HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III
by S.M. Dubnow
A Project Gutenberg EBook
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ERA OF REFORMS UNDER ALEXANDER II.
1. THE ABOLITION OF JUVENILE CONSCRIPTION
When after the Crimean War, which had exposed the
rottenness of the old
order of things, a fresh current of air swept through the
atmosphere of
Russia, and the liberation of the peasantry and other
great reforms were
coming to fruition, the Jewish problem, too, was in line
of being placed
in the forefront of these reforms. For, after having done
away with the
institution of serfdom, the State was consistently bound
to liberate its
three million of Jewish serfs who had been ruthlessly
oppressed and
persecuted during the old regime.
Unfortunately the Jewish question, which was nothing more
nor less than
the question of equal citizenship for the Jews, was not
placed in the
line of the great reforms, but was pushed to the rear and
solved
fragmentarily--on the instalment plan, as it were--and
within narrowly
circumscribed limits. Like all the other officially
inspired reforms of
that period, which proceeded up to a certain point and
halted before the
prohibited zone of constitutional and political
liberties, so, too, the
solution of the Jewish problem was not allowed to pass
beyond the
border-line. For the crossing of that line would have
rendered the whole
question null and void by the simple recognition of the
equality of all
citizens. The regenerated Russia of Alexander II.,
stubborn in its
refusal of political freedom and civil equality, could
only choose the
path of half-measures. Nevertheless, the transition from
the
pre-reformatory order of things to the new state of
affairs signified a
radical departure both in the life of Russia in general
and in Jewish
life in particular. It did so not because the new
conditions were
perfect, but because the old ones were so inexpressibly
ugly and
unbearable, and the mere loosening of the chains of
servitude was hailed
as a pledge of complete liberation.
Far more intense than in the political life of Russia was
the crisis in
its social life. While a chilling wind was still blowing
from the wintry
heights of Russian officialdom, while a grim censorship
was still
holding down the flight of the printed word, the released
social energy
was whirling and swirling in all classes of Russian
society, sometimes
breaking the fetters of police restraint. The outbursts
of young Russia
ran far ahead of the slow progress of the reforms
inspired from above.
It blazed the path for political freedom which the West
of Europe had
long traversed, and which was to prove in Russia tortuous
and thorny.
The phase of Jewish life which claimed the first thought
of Alexander
II.'s Government was the military conscription. Prior to
the conclusion
of the Crimean War, the Committee on Jewish Affairs [1]
called the
Tzar's attention to the necessity of modifying the method
of Jewish
conscription, with its fiendish contrivances of seizing
juvenile
cantonists and enlisting "penal" and
"captive" recruits. Nevertheless
the removal of this crying evil was postponed for a year,
until the
promulgation of the Coronation Manifesto [2] of August
26, 1856, when it
was granted as an act of grace.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 49.]
[Footnote 2: On the meaning of Manifesto see later, p.
246, n. 1.]
Prompted by the desire--the Manifesto reads--of making
it easier for
the Jews to discharge their military duty and of
averting the
inconveniences attached thereto, we command as follows:
1. Recruits from among the Jews are to be drafted in
the same way as
from among the other estates, primarily from among
those unsettled
and not engaged in productive labor. [1] Only in
default of
able-bodied men among these, the shortage is to be made
up from
among the category of Jews who by reason of their
engaging in
productive labor are recognized as useful.
2. The drafting of recruits from among other estates
and of those
under age is to be repealed.
3. In regard to the making up of the shortage of
recruits, the
general laws are to be applied, and the exaction of
recruits from
Jewish communities as a penalty for arrears is to be
repealed.
4. The temporary rules, enacted by way of experiment in
1853,
granting Jewish communities and Jewish individuals the
right of
presenting as recruits in their own stead
coreligionists seized
without passports [2] are to be repealed.
[Footnote 1: See on these designations pp. 64 and 142.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 148 et seq.]
The abolition of juvenile conscription followed
automatically upon the
annulment, by virtue of the same Coronation Manifesto, of
the general
Russian institution of "cantonists" and
"soldier children," who were now
ordered to be returned to their parents and relatives.
Only in the case
of the Jews a rider was attached to the effect that those
Jewish
children who had embraced Christianity during their term
of military
service should not be allowed to go back to their parents
and relatives,
if the latter remained in their old faith, and should be
placed
exclusively in Christian families.
The Coronation Manifesto of 1856 marks the end of the
recruiting
inquisition, which had lasted for nearly thirty years,
adding a unique
page to the annals of Jewish martyrdom. In the matter of
conscription,
at least, the Jews were, in a certain measure, granted
equal rights. The
operation of the general statute concerning military
service was
extended to them, with a few limitations which were the
heritage of the
past. The old plan of the "assortment of the
Jews" is reflected in the
clause of the Manifesto, providing for increased
conscription from among
"those unsettled and not engaged in productive
labor," i.e., of the mass
of the proletariat, as distinct from the more or less
well-to-do
classes. Nor was the old historic crime made good: the
Jewish cantonists
who had been forcibly converted to the Greek-Orthodox
faith were not
allowed to return to their kindred. As heretofore,
baptism remained a
_conditio sine qua non_ for the advancement of a Jewish
soldier, and
only in 1861 was permission given to promote a Jewish
private to the
rank of a sergeant for general merit, without special
distinction on the
battlefield which had been formerly required. Beyond this
rank no Jew
could hope to advance.
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