The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 3

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

60 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson continue a project in which Pete reads Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together," and Dr' Johnson provides commentary.Dr Johnson's PatreonRusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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head on over to freeman Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support. I want to explain something right now if you support me through Substack or Patreon. You have access to an RSS feed that you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. If you support me through Subscrib Star, Gumroad, or on my website directly, I will send you a link where you can download the file and you can listen to it any way you wish.

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So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingiano show. This is part three of our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Solzionisky. How are you doing, Dr. Johnson? Have you ever been in a position where you had to be? to draw blood from a dog twice a day by any chance.

Because, you know, that's what I have to do. I can't imagine. I can't imagine that that pup is enjoying it very much. Well, my dog was just diagnosed with diabetes. So now it's chaos. So, but we're going to do everything, you know, everything, everything we possibly can. And we have a good vet. So I just wondered if anyone else had.

this had this joyous responsibility, but I assume maybe it's just me for now. That does sound hard, especially since you do care about the animal too. So yeah, yeah. Nope. I'm just giving a very sharp- clawed cat antibiotics twice a day. And yesterday he got me pretty good. good. So it's fine. I think I'll live. Yes, I think I will too.

Let's get going. Yeah, let's get going here. We are up to the section, the Kahal and Civil Rights. And here we go. The Jews of Poland maintained a vigorous economic relation to the surrounding population, yet in the five centuries that they live there did not permit any influence from outside themselves. one century after another rolled by in post-medieval European development, while the Polish Jews remained confined to themselves and were always an anachronistic appearance. They had a fixed order within themselves.

Here it is granted that these conditions, which later remained intact, also in Russia until the middle of the 19th century, were favorable for the religious and national preservation of the Jews from the very beginning of their diaspora. the whole Jewish life was guided by the kaha'al, which had developed from the communal life of the Jews and the rabbis. You know, even on our own show on these, or similar topics, the two of us, my own show,

the kahaal comes up quite a bit because it was a, essentially a totalitarian system where every aspect, I mean, no different than the Talmud itself, the cell of of Jewish life it was completely autonomous in the sense that it didn't have to answer

to anybody there was the so-called four lands council where they divided up their parts of the Polish Empire I think it was a greater, lesser Poland Galicia and Volina

were the four land and they were in charge of everything and taken together that council what's the most powerful institution in the entire Polish Empire? So they collected taxes, old age, the pensions, quote unquote. There was the economic center of everything.

You couldn't go. And I think we've mentioned this before. If there's a dispute between or among Jews, you can't take it to the secular or Polish legal system. it was purely oligarchic there was a lot of abuse because again there was no answering

to anybody and and you know it was eventually it collapsed in the 19th century early 19th century but it was totally

isolated and once this began to weaken this is where the Hasidic Jews to some extent came from the Talmud was the doctrine

but slowly but surely the Kabbalah entered into a basic discourse it was persecuted quite a bit not as such but when the Hasidics first showed themselves with all these messianic

claims that were persecuted all over the Jewish world so reading some of the documents contemporary documents as to how the how worked one of the things that they did is that they told told children's stories.

And this is why it was so successful. And very few Jews actually left it that if you were to leave the Cahal and go off on your own, the Goyim are animals. They'll kill you. You have to stay within the Cajal. And that's the only way you're going to be able to function. And that was a story that they told, you know, young men to keep them from leaving. And that's how they tolerated this oligarchy.

Because there were plenty of poor Jews within the Kahul. And but as time went on, it, and Poland itself didn't exist anymore as an empire. It started to fall apart. But there's always this mentality. You know, one of the themes of this discussion we've had so far is that Poland, Lithuania, defined overwhelmingly what we mean by the word Jewish and Talmudic and rabbinic. because there were so many of them here, they were so wealthy.

And even though the Kahal took a huge hit with Kimmanyinsky, and subsequent revolts later on, that just fed into their storytelling that for no reason. They envy us. And therefore, at any moment, if you leave this boundary, you're going to be murdered or tortured or whatever because they envy our intelligence or something like that.

