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Originally found at: https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/ЕЭБЕ/Анна_Иоанновна
Anna Ioannovna- the Russian empress, whose reign (1730-1740), generally difficult for
Russia, was marked by severe repression against the Jews. Three years before accession, her
government energetically began to evict Jews from the two outskirts of the state: from the Ukraine, cut
off from the Polish center of Jewry, and from the Smolensk province, adjacent to the Jewish-populated
Belarus. By the decree of Empress Catherine I in April of 1727, the Jews were expelled from the
Russian Ukraine “abroad,” that is, to Poland. That this old Moscow policy of intolerance was contrary
to the interests of the local Christian population was discovered in 1728, when the hetman Apostle, on
behalf of the “Zaporozhye troops on both sides of the Dnieper”, applied to St. Petersburg asking to
admit Jews into the Little Russia as people useful to the region’s trade. Then the government made a
concession and allowed the Jews to temporarily come to Little Russia to the fairs "for merchant
industry", but only for the wholesale vending of goods. This "privilege" was extended at the beginning
of the reign of Anna Ioannovna also to the Smolensk province (1731). In 1734, representatives of the
Slobodskaia Ukraina
1
 in St. Petersburg filed a petition to allow visiting Jewish merchants to sell their
goods at fairs not only in bulk, but also retail (piecemeal) in view of the fact that “there are few
merchants in the Slobodskiy regiments and the commercial industry is unsatisfactory”. The Empress
granted the request, and then the assumption of the retail trade of Jews was extended to the whole of
Little Russia as a favor to the local Christian population (“we, the Great Empress, always had about our
citizens, the Little Russian people the “mother’s care ”- the words of a personal decree to the resident
minister under the hetman, Prince A. Shakhovsky). But in the same decree (Aug. 8, 1734), it was
stipulated that the ban on the non-admission of Jews to permanent residence in Little Russia remains in
its entirety.
These forced concessions to the demands of the region by the government hostile to the Jews
were replaced in the second half of the reign of Anna Ivanovna by brutal repression. The cause of this
change was the religious process of Voznitsyn and Borokh Leibov, which ended with the inquisitorial
auto-da-fe. Even before 1727, the Jewish tax collector Borokh Leibov, who lived in the Smolensk
province, stirred up a local Orthodox population against himself by daring to build a synagogue for a
group of his fellow believers in the village of Zverovichi. Smolensk burghers sent a petition in the
name of the Holy Synod, in which they complained that Borokh not only built a “Jewish school” near
the church, in which “he sent his Basurman
2
 faith”, but also “cursed the Christian faith” and beat the
priest of the village Abrahamia to death, who “accused him, a Jew, of all sorts of nasty things in the
school’s structure” . At the same time, the complainants did not fail to add that the Jews, who settled in
the Smolensk province, seduced the Orthodox into the “Jewish faith”. Having received such a report,
the Synod ordered the synagogue built by Borokh be leveled to the ground and the books in it to be
burned. In addition, the other charges against Borokh, should undergo a strict investigation. However,
this investigation had not yet been completed, and after the eviction of Jews from the Smolensk
province by decree of 1727, a new more serious accusation was made ten years later against the same
1See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloboda_Ukraine
2non-Christian

Borokh Leibov. He was accused of seducing into the Jewish faith and subjecting to the rite of
circumcision, a retired naval captain-lieutenant Voznitsyn, who retreated from Orthodoxy and
blasphemed the church. The case came in 1738 to the “Office of Secret Investigation Cases”, the head
of which was a man with inquisitorial tendencies - General Ushakov. Empress Anna Ioannovna's
attention was drawn to this case as a danger to the church, and she ordered the immediate consideration
of a material investigation by the Senate. Although the Yustits College, where the Senate referred the
case, found that the investigative material was not sufficient, and based solely on the defendants
’forced confinement in the dungeon’. At the insistence of the Empress, who was influenced by
Ushakov, the Senate rejected the additional investigation and hurriedly issued a decision dictated by
"The Office of the secret investigative affairs." It was decided that Voznitsyn, the seduced and the
seducer Borokh Leibov, “be executed by burning so that others, despite the ignoramuses and the god-
opposers, could not retreat from Christian law, and attractions like Borokh would not seduce others
from Christian law into their own laws”. The Empress immediately approved the decision and in the
second half of 1738 the convicts were burned at the stake.
