urban centers and, to do that, the numbers of merchants and townspeople hadto be increased. As John Klier points out, the Jews came to be seen as “the rawmaterial of urban development.”3 In 1769 the Jews ¤nally acquired of¤cial per-mission to reside in New Russia, and the migration of settlers increased greatlyafter the ¤rst partition of Poland in 1772. The acquisition of Belorussia, withits well-developed urban infrastructure and its large Jewish populations, re-sulted in a steady ®ow of colonists toward the South. By successive imperial de-crees of 1773, 1783, and 1791, the Jews were permitted to reside in Belorussia,Yekaterinoslav, and Tauris, and later the area was extended to encompass theUkrainian provinces. The success of this policy of colonization initially broughtits rewards, and Jews were accorded the same rights and privileges as other sub-jects of the newly acquired territories. As John Klier remarks, “Jews were at oncerecognised as Russian subjects and were not regarded as foreigners or aliens.”4

This situation continued for more than twenty years, and the Jews were not sub-jected to discriminatory legislation. However, the con¤nement of the Jews todesignated areas on the fringes of the Russian Empire resulted in the formationof the so-called Jewish Pale of Settlement. By the time that Nicholas I accededto the throne in 1825 the Pale consisted of the provinces of Grodno, Vilno, Vol-hynia, Podolia, Minsk, and Yekaterinoslav. Within these areas Jews had right ofmovement, and ¤rst-guild merchants were allowed to visit St. Petersburg, Mos-cow, and other important commercial centers of the empire.

Paradoxically the Jews paid for the economic transformation of New Russia,for a decree of 1794 forced them to pay taxes at double the rate of Christiansliving in the Pale. This did not stop the nobility from blaming them for impov-erishing their own Orthodox serfs, and as a result the Jewish Statute was passedin 1804. The statute afforded the Jews “the protection of the law on the samebasis as other subjects of the Crown” and also con¤rmed their right to an edu-cation, but at the same time it prevented them from residing on the landowners’estates and, more important, prohibited them from leasing agricultural land,from keeping inns, and from distilling or selling intoxicating liquor. The gov-ernment considered these occupations, in which many Jews were actively en-gaged, as harmful and, by prohibiting them, attempted to steer the Jews intoagriculture and small-scale industry. Despite this, a project for establishing Jew-ish agricultural colonies, proposed in 1806, never had any real success.

In spite of the discriminatory aspects of the 1804 statute, the situation wasstill relatively favorable to the Jews. Systematic expulsions from the estates ofthe nobility were not widespread, and there were still strong incentives attract-ing Jews from the western provinces to New Russia, and Odessa in particular.The Jewish population of Odessa grew steadily throughout the nineteenth cen-tury. In 1815, for example, the Jewish population of the city was less than fourthousand, but by 1861 it had more than quadrupled to seventeen thousand. Bes-sarabia had also traditionally attracted Jewish settlers because of its commercialimportance on the trading route between the Black Sea region and Central Eu-rope. Its name derived from the Walachian Basarab dynasty that had ruled it atone time, and, like Moldavia and Walachia, it was once a northern province of

2 Anton Rubinstein