kiev, Chernigov and the district of Novgorod-Seversk. In 1793 and 1795 it was again extended by the addition of a vast territory, including Lithuania, Curland, Volhynia and Podolia, ceded to Russia after the second and third partitions of Poland. The density of the Jewish popu lation on the western frontiers of the Empire began to be a danger to itself and a nuisance to the Government which therefore endeavoured to transfer the surplus population to the empty lands of New Russia, where new towns were rapidly springing up. In order to exercise indirect pressure on the Jews, double taxation was imposed upon them in the western Provinces; those who consented to remove to the south were immediately released from this burden. The Jews were given the right of voting in municipal elections; but in order to placate the Roman Catholic electors, who were dissatisfied with the political successes of the Jews under the new regime, the Jewish vote was limited to one-third of the total number of electors. A special curia was formed from the Jews eligible for election; a measure which, on the whole, did not satisfy the Jewish population, who in some cases, would have, preferred a well-meaning Christian deputy to a Jew. In Lithuania, where the Polish element prevailed in the towns, the dis abilities of the Jews remained the same as they had been under Polish rule. A similar situation arose in Curland, where the German burghers jealously guarded the ancient privileges which had come down to them from the days of the Livonian Order; a feature of whose statutes was the complete denial of rights to the Jews. In Poland, the landowners sided with the Polish burghers in upholding the Jewish disabilities. Thus the reform did little to lighten the burden of the race. The Village Jew The Jews, although they had never actually been serfs, had for cen turies lived in the villages in a state of oppression and degradation. It THE JEWISH QUESTION 123 was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the landowners came, in time, to look upon them as their menials; and the Russian Government's endeavours to give them the rights of citizenship was as distasteful to the Polish nobility as the liberation of their Christian serfs would have been. On July 28, 1797, a new ukaze was published which had the effect

of removing the Jews, who were ruining the peasants by their question able business dealings, from the villages. The Councils of Elders, seriously alarmed, convened a great Jewish congress at Ostrog in Volhynia, which decided to send representatives to St. Petersburg who should appeal directly to the Emperor (Paul I). It is not known, how ever, whether anything resulted from this deputation, or even whether it was actually sent. However, the Government again refrained from enforcing the law. II THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Alexander I ALEXANDER'S accession to the throne, on which Russia set such high hopes, seemed also to presage amelioration in the conditions of the Jews. Alexander I was disposed to regard the Jewish problem as a State ques tion of the first importance. A Committee for the Welfare of the Jews was formed, comprising both prominent officials and personal friends of the Emperor. The well-known statesman, Speransky, was greatly inter ested in this Committee's work. He recommended that the Jews should be uplifted by developing their moral and spiritual culture, by encourag ing education among them, and by reducing their disabilities as much as possible while promising them speedy and complete equality with the rest of the population in the event of the success of these measures. The Committee listened favourably to the representations of the Councils of Elders (1802). Its opinions were divided, however, some advocating -complete and immediate equality for the Jews, others recommending a more gradual transition and qualified reservations, i. e., discriminating treatment of the various categories of the Jewish population, in accord ance with their importance in regard to the general interests of the State. Two tendencies were, therefore, apparent in the Decree for the Regu lation of Jewish Affairs of December, 1804, which was brought forward by the Committee and confirmed by the Emperor: and which, for a short time, constituted the fundamental character of Jewish rights in Russia. While maintaining an attitude of disapproval towards the activities of the Jewish publicans and usurers in the villages, the Decree in every way encouraged the Jew to undertake agricultural work. The regulations which prescribed their removal from the villages of the Polish Provinces, i2 4 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. were confirmed, and the final term for this fixed (according to locality) as either January 1st, 1807, or January 1st, 1808. On the other hand, they were invited to settle anywhere in New Russia 1 and were prom ised that, if their colonization proved successful, the Provinces of Astra khan and North Caucasus would be included in the Pale of Jewish Settlement. The assistance and protection of the Government was prom ised not only to the agriculturists, but also to those engaged in trade and manufacture, who were all freed from double taxation. The Decree made the question of the complete equality of the Jews dependent on their willingness to conform to the general practices of the Empire, and endeavoured to restrict the functions of the Councils of