So they were completely, and this is how they were able to exploit people. The Slavs was such tremendous abandoned because not only were they protected by the Poles, the estates that they worked with them, but that they had no connection. They had no kinship, but they had no connection with the outside world. They spoke Yiddish. they had no very few of them spoke local languages maybe elites may have but you know this is how they this is how the exploitation became a matter of course because they're not our people their goyum or their cattle this is this is what they deserve okay moving on what may have started as a democratic

institution took on the qualities of an oligarchy bent on maintaining its own power in turn the rabbi and Kahal had a mutually exploitative relation in that the rabbis were the executive enforcement arm of the Kahal and the rabbis owed their position to appointment by the Kahal. Likewise, the Kahal owed the maintenance of its power more to the secular regime than to its own people. The fact that the Jewish people have held themselves together in their diaspora for 2,000 years, inspires wonder and admiration. But when one examines certain periods more closely, like the the Polish-Russian one in the 16th and into the middle of the 17th century, and how this unity was only won by means of methods of suppression exercised by the Kahilat,

then one no longer knows if it can be evaluated merely as an aspect of religious tradition. If the slightest traits of such isolationism were detected amongst us Russians, we would be severely faulted. When Jewry came under the rule of the Russian state, this indigenous system, them remained, in which the hierarchy of the kaha'al had a self-interest. According to J. I. Gessen, all the anger that enlightened Jews felt against the ossifying Talmudic tradition became stronger in the middle of the 19th century. Quoting, the representatives of the ruling class of jury staked everything on persuading the Russian administration of the necessity to maintain the

centuries-old institution, which reflected the interest both of the Russian power and of the ruling Jewish class. The Kahul in connection with the rabbis held all the power and not seldom abused it. It misappropriated public funds, trampled the rights of the poor, arbitrarily increased taxes, and wreaked vengeance on personal enemies. At the end of the 18th century, the governor of one of the administrative regions attached to Russia wrote in his report, the rabbis, the spiritual council in the Kahal, which are knitted closely together, hold all things in their land and Lord over the conscience of the Jews and in complete isolation rule over them without any relation to the civil order.

Now, what Solzhenitsyn is trying to explain. I mean, the first thing in the previous paragraph, he says that if we Russians or Orthodox people had this kind of arrangement within the places where we lived or in Russia itself. In other words, if we were strictly ethno-nationalist, we would be attacked right and left, which, of course, they are. the Jews do it this is multiculturalism so that's pretty clear what he's talking about here

and that it's certainly not a religious matter the distinction is very much like Islam which came from Judaism to a great extent like Islam these the differences between philosophy civil state law religion ethnic self-interest all of that these lines are

blurred or non-existent you know, God isn't really the issue. It hasn't been. It never has been, especially in the Kabbalah. God is an abstraction to them, and they are really almost the manifestation of God on earth. So it's very easy for that to quickly become, we are our own Messiah. And that's exactly, I think, still the dominant idea among Jews, the Jews today. but to the extent that the Ghaal continued to exist in certain places, they had enough power to approach, you know, the first,

the first few partitions of Poland where these areas, some of these areas came onto the Russian administration. All of a sudden now Russia has hundreds of thousands of Jews that it didn't have much contact with before what was a trickle. Now is a huge flood. And at least for a while, the Russians didn't. the Russian administration locally didn't want to break it. They didn't want to really break the Polish aristocracy to continue to exist there too.

It was a tremendously disruptive force in the extreme western parts of the empire. But there were people like Catherine Gray and a few others who tried to break it down, tried to so-called liberate the Jews by having them assimilate. same problem in Germany and it was more or less an unpopular option as time went on of course Zionism was very rare

at the time but growing in strength so that's where we are right now in history there was a still and I have a whole paper on this the special mission the Tsar Paul and Alexander I

first sent to Western, Gabriel D'Urjavon, actually being sent to Western Russia to figure out why the peasants hate the Jews so much. And I have a paper on that, which I got initially from this book, just a hint of it. And, you know, when I started reading this stuff, you know, the Russians were very naive. And he came back to, to Petersburg saying, oh, there's very good reasons for this contempt. You would have no idea what they do here. but things changed. They became more cunning

when the Polish Empire was no more another. I had a new sovereign to deal with. And you had more and more Jews leaving the Kahul at this point and they had a tremendous influence

in the capital, especially when Dersovins started to say in his naifte, that my God, the exploitation is extraordinary. And I don't know if we're going to get to that at some point, but my paper on that, I think that was in the Barnreview.

I published it there. And that comes from this very book. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro.

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Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas. With vouchers from Trump, Dunebag. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Faragea. In 18th century Eastern European jury, two movements developed. The religious one of the Hasidum and the enlightening one favoring secular culture spearheaded by Moses Mendelssohn. But the Kellehot suppressed both with all its might.

In 1781, the rabbinit of Vilna placed the ban over the house. Hasidam, and in 1784, the Assembly of Rabbis in Mogilev declared them as outlaws and their property as without owner. Thereafter, mobs laid waste to the houses of the Hasidum in several cities. It was an intra-Jewish program. The Hasidum were persecuted in the most cruel and unfair manner. Their rivals did not even feel embarrassed to denounce them before the Russian authorities with false political charges.

