"Show the Highest Condition to Emigrate": Exodus of Jews from the Russian Empire

Page 1 Historical Quarterly Yearbook CXXVII, 2020, 3 PL ISSN 0023-5903 WOJCIECH KONOŃCZUK https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7100-9745 Center for Eastern Studies, Warsaw "SHOW THE HIGHEST CONDITION TO EMIGRATE": EXODUS OF JEWS FROM THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. MICROHISTORY OF SELECTED DETTLES IN PODLASIA Abstract: In 1881–1914 from the Empire Russia, 2 million Jews emigrated, of which 78 percent. settled in the States United. The article focuses on local dimension of the great migration. As a student case study, two places were selected most of them in Podlasie (Bielsk and Orla) inhabited by Jews. An attempt was made estimating the level of Jewish migration and to show her anatomy, including the issue related to obtaining a passport, legally crossing the border and authorities for the exodus of Jews. Keywords: emigration, Jews, Impe- Russian rium, Podlasie, Grodno province ska. Abstract: In 1881–1914, two million Jews emigrated from the Russian Empire, with 78 per cent of them settling in the United States of America. The article focuses on the local dimension of the great migration. Two towns in Podlasie (Bielsk and Orle), mostly inhabited by Jews, serve as the case study. An attempt is made to estimate the size of the Jewish migration and to reveal its anatomy, including questions related to getting passports, illegal border crossing, and the attitude of the authorities to the Jewish exodus. Keywords: emigration, Jews, Russian Empire, Podlasie, Grodno Gubernia. Migration is one of the most important formative chapters in history the Jewish people. It is of particular importance in recent history the period between 1881 and 1914 when from Central and Eastern Europe 3 million Jews emigrated, including 2 million from the lands of the Russian Empire. Russia was then the country with the largest number of Jews in the world, estimated at 4 million people in 1880. and 5.2 million people in 1897, http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/KH.2020.127.3.05 Page 2 600 Wojciech Konończuk which means that half of all Jews lived there. Almost 80% Jewish migrants from Russia left for the United States people who were perceived by those seeking better living conditions gane almost like "the promised land." Only in the years 1881–1914 to the Rican ports arrived 22 million migrants, including 2.05 million Jews (9.4%), of which three out of four were from Russia (1.56 million) 1 . In the same period, nearly half a million Jewish migrants from there country went to the countries of Western Europe, South America and Palestine. The end of the great migration brought the outbreak of World War I and after it Completed, it no longer reached a similar scale, mainly due to restrictions introduced by the United States. The period before 1914 it was therefore crucial for the formation of new diasporas in both countries Americas and Western Europe, which are now - next to Israel - the largest the largest centers of the Jewish population in the world. The migration of Jews from the Russian Empire remains one of the important research topics, although much more often undertaken by foreign historians 2 . In Poland, original works that constitute would make a significant contribution to the problem, there is still little 3 . Already more than two decades ago, this was pointed out by Piotr Wróbel, who wrote that "research on migration of the Jewish population, they seem neglected not only in Poland ” 4 . 1 S. Kuznets, Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States. Background and Structure , in: East European Jews in America 1880–1920. Immigration and Adaptation , edited by JS Gurock, New York – London 1998, pp. 38–42. Kuznets article, originally published in 1975. in Perspectives in America History, remains the most comprehensive statistical with a study of the topic of Jewish emigration from Russia. The author, born in Pinsk, was winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. 2 The classic of Jewish historiography was one of the first to deal with the topic of migration Szymon Dubnow in incl. History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. From the Earliest Times Until the Present Day , vol. 1-3, Philadeplhia 1916-1920. Later literature on the subject it is very extensive. The latest publications include: Y. Spitzer, Pogroms, Networks, and Migration. The Jewish Migration from the Russian Empire to the United States 1881–1914 , He- brew University of Jerusalem, 2016; HR Diner, Roads Taken. The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way , New Haven 2015; G. Alroey, An Un- promising Land. Jewish Migration to Palestine in the Early Twentieth Century , Stanford 2014. 