Elders to purely religious (and, to a certain extent, fiscal) matters. Great importance was attached in the Decree to the speedy establishment of schools for Jews; where, instead of Talmudistic dogmas, they were to be taught the language of the country, foreign languages and the sciences. The Jews were also encouraged to depart from many of their obsolete customs which were founded entirely on superstition and which gave offense to their neighbours (the wearing of side ringlets, strangelycut clothes, etc.) . The beginning of the nineteenth century was marked by an intensive emigration of the Jews to New Russia where towns, villages and col onies sprang up with truly American rapidity. At the same time, how ever, the Government insisted on enforcing the laws relative to the trans fer of the Polish Jews from the villages to the towns in the Polish Provinces. Instructions to this effect were sent to the local authorities; the Jews were forcibly removed to the towns where they became a bur den upon the already impoverished Jewish community. The threat of French invasion after the campaigns of 1805 and 1807, put an end to these expulsions. Since then there has been no recurrence of such mass movements in Russia; although the prohibition preventing Jews from settling in villages remained in force until the Revolution. Nicholas I It is interesting to note that the Decembrists, on the whole, adopted an anti-Semitic attitude. It is difficult to estimate how the revolt of Decem ber 14, 1825 would have affected the Jews had it been successful; but Pestel, the author of a draft constitution, proposed 'their entire removal from Russia to territory in Asia Minor, especially acquired for this pur pose. The reign of Nicholas I is by far the most memorable in the history of the Russian Jews since they first came under the dominion of the Tzars. This monarch was keenly interested in his Jewish subjects and wished them well; but the history of Russian Jewry during his reign proves once more how the best intentions, too drastically carried out, may become a source of dire calamity to those whom it is sought to bene fit. The Emperor who was personally inclined, if not to grant the Jews Sea Littoral, THE JEWISH QUESTION 125 complete civil equality, at least gradually to give them certain privi leges made these favours dependent on the rapidity with which the Jews could a'bandon their seclusion and join in the general social life of the country. One of the most potent means of bringing the Jews into closer contact with the native population was the application to them, in 1827, of the recruiting laws. No fault, naturally, was to be found with the actual measure; but the manner in which it was carried out formed, in effect, one of the most barbarous persecutions to which the Jewish race had ever been subjected since its dispersal. In order the more successfully to attain the object of the measure, the age of the Jewish recruits was fixed at from 12 to 25 years, instead of the normal 20 to 35. A mutual guarantee for providing recruits was es tablished in the communities; and as the parents of young boys naturally

hid them, Jewish boys were rounded up in the streets, no attention being paid to any plea of their insufficient age. In 1840 a Committee for the Reorganization of the Jews was formed, but seems to have served no practical purpose. A new regulation was issued at this period, by which the quota of Jewish recruits for a given number of the population, was increased five-fold as compared with that of the Christians. In 1844 the civil authority of the Councils of Elders was officially and finally abolished. About the same time increased activity was shown in the establishment of Jewish schools. In this work Lilienthal (who died in the eighties in America, where he was Rabbi at Cincinnati, Ohio) took a particularly active part, as did the Minister of Public Education, Count Uvarov. The funds for building such schools came mainly from the so-called peddling dues, which remained in force until the Revolu tion, and which were a peculiar form of indirect taxation. They included a tax on kosher meat and some other articles of consumption; these dues were usually paid to the Government by private individuals, mostly Jews, to whom they were farmed out. The wearing of Jewish dress was also taxed naturally, since the Government made every effort to do away with it. Monte fiore in Russia In 1846 the well-known philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore, an English Jew, visited Russia. He was ceremoniously received by the authorities; and during his stay in the capital he presented an extensive report on the subject of the Jewish reforms to the Minister of the In terior, Count Kisselev. The Government gave him every facility in his journeys through Russia. Count Kisselev, himself although he con sidered that there was a great difference, not to the latter's advantage, between European and Russian Jews held most liberal views with re gard to the Jewish question. However, Nicholas I considered it necessary to exercise the utmost caution in gradually granting to the Jews the rights of citizenship, and still more as regards giving them the right to enter the services of the State, or to hold official posts. M 6 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. The "Catchers 33 During the last years of Nicholas I's reign a fateful gloom pervaded the towns within the Pale of Jewish Settlement. The enlistment law held the Jewish population in a cleft stick. On the one hand, the Jews (and only they) were obliged, as a fine for the non-payment of taxes, to pro vide additional recruits over and above their already "normal" five-fold quota; on the other hand, the forcible recruiting of the best workmen bled the Jewish population white and made it impossible for thereto pay their taxes regularly. Special agents went along the streets looking for boys; these so-called "catchers" (who were mostly Jews) entered the houses, pulled boys of 8 to 10 years old from their hiding places and tore them away from their screaming and weeping mothers. Alexander II The accession of Alexander II inspired the most radiant hopes

