*
1 Full title of the original: Senator Derzhavin's opinion about the aversion in Belarus of the lack of grain by curbing the selfish> crafts of the Jews, about their transformation and about other things. To establish the text, three lists of this extensive opinion served us, received: 1, from M.P. Pogodin (written during the life of Derzhavin, with a correction by his hand, but without appendices), 2, from P.P. Pekarsky, p. 3, from the late Ad.F. Stackelberg, former director of the statistical committee (the last two, with some of the following appendices in the note, but are inferior in fidelity to the first, modern copy). The original manuscript burned down in the fire of 1862, which destroyed the archives of the Department of Religious Affairs of Foreign Confessions (Compare below note .. In applications, p. 306). Part of this note was published by A. M. Lazarevsky in the Edition of N. V. Kalachov: Archive of History. And pract. Information, book. 4 (Spb. 862: pp. 60-84); moreover, only the section about the Jews was reported in its entirety. The first half about the situation of the Belarusian peasants, and the end - the project for the transformation of the way of life of the Jews - were outlined in abbreviated form; applications remained unknown to the publisher. Many inaccuracies crept into the text printed at that time, and especially into the footnotes of the note, which have now been eliminated thanks to the comparison of several lists. After Derzhavin, many wrote about the Jews, including A. P. Turgenev (1800), as can be seen from Karamzin’s letter to him and from Turgenev’s own note in Moskvityanin 1855, No. 1, p. 86. In the same letter, Karamzin mention is made of a Polish book by Chatsky on the same subject, published in Vilna in 1807 under the title:
Under the name of the armored boyars, a special category of free rural inhabitants is known, settled in the Vitebsk province on their own and landlord lands and still retaining some features of their former historical name of their own, the armored boyars were nothing more than commoners, although in a row, although in a number of different categories of this class and occupied the highest position." This is how the article “The Armored Boyars” by V.I. Vishnyakov begins in the same book of the Archive (pp. 79-94), where part of Derzhavin’s Opinion is printed.
* Count Zakhar Grieg. Chernyshev, who contributed to the annexation of Belarus, held this position from 1772 to 1782 and formed two governorships, Mogilev and Pskov. From there he was transferred to Moscow as the mayor. (Words. Bow. - Kam., part 5)
** Pleban, Polish == parish priest
* 70 years after R. X. Roman commander Titus, Vepasian's son, who later was emperor.
1 70 years after R. X. Roman commander Titus, Vepasian's son, who later was emperor.
3 In the year 315, the Greek emperor Constantine forbade at first to use the Jews in any public positions, but as they had the right to do so by the previous imperial laws, he ordered two or three people to be honored with that; but in later times extended this right to all the teachers and elders of this people. Also, the emperors Honorius and Theodosius, Valentine and others gave many privileges, but after bad deeds they canceled them and even subjected them to cruel execution.
According to the scripture itself, it is clear that they were ruled by patriarchs, judges, kings, prophets, asking them themselves, and then murmuring and rebelling against them. In subsequent times, internecine wars were waged in Alexandria under the Ptolemies, and in Rome under the emperors almost unceasing unrest and rebellions were carried out.
7 The common people do not understand it, but only the rabbins, and those who, on secret appointments in the Talmuds, explain it as they like, according to their own inventions.
On the contrary, it is clear from history that the Jews were only free for a short time, but always remained in slavery to foreign peoples: Abraham himself lived in a foreign land, Jacob served different peoples until his old age; in Egypt they were slaves, even in Palestine their state changed several times: sometimes they were ruled by judges, sometimes by foreigners, priests, and they were under kings for no more than 400 years. The Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, and finally the Romans, who were paid tribute, fell under the rule. Shrek, part 6, page 366.
They were also expelled from England by King Edward the 1st in 1291 (l "histoirc universelle dcpuis le commedcement du monde jusqa3i Present, 123, livr. 19, page 631). From France repeatedly, and for the last time they were expelled by King Philip, named Beautiful, following the example of Edward, King of England (l "histoire dc la dispersion Des Jnifs, chap. V), and from Spain in 1492 (Basnage, livr. XV), for their various atrocities, in order to cleanse the state from this harmful people.
4 From these appendices we have a note by Kakhovsky about the Jews of the Mogilev province; this document is placed after the "Opinion"
It is known from history that when the emperor Julian the Apostate, persecuting Christians and patronizing the Jews, allowed them to renew their temple in Jerusalem, which had really been started, the Jews, running from all over the earth, brought their treasures there and women even sacrificed their jewelry . This temple, however, was destroyed by miraculous supernatural or natural events, in its first beginning. About this, not only spiritual, but also secular historians certify
This custom, adopted by many Asiatic peoples, seems to be derived from the traditions of the Zoroasters.
Permissible meat is called kosher, and illicit meat is trefl. If the latter is sold for 2 kopecks, then the former is not less than 6; looks after this podrabbinok, according to the legends of the Talmuds, which originated from the laws of Moses known to all. Through this, the common people are oppressed, and the rabbins and kahals get richer. Details about kosher and club, as well as other features of Jewish life mentioned by Derzhavin, see the remarkable edition of Mr. Brafman "The Book of Kahal".
Theodosius the emperor in 429 legalized that the government would annually demand an account for the treasury collected in their kahals for evidence.
Although it was ordered from the provincial authorities that an appeal to the governor be paid to the provincial kagal, but this was not carried out because it was not confirmed by the highest authority, or that the Jews find many ways to evade the laws themselves. See extract under lit. B
Righteous or reverend. Some educated people assured me that this sect is like the Illuminati, and promised to deliver me a book about it; but since I did not receive it and do not have exact information, I cannot verify what this sect truly consists of.
Derzhavin's incorrect name for Khosada has been corrected by us. See Brafman, p. XVI, and the work cited there by VV Grigoriev about Heb. sects
Emperor Honorius in 399 ordered that the gold and silver in the synagogues collected and called the apostolic tribute should not be sent to their patriarchs in Palestine: it is not surprising if they still transfer gold and silver to Palestine according to the above-mentioned traditions. However, the aforementioned tribute was revered on a par with the imperial taxes, and therefore they called it "aurum coronarium"; its origin is from the Jewish law, which is prescribed to give a tenth to the temple of Jerusalem; upon its destruction, this tribute turned into the income of their patriarchs. (Shrek, part 7, p. 402;).
The conspirators on the life of the French kings Henry 3 and 4 used the sorcery of the rabbins, who, making terrible spells according to the Talmud, pierced their wax dolls after six weeks with daggers in front of the altar, to certify their immutable death. (Maimbonrg, Histoire de la ligne, 90.)
In the file of the late General Lieutenant Zorich, there is a note of gratitude from one Jew that a cherim was drawn up against him. (For the Zoric case, see Vol. 6, p. 122.)
In ancient times, according to their superstition, in desecration of the Christian faith, they carried in their processions the image of Amman, chained to the cross. And Gamalei, their patriarch, actually perpetrated many such Christian bloodsheds, and regarding the crucified one Christian boy, the emperor Theodosius in 415 forbade him to build synagogues in secluded places so that they could not produce such rampages, about which in many kingdoms , and in Poland itself, many anecdotes and inscriptions on tombs are found.
In Russian literature, there is a fairly thorough study of these "bloodsheds"; Unfortunately, it is not available to many. As far as we know, it was compiled by V.I. Dalem, during his service in the Ministry of the Interior, and printed in a small number of copies. Attached to the list delivered to us by Shtakelberg is also, under the letter D, a handwritten copy of a book published in 1787 in St. Petersburg (at the expense of P.D.), under the title: “Jewish rituals performed every month at the Syapvetsieciuhs. Translation from Polish. (Smird. Painting, No. 900).
In the original according to which the “Opinion” was published in the Kalachov Archive (see note on p. 229), the following sections of the transformation project were in two forms: lengthy and abbreviated. Only an abridged version is printed in the Archive; for the sake of completeness, we give this second edition a space below the line.
Here is the corrupted edition of the 1st section : 1) With the most merciful manifesto, declare them the highest patronage and say that, due to their noticeable impoverishment, they are taken care of in order to provide them with food, and at the same time confirm the poster of 1772 with some cancellations of their ancient institutions, with the image of a well-organized Christian monarchical government of dissenters, and allow those who do not want to be subjected to this institution to go abroad . 2) Designate a special protector for them. 3) Establish a commission in Byelorussia (of 3 owners, 3 merchants, 3 Jews and 3 ranks of the province) to settle all debts of Jews and Christians. In other provinces, similar commissions will have to be established, for it will be impossible to do anything in the transformation of the Jews, if not all of a sudden
When Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 set out to cleanse the state of the Jews; then they, knowing about it, brought 600,000 chervonny coins to the treasury; However, despite this gift, although the state was in dire need of money, and that 30,000,000. the red ones were taken out of Spain with them, they were expelled.
This, of course, if only in Belarus alone to make a reform about the Jews, and if in other provinces acquired from Poland, then it is necessary to establish such commissions in all provincial cities, but so that they all have the first protector as the center of their relations, and without this the organization of the Jews in one province will not do the desired benefit; for they will run from one to another.
Abridged edition 2nd. On the analysis of debt claims and their resolution.
1) Promulgate by the same manifesto, so that from its publication in 4 months all Christians and Jews present their claims against each other to the commission under fear of their destruction, and at this time, so that no mutual credit between Christians and Jews can be made.
2) In the statements of both capitals, the commission makes it known about the claims received by it, by whom and on whom exactly, without mentioning the amounts. In the following 4 months, all debtors are required to appear before the commission and approve the debt, submit a pledge or deposit money. The silence of the defendants will accuse them, and henceforth no excuse will be accepted.
3) Whoever does not present a pledge or guarantee, in order to act according to the laws. To make a decisive decision on the disputed money on the basis of laws, and this is subject to a third 4-month period, since the plaintiffs and defendants will be in person.
4) For indisputable debts, the commission will make a balance, how much the Jews owe to Christians and these Jews, - only to collect, and to settle other debts. Present this balance to the protector, who, repeating it, gives it to execution, without any appeal; on cie relies for another 4 months. And after that, the obligation made will have no legal force.
Abridged edition 3rd.
On the collection of revenues and on the payment of Kahal debts for the establishment of capital for the conversion of the Jews . 1) All fees from the Jews, salaries and non-salary, from the day the manifesto was announced, will be presented for payment for poor people and kahal debts, and for their resettlement and furnishing; and therefore it is proposed that from the remaining 3 years, and from the resettled - 6 years, these fees should not be taken to the treasury, but paid to the commission. 2) The commission, according to the complexity of the past 3 years, will make an approximate calculation of how large the amount collected per year, under different names, from the Jews should be - and submit to the protector . 3) On the day of the publication of the manifesto, the commission in all cities and towns where there are kahals and podkagals and schools will seal boxes and boxes with money, appoint an elected from the Jews, who will continue to collect. 4) This treasurer, collecting money with receipts, writes in books. 5) After 4 months, money and books are sent to the commission, which keeps them in the provincial treasury, and after a year, the commission submits a report to the parishes to the protector. 6) If in the first year it will not be possible to start the resettlement of the Jews, due to the fact that their collections will not be enough to pay off their debts, then immediately forbidding them to trade in wine, order the kahals - the poor and those without food, if found, to be sent to work for scutching flax and hemp, or for the wire of ships and the digging of channels. 7) When, at the end of the payment of mutual claims according to the rules prescribed in this decree, a sufficient amount is accumulated from the Jewish fees, then the real reform begins.
Cieit is intended solely to clear the Jews of their debts as soon as possible and make them free for reform.
abridged edition IVth branch:
By the aforementioned manifesto, order all the kahal elders, under the deprivation of all their property and being sent without wives forever to Siberia to work, to compile a true head-to-head census of all Jews. When compiling it, for better convenience, from now on, add Russian nicknames to each Jew, for example. Note Khaimovich the Intricate, Leiba Itskovich Industrial, and so on, and announce it to everyone, so that they remember and are called them.
abridged edition Vth branch:
It is proposed to divide the Jews into 4 classes:
1) merchants,
2) urban philistines,
3) rural philistines,
4) settlers and their workers.
1) Merchants are divided into 3 guilds, according to the city position, and they are given all freedom irrevocably, on the same basis.
2) City burghers must declare capital from 1000 to 500 r. and remain evenly with their benefits; one half must certainly be artisans, and the other half - clerks and other ministers of trade.
3) State-owned rural philistines pay peasant taxes; must declare capital from 500 to 100 r. and will settle on state lands and start various factories. Those who settle in the landowner's towns under special contracts are called possessory and live in special streets from Christians.
4 ) Fourth class, the owner of which each must declare from 50 to 100 rubles. capital and have with them 4 workers who are in perfect obedience to the thread until they themselves accumulate that capital and become masters.
5) When an agreement follows between the owners and the Jewse to settle them in shtetls and estates, then the owners must commit themselves to the government in
but) that in towns for 3 years without fail o they will lead the Jews to various manufactories, factories and needlework; and on the estates, they will indeed lead arable farming, cattle breeding and other rural work, as if by Jewish hands,
b) that they are the owners for the Jews, state taxes will be regularly paid,
in) and they will be satisfied, especially in case of famine;
G ) will not give them the maintenance of the lease,
e.) neither keep them as factors, nor give taverns at the mercy of them, nor allow them to sell wine, but they will try to make them useful workers and artisans.
6) For violation and failure to comply with all these articles, the owner is first subject to a fine, and finally to the confiscation of the estate to the treasury, and the Jews are deported to Siberia.
