Pale of Settlement
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The Pale of Settlement outlined with the red line
was allowed and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally
prohibited. However, Jews were excluded from residency in a number of
cities within the Pale, and a limited number of categories of Jews—those
ennobled, with university educations or at university, members of the
most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans,
some military personnel and some services associated with them, as well
as the families, and sometimes the servants of these—were allowed to
live outside it. The archaic English term pale is derived from the Latin word palus, a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.[1]
The Pale of Settlement included much of present-day Lithuania; Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and Poland (East-Central Europe); a part of eastern Latvia and parts of western Russia. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and with Austria-Hungary.
Furthermore, it comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia
and largely corresponded to historical borders of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Crimean Khanate.
The Russian Empire in the period of the existence of the Pale was predominantly Orthodox Christian. The area included in the Pale, with its large Jewish and Catholic
populations, was acquired through a series of military conquests and
diplomatic maneuvers, between 1791 and 1835. While the religious nature
of the edicts creating the Pale are clear (conversion to Russian Orthodoxy,
the state religion, released individuals from the strictures),
historians argue that the motivations for its creation and maintenance
were primarily economic and nationalistic in nature.
The end of the enforcement and formal demarcation of the Pale coincided with the beginning of the First World War, and ultimately with the February and October Revolutions of 1917, i.e., the fall of the Russian Empire.
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The Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland, with the percentages of Jewish population c. 1905
The institution of the Pale became more significant following the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, since, until then, Russia's Jewish population had been rather limited;[citation needed]
the dramatic westward expansion of the Russian Empire through the
annexation of Polish-Lithuanian territory substantially increased the
Jewish population.[citation needed]
At its height, the Pale, including the new Polish and Lithuanian
territories, had a Jewish population of over five million, and
represented the largest component (40 percent) of the world Jewish
population at that time.[citation needed]
From 1791 to 1835, and until 1917, there were differing
reconfigurations of the boundaries of the Pale, such that certain areas
were variously open or shut to Jewish residency, such as the Caucasus.[citation needed] At times, Jews were forbidden to live in agricultural communities, or certain cities, (as in Kiev, Sevastopol and Yalta), and were forced to move to small provincial towns, thus fostering the rise of the shtetls.[citation needed] Jewish merchants of the First Guild (купцы первой гильдии, the wealthiest sosloviye of merchants in the Russian Empire), people with higher or special education, University students, artisans,
army tailors, ennobled Jews, soldiers (drafted in accordance with the
Recruit Charter of 1810), and their families had the right to live
outside the Pale of Settlement.[3][better source needed]
In some periods, special dispensations were given for Jews to live in
the major imperial cities, but these were tenuous, and several thousand
Jews were expelled to the Pale from Saint Petersburg and Moscow as late as 1891.[citation needed]
During World War I, the Pale lost its rigid hold on the Jewish
population when large numbers of Jews fled into the Russian interior to
escape the invading German army.[citation needed] On March 20 (April 2 N.S.), 1917, the Pale was abolished by the Provisional Government decree, On abolition of confessional and national restrictions (Russian: Об отмене вероисповедных и национальных ограничений).[citation needed] A large portion of the Pale, together with its Jewish population, became part of Poland.[citation needed] Subsequently, most of this population would perish in The Holocaust one generation later.
Jewish life in the Pale
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Geographic distribution of Jewish languages (such as Yiddish) in the Russian Empire according to 1897 census. The Pale of Settlement can be seen in the west, top left.