among the Jews. Count Kisselev again brought forward his liberal schemes. The Minister for the Interior, Count Lanskoy, and^Count A. G. Stroganov, the Governor-General of New Russia, went still further by proposing the complete abolition of all Jewish civil disabilities and all restrictions upon Jewish settlement. The liberation of the serfs in 1861 had also its repercussion upon the Jewish question. The landowners of Great Russia, who had lost their right to the labour of the serf crafts men (tailors, bootmakers, carpenters, locksmiths, etc.) tried to attract Jewish artisans to their estates, and were highly incensed when the police sent these back to the Pale of Settlement. Somewhat more guarded and evidently influenced by former sugges tions with regard to differential treatment and its gradations, were the opinions given on the Jewish question by Count Bludoy, another wellknown official of the first years of Alexander IFs reign. About this^time, the idea of differential treatment began to make headway even in the more well-to-do Jewish circles. The cultural and habitual aloofness of the Jews gradually began to be relaxed. An ever-increasing number of Jews adopted the Russian lan guage and Russian customs; an atmosphere was created which made ^for the spread of education, the desire for a better knowledge of Russia and the promotion of a better understanding of the Jews by the Rus sians. An important periodical devoted to Jewish interests, entitled "Razsvet" (The Dawn), was published in Russian. Some zealous ad herents of these new tendencies considered it useless, and even mis chievous, to retain the German-Jewish dialect (Yiddish). An enlightened Jew (an expert on Jewish doctrine, law and customs and an official cen sor of Jewish publications) attached to the Governor-General of New Russia suggested that the printing of Yiddish books be prohibited. This measure was not carried out in a drastic manner, but provincial gov ernors in the south sometimes forbade the publication of books, and the performance of plays in Yiddish. As a matter of fact the authorities THE JEWISH QUESTION 127 turned a blind eye to most of these restrictions; but many, nevertheless, were not actually repealed until the Revolution. All attempts at an immediate improvement of the Jews' legal position were hindered by the attitude timid rather than unfriendly of the Emperor Alexander II. For instance he would not allow Jewish soldiers, who had completed the long-term service of Nicholas' days, to settle where they liked unless they had been baptized. At the same time, how ever, Jewish doctors were permitted to enter the Army Medical Service. In the decree establishing the Zemstvos no limitations were imposed upon the election of Jews as members of the Zemstvos in Provinces with in the Pale of Settlement; but the regulations governing municipal elec tions enacted that not more than one third of any town Council were to be Jews. In examining all these vicissitudes of the Jewish question, it may be noted that a social movement was beginning to make itself felt, among the Jews themselves, which tended to meet the views of the Govern ment. From the early seventies onwards the attendance of Jews in the schools established for them, which had been reorganized and greatly improved, showed a marked increase. This was largely due to the in

fluence of N. I. Pirogov, the well-known physician and educator. In 1879 all Jews holding the diplomas of higher educational establishments were granted the right to domicile anywhere in the Empire. The "Pogroms" * In 1881 the first wave of pogroms swept over the south of Russia that at Elizavetgrad being particularly fierce. Those who took part in these pogroms were not confined to the roughest part of the population (the rabble of the towns and, on market days the peasants of the neigh bouring villages), but comprised also the more advanced and from a revolutionary point of view "reliable" elements, such as railwaymen. It is an established fact that one of the early classics of pogrom litera ture in Russia is a proclamation by the Executive Committee of the Party of People's Freedom (the predecessors of the Social-Revolution aries), calling upon its members to attack the landowners and Jews. What was more significant, however, was that at about this time some of the young men of the Jewish intelligentsia began, to the Government's great surprise, to join the revolutionary movement. The 1882 Reforms The disorders in the south once again recalled the Government's atten tion to the Jewish question. A conference was convened at the Ministry of the Interior. The resulting output of regulations, which- subjected the rights of the Jews to difficult (and sometimes even offensive) restric tions, consisted of a mass of heterogeneous provisional instructions and circulars which could be and, in 1915 and 1916, actually were re scinded by a simple stroke of the Minister's pen. 1 Anti-Semitic riots. 128 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. The Committee drafted regulations with regard to the expulsion of the Jews from villages on the strength of decisions to be taken by village meetings; for which decisions unlike the common practice in such cases a simple majority, however small, was sufficient. The Minister of Finance, N. K. Bunge, protested against these regulations. A compro mise was arrived at the Jews were forbidden to settle in the villages or to acquire property there, with an exception made for those already possessing such rights. According to established rules these rights de scended also to their heirs; but as the families increased and the hold ings became divided and, also, through marriages with unprivileged persons legal complications arose, the settlement of which caused the Government a great deal of trouble. It is of interest to note that the sale of intoxicants by the Jews was eventually permitted; this regulation remained in force until Witte's financial reform (1895), which established a State monopoly for the distilling of spirits and for their sale at a uniform price. This act auto matically did away with the Jewish public-houses. The well-known "provisional regulations" of May 3, 1882, definitely established and confirmed (in principle) the status of the Russian Jews, which remained practically unaltered until the Revolution. The last manifestation of liberal tendencies with regard to the Jews on the part

