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The Politics of Jewish Legibility: Documentation Practices and Reform during the Reign of
Nicholas I
Author(s): Eugene M. Avrutin
Source: Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Winter, 2005), pp. 136-169
Published by: Indiana University Press
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The Politics of Jewish
Legibility:Documentation
Practices and Reform
During the Reign of
Nicholas I
Eugene M. Avrutin
But a name, Leyzer-Yankl.Where are you

going to get a name?
-Mendele Moykher Sforim,
The Wishing-Ring
In 1804, as part of the first systematic statute on Jews of Russia, the

imperial administration required all Jews to adopt surnames. In
an effort to minimize the self-sufficiency of theJewish community
and linkJews to the broader polity, the statute attempted to reorganize
the place ofJews in Russian society. As in France and Prussia at the end
of eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the require-
ment that all Jews adopt surnames signified an unprecedented change
ofJews' legal-administrative status in tsarist Russia.' As the framers of
the 1804 statute noted, the adoption of hereditary surnames facili-
tated the mediation of civil disputes, the control of property, and the
management ofJews in existing social categories.2 If surnames helped
officials ascribe legal status (sostoianiia) toJews, then they also played a
decisive role in regulating their place in the social domain. The stabi-
lization of the surname-as a legal instrument by which an individual
Eugene M. Avrutin, "The Politics of Jewish Legibility: Documentation Prac-

tices and Reform During the Reign of Nicholas I,"JewishSocialStudies11, no. 2
(Winter 2005): 136-169
could be objectively distinguished and identified-marked an impor-
tant turning point in the history of RussianJewry.3
The adoption of surnames signaled the beginning of a gradual [137]
transformation of Russian Jewry into a "legible" people-from an in-
clusive corporate body to a component of the population that could JewishLegibility:
Documentation
be governed, categorized, and identified unambiguously through sta-
Practices
tistical publications and administrativereports.4Surnames ensured that
Jewish identities could be made visible to the state by social-scientific
Eugene M.
technologies such as censuses, passports, and metrical books (more Avrutin
commonly known as parish registers). Although surnames repre-
sented an important point of departure in the incorporation of Jews
within the broader legal and administrative system, Russian imperial
administrators lacked the appropriate technologies to verify the con-
stituencies of the Jewish population in the beginning of the nine-
teenth century. In other words, as A. I. Paperna wrote in his memoirs,
"[T]he government did not knowJews as individuals but [knew] only
the Jewish community with its communal responsibilities."5
This article tells the story of how the modern Russian state
"grasped" its Jewish population: how it attempted to erase the con-
crete, as well as the more imaginative, boundaries of a corporate com-
munity in order to incorporate Jews as subjects of the polity. The first
half of the nineteenth century constituted the formative period of gov-
ernment intervention in the corporate autonomy of Jewish as well as
other imperial communities. During the reign of Nicholas I (1825-
55), important cultural, linguistic, and institutional reforms began to
change the mainstaysof Russianpolicies towardthe non-Russianpeoples
of the empire, however hesitantly at first. Although Nicholas con-
tinued to promote the power of the state either by military repression
or by forced conversion, the introduction of Russian law in local ad-
ministration, the abolition of self-government (in the western border-
lands), and the founding of educational institutions represented an
unprecedented attempt to refashion the institutional and legal auton-
omy of indigenous communities.6
Whatever their failures or successes, the reforms were part of a
larger political and social transformation of the civic order that sought
to unite a multiconfessional, multicultural, and ethnically diverse em-
pire.7 Nicholas implemented institutional reforms in order to break
down local allegiances and communal forms of administration. The
improvement of the bureaucracy as well as the subordination of a het-
erogeneous population within the general structure of the absolutist
system occupied Nicholas throughout his reign. He instructed his sub-
ordinates to perfect Russia and, in the process, control an unruly and
diverse population that represented all the major religions of the
world and was scattered throughout the vast territories of the empire.
[138] To be sure, financial difficulties and an uncoordinated provincial
bureaucracy constrained these interventionist measures. However,
Jewish with the creation of the political police force, known as the Third Sec-
Social tion, the codification of Russian laws, and the centralization of admin-
Studies istrative chancelleries, the reformist agenda of Nicholas I anticipated
the great transformations of the 1860s and 1870s.8Yet from the outset,
as we soon shall see, the interventions were fraught with contradic-
tions, uncertainties, and contestations.
Numbers and the Problem of Objectivity
Russia acquired the largestJewish population in the world at the end

