Nadene Goldfoot
Russia had 2 infamous Catherines who were empresses and who did much to put fear into the hearts of Jews. The 1st Catherine ruled from 1725 at age 41 till 1727 when she died, and had expelled all the Jews living in "Little Russia." Up to the very end of the 19th century, Little Russia was the prevailing term for much of the modern territory of Ukraine controlled by the Russian Empire, as well as for its people and their language. This can be seen from its usage in numerous scholarly, literary and artistic works. When she died, this order was countermanded.
She was the second wife and Empress consort of Peter the Great, and Empress Regnant of Russia.. Said to have been born on 15 April 1684, she was originally named Marta Helena Skowrońska which is a Polish spelling. Marta was the daughter of Samuel Skowroński , a Roman Catholic farmer from the eastern parts of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth,
Peter the Great had two wives, with whom he had fourteen children, three of whom survived to adulthood. Peter's mother selected his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina, with the advice of other nobles in 1689.He took Marta Helena Skowrońska, a Polish-Lithuanian peasant, as a mistress some time between 1702 and 1704. Marta converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and took the name Catherine. Though no record exists, Catherine and Peter are described as having married secretly between 23 Oct and 1 December 1707 in St. Petersburg. Peter valued Catherine and married her again (this time officially) at Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 19 February 1712. He was very religious.
Catherine was the first woman to rule Imperial Russia, opening the legal path for a century almost entirely dominated by women, including her daughter Elizabeth and granddaughter-in-law Catherine the Great, all of whom continued Peter the Great's policies in modernizing Russia. At the time of Peter's death the Russian Army, composed of 130,000 men and supplemented by another 100,000 Cossacks, was easily the largest in Europe. However, the expense of the military was proving ruinous to the Russian economy, consuming some 65% of the government's annual revenue. Since the nation was at peace, Catherine was determined to reduce military expenditure. For most of her reign, Catherine I was controlled by her advisers. However, on this single issue, the reduction of military expenses, Catherine was able to have her way. The resulting tax relief on the peasantry led to the reputation of Catherine I with them as a just and fair ruler. Yet she was extremely anti-semitic having removed Jews from "Little Russia."
Life for The Jews of Little Russia at times flourished, at other times the Jewish community faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discrimination. In the Ukrainian People's Republic, Yiddish was a state language along with Ukrainian and Russian. At that time, the Jewish National Union was created and the community was granted an autonomous status. Yiddish was used on Ukrainian currency between 1917 and 1920. Before World War II, a little under one-third of Ukraine's urban population consisted of Jews, who were the largest national minority in Ukraine. Ukrainian Jews consist of a number of sub-groups, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, Crimean Karaites, Krymchak Jews, and Georgian Jews.
During the Khmelnytsky Uprising between 1648 and 1657, an army of Cossacks and Crimean Tatars massacred and took into captivity large numbers of Jews, Roman Catholics and Uniate Christians. Recent estimates range from 15,000 to 30,000 Jews killed or taken captive, and 300 Jewish communities completely destroyed. So anti-Semitism prevailed before Catherine II reigned.
Catherine the Great ruled from 1762 to 1796,34 years, and her Jewish policy was marked by a combination of liberation and coercion. On the one hand, Jews were allowed to register in the merchant and other classes in 1780, but permission was restricted to White Russia (Belarus) in 1786.
She is responsible for moving all Jews out of Russia proper into the Pale of Settlement in 1791 which was land made up of 25 Provinces of Czarist Russia: Poland, Lithuania, White Russia (Belarus), Ukraine, Bessarabia (1st Romania, then also Moldova and Ukrania) and Crimea, where Jews were permitted permanent residence. of, and by 1795 excluded Jews from living in rural areas inside the Pale.
Permission to live outside its confines was granted only to certain people, members of the liberal professions with a high school diploma, big businesses, skilled artisans, and as Cantonists(teen conscriipts for the army). One found that borders were restricted from time to time by the oppressive "statute" that came out concerning the Jews of 1835 to May 3, 1882 under the May Laws which said that Jews could only live in the Pale. (Temporary regulations regarding the Jews (also known as May Laws) were proposed by the minister of internal affairs Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev and enacted on 15 May ,1882, by Tsar Alexander III of Russia. Originally, regulations of May 1882 were intended only as temporary measures until a future revision of the laws concerning the Jews but remained in effect for more than thirty years.) This hampered Jewish economic development. The Pale was kept in effect until August 1915, and legally in March 1917 at the end of WWI. All names in the Pale were referred to as "Russia" on census of Jews in USA during this period. .