of administrative and official circles were the decisions of the special commission under the presidency of Count Pahlen (1883-1888) affirm ing the desirability in principle of granting the Jews full rights of citizenship; but these decisions were not confirmed in higher quarters, and remained a dead letter. The First Revolution It is a 'singular fact that all this remained unchanged by the Revolu tion of 1905. The Duma made absolutely no alteration in the legal status of the Jews. Those orators of the Duma who belonged to the extreme reactionary parties denounced the Jews from the tribune; while the deputies of the Left defended them very feebly. There were but few Jewish deputies in the Dumas (two only in the fourth). Not a single restrictive decree was rescinded, although from time to time, new ones were added. In the practical application of the few rights still left to the Jews and in all disputed questions the authorities in nearly every case interpreted the law restrictively. Local administrative bodies often paid little attention to instructions from above, but established in rela tion to the Jews under their jurisdiction an independent system of op pression. Even more distasteful to the wider circles of the Jewish population than the restrictions with regard to domicile were the disabilities con nected with education. Whereas formerly the Government had endeav oured in every way to attract the Jews to the schools in order to teach them Russian, and even to give them a rudimentary knowledge of the sciences, from the beginning of the nineties when the desire for eduTHE JEWISH QUESTION 129 cation was firmly rooted among a considerable portion of the Jews, and numbers of Jewish scholars flocked to the schools in the Pale of Settle mentthe Government suddenly changed its tactics and began to limit the enrollment of Jews in the higher, special, and later, even in the sec ondary educational establishments. In the last years before the War, the ratio of Jewish pupils in the secondary schools of the Pale of Settlement (in towns where^the population was mainly Jewish) was not more than 15% of the Christian pupils a proportion which was reduced to 10% outside the Pale and to 5% in the capitals, while in the higher educa tional establishments of the capitals, (many of which were entirely closed to the Jews), it barely reached 2%It was^possible to evade these restrictions upon secondary education by combining private tuition with examination as an "outside pupil." Accordingly, within the Pale such outside pupils were almost entirely young Jews. The examinations were extremely difficult, and were made more so by discrimination against the Jews. Higher education did not even offer this alternative while in 1911 the quota limitation of the secondary schools was made to include outside pupils also. Numbers of Jewish students flocked to foreign Universities where they lived in great poverty and squalor, continually worked upon by the propaganda of revolutionary agents. Having, after untold hardship and privation, concluded his studies, the young Jew was again faced, on his return to Russia, with a terrible reminder of his lack of civil rights in such forms as a quota scheme regulating the State examinations for obtaining dip lomas, restriction of domicile, etc. In addition to the minority who had

obtained higher education abroad, and those who had been fortunate enough to be accepted by the Russian Universities under the quota scheme, there were many who held no school certificates, and who had been debarred from going to the universities just when they were begin ning to appreciate the advantages of education. They were readily in fected by the revolutionary virus and from among them came the half educated and semi-cultured Jews, who later, in the long-expected cata clysm, joined the Communist Revolution with irreconcilable rancour and vindictiveness. It is from this class of semi-intelligentsia that the Soviet regime draws its most reliable officials, entirely devoted to the new order, willing to fill every imaginable post for the supervision of "politically unreliable" elements, and to enforce Communism with even more devotion than the old order had enforced limitations against them. The Beylis Case The last event which crowned thirty years of State oppression directed towards restricting the rights of the Jews and debarring them from participating in the general development of the Empire, was the notori ous Beylis case at Kiev (1911-1913). In this lawsuit an innocent person was accused, on very flimsy evidence, and with the help of the criminal element of the town, of a horrible ritual crime. The mainstay of the aci 3 o RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. cusation was the baleful legend of the ritual murders of Christians by Jews. The trial ended in an acquittal, in spite of the Government's efforts to convict Beylis. Ill THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE JEWS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE WAR AND THE REVOLUTION THE fundamental restrictions on the Jews in Russia immediately pre ceding the War were: a) Restriction of domicile to the Pale of Settlement, embracing but a small part of the territory of the Empire. The Pale of Settlement in cluded the Provinces of: Bessarabia, Grodno, Ekaterinoslav, Kovno, Minsk, Moghilev, Podolia, Poltava, Taurida, (without the southern coast of the Crimea), Kherson (without the town of Nikolaev), Cherni gov, Kiev (without the town of Kiev) and Kholm, Vilna, and Vitebsk, as well as the Polish Provinces. It was greater in area than any one Euro pean country, but this consideration loses its effect when it is remem bered that in most Provinces the Jews were not allowed to live outside the towns. There existed, nevertheless, certain groups of individuals who per manently or temporarily enjoyed the advantage of being allowed to live outside the Pale, and even in the capitals; these were: persons holding university degrees, specialists (doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc.) while exercising their profession, students who had successfully overcome the obstacles of the quota (while at school) ; merchants of the first guild (so long as they paid guild dues and income-tax); soldiers serving with the colours; descendants of Crimean War veterans (1854-1855) ; quali

