XVI THE SUFFERINGS OF THE JEWS

The brutal persecutions of the Jews under Plehve have involved unspeakable misery; but a beneficial effect also, not to be underestimated. The entire public sentiment of Russian society has become friendly to the Jews. In numerous conversations with inhabitants of the Russian capitals, including people from all strata of society, only once have I heard a word expressing ill-feeling towards the Jews. The speaker in this instance was a colonel of Cossacks, on his way to the front, who assured me in all sincerity that the English are a "vile Jew-nation"! With this exception, all protested against regarding the Russians as enemies of the Jews. The Jews are victims of the murderous Russian politics, like the Poles, the Ruthenians, and the Liberals. This appeared to be the generally accepted idea. The natural consequence of this idea is that the Jews have the sympathy of all parties opposed to the government. While the officials are bringing deliberately false accusations against the Jews, unofficial Russia sides with the latter. The situation is similar to that which existed in the[Pg 155] West before the emancipation of the Jews, when Liberal political doctrine was directly inculcating philo-Semitism; the only difference being that among the people of Russia no anti-Semitic feeling whatever exists. Therefore, during any crisis of assimilation consequent upon emancipation, there would be little fear of an anti-Semitic reaction such as that experienced in the West.

There is one class which is pleased by the perpetual hunting-down of the Jews by the Novoye Vremya and its offshoots in anti-Semitism. This is the class of small tradesmen, notorious for their dishonesty, who are thankful that they are protected from Jewish competition. For the rest, all Russia wishes the repeal of the laws enacted in restriction of the Jews.

The government, of course, endeavors to persuade foreigners that to permit the Jews to settle beyond the pale would mean the Judaization, and the consequent ruin, of all Russia. This assertion is made in spite of their knowledge that the contrary is true. A memorial in regard to the Jews, written in 1884 by Ivan Blioch, and published by the ministry of the interior—The Jewish Question in Russia—shows by statistics that the greatest percentage of pauper peasants is found in the Jewless governments of Moscow, Tula, Orel, and Kursk; that the prosperity of the peasantry in the governments within the pale is incomparably higher than in the territory from which the Jews are excluded. The[Pg 156] arrears of revenue in districts in which there are no Jews are three times as great as in the pale. As a result, the land purchased by peasants by means of the peasants' banks is much greater in extent in the latter than in the former districts. The usurers who advance money to the peasants at from three hundred to two thousand per cent. are without exception Christians. The assertion that the Jews tempt the people to drunkenness stands morally upon about the same level as the statement that the Jews are never found engaged in agriculture. The latter statement is true, but only because the Jews are not allowed to live in the open country. The government has now monopolized the retail sale of spirits, thus driving out of the business thousands of Jewish tavern-keepers. This measure, however severe, is viewed with satisfaction by intelligent Jews as tending to improve the morals of the Jewish masses.

All these are only idle excuses in justification of the policy of extermination of the Jews, which policy has in reality a quite different cause. Three conditions have already been cited, any one of which is alone sufficient to place the unhappy Jews of the great prison state in an especially bad situation, and also to expose the régime in all its depravity—a depravity almost incomprehensible to western Europeans.

The first is the great influence which the rich Russian usurers possess with the authorities. If[Pg 157] Shylock is angry with the merchant prince of Venice because the latter lends money without interest, in Russia the r?les of the contestants are reversed. The Jew also exacts usury where he can—no one in seriousness pretends to be surprised at this, in view of the deliberate demoralization of the pale—but in comparison with his Russian colleague he keeps within modest limits, being indeed compelled to do so by his circumstances. He necessarily prefers to keep the debtor solvent rather than to drive him out of house and home, which he, the Jew, moreover, cannot buy in. The Russian usurer, on the other hand, is accustomed to show no mercy, because he calmly seizes the land of his victim, and either leases it or sells it at a profit or adds it to his own property. For a great part of the Russian usurers belong to the guild of village usurers. These people influence the under authorities with bribes, while the great speculators, the millionaire usurers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, who likewise would have to fear the milder methods of their Jewish competitors, are powerful enough to influence senators and ministers according to their wishes. The Russian usurer, therefore, is the first complainant and enemy of the Jews.

