Poles (self-name Polatsi). They belong to the western branch of the Slavic peoples. The main population of Poland. 73 thousand people live in Russia (according to the 2002 census).

Language - Polish. Writing is based on Latin script.

Believing Poles are mostly Catholics, with some Protestants.

Poles appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. at the end of the “Time of Troubles” and the expulsion of Polish troops from Russia. They took part in the development of Siberia. From the middle of the 17th century. The social composition of Polish migrants was constantly changing. Initially, these were Smolensk and Polotsk gentry who swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar and entered the military service class. Traces of their stay in the Southern Urals (at least in Ufa) are visible. A striking episode in the history of the Urals was the stay of exiled Confederates here. The captured Confederates were exiled to the cities of the Urals, some of them became privates in the Orenburg separate corps. They left a noticeable mark on the development of local culture and the formation of European standards of life.

The influx of exiles especially increased after the Polish national liberation uprisings of 1830-1831 and 1863-1864. In 1865, in the cities of the Orenburg and Ufa provinces there were 485 people under police supervision. In addition, some of the exiles were located in the villages of Chelyabinsk and Ufa districts. The Poles, exiled to the Urals in the 19th century, continued the traditions established by their predecessors: they served as doctors, teachers, scientists, and musicians. Due to the lack of educated people in the province, local authorities were forced to allow exiles to work in various institutions. U. Rodzevich served in the Orenburg provincial government. In Verkhneuralsk A. Lipinitsky served as a clerk, 244 in the Orenburg Treasury Chamber - R. Sharlovsky. The teachers were I. Rodzevich, V. Kosko, A. Shumovsky, E. Strashinsky. Many Poles made their living by crafts: carpentry, shoemaking, saddlery, and tailoring. The Poles actively integrated into the local environment. They established contacts not only with Russians, but also with representatives of indigenous peoples.

Poles appeared in the Southern Urals not only as exiles. Many of them voluntarily chose the Urals as their place of residence. With the start of construction of the West Siberian Railway in Chelyabinsk, the contingent of the Polish population increased significantly. Poles served as engineers, technicians, foremen, accountants, and bookkeepers. The construction manager was K.Ya. Mikhailovsky; among the administrative and management personnel of the road V.M. Pavlovsky, A.V. Live-

Rovsky, A.F. Zdziarski, Shtukenberg brothers. According to statistical data, there was an increase in the Catholic population in Chelyabinsk: in 1863 - 23 people, in 1897 - 255, in 1910 - 1864.

The increase in the number of Poles in the Southern Urals is evidenced quite eloquently by the facts of the construction of Catholic churches - churches. The first such temple was built in Orenburg. In 1898, a wooden church was opened in Chelyabinsk. In 1909, construction of a stone church began.

Settling in new lands, the Poles quite often assimilated through marriages, converted to Orthodoxy, and lost their ethnic roots. However, the spread of traditional Polish surnames among the old-timers of the Southern Urals reliably preserves the trace of this people in regional history.

Germans (self-name Deutsche). The main population of Germany. According to the 2002 census, 597 thousand people live in Russia, 28,457 people live in the Chelyabinsk region.

Language - German (Germanic group of the Indo-European language family).

Religious affiliation - Christianity (mainly Catholics and Lutherans, as well as a small

number of Protestants: Baptists, Adventists, Mennonites, Pentecostals).

The ancestors of Russian Germans moved to the country at different times and from different places. The influx of Germans into Russia especially intensified under Peter I and his successors. These were artisans, merchants, scientists, and military men. The Germans took an active part in the colonization of uninhabited territories of Russia, including the Southern Urals. This was facilitated by the overpopulation of German lands. In Russia, all immigrants from the northern lands (depending on the political situation) were called Swedes, Germans or Saxons. According to pre-revolutionary census documents, they were also distinguished on the basis of their confession - German settlers to Russia were predominantly Lutherans.

The Russian name “Germans” meant those who did not understand the Russian language, those who were dumb. The number of Germans definitely included Swedes and Dutch, among the latter Ivan Andreevich Reyensdorp and Pavel Petrovich Sukhtelen, two governors of the Orenburg region. The name of their compatriot, the founder of the Yekaterinburg fortress and plant (1723) - Georg Wilhelm de Genin, an outstanding specialist in the field of fortification and mining and metallurgy, lieutenant general of artillery - is well known in the Urals. He was invited to Russian service in 1697. For 12 years he was the manager of state-owned factories in the Urals and Siberia. De Gennin was engaged not only in organizing metallurgical and military production, but also in scientific activities. He collected material for a book about Ural and Siberian factories and was seriously interested in antiquities. The scientist collected a large collection of archaeological objects, descriptions and drawings of which were included in the book (first published in Russian in 1937). The materials in this book have attracted the attention of specialists to this day.

The construction of factories and the organization of military service in border fortresses attracted a significant number of foreign employees of the Lutheran faith to the Southern Urals. In the middle of the 18th century. There was already a Lutheran parish in Orenburg. To serve the spiritual needs of the parishioners, according to the proposal of Governor Abraham Putyatin, Catherine II, by decree of November 16, 1767, ordered the “establishment” of the position of a divisional preacher in Orenburg. The first preacher Philip Wernburger arrived in Orenburg on March 12, 1768. Here in 1776 the first Lutheran church (kirch) of St. Catherine in the province was illuminated. Funds for the construction of the church were collected from Lutheran parishes in Russia. Governor Reijensdorp provided great support. Subsequent repairs and reconstruction of the building were carried out with the assistance of the state treasury. Representatives of various faiths took part in collecting funds for bells for this church (1895-1897): a third of the amount was collected by the Germans, the rest by Russian merchants. The entire staff of Lutheran field and divisional preachers was supported by funds from the Ministry of the Interior. The government during the 18th-19th centuries. demonstrated a loyal policy towards non-believers, and primarily towards Lutherans. The situation changed during the First World War.

Simultaneously with the parishes for the military, parishes for the civilian population arose in the Southern Urals. In the first half of the 19th century. One of the largest German diasporas formed in Zlatoust. In 1811, the position of a Lutheran preacher was established here. The parish increased significantly after a factory for the production of bladed weapons was opened in 1815 in Zlatoust. Under a contract concluded by the manager of the Zlatoust factories, G. Eversman, a group of gunsmiths from a private factory in Solingen arrived in the Southern Urals, which by this time had stopped working. By 1818, there were 115 German craftsmen in Zlatoust (together with families - 450 people). In 1849, when its own school of gunsmiths had already been formed, the factory retained privileges for 102 craftsmen.

The founders of the Zlatoust school of decorated weapons were

Wilhelm-Nikolai Schaff and his son Ludwig. Weapon masters settled in the Urals under conditions that were extremely favorable to them. They were given the right to be tried in their own court, to have a school, a church and a club. In the 1880s (after the demand of German Chancellor Bismarck to return to their homeland), the majority of Germans of the Zlatoust diaspora chose to accept Russian citizenship. Visited Zlatoust in the 20s of the XIX century. editor of "Domestic Notes" P.P. Svinin left enthusiastic memories of the city, presenting it as “a corner of Germany transferred to the Ural Mountains.”

The growth of the urban German population was evidenced by the opening of a new parish in Troitsk (1872).

After the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the Southern Urals, the network of rural German settlements expanded significantly (primarily due to the relocation of Mennonite colonies from the south of Russia). Mennonites are followers of one of the Protestant movements. At the end of the 19th century. Three Mennonite settlements arose in the Southern Urals: Novo-Samarskoye, Orenburgskoye and Davlekanovskoye. The Mennonites organized highly productive and technically equipped agricultural production.

The population census of 1897 showed that a total of 1,790.5 thousand people lived in Russia; in the Orenburg province - 70% of the total German population of the Urals, which amounted to 5,457 people. Of these, 689 people lived in cities, and 4,768 in counties. Another flow of Germans to the Southern Urals is associated with the agrarian reforms of P. Stolypin (early 20th century). The Germans moved to the Urals in the general mass of migrants.

