[Page 57]

For several hundred years, Vitebsk gubernia belonged to the Polish kingdom, where almost all of Ashkenazic Jewry was concentrated until the Partition of Poland. Ashkenazic Jewry actually signified and signifies even now the whole creative Jewish people.

With the fragmentation of the Polish kingdom began the tendency of Polish Jews to spread over the world. It was natural that the first migrations should be to neighboring countries–in large part Polish Jews crossed the borders of Romania, Hungary, Bukovina, and also somewhat into Germany, where, after the Thirty Years War, the cities were destroyed, businesses were ruined, and people facilitated the immigration of Jews from Poland.

The Polish Jews throughout the 18^th century suffered not only from poverty and lack of rights but also from attacks and pogroms by roving bands who killed Jews, from robbery and from fires. Their situation grew more desperate from year to year. Emigration to neighboring countries to the west could not respond either politically or economically to these questions, which became increasingly desperate as the Jewish and non-Jewish populations dramatically increased. The economic development of Poland could not in the slightest degree keep up with the increase in the population.

To the east lay the great Russian empire, which had in the 17th and especially in the 18^th century so greatly increased

[Page 58]

its territory on all sides–through victories over Sweden in the north, over Turkey in the south, and also in Asiatic areas. The Polish Jews were absorbed into Russia. Even before the First Partition of Poland (1772), Jews received the legal possibility to settle in southern Russia, in the Kherson and Yekaterinoslav gubernias. Catherine the Great, the adherent to the mercantile “Torah” of the West, to the strivings to develop industry and commerce in Russia, advised her generals who had occupied parts of Poland with Russian armies even before the Partition, to hang signs with assurances of equal rights for Jews. But until the Partition of Poland, there were no Jews in Russia, which was ruled by the policy of not allowing entrance into the sacred land of Russia by “the enemies of Christendom.” In a few Ukrainian gubernias of Russia–Chernigov and Poltava–there were a few hundred Jews who had special rights to trade in the markets. But they were always bedeviled by the legalities of rights of residence.

With the First Partition of Poland, the history of the Jews in Russia begins, and Vitebsk Gubernia (formerly Polotzk) was one of the White Russian regions that first came over to Russia after the First Partition.

Catherine promised Jews full rights. And the White Russian Jews, who were the first to enjoy the union with the great Russian Empire, which had greatly developed in economic terms in the second half of the 18^th century, tried to utilize their rights in the broadest way. Vitebsk Gubernia, which is geographically the closest to Greater Russia, consequently had the best perspective. But for better or worse–thanks to its proximity to Greater Russia, Vitebsk Gubernia, and especially its capital, had a greater attraction for Greater Russian merchants. Vitebsk and Vitebsk Gubernia lie on the road not only to Greater Russia but also to Lifland and Courland, and trade with these gubernias and through them to western European countries was very valuable to Greater Russian merchants.

In comparison to Western Europe, Greater Russia was a backward country. But in comparison with Poland, Greater Russia was then a well-developed country. Catherine the Great devoted much energy and attention to the development of industry and commerce. According to Tugan-Baranovsky, the number of factories in Greater Russia went from 984 at the time of Cathrine the Great's ascension

[Page 59]

to the throne to 3,161 at the time of her death. Greater Russia at the time of the Partition of Poland, at the time of the transfer of great numbers of Jews to this land already had a fine development of a Greater Russian merchant class as well as its own Great Russian industrial bourgeoisie.

This situation determined the fate of all Russian Jewry as well as that of the Jews in Vitebsk Gubernia for more than a hundred years. This fate comprised the following: On the one hand, high barriers were erected against the Jews on the borders of Greater Russia. In 1790 the Moscow merchants adopted a resolution expressing the danger of competition from the White Russian Jews who flooded Moscow and other Russian cities with chief goods and even aspired to buy homes. They demanded restrictions. Their resolution, in fact, led to the institution of the Pale of Settlement. Catherine the Great, who had given Jews all their rights at the First Partition of Poland, declared that she had in mind only the same gubernias where Jews had long lived in Poland, but not the places in Greater Russia. On the other hand, Jews were given the ability to develop commerce and industry in the Pale gubernias, even with the danger that they would compete with the Greater Russian elements in the aforenamed areas.

And so it was. In the gubernias that were geographically close to Greater Russia, like, for example, Vitebsk, there were in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries many Greater Russian merchants and traders. They were all expelled by Jews, as we will see later. The same process occurred in the new Russian gubernias (Yekaterinoslav and Kherson), where colonization by Greater Russian elements played a large role in the settlement of those gubernias in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries. But in their cities, the Jews competed with the Greater Russians.

This introduction was necessary so that we can better understand the development of the Jewish population in Vitebsk Gubernia–the development that already in the first years of union with Russia absorbed a great flow of Jews from other former Polish areas, because proximity to Greater Russia meant proximity to the distant Greater Russian market and to the harbors of Riga and Libov. These great hopes, however, were not fully justified, and Vitebsk's Jews had to seek relief in emigration and in work in other countries and in nearby gubernias.

[Page 60]

We know quite well that the generally accepted statistical data about the number of Jews in the whole gubernia and especially in the cities cannot pretend to absolute accuracy. There is no doubt that they give some idea in regard to the absolute number of Jews and non-Jews. But more important are the relative numbers, because only they will give us the possibility of estimating both their role in the surrounding population and the spread of the Jewish population. This spread in regard to various types of living places is also to some degree a picture of the division into various professions. If not always in regard to the professions themselves, because among Jews the division among professions in the village and in the city and in the shtetl in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was not always so great, it does give some idea of the size of the professions. So the village Jews were always more of the lower middle class, while in the cities there was a level of middle- and upperclassses even at the end of the 18^th century. Also in regard to the cultural situation, in the late 18^th century there was a greater division between village and shtetl Jews on the one hand and Jews from the larger cities on the other.

Dwelling Place Type	Jews # %		Non-Jews # %
Cities	3,098	20.3	12,040	2.1
Shtetls	1,844	12.1	5,254	0.9
Villages	10,304	67.6	546,744	97.0
Totals	15,246	100.0	564,038	100.0

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small merchants from whom the population bought those things that the peasants could not provide for themselves, such as salt, kerosene, an axe, a mattock, and the like. The Jew also bought from the peasant products from his workshop–more from the free peasant, less from the bound one. But the main professions involved the inns and the leases, since the merchant very often had an inn. Jewish craftsmen were a rare phenomenon in the villages.