In turn, the officials in 1799, based on the complaint of the Hasidic, arrested members of the Kelaat of Vilna for embezzlement of tax money. The Hasidam movement expanded, being especially successful in certain provinces. The rabbis had Hasidic books publicly burned, and the Hasidam emerged as defenders of the people against abuses of the Kellehot. It is apparent that in those times the religious war overshadowed other questions, of religious life. Well, he's right here. He's talking about the Hasidic movement being not quite revolutionary,

but very close to being revolutionary. The same thing happened in Spain, the Sephardine, even worse with the Karaites and Samaritans. This cruelty towards anything that disrupts their drive to unity knows very few matches.

lying about them, going to the secular authorities, which they normally would condemn, and saying, thinking, this happened in the New Testament. It happened in the Ottoman Empire. The Jews would go to the secular authority and say, you know, this group of people, our enemies are plotting against you, or they're refusing to pay taxes, or they won't, you know, they're condemning, they're refusing to assist in the war effort or whatever it is. and they would normally be believed. And so contrary to their condemnation,

earlier condemnation, we're going to the outside authorities. They do it all the time to destroy the Hasidic movement. So you have a, and eventually this distinction more or less collapsed, but the Assydom turned out to be a semi-populist movement based, more on the Kabbalah than on the Talmud. Of course, they don't reject Talmud by any means,

but it was a matter of emphasis. And the Kabbalah became more and more popular through this growing and irrepressible movement of the Hasidic rabbi. The part of white Russia that fell to Russia in 1772 consisted of the provinces of Polatsk, later Vedepsk, and Mogulov. In a communique to those governments

in the name of Catherine, it was explained that their residents of whichever sex and standing they might be would from now on have the right to public exercise of faith and to own property in addition to all rights, freedoms, and privileges which their subjects previously enjoyed. The Jews were thus legally set as equals to Christians, which had not been the case in Poland. As to the Jews, it was added that their business stay and remain intact with all those rights that they today enjoy, i.e. nothing would be taken away from Polish rights either. Through this, the previous owner of the Kelaat survived. The Jews with their Kahl

system remained isolated from the rest of the population and were not immediately taken into the class of traders and businessmen that corresponded to their predominant occupations. In the beginning, Catherine was on her guard only against any hostile reaction of the Polish nobility from whom power threatened to slip away, but also against giving an unfavorable impression to her orthodox subjects. But she did extend wider rights to the Jews, whom she wished well,

and promised herself of their economic utility to the nation. Already in 1778, the most recent general Russian regulation was extended to white Russia. Those holding up to 500 rubles belong to the class of trade-plying townsmen, those with more capital to the class of merchant, endowed into one of three guilds according to possession. Both classes were free of the poll tax and paid 1% of their capital, which was declared according to conscience.

We know what happens when the Jews are quote-unquote liberated. Not that they were in any second-class position in Poland or in Russia, or what you might call second-class comes from the Jews themselves. in the nature of the Kahul system. But Russians were just Russians. The great merchants were all believers, generally speaking, in the Russian Empire. But now they have to compete with these incredibly shrewd, completely unified aliens, as far as their concern, who have contacts with liquidity and capital all over the world, especially in Constantinople and northern Europe,

the Netherlands in particular in London of course but have been doing this for generations upon generations upon generations they will support one another but when it comes to the Goyan no matter where they are exploiting them ruthlessly is

it's not only a tolerated but almost a sacramental act so this automatically put the Cajal again which was thanks to the Hasidic and many other things was starting to wane in importance the so-called enlightenment was you know drawing Jews to the town

especially the capital. But I put them in a tremendously advantageous position, and slowly but surely Russians started realizing why the Cossacks were so anti-Judaic. This regulation was a particularly great significance. It set aside the national isolation of Jews up to that time. Catherine wanted to end that. Further, she subverted the traditional Polish perspective on Jews

as an element standing outside the state. Moreover, she weakened the Cahal sense, the capability of the kahaal to compel. Quoting, the process began of pressing Jews into the civil organism. The Jews availed themselves to a great extent of the right to be registered as merchants, so that, for example, 10% of the Jewish population of the Mogulav province declared themselves as merchants, but only 5.5% of the Christians. The Jewish merchants were now freed from the tax obligation to the Kahal and did not have to apply to the Kahal anymore for permission to be temporarily absent. They had only to deal with the cognizant magistrate. In 1780, the Jews in Mogolev

and Skloff greeted Catherine upon her arrival with odes. With this advance of Jewish merchants, the civil category Jews ceased to exist. All other Jews had now likewise to be assigned to a status, and obviously the only one left for them was townsmen. But at first, few wanted to be reclassified as such, since the annual poll tax for townsmen at the time was 60 copecks, but only 50 kopeks for Jews. However, there was no other option. From 1783, therefore the Jewish townsmen, nor merchants,

needed to pay their taxes to the Cahal, but instead to the magistrate, each according to his class, and from him they also received their travel passes. So now, Jewish elites have to deal with a completely different reality. The one thing that they have going for them, and this is ongoing, really straight into the 19th century, is the naifte of maybe not the locals so much, but those in St. Petersburg, who, and this is prior to D'Rzavin's investigation into the causes of anti-Jewish rioting in Belarus, because this is where we're mostly talking about. the far west. And, you know, we've, we've heard, we've heard this argument before. Catherine needed allies.

