Pale of Settlement - History

History

For more information about life in the Pale, see: History of the Jews in Poland and History of the Jews in Russia

The Pale was first created by Catherine the Great in 1791, after several failed attempts by her predecessors, notably the Empress Elizabeth, to remove Jews from Russia entirely, unless they converted to Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion. The reasons for its creation were primarily economic and nationalist.

The institution of the Pale became more significant following the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, since until then, Russia's Jewish population had been rather limited; the dramatic westward expansion of the Czarist Empire through the annexation of Polish-Lithuanian territory increased the Jewish population substantially. At its height, the Pale, including the new Polish and Lithuanian territories, had a Jewish population of over 5 million, and represented the largest component (40 percent) of world Jewish population at that time.

From 1791 to 1835, and until 1917, there were differing reconfigurations of the boundaries of the Pale, such that certain areas were variously open or shut to Jewish residency, such as the Caucasus. At times, Jews were forbidden to live in agricultural communities, or certain cities, as in Kiev, Sevastopol and Yalta, and forced to move to small provincial towns, thus fostering the rise of the shtetls. Jewish merchants of the 1st guild, people with higher or special education, artisans, soldiers, drafted in accordance with the Recruit Charter of 1810, and their descendants had the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement. In some periods, special dispensations were given for Jews to live in the major imperial cities, but these were tenuous, and several thousand Jews were expelled to the Pale from Saint Petersburg and Moscow as late as 1891.