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
2. The Recruiting Ukase of 1827 and Juvenile Conscription
The ukase announces the desire of the Government "to
equalize military
duty for all estates," without, be it noted,
equalizing them in their
rights. It further expresses the conviction that
"the training and
accomplishments, acquired by the Jews during their
military service,
will, on their return home after the completion of the
number of years
fixed by law (fully a quarter of a century!), be communicated
to their
families and make for greater usefulness and higher
efficiency in their
economic life and in the management of their
affairs."
However, the "Statute of Conscription and Military
Service," subjoined
to the ukase, was a lurid illustration of a tendency
utterly at variance
with the desire "to equalize military duty."
Had the Russian Government
been genuinely desirous of rendering military duty
uniform for all
estates, there would have been no need of issuing
separately for the
Jews a huge enactment of ninety-five clauses, with
supplementary
"instructions," consisting of sixty-two
clauses, for the guidance of the
civil and military authorities. All that was necessary
was to declare
that the general military statute applied also to the
Jews. Instead, the
reverse stipulation is made: "The general laws and
institutions are not
valid in the case of the Jews" when at variance with
the special statute
(Clause 3).
The discriminating character of Jewish conscription looms
particularly
large in the central portion of the statute. Jewish
families were
stricken with terror on reading the eighth clause of the
statute
prescribing that "the Jewish conscripts presented by
the [Jewish]
communes shall be between the ages of twelve and twenty-five."
This
provision was supplemented by Clause 74: "Jewish
minors, i.e., below the
age of eighteen, shall be placed in preparatory
establishments for
military training."
True, the institution of minor recruits, called
_cantonists_, [1] existed
also for Christians. But in their case it was confined to
the children
of soldiers in active service, by virtue of the principle
laid down by
Arakcheyev [2] that children born of soldiers were the
property of the
Military Department, whereas the conscription of Jewish
minors was to be
absolute and to apply to all Jewish families without
discrimination. To
make things worse, the law demanded that the years of
preparatory
training should not be included in the term of active
service, the
latter to start only with the age of eighteen (Clause
90); in other
words, the Jewish cantonists were compelled to serve an
additional term
of six years over and above the obligatory twenty-five
years. Moreover,
at the examination of Jewish conscripts, all that was
demanded for their
enlistment was "that they be free from any disease
or defect
incompatible with military service, but the other
qualifications
required by the general rules shall be left out of
consideration"
(Clause 10).
[Footnote 1: From _Canton_, a word applied in Prussia in
the eighteenth
century to a recruiting district. In Russia, beginning
with 1805, the term
"cantonists" is applied to children born of
soldiers and therefore liable
to conscription.]
[Footnote 2: See Vol. I, p. 395, n. 1.]
The duty of enlisting the recruits was imposed upon the
Jewish communes,
or Kahals, which were to elect for that purpose between
three and six
executive officers, or "trustees," in every
city. The community as such
was held responsible for the supply of a given number of
recruits from
its own midst. It was authorized to draft into military
service any Jew
guilty "of irregularity in the payment of taxes, of
vagrancy, and other
misdemeanors." In case the required number of
recruits was not
forthcoming within a given term, the authorities were
empowered to
obtain them from the derelict community "by way of
execution." [1] Any
irregularity on the part of the recruiting
"trustees" was to be punished
by the imposition of fines or even by sending them into
the army.
[Footnote 1: The term "execution"
(_ekzekutzia_) is used in Russian to
designate a writ empowering an officer to carry a
judgment into effect,
in other words, to resort to forcible seizure.]
The following categories of Jews were exempted from
military duty:
merchants holding membership in guilds, artisans
affiliated with
trade-unions, mechanics in factories, agricultural
colonists, rabbis,
and the Jews, few and far between at that time, who had
graduated from a
Russian educational institution. Those exempted from
military service in
kind were required to pay "recruiting money,"
one thousand rubles for
each recruit. The general law providing that a regular
recruit could
offer as his substitute a "volunteer" was
extended to the Jews, with the
proviso that the volunteer must also be a Jew.
The "Instructions" to the civil authorities,
appended to the statute,
specify the formalities to be followed both at the
recruiting stations
and in administering the oath of allegiance to the
conscripts in the
synagogues. The latter ceremony was to be marked by
gloomy solemnity.
The recruit was to be arrayed in his prayer-shawl
(Tallith) and shroud
(Kittel). With his philacteries wound around his arm, he
should be
placed before the Ark and, amidst burning candles and to
the
accompaniment of shofar blasts, made to recite a lengthy
awe-inspiring
oath. The "Instructions" to the military
authorities accompanying the
statute prescribe that every batch of Jewish conscripts
"shall be
entrusted to a special officer to be watched over, prior
to their
departure for their places of destination, and shall be
kept apart from
the other recruits." Both in the places of
conscription and on the
journey the Jewish recruits were to be quartered exclusively
in the
homes of Christian residents.
The promulgated "military constitution"
surpassed the very worst
apprehension of the Jews. All were staggered by this
sudden blow, which
descended crushingly upon the mode of life, the
time-honored traditions,
and the religious ideals of the Jewish people. The Jewish
family nests
became astir, trembling for their fledglings. Barely a
month after the
publication of the military statute, the central
Government in St.
Petersburg was startled by the report that the Volhynian
town of
Old-Constantine had been the scene of "mutiny and
disorders among the
Jews" on the occasion of the promulgation of the
ukase. Benckendorff,
the Chief of the Gendarmerie, [1] conveyed this
information to the Tzar,
who thereupon gave orders that "in all similar cases
the culprits be
court-martialed". Evidently, the St. Petersburg
authorities apprehended a
whole series of Jewish mutinies, as a result of the
dreadful ukase, and
they were ready with extraordinary measures for the
emergency.
[Footnote 1: Since 1827 the Gendarmerie served as the
executive organ of
the political police, or of the so-called Third Section,
dreaded
throughout Russia on account of its relentless cruelty in
suppressing
the slightest manifestation of liberal thought. The Third
Section was
nominally abolished in 1880.]
However, their apprehensions were unfounded. Apart from
the incident
referred to, there were no cases of open rebellion
against the
authorities. As a matter of fact, even in Old-Constantine,
the "mutiny"
was of a nature little calculated to be dealt with by a
court-martial.
According to the local tradition, the Jewish residents,
Hasidim almost
to a man, were so profoundly stirred by the imperial
ukase that they
assembled in the synagogues, fasting and praying, and
finally resolved
to adopt "energetic" measures. A petition
reciting their grievances
against the Tzar was framed in due form and placed in the
hands of a
member of the community who had just died, with the
request that the
deceased present it to the Almighty, the God of Israel.
This childlike
appeal to the heavenly King from the action of an earthly
sovereign and
the emotional scenes accompanying it were interpreted by
the Russian
authorities as "mutiny." Under the patriarchal
conditions of Jewish life
prevailing at that time a political protest was a matter
of
impossibility. The only medium through which the Jews
could give vent to
their burning national sorrow was a religious
demonstration within the
walls of the synagogue.
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