7) Moreover, between the owner and the Jews, detailed contracts must necessarily be concluded on all duties and fines on both sides, meaning that the Jews remain free people and after 10 years can change the contract and place of residence
CieIt is assumed that there are enough prosperous Jews in the townships, who are considered philistines, who have their own not only wooden, but also stone houses, so that, on the one hand, they are not burdened by a speedy resettlement, and on the other, so that by encouraging them to sign up as merchants, multiply state income; the poor philistines living there hopefully will accept their settlement in their former places.
Cie under Polish rule it was still instituted. Constantine, the Greek emperor, in 315 forbade any communication with the Jews; then and now, it seems that their villages should be settled separately from other peoples.
This bailiff is in everyone settlement they rely, like Prussian institutions, both for watching in their schools so that nothing harmful happens, and for solving civil cases, and for monitoring the streets and houses of cleanliness and tidiness, which should be from poor, retired officers and on the maintenance of Jewish sums .
By this we mean buildings made of earth invented by N.A. Lvov, about which see in the previous Volumes on the Indexes, under the name of Lvov.
abridged edition VIth branch:
1) Upon receipt of a new total census, the commission, through the zemstvo courts and kahals, within two months, collects announcements from all Jews, which class anyone wants to join and how much capital will show.
2) Therefore, the commission will make a calculation, observing a strictly political rule, so as not to burden one city with a note of many merchants or philistines, and not to leave another with a small number, following the calculation that according to the number of revision souls settled in any district, there were no merchants in that city and burghers more like n.againstone hundred and one merchants and 4 tradesmen.
3) And because in Belarus the inhabitants are considered to be 632,009 souls, then in all cities there should be 6,320 merchants, 25,280 philistines. But since in that number there are already 1,1259 Christian merchants, 16,768 philistines, 595 Jewish merchants, 17,526 philistines, then 4,466 should be added to the number of merchants, and 9,014 should be subtracted from the burghers according to this calculation. To the rest of all Jews who do not settle in the estates, to allocate land in the Astrakhan and Novorossiysk provinces, appointing the poorest for resettlement. About all this, the commission will submit a statement to the protector.
As in the Byelorussian province, according to the statement of the state chamber, there are only 2.145 acres 940 sazhens of state empty lands, then, assuming 15 ten. per capita, and it will be possible to accommodate state-owned settlers on these no more than 148 souls of the male sex.
abridged edition VIIth branch:
1) At the end of the new audit, the kahals must select the required number of young people from merchants, burghers and villagers, and the commission sends them to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Riga to study accounting, literacy, crafts and skills and arable farming
2) The owners of the Jews who have settled in them evenly bake to teach various useful exercises.
3) After assigning places of land for resettlement, the commission selects efficient and careful Jews through kahals and sends them there to occupy places, with the appointment of no more than 300 houses in each town, and no more than 10 owners or 40 households in the villages.
4) Thesedeputies, upon arrival at the place and having received plans for the villages, submit to the protector, who refers to the governor, about the construction of several houses for the first case.
abridged edition VIIIth branch:
1) Following the amount to be resettled is divided into parties, Andone goes ahead, to build houses on the site of others. who will follow them.
2) At each party, 3 nimble Jews are appointed;
for the resettlement in this way of all parties, .they are given benefits for 6 years. And those who remained in Belarus, the government favors to give 3 years of benefits; for though not much, yet they will suffer a disorder from. this reform. After the lapse of same these years, to take taxes from all Jews for equalwith other subjects, not double; Moreover, it is also proposed, in order to encourage the establishment of factories, to collect from the townspeople not in money, but in cloth or linen. The protector will use all possible diligence for the establishment of manufactories
abridged edition IXth branch:
1) In all provinces where Jews live, prohibit and destroy kahals and their very title, following the example of how they are in Prussia AndThe Caesars have been destroyed.
2) In all civil matters, the Jews between themselves and Christians must be subordinated to be legalized by the government
3) The spiritual ones are taught in schools, which are under the discretion of the mayor, zemstvo police, bailiffs and owners.
4) Cancel taxation fees; collect state taxes on an equal footing with other subjects equally.
5) If, according to the establishments of their faith and customs, there should be unsettled fees, somehow: pe6eniedead, from boxes, paradise apples, etc., then nothing else, porridge, a kind of voluntary alms and for nothing else, but pleasing deeds for the good. e, and the most spiritual corrupted morals, introduced sybarism, discovered cabalistic, astrological and other superstitious teachings. and through that, having breathed in wickedness, they shook Christianity, from which from the beginning there was a heresy known from Novgorod Strigolnikov; then in Moscow and in other cities, various rumors and splits occurred, which, even when brought to the common people, spill their ulcer. For this purpose, in 1497, in 1509, and in subsequent years, there were councils that conducted investigations, according to which exposed criminals were punished by death; but all ce does not intimidate the Jews. The latest incidents prove them to be of such assistance. (Manuscript Enlightener, part 6, pp. 171 and 127 Let. Novgorodsk. Search for Dmitry Rostov., part 3, ch. 8. Message apxbishop Slovenian to the Old Believers, Art. 2. History. news about the strigolniks, art. 181 and 183.)
Politicians prove that the Jews cannot be useful merchants to the state, so much because of treachery, so much because of their non-attachment to the land, and that they are always ready to take the money they have earned to other states or send it to Palestine, and therefore it is supposed, at least through attorneys, to refrain from doing so and to have as much information as possible about their capitals.
Theodosius emperor in 415 forbade the Jewish glorious patriarth branch:
To form schools where teaching would be in pure Hebrew; topometeaching various sciences, introduce the teaching of languages; Russian, Polish and German. Distinction and ability of pupils should be carefully rewarded. As mentors, choose, for the most part, meek and enlightened people.
Among other many examples that the Jews in Spain were elevated to noble dignity, under King Alfonso XI, of them was one state treasurer, originally from According to Jewish custom, at their weddings, even the poorest at feasts spend the last of their property, which continue for several days, so that at the end of them sometimes the newlyweds are left with nothing.
According to history, it is not clear that entire nations were led into captivity, but the Jews were twice Nebuchadnezzar and Titus; also, under the leadership of only the Maccabees, they showed the experiments of their courage and art in military operations, and more, it seems, nowhere, and even now, at the slightest danger they are always shown extremely timid.
Mikhail Edelman
“Old man Derzhavin noticed us…”
Portrait of Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, Hermitage Museum.
Although these lines were written much later than the events described here and on a completely different occasion, they are very suitable for us, because the famous poet and dignitary t what mark did he leave that Russian anti-Semites to this day put forward “Opinions onJews” of this outstanding anti-Semite.
Gavriil Romanovich was not only a poet, but also a major statesman: a senator and even president of the College of Commerce. And in 1799, for the first time, at the age of 56, he met with Jews.
It happened like this
Paul I sent Derzhavin to Belarus to investigate the complaints of the Jews against the owner of the city of Shklov, S.G. Zorich, who oppressed both Jews and peasants. Derzhavin was instructed to provide protection to those who suffered from Zorich.
Lieutenant GeneralZorich, a former favorite of Catherine II, left St. Petersburg in 1778 at the age of 35 and settled in the town of Shklov (near Mogilev), presented to him even earlier by the Empress (according to the first partition of Poland in 1772, part of the Mogilev and Vitebsk provinces went to Russia), lusting after 11 months of a brilliant Serb who was 14 years her junior.
IN Shklove Zorich led such a wide life that even his colossal income was not enough for it. Here Semyon Gavrilovich lived as a local king with a numerous courtyard, a theater where French operas and Italian ballets were staged, royal trips and balls, squandering huge amounts of money.
How Zorich overlaid Jews and peasants with exorbitant payments. Jews were forced to sell such a quantity of vodka that they were forced to declare that it was impossible to sell such a quantity of buckets, and even at a high price. In response, Zorich ordered vodka to be taken to the taverns and, regardless of who does not hand over the money on time, it is easier to subject him to corporal punishment. Zorich imagined that the Jews were his serfs and dealt with them as he wanted: he took away some of their houses and drove them out of the town, beat others with his own hands, and also took away drinks without money.
Even before arrivalDerzhavin in Shklov was the decision of the Senate that the landowner had no right to trial and reprisal Jews, since they belonged to the merchant and petty-bourgeois class. In addition, in order to somewhat protect the Shklovsky Jews from large requisitions, it was decided, as a temporary measure, to pay the average amount as for the last three years, since Zorich constantly overestimated taxes.
Is it because the complaintZorich showed his arbitrariness too clearly, or maybe Zorich's personality played a role, as a favorite of Catherine II, whose memory Paul I treated negatively, sometimes with malice, the sovereign and decided to consider the complaint of the Shklov Jews against Zorich. Derzhavin was instructed to convey the reasons for the complaint not only to the Senate, but also to the Sovereign.
Guilt Zorich was obvious, but Derzhavin, a serf-owner at heart, and also for personal reasons, decided to shield his peer. To do this, he took advantage of the Sennen case, which arose at that time in Belarus, accusing Jews of ritual murder. At the same time to kill the second hare - to strike at the Jews.
The Senno case is the first ritual trial against Jews in Russia, which later served to initiate similar cases. Before that, there were many slanders in border Poland, Lithuania, Galicia, but they did not play such a role, although they were accompanied by torture and murder of Jews. Senno is a small county town (in fact, a town with up to a thousand people) in the Mogilev province, 50 km southwest of Vitebsk.
On Passover in 1799, in the Senno district, a woman's corpse was found near the Jewish tavern. One witness claimed to have seen this woman in a tavern with 4Jews. They were arrested. There was no direct evidence, but only a rumor that the Jews needed Christian blood. The Belarusian governor referred the case to the criminal department of the main Belarusian court. This department instructed Secretary Stukov to investigate: “Is there a provision in the laws of the Jews that Jews need Christian blood?”
Seven years earlier, beforeSennen case, in 1772, that is, when the Belarusian region passed to Russia, in the printing house of the Pochaev Lavra (in Volhynia) “Talmud’s Fables, from the Jews themselves” were printed, and five years later in St. Petersburg in 1787 “Rites of the Jews”, where the legend was given about the desecration of Christian shrines by Jews and the use of Christian blood. The basis of this bloody literature was Polish books on this topic.
The publication of this literature paved the way for the slander
Secretary Stukov involved in the investigation a baptized renegade Jew, Stanislav Kostinsky. They got two Hebrew books and one Polish. Kostinsky made an extract from the religious code of the Shulkhan-Aruch (it regulates the life of a Jew to the smallest detail), which Stukov obtained “from places far from Vitebsk”, as if this book, which was in constant use, was not in Vitebsk. Making extracts, Kostinsky distorted their essence.
The Polish book was called "The Discovery of the Mysterious Deeds of the Jews through the Rabbis Who Accepted the Christian Law." And in this book there was a link to another book - "Izyfelev", which was reported under torture by the convert Yan Serafinovich in the Galician citySandomierz back in 1710. In general, the sources were “good”, and Stukov, with a distorted translation of Kostinsky, forwarded these books to the criminal department with a corresponding report.
At the same time, the director of the Department of Religious Affairs for Foreign Confessions, Skripitsyn, sent a note to the Senate, in which he stated that it was possibleJews use Christian blood, but that nothing was discovered in the “Sennen case”, that is, in this case there is no evidence. The process was supposed to be completed and consigned to oblivion, but at that time Derzhavin arrived as a senator to investigate the complaint of the Shklov Jews against Zorich.
Derzhavin met with Stukov and sent his note to Paul I and stated that the content of Stukov's note "accuses all Jews of viciously shedding Christian blood over their Talmuds." And also, considering that “due to open hostility” one people cannot be a witness against another, he, Derzhavin, refuses to accept the testimony of Jews against Zorich “... until the Jewish people are justified before Your Imperial Majesty in the aforementioned common opposition to Christianity that is clearly shown on them villainy."
But a little earlier than Derzhavin's message, Pavel got acquainted with the note of AbrahamBernhard, doctor of medicine, who lived in Shavly (now Shauliai) of the Kovno province. In this note, entitled “Light in the darkness of Samogitia” (Samogitia - Zhmud, Zhemayte - a country in the lower reaches of the Neman, as well as its indigenous population). Bernhard spoke about the medieval persecution of the Jews and about two ritual processes, as well as various evidence of the Law of Moses and the Talmud, showing the groundlessness of the Sennen libel.
Pavel the First
Note Bernhard made an impression on Paul I. He rejected Derzhavin's proposal, ordering him to carry out the instructions given to him, leaving aside the Senno process. The sovereign's answer also sobered up the Vitebsk court, where the “case” was considered: not finding real evidence to accuse the Jews of the murder of a woman, he released the suspects. And Zorich died in the same 1799 without offspring, leaving 2 million rubles of debt. Derzhavin harbored his dark and fierce enmity towards the Jews.
And to convince public opinion of involvementJews to the Sennen murder, in 1810 was printed in Smolensk with a new edition of “Jewish Rites”. Derzhavin contributed to the spread of this slander. Looking ahead, let’s say that in his “Opinions on the Jews” (draft of Jewish reform) he stated that if “bloodshed” happened anywhere in antiquity, it was only due to the fanaticism of some fanatics, but he immediately noted that these atrocities “ are performed or, at least, now they are only protected in kahals. And he attached a note (copy) of Stukov and a distorted translation (probably by a renegade Kostinsky) of some places from the book “Sheved Yehuda” (tribe of Judah; clan, tribe of Judah).
And soon Derzhavin had an opportunity to influence Jewish life in Russia.
