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 XXV
INNER UPHEAVALS
1. DISILLUSIONMENT OF THE INTELLIGENZIA AND
THE NATIONAL REVIVAL
The catastrophe at the beginning of the eighties took the
Jews of Russia
unawares, and found them unprepared for spiritual
self-defence. The
impressions of the recent brief "era of reforms"
were still fresh in
their minds. They still remembered the initial steps of
Alexander II's
Government in the direction of the complete civil
emancipation of
Russian Jewry, the appeals of the intellectual classes of
Russia calling
upon the Jews to draw nearer to them, the bright
prospects of a
rejuvenated Russia. The niggardly gifts of the Russian
Government were
received by Russian Jewry with an outburst of gratitude
and devotion
which bordered on flunkeyism. The intellectual young Jews
and Jewesses
who had passed through the Russian public schools made
frantic
endeavors, not only towards association but also towards
complete
cultural amalgamation with the Russian people.
Assimilation and
Russification became the watchwords of the day. The literary
ideals of
young Russia became the sacred tablets of the Jewish
youth.
But suddenly, lo and behold! that same Russian people, in
which the
progressive forces of Jewry were ready to merge their
identity, appeared
in the shape of a monster, which belched forth hordes
upon hordes of
rioters and murderers. The Government had changed front,
and adopted a
policy of reaction and fierce Jew-hatred, while the
liberal classes of
Russia showed but scant sympathy with the downtrodden and
maltreated
nation. The voice of the hostile press, the _Novoye
Vremya_, the _Russ_,
and others, resounded through the air with fall vigor,
whereas the
liberal press, owing partly--but only partly--to the
tightening grip of
the censor, defended the Jews in a perfunctory manner.
Even the
publicists of the radical type, who were principally
grouped around the
periodical _Otyechestvennyia Zapiski_ ("Records of
the Fatherland"),
looked upon the pogroms merely as the brutal
manifestation of an
economic struggle, and viewed the whole complicated
Jewish problem, with
all its century-long tragic implications, in the light of
a subordinate
social-economic question.
The only one whose soul was deeply stirred by the sight
of the new
sufferings of an ancient people was the Russian satirist,
Shchedrin-Saltykov, and he poured forth his, sentiments
in the summer of
1882, after the completion of the first cycle of pogroms,
in an article
marked by a lyric strain, so different from his usual
style. [1] But
Shchedrin was the only Russian writer of prominence who
responded to the
Jewish sorrow. Turgenyev and Tolstoi held their peace,
whereas the
literary celebrities of Western Europe, Victor Hugo,
Renau, and many
others, came forward with passionate protests. The
Russian
_intelligenzia_ remained cold in the face of the burning
tortures of
Jewry. The educated classes of Russian Jewry were hurt to
the quick by
this chilly attitude, and their former enthusiasm gave
way to
disillusionment.
[Footnote 1: The article appeared in the
_Otyechestvennyia Zapiski_ in
August, 1882. The following sentences in that article are
worthy of
re-production: "History has never recorded in its
pages a question more
replete, with sadness, more foreign to the sentiments of
humanity, and
more filled with tortures than the Jewish question. The
history of
mankind as a whole is one endless martyrology; yet at the
same time it
is also a record of endless progress. In the records of
martyrology the
Hebrew tribe occupies the first place; in the annals of
progress it
stands aside, as if the luminous perspectives of history
could never
reach it. There is no more heart-rending tale than the
story of this
endless torture of man by man."
In the same article the Russian satirist draws a clever
parallel between
the merciless Russian _Kulak_, or "boss," who
ruins the peasantry, and
the pitiful Jewish "exploiter," the
half-starved tradesman, who in turn
is exploited by everyone.]
This disillusionment found its early expression in the
lamentations of
repentant assimilators. One of these assimilators,
writing in the first
months of the pogroms, makes the following confession:
The cultured Jewish classes have turned their back upon
their
history, have forgotten their traditions, and have conceived
a
contempt for everything which might make them realize
that they are
the members of the "eternal people." With no
definite ideals,
dragging their Judaism behind them as a fugitive
galley-slave drags
his heavy chain, how could these men justify their
belonging to the
tribe of "Christ-killers" and
"exploiters"?... Truly pitiful has
become the position of these assimilators, who but
yesterday were
the champions of national self-effacement. Life demands
self-determination. To sit between two stools has now
become an
impossibility. The logic of events has placed them
before the
alternative: either to declare themselves openly as
renegades, or to
take their proper share in the sufferings of their
people.
Another representative of the Jewish _intelligenzia_
writes in the
following strain to the editor of a Russian-Jewish
periodical:
When I remember what has been done to us, how we have
been taught to
love Russia and Russian speech, how we have been
induced and
compelled to introduce the Russian language and
everything Russian,
into our families so that our children know no other
language but
Russian, and how we are now repulsed and persecuted,
then our hearts
are filled with sickening despair from which there
seems to be no
escape. This terrible insult gnaws at my vitals. It may
be that I am
mistaken, but I do honestly believe that even if I
succeeded in
moving to a happier country where all men are equal,
where there are
no pogroms by day and "Jewish commissions" by
night, I would yet
remain sick at heart to the very end of my life--to
such an extent
do I feel worn out by this accursed year, this
universal mental
eclipse which has visited our dear fatherland.
Russian-Jewish literature of that period is full of
similar
self-revelations of disillusioned intellectuals. However,
this
repentant mood did not always lead to positive results.