Only a fifth of the Jewish population lived in the cities. But there is no doubt that the Jewish professions in the shtetls were not much different from those in the villages. The percentage of merchants and craftsmen was a little bigger, but only a little. Our information is that about 80 percent of the Jewish population of Vitebsk Gubernia were residents of places where inns were the greatest sources of income. Only a little more than a fifth of the Jews lived in the cities where there was already a Jewish craftsman.

One has to remember that Vittebsk Gubernia lay far from the Western European borders, where the Jewish population was more industrialized and had more business abroad. In the Polish gubernias, the percentage of village Jews was much smaller and the professions of the Jewish population were not so one-sided.

Of the Christian population, fully 97 percent lived in villages–again, far different from the purely Polish gubernias. Only two percent of the Christian population lived in the cities, ten times fewer than the Jews.

Let us now see the percentiles of Jews in different types of living areas (See Table 2, page 62).

One must remember well these numbers in order to evaluate the profound economic revolution that entered the life of Polish Jewry with the transfer to Russia.

This revolution is particularly illustrated by data regarding the population in the cities of Vitebsk Gubernia in the years 1772 and 1815. The increase in the Jewish population in the cities of the gubernia was also a result of persecutions of village Jews who were driven into the cities. The tragedy was terrible–poverty grew in the cities without measure. It would be

[Page 62]

Dwelling Place Type	# of Residents	Of Jews # %
Cities	15,138	3,098	20.4
Shtetls	7,098	1,844	26.3
Villages	557,048	10,304	1.9

We have data about the number of Jews in ten cities of the Vitebsk Gubernia in two periods: 1172 and 1815, the hardest and most trouble-laden 43 years; the years of the first stages of the transformation to a new world, to the greater Russian empire, which survived the first symptoms of the collapse of the feudal economy and the intensive rise of the capitalistic form of economy (see Table 3, page 63).

The whole city population tripled–and the Jews themselves about increased fivefold. The Christian population did not even double (from 9,812 in 1772 to 17,336 in 1815). The percentage of

[Page 63]

Cities	Total Inhabitants	Jews		Total Inhabitants	Jews
		#	%		#	%
Vitebsk	5,382	1,227	22.8	10,665	5,426	50.9
Polotzk	1,925	1,013	52.6	4,621	2,602	56.3
Dvinsk (Dinaburg)	435	136	31.3	2,774	1,559	56.2
Surazh	635	8	1.3	3,111	1,551	50.0
Velizh	2,291	22	1.0	5,427	1,481	27.3
Drisa	128	21	16.4	2,158	1,349	62.5
Lutzin	439	66	15.0	1,766	1,176	66.6
Rezhitza	93	-----	---	1,191	1,072	90.0
Horodok	646	391	60.5	1,750	992	56.7
Sebezh	835	113	13.5	1,729	648	37.5
Totals	12,809	2,997	23.4	35,192	17,856	50.7

For the following years we do not have such detailed numbers about the general population and about the number of Jews in different types of locales. We will confine ourselves to the general information that is available and that shows one thing that is very important–the intensive growth of the general and of the Jewish population. First, the census of 1897 provides a clear picture about all aspects of the general and Jewish population, but we will come to this material later.

According to Gessen (Yuli Gessen, “The History of the Jewish people in Russia,” Leningrad, 1925, vol. 2, p. 102), in 1838 there were in Vitebsk Gubernia:

The whole population–717,000; of them, 47,000 Jews, that is 6.5%. Gessen notes: “One can surely doubt

[Page 64]

the correctness of the numbers, but they give a general idea. I have rounded off the numbers.”

We have felt it necessary to note this remark, which can be applied to all the data from the nineteenth century until the census of 1897. But it is important to remember that “they give a general idea.” And truly important is the conclusion: first, that the Jewish population had without doubt greatly increased–from a little more than 15,000 in 1772 to 47,000 in 1838. That is, it more than tripled. Second, that the Jewish population had increased more than the non-Jewish population, because it went from 2.6% in 1772 to more than 6%. The numbers are not exact, but the general picture shows that the Jewish population grew greatly and grew more greatly than the non-Jewish population–there can be no doubt about this. We hesitate to say that the population, its size and its gender- and age-structure, was the basis of its economy.

Let us now try to give a general picture of the economic development of the Jewish population in the first half of the nineteenth century. The material is, unfortunately, scanty, but in the absence of other sources–we will also in this regard have to be happy giving a general picture. We will be able to breathe easier when we come to the general Russian census of 1897, even though those numbers are defective. Suffice it to say that they allow some fundamental questions, like those regarding the membership in social classes.

We have no systematic materials about the professions of the Jews in Vitebsk Gubernia or in other parts of Russia. We will have to a picture of Jewish professions and about their economic role in comparison with the non-Jewish population from partial and fragmentary reports and facts.

Before 1785, there is information about Jewish and non-Jewish merchants in Vitebsk Gubernia: there were in the gubernia–653 Christian merchants and only 511 Jewish. So at the beginning of the transfer of the gubernia from Poland to Russia, the Jews were

[Page 65]

in the minority among merchants–only 40.5%.^[4] It is not known to which people the non-Jewish merchants belonged. From other materials, it is clear that among them were many Great Russians who, in the first years after the seizure of White Russia by the Russian army, were allowed to occupy economic positions.

That these figures give no clear picture of the actual situation one can see in the data about merchants in the city of Vitebsk and in the district:^[5]

Years	Altogether	Jews Number	Percentage
1787	497	175	41
1797	394	46	11.7
1800	420	40	9.5
1805	447	46	10.3

For 1802 we have information for the whole Vitebsk Gubernia. In the whole gubernia there were 1,220 merchants, of whom only 171 were Jews, that is, only 14%.

The development went in the direction of Jewish victory. We have more detailed information about merchants in all three categories for 1855, about a half century later. Here are the data^[6]: merchants from the first and second guild–64; Jews–58 (90.6%). Merchants from the third guild–1,178; Jews–652 (55.4%).

There can be no doubt that the very high percentage of Jews among the merchants at the first and second levels was a result of the czarist statutes that gave these

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categories of merchants privileges whether in regard to conscription or to settlement rights and business in the central gubernias. But in order to be in these guilds, one had to be wealthy. This indicates that already in this gubernia there were Jews of great property.