fied artisans, holding trade certificates (only while plying their trades) and a few others. b) Complete inability to enter Government service. This with very few exceptions, was rigorously enforced. c) Restrictions upon entering the service of the Zemstvos except as doctors. d) Restrictions upon entering the profession of the law; the quota regulating the enrollment of Jews as solicitors' clerks closed this career to the majority of Jewish aspirants. e) In the army no Jew could hold officer's rank. A special form of mutual guarantee was instituted for the Jews in respect of military serv ice: if any man failed to report at the proper time at the recruiting sta tion, his place was filled up from among those who had been given ex emption for family reasons. Failure to report at the proper time, besides being a legal offence, was punishable by a heavy fine (levied exclusively on Jews). THE JEWISH QUESTION 13 1 f) The Jewish quota for the State schools was established at 10% only (5% in the capitals). g) Inability to acquire landed property in places outside the Pale of Settlement or, with some exceptions, in the villages within the Pale. Ex ceptions were also made for the Jewish Agricultural Colonies scattered over the whole area these will be more fully dealt with later. 1 The War and the Jews The Imperial Government during the last years of its existence showed a definite tendency to remove these restrictions. The Pale ceased to exist from the very first days of the War, when hundreds of thousands of refugees from Poland and Lithuania, and among them innumerable Jews, fled in terror before the enemy invasion, and spread over the In terior of Russia (about 20 Provinces of the Pale of Settlement were in the zone of military operations). In these circumstances it was impos sible to discriminate between the refugees; and the sword of war cut the Gordian knot of the domicile question. Later in the War about a quarter of a million Jews were called up for military service, and fought side by side with their Christian fellow-citizens. Young Jews invalided out of the army, their relatives and the relatives of Jews killed in action saw the school quota abolished for them. The removal of educational restrictions on the Jews proceeded rapidly with the appointment of Count P. Ignatiev as Minister of Education. He did his utmost to repair the injustice which, until .then, had been meted out to Jewish students. Great is the power of national inertia, while the national memory ^is short. The deeply tragic history of the last decades of the Imperial regime will always it may be, remain associated in most Jewish minds with memories of harsh injustice. Very few will remember that Russia was the first Christian State where, as early as the eighteenth century, the principle of "equal rights for the Jews" was commended from the Throne. In the purblind party struggles between the Jews and their

Christian opponents and enemies, it has already been forgotten that one of the last acts of the dying regime was the removal of most Jewish disabilities. In concluding the history of the legal disabilities of the Jews it must be stated that the generally accepted legend that these were only re moved by the Soviet Government is entirely misleading. As a matter of fact the complete and comprehensive removal of restrictions was one of the first acts of the Provisional Government (March 1917). Statistics of the Jewish Population of the Empire (Census of 1897) In 1897, the total Jewish population of the Empire was returned as 5,189,401 persons of both sexes (4.1396 of the population). Of this total 93.9% lived in the 25 Provinces of the Pale of Settlement. The total popX A11 these restrictions held good as long as a Jew remained faithful to his religion. Every disability disappeared automatically when a Jew embraced some other religion. 132 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. ulation of the Pale of Settlement amounted to 42,338,367 of these 4,805,354 (11.596) were Jews. At the beginning of the War the number of Jews in the Empire had grown to about 6,500,000. IV THE CONTEMPORARY POSITION OF RUSSIAN JEWRY THE extensive participation of the Jewish intelligentsia in the Russian revolutionary movement goes back some 40 years. The rise of revolu tionary feeling among the Jews should, apparently, be attributed to a psychological reaction brought about by the anti-Jewish policy of Alex ander Ill's government. It was, however, only at the beginning of Nicholas II's reign, and under the influence of the general spirit pervad ing the country, that the pent-up revolutionary stream began to flow. Numbers of Jewish youths joined the revolutionary parties, especially those who had failed, owing to the quota system, to gain the longed-for admittance to schools. The Jewish revolutionaries were mostly of the poorest classes on whom the burden of disqualification naturally fell most harshly; and their sense of racial humiliation became subcon sciously merged into rancorous hatred of the existing social system. The Bund Naturally, the revolutionary-minded intelligentsia were only too ready to involve the working classes in this movement. In 1897 a Union of the Jewish workmen of Lithuania, Poland and Russia was formed under the name of the Bund. Its influence over the Jewish masses was, however, negligible. During the 1917 Revolution most of the members of the Bund joined the Communists, and the rest were expelled or exiled. Many Jews were prominent in the Russian revolutionary parties. Of the two principal ones the Social Revolutionaries and the Social Demo crats Jewish sympathies clearly tended towards the right wing of the latter (the Mensheviks). Both the founders and leaders of the Menshevik section of this Party, Martov and Axelrod, were Jews. The pro gramme of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, relating to the peasants'

