East European Jewish Affairs the MARKETPLACE in BALTA

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THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA Aspects of economic and cultural life

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

TaylorFEEJ_A_265183.sgm10.1080/13501670701653419East1350-1674Original2007373000000DecemberYohananPetrovsky-Shternyps@northwestern.edu European and& Article Francis 2007(print)/1743-971XFrancis Jewish Ltd Affairs (online)

To the blessed memory of John Doyle Klier A marketplace in a shtetl (a Polish private town) was a locus of exchange of artefacts and goods, perhaps as any European marketplace.1 Historians from Ignacy Schiper to Gershon Hundert, Moshe Rosman and Adam Teller have thoroughly recreated the predomi- nance of Jews in East European, mostly 18th-century Polish, economy and emphasized their leading role in the trading life of the shtetl. Their studies have equipped the modern researcher with a panoramic vision of Jewish economic activities and provided an excellent grasp of what historians tend to call “the Jewish trade.” And yet, while the forms of “exchange” have been studied, the “artefacts and goods” have not. Nor has a marketplace as a specific locus of the shtetl received attention. Recreating the 19th-century shtetl marketplace in its economic, political, social and cultural contexts seems an unfeasible task. Given the dearth of documentary evidence (even the founding fathers of Russian economic history complained of that), it is hardly possible to walk through the stalls of a marketplace, check out what is on sale and what the prices are, talk with the salesmen over the counter about their concerns and troubles, find out what local authorities—and travellers—think and do about the marketplace, and figure out what was the impact of a fair on the daily life of the townsfolk. Even if the scanty evidence allows a glance into the grassroots history of the town fair, the ways to interrogate the evidence, that is to say, the choices of interpretative historical methodology, are not so obvious. To deal with the challenge, this essay seeks to reconstruct the marketplace of an East European Jewish town in a variety of contexts—economic, cultural, religious and social, taking the town of Balta in Podol province as a point of reference.2 Balta emerges from this essay as a paradigmatic borderland town in transition. In the 1790s the Polish administration was slowly vanishing as the result of the second and third Polish partitions, which led in turn Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 to the disappearance of Rzecz Pospolita, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as an independent polity. Simultaneously the Russian administration began establishing itself in what the contemporary Russian documents often called the “newly returned territories from Poland.” While Russian-Jewish historians from Simon Dubnow to John Klier have recon- structed the whole plethora of the governmental regulations on the Jews and emphasized the role of Russian legislation in shaping the life of the 19th-century East European Jewish community, this essay suggests a methodological shift from vertical to horizontal. It flags the necessity of moving the research of Russian-Jewish history beyond the institutions

controlled by the government. It might be helpful to translate this approach into Russian as a trend toward a razgosudarstvlenie of the Russian-Jewish scholarly discourse. Instead of analysing St-Petersburg-elaborated state policies in their relation to Jews in the 15 western provinces of Russia known as the Pale of Settlement, this essay focuses on horizontally oriented local interaction between the Russian administration, Jewish trade and Slavic and Jewish customers. A Russian state clerk, a member of the degraded Polish szlachta (gentry) and a Jewish merchant found themselves in the whirl of the shtetl marketplace as a result of the Polish partitions. Under new conditions, all three sides, Russians, Poles and Jews, had to make new sense of this situation. In a way, the marketplace turned out to be a locus of exchange not only of artefacts and goods, but of ideas and values. When Poles, Jews and Russians perceived the marketplace to be the locus of value exchanges, clashes of interests did not wait to surface. As part of a larger work-in-progress, tentatively titled “The Russian Shetl, 1790–1840,” this essay offers a new approach to the study of economic history integrated within the history of culture.

Three in One In the early 1800s, Balta both was and was not a shtetl. Formally it was not, for starting in mid-1790s this Polish private town (called the miasteczko in Polish and the shtetl in Yiddish) came under the patrimony of the Russian Empire and entered the imperial records as a crown town (kazennyi gorod), not to be confused with the Crown towns in the Kingdom of Poland with their often granted De non tolerandi Judeos privilege.3 Economically, however, at the end of the 18th century Balta was still a shtetl that retained each and every characteristic of the Polish private town, including its trades, its lease-holding economy, its significant Jewish population and its intensive Polish–Jewish commercial interaction.4 In 1799, Balta comprised 1,895 inhabitants, of whom 1,347 were Jews and 548 Christians (in 2007, Balta has some 20,000 inhabitants).5 For the Poles—that is to say, for the magnate Lubomirskis family—Balta was a pivotal, private border town, which militarily separated Polish territories from Turkish domains, but connected them economically. For the Russians, Balta was a new town stemming from three separate settlements that had emerged close to one another at different times and under various political and military circumstances. What in the late 1790s the Russian administration called the crown town of Balta incorporated the early 17th-century village called Palievo Ozero (literally, the “Lake of Palii”), part of Lubomirski’s latifundium, and co-opted the Turkish settlement Foksan Balta, located on the lower right bank of the Kodyma river. In 1690–95, Count Józef Lubomirski (?–1736) erected his castle on the high left bank of the Kodyma to keep Tatars and Turks at bay and thus protect southern Poland—which would later become the Podol province of the Russian

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 Empire. To immortalize his own contribution, Lubomirski called his castle and adjacent settlements Józefgród.6 The three settlements—Foksan Balta, Józefgród and Palievo Ozero—became one in the course of the 18th century. After 1699, Turkey ceded to Poland the left bank of the Kodyma river, that is, the entire Podol territory, retaining, however, the Balta fortress on the right bank. In 1776, Alexander Lubomirski (?–1808), the commander-in-chief (kasztelan) of the Kiev fortress, obtained a Magdeburg law for his town Józefgród from the Polish King Stanisl aw August Poniatowski (1732–98). Now free from Polish Crown control, the town acquired its urban privileges; it could establish its own magistrate and town court, elect magistrate members and select two heads of the city council (magistrate) for a one-year term and two THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 279

elders for life term. Furthermore, it could now develop and tax its own trade and establish guilds to benefit local merchants and artisans. A free town, the left-bank part of the future Balta was still controlled by the magnate who bestowed economic privileges on this or that group, or an individual, as he found fit. The Crown document specified that only those priv- ileged by the town owner could engage in wine-, beer- and mead-brewing. The town was not immune to the plagues of early modernity—urban epidemics. In 1768, a disastrous plague decimated the town population, to the extent that eight years later Alexander Lubomirski had to invite new settlers, promising them various economic privileges. To propel economic and population growth, he established two fairs in the town, one starting on Tuesday after Pente- cost in late spring or early summer, the second in October after the holidays of the Virgin Mary Garment (Pokrova).7 A 17th-century French traveller, François-Paulin Dalairac, travelling through Podol penned in his memoir that

Jews obtained a privilege to settle in town, and since this race is mobile and fruitful, there is nothing strange about the fact that in towns and shtetls one meets predominantly the Jews. They are lease-holders, they own inns, customs, Crown possessions, potash industry. They trade in each and everything and are quite successful. A traveller might have died of hunger if not for their help. Poles do not care about anything. [On the contrary], a Jew provides a traveller with everything. Jews fill out the fairs. When one comes to a certain place, one can be sure to find a place to stay overnight if one meets there a Jew.8

