Russian authorities and subjects, and their contributions to local economies were
not appreciated.
Official Russian policy to Jews alternated between Enlightenment-inspired dec-
larations of religious toleration and socially homogenizing efforts, on the one hand,
and forcibly managing their economic roles and settlement on the other. Initially,
under Catherine II, Jewish representative institutions were maintained (useful for tax
collection and providing liaison with the government), but efforts were also made to
integrate Jews into existing Russian social categories. Jews were classified in the urban
categories of merchant or poll taxpaying townsmen; they were encouraged (even
forcibly moved) from rural roles into urban settings. Lower-class Jews were expected
to provide recruits, but were allowed to buy out the obligation. In 1780 Catherine II
declared that all Jews should join burgher ranks or the merchantry, which opened up
economic opportunity, particularly since Jewish merchants were permitted to travel
around the empire (a privilege not allowed to most merchants). In principle the 1785
Charter to the Towns allowed Jews to be elected to town government and in the same
year the Senate affirmed that any Polish laws that discriminated between Poles and
Jews were to be negated. In 1787 Catherine II declared that official documents would
not use the derogatory term of“zhid.”
In the 1790s, however, official policy on many of these issues changed in
response to the opposition of Christian townsmen and nobles and to the greater
influx of Jews in the second and third partitions (1793, 1795). In 1794 their poll
tax rate was doubled. Even the most successful Jewish merchants were forbidden to
move to major cities beyond the lands of the partitions and some of the new Black
Sea acquisitions. As the state investigated how to alleviate general rural poverty in
the new western borderlands, Jews tended to be blamed; hostility rose. In 1802 the
state inaugurated work on a new legal code for Russia’s Jews; issued in 1804, it
maintained double taxation, backed off from their access to urban government and
guilds, and formalized a Pale of Settlement to which Jews were restricted. The Pale
consisted of Commonwealth territories acquired in the partitions and new farming
lands and urban centers in the Black Sea steppe. Jews continued to be able to lease
distilling operations and taverns, but this remained a point of tension into the
nineteenth century. Perhaps more than with any other ethnic group, Jews were
treated officially with hostile and discriminatory attitudes, generally reflecting
beliefs at large in the lands of the Commonwealth.
EMPIRE IN 1801
By the end of the reign of Paul I (1796–1801), the Russian empire was massive and
powerful. It stretched across European Russia and Siberia to the Pacific, it enjoyed
brisk trade on the White, Baltic, and Black Seas. It was a major player in central
European power politics, epitomized by multiple victories over the Ottoman Turks
and partnership with European allies to partition Poland. Russia’s army had proven
formidable, and European powers regarded with apprehension Russia’s potential
naval capacities in the Black Sea and Mediterranean.
124 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801