movement and the agrarian question mostly, attracted less attention. There were also many Jews in the moderate liberal parties. The Revolution The Jews, perhaps, more than any other section of the population maintained the Revolutionary tradition through the years of pacification that marked the Stolypin regime and hailed the "great and bloodless" Revolution of March 1917 with enthusiasm. The great bulk of the Jews were, however, moderate socialists and at first their membership of the Bolshevik Party was small. Among the leaders of the Communist Party there were, of course, THE JEWISH QUESTION 133 Jews, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotzky, loffe and others. But they were "internationalists," and the Jewish population could not regard them as champions of their national cause. Most of the Jews put their faith in the Provisional Government. They were not much affected by the ideo logical discussions among the various parties in the capitals, and paid little heed to the ominous signs of an approaching catastrophe. For a time, and until the spirit of those who opposed the Communist tyrants was broken, the Jewish intelligentsia of the capitals and the large towns in no way lagged behind the Russians in resisting them. There were many Jews among those who sought to avenge the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the disgrace of Brest-Litovsk. Thus the president of the Cheka, Uritzky, himself a Jew, was murdered by a Jew, Kannegiesser, while Dora Kaplan, who wounded Lenin, was also a Jewess. Nor was separatism popular among the Jews. Forcible severance from Russia was not desired by most of the Jews; still the proclamations of separatist groups promising every kind of self-determination and all the blessings of this world sounded sweet in the ears of the radical Jewish intelligentsia. In the Ukraine in particular the Jewish participation in the separatist movement was strong. Many Jews even look somewhat leniently upon the fact that the most terrible pogroms to which the Jewish race has ever been subjected were organized by Ukrainian So cialists and separatists fighting against the "Imperialism of Moscow." In Russia proper, meanwhile, where the Soviet power had been suc cessful in its struggle on several fronts, the small body of Jewish in telligentsia living outside the Pale of Settlement quickly lost its animosity against the Soviets, and adapted itself to the fact of the astounding polit ical success gained by the Communists over their enemies. The fact that the leaders of the White anti-Communist movement had at the time of its greatest success condoned much injustice and oppression with regard to the Jews (anti-Semite agitation in the White Press, disorderly conduct towards the Jewish population, etc.) greatly affected the situation. The Appeal of Communism All this was, of course, made the subject of increased agitation among the Jewish population, and especially the intelligentsia, at the time of the final triumph of the Communists.

It is not to be wondered at that Communist propaganda was so ex traordinarily successful among the Jewish intelligentsia. The bewilder ment and uncertainty of judgment to be noticed among them, due to their sudden break from the century-old religious and intellectual tradi tions of their race, naturally predisposed them to the acceptance of a social Utopia. The campaign against purely idealistic science, and the destruction of the spiritual elite of the population, in some unaccountable way flattered the morbid self-esteem of the half-cultured provincials who had been denied education by the old regime. The enormous growth of Communist bureaucracy absorbed the whole of the available Jewish 134 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. intelligentsia partly by the chances it offered of escaping death from famine, and partly because it seemed to be a form of actual State service and participation in power, so dear to these step-sons of the old regime who had always been bereft of rights. Naturally, the elite of the Jewish race in Russia declined to have any dealing with Communism; and in consequence it was either destroyed or compelled to emigrate. The mem bers of the different opposition parties (Mensheviks and Revolutionary Socialists, not to mention the bourgeois Zionists), are still persecuted quite as virulently as their non-Jewish colleagues. It is a remarkable fact that this procedure, in spite of all protests by those friends of the perse cuted who live beyond the reach of Communist authority, has not im pelled the great majority of the Jewish intelligentsia outside the U.S.S.R. to take any outstanding part in denouncing the Communists, This may be to a great extent (though not entirely) explained by the conditions under which the Jews at present live in those parts of the Pale which have been separated from the U.S.S.R. Hemmed in by the frontiers of several new States, the Jewish population of a considerable part of the Pale of Settlement found itself unexpectedly cut off from the economic and intellectual life of a great Empire. The anti-Jewish chau vinism of the new nations brought about such conditions of life for the Jews as made their old pre-Revolution life in Russia appear a lost para dise. Jews in the U.S.S.R. In Soviet territory, on the other hand, the economic position of the Jewish population is tragic. The Draconian laws of the Soviets offer hardly any economic independence to artisans, and none whatever to traders. Masses of the Jewish population are not only deprived of civil rights (as they were under the old regime) but even of the elementary, human right to obtain food: 35% of the Jewish population belongs to the category of the so-called "deprived" (disenfranchised), whereas the average percentage of disenfranchised in the whole country does not ex ceed 6%. Whole categories of the Jewish population (<?. g. teachers and rabbis) are deliberately condemned to die of hunger. Furthermore, the systematic persecution of the Jewish religion, which is carried out in a coarse and offensive manner, insulting to racial dignity, deserves special comment. One would have thought, in such a terrible situation as this, that as Jews are scattered all over the globe, the whole world would be ring ing with Jewish denunciations of Communism. What a short time ago seemed inevitable (the Beylis case) has now become impossible. The