3 More recent works include: A. Żukowski, Consequences of anti-Jewish policy in tsarist Russia. Emigration of Jews to South Africa at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries , "History Modern "27, 2014; M. Starczewski, From the history of economic emigration. Agents in exile on in the Polish lands before 1914 , PH 103, 2012, 1; GM Kowalski, Legal regulation of exits- in the Kingdom of Poland in the years 1815–1914 , CPH 55, 2003, 2; K. Zieliński, Jewish Emigration ska from Russia and the Kingdom of Poland to the United States of America (1881–1918). Outline issues, "Jewish History Quarterly" 2002, No. 1. 4 P. Wróbel, Migrations of Polish Jews. An attempt at synthesis , "Biuletyn ŻIH" 1998, 1-2, p. 3. Page 3 601 "They show the highest tendency to emigrate" While since then, foreign historiography has done a lot to shed new ones light on the issue of the great Jewish migration at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, among Polish historians, the subject still requires in-depth studies the dees. In recent years, port statistics have been made available America, which offers unprecedented opportunities to explore the scale migration in particular years, origin of migrants, their structure age, etc. The availability of archives in countries is also important Eastern Europe, which are still insufficiently used by Polish researchers. This article has several goals. First, showing the local dimension of the great emigration from the Russian Empire. She is known absolute number of Jewish migrants, but we have no data for individual cities and towns. In this text, using analysis of data from American ports and archives of compatriots, stored at YIVO in New York, an attempt was made to estimate the number of migrants from selected shtetls of Podlasie, then entering in the Grodno governorate. Second, the article examines the anatomy legal and illegal migrations (approx. 20-25% and 75-80, respectively percent departures), including issues related to obtaining documents travelers and their costs, travel to ports, ways of crossing border with Germany, through which most Jews left. Shown also the system of transferring emigrants across the "green border", operating on agents commissioned by large shipbuilding companies out. Thirdly, the policy of the Russian government towards the emissary grace that was forbidden under applicable law. For this purpose documents from the Russian State Archives were used Of St. Petersburg and the National Historical Archives Belarus in Grodno. The scale and directions of Jewish migration from Russia In 1854. he came to the port of New Orleans by cruise from Hamburg thirty-six-year-old Mosze Tannenbaum, an emigrant from Bielsko 5 , a district town in the Grodno governorate, with approx. 3 thousand inhabitants 6 . It was probably the first time that 5 Since 1919, the city has been officially called Bielsk Podlaski, it was previously used first segment. 6 New Orleans Passenger Lists, 1813–1963 , data from Ancestry.com based on Selected Passenger and Crew Lists and Manifests , National Archives, Washington, DC Page 4 602 Wojciech Konończuk a resident of this Podlasie shtetl went on a journey through the tick It is not known what this artist was, because such a profession was included in his migration form, he was looking for the third largest city at that time the Americans, or whether he settled there permanently. But he belonged to a very small group of inhabitants of the Russian Empire who at that time she decided to travel so far. In the years 1850–1859 only 542 citizens came to the United States Russian 7 . The number of Jews in the United States was still relatively low big, but it started to grow and in 1880 was about 250 thousand. people, incl about 40 thousand are migrants from the lands that used to be part of the spolitej 8 . About half of them were Russian citizens, of whom about 15 thousand arrived in the years 1871–1880. It was, however, a prelude mass migration 9 . The real exodus began only in the 1880s. and with varying intensity it lasted until 1914. In 34 years with the Russian Empire- 2 million Jews emigrated, of which 1.56 million (78%) settled itself, as we mentioned in the introduction, in the United States, incl as many as one million in the years 1903–1914 10 . If we assume that in the years 1881–1914 3.2 million people emigrated from the lands of the Russian Empire, which is a percentage Among all emigrants, the number of Jews amounted to 61.7%, and as much as 48.5%. citizens of Russia who settled in the United States at that time were followers of the Mosaic religion. In the course of the last In the two decades of the 19th century, their participation in Russian migration to the USA reached 71 percent, which shows that there is readiness among the Jewish population to emigrate, it developed the earliest. Although the tsarist administration wrote about the Jews that "they were leaving whole families and show the highest propensity to emigrate ”, this is massive the departures were not only a Jewish phenomenon 11 .

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