Alexander III was Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 13 March 1881 until his death in 1894. He was highly reactionary in domestic affairs and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II, a policy of "counter-reforms". Under the influence of Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827–1907), he acted to maximize his autocratic powers.
Nicholas I was Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland. He was the third son of Paul I and younger brother of his predecessor, Alexander I. Nicholas's thirty-year reign began with the failed Decembrist revolt. He is mainly remembered as a reactionary whose controversial reign was marked by geographical expansion, centralisation of administrative policies, and repression of dissent both in Russia and among its neighbors. Nicholas had a happy marriage that produced a large family; with all of their seven children surviving childhood.
Boris III, originally Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver, was the Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1918 until his death in 1943.
The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest population of Jews in the world. Within these territories, the primarily Ashkenazi Jewish communities of many different areas flourished and developed many of modern Judaism's most distinctive theological and cultural traditions, while also facing periods of antisemitic discriminatory policies and persecution, including violent pogroms.
The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well. A few Jews were allowed to live outside the area, including those with university education, the ennobled, members of the most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans, some military personnel and some services associated with them, including their families, and sometimes their servants. Pale is an archaic term meaning an enclosed area.
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the eastern half of the European continent already before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "For two centuries – wrote Zvi Gitelman – millions of Jews had lived under one entity, the Russian Empire and [its successor state] the USSR. They had now come under the jurisdiction of fifteen states, some of which had never existed and others that had passed out of existence in 1939." Before the revolutions of 1989 which resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, a number of these now sovereign countries constituted the component republics of the Soviet Union.
Cantonists were underage sons of conscripts in the Russian Empire. From 1721 on they were educated in special "cantonist schools" for future military service. The cantonist schools and the cantonist system were eventually abolished in 1857, following public and international criticism and the Russian defeat in the Crimean War.
Temporary regulations regarding the Jews were residency and business restrictions on Jews in the Russian Empire, proposed by minister Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev and enacted by Tsar Alexander III on 15 May, 1882. Originally, intended only as temporary measures, they remained in effect for more than thirty years.
Garrison schools in 18th century Russia were military schools that provided the primary education for the children of the military recruits. The institution of the Garrison schools was introduced by the ukase (decree) of Tsar Peter the Great in 1721 primarily for the children of military recruits in the course of Peter's reform of the Russian military. This so-called military revolution transformed the military from an archaic militia-like force to the regular army, which drew upon military recruits called, predominantly from enserfed peasantry, to serve for 25 years, which, given the expected life span of most Russian serfs at the time, essentially meant that they would serve for life. The recruits and their children born after the recruitment were liberated from the serf status, and a network of Garrison schools was created for the children's education. The boys, starting from the age of 7, were taught literacy, elementary math, "artillery and military engineering", but also fine arts and several trade professions, such as shoe-making, sewing, wood- and metal-working, etc.
The history of the Jews in 19th-century Poland covers the period of Jewish-Polish history from the dismemberment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, until the beginning of the 20th century.
Horace Osipovich (Naftali-Gerts) Günzburg, 2nd Baron Günzburg, was a Russian philanthropist.
The history of Jews in Estonia starts with reports of the presence of individual Jews in what is now Estonia from as early as the 14th century.
The history of the Jews in Finland goes back to the late 18th century. Many of the first Jews to arrive were nineteenth-century Russian soldiers who stayed in Finland after their military service ended. The two synagogues in active use today in Finland were built by Jewish congregations in Helsinki and Turku in 1906 and 1912, respectively. The Vyborg Synagogue was destroyed by Russian air bombings on 30 November 1939, the first day of the Winter War. Today, Finland is home to around 1,800 Jews, of which 1,400 live in the Greater Helsinki area and 200 in Turku. Finnish and Swedish are the most common mother tongues of Jews in Finland, and many also speak Yiddish, German, Russian or Hebrew. Since data collection began in 2008, incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise in Finland. The number of incidents are likely under-reported, as Finland does not have a systematic method for recording specific forms of hate speech that incite violence or hatred.
Pogroms in the Russian Empire were large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting that began in the 19th century. Pogroms began to occur after Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire from 1772 to 1815. These territories were designated "the Pale of Settlement" by the Imperial Russian government, within which Jews were reluctantly permitted to live. The Pale of Settlement primarily included the territories of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Bessarabia, Lithuania and Crimea. Jews were forbidden from moving to other parts of European Russia, unless they converted from Judaism or obtained a university diploma or first guild merchant status. Migration to the Caucasus, Siberia, the Far East or Central Asia was not restricted.
Conscription in the Russian Empire was introduced by Peter I of Russia. The system was called "conscript obligation".
The Imperial Russian Army or Russian Imperial Army was the armed land force of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of regular troops and two forces that served on separate regulations: the Cossack troops and the Muslim troops.
Antisemitism in the Russian Empire included numerous pogroms and the designation of the Pale of Settlement from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia, unless they converted to the Russian Orthodox state religion.
Abstinence was a form of draft evasion and a form of hunger strike employed by young men in the Russian Empire's Jewish Pale of Settlement in order to be found unfit for military service by the Imperial authorities.
The history of the Jews in Moscow goes back from the 17th century, the city of Moscow held 175,000 Jews from the Nazis although Moscow did not become an important Jewish center until the late 19th century when more Jews were legally allowed to settle. Prior to the 19th century, Jews had arrived in the city as prisoners of the Russo-Polish war or after 1790, as merchants allowed one month stays. In the late 1800s, the Jewish population boomed, and then dramatically dropped after the 1891 expulsion of Jews from the city. The population grew once again following World War I, and was a Jewish and Zionist cultural center until the end of the revolution, after which it became a Soviet Jewish center for a period of time. The Moscow Jewish community experienced a number of highs and lows under the Soviet Union as Jewish identity became increasingly taboo in the eyes of the government. After the collapse of the Soviet government and the mass migration of a huge portion of Russian Jews from the country, Moscow has still maintained a sizable Jewish population.
This timeline of antisemitism chronicles the acts of antisemitism, hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group, in the 19th century. It includes events in the history of antisemitic thought, actions taken to combat or relieve the effects of antisemitism, and events that affected the prevalence of antisemitism in later years. The history of antisemitism can be traced from ancient times to the present day.
