(1) the minister had to invite him directly and not merely imply that Schiff
would be received, and (2) restrictions on Jewish visas had to be abolished,
for Schiff refused to visit Russia by special favor. Although equal rights for
Jews were not mentioned, Schiff had not yielded. He believed and the Rus-
sian government also understood that “when foreign Jews are equally enti-
tled to cross the Russian border with other foreigners, then the Russian
Government will not long be able to insist on maintaining the scandalous
restrictive laws against her own Jews.” If Russia agreed to his terms, he
would take on the mission as “the noblest task of my life.”
Von Plehve’s assassination a few weeks later, which Schiff explained as
inescapable “divine justice,” cut short the negotiations. Nevertheless, the
banker reiterated his readiness to help Russia if the visa policy was
changed. “If Czar Alexander II, with one stroke of a pen, could free mil-
lions of Serfs, who had certainly not attained to the cultural level of the
Jews in Russia, there should be no difficulty in giving the Jews the same
civic rights as are accorded to other Russian citizens.” At this point, Schiff
momentarily retreated from his original terms. Now prepared to accept a
compromise that smacked of his American experience with immigrant dis-
tribution, he suggested a law permitting Jews to move freely about the em-
pire but with certain restrictions—no further movement into regions
where a large percentage of the population was Jewish and no settlement in
new areas if the number of Jews would exceed the general proportion of
Jews in the entire population.^30
Russia continued to seek Schiff’s financial help in America through
Gregory Wilenkin, a privileged Russian Jew, who was a financial attaché in
Washington and a distant relative of Schiff’s brother-in-law, Isaac Selig-
man. Schiff gave Wilenkin his standard response: Russia had lost American
money markets and goodwill by its “barbarous” treatment of the Jews, and
only a complete reversal of policy (i.e., Jewish equality) could regain sup-
port among Americans and American Jewish bankers. Wilenkin persisted
in his overtures for many years. In 1908 he invited Schiff again to St. Pe-
tersburg to confer with the minister of finance, but the banker cynically
dismissed Romanov promises unaccompanied by concrete evidence of
Jewish rights. Wilenkin also sounded out Schiff on a possible railroad deal
in Manchuria between Russia and Japan. The banker agreed to pass on the
suggestion to Baron Takahashi, perhaps to show Wilenkin his readiness to
be of service to Russia if his conditions were met.^31 As discussed above,
however, Schiff sided with Japan after the Russo-Japanese War in its com-
petition with Russia in the Far East.
Direct negotiations with Russia, perhaps more than any other episode,
revealed how far Schiff’s power extended in Europe as well as in the United
States. Equally striking was his characteristic independence. The Jewish
community was neither alerted to nor asked to pass on his terms for dealing
136 Jacob H. Schiff