The new great Russian nationalism very soon developed ugly features. Not only did
it lead to a growing repression of non-Russian nationalities, such as the Poles, but
also of other minorities of “foreign race” (inorodtsy) that could not be assimilated. In the first place Jews were targeted. The discrimination
and scapegoating of Jews became an official state policy. Since 1791, during the reign
of Catherine the Great, there had existed already in Russia a policy aimed at restricting
the rights of Jews. In that year the Pale of Settlement was introduced. This measure
restricted the territory on which the Jews had the right to live. It included the
Western border region of the empire (the word “Pale” indicated “border”) and comprised
a territory that approximately covered the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
This territory consisted, globally, of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Bessarabia,
and only a small part of Russia proper. Eighty percent of the European part of the
Russian empire was “forbidden to Jews” (although there were a few exceptions). Additionally,
many towns within the Pale itself were closed to Jews. In 1795, after the third partition
of Poland, when Russia annexed Eastern Poland and Poland ceased to exist as an independent
state, the Jewish population in the Pale Settlement swelled to approximately five
million, creating the greatest concentration of Jews in the world. This concentration
within a restricted area made them vulnerable to attacks.
This is what happened after the murder of tsar Alexander II in 1881, when immediately
the Jews were accused of the murder. It led to a wave of pogroms in the South of the
empire, characterized by looting, rape, and murder. This wave of violence went on
for three years. The government not only failed to persecute the offenders, but overtly
and secretly supported the movement. The eminence grise of the regime, Pobedonostsev, a known anti-Semite, was quoted as having said that
“a third of the Jews will be converted, a third will emigrate, and the rest will die
of hunger.” He was the man behind many new repressive measures, such as the May Laws,
issued in 1882, banning Jews from rural areas and towns with more than ten thousand
inhabitants. Jewish property in rural areas was confiscated and at universities quota
were imposed restricting the number of Jewish students. Official, state-sponsored
anti-Semitism and popular anti-Semitism, fed by resentment, went hand in hand. According
to Leonid Luks, “in this struggle to bind the people to the regime anti-Jewish slogans
would play an increasingly important role. There was an ever-increasing tendency amongst
the conservatives to associate the sharp social and political conflicts in the country,
as well as several foreign policy drawbacks suffered by the tsarist empire (Congress
of Berlin, 1878), with the activities of international Jewry.”[37] A leading role in spreading anti-Jewish sentiments was played by the chauvinist
and fiercely anti-Semitic Pan Slav movement that quickly grew in strength at the end
of the century and reached its apogee after the lost war with Japan and the subsequent
revolution in 1905.
