Jewish Settlement in Siberia

Siberia, which means "Sleeping Land" in Tatar, and "The Edge" or "The End" in Ostyak - one of the local languages of the region - is a vast territory. It spreads eastward from the Ural Mountains to the highlands bordering the Pacific Ocean and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the borders of Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia in the south. The Russian Far East region has also been traditionally considered a part of Siberia.

Geographically, Siberia is divided into the more populous Western Siberia (bordered by the Yenysey river), which was incorporated into the Russian Empire as early as the end of 16th century, and the sparsely populated Eastern Siberia, whose more distant regions began to be settled by the Russians only towards the end of the 19th century.

The Jewish Soldiers’ Synagogue, built in 1903 by Jewish soldiers from a local garrison near Tomsk with the help of the Jewish community of Tomsk.

From its very beginning, the history of the Siberian settlement became synonymous with the history of Russian exile, forced settlements, labor camps and prisons. While the burgeoning Moscow principality achieved its first victories against the Polish Lithuanian kingdom in the early 17th century, Mikhail Romanov (1613-1645), the first Romanov Tsar, established a separate Ministry for Siberian Affairs. By a special decree issued in 1635, all captured war prisoners - Lithuanians, Germans and Jews - were sent to forced settlement in Siberia. This policy was intended to strengthen the developing Moscow principality by bringing about a colonization of Siberia as well as by getting rid of all undesirable political opponents. The next tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Alexei Romanov (1645-1676), continued with this strategy. Following an extended internal struggle for the throne, Alexei resolved to punish his political opponents and their supporters by banishing them to Siberia. Subsequently, several dozen Jews and Germans from the German Sloboda district (till the beginning of the 18th century, all foreigners in Russia were called "Germans") were expelled to Siberia in 1659 as numerous opponents of the tsar sought shelter in the houses of “foreigners”.

In order to properly explore this enormous territory, the Russian Imperial Geographic Society sent several scientific expeditions to Siberia in the early 18th century. These expeditions discovered vast natural resources of gas, coal, gold, iron, silver, copper, etc. As a result, it was decided that a network of state-owned enterprises should be immediately established with the aim of encouraging the industrial development of the region by taking full advantage of the newly discovered natural resources. Such enterprises were founded in Nerchinsk, Achinsk, Kainsk, Kansk (Krasnoyarsk), Nizhneudinsk. The work force was mainly composed of administrative and political prisoners, and was later augmented with criminals as well.

Early Jewish community of Tobols'k
In addition to merchants, Jewish political and administrative exiles were among the first settlers of these towns. Jews began to set up communities throughout Siberia. The first reference to the Jewish community of Tobols’k dates from 1813. The document mentions the establishment of a Hevra Kadisha, and of a separate Jewish cemetery and praying house. In 1816, a Jewish merchant called Preisman donated 10.000 rubles in gold for the building of a Russian Orthodox church. Consequently, he was permitted to settle in the town along with his entire family and to open a synagogue for the needs of the local Jewish community. The newly established Jewish communities of Siberia had enough members to ensure the preservation of the Jewish traditional way of life; every Jew was free to study the Torah and the Talmud.

Early Jewish community of Kainsk
At the beginning of the 19th century, the center of Jewish life moved to Kainsk. Count Michael Speransky (1772-1839), a dismissed Russian prime-minister, who later became Governor-general of Siberia, wrote in his diary: ”Kainsk is a newly established settlement. What surprised me here - a lot of Gypsies and Jews”. Sergei Maksimov (1831-1901), a famous Russian geographer and writer passing through Kainsk, wrote: ”The numerous Jewish population makes the city similar to the Russian cities in the Western part of the Russian Empire. They [the Jews] make up four fifths of the city’s total population and wear traditional Jewish clothes and side curls. Jewish presence transformed the city into one of the main centers of economic activity in the Siberian territories”. Kainsk became one of the main trade centers of Siberian furs, which were well prized in Western Europe; each year the local Jewish merchants sent a special shipment of furs to the Leipzig fair. There were 70 merchants, all of them Jews, among a total population of 700 inhabitants. The number of Jewish merchants increased after 1820 with the discovery of new gold mines in the Altai Mountains, not far from the city. The Jews also owned 23 of the largest and richest houses in the city.