In Chelyabinsk, the Germans primarily had the opportunity to engage in trading activities. If in 1894 there were 34 Lutherans here, then in 1911 their number reached 497. In 1906, the General Consistory discussed the issue of allocating an independent parish for them in Chelyabinsk. However, the church was never built in the city. 248

The spread of education and literacy is associated with the appearance of Germans in the Urals. In 1735, on the initiative of the head of the state-owned factories of the Urals V.N. Tatishchev, a German school was opened in Yekaterinburg. Its first rector was Bernhard Stermer. The school was an advanced educational institution. Children of the upper classes and management personnel of mining factories who graduated from verbal or arithmetic schools or home schooling were sent to it. The school doors were not closed to the children of craftsmen and factory workers. Along with reading, writing, German grammar and translations, the educational institution taught the basics of history, geography, and scripture. Knowledge of the German language, according to V.N. Tatishchev, could open Russian youth access to literature on mining, which was published mainly in German. A library of books, magazines and newspapers was created at the school. The educational institution trained a large number of translators who were sent to foreign specialists in the Urals and Siberia.

According to the 1897 census, in the Orenburg province about 70% of the total German population was literate. About a third of the male population could read Russian, and the same amount could read German. German women knew German literacy better. At this time, children in German families preferred to be taught in Russian.

Over the course of many centuries of life among the Russian population, the Germans not only actively integrated into Russian culture, but also themselves were subjected to assimilation (Russianization), without losing their ethnic identity. The high level of literacy, the presence among the Germans of qualified artisans (shoemakers, tailors, watchmakers), and narrow specialists (healers, pharmacists, etc.) created respect for them in society. In the 20th century The life of Germans in Russia lost its former status and stability. In 1930-1940 The Germans gained autonomy - the German Volga Republic was created.

But during the Great Patriotic War, the Germans became outcasts. The Republic was abolished. About 1 million people were deported to Kazakhstan, the Urals and Siberia. After the end of the war until 1956, the Germans were under police surveillance. In 1964 they were partially rehabilitated. Since 1979, the emigration of Germans to their historical homeland has intensified in Russia. According to the 1926 census, the number of Germans in Russia was 1238.5 thousand people, in 1989 - 842.3 thousand.

On the territory of Russia, the Germans usually lived in isolation from other ethnic groups, which allowed them to preserve ethnic traditions. However, the culture of Russian Germans differs significantly from German culture itself. This is due to two factors. Firstly, by the time the first settlers appeared in Russia, there was no single German culture (Germany was divided into more than 300 independent principalities). The German ethnos and culture still had to go through a stage of formation. Secondly, living in completely new environmental conditions, the Germans adapted to them. This applied to building materials, the composition of the herd, the range of cultivated crops, etc. In Russia there was a process of formation of the German subethnic group, which was reflected in its names: “Russian Germans”, “Soviet Germans”. Among the features of subethnic culture, attention should be paid to the low level of urbanization. According to the 1926 census, it was 14.9%. Russian Germans were mainly rural residents. Urban Germans differed significantly from other ethnic groups in their demographic behavior. They were characterized by late marriages and low birth rates. This model of behavior was formed in Western Europe already in the 15th century.

Jews are a general ethnic name for peoples that historically go back to the ancient Jews. The main population of Israel. They live in different countries.

Language - Hebrew, Yiddish, languages ​​of the countries where they live.

Religion - Judaism.

They appeared in Chelyabinsk in the middle of the 19th century. These were soldiers with 25 years of active service, graduates of schools of military musicians (cantonists). In 1840 there were 40 people, in 2000 - 4.4 thousand. In the 1990s, about 50% of Jews emigrated.

Before the revolution, they lived in the city on the basis of a temporary permit document, since their main place of residence was determined by the Jewish Pale of Settlement, introduced in 1791. Due to the fact that Jews did not have the right to own land, houses (with the exception of retired soldiers and people with average special and higher education), most of them in Chelyabinsk at the end of the 19th century. consisted of retired soldiers and non-commissioned officers. In addition, boys from Jewish families, sent to military schools and forcibly converted to Orthodoxy, often remained in the places where they retired after studying and long service. Mostly Jews were engaged in trade, medicine, as well as jewelry, publishing, pharmacy, sewing, and baking.

The increase in the Jewish population began at the beginning of the 20th century. and was associated with the temporary abolition of the Pale of Settlement (during the First World War, the government allowed Jewish refugees to live in the Urals and Siberia), and the industrial growth of the city. The growth in numbers was also facilitated by the outflow of the Jewish population from the western regions of Russia due to pogroms (several people died in Chelyabinsk during the Jewish pogrom of 1905). This was indirectly facilitated by the launch of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Children studied in cheder (primary schools), in a Jewish school, within the framework of the five percent norm in a real school, a gymnasium, and a trade school. The center of social and religious life of Jews in Chelyabinsk was the synagogue (Jewish temple), built in 1900-1905. It was under her that a Jewish school and a society to help poor Jews, and later refugees who arrived in Chelyabinsk during the First World War, were opened. The Jewish community patronized the families of the defenders of the Fatherland.

The October Revolution of 1917 changed the social composition of Jews. Representatives of large and medium-sized capital emigrated. In connection with the liquidation of Jewish societies (1917), the prohibition and confiscation of books in Hebrew (1919), the confiscation of all silver items from the synagogue (1921), and then the closure of Jewish schools and the synagogue (1929), national traditions also changed. The weakening of national-religious traditions contributed to the rapid assimilation of Jews. This was facilitated by familiarization with Soviet culture and mixed marriages. At the same time, the new government allowed Jews to study in higher educational institutions and participate in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the city.

During the period of industrialization of the 1920-1930s. Jews contributed to the creation of a new society: they worked on the construction of factories, in party and government bodies (ChTZ director A. Bruskin, chief engineer I.Ya. Nesterovsky, construction manager of the ChGRES Ya.D. Berezin, first secretary of the Traktorozavodsky district A.M. Krichevsky and etc.). Many of them became victims of repression in the second half of the 1930s.

During the Great Patriotic War, the number of Jews increased due to those evacuated, but decreased in the post-war years: many returned to their old place of residence. At the end of the 1940s. Almost all Jews were removed from leadership positions. In 1953, 10 heads of departments at the medical institute were arrested in the “doctors’ case.” In the 1990s. The revival of the religious and national-cultural life of the Jewish population began: the synagogue was returned, Jewish schools and a library were opened, and public organizations were created.

We need all kinds of books, or there are only Jews around

I. E. Antropova

Collection of documents on the history of the Jews of the Urals from the funds of institutions of the pre-Soviet period of the State Archives of the Sverdlovsk Region

M.: Drevlekhranilishche, 2004. – 460 p.

Y. M. Shulman

Cities and people of the Jewish diaspora in Eastern Europe before the beginning of the twentieth century. Russia: Voronezh, Kursk, Rostov-on-Don, Smolensk, Taganrog M.: Parallels, 2004. – 144 p.

A. Davidov

Sages of the Caucasus

Jerusalem, 2004. – 214 p.

The regional history of Jewish life can be told in different ways. The three books presented here tell the story of Jews not only in three different regions—the Urals, the cities of European Russia, and the Caucasus—but also in three different ways. The first of them, with a depressingly boring title - especially boring for those who do not have a clear understanding of archival work - not only lives up to the title, but also contains a very lengthy historical sketch. The next issue of the series “Cities and People of the Jewish Diaspora” by Ya. M. Shulman is a selection of short descriptive notes of an encyclopedic nature. Finally, “The Wise Men of the Caucasus” by Adam Davidov is a panegyric narrative about Mountain Jewish rabbis, not without literary pretensions. The various tasks posed by the authors were solved with varying degrees of success.

