Jews Not Nobility Exploited Peasants Klier

Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the “Jewish Question” in Russia, 1772-1825, by John Doyle Klier. 2011

The Myth of Jews Forced Into Commerce. Exploitation of the Peasants: Less the Fault of the Magnates and More the Fault of the Jews

Author John Doyle Klier provides historical background to the events. (My review is based on the 1986 edition). Contrary to the myth of constant persecution of Jews under Christianity, he cites (p. 193) the 1939 work of Joshua Starr, THE JEWS IN THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 641-1204. Starr, on p. 8, had estimated that, 90% of the time, during the six centuries comprising 641-1204, Jews were free from general and serious persecution. Moreover, persecutions of Jews tended to coincide with persecutions of all minority religions.

Most so-called Russian Jews were really Polish Jews who had become part of the Russian Empire after the late 18th-century Partitions of Poland. How to deal with them?

EMANCIPATING THE JEWS

One interesting feature of this book is the following: Critical views of Jews, which are now commonly regarded as anti-Semitic, were held not only by reactionaries, but also by many progressive Russians and progressive Jews.

This work emphasizes Enlightenment-inspired attempts by some leading Russians, notably the Russian poet Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin and Russian reformer I. G. Frizel, the Governor of Lithuania, to uplift and modernize the Jews. Derzhavin had visited formerly-Polish Belarus (p. 95), and had gotten most of his ideas from the reformist Mendelssohn-follower Polish Jew I. Frank. (pp. 98-100). David Friedlander of Berlin, another disciple of Moses Mendelssohn, brought in by Polish authorities to help in the modernization of the local Jews, attributed the low state of the Jews to Talmudic training, Hasidism, and the kahal (communal self-government). (p. 176).

JEWS AND MILITARY SERVICE

Frizel noted that, in the tight-knit Rabbinist-Talmudist Jewish communities, youth were married as young as age 7 (or even younger). (p. 93). Dershavin opposed Jews in the military because Jews usually would not fight on their Sabbath (Saturday). (p. 112). [Around 1918, as part of the so-called Minorities Treaty, Jews could potentially avoid military service in the Polish Army on putative religious grounds, such as a violation of their Sabbath. In fact, the haredim in today’s Israel commonly avoid military service for similar religious-based reasons.]

THE MYTH OF JEWS FORCED INTO USURY

It is commonly supposed that Jews were forced into finance-related occupations because they were barred from anything else. At least in the case of Poland, this was not the case. Klier comments, (quote) Frizel began his report with a sweeping demographic and historical examination of the Jews…The Jews had been treated with indifference by past Polish governments, and they had taken full advantage of this latitude. In Poland the Jews had been free men, unrestricted by law and free to enter any occupation they desired. They thus gained control of the provisioning trade and of virtually all activities involving the handling of money. (unquote). (pp. 89-90).

EXPLOITATION OF PEASANTS: MORE BY JEWS THAN BY THE NOBILITY

How did exploitative conduct flow from the Polish magnates through the Jews to the peasants? Were the Jews primarily the order-fulfillers of the Polish magnates, or did they have a great deal of autonomy in how they acted? Did the magnates give exploitative directives to the Jews, or were the magnates more of the nature of absentee landlords who allowed the Jews a more-or-less free hand to exploit the peasants, while coming back for their cut of the “take”?

Klier’s assessment of Derzhavin’s visit points to the latter. Klier comments, (Quote) Unlike Russian landowners, however, they [Polish magnates] showed no concern for the well-being of their estates or their peasants. Derzhavin considered them guilty of neglecting the essential duties and responsibilities that should maintain proper order and balance in the countryside. Instead of personally settling on their estates and administering them, or at least delegating control to a member of their family, the magnates leased out their estates on a short-term basis, an abuse lamented in the reports of other investigators. By leaving their peasants at the tender mercies of the lease agent, the landowners failed to assume their proper obligations. They were ever ready to sacrifice peasant well-being for financial gain, a typical example being the willingness to tolerate the activities of the Jews as distillers and tavern-keepers, although the latter ruined the peasantry by encouraging drunkenness. (unquote). (p. 101).

In making the foregoing statements, Dershavin could not have been trying to make Poles look better by emphasizing the self-directed exploitative conduct of Jews. Dershavin had been an unreconstructed Polonophobe. (p. 121, 205).

DO NOT BLAME THE NOBILITY FOR THE ACTIONS OF JEWS AGAINST PEASANTS

Further evidence that the peasants were exploited, first and foremost, by the leaseholders (usually, though not always, Jews) is evidenced by the fact that “on more than one occasion”, the peasants offered to pay the estate owner to release them from the authority of the leaseholder. (p. 86).

JEWS AS FARMERS: VERY LIMITED SUCCESS

The reformists’ proposals to get Jews to become farmers (p. 94, 111, 137-139) never gained much following. Could it be that the Jews as middleman role had become so entrenched that it had created a co-dependency involving Jews, Polish magnates, and Russian officials? If so, then all three parties were so locked into the Jewish-middleman system that none of the three parties had really wanted it to change. Of course, the inertia of a slowly-changing agrarian society also played a major role in the perpetuation of the Jewish economic niche.

THE LIQUOR TRADE

In time, more of the blame on the PROPINACJA (liquor dealing) was laid on the Polish magnates, and less on the Jews. The cause of this trend is not identified by Klier. Could it be that Russian hostility to Polish magnates—by virtue of them being the champions of eventual Polish independence—increasingly animated Russian thinking?

PUBLIC SCHOOL JEWISH EDUCATION

Universal education had been a cornerstone of the Enlightenment, including the efforts to modernize and elevate the Jews. Until recent centuries, however, Jews had generally resisted GOY knowledge as both useless and unworthy of Jews. A residue of this kind of thinking persisted in 19th century Russia, as identified by Klier, (quote) The committee members should have realized that the Jews would never enter Gentile schools if they had a choice. The fear of proselytism would not be stilled by government assurances that Jewish youth would not be disturbed in their faith. Within the Jewish community there was no motive for seeking an outside secular education: what could be learned that would do anybody any good? (unquote). (p. 136).