First half of the 19th century
Despite the law of 1812 that allowed Jewish craftsmen and merchants to leave their villages in the western guberniyas (regions) of the Russian Empire and settle in Siberia, exiled Jews continued to be the main reason for the increase in the Jewish population of Siberia. As a rule, new Jewish settlers maintained close relationships with relatives whom they had left behind in their former places of residence.

Setting up a family was one of the problems facing new male settlers. Numerous shadkhanim (matchmakers) wandered all over Siberia to provide Jewish men with brides from western Russian guberniyas for a sum of 50-200 rubles in gold. Despite the fact that the Jews of Siberia were known as “wealthy grooms,” not everybody was ready to pay such a large amount of money to a shadkhan. In April 1817, the government issued a special decree by which all the new inhabitants of Siberia, including Jews, were permitted to marry women from the native population on the condition that they converted to either Christianity or Judaism. Very often, these newly proselyte women became more religious than their husbands and their devoutness became proverbial. Jewish men were forbidden to marry Christian women and were not allowed to follow their exiled wives. Only Jewish wives with female children were allowed to follow their Jewish husbands to the Siberian exile.

As a result of the fact that Jewish merchants were accused of bribery, theft, and illegal trade with gold, furs and precious stones, it was decided, after 1820, to resettle the Jewish merchants further east in Siberia, far-off from the state-owned factories in the Ural Mountains. The Omsk and Tobol’sk guberniyas were selected as the new destinations for Jewish forced settlement. In order to increase the population of Siberia and to simultaneously encourage Jews from the overpopulated western Russian guberniyas to settle in the new areas, a special decree was issued in November 1836. According to this decree every male settler was provided with 15 desyatins (approx. 33 acres) of arable land, the necessary agricultural equipment, cattle, household equipment and food supply for half a year as well as a sum of money to cover the transportation and accommodation expenses. Thousands of Jewish families were willing to be resettled in the new regions. However, in January 1837 it was unexpectedly decided to stop the colonization of Jews in Siberia under the pretext that “such a policy would lead to unfair multiplication of Jews who then would spoil the native local population as Jews are known for their laziness, thefts and briberies, and the lack of faith”. Nevertheless, 1367 new Jewish settlers were allowed to settle in the guberniyas of Omsk and Tomsk.

The Tsarist government even applied new restrictions to Jewish political and administrative prisoners. They were permitted to settle solely in the Yakutsk guberniya and the Baikal Lake region. Their wives were allowed to join them, but male children under 18 years of age were forced to convert to Christianity and to join the “kantonists.” Male children above 18 years of age were to be left in the villages of the Pale of Settlement.

Some Famous Jews of Siberia
Konstantin Kaufmann Petrovich (1818-1882) - a famous Russian general, he conquered vast territories in Central Asia and Siberia for the Russian empire. For two decades he was governor-general of Turkestan and Siberia.

Horacio Ginzberg (1833-1909) - a famous Russian merchant and philanthropist who founded the “Lena Goldfield Company". He, and later his children controlled practically all the gold production of Siberia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Ginzberg was awarded the title of baron in recognition of his achievements and service for Russia.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Bronstein) (1879-1940) - a revolutionary and one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. After having been arrested for revolutionary activity in January 1898 and spending two years in imprisonment, he was exiled to the small village of Ust-Kut in Siberia. In 1902, he succeeded in escaping with the help of a forged passport bearing the name of Trotsky, which he took from one of his Russian guards and adopted as his revolutionary pseudonym. During the first Russian revolution (1905-1907), Trotsky was arrested for the second time in 1906 and subsequently exiled to the village of Obdorsk, in the Arctic region of Siberia. Trotsky escaped from Siberia again in 1907.

Avraham Harzfeld (Postrelko) (1888-1973) - a Labor leader in Israel. Harzfeld joined the Russian Socialist Zionist party in 1906. In 1909 he was arrested for revolutionary activity and for the distribution of illegal literature. In 1910, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor and sent to a small village near Yakutsk in Siberia, but in 1914, he managed to escape and subsequently immigrated to Palestine.

Halpern Leivick (1886-1962) - Yiddish poet. A Bundist since 1902, he was arrested in 1906 for distributing illegal literature. After spending four years in prisons in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he wrote several books in Yiddish, he was exiled in 1911 to the village of Vitim near the Lena River. He escaped in the summer of 1913 and later immigrated to the USA.