In the first book, in addition to its content and style, there is something inexplicable - some kind of “energy” of the text emanating from every page and even from the cover. From “Jews of the Urals” - as I will call for brevity “Collection of documents on the history of the Jews of the Urals from the funds of institutions of the pre-Soviet period of the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk Region” - even before the start of reading, there emanates thoroughness and thoughtfulness, artistic taste and a sense of proportion. Everything here is academically rigorous: three parts plus an introduction, an appendix (demographic tables, a glossary of terms, a list of Jewish political organizations, etc.), a bibliography and an index. The first part is a historical monographic essay of one and a half hundred pages, “Jews in the Urals before October 1917.” Next is a brief overview of the documents and the main, third part of the book – the documents themselves. This part is well structured, its sections are “Right to Residence”, “Jewish Soldiers”, “Types of Activities. Prohibitions, restrictions” with subsections by type of activity, “Religious and community life”, “Jews in the revolutionary movement”, etc. - make it easy to find information on the desired topic. And what information! Real documents of time, official and everyday, have their own undeniable charm, which captivates the reader no worse than an adventure novel. A secret order to dismiss from work a person who had the misfortune of being a Jew, and the outwardly restrained, dignified refusal of a simple, honest Russian servant who had the misfortune of being the boss of this Jew—a refusal to carry out the order. Denunciations and circulars, police interrogation reports and private letters, military reports and humiliated petitions not only paint a bright and gloomy picture of the life of the Ural-Jewish society, full of unique life details, but also create a living string of portraits and voices. These voices testify and “let it slip,” they are cunning and simple-minded, they complain and defend themselves, some build insurmountable walls, others bang their heads against them.

With all this, it is clear that this book can hardly be recommended “for easy reading” to the general reader. This is clear to the book’s creators and themselves: the “massive” circulation of 500 copies speaks for itself.

But “Cities and People of the Jewish Diaspora in Eastern Europe before the Beginning of the 20th Century” by Ya. M. Shulman is quite possible to read on the road. A small book, the third in a series of publications by the same author (the first was dedicated to five Ukrainian cities, the second to five Belarusian cities) is the embodiment of a simple and successful idea for a laconic and popular presentation of material to the reader. Each story about the city is a short historical sketch, followed by lists of famous Jews born here, each name accompanied by an encyclopedic entry. In the book we will meet aircraft designer Lavochkin and sculptor Zadkine, actress Ranevskaya and diplomat Shafirov, physicist Flerov and poet Marshak, musician-teachers Gnessins and paratrooper Kunikov, as well as many others, of whom, as Pushkin noted, “it is not only possible, but also should "

The modest appearance of “Cities and People of the Jewish Diaspora,” as well as the solid academic restraint of “Jews of the Urals,” is more than compensated by the richness of the design of “The Wise Men of the Caucasus,” a book that the author himself presents as follows: “...Not a historical study, but stories about spiritual teachers mountain Jews." Color illustrations, screensavers, huge font. At first glance, the collection is quite eclectic; stories stylized as folklore are interspersed with informational essays under the heading “Customs and Traditions.” However, an undoubted stylistic unity is observed - both are written in such a way that fully meets the author’s goal: to provide spiritual support in studying the Torah and observing mitzvais, to testify that “Mountain Jews lived in accordance with the laws of the Torah, in love and devotion to the Creator.” . It is useless to look here for a detailed and objective story about the relations of Jews with the non-Jewish environment, about the contradictions and problems in the Jewish environment itself. For example, Yosef Shur (Joseph ben Chaim Khaimovich, late 19th – early 20th centuries), the rabbi of the village of Kusary, who was disgraced for freethinking, was not included in the number of mountain Jewish sages. A poet and educator who even kept his diary mainly in Hebrew poetry, he joined those who sought to change the way of life of Mountain Jews. Felix Shapiro, who knew him personally—the same author of the “Hebrew-Russian Dictionary”—called him “the only bright figure of Mountain Jewry.” But the author of “The Wise Men of the Caucasus,” Rabbi Adam Davidov, is interested in completely different people and other stories: stories about insightful sages similar to Hasidic parables, crazy stories about miraculous salvations, the author’s memories of how he revived Jewish religious life in the 1990s cubed. If you are not picky about the unctuously pathetic style, then from these stories you can learn a lot of interesting things about the Mountain Jews.

However, it is easiest to understand and most difficult to accept the author’s irreconcilable position in relation to science, historical and ethnographic. On the very first page of the preface, the author decisively states: “One should not take into account the absurd fabrications of some “historians,” including Israeli ones, who are preoccupied with the complex of Judeophobia. Mountain Jews are surprised to read about themselves that they are former Persians, Khazars, Avars, Muslims and the like. In the end, it can be agreed that the Jordan River is a tributary of the Mississippi River.” But scientists are not to blame for the fact that the historical evidence they have (inscriptions on tombstones, written references in the texts of other peoples, etc.) does not provide grounds for confirming the version unconditionally proclaimed by the author about the two-thousand-year history of Mountain Jews in the Caucasus. Working hypotheses about the ethnogenesis of the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus do not aim to satisfy anyone’s religious and national ambitions, but there is no anti-Semitic complex in them either. Rather, an attempt to “pull some Jewish society by the ears” to the ancient Jews alone, without the assumption that over the past millennia other communities also participated in ethnogenesis, can be likened to an attempt to defend the slogan about the “tributary of the Mississippi.” In short, in this case, the scientific approach does not belong to the strengths of the author's thinking. Although there are many readers who will find this book the closest and most understandable of the three we have presented.

Mikhail Lipkin

Monthly literary and journalistic magazine and publishing house.

Irina Antropova is a historian-archivist, researcher of the history of the Jews of the Urals, author of a number of scientific and popular publications on this topic, including the 2004 “Collection of documents on the history of the Jews of the Urals from the funds of institutions of the pre-Soviet period of the State Archives of the Sverdlovsk Region".

At the end of the 18th century. As a result of the three partitions of Poland, a million-strong Jewish population joined the ranks of the subjects of the Russian Empire. Over the next two hundred years, Jews in Russia were subjected to open discrimination, served as an object for various government experiments, the hatred of the crowd, skillfully directed by the same government, the envy of ordinary people and religious intolerance1. Since 1791, the so-called Pale of Settlement was established (it included the newly annexed western provinces), outside of which Jews were forbidden to live. The Russian government periodically denied them access to the civil service and some free professions, established a percentage norm for admission to higher educational institutions and gymnasiums, from time to time deprived them of voting rights in elections at various levels, and severely punished those who, having converted to Orthodoxy (even under duress) , decided to return to Judaism, condoned the organization of Jewish pogroms.

The Urals are a mining region; on the Ural lands there were many “strategically important objects”: mines, gold mines, mining factories. All this significantly influenced the situation of the Jews. In addition, the south of the Urals, according to the government, was considered a place unacceptable for Jews to live in, since in the first half of the 19th century. the Orenburg fortified line passed there, separating the Russian Empire from the tribal associations of the Kazakhs. Ekaterinburg, while remaining the status of a district city of the Perm province, was at the same time the center of the entire mining Urals, where the management bodies of mining plants were concentrated (from Votkinsk to Tyumen). The residence of the Chief Director of the Ural Mining Plants and a number of production facilities of primary importance were located in Yekaterinburg: a cutting factory, a mint, a laboratory for melting non-ferrous metals, etc. By prohibiting Jews from appearing in the Urals (an area that was not part of the Pale of Settlement), the government placed its main emphasis on prohibiting the presence of Jews in mining factories and mines. However, representatives of the local mining administration were tolerant of Jewish employees at the factories. Moreover, it happened that enterprise managers stood up to the authorities on behalf of their Jewish engineers, trying to prevent their dismissal. In the worst position were artisans, merchants (we are not talking about the first guild merchants, who had the opportunity to quickly resolve misunderstandings that arose) and small traders, since they were “under the jurisdiction” of the Perm governor and his officials, who, according to the testimony of the famous local historian V.S. Verkholantsev, “we tried to imitate our superiors to the best of our ability and avoid what our superiors did not like.”

In addition, the Urals was a multinational and multi-religious region. The Russians colonized it relatively late. Exiles of all stripes have long lived here, criminals from Siberia fled here, schismatics settled here. The Orthodox were tolerant of various religions and sects. In such a mixture of nationalities and religions, little attention was paid to the small handful of Jews. Therefore, the small Jewish population lived peacefully with the rest of the inhabitants and extreme manifestations of anti-Semitism were not observed in the Urals until October 1905.

