Pale of Settlement

Map showing the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland with the percentages of Jewish population (circa 1905).

The Pale of Settlement (Russian: Черта́ осе́длости, chertá osédlosti, Yiddish: דער תּחום-המושבֿ der tkhum-ha-moyshəv, Hebrew: תְּחוּם הַמּוֹשָב‎, tḥùm ha-mosháv) was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and with Austria-Hungary.

The Pale comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia, and largely corresponded to historical borders of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; it included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, and parts of western Russia. At a number of cities within the pale also, Jews were excluded from residency. A limited number of categories of Jews were allowed to live outside the pale.

The word pale derives ultimately from the Latin word palus, meaning stake (palisade is derived from the same root). From this derivation came the figurative meaning of "boundary", and the concept of a pale as an area within which local laws were valid.

The "Pale", with its largely Catholic and Jewish populations, was acquired by the Russian Orthodox Czarist Empire in a series of military conquests and diplomatic manoeuvres between 1791 and 1835, and lasted until the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917.

History

For more information about life in the Pale, see: History of the Jews in Poland and History of the Jews in Russia

The Pale was first created by Catherine the Great in 1791, after several failed attempts by her predecessors, notably the Empress Elizabeth, to remove Jews from Russia entirely, unless they converted to Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion. The reasons for its creation were primarily economic and nationalist. While Russian society traditionally had been divided mainly into nobles, serfs, and clergy, industrial progress led to the emergence of a middle class, which was rapidly being filled by Jews, who did not belong to any of these. By limiting the areas of Jewish residency, the imperial powers attempted to ensure the growth of a middle class for the non-Jewish majority.

The institution of the Pale became more significant following the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, since until then, Russia's Jewish population had been rather limited; the dramatic westward expansion of the Czarist Empire through the annexation of Polish-Lithuanian territory increased the Jewish population substantially. At its height, the Pale, including the new Polish and Lithuanian territories, had a Jewish population of over 5 million, and represented the largest component (40 percent) of world Jewish population at that time.

From 1791 to 1835, and until 1917, there were differing reconfigurations of the boundaries of the Pale, such that certain areas were variously open or shut to Jewish residency, such as the Caucasus. At times, Jews were forbidden to live in agricultural communities, or certain cities, as in Kiev, Sevastopol and Yalta, and forced to move to small provincial towns, thus fostering the rise of the shtetls. Jewish merchants of the 1st guild, people with higher or special education, artisans, soldiers, drafted in accordance with the Recruit Charter of 1810, and their descendants had the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement. In some periods, special dispensations were given for Jews to live in the major imperial cities, but these were tenuous, and several thousand Jews were expelled to the Pale from Saint Petersburg and Moscow as late as 1891.

Jewish life in the Pale

Jewish life in the shtetls (Yiddish שטעטלעך shtetlekh "little towns") of the Pale of Settlement was hard and poverty-stricken. Following the time-honored Jewish religious tradition of tzedakah (charity), a sophisticated system of volunteer Jewish social welfare organizations developed to meet the needs of the population. Various organizations supplied clothes to poor students, provided kosher food to Jewish soldiers conscripted into the Tsar's army, dispensed free medical treatment for the poor, offered dowries and household gifts to destitute brides, and arranged for technical education for orphans. According to historian Martin Gilbert's Atlas of Jewish History, no province in the Pale had less than 14% of Jews on relief; Lithuanian and Ukrainian Jews supported as much as 22% of their poor populations.^[1]

The concentration of Jews in the Pale made them easy targets for pogroms and anti-Jewish riots by the masses. These, along with the repressive May Laws, often devastated whole communities. Though pogroms were staged throughout the existence of the Pale, particularly devastating attacks occurred from 1881–1883 and from 1903–1906, targeting hundreds of communities, killing thousands of Jews, and causing considerable property damage. Anti-Russian riots by the Jews also occurred, for example in Gomel.

A Jewish teacher in 19th-century Podolia.

One outgrowth of the concentration of Jews in a circumscribed area was the development of the modern yeshiva system. Until the beginning of the 19th century, each town supported its own advanced students who learned in the local synagogue with the rabbinical head of the community. Each student would eat his meals in a different home each day, a system known as "essen teg" ("eating days").

After 1886, the Jewish quota was applied to education, with the percentage of Jewish students limited to no more than 10% within the Pale, 5% outside the Pale and 3% in the capitals of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev. The quotas in the capitals however, were increased slightly in 1908 and 1915.

Despite the difficult conditions under which the Jewish population lived and worked, the courts of Hasidic dynasties flourished in the Pale. Thousands of followers of rebbes such as the Gerrer Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (known as the Sfas Emes), the Chernobyler Rebbe, and the Vizhnitzer Rebbe flocked to their towns for the Jewish holidays and followed their rebbes' minhagim (Jewish practices) in their own homes.

