Nor was the governmental system of encouraging agriculture among Jews attended by greater success.  In consequence of the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from the villages of White Busier in 1823, some two thousand refugees had drifted into the agricultural colonies of New Russia, but all they did was to replace the human wastage from increased mortality, which, owing to the change of climate and the unaccustomed conditions of rural life, had decimated the original settlers.  During the reign of Nicholas, efforts were again made to promote agricultural colonization by offering the prospective immigrants subsidies and alleviations in taxation.  Even more valuable was the privilege relieving the colonists from military service for a term of twenty-five to fifty years from the time of settlement.  Yet only a few tried to escape conscription by taking refuge in the colonies.  For the military regime gradually penetrated into these colonies as well.  The Jewish colonist was subject to the grim tutelage of Russian “curators” and “superintendents,” retired army men, who watched his every step and punished the slightest carelessness by conscription or expulsion.

In 1836 the Government conceived the idea of enlarging the area of Jewish agricultural colonization.  By an imperial rescript certain lands in Siberia, situated in the government of Tobolsk and in the territory of Omsk, were set aside for this purpose.  Within a short time 1317 Jews declared their readiness to settle on the new lands; many had actually started on their way in batches.  But in January, 1837, the Tzar quite unexpectedly changed his mind.  After reading the report of the Council of Ministers on the first results of the immigration, he put down the resolution:  “The transplantation of Jews to Siberia is to be stopped.”  A few months later orders were issued to intercept those Jews who were on their way to Siberia and transfer them to the Jewish colonies in the government of Kherson.  The unfortunate emigrants were seized on the way and conveyed, like criminals, under a military escort into places in which they were not in the least interested.  Legislative whims of this kind, coupled with an uncouth system of tutelage, were quite sufficient to crush in many Jews the desire of turning to the soil.

Nevertheless, the colonization made slow progress, gradually spreading from the government of Kherson to the neighboring governments of Yekaterinoslav and Bessarabia.  Stray Jewish agricultural settlements also appeared in Lithuania and White Russia.  But a comparative handful of some ten thousand “Jewish peasants” could not affect the general economic make-up of millions of Jews.  In spite of all shocks, the economic structure of Russian Jewry remained essentially the same.  As before, the central place in this structure was occupied by the liquor traffic, though modified in a certain measure by the introduction of a more extensive system of public leases.  Above