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There's a notion that Russian laws have always been extremely harsh on Jewish subjects. Nothing of the sort; in fact, everything changed over time. At the moment when Jews became subjects of the Russian Empire, that is, during the partition of Poland under Catherine the Great, Russian legislation regarding Jews proved to be ultra-liberal and more progressive than anything previously known in Europe. Specifically, it was Catherine who enrolled her new Jewish subjects into the Russian estates, that is, as townspeople, or, if they were wealthy, as merchants. And this was a colossal revolution. Later, in the 19th century, a host of restrictive laws were imposed on those regulations that were brilliantly progressive for their time, but at first, this was completely untrue.

STUDIO: Restrictions were imposed as early as the late 18th century, as discussed by Valery Dymshits, a research fellow at the Center for St. Petersburg Judaica at the European University at St. Petersburg. It was under Catherine the Great that the so-called Pale of Settlement was established—Jewish subjects living in the annexed provinces were prohibited from settling outside them. These restrictions also changed over time, but the Pale of Settlement itself lasted until 1917. This is the podcast "From Now on, We Ourselves." My name is Andrey Allakhverdov. Hello.

Of course, Jews weren't the only part of the Russian Empire's population whose rights were limited. And anti-Semitism existed far beyond Russia. Still, the existence of the Pale of Settlement was one of the empire's most unsightly features. But we're talking about self-government, and it existed in this part of the country. How it was organized and how it changed over time is discussed in this article. Valery, research fellow at the Center for St. Petersburg Judaica at the European University at St. Petersburg Dymshits.

VD: So, the situation is very simple. In Judaism, as in Islam, by the way, there is no separation between secular law and canon law. From a certain perspective, one could say that Judaism is not so much a religion as a legal system. That is, the regulation of everyday life, the relationships between people, between people, between people and society, everything called, I don't know, property, administrative, civil, criminal, marital, inheritance, and whatever other branches of law there are—all of this is regulated by religious law. As long as traditional Jewish communities existed anywhere, the minimum condition for their existence was not liberation from some kind of national oppression, but a demand for judicial autonomy. Because judicial autonomy is the minimum condition for the exercise of religion. On the other hand, this self-government and autonomy of Jewish communities was highly satisfactory to any central authority, because the community paid taxes. And this was very important, because in the world of victorious feudalism, no one paid taxes to anyone else. A feudal lord owed the king service, not taxes, for his tenure and land. That is, cash flow into the treasury was always very scarce. But the Jews paid taxes. Because their rights, their lives, and their property were protected by the central government. It's much simpler and more pleasant to collect taxes not from individuals, but from the community. And how the community internally distributes these taxes, from whom it takes more and from whom less, is a simple matter. Yes, at some point, this whole story begins to conflict with the formation of a modern, absolutist state, where the state aims to get to the bottom of every individual, turn them into taxpayers, turn them into soldiers, when we have a conscript army, and so on. Since the Russian Empire, for many reasons, was significantly behind in modernization, these processes in the Russian Empire, in terms of the elimination of Jewish self-government, also proceeded significantly later. The kahal, or Jewish self-government in the Russian Empire, was abolished by Nicholas I, but the de facto self-governing community, albeit with some modifications, persisted until the era of great reforms, that is, until Alexander II, when Russia finally turned away from its medieval path toward a more or less modern capitalist development. This led to this archaic community becoming unsatisfactory not only for the state but also for the community members themselves, as each individual wanted to try their own luck in this world of capitalist initiative, to somehow escape the tutelage of the collective. That's when it all began to fall apart completely. 

From the book "My Memories" by Yehezkel Kotik

Kamenets belonged to a landowner named Osierevsky. He was an elderly bachelor and a former Polish colonel from before the first uprising. He owned up to five thousand serfs. He owned numerous estates around Kamenets, including the town itself. He also owned fifteen million zlotys. In Kamenets, everyone paid the landowner a yearly tax for the area occupied by their house; no one dared buy beer or vodka except from the landowner. On top of this, there were various other taxes: on salt, on leather—in short, everything a person needed to survive was taxed. And the clever Osierevsky extracted so much from the residents under contract that in this sense, Kamenets was probably unique.

