Abstract
During the great debate raging in the 1880s over the Jewish role in German life — a debate said to have marked the emergence of modern anti-Semitism1 — the liberal historian Theodor Mommsen complained that the ‘barbarism’ displayed by many of his countrymen was little better than the Russian kind.2 Mommsen’s was a moral judgement and he would have agreed that the situation of Germany’s Jews was in every respect superior to that of their brethren in the empire of the tsars.
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Notes and References
J. Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1980) p. 245.
H.-U. Wehler, Bismarck unci der Imperialisms (Cologne: 1969) p. 471.
H. Rosenberg, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit (Berlin: 1967) pp. 88–117.
A concise working definition of these terms is given by E. Mendelsohn, The Jews of Central Europe (Bloomington, Indiana: 1983) p. 2: acculturation (by which is meant the Jews’ adoption of the external characteristics of the majority culture, above all its language) and assimilation (by which is meant the Jews’ efforts to adopt the national identity of the majority, to become Poles, Hungarians, Romanians ‘of the Mosaic faith’, or even to abandon their Jewish identity altogether).
A. Eunkenstein. ‘Anti-Jewish Propaganda: Pagan. Christian and Modern’, Jerusalem Quarterly, 19 (1981) pp. 65–72:
F. Golczewski. Polnisch-Jiklische Beziehungen, 1881–1922 (Wiesbaden: 1981) p. 6:
S. Lehr. Antisemitismus — religiose Motive im sozialen Vorurteil (Munich: 1974) p. 235.
R. Pipes, ‘Catherine II and the Jews’, SJA 5, no. 2 (1975) p. 4. Some students of the Russian Church hold that rising hostility to Jews in late Imperial Russia was due to secularization, the decline of Church influence and of Christianity. See
D. V. Pospielovskv, ‘The Jewish Question in Russian Samizdat’, SJA 8, no. 2(1978) pp. 4–5, 14–15.
A. G. Duker’s introduction to B. D. Weinryb, Jewish Emancipation Under Attack (New York: 1942) pp. 8–30 surveys the history of emancipation. For Germany, and a discussion of the concept, see
R. Rürup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus (Göttingen: 1975); for Prussia.
H. Holoczek, ‘Die Judenemanzipation in Preussen’, in B. Martin and E. Schulin (eds) Die Juden als Minderheit in der Geschichte (Munich: 1981) pp. 131–60; for France,
P. Girard, Les Juifs de Erance de 1789 à 1860 (Paris: 1976); for Austria,
W. Häusler, Toleranz, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus’, in N. Vielmetti (ed.) Das österreichische Judentum (Vienna: 1974) pp. 83–140.
R. Mahler (ed.) Jewish Emancipation (New York: 1942) is a selection of documents.
S. W. Baron, ‘The Impact of the Revolutions of 1848 on Jewish Emancipation’, JSS, 11, no. 3(1949) pp. 195–248.
S. M. Dubnov, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Philadelphia: 1916–20) 1, pp. 242–61;
Iu. Gessen, Istoriia evreev v Rossii (St Petersburg: 1914) pp. 1–19;
Sh. Ettinger, ‘Historical and Political Factors in Soviet Anti-Semitism’, in J. M. Kclman (ed.) Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union (Jerusalem: 1980) 2, pp. 45–7;
Baron, The Russian Jew (New York: 1964) pp. 1–15.
Demographic data for this period are notoriously unreliable and vary from source to source. According to EI, 13, p. 731, pre-partition Poland had between 7500 000 and 900 000 Jews. Of these, it has been calculated, Russia received the largest share, between 320 000 and 400 000; Prussia the smallest, between 175 000 and 185 000 (but see note 22 below) and Austria between 260 000 and 315 000; cf. A. Springer, ‘Enlightened Absolutism and Jewish Reform’, CSS, 11 (1980) p. 240.
Pipes estimates that there were 600 000 Jews in Russia in 1796 but does not indicate whether this figure includes the Kingdom of Poland. Ia. Leshchinskii, ‘Evreiskoe nasclcnic Rossii i evrciskii trud’, in Kniga o russkom evreistve (New York: 1960) p. 183,
gives a figure of 1.2 million for 1815, including Poland. In 1904, the Jewish Colonization Society (EKO) arrived at these numbers for Russia alone: 1.04 million in 1847, nearly 3 million in 1881 and 3.5 million in 1897. the inclusion of Poland brings the total to 5.2 million. EKO, Sbornik materiahv (St Petersburg: 1904) 1, p. xviii–xxiii.
Springer, ‘Enlightened Absolutism’, pp. 252–8; Hausler ‘Toleranz , p. 84–9; .JE, 5, p. 552; S. Joseph, Jewish Immigration to the United States (New York: 1914) pp. 77–9.
