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restrictions, which, when considered in the context of general laws, contain many contradictions
and beget bewilderment.” In response, His Majesty ordered “a revision of all existing statutes on
Jews to harmonize them with the general strategy directed toward integration of this people with
the native inhabitants, to the extent afforded by the moral condition of Jews”; that is, “the
fanaticism and economic harmfulness ascribed to them.”
No, not for nothing had Herzen struggled with his Kolokol, or Belinsky and Granovsky,
or Gogol! (For although not having such goals, the latter acted in the same direction as the
former three did.) Under the shell of the austere reign of Nicholas I, the demand for decisive
reforms and the will for them and the people to implement them were building up, and,
astonishingly, new projects were taken by the educated high governmental dignitaries more
enthusiastically than by the educated public in general. And this immediately impacted the
Jewish Question. Time after time, the ministers of Internal Affairs (first Lanskoi and then
Valuev) and the Governors General of the Western and Southwestern Krais [administrative
divisions of Czarist Russia] shared their suggestions with His Majesty who was quite interested
in them. Partial improvements in the legal situation of the Jews were enacted by the government
on its own initiative, yet under direct supervision by His Majesty. These changes went along
with the general liberating reforms which affected Jews as well as the rest of population.
In 1858, Novorossiysk Governor General Stroganov suggested immediate, instant, and
complete equalization of the Jews in all rights — but the Committee, now under the
chairmanship of Bludov, stopped short, finding itself unprepared for such a measure. In 1859 it
pointed out, for comparison, that “while the Western-European Jews began sending their
children to public schools at the first invitation of the government, more or less turning
themselves to useful occupations, the Russian government has to wrestle with Jewish prejudices
and fanaticism.” Therefore, “making Jews equal in rights with the native inhabitants cannot
happen in any other way than a gradual change, following the spread of true enlightenment
among them, changes in their inner life, and turning their activity toward useful occupations.”
The Committee also developed arguments against equal rights. It suggested that the question
being considered was not so much a Jewish question, as it was a Russian one; that it would be
precipitous to grant equal rights to Jews before raising the educational and cultural level of
Russian population whose dark masses would not be able to defend themselves in the face of the
economic pressure of Jewish solidarity; that the Jews hardly aspire toward integration with the
rest of the citizens of the country; that they strive toward achieving all civil
rights while retaining
their isolation and cohesion which Russians do not possess among themselves.
However, these voices did not attain influence. One after another, restrictions had been
removed. In 1859 the Prohibition of 1835 was removed: it had forbidden the Jews to take a lease
or manage populated landowner’s lands. And thus, the right
to rule over the peasants, though that
prohibition was in some cases secretly violated. Although after 1861 lands remaining in the
property of landowners were not formally populated. The new changes were aimed to make it
easier for landowners to turn for help to Jews if necessary in case of deterioration in the manorial
economy, but also in order to somewhat widen the restricted field of economic activity of the
Jews. Now the Jews could lease these lands and settle on them though they could not buy them.
Meanwhile in the Southwestern Krai capital that could be turned to the purchase of land was
concentrated in the hands of some Jews, yet the Jews refused to credit landowners against
security of the estate because estates could not be purchased by Jews.
Soon afterwards Jews were
granted the right to buy land from landowners inside the Pale of Settlement.