frontiers of the U.S.S.R. are carefully guarded, and nothing but praise of Communism may cross them. Far more important is the marked dif ference in their present position; whereas formerly the authority which oppressed the Jews was something strange and foreign to them, some thing in which they were never called upon to take part, now things are different: the unheard-of despotism which is slowly starving the Jewish THE JEWISH QUESTION 135 population to death is, in most cases, represented in the towns by fullblooded Jews, fanatically devoted to the Soviet power. For most Jewish artisans and tradesmen the existence of this regime means physical de struction; but on the other hand thousands of the semi-intellectuals and social failures in the small towns have tasted unlimited, uncensured power. From the statistics given later, it will be seen that the percentage of Jews in the Communist Party is not as great as is generally supposed; but there is no doubt that no other section of the community has con tributed to it so many whole-hearted and undoubtedly "reliable" fa natics. Contemporary Statistics of the Jews According to the census of 1926, the total number of Jews in the U.S.S.R., is computed at 2,672,398 of whom 59% live in the Ukraine, 15.2% in White Russia, 2,2% in Great Russia and the remaining 3.8% in different Federal Republics. The following table shows the social (pro fessional) composition of the Jewish population at that time: Social Groups % ^ Workmen * H-8 Peasants 9- 1 Artisans l8 -9 Government clerks 2 3-3 Liberal professions *& Traders JI - 6 Unemployed 9-3 Persons of indefinite and unproductive professions 114 IOO.O Investigation has established that some 400,000 families (I e. approxi mately 1,200,000 persons) stood in need of outside assistance which they could not obtain. Unfortunately, more detailed results of the census of 1926, so far as the Jews are concerned, are not available, and the following particulars have been taken from the returns of the former (1923) census, as given in a Soviet publication. 1 According to these particulars, the total number of Jews in the U.S.S.R. was given, in 1923, as 2454,000; a figure which indicated a slight increase in the Jewish population between 1923 and