In 1800, he received a second business trip to Belarus, where a terrible famine raged - the order of the Sovereign to investigate the reasons for the crop failure in Belarus, and why the peasants were left without bread by the landowners in a famine year. On September 6, 1800, Paul authorizedDerzhavin to stop abuses, and the landlords, who, out of boundless greed, leave the peasants without help, take away the estate and give it to guardianship.
But in the additional instructions givenDerzhavin was closely acquainted with him, no less anti-Semitic than Derzhavin himself, Procurator-General of the Senate P.Kh. attention to their fishing in that, and to the aversion of such common harm from them, they filed their opinion.
This Judeophobic postscript, not without the participation ofDerzhavin, given in order to weaken the blow against the landlords and turn it on the Jews. And here Derzhavin unfolded to the fullest extent of his verbal ornateness, applying a falsely constructed conclusion, deceptive arguments, snatching out certain aspects of the phenomenon, which at a superficial glance seem correct. In addition, he needed to maintain the authority of the landowners in the eyes of the serfs.
With revision of BelarusDerzhavin coped within 3-4 months: he took custody of the estate of one Polish magnate Oginsky, personally closed the Jewish distillery in the town of Liozno, and disposed of it so diligently that he caused a complaint from a Jewish woman in beating her. He collected information about the Jews among the philistinism and merchants hostile to them, among the "learned" teachers of the Jesuit College. He received only two projects of enlightened Jews - Frank and Notkin (about them - below). From various surveys, Derzhavin drew a “conclusion”: “Jewish occupations—trade, rent, catering, factoring—are only “subtle inventions under the guise of profits and services to others, to deplete their property; the school is a nest of superstitions; Jews have no moral sense at all. They have no concept of philanthropy, disinterestedness and other virtues.”
After these “righteous” works on “putting things in order”Derzhavin, in the fall of 1800, settled in Vitebsk and began to draw up a note on the Jews under the title “Opinion on the aversion in Belarus of the lack of bread by curbing the mercenary crafts of the Jews, on their transformation and other things.”
Until the end of the century, Russian anti-Semites will pray for this Derzhavin “work”. After all, the perpetrators of the famine, according to the conjecture of the senatorDerzhavin turned out to be not landowners, but Jews. Derzhavin's "work" is extensive and there is no way to fully comment on it in a newspaper essay, here are just a few touches.
It begins with the fact thatthe Jews "made and still make a lot of noise about themselves." Then a little history. When several kingdoms collapsed, and almost traces of them disappeared, the Jews retain their unity, language, faith, customs, laws. Derzhavin presents excerpts from church and Polish history and asserts that the Jews rule over those among whom they live.
“Parasites, they were in abundance by deceit and cunning at the expense of their hospitables, did not engage in crafts and arable farming” (And in a footnote, edited by academician J. Grot, vol. VII, 1872, some softening of the editor: For a short time, the Jews were free, and the rest of the time under the yoke of other peoples: Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Romans, who paid tribute).
And further, describing the life of the Jews, Derzhavin concludes: “The Jews are smart, insightful, quick-witted, agile, courteous, helpful, sober, temperate, modest, not voluptuous, etc., but on the other hand, untidy, smelly, idle, lazy, cunning , evil, etc.” (Isn't it a contradiction - quick and lazy?).
“They don’t take off their yarmulkes in front of anyone.” For a courtier, this is already a crime. Listing items about studies, schools and classesJews in the 6th paragraph, he writes: “In these kahals, Christian bloodsheds are performed and protected, in which the Jews are suspected in different times and kingdoms.” Although Derzhavin himself, as already noted, cannot assert this, according to him, but he considered it necessary not to lose sight of it.
And he concludes that the life of the Jews must be changed
Certainly, Derzhavin understood the causes of the famine, but, being himself a landowner, he did not dare to suggest measures to curb the arbitrariness of the landowner and said that the landowner should retain full power over the peasant. Therefore, without touching upon the relationship between the landowner and the peasant, Derzhavin directed his attention exclusively to the Jew. And the Jew must be subject to harsh government regulations.
In an official note on the causes of the famine, he lists 13 points, where he slightly affects the Poles: lazy, slow, shirk from work, ask for help from the landlords and - again their motive - the Jews: "... give the Jews for old debts." “And the Jews, buying from the peasants, sell them at exorbitant prices, enrich themselves. So the villagers have been deprived of the ways to be prosperous and well-fed.” “Jew tenants in taverns sell wine day and night… These taverns are a temptation for the people, where the peasants corrupt morals… There the Jews lure them not only for bread and… tools, property, time, health and life itself.”
And further, with minor modifications in the same key throughout the official note, the main culprit of the famine was a Jew. And althoughDerzhavin, in his draft, proposes to prohibit the lease of estates to everyone, regardless of whether they are “Christian law or Jews,” the figure of the Jew under his pen, the pen of a senator and poet, has grown to such a size that it has overshadowed both landowners, and peasants, and peasant tenants.
In a private letter to his friend Prosecutor General ObolyaninovDerzhavin wrote: “It is difficult to blame anyone without sin and with justice. The peasants drink their bread to the Jews and suffer a lack of it. The owners cannot forbid drunkenness because they get almost all their income from the sale of wine. And the Jews cannot be fully blamed either, that they extract the last food from the peasants to feed themselves. In a word, it would be necessary for all to preserve moderation and through this take advantage of the general prosperity. But where and who is it, who fully observed it? Everyone wants more benefits for himself.”
In an official noteDerzhavin outlines an extensive project (88 points) for transforming the life of the Jews. The whole project is a mixture of Judeophobia with an attempt at a glimpse of reality and a vague understanding of the tragedy of the Jews. It has many coercive and repressive measures. So, in one of the measures to eliminate hunger (“the eighth”), the senator suggests: “Owners and managers should be very careful that the Jews do not go with carols and that the Jews do not pay grain debts.” And for the violation he offers punishment: peasants without a queue in recruits, Jews without wives and children in mining plants.
The nobleman [He is not a nobleman, but a dignitary - FV] thought of the fact thatJews must be expelled from cities and even villages, conducting a census, adding, as he calls, Russian nicknames to Jewish names. “For example, Nota Intricate, Leiba Itskovich Industrial, Khatskil Mordukhovich Wild, Leizer Movshevich Derevensky, so that everyone remembers his own.”
But it must be said that this statesman was not disinterested. With a Jewish project, he hoped to become the “boss,” whom he calls the protector, over allJews of Russia: “... would it be objectionable for the Jewish people, regarding only its transformation and, if possible, transformation, to determine a special protector, under whose leadership all this work would be done and who, in every necessary case, could not only patronize them in the provinces and in the Senate; but also to represent them with His Majesty.”
But before this definition of a special protector, “humane”the dignitary proposes one of the main measures to eliminate hunger: to eliminate taverns, “…. And where the taverns remain, then establish them on the right of taverns, and expel the Jewish tenants immediately.
And a completely “brilliant” measure: “On resettlementJews from Belarus. Moreover, one of the paragraphs says: “And whoever can pay state and kagal taxes can stay.”
Wanting to burden even moreJews, but, creating the appearance of equalizing them with the peasants, Derzhavin proposes to take Jews into military service, but, fearing that the Jew, thanks to his sobriety, perseverance and diligence, will advance in the service, this dignitary man suggests: “... with recruiting sets, although they could If they were accepted to be in military service, but as by their natural cowardice they can never be good soldiers, ... it seems that they can be used only in furleiters, musicians and other non-fringe low positions. Those who have achieved high sciences should not be awarded officer and staff officers and noble ranks.
And after offering all his considerations, he draws a line: “... and only then, and not before the depravedJews, if they change their superstitious customs, will be direct subjects of the Russian throne.
And in conclusion - this is already the apotheosis - of his very large and “useful” work, the state “reformer”, again using sophistry, uses evangelical love to humiliate and additionally insultJews and the exaltation of the sovereign: “Thus, the Jews are an obstinate and savage race, enemies of Christians, although, by the definition of eternal destinies, they will remain in their indispensable dispersion, as long as the Almighty pleases; but even in this sad state they will receive an image of well-being. And Paul the First will be granted an unforgettable glory to generation and generation, that he was the first of the Russian monarchs to fulfill this great commandment: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” Genuine signed: Senator Derzhavin.
And throughout the projectDerzhavin - religious hostility and fanatical distrust of Jews: Jews are the enemies of Christians. And where it was necessary to see the feudal lord, Saltychikha, the immorality of the Law Derzhavin, wanting to see the Jew, saw him. Speaking objectively, Derzhavin also proposed positive measures: the spread of education among the Jews and the introduction of productive labor. But these measures were inspired by the Jews Frank and Notkin.
Frank Ilya, a doctor, studied in Berlin, practiced in the town of Kreslavka, Dvina district, Vitebsk province. Derzhavin visited Kreslavka, where they met. Derzhavin said to Frank: “Since Providence has preserved this small and scattered people so far, we must take care of their preservation” (Derzhavin repeated this in Opinion). These words deceived Frank about Derzhavin's true attitude towards the Jews.
Frank adhered to the views of the then German Enlightenment (XVIII century). He criticized the Jewish rituals and traditions of Judaism. He accused Jewish teachers of the fact that because of their teaching, Jews are isolated from other peoples, and therefore they become stagnant in ignorance, and the Talmud is filled with nonsense. Frank believed that Jewish reform should begin with the opening of schools teaching Russian, German, and Hebrew.
Of course, this one-sided criticism, devoid of historical explanations, was enthusiastically received.Derzhavin. He took from Frank the idea of a general education, but also included in his reform project those words of Frank, which speak of the isolation of the Jews from the surrounding peoples. In this respect, Frank's note played a negative role - Derzhavin's project became an argument for anti-Semites. Frank, on the other hand, was sure that he saw before him an enlightened dignitary, and Derzhavin took advantage of this to show a gloomy picture of Jewry. But Frank's idea of educating the Jews formed the basis of cultural reform.
Notkin, Nota Khaimovich, a Mogilev merchant, became an outstanding public figure. He signed official papers with the title of “Court Counselor of the Polish-Royal Court”. In 1788, he carried out deliveries for the commander-in-chief in the Russian-Turkish war, Field Marshal G.A. Potemkin. He put forward his own project, where he boldly contradicted Derzhavin: "... it is unreasonable to consider the Jews the only culprits for the poverty of the peasants."
He proves that “in many places, where, although they areJews, peasants live in abundance, in other places where there are no Jews, the peasants, however, are in need. The ban on Jews living in villages is useless, since where will the poor go, who are believed to be up to 100,000 of both sexes with minors? And if they are resettled in empty lands to engage in agriculture, then where will they get the money for arranging and feeding, to whom they will sell “their products”.
Notkin writes that if there are any abuses on the part of the Jews, then they come solely from poverty, and therefore, in order to use the Jews for the benefit of the state and their own, poverty must be averted. And it offers a number of useful measures, including:
- release Jews from double taxation and equalize with other Russian subjects;
- Arrange factories and plants. Limit landlords from Jewish taxes according to the state in which they (the landowners) were at the time of joining that region to Russia;
- to create schools with the study of languages (as well as Frank's proposal).
And then - an original measure, contrary to Derzhavin's measure, bold and independent: not to elect for a meeting in the ministries of thatJews who do not know Russian. Able Jews are assigned to public service and rewarded according to merit and rank.
Notkin prevented the resettlement of Jews from Smolensk and tried to paralyze Derzhavin's project. But Derzhavin's project, with the assistance of Prosecutor General Obolyaninov, was given special importance in the Senate, where the Jewish reform was being developed. Many times rumors came to the government about the arbitrariness committed against the Jews in the former Polish territory. And therefore, in the last years of the 18th century, it put the Jewish question on the queue, and the local regions were invited to speak out. Many Polish-Lithuanian nobles expressed their opinion in the spirit of Derzhavin.
The main thing for them was - strengthening the influence of the landowners and, of course, having a scapegoat -Jews - to justify before the government. And in 1802, to consider Derzhavin’s project, the Jewish Committee (“Committee for the welfare of the Jews”) was established (already under Alexander I), which included major dignitaries from the sovereign’s entourage: Count V.P. Kochubey, Minister of the Interior, friend of Emperor Alexander I; Prince A.-E. Czartoryski, comrade of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, also a friend of the Tsar; count S.O. Pototsky, senator; Count V.A. Zubov, lieutenant general, director of the 2nd Cadet Corps at that time. Among the representatives of the old regime, our "reformer" Derzhavin, who at that time became Minister of Justice, also entered. M.M. Speransky, a thirty-year-old professor, head of the office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was entrusted with managing the committee. The committee invited Jewish deputies from all kahals of Minsk, Podolsk, Mogilev and Vitebsk provinces to work. Here it was also decided that the governors would express their opinion on the structure of the Jews.
Derzhavin defended his exclusive position in the Committee and, using the highest right, in a flattering letter invited Notkin, noting his high moral qualities, to take part in the work of the Committee. Later, in his notes, where Derzhavin writes about himself in the third person, he speaks of Notkin contemptuously, with disdain, like a courtier who no longer needs this person (Notkin was no longer there, he died in 1804).
An interesting note was drawn up by a member of the Committee, CountPototsky Severin Osipovich, senator. A man of statesmanship, he writes that the fate of seven to eight hundred thousand people has to be dealt with. Persecuted for more than 18 centuries, doomed to the hatred of peoples, burdened with taxes and excluded from almost all worthy trades, the Jews could not help but become infected with vices that were recognized as innate. It is necessary to distinguish the vices caused by the position in which the Jewish people found themselves from those that are characteristic of them along with other people.
