HISTORY OF THE JEWSIN RUSSIA AND POLAND

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMESUNTIL THE PRESENT DAY

BYS.M. DUBNOW

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIANBYI. FRIEDLAENDER

VOLUME II

FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I. UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III.(1825-1894)

PHILADELPHIATHE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA5706—1946

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

It was originally proposed to give the history of RussianJewry after 1825—the year with which the first volume concludes—in asingle volume. This, however, would have resulted in producing a volumeof unwieldy dimensions, entirely out of proportion to the one precedingit. It has, therefore, become imperative to divide Dubnow's work intothree, instead of into two, volumes. The second volume, which isherewith offered to the public, treats of the history of Russian Jewryfrom the death of Alexander I. (1825) until the death of Alexander III.(1894). The third and concluding volume will deal with the reign ofNicholas II., the last of the Romanovs, and will also contain thebibliographical apparatus, the maps, the index, and other supplementarymaterial. This division will undoubtedly recommend itself to the reader.The next volume is partly in type, and will follow as soon ascircumstances permit.

Of the three reigns described in the present volume, that of AlexanderIII., though by far the briefest, is treated at considerably greaterlength than the others. The reason for it is not far to seek. The eventswhich occurred during the fourteen years of his reign laid theirindelible impress upon Russian Jewry, and they have had a determininginfluence upon the growth and development of American Israel. Theaccount of Alexander III.'s reign is introduced in the Russian originalby a general characterization of the anti-Jewish policies of RussianTzardom. Owing to the rearrangement of the material, to which referencewas made in the preface to the first volume, this introduction, whichwould have interrupted the flow of the narrative, had to be omitted. Buta few passages from it, written in the characteristic style of Mr.Dubnow, may find a place here:

Russian Tzardom began its consistent role as a persecutor of the Eternal People when it received, by way of bequest, the vast Jewish population of disintegrated Poland. At the end of the eighteenth century, when Western Europe had just begun the emancipation of the Jews, the latter were subjected in the East of Europe to every possible medieval experiment…. The reign of Alexander II., who slightly relieved the civil disfranchisement of the Jews by permitting certain categories among them to live outside the Pale and by a few other measures, forms a brief interlude in the Russian policy of oppression. His tragic death in 1881 marks the beginning of a new terrible reaction which has superimposed the system of wholesale street pogroms upon the policy of disfranchisement, and has again thrown millions of Jews into the dismal abyss of medievalism.

Russia created a lurid antithesis to Jewish emancipation at a time when the latter was consummated not only in Western Europe, but also in the semi-civilized Balkan States…. True, the rise of Russ

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