She went to the nobility. She freed them from all service obligations, which completely upended the social order, made her very unpopular, but in that same process, saw the Jews as economically valuable. Remember last time we talked about the Empress Elizabeth, when someone said to her, we're going to lose money. if you throw them out and she said, I don't care. Well, here, Catherine cares for not just a political, but for a financial reason, too.

So like so many Americans, the elite in Petersburg saw the Jews as this very industrious, utile, and mostly isolated group of people. Bringing them closer to the mainstream meant that we could have greater access to their money and their ability, having no idea what they were doing. And remember the relation between the Kahul and Polish elite was still existing in Ukraine and other parts of the far west.

So that didn't go away. So they had absorbed into themselves a very exploitative group of people. And slowly, you'll have Russians realizing this. But at this point, people like Catherine had no idea how intense the exploitation really was. and it was mostly later, I think after her death, did it become more and more obvious when Dershavan was sent to Belarus. You catch them in the corner of your eye.

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Step outside and be captivated by the wild, Atlantic surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Farage. The new order had consequences for the cities, which only took status into consideration, not nationality. According to this arrangement, and all townsmen, thus also all Jews, had the right to participate in the local class governance and occupy official posts.

Corresponding to the conditions of that time, this meant that the Jews became citizens with equal rights. The entry of Jews as citizens with equal right into the merchant guilds and townsmen class was an event of great social significance. It was supposed to transform the Jews into an economic power that would have to be reckoned with, and raise their morale.

It also made the practical protection of their life interests easier. At that time, the classes of traders and tradesmen, just like the municipal Commonwealth, had a broad self-determination, thus a certain administrative and judicial power was placed into the hands of Jews just like Christians, through which the Jewish population held a commercial and civil influence and significance. Jews can now not only become mayors, but also advisory delegates and judges. At first, limitations were enacted in the larger cities to ensure that no more Jews occupied electable positions than Christians.

In 1786, however, Catherine sent to the Great General of White Russia command written by her own hand to actualize the equality of Jews in the municipal class self-governance, unconditionally and without any hesitation, and to impose an appropriate penalty upon anyone that should hinder this equality. Remember, Catherine II was, in my opinion, an illegitimate monarch. She murdered her way, and quite literally slept her way, to the throne of Russia. She didn't speak Russian very well. And when she took over in a coup, like we said last time, she needed allies. and the Jews seem to be one very potent source of money and support. She found herself without fully realizing it in the same position that Polish nobles were relative to or a similar position, the Polish nobles had to the Jews.

What happens when you claim that ethnicity doesn't mean anything with the Jewish population? Well, the law may say that the concept of Jew doesn't exist, but the Jews don't accept that. And all this means is that the Jews are going to be able to outperform everybody, given the nature of their experience that Russia, Russia never really had a very strong merchant backbone. It was a land power. It was a royalist, a land power, not a commercial republic. The old believers, because they were outside of the mainstream, developed a mercantile interest. although of course there was no use for her anything like that with them

but in her search for allies you know giving away lands to people who would support her she was bringing Russia into a serious problem and what ended up happening is she started to notice that peasants were rioting everything that happened in the in Poland and so now she's saying that Jews have to have

the same representation as their numbers and will punish anyone who doesn't go along with this. So clearly there's a relationship, a very unhealthy relationship here growing between the Cajal, what's left of it, and Catherine. It should be pointed out that the Jews thus were given equal rights not only in contrast to Poland, but also earlier than in France or the German states. Under Frederick the Great, the Jews suffered great limitations. Indeed, the Jews in Russia had from the beginning the personal freedom that the Russian peasants

were only granted 80 years later. Paradoxically, the Jews gained greater freedom than even the Russian merchants and tradesmen. The latter had to live exclusively in the cities, while in contrast, a Jewish population could live in colonial colonizations in the country and distill liquor. Although the Jews dwelled in clusters,

not only in the city but also in the village, they were accounted as part of the city contingent, inclusive of merchant and townsmen classes. According to the manner of their activity and surrounded by unfree peasantry, they played an important economic role. Rural trade was concentrated in their hands, and they leased various posts belonging to the landowner's privilege, specifically the sale of vodka and taverns, and therewith fostered the expansion of drunkenness. The white Russian powers reported, The presence of Jews in the villages act with harm upon the economic and moral condition of the rural population,

because the Jews encouraged drunkenness among the local population. In the stance taken by the powers at B, it was indicated, among other things, that the Jews led the peasants astray with drunkenness, idleness, and poverty, that they had given them vodka on credit, reception of pledges for vodka, but the brandy operations were an attractive source of income for both the Polish landowners and the Jewish commissioners. granted, the gift of citizenship that the Jews received brought a danger with it. Obviously, the Jews were also supposed to acquiesce to the general rule to cease the brandy business in the villages and move out.