A deep gulf lay between Derzhavin's "Opinion" and Pototsky's note.
Derzhavin viciously slandered the Jews, demanded that they be constrained in their civil rights and separate from the civilian population. He tried to prove that the Jews are the enemies of Christians, not only in matters of religion, but also in everyday relationships. In the everyday actions of the Jews, a malicious intent is hidden.
Potocki, on the other hand, tried to lighten the accusations against the Jews, wishing to bring them closer to the Christians, and did not speak of a new restriction. But there was also a voice that, in its civic spirit, was not only diametrically opposed to Derzhavin's anti-Semite phobia, but even significantly higher than Pototsky's humanity. It was a note from the Lithuanian governor Ivan Grigoryevich Frizel (who died in the year the Committee was founded). He took into account the needs of the Jews themselves. In his project, he demanded the destruction of Jewish autonomy in order to free the Jewish masses from the power of the leaders of the kahals, who abused it, and also to equalize the rights of the Jews with the corresponding masses of the Christian population.
That is, merchants with merchants, artisans with artisans, with the right to be accepted into workshops and to be elected to various positions. Landowners, on the other hand, should be compared with Russian single-palace dwellers, i.e. owners of a small (one yard) plot of land (such came from service people). Also create forJews to general education schools, to involve them in productive work and to curb the willfulness of the landlords. That is, in contrast to Derzhavin, to turn the Jews into full-fledged Russian citizens. Frizel's project was not carried out, but played a role in the Jewish Committee.
Derzhavin opposed the equality of the Jews. He defended the provisions of his project, which was a mixture of wild judgments of a patriarchal Russian about a culture unfamiliar to him with reformist plans in the contemporary barracks-Prussian spirit.
Here it is required to name one more person, Senator D.O. Baranov. Being the clerk of the Jewish Committee, which develops the “Regulations” of 1804 onJews, he drew up a draft of new legislation in the spirit of Derzhavin's "Opinion" directed against the Jews, which was unfavorable for them. But Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky did not give movement to Baranov's anti-Semitic project. Speransky, on the other hand, owns the journal resolutions of the Committee, imbued with free-thinking. Speransky himself was friendly with Abram Peretz, an educator and leader of the Jewish community of St. Petersburg, a prominent shipbuilding contractor (By the way, 18 years after the events described, Baranov was sent to Belarus in connection with the famine that raged there again, where again, in the spirit of Derzhavin, he noted the main cause of the famine ).
Hostile relationsDerzhavin to the new statesmen - associates of Alexander I, forced him to resign soon. The “Regulations on the Jews” of 1804 was developed by the Committee without Derzhavin, but its draft did not remain without influence on the nature of this act.
The result of the activities of the Committee was the publication of the first systematically developed legislation onJews of Russia - "Regulations on the Jews" of 1804. The Decree on the publication of the “Regulations” stated that the reform was in line with the good of the Jews themselves. In fact, the reform took on the character of a measure aimed not at improving the conditions in which the Jews lived, but at eliminating those phenomena of Jewish life that were considered harmful to the rest of the population.
Catherine II ruled the country until 1796, and after her death, her son Pavel I occupied the Russian throne. In 1799, Jews from the Belarusian town of Shklov complained to the emperor about the owner of the town, retired general S. Zorich, in the past - one of the favorites of Catherine II. When the empress lost interest in Zorich, she granted him the Shklov estate, where he built himself a castle and lived "in splendid arrogance": he maintained at his own expense an opera house, a military school for three hundred noble children, "every day" arranged balls, masquerades, fireworks and grand hunts. The “Shklov despot”, a man of strong temper, considered all Jews “subject to him, as long as they live on the earth”‚ and dealt with them at every minute whim as with serfs: he drove them out of the town, took away houses and property, beat him with his own hands, drove him to work "in stocks and glands", levied such taxes that "left only air without payment".
Paul I had no particular sympathy for the favorites of his late mother. Having received a complaint from Shklov, he sent there the famous Russian poet, Senator Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin, to sort out on the spot "unauthorized actions against the Jews ... retired Lieutenant General Zorich." Derzhavin arrived in Shklov, questioned witnesses, but treated Zorich's "amusements" condescendingly and reported to St. Petersburg that "no matter how hard he tried", he did not find excessive "harassment of the Jews by Zorich" for which he could be subjected to ... trial. However, the testimonies could not be crossed out, and Derzhavin took advantage of the trial on accusing the Jews of drinking Christian blood.
It happened in the same year in Belarus, in the Senno district, shortly before Easter. Near the tavern they found the corpse of a woman, and on the basis of "the popular rumor that the Jews need Christian blood," they accused four Jews who happened to be in that tavern of ritual murder. An investigation began, and a special official was instructed to "secretly find out if ... there is a provision in Jewish laws that Jews need Christian blood?" The baptized Jew Stanislav Kostinsky took the code of Jewish laws "Shulchan Aruch" and translated excerpts from it with distortions to support the accusation. This incorrect translation, erecting slander on the whole people, was submitted to the court for consideration, but the case ended happily and the accused were acquitted.
However, even before the end of the investigation, Derzhavin informed the emperor that the Senno case "accuses all the Jews of maliciously spilling Christian blood through their Talmuds" and therefore they cannot give impartial testimonies against Zorich "until" - as he wrote - the Jewish the people will not justify themselves before Your Imperial Majesty in the atrocity mentioned ... against Christians." Pavel I ordered Derzhavin to conduct the Zorich case, not taking into account the Senno trial, but Zorich had died in the meantime, the case was sent to the archive, and the Senate decided that the Jews, belonging to the merchant and petty-bourgeois estates, could not be considered serfs in landowner towns and villages. Thus, they were formally recognized as free citizens with a limited place of residence - in contrast to the peasants, who, according to the manifesto of Paul I, were forbidden even to "dream that they have to become free."
A year later, Derzhavin was again sent to Belarus with the broadest powers. In the region for several years in a row there was a crop failure, famine raged, and the landowners left their serfs without help and sent all the grain to distilleries, which brought them good incomes and soldered the peasants. “Terrible poverty,” a contemporary wrote, “is a consequence of drunkenness, and drunkenness is a consequence of free distillation and the sale of wine, which is extremely cheap and absorbs the welfare of millions for the benefit of several hundred people.” Sending Derzhavin to Belarus, Paul I ordered to stop abuses and strictly to punish the landlords who “out of immeasurable self-interest leave their peasants without help to feed themselves.” The emperor’s order did not say anything about the Jews, but on the same day Derzhavin received an explanation from the Prosecutor General of the Senate: the essence of the Jews ... then the Highest Will is that Your Excellency pay (on them) special attention. "And Derzhavin's inspection took on a different meaning.
In those days, the Jews were engaged in the Shinkar trade in the villages‚ in the pan estates‚ and they were accused of soldering the peasants of the western provinces. At the same time, they forgot that it was not only Jews who used the income from the production and sale of vodka. “The owners smoke wine,” wrote Derzhavin in his report, “they smoke boyars, gentry, priests, monks and Jews of various orders.” They also forgot that the peasants drank and starved in those provinces where there were no Jews at all. In Kyiv, for example, Jews could not live in the eighteenth century, and the tradesmen, Cossacks, the city magistrate and even monasteries, including the famous Pechersk Lavra, were engaged in distillation and the sale of wine with might and main. Distilleries were scattered around the whole of Kyiv. On one Podil, in the magistrate's taverns, twenty-five to thirty thousand buckets of vodka were drunk annually, giving income to the magistrate up to ten thousand rubles.
Even under Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, they were looking for such a source of "multiplication" of state revenues, which "cannot have any diminution at all, but there will be a single circular and endless appeal." The sale of vodka became such a main source of income for landowners and the state, and agronomists recommended that landlords "use bread to smoke wine in order to get double profit through this." The calculation was simple: one could earn twice as much money for wine than for the sale of bread, from which this wine was made. In 1773, the government bought two million buckets of vodka from the landlords of Russia and received from its sale more than four million rubles of net profit - a huge amount for those times.
When the Jews were accused of soldering the peasants, they did not take into account the fact that the Jews in the villages did not have the right to own land, they were limited in trade and crafts in the cities, and the main way to earn a living for them was distilling and tavern making. The law forbade them to independently engage in this trade, and therefore they took over the production and sale of vodka from the landowners. Willy-nilly, they became intermediaries between landowners and peasants, and the landowners, using their power, forced Jewish taverns to sell huge quantities of alcoholic beverages. Sometimes several landowners owned the same village, each of them built a tavern there, planted his own tavern maker and sold his own vodka. In the Senate report, it was noted that S. Zorich "forced the Jewish shinkars to take 16,000 buckets of bread wine from him every year and exact from them 3 rubles 15 kopecks per bucket" although this wine cost three times cheaper and sold it was not possible in such quantities. By order of Zorich, barrels were forcibly rolled into the taverns and money was collected from the taverns "through execution." It turned out that the Jewish shopkeeper bargained for the last penny from the peasant and gave it to the landowner, remaining as poor as his enslaved neighbor. Contemporaries noted the poverty of the taverns that struck them, and the Lithuanian governor reported in a report that only women sit in taverns, and their husbands "go out to other trades, because the income from the tavern is often insufficient for their maintenance."
Arriving in Belarus, Derzhavin discovered during an audit that the serfs ate bread half and half, sorrel, quinoa and roots: out of "habit and need for contented indifference" ‚ "thin and pale as dead", - and the Jewish population of the region was "in extreme exhaustion and poverty, and such a large part." He even noted that the landlords were largely to blame, who made wine in huge quantities, built taverns, planted drunkenness and imposed exorbitant taxes on the peasants. However, Derzhavin, himself a big landowner, blamed only the Jews as the cause of all the troubles of the Belarusian peasant, although in a private letter to the Prosecutor General of the Senate he stated otherwise: in it. The owners cannot forbid drunkenness because they get almost all their income from the sale of wine. And the Jews cannot be fully blamed either, because they extract the last food from the peasants for their livelihood. In a word, everyone should save moderation ... but everyone wants more benefits for himself.
Derzhavin observed Belarusian Jews for three or four months, and nevertheless decided to draw up a detailed plan for the complete reorganization of Jewish life. His note, submitted to the government, was called: "The opinion of Senator Derzhavin on the aversion in Belarus of the lack of bread by curbing the selfish thoughts of the Jews, on their transformation and other things." He wrote, based on his "research": Jews avoid hard work, because from their "Talmuds" it follows that they should rule, and other peoples should obey them; their school is a "nest of superstitions" where children are taught only religion and fanaticism, and until their schools change, their manners will not change; they collect their riches "to build a new temple of Solomon" or "for carnal pleasures"; they always walk with their heads covered, because "they honor themselves before all other peoples as the most excellent"; they take the same names, “some Movshev, Abramov, Leibov, Khaimovichev, Leizarovichev and the like”‚ and this should also be “attributed to their cunning”; they wear the same black dress, which is why "memory is lost, the concept is confused" and it is difficult to determine their true number when levying taxes.
After such a preface, Derzhavin outlined an extensive project - eighty-eight points for the "transformation of the Jews." "In order to make (them) useful citizens", it is necessary to distribute the Jewish population equally in different places of Belarus, where they will turn to agriculture, and the surplus to be resettled on "empty lands in the Astrakhan and Novorossiysk provinces." Derzhavin suggested placing the Jews on special streets, separate from the Christians; not to allow Jews to take part in elections to city magistrates, so that the fate of Christians "is not to be betrayed into the hands of those who hate them"; "weaken their fanaticism... and, having exterminated their hatred for other peoples, to destroy the insidious plans to steal other people's property"; to prohibit Jews from taking "Christians and Christian women in their services"; "not even send Jews with their wives to hard labor in Siberia, so that they do not multiply and corrupt the heart of the Empire, that is, the indigenous people" - and so on. Thus, wrote Derzhavin, "the Jews are obstinate and crafty, the enemies of Christians, will receive an image of improvement" and Paul I, having made this reform, will be awarded great glory for fulfilling the commandment: "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you."
The Senate was supposed to consider Derzhavin's note, but in March 1801 there was a palace coup, the conspirators killed Paul I, the reign of his son, Alexander I, began, and with him a new, seemingly, approach to the Jewish problem.
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Essay seventeenth
"Opinion" of Senator G. Derzhavin. Jewish Committee under Alexander I. Eviction from the villages. Jewish agricultural colonies
“I do not broadcast in order to bring myself to the stage in pomp. Can vanity have a place in a despondent and contrite heart? No, I pour out only that sorrow with which my soul is filled to excess!..”
Catherine II ruled the country until 1796, and then her son Pavel I took the Russian throne. In 1798, Jews from the Belarusian town of Shklov complained to the emperor about the owner of the town, a retired general S. Zorich, in the past - one of the favorites of Catherine II. When the empress lost interest in Zorich, she granted him the Shklov estate, where he built a castle and lived "in splendid arrogance": he maintained a theater at his own expense, a military school for 300 noble children, "every day" arranged balls, masquerades, fireworks and grandiose hunts .
The “Shklov despot”, a man of strong temper, considered all Jews “subject to him, as long as they live on the earth”‚ and dealt with them at every minute whim as with serfs: he drove them out of the town, took away houses and property, beat him with his own hands, drove him to work "in stocks and glands", taxed such taxes that "left only air without payment."
