Jews who had broken with the traditional patriarchal Jewish way of life, and quickly adopted both the good and bad aspects of urban civilization. Among them one can see marked contrasts, with fully assimilated Jewish bourgeois living side-by-side with the impoverished Jewish proletariat.”63
The Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth century resulted in the financial ruin of many Jewish craftsmen, leading many of them to emigrate abroad. The “proletarianization” of the Jewish populace had reached a grand scale by the outbreak of World War I. According to Leshchinskii, 600,000 Jews (30 percent of the working population) had become part of the proletariat by the beginning of the war. Half of these were workers and apprentices in workshops, while 75,000 worked in factories, mostly concentrated in the Polish territories, in cities such as Warsaw, Bialystok, and Lodz. An additional 110,000 Jews were employed as porters, longshoremen, and in similar professions.64
By the end of the nineteenth century, 39.7 percent of those engaged in commerce in Russia were Jewish (72.8 percent in the Pale of Settlement). They owned mostly small-scale enterprises, and the profits of the Jewish “merchant class” were often barely enough to make ends meet. Löwe claims that Jews suffered as a result of industrialization, perhaps more than any other ethnic group in Russia, as they were deprived of those advantages they had earlier enjoyed. In his view, the stereotype of the Jews as the “spearhead” of capitalism (as Russian conservatives often viewed them) was more an ideological construct than a reflection of reality.65
Both industrialization and rapid population growth hit Jewish craftsmen (remeslenniki) and traders hard. In the Kursk and Yaroslav gubernias (where Jews were forbidden to live) there was less than one craftsman per 1,000 inhabitants, whereas there were 2.6 for every 1,000 in the Kiev gubernia. Of these the majority were Jews. At the turn of the century, a craftsman's income was often less than half that of a peasant (150–300 rubles, as opposed to 400–500 rubles respectively). Many would not survive market conditions and became unemployed, and turned to haunting market squares in the hope of finding work. In some communities, unemployment went as high as 40 percent. In 1898, nearly 20 percent of Jews within the Pale received charitable assistance for Passover. In 1900, nearly two-thirds of Jewish funerals in Odessa were paid for by the community. According to some sources, at the turn of the century 30–35 percent of the Jewish population was unable to make ends meet without relying on assistance from charitable institutions.66
By 1914 nearly half of Russia's 5.6 million Jews belonged to the lower middle class, while another quarter could be considered members of the proletariat, a fact that casts doubt on the conservatives' claim that Jews served as the “spearhead of capitalism.”67 At the same time, such a claim did contain a kernel of truth. Of course, it was not the unemployed Jews of the shtetl that conservatives had in mind, but rather other Jews—the successful financiers, wholesale traders, and industrialists. The liberal economist M. V. Bernatskii, who was later to become the Finance Minister of the Provisional Government (and later served in the same capacity for Denikin and Vrangel), would concur with the conservative opinion, though he viewed the situation as a positive one. Taking into account that Jews composed more than a third of the “merchant class,” he wrote, “If we can put aside the ideals of subsistence production and see the successes of our country's development in trade, we are forced to admit that Jews have played an enormous role in the Russian economy. Enormous, as they are the ones who are making such trade possible.” Bernatskii was also of the opinion that if there were no Jews in Russia, it would be necessary to invite them in, to stimulate trade and industry.68
Unfortunately, Bernatskii was in the minority, and the restrictions placed on Jews, motivated by fears of “Jewish domination,” slowed economic development. These fears were completely irrational. Productive citizens (or “subjects”) serve as the foundation of civil order; the fruits of their collective labors decrease poverty; so by extension, the authorities' ire at their presence should logically also decrease. Yet the authorities, or at least most of them, preferred to have Jews leave the country if they refused to “perish or assimilate,” instead of allowing them to work for the “economic prosperity of Russia,” to use Witte's formulation. Even as the Ministry of Finance attempted to prove that “our industry is as yet unable to get by without foreign and Jewish capital,” the Ministry of War, the Ministry of the Interior, and several others, up to and including Nicholas II, were not inclined to repeal the numerous restrictions placed on Jews.69
The Russian government closely followed popular opinion, and derived much of its support from the more conservative portions of society. Those in charge of policy concerning the Jews in Imperial Russia increasingly came from the conservative camp. While liberals considered Jewish “emancipation” to be a component of their main goal of liberating Russian society from backwards absolutism, “patriotic guardians” of various types believed that Jewish activities, be they intellectual or economic in nature, were leading to the impoverishment of the nation and to a perilous break with the spiritual values of the Russian Orthodox state.
The slogan “The Jew [zhid ] is coming!” which appeared on the pages of the newspaper New Times (Novoe Vremia) in 1880,70 could be found, in one form or another, in nearly every conservative or reactionary publication. Thirty years after this phrase graced New Times's pages, an even worse variant would appear: the “Jewish Invasion.”71 Antisemitism in Russia contained its own peculiar combination of a hatred for Judaism, which was deeply entrenched in Orthodox culture,72 along with the anti-capitalist reaction to modernization, whose main perpetrators, it was claimed, were Jews. Parts of Russia's intelligentsia were likewise heavily influenced by European antisemitism, particularly of the German variety.73
Turgenev's Huntsman's Sketches encapsulate the relationship of “the people” to the Jews, which is based on fundamental religious differences. The protagonist, the landowner Chertopkhanov, hears the rumblings and shrieks of a crowd as he is passing through a local village. Someone is being beaten. He asks a local woman about what is taking place:
“The Lord knows, batiushka,” answered the old woman…“you can hear that our lads are beating a Yid [zhid].”
“A Yid? What Yid?”
“The Lord knows, batiushka. A Yid appeared among us; and where he's come from—who knows?”
“So, you see, they're beating him, sir.”
“Why beating him? What for?”
“I don't know, batiushka. No doubt, he deserves it. And, indeed, why not beat him? After all, batiushka, he crucified Christ!”74
This story, entitled “The End of Chertopkhanov,” was published in 1872. Thirty years afterwards, the economist and journalist M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii was serving his exile in the Poltava gubernia. He discovered that Ukrainian peasants and the local Jews would get along well and would cooperate to their mutual benefit. “Yet despite all this,” he wrote, “the Jew can never be completely sure that this Russian neighbor, whom he lives next to in peace and harmony year in and year out, won't someday attack him, steal his property, commit foul acts against him, or even possibly kill him…He might be an ‘OK Jew' but…from the point of view of the Russian peasant he will always be an outsider and moreover a proponent of a repulsive faith. ‘Did the Jews not crucify our Lord?' This universal source of antisemitism, consecrated by the passage of centuries, particularly in Russia, cannot help influencing social opinion.”75 Tugan-Baranovskii also argued that the basis of Russian antisemitism was not to be found only in the archaic worldview of the peasants, but also in the upper and middle classes and parts of the intelligentsia. He believed that antisemitism was a result of increased nationalism and economic competition; in his opinion, those unable to compete economically with the Jews would often become nationalists and antisemites.
The