VD: What was the purpose of these small towns in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which were later inherited by the Russian Empire—what were called shtetls? "Shtetl" comes from the Polish word for "place," meaning "city," while "shtetl" means "small town." In fact, it's not about size at all, but about legal status. A shtetl is a privately owned town built on private land belonging to a landowner. And, so to speak, for the very fact of their existence, the residents of this town pay the landowner—usually a Polish magnate—a special land tax called "chinsh," from the Latin word "census." Only those who own real estate pay this tax. If you live in a rented apartment, you don't pay the tax. Consequently, you have a class of full-fledged taxpayers called "baal bayt," or homeowners. They are the ones who actually have agency, the right to vote. If we take, say, the most stable medieval republic in Europe, which, with great difficulty, nevertheless preserved its republican system—Venice, the second largest city in medieval Europe—in fact, the heads of a thousand of the best families, the patricians, enjoyed full political rights in this republic. In essence, the Jewish community was structured much the same way. The community of full-fledged men elected a kahal, that is, a communal self-government body. The word "kahal" itself means "community." A kahal was 12 men elected from the best people of the city, who were called "parnasim," or elders, or chairmen. Each such parnassus was called a "parnas chodesh," from the Hebrew word "chodesh," meaning month—a monthly elder. The idea was that the head of the community, the head of the executive power, was one of the 12 kahal leaders, and they rotated monthly. Naturally, this was done for free; it was all done for honor, status, and prestige. The kahal had to resolve a host of issues: public welfare, inviting the city rabbi, maintaining charitable institutions—well, the sort of thing any city government does. But most importantly, the central issue: the kahal had to assess taxes so that these taxes would be passed on to both the central government and the landowners, which would ensure that the community would thrive and not be abused. When Nicholas I extended conscription to his Jewish subjects—previously, Jews had not served in the Russian army—another, more dreadful tax was introduced: a tax in kind: young men had to be selected and conscripted into the army for 25 years. With the understanding that this young man would never return, that no one would ever see him again.

Generally speaking, studying Jewish self-government is extremely instructive, because the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, as it existed until roughly the mid-19th century, was essentially a small medieval self-governing republic, like Florence or Novgorod the Great, only very small. Medieval republics were always census democracies, meaning that not all city residents had full political rights, that is, the right to vote. Women, naturally, were excluded—a 50 percent cut. Those who had recently arrived and settled had no statute of limitations. And most importantly, there was an internal class boundary. Essentially, we are dealing with an oligarchic republic. These were a few, so to speak, the best families who controlled the life of the city. And if we look at the history of all medieval European republics, with the exception of Venice, we see that they all, as they say, ended badly; they all turned into monarchies. Every single one. There was the Republic of Florence, and at some point, bam, we see it transform into the hereditary domain of the Medici. Who were the Medici? Basically, ordinary citizens, bankers, well, wealthy citizens. There were many of them. But at some point, we see the Medici become Grand Dukes of Tuscany, essentially European monarchs, intermarrying with European royal houses. In other words, the path of oligarchic, census-based democracy always leads to its degeneration into tyranny. I use the word "tyranny" in a nonjudgmental sense: not in the sense that a tyrant is a bad person, but in the sense that it is a person who rules autocratically, subordinating democratic institutions. And, crucially, such an autocratic ruler always comes to power with the support of the poorest segments of the population. If we look at historical documents, we see that by the late 18th century and early 19th century, not all, but most of these kahal structures, while formally preserved, were diluted and became empty words, though the terminology remained intact. For example, it turns out that the community was headed by one person, the parnas khodesh, or elder for a month. Moreover, "a day lasts longer than a century"—this month lasts a lifetime. He is the lifelong parnas khodesh, and he leaves this position, with the same title, to his son.