This situation remained almost unchanged in 100 years. Jan Henryk Müntz, an 18th-century traveller and painter from Alsace, passed through Balta on 12 August 1781, made a bucolic drawing of both banks of the Kodyma river and a bridge over it “marking the border between Poland and the Ottoman kingdom,” and wrote in his diary, “The trade in Balta was until recently vibrant, but once Russians relocated Tartars from those regions (between Bendery, Ochakov and Balta), there is nothing to do here. The surrounding land is fertile, the soil is of clay covered with humus and mixed with it. To the north, wonderful woods; the population is sparse. The dwellers are artisans and Jewish merchants.”9 Figure 1 Although the two fairs established by Alexander Lubomirski performed a pivotal role in the future town development, later events prevented him from becoming a life-long town benefactor. In 1768–72, the Lubomirskis joined a group of influential Polish magnates in the Bar Confederation, which brought together various political constituencies of Poland in their attempt to save the country from the increasing Russian interference, the strengthening of the king’s power and the weakening of the szlachta. The troops of the Bar Confederation had a number of successful engagements with the Russians, provoking the advance of Russian troops into what was then eastern Poland. During one of the raids against the Confederates,

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 Russian Cossack troops persecuting Lubomirski’s units mistakenly rushed into what was then Turkish Balta. This infuriated the Turks and made them join the military campaign that led to the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74). The subsequent First (1772), Second (1793) and Third (1795) Partitions of Poland demonstrated only too well the key strategic position of Balta. Historians have proved that Russians did not try to discontinue the private ownership of Polish magnates on their towns—yet this was true only in some cases, not in the case of Balta. Poles and Turks, two strategic enemies of Russia, were not allowed to control a border town, even in part. Besides, as happened in many cases with the towns and villages owned by rebellious members of the Polish szlachta (unlike those towns owned by the gentry supporting Russia’s territorial 280 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

FIGURE 1 Former fishmongers, Balta, 2006. Photo by Alla Sokolova, Centre “Petersburg Judaica,” European University in St. Petersburg

pretensions), the Russian administration preferred to either confiscate or purchase the town from its Polish owners. Once the town found itself within the Russian domain as a result of the second Polish partition (in 1791–92), St Petersburg purchased Józefgród from the Lubomirskis, uniting the left- and the right-bank settlements into one, naming it first Elensk, which name it retained until 1797, and then renaming it the crown town of Balta. While the Lubomirskis retained parts of their latifundia elsewhere in eastern Poland, they were forced to sell Balta willy-nilly, as the Russians insisted on purchasing the other part of what they saw a single urban settlement on the two banks of the Kodyma river. The Lubomirskis agreed, particularly since their military expenses had exhausted their treasury. They sold Balta for five

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 million roubles, of which more than four million went to their creditors as outstanding payments of debts. Despite becoming a Russian crown town, throughout the first half of the 19th century Balta retained its magistrate, its economic privileges, its Polish Catholics, Tartars, Armenians and Russian Orthodox, its trading Jews and its marketplace with two annual fairs.10

The Marketplace and the Town’s Money Because of its fair in Russia’s south-west region, Balta’s economic function was on a par with such significant urban centres as Zhitomir, Kamenets-Podolsk, Kiev and Berdichev. In THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 281

the first half of the 19th century, along with six other fairs in Podol, Kiev and Volhynia province, Balta fairs participated in a continuous trade; when the late May–early June ten- day Balta fair ended, the Berdichev June fair began, followed by the late June–early July fair in Kiev, etc.11 In relation to duration and turnover, Balta fairs fell into the first 3% in the 1790s and the first 1.5% in the 1860s of all other Russian fairs. There were very few marketplaces of similar scope in the Russian Empire at that time. The number of participants—about 10,000 in the 1840s—also made the Balta fairs unique, placing them among the first 2.2% of the biggest Russian fairs.12 The Balta fairs benefited the town in many different ways and the local Russian administration—continuing the economic policies of the Lubomirskis—did its best to boost trade. For example, in the 1830s the annual fairs yielded 3,099 roubles of income into the town’s treasury as the result of the lease of stalls to trading merchants, a significant sum of money comparable to the income from trade of other well-developed towns in the interior of Russia. The town received 4,682 roubles from the leasing of town measures and weights used by incoming merchants. Local guild merchants paid 3,020 roubles of income tax and estate (soslovie) dues. Inns, the only places where the alcohol was allowed to be sold, triggered an income of 1,075 roubles. The town obtained 1,034 roubles from the sale of land within the town borders for the construction of new town houses. In addition, the administration received 5,430 roubles’ income from grain and straw sales and the arrears of previous years. The local administration reported that it received 11,654 roubles from the Podol province relief funds for soldiers in hospital; even if one takes into consideration the notorious penchant of the underpaid Russian state clerks for embezzlement, it was still a substantial sum of money which could have been spent on local needs. General town income yielded 47,278 roubles, which was a highly underreported sum of money, given that the innkeepers most likely paid directly to the local town authorities, who personally benefited from reduc- ing the official income figures. At the same time, the town generally spent 9,824 roubles on police and firemen, and 1,500 roubles on the city council, yielding 43,358 roubles total expenses.13 Comparative analysis of the official reports sheds light on the meaning of these figures. Thus, for example, in 1835 Balta received 1,072 roubles for the use of the town fields, 400 roubles for inn-keeping, 2,000 roubles from a certain Duvid Sobelman (a lease-holder of the town weights and measures), 3,020 roubles from the local merchants and 1,709 roubles for leasing of the town square to the trading merchants. Expenses included 1,088 roubles for firemen’s horses, 1,054 for town clerks, and the saldo was 16,149 roubles income to 13,017 roubles expenses.14 While the number of trading town merchants remained the same—and so did their taxes—by 1837 the town income had grown significantly because of the leasing of the stalls and the twofold increase of income from measures and weights. Indeed, the

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 income of about 3,000–4,000 roubles, given a fourfold increase in turnover, seems to suggest a certain inaccuracy. But even if one takes into consideration the dubious nature of the figures in the annual report, the comparative reports of 1834–37 are proof of the town’s economic stability, its steady economic growth, a positive saldo between its income and expenses, and a modest overall increase in its income—all of this despite the fact that it was no longer a border town enjoying trade privileges due to its geographic location.15 Accord- ing to more accurate figures provided by a state clerk in 1840, one of the two Balta fairs had more than 300,000 roubles’ turnover (see discussion below). This proves that the town fair was growing and in the 1830s and 1840s was among the 2–3% of Russian fairs with the largest turnover.16 282 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

FIGURE 2 Rebuilt synagogue, Balta, 2006. Photo by Alla Sokolova.