The tribulations of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement were immortalized in the writings of Yiddish authors such as humorist Sholom Aleichem, whose stories of Tevye der Milchiger (Tevye the Milkman) in the fictional shtetl of Anatevka form the basis of Fiddler on the Roof. Because of the harsh conditions of day-to-day life in the Pale, some 2 million Jews emigrated from there between 1881 and 1914, mainly to the United States. However, this exodus did not affect the stability of the Jewish population of the Pale, which remained at 5 million people due to the high birthrate.

During World War I, the Pale lost its rigid hold on the Jewish population when large numbers of Jews fled into the Russian interior to escape the invading German army. On March 20 (April 2), 1917, the Pale was abolished by the Provisional Government decree, On abolition of confessional and national restrictions (Об отмене вероисповедных и национальных ограничений). A large portion of the Pale, together with its Jewish population, became part of Poland.

Territories of the Pale

The Pale of Settlement included the following areas.

1791

The Ukase of Catherine II of December 23, 1791 limited the Pale to:

• Belarus:
  • Mogilev guberniya
  • Polotsk guberniya (was later reorganized into Vitebsk guberniya)
• Ukraine:
  • Yekaterinoslav namestnichestvo (viceroyalty)
  • Taurida Oblast (Crimea)

1794

After the Second partition of Poland, the ukase of June 23, 1794, the following areas were added:

• Minsk guberniya
• Mogilev guberniya
• Polotsk guberniya
• Malorossiya:
  • major part of Kiev guberniya
  • Volhynia (Iziaslav guberniya)
  • Podolia (Bratslav guberniya)
• Chernigov guberniya
• Novgorod-Seversk gubernia (later became Poltava guberniya)

1795

After the Third Partition of Poland, the following areas were added:

• Vilna guberniya
• Grodno Governorate

1805–1835

After 1805 the Pale gradually shrinks, by the exclusion of the following areas:

• Lithuanian guberniyas
• Southwestern Krai
• Belarus without rural areas
• Malorossiya without rural areas
• Chernigov guberniya
• Novorossiya without Nikolaev and Sevastopol
• Kiev guberniya without Kiev
• Baltic guberniyas closed for newcoming Jews

• Congress Poland

Rural areas for 50 verst (kilometers) from the western border were closed from new settlement.

Final [% Jewish according to the 1897 census] ^[2]

• Northwestern Krai (whole; Lithuania, Belarus):

1. Vilna guberniya [12.86%]
2. Kovno guberniya [13.77%]
3. Grodno guberniya [17.49%]
4. Minsk guberniya [16.06%]
5. Mogilev guberniya [12.09%]
6. Vitebsk guberniya (some parts of it are in Pskov Oblast and Smolensk Oblast now) [11.79%]

• Southwestern Krai (part; now in Ukraine):

1. Kiev guberniya [12.19%]
2. Volhynia guberniya [13.24%]
3. Podolia guberniya [12.28%]

• Polish guberniyas (lands of Congress Poland):

1. Warsaw guberniya (Варшавская губерния (Мазовецкая губерния 1837-1844)) [18.22%]
2. Lublin guberniya (Люблинская губерния) [13.46%]
3. Płock guberniya (Плоцкая губерния) [9.29%]
4. Kalisz guberniya (Калишская губерния) [8.52%]
5. Piotrkow guberniya (Пётроковская губерния) [15.85%]
6. Kielce guberniya (Келецкая губерния (Краковская губерния 1837-1844)) [10.92%]
7. Radom guberniya (Радомская губерния) [13.78%]
8. Siedlce guberniya (Седлецкая губерния (Подлясская губерния 1837-1844)) [15.69%]
9. Augustów guberniya (Августовская губерния 1837–1867), split into:

1. Suwałki guberniya (Сувалкская губерния) [10.16%]
2. Łomża guberniya (Ломжинская губерния) [15.77%]

Others:

1. Chernigov guberniya (some parts of it are in Bryansk Oblast now) [4.98%]
2. Poltava guberniya [3.99%]
3. Tavrida guberniya (Crimea) [Jewish 4.20% + Karaite 0.43%]
4. Kherson guberniya [12.43%]
5. Bessarabia guberniya [11.81%]
6. Ekaterinoslav guberniya [4.78%]

In 1882 it was forbidden for Jews to settle in rural areas.

The following cities within the Pale were excluded from it:

• Kiev (the ukase of December 2, 1827: eviction of Jews from Kiev)
• Nikolaev
• Sevastopol
• Yalta

See also

• English Pale around Dublin in Ireland
• May Laws
• Pogrom
• History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
• History of the Jews in Poland

References

• Abramson, Henry, "Jewish Representation in the Independent Ukrainian Governments of 1917–1920", Slavic Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Autumn 1991), pp. 542–550.

External links

• The Pale of Settlement (with a map) at Jewish Virtual Library
• The Pale of Settlement (with map and additional documents) at The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
• friends-partners.org (with map)
• Life in the Pale of Settlement (with photos)
• Jewish Encyclopedia - Jewish Encyclopedia
• aish.com
• britannica.com
• digital.library.mcgill.ca (with map)
  • jpg
• [1] (with map of Polish era)
• The decree "On abolition of confessional and national restrictions", passed by the Provisional Government on March 20, 1917 (in Russian)