Alexander Averbuch (b.1974) - an athlete. Born in Irkutsk, Siberia, he immigrated to Israel in 1999. His outstanding career includes winning the Decathlon in the European Under 23 Championships in 1997, the Bronze medal at the World Athletics Championship in Seville in 1999, the European Indoor Championship in 2000, and the Gold medal for pole vaulting in the European Championship in 2002.

Second half of the 19th century
In 1855, Alexander II inherited the Russian throne. He was known for his liberal ideas and tried to implement political and administrative reforms. The “kantonist” institution was abolished, Jewish merchants from villages in the Pale of Settlement were permitted to join the merchant guilds and to become city dwellers. Jews were allowed to buy lands in certain parts of the Russian Empire and establish small private enterprises. Certain changes were introduced into the legal status of the Jewish population of Siberia: male and female children who were born in Siberia and who stayed with their parents, were free to receive education in state public schools and were allowed to choose their own occupation. Other decrees issued in 1868 and 1875 permitted retired Jewish soldiers and artisans to settle in every part of Siberia.

The Jewish communities of Siberia, especially those located in large cities began to develop and increase in population. In 1859 a yeshiva was opened. A year later, the Technological College for Jewish men was opened with more than 100 students and was soon followed by a new synagogue and a Jewish cemetery. In the 1860s, there were 2,089 Jews in Tomsk, constituting 8% of the city’s general population.

Almost all the larger Jewish communities were allowed to build synagogues and to open elementary Jewish schools (heder). Tobol’sk had a population of 1,500 Jews, which represented 8.5% of the city’s population, while in Kainsk the Jews constituted 8% of the city’s population. Every official source of the time emphasized that the Siberian Jews, who mostly earned their living as merchants and artisans, were very well off.

After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, most of the privileges that had been granted to the Jews were abolished. However, in Siberia, where the local authorities benefited from the economic activity of the Jews, they preferred to “avert their eyes” and did not enforce the instructions sent to them from St. Petersburg.

According to the population census of 1897, the Jewish inhabitants of Siberia numbered 34,477 persons, the majority of whom were city dwellers and represented 0.6% of the total Siberian population. Following the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railroad (1904), many Jewish merchants, traders, artisans, and agricultural workers from the Pale of Settlement started to arrive in Siberia. The Jewish population increased to 50,000 in 1911 and continued to grow in the early years of the 20th century. Some 84% of Siberian merchants were Jews.

First half of the 20th century
The way of life of the Jews of Siberia differed from that of their fellows in the Pale of Settlement. They generally visited synagogues only on the High Holidays (Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, Passover and Shavuot), they kept their shops open every day of the week including Saturdays and holidays, wore European clothes and had Russian-influenced given and family names. The Jews of Siberia disregarded the religious differences between Chassidic and Lithuanian Jews; in Siberian synagogues there were no old Torah scrolls and other Jewish ritual objects. Nevertheless, the education of their children was important for the Jews of Siberia. They wanted their children to learn Jewish subjects and to read something in "Jewish” and therefore they willingly donated money to Jewish schools and other community needs.

Siberia also was known as a center of Zionist political activity. Among the exiled political prisoners were Jews from different political parties and movements: Bundists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Socialist Democrats (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), Zionist Socialists, Po’alei Zion. The First Congress of the Zionists of Siberia was attended by representatives from thirteen Jewish communities and was held in Tomsk in 1903. During World War I Siberia was flooded with Jews disappointed by the political regime in Russia as well as by war refugees from the Pale of Settlement. The Bund representatives of Siberia held their conference in Irkutsk in August 1917. During 1918-1922 the Bund published the “Siberian Bund Newspaper ”.

After the end of the Civil War in 1921, Siberia was incorporated into the Russian Federation. Numerous Jews were accused of “collaboration with the opponents of the Soviet regime”; several were executed and some left to China, Mongolia, and Palestine. The private property of wealthy Jews was confiscated as well as the property of Jewish communities, including synagogues. Later, in 1922 the Bolshevik power decided to return part of the property to the Jewish communities. The establishment of the People’s Commissariat on National Affairs, which included the Evsektsia (the Jewish Cell) department, led to the opening of numerous cultural clubs for Jewish workers, Jewish theaters, schools, and libraries in Siberian cities.