Figure 2

The Balta Marketplace from Within Balta fairs came to the attention of the provincial administration as a result of a misun- derstanding. As a major trading centre, Balta attracted merchants and buyers, mostly Jews and Poles, of whom the Russian authorities became increasingly suspicious in the 1810s and 1820s. Throughout the early 19th century the Russian regime considered Poles unreliable, particularly because of their support for Napoleon and continuous striving for political independence, even after the collapse of the Duchy of Warsaw. Jews proved their fully fledged support of Russia in the 1810s, yet their track record as Polish factors also made them suspicious in the eyes of the Russian central administration. Jews were known to be trading in horses, strategic merchandise at a time when cavalry troops were considered a major military force. Horses may have been and, in most cases, were purchased from Jews by Poles. And Poles, as the Russian authorities came to seriously suppose before and after the 1830

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 rebellion, could have used horses to secretly form new cavalry squadrons ready to attack Russian troops, ultimately aiming to re-establish Poland as an independent polity. Using some murky denunciation of a Balta Jewish gang of smugglers and cabmen as a convenient pretext, in 1840 the Podol province authorities dispatched a special envoy (chinovnik osobykh poruchenii), Major Gaivoronskii, to a Balta fair with a secret mission to inspect the alleged clandestine trade in horses between Poles and Jews. The authorities gave Gaivoronskii a handsome sum of 200 roubles, instructed him to look for anything suspicious and pay special attention to circulating rumours, political conversations, and expectations among the Poles. He had to double-check whether any Jews were commissioned to prepare large quantities of horseshoes. In particular, he had to THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 283

investigate whether the Polish possessor of the village of Bubnovka (Gaisin district) really had dealings with a certain Jew, Gershko Elmanovich, who engaged in selling horses wholesale. Bibikov, the Governor-General of Kiev, Podol and Volhynia provinces, ordered the local authorities to help Gaivoronskii in every way possible—which, as we shall see, helped the state clerk to portray the Trinity fair in a multifaceted way. With all this in mind, Gaivoronskii visited Balta for five days. His report, written immediately thereafter, dismissed any anti-Jewish and anti-Polish suspicions. Poles talked more than they acted. They discussed any minor court case against a Pole as an act of anti-Polish persecution orches- trated by the Russian government. Zelmanovich (not Elmanovich), the mill lease-holder and the wine-distiller in Bubnovka residing in the town of Bratslav, sold only five and bought six horses— hardly enough to equip the Polish rebels in the district. As far as the expectations of the Kiev provincial authorities went, Gaivoronskii’s report simply disproved their suspicions.17 Yet, for historians, the report provides a keen, detailed and accurate insight into the operation of the Balta fair. Gaivoronskii inspected the fair situated on both banks of the Kodyma. He seemed quite impressed by the fair, which he described as a major economic and social event. According to his report, 10,000 people traded at the Balta fair annually. Jews used to bring some 9,000 horses from the Don steppes and southern districts for sale. In 1840, however, there were not so many of them, since many horses had been sold in Berdichev. Merchants brought cattle from the Kherson and Bessarabia steppes. From Europe came cotton, calico and silk manufactured goods. Gaivoronskii emphasized that the merchants did not manage to sell all their goods, as most buyers did not have enough money, a statement that was true of all estates of Podolia province’s population. The trade in horses yielded some 250,000 roubles, manufacture 50,000 roubles and haberdashery 20,000 roubles. Ordinary people (chern’), most likely trading townsfolk, earned about 10,000 roubles. The general turnover of the Balta Trinity fair amounted to 330,000 roubles. Yet Gaivoronskii was also critical of what he saw, particularly the sanitary conditions of the fair. The soil in Balta he found muddy and dirty. The town authorities, he argued, made no effort to clean or improve the roads and the marketplace. There was cheap stone near the town which could easily be used to pave the roads, yet wagons often got stuck in mud. Two bridges over the Kodyma river were not enough for the incoming merchants; the authorities should have considered building a third bridge in the direction of Dubossary. Also Gaivoronskii mentioned in passing that the town authorities should find a safer place for the fair to avoid enormous losses during fires, an insightful observation given later developments in Balta.18

The Marketplace and Urban Development Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 The growth of the town’s income from trade prompted the local authorities to invest in the marketplace. They planned to make it more suitable for trading merchants, to attract more people to the fairs, to culturally and socially accommodate the guests and to further develop the town economic infrastructure. In the early 1820s, one annual fair yielded an income of 1,700 silver roubles, and by the 1840s this had grown to 2,700, according to town council reports. These figures make one believe the town knew how to count its internal revenue yet consistently underreported its income to the provincial authorities.19 The best decision, the municipal council argued, was to reinvest the monies. Economic targets were as important for the town as cultural one; investment in the latter should have supported the 284 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

achievement of the former. The authorities allocated 800 roubles from town sums for building fair booths (balagany), a circus ring (or a riding-place; the context of the document allows both readings), three inns and one theatre building—all within the marketplace or very close to it. Since in Podol province the only rival of the Balta Trinity and Pokrova fairs were the Berdichev Assumption and Onufrii fairs, it could have been that envy and competition prompted the town council to buttress trade with entertainment. Perhaps Balta merchants, often trading in Berdichev, saw there what a special Russian governmental envoy, Colonel Bek, had seen in late August 1837. During the Assumption fair, a shabby local Berdichev theatre staged Polish plays daily, a company of jugglers showed their tricks in the fair booth, three profes- sional entertainers from Holland demonstrated their cast of rare animals, including an “anakondra” (sic) whom they fed with doves and rabbits, and a certain Dominican from Italy entertained the public with his wax cabinet and “kosmorama,” whatever the Russian reporter meant by this.20 To have public entertainment such as in Berdichev was for Balta town council a question of honour. Hence, the fair booths, theatre building and circus ring. Most importantly, in the mid-1840s the town committee decided to save the overcrowded centre of the town and build two sets of stalls using the old marketplace for fish, cattle and large goods, while moving more subtle merchandise, including haberdashery, to the other bank of the river. The construction of fair buildings was supposed to yield more than 5,000 roubles of annual income.21 The town council planned to sell the contract for the construction of the new stalls and booths at public auction, and gave the local police chief Khobotov responsibility for its construction. It also suggested taxing incoming merchants for the use of the newly erected stalls. Initially, the Jewish townsfolk seemed unhappy with this idea, as they had been leasing their own premises to the incoming merchants, and yet circumstances drew them into a fierce debate over the construction project. As a debate ensued between the left- and right-bank dwellers, Jewish townsfolk and merchants had good reason to become involved. The town committee supervising the marketplace triggered bellicose activities in two parts of the town when it suggested moving a considerable part of trade to the left bank of the Kodyma. This decision could have been detrimental to the economic well-being of the right bank, yet it sparked the enthusiasm of the left bank, which was more well-to-do and influential. The left-bank residents requested that the marketplace commission move the Trinity (Troitskaia) and Peter and Paul fair (Petropavlovskaia) to their side of the river.22 Abram Chechelnitskii and Nison Kogan, two Jewish merchants pursuing private interests yet also seeking to alleviate the overcrowded right bank, promised to build the sixty-slot trade stalls on the left bank. They warned the authorities that the right-bank stalls were too old and ruined. The town council signed a contract with them allowing them to develop the left-bank marketplace. Still the members of the council could not come to a final agreement: they realized that the lease of the right-

