In the face of the common foe we are all united. We have mustered all our forces forthe defence of our native land from the hostile invasion. We are all brothers, all children of one fatherland, and to all Russia is a good mother loving all equally well. Many are the peoples Russia has gathered under her dominion and she is to all equally benevolent.
How eager is one to say these words, to have the right to utter them! But we have it not. Not toward all is Russia equally benevolent, and in the hour of great trials and high deeds she is still unable, still unwilling, to tear asunder the fatal chain, the terrible "Pale of Settlement."
Whenever I met Russian Jews abroad, I always marvelled at the strangely tenacious love for Russia which they preserve. They speak of Russia with the same longing and the same tenderness as the Russian emigrants; they are equally eager to return and equally saddened if the return is impossible. Wherefore should they love Russia, who is so harsh and inhospitable toward them?
Strange as it may sound, there are children who love their cruel stepmothers. Of course, they are exceptions; usually such stepmothers are hated. But in the case of Jews suchexceptions become the general rule: the Jews love the same Russia that is so cruel toward them.
Some one's interests demand that the Jews should be oppressed, stabled in the "Pale of Settlement," limited in the right to education, and in other respects. But to whose interest is it? Russia's? Surely not.
Social relations in Russia, as in every civilised state, must rest on the immovable foundations of justice, reason, and conscience. All those persons who are united by the fact of their belonging to the Russian state must have, within the limits of the empire, the minimum of rights, which, to our shame, are refused the Jews. This minimum each one of us receives not for his personal or racial deserts or distinctive traits, but as a citizen of the state. To obey the common Russian laws, to pay the established taxes, to serve in the army,—all these are the duties of a Russian subject, corresponding to the amount of rights of which he can be deprived only by a court ruling for a crime.
A man not dishonoured by a court decision may not live where he wants to,—because heis a Jew; a boy who has not been dismissed from any school for deficiency or misconduct, may not enter the "gymnasium," where there are plenty of vacancies, but where the few vacancies set aside by a percentage rule for the Jewish brats, are eagerly filled by them; a soldier's wife may not visit her wounded and agonising husband because he happens to be dying outside the "Pale"; the deceased may not be buried in the town where he died, for he had no right of residence in that town,—what does all this mean? Who needs all this?
All these people are Russian subjects, not our enemies, and yet they are treated in this fashion. What is the purpose of it all? Is it in order to kindle among the Jews the fire of implacable hatred of Russia and turn them into our enemies? But then we must be logical and not tolerate them in the "Pale of Settlement"; we must exile or destroy them. But a civilised state will never persuade itself to commit such acts, inhuman though logical. And if it does not decide to do that, it must, for the sake of its safety and dignity, grant to every Russian citizen the elementary human rights. It is imperative that everyRussian citizen should have every reason to love Russia and no right to hate her. If that portion of the Russian population which is deprived of rights still loves Russia, it is because the people of purely Russian extraction have no hatred for people of non-Russian birth, and our co-citizens are fully aware of it. They know that their disabilities are a burden to ourselves.
The removal of the Jewish disabilities is most imperatively dictated to us also by our dignity as a body politic. The name of Russian subject must be respected within our country, for otherwise the civilised world will not grow accustomed to respect Russia. Our country is feared for its military might and loved for the fine qualities of its people, but it will be respected only when it becomes a land of free men.
[1]Several words here are crossed out by Russian censorship.—Translator's Note.
[1]Several words here are crossed out by Russian censorship.—Translator's Note.
Vladimir Sereyevich Solovyov is known to the world as thenoblest and the most profound of Russian thinkers. The author of a large number of philosophical and theological treatises, he is also responsible for a slender volume of exquisite poems and a series of publicistic works, wherein the cause of progress is vigorously upheld. Solovyov was born in 1853 and died in 1900.
Vladimir Sereyevich Solovyov is known to the world as thenoblest and the most profound of Russian thinkers. The author of a large number of philosophical and theological treatises, he is also responsible for a slender volume of exquisite poems and a series of publicistic works, wherein the cause of progress is vigorously upheld. Solovyov was born in 1853 and died in 1900.
