THE JEWISH COMMUNITY 177both Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa began by expelling numerous poor
Jews back into Poland in a move to 'protect' their new Christian subjects. In
Galicia, important reforms were initiated in 178Z by Joseph II, who viewed
Jewish autonomy as an anachronism. By introducing state education and milit-
ary service, and by abolishing the kahal, he sought to bring the Jews into the
mainstream of public life and German culture. In Russia, after some vacillation,
Catherine II pursued the simpler aim of keeping the Jews apart from the popu-
lation at large. In 1786, she restricted Jewish residence to the cities, and from
1791 to a Pale of Settlement which was gradually expanded over succeeding
decades to cover twenty-five western gubernias of the Empire. With the excep-
tions of the Crimea and Bessarabia, the territory of the Pale as finally defined in
1835 coincided very largely with the lands annexed by Russia from Poland-
Lithuania. In the Duchy of Warsaw, the decree of 1807 on personal liberty,
which ended serfdom, was suspended in relation to the Jews, and was never
fully implemented. In Prussia, where Frederick II had extended limited protec-
tion to wealthy Jews in certain specified professions, full civic equality was
established in I8IZ. Thus, by the end of the Napoleonic period, many ambigu-
ities and disabilities remained. In the Congress Kingdom, as in Prussia, the
granting of civil equality in 1822 was attended by the abolition of the kahal.
Other restrictions, such as the clauses De non tolerandis Judaeis in municipal
charters, remained in force until 1862. In the Prussian provinces newly acquired
by the Treaty of Vienna, the principle of Jewish Emancipation was not put into
effect until 1846; in Austria, it had to wait until 1848, and in some minor
respects, until 1867; in the realms of the Tsar, it was never permanently estab-
lished. In the Russian Empire, the draconian measures of Nicholas I, briefly
relaxed under Alexander II, were swiftly reinstated in the reign of Alexander III.
According to the May Laws of 1882, the regulations of the Pale were to be
strictly enforced; Jews were to be barred from the senior ranks of the army and
bureaucracy, and from buying land; they were to be given only limited access to
secondary and higher education, to the professions, or to posts in local govern-
ment. Further relaxations introduced in 1905-6 had little time to take effect
before the Empire itself was swept away. Thus, if in the old Republic, the chil-
dren of Israel had sometimes felt that they were bondsmen in the Land of Egypt,
in Russia, they knew for certain that they had been carried off into the
Babylonian Captivity. (See Map 7.)
In all three Partitions, the imposition of the institutions of the authoritarian
state affected every aspect of Jewish life. The gradual reduction in the jurisdic-
tion of the kahal, and the growth of the powers of the state authorities, meant
that the Jews for the first time became full citizens of the countries in which they
lived. Whereas in Poland-Lithuania, they had managed their own affairs in their
own way, they now had to assume a civilian identity similar to that of all other
citizens. For one thing, they incurred the wrath of officialdom, and the resent-
ment of other tax-payers and conscripts. For another thing, in order to be taxed
and conscripted, they needed to appear on the official Registers; and in order to