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III
RUSSIA AND THE JEWS

The ascendency of Russia as a power making for democracy is one of the miracles of the present War. Who could have foreseen five years ago that the country suffering under the most despotic autocracy of modern times would so suddenly become the champion of a most radical democracy? Yet, this is what is actually happening today. Notwithstanding the vacillations and frightful uncertainties that still beset Russia, she seems destined to play an enormous part in the future definition and direction of democracy, and the world may yet learn many a lesson from her. This is one of the miracles of the War. Under these circumstances, we, as Jews, must be doubly interested in the story of the relation that has existed between Russia and the Jews.

Only yesterday the name of Russia was the synonym of nothing so much as Jewish suffering. Persecution has been the well-nigh universal lot of the Jew. In even the freest and fairest countries he has had to endure outlawry and disability. But in no other country was he called upon to bear persecution so continuous and variegated as in old-time Russia. There all the persecutions of the past seemed to gain repetition and culmination. Wherever the Jew turned, he found himself hedged in by restrictions and humiliations. His dwelling, his education, his occupations – everything was under the ban. For centuries he was driven from pillar to post and forced to drink the cup of calamity to the very dregs.

When we think of all the misery that the Russian Jew had to undergo, we cannot but marvel that he should have been able to survive it all, and thus to belie the prediction of that arch-enemy, Pobiedonostseff, that as a result of the laws against them, one third of the Jews of Russia would emigrate, one third would be baptized, and the rest would perish. Thank Heaven, the contrary has come to pass: Pobiedonostseff and his kind are gone, the autocracy is dead, and the Jew of Russia is still there, with a new era before him, destined, let us hope, to surpass in grandeur and glory any that has gone before.

When we consider the story of those horrible persecutions, we find that the chief excuse for them was the charge that the Jew was not a true Russian, but a stranger. Yet, this charge was fundamentally false. It is only necessary to think of the Jew's history, to realize that he is as little a stranger in Russia as any other part of the population.

The Jew's beginnings in many parts of Russia go back to the very earliest times – in some instances beyond the records of history. It is true that a large part of her Jewish population Russia acquired in the year 1772, and subsequent years, as a result of the division of Poland. But in other parts of Russia, the presence of Jews is of much more ancient date.

In Kieff, the mother of cities to the Russian, Jews were settled as far back as the eighth or ninth century – some holding that they came there with the Khazars, who are supposed to have founded Kieff. In the centuries following the Jews worked and traded and flourished there and held important official positions, so much so that by the sixteenth century Kieff became a centre of Jewish learning, with the motto: "From Kieff shall go forth the law."

As for the Crimea – the beautiful province to which the deposed Czar was so eager to be sent – its Jewish settlements date back to Hellenic days, when the Greeks began to found commercial centres on the shores of the Black Sea, and Jews from the Byzantine Empire, as well as from Persia and the Caucasus, came along with them, establishing communities with synagogues and cemeteries and other institutions, as we know from recently discovered inscriptions, which go back to the first century.

Similarly, we have early accounts of Jews going and coming in Novgorod and Moscow – Jews speaking the Slavic dialect and antedating by many years those from Western Europe who came to Russia as a result of persecutions in Germany and elsewhere, and who brought with them their German speech. When we examine these records, we can see how ancient is the lineage of the Jew in Russia and how groundless, as well as vicious, was the theory of those who maintained that the Jew of Russia had to be repressed and oppressed for the reason that he was a stranger in the land.

There has never been a more complete, nor a more wonderful, transformation than the one wrought by the Russian Revolution in the condition of the Jew. One of the first consequences of the Revolution was the abolition of Jewish disabilities, the specific abrogation of all Jewish restrictions, the repudiation of all the laws and regulations against them that centuries had accumulated – the instant recognition of the Jew. It is nothing short of marvellous to think that today Jews are found in the highest positions in Russia – in the Senate, which means their Supreme Court, in the police administration, in the army, and on most responsible commissions to foreign lands. Magic could have wrought no more marvellous change.

Yet, it would be wrong to think that all this has no connection with the previous life and conduct of the Jew of Russia. On the contrary, the student of the history of the Russian Jew cannot help recognizing the intimate relation between the life and the achievements of the Russian Jew in the past and the recognition that has come to him at the very dawn of the new age. Here, too, there has been no exception to the normal operation of historic law.

If the Jew of Russia has been adopted so promptly and so fully into the new-born Russian democracy, it is because in the past he has shown his mettle, because his whole record has demonstrated his civic worth, and because his character and his attainments even under the worst possible conditions demonstrated what he was capable of being and doing once he was given that boon of recognition and opportunity which it is the aim of democracy to bring to all men.