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 bank Jewish houses during the fair was one of the few stable forms of income the town obtained. Once the stalls were in place, the left-bankers requested the Governor-General to forbid trading in fine goods in the old part of the city. In turn, the right-bankers complained about the monopolist tendencies of the left-bankers. Subsequently, some 12 Christian and 40 Jewish merchants petitioned the authorities not to move the fair to the right bank. Lieutenant-General Radishchev considered the case and found the right-bank fair much more economically beneficial. But the left bank was not so easy to appease; Chechelnitskii and Kogan, as well as other Jewish and Christian merchants from the left bank, sent their plea to Count Illarion Vasilchikov, the Governor-General of the province. They maintained that the town of Balta was renowned first and foremost for its THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 285

Trinity fair. Merchants from everywhere came to town to buy and sell. To accommodate them, the town built stalls on the right bank. The rows of the stalls were not only economically useful for the town, but also adorned it. Yet “because of their envy” the left-bank dwellers decided to move the fair to the left bank, while “all Berdichev and Moscow merchants” trading in Balta unanimously acknowledged that it was more convenient to trade on the right bank. Some 102 Jewish merchants beseeched Vasilchikov to leave the St Trinity fair in its old place and not to move it elsewhere. Yet it was obvious to the right-bankers that the new stalls on the left bank changed the balance of the dispute. Now they realized that in order to continue having the fair on their bank they had to join efforts with the local, also right-bank Christian merchants, and co-sponsor the reconstruction of the old stalls. Fearing financial loss, the right-bank residents finally promised to rebuild the old stalls, erect 40 new ones, and add 200 silver roubles annually to the treasury.23 Figure 3 The result of this dispute was obvious. Balta continued to use both parts of the marketplace throughout the second half of the 19th century, boasting new accommodating stalls on both sides of the Kodyma. The local patriotism of the left- and right-bankers further buttressed the economic development of the town. Balta residents could not predict that, first of all, the two parts of the marketplace would eventually become specialized in certain kinds of merchandise (according to the most recent anthropological research this continues into the 21st century).24 And secondly, as Gaivoronskii predicted, the right bank of the town remained as vulnerable to urban calamities as the left one.

The Fair in Fire Balta annual fairs were not only a blessing but also a curse. During market days, a narrow central town street turned into an overcrowded ant-hill. The existing inns could Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014

FIGURE 3 The busiest crossroads in Balta, 2006. Photo by Alla Sokolova. 286 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

never accommodate thousands of travelling merchants and customers. Besides, the town never had enough stalls; compare some 200–300 trading slots on both sides of the Kodyma and some 10,000 reported merchants and customers. The incoming merchants, mostly Jews, rented premises in, and traded from, the houses facing the street. Genuine early 19th- century houses in Balta have not survived, but if one extrapolates the results of Alla Sokolova’s research into the architecture of Shargorod (Polish: Szarogród, also Podol province), one can easily visualize the scene.25 Private Jewish houses looked like small stores. One can imagine clay-covered wooden houses with a sheltered backyard that aided the unload- ing of merchandise in the rainy weather. Wide doors led from the street into a large room that served as a tavern or an inn. The doors had huge castle-style door-bolts; wide windows out of which one could trade faced the street; and the window-sills served as a counter. Most likely, Balta’s central street architecture matched the Shargorod’s. The only difference was that the Shargorod street went from the lower part of the town—with its gorgeous 16th- century fortress-style synagogue—to the upper part with its monastery and cathedral, while Balta’s central street was flat and narrower than that in Shargorod. Therefore, in the heat of market days it was next to impossible to navigate through the Balta fair—cattle, horses, wagons and barrels blocked the path. No doubt, this created a problem for the local firemen, who repeatedly informed the authorities about this ongoing danger. Before the shtetl fire was associated in Jewish literature with revolution and radical change, it was what it was: a real plague of an under-urbanized town. Let us take a look at the Balta fire. On 22 May 1854, Balta’s Jews went to the synagogue to celebrate Shabbat. Mendel Berdichevskii, a local resident and home-owner, also went. Apparently a merchant or a group of merchants renting his hay-loft during market days had to warm some food, or, more likely, left the warmed stove in the hay-loft unattended and also departed for the synagogue. First the fire engulfed the hay-loft, the neighbouring barn and the house of a certain Abram Tesler. The weather was windy that May Saturday. The fire spread immediately through half the town. Neighbouring houses built from straw and reed burnt to ashes in minutes. The local authorities signalled the alarm, summoned police and fireman, yet before the fireman arrived (and the town spent enormous amounts on firemen horses), the local police made an extraordinary effort to save the town from destruction. The policemen helped disassemble the burning barns, moved Jews to a safer district of the town and in fact, mobilized the townspeople to deal with the fire. Some 300 Balta residents, firemen, merchants and policemen managed to stop the fire saving the stalls with merchandise worth 300,000 roubles, special hangars with alcohol, the hospital and the market square. The house of a certain Liptsker, a local tycoon, was burnt to ashes but the people helped him to save 200 buckets of oil. The stalls established in the streets were also saved. Due to the timely intercession of the police, only 37 houses and 54 small hay-lofts (sarai) were burnt. And yet the damage

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 amounted to 50,000 roubles, comparable to the annual income of the town. Analysing the accident, the town administration found no reason to suspect anybody of intentionally setting the fire. Rather, it underscored the crowdedness of the town as the main reason for the devastation. The town council emphasized that the consequences could have been much more serious had it not been for the selfless actions of the police, a statement that does not seem self-serving in the Balta urban context.26 The town also tried to provide social relief to those who’d suffered from the fire. Abram Fomin, one of the town’s richest Jews, was particularly upset. He complained to the provincial administration in Kiev that he had suffered considerable losses during cholera epidemics in 1848, and now from fire, losing his house worth 6,000 silver roubles and belongings worth 4,000 silver roubles. “It THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 287

FIGURE 4 Old Jewish house, Balta, 2006. Photo by Alla Sokolova.

is aggravating for the soul of a Russian merchant!” he wrote.27 Remarkably, the Governor of Volhynia, Podol and Kiev province ordered the provision of some sort of financial compensation to save the richest town Jews from bankruptcy. There seems to have been an understanding at the local level that the prosperity of the financial leaders of the Jewish community benefited not only Jews, but the town as a whole.

Figure 4

The Fair and Jewish Philanthropy Around the late 1810s the Balta Jews established the Bikur holim, the Visiting the Sick Society closely associated with, and even depending on, the Balta marketplace. As a rule, the Visiting the Sick societies were established at a grassroots level to alleviate the burden of poor and sick Jews. They were closely connected with, and sometimes sponsored by, the Hevrah kadisha, the Burial Society. The Visiting the Sick Society was hardly influential in the Jewish town social infrastructure. But Balta’s Visiting the Sick case was different. Two hundred and forty-eight signatures were affixed to the statute of the society.28 This figure implies that almost everybody, if not every taxpaying Jewish householder in Balta,

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 was a member. It also presumed that the society’s regulations were binding for most, if not for all, the taxpayers. Furthermore, as the fifth paragraph of the statute underscored, the regulations were initiated by the anshei kahal alufei ha-hevrah tovei ha-ir, that is to say, nobody else but the kahal, the local Jewish town elders, assumed responsibility for the operation of the society. To establish a new society the kahal needed an endorsement of the local rabbi and/or the head of the town rabbinic court, and of the town elders; their signatures did appear at the end of the Visiting the Sick statute. To further enforce the regulations, particularly their financial component, the kahal invited Rabbi Moshe Tsevi ben Shimon, a leading Hasidic master (admor) residing in the nearby town of Savran, to endorse the regulations and bless the society members for their pious enthusiasm.29 One can even assume that, as the 288 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