Some
of these intellectuals, having become part and parcel of
Russian
cultural life, were no longer able to find their way back
to
Judaism, and they were carried off by the current of
assimilation,
culminating in baptism. Others stood at the cross-roads,
wavering between assimilation and Jewish nationalism.
Still
others were so stunned by the blow they had received that
they reeled violently backward, and proclaimed as their
slogan
the return "home," in the sense of a complete
renunciation
of free criticism and of all strivings for inner reforms.
However, in the healthy part of Russian Jewry this change
of mind
resulted in turning their ideals definitely in the
direction of national
rejuvenation upon modern foundations. The idea of a
struggle for
national rejuvenation in Eussia itself had not yet
matured. It appeared
as an active force only in the following decade. [1]
During the era of
pogroms the salvation of Judaism was primarily associated
with the idea
of emigration. The champions of American emigration were
prone to
idealize this movement, which had in reality sprung from
practical
necessity, and they saw in it, not without justification,
the beginning
of a new free center of Judaism in the Diaspora. The
Hebrew poet Judah
Leib Gordon [2] addresses "The Daughter of Jacob
[the Jewish people],
disgraced by the son of Hamor [the Russian
Government]" [3] in the
following words:
[Footnote 1: That idea was subsequently championed by the
writer of this
volume. See more about it in Vol. III.]
[Footnote 2: See p. 228 et seq.]
[Footnote 3: An allusion to Gen. 34, with a play on the
words
_Bem-hamor,_ "the son of an ass."]
Come, let
as go where liberty's light
Doth shine upon all with equal might,
Where every man, without disgrace,
Is free to adhere to his creed and his race,
Where thou, too, shalt no longer fear
Dishonor from brutes, my sister dear![1]
[Footnote 1: From his Hebrew poem _Ahoti Ruhama_,
"My Beloved Sister."]
The exponents of American emigration were inspired by the
prospect of an exodus from the land of slavery into the
land
of freedom. Many of them looked forward to the
establishment
of agricultural and farming settlements in that country
and to the concentration of large Jewish masses in the
thinly
populated States of the Union where they hoped the Jews
might be granted a considerable amount of
self-government.
Side by side with the striving for a transplantation of
Jewish centers
centers within the Diaspora, another idea, which
negatives the Diaspora
Diaspora altogether and places in its stead the
resuscitation of the
Jewish national center in Palestine, struggled to life
amidst the
birth pangs of the pogroms. The first theoretic exponent
of this
new movement, called "Love of Zion," [1] was
M.L. Lilienblum, who in a
former stage of radicalism had preached the need of
religious
reforms in Judaism. [2] As far back as in the autumn of
the first pogrom
year Lilienblum published a series of articles in which
he interpreted
the idea of Palestinian colonization, which had but
recently sprung
to life, in the light of a common national task for the
whole of
Jewry. Lilienblum endeavored to show that the root of all
the
historic misfortunes of the Jewish people lay in the fact
that it
was in all lands an alien element which refuses to
assimilate in
its entirety with the dominant nation--with the landlord,
as it
were. The landlord tolerates his tenant only so long as
he finds him
convenient; let the tenant make the slightest attempt at
competing
with the landlord, and he will be promptly evicted.
During the Middle
Ages the Jews were persecuted in the name of religious
fanaticism.
Now a beginning has been made to persecute them in the
name of
national fanaticism, coupled with economic factors, and
this "second
chapter of our history will no doubt contain many a
bloody page."
[Footnote 1: A translation of the Hebrew term _Hibbat
Zion_. In Russian
it was generally termed _Palestinophilstvo_, i.e.,
"Love of Palestine."]
[Footnote 2: See p. 236 et seq.]
Jewish suffering can only be removed by removing its
cause. We must
cease to be strangers in every land of the globe, and
establish
ourselves in a country where we ourselves may be the
landlords. Such a
country can only be our ancient fatherland, Palestine,
which belongs to
us by the right of history. "We must undertake the
colonization of
Palestine on so comprehensive a scale that in the course
of one century
the Jews may be able to leave inhospitable Europe almost
entirely and
settle in the land of our forefathers to which we are
legally entitled."
These thoughts, expounded with that simplified logic
which will strike
certain types of mind as incontrovertible, were fully
attuned to the
sentiments of the Jewish masses which were standing with
"girded loins,"
ready for their exodus from, the new Egypt. The
emigration societies
formed in the beginning of 1882 counted in their ranks
many advocates of
Palestinian colonization. Bitter literary feuds were
waged between the
"Americans" and "Palestinians." A
young poet, Simon Frug[1], composed
the following enthusiastic exodus march, which he
prefaced by the
biblical verse "Speak unto the children of Israel,
that they go forward"
(Ex. 14.15):
[Footnote 1: He became later a celebrated poet in Russian
and Yiddish.
He died in 1916.]
Thine eyes
are keen, thy feet are strong, thy staff is firm--
why then, my
nation, Dost thou on the road
stop and droop, thy gray head
lost in
contemplation? Look up and see:
in numerous bands Thy sons return from all the lands.
Forward then march, through a sea of sorrow,
Through a chain of tortures, towards the dawn of
the
morrow!
Forward--to the strains of the song of days gone
by!
For future ages like thunder to us cry:
"Arise, my people, from thy grave,
And live once more, a nation free and
brave!"
And in our ears songs of a _new_ life ring,
And hymns of triumph the storms to as sing.
This march voiced the sentiments of those who dreamed of
the Promised
Land--whether it be on the shores of the Jordan or on the
banks of the
Mississippi.
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