Paul I had no particular sympathy for the favorites of his late mother. Having received a complaint from Shklov, he sent there the Russian poet, Senator G. Derzhavin, to sort out on the spot "unauthorized actions against the Jews ... retired Lieutenant General Zorich." Derzhavin arrived in Shklov, questioned witnesses, but treated Zorich's "amusements" condescendingly and reported to St. Petersburg that "no matter how hard he tried", he did not find excessive "harassment of the Jews by Zorich" for which he could be subjected to ... trial. However, the testimonies could not be crossed out, and Derzhavin took advantage of the trial on accusing the Jews of drinking Christian blood.
It happened in the same year in Belarus, in the Senno district, shortly before Easter. Near the tavern, they found the corpse of a woman, and on the basis of “the popular rumor that the Jews need Christian blood,” four Jews who happened to be in that tavern were accused of ritual murder. An investigation began, and a special official was instructed to "secretly find out if ... there is a provision in Jewish laws that Jews need Christian blood?" Baptized Jew Stanislav Kostinsky took the code of Jewish laws "Shulchan Aruch" and translated excerpts from it with distortions to support the accusation. This translation, erecting slander on the whole people, was submitted to the court for consideration, but the case, in the end, ended happily and the accused were acquitted.
Even before the end of the investigation, Derzhavin informed the emperor that the Sennen case "accuses all the Jews of vicious shedding, according to their Talmuds, of Christian blood," and therefore they cannot give impartial testimony against Zorich, "until, as he suggested, the Jewish people will be justified before Your Imperial Majesty in the mentioned ... villainy against Christians. Pavel I ordered Derzhavin to conduct the Zorich case, without taking into account the Senno trial, but Zorich had died in the meantime, the case was sent to the archive, and the Senate decided that the Jews, belonging to the merchant and petty-bourgeois estates, could not be considered serfs in landowner villages. They were formally recognized as free subjects of a country with a limited place of residence - in contrast to the peasants, who, according to the manifesto of Paul I, were forbidden even to "dream that they have to become free."
A year later, Derzhavin was again sent to Belarus with the broadest powers. There, for several years in a row, there was a crop failure and loss of livestock, famine raged, and the landowners left the serfs without help and sent grain to distilleries, which brought them good incomes and soldered the peasants. “Terrible poverty,” the researcher noted, “is a consequence of drunkenness, and drunkenness is a consequence of free distillation and the sale of wine, which is extremely cheap and absorbs the welfare of millions for the benefit of several hundred people.”
Sending Derzhavin to Belarus, Paul I ordered that the landowners be severely punished, who "out of immeasurable greed leave their peasants without help to feed." The emperor’s order did not say anything about the Jews, but on the same day Derzhavin received an explanation from the Prosecutor General of the Senate: Attention". And Derzhavin's inspection took on a different meaning.
“Russian Jewry is a direct continuation of Polish Jewry…” noted the historian S. Etinger. – It was not the Jews who moved to Russia, but Russia itself “came” to the Jews. Russian Jewry… retained its identity – unlike many other groups of Jewry, and did not even try to give it up.” From century to century, Jews lived among Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles and Lithuanians, spoke Yiddish, were engaged in crafts, as well as Shinkar trade in villages and on pan estates.
Jews were accused of soldering the peasants of the western provinces, forgetting that not only they produced and sold vodka (which in those days was called wine), the peasants drank and starved in those provinces where there were no Jews at all. “The owners are smoking wine,” Derzhavin wrote in his report, “boyars, gentry, priests, monks of various orders and Jews are smoking.” In Kyiv, for example, Jews could not live in the eighteenth century, and the philistines, the city magistrate, Cossacks to raise funds to equip the detachments, even monasteries, including the famous Pechersk Lavra, were engaged in distilling and selling wine there. “Khreshchatyk was turned almost into a continuous distillery settlement,” the researcher noted. – Distilleries were scattered around the whole of Kyiv. At one Podil, up to 30,000 buckets of vodka were drunk annually in magistrate's taverns, which provided income.
Even under Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, they were looking for such a source of “multiplication” of state revenues, which “cannot have any diminution at all, but there will be a single circular and endless appeal.” The sale of vodka became such a main source of income for landowners and the state, and agronomists recommended that landowners "use bread to smoke wine in order to get double profit through this." The calculation was simple: one could earn twice as much money for wine than for the sale of grain, from which this wine was made. In 1773, the government bought two million buckets of vodka from the landlords of Russia and received from its sale more than four million rubles of net profit - a huge amount for those times.
When the Jews were accused of soldering the peasants, they did not take into account the fact that in the villages they did not have the right to own land, they were limited in trade and crafts in the cities, and the main way to earn a living for them was distillation and tavern making. The law forbade them to independently engage in this trade, so they took over the production and sale of vodka from the landowners. Willy-nilly, they became intermediaries between landowners and peasants, and the landlords, using their power, forced Jewish taverns to sell huge quantities of alcoholic beverages. Sometimes several landowners owned the same village, each of them built a tavern there, planted his own tavern maker and sold his own vodka.
In the Senate report, it was noted that S. Zorich “forced the Jewish shinkars to take 16,000 buckets of bread wine from him every year and collect from them 3 r. 15 kop. per bucket”, although this wine cost three times cheaper and there was no way to sell it in such quantities. By order of Zorich, barrels were forcibly rolled into the taverns, exacting money from the taverns "through execution." It turned out that the Jewish shopkeeper bargained for the last penny from the peasant and gave it to the landowner, remaining as poor as his enslaved neighbor. Many noted the poverty of the taverns that struck them, and the Lithuanian governor reported that only women were sitting in taverns, and their husbands “go out to other trades, because the income from the tavern is often insufficient to support them.”
Arriving in Belarus, Derzhavin discovered during the audit that the serfs - "thin and pale as the dead" - ate bread in half with chaff, sorrel, quinoa and roots out of "habit and need in contented indifference" and the Jewish population of the region remained "in extreme exhaustion and poverty, and such are the majority." He even noted that the landlords were largely to blame, who made wine in huge quantities, built taverns, planted drunkenness and imposed exorbitant taxes on the peasants.
However, Derzhavin, himself a large landowner, blamed the Jews for all the troubles of the Belarusian peasant, although in a private letter to the Prosecutor General of the Senate he stated otherwise: “It is difficult to blame someone severely without error and in fairness. The peasants drink their bread to the Jews and therefore suffer a lack of it. Owners cannot forbid drunkenness because they get almost all their income from the sale of wine. And the Jews cannot be fully blamed either, that they extract the last food from the peasants for their livelihood. In a word, everyone should maintain moderation ... but everyone wants more benefits for himself.
Derzhavin observed the Belarusian Jews for three to four months, collecting "information from the most prudent inhabitants, from the Jesuit Academy, all government offices, the nobility, merchants and the Cossacks themselves regarding the way of life of the Jews, their crafts, deceptions and all the tricks and tricks with which they trap and expose stupid and poor villagers. His note, written hastily and submitted to the government, was called: "The opinion of Senator Derzhavin on the aversion in Belarus of the lack of bread by curbing the mercenary crafts of the Jews, on their transformation and other things."
In the "Opinion" it is said: the Jews avoid hard work, because from their "Talmuds" it follows that they should rule, and other peoples should obey them; their schools are a "nest of superstitions" where children are taught only religion and fanaticism, and until their schools change, their manners will not change; they collect their riches “for carnal pleasures”, as well as “for the creation of a new temple of Solomon” for the implementation of “secret plans” in Palestine; they always walk with their heads covered and “revere themselves before all other most excellent peoples”; they take the same names, “some Movshev, Abramov, Leibov, Khaimovichev, Leizarovichev and the like” ‚ and this “should be attributed to their cunning”; wear the same black dress, which is why “memory is lost, the concept is confused”, it is difficult to determine their true number when levying taxes.
After such a preface, Derzhavin outlined an extensive project - 88 points for the "transformation of the Jews." “In order to make (them) useful citizens”, it is necessary to distribute the Jewish population equally in different places of Belarus, where they will turn to agriculture, and the surplus to be resettled to “empty lands in the Astrakhan and Novorossiysk provinces.” In his “Opinion” it is said, among other things: “To send such hungry Jews in the winter to the villages, to beat flax and hemp ... in the summer to dig the Mariinsky and other canals ... so that, on the one hand, these poor Jews will not be left without the necessary food, and on the other would turn to robberies and other pranks ... "
Derzhavin suggested placing the Jews on special streets, separate from the Christians; not to allow Jews to take part in elections to city magistrates, so that the fate of Christians “is not to be betrayed into the hands of those who hate them”; to forbid Jews to take “Christians and Christian women in their services”; “weaken their fanaticism… and, having exterminated their hatred for other peoples, to destroy the insidious plans to steal other people's property”; “not even send Jews with their wives to hard labor in Siberia, so that they do not multiply and corrupt the heart of the Empire, that is, the indigenous people” - and so on.
Thus, wrote Derzhavin, “the Jews are a stubborn and crafty race, the enemies of Christians ... will receive an image of prosperity” , and Paul I will be awarded great glory for fulfilling the commandment: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” The Senate was supposed to consider Derzhavin's note, but in March 1801 there was a palace coup, the conspirators killed Paul I, the reign of his son, Alexander I, began, and with him a new, it seems, approach to the Jewish problem.
In November 1802, Alexander I established the Jewish Committee to revise and streamline the legislation on the Jews of the Russian Empire, which had previously been in a chaotic state. Minister of Justice G. Derzhavin became one of the members of the committee, and his "Opinion" formed the basis of the work of the committee.
Upon learning of this, the Jewish communities became worried, fearing the introduction of new restrictions. Representatives of the kahals even decided to "go to St. Petersburg and ask our Sovereign, may His glory be exalted, so that we do not make any innovations." They began to collect money to send intercessors to the capital, they announced a three-day fast with prayers in synagogues “on the occasion of unfavorable news”, and the Minister of the Interior, having learned about this, hastened to announce to the kahals that the government does not intend to introduce new restrictions for Jews, but, on the contrary, proposes to bring them "a better arrangement and peace of mind".
The intentions of Alexander I and the committee members were at first the best. They wished to resolve the Jewish question in the spirit of humanity, and the following words appeared in the journal of the committee meetings: “As few prohibitions as possible, as much freedom as possible... disappeared along with the beginnings that gave birth to them ... And in the education of the Jews (should) prefer the means of quiet approval, initiation of their own activities and suppression of only those obstacles that depend directly on the government and cannot be stopped by themselves. Derzhavin's Opinion, with its violent measures, was now becoming superfluous; Derzhavin said indignantly that the other members of the committee were "stuffed with constitutional French and Polish spirit"; he soon retired and did not take any part in the activities of the committee.
The committee decided to invite Jewish deputies to St. Petersburg in order to hear their opinion, and this fact amazed many. “This Autocrat,” they admired, “who has the autocratic right to dispose of the fate of his subjects, still deigns to call deputies ... humiliated unfortunates to explain his needs!” By the summer of 1803, the deputies had gathered in St. Petersburg, where they found a Jewish community of several dozen people. Among them stood out the army supplier Nota Notkin, who was the first to be recorded in the community's book as "respected and venerable Nathan Note from Shklov".
Notkin proposed to the committee his project of transforming the way of life of the Jews - as opposed to Derzhavin's "Opinion" with his violent measures. Derzhavin was for the forced involvement of Jews in agriculture and factory labor, up to and including exile in Siberia, “in eternal work in mining factories and without a wife”‚ - Notkin proposed a voluntary appeal to these occupations, advising to establish a cloth, spinning, rope, a sailing factory to teach Jews factory trades. It is impossible to turn all Jews into farmers, he thought, “this is absurd… It is impossible for everyone to lead the same way of life. Jews are engaged in those crafts in which others do not practice. They must be allowed to “search for their livelihood by useful labor in peace”; for this it is necessary "to transform in an insensitive way the state of this people, to avert abuses on their part, and most importantly to destroy the source of these abuses - namely, poverty."
"Projects" for Jewish reform were also sent to the committee by Christians, officials and private individuals, in order, as one of them said, "to cast their meager remarks to the foot of the throne." There were many proposals, and a certain retired prime minister even compiled an "Opinion on the use of Jews and Yakuts for the benefit of the state." Each project sent contained the necessary measures from which "the state will feel tangible benefits." It was necessary to settle the Jews on state lands “with strict supervision” of them, and immediately “through arable farming, inexhaustible riches will be discovered in the bowels of the earth”; “porcelain clay, various dyeing herbs and the like will be discovered by the Jews when tearing up the lands”‚ and the newly created Jewish settlements “will already bring benefits to the state that the troops passing through the steppes ... will not be in need.” It is unlikely that the Jewish Committee seriously considered these "projects", but it listened to the opinions of the Jewish deputies, studied the living conditions of the Jews and compiled an explanatory note - the result of the collected data.
Persecuted for more than eighteen centuries, that note said, eliminated from many trades, burdened with taxes, doomed to the hatred of peoples, the Jews could not help but become infected with vices that were recognized, perhaps, inborn. Jews are deceitful, rogue and cunning? But when cunning is the only weapon against the oppressor, can it be recognized as a crime? Jews cheat in trade? Who is to deceive, if not a petty trader, almost everywhere constrained, subject to many illegal extortions? Jews hostile to Christians? But who is capable of patiently enduring slavery and tyranny, reaching the point of inhumanity? Are Jews lazy and prefer easy activities? This is not true. Like others, they strive to make more money and work less; but the Jew has nothing, no one gives him anything, and everyone - from the highest authority to the last official - demands everything from him that pleases. Jews are multiplying immensely? But this reproach testifies best of all to the purity of their manners and their economy. And why in general should one or two million Jews be more feared than the same number of Kalmyks or Armenians?