W. W. Hagen, Germans, Poles and Jews (Chicago: 1980) pp. 46–7.
The Löwer figure is from M. Richarz (ed.) Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland (Stuttgart: 1986) 1, p. 27, the higher one from
Dubnov, Weltgeschichte desjudischen Volkes (Berlin: 1925–30) 8, p. 17.Both conflict with the numbers cited in note 16. Matters are confused further by Holeczek who writes ‘Judenemanzipation’ p. 138) that the number of Jews in Prussia almost doubled in the reign of Frederick II (1740–86) to reach ‘about 60 000 gainfully employed individuals’. EJ, 13, pp. 1290–92 states that there were 2100 Jewish families in Prussia in 1749, that through the first partition of Poland Prussia’s Jewish population almost doubled and that the second and third partitions added about 53 000 and 75 000 respectively for a total of 124 000 in 1816.
Springer ‘Enlightened Absolutism’, pp. 247–51; Holeczek, ‘Judenemanzipation’, pp. 151–2; I. Freund (ed.) Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preussen (Berlin: 1912) 2, p. 509;
P. S. Wandycz, The Lands of Partitioned Poland (Seattle: 1974) p. 15; Hagen, Germans, Poles and Jews, pp. 103–4.
Citations to the first (PPSZ) or second (VPSZ) collection of laws will give volume numbers, the number of the law or decree and page references to the compilation of V. O. Levanda, Polityi khronologicheskii sbornik zakonov i polozhenii kasaiushchikhsia evreev (St Petersburg: 1874). Thus, the 1804 statue is PPSZ 28, no. 21 547/Levanda, pp. 53–60.
Springer, ‘Gavriil Derzhavin’s Jewish Reform Project of 1800’, CASS, 10, no. 1 (1976) pp. 1–24. Emphasis added.
M. Rest, Die russische Judengesetzgebung (1772–1804) (Wiesbaden: 1975) pp. 229–40.
VPSZ, 10, no. 8054/Levanda, pp. 359–74. In discussing the policies of Nicholas I, I have made extensive use of the excellent study of M. Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the. lews (Philadelphia: 1983).
Count N. D. Bludov, head of the Jewish Committee, quoted by Gessen, Zakon i zhizn’ (St Petersburg: 1911) p. 112. On the reforms of Alexander II, see Gessen, Istoriia, pp. 267–99 and Dubnov, History 2, pp. 154–77.
Sec Chapter 4, section I and the following works of I. M. Aronson: ‘Russian Bureaucratic Attitudes Towards Jews, 1881–94’. Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University (1973) pp. 58–60; The Attitudes of Russian Officials in the 1880s Toward Jewish Assimilation and Emigration’, SR. 34, no. 1 (1975) pp. 1–18; ‘Nationalism and Jewish Emancipation in Russia: The 1880s’, Nationalities Papers 5, no. 2 (1977) pp. 167–82; ‘The Prospects for the Emancipation of Russian Jewry during the 1880s’, SEER 55, no. 3 (1977) pp. 348–69.
On Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Count H. G. R. de Mirabeau and the Abbé Henri Grégoire sec I. E. Barzilay, ‘The Jew in the Literature of the Enlightenment’ VSS, 18, No. 4 (1956) pp. 243–61; also
R. F. Necheles, ‘The Abbé Grégoire and the Jews’, JSS, 33, no. 2–3 (1971) pp. 120–40. See
H. Arendt, ‘Privileged Jews’, JSS, 8, no. 1 (1946) p. 23.
Dubnov, History, 2, p. 202; J. Silver, ‘Some Demographic Characteristics of the Jewish Population in Russia at the End of the 19th Century’, JSS, 42, no. 3–4 (1980) pp. 269–80, concludes that the major factor in Jewish population growth was not fertility, which was higher in the general population, but a relatively low mortality level.
T. Herzl, Theodor Herzl’s Tagebücher, 1895–1904 (Berlin: 1924) 3, p. 478. See Chapter 4, section I.
Jean-Paul, Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive (Paris: 1946) p. 15.
Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York: 1937) 2, p. 234.
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1911 (Washington, DC: 1918) pp. 697–9; cf. A. T. Vassilyev, The Ochrana (Philadelphia and London: 1930) p. 100;
H.-D. Löwe, Antisemitismus und reaktionare Utopie (Hamburg: 1978) p. 159.
EKO, Sbornik, 1, p. xxi. For data on the growth of Jewish poverty and pauperism in the 1890s see ibid., 2, pp. 221–38.