of the eighteenth century. During the seventeenth century under Pol-
ish rule, Jewish life had expanded remarkably as Polish magnates uti-
lizedJews as intermediaries for their business skills and expertise. Jews
leased and managed the nobility's properties, engaged in a variety of
middlemen activities, and made a significant contribution to the econ-
omy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as merchants and do-
mestic traders. Thousands of smallJewish communities were founded
that achieved unprecedented religious, juridical, and cultural auton-
omy. AJewish parliament of sorts, the Council of Four Lands, super-
vised fiscal and juridical matters over a vast number of Jewish
communities and organizations. IndividualJewish communities were
granted control over almost all aspects of communal life, from taking
care of the poor to regulating vagrancy, appointing and paying the
Jewish clergy, and administering educational institutions. By the eigh-
teenth century, according to a recent study, "Polish Jews and their
neighbors felt that theJewish community was a rooted and permanent
one."9 Communal self-government and economic independence as
well as cultural practices and religious vitality ensured that PolishJews
inhabited an insular and autonomous universe.?1
When approximating the size of the Jewish population in the eigh-
teenth century, historians have arrived at wide-ranging results. For
pre-partitioned Poland, estimates have ranged from 170,000 to
750,000Jews.1l The historian Raphael Mahler argued that censuses in
eighteenth-century Poland may have had as much as a 33 percent mar-
gin of error.'2 Community elders hid newly born children from regis-
tration lists.Jewish merchants avoided official censuses and surveys in
fear of expulsion from cities and territories off-limits to them, since
first the Polish and then the Russian crown regulated Jewish settle-
ment in such commercial and industrial hubs as Kiev and Warsaw.l3
As Russia acquired territories and peoples in the western, eastern, [139]
and southern frontiers in the eighteenth century, peasants, Jews, and
other minority groups refrained from accurate enumeration in order Jewish Legibility:
Documentation
to avoid paying taxes. Until the first comprehensive census of 1897, the
Practices
Russian imperial administration relied on the poll tax census that
0
Peter the Great (1689-1725) had introduced. With the hopes of fi-
Eugene M.
nancing a regular standing army and navy, Peter instituted direct tax- Avrutin
ation and conducted an empire-wide population census to count the
male population. Unlike previous censuses, the poll tax censuses
counted individual "souls"and not family units.14Townsmen and peas-
antry shouldered the responsibility of taxation, while the nobility (and
the merchant estate beginning in 1775) was exempt.
The first census (1719-20) represented a methodological break-
through in Russian population statistics,since persons, and not house-
holds, were counted.15 Between 1719 and 1858, the imperial government
administered 10 poll tax censuses, which documented males in the
two primary social estates that paid the majority of taxes but were con-
ducted irregularly. (The second revision took place in 1744, the third
in 1762, and the fourth in 1782.)16 Because in Russia, as in early mod-
ern Europe, censuses enumerated only portions of the population for
taxation and conscription purposes, population counts were often not
reliable or comprehensive.17 As one historian concluded, "The exist-
ing [census] materials possess significant errors."18Population move-
ments and concealment of vital information circumscribed the
effectiveness of the poll tax census. And neither fines nor increased
surveillance helped reduce flight from population counts.19
After Russia annexed Poland and acquired its Jewish population,
Catherine the Great (1762-96) ordered that itsJewish subjects be reg-
istered in either the merchant or the townspeople estates. By includ-
ing Jews within the social estate system, the imperial administration
hoped to curb the autonomy and governing powers of the kahal (the
executive board of the Jewish community). All registered Jewish mer-
chants and townspeople were required to pay taxes either to munici-
pal magistrates in cities or to ratushi (town councils) in urban
settlements, although the experiment with social estates proved to be
short lived. After the first Polish partition in 1772 (with the exception
of the years 1782-86), the crown obligated the kahal to collect all gov-
ernment and communal taxes as well as conduct official counts of
members of their community.20 The imperial administration con-
tinued to rely on communal elites for fiscal and administrative mat-
ters, even though the relationship hindered direct governance of the
Jewish population.
[140] At the turn of the eighteenth century, the senator and poet G. R.
Derzhavin insisted that a special universal Jewish census be conducted
Jewish in Belorussia (Polotsk and Mogilev provinces), since so manyJews were
Social not registered properly. "It is impossible to assume that the census ad-
Studies ministered by the kahal would have an accurate count of the Jews," he
wrote. "The kahals are afraid to show the complete numbers.... In
order to eliminate their fears and attain an accurateJewish population
count, we need to make a special undertaking."2' Derzhavin suggested
a more efficient and accurate means by which the state could not only
collect taxes but also recognize Jews as distinct individuals:
A universal census of all kahals needs to be begun on the day of the an-
nouncement of the imperial majesty's manifesto and concluded unequiv-
ocally in four months. Moreover, for the accurate count of Jewish] souls
and for convenience in juridical matters, as well as for the recovery of
debts and for ascertaining the guilty and the innocent in investigations, all
Jews need to add to their name and patronymic a Russian surname. For
example, Nota Khaimovich Zamyslavatyi,Leiba Itskovich Promyshlennyi,
Khatskil Mordukhovich Dikii, Leizar Movshovich Derevenskii, etc.-
announcing the abovementioned to everyone, in order for eachJew to re-
member and be called by a surname.22
Such efforts to assign permanent surnames, asJames Scott has argued,