Russian government radically diminished the functions of the kahal but endorsed the grassroots activities of the havurot—the phenomenon discussed elsewhere—the kahal could have disguised itself as the Visiting the Sick Society.30 The institutional disguise could have enabled the kahal to perform one of its major functions hardly compatible with the otherwise dependent Visiting the Sick and legally forbidden to the kahal: tax trade in Balta.31 Although it was not established as a grassroots institution, and it did not function as one, the Visiting the Sick Society presented itself as a voluntary society with a narrow scope of activities. The society operated as one branch of the kahal, responsible for the implemen- tation of many of the social relief activities charged to the Balta kahal.32 The society assumed responsibility for providing aid for the sick, poor and disabled, both local and visiting. For example, if a vagabond alms-solicitor became sick, the warden of the society sent a doctor to him or to her and the society treasurer covered the expenses. Among other issues related to the sick members and non-members of the society, the Visiting the Sick members took an obligation upon themselves to take care of the hekdesh, a shabby inn for vagabond alms- seekers, which the society called the “house of the kahal” (paragraph 15). The goal was to transform the hekdesh—something characteristic of every shtetl in the Pale of Jewish Settlement—into a community-sponsored hospital. While later in the 19th century this transformation became ubiquitous in the towns of the Pale, the Balta Jewish community seems to have been moving twenty or thirty years ahead of schedule. To protect themselves from swindlers and potential burden, the society allowed the poor only a three-day stay in town, unless they became sick and needed special care. In addition, the society promised to provide a disabled or blind individual with a free wagon or a special cart, yet the regular poor were bereft of this accommodation. Figure 5 Yet the society’s activities were only a legal cover for a matter of a greater significance. While issues related to the biblically inspired commandment of visiting the sick occupied two or three out of the 30 paragraphs of the statute, most of them—as well as later Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014

FIGURE 5 Former Talmudtora building, Balta, 2006. Photo by Alla Sokolova. THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 289

amendments—dealt with the taxation of trade. As we already know, there was a substantial number of trading merchants during the Balta fair, one of the two most important annual markets in the then Malorossia (Ukraine), on a par only with Berdichev.33 The society, or, better to say, the kahal in disguise as the voluntary society, seemed to tax each and every Jewish merchant trading at the local fair. It taxed even those who did not appear during the fair and instead sent specially hired clerks, substitutes and agents. The kahal required payments to the society’s treasury irrespective of who was selling, a Jewish owner or a representative, whether the merchandise had been bought elsewhere and brought to town or bought locally and exported elsewhere. Those who bought from a non-Jew also paid. In the 1820s, the kahal required that the sellers donate to the Visiting the Sick treasury three, two or one kopek for each 100 measures, respectively, of three different types of flour brought to the market. The sellers paid two kopeks per pud (16 kilograms) of mead, five kopeks for a wagon of tar utensils, two kopeks for a wagon of wooden or glass utensils, five kopeks for a 100 measures (okes) of salt, one kopek (gadol) per pud of dry fruits, including raisins. As for dry plums and other fruit sold by weight, the trustee of the society had to figure out the amount of the imposed tax by taking the merchant to the Balta house of measures (veghoyz). In addition, the members donated five kopeks weekly to the treasury of the society (yielding an additional 700–800 roubles annually). Plus, according to the rota (chered’) established by the society warden, every Sabbath following the beginning of a new month a society member went around the town and solicited donations in the synagogues, private prayer quorums and praying schools from those called to the Torah, including the guests of the town. Twenty years later, in 1844, the Visiting the Sick Society came to replace the kahal, which was officially abolished that year in Russia. Between 1844 and 1854, the society redefined several forms of tax, specified other taxes and introduced new ones. The elders added ten kopeks tax for each wagon of herring, introduced one silver kopek for each quarter of flour, irrespective of where it was ground, and required five kopeks’ tax for each utensil of tar, not for a wagon, as had been done before. Now wine was also taxed: five kopeks for each vessel of wine (most likely, a barrel). Several forms of tax were redefined and others were introduced. The society also requested three kopeks for each wagon of salt, five kopeks for each wagon of wooden or glass utensils, five kopeks for each wagon of wool, one kopek for 16 kilograms of sugar, five kopeks for a wagon of leather, whether from cattle or sheep, and ten kopeks for each wagon of those who came to trade in Balta. The last regulation seems to have implied that non-Jewish merchants had to pay tax, too—perhaps as a tax to the town, not necessarily to the Visiting the Sick Society’s treasury. The society records suggest that throughout the first half of the 19th century there was a steady growth in Balta’s trade. Wine, herring, glass utensils, sugar, tar and flour seem not to have been mentioned as major merchandise in the Russian

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 official accounts of the Balta fairs. One may add that the appetites of the Jewish communal elders also grew. The preliminary estimate of the expected revenues—in thousands of roubles, if not in dozens of thousands—leads one to conclude that the Visiting the Sick Society could have built not only one hospital, but also a new bet-midrash, a Talmud–Torah school, a new synagogue and a new inn for travellers. In fact, new and formidable buildings for these Jewish institutions did appear in the town in the second part of the 19th century, yet we are unable to reconstruct who sponsored their construction.34 Sometimes it is worthwhile discussing as what we can see in a primary document as what we cannot. The Balta kahal effectively taxed a wide array of products and goods bought and sold at the local fair. But where were the horses? Cows? Sheep? According to the Russian 290 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

and Polish testimonies, Balta was singled out as the very centre of the horse and cattle trade, in the 1820s as well as in the 1880s. The revenue of the horse traders should have been much higher than the income of the retail and wholesale traders dealing in, say, leather and tar. Why did the Balta kahal avoid mentioning the horse-trading merchants, who could have considerably contributed to the society treasury? A possible suggestion that Jews were pushed out of the horse market does not hold water; Jews owned stables in Balta and were known as the key players in this area. Perhaps the Jewish community elders had the horse and cattle dealers pay trade taxes through a different semi-voluntary social relief institution benefiting, say, the local Talmud–Torah school, the documents for which have not survived. Or perhaps the Visiting the Sick Society controlled the right-bank trade and another society the left bank, where horses and cattle were traded. Or, even more probably, the elders of the society were the richest in town and they themselves dealt in cattle and horses and did not find fit taxing their own revenues. Be that as it may, one has to ask a more important question: what happened to the Balta Jewish hospital? After all, the society had been raising funds for this purpose, according to its statute and endorsements, between the 1820s and the 1850s.