Speaking about the first appearance of Jews in the Urals, we note that Nikita Demidov in his industrial development of the region was patronized by Peter the Great's vice-chancellor Pyotr Shafirov, about whom ill-wishers said that “he wears a skull cap under his wig.” It was he who argued for Demidov before the Tsar. (Shafirov was the son of the baptized Jew Shafir, or according to other sources Shai Sapsaev).

Until the thirties of the 19th century. There were few Jews in the Urals. A curious case is the Jew Gumprecht, who in 1805 managed a cement factory near Yekaterinburg. If we consider that Gumprecht “started out” as a major counterfeiter, for which he was captured, beaten with rods, branded and exiled to eternal settlement in Siberia, then we can say that he made a brilliant career. The tolerance of some heads of the mining administration in the Urals extended quite widely. This is confirmed by Ivan Filippovich German, who accepted Gumprecht into the service. During the war with Napoleon, Jews suspected (often based on denunciations) of espionage were sent to the Orenburg province. However, it happened that the authors of the slander themselves were exiled. So, in 1823, false informers Leiba Gershkovich and Itsik Moshkovich arrived in Perm, remaining in the Urals even after serving their sentences.

Despite the fact that there is no clear evidence of the existence of a settled Jewish population in the Urals before the 1830s. no, Emperor Alexander I, after traveling through the Urals in 1824, issued a decree prohibiting Jews from even temporary stay in state-owned and private factories, as well as in Yekaterinburg itself. The detailed hourly reports of Alexander's trip do not mention the specific reason that led to the appearance of such a decree. There is an assumption that the culprit is the Jewish merchant who caught the eye of the emperor - a rather mythologized and infernal figure (a kind of Ahasferus - where and when were there no Jewish merchants?). It is also possible that someone filed a complaint against a Jewish neighbor who turned out to be more successful in business. Be that as it may, Alexander, by that time pretty tired of fruitless attempts to “lead the children of Israel to the right path” through the Society of Israeli Christians, issued the aforementioned decree. Moreover, the decree was not included in the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, but was simply sent to the Perm berg inspector for execution “secretly” and, given that the legislation on Jews was “gaining momentum” every year, it should have quickly lost the force of law. However, throughout the entire 19th century, that same decree of Alexander served as the basis for prohibitory circulars of the central authorities and orders of local (not only Ural) authorities.

The first truly mass appearance of Jews in the Urals is associated with the notorious decree of Tsar Nicholas I of 1827 on the introduction of military service for Jews. In addition to ordinary conscripts, cantonists began to be recruited from Jews - boys 12 years old (and in fact, starting from eight). They were sent to serve in special battalions far from their homes. Upon reaching the age of 18, cantonists were sent to a “real” 25-year military service. This tragedy, which “gave” the Urals the first Jewish communities, lasted almost 30 years (the institute of cantonists for Jews was abolished in 1856). Without going into details of the dramatic collisions, well and in detail described in old literature and the latest journalism, we will only say that the number of cantonists increased from year to year and by 1843, 1812 Jewish teenagers served in the Ural battalions (Perm, Orenburg, Troitsky). The purpose of attracting Jews to serve military service was not only their acculturation in the Russian environment, but also an attempt by a variety of means - moral and physical “exhortation” - to achieve the transition of young people to Orthodoxy. In the Perm battalion, the baptism of Jewish cantonists was carried out so successfully that children who did not respond to the instructions of army missionaries were transferred here from other battalions. The military commander of Danchevsky and Perm Archbishop Arkady put forward their own new methods of conversion, often far from the unctuous instructions described in official reports, and more than once received the highest attention and awards. Needless to say, many cantonists subsequently returned to the faith of their fathers.

In 1836, thirteen-year-old Pincus Raichik was baptized in the Perm battalion, who became Mikhail Afanasyev, later a famous poet, Perm chronicler of the turn of the century. There were also cases of adult soldiers accepting baptism - in this case deliberately, because... an unbaptized person could not advance in rank above non-commissioned officer. It should be noted that apostasy among adults was rare, despite the benefits acquired by converts.

In the early 1840s. On the site of the city churchyard of Perm, where Jewish cantonists were buried, the city's first Jewish cemetery arose. In Yekaterinburg, the founding of the Jewish cemetery dates back, according to some sources, to the 30s, according to others - to the 40s. XIX century (even the name of its “founder” is known - Yitzchok Lansberg). It was the cemeteries that provided the first material evidence of the existence of the rudiments of Jewish communities in the Urals. During these same years, in military battalions, or more precisely, in the settlements and cities where they were stationed, Jewish prayer houses officially permitted by the authorities appeared, reserved for military personnel of the Jewish faith. In 1852, police reports in Yekaterinburg first mentioned a Jewish prayer school (aka prayer house). And by the 1860s. all provincial cities of the Urals acquired so-called soldiers’ synagogues.

At the end of their service, Jewish soldiers did not have the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement, where they served. Such a right was granted to them only in 1867. But common sense still prevailed over legal structures, and “indefinite leave” settled in the places of their former service. In addition, it is very likely that from the point of view of local authorities, semi-literate, middle-aged soldiers cut off from their roots did not pose a “threat” to the Fatherland. After retiring, the Jews engaged in some simple craft, started families (brides for soldiers, usually dowryless women who had no chance of getting married in their homeland, were brought from the Pale of Settlement by shadkhens specially engaged in this2), united around prayer houses and, with permission from the authorities, in some cases they assigned themselves shochets3, and then rabbis. In 1852, police reports in Yekaterinburg first mentioned a Jewish prayer school (also known as a prayer house). And by the 1860s. all provincial cities of the Urals acquired so-called soldiers’ synagogues.

Until 1859, Jews (not military personnel) were essentially denied access beyond the Pale of Settlement. Despite the fact that the Jews were subjects of Russia, the government and a certain part of society saw them as strangers, suspected them of espionage, worldwide conspiracies, striving for kahal domination, and sometimes even of ritual actions involving the consumption of the blood of Christians and similar unthinkable and absurd intentions. And therefore, the government was especially zealous in protecting strategically important economic objects for the country - gold mines and mountain mines - from Jews. In the Urals, large-scale operations were periodically carried out to identify a few Jews and their subsequent deportation. Thus, in 1827, special orders appeared for the eviction of Jews from Orenburg, in 1828 government institutions of the Perm province were inspected, and the following year - in the Orenburg province. By the way, after the “removal” of Jews from the mining areas, the problem of the theft of gold being mined, of course, was not resolved. And since the presence of Jews in the mountainous districts was no longer allowed, the Minister of Finance this time explained the continuing theft by the increase in the number of gypsies...

Merchants, clerks and some others were allowed to temporarily travel inside Russia, but the remoteness of the Ural region from the provinces of the Pale of Settlement allowed only a few to get there. Jews were accepted into government service only with the Highest permission. Perhaps the only “Ural” example is Avraham Nasonovich Shein, who in 1844 served at the Perm factories with the rank of chargemaster4 of the 13th class. As for the common example - the collegiate assessor Alexander Dmitrievich Blank (V. Lenin’s grandfather), who served as a surgeon at Ural factories in the 40s, as is known, he converted to Orthodoxy, which radically changed his status.

The situation changed significantly after the liberal reforms of Alexander II. Restrictive laws against Jews remained, but along with them, a fairly large number of liberal ones were adopted, which at first glance somewhat softened the discrimination against Jews in Russia. The most famous and significant of them are the decrees that opened up part of the Jewish population access beyond the Pale of Settlement: in 1859 - to merchants, 1861 - to holders of academic titles, 1865 - to artisans, 1867 - to Nicholas soldiers and their descendants, 1879 - to Jews with higher education, as well as dentists, obstetricians, pharmacists, and midwives.