There is clear evidence that Vitebsk's Jews had business with Moscow. Jews from Vitebsk Gubernia bought businesses in Moscow in the five years from 1828 until 1832 for 4 million and 651 thousand rubles.^[7] One must recall that in those years that there was no textile industry in Lodz, and the textile fabrication in the Bialystok districts was still in diapers and had only begun to develop. We must conclude that there were wealthy Jews who bought higher status for non-merchant interests, but there certainly also were wealthy Jewish merchants who for business purposes paid large sums for the guilds.

We said earlier that at the beginning of the 19^th century in Vitebsk and in Vitebsk Gubernia the Great Russians occupied important business positions. Here is what one of the experts on White Russia wrote^[8]: “In the last years of the 18^th century and the first years of the 19^th, Vitebsk had broad business relations with Smolensk, Kharkov, Petersburg, Minsk, Voronezh, Kherson, Jakobstadt, Lipetsk, and elsewhere. In these relationships, a great role was played by business on credit. Later on, the markets of central White Russia began to be filled with merchants from Moscow factories. The high point of Moscow capitalism was Vitebsk, which was occupied by merchants in the fashion business, furs, haberdashery, tea, fish, roe. They took over business from Riga.”

It is no surprise that the Russian Moscow merchants at the beginning of Russian control over the former Polish areas were quicker and more successful at occupying economic positions. The White Russian Jew, and the Vitebsker in general, was then unfamiliar with the Russian market. He had no connection with the Russian cities like Petersburg, Kharjoiv, Smolensk, and so on. There were not Jews in these cities,

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and connections were only possible for Russians. It is no surprise that the non-Jewish merchants were more successful in taking economic positions in the newly seized areas. But within a half century, the Jews forced out the Great Russian merchants.

A. Margolis writes in his valuable book “History of the Jews in Russia” (Moscow, 1930, p. 259):

“The writer of the following lines tells how in the first half of the nineteenth century all of the businesses in Vitebsk were in Christian hands (Great Russians and White Russians) and he complains that the business then went over to the Jews. Here is his note on Christian businesses in Vitebsk:

‘The central camp for wheat flour belonged to A.G. Petrov…I.I. Glinko…LP.K. Ivashek; the best grocery businesses were Duboltovke's, Rindo's, Labanov's; haberdashery, jewelry businesses–Tchirayev's, Krokel's; an iron shop belonged to Tsitrinenko; wine business (with foreign wines) was mainly Sutern's and Hoza's. Aside from all these popular names, it would be possible to make a long list of their equals as well as figures in various branches of industry…’

‘…An instability began like a plague after fifty years to undercut the Christian merchants in Vitebsk.’”^[9]

The data cited for the participation of Jews among the merchants at the beginning of the 19^th century and in the middle of that century provide an exhaustive explanation for the “plague” that befell the Russian and White Russian entrepreneurs.

We have received, more or less, a picture of the emergence of a wealthy and propertied Jewish merchant–but this is was a small class. In the broader masses there began a process of transition to labor. The Jewish Pale, which included the great Jewish masses, began to go to work. And it was quickly established that in the gubernias with a heavy concentration of Jews, the percentage of craftsmen was much greater than in neighboring gubernias where there was no Jewish population.

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Here are some characteristic data for the years 1861-1862:^[10]

There were in Vitebsk Gubernia–1 tailor for every 210 people, and in the neighboring Pskov Gubernia 1 tailor for every 881 people.

There were shoemakers–in Vitebsk Gubernia 1 for every 200 residents, and in Pskov Gubernia 1 for every 494 residents.

Carpenters in Vitebsk Gubernia–1 for every 600 residents, and in Pskov Gubernia 1 for every 1,028.

There were watchmakers–in Vitebsk 1 for every 2,070 people, and in Pskov Gubernia 1 for every 4,495 people.

These are important numbers. They show us a phenomenon that became clear and obvious a couple of decades later. Emigration, which increased in the 1870s and assumed a mass character that grew from year to year, was essentially a continuation of the process that we have established–a mass movement toward work opportunities. The increase of craftsmen in Vitebsk Gubernia was a small stream of the larger flow of labor that flooded the Jewish Pale at the end of the 19^th century.

Neither the growth of propertied Jewish merchants nor certainly the overgrowth of craftsmen could solve the problem of overpopulation in the White Russian gubernias in general and especially in Vitebsk Gubernia, which had resulted from the French-Russian War (1812) and from droughts that afflicted the White Russian part of Russia several times in the first half of the 19^th century. A thousand time harder and more tragic was the situation of the Jewish populace, for whom the expulsions from the villages in 1807-1808 and 1823 added to those difficulties.

It was officially established that the expenses of the war cost the city of Vitebsk^[11] 2,000,873 rubles and it cost the Jews 1,009,000, that is 34.7%.

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Here is Y. Sossi's description of the situation in the first half of the 19^th century:^[12]

“In 1823 began the terrible Jewish expulsion from Vitebsk and Mohilev Gubernias. In 1824 some 20,000 Jews were expelled. Poor, deprived, and hungry Jews came to the towns with their wives and children–where they not only received no income, but they could not find even temporary support or temporary places to live.”

Jews from Vitebsk participated in the Jewish colonization of South Russia. Later they also went to Siberia, which had been set aside by the czarist government as a place of refuge for Jews with the aim of colonizing it. The government then regretted this move, and Jews from various gubernias, including Vitebsk, remained stranded on the roads and suffered.

These were all droplets in a sea of sorrow and need.

How great was Jewish need in Vitebsk and in the gubernia is especially clear from the following: “In some gunbernias, Jews eagerly took some agricultural jobs. For example, Jews from Vitebsk gubernia went to neighboring Smolensk Gubernia and there worked for the property owners clearing fields, digging ditches, and doing other work for a pittance. For example, for a fathom-long ditch an arshin [about 28 inches] wide and three-quarters of an arshin deep, the pay was not more than four kopecks. Each person dug nine or ten such ditches a day, for which he earned 36 kopecks. If they were not willing to do so, or more properly said, they were dismissed to work on the roads or to do other such governmental work–they had to explain that they did not trust the people with whom they had to deal.”^[13]

Consider that the property owners had serfs and therefore a source of cheap labor, so it becomes clear how terrible the Jews' problems must have been, more properly, Jewish hunger, for them to go to a strange area and work for a few groschen in return for hard work, for work for which they were not accustomed and not prepared.