The dominating idea of the present time is the national idea. Of course, there is nothing bad about this. But the national idea as well as any other, can be very differently interpreted. The conception of nationalism which is very popular in our country reminds one of the famous answer made by a Hottentot to a missionary, who asked him whether he knows the difference between good and bad. "Sure I know," retorted the Hottentot. "Good—is when I steal other people's cattle and wives, and bad—when my own are stolen." In a like manner, many of our nationalists praise the love for their people and brand other people's patriotism as treason.
In spite of the wide diffusion of this view, I persist in my belief that the Russian nationalidea cannot be based on a Hottentot-like morality, that it cannot exclude the principles of justice and all-human solidarity. It is time that we should see the realisation of the true Russian idea and of all that it implies, namely: Poland's autonomy, Jewish equal rights and the untrammelled development of all the nationalities that people the Russian Empire.
Count Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy, born in 1858, occupied the post ofMinister of Public Instruction at the time of Count Witte's premiership. In 1907 he was a candidate for election to the Duma, as deputy from Petrograd. A distinguished archeologist and connoisseur of art, he was for many years the vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.
Count Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy, born in 1858, occupied the post ofMinister of Public Instruction at the time of Count Witte's premiership. In 1907 he was a candidate for election to the Duma, as deputy from Petrograd. A distinguished archeologist and connoisseur of art, he was for many years the vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." (St. Matthew, 7, 12.) This is the divine law, which it is the task of every one who considers and feels himself a Christian to follow, and which should also be strictly observed by a State. Now, would any one of the Christians who owe their allegiance to the Russian state consent to be treated as the Jews are in Russia? Would he like to be confined within a certain definite zone of settlement, to be kept from giving his children an education, and to find himself excluded from many fields of honest and honourable endeavour? Would he like, all through his life to be humiliated before his co-citizens of other faith and birth?
You despise them, hate them, and accuse them of all that it may please any maniac or liar to invent about them. Yet you demand of the Jews that they should help you, when you stand in need of help. You, Jew-haters, serve somebody or something, but truly it is not God, it is not the cause of goodness that you are serving. In your blindness you harm, above all, yourself and our country, our dear, long-suffering Russia, whom the Jews, your co-citizens, love and cannot help loving more than you do. They know that Russia hates none of her faithful and loving children and that they are hated only by people, who, either by nature or because of a poor education, cannot exist without hating some one or something. By their deeds ye shall know them, these wolves disguised as sheep.
Combat evil and side with good, do good, and do not judge a man by the fact that his parents are Jewish or Christian, or that he was born into one faith or another. Remember that we are all born equally naked and that we must all die. Therefore, do not boast of your birth; bear firmly in mind that we are allequal before God, before Truth and that we must be equal before the Law.
As for the legal disabilities of a portion of citizens who are guilty of no crime,—such as injustice must be completely condemned. In practice, such a policy has always borne and always will bear fruits of evil. The very existence of such an injustice corrupts and puts in jeopardy the social body which tolerates it.... No benefits which may be derived by individual persons or social classes from an inequality of rights can justify the State in depriving a group of citizens of their full rights, as a result of their race and faith. This is the A-B-C of justice, and those who do not know it have yet to learn what justice is.
Neither are the Jews better than we are, nor are we better than they. We are all human beings and, as such, we must all be equal before the impartial and dispassionate Law, which determines our rights and duties towards the State and society. Good and bad people, I repeat, are everywhere, and the proportion is roughly the same among us asamong them. Let us, therefore, strive for the realisation of justice on earth, and let us believe in the final triumph of truth. The rest will be added unto us. Without such a faith it is hard to live....
A sad and disquieting image often rises before my eyes.
It happened in Petrograd, on the staircase of a large, new building, one apartment of which was transformed into a private ward. When I entered the porter's lodge, on my way to a friend, I saw that it was filled with wounded soldiers, who had just arrived, while curious spectators crowded near the plate-glass door. The house was new and luxuriously furnished, and the elevator on which the wounded soldiers were taken up, was carefully covered with some kind of cloth, for fear that the velvet would be soiled and the insects would get into the seams. Upstairs the wounded were cordially greeted by a priest and a man dressed in white. After having kissed the priest's hand, the wounded, evidently embarrassed by the bright light and theluxury of the place, entered the ward awkwardly and silently. There were no seriously wounded on stretchers among them, all were able to walk; yet it was painful to look at them.