Before his death, Reb Velvel sent for the police captain and asked him to appoint an intelligent and honest man who could lead the city as the monthly elder in his place, and he also named several intelligent owners. The police captain, who had apparently already taken notice of the grandfather, said: “I would like to make your son, Aron-Leizer, the monthly elder, even though he is very young. I like him.” “Leave my dear son alone. This position is difficult. No matter how hard a man tries, nothing comes of it. Everyone hates him.” […] A few days later, the monthly elder died. […] The next morning, the police captain sent for the grandfather, who was twenty-eight years old at the time, and offered him his father’s position. The grandfather flatly refused. […] But the police captain insisted: “Listen,” he explained to the grandfather, “I have no one else but M., your blood enemy. If he becomes the monthly elder, your family will suffer." [...] Taking the position was mortally bitter, and not taking it was equally bad. They thought and debated for a long time, and finally decided that he should be taken. [...] The police captain, with the warmth typical of the time, kissed him on the head and wished him success in his new position. He immediately ordered a town meeting to be convened and... to elect Aron-Leizer, the son of the former monthly elder. The town "elected" him, and even with great joy. People liked him for his intelligence and energy.

What is this based on, strictly speaking? Jewish self-government exists insofar as it performs fiscal functions for the benefit of non-Jewish state authorities, landowners, and so on. If you have an oligarchy, then you collect these taxes, naturally, not from the oligarchs—they're fools, aren't they?—but from the middle class and the poorest population, meaning you make the tax base as broad as possible. If you have a tyranny, then you do something very simple: you rip off these same taxes from those who are one rung below you on the social and economic ladder. First, you exempt the poorest strata of the population from taxation; they rejoice terribly for you—through fire and water. And second, you constantly undermine the economic well-being of the powerful, lest they accidentally overthrow you and take your place themselves. Yes, in the 18th century, these places had Roman customs, where the head of the community would roll out a barrel of vodka into the square and give it to the poor, say. Like some Roman emperors. It's not like they were rereading Suetonius at night. It's just the same mechanisms.

STUDIO: You say there were 12 Parnassims, and one of them became a de facto tyrant, a one-month ruler for all time. How did he remove all the others from power?

VD: Well, firstly, the sources of external power on which so much depended—that is, the external state administration and the landowners. They found it more convenient and pleasant to deal with one person rather than some board. Secondly, from the mid-17th century onward, the Jewish population of Eastern Europe entered a period of calamity. The second half of the 17th century is called "the Deluge" in Polish historiography, because the very existence of the Polish state was brought to the brink of annihilation. A very relative stabilization only began in the early 18th century, and then part of Poland became a theater of military operations during the Northern War. Then, in Ukraine in the mid-18th century, there were endless peasant uprisings, and royal authority steadily weakened. The state, once strong, wealthy, and well-governed, transformed into what is called a failed state, which ultimately culminated in the partitions of Poland. Understandably, under these conditions of endless raids, massacres, and pogroms, Jewish communities became greatly impoverished. And the taxes they have to pay to various places haven't been abolished. And from time to time, a successful, powerful, wealthy individual emerges in every community who says, "Let me pay the tax for everyone. In exchange for you transferring all your political authority to me." It's a standard mechanism. Moreover, the ancient Russian state had two republics—Novgorod and Pskov. You can't build statistics on that, but here we're talking about thousands of very similar cases where we can see patterns.

If a landowner offended a Jew, he would go to the monthly elder, who would forward his complaint to the police captain. And, although it was understandably difficult, everything was done to get something out of the landowner. Because my great-grandfather was valued by his superiors, he also wielded a certain amount of influence with the landowners. He himself had little contact with them, and had no particular dealings with them, except when he had to ask the landowner for something on behalf of the Jews. Then he would go to the landowner, and this usually helped. His house was filled with a hubbub of people, mostly poor. […] These people were completely devoted to him. But the big landowners hated him mortally – for his rudeness and for extorting as much money from them as he wanted. The town rabbi was a wise Jew, and my great-grandfather had provided him with enough to live on. And he consulted only with the rabbi, who regularly came to him for tea. And it can be said that during that period, order reigned in Kamenets, and the Jews lived more or less peacefully. The monthly elder, Reb Velvel, son of Aron, was probably the best and most honest.