[Page 70]

Let us make some conclusions about the situation of the Jewish populace at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century–about the situation of the whole Jewish Pale and of Vitebsk Gubernia. There were certain differences between the situation, we say, of Jews in Kherson Gubernia, who had harbors like Odesa, and in Vitebsk Gubernia; one can also say that in Warsaw Gubernia, which had the city of Warsaw, where, at the beginning of the second half of the 19^th century, there were already Jewish workshops and Jewish factories, the situation was somewhat better than in the White Russian gubernias, which were the poorest in the Pale of Settlement. The distinction was not great. In any case, the picture that we have received about the situation of Jews in Vitebsk Gubernia undoubtedly applies to the greatest part of the Jewish population in Russia at the beginning of the second half of the 19^th century.

In short, these are our conclusions: the number of Jews in the villages dropped sharply, leading to a change in sources of income. The largest change was undoubtedly the growth of the artisans in the cities. The growth of work for Jews already in the first half of the 19^th century served as a basis for the intense development in that direction in the second half of the 19^th century. This growth in work for Jews from Vitebsk Gubernia laid the foundation for the later emigration of large parts of the Jewish population to larger cities where Jewish industry developed, such as Lodz, Bialystok, Warsaw, and also Odesa and other cities in southern Russia.

The growth of work also made possible the later emigration to London and even later to America. Certainly hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from the Pale, many thousands of them from Vitebsk Gubernia from the merchant class and even more from the unclassified. The working element who went to London or New York immensely affected the labor adjustments in the lands of emigration. We have no data about the number of emigrants from Vitebsk Gubernia to the industrial cities of Russia, such as Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, and also in the rapidly growing cities of southern Russia, such as Odesa, Yekaterinoslav, and others–just as we have no data about the emigration from Vitebsk Gubernia in the 19^th century to foreign countries, England and America.

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But there is no doubt that emigration to other Russian cities affected Vitebsk Gubernia not less than all other gubernias in the Pale. We will provide data later about emigration to foreign countries, but only for the 20^th century. But it is known that the tempo of emigration in the 20^th century was heavily dependent on the group of relatives and friends that one had in the lands of emigration. Vitebsk Gubernia at the beginning of the 20^th century had a high level of emigrants, which leads to the conclusion that Vitebsk Jews had at the beginning of the 20^th century many relatives and friends in England and America, fellow countrymen and good acquaintances who played a large role in the growth of emigration from Russia.

The social-economic differentiation, in the sense of new professions and their varieties, as well as in details of the class outline, began already in the first half of the 19^th century, but these processes first unwound and radically changed the physiognomy of Russian Jewry, and of Vitebsk Gubernia, in the second half of the 19^th century.

In general this gives the impression that the Jews from smaller towns, from the Kasrilevkas and Mazepevkes, caught on, opened their eyes, saw the train, laughed and recognized that it would not stop. They soon understood that a new world was being born and let themselves enter that world. Thus began to grow the thick Jewish settlements in the large cities of the Pale, parallel to emigration, which laid the foundation for the five million Jewish settlers in America, the greatest Jewish center in the world.

As we have already said, the economic and social situation significantly improved in the second half of the 19^th century. This led, naturally, to a great increase in the Jewish population. Mortality rates fell significantly, and the birthrate stayed high for a long time. We will soon see how greatly the Jewish population grew in Vitebsk Gubernia, especially in the cities.

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Let us assemble all the data that we have for more than a century. And although, as we have seen, the data prior to 1897 are not absolutely trustworthy, they are important for the picture of the growth of the Jewish population.

Years	Number of Jews	Percent of the population
1772 (a)	15,246	2.6
1864 (b)	68,000	6
1897 (c)	175,586	11.8
1917 (d)	203,000	-------

1. Ch. Korobkov, “The Census of the Jewish Population, Vitebsk Gubernia” (Russian) in “Yevreiskaya Starina,” 1912.
2. Yuli Gessen, “History of the Jewish People in Russia” (Russian), vol. 2, p. 159.
3. “The First General Count of the Population of the Russian Empire” (Russian), 1903, Notebook 3.
4. “The Jewish Population in Russia” (Russian), Published by the Jewish Statistical Society. Petrograd, 1917.

Let us now return to the census of 1897, which gives us the broad outline both of the distribution of Jews in the gubernia at various points and of the percentage of Jews at various points in regard to the whole population, and finally in regard to the cultural and professional mobility of the Jewish population. We have a list of all the placers with more than 500 Jews and their percentage of the population. Let us at least provide a list of the larger places and of their number of Jews.

City and Town	Number of Jews	% of Population		City and Town	Number of Jews	% of Population
Vitebsk	34,440	52		Livengoff	1,406	53
Dvinsk	32,400	44		Preli	1,375	65
Molotzk	12,481	61		Varkliana	1,365	75
Rezhitza	6,478	60		Turazh	1,246	46
Velizh	5,989	49		Usviat	1,205	41
Nevel	5,836	62		Ushatz	1,129	70
Kreslavka	4,051	52		Kalishki	1,127	72
Tchashnik	3,480	74		Ilyana	1,105	78
Horodok	3,413	68		Glazmanka	1.064	46
Kreitzburg	3,164	76		Dagda	1,026	68
Leppel	3,379	54		Kublitsh	935	72
Drissa	2,856	670		Kamen	826	77
Lutzin	2,803	54		Veshki	668	70
Sebezh	2,561	59		Volenetz	602	61
Sirotina	1,766	89		Fridroisk	561	66
Yanovitsh	1,702	72		Nikolayevo	551	74
Asvaya	1,660	59		Rebinishk	533	91
Ulla	1,539	62		Rasitza	524	69

Type of Dwelling Place	Number of Kehillahs	Number of Jews	% of Jews
Kehillas of more than 30,000 Jews	2	66,840	38.1
Kehillahs of more than 10,00 Jews	1	12,480	7.1
Kehillahs of 5,000-10,000 Jews	3	18,303	10.4
Kehillas of 3,000-5,000 Jews	5	17,487	10
Kehillas of 2,000-3,000 Jews	3	8,222	4.7
Kehillahs of 1,000-2,000 Jews	14	18,715	10.6
Kehillahs of 500-1,000 Jews	8	5,200	3
Totals	36	147,247	83.9

[Page 74]

Almost 84% of all Jews in the gubernia lived in 36 kehillahs. Therefore their compactness was of this sort–over 38% lived in two kehillahs (Vitebsk and Dvinsk). If you include Polotzk with over 12,000 Jews, we can see that over 45% of all Jews in the gubernia lived in three areas. If this were only a single gubernia, it would have been insignificant, but this was absolutely typical for all the gubernias in the Pale of Settlement.

