6. Jewish Emigration from the Pale of Settlement – 2,200,000 People Displaced
In the late eighteenth century, the Russian Empire was rife with anti-Semitism. As the Empire spread westwards from its Orthodox Christian base it conquered lands populated by people of other religions: Catholics and Jews. In order to control the Jewish population, Catherine the Great established the Pale of Settlement in 1791. The Pale, comprising the western fifth of the Empire, was designated as the only place where Jews could live and work. Even within the Pale, some cities were off-limits to Jews, and their property rights were severely limited.
While Jews in the Russian Empire were denied equal rights, the greatest challenge that they faced was the threat of pogroms – violent attacks on Jewish communities. When Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by socialist revolutionaries in 1881 many Russians blamed Jews for the Tsar’s death. This touched off a series of 166 pogroms in Ukraine. A still larger string of pogroms occurred during the tumultuous years of 1903 to 1906 when Russia was rocked by a failed war with Japan and an abortive revolution.
In response to legal oppression and mob violence, many Jews looked to leave Russia in search of a better life. Rather than trying to restrict Jewish emigration the Russian state actively encouraged Jews to leave the country. Most Russian Jews, some 2,000,000, would find new homes in the United States or Western Europe.
A small contingent of these emigrants, believing that they were not safe from anti-Semitism even in more liberal western countries, would found the Zionist movement with the goal of establishing a Jewish state. 45,000 of them would leave Russia for Palestine.