Preface

Between the years of 1771-1791, three successive partitions of the Kingdom of Poland between the Russian, Prussian and Austrian Empires nearly doubled the size of the Russian Empire. This Polish territory was home to nearly a million Jews. Previously, Russia had attempted to expel whatever Jews lived within its borders; but the massive population of Jews that came with the Polish territory was too large to simply expel. Russian policy towards its Jewish population varied for the next half-century, but when Nicholas I ascended the Russian throne in 1823, things changed for the worse. The general trend of "Enlightened Reform" of Alexander I's government took a turn towards the militaristic and reactionary. Nicholas' rule was particularly despotic. Stanislawski (1983) stresses that it was not only the Jews that felt the burden of his strict, repressive regime.

(Fig. 1) A typical portrait of Nicholas I. He is posed in a military setting.

The Russian Jewish experience of the 19th century is marked by many assimilationist measures, but one particular ordeal stands out in the table of contents of most history books as well as the Yiddish folk-song of the day. Soon after he came to power (1827), Nicholas issued an order that a percentage of Jewish boys and men be drafted into the Russian army. Previously, Jews had not been admitted into the army due to doubts about their strength and loyalty.

In other European countries the entrance of Jews into military service usually marked an era of emancipation and represented proof that a Jew could be a loyal and productive citizen. This was not the case for Russia. The draft was imposed by force, and against the will of the Jewish population. The army was dreaded. Jewish families did their best to keep their boys from the khappers &endash;Jewish men hired by the government to snatch Jewish boys out of their homes and send them off to the military preparation schools known as the cantonist battalions. Young men over the age of 18 were drafted away from their homes and families for 25 years of service. Boys as young as ten were kidnapped and taken to the Cantonist Battalions. The brutality of this policy was extreme: many young boys died on their long marches; many families never saw their sons and husbands after they were drafted. Between the years of 1827 and 1854, approximately 70,000 Jewish men were conscripted, 50,000 of which were minors and sent first to the cantonist battalions (Stanislawski 1983: 25).

According to Stanislawski, the primary intent of this policy was the conversion of as many of the soldiers and cantonist children as possible from Judaism to Russian Orthodoxy. Though the "religious freedom" of the soldiers was written into the law, it was clear that the main purpose of the policy was conversion.1 This excerpt from Nicholas' private writing should be convincing:

"the chief benefit to be derived from the drafting of Jews is the certainly that it will move them most effectively to change their religion" (Baron 1964: 35).

Thesis

Why should such a policy come into existence? What was it a response to? Why would Nicholas (and others) specifically aim to convert?

The conscription/conversion policy of Nicholas I represents one of many "solutions" or "answers" to Russia's "Jewish Question." Imperial Russia was, to differing degrees, a state with an official religion; Russian Orthodoxy formed a significant component of its national identity.2 As non-Christians, Jews were perceived as a threat to Russia's "spiritual integrity." Jews presented Russia with a cultural anomaly- for the most part they dressed, talked and lived differently from Russians. As a merchant class &endash;and thus not tied to the land as peasants were&endash; Jews seemed to be a threat to Russia's economic security. Their local independent government structures, the kahals seemed to defy the power of the Tsar and nobility. Thus the "Jewish Question" is not a singular question; it points to the "problem" of the existence of a group of people who do not look, speak or think "Russian" within the boundaries of Russia.

Different Russian rulers answered the Jewish Question with different policies. The experience of any subject to the throne, Jew or Gentile, depended greatly on the particular personality of the Tsar, some being more brutal than others. Solutions ranged from the expulsion or murder of all Jews refusing to convert to encouraging Jewish kids to go to secular schools. Though forced conversion via the military was a policy &endash;an "answer" to the Jewish Question&endash; specific to the particular personality of Nicholas I, the notions and fears of Jews, Judaism and "Jewishness" and the ideas of "Russia" and "Russian" that it arose in response to were wide-spread and are rooted in history. By tracing these ideas back through Russian history, as well as examining how they surfaced at later times, I will place the conscription/conversion policy within a matrix of ideas which seek to explain the motivations behind it, putting it in a theoretical, as well as historical context.

