According to tradition, there were Jews in what is now Russia and the Ukraine as early as the time of the Biblical King Solomon. The first records don't show them in the Crimea until the fourth century CE, and there seem to have been synagogues before there were churches. However they were not in significant numbers until much later. When Jews were expelled from the rest of Europe (for example from England and then from Spain in 1492), many settled in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland and in the area around Kiev in the Ukraine. The latter is the region depicted in the Tevye stories (1894-1914) and Fiddler on the Roof (1905). There they were restricted but not really persecuted. In the region of Moscow there were very few Jews and these few were tolerated for their education and skills. Under Ivan the Terrible and later Tsars anti-Semitism grew.

In 1772, Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria and a large area with many Jews became part of Russia. In 1791, Catherine the Great established the Pale of Settlement to which most Russian Jews were restricted. This was a roughly rectangular area stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Most Jews were forbidden to live in the villages or towns of less than ten thousand people. Instead they were concentrated in the small cities or shtetls. Exceptions were made for some very rich Jews and professionals.

In 1809, all Jews were ordered to adopt fixed family names which could be passed down from generation to generation aso that government record keeping about them would be easier. Until 1827 Jews were exempted from army service, but then a change was made so that they could be conscripted and forced to serve for twenty-five years.

When Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, Jews were wrongly blamed and there was an outbreak of pogroms with the tacit, if not actual, approval of the government officials. In 1882, the May Laws placed quotas on Jews in education: ten percent of the population in the Pale and less elsewhere. In spite of this, The Jews were among the most literate people in Russia; sixty-five percent of Jewish males were literate compare to thirty-nine percent in the general population.

There were exceptions, but about 90% of Russian Jews were forced to live in the Pale. They were not allowed to participate in local elections or serve in town government. These laws also prevented them from becoming professionals such as doctors or lawyers. However, most Jews could be conscripted into the army for twenty-five years!

Under Tsar Nicolas II, anti-Semitic propaganda led to more pogroms, especially those of 1903 and 1905, probably with the support of the secret police. Emigration was encouraged even to the extent of establishing agricultural settlements for them in Israel. Not surprisingly, many Jews (like Perchik in Fiddler) joined the Bolshevik party, but most of these were "New Jews" who knew no Yiddish, not the "Old Jews" like Tevye. Many of them were atheists and, alienated from other Jews and not accepted by Russians, they found a home with the Bolsheviks. After the overthrow of the Tsars in 1917, the Pale of Settlement was abolished. Under Lenin, Jews, including Leon Trotsky, actually were a plurality in the new Communist Party. When Trotsky was asked if he were a Russian or a Jew he replied, "I am neither, I am a social democrat, an internationalist'. On July 10 1918 the Soviet government abolished all discrimination against Jews.

During all of this time, many Jews had emigrated, mostly to Israel and America, but many to Poland as Tzeitel and Chavka did in Fiddler. After 1905 Jews had been threatened with an ultimatum to convert to Christianity or be expelled. This was never enforced, but it did encouraged emigration. Those that left were soon replaced by the high birthrate among those who remained so that, In 1914, almost half of the Jews in the world still lived in Russia. Today, most of the Jews in Russia, as in the United States, are secular and very unlike the Orthodox Jews of Tevye's time. Now that they have a choice, Jews are particularly engaged in fields such as medicine, law and education, the areas which had previously been forbidden to them.

Pogroms
'Pogrom' is a Russian word which describes a riot which works havoc against any particular ethnic, religious or societal group, but it is used primary for such a riot against Jews throughout history. Early examples include attacks on Jews by the Crusaders as they marched across Europe on their way to Jerusalem. The term itself began to be used in nineteenth century Russia to describe the first such actions against the Jews around Odessa.

Other pogroms followed after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 which was wrongly blamed on the Jews by his successor, Alexander III. Jews were assaulted and injured in 166 towns in what is now the Ukraine, and two Jews and nineteen of the attackers died. More violent pogroms broke out in 1903-1906; these killed about 2,000 Jews. Many more of the attackers of various nations died as the Jews defended themselves. In such riot, the mob was led by a priest; in all about forty-eight died and five hundred were injured as local police stood by. (The Jews soon learned that most Russian police could be bribed.) These pogroms are the ones mentions by Sholem Aleichem and pictured in Fiddler.

Historians argue about whether most of the pogroms were spontaneous or whether they were instigated by authorities. Whichever is the case they probably occurred because Russian authorities blamed the Jews for all unfortunate events. One of the reasons given for the segregation of Jews in the shtetls and out of the villages was to protect the peasants from being exploited by them!

During the 1917 revolution there were again many pogroms. This time 250,000 Jews were killed. As a result there was a new wave of emigration, and Jews who stayed home tended, as before, to join with the Bolsheviks and the Communists. Pogroms soon spread outside of Russia and the Nazis encouraged them before they started their own mass killings. They continue today both inside and outside Russia, usually not against Jews, but against other ethnic minorities.

As oppressive as the sporadic pogroms were, they were mild in comparison with the officially instituted Holocaust. About 2,000 Russians died in the pogroms of 1905 (the year in which Fiddler is set) compared to the over two million who were killed during the Holocaust.

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Revised February 2011
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