This inquisitorial process undoubtedly strengthened in the Empress and government spheres the
fear of the influx of Jews in Russia. The old ghost of the “heresy of the Judaizers,” who in the 16th and
17th centuries forced the Moscow tsars to drive every Jew out of Russia “abroad,” prompted the St.
Petersburg government to take measures to protect the Russian suburbs from the penetration of the
Jews. In the same year of 1738, the Senate inquired about the holdings (cash) of Jews in the Ukraine,
and it turned out - according to the report of the General Chancery from Glukhov - that 140 people live
there, who penetrated there from Poland, contrary to the decree of 1727. The Senate sent a decree on
the immediate expulsion of these illegally settled abroad. But the answer to this came from the Little
Russian Military Chancellery that the immediate expulsion of Jews abroad, in view of the war that was
taking place with Turkey, seemed dangerous, "so that through their current expulsion there doesn’t
result in any kind of espionage." The Senate submitted the case to the Cabinet of Ministers, which put
the resolution: “The expulsion of Jews, is considered postponed until the end of the current Turkish
war” (August 18, 1739). At the same time, the cabinet of ministers ordered more precisely to establish
the number of Jews illegally residing in Little Russia and the nature of their industries and to send a
statement from the Military Chancellery to the Senate, in the meantime, “to look and firmly forbid that,
even in the whole of Little Russia, no one would take the Jews into their homes, neither keep them in
their taverns, nor to rent any quarter to them”. The required statement was soon submitted, and it turned
out that the real number of Jews in the Little Russia exceeded the above figure: it turned out that there
were 292 men and 281 women on 130 properties, totaling 573 people. They lived "not in their own
houses" and did not have "farms, factories and other trades", and were listed mainly as the owners of
various estates who leased taverns for the sale of drinks. It was decided to evict this handful of Jews as
soon as the war ended and peace between Russia and Turkey was concluded. In the Senate report in
this sense, the Empress enacted the following resolution (July 11, 1740): "The above-stated Jews, by
the force of previous decrees, from Little Russia are to be sent abroad. " Thus, in the last year of the
reign of Anna Ioannovna, Little Russia was again evacuated of the Jews, who retained, apparently, only

the right of temporary arrival at the fairs. Later, in the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, even this right of
temporary arrival on commercial affairs was taken away from the Jews. 
The Judeophobia of the Empress and dignitaries did not prevent them, however, from using the
services of Jews where financial or other interests demanded it. In the case of the wealthy agent of the
Duke of Courland, Brion, a  favorite of Empress, the Jew Lipman (or Liebman) apparently played an
important financial role in Petersburg, where he dealt with large government payoffs and supplies. At
the court of Anna Ivanovna, the court jester of Peter the Great, Acosta or Lacoste lived out his days.
Wed: First. Full Collected Law., №№ 5852, 6610, 6614, 6898, 7612, 7869, 8169; Levanda,
"Chronological collection of laws on Jews" (St. Petersburg, 1874), №№ 16-22; Golitsyn, “The History
of Russian Legislation on Jews”, St. Petersburg, 1886, pp. 20–42 and 284–296 (the author used in part
also material from the archives of the Senate and the Synod); Solov'ev, “History of Russia”, vol. XXI,
p. 310; Wed also volume XIX, pp. 313-14; Dubnov, "The General History of the Jews," Vol. III, pp.
337-340; Wunderbar, Geschichte d. Juden in Livland und Kurland, Mitau, 1853, pp. 16-22.
SD