This the Jew of Russia has shown, first of all, by his spiritual life. The Russian poet Pushkin has said that glass is shattered by blows, but iron is thus made the stronger. This saying has been properly applied to the effect of persecution upon the character of the Russian Jew.

Nothing is more remarkable than the spiritual history of the Jew in Russia. The Russian Jew has been proud of his Judaism, and devoted to it. Nowhere else do we find from the very beginning so great a readiness to propagate his ideas. It is remarkable that in Russia, of all countries, we find the Jewish influence reaching out the farthest into the non-Jewish world.

Nestor, the old Russian chronicler, relates that in the tenth century the Jews came to Kieff in order to convert to their religion the Grand Duke Vladimir. As a matter of fact, the Khazars, a people living in southern Russia, did become Jews in the eighth century, and remained such for a couple of centuries. In the sixteenth century the Judaistic sect sprang up in Novgorod and spread to the very monasteries of Moscow, and in one form or another, in spite of many efforts to suppress it, it has not ceased to this very day. Perhaps it is this persistence of the Jewish spirit and spread of Jewish influence that made the autocracy fear the Jew as a menace to Christianity.

Even more important, however, has been the spiritual life of the Jewish community itself. It has thrived despite persecution. It has created centres of learning, scholars, saints, and above all masses of learned and saintly men and women, which both in number and character have never been surpassed in the whole heroic range of Jewish history. It is this spiritual life of the Jew of Russia – devout, loyal, God-intoxicated – that could not help but excite the admiration, and ultimately to gain the recognition, of the world.

Then, there is the contribution that the Jew has made to the life and civilization of Russia and of other countries. One of the charges of his enemies was that the Jew of Russia was not a useful subject – that he was a menace to his neighbors. In vain writers and statesmen of enlightenment sought to expose the falsehood of this charge; in vain they insisted that whatever was wrong with the Jew was due to the restrictions and discriminations that were placed upon him; in vain did such men as Count Uvarov, as far back as the year 1841, and Alexander Stroganov, in 1858, demand the creation of educational facilities, and even complete emancipation, for the Jews in their interest as well as for the common good. The dread and the tyranny of the autocracy could not be overcome.

Fortunately, the Jew did not allow himself to be wholly crushed by these calumnies and calamities. He went on using his powers to the utmost. He grasped education where-ever he could find it. He became an important factor in the literary, in the artistic, in the musical, in the commercial and industrial life of Russia – producing an Antokolsky, Rubinstein, a Frug, the Polyakoffs and the Ginzburgs, and no end of others, to say nothing of the vast new Hebrew literature he has created, including the names of such genuine poets as Lebenson, Gordon, and Byalik, while the rest of the world has been so vastly enriched by the work of Russian Jewish exiles that it is no exaggeration to say that they have covered the face of the earth with the fruits of their spirit.

Nor must we forget the ineradicable patriotism of the Russian Jew. Often under the old régime people asked how it was possible for the Jew of Russia to be patriotic. The answer is that no matter what made it possible, the Jew of Russia was patriotic. Though he may have had grievances against the autocracy and its agents, he loved his country none the less and in war and in peace he was there to show it.

As far back as the Russian War of Liberation, in 1812, the Jew so distinguished himself in the Russian army, that he evoked the praise and satisfaction of Alexander I, who was fortified thereby in his good intentions toward the Jew; unfortunately thwarted later on by hostile influences and religious apprehensions.

Similar patriotism the Jews have shown on all other occasions, including the present War. As for the fight for liberty and the Russian revolutionary movement, the Jews have played a leading part in it, shrinking not from its severities and hardships, and this they have done not only for their own sake, but for the common good.

Thus, we can see that the vindication and recognition of the Jew of Russia today are not without their roots in the life of yesterday. They are the efflorescence of his spiritual life – of his contribution to the life of his country and other countries – of his inalienable patriotism. "The Revolution," Kerensky has said, "is the expiation of the past and its sins." It may well form such an expiation to the Jew!

How about the future? It would be idle to deny that the peril is not yet past. The Jew of Russia is not yet out of the woods. But neither is Russia as a whole. As long as reaction and anarchy threaten, there is danger for the Jew. But in this regard the Jew of Russia must take his chance with the rest. His fate is bound up with the complete triumph of democracy in Russia – democracy founded on self-discipline, self-sacrifice, and service, toward the firm establishing of which she is still struggling. If we would help the Jew, we must do what we can toward the help of Russian democracy. Let democracy triumph in Russia, and it will mean the triumph of the Jew!