Jews who arrived in the Urals in the 1870-1880s. (the second wave of migration), we found here a fully established Jewish community with its own specific characteristics. The old-timers differed from their fellow tribesmen from the Pale of Settlement in a higher degree of assimilation, Russian clothing, partial or complete loss of the Yiddish language, poor knowledge of Jewish tradition and some disregard for religious precepts. In addition, their professional and social status was lower than that of newcomers. New arrivals, lacking a choice, were initially forced to visit soldiers' chapels, and this inevitably caused conflicts between them and the old-timers. According to the tradition that existed at that time, those who promised to donate more than others for community needs were awarded a call to the Torah. As a rule, they turned out to be “free” rich people and intellectuals. The former soldiers were not happy with this. Conflicts led to the fact that visitors began to found their own houses of worship. For example, in Orenburg around the 60s. XIX century Along with the existing “battalion” prayer house, there was (we do not know the exact time of its establishment) an “engineers’” house. There was also a separate prayer house for Bukharan Jews, which was later destroyed by fire and never opened again. In Perm, along with the already operating soldiers' synagogue, the so-called free synagogue was founded in 1881. Each synagogue had its own community. However, seven years later, representatives of both communities, having discussed at a meeting (in Russian, since not everyone could speak Yiddish fluently), decided to unite. And very timely, since in the depths of Russian society a force has already arisen that has turned out to be stronger than centuries-old traditions - the revolutionary movement.

The murder of the Tsar by Narodnaya Volya in 1881 caused a tightening of government policy towards Jews. In particular, in the Urals this was expressed in the establishment of total control over their stay in Yekaterinburg and at the Ural mining plants. Local authorities increasingly began to question even the legal rights of Jews to live in the region. In 1886, a decree was issued by the Minister of State Property, prohibiting Jews from serving in the mining department and blocking their access to gold mining for a decade. As a consequence of this decree, there was an order from the Chief Director of the Ural Mining Plants to identify Jews in the civil service at factories and industries for their subsequent dismissal. Judging by the reports of the district mining authorities, Jews were in the service of both state and private factories as mining engineers, clerks, mine supervisors, chemists, and field managers. (By the way, at the beginning of the 20th century, the future director of the laboratory at the Lenin Mausoleum, a professor of biochemistry, and then simply an engineer at chemical plants near Solikamsk, Boris Zbarsky and his assistant, a young factory clerk, Boris Pasternak, worked in the Urals). Of course, firing them all (and evicting some from the region) meant damaging production, which, it must be said, was not on the rise anyway. Therefore, with rare exceptions, things broke down at the correspondence stage. The artisans, who made up the bulk of the Jewish population and, unlike merchants and engineers, did not represent any special “value” in the eyes of the local authorities, were not ignored either. Despite the fact that in 1865 craftsmen were given the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement, over time it acquired a whole garland of additional and mandatory conditions. Thus, the craftsman was obliged to engage exclusively in his craft, start working no later than a month after arrival, provide evidence of a craft council to substantiate his rights, and also had to prove that his occupation was indeed a craft, etc. Let us add to this that Jews who had documents for the right of residence outside the Pale of Settlement were prohibited from living in rural areas, moving without permission even within the province (from county to county), or temporarily staying in a location other than their place of registration without special permission from the police. Violation of any of these conditions threatened deportation. This entire complex system was regulated by an ugly proliferation of legislation: numerous laws, acts, orders, clarifications, which gave rise to bribery and abuse by police officials who saw Jews as a reliable source of income.

Those who managed to gain a foothold reached certain heights. The merchant families Peretz, Antselevich, Mekler, Polyakov, and Halameizer were widely known in Yekaterinburg and beyond. Perm merchant of the 1st guild Kalman Naumovich Liberman was the manager of the regional branch of the Bank for Foreign Trade and owned tobacco and building materials stores. The oldest - since 1850 - of the trading houses in Perm (ready-made clothes, cloth and fur goods) was founded by Zelik Epfelbaum. The only all-Russian bank that arose in Yekaterinburg, the Siberian Trade Bank, was founded in 1872 by Albert Soloveichik. The director of the timber industry company in Perm was the famous timber merchant S.I. Lieberman. Up to 35% of the members of the Chelyabinsk Exchange Society were Jews, many participated in the management bodies of the Chelyabinsk Exchange - the exchange committee, the exchange arbitration commission, the quotation and audit commissions.

The most famous Jewish doctors were: in Yekaterinburg - Boris Osipovich (Iosifovich) Kotelyansky (who served as the prototype for the main character of Mamin-Sibiryak’s story “The Jew”), who died at the age of 32 from typhus, having become infected from a patient during an epidemic; Dr. I. Syano is the owner of a large house on the corner of modern Liebknecht and Malyshev streets; in Perm - Maria Yakovlevna Brushtein, who combined healing with revolutionary work, N.I. Okun, the only local Jew awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus with swords, Abraham Kaufman - later a major Zionist figure; in Ufa - head of the city psychiatric hospital, hereditary nobleman Yakov Febusovich Kaplan. While dealing with the problems of forensic psychiatric examination, Kaplan died at the age of 31 at the hands of a criminal patient. There were many wonderful people among attorneys, teachers, and musicians, but the format of the essay does not allow us to talk about them in more detail.

Unfortunately, there is no description in archival materials of the life of Yekaterinburg and Ural Jews in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. There are very few documents about the community itself. We can only say with confidence that her social status has increased significantly compared to the 70-80s. XIX century The imbalance between the male and female population has disappeared. Competent, intelligent, wealthy people were promoted to the first positions. At that time, belonging to the active community was an indicator of social status rather than a matter of religiosity. In addition, activities to open a synagogue, etc. was for Jewish intellectuals part of the struggle for their civil rights. Some wealthy Jewish merchants, entrepreneurs or high-ranking officials took a direct and active part in the affairs of the Jewish community. The most striking examples are attorney David Lvovich Rassner, merchant of the 1st guild Genrikh Borisovich Peretz, timber merchant Aron Halameizer - in Yekaterinburg; merchant of the 1st guild, bank manager Kalman Lieberman and factory owner Solomon Abramovich, who was at one time the head of the soldiers' synagogue, in Perm. There were also those who donated or bequeathed part of their property to the Jewish community. For example, the Chelyabinsk merchant of the 2nd guild Solomon Bren bequeathed a plot of land that belonged to him for the construction of a synagogue. Z.L. Obukhovsky donated a new house for the Orenburg Jewish-Russian School. The manager of a large company, and then the owner of a commercial and industrial enterprise and a gold mine, chemical engineer Simon Drusvyatsky served for some time as a state rabbi in Perm, the merchants Peretz, Anzelevich, Mekler were members of the board of the Jewish community of Yekaterinburg, and largely thanks to their support, it was opened in the city house of worship.

By the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. on the territory of the Ural region, prayer houses operated in all provincial cities - Perm, Orenburg, Ufa, Vyatka, in large district cities - Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Troitsk, Birsk, Sterlitamak, Zlatoust and some others. There were synagogue buildings in Perm (the wooden one, built in 1886, has not survived, the stone one was erected in 1903), Chelyabinsk (the wooden one, built in the 80s of the 19th century, has not survived, the stone one - in 1905) , Orenburg (stone - in 1871), Ufa (wooden - around 1896, stone - in 1915), Vyatka (wooden - in 1907, not preserved). In Yekaterinburg, paradoxically, there has never been a specially built synagogue building; its role was played by houses of worship located in rented premises. At the beginning of the 20th century. it was a building on the corner of Simanovskaya and Usoltsevskaya streets at number 16/52. At the beginning of 1917, the community laid the foundation for the future synagogue and purchased building materials. But after well-known events, all this was confiscated by the new authorities.

Communities quickly acquired appropriate institutions engaged in charity, in charge of issues of education, rituals and enlightenment: charitable societies (before 1906 - under the communities, after - independently), almshouses, "children's hearths", funeral brotherhoods, mutual aid funds, mikvahs, kosher meat benches, canteens, etc. In Perm at the beginning of the 20th century. On the initiative of bookbinder Ilya Ioffe (father of the famous microbiologist Vladimir Ioffe), a group of parents sent a Hebrew teacher from Ukraine and organized a modern-style home cheder6 for their children and several other students. The students even published a handwritten journal in Hebrew, Kitmei Hadyeh (Ink Spots). Hebrew teachers, due to existing legislation, sometimes had to live on false documents, most often on craft certificates. Thus, Aron Pinevich Sterin, a Hebrew teacher in Kungur, lived in the city since 1907 on the false testimony of a leather cutter, having set up a fictitious preparation workshop in his house. Traditional cheders, both home and synagogue, were gradually replaced by Jewish colleges and schools.