The Marketplace and the Birth Rate Jewish communal elders sought to take care of their sick in the same way the local town administration tried to improve the sanitary situation. Establishing a hospital was as much on the agenda of the kahal as it was on the agenda of Balta’s town administration. And the marketplace served a source of philanthropy both for the Jewish kahal and, as will be demonstrated shortly, the Christian town elders. Sanitary conditions in Balta were far from satisfactory. The unpaved streets, the ubiquitous mud, the crowded overpopulated houses, the narrowness of the trading stalls, the smell of cows, pigs and goats walking freely in the streets, and the manure of thousands of head of cattle brought from elsewhere to Balta fairs made Balta look and reek more like a village rather than a town. (One should take into consideration that a janitor was not included on the books of the town council.) Balta residents had strong memories of the devastating impact of cholera in the late 1840s, the result of the poor sanitary control in the town. In 1846, Balta had about 13,000 inhabitants, who had access to the services of a single pharmacy established in 1846 and owned by local Poles. The closest alternative pharmacies were in Chechelnik, Ozero and Okna, towns respectively, 47, 40 and 51 miles from Balta.35 Trying to modernize Balta’s urban infrastructure, in the 1850s the town council petitioned the provincial administration for permission to open a second pharmacy in town. More or less at the same time, the Balta authorities finally established a town hospital. It was

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 a civil institution serving military purposes. Russian troops in Bessarabiia province were expecting a major clash with Turks and Austrians in the southern borderlands of the empire in the wake of the Crimean War. In the Russian south-west, troops were constantly on the move and soldiers not infrequently sick. In state hospitals in Balta, Gaisin and Bratslav (Podol province), Jewish and Christian soldiers were put together. They suffered mostly from scabies, diarrhea and rheumatism. Observers complained about the heavy and humid air in the hospital, and the overcrowded rooms with beds standing too close to one another and some soldiers placed on the floor. In 1854, there were 79 sick in Balta’s local hospital, 48 of them soldiers. Most of the patients were of the military estate; the mortality rate among Jewish soldiers and civilians seems to have been lower than among their Christian brethren.36 THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 291

The sanitary control inspectors noticed that the situation was much better in the private Jewish hospital established in the house of the Jewess Reitershternova, most likely the very hospital planned by the Visiting the Sick Society in the 1820s.37 The 1862 Podol province annual statistical report also mentioned two Jewish private hospitals with 84 sick; most likely, one of these two hospitals was in Balta and the other in Mogilev-Podolskii.38 The dearth of sources does not allow one to speculate when and how Balta’s Jewish hospital was established, yet it was well established in the 1850s, surviving through the second half of the 19th century, and its building into the 21st century.39 It is crucial, however, to underscore the point that the Jewish hospital was constructed almost at the same time as, if not before, the state Russian hospital, and that it most likely contributed to lowering the mortality rate among Balta Jews. The hard data confirm this hypothesis. Between 1795 and 1857, the population of Podol province grew from 580,396 to 824,206, that is, 30%, on a par with the population growth in Kiev province and significantly higher than in Russia’s interior provinces.40 The province underwent a rapid urbanization; 35% of its population lived in towns, which exceeded the urban proportion of the population elsewhere in the empire, excluding the capital provinces of Moscow and St Petersburg.41 In 1855, there were 7,429 Jewish and 899 Christian townsfolk in Balta and 773 Jewish and 79 Christian third guild merchants.42 Jews thus constituted 89% of the town population. In April 1862, Balta’s population was about 13,794 residents. Among them the town had 87 members of the hereditary gentry, 184 non-hereditary gentry, 64 Russian Orthodox priests, 360 men and 310 women merchants, 3,168 men and 2,819 women townsfolk, 1,094 regular troops permanently billeted in town, 199 retired soldiers settled in town, and 2,851 men and 2,658 women beyond classifica- tion—of unidentified creed or occupation. If in seven years the ratio had not changed significantly, one may surmise that there were approximately 12,400 Jews in town. Official reports, remarkably, did not single out Jews, counting them instead with the rest of the population. Yet they specified the religion of the clergy. Balta boasted 11 rabbis, more than anywhere else in Podolia province except Mogilev-Podolsk. Its Jewish population grew more rapidly and was healthier than the surrounding Christian population; in 1861, 133 boys and 125 girls were legitimately born to Christian families, 22 boys and 20 girls illegiti- mately. Among Jews, 239 boys and 158 girls were born, none of them out of the wedlock.43 Among new-born Christian children, 19 boys and 16 girls died before they reached one year old, and 47 boys and 52 girls died between the ages of one and five. Among Jews, the corresponding numbers of new-borns were 18 boys and nine girls, and 43 boys and 27 girls between the ages of one and five. Given a bigger percentage of Jews in town, the difference in birth and child mortality is striking, particularly

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 the much lower percentage among Jewish girls (whose deaths were not always accu- rately recorded). The ratio of births to deaths among Christians was 2.24 while among Jews it was 4, which indicates that the Jewish population of the town was increasing at twice the rate of the Christian one and which also explains the increasingly Jewish character of the Balta population in the 1880s.44 While one can only hypothesize as to whether Balta’s Jewish hospital had anything to do with the difference in mortality rate, one should assume that Balta Jews had a much better sanitary control than their Christian neighbours—particularly in view of the claim that in the mid 19th century there was a ubiquitous “decrease of the dynamics of birth rate among urban population” in Russia.45 292 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

Conclusion

Throughout the first half of the 19th century the Balta Jewish community—along with the Jewish communities of Podol province—underwent a significant modernization process and emerged as the most urbanized group among the local population. If in 1827 merchants constituted 1% of the province’s population (against 99% townsfolk), as many as 7% were merchants in 1854 (against 93% townsfolk). This proportion was higher than anywhere else in the south-western provinces of Russia.46 In the 1860s, the trade in Podol province was overwhelmingly Jewish. While there were only 645 registered Christian merchants, there were 15,849 registered Jewish merchants in the entire Podol province. The overall number of trading Jews was even bigger, since many Jewish urban residents (meshchane) often engaged in retail trade without being registered with the merchant estate.47 In the 1860s, as earlier in the 19th century, Balta remained entirely a centre for trade; it had almost no facto- ries or other industrial enterprises. Yet it had quite a number of local artisans, including 26 bakers, 22 butchers, 25 tailors, 35 shoe-makers, 17 stove-makers, 28 carpenters, 25 smiths, 14 tanners, 18 barrel-makers, four watch-makers, four goldsmiths and three book-binders, most of them Jews. The town authorities issued some 208 certificates for trade in Balta. There were three guild merchants in town, most likely of Jewish origin. The Balta Jewish community had two synagogues and three prayer houses, both made of stone—the number and quality of the synagogues in Balta exceeded those of Vinnitsa, a pivotal grain centre in the heart of Podol province. Balta illuminates the historical itinerary of the shtetl; its transformation from a Polish into a Russian town. As a result of Jewish agency, the annual Balta marketplace, the heritage of the Polish town owners, became the very focus of the town’s economy and cultural life. Notorious for the dearth of its local human and natural resources—the 18th-century town owner Lubomirski tried to change this situation—and repeatedly decimated during the cholera and plague epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries, Balta turned into a town that could survive only because of its marketplace and its annual fairs. The market was the town’s heart, nerves and sinews. Balta retained its pivotal trade status throughout the 19th century. In the 1870s, due to the extraordinary level of Jewish economic activity, the south-western Russian press acknowledged Balta as the very centre of the Podolian provincial grain, cattle and live- stock market. In the 1880s, Russian economic reports singled out Balta as a town with a significant trade in horses and oxen. Clients came to trade to Balta not only from the Russian Empire, but from Austria, Prussia and Poland. In 1884, the local newspaper reported that buyers from as far as the US bought some 130 horses, at 300 roubles each, at the Balta Trinity market.48 Balta marketplace—lost for Poles geographically and economically—became the theme of

two Polish painters, Józef Brandt (1841–1915) and Józef Marian Chesortl[k]lmona[cue]t´ski (1849–1914),