There was a wounded soldier in one of the last groups taken up by the elevator who strangely attracted everybody's attention. He was a short, young, lean, ghastly pale Jew. All the wounded were pale, but there was something sinister about the pallor of his face; it was a paleness of an utterly exhausted, anæmic or fatally sick man. He was walking alone, feebly moving his feet, and like everybody else bent to kiss the hand of the priest, but he hardly knew what he was doing, and his kiss was strangely indifferent and meaningless. He was evidently wounded in his arm, which he held stretched out. Several fingers were wrapped up, the others, which were not injured, were covered with a crust of dirt and blood. But on his coat, on the back, there was a large brown blotch of blood, a very large one, covering almost half of his back and in the midst of the soft cloth it bulged stiffly as if starched. And this horrible spot told thesimple story of the battle and the wound. But it was not the stain that made him so peculiarly conspicuous—other soldiers had similar blotches—it was rather his unusual pallor, thinness and smallness, and, above all, an expression of peculiar timidity, as if he was not at all sure whether his behaviour was appropriate and whether he had come to the right place. The faces of the other wounded soldiers, non-Jews, expressed nothing of the kind. These men were confused, but not afraid, and walked straight ahead, into the ward.
And then I recollected how a military sanitarian, whose duty it is to escort a train of wounded soldiers, had told me that the wounded Jews actually try not to moan. It was hardly credible, and at first I did not believe it; how was it possible, that a wounded soldier, freshly picked up from the battlefield and lying among wounded soldiers should try not to moan, as all do? But the sanitarian confirmed his statement and added: they are afraid to attract attention to themselves.
The Jewish soldier entered the ward after the others, and the door was closed, but hisimage, sorrowful and disquieting, lingered before my eyes. Of course, he, too, tried not to attract attention—and therein is the cause of his shyness; and when his wound will be dressed and he will be put into bed, he will also try not to moan. For, what right has he to moan aloud?
It is very possible, that he has no right of settlement in Petrograd and is allowed to stay there only as one of the wounded; a rather precarious right! And that which is home for others is nothing but a kind of honourable imprisonment for him; he will be kept for a while, then they will let him go, saying: "Go away, you must not be here."
And what if his mother, or sister, or father, who also have no right of settlement, will desire to come to him and kiss his bloodstained hand which has defended Russia—vague, distant Russia? But these reflections and questions came to my mind later. At the moment, I beheld, with the eyes of a peaceful citizen, the bloody, hardened blotch and the dreadful pallor of war, and the needless terror before that which, after all, is your own, and I felt an overwhelming depression and sadness.
Catherine Kuskova is a journalist and social worker ofconsiderable note.
Catherine Kuskova is a journalist and social worker ofconsiderable note.
Lord, what a familiar sight! How many times have we seen it during the last nine or ten months.... And every time you blush with shame and you have the feeling of being overcome and petrified in the face of the incomprehensible, elemental catastrophe.
The train slowly pulls up to the high structure of the station. The scene is laid in one of the towns of the Western section. Faces of passengers, restless, way-worn, sickly, are seen in the windows. The cars are over-crowded beyond all measure. There are many black-eyed children, with curly black locks, and also old people, decrepit with age. The railway platform is crowded with Jewish youths, with representatives of the Jewish community, and a mass of curious people who eagerly scan the newcomers. A large crowd of passengers emerge from the cars rapidly and in disorder.They are Jews deported from the zone of military operations. The local Jewish community had been notified by a telegram and now they are meeting the newcomers.
The community has seen to it that hot tea, bread, and milk for the children is served to the deported right at the station. A most timely measure! Many of them had had no time even to take food along; they were deported on short notice, and, besides, a family is allowed to carry no more than forty pounds of luggage. What is forty pounds for a family often very large? They can hardly afford to take some underwear and warm clothes.... Behind each family there remained a home, probably a store, a stand, a workshop or simply a sewing-machine, the sole source of income.... All are equal now in this dreadful train, which carries them away from home, naked wrecks of humanity, torn from their customary course of life and deprived of the daily toil, which fed the family. And what a terror it is to look into their eyes. It is plainly written in them: "This is nothing, the worst is still to come."
They sat down on the benches in the waitingroom, and started drinking tea, and eating.