Ural Jews widely took part in all-Russian public life, spoke Russian, and taught children in gymnasiums. However, no matter how active the process of integration of Jews into Russian society was, the influx of new migrants to the Urals from the Pale of Settlement, which continued despite the bans, held back assimilation. And although the majority of Jews integrated into local life, the Jewish community remained fairly united, and its members retained their own ethnocultural and religious identity. This is evidenced, for example, by the extremely small number of mixed marriages between Jews and Christians, as well as the statistics of baptized Jews. There were few of them - for example, in the Perm province they made up only about one percent of the entire Jewish population. Another indicator of the preservation of ethnic identity is language. According to the 1897 census, from 85 to 97% of Jews living in the four Ural provinces named Yiddish as their native language.

The third, most massive wave of migration of the Jewish population to the Urals was caused by the First World War. Moreover, the move was not always voluntary - the government and military command pursued a policy of mass eviction of Jews (Russian citizens) from the front line, indiscriminately accusing them of political disloyalty, suspecting them of espionage and aiding the enemy. Thus, 97 families were expelled from Bialystok because their members had visited German resorts before the war. In addition to refugees and deportees, prisoners from the Austro-Hungarian and German armies were brought to the Urals, as well as so-called “military detainees” - civilian hostages captured by Russian troops on enemy territory. In June 1915, 146 Jewish Austrian subjects who had nothing to do with the hostilities were sent in freight cars to Irbit. The local district police officer, not knowing what to do, put them in prison just in case (and among them there were women, old people and children). By the end of the summer of 1915, a significant part of the so-called Pale of Settlement was occupied by the enemy, and the Russian government was nevertheless forced to allow Jews to temporarily reside in the internal provinces. It cannot be said that the local authorities were happy about this turn of events. The Orenburg governor even ordered police officials to keep lists of Jews “for the future,” especially noting refugees and foreign nationals. According to the Jewish Committee for Relief to War Victims (EKOPO), the number of Jewish refugees in all four Ural provinces amounted to 6,731 people on November 4, 1915. Let us note that the spy mania that worsened during the war came from government circles - Jews were often accused of speculation, agitation against the Tsar, etc., official reports spoke of the growing discontent of the local population (for example, in Orenburg and Chelyabinsk). However, in reality there was no particular discontent - the difficulties of the war were not associated by local residents with Jews. And the government's initial fears - whether the influx of refugees would cause pogroms - were not justified.

Before October 1917, pogroms occurred in the Urals only once. They were not caused by an “initiative from below,” but became part of a “wave” launched by the authorities that swept across all of Russia. We are talking about the pogroms of October 1905. Events developed according to a single scenario developed in the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: after the promulgation of the tsar’s manifesto “On the Improvement of State Order,” protest demonstrations by supporters of left-wing parties and those dissatisfied with the manifesto took place everywhere. In counterbalance, the “patriots” organized processions and religious processions with flags and banners (and at the same time with clubs and sticks captured “just in case”), which soon turned into clashes with left-wing demonstrators, and then into pogroms. The drunken mob beat up not only Jews, but also students, high school students, and intellectuals. In Ufa, four people were killed, including a Jew, Matvey Rukker; in Yekaterinburg, two young men of Russian nationality were killed, and thirteen were seriously wounded. In Vyatka, random Russian citizens became victims of the crowd. The most brutal pogrom took place in Chelyabinsk - according to various sources, 10 people were killed (three of them Russians who defended Jews), 38 Jewish apartments, 16 shops and shops were looted.

Of course, even before these events, there were publications of anti-Semitic content on the pages of local and all-Russian publications distributed in the Ural cities, and a little later branches of the Black Hundred Union of the Russian People and anti-Semitic leaflets appeared, trying to create an image of the Jew as the culprit of all troubles. But still, in the Urals, Judeophobia was not inherent in the mass consciousness. However, the tragedy was not that the so-called “conductors of evil” appeared. The trouble was different: unfortunately, many ordinary people easily, even if for a short time, took their side.

Discrimination and pogroms led to the fact that part of the Jewish population emigrated from Russia, and the other part - the younger generation - joined the ranks of the revolutionary movement, joining the Bund or all-Russian socialist parties. Everyone is well aware (at least by street names) of the names of Sverdlov, Weiner, Goloshchekin, Sheinkman, Sosnovsky, Zwilling, and Yurovsky, so “beloved” by anti-Semites. Thus, one may get the misleading impression that in the Urals Jews took the most active part in the Bolshevik organizations. Without explaining the reasons for this situation, we will only say that in fact, Jews most actively joined the ranks of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, and young people who did not want to break with their Jewish roots gave preference to the Bund and Poalei Zion parties. I.V. Narsky, having analyzed data on four thousand members of various parties in the Urals (2/3 of them are socialist) from the documents of the Special Department of the Fund of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation), came to the conclusion that among the Ural Social Democrats, Jews accounted for 9 %, among the Socialist Revolutionaries - 6%, among the liberal-radical Cadets - 2%. Speaking about the latter, it is worth mentioning Lev Afanasyevich Krol, the constant leader of the Ural Cadets and a member of the party’s Central Committee. Being a fairly large entrepreneur, Krol was part of the leadership of the Ural Military-Industrial Committee during the First World War. He actively fought against Bolshevism and Soviet power, in 1918 he headed the regional provisional government of the Urals, and later was a member of the Amur People's Assembly. Just before emigrating to Paris, he published in Vladivostok an interesting book of memoirs about the three post-revolutionary years. In general, the personal stories of revolutionary figures of those years are very interesting and almost always tragic. Many of them either died during the civil war, or were later shot by the Soviet authorities, sent into exile, died in poverty, like Lev Gerstein, some committed suicide, like David Hansburg. Some were helped to avoid a similar fate by natural causes, such as the death of Sverdlov from the Spanish flu or Yurovsky from cancer.

The Jews, unlike other peoples, besides revolution and religion, had one more alternative to Russian reality. While some wanted to correct society and change the existing system here, others dreamed of a kingdom of justice “there” - at the white walls of Jerusalem. The Zionist movement, which arose at the end of the 19th century, quickly grew stronger and, despite, or perhaps thanks to, the prohibitions, gained great popularity. The very first Zionist organization in the Urals arose in Perm - shortly after the first Zionist congress in Basel in 1897. The number of its members by 1900 amounted to approximately 10% of the entire Jewish population of the city. After February 1917, the influence of the Zionists only strengthened - according to the results of elections to the councils of new democratic Jewish communities: in Perm they received 21 seats out of 35, in Orenburg - 11 out of 31, in Ufa - 12 out of 28. In addition to the Zionists in all major Ural cities Jewish parties of various directions operated: socialist Marxist - Bund and Poalei Zion and non-Marxist - united socialists - ESRP (which arose from the merger of the Socialist Jewish Workers' Party - SERP and the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party), liberal - the Jewish People's Group, the Jewish People's Party. After February 1917, they actively became involved in all-Russian public life, nominated their deputies in elections to local government bodies and sometimes even got elected. Thus, in the summer of 1917, a representative of the Jewish Democratic Group, Isaac Abramovich Kontorovich, was elected as a member of the Yekaterinburg City Duma. However, the majority of provincial branches of all-Russian Jewish parties, with rare exceptions (representatives of the Bund after February were members of the Soviets of Perm, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Kungur), performed cultural and national functions to a greater extent than political ones.