L. Greenberg, The Jews in Russia (New Haven: 1965) 1, p. 160, quotes an official source to the effect that in the 1880s, 90 per cent of Jews constituted a ‘proletariat living from hand to mouth, in poverty and under the most trying and unhygienic conditions’. In Germany, by way of contrast, where around 1800 10 per cent of Jews had been well-to-do, ‘considerably more than half had a secure, middle-class income by 1850. Towards the end of the century, two-thirds of the Jewish population had risen into the upper and middle levels of the bourgeoisie. (Holeczek, ‘Judenemanzipation’, pp. 158–9.
A. Kahan, The Impact of the Industrialization Process in Tsarist Russia Upon the Socio-Economic Conditions of the Jewish Population’, unpublished paper (1972) and Greenberg, The Jews in Russia, 1, pp. 160–71. Although precise data are lacking to make quantitative comparison possible, the number and resources of Russia’s Jewish entrepreneurs and bankers — and in particular their financial services to the state -appear to have been considerably smaller than they were in the West. There was nothing, for example, to compare with the situation in Bavaria where, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 80 per cent of all government loans were endorsed and negotiated by Jews. At the end of the century, 80 per cent of Austria’s banking entrepreneurs were Jews or converted Jews. See
H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: 1951) pp. 14–18 and
A. J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime (New York: 1981) p. 144, cf. Greenberg, The Jews in Russia, 1, p. 161, The low economic status of the Russian Jews is clearly evidenced by their disproportionately small representation in the commercial and industrial life of the country’. This fact did not, of course, keep them from being denounced for playing a disporportionately large and powerful role in the economy. It can be argued — and Löwe has done so in Antisemitismus — that official and unofficial anti-Semitism in Russia coincided with and expressed a conservative and agrarian reaction agaiast the advance of industry and capital and in particular against their Jewish representatives. The opposition to big business and capital, especially when these were Jewish or foreign, was definitely a factor in Russian anti-Semitism, but in terms of actual laws or policies, the opposition was not very consistent or effective. During the years examined by Löwe — 1890–1917 — a reactionary, anti-capitalist anti-Semitism strengthened opponents of emancipation both inside and outside government, but neither before nor after 1890 was official resistance to it grounded primarily in anti-capitalism. Indeed, in both periods the laws favored Jewish capitalists over their less fortunate co-religionists. It is significant that Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who linked the ills of the age — materialism, financial power and corruption — with the Jews, rejoiced that there were none among the wealthy men he knew or met. ‘Perhaps because he knew so many Moscow and St Petersburg bankers and realized that few Jews lived in the capital, he did not decry their economic power in banking and industry.’
(R. F. Byrnes, Pobedonostsev, [Bloomington, Indiana: 1968] p. 206). For positive assessments of the magnitude of the contribution Jewish capitalists made to Russian ecnomic development, see: I. M. Dizhur, ‘Evrei v ekonomicheskoi zhizni’ Rossii’ in Kniga o russkom evreistve, pp. 155–82 and
A. J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: 1982) pp. 57–60.
‘Perepiska Nikolaia II i Marii Fedorovny’, KA, 22 (1927) p. 169; A. E. Healy, Tsarist Anti-Semitism and Russian-American Relations’, SR, 42, no. 3 (1983) p. 412.
R. J. Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism (New York: 1978) pp. 53–4;
L. B. Schapiro, ‘The Role of the Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement’, SEER, 40, no. 94 (1961) pp. 151–60; Greenberg, The Jews in Russia, 1, pp. 146–59; 2, pp. 139–59.
Quoted by S. Lambroza, ‘The Pogrom Movement in Tsarist Russia, 1903–06’, Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University (1981) p. 198.
Mendelsohn, The Jews, pp. 87–94 and W. O. McCagg, Jr, Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (Boulder, Colorado: 1972) pp. 36, 129, 199, 223.
F. Stern, Gold and Iron (New York: 1977) pp. 513–31;
P.G.J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (New York: 1964) pp. 97–100; Richarz, Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland, 1, pp. 62–3.
R. Strauss, ‘The Jews in the Economic Evolution of Central Europe’, JSS, 3, no. 1 (1941) p. 38.
Baron, ‘Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation’, Diogenes, 29 (1960) pp. 76–8.
There was in Russia no Christian-Jewish ‘middle-class symbiosis’ as there was in the West. For Germany, in particular, see A. Lcschnitzer, The Magic Background of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: 1956) pp. 24–40.
See the petitions of Moscow and St Petersburg merchants in A. Scholz, (trans.) Die Juden in Russland (Berlin: 1900) pp. 244–8. On the ambivalent attitude of the merchantry to Jews see Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, pp. 61–2, 331–2.