From the compactness, let us move to the second point about the distribution of the Jewish population–more than 28,000 Jews, or more than 16 percent of the Jewish population in the gubernia were scattered and spread out over scores, perhaps hundreds, of places with populations under 500.

Further analysis of Table 6 shows us that in 1897, more than 55% of all Jews. In the gubernia lived in kehillahs with more than 500 people.

Up to this point we have considered the question of the distribution of the Jewish population in the gubernia. Let us now see how large the percentage of Jews was in relation to the whole population.

The percentage of Jews in 1897 amounted to: in the towns, 52.7%; in the shtetls, 66.3%; in the villages, 1.9%.

The list of 36 places in Table 5 gives us a precise and more detailed picture of the balance of the Jews in relation to the whole population. We have 11 places with more than 70% Jews. Of those 11,, there are 2 with more than 80% (Sirotino–89%, and Rebinishk---91%). With more than 60% Jews we have 24 out of 36. And with more than half Jews, there are 31 of the 36. In only 5 places were Jews in the minority.

That Jews had a majority in the city and town populations was one of the most important facts in Jewish national development. The Jews determined the physiognomy of the places where they lived–Shabbos and Holiday peacefulness; Yiddish language and general Jewish culture were possible in Russia thanks to the compactness of the Jewish population and thanks to their majority in the cities and towns in many gubernias of the Pale of Settlement. It certainly helped that that so much business and so much craftsmanship was in Jewish hands. Jewish compactness and its majority status affected not only area but also social-economic life.

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If the stronger 47% of non-Jews in the city population and even the stronger 33% of Christians in the villages had pursued a national character, a national style of language and culture, the national-cultural dominance of the Jews in those places would have been impossible–the minority in the two city-types of living areas would have belonged to the majority of the whole gubernia and their majority influence would have dominated in the cities and towns. It was lucky for the nationalism of the Jewish population that the non-Jewish majority was divided in terms of nationalism, especially among the population in the cities, which had far more importance in cultural life than did the villages.

We are not interested in the religious differences, although these, too, greatly weakened the influence of the majority. More important for us is the language, and therefore also the culture fractures.

Number of Inhabitants
Languages	Absolute numbers	Percentages
White Russian	788,533	52.9
Latvian	264,011	17.7
Great Russian	197,918	13.3
Yiddish	174,204	11.7
Polish	50,181	3.4
Others	13,301	1
Totals	1,488,148	100

The picture is more than clear–the national majority in the gubernia had a very small minority in the cities, in the places with the greatest influence on the physiognomy of life in the whole gubernia. The Jews had the majority but did not have

[Page 76]

Number of Inhabitants
Languages	Number	Percentage
Yiddish	112,455	52.2
Great Russian	57,747	26.8
White Russian	28,728	13.3
Others	16,560	7.7
Totals	215,490	100

We saw above that in the small towns the percentage of Jews was greater–higher than two thirds. We must remember that 99.2% of all Jews in the gubernia gave Yiddish as their mother tongue. So there is no division between the number of Jews according to their religion and according to their language.

Let us consider briefly the chief language in the capital of the gubernia, in Vitebsk:

[Page 77]

the Yiddish speakers comprised not less than two-thirds of the capital.

Age Group	Percentage of the whole population	Percentage of the Jewish population
0-9	27.58	26.8
10-19	22.42	24.8
20-59	43	42
60-69	4.11	3.6
Over 70	2.89	2.8
Totals	100	100

We come to the conclusion that from a biological perspective the age situation was healthy both for the whole population and for Jews.

Vitebsk Gubernia is near Great Russia. In addition, we have seen that the Great Russians in 1897 comprised a high percentage of the city population generally and particularly in the

[Page 78]

city of Vitebsk. We can say that among Jews in this gubernia there was a higher percentage of “literate people”–among men there were 55.2% and among women 36%. Among the non-Jewish population, the percentage of the “literate” was much smaller: for men, 30.9% and for women only 19.5%.

We must speak about literacy in Russian and Yiddish. Those literate only in Yiddish were not counted. That was natural, since young Jews had a higher percentage of literacy. Thus, Jewish people from 20 to 29 were literate: men 75.8% and women 56.6%. Those older than 60 had a literacy rate of 31% for men and only 5.8% for women.

In general we have a positive picture. It is even more interesting because we have seen that more than 99% of the Jewish population gave Yiddish as their mother tongue. That means that literacy in Russian was not a factor in assimilation. In 1897, there were no political parties in Russia generally and certainly not among Jews. At the census there was no national agitation, as there was later in Austria and even later in Poland. The data regarding the mother tongue (99%!) were therefore an objective mirror of the situation.

The Russian literacy of the Jewish population was already at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries an economic factor, truly, for only a small part of the Jewish population. Jews in Vitebsk conducted business with the neighboring Great Russian gubernias, Pskov and Smolensk. In addition, Vitebskers were lumber merchants. They cut lumber deep inside Russia. Literacy in Russian only became useful when Great Russia became open to Jews after the 1917 Revolution. As is well known, the Revolution made good use of Jewish youth I various government positions, because among the Christian population, especially in the ational minorities, like the Ukrainians and White Russians, there was a lack of people with knowledge of Russian.

[Page 79]

One cannot understand the developmental process of the Jewish population in one gubernia if one has no clear understanding of the developmental process of all of Russian Jewry.

Vitebsk was an organic part of Russian Jewry and the similarities in the processes were much more plentiful and more important than the differences and individual peculiarities.

With the fleeing of the peasants in Russia, a new chapter began in the history of all the peoples in the Russian empire and also in the fate of the Jewish population in general, as well as in the fate of the Jews in Vitebsk Gubernia.

With the freeing of the peasants at the start of the 60s of the 19^th century, the market in Russia increased significantly. Agricultural production increased, and with that increase came the possibility of agricultural exports. Purchasing by liberated peasants grew strongly and created a large internal market for industry and business.

The city population grew and so, too, did business and industrial turnover. The city population became more cultured and its aspirations became broader and more diversified, which gave further impetus to the development of industry and business.

