issued the new “Regulation Concerning the Basket Tax.” [1] The revenue from this tax which had for a long time been imposed upon Kosher meat was originally placed at the free disposal of the Kahals, though subject, since 1839, to the combined control of the administration and municipality.  According to the new enactment, the proceeds from the meat tax which was to be let to the highest bidder were to be left entirely in the hands of the gubernatorial administration.  The latter was instructed to see to it that the income from the tax should first be applied to cover the fiscal arrears of the Jews, then to provide for the maintenance of the Crown schools and the official promotion of agriculture among Jews, and only as a last item to be spent on the local charities.

[Footnote 1:  The tax is called in Russian korobochny sbor, or, for short, korobka, a word related to German Korb.  It was partly in use already under the Polish regime.]

In addition to the general basket tax, imposed upon all Jews who use Kosher meat, an “auxiliary basket tax” was instituted to be levied on immovable property as well as on business pursuits and bequests.  Moreover, following the Austrian model, the Government instituted, or rather reinstituted, the “candle tax,” a toll on Sabbath candles.  The proceeds from this impost on a religions ceremony were to go specifically towards the organization of the Jewish Crown schools, and were placed entirely at the disposal of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

Thus in exact proportion to the curtailment of communal autonomy, voluntary self-taxation was gradually supplanted by compulsory Government taxation, a circumstance which not only increased the financial burden of the Jewish masses, but also tended to aggravate it from a moral point of view.  The “tax,” as the meat tax was called for short, became in the course of time one of the scourges of Jewish communal life, that same life which the “measures” of the Government had merely succeeded in disorganizing.

Anxious as the Government was to act diplomatically and, for fear of intensifying the distrust of Russian Jewry towards the new scheme, to stem the flood of restrictions during the execution of the school reform, it could not long restrain itself.  The third plank in the platform of the Jewish Committee, the increase of Jewish disabilities, which had hitherto been kept in reserve, was now pressing forward, and issued forth from the recesses of the chancelleries somewhat earlier than tactical considerations might have dictated.  On April 20, 1843, while the “enlightenment” propaganda was in full swing, there suddenly appeared, in the form of a resolution appended by the Tzar’s own hand to the report of the Council of Ministers, the following curt ukase: