History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 2 [of 3]: From the Death of Alexander I until the Death of Alexander III (1825-1894)Dubnow, Simon
Religion
History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 2 [of 3]: From the Death of Alexander I until the Death of Alexander III (1825-1894)
Dubnow, Simon
Jews -- Poland -- History; Jews -- Russia -- History; Poland -- History; Russia -- History
Subsequent events soon made it clear that the Government, represented by
Ignatyev, was far from harboring any sympathy for the victims of the
pogroms. The public did not fail to notice the fact that the Russian
Government, which was in the habit of rendering financial help to the
population in the case of elemental catastrophes, such as conflagrations
or inundations, had refrained from granting the slightest monetary
assistance to the Jewish sufferers from the pogroms. Apart from its
material usefulness, such assistance would have had an enormous moral
effect, inasmuch as it would have stood forth in the public eye as an
official condemnation of the violent acts perpetrated against the
Jews--particularly if the Tzar himself had made a large donation for
that purpose, as he was wont to do in other cases of this kind. As it
was, the authorities not only neglected to take such a step, but they
even went so far as to forbid the Jews of St. Petersburg to start a
public collection for the relief of the pogrom victims. Nay, the
governor-general of Odessa refused to accept a large sum of money
offered to him by well-to-do Jews for the benefit of the sufferers.
Nor was this the worst. The local authorities did everything in their
power to manifest their solidarity with the enemies of Judaism. The
street pogroms were followed by administrative pogroms _sui generis_.
Already in the month of May, the police of Kiev began to track all the
Jews residing "illegally" in that city [1] and to expel these "criminals"
by the thousands. Similar wholesale expulsions took place in Moscow,
Oryol, and other places outside the Pale of Settlement. These
persecutions constituted evidently an object-lesson in religious
toleration, and the Russian masses which had but recently shown to what
extent they respected the inviolability of Jewish life and property took
the lesson to heart.
[Footnote 1: It will be remembered that the right of residence in Kiev
was restricted in the case of the Jews to a few categories: first-guild
merchants, graduates from institutions of higher learning, and
artisans.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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