In the same liberal spirit, the committee spoke in favor of transformative measures, but when the time came to make decisions, the members of the committee - people of education and humane for those times - sacrificed their convictions for their own interests. They were the largest landowners, for whom tens of thousands of serfs worked for free - two, three, or even four days of corvée a week, and therefore the members of the committee did not dare to recognize themselves and other landowners as the perpetrators of poverty in the Western Territory. They could not name the true reason for this - the bondage of the peasant, and instead of this they blamed the "harmful" influence of the Jews. It was as if they were different people: those who started work in the committee and those who finished it. As if they were not the ones who recently wrote down: “As few prohibitions as possible, as much freedom as possible ...” Good wishes remained on paper, and instead of this, cruel and hasty coercive measures were legalized in order to stop “various abuses and disorders to the detriment of agriculture and industry in those provinces where the Jews live.
On December 9, 1804, Alexander I approved the “Regulations on the Organization of the Jews” proposed by the committee, which provided for two goals: “the true welfare of the Jews” and “the well-being of the local population.” The "Regulations" recognized the right of personal freedom of the Jews "under the exact protection of the laws on an equal footing with all other Russian subjects"; no one was allowed to "oppress, or even disturb them in the exercise of faith and in general civil life, either in word or deed." The new law, however, retained the former Pale of Settlement in the west of the country, adding the Astrakhan and Caucasian provinces - for Jewish farmers who settled there (in 1825, these provinces were again excluded from the Pale of Settlement). For the development of factories and crafts, the law abolished the double tax from manufacturers, artisans and farmers, but retained it for the rest of the Jewish population, promising to abolish it at that moment "when in general all Jews in agriculture, manufactories and merchants will provide constant direction and diligence."
The “Regulations on the Organization of the Jews” determined that only those Jews who could read and write in Russian, Polish or German could occupy elective positions in the city self-government, although sometimes illiterate Christians were elected to these positions. The “Regulations” allowed manufacturers, artisans, artists and merchants to come on business and for a limited time to the inner provinces of Russia, but only in German dress and with special “governors’ passports” as if they were traveling abroad. The Jews asked to cancel these passports, which were not easy to obtain, but they were told that without the permission of the governors, "Jewish vagabonds could flood the entire Empire."
But the 34th article of the "Regulations" turned out to be the most cruel. She determined the deadline - January 1, 1808, after which "none of the Jews ... in any village or village can maintain any rents, taverns, taverns and inns ... nor sell wine in them and even live in them, under whatever it was not a view, except passing through. And this meant that tens of thousands of Jews had to rise from their homes, move from villages to cities and lose all means of subsistence.
At that time, about 60,000 Jewish families lived in the rural areas of the western provinces - about a quarter of a million people. Having turned into Russian subjects after the divisions of Poland, they retained their former occupations: they rented distilling and selling wine from landlords, dairy farms, mills, fishing, bought bread and other products from peasants, sold necessary goods in return - salt, dishes, braids ‚ sickles and more. On all roads there were Jewish taverns and inns, where travelers stopped, along all roads Jews maintained postal stations. “This land without Jews,” the Russian traveler wrote, “would be like a body without a soul, it would be a desert, a country of disasters and poverty. But the extreme multitude of Jews (their overcrowding) spoils all the good that could come from them.
In the Pale of Settlement, there were small Jewish factories for the production of glass, leather, soap, paper, cloth, cotton wool, mercury, potassium and potash. Only large merchants entered the merchant class; they exported flax, hemp, bread, and imported silk, cloth, coffee, sugar and wine. In Grodno, the traveler reported, "foreign goods are traded mostly by Jews"; in Shklov, they were engaged in the sale of "silk fabrics, lace, linens and various haberdashery items"; in Mogilev-on-Dnepr, Jewish merchants traded goods "from Riga, Frankfurt, Breslavl, Koenigsberg, Leipzig and Russian capitals." There were few large merchants, and most competed with each other, trading in small things in tiny shops. Merchants also went around the villages, selling goods - this was the Jewish version of the Russian peddler of the inner provinces of Russia.
The cities were overflowing with Jewish artisans, among whom tailors, shoemakers, furriers, barbers, jewelers, and joiners, carpenters, turners, millers and blacksmiths predominated. In Minsk, for example, there were few Jewish shoemakers because of the very skillful Poles, but in the Kiev province, Jewish shoemakers made up the majority. The Kyiv governor even noted that in Kyiv "there are no good philistines of the Christian law, skillful craftsmen and artisans" in Kiev, and there are mostly Jews from those. Not finding customers in the cities, the artisans went to work in the countryside and returned home only on Friday to spend Saturday with their families. “Learning some craft,” the Lithuanian governor reported, “they never finish their science; as soon as they themselves begin to work somehow, they immediately become masters and start their own household. The reason for this was early marriages, large families and severe poverty, which forced them to start independent work and earn a living as soon as possible.
The poverty of the Jewish population was widespread. The Kyiv governor reported: two-thirds of the Jews in his province "with the greatest effort now find daily food." “It seems fair,” he wrote, “to think about the fate of this despised and oppressed people, who, having not received from the state any property in their property, is obliged to pay the treasury for allowing them to live here a double tax,” and the landowners ... in their possessions the same amount or even more. That is why he came, except for a small number, to such a state that not only he could not pay taxes, but he could not support himself.
According to the new “Regulations”, a quarter of a million Jews were to join this mass of urban poor, who were evicted from the villages. “Can this measure be called embarrassing for them,” proclaimed the members of the Jewish Committee, “when, at the same time, many other ways are opened up for the Jews not only to maintain themselves in a comfortable condition, but to make acquisitions—in agriculture, factories, crafts, when, together with with this, a way is opened for them even to own land in property.
But those were just nice words. The "Regulations on the organization of the Jews" really allowed the Jews to start factories with factories and buy uninhabited lands, but permission alone was not enough for a whole people - practically without outside help, experience and accumulated funds - to immediately change their trades, which they have been engaged in for centuries. This has not happened anywhere and never, this could not happen in Russia either. But the law was already dictating its conditions, in the remaining short period of time a quarter of a million people, burdened with double taxes, were obliged at their own expense to move to cities, where even without them there were a lot of poor people, to settle in new places, to adapt to other conditions and master some kind of craft. Ruin awaited them all, the inevitable transformation into homeless wanderers and beggars.
At first, the Jews hoped that the law would be repealed, and only a few moved from the villages to the cities. But the local authorities began to show perseverance in order to clear the countryside of Jews, and thousands of unfortunate people wandered along the roads in search of bread and shelter. They sent complaints to Petersburg; local landowners also complained, who could not do without a Jewish tenant or tavern keeper, which is why they suffered losses; the authorities were also worried, because from such a resettlement “cities and towns can be filled with beggars, and these people from poverty can embark on various disorders and, among other things, on robberies and robberies.” But the government did not want to cancel the approved law, demanding to resort to "drastic coercive measures."
However, external circumstances unexpectedly suspended the eviction. In the autumn of 1806, on Napoleon's orders, a special manifesto was sent from Paris to convene the "great Sanhedrin". This Sanhedrin, according to Napoleon's plan, was to repeat the Jewish Sanhedrin of the past, the Great Sanhedrin - a meeting of wise men, teachers of the Law in Jerusalem. Napoleon's idea worried the rulers of Prussia, Austria and Russia on the verge of the upcoming war with France: it was assumed that in this way he would attract the oppressed Jews to his side in the area of future hostilities. In Russian journals they wrote: “Napoleon ended up proclaiming himself the savior of the Jews in order to have spies everywhere ... Napoleon ordered to declare himself the messiah of the Jews in order to have his scouts everywhere.” In order to avoid this danger, we decided to calm the Russian Jews and take immediate measures.
In February 1807, when the meetings of the Sanhedrin began in Paris, Alexander I suspended the eviction from the villages and ordered to find out the opinion of the Jewish communities on this matter, “wanting to give (the Jews) ... new proof of Our care for their well-being.” Representatives of the Jewish communities asked to cancel the eviction or at least postpone it, but soon the Peace of Tilsit was concluded, a “cordial agreement” was established between Napoleon and Alexander, and “Bonaparte’s intrigues” could no longer be feared. In October 1807, a new order followed: “in exchange for delay, due to the military circumstances of what happened ... without delay, the slightest and indulgence,” to evict Jews from the villages in the next three years, so that each year there would be at least one third of their total number. They did not forget to take care of the welfare of the landowners: if any village belonged to several landowners, and there were several Jewish innkeepers in it, they should have been evicted at the same time, "so that the landowners would not undermine one before the other."
The government proclaimed the "relocation" of the Jews, but this was already an expulsion. Those who did not leave voluntarily were escorted out by force under the escort of soldiers, driven into cities and towns, leaving there to fend for themselves. Thousands of homeless people roamed the roads, got sick, died; local authorities reported to the capital that "Jews were untimely expelled from the villages, ruined, plunged into poverty, and most of them are deprived of daily food and shelter." Hundreds of families asked for the promised lands for farming, but it turned out that in the western provinces there were almost no state-owned lands for their settlement, and there were no free jobs in a few private factories. “It is impossible to turn Jews into factory workers,” the auditors reported. “In the western region there are no factories, either state-owned or private, and the Jews themselves have no capital ...”
Moreover, many small settlements were considered cities only on paper, and the settlers did not find shelter for themselves, or any crafts. It was already clear that the resettlement would lead to a catastrophe, and in December 1808 the government decided: to leave the Jews in their original places henceforth "until further command" and to establish another committee that would again consider this unfortunate issue.
In 1806, 36 Jewish families from the Mogilev province were asked to be resettled in the Novorossiysk Territory to engage in farming in the southern steppe regions. Following them, the Jews of Vitebsk, Chernigov and Podolsk provinces addressed the government with the same request - approximately 7,000 people. And soon the settlers formed the first colonies of Jewish farmers in the Kherson province: Bobrovy Kut, Seydemenukha, Dobroe and Izrailevka. (The name Seidemenukh came from two words in Hebrew - “sde mnuha”, which means “quiet field” or “field of rest.” And in the future, the villages of Efengar and Nagartov appeared there - translated from Hebrew “beautiful river” and “good river ".)
During the forced eviction from the villages, rumors spread among the Jews about the "fertile Novorossiya", about the large loans and benefits that the colonists receive there. Now many saw in this a salvation from trouble, pinned their hopes on Novorossiya, submitted tearful petitions to the authorities for an immediate transfer to farmers. In the record book of the Mstislav community in July 1808, the following message appeared: “Our eyes have grown dim, looking at need and disaster, at how our children ask for bread and there is nothing to satisfy their hunger. And now the Lord took pity on his people, having created a medicine even before the disease ... The Tsar ordered ... and from our society and from the surrounding area left ... male souls - 155, female - 116, and together - 271 souls, may they multiply and bless their God… And it was given to them… for such a long journey from the public mug one hundred and fifty rubles, from the sums of the funeral brotherhood one hundred rubles, as well as food for the road… When the Lord favors us, he will lead us to a very good land!”
There were more and more people wishing to move to Novorossia. The more mercilessly they were expelled from the villages, the more persistently they rushed to new lands, and from there they reported with concern to the capital that Jews "in no small number are constantly coming and going to Novorossia." They sold their property and traveled in secret, in small groups, at their own expense, without permission or passports, hoping to receive reimbursement for their expenses on the spot. Settlers arrived in the colonies, exhausted by a long and difficult journey, “rare of them had the most necessary attire,” local authorities reported, “for the most part it consisted of only rags.” “Our journey lasted up to four months,” wrote one of the colonists. - Arriving at an empty site, we received money in a very small amount and, exhausted on the road from the cold, bad weather and various worries, we had to start building houses ... Amid the vast steppe and the ferocity of winter, very painful for us, we undertook to plow the never plowed earth."
By the beginning of 1810, 600 Jewish families settled in the seven colonies of the Kherson province - 3640 people, and many were still waiting for their settlement, wandering around Novorossia. The local authorities asked to stop the flow of migrants, because even without them, "a great number of homeless Jews roam from place to place ... they persistently ask for land, housing and food." And in the colonies, things were not the best way. The money allocated was not enough to build a house, buy oxen, plows, harrows and carts. By the time of sowing, they were given not seeds, but money, “and even then not at the right time,” the colonists complained. “For example, for winter sowing instead of August - in December and even later.” Sometimes local rulers, not trusting inexperienced colonists, themselves bought oxen, plows and other equipment for them, "very cheap and all the best." But the purchased oxen, according to the testimony of the auditor, "turned out to be old, emaciated, unsuitable for field work, and wagons, plows, etc. - fragile, requiring correction, repairs and alterations."
The new farmers, who did not have any experience, had to learn in a short time to plow the virgin land, which could only be lifted by a team of four oxen. In the villages adjacent to them, even Russian peasant settlers were ruined, unaccustomed to these conditions - what could be expected from merchants and taverns, who at an advanced age took up the plow for the first time? Many houses in the colonies stood "without roofs, yards and fences." Wells were dug, but the water in them turned out to be bitter-salty, harmful to people and livestock. There were no forests in the vicinity, only weeds grew. It was not possible to prepare dung for the long winter, and therefore the families lived together in several heated huts, and the abandoned houses became damp under the snow and collapsed. The overseers of the colonies reported that the settlers "do not know how to start and how to end" and the most zealous of the overseers suggested accustoming them to rural work in a tried and tested way: "the diligent - to encourage, the lazy - to force, and the negligent - to fight."