On March 20, 1917, the “Resolution of the Provisional Government on the abolition of religious and national restrictions” equalized Jews with Russian citizens, proclaiming the abolition of all laws contrary to the principle of equality. But the subsequent flourishing of Jewish parties and organizations was short-lived. The new Soviet government, through the Jewish Commissariat, created under the People's Commissariat for Nationalities headed by Stalin, as well as the Jewish sections of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, began the gradual curtailment and then the complete liquidation of national Jewish parties and public associations. By 1930, in the Urals, Jewish prayer houses, synagogues and other premises were requisitioned by the authorities, and the organizations themselves were closed (material assets were confiscated even earlier - in 1922, under the pretext of helping the hungry).

During the Great Patriotic War, mass evacuation to the Urals led to the appearance in the late 1940s and 50s. in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) and Molotov (Perm) small religious societies engaged in purely religious matters and existed on voluntary donations. But they did not last long: in 1959, by decision of the Council of People's Deputies of the local convocation, the Jewish society of Molotov was closed, and in 1961 - of Sverdlovsk. The only building in Sverdlovsk, built back in 1916 specifically for Jewish religious needs (ritual bathhouse - mikveh), was demolished.

Thus, until the late 1980s, Jewish life was denied legal public expression. However, this could not eradicate people’s desire for communication and knowledge, preservation and transmission of traditions. Many families retained spoken Yiddish at home, especially those evacuated during the Great Patriotic War and who remained to live in the Urals. Communication and discussion of miraculously arriving letters from relatives from Israel took place exclusively at home, “in the kitchen.” In several regional centers of the region, “home” minyanim gathered for prayer7. It is also known that despite the threat of arrest in several cities, Hebrew classes were held clandestinely in apartments. And largely thanks to this simmering “at-home” Jewish life, as well as the enormous need for national communication and self-expression that did not fade during the Soviet decades, the modern revival and re-creation of Jewish communities in the Urals and throughout the country was received with amazing enthusiasm.

1 Anti-Semitism in Russia is an extremely complex topic. The role of the authorities of the Russian Empire in provoking and organizing Jewish pogroms is not always clear. At the very least, the widespread opinion among both Jewish and Russian intelligentsia about the responsibility of the authorities, especially the government, for organizing pogroms is not always based on reliable evidence. Another thing is the blatant connivance of these pogroms.

2 Shadchen is an intermediary in marriage among Jews.

3 Shoichet is a slaughterer who slaughters livestock and poultry in accordance with the ritual prescriptions of Judaism.

4 Schichtmeister - the rank of a mining official of the 13th or 14th class. The 13th class shiftmaster corresponded in the table of ranks to an army second lieutenant and a civilian college protocolist and registrar.

5 Torah - the first five books of the “Hebrew Bible” (the Jewish name of which is TaNaKh, the non-Jewish name is the Old Testament). The Torah, in scroll form, is kept in synagogues and a specific weekly section is read during Shabbat services.

6 Heder is a Jewish religious primary school.

7 A minyan is a gathering of at least ten Jewish men who have reached religious adulthood (13 years old). The presence of a minyan is mandatory for public worship.

Which people have the strongest roots on our planet? Perhaps this question is relevant for any historian. And almost every one of them will answer with confidence - the Jewish people. Despite the fact that humanity has inhabited the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, we know our history at best for the last twenty centuries AD and approximately the same amount BC. e.

But the history of the Jewish people begins much earlier. All events in it are closely intertwined with religion and involve constant persecution.

First mentions

Despite their considerable age, the first mentions of Jews date back to the time of the construction of the pyramids of the Egyptian pharaohs. As for the records of themselves, the history of the Jewish people from ancient times begins with its first representative - Abraham. The son of Shem (who, in turn, was born in the vastness of Mesopotamia.

As an adult, Abraham moves to Canaan, where he meets the local population, subject to spiritual decay. It is here that God takes this husband under his protection and enters into an agreement with him, thereby placing his mark on him and his descendants. It is from this moment that the events described in the gospel stories begin, in which the history of the Jewish people is so rich. Briefly, it consists of the following periods:

• biblical;
• ancient;
• antique;
• medieval;
• modern times (including the Holocaust and the return of Israel to the Jews).

Moving to Egypt

Abraham starts a family, he has a son Isaac, and from him - Jacob. The latter, in turn, gives birth to Joseph - a new bright figure in the gospel stories. Betrayed by his brothers, he ends up in Egypt as a slave. But still he manages to free himself from slavery and, moreover, become close to the pharaoh himself. This phenomenon (the presence of a pathetic slave in the retinue of the supreme ruler) is facilitated by the narrow-mindedness of the pharaoh’s family (the Hyksos), who came to the throne due to vile and cruel actions that led to the overthrow of the previous dynasty. This genus is also known as the shepherd pharaohs. Once in power, Joseph transports his father and his family to Egypt. This is how the strengthening of Jews in a certain area begins, which contributes to their rapid reproduction.

The beginning of the persecution

The history of the Jewish people from the Bible shows them as peaceful shepherds, minding exclusively their own business and not getting involved in politics, despite the fact that the Hyksos dynasty sees them as a worthy ally, giving them the best lands and other conditions necessary for farming. Before entering Egypt, the clan of Jacob numbered twelve tribes (twelve tribes), which, under the patronage of the shepherd pharaohs, grew into an entire ethnic group with its own culture.

Further, the history of the Jewish people tells of deplorable times for them. An army leaves Thebes with the goal of overthrowing the self-proclaimed pharaoh and establishing the power of a true dynasty. She will soon succeed in doing just that. They still refrain from reprisals against the Hyksos favorites, but at the same time turn them into slaves. The Jews endured long years of slavery and humiliation (210 years of slavery in Egypt) before the coming of Moses.

Moses and the withdrawal of the Jews from Egypt

The history of the Jewish people shows Moses as coming from an ordinary family. At that time, the Egyptian authorities were seriously alarmed by the growth of the Jewish population, and a decree was issued to kill every boy born into a family of slaves. Miraculously surviving, Moses ends up with Pharaoh's daughter, who adopts him. So the young man finds himself in the ruling family, where all the secrets of government are revealed to him. However, he remembers his roots, which begins to torment him. He becomes unbearable at the way the Egyptians treat his fellow men. On one of his walking days, Moses kills the overseer who was brutally beating a slave. But he turns out to be betrayed by the same slave, which leads to his flight and forty years of hermitage in the mountains. It is there that God turns to him with a decree to lead his people out of the lands of Egypt, while endowing Moses with unprecedented abilities.

Further events include various miracles that Moses demonstrates to Pharaoh, demanding the release of his people. They do not end after the Jews leave the Jewish people for children (gospel stories) shows them as:

• the flow of the river before Moses;
• fall of manna from heaven;
• the splitting of a rock and the formation of a waterfall in it and much more.

After the Jews left the power of Pharaoh, their goal became the lands of Canaan, which were allotted to them by God himself. This is where Moses and his followers are heading.

Israel Education

Forty years later, Moses dies. Right before the walls of Canaan, where he gives his power to Joshua. Over the course of seven years, he conquered one Canaanite principality after another. On the captured land, Israel is formed (translated from Hebrew as “fighter of God”). Further, the history of the Jewish people tells about the formation of the city - both the capital of the Jewish lands and the center of the world. Such famous personalities as Saul, David, Solomon and many others appear on his throne. A huge temple is erected in it, which is destroyed by the Babylonians and which is restored again after the liberation of the Jews by the wise Persian king Crete.

Israel is divided into two states: Judah and Israel, which are subsequently captured and destroyed by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

As a result, several centuries after Joshua conquered the Canaanite lands, the Jewish people scattered throughout the land, having lost their home.

Later times

After the collapse of the Jewish and Jerusalem states, the history of the Jewish people has several ramifications. And almost every one of them survives to this day. Perhaps there is not a single side where Jews would go after the loss, just as there is not a single country in our time where there is a Jewish diaspora.

And in each state they greeted “God’s people” differently. If in America they automatically had equal rights with the indigenous population, then closer to the Russian border they faced mass persecution and humiliation. The history of the Jewish people in Russia tells of pogroms, from Cossack raids to the Holocaust during World War II.

And only in 1948, by decision of the United Nations, the Jews were returned to their “historical homeland” - Israel.