"Well, you are feeding your spies, eh?" suddenly remarks a porter, addressing a representative of the Jewish community. The latter grows pale, shivers, and quickly moves away. What, indeed, could one answer? How does this great migration of a people impress an unsophisticated brain? If the entire population leaves a district the matter is clear; the place must be evacuated before the enemy. But the trains loaded with Jews do not come from districts already occupied by the foe. How else can a plain man construe this fact than that the Jews are spies, dangerous people, in short, our internal enemy? And so this one-year-old baby whose puffed-up, tiny hand hangs down from its mother's shoulder is also an enemy, just as is this sad girl wearily skulking in a corner, and this old man with his shaking head and wrinkled hands,—all these are our enemies, otherwise why should they have been deported before the arrival of the foe? Why such a peculiar selection of the passengers of the dreadful trains? I go from one porter to another, asking them who was brought on. The answer is the same: "Jews,spies...." The very arrival of such a train engenders an ill feeling toward the entire Jewish nation,—and how many such trains have arrived here lately! And if you were to stop and ask who established the guilt of these people, and whether it is thinkable that all these tens of thousands of men, women, and children should have been caught red-handed, no one will stop to listen to you. A Jew is a spy,—this is the only impression that becomes indelibly branded in the brains of the Russian population which witnesses the new tragedy of the Jewish nation. The effect of the passage of these trains is truly terrible, it is a series of systematic object-lessons of hatred....
When the crowd has quenched its hunger and thirst, a new problem presents itself: how to transport all this mass to the town and give them shelter. For this purpose a number of carriages are kept in readiness. The coachmen, all of them Jews, load the miserable luggage and try to accommodate the old, the sick, and the children. Now and then a bearded, husky driver would wipe away a tear; to one side, Jewish women weep frankly. The sorrowful procession sets out for the town.There the refugees will once more have to meet the Russians and endure questionings, insulting remarks and slaps in the face.... Will the Jewish nation stand all this?
Yes, it will undoubtedly stand this frightful trial. There is something in its inner nature that enables it to hold out under the most terrible conditions.
At the house of a representative of the Jewish community, I find several people who handle the transportation and distribution of the deported Jews.
"How many people have passed through your hands?"
"Several thousand. We get word by telegraph from the centres of deportation as to how many people we should keep and how many send further."
"Where do you get the means necessary for these operations?"
"The entire Jewish population of our town has imposed upon itself a systematic refugee tax. This source furnishes us 3,000 rubles monthly. Of course this is very little, ours is a poor town. Then we get financial aid from the Jewish communities, which do not have tohelp the deported directly. We have received several thousand rubles from Smolensk, Petrograd, Moscow, and elsewhere."
"And how about the Russian population, does it render you any assistance?"
"No, its attitude toward the deported is at best indifferent, and at worst hostile."
"And the Jews, do they not protest against this new tax?"
"Oh, no, not in the least. You have no idea to what an extent the feeling of solidarity grows among us in such cases. Here is an instance. A train with the deported arrived here yesterday. It was Saturday. That is, as you know, a sacred day for the Jews. Nevertheless, all our Jewish coachmen came to the station to take the newcomers to the town. We have asked them to come to-day to get paid for their services. Not one of them appeared. And so it has been all along. There is not a Jewish coachman in the town who would take money in such a case. On the contrary, they would be insulted if they were not asked to do their bit. When the first train arrived, the present self-taxation was not yet in existence. We received the telegram suddenly. Nothingwas in readiness. Our young people got busy and started canvassing the Jewish houses. And at once people brought all they could: tea, sugar, eggs, milk. We met the hungry ones with full hands. No, we cannot complain against the Jews; they do all they can, even the poorest."
The representative shows me a heap of telegrams. Their contents are brief: "To Rabbi so-and-so. Meet 900; meet 1000; meet 1100." Only the numbers differ....
"And where do you house those who remain here?"
"Well, we accommodate them in the Jewish school, in private homes, in rooms hired for the purpose. But here we met with a new obstacle. Our town is situated on the left bank of the river Dnyepr. Now a new order was issued to the effect that the deported should settle exclusively on the left bank. We had trouble enough, I warrant you. Fortunately, the local authorities have shown us some consideration and postponed the second deportation.... But to entrain worn-out people and send them anew into the unknown,—it is painful even to imagine it. Think of it: to growaccustomed to the place, to the people who take care of you,—and then again a train, a flashing of a station, and the final outrage of the arrival. Many say: 'Better to die than to resume our road again.'
