The Pale of Settlement is the border of the territory beyond which the Jews were forbidden to live in the Russian Empire. In the country, these rules were officially in force from 1791 to 1917, although in fact the law ceased to apply in 1915. The only exceptions were certain categories of Jews, which at different times could include people with higher education, merchants of the first guild, recruits who had served in the army, Karaites, artisans who were assigned to specific craft workshops, as well as Bukhara and Mountain Jews. The total area of the territory was more than 1 million 200 thousand square kilometers.
Definition of a concept
The Pale of Settlement is a concept that has also been called the constant Jewish Settlement line. This law was formed during the reign of Empress Catherine II. She signed a decree that strictly defined where Jews have the right to settle and work.
The Pale of Settlement is, in fact, the territory that covered the pre-agreed settlements related to the urban type. They also meant places, since Jews were also forbidden to live in rural areas. As a result, it included significant territories of modern Belarus, Lithuania, as well as the Kingdom of Poland, Latgale, Bessarabia, some areas of modern Ukraine, which at that time corresponded to the southern provinces of the Russian Empire.
As a result, it is believed that the Pale of Settlement is one of the most shameful pages in Russian history before the October Revolution, when citizens of a certain nationality and religion were actually infringed on their rights.
Appearance story
The actual beginning of the Jewish Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire was laid by the decree of Catherine II. It was signed in December 1791. This was the formal reaction of the government to the appeal of the Jewish merchant from Vitebsk Tsalka Faibishovich.
According to this decree, the Jews were allowed to live permanently in the territories of Belarus and New Russia, at that time quite recently annexed to Russia. At the same time, they were forbidden to enroll in the merchants, for example, in Moscow. In particular, this was demanded by merchants who feared that competition would increase significantly.
Heinrich Sliozberg, a specialist in Jewish history, emphasized that the Empress’s decree was evidence that it was decided for the Jews not to make any exception. The fact is that restrictions on the right to freely choose one’s place of residence and on the right to free movement existed for everyone. To some extent, this even applied to noblemen.
In fact, the Jewish Pale of Settlement arose after the Second Partition of the Commonwealth. As a result, its territories in the east were transferred to the Russian Empire along with all the local Jewish residents.
When the third partition of Poland took place in 1795, the Grodno and Vilnius provinces, in which a large number of Jews lived, were included in the Jewish Pale of Settlement.
Legal registration
Although it all started with the decree of Catherine II, formally, this situation was formalized only in 1804, when the "Regulation on the device of the Jews" was adopted. It detailed all the territories and provinces in which they were allowed to live and trade. Until 1835, the Caucasian and Astrakhan provinces were included in such provinces.
In particular, this document clearly defined what the Pale of Settlement means. It strictly prescribed all Jews to enroll in one of the estates. They could become manufacturers, landowners, merchants, artisans or tradesmen.
It is noteworthy that this "Regulation" was based on the "Opinion" of Senator Gabriel Derzhavin, who formulated the causes of food shortages in Belarus, as well as on existing Polish bills of the XVIII century.
The term itself was first used in the new edition of the Regulations on the Jews, which was published in 1835.
Causes
It is believed that there were several factors that led to the appearance of the Pale of Settlement of Jews in Tsarist Russia. One of them is the reluctance of Russian merchants to compete with them, as they suspected that they would suffer an imminent defeat. Jews have always been famous for their ability to trade successfully.
As a result, the main reasons for the Pale of Settlement became economic aspects and religion. Catherine II considered them dangerous adversaries for the current church, and besides people who represent an unproductive nation, she dreamed of turning them to useful work for society and the entire state.
Moreover, some historians are sure that Catherine was afraid that the Masonic ideas and sentiments of the French Revolution would spread with the Jews around the country.
Geography
As a result, the Pale of Settlement in Tsarist Russia included specific places that existed in a number of provinces. These are Vilenskaya, Bessarabskaya, Volynskaya, Vitebskaya, Grodno, Kiev, Yekaterinoslav, Minsk, Koven, Podol, Mogilev, Poltava, Kherson, Taurida and Chernihiv provinces.