In 1783, the following was published, quote, The general rule requires every citizen to apply himself in a respectable trade in business, but not the distilling of schnaps as that is not a fitting business, and whenever the proprietor permits the merchant, townsman, or Jew to distill vodka, he will be held as a lawbreaker. And thus had happened. They began to transfer the Jews from the villages to the cities to deflect them from their centuries-old occupation,

the leasing of distilleries and taverns. Just briefly, people don't realize how small the bureaucracy was in St. Petersburg, especially in the 19th century. People think this is this top-heavy bureaucracy, and that was not the case. Um, politics was local in Russia, even more so than, uh, than in the West. They could pass a statute or, um, an executive decision, but enforcing it is another matter. It's very easy for a Jew to take someone who's deeply in debt to them and hand over that

right, um, that distilling right to someone else, uh, member of the Guiam. They did this in Poland all the time. when you have, they're already colonizing just as much that they did under under Polish rule in Russia and expanding just like they had done

they had done before. So you didn't have a lot of enforcement mechanisms and this, I'm almost positive this law was largely unenforced or if it continued it continued under different circumstances, but the

Jews continued to profit from it. Naturally, to the Jews, the threat of a complete removal from the villages naturally appeared not as a uniform civil measure, but rather as one that was set up specifically to oppose their national religion. The Jewish townsmen that were supposed to be resettled into the city and unambiguously were to be robbed of a very lucrative business in the country fell into an inner city and inner Jewish competition. Indignation grew among the Jews, and in 1784, a commission of the Kellehap traveled to St. Petersburg to seek the cancellation of these measures. At the same time, the Kellehatt reasoned that they should, with the help of the administration, regain their lost power in its full extent over the Jewish population.

But the answer to the Zarina read, as soon as the people yoke to the Jewish law have arrived at the condition of equality, the order must be upheld in every case so that each, according to the law, to his rank and status enjoys the benefits and rights without distinction of belief or national origin. But the clenched power of the Polish proprietors also had to be reckoned with. Although the administration of White Russia forbid them in 1783 to lease the schnapps distilling to an unauthorized person, especially Jews, the landlords continued to lease the industry to Jews. That was their right, an inheritance of centuries-old Polish.

custom. The Senate did not venture to apply force against the landholders and in 1786 removed their jurisdiction to relocate Jews into cities. For this, a compromise was found. The Jews would be regarded as people that had relocated to the cities but were retained the right to temporary visits to the village. That meant that those that were living in the villages continued to live there. The Senate permission of 1786 permitted the Jews to live in villages and Jews were allowed to lease from the landholders the right to produce and sell alcoholic beverages, while Christian merchants and townsmen did not obtain these rights. So ultimately, very little change.

Because of a lack of enforcement, it wasn't going to change anyway. But, I mean, for the most part, we're not talking about Russians here. This is still a heavily Polish Ukrainian part of the world. I mean, Russians are involved, but this was simply a piece of the Polish Empire that had been absorbed into Russia previously, part of Russia. So, you know, at this point, Poland was gone as an empire. So, but the aristocracy there, I should say the oligarchy there was just as angry as any Jew was at this regulation that says that they can't. They can't confer this monopoly, but they did it anyway. And having something so stupid like this, this temporary visits to the villages,

like that's going to make any difference because Russia started to realize the money, elites anyway, landholders, the money that they could make by partnering with the Jews on this stuff and the one class that suffered badly, as always, was the peasantry. Even the efforts of the delegation of Kellehot in St. Petersburg was not wholly without success. They did not get what they came for, the establishment of a separate Jewish court for all contentions between Jews. But in 1786, a significant part of their supervisory right was given back, the supervision of Jewish townsmen, the majority of the Jewish population. This included not only the division of public benefits, but also the levying of poll tax and adjudicated the right to separate from the congregation. Thus, the administration recognized its interest

in not weakening the power of the cahal. In all Russia, the status of traders and businessmen, merchants and townsmen, did not have the right to choose their residences. Their members were bound to that locality in which they were registered in order that the financial position of their localities would not be weakened. However, the Senate made an exception in 1782 for white Russia, The merchants could move, as the case might be, as it was propitious for commerce from one city to another. The ruling favored, especially the Jewish merchants. The Russian oligarchs, the elite of the elite, were found in the Senate. That's what the Senate was.