According to the population census of 1926, there were 32,750 Jews in Siberia. Of that number, 28,972 lived in cities and 3,778 in villages. In 1928, with strong support from the Evsektsia, the Soviet government decided to establish a Jewish Autonomous region with its center in Birobidzhan, in the eastern region of Siberia. There are no exact statistics about the number of Jews who arrived in Birobidzhan between 1928-1936; generally it is assumed that the Autonomous region attracted some 30,000 Jews, mostly from the western areas of the USSR.

Second half of the 20th century
Another wave of Jews reached Siberia with the outbreak of World War II. Numerous industrial enterprises and institutions of higher education, including the Soviet Academy of Science, were evacuated from the central parts of the USSR to Siberia and Central Asia. Their staff included many Jews along with their families. After the war, many Jews decided to remain in Siberia, instead of returning to their former places of residence. As a result, the Jewish population of Siberia increased by more than 10,000 persons.

pic

Ida Nudel, a refusenik, during exile in Kriboshenino, Siberia, 1978
Visual Documentation Center - Beit Hatfutsot
Courtesy of Yona Schwarzman, Israel

State anti-Semitism became an everyday feature of life between the period of the early 1950’s and the mid-1980’s. While many Jews accused of “anti-Soviet activity and propaganda” were exiled to Siberia, others moved from central Russia to Siberia of their own free will in order to escape Soviet repression. All centers of Jewish cultural and religious life were closed with the exception of some model “Soviet” synagogues, newspapers and a theater in Birobidzhan. Jewish cultural and spiritual life went underground and in almost every large city there were clandestine groups who studied Hebrew, Judaism and Israeli history.

Since the late 1980’s and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a revival of Jewish community life in Siberia. A Jewish school was reopened in Birobidzhan and synagogues and courses for the study of Hebrew and Jewish tradition were reopened in Tomsk, Omsk, and Kainsk. While many Jews have immigrated to Israel, others have chosen to remain in Siberia. Various estimations put the current Jewish population of Siberia between 25,000 to 30,000 persons.

References:
Savinykh, M.N., Politika Rossi’iskogo samoderzhaviya v Otnoshenii Sibirskih Evreev v 19-nachale 20 Vekov. (Policy of the Russian Empire towards Siberian Jews in the 19th-20th centuries). Tomsk, 1997
Turetskii, G., Evrei v Sibiri. (Jews in Siberia). Sibirskaya Zaimka. On-line journal. http://www.zaimka.ru/to_sun/evrei.shtml
Kratkaya Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia. (Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia). Vol.7, pp. 791-799. Jerusalem, 1994
Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol.14, pp.1486-1489. Jerusalem, 1971

Dr. Irena Vladimirsky is a historian and researcher with the Department of History, Achva College of Education, Israel, specializing in the history of Central Asia. She contributed this article to the website of Beit Hatfutsot.

קרן נדב – לקידום מורשת העם היהודי
NADAV Fund for the Advancement of Jewish Heritage

Jews in Siberia-From the Jewish Encyclopaedia

By : Joseph Jacobs   J. G. Lipman

  Ukase of Jan. 5, 1837.
  Status of Siberian Jews.
  Anomalous Position.

Russian territory in northern Asia, extending from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Arctic Sea to the Chinese frontier, with a total population (1902) of 6,276,226, including 31,380 Jews. As a place of banishment for Russian prisoners Siberia acquired its first Jewish settlers in the seventeenth century in those banished thither as criminals, among whom there were many whose only crime consisted in their being Jews. When steps were taken in 1829 to diminish the number of Jews in Courland and Livonia, it was proposed among other measures to deport to Siberia those Jews who failed to register in some community by a specified time (see Courland). The Jews thus deported were followed by their families and friends, and the authorities did not apparently object to the latter's establishing themselves in Siberia. In the course of time, however, the Jewish question was brought forward there also. In the early thirties of the nineteenth century a question was raised in the Senate, in the case of Berkowitz and Kamener, for the purpose of ascertaining whether Jews deported to Siberia, and their children who accompanied them, were entitled to avail themselves of the gild privileges. The committee of ministers to whom the case was referred resolved that it waslegal for Berkowitz and Kamener to register in the merchant gild; but "in order to prevent too great an increase of Jewish merchants to the injury of the natives," it was resolved that the case of every Jew wishing to secure a trade license be presented to the minister of finance for decision at his discretion. This resolution was approved by the czar, March 3, 1834 ("Vtoroye Polnoye Sobraniye Zakonov," ix., No. 6875).