The second and more powerful cause is the spirit of Pobydonostzev, the fanatic of uniformity. Combining in himself the qualities of jurist, theologian, and scholastic, he is too barren in mental powers to master the conception of a state which should take[Pg 158] into account any diversity of creed or race. Above all, however, any toleration would undermine the three pillars upon which alone his conception of the Russian empire can rest—autocracy, orthodoxy, and Russianism. For the preservation of this Asiatic, uniform, absolutist régime, or, better, of the omnipotence of hierarchy, it is above all necessary to keep the people in absolute subjection. This, again, is possible only when every chance of learning anything else than their own condition is closed to them. A prisoner who endangered the spirit of blind obedience by a tendency to dispute orders could not be tolerated in a prison. As little can the great Russian prison state endure men who might lead the prisoner to think whether he must be absolutely a prisoner. Of such thoughts, however, the Jews, who are subject to special taxation, are suspected above all others. Their criminality is certainly of the smallest; they are the most punctilious of tax-payers, and, moreover, the best-conducted citizens in the world. But they are—Heaven knows why—perhaps because of their Talmudic-dialectic occupation, perhaps also because as pariahs they have little cause to be enthusiastic over the ruling order—they are inexorably subtle critics of all existing things, and so could easily upset the simple minds of the Russian lower classes. That is the chief reason why they are surrounded by a cordon of plagues. The paternal precaution of the Russian government is of course not much[Pg 159] wiser than the conviction so many mothers entertain of the unshaken faith of their children in the story that the stork brought the baby. Quite without Jewish criticism the Russian peasant, under the never-resting lash of hunger, begins to think and to grumble; and although his unruly sentiments express themselves chiefly in the specifically Russian form of the organization of religious sects, nevertheless each new sectarian shows a new desertion from Pobyedonostzev's ideal of a Russian subject. Upon the organization of sects, however, the Jews have of course no direct influence whatever.

The third cause of the persecution of the Jews is to be found in the Satanic brain of Plehve, who wishes to furnish to the humane Czar, and perhaps still more to the Czaritza, who has western European ways of thinking, an indication that without the Jews there would be no opposition whatever in Russia. For this purpose he not only has the Jews entered more strictly on the police-registers, if they are guilty of any political offence, such as being present in a forbidden assemblage, but he also directly provokes them, in order to drive them into the ranks of the revolutionaries and thereby to compromise the latter. In Hungary and Bohemia ritual murder cases were incited in order to give the Jews a lesson to remember, and to make them national—i. e., more Magyar or Czechic—in feeling, since they stubbornly persisted in remaining[Pg 160] German. In Russia, however, they are driven into the camp of the revolutionaries, in order to extirpate the former and to cast suspicion upon the latter. Nevertheless, some governors, who in other respects readily comply with the directions given from above, yet dare to step in in behalf of the Jews, contrary to the measures appointed by higher authorities, as for example, Prince Urussoff, governor of Bessarabia, who is to be thanked that in spite of all the efforts of Krushevan, the creature of Plehve, no outbreaks of the mob against the Jews took place in Kishinef recently.

As personal but nevertheless effectual causes of the persecution of the Jews, the anti-Semitism of the dowager Empress and of the Grand-Duke Sergius, governor-general of Moscow, must be mentioned. Respectively brother and wife of Alexander III., they conservatively hold to his opinions. This unfortunate and narrow-minded man had been persuaded by conscience-smitten persons that Jewish army-contractors were the cause of the defeat of the Russians in the Turkish war; and it was as hard to get an idea out of his head as to get one in. The inclination of the Grand-Duke Sergius to torture human beings amounts to a disease. He can satisfy it most easily upon the defenceless Jews.

The final cause of the persecution of the Jews, and one which is regarded by many people as the weightiest, is the certain income which legislation against the Jews means for every unscrupulous[Pg 161] official. Most of the laws passed against the Jews are quite impossible of execution, or are executed only in a very imperfect way, thanks to the corruptibility of the Russian officials. "Absolutism palliated by corruption"—this bitter saying fits the case of the Jews best. Yet what relieves the situation for them in a certain way renders it worse for them in another. It certainly is a question whether the ransom-money of one generation will not become the purchase-money of the next. The Russian bureaucracy will not be willing to renounce its income from bribes and extortions. Thus it prevents all legislative decrees in favor of the Jews. These poorly paid, much feared, but still despised officials are, in the inclined plane of their evil consciences, quite as much victims of the system as the Jews, but in a different way. We are all human, whether Christian or Jew, and in the long run, under the operation of the most depraved of all rules, neither the one nor the other can keep himself pure. The worst thing that has happened to the Jews, however, is not, as can well be understood, an occasional "pogrom" (riot), in which, to the indignation of all civilized mankind, defenceless people are slain and plundered by command of the authorities. The worst is the restriction to particular zones and to particular callings. That is systematic massacre, a deliberate policy of destruction and extirpation. Even if the misery of the ghetto has, thanks to the strict abstemiousness of the Jews,[Pg 162] failed as yet to kill them in the way that the peasantry, weakened by alcoholism, are killed in the famine provinces, nevertheless the moral result is frightful. Even the iron family morality of the Jews is shaken in the western governments. A deplorable percentage of prostitutes is made up of Jewesses. Experience shows that sexual deprivation is the beginning of every other form of degeneration. Moreover, the matter does not generally end with the individual who sinks into prostitution. The ethical ideas of such a morally defective person spread contagion in a wide circle. Families are broken up, or unchastity makes its way into them. The whole conception of life becomes different when the chastity of women becomes an article of trade or an object of ironical scepticism. Still, in comparison with their environment even these Jews may be called chaste, for they are merely stained by the barbarism of the Orient. But it is, nevertheless, monstrous that in a Christian country the hard-won sexual morality of a part of the population, once gained, must be endangered only because malevolent politics will have it so. The moral purity of the Jews and of the Teutonic races has redeemed the world from the deep depravity of the Roman decadence. Now a Christian state policy destroys a part of the iron stability of this moral acquisition of humanity.