This kind of governance, whether oligarchic or tyrannical, is strongly tied to two key external factors. The first is the power of the landowner, because the entire economy of old Poland and, subsequently, the Western Territory of the Russian Empire—nothing changed in terms of governance when these lands became part of the empire—was based on tax-farming leases. That is, someone leased all the feudal regalia from the landowners: corvée, quitrent, income from the mill, river, forest, and ponds, bridge tolls, and, most importantly, of course, the right of propination, that is, the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. This brought in the largest income. It was always more pleasant for the landowner to receive the entire income from his estates at once, in cash, and then take the money to Warsaw, Paris, or St. Petersburg, and generally speaking, avoid hanging around in the dirt. And it's clear that the landowner found it very convenient and pleasant to deal with a single head tenant, who would then sort everything out so I wouldn't have to worry about it. And this managing tenant was always Jewish, of course, there was no other choice. So, as a rule, this tyrant was also the person who served as the head tenant and dealt with the landowner. This is one source. And, if we're talking about Poland, the western edge of the Russian Empire, there was another figure. In the neighboring district town, there was a police captain who represented the Russian Empire in its, so to speak, police functions and in its executive functions. And he, as a rule, lived with this one oligarch for decades, so to speak, in perfect harmony, protecting his authority, using his own police apparatus to suppress potential rebels, and was, naturally, thoroughly corrupt. You can't even call it a bribe; it was simply a constant flow of payments into his deep police pocket. Interestingly, after Nicholas I abolished the kahal, the next form of interaction with the state became the tax collector. He was even called "tax collector"; it was an official title. Simply put, in consultation with the local authorities, including the police captain, a single person was appointed who was responsible for collecting taxes from a given Jewish community. In other words, what had already degenerated into a tyranny was essentially legitimized by the state.

He served as the monthly elder for two and a half years, until this absolute power was abolished. The monthly elder was no longer responsible for the entire city and was given a new title – collector, whose job it was to collect all taxes for the treasury, and for this, too, it was not he who was responsible, but the city. Aron-Leizer didn't want to be a collector. Again, the police captain urged him to do so and even promised that his authority would remain unchanged. The city was still unfamiliar with the position of collector; they didn't yet know what to do with it or how, for example, a collector should conduct himself [...] Aron-Leizer became collector, but he governed the entire city as before, not a hair less, and I don't know if any other collector in Lithuania ever wielded as much power as he did. The other owners began to look at him angrily. Aron-Leizer didn't care. For him, they played no role at all. The police captain was his man – and that was enough! 

I've painted a rather bleak picture, where power is concentrated in a few greedy hands. In reality, both in Europe and in the places we're talking about, things weren't quite so bleak. Because there were numerous horizontal structures that were, to a certain extent, capable of dampening this, in modern terms, vertical power structure. These were the so-called "chevres," from the word "haver," meaning "comrade"—a partnership. But it's usually translated into Russian as "brotherhood." It's the same as, say, a medieval Venice scuola, an association of laymen. There were a huge number of them. These could be guild organizations, associations of artisans of a particular profession. There were all sorts of charitable societies, the most important of which was the Chevra Kadisha, a burial fraternity—that is, people who, as a matter of piety, helped organize funerals. Since Jewish law requires burial on the day of death, and this is prohibitively difficult for the family, there is a so-called social organization that takes on these responsibilities—the Chevra Kadisha, or Holy Brotherhood. There's also the Achnosas Kalo society, which raises money for dowryless women, since it's difficult to marry a girl without a dowry. Bikur Cholim—visiting the sick—helps the sick, preparing food for them, and so on. There are purely religious brotherhoods, such as those who read psalms together, or thillim. That is, people gather and read psalms together. Or they gather as a hobby group and read the Mishnah or some other religious book together and discuss what they've read. This is how they spend their leisure time. In fact, all these fraternities, regardless of their professed goals, are, as we would now say, horizontal structures of civil society that act as a buffer against the harsh central government, because each individual lacks political agency, while a brotherhood does. Generally speaking, it can influence the courts, the administration, the distribution of taxes, the government, which, as they say, is getting too brazen, and so on. Furthermore, since the same brotherhood can include both rich and poor people, this relieves class tensions and increases the level of mutual assistance, because within such a brotherhood—this is very important for people engaged in small-scale trade and small-scale crafts—you can count on an interest-free loan or a loan at a very low interest rate. Within such a brotherhood, a khevre, you can count on such a loan, but outside it you cannot. A high interest rate insures the lender against some defaults. But here, everyone is one of us; you cannot escape this circle of mutual responsibility. That is, these kinds of horizontal structures, complex and influential, seem to return to the middle class and lower classes part of that subjectivity that they seem to have lost due to the fact that the republic has long ceased to be a republic.