A Jewish teacher in 19th-century Podolia
dispensed free medical treatment for the poor, offered dowries and
household gifts to destitute brides, and arranged for technical
education for orphans. According to historian Martin Gilbert's Atlas of Jewish History,
no province in the Pale had less than 14% of Jews on relief; Lithuanian
and Ukrainian Jews supported as much as 22% of their poor populations.[5]
The concentration of Jews in the Pale, coupled with Tzar Alexander
III's "fierce hatred of the Jews", and the rumors that Jews had been
involved in the assassination of his father [Tzar Alexander II] made
them easy targets for pogroms and anti-Jewish riots by the majority population.[6] These, along with the repressive May Laws, often devastated whole communities.[citation needed] Though attacks occurred throughout the existence of the Pale, particularly devastating anti-Jewish pogroms occurred from 1881–83 and from 1903–1906,[7] targeting hundreds of communities, assaulting thousands of Jews, and causing considerable property damage.[citation needed]
One outgrowth of the concentration of Jews in a circumscribed area was the development of the modern yeshiva system.[citation needed] Until the beginning of the 19th century, each town supported its own advanced students who learned in the local synagogue with the rabbinical head of the community. Each student would eat his meals in a different home each day, a system known as essen teg ("eating days").[citation needed]
After 1886, the Jewish quota
was applied to education, with the percentage of Jewish students
limited to no more than 10% within the Pale, 5% outside the Pale and 3%
in the capitals of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev.[citation needed] The quotas in the capitals, however, were increased slightly in 1908 and 1915.[citation needed]
Amidst the difficult conditions in which the Jewish population lived and worked, the courts of Hasidic dynasties flourished in the Pale.[citation needed] Thousands of followers of rebbes such as the Gerrer Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (known as the Sfas Emes), the Chernobyler Rebbe, and the Vizhnitzer Rebbe flocked to their towns for the Jewish holidays and followed their rebbes' minhagim (Jewish practices) in their own homes.[citation needed]
The tribulations of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement were immortalized in the writings of Yiddish authors such as humorist Sholom Aleichem, whose novel Tevye der Milchiger
(Tevye the Milkman) (in the form of the narration of Tevye from a
fictional shtetl of Anatevka to the author) form the basis of the
theatrical (and subsequent film) production Fiddler on the Roof.[citation needed]
Because of the harsh conditions of day-to-day life in the Pale, some
two million Jews emigrated from there between 1881 and 1914, mainly to the United States.[8]
However, this exodus did not affect the stability of the Jewish
population of the Pale, which remained at 5 million people due to its
high birthrate.[citation needed]
Territories of the Pale
The Pale of Settlement included the following areas.1791
The ukase of Catherine the Great of December 23, 1791 limited the Pale to:- Western Krai:
- Mogilev Governorate
- Polotsk Governorate (later reorganized into Vitebsk Governorate)
- Little Russia (Ukraine):
- Novorossiya Governorate
1794
After the Second Partition of Poland, the ukase of June 23, 1794, the following areas were added:- Minsk Governorate
- Mogilev Governorate
- Polotsk Governorate
- Kiev Governorate
- Volhynian Governorate
- Podolia Governorate
1795
After the Third Partition of Poland, the following areas were added:1805–1835
After 1805 the Pale gradually shrank, and became limited to the following areas:- Lithuanian governorates
- Southwestern Krai
- Belarus without rural areas
- Malorossiya (Little Russia or Ukraine) without rural areas
- Chernigov Governorate
- Novorossiya without Nikolaev and Sevastopol
- Kiev Governorate without Kiev
- Baltic governorates closed for arriving Jews
Rural areas for 50 versts (53 km) from the western border were closed for new settlement of the Jews.