It is self-evident that whoever can tries to free himself from the misery of the ghetto. Even [Pg 163]Russian legislation has left some small gates open, and through these the struggling Jews squeeze themselves with every exertion of strength and cunning. Then there ensues a battle between brutality and artfulness—one not lacking in elements of humor. The authorities, hostile to the Jews, try of course to prevent too many of them from escaping from the ghetto and from settling in cities which it is desired to keep as free from Jews as possible. The Jews, however, try again and again to evade the prohibitions and the illegally interpreted ordinances and to settle where there is a possibility of a means of livelihood. Such cities are, for example, St. Petersburg and Moscow. The martyrdom which Jews and Jewesses undergo in order to gain the right to stay in these cities borders on the tragic. A non-resident Jewess is not allowed to study in these places, but may live there as a prostitute. An innocent young girl wished to have herself registered as a prostitute, so that she might attend the university, never suspecting what formalities she would have to undergo in consequence. In course of the medical examination, however, the circumstances of the case were immediately discovered, and the young girl was punished for the attempted deception and sent away.

A well-known Orientalist, a man of seventy years, had business to execute in Moscow which he did not succeed in finishing before night. No hotel would have taken him in; and he could not endanger any[Pg 164] of his friends, for if in the frequent nocturnal rangings of the police in Jewish dwellings a Jewish guest without a passport should be taken, the host would lose his right of residence. In his difficulty the old man asked a railroad official how he could pass the icy-cold night. The man gave him the good advice that he should seek out the only place where a man is permitted to take a room and spend the night without a passport—a brothel. Accordingly, this man of seventy, in order not to freeze, was obliged to pass the night in a room with a drunken prostitute, and sat until morning in a chair, praying. The man who related these facts to me was a Russian author widely known and honored.

A Jew who for five years has paid the taxes of the first guild in a municipality of the pale receives permission to leave the pale and settle elsewhere. He must, however, gain permission for each member of his family through the strictest formalities. Woe to him if a child has been born to him during that time! It cannot qualify, and it may easily happen that the father must return to the pale. A Jewish merchant of the first guild in Moscow tried to obtain permission to send such a child to school. Admission was refused, because he did not possess the necessary papers. The father appealed to the senate in St. Petersburg, and asked for provisional permission for attendance of his child at school until the passing of a judgment in that place. The minister of justice, Muraviev, however, entered a[Pg 165] protest against this. Therefore the father was obliged either to employ private tutors or to let the child grow up without instruction.

Whoever works as assistant to a dentist, and has obtained a certificate, may open an office for himself. The only requirement for this is that it shall be well fitted up and that nobody shall sleep in it. This facilitation is granted because of the fact that in Russia there is a great lack of dentists. Yet a Jewish dentist went to a lawyer and complained that he had fitted up his office and had handed in to the police his request for leave to practise. The police waited three months, then came and explained that, since he had not practised his profession for three months, he must immediately leave Moscow. He was obliged to leave his house immediately, and wander about all night, because he could nowhere find lodging.

Another Jewish dentist, a woman, wished to take her examination. A certificate was demanded testifying to her political blamelessness. When she tried to obtain this it was refused her, since she had no right of residence there, and therefore could not demand a certificate!

The Jews meet these tricks of the authorities with tricks of their own. They pay for a dentist's certificate, fit up an office, and then go into trade in bed-feathers or calico. The police official who wishes to prove whether the dentist's profession is really practised has some ruble notes slipped into[Pg 166] his hand. Very recently the Jews have found a means to become known as Christians without baptism, which they shun. Good-natured priests, who receive nothing at all for a baptism but a large price for a written declaration that X. Y. is an orthodox Christian, draw up such declarations. The unbaptized Hebrew comes as an orthodox Christian to Great Russia and carries on business, while the helpful priest receives a little income from him.

In general, the Jew must be able to pay; in that case life is not hard for him in Russia, where, as I have said, no anti-Semitic feeling whatever exists among the people, and the national characteristics of good-nature, of heartiness, helpfulness, and politeness make life easy and pleasant. But woe to the poor wretch who cannot pay at every step! Woe to the struggler who wishes to better his lot! Woe to the lover of justice who dares to fight for his rights or even for the public welfare! One of the special laws for the Jews is that any one may trample him and injure him unpunished. Of all the unfortunate subjects of the Czar, he is the most unfortunate. His intelligence, his sense of justice are offences against the sacred order of things, which demands stupidity and obedience. Thus exists the entirely incomprehensible condition that a great realm steers towards inevitable economic ruin for lack of economic intelligence, while it possesses five million born financiers, who in the lifetime of a man could change Russia into an economic world-power.