From the 7th to the 14th centuries, there is evidence of the presence of Jews in what is now Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia. They were few compared to those in Russia’s neighboring countries. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe already had a growing Jewish population, which arrived in Poland at the invitation of King Casimir III, after being expelled from England, France, and Spain, and having suffered persecution in Germany in the 14th century. Jews settled in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Hungary, and sparsely populated regions of Ukraine.

During the reign of Tsarina Catherine II the Great, the Russian Empire took possession of large territories in Poland and Lithuania that included a large Jewish population. This occurred during the second (1793) and third (1795) partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Catherine established that Jews could only live in the so-called «Zone of Settlement,» in Hebrew «Thum Hamoshav,» an area that included parts of Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Western Russia.

Catherine’s successor, Alexander I (1801–1825), expanded the empire’s borders to Alaska. After Napoleon’s defeat, he led the Russian delegation to the Congress of Vienna that defined the new map of Europe. In 1827, Nicholas I succeeded Alexander I and decreed military service for Jews. Between that year and 1854, 70,000 Jews were conscripted, which indirectly caused the cultural and social isolation of Jews to gradually erode. A significant number of Jews adopted Russian customs, education, and the language.

Alexander II succeeded Alexander I, but he was assassinated in 1881. His successor, Alexander III, was a reactionary and anti-Semite. A wave of pogroms occurred in Ukraine in 1881, under the pretext that Jews had assassinated Alexander II. These occurred in 166 Ukrainian towns, where thousands of homes were destroyed and many families reduced to extreme poverty. Many Jews were injured and killed. The wave of pogroms continued until 1884, even instigated by law enforcement. In 1886, Jews were expelled from kyiv, and in 1891, from Moscow. In 1892, they were banned from running for office in the Duma, the parliament. Another wave of pogroms occurred between 1903 and 1905, leaving 1,000 Jews dead and 7,000 wounded.

The Jewish response to this situation was emigration, primarily to the United States. Between 1881 and 1924, more than 2 million Jews arrived in the United States, although it was not the only destination. They also emigrated to Australia, Canada, Western Europe, South America, South Africa, and Palestine with the first aliyah from Bilu and Hovevei Zion in 1882. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Russia had the largest Jewish community in the world. In the 1897 census, there were 5,189,401 Jews, 4.13% of the total population. Those living within the «Zone of Settlement» represented 11.5% of the population in that area. The «Zone of Settlement» lasted more than 100 years and ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was undoubtedly the largest «ghetto» that ever existed.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Encyclopaedia Judaica and other sources.