STUDIO: You say – to influence the court, that is, it was not independent?

VD: The head of the court—in a sense, its main function—was the city rabbi. A rabbi, contrary to popular belief, is not a priest, because there are no priests. He is a person who possesses a vast, gigantic body of texts on religious law and administers the law, that is, he finds a correspondence between a specific case and what is written in the books, and issues a decision. Therefore, the city rabbi is called av beit din, that is, the head of the rabbinical court, literally the father of the rabbinical court. This is his main function, strictly speaking. He is not the person who leads public prayer, because that is a specialized person called a chazan, a cantor, who must have a beautiful voice, while a rabbi is something entirely different. Secondly, in Judaism, the church as an institution does not exist, in the sense that there is no vertical hierarchy. The parish priest is appointed by the bishop. The rabbi is hired by the community and paid a salary. Accordingly, anyone who wants to fill this position and expects this salary must pass a sort of qualification exam, since, generally speaking, a certain percentage of adult men are, as they say, quite respectable and proper, for a wealthy man with leisure time to spend it studying sacred books. Not for any practical purpose, but rather as a religious obligation.

Kamenets was renowned as a city of learned scholars; its rabbis were among the most renowned, although their salaries were paid no more than three or four rubles a week. Before the rabbi's arrival, the Kamenets scholars, young and old, prepared questions and objections to test him, and before his first sermon, he felt his heart nearly sink with fear before the Kamenets scholars. The first sermon was something of a test. It was supposed to consist of sharp interpretations and reinterpretations, and if the scholars were satisfied, he knew he had passed the test.

That being said, it's certainly not true that the rabbinical court is, so to speak, impartial and independent, because the rabbi is, of course, very dependent on this, so to speak, local boss, the local tyrant. He can simply be kicked out of town and replaced, because he's a hired servant in a society that, frankly, isn't exactly democratic by modern standards. And we know of many specific historical cases where a rabbi came into conflict with the parnas chodesh, or kahal, and was brutally thrown out of town, his contract terminated, and even given a light beating.

STUDIO: And he left for another city?

VD: Yes, yes. But if you'd like, I can give you some specific examples. Well, look, there was this guy, his name was Aryeh Ginzburg, he wrote an extremely important theological treatise called "Shagaas Rye. The Roar of the Lion." He was a rabbi in Minsk in the mid-18th century. He had a complicated conflict with the local kahal, with the community leaders. He wasn't just fired; he was put on a filthy cart—that is, a cart used to transport sewage out of the city—and on Friday evening, before the Sabbath, he was driven out of the city, a distance greater than a person is allowed to travel on the Sabbath. It's about a kilometer outside the city limits. And then he was dumped in a ditch in an open field. That is, unable to leave due to religious obligation, he had to spend the Sabbath without food, drink, bed, or the opportunity to pray in a synagogue, simply in a ditch with frogs. But it must be said that the young man didn't completely disappear, because after a relatively short time, he found himself on the other side of Europe, in Lorraine (where Minsk is, and where Lorraine is), in the city of Metz. He was the city's chief rabbi. There was a large, wealthy community in Lorraine. So he continued working in Metz. He was a man of European renown, and they gladly gave him shelter in France.