In addition, all ten provinces of the Kingdom of Poland fell into the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. At different times Kiev was excluded (then Jews were allowed to settle only in several parts of the city), as well as Yalta, Nikolaev and Sevastopol.
Also, Jews accounted for more than one percent of the local population in Riga, Novgorod, Smolensk, Bryansk, Kharkov, Valka, Toropetsk, Roslavl, Kharkov counties, Courland province, in many parts of Siberia and in the Rostov district of the Don Don Army Region.
Application practice
Of course, over the years the existence of such a law on the Pale of Settlement in Russia, the practice of its application has changed. For example, by the end of the 19th century, there were about five million Jews in Russia; they were the fifth largest nation in the country. At the same time, only about 200 thousand of them could live in cities that did not fall into the Pale of Settlement.
Even a temporary trip was complicated, besides they were forbidden to live in rural areas. As a result of these restrictions, as well as with a small selection of specialties that they could be engaged in, severe poverty and crowding were noted in these places. Back in the 1880s, most Jews lived much worse than even the poorest Russian workers and peasants. In this case, the bulk was actually doomed to slow death from starvation.
Before the accession to the throne of Emperor Alexander II, none of them could permanently live outside the Pale of Settlement in Russia. Jews suffered greatly because of this.
Policy of relief
The first concessions were adopted in 1859. The government decided that this ban would not apply to merchants of the first guild. To get permission to live outside this line, you should have become a merchant of the first guild within its borders, at least two years before the issuance of the decree. Or live five years in this status after signing the document.
At the same time, this relief did not extend to cities located 50 versts from the borders of the Bessarabian and western provinces, as well as to cities in the Cossack regions, in Finland and some other settlements. For residence outside the Pale of Settlement, Jewish merchants of the first guild had the right to take one clerk with them, as well as four domestic servants.
At the same time, joining the first guild was not easy. It was necessary to fulfill two conditions. Firstly, to obtain a fishing certificate of a specific category - its value at the beginning of the XX century ranged from 500 to 1500 thousand rubles a year. Secondly, to become the owner of a guild certificate for 75 rubles a year. In this case, the actual receipt of the consent of the guild itself to enter or engage in certain commercial or industrial activities was not required.
In fact, the entry of Jews into the first guild of merchants allowed them to remove restrictions on their living by paying a fairly high tax and waiting for five years. For the majority of representatives of this people, this was unrealistic, so that the relief affected a small part of Jewry.
Educated people
In the future, gradually introduced the abolition of the Pale of Settlement began for educated Jews. In 1861, the ban ceased to apply to people with higher education who had diplomas of doctors of surgery and medicine, as well as all with masters, doctors or candidates in other university departments.
Since 1865, laws have been passed for three years that finally remove the ban from doctors who have no academic degree at all.
In 1872, this ban was officially lifted from the Jews who managed to graduate from the St. Petersburg Technological Institute.
By 1879, the right to freedom of movement and choice of place of residence was granted to Jews who became graduates of higher educational institutions, including medical ones, as well as dentists, pharmacists, midwives, paramedics.
Soon, this ban ceased to apply to guild artisans, as well as retired lower ranks, who entered the military service on recruitment. Craftsmen were issued a temporary residence permit in specific settlements. In most cases, they were closely monitored by the local police.
Obtaining education or registering for a craft workshop for Jews was associated with certain difficulties. Since the 1880s, the interest rate has been in force at universities, which allowed accepting no more than three percent of Jews in capitals, no more than 5% in other cities and no more than 10% within the city limits. And craft workshops were almost everywhere dissolved. In the Pale of Settlement, they remained only in Odessa.
The domestic statesman of that time, Count Ivan Tolstoy, noted that the authorities, while maintaining this law, always had in mind that Jews remain a dangerous, criminal and practically incorrigible people.