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 who painted two canvases, The Fair in Balta (ca. 1870) and The Horse Fair in Balta (1879) both celebrating the beauty of the horses placed in the very centre of the town marketplace. The significance of Balta’s market went far beyond its economic function. The story of Balta’s marketplace proved that a shared pool of values, interests and ideas united the local urban Christian administration and the Jewish community. The language of the local admin- istrative documents reveals no attempt to distinguish between the Christian and the Jewish urban residents. Both groups—as well as non-specified Tartars and Poles—were seen as legitimate and jointly contributing to the town’s development. The town’s administration and Jewish communal leadership had shared concerns about trade conditions, economic benefits and sanitary control of the town. The actions of the town police during the fire in a THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 293

heavily populated Jewish part of Balta also testify to the common concerns between Jewish and Christian residents. Jewish merchants seemed to have had the same type of geographically based “patriotism” as their Christian colleagues. As far as their economic interest was concerned, they were divided by the river Kodyma from those on the opposite bank more than they were divided by the religious markers. Balta’s Jewish leadership bent over back- wards to seek ways to adapt to new Russian legislation and act in Jewish interests within the legal framework. A plea of the Yiddish-speaking and traditional-minded Jew who pointed to the afflictions of his “soul of a Russian merchant” might suggest that Russian acculturation did not need the ideology of the Haskalah to capture the minds and hearts of some East European Jews. Ultimately, the study of the centrality of a marketplace in the history of the Russian shtetl suggests new approaches to East European Jewish history; the local urban context, grassroots economic history and brand new forms of Jewish–Slavic socio-cultural interaction takes us far beyond the commonly accepted East European Jewish narrative focused mainly on pogroms and persecutions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer, whose peer review helped me to improve this essay significantly.

NOTES 1. For a useful discussion of the shtetl, mostly in the 19th-century Russian context, see Klier, “What Exactly Was a Shtetl?” 23–35. 2. Balta is situated 200 km from Odessa in the forest-steppe region in the south-east of Podol province (close to the border between present-day Ukraine and Moldova) on the two banks of the Kodyma river, the right tributary of the South Bug river. 3. To disassociate the Crown (koronny) Polish town and the Russian crown (kazennyi) town, this essay refers to the first with a capital and to the second with lower case. Paradoxically, as Russia confiscated or purchased more and more formerly privately owned towns from the Polish szlachta, there were many 19th-century shtetls registered with Russian authorities as crown towns—kazennye goroda. 4. This essay draws heavily from research on the urban environment in pre-reform Russia; see Hildermeier, Bürgertum un Stadt in Russland; Hittle, The Service City; Rozman, Urban Networks in Russia, 1750–1800, and Premodern Periodization; Gorskaia, Gorod i gorozhane Rossii v XVII– pervoi polovine XIX v; Ryndziunskii, Gorodskoe grazhdanstvo doreformennoi Rossii; Balatskaia, Istochniki po istorii naselennykh punktov dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii; Demkin, Gorodskoe predprinimatelstvo v Rossii na rubezhe XVII–XVIII vekov; Mironov, Russkii gorod v 1740-e–1860-

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 e gody; Stolichnye i periferiinye goroda Rusi i Rossii v srednie veka i rannee novoe vremiï; Vodarskii, Naselenie Rossii za chetyresta let. 5. See “Balta,” in Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, 722–24. 6. For a brief history of Balta, see Sushins’kyi, Balta; Androsova & Polishchuk, Balta; Taskin, Iuzefgrad; Striapkin, Balta; Bogunenko, “Goroda Odesskoi oblasti,” 187–95; Landa and Rabinovich, “Istoriko-geograficheskii ocherk Odesskoi oblasti,” 127–36; Karachkivs’kyi, “Materialy do istorii mist na Podilli naprykintsi XVIII viku,” 164–72; “F.,” “G. Balta [Podol’skoi gubernii],” 605–9; Antonovich, Monografii po istorii Zapadnoi i Iugo-zapadnoi Rossii, 188, 349. 7. For the history of trade in Balta, see Kuk, “Iarmarok u Balti” and “Z mynuloho Balty;” Hurdzhii, “Ukrains’ki iarmarky ta ikh rol u vnutrishnii torhivli Rossii,” 51; Prykhod’ko, “Dal’she 294 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

vtiahnennia pomis’koho hospodarstva na pravoberezhnii Ukraini v tovarne vyrobnytstvo,” 153–72. 8. [Dalairac], Memoires du Chevalier de Beaujeu, 94.

9. Budzin´ ska, Jana Henryka Müntza podróz[d] o t˙e malownicze po Polsce i Ukrainie, 106–7. 10. Sushins’kyi, Balta, 25–26, 29–30. 11. Mironov, Vnutrennii rynok Rossii, 224–25. 12. Most Russian fairs, between 80% to 90%, lasted for 1–3 days. Forty-one per cent of fairs attracted less than 1,000 and 47% less than 5,000 participants. See Mironov, Russkii gorod, 132, 157. 13. Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy (Central National Historical Archive of Ukraine, Kyiv), henceforth TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 69, spr. 276 (“Po predpisaniu general- gubernia o sostavlenii smet [po Podol’skoi guvernii],” 1837), ark. 79–82. 14. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 66, spr. 496 (“Smeta dokhodov i raskhodov po kazennym gorodam Podolskoi gubernii,” 1835), ark. 64–67. 15. Compare with the town income in 1834: merchant capital constituting 2,740 roubles, 2,204 roubles for the lease of stalls during town fairs, 1,072 for inn-keeping tax. Other town expenses, specified in the 1834 annual report, included the 550 roubles annual salary for the local policeman (chastnyi pristav), 300 roubles for the district policeman, 1,054 for the town clerks, 400 roubles for firemen, 50 roubles for each of the stove-cleaners, 2,900 for city magistrate clerks and 150 roubles to light the town. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 65, spr. 341 (“Smeta Podol’skoi gubernii,” 1834), ark. 19–20. 16. Compare the comparative figures of the Russian fairs’ turnover in Mironov, Russkii gorod, 162. Mironov demonstrates a continuing growth of the Podol province markets: the Podol province trade yielded 323,000 roubles in 1832, 747,000 in 1849, 897,000 in 1863, 1,456,000 in 1868, 1,798,000 in 1894. See ibid., 167–68. 17. The report of another envoy sent to Onufrii fair to Berdichev supported Gaivoronskii’s investigation in Balta and his analysis of Russian–Jewish–Polish relations; see TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 790a, spr. 2 (“O delakh chinovnikov sekretnykh poruchenii i rasporiazheniakh po doneseniam ikh,” 1840–41), ark. 45–46ob. 18. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 790a, spr. 2 (“O delakh chinovnikov sekretnykh poruchenii i rasporiazheniakh po doneseniam ikh,” 1840–41), ark. 28–29, 32–35, 36ob, 38. 19. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 78, spr. 165 (“O postroike v gorode Balte pomeschenii dlia iarmarok,” 1845–59), ark. 1–17. 20. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 1, spr. 2054, ch. 1 (“Po raportu korpusa zhandarmov polkovnika Beka o raznykh proisshestviakh, sluchivshikhsia na berdichevskoi iarmarke,” 1836), ll. 1–11. 21. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 78, spr. 165, ark. 119. 22. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 78, spr. 165 (“O postroike v gorode Balte pomeschenii dlia iarmarok,”

