3.  THE ABOLITION OF JEWISH AUTONOMY AND RENEWED PERSECUTIONS

No sooner had the school reform, which was tantamount to the abrogation of Jewish school autonomy, been publicly announced than the Government took steps to realize the second article of its program, the annihilation of the remnants of Jewish communal autonomy.  An ukase published on December 19, 1844, ordered “the placing of the Jews in the cities and countries under the jurisdiction of the general (i.e., Russian) administration, with the abolition of the Kahals.”  By this ukase all the administrative functions of the Kahals were turned over to the police departments, and those of an economic and fiscal character to the municipalities and town councils; the old elective Kahal administration was to pass out of existence.

Carried to its logical conclusions, this “reform” would necessarily have led, as it actually did lead in Western Europe, to the abolition of the Jewish community, outside the narrow limits of a synagogue parish, had the Jews of Russia been placed at the same time on a footing of equality in regard to taxation.  But such European consistency was beyond the mental range of Russian autocracy.  It was neither willing to abandon the special, and for the Jews doubly burdensome, method of conscription, nor to forego the extra levies imposed upon the Jews, over and above the general state taxes, for needs which, properly speaking, should have been met by the exchequer.  Thus it came about that for the sake of maintaining Jewish disabilities in the matter of conscription and taxation, the Government itself was obliged to mitigate the blow at Jewish autonomy by allowing the institutions of Jewish “conscription trustees” and tax-collectors, elected by the Jewish communes “from among the most dependable men,” to remain in force.  The Government, moreover, found it necessary to establish a special department for Jewish affairs at each municipality and town council.  In this way the law managed to destroy the self-government of the Kahal and yet preserve its rudimentary function as an autonomous fiscal agency which was to be continued under the auspices of the municipality.  In point of fact, the Kahal, which, through its “trustees” and “captors,” had acted the part of a Government tool in carrying out the dreadful military conscription, had long become thoroughly demoralized and had lost its former prestige as a great Jewish institution.  Its transformation into a purely fiscal agency was merely the formal ratification of a sad fact.

Having disposed of the Kahal as a vehicle of Jewish “separatism,” the Government next attacked the special Jewish “system of taxation,” not to abolish it, of course, but rather to place it under a more rigorous control for the purpose of preventing it from serving in the hands of the Jews as an instrument for the attainment of specific Jewish ends.  It is significant that on the same day on which the Kahal ukase was made public was also