It was Petrine Creation. And these were people who either directly or indirectly profited. from incorporating these parts of the old Polish Empire into Russia. This 1782 exception clearly was self-interested. They didn't want, you know, a city that had a lot of opportunities, you know, temporarily, gaining all this population and poorer cities losing population. Because usually, you know, they know what a debt bubble is. They know how that doesn't really work.

Monetization was slowly creeping into these. These areas, people were using cash more and more, certainly in the Senate, they were. But White Russia or Belarus, they make this exception entirely because, to allow Jews to go from one place to another, which I guarantee you they were doing anyway. However, they began to exploit this right in a greater extent than had been seen before. Jewish merchants began to be registered in Moscow and Smolensk. Jews began soon after the annexation of white Russians. Russia in 1882 to settle in Moscow. By the end of the 18th century, the number of Jews in Moscow was considerable. Some Jews that had entered the ranks of the Moscow merchant class began to practice wholesaling. Other Jews, in contrast, sold foreign goods from their apartments or in the courts,

or began peddling, though this was at the time forbidden. In 1790, the Moscow merchants submitted a complaint. In Moscow has emerged a not insignificant number of Jews, from foreign countries and from white Russia, who, as opportunity afforded, joined the Moscow Merchants Guild and then utilized forbidden methods of business, which brought about very hurtful damage and the cheapness of their goods indicated that it involves smuggling, but moreover, as is well known, they cut coins. It is possible that they will also do this in Moscow. As amends to their thoroughly cagey findings, the Moscow merchants demanded their removal from Moscow, the Jewish merchants appealed with a counter-complaint

that they were not accepted into the Smolensk and Moscow merchant guilds. If you read a mainstream Jewish historian today, all they're going to tell you is that this complaint from a merchant guild, or not just in Russia, but anywhere, comes from envy. It comes from the fact that they weren't as business-minded as Jews were. But there's this curious comment here that peddling was forbidden. It's true. Advertising, this occurred in every Western European country too.

Advertising, leaving your guild's specific area, engaging in competition, and certainly artificially manipulating prices. This was new to them. of course they had a valid complaint of course they were smuggling of course they were cutting coins of course they were doing what walmart does and underselling everybody which you couldn't do prior to this and then taking over when your competition starts to start to suffer the fact that jews had access to

to credit all over the world the russians didn't so much that they could charge for loans they could charge a much better rate only of course to raise it later on all the older regulations on usury they were flaunting flouting I should say and making a mockery of it and you notice at this particular period of time

the Jews didn't even answer it they simply said we're being excluded and this is why we'd have to do this but they weren't saying that we weren't doing it or trying to defend themselves in any way ultimately the argument came to be that our business acumen assists the state, the same way that it assisted, allegedly, the Polish nobility. And because of that, you need to tolerate us.

But you see already, this is a very short period of time after the partitions of Poland, that they're already colonizing, not just the western parts of the empire, but Moscow itself and other major cities, going up against a totally unprepared, really non-mercantile traditional medieval approach to economics, things that at just price, and through their maccavillian methods, completely undercut everybody. They had every right to complain.

But again, because of their command of credit and capital, from a practical point of view, the state was very hesitant to do much about it at the time. The Council of Her Majesty heard the complaints. In accordance with the unified Russian order, she firmly established that the Jews did not have the right to be registered in the Russian towns and harbors, but only in white Russia.

By no means is usefulness to be expected from the migration of Jews into Moscow. In December 1791, she promulgated a highest order eukes, which prohibited Jews, quote, to join the merchant guilds of the inner provinces, but permitted them, quote, for a limited time to trade reasons to enter Moscow. Jews were allowed to utilize the right to the Merchant Guild in Townsman class only in white Russia. The right to permanent residency and membership in the Townsman class, Catherine continued,

was granted in New Russia, now accessible in the vice regencies of Yekaterinislav and Torida. Shortly thereafter, these became the provinces of Yekaterina. Slav Therrida and Cherson. That is, Catherine allowed Jews to migrate into the new expansive territories into which Christian merchants and townsmen from the provinces of Interior Russia generally were not permitted to emigrate. When in 1789, it was, when in 1796, it was made known that groups of Jews already had immigrated into Kiev, Chernigov, and Novgorod Syrivesk, Versk provinces, it was likewise granted that to utilize the right of the Merchant Guild and the Townsman class.