Among the settlers there was an increased mortality due to difficult living conditions and an unusual climate. Some "were absent without permission" to the cities; others returned to their former places in the Pale of Settlement. One of the inspectors reported to the authorities: “Severe frosts, which the local old-timers will not remember, strongest winds and blizzards, deep snows, which filled up the roofs of the huts in the colonies ... All the colonists complain about starvation, the cattle die, and people are cold and starving ... The Jews are in a terrible position and unanimously with the shedding of tears, they beg to turn them away from death; in thin, collapsed huts without roofs, without any food and fuel, which is nowhere to get beyond the boundless snows - they are exhausted among the cold and hunger, among the steppe!
Another inspector echoed him: “In rags, barefoot and without shirts, fifteen or twenty people in a hut, in stuffiness and indescribable untidiness, they stayed and bred a cruel scurvy disease. The sick lay along with the healthy, infected them; both of them were dying.” And the colonists of the Seidemenukha settlement complained to the authorities: “From the change of waters, climate, shortcomings, despair and illnesses, two hundred souls died in us within three years ... and we are all poor, unhappy!” The authorities allocated 300,000 rubles for the resettlement of Jews. The audit found that in three years 145,000 were spent for these purposes, and only ... 2519 rubles were left in the cash register. The local authorities failed to account for the sums spent, the treasury had no other money, and in April 1810 the government ordered to suspend the settlement of Jews in the Novorossiysk Territory.
The same thing happened with involvement in factory labor. A cloth factory was opened in Kremenchug to train "loitering Jews" in order to prepare specialists for future enterprises. The factory resembled a military barracks, from which it was impossible to leave without permission; several families were settled in each room, who received clothes and food, the children worked in the shops with their parents, but for less wages. At first, more than a hundred people worked in Kremenchug; three years later, thirteen remained, and the factory had to be closed; according to the overseer, the last families, together with their children, “at night ran out of the windows from the barracks.” The report noted that it is impossible to accustom people to a new profession by coercive measures: "factories are established by themselves, gradually and as needed, and the capital used for the forcible arrangement of this kind of establishments are capital thrown into the water."
Meanwhile, the newly created Jewish Committee continued to work and in 1812 submitted its report to the emperor. In the report, perhaps for the first time, the truth was told about the position of the Jews of Russia and their role in the economy of the western provinces. The lack of bread in Belorussia, it is said there, is not due to the fact that the Jews sell wine to the peasants, but from poor fertilization of the land and improper management. There are also quite a few Jews in the southwestern provinces, but the local peasants are more prosperous than the Belarusian ones. “As long as the Belarusian and Polish landowners will have the current system of economy based on the sale of wine, until the landowners stop, so to speak, patronize drunkenness, until now this evil, growing year by year, will not be eradicated by any efforts, and the consequences will be the same‚ whoever is assigned to sell wine, a Jew or a Christian, is an example of this in those provinces where there are no Jews at all, but drunkenness still exists.
The members of the committee noted: if thousands of Jewish taverns are evicted from the villages, then thousands of peasant taverns will take their place; as a result of this, agriculture will lose many skilled workers, and the treasury will spend huge amounts of money to turn Jewish tavern workers into plowmen. But what is the advantage of turning farmers into kissers, and kissers into farmers? The Jew buys his harvest from the peasant in the village, sells him scythes, dishes, salt and other goods, and therefore the peasant should not waste time, especially during working hours, on trips to the city, where he will still sell the goods to the same Jew and be able to drink what he drank in his village.
From the resettlement in the cities, the Jewish people "was subjected to ruin", and therefore the committee proposed - on the eve of the war with France - not to harden to the last extreme the already oppressed people. They should be left in their original places and again allowed them to rent, distill and sell wine, from which they “never enriched themselves, but extracted only food and the satisfaction of their duties.” But the proposals of the committee were already out of time. The year 1812 came, Napoleon was advancing on Russia, and the resolution of the Jewish question was postponed until better times.
At first, the small Jewish community of St. Petersburg did not have its own cemetery, and the first three dead were buried among Christians. In 1802, the community acquired a plot of land at the Lutheran cemetery, and in the book of records of the Lutheran community of St. Petersburg they noted: “It is not forbidden for Jews to carry their dead to their cemetery through our cemetery” - while the Lutherans took ten rubles for each funeral. The remains of the first dead were transferred to the newly created cemetery.
The names of the buried were entered in the community's record book "to preserve memory." Here are some of them: “Yosef, son of Eliezer from Mogilev, nicknamed Yosef Kosy”; “A miscarriage from Moses, the son of Yaakov Kirchner from Shklov, is buried near the moat”; “The famous rabbi and glorious doctor Moshe Elkan from Tulchin died and was buried”; “We record for memory that a patient died in the hospital, and we were ordered to bury him, because before his death he revealed to the hospital authorities that he was a Jew and wanted to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. We also know that he did not change his religion, but his behavior did not befit a true Jew, so they put him in a separate place, on the south side near the rampart. His name is Avigdor son of David Chakhechover from Warsaw.
Nota Notkin was the supplier of the army of Prince G. Potemkin, "he repeatedly risked losing his life and supplied food and fodder for the troops at a time when no one else but him wanted to start this." The treasury did not return the money spent to him - about 200,000 rubles, and Nota Notkin went bankrupt twice. There is evidence that Paul I gave Notkin an estate in the Mogilev province for his merits, and Alexander I granted him a gold snuff-box studded with diamonds for a clear supply of food to the army and navy. Nota Notkin was an intercessor for his co-religionists and helped the St. Petersburg community; he died in 1804 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery of St. Petersburg, which was founded with his help. On the grave monument they wrote: "The high-ranking and noble Mr. Natan Note, the son of Chaim from Shklov."
Abram Peretz, a commerce adviser, the son of a rabbi from Galicia, lived in St. Petersburg, a contractor for building ships and supplying the Russian army. Peretz hosted all of Petersburg in his house, "was famous for his intelligence" and "was long remembered by the capital for his merits, for his great deeds and then for his misfortunes." “Peretz the farmer is a Jew‚ but a kind and truly noble man‚‚ – they certified him. The financial reform of 1810 in Russia owes much of its success to the “instructions of the banker Peretz”, and in 1812, during the Patriotic War, Peretz invested his money and experience in organizing the supply of the Russian army with provisions. After the war, he could not get his own money from the treasury - about four million rubles, and went bankrupt. At the end of the nineteenth century, he was again remembered: “Peretz in 1812 and 1813. our army owes chiefly to its food."
Lived in St. Petersburg and Yehuda Leib ben Noah, aka Leiba Nevakhovich from Podolia, a friend and teacher of Peretz. He was engaged in literary creativity - "a certain secret force calls me to the pen" ‚ knew several languages ‚ but wrote mainly in Russian ‚ as he himself said ‚ 'in a language more famous and commonly used in my homeland'. In 1801, Nevakhovich composed an ode in Hebrew and Russian "on the Most Joyful Day ... of the Ascension to the Ancestral Throne" of Alexander I. And he signed: "The most loyal Jew Leiba Nevakhovich."
Already the rose is in bloom, and the horn of salvation arises;
Alexander ascends the most sacred Throne of Russia...
The beauty of Joseph shines in the features of His image,
And the mind of Solomon reigns in the soul ...
In 1803, during the work of the Jewish Committee, Nevakhovich wrote the book “The Cry of the Jewish Daughter” and dedicated it to a member of the Jewish Committee, the Minister of the Interior, Count V. Kochubey, “daring to depict with my weak pen” the fate of “the humiliated and tearful daughter of Israel.” “I do not broadcast in order to bring myself to the stage in pomp. Can vanity have a place in a despondent and contrite heart? No, I pour out only that sorrow with which my soul is overfilled!”
This book - the first Jewish literary work in Russian - was supposed to awaken in the "noble Russians" humane feelings for the Jews, their "compatriots" - compatriots. “At that very time,” Nevakhovich wrote, “when the hearts of all European peoples drew close to each other, when they had already merged into one, the Jewish people still see themselves despised ... The very name of a Jew already produces in the pronunciator and listener of it some strange and extraordinary movement. This name has been made reproachable, despicable, desecrated and a kind of monster for children and the foolish... O Christians, famous for meekness and mercy, have pity on us, turn your tender hearts to us!.. Ah, Christians!.. You are looking for a Jew in a person! no, look for a man in Judaism, and you will undoubtedly find him!.. I swear that a Jew who keeps his religion in a pure way cannot be an evil person, even a bad citizen!!!”
The censor suggested "this essay ... be completely unpublished, as if it was completely unnecessary, and perhaps it is contrary to the fate of God about the people of the Jews," but the book, nevertheless, was published in 1803, and then Nevakhovich published it in Hebrew, dedicating " defender of his people" Note Notkin and "commercial adviser" Abram Peretz. The book ended with these words: “Thus did the sad daughter of the Jews cry out, wipe away her tears, sigh, and still be inconsolable.”
But Leiba Nevakhovich himself later found a way to “consolate himself”: he converted to Lutheranism and began to be called “provincial secretary Lev Nikolaev, son of Nevakhovich.” He contributed to Russian journals and wrote the play Souliots, or Spartans of the Eighteenth Century, "one of the most excellent works of its kind"; the play was a success on the stage of the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg, for which Alexander I awarded him with a gold snuffbox with diamonds and the royal monogram.
Lev Nikolaevich Nevakhovich was buried at the St. Petersburg Lutheran cemetery, and his children, as they assured, did not like to remember the late father Leib Nevakhovich. His son Alexander was a playwright, head of the repertoire of the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg; son Mikhail, a cartoonist, published the first comic magazine in Russia, Yeralash. The grandson of Leib Nevakhovich, the world famous scientist Ilya Mechnikov, became a Nobel Prize winner.
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The rulers of Russia, being educated people in their time, if not all of them read the Torah and the Talmud, then they were probably familiar with their content and could not help but realize the great evil from the Jews for the country and the Russian people. Therefore, all attempts by the Jews to settle down and manage in Russia "were energetically rejected." For several centuries, the country had a law established by under Vladimir Monomakh: « From all the Russian land, send all the Jews with all their property and continue not to let them in; - and if they secretly enter, - freely rob and kill them ". But the Jews still managed to penetrate into Russia by any means. In 1550, since then, for more than two centuries, Jews were not allowed, even temporarily, to the territory not only of the Muscovite kingdom, but of the entire Russian Empire. Peter I: " I prefer to see Mohammedans and pagans in my country than Jews. The latter are deceivers and swindlers. I eradicate evil, not breed it. There will be neither housing nor trade for them in Russia, no matter how much they try about it and no matter how much they bribe their neighbors to me. ».Ivan Derzhavin: Jews, leave Russia alone!
I was prompted to write this article by a phrase I read in the GP: "If you sum up the harm and benefit of Russia from the Jews, then there will be no less benefit." I don’t know what the author meant by harm and benefit, most likely not a Jew, because he would not recognize the harm from the Jews at all, so I myself will try to calculate this balance. I will proceed from the current state of my Russia, which has never been worse in its centuries-old history. There is little doubt that she is on the edge of the abyss. And in this huge, if not the main fault lies with the Jews.
The Russian people, which form the state, have always been hospitable and friendly to all the peoples, nationalities and ethnic groups living in Russia. Only immediately after their appearance in Russia did he feel rejection and even hostility towards the Jews because of their human, but rather inhuman qualities, which became natural due to strict adherence to the teachings and instructions of their Bibles of the Torah and the Talmud. Here are just a few quotes from them, before which Hitler's Mein Kampf fades.
Teachings from the Torah:
You are a holy people under the Lord your God, and the Lord God has chosen you to be a special people under it, above all the nations that are on the face of the earth,
And you will devour all the nations that the Lord your God will betray you; your eye will not have pity on them,
Every place where you set your foot will be yours,
And you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you,
For nations and kingdoms that do not want to serve you will perish, and such nations will be completely destroyed,
And you will lend to many nations, but you yourself will not borrow.
And here is from the instructions of the Talmud:
Jews are human beings, and other nations of the world are not people, but beasts,
Jehovah created non-Jews (goyim) in human form so that the Jews would not have to use the services of animals,
God gave the Jews power over the property and blood of all nations,
Do not save the goyim in case of danger or death,
A goy who sticks his nose into the Talmud is guilty and punishable by death,
A Jew can and should swear a lie when the goyim ask if there is anything against them in our books,
It is permitted to kill accusers of the Jews everywhere and even before they began to accuse,
How to define the word robbery? A goy is forbidden to steal, rob, take women and slaves from a Jew. But a Jew is not forbidden to do all this in relation to a goy,
Goyim girls from the age of 3 may be subjected to violence by Jews.
The last postulate is generally outside the human mind. I have not read or heard anything about the fascists raping 3-year-old children. In general, the entire Torah and the entire Talmud are permeated with the fascist extermination of other peoples with the blessing of Jehovah God. The Jewish God is not a universal God, but a God only for Jews. He treats non-Jews (gentiles) with fierce hatred, whom he likens to saliva. Even Hitler is inferior to him in inhumanity.