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 1845–59), ark. 122–123, 131–132b, 141b–142b. 23. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 78, spr. 165, ark. 169. 24. Mikhail Krutikov, personal communication, 14 August 2007. 25. Lukin and Khaimovich, 100 evreiskikh mestechek Ukrainy; Sokolova, “A Study of the Architecture of the Ancient Jewish Towns of Eastern Podolia,” 10–12; idem, “Arkhitekturnyi obraz shtetla,” 147–84; idem, “Architectural Space of the Shtetl-Street-House,” 35–85; idem, “Architectural Phenomenon of the Podolian Shtetl,” 36–79; idem, “Brick as an Instrument of Innovative Assault,” 188–219. 26. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 1, spr. 11954 (“Perepiska s ministrom vnutrennikh del i podol’skim grazhdanskim gubernatorom o pozhare v Balte,” 1854), ark. 19–33. THE MARKETPLACE IN BALTA 295

27. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 1, spr. 11954, ark. 1–3. 28. Pinkas hevrah bikur holim. Balta (Podolia province), 1821–54. 100 folios, 71 blank. East European Ashkenazic cursive script. 20x31. Vernadsky Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Manuscripts, Orientalia Division, pinkasim collection, no. 1 (old number OR 1). Hereafter: Pinkas hevrah bikur holim. 29. Pinkas hevrah bikur holim, f. 46. Rabbi Moshe Tsevi Guterman (1775–1838) was a renowned disciple of Barukh of Medzhibozh and Levy Itskhak of Berdichev. After Levi Yitskhak’s death he succeeded him for a brief time as the Rabbi of Berdichev; he then served as the Rabbi of Uman and Kishinev. Renowned as a fierce opponent of the Braslav Hasidim, Moshe Tsevi passed away during an epidemic of cholera in Odessa province while trying to check the spread of the epidemic using his spiritual power. Balta had a Savran praying house dedicated to Rabbi Moshe Tsevi. For more detail on Hasidic masters endorsing the societies, see Petrovsky-Shtern, “Hasidim, Havurot, and the Jewish Street,” 20–54, for Admor of Savran, see ibid., 37–39. For a discussion of Rabbi Moshe Tsevi’s opposition to Braslav Hasid- ism, see Assaf, Neehaz ba-svakh, 180, bibliography. 30. On the Russian administration policies toward the kahal and the havurot, see Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “Russian Legislation and Jewish Self-Governing Institutions: The Case of Kamenets-Podol’sk,” essay-preface, and “The Minute-Book of the Kamnits (Kamenets) Burial Society,” translated and annotated edition of the 1798/99 Hebrew document, published in Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe (Summer, 2006), 107–30. 31. That the first regulations coerced obedience and diffidence from the members, forbidding them any protests and quarrels under the penalty of a fine or the threat of post-mortem divine punishment also proved that the kahal elders, rather than grassroots activists, stood behind the operation of the society. The kahal elders performed the same function vis-à-vis the Jewish community as the town council vis-à-vis the townsfolk. The kahal elders knew that their position in the society was lucrative and made sure nobody challenged their privileges: they forbade newcomers to participate in the elections of the community leadership for two years, allowing during the subsequent two years the privilege to elect but not to be elected. Indeed, the kahal elders made sure they wrapped their imposition in the religious language well familiar to any Jew whatever his or her status or level of literacy. 32. Balta’s Visiting the Sick Society assumed thus the function of the kahal before the dissolution of the kahal—and continued to fulfil some of the kahal’s quintessential functions after the latter’s dissolution. It seems to have been an alternative institution substituting the kahal to the institute of sborshchiki and deputaty discussed in the classic study of Shokhat; see Shokhat, “Ha-hanhagah be-kehilot rusia im bitul ha-kahal,” 143–233. 33. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 790a, spr. 2 (“O delakh chinovnikov sekretnykh poruchenii …,” 1840), ark.

Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014 28–31. 34. For modern photos of the former Balta Talmud-Torah and Jewish hospital, see 〈http://balta- town.narod.ru/rel/aid.htm〉 (accessed 14 August 2007). 35. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 1, spr. 10760 (“Ob otkrytii apteki v Balte,” 1853), ark. 1–6. 36. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 85, spr. 68, ch. IIa (“Vedomosti o sotsoianii baltskoi i mogilevskoi gorod- skikh bolnits,” 1854), ark. 2–43. 37. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 85, spr. 68, ch. I (“Opisanie gorodski bolnitsy,” 1854), ark. 14, 41, 32–33b, 37–38, 85, 100–100b, 127–128. 38. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 39, spr. 2 (“Statisticheskie tablitsy po Podol’skoi gubernii,” 1862), ark. 82. 296 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

39. Mikhail Krutikov, personal communication, 14 August 2007. See also the modern map of Balta, which shows the marketplace on both sides of the Kodyma: 〈http://balta- town.narod.ru/Balta_MAP.htm〉 (accessed 14 August 2007). 40. Kabuzan, Izmeneniia v razmeshchenii naseleniia Rossii, 38–39. 41. Ryndziunskii, Gorodskoe grazhdanstvo, 291. 42. “Balta,” in Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, 3: 722–24. 43. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 39, spr 2 (“Po politseiskomu upravleniiu. Statisticheskie tablitsy po Podol’skoi gubernii,” 1862), ark. 19–78. 44. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 39, spr. 2 (“Statisticheskie tablitsy po Podol’skoi gubernii,” 1862), ark. 1– 82; for a detailed account of Balta see ark. 19–78. For the predominantly Jewish population of late-19th–century Balta and the Jewish character of the town at the turn of the 19th century, see Zeltser, “Pogrom v Balte.” 45. Mironov, Russkii gorod, 55. 46. Ryndziunskii, Gorodskoe grazhdanstvo, 297. 47. TsDIAU, f. 442, op. 39, spr. 2, ark. 82. 48. Sushins’kyi, Balta, 175.

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Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern teaches early modern, modern and East European Jewish history and culture at Northwestern University, Illinois. He holds a PhD from Moscow University in comparative literature (1988) and a PhD from Brandeis University in modern Jewish history (2001). He has published numerous articles in Judaic studies and authored two books, Drafted into Modernity: Jews in the Russian Army, 1827–1917, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press and The Anti-imperial Choice: The Making and Unmaking of a Ukrainian Jew, forthcoming with Yale University Press. Downloaded by [University North Carolina - Chapel Hill] at 04:04 30 September 2014