What this amounted to, in my opinion, is that the Jews were given permission, sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, to function as if they're a member of the Merchant Guild without having to conform to its specific practices, including, you know, the rejection. of advertising and undercutting and stuff like that. Sending them into different areas that were just being settled, New Russia, for example, which is close to the Black Sea, you know,

and therefore they're connected with the rest of the world there, meant that they were colonizing these areas and dominating them and growing tremendously wealthy as an ethnic body in the Russian Empire. empire. And so this is just getting started here. And the problem with debt is that you end up taking, you know, someone defaults, you end up taking their lands either in your own name or someone else's name. And the money just was rolling in. And Russia didn't have that mentality. They weren't a self-interested, self-seeking mercantile group of people, especially in the central provinces.

So this was already becoming a disaster for Russia financially. The pre-Rurricular, the pre-Rour Revolution Jewish Encyclopedia writes, the U-K.S. of 1791, quote, laid the groundwork for setting up the pail of settlement, even if it wasn't so intended. Under the conditions of the then-obtaining social and civic order in general, and of Jewish life in particular, the administration could not consider bringing about a particularly onerous situation and conclude for them exceptional laws, which among other things would restrict the right of residency. In the context of its time, this U-Kase did not contain that which in this respect would have brought the Jews into a less favorable condition than the Christians. The U-Ks of 1791, in no way limited the rights of Jews in the choice of residency, created no special borders, and for Jews the way was opened into new regions into which, in general, people could not emigrate. The main point of the decree was not concerned with their Jewishness, but that they were traitors. The question was not considered from national or religious point of view, but only from the viewpoint of usefulness.

The U-Kees of 1791, which actually privileged Jewish merchants in comparison to Christian ones, was in the course of time the basis for the future pale of settlement, which almost until the revolution cast, as it were, a dark shadow over Russia. By itself, however, the Ucas of 1791 was not so oppressive in its outworking as to prevent a small Jewish colony from emerging in St. Petersburg by the end of the reign of Catherine II. Here lived the famous tax leaser Abram Peretz and some of the merchants close to him, and also, while the religious struggle was in full swing, the rabbi Abgador Chumovitz and his opponent, the famous Hasidic Sadek, Zadik, Zadik, Zavidav. Zalman Borchovits. Borchovich. In 1793 and 1795, the second and third partition of Poland took place in the Jewish population

from Lithuania, Poldalia, and Volina, numbering almost a million, came under Russia's jurisdiction. This increase in population was a very significant event, though for a long time not recognized as such. It later influenced the fate of both Russia and the jury. of East Europe. After centuries long wandering, Jewry came under one roof

in a single great congregation, quote unquote. You notice that because the gahal is not really functioning like it used to, it's greatly weakening, they weren't able to discipline any of the

Hasidic Jews. They, by this point, had become quite powerful and had a whole different philosophical, more sophisticated point of view than your rabbis who are purely Talmudic in the waning

Kahul system. But Shultanitsyn is absolutely right now. All the problems of the Jews and what they caused in Poland has been totally transferred to Russia to a ruling class that generally speaking

didn't know what they were getting themselves into They were simply being told, and you know, this name of Peretz, as you read up here, Abram Peretz, that family and others very much like it, will come up again and again in Russian history or really the history of St. Petersburg. So the Hasidic rabbis could do what they please. So they were in a privileged position compared to Russians They were highly experienced in manipulation Including manipulation the state or nobility And keep in mind something else That so much of new Russia

The closer they get to the Black Sea The more that they And they have a folk understanding of this Reestablishing Khazaria Because some of these colonies The Pala sediment actually did include Portions of the old Khazar Mphi, Empire. But but don't listen when people tell you that the Jews couldn't, couldn't leave the pale of settlement. It's a lie. They were all over the Russian Empire. And their position in the pale, generally speaking, was privileged. They were not subject to the draft, you know, in wartime. But they knew how, more than anything else, to manipulate both local and now, St. Petersburg itself, especially using using the same.

Senate. And, you know, this is going to have world-shattering consequences. When you go through the early Bolsheviks, you go through their backgrounds. So many of them are from this pale, from wealthy merchant families, post-Kahal wealthy merchant families, for the most part, you know, semi-isolated, but not entirely so, Jewish nationalists. And once they, they, reached a certain level of wealth, cohesion, and then spread all over the empire, revolution was around the corner, unfortunately. In the now vastly expanded region of Jewish settlement, the same questions came up as before. The Jews obtained rights of merchant guilds and townsmen, which they had not possessed in Poland, and they got the right to equal participation in the

class municipal self-government, then had to accept the restrictions of this status. They could not migrate into the cities of the inner Russian provinces and were liable to be moved out of the villages. With the now huge extent of the Jewish population, the Russian regime no longer had a way to veil the fact that the Jews continued to live in the villages simply by modeling it as a temporary visit. A burning question was whether the economic condition could tolerate so many tradesmen and traders living amongst the peasants. In order to diffuse the problem, many Mechsteadel were made equal to cities. Thus, the legal possibility came about for Jews to continue living there. But with the large number of Jews in the country and the high population density in the cities, that was no solution.

