Attitudes of 3 Russian Czars Towards the Jews

One thing that all Jews know about their history is that throughout it, they have been persecuted. This is no less true under the Czarist rule in Russia. What is different is to what extent Jews were limited by the laws and commands of the current ruling Czar of Russia. To examine this, three different famous Czars were chosen and researched. These Czars were Catherine the Great, Nicholas I and Alexander III. Each of these rulers made decisions which had an impact on daily Jewish life, the practice of Jewish religion and the Jews relationship with the government. In comparing these Czars, a pattern was found showing that each Czar seemed to build on the previous Czars limits and persecutions, albeit focusing on one part of Jewish life, consistently making life for Jews in Russia more and more difficult. Czars tried to limit all parts of Jewish life so that they would be punished for going against the church and taking good jobs from native Russians.

The earliest Czar that was compared was Czarina Catherine II, who ruled from 1762 to 1796. Compared to other Czars, she was very fair, as she leaned to theories of enlightenment. Unfortunately, due to here foreign origins , she depended on the support of nobility and had to consider the desires of the church and magnates to keep her rule. Commercially, she appreciated what the Jews did as moneylenders and unofficially admitted Jewish merchants and men of wealth into Riga and St. Petersburg. After parts of Belorussia came under Russian rule with the first partition of Poland, Catherine said “Jewish communities residing in cities and territories now incorporated in the Russian Empire shall be left to the enjoyment of all those liberties with regard to their religion and property which they at present possess” . By 1783, Jews were admitted to the mercantile estate and even allowed to participate in municipal government. Jews were even free to personally oversee the directives of the Russian state in Jewish communities. However, not all was good for the Jews under Catherine the Great’s rule. In 1791, Catherine gave way to pressure from the merchants in the government of Russia and prohibited admission of Jews to the mercantile estate in the governments of inner Russia (this laid foundation for “Pale of Settlement” ). Jewish communities also had to pay almost twice as many taxes as Christians and implement the directives of the state in the Jewish sphere. Still, life under Catherine’s rule was still nowhere nearly as bad as life under Nicholas I.

Czar Nicholas I, who ruled from 1825 to 1855, sought to eliminate all national and religious minorities in the Russian empire, most notably the Jews. He believed that Jews must be separated so that they could be assimilated into the people of Russia. Some of Nicholas’s methods for this were to forcefully conscript young Jewish children

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