Various historians have noted that Russia's encounter with such a large population of Jews was like "culture shock"; that in Jews, Russians faced "the new, the strange, the bizarre" (Klier 1986: 62). These words sound alarms for an anthropologist. They appear on the page as the tips of icebergs; small traces of a complex network of ideas and ideologies; they ask for deep inquiry. Contemporary anthropology aims not only to understand groups of people we perceive as "new," "strange," and "bizarre" &endash;"the Other"&endash; but more importantly, it aims to understand how and why we construct our ideas of the Other; to understand all the ways by which in creating and looking at the Other, we define ourselves.

(Fig. 2) In 19th Century Russia, the image of the Jewish man represented "the new, the strange, the bizarre." How did these ideas inform Nicholas' policy? How did they work in the formation of a "Russian" identity?

I aim to understand how and why Russians constructed their ideas of Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness as Other, and to show that these ideas were a significant part of the motivations and rationale of the conscription /conversion policy.

Methodology

I have made my way through various source materials, none of them in the original Russian and all but a few segments have been secondary sources. I have, however, been able to delineate a few trends in Russian thought. I will divide the paper into sections by idea, rather than by source. For example, Dyerzhavin's Opinion of 1800 will appear at various points in the paper, since his report exemplifies more than one trend in the representation of Jews and Judaism.

Much of my source material comes from years after Nicholas instated the conscription laws, some from as late as 1870, during the reform era. But this material is valuable for a number of reasons. When Tsar Alexander II came to power (1855), Russia experienced a re-liberalization of the press, opening up new avenues for expression. While Enlightenment logic became popular among intellectuals, their old traditions of Judeophobia survived. In the reform era, these ideas resurfaced in the guise of secular, rational writing (Klier 1995: 143). Thus, many ideas that were latent at the time of Nicholas came to the surface in the Russian press in later years. By looking at the circulation of ideas in the press at this period, we can better understand the collective ideas of the time of Nicholas I. John Doyle Klier's book, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question: 1855-1881 (1995) has been invaluable for this source material. As he explains in his introduction,

"For the century after 1825, it is virtually impossible to find attitudes toward the Jews among Russian officials or the educated public that do not have antecedents" [in the partition period] (Klier 1986: 4).

I will not try to trace every single trend or pattern in Russian thought concerning the Jews, that would obviously be impossible. Instead I will look at the ideas which I believe translated into the conscription/conversion policy. Michael Stanislawski frames his book, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews (1983) with the idea that policies towards the Jews were determined by "anti-Jewish animus in the minds of all Russians" (Stanislawski 1983: 4). Prefacing his book on the emergence of the Jewish Question in Russia, Klier explains that "religiously motivated anti-Jewish sentiments were the decisive element in Russia's Jewish policies." He credits Stanislawski for explaining how "theoretical formulations of earlier reigns found practical application under Nicholas I" (Klier 1986: xv).

Both historians agree that the ideas about Jews which were alive at the time of Nicholas I have their deepest roots in theologically based anti-Judaism &endash;a subject I will explore more deeply later on. For now it is important to clarify that the ideas that existed at the time concerning Jews were not necessarily rational, or based on reality, however they did shape and affect the very real and seemingly rational policies of Russia's government.

The Question of Russian Identity

The Jewish Question emerged in Russia at a time when the definition of "Russian" was unclear. Andrzej Walicki, intellectual historian of Russia, has identified the 19th century as a period in which Russia was like a problem to be solved. While western Europe was clearly on the track of modernism and Enlightenment thought, Russia was significantly behind in the process of modernization. Where was Russia going? How did Russia's culture and heritage fit in with modernization? The debate is best exemplified by the Slavophile/Westernist debate of the second half of the century.

At various points throughout Russian history "Westernism" gained popularity among the intellectual and governing elite. In 1703, Peter the Great built the new capital of St. Petersburg to rival Versailles in architectural splendor. In 1715 the "Academy of Sciences" was modeled after the Academy of Berlin (Conte 1994: 70). French language was used in the court of Elizabeth (1742-1761); Enlightenment jargon was fashionable with Catherine II (1762-1796), and later with Alexander I (1801-1825).3 Intellectuals of the second half of the 19th century believed Russia ought to use western European countries as a model for their own social and political progress. The Slavophile movement emerged in response to these trends. The Slavophiles were educated Russians who advocated a return to "truly Christian" and "Slavic" principles. They were nostalgic for the days before Western thought had "leaked into" Russia. Russian Rationalists and Westernists were perceived as "uprooted...lost" (Walicki 1977: 7-8).