Final demographics
According to the 1897 census, the guberniyas had the following percentages of Jews:[9]- Northwestern Krai (whole; Lithuania, Belarus):
- Vilna Governorate [12.86%]
- Kovno Governorate [13.77%]
- Grodno Governorate [17.49%]
- Minsk Governorate [16.06%]
- Mogilev Governorate [12.09%]
- Vitebsk Governorate (some parts of it are in Pskov and Smolensk Oblasts now) [11.79%]
- Southwestern Krai (part; now in Ukraine):
- Kiev Governorate [12.19%]
- Volhynian Governorate [13.24%]
- Podolia Governorate [12.28%]
- Polish governorates (lands of Congress Poland):
- Warsaw guberniya (Варшавская губерния (Мазовецкая губерния 1837–44)) [18.22%]
- Lublin guberniya (Люблинская губерния) [13.46%]
- Płock guberniya (Плоцкая губерния) [9.29%]
- Kalisz guberniya (Калишская губерния) [8.52%]
- Piotrkow guberniya (Пётроковская губерния) [15.85%]
- Kielce guberniya (Келецкая губерния (Краковская губерния 1837–44)) [10.92%]
- Radom guberniya (Радомская губерния) [13.78%]
- Siedlce guberniya (Седлецкая губерния (Подлясская губерния 1837–44)) [15.69%]
- Augustów guberniya (Августовская губерния, 1837–67), split into:
- Chernigov Governorate (some parts of it are in Bryansk Oblast now) [4.98%]
- Poltava Governorate [3.99%]
- Taurida Governorate (Crimea) [Jewish 4.20% + Karaite 0.43%]
- Kherson Governorate [12.43%]
- Bessarabia Governorate [11.81%]
- Yekaterinoslav Governorate [4.78%]
The following cities within the Pale were excluded from it:
- Kiev (the ukase of December 2, 1827: eviction of Jews from Kiev)
- Nikolaev
- Sevastopol
- Yalta
See also
- English Pale around Dublin, Ireland
- Pale of Calais, English territory in France from 1360 to 1558
- May Laws
- Pogrom
- Hippolytus Lutostansky
- History of the Jews in Russia
- History of the Jews in Poland
- History of the Jews in the Soviet Union
- Antisemitism in the Russian Empire
- Antisemitism in the Soviet Union
- Antisemitism in the Russian Federation
References
- Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г.: Распределение населения по вероисповеданиям и регионам [The first general census of the population of the Russian Empire in 1897: Population by religions and regions]. Демоскоп Weekly (in Russian). Retrieved 30 September 2013.
- Abramson, Henry, "Jewish Representation in the Independent Ukrainian Governments of 1917–1920", Slavic Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Autumn 1991), pp. 542–550.
External links
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This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. (August 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
- The Pale of Settlement (with a map) at Jewish Virtual Library
- The Pale of Settlement (with map and additional documents) at The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
- Jewish Communities in the Pale of Settlement (with a map)
- friends-partners.org (with map)
- Life in the Pale of Settlement (with photos)
- Jewish Encyclopedia - Jewish Encyclopedia
- aish.com
- britannica.com
- digital.library.mcgill.ca (with map)
- Map of area in the Polish era (Royal Museums, Greenwich)
- The decree "On abolition of confessional and national restrictions", passed by the Provisional Government on March 20, 1917 (in Russian)
Categories:
- Antisemitism in Russia
- Historic Jewish communities
- History of Belarus (1795–1918)
- History of Lithuania (1795–1918)
- Congress Poland
- History of Bessarabia
- History of Ukraine (1795–1918)
- Jewish Belarusian history
- Jewish Lithuanian history
- Jewish Polish history
- Jews and Judaism in the Russian Empire
- Jewish Ukrainian history
- Politics of the Russian Empire
- Shtetls
- Cultural regions
- Jewish political status
- Society of the Russian Empire
- Settlement schemes
[Ed.[full citation needed]
note: Attitudes toward the Jews are to be found at this time point.
Production may be one of Moscow University and the Academy of Arts
(Московский университет и Академия художеств).]
[Presents
14 groups of Jews to whom permission might be granted to live outside
of the Pale, indicating additional conditions, and presenting three
reasons for temporary permissions to leave, for the 13 governates of the
Russian Empire; the bogpost is by an academic historian, and states:
'These rules was regulated by the Law on Social Estates and the Law on
Passports printed in vol. 9 and 14 of Свод законов Российской империи.']
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