Legal Restrictions Imposed Upon the Jews since 1882.

1. As a temporary measure and until a general revision is made of the legal status of the Jews, they are forbidden to settle anew outside of towns and townlets (boroughs), an exception being made only in the case of existing Jewish agricultural colonies.

2. Until further orders, the execution of deeds of sale and mortgages in the names of Jews is forbidden, as well as the registration of Jews as lessees of real estate situated outside of towns and townlets, and also the issuing to Jews of powers of stewardship or attorney to manage and dispose of such real property.

3. Jews are forbidden to transact business on Sundays and on the principal Christian festivals, the existing regulations concerning the closing on such festival days of places of business belonging to Christians to apply in future to Jews as well.*

* The third clause of the May Laws is not to be compared in importance with the two others, which strike so radically at the right of domicile and the possession or leasing of landed property, but this wholly unjustifiable measure works in an exceedingly oppressive manner in the towns, where the Jews, even although forming the majority of the inhabitants, have to refrain from all business transactions for two days out of every seven.

These regulations, it will be seen, were intended to be only temporary, but although a revision of the laws was duly drafted by a special Commission under presidency of Count Pahlen, no further action has been taken in the matter, and the May Laws, thirty years after their enactment, are still in force, with a mass of additional restrictive "explanations" and interpretations, and with no immediate prospect of their repeal.

From 1882, also, dates the order of the Ministry of War forbidding the admission of Jewish recruits to the Navy, fortresses, and the frontier service, and allowing Army surgeons to employ only Jewish attendants, for the reason, as related elsewhere, that Jewish physicians "exercised a demoralising influence" upon Christian attendants. On March 8th of this year the Imperial sanction was given to the order prohibiting the admission of Jews to the Kharkoff Veterinary Institute and limiting the number of Jews admitted to the Veterinary Institutes at Kasan and Dorpat. This was the beginning of the "percentage" principle which, as will be seen, received such extensive application in the years that followed.

In contradistinction to the preceding year, 1883 was relatively a lenient one as regards legislation concerning the Jews. Thus the only noteworthy additional restrictions of Jewish rights were the following:-

This decision affected practically all Jewish free students, as, with the exception of Odessa and Warsaw, the university towns are situated beyond the Pale, while the students in question nearly all belong to the non-privileged classes.

Ancient and absurd laws which had long lain in oblivion were also unearthed and put into execution - for example, the law forbidding Jews to employ Christian domestics, under which, in the year 1883, no fewer than 270 Jews were prosecuted in a few districts of the government of Chernigoff alone. The cleansing of St. Petersburg from Jews assumed terrible proportions, and non-privileged families, who had lived in the capital for many years, were generally accorded a respite of only 24 to 48 hours. It was, however, in the village settlements that the authorities proceeded in the most rigorous fashion, the phrase in the May Laws "to settle anew outside of towns and townlets" giving rise to different interpretations and endless misunderstandings, and becoming a prolific source of official abuse. Thus a Jew, on returning to his village after a few days' absence, was refused admission to his home on the pretext that he was a "new-comer," while, on the other hand, if he wanted to move from one house to another in the same settlement, he was met with the reminder that he was contemplating "leasing real estate situated outside of towns and townlets" in glaring defiance of the May Laws. These arbitrary decisions, it is true, were usually cancelled on an appeal to the Senate, but this involved the expenditure of time and money, and in the meantime the parties concerned were frequently ruined beyond recall. This year, too, the St. Petersburg College of Mines decided, on its own initiative, to restrict the proportion of Jewish aspirants to 5 per cent of the total number of students admitted.

Wherever a Jew still remained in the State service he was hounded out, however humble the capacity in which he served. As a typical instance of this cleansing process, showing how anxious were the provincial bureaucrats to fulfill their duty in this respect, it may be mentioned here that the Governor of Kovno, finding several Jews among the clerks employed in the Police Department, had them promptly turned out of the office. This year, too, several workmen's corporations - in Moscow, Smolensk, etc.- refused Jewish artisans admission to their guilds, thus causing the latter to forfeit their residential right.

The most thoroughgoing Jewish restrictions were :-

This became the standard ratio for most of the Stock Exchange committees, except where still further limitations were introduced.

