John Klier once wondered, if at the end of the 19th century Russian Empire’s journalists wrote about Jewish life as terra incognita, how mysterious was it for imperial officials when they first met? This project reformulates this question: How were the imperial officials so well informed about their Jewish subjects? Also, what were the strategies of Jewish behavior when communicating with representatives of the state?

The aim of the project is to study the perceptions/knowledge of the imperial bureaucracy regarding Jews in the 1840s and 1850s. This period is important for understanding both the previous and subsequent policy of the imperial government towards Jewish subjects. In particular, I am interested in the policy of “merger”/“sliyania” started in 1859, the individual emancipation of Jews with permission to leave the Pale of Settlement.

I argue that the government officials in St. Petersburg were informed about the Jewish question much better than research usually acknowledge. Accordingly, certain decisions of the imperial center were made in close contact with representatives of the authorities on the periphery. In the same period, we observe a specific discourse regarding the Jews, which was established in the environment of the imperial bureaucracy, which had orientalizing and racist views. I believe that this was a transitional period between the traditional Judeophobia and the emergence of modern anti-Semitism.

The project is devoted to the history of the Jewish population of Russian Empire in 1859-1914. Project has two main focuses – the mass migration of Jews beyond the Pale of Settlement and the existence of a Jewish community in the space of an Imperial City. Kharkiv was chosen as a research area. The history of the Jewish community in the multicultural space of a large city is a popular topic in the historiography. However, researchers rarely go beyond the Pale of Settlement. Our study fills gaps and creates a new perspective on the history of the Jews in Russian Empire. Our research is based on a complex of different sources such as documents of central and local authorities, judicial and police documents, periodicals, documents of personal origin.

The internal Jewish migration was the main line of the process of forming a Jewish community beyond the Pale. In this project will be determine the direction of Jewish migration, the composition of migrants and their motivation, the special network that was created by migrants and would facilitate adaptation of a new migrant or could delay the migration movement.

A full-length study is available here.