Abstract
The second phase of Jewish liberal politics witnessed the breakthrough from traditional forms of representing Jewish interests to modern politics. The Russian Revolution of 1905 and its key player, the Russian intelligentsia, paved the way for the Defense Bureau members to shift their approach from welfare and legal aid activities to politics, and provided them with the possibility to claim legal emancipation for Russian Jews. Thus, in order to enforce the democratisation of the country, and to create a legal political opposition in Russia, the intelligentsia initiated the banquet campaign, the petition’s movement and finally founded the Union of Unions in 1905. Jewish Liberals perceived the creation of a public space as the opportunity to join the Revolution, and bring forward specific Jewish demands more effectively. To this end, Jewish Liberals founded the Soiuz Polnopraviia, an organization which was open to all political groups within Jewish society, and thus served as a public space for Jewish society. The SP in turn enabled Jewish Liberals to spread their political standing to wider strata of Jewish society, and to mobilize and politicize the Jewish masses. Moreover, in addition to the struggle for a democratisation of the country, the Liberals widened their efforts among the leaders of the Jewish communities in Western Europe and America, and added to constitutional reform within Russia external diplomatic pressure on the Russian government.
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Notes and References
See Miroslav Hroch, Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegung bei den kleinen Völkern Europas. Eine vergleichende Analyse zur gesellschaftlichen Schichtung der Patriotischen Gruppen (Prague, 1968).
For more information on the rapid increase and development of the press in this period, see Caspar Ferenczi, ‘Freedom of the Press under the Old Regime’, in Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson (eds), Civil Rights in Imperial Russia (Oxford, 1989) pp. 191–214.
For more details see Terence Emmons, ‘Russia’s ‘Banquet’ Campaign’, California Slavic Studies, 10 (1977) pp. 45–86; and
Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, ‘Die Rolle der Russischen Intelligenz in der Revolution von 1905’, in Forschungen zur Osteuropâischen Geschichte, 32 (1983) pp. 237–43.
For more information about the Soiuz Soiuzov, see S.D. K(irpichnikov), Soiuz Soiuzov (St. Petersburg, 1906); and
S.N. Dmitriev, ‘Soiuz Soiuzov v gody pervoi rossiiskoi revoliutsii’, in Istoriia SSSR 1 (Jan./Feb.l990) pp. 40–57; and Löwe, ‘Die Rolle der Russischen Intelligenz’, pp. 229–56.
See Dmitriev, ‘Soiuz Soiuzov’, p. 45; Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905. Russia in Disarray (Stanford, 1988) pp. 143–4;
Sidney Harcave, The Revolution of 1905 (London, 1970) pp. 143–5.
Therein they demanded the abolition of all restrictive laws, emancipation along with the rest of the population, freedom of movement (svoboda peredvizheniia), by abolishing the particularly oppressive Pale of Settlement, freedom of employment, and the right to obtain education and property. See Pravo, 1905, p. 739; all the thirty-two cities are mentioned by Sidney Harcave, Jewish Political Parties and Groups and the Russian State Duma from 1905–1907, unpublished DPhil thesis (Chicago, 1943) pp. 45–6.
The foundation of the Soiuz Polnopraviia received wide coverage in the Jewish press, see Khronika Evreiskoi Zhizni, no. 14, 10 April 1905, pp. 20–1, and Voskhod, no. 14, 6 April 1905, p. 17, as well as it found its way into the Okhrana files, see R.M. Kantor, ‘Razgrom evreiskoi intelligentsii’, in Evreiskaia Letopis, II (1924) pp. 87–95.
Bramson had founded the Jewish Democratic Group in St. Petersburg by the end of February, 1905. See Simon Dubnow, ‘Jewish Rights between Red and Black’, p. 462; and S.M. Dubnov, Kniga Zhizni. Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia, vol. II (Riga, 1935) pp. 20–1. The other founders of the EDG were A.I. Braudo, Bikerman and Saker. Dubnov mentioned Dr. Shabad as the EDG’s representative in Vilna.
See Dubnov, Kniga zhizni p. 23; and Oscar I. Janowsky, The Jews and Minority Rights 1898–1919 (New York, 1933, reprint 1966) p. 91. Janowsky only mentioned, however, the Liberals and Zionists as participants of the SP.
See Simon Dubnow, Mein Leben, edited by Elias Hurwicz (Berlin, 1937) pp. 159–60.
‘As an active member of the Union for the achievement of Equal Rights and the Union of Attorneys, I was a delegate to the central organ of the Union of Unions’, see Arnold D. Margolin, From a Political Diary. Russia, the Ukraine and America, 1905–1945 (New York, 1946) p. 8.
The unions affiliated to the Union of Unions were: academics, lawyers, agronomist and statisticians, medical doctors, veterinarians, railway workers, writers, Zemstvo people, the Union of the Emancipation for Women, the Union of the Full Equality for the Jews, engineers, clerks and book-keepers, teachers of the primary and middle schools, the Union of peasants and finally the pharmacists. All in all the Soiuz Soiuzov had 40–50,000 members in the summer of 1905. See S.D.K, Soiuz Soiuzov, pp. 21–30; for a detailed account of all the unions, see Jonathan E. Sanders, The Union of Unions: Political, Economic, Civil and Human Rights Organizations in the 1905 Russian Revolution, unpublished DPhil thesis, Columbia University, 1985.