Ukase of Jan. 5, 1837.

On the other hand, Nicholas I. intended to establish Jewish agricultural colonies in Siberia; and he even issued an order calling for the assignment of land for this purpose in the governments of Tobolsk and Omsk (1836). The Jews, especially those from Courland, were quite eager to settle in Siberia, but the plan was suddenly abandoned, and by a ukase dated Jan. 5, 1837, the czar ordered that the settlement of Jews there should be discontinued. The issuing of this ukase was largely due to the influence of the adjutant-general, Count Benkendorf, and of the minister of the interior, Count Bludov; the latter, though he had officially advocated the establishment of Jews in Siberia, had privately opposed the measure. Nicholas I. came to the conclusion that the settlement of a large number of Jews in Siberia would result in economic injury to the native population, and he suggested, as the most effective remedy, "the enrolment among the military cantonists of all the children of Jews deported for settlement in Siberia." Inquiries made at that time showed that in the governments of Tobolsk, Tomsk, and Yeniseisk there were eighteen Jewish merchants and 659 Jewish artisans, while there were thirteen Jewish settlers in the territory of Omsk. The regulations finally adopted by Bludov specified, among other provisions, that the transfer of Jewish settlers to Siberia should be positively and permanently prohibited; that the lands assigned for new Jewish colonies in the government of Tobolsk and in the territory of Omsk should be used for other purposes; that prospective Jewish settlers already on their way to Siberia should be sent elsewhere; that Jews liable to banishment to Siberia were, if under thirty-five, to be pressed into military service, if between thirty-five and forty to be sent to the workhouse, and if over forty to be deported to special settlements in the remote regions of Siberia, namely, in the territories of Yakutsk and Transbaikalia. The Jews sentenced to hard labor in the mines were to be settled in the same regions at the expiration of their terms. Jews who had come to Siberia in order to join their relatives were to be given the alternative of returning to their former homes or of joining their coreligionists in the new Russian colonies. On their refusal to accept either, they were to be deported to the remote parts of Siberia. Male children under eighteen of Jewish settlers were to be registered among the military Cantonists ("Vtoroye Polnoye Sobraniye Zakonov," xii., No. 10,242).

Status of Siberian Jews.

Meanwhile thirty-six Jewish settlers from the governments of Moghilef and Byelostok arrived in the territory of Omsk, and their status became the subject of much official correspondence. Bludov reported the matter to Nicholas I., who decided that it would be "unjust to transfer these Jews again," and ordered that they be given the choice of removal to the government of Kherson or of remaining in Siberia under the regulations adopted for the Jews already established there. From a document of subsequent date it appears that thirty-two of these Jews preferred to remain in Siberia, while four asked to be sent back to their old homes. After this, and until the death of Nicholas I., the government endeavored in various ways to discourage the settlement of Jews in the territory.

During the reign of Alexander II. several Jews, not convicts, were given permission to settle in Siberia, but notwithstanding this permission those who established themselves there were subjected to much oppression by the local administrators, who interpreted the law according to their own desires. Thus Jewish artisans, to whom the law of the empire permitted unrestricted residence while they were actively engaged in the pursuit of their trades, were frequently compelled to remain in the Siberian settlements where they happened to be registered, and were not allowed to leave even when unable to earn a livelihood there (see "Khronika Voskhoda," 1889, No. 9).

Anomalous Position.

"A general review of the government enactments concerning the Jews naturally leads to the question," says Mysh in 1889, "why the honest Jew who is not a member of the privileged classes is forbidden to breathe the air of Siberia, while various criminals and their descendants, although Jews, may not only live in Siberia while serving their terms, but may settle there permanently, and enjoy full civic rights, even though forbidden to engage in the liquor trade. At the same time, thanks to the laws concerning the Pale of Settlement, any Jew within the Pale who, on account of overcrowding and the fierce competition of his coreligionists, suffers from poverty, and who wishes to escape from his unfortunate position, and to remove with his family beyond the Pale, will find only one way open to him, namely, to commit some crime. It will then become possible for him to remove with his family to Siberia at the government's expense, and become there a full-fledged member of the local population."

