Everything about The Pale Of Settlement totally explained
The
Pale of Settlement (
cherta osedlosti) was the term given to a region of
Imperial Russia, along its western border, in which permanent residence of
Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish residence was generally prohibited. It extended from the
pale or demarcation line to near the border with central
Europe.
Though comprising only 20% of the territory of European Russia, the Pale corresponded to historical borders of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and included much of present-day
Lithuania,
Belarus,
Poland,
Moldova,
Ukraine, and parts of western
Russia. Additionally, a number of cities within the pale were excluded from it. 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 phrase "beyond the pale" derives from this meaning, referring originally to the
English Pale in Ireland.
History
For more information about life in the Pale, see: History of the Jews in Poland and History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
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 reasons for its creation were primarily economic and nationalist. While Russian society had traditionally 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 didn't belong to any sector. By limiting their area of residence, the imperial powers attempted to ensure the growth of a non-Jewish middle class.
The institution of the Pale became especially important to the Russian authorities following the
Second Partition of Poland in 1793. While Russia's Jewish population had, until then, been rather limited, the annexation of Polish-Lithuanian territory increased the Jewish population substantially. At its heyday, the Pale, which included the new Polish and Lithuanian territories, had a Jewish population of over 5 million, which represented the largest concentration (40 percent) of world Jewry at that time.
Between 1791 and 1917, when the Pale officially ceased to exist, there were various reconfigurations of its boundaries, so that certain areas were open or shut to Jewish settlement, such as the
Caucasus. Similarly, Jews were forbidden to live in agricultural communities (as well as in
Kiev,
Sevastopol and
Yalta), and forced to move to small provincial towns, fostering the rise of the
shtetls (from
Yiddish שטעטל
shtetl "little town/little city", from שטאָט
shtot "town/city"; cf.
Standard German Stadt "town/city",
Städtchen/Städtlein "little city/little town",
dialectal German Städtl/Städtel
"little town/city"). 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.
During the
Second World War, the whole area of the former Pale found itself within the furthest extent of
Nazi German control on the
Eastern front, resulting in many mass killing sites by the
Einsatzgruppen in one of the Nazis' largest planned systematic operation of Jewish extermination, as part of the
Holocaust. This led to the virtual disappearance of Jewish life in the area of its once greatest concentration.
Life in the Pale
Life in the
shtetls (
Yiddish שטעטלעך
shtetlekh "townlets/little towns/little cities"; דאָרף
dorf "village", דערפֿער
derfer "villages") of the Pale of Settlement was hard and stricken by poverty. A sophisticated system of volunteer Jewish
social welfare organizations developed to meet the needs of the population, following the time-honored Jewish tradition of
tzedakah (charity). Various organizations supplied clothes to poor students, provided
kosher food to Jewish soldiers conscripted into the
Czar'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.
The concentration of Jews in the Pale made them an easy target for
pogroms and massive (and often government-sponsored), anti-Jewish riots. 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 tens of thousands of
rubles in property damage.
A positive 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").
The
Jewish quota existed for education: since 1886, the percentage of Jewish students could be no more than 10% within the Pale, 5% outside the Pale and 3% in the capitals (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev). The quotas in the capitals were slightly increased 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 (see
History of the Jews in the United States). However, this exodus didn't 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 (see
History of the Jews in Poland). The
Bolshevik Revolution and the wars of 1918-1920 also resulted in many pogroms and military excesses—over 1,236 of them in the Ukraine alone during which, conservatively, 31,000 Jews were killed (Abramson, Henry).
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:
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:
Chernigov guberniya
Novgorod-Seversk gubernia (later became Poltava guberniya)
1795
After the Third Partition of Poland, the following areas were added:
Vilna guberniya
Grodno guberniya
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
Chernigov guberniya (some parts of it are in Bryansk Oblast now)
Poltava guberniya
Tavrida guberniya (Crimea)
Kherson guberniya
Bessarabia guberniya
Velizh uyezd (now part of Smolensk Oblast)
Northwestern Krai (whole; Lithuania, Belarus)
Southwestern Krai (part; now in Ukraine)
Polish guberniyas (lands of Congress Poland)
- Warsaw guberniya (Варшавская губерния (Мазовецкая губерния 1837-1844))
- Lublin guberniya (Люблинская губерния)
- Plock guberniya (Плоцкая губерния)
- Kalisz guberniya (Калишская губерния)
- Piotrkow guberniya (Петроковская губерния)
- Kielce guberniya (Келецкая губерния (Краковская губерния 1837-1844))
- Radom guberniya (Радомская губерния)
- Siedlce guberniya (Седлецкая губерния (Подлясскаягуберния 1837-1844))
- Augustow губерния Августовская губерния 1837-1867), split into:
- Suwałki guberniya (Сувалкская губерния)
- Łomża guberniya (Ломжинская губерния)
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
YaltaFurther Information
Get more info on 'Pale Of Settlement'.
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