Now it seemed to be a natural way out that the Jews would take advantage of the possibility offered by Catherine to settle in the huge, scarcely occupied New Russia. The new settlers were offered inducements, but this did not succeed in setting a colonization. movement into motion. Even the freedom of the new settlers from taxes appeared not to be attractive enough to induce such a migration. Thus, Catherine decided in 1794 to induce the Jews to emigrate with contrary measures. The Jews were relocated out of the villages. At the same time, she decided to assess the entire Jewish population with a tax that was double that paid by Christians. Such attacks had already been paid for a long time by the old believers, but applied to to the Jews, this law proved to be

neither effective nor of long duration. When we're talking about migration, and this happened actually a few more times, they wanted them to be small landholders and to actually begin cultivation. Again, this naifte, they didn't realize that was absolutely out of the question. Even in the lands of the former Khazar Empire,

because even there, they weren't cultivating the land. It was still a mercantile, essentially toll-based economy, at least that part of it that was monetized. It just didn't matter. The legal establishment in late 18th century Russia was no match for people who almost professionally pour over the text of the Talmud, which is all these very fine legal arguments on everything you could you could think of reading that thing, even parts of it is brutal. You know, this is way beyond Machiavelli. And so they could find loopholes in anything.

They had no moral standards except their own self-preservation and their own profit. So it's essentially a way to slowly begin living off of corruption, but then corrupting everyone else around them. Monetization in so many parts of the village in West and Southern Russia came from a Jewish USurious demands.

And so I also think that this is a very natural place to stop only because there's a big distinction. Once Catherine dies and Paul's short reign comes in and then Alexander I,

everything changes and I shouldn't say everything changes there's there's a total there's a there's a substantial alteration and attitudes from the monarchy and those around them Catherine was a disaster she didn't really

you know she shouldn't even have been there in the first place she was a Germanic background didn't speak Russian very well that kind of thing but we can talk about the D'Urjavan mission, which Paul and then Alexander sent several times out to the countryside to find out why are their constant riots?

Why are there so much contempt? They honestly didn't know. And Dershavin starts off as somewhat vaguely phylo-Semitic, thinking that he's going to find out that they're jealous or that they're not going to, you know, that they're not a good businessman. And he found out that was absolutely wrong. and so much of what later on became the Russian point of view on Jews came from Djerzavus, that whole investigative committee that he shared and the reports just from, you know,

empirical observation of what Jews were doing in the countryside and in this city. And I think that distinction was not great at the time, at least as far as they were concerned, because they would use as temporary, you know, manipulating the words like temporary, as we talked about before, you know, No one's going to out legal argue a Jew when it comes to their own self-interest. It isn't going to work, especially Russians at that time. Dershavan and the investigative committee will change. Still, they're going to be able to buy their way into Russian life.

And it's going to be a back and forth throughout the 19th century. We've come to the very end of the 18th century now. And this seat change removes some, of the naivtee from the Russian monarchy and to a lesser extent the ruling class. And that's something that we're going to talk about at some length because it's very important. And very few people even have heard of it before. I had already taken notes to say where I had broken off so that we can get into Paul the first reign on the next episode.

So awesome. All right. As per usual, in the show notes to this, we'll be all the places where people can subscribe to you and to also donate because yeah this is this is how you make your living and I look forward to the next episode because this is uh this is where we really start getting into the meat of a lot of uh let me we've already discussed a lot of resentments that are still felt today but this is where we start getting into um a lot of the things that are even even more current on their minds.

Yeah. And as all this is going on, I mean, precisely as all this is going on, slowly but surely, you have peasants and Russian merchants building this resentment. And just like in Poland, it explodes with the Cossacks in Kimmelnitsky's 1648. It will continue to explode from time to time, maybe not that systematically. But, and because no one wanted that apple card upset, you know, the Western, parts of the empire were generating a lot of money and cash, not just in kind. No one wanted that unstable.

And that's why it was so important to figure out what was going on. Now, what came out of it is a separate issue. But all of this is building, the pressure cooker is building, and Jews simply can't continue to say that, you know, we did nothing wrong. You're just ignorant. You're just going, you're jealous or whatever it might be. We're just smarter than you. They can't.

And that's part of why this book is very successful and why it was a huge and continues to be a huge seller in Russia itself. And this book, when it came out, changed just like things were changing in this point in history. This book itself changed. A lot of elite Russian opinion on the Jews in the in the in the Putin era. All right. Until the next time. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. All right, my friend. Thank you.