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3 The Consolidation of Jewish Kiev, 1881–1914 I n the last thirty-­ five years or so of Romanov rule, the Jewish population of Kiev continued to grow, and Jews continued to take root in the city despite increasingly strict enforcement of the regulations on Jewish residence there. In this chapter, we will survey the nuts and bolts of Jewish existence in Kiev—numbers, occupations, residential patterns—and then examine the bloody pogrom of 1905, the Beilis Affair of 1911–13, and their impact on the city’s Jews. Subsequent chapters will investigate other aspects of Jewish life in this period: Jewish literary and political culture, patterns of acculturation, interethnic relations and antisemitism, charity and philanthropy , and the democratization of communal and cultural politics after 1905. Constantly hampered by official restrictions on Jewish residence and institutional life in Kiev, the city’s Jews nonetheless managed to fashion an array of institutions—some legal, others underground—to serve their religious , cultural, educational, and political needs. The revolution of 1905 brought about a flurry of activity in the city’s communal and welfare organizations , which rapidly became heavily politicized, but after the first enthusiastic months, the meetings presided over by the Jewish notables and middle-­ class professionals—well-­ meaning as they may have been—could have but little relevance for most working-­ class Jews, struggling to recover from the 1905 pogrom, piece together a living, and survive from day to day without being expelled from Kiev. Insecurity amid Continued Growth The 1881 pogrom dealt a heavy blow to Kiev’s Jews, especially in the years immediately following the “disorders”: according to one source, the Jewish population had dropped to 11,000 by 1885 (the official count had been 14,000 in 1874 and was certainly higher just prior to the pogrom).1 If true, this would have meant that Jews now formed only 7 percent of ­ Kiev’s populace, the lowest level for decades.2 However, another, more reliable source gives a figure of 18,000 Jews in 1887, so the decrease in population—if there was one at all—was probably slight and fleeting (as is the case throughout 102 JEWISH METROPOLIS the entire period under study in this book, the population statistics available to us are, at best, educated guesses).3 The city’s Jewish population soon returned to its upward trajectory, and Jewish visibility—despite the pleas of the “nobles”—did not diminish but, if anything, only increased, especially in the realm of philanthropy (Jewish philanthropy will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 6). Nor did the pogrom seem to have a decisive impact on Jewish–Christian interaction in the ensuing years; as chapter 5 will show, in the everyday life of Kiev’s workplaces, social clubs, and voluntary organizations, a mixture of segregation and integration between Christians and Jews meant that toleration and even camaraderie was practiced in some circles, while interethnic tension and hostility remained a fact of life. Government policies mandating or encouraging segregation, which multiplied in the 1880s and 1890s, bolstered the latter trend. On the other hand, the Kiev Literacy Society counted both Christians and Jews among its board members and operated programs open to individuals of both religions, in addition to courses geared specifically to the needs of Jewish students.4 The percentage of Jews in some public school districts was as high as 29 percent, but universities and gymnasia imposed quotas on Jewish students, while some private schools barred them altogether.5 What all this meant for the security of Kiev’s Jews is difficult to determine. Residential patterns are similarly ambiguous in meaning for the historian: does the fact that there was a decrease in Jewish residential concentration in a few neighborhoods mean that Jews felt more comfortable living among Christians, or did they fear that the continued existence of Jewish “ghettos” could serve as provocation for animosity and even violence? One piece of evidence that seems to demonstrate that interethnic tensions were—at least to some extent—always brewing beneath the surface is a report from Kiev in 1884 to a St. Petersburg newspaper, recounting the tale of a dispute between two market-­ women, one Jewish, the other Russian Orthodox , at the Zhitnyi bazar, which escalated to a brawl that threatened to explode into a full-­ scale pogrom. According to the report, the Jewish ­ trader’s husband, “a hefty Jew,” gave his wife’s antagonist a whack, whereupon a crowd of artisans and laborers moved in to defend the...

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