See L.M. Bramson, K istorii Trudovoi Partii. Trudovaia Gruppa pervoi gosudarstvennoi Dumy, 2nd (ed.) (Petrograd, 1917) p. 16. Here, Bramson described a meeting of this Union which took place in St. Petersburg three days before the opening of the Duma. He succeeded in pushing through a resolution in favour of equality of rights for Russian Jews against the adherents of the anti-Semite Erogin; this particular activity in the Union of Peasants is also reported by another former SP activist. See Pozner, ‘Bor’ba za ravnopravie’, p. 137.
In the memorandum of 18 February 1905 to the minister of the interior, Tsar Nicholas II had promised an elected, legislative assembly. Therein the minister of the interior, Bulygin was charged with the elaboration of the right to vote. See Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, ‘Bulygin Duma’, in Hans-Joachim Torke (ed.), Lexikon der Geschichte Rußlands. Von den Anfängen bis zur Oktober-Revolution (Munich, 1985) pp. 72–73; for further information on the Bulygin Duma see Ascher, Revolution of 1905, pp. 177–81; and Harcave, Revolution of 1905, pp. 145–6.
Kokovtsev writes in his memoirs that Vitte was very interested to give the right to vote to the Jews. Furthermore, the majority of the meeting’s participants had agreed with it. See Graf V.N. Kokovtsev, Iz moego proshlago. Vospominania 1903–1919, vol. I (Paris, 1933) pp. 70–1 [Reprinted 1969 in Slavic Printings and Reprintings, vol. 200/1, edited by C.H. van Schoonefeld, The Hague and Paris, 1969];
for more information on this conference see also George E. Snow, “The Peterhof Conference of 1905 and the Creation of the Bulygin Duma’, in Russian History, II, 2 (1975) pp. 149–62.
See Robert Weinberg, ‘Workers, Pogroms, and the 1905 Revolution in Odessa’, The Russian Review, 46 (1987) p. 46.
In many places in the Pale of Settlement the Jews proved to be the dominating group: in Kherson, of the 199 delegates one hundred were Jews. From Vinnitsa, a city in the gubernia of Podolia, it was reported that 35 per cent of the voters were Christians and 45 per cent Jews and so on. See Voskhod, no. 37, 16 September, p. 12. Lestschinsky talks of an absolute or relative majority (between 50 per cent and 59 per cent) of Jews in the main towns of the provinces of Minsk, Grodno, Siedltse, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Kieltse, Volynia and Radom. See Jacob Lestschinsky, ‘Dubnow’s Autonomism and his “Letters on Old and New Judaism” ‘, in Aaron Steinberg (ed.), Simon Dubnov. The Man and his Work, A memorial volume on the occasion of his birth, 1860–1960 (Paris, 1963) p. 88.
In this Manifesto, Nicholas II promised an elected assembly with legislative functions whereby no law would be enacted without the consent of the State Duma. In addition to this, the Tsar promised civil freedoms such as the freedom of meeting, speech, press and coalition, and indirectly also the emancipation of religions and nationalities, and finally, as opposed to the Bulygin Duma, an extension of the right to vote to wider strata of the population. See Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, ‘Die Rolle der demokratischen Intelligenz’, in M. Hellmann, K. Zernack, G. Schramm (eds), Handbuch der Geschichte Russlands. vol. 3/1 Von den autokratischen Reformen zum Sowjetstaat 1856–1945 (Stuttgart, 1982) p. 350.
A. Linden counted 660 pogroms between 18 and 29 October. See A. Linden, ‘Die Dimensionen der Oktoberpogrome 1905’, in Die Judenpogrome in Russland, vol. I (Cologne and Leipzig, 1910) p. 187. Dubnov gave the following information about the Odessa pogrom: more than three hundred people were killed, thousands were mutilated and wounded and more than 40,000 people were economically ruined. See Simon Dubnow, Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes. Vol X. Die Neueste Geschichte (Berlin, 1929) p. 396. Voskhod reported in no. 44–5 in 11 November 1905 that about eight hundred had been killed and several thousand wounded. For more detail about the background and the conditions which made the pogrom possible, see Weinberg, ‘Workers, pogroms and the 1905 Revolution in Odessa’, pp. 53–75; and Ascher, Revolution of 1905, pp. 254–62.
Feder mentioned various meetings such as the ones of Paul Nathan with Vitte in 1905 and 1906, and an interview with Vitte in Portsmouth (1905) by Strauss and Schiff. See Ernst Feder, ‘Paul Nathan and his work for East European and Palestinian Jewry’, Historia Judaica, vol. XIV (April 1952) part I, pp. 10–13.