"But we are forced to send them further, although nowadays it is hard to place the deported; all the towns are crowded, the congestion leads to diseases. Here, too, we have had several deaths...."
"Tell me," I said finally, "but you know, at least approximately, why these people are deported? It is impossible that this should be done for no earthly reason, simply because they happen to be Jews...."
How great was my repentance that I put this naïve question! I shall never, never forget the eyes which turned on me. There was in them a burning pain and another question: "Yes, for what crime? If we only knew it.... Perhaps, you will tell us? You are a Russian, you are in a better position to know...."
I got up quickly, shook hands, and left in silence, with a feeling of repulsion for myself and shame for my helplessness....
Sergey Yakovlevich Yelpatyevsky is a popular writer ofrealistic, and humanitarian tales and sketches. In his youth he was exiled to Siberia, and in 1910 he was imprisoned. He was born in 1854.
Sergey Yakovlevich Yelpatyevsky is a popular writer ofrealistic, and humanitarian tales and sketches. In his youth he was exiled to Siberia, and in 1910 he was imprisoned. He was born in 1854.
A party of Jews was brought to the province of Tavrida. Officially they are called "the deported"; the newspapers refer to them as "the homeless ones." At first came three thousand Jews from the province of Kovno. They were followed by Kurland Jews, and now about seven thousand Jews have been settled in the government of Tavrida. Other parties are expected....
They had wandered a long time before they reached their new place of residence. Obviously, the authorities who handled the deportation thought only of how to get rid of the Jews, and those on whom the newcomers were thrust had not been informed in time and did not know how to arrange to take care of them.
The first party, three thousand strong, stayed a while at Melitopol, then they were transported to Simferopol where they remained five days, and were finally distributed over the towns and townlets of northern Crimea.
It is told that one of the parties was assigned to Yekaterinoslav, but the authorities refused to accept the people and ordered them to proceed further. The local papers report that a group of deported Jews was transported from Pavlograd to Jankoy, then, according to an instruction from the Ministry of the Interior they were shipped to Voronezh....
There are many old men and women, many girls and mothers, and a large number of children in the party which has been brought here. All of them are miserable and exhausted, a number are ill, either because they had been sick when the catastrophe overtook them or because they fell ill on the way, and there are many pregnant women among them. As a result of their long wanderings, wives have lost their husbands and mothers their children and they eagerly question everybody about those dear to them.
Little has been written in the newspapers about the Jews deported from the zone of military activities, and so far little has been heard of either the state or the social organisations coming to the assistance of these "war sufferers," who feel the burden of war even more heavily than those who fled from the war-stricken districts on their own account. There was a vague statement that the Pirogov Society is aiding the Jews deported to the Government of Poltava and that meagre sums were contributed by the Union of Towns and the Ministry of the Interior,—that is all the newspapers have so far reported.
The burden of taking care of the newcomers fell entirely on the local Jewish communities. It was a heavy burden, for there are no more than about twenty thousand Jewish families in the entire government of Tavrida. These twenty thousand families had to take care and to support seven thousand homeless people, mostly small tradesmen and peddlers who had had no time to liquidate their businesses and who could not take along any property, for bedding was the only thing they were allowed to carry.
They had to find housing facilities in all haste, to organise transportation and medical aid, and to solve the food and employment problems. An attempt was made to utilise the deported in agriculture, in which labour is nowadays exceedingly scarce in Crimea. But the old people and the children are not fit for agricultural work and it would take too long to train the able-bodied women. On the other hand, the largest and more prosperous Crimean towns, such as Simferopol and Sebastopol, Yalta, Yevpatoria, and Theodosia, where the deported Jews could easily find employment, are closed to the newcomers. Only the smaller and poorer towns and townlets where even the local Jews can scarcely get employment, are put at the disposal of the newcomers as their places of residence. There was even a project to settle a portion of these people in the city of Perekop. This town counts only one Jewish family among its population. It consists of a prison and several deserted shanties, and reminds one of that legendary Siberian town, which was made up of a single pillar erected as an indication of the site where the city was supposed to stand.