The Slavophile movement is significant to this study not because it directly affected Nicholas I's thinking; in fact historians date the movement as beginning after his reign. However, Slavophile writers such as Ivan S. Aksakov based much of their work on the same Judeophobic assumptions and ideologies which existed at the time of Nicholas I and before. Slavophilism represented an active return to ideologies from Russia's past; it is nostalgic for the years before Jews inhabited Russian land in any significant numbers. It excludes from "Russia" Jews, and anyone else who does not fit the constructed concept of Russia as a "spiritually pure" (Christian) nation. Klier gives a summary of Aksakov's concept of Russia:

"Russia was a Christian country, and Christian teachings were the starting point for the moral and spiritual life of the nation. The produced a distinctive civil and social life and shaped education, science, law and social relations" (Klier 1995: 127).

Aksakov's attachment to the idea of a pure "Russian nation" mirrors Benedict Anderson's model of nationalist thought. In his book, Imagined Communities, Anderson traces the process by which a "nation" is first "imagined" and then "once imagined, modeled, adapted, and transformed" (Anderson 1983: 129). What is most significant here is that in Anderson's model, the "nation" exists first as an imaginary entity. Political and social realities are molded to fit the idea of the "nation." Anderson asks how and why people become so attached to the national idea.

Aksakov and others seem to envision a "Russia" which is inherently Christian, which has been so since time immemorial. One of the things Anderson points to is the fact that nationalists read nationalism back into their own history before such concepts existed. "Russia" is referred to in history books when specifying the land where the modern nation now exists, but the Imperial Russia which unifies Moscow and Novgorod (and that which is the "guardian" of the Eastern Orthodox Church) did not exist until the late 15th century; Kiev was acquired during the partition period (1770s-1790s). To exclude Jews from Russia on the grounds that they never were a part of "Russia" is to imagine them out of an imaginary entity.

By the same token, Anderson argues, people can be imagined into a nation, provided they are transformed in one way or another to fit the national mold. He cites the example of the Quechua Indians of colonial Peru, who became "Peruvian" only upon baptism (Anderson 1983: 133). I argue that it was necessary to convert the Jews out of Judaism in order to imagine them into "Russia."

Russification

At the partitions of Poland in the last quarter of the 18th century Russia not only acquired the mass of Jews but also a mass of Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Lithuanians. This created a problem for those who believed that Russia ought to be a strictly "Russian" place. Linguistic and cultural diversity was rarely preferred over homogeneity by Russia's rulers. Thus, there is a long history of policies of "Russification." This term is generally defined as any policy under which people are forcibly made to take on Russian culture, language or political structure. At various points in its history, Russia had absorbed various non-Russian speaking peoples, many of which voluntarily or gradually assimilated. In medieval times, nomadic Finnic speaking peoples settled in parts of Russia, and in the modern period groups of Tatars, Belorussians and Ukrainians became assimilated.

The partition period marks the beginning of legal, or forced Russification. Beginning in the mid 1770's policies were instituted in the newly acquired territories of Belorussia, Lithuania and Poland which required that Russian be taught in schools for local nobility and that it be the language of public administration. Uniform Russian laws and institutions began to be exported to these territories, replacing older native educational and political institutions. Russian landowners replaced Polish landowners. This type of Policy continued under Nicholas I: In Belorussia and in the Baltics, schools were set up for children of peasants in which the language of instruction was Russian. Non-Russian Orthodox priests and monks were ordered to return to Russian orthodoxy under the threat of arrest or confinement. Soldiers were sent to villages to monitor peasant resistance to their local clergy's reunion with the Orthodoxy. In later years, Russia dealt with the Muslim inhabitants of its territory in Caucasus, Siberia and Central Asia in the same way. In 1864 a school was founded in which the teachers were trained to "inculcate Russian religious and national ideas in the minds of children" (Thaden, 1980: 209).

GO TO SYMBOLIC SYSYTEMS: CATEGORIZATION & ANOMALY