1926. From the following considerations it will appear, however, that these figures are open to considerable doubt in view of the general mortality of the Jewish population in the U.S.S.R. An analysis of the census of 1897 shows, for the present territory of the U.S.S.R. a total Jewish population of 2,504,000 which gives, for 1923, an absolute decrease of 50,000. The natural increase in the popula tion for the same period is estimated at 1,140,000; figures which, taken together indicate a decrease of 1,190,000 Jews. In attempting to explain 1 "The Jewish population of the U.S.S.R.' 1 Moscow, 1927. i 3 6 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. this, the number of Jews who emigrated during the period is given at 600,000, while the victims of the pogroms of 1918-1920 are estimated at 100,000. If to this are added several tens of thousands who fell in the War, or who were reported missing, there still remains, however, a deficit of more than 450,000 persons, concerning whom the authors, ow ing to the Soviet censorship, do not dare give the only true explanation the rapid dying out of the Jews through the Revolution, the Civil War and, especially, the present deadly economic policy of the Soviet regime. In comparing the censuses of 1897 and 1926, the most interesting facts that emerge concerning the Jewish population are: the sharp decrease in the numbers of traders, professional workers, industrialists, farmers and trade employees, and the appalling growth in the number of persons having no fixed occupation. Another very important fact brought out by the census of 1923 is the mass flight of the Jews from the villages to the towns. Even more illuminating, with respect to the decline of the Jewish population in the U.S.S.R. are the interesting tables given in Soviet pub lications, which show the percentage of the Jewish population, for vari ous towns, in 1897 and 1923. From the particulars of the two republics the Ukraine and White Russia in which most of the Jewish popula tion (nearly 7$% of the U.S.S.R.) is to be found, it will be seen that in the great majority of towns the number of Jews shows a great decrease in 1923 as compared with 1897. I*n the Ukraine the greatest decrease of the Jewish population since i897isfoundatMoghilev-Podolsk (29%) andBerdichev (28%). Almost the same decrease is to be seen in the large Jewish communities of Tulchin, Elizavetgrad, Bela-Tserkov, Nezhin and others. Certain towns Vinnitza, Proskurov, Uman and Chernigov show a slight increase as compared with 1897; although this, without doubt, is actually a decrease as compared with 1913. In a few districts, of the Ukraine only, there may be noticed an unexpected increase in the Jewish population, mainly in the large industrial centres (which had formerly been outside the Pale of Settlement e. g. Kiev) , where the Jewish artisans have gathered in search of work. Thus in the Artemov (Bakhmut) district the Jewish population is 3.88 times as great as in 1897, in the Kiev district 2.88 times (in Kiev itself the increase has been from 32,000 to 123,000) in the Mariupol district 2.88 times, and in the Krivoy Rog district 1.99 times; on the other hand, in other towns the decline of the Jewish popu lation is breaking all records. Information is available showing that the Jewish population in Elizavetgrad decreased from 31,812 in 1920 to

18,871 in 1923; and in Odessa from 190,135 in 1920 to 130,041 in 1923. The proportion of the Jewish population to the whole population of the Ukraine fell from 7.8% in 1897 to 5.3% in 1923. Even the imper turbable Soviet statisticians were aghast at such, fluctuations of the popu lation, and could think of no better explanation for it than a (mythical) repatriation of alien subjects ! . . . In White Russia the total decrease of the Jewish population of the THE JEWISH QUESTION 137 towns between 1897 an( i *9 2 3 ' l& %% In the Moghilev district the de crease amounts to 22%, in the district of Polotzk to 40%, and in that of Slutzk to 22%. A slight increase (but only in comparison with 1897, i. e. taking no account of 26 years of natural increase) Is noticeable in the districts of Vitebsk 15%, and Minsk 2%. Only in the R.S.F.S.R. is there a marked increase of the Jewish popu lation from 252,000 in 1897 to 443? in J 9 2 3- This increase is not due to any gradual improvement in living conditions, but to emigration from the Pale of Settlement. A great increase of the Jewish population is particularly noticeable in the capitals: in Moscow, in 1923, there were 87,000 Jews (as against 8,000 in 1897) and in Leningrad 52,000. This increase may be almost exclusively ascribed to an influx of young Jews from the Pale adherents to and sympathizers with Communism in search of administrative and technical posts. It may be well to give here a few particulars of the part taken by the Jews in the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. In 1922 Jews constituted 5.2% of the Party, in 1927 4.3%, in 1929 3.5%. The percentage of Jews in the total population of the U.S.S.R. is approximately 1.8%. Among the urban population the number of Jewish Communists per 1,000 was 20, whereas for the rest of the population it was 32. The spe cial Jewish section of the Communist Party was dissolved in 1930. JEWISH AGRICULTURAL COLONIES a) Jewish Agriculture Before the Revolution THE decree of 1804 encouraged the Jews to settle on the land, and the first Jewish colonies soon arose in the Odessa and Kherson districts of New Russia. The Jewish colonists were given allotments of land, granted state loans, and allowed to pay diminished taxation for a certain period of years. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, great distress was felt among the colonists, owing to maladministration and the venal ity of local officials; some of the colonists even died of starvation but were replaced by others. During the reign of Nicholas I the colonists were given further privileges (amongst others, the exemption of young boys from military service). From 1830 onwards the colonists were for bidden to engage in any other work. In 1835 new Crown lands were allotted to them, and they were permitted to purchase, and lease, pri vately-owned land. Colonies were also founded, during the forties, in the western Provinces and that of Ekaterinoslav; and, in the fifties, in Bes sarabia. In 1847 a special fund was opened for the settlers. The average allotment of land in New Russia was 30 hectares * per household and 20 hectares per household in other places.

Early in Alexander IPs reign, certain restrictions were enforced upon 1 1 hectare = 2.7 acres. i 3 8 RUSSIA/U.S.S.R. the Jewish colonists. In 1859 the further allotment of land was stopped, as the colonization of New Russia was nearly completed. In 1865 the colonists were permitted to follow other occupations. They became sub ject to the general law of conscription introduced in 1874. From 1872