would soon become for Russia, as for all European countries, common
practice of modern statecraft and usually took place when states
sought to "put [their] fiscal system on a more lucrative footing."23
During the early modern period, Jewish names were composed of
the forename (or given name) and the patronymic, which were cre-
ated by adding the suffix ovich or evich to the father's given name (e.g.,
Yudka Abramovich). Jews customarily used sacred names (shemot ha-
kodesh) beginning with the circumcision ceremony for the boys and
the naming ceremony for the girls, and nicknames or secular names
(kinnuiim) in everyday life. The nicknames were usually based on occu-
pations or personal characteristics (e.g., Izak Brodavka [wart] or Itska
Dolgoshiia [long-necked]). MostJews, moreover, used double names
(e.g.,Judah Leib) and sometimes even triple names (e.g., Arie Yehuda
Leib) in everyday life. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
kahals required Jews to adopt surnames, which were usually based
either on occupations (e.g., Svechkov), personal characteristics (e.g.,
Skorokhodov), or place of residence (e.g., Dubnov). The adoption of
surnames was a slow and uneven process, and elite and ordinaryJews
alike continued to know one another by their nicknames instead of
their newly adopted surnames throughout the nineteenth century.24
But once Jews officially adopted surnames, imperial law forbade them [141]
to make changes.25
Surnames or no surnames,Jews continued to pose problems for im- JewishLegibility:
Documentation
perial officials. The four censuses taken between 1808 and 1822 de- Practices
signed specifically to count the Jewish population did not produce 0
satisfactoryresults.26The Jewish Committee (established by the Minis-
Eugene M.
try of the Interior to realign Jewish life and society) estimated that, in Avrutin
the pre-Reform period, more than 25 percent of theJewish population
was not officially recorded.27 In 1814, for example, in a report to the
Ministry of Finance, one official noted that more than 64,000 Jewish
souls could not be accounted for in Volhynia province.28 The expul-
sion of Jews from the countryside and villages that took place at the
end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries fur-
ther impeded reliable population counts. The crown viewed Jews as
the primary source of peasant poverty, drunkenness, and conflict and
ordered as many as 200,000Jews to leave the countryside. The Ministry
of the Interior reported that thoseJews who had been driven out of the
villages "do not have permanent places of residency and wander from
one place to the other." After the expulsion of April 11, 1823, the re-
port continued, "many [of these Jews] in the Belorussian provinces
have dispersed to towns in other provinces without passports and re-
main silent as to their whereabouts." Administrators complained that
Jews did not pay taxes and escaped residential controls.29
After reviewing the statistical data for the ninth revision (1850), the
Ministryof Finance similarly reported that "manyJewishcommunities
reported numbers inconsistent with those of the eighth revision
(1834)." A significant number of these communities, the ministry
claimed, documented from one-third to half of allJewish males as "un-
explained absences," and otherJews recorded as "missing"were found
residing in their homes on further inspection.30 The Minsk treasurer
cited another example of what was termed as "incredible abuse" on be-
half of Jews. In the town of Kletsk (Minsk province), the eighth revi-
sion documented 1,236 Jewish souls. Seventeen years later, however,
only 750 Jews appeared in the ninth revision, and, out of these, the
treasurer could not account for 294 souls. In its report to the Ministry
of Finance, the treasurer asked in desperation: "Fromwhom will we re-
ceive the rest of our finances, and why will we conduct a draft for 456,
and not for 1,236,Jews?"31
After the turn of the nineteenth century, the burdens of taxation
proved to be the most powerful incentive for hiding from official
counts. The poorer sectors of the Jewish communities continually re-
frained from paying taxes. Although Paul I (1796-1801) and later
[142] Alexander I (1801-25) recognized that high taxes led many newly ac-
quiredJews to extremely poor conditions and, in turn, forced kahals to
Jewish hide their Jews from official enumeration, they nevertheless insisted
Social that kahals perform accurate population counts.32 Between 1795 and
Studies 1815, amid a serious financial crunch, the tsarist government con-
ducted three revisions in hopes of extracting more taxes from the
population at large. In an effort to increase state revenues and im-
prove the economic conditions ofJewish communities, thoseJews who
were not recorded in the seventh revision (1817) were even exoner-
ated from paying arrears and any fines, in the hope that communities
would fulfill minimal fiscal obligations.33But in the 1820s the situation
only grew worse. In 1823, the Grodno governor received word that a
number of Jews had become extremely ill for lack of food and had
even starved to death.34Nicholas I agreed that kahals could exchange
recruits for outstanding debts afterJews were required to fulfill mili-
tary service in 1827. Additional military obligations, however, only in-
creased the psychological and financial pressures on the Jewish
communities.35 With little or no luck collecting monies, the state saw
its tax arrears climb to over eight million rubles by the mid-1850s.36
Jews, of course, were not the only social group who experienced in-
ternal strife when communal responsibility required the more finan-
cially able taxpayers to compensate for those who were either unable
or unwilling to pay, who fled the community in fear of payment, or
who had passed away between tax polls. By the turn of the nineteenth
century, peasants often resorted to similar strategies as did Jews and
other ethnic minorities in the Russian Empire.37Moreover, as one his-
torian has suggested, underdeveloped provincial archives helped
erase the memory of fiscal transactions, the documentation of who
paid and how much. And other factors such as bribery, endemic cor-
ruption, and misclassification of information only contributed to the
memory loss.38
The Russian state continued to use periodic revisions until 1858 to
count its male population, collect taxes, and identify potential military
recruits (and, forJews, it also used special "rotation books" [ocherednye
knigi] after 1827 for conscription purposes). The tsarist government
used "communal responsibility" (krugovaiaporuka)to count the popu-
lation and enforce fiscal and administrative matters.Jewish communi-
ties continued to frustrate local and central officials as they resisted
population counts, bribed tax inspectors, and distorted numbers.
Boris Miliutin, in one of the first published government studies of the
Jewish communities, expressed disbelief at how three distinct bodies-
the Ministryof the Interior, the Department of Spiritual Affairs of For-
eign Confessions (DDDII), and the Jewish Communities-could pro- [143]
vide three radically different population counts.39
As the empire grew in size and increased in ethnic composition, the JewishLegibility:
Documentation
limitations of revisions became apparent. Concerned with increasing
Practices
the power of the absolutist state, the crown focused its energies on
counting the male population. Groups such as Jews and other "east-
Eugene M.
ern" peoples who were designated as inorodtsy(aliens) for their distinct Avrutin
ways of life and low levels of civilization repeatedly eluded official
counts.40As Petr Keppen wrote in his study of the ninth revision:
I have adopted the word revision (reviziia)because, as is known, we still do

