(1)
Mary Antin, The Promised Land
(1912)
The Gentiles used to wonder at us because we cared so much about
religious things about food and Sabbath and teaching the children
Hebrew. They were angry with us for our obstinacy, as they called
it, and mocked us and ridiculed the most sacred things. There were
wise Gentiles who understood. These were educated people, like Fedora
Pavlovna, who made friends with their Jewish neighbors. They were
always respectful and openly admired some of our ways. But most
of the Gentiles were ignorant. There was one thing, however, the
Gentiles always understood, and that was money. They would take
any kind of bribe, at any time. They expected it. Peace cost so
much a year, in Polotzk. If you did not keep on good terms with
your Gentile neighbors, they had a hundred ways of molesting you.
If you chased their pigs when they came rooting up your garden,
or objected to their children maltreating your children, they might
complain against you to the police, stuffing their case with false
accusations and false witnesses. If you had not made friends with
the police, the case might go to court; and there you lost before
the trial was called unless the judge had reason to befriend you.
The Tsar was always sending us commands - you shall not do this
and you shall not do that - till there was very little left that
we might do, except pay tribute and die. One positive command he
gave us: You shall love and honor your emperor. In every congregation
a prayer must be said for the Tsar's health, or the chief of police
would close the synagogue. On a royal birthday every house must
fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and
be fined twenty-five rubles. A decrepit old woman, who lived all
alone in a tumble-down shanty, supported by the charity of the neighborhood,
crossed her paralyzed hands one day when flags were ordered up,
and waited for her doom, because she had no flag. The vigilant policeman
kicked the door open with his great boot, took the last pillow from
the bed, sold it, and hoisted a flag above the rotten roof.
The Tsar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family. There
was a poor locksmith who owed the Tsar three hundred rubles, because
his brother had escaped from Russia before serving his time in the
army. There was no such fine for Gentiles, only for Jews; and the
whole family was liable. Now the locksmith never could have so much
money, and he had no valuables to pawn. The police came and attached
his household goods, everything he had, including his bride's trousseau;
and the sale of the goods brought thirty-five rubles. After a year's
time the police came again, looking for the balance of the Tsar's
dues. They put their seal on everything they found.
There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish
children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred;
and even the lucky ones had their troubles. First, you had to have
a tutor at home, who prepared you and talked all the time about
the examination you would have to pass, till you were scared. You
heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned
down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.
You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your
heart heavy about that matter of your nose. There was a special
examination for the Jewish candidates, of course: a nine-year-old
Jewish child had to answer questions that a thirteen-year-old Gentile
was hardly expected to answer. But that did not matter so much;
you had been prepared for the thirteen-year-old test. You found
the questions quite easy. You wrote your answers triumphantly -
and you received a low rating, and there was no appeal.
I used to stand in the doorway of my father's store munching an
apple that did not taste good any more, and watch the pupils going
home from school in twos and threes; the girls in neat brown dresses
and black aprons and little stiff hats, the boys in trim uniforms
with many buttons. They had ever so many books in the satchels on
their backs. They would take them out at home, and read and write,
and learn all sorts of interesting things. They looked to me like
beings from another world than mine. But those whom I envied had
their troubles, as I often heard. Their school life was one struggle
against injustice from instructors, spiteful treatment from fellow
students, and insults from everybody. They were rejected at the
universities, where they were admitted in the ratio of three Jews
to a hundred Gentiles, under the same debarring entrance conditions
as at the high school: especially rigorous examinations, dishonest
marking, or arbitrary rulings without disguise. No, the Tsar did
not want us in the schools.
(2)
Reverend W. C. Stiles was in Russia during the pogroms of 1903.
Under every kind of outrage they died, mostly at the door of
their homes. They were babes, butchered at the breasts of their
mothers. They were old men beaten down in the presence of their
sons. They were delicate women violated and murdered in the sight
of their own children.
(3)
In her book Promised Land, Mary Antin
described what it was like to be Jewish in Russia during the 1880s.
I remember a time when I thought a pogrom had broken out in
our street, and I wonder that I did not die of fear. It was some
Christian holiday, and we had been warned by the police to keep
indoors. Gates were locked; shutters were barred. Fearful and yet
curious, we looked through the cracks in the shutters. We saw a
procession of peasants and townspeople, led by priests, carrying
crosses and banners and images. We lived in fear till the end of
the day, knowing that the least disturbance might start a riot,
and a riot led to a pogrom.
(4)
Joseph Stalin, article in
Brdzola newspaper (December, 1901)
Groaning
are the oppressed nationalities and religions in Russia, among them
the Poles and Finns. Groaning are the unceasingly persecuted and
humiliated Jews, deprived even those miserable rights that other
Russian subjects enjoy the right to live where they choose, the
right to go to school, etc. Groaning are the Georgians, the Armenians
and other nations who can neither have their own schools nor be
employed by the state and are compelled to submit to the shameful
and oppressive policies of Russification.
(5)
Vyacheslav
Plehve, speech to a Jewish delegation in Odessa in 1903.
In Western
Russia some 90 per cent of the revolutionaries are Jews, and in
Russia generally - some 40 per cent. I shall not conceal from you
that the revolutionary movement in Russia worries us but you should
know that if you do not deter your youth from the revolutionary
movement, we shall make your position untenable to such an extent
that you will have to leave Russia, to the very last man!
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