The phrase White Russia is the literal translation of the word
Belarus . In earlier times the countries belonging to the Rus were
given many epithets or qualifying adjectives. For example, the
different regions were called Red Rus, Galician Rus, Black Rus,
White Rus, Great Rus or Little Rus. White Rus proved to be the
most viable name and over the centuries this became the name of
the sovereign state. In textbooks and reference books it is generally
stated that the origin of the term is not finally explained. However,
there are five possible versions which are most commonly cited.
According to the first, the territory which was not overcome by the Mongolian khans in the 13th century was called white.
Genghis Khan and his descendants conquered the territory from China to the Volga between 1237 and 1242 and controlled this until 1480.
However, the princes of Polotsk and their neighbours resisted
successfully and remained independent. So in this case, white
meant independent, free. According to the second alternative, the
name comes from the white hair or colour of the clothing worn by
the indigenous peoples in the respective area.
The woman whom history would remember as Catherine the
Great, Russia’s longest-ruling female leader, was actually the
eldest daughter of an impoverished Prussian prince. Born in
1729, Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst enjoyed numerous marital
prospects due to her mother’s well-regarded bloodlines.
In 1744, 15-year-old Sophie was invited to Russia by
Czarina Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter the Great who had
assumed the Russian throne in a coup just three years
earlier. The unmarried and childless Elizabeth had chosen
her nephew Peter as heir and was now in search of his
bride. Sophie, well trained by her ambitious mother and
eager to please, made an immediate impact on Elizabeth,
if not her intended husband. The marriage took place on
August 21, 1745, with the bride (a new convert to
Orthodox Christianity) now bearing the name Ekaterina,
or Catherine.
The Pale of Settlement included the following areas, mostly concerning Ukraine.
1791
The ukase of Catherine the Great of December 23, 1791 limited the Pale to:
- Western Krai-name of the westernmost parts of the Russian Empire, excluding the territory of Congress Poland.:
- Mogilev Governorate-- was a governorate of the Russian Empire in the territory of the present day Belarus. Its capital was in Mogilev, referred to as Mogilev-on-the-Dnieper, or Mogilev Gubernskiy.
- Polotsk Governorate (later reorganized into Vitebsk Governorate)-- was an administrative unit of the Russian Empire, with the seat of governorship in Vitebsk. It was established in 1802 by splitting the Byelorussia Governorate and existed until 1924.
- Little Russia (Ukraine):
- Kiev Governorate-- was an administrative division of the Russian Empire from 1796 to 1919 and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1919 to 1925.
- Political subdivisions: uyezds: 12Today part of: Ukraine
- Chernigov Governorate--was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the Malorossiya Governorate with an administrative centre of Chernihiv.
- Novgorod-Seversky Viceroyalty (later became Poltava Governorate)--was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire
- Novorossiya Governorate-- also referred to as the Union of People's Republics, was a proposed confederation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine, both of which are under the control of pro-Russian separatists. .
- Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty--The Ekaterinoslav Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire was created on 26 March 1783 by merging the Novorossiya Governorate and Azov Governorate. On 31 December 1796, it was incorporated into the re-established Novorossiya Governorate.
- Taurida Oblast (Crimea)
- Fiddler on the Roof musical, later adapted into a film, located in the Pale of 1905 in the fictional town of Anatevka, Ukraine
- Yentl musical, later adapted into a film located in the Pale of 1873 Poland
- The novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Jews living in the Ukrainian SSR underwent Sovietization, together with the rest of the population of the Soviet Union.
The Ukrainian Jews were targeted and murdered during the Holocaust when the Nazis occupied Ukraine. During the war, a total of 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were killed, leaving only 40% of the Jewish population prior to the war. In 1939, when Western Ukraine was taken over by Germany, the Jews were put into ghettos and later sent to death camps where they were murdered. Additionally, the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units, was responsible for the mass murder of up to a million Ukrainian Jews. Following the atrocities of World War II, there was a lot of antisemitic violence in Ukraine. However, after the period known as Glasnost, the view of Jews became more positive as they realized a need for change. The number of Jews in Ukraine has drastically decreased since the late 20th century. The 2001 census showed that 380,000 Jews left Ukraine since 1989, which was 3⁄4 of the entire Jewish population.
Resource:
Update: 2/24/22
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Russia#:~:text=Up%20to%20the%20very%20end,scholarly%2C%20literary%20and%20artistic%20works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_I_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Soviet_Union
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