For more details see Zosa Szajkowski, ‘Paul Nathan, Lucien Wolf, Jacob H. Schiff and the Revolutionary Movements in Eastern Europe, 1903–1917’, Jewish Social Studies, 29 (1967) pp. 5–10.
Rothschild subsidized this newspaper until 1908. See Gary Dean Best, To Free a People. American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890–1914 (Westport, Connecticut and London, 1982) p. 167.
For more information on Jacob Schiff’s campaign see A.I. Sherman, ‘German-Jewish bankers in World Politics: The Financing of the Russo-Japanese War’, in Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute, 28 (1983) pp. 59–73.
See Khronika Evreiskoi Zhizni, no. 1, 10 January 1906, p. 34; Pozner, ‘Bor’ba za ravnopravie’, p. 173; Sidney Harcave, ‘The Jews and the First Russian National Election’, The American Slavic and East European Review, vol. IX, no. 1 (February 1950) p. 39.
The inquiries showed mainly positive results: In Kherson one hundred out of 199 candidates were Jews; in Vinnitsa (Gub. Podolia) 35 per cent of the voters were Christians while 45 per cent were Jews, see Voskhod, no. 37, 16 September 1905, p. 12. In Vindavo 150 voters out of 250 were Jews; in Ekaterinoslav 40 per cent of the voters were Jews, see Voskhod, no. 40, 8 October 1905, pp. 14–15. According to Alexander Orbach this led to the Soiuz Polnopraviia’s expectation of twenty Jewish Duma deputies. See Alexander Orbach, ‘Zionism and the Russian Revolution of 1905. The Commitment to Participate in Domestic Political Life’, in Annual of Bar-Ilan University Studies in the History and Culture of East European Jewry, vol. XXIV–XXV (Jerusalem, 1989) p. 19; Harcave even talks of an expectation of twenty-three Jewish deputies. See Harcave, The Jews and the First Russian National Election’, p. 40.
See S. Aleksandrov, ‘Evreiskii vopros v Dume i “dostigateli” ‘, in Nashe Slovo, 22 June 1906, p. 4.
See A.K., ‘K izbiratel’noi kampanii’, in Evreiskii Narod, no. 4, 10 November 1906, cols 1–5.
This proclamation is cited in Gregory L. Freeze, From Supplication to Revolution. A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (New York and Oxford, 1988) p. 299.
The left-liberal radical wing was further strengthened by two Social Democrats and 17 Social Revolutionaries. See Warren B. Walsh, ‘Political Parties in the Russian Duma’, Journal of Modern History, 22 (1950) pp. 144–145.
See Judith Elin Zimmerman, Between Revolution and Reaction. The Constitutional Democratic Party, October 1905 to June 1907. DPhil thesis. Columbia University (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1969) pp. 163–70.
During the discussions in the committee on civil equality, Vinaver had taken the ‘regesty i nadpisy’ with him to the session in order to show the committee members the amount of all the restrictions. Apparently, one deputy looked at the facts and seemed to ask: ‘Did we really create all these restrictions?’ See Louis Greenberg, The Jews in Russia: The Struggle for Emancipation, vol. 2 (New York, 1976) p. 117.
See Sidney Harcave, ‘The Jewish Question in the First State Duma’, in Jewish Social Studies, 6 (1944) p. 161; Vinaver gave a full account of this action.
See M.M. Vinaver, Kadety i evreiskii vopros (St. Petersburg, 1907) pp. 6/7.
According to Bramson, the Trudovik leader Aladin had initiated this committee (see Bramson, K istorii Trudovoi Partii, p. 52). For more general information about the Trudoviki, their programme and activities in and outside the Duma see D.A. Kolesnichenko, ‘Iz istorii borby rabochego klassa za krest′ianskie massy v 1906 g.’, Istoricheskie Zapiski, 95 (1975) pp. 254–82; and
D.A. Kolesnichenko, ‘K voprosu o politicheskoi evolutsii trudovikov v 1906 g.’, in Istoricheskie Zapiski, 92 (1973) pp. 84–109. However, these articles do not mention the Jewish question, and only reflect the relations between Trudoviki and Bolsheviki.
Almost the entire Kadet and Trudovik Duma factions had gone after the dissolution of the Duma to Vyborg, Finland, in order to look for an appropriate protest action. In the end, a proclamation was issued to the Russian population in which they called upon them to refuse paying taxes and no longer to send their sons to the army. However, this action failed as it did not meet any resonance among the Russian population which was exhausted from revolutionary activities. Furthermore, the socialist parties made no efforts to support the Vyborg appeal actively. For more details on the Vyborg appeal, see ‘Pervaia Gosudarstvennaia Duma v Vyborge’, Krasnyi Arkhiv, 57 (1933) pp. 85–99; M.M. Vinaver, Istoriia vyborgskago vozzvania (St. Petersburg, 1917); and Bramson, K istorii Trudovoi Partii, pp. 77–81.
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Gassenschmidt, C. (1995). The Revolution of 1905 and the Struggle for Legal Emancipation. In: Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900–14. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23944-3_2
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