Together with these economic developments, the Jewish population grew in the middle-sized and larger cities in the Pale of Settlement. The tavern lost more and more of its role in Jewish economic life and disappeared entirely from the Jewish economy at the end of the 19^th century when the government took over the monopoly on strong drink. This development displaced large masses of Jews. Mid-sized and large businesses grew and the number of Jews involved in business grew. Mid-sized Jewish industry grew, and even more the work that served the direct needs of the population. This work required small capital and used the energy of broad levels of the Jewish population. Within the framework of this work came a differentiation, which resulted in larger workshops with five or even ten workers. There arose and strongly increased a proletariat of craftsmen.

[Page 80]

We will not consider any conclusion about the Jewish bourgeoisie, such as Jewish bankers, Jewish sugar-manufacturers, Jewish train builders, and many others, because they had no direct relationship to the gubernia, which is our interest at this time. Even in regard to the mid-sized industries, like the conclusion about Jewish leather factories, textile undertakings, or pig bristle cultivation we will not speak because Vitebsk Gubernia only weakly participated in these developments. Certainly there were mid-sized Jewish business and industrial undertakings, but they did not shape the social-economic physiognomy of the city of Vitevbsk and of Vitebsk Gubernia, which had a very weak industrial development.

The differentiations that we have described became deeper and more developed, but the petty bourgeois physiognomy of the gubernia–many small merchants and many small workshops and very few mid-sized or large businesses and industrial undertakings–remained stable until the Bolshevik Revolution.

All of these positive developments undoubtedly raised the living standard of the Jewish population, although poverty was full-blown for a large portion of the Jewish population. The percentage of those receiving charity was quite high for the whole time both in the capital and in the province.

The Jewish population reacted very differently to poverty and need–the hardness and passivity of the first half of the 19^th century disappeared. The Jewish mass energetically and actively sought to extricate itself from poverty. Emigration, whether to places in Russia or even more to other countries, grew, and at the beginning of the 20^th century was one of the most important factors in easing the situation of the Jewish masses. But also at home the Jewish masses did not endure poverty and need passively. Aware of the battles of the proletariat elements, like business employees and proletariat workers, who at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries were the active fighters not only for material improvement and for shorter working hours but also for political and national freedom, there were also the lumpenproletariat, the poor masses, who were impatient and demanding, fighting and protesting.

Let us give some examples that show in the clearest way how the psychology of the Jewish masses was at the end of the 19^th

[Page 81]

century, how courage and boldness replaced the depression and submissiveness of the first half of the 19^th century.

In 1891 there was a famine in every White Russian gubernia. The situation was so tragic and dangerous that the government issued an order–that after August 15, no one could export grain so that the cost of agricultural goods should not rise. The grain merchants immediately jumped into action and sold grain for export before that date. The masses, especially in the cities, who did not have their own agricultural products and were the customers for the village merchants, became upset with the grain merchants and became unruly in the White Russian gubernias.

We hesitate to say that the majority of grain merchants were Jews. The oft-cited A. Margolis, who had official document reports from the local police and particularly from the special government representative Saburov, cites the following: “Poor Jews played a role,” “Jews took an active role,” “ the participants were partly Old Believers, but more than anyone else they were Jews.” The official report relates that in Polotzk and Vitebsk the masses turned on the police in an attempt to free the arrested “rebels.” The Polotzk aide official says in his report that “about 200 rebels besieged the police for two hours and threw rocks.” In Kreslavka they said that “people stopped the bread wagons” and people were prepared to attack the grain stores and the homes of the wealthy at night.

The above-mentioned representative from the police department wrote in his report:

“In this city (that is, Vitebsk), the crowd, from the same motive, the rise in the cost of bread, began to stop the carts with rye that were being taken to the station.” He describes in detail the disorder at the station, and he says, “They trained more groups of hoodlums who, after those stoppages, began, with the participation of the Jews, to rampage at three Jewish houses. Then everyone attacked the houses of the wealthy grain merchant, the Jew Hershman, most of whose property was stolen and the rest damaged and thrown into the street,.” (Emphases mine–the author.)

[Page 82]

The report goes on to say that the military had to be called out and that four people fell. It does not say whether any Jews were among the fallen.

From this report it become clear that the targets of the attacks were certainly Jews, but we must also remember that there were Jews among the attackers. Should we believe the police report? There is evidence that they were not lying.

In “Ha-Melitz” number 178 from 1891 there is an article from Sebezh. It says that in Sebezh, representatives of the residents went to the chief of the district's police and asked him not to allow the grain merchants to come to that area to sell grain because that would lead to a rise in prices. The police chief promised. The newspaper writes: “That crowd of people, and among them many of our brothers, fell upon him with shouts. And they turned to the ships that stood loaded in the harbor, and they yelled and drove off the police and the clerks who stood there guarding the grain.”

The article tells extensively how the crowd tore open the sacks, took the grain, and fled:^[15] “All of the grain merchants hid. The police chief informed the governor and gave him the names of the leaders of the pogrom, among which were many of our brothers. They were noted and turned over to the courts.”

And early and late in the Torah–I will use the same method–Vitebsk's Jews already had in 1891 a sure tradition of “rebels.”

In 1895, the Vitebsk city council decided to charge a special surcharge for various products, materials, and fowl. For example, for every wagon of wood–20 kopecks; for cabbage–15 kopecks; for a goose–5 kopecks, and so on. “These charges were put in the hands of a Jewish merchant named Perlshteyn. When Perlshteyn's men came to the market on October 1, 1895, and began to demand these fees, no one wanted to pay.”^[16]

It is further related that the agents did not allow buying or selling, and “people threw themselves on them, broke their bones,

[Page 83]

and abandoned the market. The crowd gradually succeeded–the surcharge was abolished. The press reported that the battle was led by the Christian buyers and the Jewish sellers.”

We cannot take time here for every cultural and political movement that raised the spiritual condition of the masses as well as their material state and their appetites. They were dependent on each other–the improving situation of important classes led to a higher cultural situation and to a higher living standard and even to higher ambitions and appetites. And to repeat the higher living conditions raised the cultural level and consequently the political consciousness.

Now we move to material that will illuminate and confirm all the processes that we have discussed in our brief introduction in the second half of our work.

The most characteristic aspect of the Jewish employment structure in former Russia is that it was not shared with the surrounding majority but was quite separate. These were two separate economic worlds that were in constant commercial relations. But as if in two different worlds. Each of these worlds could be lived out culturally and spiritually separately–the minority did not feel in terms of employment like a minority.