Löwe, Antisemitismus, pp. 103–5 and S. Harcave, ‘The Jewish Question in the First Russian Duma’, JSS, 6, no. 2 (1944) pp. 408–25.
P. B. Struve, Po vekham (Moscow: 1909), reprinted in
R. Pipes (ed.) The Collected Works of P. B. Struve (Ann Arbor, Michigan: 1970) pp. 218 and 209; cf.
A. Ia. Avrekh, Stolypin i Tret’ia Duma (Moscow: 1968) pp. 36–43.
P. N. Miliukov, ‘The Jewish Question in Russia’, in M. Gor’kii et al. (eds) The Shield (New York: 1917) p. 73. The original, published in Petrograd in 1916 under the title Shchit, has not been available to me.
M. T. Florinsky, Russia: A History and an Interpretation (New York: 1953) 2, p. 947.
W. E. Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia (New York: 1962) p. 113.
S. F. Starr, ‘Tsarist Government: The Imperial Dimension’, in J. R. Azrael (ed.) Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices (Nw York: 1978) pp. 13 and 26, The fact that per capita expenditures on police during the late nineteenth century were far higher in practically every non-Russian province than in Moscow shows that the price of empire was perpetual fear of violence’. Also see
M. Raeff, ‘Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy Toward the Nationalities’, in E. Allworth (ed.) Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: 1971) pp. 22–42.
There were, of course, no basic or ‘innate’ rights of citizenship until 1906. Before then, all categories of the empire’s subjects possessed only such rights — in effect, privileges — as the ruler had bestowed upon them. If Jews, therefore, were barred from the state service or denied a free choice of residence, such restrictions applied also to peasants. Even so, the situation of Jews was special. They did not automatically and on the same footing enjoy the rights or privileges of other native merchants or townsmen — the two social estates (soslovii) to which 95 per cent of Jews formally belonged. Article 76 of the Fundamental Laws of 1906 (in G. Vernadsky et al. (eds) A Source Book for Russian History, [New Haven: 1972] 3, p. 773) at last established that ‘Every Russian subject has the right to freely choose his place of residence, to acquire and dispose of property and to travel beyond the frontiers of the state without hindrance’. Article 76 made these rights less than absolute by declaring that their ‘limitations ... are regulated by special laws’. As far as Jews were concerned, existing disabilities, whether embodied in laws or in administrative regulations, remained on the books and in force. The status of Russian Jews as citizens whose rights were restricted by special legislation meant that emancipation required not positive laws to grant them civic and/or political rights but negative legislation, that is, the abolition of restrictions imposed upon them; cf. Chapter 2, section I.
It was not a generalized anxiety alone that kept the tsarist government from making common cause with Jews against other minorities, as the Prussians and Hungarians had done. The Russians were loath to repeat similar experiments because of what had happened during the Polish Rebellion of 1863. Before its outbreak, assimilated and upper-class Jews, in expectation of equal rights in a free Poland, gave their support to the Polish cause. In order to weaken Jewish adherence to it, the tsar in 1862 approved extensive concessions which succeeded in detaching most Jews from the rebellion. In spite of this, and although the Jewish masses did not join the fight for Polish independence, St Petersburg was less gratified by its success than frightened by the earlier act of disloyalty. Moreover, in Poland as well as in the Polish provinces of the empire, the Russian effort to combat dissident Polish landlords by winning the allegiance of their peasants precluded concessions to the Jews. See J. Meisl, Geschichte der Juden in Polen und Russland (Berlin: 1921–4) 3, pp. 316–32.
See Kokovtsev’s meeting with a Nationalist delegation in Chapter 4, section II; A. E. Alektorov, Inorodtsy v Rossii (St Petersburg: 1906);
Avrekh, Tsarizm i Chetvertaia Duma (Moscow: 1981) p. 38. Sazonov (see note 52) considered the Jews a menace to law and order as well as to the integrity of the empire.
H. Mommsen, Arbeiterbewegung und nationule Frage (Göttingen: 1979) pp. 127–46.
That was also the view of Struve who thought that, unlike Austria-Hungary, Russia was a genuine national state (or ‘national empire’) like Great Britain and the United States. See Pipes, Struve: Liberal on the Right (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1980) p. 211.
In 1897, non-Russians were 55.7 per cent of the empire’s 122.6 million people. S. I. Bruk and V. M. Kabuzan, ‘Dinamika i etnicheskii sostav naseleniia Rossii ... konets XIX v. — 1917 g.’ Istoriia SSSR, no. 3 (1980) pp. 74–93.
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© 1986 Hans Rogger
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Rogger, H. (1986). The Question of Jewish Emancipation: Russia in the Mirror of Europe. In: Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06568-4_1
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