Fireworks are noticeable, but they are of little use: no heat, no light. It will sparkle, make you happy for a moment - and that’s all. The work of Jewish communities in the Russian diaspora often resembles this favorite form of holiday entertainment.

Meetings, conferences, ceremonial magazines with glossy covers - all this is noticeable, “accountable”, and understandable to auditors. But the real, real work is done invisibly, in depth and completely unnoticed.

Here in front of me is a small book by I.E. Antropov, M.I. Oshtrakh “History of the Jews in the Urals. Catalog of documents from the archives of the Sverdlovsk, Perm and Tyumen regions." This work was published by the Sverdlovsk Association of Jewish Studies.

The annotation says that the book “is dedicated to the history of the Jews in Yekaterinburg and the Urals. Over 12 years of work, historians managed to collect the most interesting, unique material. For the first time it is systematized and meaningful.

The first section of the book is devoted to the history of the appearance of Jews in the Urals.

The second is a catalog of archival documents.

There is a third section, modestly called the “Appendix” by the authors, but this “Appendix” is extensive and of great interest.

The authors write: “Documents related to the residence of Jews in the Urals begin to appear mainly in the 20s. 19th century. It is significant that one of the first documents discovered by the authors is of a “denominational” nature. They did not want to let Jews into the Urals. On December 19, 1824, “a weak and crafty ruler” issued a decree to the Minister of Finance: “During my travels along the Ural Ridge, I noticed that Jews, contrary to indigenous and state laws, flock to mining factories and, secretly purchasing precious metals, corrupt the local inhabitants to the detriment of the treasury and private breeders. I command you to strictly instruct the Mountain Chiefs of the Ural Range and take other appropriate measures so that Jews are not tolerated at all, both in state-owned and private factories... neither in transit nor in residence.”

Just a few lines about how the empire drove the Jews into the Pale of Settlement, into poverty and lack of rights. One must think that the true bloodsuckers of the Ural serfs and workers got rid of their competitors.

It’s not just about the traders of these very “precious metals”. I read another interesting document in the book by Antropova and Oshtrakh. The authors write: “In addition, the Ural mining authorities “removed Jews from the mining battalions - the lower military ranks, and these units were no longer replenished with Jews.” It is unlikely that the “lower ranks” were involved in the iron trade.

Jews with higher education had the right to settle everywhere throughout the Russian Empire, and therefore the Urals and Siberia were populated by Jews of special energy and intellectual qualities. But even for such people it was not easy. The authors of the book publish a document according to which Dora Abramovna Shpilberg, a graduate of the University of Warsaw, who arrived from Harbin, asks for permission to open a dental office in Nizhnyaya Salda. The district police officer, the head of this disastrous place, Dora Abramovna refused this request. He probably had healthy, strong teeth.

I must say that the efficiency of this book is optimal, the density of the material is significant. No water, no empty “reasoning”. The reader can draw his own conclusions, think for himself, and extract from this work what he needs.

Sometimes, the authors summarize the cited documents. Well, for example: “As a result, by 1930, almost all of the above-mentioned institutions were closed, and Jewish education was liquidated.” Basically, the documents are so eloquent that such a “point” is not required.

I was especially interested in the “Appendices” to the book “The History of the Jews of the Urals.” The authors managed to discover the most interesting documentary evidence. I knew nothing before about the interest of the writer D.N. Mamina-Sibiryak on the Jewish theme. I haven’t read his story “The Jew.” Here is an excerpt from this story given in the book: “He fled from Egypt, he wandered again in the barren desert - how unbearably thirsty in these hot sands, what a merciless sun! He went into Babylonian captivity - how terribly the children and women cried. He was tortured by the Holy Inquisition, he rotted alive in the Jewish quarters of medieval, dirty towns, he burned at the stake, he was afraid of his own shadow. He didn’t even know where to run... No, this is terrible, terrible, terrible! Levinson died two weeks later."

The poems of the famous Jewish fiction writer Andrei Sobol are interesting. Antropova and Oshtrakh discovered them in the archive, as they write, “a Jewish girl from the Urals, Sara Simanovskaya.”

The lyrics never got in the way of the story. Sometimes, behind the driest document there is more poetry, tragedy, drama than in other rhymed lines. Here is a sample of one such document from the book: “The case of the Yekaterinburg District Court on charges of merchant Evgraf Mikhailovich Sokolov (aka Yankel Itskov Kogan) of apostasy from the Orthodox faith.

The indictment dated December 31, 1887, states that Kogan converted to Orthodoxy, “but, living for about 12 years in the Pokrovsky village of the Tomsk province, he never fulfilled the requirements of the Orthodox faith, evading it and apparently returning to the faith of his fathers.” Sokolov’s (Kogan) petition to the Yekaterinburg ecclesiastical board, explaining that he (Kogan) was baptized against his will and the will of his parents at the age of 9 when enlisted as a cantonist in the Omsk battalion and “throughout his entire life he remained in the faith of his fathers according to the Law of Moses.” .

Here is another similar document: “The indictment of the Yekaterinburg District Court dated May 31, 1889, based on the testimony of B. Katz that “she accepted the Christian faith while in a painful state and not understanding, due to her youth, the essence of Christian teaching, why at present time abides in the Jewish faith.”

In this regard, I would like to talk about a book sent to Israel by my cousin, journalist Leon Flaum, from Omsk. It is called “Omsk Crossroads”, and the central place in this book is occupied by an essay about the Pantofel family. Leon managed to find a unique text in the archive: “A brief recollection of the life of the Nikolaev soldier Abram Markovich Pantofel, dedicated to his children and grandchildren.”

It must be said that today, as Flaum writes, there are 25 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, and 11 great-great-grandchildren in the Pantofel family. “Pantoffels live in several cities of Russia and other post-Soviet states, most of all in Omsk. It is not so easy to calculate the total length of service of the dynasty. Only those who lived and live in our city have at least about 2 thousand years.” Surely there are Pantofeli in Israel.

So the forefather of this family, in his notes of a cantonist of the mid-18th century, writes: “At the age of nine, he stopped going to cheder and entered a faience and crockery factory. The first month I worked for ten kopecks a day, then for twelve.

A little time passed, when in August 1850, at about 12 o'clock at night, while sound asleep in a hut on the stove after tiring work, I was woken up by the sotsky and some people. They lifted him from the stove in his arms with the words: “Come on, Avrumka, come to sleep with us.” I cried...

Of all the cities, we were most afraid of Kazan. They said that cantonists were forcibly baptized in it. In the arena the colonel examined us. He asked: “Does anyone have any complaints?” Everyone answered negatively. He ordered that everyone who wanted to be baptized came out three steps from their front. I repeated it again. Nobody came out. They were silent. The colonel announced that in Tobolsk everyone would be baptized anyway. This made us sad. The older cantonists, under the guise of illness, tried to stay in the district towns and hospitals along the way. Otherwise, we traveled safely from Kazan. And upon arrival in Tobolsk they found themselves in a separate company of military cantonists. Our journey through villages and towns continued for almost a whole year...

In Tobolsk, the first thing they did was forbid us to speak Jewish, they took away our prayer books, gave us uniforms, and assigned us to barracks, to wooden beds with canvas mattresses and the same pillows with straw.”

One detail of these wonderful “memoirs” seemed to me extremely curious, perhaps at least to some extent explaining the reasons for Judeophobia where there were very few Jews.

A stunning passage, in my opinion. The children were clearly strangers: they were still dressed unusually, they did not know how to speak Russian, they prayed in their own way, and the peasants pitied them as orphans, as slaves of the Tsar, the same as they were. But the children were forced to lie... Who knows, maybe the memory of this lie still remains in the memory of the descendants of those peasants.

A taste for historical research is a sure sign of the intellectual health of a people. Jews in the Diaspora live differently, but, as before, there are many among them who do everything in modern, preferential conditions to preserve the memory of their ancestors in Russia.

What is behind this “love for fatherly tombs”, a simple and normal desire to find out the truth about one’s people? Of course, both. In any case, the work of Ural and Siberian historians is worthy of deep respect. This is honest, professional, talented work.