The well-known characteristic of the Pale of Settlement, that Jews closed their businesses on Shabbos and holidays and non-Jewish customers adapted to these Jewish days of rest is a good illustration of the isolation of the Jewish group from the surrounding non-Jewish world majority. The Jewish merchant had no competition either in buying agricultural products or in selling his merchandise.

Vitebsk Gubernia confirms a hundred percent what we said. Let us examine the employment structure of Jews and non-Jews.

In business, the two important non-Jewish national groups were so small (less than 1 percent each!) that the Jewish merchant had absolutely no fear of competition. One must add

[Page 84]

Employment	Jews	Great Russians	White Russians
Agriculture	0.4	37.1	79.5
Business	38.8	0.8	0.7
Industry	36.4	12.9	4.9
Other	24.4	49.2	14.9
Totals	100	100	100

In industry the situation was different. Great Russians made up 13 percent, but there, too, there were more Jews in the skilled branches, where they comprised 70% and in certain branches even higher. The isolation of the Jewish population was quite deep.

Let me make several observations on Table 10. The category of “Other” for the Great Russians shows a higher percentage. This is because more than 20 percent of all Great Russians in Vitebsk Gubernia were soldiers and officers. Among Jews there were many serving maids and wagoneers.

We have emphasized the moment of the national split of the non-Jewish population. This goes like a red thread through the workshop in all branches. We can take as an example the needlecraft industry. (See Table 11, p. 85).

Jews made up nearly two-thirds of everyone employed in the needlecraft industry; the other one-third was divided among four large national groups and several other smaller ones, like Germans and others.

In the cities, the percentage of Jewish artisans was higher. Let us consider the same needlework industry, but in the cities, and we come up with another table. (See Table 12, p. 85.)

[Page 85]

National Group	Number Employed	Percentage
Jews	9,299	63.9
White Russians	2,066	14.2
Great Russians	1,397	9.6
Latvians	878	6
Poles	856	5.8
Other	56	0.5
Totals	14,552	100

National Group	Number Employed	Percentage
Jews	6,435l	74.9
Great Russians	913	10.6
White Russians	657	7.7
Poles	491	4.7
Other	92	1.1
Totals	8,588	100

In considering the professional structure, we have not considered the important area of liberal professions, but such a count would be awkward, because the data are untrustworthy. For example. In the medical professions all of the serving elements the hospitals. And because the class differentiations are totally ignored, one cannot divide them.

We will move from Russian census to the materials from the research of the Jewish Colonization Association (YIKA)

[Page 86]

which was conducted in 1897-1898 and provides much material that shows us, first, the development of Jewish labor and also about the classes.^[17]

Social Groups	1887		1898
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
Masters	8,202	56.4	10,671	45.4
Assistants	3,440	23.6	7,077	30.2
Apprentices	2,892	20	5,725	24.4
Totals	14,534	100	23,473	100

These figures lead to an important conclusion–the number of assistants, that is, wormers, more than doubled; also the number of apprentices doubled at a time when the number of masters only increased by a quarter.

In 1887, for 56 homeowners there were 23 paid workers, and in 1897 for 45 homeowners there were more than 30 workers. Also the proportion of apprentices grew. Understand, the class differentiation was very flat, so one does not have to accept these general numbers. In the group of homeowners there were some who had no paid workers and some who had two or even five or more. One must also take into account that these numbers apply to the whole gubernia. In the cities, especially in the capital, in Vitebsk, class differentiation was more marked.

In the city of Vitebsk, for 34 masters there were 36 workers and 30 apprentices.

For 1893 we have the division of workshops according to the number

[Page 87]

of employees in Vitebsk Gubernia, with a comparison to the non-Jewish workshops.

Workshops	Jewish		Non-Jewish
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
No workers	1,486	70.4	637	74
One worker	400	18.9	133	15.5
2-5 workers	206	9.8	83	9.6
6-10 workers	13	0.6	5	0.6
More than 10 workers	6	0.3	3	0.3
Totals	2,111	100	861	100

Also the second group, with one worker, can be counted among the poor–this group made up a fifth of all workshops. These first two groups combined comprised more than 89 percent of all workshops. Only a small percentage of all workshops had more than 6 workers. Only six workshops in the whole gubernia had more than 10 workers, only .3%. We attribute these last two groups to the very wealthy. We conclude that only a very small percentage of Jewish craftsmen belonged to the middle class in the Pale at the end of the 19^th century.

Glancing at the non-Jewish workshops, we are surprised at the similarity–the numbers are almost the same, and we await a more detailed analysis.

We also have data about the distribution of the workshops according to the number of apprentices for Jews and non-Jews, but it is not necessary to look at them because they show the same picture. For Jews, the number of workshops without apprentices is 69.8% and for non-Jews a bit more, 73.5%. Workshops with more than 6 apprentices for Jews amount to 0.8% and for non-Jews 1.0%.

[Page 88]

We said earlier that in the last quarter of the 19^th century there was a mass movement to work by Jews and probably by non-Jews. This movement toward working incomes stems, on one hand, from the high natural growth that led people to seek jobs, because agricultural work for non-Jews and business work for Jews were overfilled; on the other hand, the need for the products of work grew for the population, and such work promised an income. The following data about the emergence of the workshops in Vitebsk Gubernia will show that a very large percentage were newly established. Inherited workshops or those bought from others comprise a small percentage.

Method of Establishment	Jewish		Non-Jewish
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
Newly Established	2,010	96.7	771	89.6
Inherited	60	3	79	9.1
Purchased	9	0.3	11	1.3
Totals	2,079	100	861	100

Evidence that the larger percentage of Jewish craftsmen was the first generation in this line of work we get from the data of 1893 that shows from whom the master or the worker learned his work. It is natural that a worker should most often learn from his father–it costs nothing and the boy or girl can begin work at an early age. Here are the data about how the Jewish masters learned their craft:

From Parents	288	15.8
From Stranger	1,433	78.7
Self-taught	102	5.5

[Page 89]

More than 78% of the masters learned from non-family craftsmen. Of course, there is no evidence that these were all not children of craftsmen. There were certainly enough cases when a tailor sent a child to a shoemaker to learn or vice-versa. But usually a child learned a craft from his father. The high percentage of those who learned from strangers undoubtedly shows that many children whose parents were unskilled or in business or ran inns were learning crafts.