Under Alexander III. and Nicholas II. official discrimination against the Jews of Siberia became more pronounced. Thus the council of the government of Tobolsk decided that the domicil of a Jew registered in a Siberian community is not Siberia at large, but only the place of his registration, and hence such a Jew, if not a registered artisan, has not the right to move from one Siberian government to another, nor even to transfer his residence from one settlement to another in the same government. The Siberian administrations were supported in this ruling by the imperial Senate, and thereby many Siberian Jews have been placed in the position of serfs practically attached to the locality where they happen to reside; in many instances they have been deprived of the means of gaining a livelihood.

Regulations of a similar nature were adopted in 1899 by the governor-general of Transbaikalia. According to these, "all Jews are forbidden to reside inthe boundary-zone adjoining the Chinese frontier. Only those Jews who lived there prior to the ukase of June 12, 1860, are permitted to remain in the place of their registration. The banished Jews and their descendants have no right to move freely from place to place in Siberia, but may apply to the governor-general for permission to do so" ("Khronika Voskhoda," 1900, No. 2, p. 10). These regulations are everywhere enforced with great severity and arbitrariness by the local administrations, much suffering being inflicted upon the Jewish residents of Siberia (ib. Nos. 42, 70; "Die Welt," 1902, No. 48).

According to the census of 1897, the Jews in Siberia numbered 34,477 (18,483 males, and 15,994 females), distributed as follows:
see table

Bibliography: Voskhod, 1887, ix.;
ib. 1889, vii.;
Voskhod, Nedyelnaya Khronika Voskhoda, 1887. No. 40;
Mysh, Rukovodstvo K Zakonam o Yevreyakh, 2d ed.J. J. G. L.

From The Jewish Virtual Library-Siberian Settlements

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0018_0_18447.html

SIBERIA (Rus. Sibir), Asiatic part of the Russian Federation, extending from the Urals in the west to the Pacific in the east. The first Jews went to Siberia from Lithuanian towns captured by the Russians in the Russo-Polish war (1632–34); they were exiled there together with other prisoners. In 1659 a number of Jewish residents in the "German quarter" of Moscow were exiled to Siberia. At the beginning of the 19^th century Jews were among the convicts sent to Siberia for settlement or hard labor. The latter founded the first Jewish communities there, e.g., in *Omsk, *Tomsk, Tobolsk, Kuibyshev (Kainsk) in western Siberia, and Kansk and Nizhneudinsk in eastern Siberia.

Since Siberia was outside the *Pale of Settlement, convicts continued to constitute the main Jewish element settling there throughout the 19^th century. Due to the scarcity of Jewish women in Siberia at the beginning of the 19^th century, Jews were allowed in 1817 to buy Kalmyk women, to make proselytes of them and marry them. In 1826 Jews were forbidden to settle in the border district of Siberia between the area of Russian settlement and that of the natives; in 1827 the husbands of Jewish women exiled to Siberia were forbidden to join them; and in 1836 Jewish women joining their exiled husbands were forbidden to take their male children with them. In 1834 Jews whose sentences had expired, as well as members of their families, were obliged to apply for special permission from the minister of finance to join local merchant guilds, in order to prevent "an undue multiplication of Jews among the merchant class, and consequent damage to the native population."

In 1836 the Russian government, within the framework of its program to increase the number of Jews engaged in agricultural work, set aside 15,154 desyatins (409,138 acres) of land in western Siberia for Jewish agricultural settlement. In January 1837 *Nicholas I ordered the curtailment of Jewish settlement in Siberia: by this time, however, several hundred Jews had already arrived to participate in the project. On May 15, 1837, ordinances were issued "to prevent the immigration of Jews to Siberia, and to decrease the number of Jews settled there"; these decrees specified, inter alia, that only Jewish convicts aged 40 and over could be exiled to Siberia, and that even such settlers should be allowed in the outlying districts of the country only (in the Yakutsk district and on the further side of the Baikal). The ordinances further required that the sons of exiles (i.e., those under 18) be handed over as *Cantonists, as well as sons of exiles who had completed their terms of sentence; their descendants were also to be handed over as Cantonists, or to be removed to the Pale of Settlement before reaching the age of 16.