In the second half of the XIX century, this concept actually turned into a synonym for anti-Semitism, approved at the state level. It was based on religious intolerance, mostly not extending to baptized Jews.
Effects
This state policy, in fact, included restrictions on admission to gymnasiums and universities, a ban on farming, the treatment of Jews as people with limited rights, pogroms approved by the authorities.
All this led to an increase in the migration of representatives of this nation to the United States, their subsequent colonization of Palestine and Argentina. On the other hand, some of them provoked radicalization and participation in revolutionary parties and organizations.
The prohibition policy was criticized by many cultural figures of that time. For example, the writer and publicist Vladimir Korolenko, who wrote in the story The Mendel Brothers that this trait was perceived by others as a given. Some even compared it with the sedentary line of animals, that is, their range, area of distribution, beyond which they, as a rule, did not go beyond.
As a result, from 1881 to 1914, about one and a half million Jews left Russia alone for America.
Pogroms
The Jewish pogroms actually sanctioned by the authorities (at least law enforcement agencies did not intervene when representatives of radical political organizations organized them) became a vivid consequence of the existing Pale of Settlement at the beginning of the 20th century.
It all started in Chisinau back in April 1903. Over time, they became the subject of not only foreign, but also the domestic policy of the Russian Empire. In the negotiations with foreign powers about requests to give the country another borrowed funds, it was the pogroms that became one of the main reasons for which regular problems arose with these loans.
Already in 1904, American President Roosevelt made strict demands to amend the Jewish question, as well as strictly abide by the agreement on navigation and trade, concluded between the countries in 1832. But in the minds of Nicholas II, as most historians have noted, there was a surrealistic scheme. He believed that since the agreement provides for the subordination of Americans in the territory of Russia to domestic law, then the regime of the Pale of Settlement becomes applicable to American Jews. After lengthy debate and bickering, America denounced the 1832 agreement in 1911.
It was the pogroms that provoked many representatives of Jewish youth en masse to join the revolutionary organizations and movements, which at that time were extremely numerous in the country. The authorities got used to perceive the Jews as cowardly and submissive citizens, therefore, they were not ready for such selflessness and struggle, like self-sacrifice, contempt for their own death.
Calls for its cancellation were heard constantly. Moreover, equalizing Jews in rights was demanded not only by representatives of Jewry itself, but also by the outstanding humanists of that time, high-ranking domestic officials. It began at the beginning of the 19th century, when Speransky spoke of the need to cancel the Pale of Settlement. Witte, Stroganov, Milyukov, Stolypin, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy came up with similar initiatives. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the clause on the abolition of the Pale of Settlement was included in the programs of most political parties, with the exception of the Black Hundreds.
Cancel
In fact, the Pale of Settlement ceased to exist in August 1915. It was then that the Ministry of the Interior decided to allow Jews to live in cities outside the notorious line due to wartime emergency. Under the ban, there were still capitals, as well as areas under the jurisdiction of the ministries of the military or imperial court. These included the palace suburbs of St. Petersburg, as well as the frontline zone.
The abolition of the Pale of Settlement did not affect the softening of state policy in relation to this nation. Moreover, a significant part of the Jews found themselves in the frontline zone, they were considered by the government as unreliable elements, it was believed that in other places they would be less dangerous.
Finally, the abolition of the Pale of Settlement was connected with the Russian revolution. This was done by the Provisional Government after the events of February 1917. At the same time, according to historians, from the beginning of the First World War, from 250 to 350 thousand Jews were expelled from the western frontline provinces. They were relocated to Yekaterinoslav, Poltava and Tauride provinces. Up to 80 thousand representatives of this nation were expelled from the Kingdom of Poland, most of them immediately fled to Warsaw.
Along with the very Pale of Settlement, the Provisional Government lifted the ban on Jewish officers in the army. This was also caused by the conditions of martial law in which the country was located.