The simple Russian people, of course, did not read either the Torah or the Talmud, but judged the Jews by their behavior in life. As elsewhere in the world, the Jews who appeared in ancient Russia in small numbers were mainly engaged in trade and usury, on which they quickly enriched themselves, including through forgery, fraud, fraud and deceit, which was deeply contrary to Russian nature. In addition, the Jews actively propagated the "heresy of the Judaizers." This could not but arouse the indignation of the local population, and already in 1068 they perpetrated the first Jewish pogrom in Kyiv, and a little later, at the congress of Slavic princes, a decision was made to prevent Jews from staying on the lands that were part of Kievan Rus. I am sure that the first pogrom in Russia was committed spontaneously, and the Russian people did not know that such pogroms had long been carried out in all countries where the Jews were infiltrated. The largest pogrom, which took place exactly ten centuries ago in Alexandria, is widely known, during which 56,000 Jews were destroyed. Then there were pogroms in Rome in 387, in Clermont (France) and Ravenna (Italy) in 519, in Cordoba (Spain) in 1013. Looking ahead, I will say that up to the 18th century, over 50 Jewish pogroms were committed in European countries.
So Russian people were far from the first and not alone in their hatred of the Jews.
The rulers of Russia, being educated people in their time, if not all of them read the Torah and the Talmud, then they were probably familiar with their content and could not help but realize the great evil from the Jews for the country and the Russian people. Therefore, all attempts by the Jews to settle down and manage in Russia "were energetically rejected." For several centuries, a law was in force in the country, established under Vladimir Monomakh: “Send out all the Jews from all the Russian land with all their property and continue not to let them in; - and if they secretly enter, - freely rob and kill them. "But the Jews still managed to penetrate into Russia by any means. In 1550
The Prince of Lithuania and the King of Poland, through the ambassador, appealed to Tsar Ivan the Terrible with a request not to obstruct "Jews with goods to enter your state." To which the tsar replied: “We have written to you more than once about the dashing deeds of the Jews. they are many, hearing their such evil deeds." And after the capture of Polotsk during the Livonian War in 1563, when "the Polovtsy complained to Ivan the Terrible about the oppression and dashing deeds of the Jews, who were attorneys and tenants of the Polish authorities and magnates, the tsar ordered that all the Jews of Polotsk be drowned in the river."
Since then, for more than two centuries, Jews were not allowed, even temporarily, to the territory not only of the Muscovite kingdom, but of the entire Russian Empire. Peter I also took an irreconcilable position towards the Jews: “I prefer to see Mohammedans and pagans in my country, rather than Jews. The latter are deceivers and swindlers. I eradicate evil, not breed it. There will be no housing for them in Russia, no trade, no matter how much they try about it and no matter how they bribe their neighbors to me.
And here Russia was not alone. Jews were repeatedly expelled from almost all European countries, including 6 times from France, 5 times from Italy and Switzerland, 3 times from England and Portugal, and once from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania. But their exile did little, they continued to creep into all countries like cockroaches. The same picture was in Russia until the October Revolution. And yet, it must be said, until the 18th century there were relatively few Jews in Russia, even those who accepted Christianity for the sake of appearance. Only after the annexation of Crimea to Russia and the partition of Poland, together with the previously lost Russian lands, “Russia received hundreds of thousands of Jews at once.” Not realizing their danger, Catherine II (1762-1796) naively decided to "tolerate them, hoping to turn into good subjects."
But very soon the government became convinced that the Jews did not want to become loyal citizens of the Russian Empire and continued to brazenly oppose their interests to the interests of Russia. Their attitude towards the state, Christianity and the Russian people was stubbornly hostile, which revealed the need for a legislative solution to the issue of their stay in Russia. In 1776 the first legislation concerning the Jews was issued. In 1785 a decree was issued on the organization of the Jews. Then numerous Statutes, Regulations and Rules of Conduct for Jews in the country appeared. By the way, the very first draft of a radical Jewish reform under Paul I (1796-1801) was proposed by the senator, and then the Minister of Justice (he is also a famous poet), my family namesake G.R. Derzhavin, who was one of the most prominent specialists to combat the Jewish invasion of Russia.
He was convinced that "Nothing can be done in the transformation of the Jews, if all the Jews are not taken up at once by the entire Russian society." But the matter dragged on, and Tsar Alexander I (1801-1825) turned out to be liberal towards the Jews and did not want to hear about a radical reform. Before the October Revolution, more than 1000 different government documents about the Jews were published, but they did not stop their hostile activities in Russia. The main drawback of the anti-Jewish legislation was that in Russia there was no clearly developed program to combat the Jewish danger, and the rulers behaved extremely inconsistently towards the Jews. Some kings were tolerant of them, not seeing a danger in them, while others, well aware that "every Jew is an incarnation of the Talmud and very harmful to Russia", actively tried to resist this.
So, under Nicholas I, for all 30 years, while he ruled (1825-1855), "the Jews were a disgraced and even despised tribe in Russia." They were forced to serve in the army, "special laws against their smuggling" were issued, "they began to tighten their control so that Jews do not illegally move from the Western Territory to Central Russia." They also began to persecute the new Russian Judaizers, the so-called Subbotniks, who succumbed to the influence of the Jews. There was some benefit from all these deeds, but it was not possible to carry out a coherent system of measures to neutralize Jewry in the future also because “the Jews raised a great uproar in Russia and throughout Europe. They shouted that “we Jews are not loyal subjects because the government restricts our rights and freedoms, and if there were no restrictions, then we Jews would serve the interests of Russia with joy in our hearts.”
And although it was a false trick, the government of Alexander II (1855-1881) again made concessions, which again did not at all bring the Jews to their senses, but only strengthened their position in the Russian Empire even more. Putting into practice the teachings of the Talmud, which asserted that “everything is allowed” to the Jews in relation to the goyim, the Jews began to exploit Russians even more energetically, deceive, solder, turn them into slaves without rights, decompose the national highly moral spirit of the Russian people, impregnating it with the Jewish spirit of profit and money-grubbing. Undermining the foundations of the Orthodox faith, they sought to remake the Russian people as much as possible into unbelieving, militant and stupid atheists, submissive to the Jewish ideology. It was clear to everyone that it was criminal to postpone the development and implementation of a radical reform to limit Jewish influence in Russia.
Such the reform was proposed to the tsar in 1876 by the commercial adviser of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Prince N.N. Golitsyn in his note " On the Necessity and Possibility of the Jewish Reform in Russia". Golitsyn from 1872 to 1875 was the vice-governor of the Podolsk province and studied the behavior of the Jews well - "this small people with a big mouth and big suckers." And in his note, the prince tried to convince the tsar and the government of Russia that they should treat the Jews as a serious, insidious and constantly advancing enemy and, before it was too late, decided to give this enemy a decisive rebuff.
According to Prince Golitsyn, evil from the Jews since the time of Catherine II went in three areas: spiritual-moral, economic and civil-political.
The Harm of Jewry in the Spiritual and Moral Sphere, which consisted in undermining the foundations of the Orthodox faith among the Russians and other peoples of Russia and the decomposition of the national spirit of the Russian people, I have already outlined in general terms.
Jews in the economic sphere most fully manifested their main quality - "a tendency to vampirism", namely, robbing and sucking money out of the Russian people. This was especially evident in the west and south of Russia, where the bulk of the Jews were concentrated. “Without a Jew, life is now, as it were, impossible. They captured all branches of trade, production, crafts and credit. The Jews have created such conditions of life here, when it is unthinkable to sell or buy anything without them ... Buying food at a low price from the peasants, and selling it at exorbitant prices, they profit extremely from this trade. Despite the prohibition to engage in the drinking business, they actively soldered Belarusians and Little Russians, "because it is easier to rob drunkards." The most common type of exploitation of the indigenous population by the Jews was usury. "All Jews without exception, including the owners of drinking establishments, are usurers." Jewish financiers ruined thousands of peasants and appropriated many large estates of landlords, who were ruined and deceived.
In the civil-political sphere, Jews are the most politically unreliable citizens of Russia. They have no desire to protect the interests of Russia. Previously, they refused to serve military service. The government forced them to do it, but there is no sense in the Jewish soldiers. On the western and southwestern borders, they are constantly engaged in smuggling, undermining the economic and financial power of Russia, and also, moving across the border to Austria-Hungary and back, become informants for the secret services of a hostile state. By preaching a cosmopolitan spirit (actually Jewish), they are corrupting the Russian national spirit and Russian patriotism, weakening the Russian state. After all, in war the spirit of the troops is the most important thing.
The percentage of farmers and workers among the Jews is negligible. They aspire to become the ruling people, the commanding people, the ruling people. By disguising their desires and goals, they present themselves as “a humiliated and disenfranchised people”, trying to squeeze a tear out of the liberal Judophiles and other fools, of whom there are still quite a few in Russia.And the liberals begin to shout: "We must give complete freedom of action to the Jews in Russia." But how can one give freedom of action to the most dangerous enemy that is advancing? Rights can be given only to those Jews who want and can serve Russia. But where to find such Jews? As long as the Jews are what they are, as long as they are brought up on the superiority of their nation, as long as they are aimed at profit and vampirism, at the subjugation of the Russian people, to grant them unlimited rights and freedoms is thoughtlessness. You can't be generous and kind with Jews."
I have given such a detailed excerpt from the report of Prince Golitsyn so that you feel with all the fibers of the Russian soul that since then nothing has changed in Jewish nature, and only the grave will correct it, like a hunchback.
Golitsyn proposed to carry out his reform project in two stages.
At the first stage Jews returned to the territory of the western region, from where the entire Christian population had to leave first. “The enemy must be thrown back, held there, and no longer let a single Jew go east from there, “so that the heart of the empire would not be corrupted,” as Derzhavin rightly said.
For the second stage the government was to “recognize as harmful the ideas of the superiority and permissiveness of Jews over other peoples, not allow Talmud rabbis to introduce such ideas into the consciousness of the Jewish people, demand that Jews respect other peoples and work together with them for the good of Russia. “Do good, Jew, be honest, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t covet someone else’s property, don’t engage in trickery.”
Golitsyn hoped that the Jews would become such, ceasing to be a vampire people, living alone, without the Christian population - an object from which to suck out the vital juices. No one will stick to the mouth and suckers. And in order to survive, in order to survive in these conditions, the Jewish people will be forced, like all other normal peoples, to divide into layers and classes. A class of farmers and a class of workers will inevitably appear. Millions of Jews who were merchants, usurers, tenants, bankers, brothel owners, etc. will inevitably become farmers and workers. Without a foreign people-victims and without their own productive classes, without their farmers and workers, and with the closing of all loopholes for smuggling on the border with Russia, the Jewish people simply cannot survive.
By resettling the Jews in a limited, isolated area, and by clearing the country of Jewish writers, journalists, publishers of newspapers and magazines, lawyers, judges, teachers, officials working in the educational department, etc., the government will free the Russian and other indigenous peoples of Russia from manipulation of their consciousness by a foreign and harmful people.
Golitsyn did not rule out that a considerable part of the Jews, and perhaps the majority of them, would not agree to live in an isolated region without a foreign victim people and would not wish to turn into farmers and workers. And when they saw that their "global hubbub" did not help them, Western Europe and America did not begin to fight with Russia for their interests, they will inevitably begin to leave Russia en masse. “Their fearfulness and cowardice will further increase their exodus from Russia. “But I don’t think,” writes Prince Golitsyn, “that we would find anyone who would chase after them to stop them. No one and nothing in Russia will suffer from their constant decline, on the contrary, everyone will breathe freely. The more Jews leave, the better for Russia and the Russian people. The remaining Jews will gradually turn into an ordinary working national minority. And in the more distant future, they will “get angry”, that is, the Jews will become loyal citizens of the empire or even assimilate.
We, living in the 21st century, have only to wonder at the holy naivete of Prince Golitsyn. Yes, apparently, he himself believed more in the effectiveness of not his project, but in the "club of the people's war", which the government warned about if it "feared to launch the Great Counteroffensive against the Jews. “The bitterness among the people against the Jews is growing every day and we cannot allow the Odessa slogan “We must beat the Jews!” somewhere turned into a slogan - "We must cut the Jews!".
As expected, the same thing happened with the project of Prince Golitsyn’s reform as with Derzhavin’s project: the autocrat Alexander II did not dare to rid Russia of the Jews, including being afraid of condemning the West, where the Jews had a lot of weight, and the media belonged mainly to them. Not only was the Reform not accepted, but Golitsyn's proposal was hidden from the people. The prince died in 1893 at the age of 57. I do not rule out that the Jews could have a hand in this.
As Prince Golitsyn foresaw, if his Reform is not accepted, the process of “Jewishization” of the Empire and the Russian people will quickly begin in Russia. “Jewishing Russia means that the Jews will, of course, be the bosses in the state. The highest and most influential places will be occupied by Jews. Jews will make up a large part and the most intelligent part of the bureaucracy. All trade, credit, banks, industrial enterprises of all kinds, all railways, most of all real estate and valuables will gradually and, so to speak, quietly and imperceptibly pass into their hands. The Jews will not only be absolute tyrants in the economic life of the country, not only will they control the labor force of the people, but they will also influence the world of the spirit. They will have monopoly control over the press, they will intensify national depersonalization and humiliate the national dignity of the Russian people. They will brazenly trample on all the national values of the Russian people.
The worst thing is that as a result of this Jewish influence in the Russian people "apathy will appear" to the struggle for their survival and development. Jews will corrupt, decompose the Russian Spirit. AND such a people will no longer care who controls them. The Russian people, abandoned and betrayed by their government, are degrading, will no longer recognize themselves as the Russian people, and will perish as a people. The Russian people will become just a denationalized mass of workers controlled by Jews.
Was the prince not a seer, as if looking into the water? Tell me, what is wrong in Russia now? The whole of Europe is seething. In the States, people began to rebel. And only in Russia, humility is like in a slaughterhouse.
But let's continue what happened to the Jews in Russia after Prince Golitsyn's project was hidden in the archive.
