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Originally found at: https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/ЕЭБЕ/Алексей_Михайлович
Alexey Mikhailovich- Tsar of Moscow (1645–1676), during which the gradual recession of
Polish territories began and, in this connection, the influence of Russia on the fate of the Jews. Moscow
Russia did not know Jews previously, did not even allow visiting Jewish merchants from neighboring
Poland to enter its borders and was protected from them even in the first years of the reign of Alexei
Mikhailovich. In the “Code” of 1649, it was forbidden for “unbaptized foreigners” to keep Russian
people in their service under the fear of “cruel punishment” (Article 20). “Busurman”
1
, which “will
force the Russian people to their faith and cut them off according to their Busurmanian faith”, must be
burned by fire “without mercy” (Article 22). This meant, apparently, Mohammedans, Jews and non-
believers in general. The articles of “The Code,” without specifically naming the Jews, who were
almost nonexistent in Russia at that time, are of more theoretical importance to them. Soon however,
the Russian Tsar had to meet with Jews in real life, under unusual military circumstances. The Cossack
uprising in the Ukraine in 1648 fatally led to the intervention of Moscow in Polish affairs. Already in
June 1648, after the first outbreaks of the Ukrainian uprising, the Putivl voivode Pleshcheyev notified
Tsar Aleksei that the Cossacks had beaten "Poles and Jews". In January 1649, the royal messenger
Kunakov reported on the same bloody affairs in the Mogilev gubernia and in Lithuania. The king sent
an order to the governor Pleshcheyev not to allow "any Lithuanian people and Jews (fugitives from
Poland) to the royal side and send them back from the outposts (Moscow border)" (June 5, 1649). Four
years later, the Cossack hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky broadcast across the Ukraine a slogan about
uniting with the “king of the east” against Poland. War was declared against Poland, and in May 1654
Tsar Alexei himself embarked on a campaign. After Moscow troops invaded Poland (Belarus), the
Jews felt the heavy hand of these Cossack allies. On the occasion of the accession of the city of
Mogilev-on-the-Dnieper to Russia, the tsar, at the request of the local Orthodox population, gave the
order: “There should not be but one Jew in Mogilev at all” (September 15, 1654). After the expulsion
of the Jews from the city, it was ordered to give half of their houses to the town hall and to leave the
other half for the Tsar's servants and troops. Despite these severities, a group of Jews remained in
Mogilev, waiting for salvation from the approaching Polish army of Radzivil. When the calculations of
the Jews were revealed, the head of the local Russian garrison, Poklonsky, ordered the Jews to get out
of the city, and there his soldiers killed all but a few who had expressed their readiness to be baptized
(1655). During the three-month siege of the city of Vitebsk by the Russians, the Jews together with the
Poles bravely fought the enemy, built fortifications and repelled assaults. When the city was taken, the
1Jew, Moslem or non-Christian

Russian voivode Sheremetev, by order of Tsar A. (April 2, 1655), took the Jews as prisoners of war:
they were sent together with the Poles first to Novgorod where they were kept in prison, then
transported to Kazan. Another batch of Jewish prisoners sent by voivode Trubetskoy (apparently from
the Ukraine) ended up in Kaluga, and the king ordered them to be sent in Nizhny Novgorod in the
spring of 1655 together with the exiled Lithuanians (108 families in total and 24 singles). In August
1655, the Cossack-Moscow army staged a beating of Poles and Jews in Vilna. Fortunately, most of the
Jewish population managed to escape from the city even before the invasion by the enemy. Three years
later during the Moscow-Swedish invasion, the Vilna magistrate and Christian tradesmen settled their
long-standing accounts with the Jews, claiming the privilege of Alexei Mikhailovich, which by the way
was: "You should send Jews from Vilna to live in the country" (June 30, 1658). At the end of the war,
when all the above-mentioned Belarussian and Lithuanian cities moved back to Poland, the invasion of
the Jewish settlement region by the Moscow tsarist troops left only grave memory. The Moscow
policy, hostile to the Jews, had longer consequences for those parts of Little Russia (left-bank Ukraine),