Let us consider the situation of Jewish craftsmen in Vitebsk Gubernia (1898):

Clothing skills	36.9%
Leatherwork	16.2%
Food products	11.6%
Woodworking	10.8%
Building	9.3%
Metalwork	8.5%
Textile work	4.0%
Graphic work	2.2%
Chemical work	0.5%

We think it is important to supply the following fact about the enterprise of Vitebsk's Jews who had no way out.

A Jewish locksmith from Vitebsk happened to be in Riga and there saw a plowshare. He was interested in the plowshare and bought one. Arriving at home, he studied it and learned how to make similar plowshares. He sold them cheaply, and his business went well, so that he had to take on a partner with money so that he could produce these plowshares in mass. This business also went well led to several large undertakings: the factories of Levitan and Rapoport in 1898 each had 80 workers; the factory of Berlin–40 workers, and that of Zackheim–20, and so on.

[Page 90]

We think it is necessary to add a longer quote from the YIKAK materials that reflects a bit of Jewish life from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries:

“In the Jewish workshops there were always strikes and conflicts between the workers and the owners, while in the German factories such goings-on were absolutely unknown. The were many particular reasons that inflamed the Jewish worker movements, such as the lack of rights, the confinement, and the backwardness of the Pale of Settlement, the impossibility of getting into a factory, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, which severely limited the opportunities of the Jewish worker. But aside from these particulars, many in Vitebsk worked in horrifying conditions in the Jewish workshops. For example, earlier in the Jewish workshops people worked 16 hours a day (from 6 in the morning until 10 at night) and for very low wages. In addition, the poor small owners, because of their lack of capital and because of the frequent crises, could often not pay wages, leading to sharp conflicts” (p. 277).

Describing the poverty of the Jewish craftsmen, the backwardness of the working methods, the frequent crises and the need occasionally to find other kinds of work or to help out to the villages to find work, the authors close their chapter about the situation of labor in White Russia with the following words:

“As we see from the words of the researchers in these places, one encounters in recent times fewer Jewish craftsmen seeking work in the villages. Instead of shlepping out to the villages, there was an important change–Jewish craftsmen left their shtetls not for weeks but forever. Emigration, especially to North America, took in more and more of the Jewish craftsmen.”

The White Russian territory was generally industrially backwards, and among the gubernias, of this territory, Vitebsk Gubernia was the most backward. The Germans were firmly established in industry, and it was hard to compete with them.

[Page 91]

According to official data, there were, In Vitebsk Gubernia in 1864, 209 factories, large and small; of those, 52, or 25%, were Jewish.^[18]

From the data of the YIKA researcher, we have constructed the following table for the years 1897-1898:

1. Number of factories–304. In Jewish hands–120 (39.4%)
2. Value of their products–5,000,731 rubles. Of the Jewish factories–1,000936 (33.8%)
3. Number of workers in all factories–4,861. In Jewish factories–2,200 (45.3%)
4. Number of Jewish workers–2,525, 54% of all workers
5. Average value of products: Non-Jewish factory–20,600. Jewish factory–16,100 rubles
6. Average number of workers in a factory: Non-Jewish 14.4. Jewish–18.3.^[19]

Regarding Jewish workers, it seems that about 300 Jewish workers were employed in non-Jewish factories.

Regarding Jewish workers we have a little historical documentation from the factory inspector of Vitebsk Gubernia for 1907:

“In this report year we marked a decline in the number of Jewish workers with a parallel growth in the number of non-Jewish workers in the same industry, in which Jews comprised a majority. So, for example, in the leather factories and especially in the tobacco factories that employ Jews, the number of Jews fell sharply. In the city of Vitebsk, Jewish workers in the tobacco factory made up 75 or more percent and now we see a decline in that number. We should not find as an explanation that the owners hastened

[Page 92]

after cheaper labor. In the cities of the Pale of Settlement, Jewish craft labor was cheap enough. It is exclusively a phenomenon of the Jewish factory workers trying to find a more peaceful work environment. ”

“Remember that of the 17 workers organizations that function in Vitebsk, 15 are Jewish, so it is understandable that the tendencies of the Jewish owners is a kind of protest against the professional unions.”^[20]

Original footnotes:

1. Ch. Korobkov, “The Census of the Jewish Population, Vitebsk Gubernia”
   (Russian), in “Russian Antiquity,” 1912, pp. 164-177. The data there are only for men. We have doubled the numbers. Return
2. Ibid. Return
3. Ibid. Return
4. H. Alexandrov: “The Jewish Population in White Russia at the Time of the Partition of Poland,” in the collection “Zeitschrift,” Minsk, 1930, p. 35. Return
5. “Hebrew Encyclopedia” (Russian), vol. 5, pp. 634-638. Return
6. Ibid. Return
7. “Hebrew Encyclopedia,” vol. 11, p. 332. Return
8. Dovnar-Zapolsky, “National Economy of White Russia, 1861-1914.” Minsk, 1926, pp. 4-5. Return
9. Nikiforvsky, “Fragment from Bygone Vitebsk,” Vitebsk, 1899, pp. 218-219, 238. Return
10. “Economic Condition of Town Settlements in European Russia,” Petersburg, 1863. Cited by A. Margolis, p. 249. Return
11. A. Smenovsky, “Notebook of Vitebsk Gubernia for 1864,” St. Petersburg, pp. 106-107.Cited by A. Margolis, p. 271. Return
12. Y. Sossis. “The Social-Economic Situation of the Russian Jews.” Petrograd, 1919, p. 17. Return
13. N.N. Golitsin, “History of Russian Legislation about Jews,” Peterburg, 1886, pp. 403-404. Cited by A. Margolis, p. 272. Return
14. “The Jewish Population in Russia” (Russian). Petrograd, 1917. Return
15. All citations are taken from A. Margolis, “Jewish Folk-Masses in the Battle against Oppression.” Moscow, 1940, pp. 94-97 and 132. All emphases are mine–The Author. Return
16. Ibid., pp. 85-86. Return
17. “Materials about the Economic Situation of the Jews in Russia” (Russian), Petersburg, 1904, book 1, pp. 252ff. Return
18. E. Orshansky, “Jews in Russia.” St. Petersburg, 1872, p. 73. Return
19. Yakov Leshchinsky, “The Jewish Worker in Russia.” Vilna, 1906. Table 23. Return
20. “Summary of the Reports of Factory Inspectors for 1907-1908,” Petersburg, 1909, p VIII. Return

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