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SUMMARY
EVACUATION OF JEWS FROM FLORESTI TOWN ON THE GROUNDS OF STAY OUTSIDE
JEWISH ZONE. UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS
The Russian Empire had no Jewish population at
all (not taking into account several “tolerated” Jews in
Sankt-Petersburg and Novorosija), until the end of the
XVIII th century, after the three partitions of Poland,
the number of Jews grew sharply, and they started to
come into the center of the Empire. The Tsars hadn’t
any tradition of the management of Jews, except the
imperial law interdicting the presence of the Jews
along the Imperial territory, so they were imposed to
search for new policies, and new possibilities to control
the newly arrived immigrants. The most important
question was to integrate autonomous Jewish population
in the social and economic spheres of the Empire,
so when it was understood by the autocracy that this
process will take some time, and it’s very difficult to
handle with this population, the administrative organs
imposed for the Russian Jewry, “to live in the places
where they settled before 1772, with the guaranty that
their rights will be protected by the law”.
This primary condition imposed by Katherine the
Second, gave the start for developing/creating the Pale
of the Settlement, it was better shaped in the law of
1804, and lately improved and enlarged in the 1835.
The Pale was consisted of 15 Gubernia’s, as follows:
Bessarabia, Vilna, Vitebsk, Volynija, Grodno, Ekaterinoslav,
Kiev, Kovno, Minsk, Mogilev, Podolsk,
Poltava, Taurida, Kherson, Chernigov, and this
configuration was the same until 1917 when the law
was abolished. The historiography on this problem
is very various and the researchers have different,
even opposite opinions about the role of it for the
Jews from the Russian Empire. The majority of
the representatives from the Jewish historiography
emphasize the negative role of the Pale, this would
be Rabinovich and Gessen, their position is based
on the analysis of the Jewish legislation and Jewish
existence in the Pale. Another contemporary author,
Tikhonov, considers that the Pale had a positive role
for the evolution of the Jewry, firstly giving them the
opportunity to develop in a specific way, and secondly
protecting them from anti-Semitic actions and anti-
Jewish pogroms, this author writes in a lately period,
so he based his conception on a larger source database.
Thus, we consider that there can be found as positive
as negative features of the establishing the Pale of
the Settlement and this can be seen in the particular
case of Gubernia Bessarabia, it entered in the Pale in
1812, once being annexed by the Russian Empire, and
it attracted a lot of Jewish immigrants from different
regions of the Empire.
The case we present below is the perfect demonstration
of its negative role, but we should not forget about
some possibilities which had the Jewish population
particularly from Bessarabia, because it was the only
Gubernia, where the privileges granted to the Jewish
population by the previous rulers was kept untouched.
Also the Governor Urusov, believes that the “May
Laws” had had their role in the process of restricting
Jewish presence in the villages, it was only granted the
right to live in 10-19 cities and a number of 30 fairs from
the whole Gubernia, shrinking the “vital space” for the
Jewish population, making their life very difficult.
In 1912 there was an initiative of the Policeman
from Soroca County to evacuate a number of 11
Jewish families from the region Floreshti, because they
hadn’t the right to live in the place in accordance with
the “May Laws”, and because the territory in which
they settled wasn’t a part of the Pale of the Settlement,
the other argument was that Floreshti is not a fair, but
it’s a village, so the Jews should be evacuated during a
week. This statement shocked the Jewish population
of Floreshti, and they sent their representatives to
Chisinau in order to defend their rights, in the discussion
with the Governor of Bessarabia.
This case was even reflected by the local newspaper
called “Bessarabskaya jizn”; this had a positive role for
emphasizing the problem which appeared, and giving
the possibility for it to be better known by the population
and the administration. The great resonance of
the case helped in a way the acceleration of taking into
consideration the problem by the administration
This 40 Jews, sent several requests to the Governor
in order to solve the misunderstanding, but it wasn’t
possible until 1914. The Policeman also had a big
correspondence with the Governor, in which he tried
very hard to prove that Floreshti was not a fair but a
village, in this way trying to evacuate the Jews, and
to stop their business in the region, and transferring
the market from Floreshti to Markuleshti. So the
main dispute which appeared between the population
of Floreshti and Markuleshti was the opening of
a weekly market, and every location was interested in
opening it on its own territory.
There were initiated several investigations in order
to establish the real surface of the fair, and to find out
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