which were ceded from Poland to Russia by virtue of the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo. The agreement
provided the Jews of the regions that had transferred to Russia with a free choice: either go to the
neighboring Polish Ukraine (right bank), or to remain "in the direction of his royal majesty," that is, in
the Moscow part of Little Russia. Only Jews (baptized) who married Russian people should stay with
their husbands in the annexed region. Allowing the Jews to remain at their former places in the Ukraine
did not prejudge, however, the question of their right to stay in the indigenous regions of Russia. It is
possible that, at first, the Jewish merchants who came to Moscow were not very keenly watching. This
explains the assertion of the Englishman Samuel Collins (in the work The Current State of Russia,
1666) that the Jews "have recently multiplied in Moscow and at the court." The “patron saint” of the
Jews, the physician Stefan von Gaden, baptized from the Jews, and a German native who was at the
Moscow court in 1672-74. This condescending attitude to the violation by Jews of the old prohibition-
to live and trade in the capital of Holy Russia, was manifested in isolated cases. The trade regulations
of 1667 introduced many restrictions for foreign trade in Moscow in general. Foreigners who came to
Russia had no right to sell their goods at retail nor bring them to fairs. In Moscow and other internal
cities, only those foreigners were allowed who had royal letters for the red seal. “The Jews in the reign
of Alexei Mikhailovich,” says the Russian historian Soloviev, “were able to obtain such certificates for
themselves” under the red seal. They came to Moscow with cloth, pearls and other goods and received
commissions from the Court. Thus, in 1672, Shklovsky Jews, Samuel Yakovlev and his comrades,
were released from Moscow abroad to buy Hungarian wine. ” These single privileges subsequently
ceased. Already in the year of the death of Tsar Alexei, his successor Theodore issued an order: not to

allow Jews from Smolensk to Moscow, who came there "in secret" with goods. The secret transport of
goods was apparently caused not by smuggling, but by the obstacles with which the authorities blocked
the passage of the merchants themselves to the capital. This can be seen from the explanation in the
same order: “According to the decree of the great Sovereign, it is ordered not to allow goods to and
from Smolensk” (September 12, 1676). Thus, in the last years of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, the
first Pale of Settlement for Jews, who remained in insignificant numbers in the Little Russian region
attached to the royal land, arose in Russia.
Wed: Full. Collected Zak., T. I, №№ 1, 135, 148, 232, 398, 441, 662; Levanda, "Collection of Laws on
the Jews", №№ 1-7 (St. Petersburg., 1874); Retests and labels: a set of materials for the history of Jews
in Russia (vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1899; vol. II — printed: taken from proofread sheets), No. 757, 877,
904-05, 906, 910, 954-58, 961, 966 , 969, 971, 1052, 1055, 1140, 1156; Kraszewski, Wilno etc., t.
II; Finn, Kiria Neemanah, p. 11; Soloviev, "History of Russia", book. III, p. 723; Dubnov,
“Universal. ist Heb. ”, III, 288, 291, 335; Gradovsky, “The Trade Laws of Jews in Russia” (St.
Petersburg, 1888), pp. 2-28 (a book that completely distorts the historical perspective with a view to a
rather dubious apology — evidence of the tolerance of the old Moscow policy); Richter, "History of
Medicine in Russia" (Moscow, 1814), Vol II, 260-64. Finn, Kiria Neemanah, p. 11; Soloviev, "History
of Russia", book. III, p. 723; Dubnov, “Universal. ist Heb. ”, III, 288, 291, 335; Gradovsky, “The Trade
Laws of Jews in Russia” (St. Petersburg, 1888), pp. 2-28 (a book that completely distorts the historical
perspective with a view to a rather dubious apology — evidence of the tolerance of the old Moscow
policy); Richter, "History of Medicine in Russia" (Moscow, 1814), Vol II, 260-64. Finn, Kiria
Neemanah, p. 11; Soloviev, "History of Russia", book. III, p. 723; Dubnov, “Universal. ist Heb. ”, III,
288, 291, 335; Gradovsky, “The Trade Laws of Jews in Russia” (St. Petersburg, 1888), pp. 2-28 (a
book that completely distorts the historical perspective with a view to a rather dubious apology —
evidence of the tolerance of the old Moscow policy); Richter, "History of Medicine in Russia"
(Moscow, 1814), Vol II, 260-64.
S. Dubnov.