The following were the most noteworthy enactments of the year :-

Of the other troubles which befell the Jews in the course of this year, the most serious were experienced by the inhabitants of the fifty-verst boundary zone. The ambiguously worded enactments relating to this region were now interpreted by the governors of the boundary zone in such a manner that they not only expelled the Jews who had settled there subsequently to the year 1858, but also those who, while having been settled there for many generations, had temporarily left their places of residence since 1858.

The principal measures were :-

Many other judicial oppressions were added to the intolerable burden of the Jews during this year. According to a Senatorial ruling of May 19th, it was decided that the daughters of privileged merchants lose their right of residence on marriage. This point, however, is of trifling importance in comparison with the effects of the Senatorial decisions relating to the boundary zone. These restrictive resolutions had been growing in volume since 1884, and this year the Senate decided that the privileged classes of artisans, merchants of the first Guild, and others enjoying the universal right of residence, were also to be excluded from the boundary zone. The expulsions from the boundary zone attained terrible proportions during this year, which also brought further restrictions concerning the right of Jews to prosecute mining enterprises on uncultivated land belonging to the State, while the admission of Jewish students to the Institute of Civil Engineers at St. Petersburg was limited to 3 per cent. of the total.

The labours of Pahlen's Commission appointed to settle the Jewish question came to a close in the spring of this year. The majority pronounced themselves in favour of substantial alleviations, but the Russian Government paid no attention to their finding. The most important restrictions were :-

As in the previous twelvemonth, the expulsions from the boundary zone were carried out with the utmost rigour during 1888. According to a decision of the Senate, ratified on February 22nd, the right of residence in that region belonged only to those Jews who had been registered in the local communes prior to the year 1858. This decision was specially directed against Jews who possessed landed property in the boundary zone.

This year was marked by the rigorous exclusion of Jews from the legal profession:-

This year is distinguished by many further curtailments of rights, as, for instance, the decision that artisans outside the Pale, though provided with the right of domicile, must not engage in trade. Another interpretation of the Senate deprived Jews of the right to be elected presidents of school boards, whether in district or provincial towns. The extent of these judicial persecutions may, perhaps, best be gauged from the fact that henceforth Jews were not allowed to conduct a military band, and that they could form at the most one- third of the number composing such a band. By the Law on Military Duty (January 31st, 1889) Jews were finally deprived of the right - enjoyed by all other Russian subject - to find a substitute (a brother or other relative) when cal1ed out for military service, and this year, too, a stop was put to the admission of Jewish students to the Army Medical College and the Institute of Civil Engineers.

* It must not be forgotten that the May Laws apply only to the Pale of Settlement, and therefore the interdict on the purchase or leasing of real estate outside of towns and townlets did not affect Jews living to the north or east of the Pale. The privileged classes, in point of fact, availed themselves of this, and bought or leased landed property in the interior governments. This "concession" which only benefited a small number of Jews, underwent however, continual abridgments, until it was finally withdrawn in 1903.

Of the oppressive measures which became law in the course of this year we give the following:-

Another restriction imposed upon the Jews, was the order of the Governor-General of Kieff forbidding the wives of poor artisans to sell milk, bread, and other commodities in the market-places of that town. Particularly noteworthy were the important restrictions which this year were introduced into the rules and regulations of joint-stock companies and partnerships, with the object of preventing Jews from acquiring landed property in this roundabout way. In accordance with the May Laws, Jews may neither become directors of companies possessing real property situated outside of towns or townlets in the Pale of Settlement nor own the majority of shares in such companies.

This year was a year of lamentation and panic, the fears aroused by the wholesale expulsions from Moscow causing no fewer than 76,000 persons to seek refuge in the United States. The following were the most important restrictions introduced during this year:-

The wellnigh complete exclusion of Jews from municipal self-government was the chief event of this year, but, as will be seen from the following list, many other remnants of their sadly curtailed rights were also swept away:-

How anxious the Russian Government was to get rid of the Jews is shown by its refusal, shortly before this date, of Baron Hirsch's offer of twenty million roubles (£ 2,000,000) to be applied to the higher and technical education of Russian Jews in the Pale of Settlement, and its sanction, shortly afterwards, of the work of the Jewish Colonisation Association in Russia. The government of a country in which emigration is officially forbidden thus sanctions a society whose aim is nothing more or less than to remove the whole Jewish nation from the country, and grants this new departure considerable privileges!