The local Jewish communities spend about fifty thousand rubles monthly on feeding the deported. This sum does not include the expenses of transportation and housing. The local communities applied to the Petrograd Committee, but it took upon itself only fifteen thousand rubles. The remaining thirty-five thousand are contributed by the Jews, who have also to support their specific cultural institutions as well as municipal institutions of a general character.
The representatives of the Simferopol Jewish community applied to the Governor of Tavrida for financial help. I do not know whether they were successful. Meanwhile, other parties of deported Jews are expected here, and how the Jews will be able to handle them, is more than I can tell.
The War has ruined many homes and made many men, women, and children homeless. But it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that fate has been most ruthless to these deported Jews. The so-called "refugees," after all, acted freely; they brought with them, if not what they wanted at least what they had time, what they were able to take; they couldgo wherever there was work. The refugees were everywhere welcomed and helped by both the authorities and the public organisations. Special days for the soliciting of donations were appointed and large sums collected. Wherever they went people tried to alleviate their sufferings. But the deportation of the Jews took place as if on the sly, without attracting any one's attention, without engaging the sympathies of the people at large to the degree which might be expected.
The deported proved a heavy burden not only for the Jewish but also for the Gentile population of the humble villages of the government of Tavrida, which were flooded by the newcomers. The prices of food, and the rent soared up, and competition among tradesmen and small merchants grew more ruthless,—in a word, life here became much harder than the War alone would have made it.
As one observes these throngs of old men, children and pregnant women who are deported and tossed from one end of thecountry to the other, simply because they are Jews, one wonders to whom it brings profit or happiness. It is clear that it does no one any good and no one finds this wholesale deportation either just or necessary.
"In discussing the deportation of Jews the Minister of the Interior pointed out that this measure was not justified by the actual behaviour of the Jewish population, which is in general loyal to the country and cannot bear responsibility for the actions of criminal individuals, of whom unfortunately no nationality is free" (Yuzhnyia Vyedomosti, No 10). The same communication contains the following statements: "It was asserted that the wholesale accusation of the Jews as traitors is wholly groundless.... In view of this the council of Ministers, by an overwhelming majority, decided to make intercession to put an end to the deportation of the Jews."
Whether the Council of Ministers has interceded and whether its efforts were crowned with success,—I know not. The papers published several orders whereby separate groups of deported Jews were permitted to return to their former places of residence,—for instance,the deported Galician Jews were allowed to return to Galicia,—but there was no general rescript which would put an end to the deportation....
The wholesale deportation of the Jews caused a great perplexity among the population of Crimea. Even people who are not over-sensitive to problems of truth and justice and whose sympathies are far from being broad, show signs of being stirred up. Suppose the Council of Ministers is mistaken, they say, and the presence of the Jews in the governments of Kovno and Kurland is really a danger for the State, but then do not Germans live in those provinces, in even larger numbers than Jews? Time and again we read in the newspapers of the friendly reception of the German armies by the German population of Kurland. There were also registered cases where penalties were imposed on individual persons who either showed too great an enthusiasm for the German troops or rendered them material services. Nevertheless, nothing was heard about the German population of the Government of Kurland being deported in a wholesale manner,—at least,not a single train with Kurland Germans has reached Crimea.
On the other hand,—so thinking people keep on arguing,—if the Jews have proved to be more German than the Germans themselves, and the Teutonic population of Kurland act like loyal Russian subjects, why then liquidate the land owned by the Crimean Germans, who have been living in Crimea for more than a century, who have never shown any disloyalty to Russia, who, furthermore, are separated from the German frontier by thousands of versts and who are, therefore, by no means able to inform the Germans from Germany about the movement of our troops in the provinces of Kurland and Kovno.
And once more rises the question: "In whose interests is all this done?"
The matter has also another aspect. How many Jews were deported—tens or hundreds of thousands—no one knows exactly; but seeing the large masses which are being shifted from place to place, people wonder how many cars were necessary to transport all these throngs. And then it occurs to them that all these trains could bring in enormous cargoesof coal, sugar, kerosene and other wares which are so badly needed here, and carry away grain and fruit, which are needed elsewhere, thus making life more livable in many corners of our vast country.
And people who have the enviable capacity of not losing their equanimity under any circumstances, remark that in this fashion the Jewish problem is being settled and the Pale of Settlement removed.
"Here already the provinces of Voronezh and Penza are opened to Jews.... Little by little all of Russia will be opened up...."