In 1857, under Czar Alexander II, Jews in Siberia were permitted to join merchant guilds on the basis of the existing general instructions regarding this matter, and in 1860 the Siberian Jewish children were permitted to remain with their parents. The same proclamation, however, forbade them to settle within 100 versts of the borders with neighboring countries. When after 1859 certain classes of Russian Jews were permitted to settle outside the Pale of Settlement, some of them found their way to Siberia. During this period the Jewish communities of Siberia consolidated and the characteristics of the typical "Siberian Jew" emerged: similar in dress and language to his Russian neighbor, ignorant in Jewish learning, and negligent of the mitzvot; he nevertheless possessed warm Jewish sentiments and was attached to the Jewish people and religion. The last quarter of the 19^th century saw the emergence of an intelligentsia among Siberian Jewry, a few of whose members were political exiles. Some of the latter devoted themselves to investigating the customs and languages of the indigenous peoples, e.g., V.G. *Bogoraz, V. *Jochelson, L. Sternberg, M. Krol, S. Chudnovsky, N. Geker, and I. *Shklovski.

Jews of Siberia played a prominent role in the economic development of the area, especially in the fur trade. Some Jews, like the *Guenzburg family of St. Petersburg, participated in the development of Siberian gold mining. In 1897 there were 34,477 Jews in Siberia (0.6% of the total population): 8,239 in the region of *Irkutsk, 7,696 in the region of Tomsk, 7,550 in the Trans-Baikal region, 5,730 in the Yenisei region, and 2,453 in the region of Tobolsk. Some 2,689 Siberian Jews (8.25%) were then engaged in agriculture, 9,161 (28.10%) in crafts and industry, 12,362 (37.92%) in trade, 1,906 (5.85%) in transport, and 1,051 (3.22%) in private and public clerical work and the liberal professions. In the 1890s the entry of Jews into Siberia and the rights of the Jews living there were further restricted. The revised edition of the passport rules published in 1890 proclaimed a total ban on Jewish immigration to Siberia, save for those who were sentenced to exile or hard labor there. This ban became the fundamental rule regarding Jewish entry into Siberia and served as a basis for further prohibitions. In 1891 it was interpreted as including also those Jews who had the right to settle outside the Pale, and this interpretation was finally authorized in 1899; at the same time, however, it was established that the prohibition did not extend to Jews who were already living in Siberia.

From this time Siberia was closed to all Jews, except those sentenced to hard labor or exile. In 1897 the same ban served as a basis for a new law prohibiting Siberian Jews (except for the descendants of soldiers who had served in the army during the reign of Nicholas I) from residing in any other place but that of their registration as permanent residents. This order spelled deportation for thousands of Jewish families who were not living in the place where they were registered; the practical difficulties involved in the transfer of thousands of families from place to place prevented its being carried out. Thousands of Siberian Jews, however, were then left completely at the mercy of the markedly hostile local administration, with the threat of deportation constantly hanging over their heads.

On the other hand, the attitude of the Christian population in general toward the Jews was sympathetic, as may be gauged, among other things, from the election of the Jewish exile Avigdor (Victor) *Mandelberg to the second *Duma (1907). During World War I thousands of Jewish refugees from the front lines reached Siberia and exercised a considerable influence on Jewish community life there: The number of Jewish educational institutions grew, and political parties (e.g., the *Bund, *Zionist Socialists, *Po'alei Zion) were established. After the 1917 Revolution a congress of Jewish community representatives from all Siberia and the Urals was held in Irkutsk (January 1919) and a national council of Siberian Jews was elected. Representatives of the Zionist movement, which had spread widely in Siberia in the first years of the 20^th century and greatly intensified its activities after the revolution, exercised a decisive influence at the congress. Thus, the congress resolved, inter alia, "that the work of building Ereẓ Israel will be included among the activities of the Jewish communities in Siberia and the Urals." The national council was headed by M. *Novomeyski, then officiating as the chairman of the Zionist Federation.

