History
Jews have lived on the territory of Nizhny Novgorod since the 19th century. The laws of the Russian Empire prohibited Jews from living in the center of Russia, allowing them land only in the Pale of Settlement. Only merchants of the top guild and retired soldiers of the imperial army could live there. Nevertheless, the high trade and industrial development of Nizhny Novgorod attracted people, and Jews started arrive at Nizhny Novgorod from western regions of the empire. The majority of migrants were dealers and merchants. They arrived at Nizhny Novgorod to different trade fairs on the territory of the famous local fair. But there was no permanent Jewish community in the city until 1840, prompted by the decree of the tsar that started to recruit Jews for military service.
Read more about this topic: Jewish Community Of Nizhny Novgorod
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)