Pale of Settlement

Pale of Settlement was an 1890s English translation of the Russian (). The English pale, with the archaic meaning "a district or territory within determined bounds, or subject to a particular jurisdiction", dates back to the 1540s when it was used to describe things like the English jurisdiction of Ireland and of France. By extension, the Pale is also shorthand for the Pale of Settlement. In Yiddish it is referred to as the area of shtetl, or in Hebrew of moshav. ==History==

The Russian Empire did not rule over a significant Jewish population until the territory that would become the Pale first began to enter Imperial Russian hands in 1772 with the First Partition of Poland. At the time, most Jews (and in fact most imperial subjects) were restricted in their movements. The Pale came into being under the rule of Catherine the Great in 1791, initially as a measure to speed colonization of territory on the Black Sea recently acquired from the Ottoman Empire. Jews were allowed to expand the territory available to them, but in exchange, Jewish merchants could no longer do business in the Russian interior. The institution of the Pale became more significant following the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 because, until then, the empire's (former Muscovy's) Jewish population had been rather limited. The dramatic westward expansion of the Russian Empire through the annexation of Polish–Lithuanian territory substantially increased the Jewish population. At its height, the Pale had a Jewish population of over five million and represented the largest component (40 percent) of the world's Jewish population at that time. The freedom of movement of non-Jewish imperial subjects was greatly increased, but the freedom of movement of Jews was greatly restricted and officially kept within the boundaries of the pale. expanded the rights of rich and educated Jews to leave and live beyond the Pale, which led many Jews to believe that the Pale might soon be abolished. and in the aftermath anti-Jewish sentiment skyrocketed. Anti-Jewish pogroms rocked the country from 1881 through 1884. The reactionary Temporary regulations regarding the Jews of 1881 prohibited any new Jewish settlement outside of the Pale. The laws also granted peasants the right to demand the expulsion of Jews in their towns. The laws were anything but temporary, and would be in full effect until at least 1903. In 1910, Jewish members of the State Duma proposed the abolition of the Pale, but the power dynamic of Duma meant that the bill never had a realistic chance to pass. Far-right political elements in the Duma responded by proposing that all Jews be expelled from the Russian Empire. In some periods, special dispensations were given for Jews to live in the major imperial cities, but these were tenuous, and several thousand Jews were expelled to the Pale from Moscow as late as 1891. The extremely restrictive decrees and recurrent pogroms led to much emigration from the Pale, mainly to the United States and Western Europe. However, emigration could not keep up with birth rates and expulsion of Jews from other parts of the Russian Empire, and thus the Jewish population of the Pale continued to grow. The Pale formally came to an end soon after the abdication of Nicholas II, and as revolution gripped Russia. On March 20 (April 2 N.S.), 1917, the Pale was abolished by the Russian Provisional Government decree, On the abolition of religious and national restrictions. Subsequently, most of the Jewish population of the area would perish in the Holocaust one generation later. ==Jewish life in the Pale==

) in the Russian Empire according to 1897 census. The Pale of Settlement can be seen in the west, top left. '' (Jewish teacher) in 19th century Podolia Jewish life in the shtetls (, '', "little towns") of the Pale of Settlement was hard and poverty-stricken. Following the Jewish religious tradition of tzedakah'' (charity), a sophisticated system of volunteer Jewish social welfare organizations developed to meet the needs of the population. Various organizations supplied clothes to poor students, provided kosher food to Jewish soldiers conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, dispensed free medical treatment for the poor, offered dowries and household gifts to destitute brides, and arranged for technical education for orphans. According to historian Martin Gilbert's Atlas of Jewish History, no province in the Pale had less than 14% of Jews on relief; Lithuanian and Ukrainian Jews supported as much as 22% of their poor populations. The concentration of Jews in the Pale, coupled with Tsar Alexander III's "fierce hatred of the Jews", and the rumors that Jews had been involved in the assassination of his father, Alexander II, made them easy targets for pogroms and anti-Jewish riots by the majority population. These, along with the repressive May Laws, often devastated whole communities. Though attacks occurred throughout the existence of the Pale, particularly devastating Russian pogroms occurred from 1881 to 1883 and from 1903 to 1906, targeting hundreds of communities, assaulting thousands of Jews, and causing considerable property damage. Jews typically could not engage in agriculture due to restrictions on Jews owning land and farming in the Pale, and were thus predominantly merchants, artisans, and shopkeepers. This made poverty a serious issue among the Jews. However, a robust Jewish community welfare system arose; by the end of the 19th century nearly 1 in 3 Jews in the Pale were being supported by Jewish welfare organizations. In 1912–1914, S. An-sky led the Jewish Ethnographic Expedition to the Pale, which visited around 70 shtetls in Volhynia, Podolia, and Galicia, gathering folk stories and artifacts, recording music, and making photos, as an attempt to preserve and salvage traditional Ashkenazic culture that was vanishing because of modernization, pogroms, and emigration. ==Territories of the Pale==

The Pale of Settlement included the following areas. 1791 The ukase of Catherine the Great of December 23, 1791 limited the Pale to: • Western Krai: • Mogilev Governorate • Polotsk Governorate (later reorganized into Vitebsk Governorate) • Little Russia (Ukraine): • Kiev Governorate • Chernigov Governorate • Novgorod-Seversky Viceroyalty (later became Poltava Governorate) • Novorossiya Governorate • Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty • Taurida Oblast (Crimea) 1794 After the Second Partition of Poland, the ukase of June 23, 1794, the following areas were added: • Minsk Governorate • Mogilev Governorate • Polotsk Governorate • Kiev Governorate • Volhynian Governorate • Podolia Governorate 1795 After the Third Partition of Poland, the following areas were added: • Vilna Governorate • Grodno Governorate 1805–1835 After 1805 the Pale gradually shrank, and became limited to the following areas: • Lithuanian governorates • Southwestern Krai • Belarus without rural areas • Malorossiya (Little Russia or Ukraine) without rural areas • Chernigov Governorate • Novorossiya without Nikolaev and Sevastopol • Kiev Governorate without Kiev • Baltic governorates closed for arriving Jews Rural areas for from the western border were closed for new settlement of the Jews. After 1836 • Chernigov Governorate, Poltava Governorate, Taurida Governorate (Crimea), Kherson Governorate, Bessarabia Governorate, Velizh Governorate. • Northwest Territories (Lithuania and Belarus): Vilnius, Kaunas, Grodno, Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk governorates. • Southwestern Krai (Ukraine): Kiev, Volhynian Governorates. • Kingdom of Poland: Warsaw, Lublin, Płock, Kalisz, Piotrków, Kielce, Radom, Siedlce, Augustów gubernias (divided into Suwałki and Łomża in 1867). In 1917 Congress Poland did not belong to the Pale of Settlement but Jews were allowed to settle there. In 1882 it was forbidden for Jews to settle in rural areas. The following cities within the Pale were excluded from it: • Kiev • Nikolaev • Sevastopol • Yalta ==In popular culture==

• Fiddler on the Roof, which was later adapted into a film, was located in the Pale of 1905 in the fictional town of Anatevka, Ukraine. • Yentl, also adapted into a film, was located in the Pale of 1873 Poland. • Some novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer take place in the Pale. ==See also==