Soviet Rule

With the establishment of Soviet rule in Siberia, however, Jewish communal, cultural, and national institutions were gradually destroyed. Many wealthy and middle-class Jews left, most of them for China and a few for Palestine. The majority of the Jewish refugees living in Siberia returned to their homes in Poland and Lithuania. In 1926 there were only 32,750 Jews: 9,083 in the region of Irkutsk, 5,505 in the region of Tomsk, 4,389 in the region of Omsk, 3,040 in the region of Krasnoyarsk, and 2,301 in the region of Novosibirsk. Some 28,972 Siberian Jews lived in towns and 3,778 in rural districts. In 1939 the number of Jews rose to 63,844 persons, most of them in Khabarovsk Krai (district) – 22,473, including 13,291 of the Jewish Autonomic region – Birobidzhan; Novosibirsk district (11,191); and Irkutsk district (8,504). Except in the Jewish Autonomous Region where the Jews constituted 18.57% of the population, the Jews were a small percentage of the total population, only 0.6% and 2%. Most Jews lived in the capitals of the districts. The Soviet rulers exiled thousands of Zionists from European Russia to the most outlying parts of Siberia. Among the exiles was the poet Ḥayyim *Lenski, who described life in the concentration camps and the scenery of Siberia in his poetry. In 1928 the Soviet government assigned an area in eastern Siberia to Jewish settlement, and in 1934 it was declared an Autonomous Jewish Region (see *Birobidzhan). During World War II large numbers of Jewish refugees from the areas occupied by the Germans reached Siberia, and some of them remained there after the war ended. According to the 1959 census there were 12,429 Jews in the Novosibirsk oblast, 9,458 in the Omsk oblast, 10,313 in the Irkutsk oblast, 2,691 in the Buryat-Mongol republic, 8,494 in the territory of Khabarovsk, and 14,269 in Birobidzhan. The census, which did not cover the whole of Siberia, registered a total of 57,654 Jews (i.e., those declaring themselves as Jews). Some 53,266 (92.4%) lived in towns; 9,970 (17.3%) declared Yiddish as their mother tongue (excluding Birobidzhan – only 4,373, or 10%). In Novosibirsk, which became the capital of Siberia, the Jewish population (with a synagogue and an old Jewish cemetery) numbered in the late 1960s about 25–30,000, consisting of a small nucleus of Siberian Jews who had been there from czarist times – and their descendants – and mostly of Jews who had been evacuated from the western Soviet Union during World War II. In 2002, 3,330 Jews remained in the Novosibirsk oblast and 14,579 in the entire Siberian district.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

M.A. Novomeysky, My Siberian Life (1956); Ben-Ami (A.L. Eliav), Between Hammer and Sickle (1965); A. Druyanow (ed.), in: Reshummot, 3 (1923), 549–51; Ẓ. Shimshi, Zikhronot (1938), 92–102; A. Mandelberg, Me-Ḥayyai (1942), 21–25, 45–82; A. Zenziper (Rafaeli), Pa'amei ha Ge'ullah (1951), 143; idem, Be-Ma'avak li-Ge'ullah (1956), 57–60, 189–98, 213–8; S. Kushnir, Sadot va-Lev (1962), 47–71; M. Elkin, Kaybaler stepes (1934); M. Mysh, in: Voskhod, 9:7 (1889), 1–18; 9:8 (1889), 1–21; idem, Rukovodstvo k russkomu zakonodatelstvu o yevreyakh (1890), 243–51; Halpern, in: Voskhod, 20:3 (1900), 3–17; M.A. Lozina-Lozinski, Sistematicheskiy sbornik razyasneniy pravitelstvuyushchogo senata po delam o zhitelstve yevreyev (1902), 545–78; G. Belkovski, Russkoye zakonodatelstvo o yevreyakh v Sibiri (1905); B.D. Brutzkus, Professionalny sostav yevreyskago naseleniya Rossii (1908), table no. 8; Yu. Ostrovski, Sibirskiye yevrei (1911); V. Voytinski and A. Gornstein, Yevrei v Irkutske (1915); N.N. (I. Syrkin), in: Yevreyskaya Starina, 8 (1915), 85–99; Neiman, ibid., 381–5; Kleinman, in: Yevreyskaya Letopis, 3 (1924), 124–34; Kirzhnitz, in: Sibirskaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, 1 (1929), 869–73.

[Yehuda Slutsky]

Jewish Settlement in Siberia Dr. Irena Vladimirsky

Soviet Rule

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Jewish Settlement in Siberia
Dr. Irena Vladimirsky