1 - The Position of the Jews in the Tsarist Empire, 1881–1905

Summary

What you write about the Yids is quite correct. They fill everything up, they undermine everything, and they embody the spirit of the century. They are at the root of the revolutionary-social movement and regicide. They control the periodical press, the financial markets are in their hands, the popular masses fall into financial slavery to them, they guide the principles of present-day science, seeking to place it outside Christianity. And besides this, no sooner does a question about them arise then a chorus of voices speaks out for them in the name of ‘civilization’ or ‘toleration’ (by which is meant indifference to faith). As in Romania and Serbia, as with us—nobody dares say a word about the Jews taking over everything. Even our press is become Jewish. Russkaya pravda, Moskva, Golos, if you please—are all Jewish organs …

Letter from KONSTANTIN POBEDONOSTSEV TO FEDOR DOSTOEVSKY, August 1879

THE YEARS BETWEEN 1881 and 1905 saw a significant deterioration in the situation of the Jews in the tsarist empire, who now constituted by far the largest Jewish community in the world with a population in 1897, when the first modern census was taken, of over 5.2 million out of a total 126 million (see Map 1). During this period the crisis caused by the deteriorating position of Russian Jewry was the motor which drove world Jewry. The crisis was partly the result of the growing disillusionment of the tsarist government with what it saw as the negative consequences of the ‘integrationist’ policies vis-a-vis the Jews which it had pursued, particularly during the reign of Alexander II. Its leading bureaucrats, mainly noble in origin, with aristocratic and rural prejudices against Jews, became increasingly subject to an anti-Jewish psychosis, attributing all the ills of the empire to Jewish machinations. More and more they came to see the Jews, rather than the disruptive effects of industrialization and modernization, as the source of their difficulties. Tsarist policy had always had a dual character: on the one hand, its aim was to ‘civilize’ the Jews and transform them into useful subjects of the tsar; on the other, it sought to minimize their ‘harmful’ effect on the rest of the society. Now most stress was placed on the latter goal.