Pale of Settlement

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The Pale of Settlement circled with the red line
Map showing the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland with the percentages of Jewish population (c. 1905)

The Pale of Settlement (Russian: Черта́ осе́длости, chertá osédlosti, Yiddish: דער תּחום-המושבֿ, der tkhum-ha-moyshəv, Hebrew: תְּחוּם הַמּוֹשָב, tḥùm ha-mosháv‎) was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited. 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. The English term "pale" is derived from the Latin word "palus", a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.

The Pale comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia, and largely corresponded to historical borders of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; it included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, and parts of western Russia. Jews were also excluded from residency at a number of cities within the Pale. A limited number of categories of Jews were allowed to live outside the pale.

The Pale, with its large Catholic and Jewish populations, was acquired by the Russian Empire (which was majority Russian Orthodox) in a series of military conquests and diplomatic manoeuvres between 1791 and 1835, and lasted until the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917.

History

For more information about life in the Pale, see History of the Jews in Poland and History of the Jews in Russia.

The Pale was first created by Catherine the Great in 1791, after several failed attempts by her predecessors, notably the Empress Elizabeth, to remove Jews from Russia entirely,[citation needed] unless they converted to Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion. The reasons for its creation were primarily economic and nationalist. [citation needed]

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; the dramatic westward expansion of the Czarist Empire through the annexation of Polish-Lithuanian territory substantially increased the Jewish population. 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.

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. At times, Jews were forbidden to live in agricultural communities, or certain cities, as in Kiev, Sevastopol and Yalta, and forced to move to small provincial towns, thus fostering the rise of the shtetls. Jewish merchants of the First Guild, 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.[1] 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.

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. On March 20 (April 2), 1917, the Pale was abolished by the Provisional Government decree, On abolition of confessional and national restrictions (Russian: Об отмене вероисповедных и национальных ограничений). A large portion of the Pale, together with its Jewish population, became part of Poland.

Jewish life in the Pale

Jewish life in the shtetls (Yiddish: שטעטלעך shtetlekh "little towns") of the Pale of Settlement was hard and poverty-stricken.[citation needed] Following the Jewish religious tradition of tzedakah (charity), a sophisticated system of volunteer Jewish social welfare organizations developed to meet the needs of the population. Various organizations supplied clothes to poor students, provided kosher food to Jewish soldiers conscripted into the Tsar's army, 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.[2]

The concentration of Jews in the Pale made them easy targets for pogroms and anti-Jewish riots by the majority population. These, along with the repressive May Laws, often devastated whole communities. Though pogroms were staged throughout the existence of the Pale, particularly devastating attacks occurred 1881–1883 and 1903–1906, targeting hundreds of communities, killing thousands of Jews, and causing considerable property damage.[citation needed]

A Jewish teacher in 19th-century Podolia

One outgrowth of the concentration of Jews in a circumscribed area was the development of the modern yeshiva system. 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").

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. The quotas in the capitals however, were increased slightly in 1908 and 1915.

Despite the difficult conditions under which the Jewish population lived and worked, the courts of Hasidic dynasties flourished in the Pale. 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.

The tribulations of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement were immortalized in the writings of Yiddish authors such as humorist Sholom Aleichem, whose stories of Tevye der Milchiger (Tevye the Milkman) in the fictional shtetl of Anatevka form the basis of Fiddler on the Roof. Because of the harsh conditions of day-to-day life in the Pale, some 2 million Jews emigrated from there between 1881 and 1914, mainly to the United States. 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.

Territories of the Pale

The Pale of Settlement included the following areas.

1791

The Ukase of Catherine II of December 23, 1791 limited the Pale to:

1794

After the Second partition of Poland, the ukase of June 23, 1794, the following areas were added:

1795

After the Third Partition of Poland, the following areas were added:

1805–1835

After 1805 the Pale gradually shrinks, and becomes limited to the following areas:

Congress Poland did not belong to the Pale of Settlement[3]

Rural areas for 50 verst (kilometers) 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:[4]

  1. Vilna guberniya [12.86%]
  2. Kovno guberniya [13.77%]
  3. Grodno guberniya [17.49%]
  4. Minsk guberniya [16.06%]
  5. Mogilev guberniya [12.09%]
  6. Vitebsk guberniya (some parts of it are in Pskov Oblast and Smolensk Oblast now) [11.79%]
  1. Kiev guberniya [12.19%]
  2. Volhynia guberniya [13.24%]
  3. Podolia guberniya [12.28%]
  1. Warsaw guberniya (Варшавская губерния (Мазовецкая губерния 1837–44)) [18.22%]
  2. Lublin guberniya (Люблинская губерния) [13.46%]
  3. Płock guberniya (Плоцкая губерния) [9.29%]
  4. Kalisz guberniya (Калишская губерния) [8.52%]
  5. Piotrkow guberniya (Пётроковская губерния) [15.85%]
  6. Kielce guberniya (Келецкая губерния (Краковская губерния 1837–44)) [10.92%]
  7. Radom guberniya (Радомская губерния) [13.78%]
  8. Siedlce guberniya (Седлецкая губерния (Подлясская губерния 1837–44)) [15.69%]
  9. Augustów guberniya (Августовская губерния, 1837–67), split into:
  1. Suwałki guberniya (Сувалкская губерния) [10.16%]
  2. Łomża guberniya (Ломжинская губерния) [15.77%]

Others:

  1. Chernigov guberniya (some parts of it are in Bryansk Oblast now) [4.98%]
  2. Poltava guberniya [3.99%]
  3. Tavrida guberniya (Crimea) [Jewish 4.20% + Karaite 0.43%]
  4. Kherson guberniya [12.43%]
  5. Bessarabia guberniya [11.81%]
  6. Ekaterinoslav guberniya [4.78%]

In 1882 it was forbidden for Jews to settle in rural areas.

The following cities within the Pale were excluded from it:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Who could live outside the Pale of Settlement?
  2. ↑ An area of Russia where Jews were most oppressed, the Pale of Settlement gave rise to amazingly good things.
  3. ↑ Who could live outside the Pale of Settlement?
  4. ↑ "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). 16–29 September 2013(?). 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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