STUDIO: Is there any way we can utilize the experience of managing Jewish communities today? Clearly, much of it has no relevance to modern times, but perhaps some of it might be useful?

VD: I'll say right away that, of course, this has nothing to do with anything, in my opinion. But the way the question is posed is highly legitimate and meaningful, because, strictly speaking, this is exactly how the question was posed 100-120 years ago, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and even a little earlier: to what extent do the historical institutions of communal self-government relate to today and can be of interest to us precisely through the prism of current issues. Behind this lay a vast, well-developed ideology, both in Europe and especially in the Russian Empire. It was called autonomism. Autonomism arose as a specific demand in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, because radical left movements, including the Social Democrats, clearly understood that sooner or later the patchwork Habsburg monarchy would collapse, disintegrate into national enclaves, and everyone would disperse to their national homes and build their own national states. But the problem is that the population had become extremely mixed during the journey, and, for example, in large Austrian cities, it was, of course, very mixed. And to this we must add that Austria-Hungary was home to a huge number of Jews, who had no compact ethnic territory whatsoever. This gives rise to the idea of ​​autonomy, the idea that different ethnocultural groups, living together in such multi-ethnic, multi-religious, large cities, should have the right and opportunity, and perhaps even state support, to self-organize and self-govern, primarily in the interests of preserving and developing their national culture.

The next step, a very important one, was taken in Russia by Semyon Dubnov. He is usually positioned as a historian, but in reality, he was a mediocre historian, but a very significant ideologist and cultural philosopher. He was the ideologist of a new form of autonomism. In the Russian Empire, equality of subjects before the law essentially did not exist because it was a class monarchy, and this was not only due to Jews; Jews were certainly discriminated against. The alternative to Russian discrimination was the European model: equality of citizens before the law regardless of their origin or religion. But Dubnov was also unsatisfied with the Western European model, because, in his view, European Jews had paid for equality with assimilation and were steadily moving toward becoming Germans, Frenchmen, and so on. Accordingly, in the coming bright tomorrow, in the happy Russia of the future, we must ensure that the enormous Jewish population of the Russian Empire, nearly six million at that time—incomparably larger than the Jewish communities of Western European countries—receives full citizenship rights, without, however, following the destructive European path of assimilation. He constructed his own philosophy of history, which argued that humanity passes through three stages of development. The first is tribal, when people are united by a common origin and territory. The second is statist, when national states are created on the basis of certain ethnic groups. And the third, highest and, naturally, best stage is when people are united by a commitment to common cultural values. At the core of Dubnov's ideas was the notion of voluntary self-government, in this case of Jewish communities, not necessarily religious (he was an atheist), living in a given territory.

This is a monstrous utopia, compared to which all other utopias seem completely realistic. Everyone voluntarily gathers together based on identity and a commitment to shared values. They independently elect self-governing bodies, which is crucial for maintaining all sorts of institutions—schools, libraries, theaters, universities, clubs, hospitals. Everything is financed through self-taxation. That is, people who sign up to be part of this community voluntarily impose a tax on themselves. And then it's all supported by the state, naturally, a democratic one, which can also participate in financing this joy. Dubnov says: look, throughout the centuries of Jewish existence in Eastern Europe, from the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later in the Russian Empire, Jewish communities enjoyed a high degree of political agency, a large degree of self-government, self-financing of their communal needs, and judicial autonomy. Let's study this experience. Researchers at the beginning of the 20th century partly correctly understood what they were dealing with, and therefore, first of all, they turned not to the experience of the Russian 19th century, when, in general, all this old, medieval democracy had collapsed, but to the experience of the second half of the 16th, first half of the 17th century, when Jewish communities were still quite, well, democratic.

STUDIO: I would like to thank Valery Dymshits, a research fellow at the Center for St. Petersburg Judaica at the European University at St. Petersburg. This was the podcast "We'll Do It Ourselves." Listen to us, react, and comment—we're very interested in your opinions. See you there.