causes of the pogroms more rigorously, one in each province of the Pale. Five
out of sixteen suggested abolishing the Pale of Settlement and letting Jews
settle in the Russian interior.
Instead, the count imposed a series of “temporary” laws in May 1882,
which came to be known as the May Laws. According to the May Laws, there
was to be no new Jewish settlement in the villages of the Pale, and no Jewish
leasing or managing estates in the Pale. In addition, Jews were prohibited
from conducting business on Sundays or Christian holidays. Though officially
temporary, the May Laws remained in effect until 1917, leading to sporadic
expulsions from villages (like the one described at the end of Fiddler on the
Roof). These laws were demographically and economically devastating. The
curtailment on Jewish settlement in villages without the admission of Jews to
larger cities meant further overcrowding in the small and medium-sized
towns of the Pale. Overcrowding meant increased economic competition and
impoverishment. The ban on Jews leasing estates deprived many Jews of a
vital source of income. Most devastating, perhaps, was the prohibition of
working on Sundays and Christian holidays. Coupled with the Jewish prohi-
bition of working on Saturday and Jewish holidays, this meant that Jews in
the Pale were prohibited from working for more than one-third of the year.
Outside the Pale, moreover, the tsarist regime imposed a severe numerus
clausus. From 1889 to 1895, no Jewish lawyers were admitted to the Russian
bar, and the number of Jewish students admitted to Russian universities
was significantly curtailed. In 1891, Jews were expelled from Moscow and
St. Petersburg. Along with the May Laws, these policies marked a reversal of
the Russification policy that had been followed since Nicholas I.
Jewish responses to the pogroms and the May Laws reflected a growing
sense that, barring any radical changes in Russian politics or society, there
was little or no future for Jews in Russia. The most widespread response was
emigration, primarily to America. More than 2 million Jews emigrated from
the Pale to the United States between 1881 and 1924. As a worldview, emi-
gration reflected a sense that, though Jewish life in Russia was over, Jews
could still make a good life elsewhere in the diaspora.
The westward exodus of Jews from Russia made Jews in western and espe-
cially central Europe very nervous. Fearing that an influx of unacculturated
Ostjudenwould undermine their recent acceptance into mainstream society,
Jews in western and central Europe moved quickly to shuffle the newly arriv-
ing Ostjudenoff to America as quickly as possible, and to acculturate those
who remained with even greater alacrity. Such concerns were justified. In
Hungary, the possibility of an influx of Ostjudenafter 1881 became a central
plank of Viktor Istóczy, Hungary’s most outspoken anti-Semite. A blood libel
in 1882 against the largely unacculturated Jews of Tiszaeszlár, a small village
in northeastern Hungary, fed this xenophobic concern about the Ostjuden, part
of the reason why this incident escalated into a national crisis and trial.
186 Anti-Semitism and Jewish responses, 1870–1914