Thereby
hangs a tale! Peter the Great would not allow Jews to settle in his
dominions on the ground that his single-minded, ignorant subjects could
not compete with a naturally clever race endowed with a marvelous talent
for money-making. Under his successors, by the annexation of Poland,
several millions of Polish Jews became Russian subjects; but the policy
of exclusion, so far as Russia proper is concerned, has been maintained
down to the present day, so that, throughout the purely Russian
provinces, Jews are not yet allowed to settle in the villages. If you
ask the reason, you will probably be told that if a single Jew were
allowed to live in a village, all the Orthodox inhabitants would soon be
deeply in debt to him. In some respects, however, the old regulations
have been relaxed. A certain proportion of Jewish students are admitted
to the universities and higher schools, and such of them as pass their
examinations may settle in the towns and freely exercise their
professions. As a matter of fact, a considerable proportion of the most
capable barristers, physicians, bankers, &c., in Petrograd, Moscow, and
other cities are Jews by race and religion, and I have never heard of
any of them being persecuted. Anti-Semitic feeling, so far as it exists,
has nothing to do with religious beliefs. It is confined to such people
as the trader who suffers from the competition of Jewish rivals, or the
peasant who finds that the money-lender, from whom he has borrowed at a
high rate of interest, exacts rigorously the fulfillment of the
contract.
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