national bodies, the va’adim (the singular form is va’ad), which assessed taxes on communities, negotiated with the secular authorities, and attempted to set social standards. Although similar bodies were abolished in Poland in 1764, the Russian state allowed Jews to create them on a regional basis. These included provincial ka-hals, and the institution of Deputies of the Jewish People, which lasted until 1825. Seen as an obstacle to Jewish integration, the kahal system was technically abolished in 1844, but virtually all of its functions endured unchanged.
Within each community existed a wide variety of societies (hevrah, plural: hevrot) that oversaw an extensive range of devotional, educational, and charitable functions. The most important of these was the burial brotherhood, the hevrah kad-disha.
LEGAL STATUS
The defining characteristic of a Jew in Russian law was religious confession; a convert from Judaism to any other faith ceased legally to be a Jew. In other respects Russian law possessed numerous and contradictory provisions that applied only to Jews. In Russia’s social-estate based system, almost all Jews were classed as townspeople (meshchane) or merchants (kuptsy), and the general regulations for these groups applied to them, but with many exceptions. Confusingly, all Jews were also placed in the social category of aliens (inorodtsy), which included groups such as Siberian nomads, who were under the special protection of the state. A huge body of exceptional law existed for all aspects of Jewish life, including tax assessment, military recruitment, residence, and religious life. Jewish
emancipation in Russia would have had to encompass the removal of all such special legislation.
The guiding principles of Russia’s Jewish policy were not based on traditional Russian, Orthodox Christian anti-Semitism, nor was there ever a sustained and coordinated effort to convert all Jews to Russian Orthodoxy, with the exception of conversion-ary pressures on Russian army recruits. Russian policy was influenced by the Enlightenment-era critique of the Jews and Judaism that saw them as a persecuted minority, but also isolated and backward, economically unproductive, and religious fanatics prone to exploit their Christian neighbors. In 1881 Russian policy was broadly aimed at the acculturation and integration of the Jews into the broader society. The anti-Jewish riots (pogroms) of 1881 and 1882 led to a reversal of this policy, inspiring efforts to segregate Jews from non-Jews through residence restrictions (the May Laws of 1882) and restricted access to secondary and higher education. Much of Russian legislation towards the Jews after 1889 lacked a firm ideological basis, and was ad hoc, responding to the political concerns of the moment.
Following the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, Russian public opinion, fearful of Jewish exploitation of the peasantry, grew increasing critical of the Jews. These critical attitudes were characterized as Judeophobia. Originally based on concrete, albeit exaggerated, socioeconomic complaints (exploitation, intoxication of the peasantry), Russian Judeophobia acquired fantastic elements by the end of the century, exemplified by forgeries like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed to expose a Jewish plot bent on world domination. The presence of Jews in the revolutionary movement led the state to attribute political disloyalty to Jews in general. Right-wing political parties were invariably anti-Semitic, exemplified by their rallying cry, “Beat the Yids and Save Russia!”
Jews made significant contributions to all branches of the Russian revolutionary movement, including Populism, the Social Revolutionaries, and Marxist Social Democracy, which included a Jewish branch, the Bund, that concentrated on propaganda among the Jewish working class. Lev Pinsker, author of the 1882 pamphlet Auto- Emancipation!, and Ahad Ha’am were major ideologues of the early Zionist movement. East European Jews were the mainstay of Theodor Herzl’s movement of political Zionism. See also: BUND, JEWISH; JUDAIZERS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST PALE OF SETTLEMENT; POGROMS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aronson, I. Michael. (1990). Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Dubnow, S. M. (1916-1920). History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, 3 vols. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America. Frankel, Jonathan. (1981). Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Klier, John D. (1985). Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Klier, John D. (1995). Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1885-1881. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Klier, John D., and Lambroza, Shlomo, eds. (1991). Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mendelsohn, Ezra. (1970). Class Struggle in the Pale. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Miron, Dan. (1996). A Traveler Disguised: The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Nathans, Benjamin. (2002). Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rogger, Hans. (1986). Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia. London and New York: Macmillan. Stanislawski, Michael. (1983). Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. Tobias, Henry J. (1972). The Jewish Bund in Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Zipperstein, Steven J. (1986). The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
JOHN D. KLIER
(1620-1690), Ivan “Bolshoy” Petrovich Savelov (as a monk, Joakim) was consecrated Patriarch Joakim of Moscow and All Russia on July 26, 1674.
When Patriarch Joakim assumed the post, the Russian Church was experiencing increasing opposition. Joakim moved firmly but tactfully to rationalize the administrative structure of the church, to bolster patriarchal finances, and to bring the institution under his control. Joakim’s administrative reforms were complemented by efforts to revitalize the reform program begun at mid-century, which included both liturgical and spiritual reform. During Joakim’s tenure, liturgical reform continued, and sermons and other simple religious tracts were composed, printed, and distributed in increasing numbers. Joakim was also committed to a program of education, under the control of the church. Joakim’s ardent conviction that the church alone could define doctrine and should control education generated opposition. Individuals and groups, ranging from the original opponents of Patriarch Nikon and their followers to disparate dissenters who did not conform to new practices, vocally and sometimes violently opposed the liturgical and administrative changes effected by Patriarch Joakim and the church he led. When teaching, preaching, and persuasion failed to convince opponents, the state stepped in to persecute and repress. In the 1680s Joakim’s determination that a proposed academy of higher learning be under patriarchal control led to a clash with the monk Sylvester Medvedev and a faction that enjoyed the sympathy of the regent, Sophia Alexeyevna. This conflict ripened into a dispute about the Eucharist that drew in learned members of the clerical elite in Ukraine. The debate threatened plans to subordinate the Kievan see to the Moscow patriarchate. Quickly it degenerated into polemics. The palace coup of 1689 that brought Peter to the throne ended the dispute. Patriarch Joakim’s support of Peter assured his victory in this affair. Sylvester Medvedev was arrested, then, almost a year after Patriarch Joakim’s death, tried and executed. This was a crude political resolution to what had begun as a learned debate. As such, it undermined the legitimacy of the church in the eyes of the educated. Joakim died on March 17, 1690, shortly after the coup, leaving a testament that manifested profound anxiety for the future of both church and state.
Joakim has attracted little scholarly attention. Discussions that relate to his patriarchate focus on the increasing influence of Ukrainian churchmen in Moscow, the struggle over the opening of an academy in Moscow, the Eucharistic controversy of the late 1680s, and the subordination of the Kievan church to the Russian patriarch. Until recently, the dominant theme in this literature was the growing tension in Moscow as Old Muscovite culture confronted Ukrainian Culture and as supporters of a Greek direction for the Russian Church came into conflict with those favoring an allegedly Latin direction. Joakim traditionally was placed on the side of the conservative, Old Muscovite, Greek faction opposed to a progressive, Ukrainian, Latin faction. An emerging body of related scholarship questions this binary analysis, suggesting the need for a more complex approach to the period and the man. See also: MEDVEDEV, SYLVESTER AGAFONIKOVICH; NIKON, PATRIARCH; PATRIARCHATE; PETER I; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH; SOPHIA