This year the right of residence again suffered further curtailments, but, as will be seen, there were limitations in other directions as well:-

During this year many additional decisions of the Senate were given against the Jews. For example, wine and corn sorters and several other artisans' occupations were excluded from the privileged categories. The teaching of the Russian language was forbidden in the "Chedarim" or Hebrew private elementary schools.
In many places the Jews this year suffered much annoyance through their names being changed. They were ordered to give up using the names which many had borne for years, and to adopt once more the humiliating Ghetto denominations (such as Joschko, Moschko, etc.) under which they had been registered in the official records. There were, it must be admitted, many Jews who bore their Ghetto brand with pride and almost with joy.

Of the codified restrictions imposed upon the Jews in the course of this year the following may be noted:-

Among the many other vexatious measures of this year may be mentioned the Senatorial decision forbidding midwives - who belong to the privileged categories - to keep their parents wIth them, however old and infirm they may be, outside the Pale of Settlement.

The first year of the reign of Nicholas II was responsible for the following measures:-

A relatively temperate year for the Jews in Russia, yet we have to chronicle:-

On the whole, conditions during this twelvemonth were very tolerable for the Jews, but one heavy economic blow was dealt them, for the introduction of the Government spirit monopoly in Western Russia deprived thousands of Jews of their means of livelihood, and unlike their Christian colleagues, they could not find work in a similar capacity under the State.

While the Russian Jews this year were agitated by great political movements, the legal pogrom continued as before:-

This year, as is fully related elsewhere, they went so far as to expel from Moscow merchants of the first Guild, and to arrest persons "of Semitic physiognomy" in the streets in broad daylight, handing them over subsequently to the police to be deported. Some conception of the devastation wrought among the Jewish community of Moscow may be formed from the fact that of five synagogues only one remained, and that the Jewish school, or "Talmud Tora" had been compelled to close its doors. In Siberia, too. where the domiciliary right of the privileged Jews had been questioned or curtailed, the bureaucracy fumed and fretted, and wholesale expulsions were the rule. In Tomsk alone some 800 Jewish families who possessed real estate were on this account victimised and driven out.

In this year we may note the following restrictive measures:-

This year saw the following restrictions added to the Code:-

Amongst the other vexatious measures of this year we may chronicle the Senatorial decree of December 1st forbidding Jewish villagers to remove to a neighbouring village even in the same parish, unless the new village is distant from the old less than three versts. Another order trenching upon the domiciliary privilege was to the effect that attendance at a school of dentistry confers no right of residence upon the students. About this period the last remaining elective offices were closed to the Jews. Thus, on December 20th, the Imperial Council declared that Jews must not accept positions as representatives of a municipal bank.

We have only the following important measures to place on record:-

During these three years numerous "percentage" regulations (from 5 per cent. to 50 per cent.) were introduced into a number of newly founded schools, especially commercial institutions.

By an order of May 10th, 1903, Jews were forbidden to purchase, lease, or manage estates beyond the Pale. This was the final stroke in the exclusion of Jews from the possession and enjoyment of real property in any part of Russia beyond the towns and townlets of the Pale. In 1905, a commission was once more appointed to inquire into the Jewish question, and the Government held out a promise of revising the legal status of Russian Jews and minimising the terrible disabilities under which they labour, but the high hopes raised in the Ghetto by this announcement were soon dashed to the ground. Even the oft-quoted Stolypin circular of May 22nd, 1907, ordering that the expulsions of Jews settled without the Pale should cease, became in the hands of an ill-disposed bureaucracy a powerful weapon against the Jews. Both the original circular and the "supplementary" circular of 1909 - with their ambiguous wording, so characteristic of Russian legislative enactments - were interpreted in such a manner as to intensify the persecution of the Jews. A riot of expulsions ensued, and these increased with every year, culminating in the wholesale proscriptions of 1910, which overtook the Jews in every part of the Empire, and continued well into the following year. In 1909, restrictions were placed upon Jews frequenting summer and health resorts, and frequent expulsions followed, many invalids being among the victims of this senseless tyranny. All these restrictions, however, pale into insignificance in comparison with the universal extension of the iniquitous "percentage rule", which in 1910 was applied to schools of surgery, midwifery and dentistry, with their resultant decay and ruin. Recently it has overtaken the commercial schools, well-nigh the last line of defence in Jewish education. In the autumn of 1909 the proportion of Jewish admissions to these schools, many of them founded and maintained by Jewish money, was fixed at a maximum of 15 per cent.