not have a populationcensus-that is, the enumerationof all individuals
who constitute the population. Revisions entail counting individuals who
have been ascribed to tax-paying status. These revisions.... have an eco-
nomic objective, for which they supply, for the most part, the necessary in-
formation about the male population that earns salaries and receives
privileges. About the non-taxpayers we have very little data, and this is why
I consider these [statistical] results as having only a minimal approxima-
tion to the truth.41
Alongside military statistics, Keppen's own published work provided

one of the first reliable "maps"of the multiethnic empire, charting
and dividing Russia's territories by ethnic components.42 Even with the
development of specialized disciplines such as statistics, ethnography,
and other social sciences that began to employ new "scientific"meth-
ods for counting and describing Russia's population, revisions re-
mained the most accessible and popular source for empire-wide
counts.43 But since the state administered the revisions with much ca-
price, and since bureaucratic inefficiency ensured much imprecision
in the tabulation of statistical data, key members of the bureaucracy
such as P. D. Kiselev, Dmitrii and Nikolai Miliutin, and L. A. Perovskii
began to realize the difficulties in implementing effective social poli-
cies without reliable statistics.44
As with other integrationist reforms of the time, one of the goals of
the 1835 law code (the state's first serious attempt to reshape the ad-
ministrative structure ofJewish society), and especially the 1844 statute
on the kahal, was to bring disparateJewish communities within an over-
arching municipal administrative structure.45 The 1844 statute at-
tempted to curtail Jewish isolation and bring autonomous Jewish
communities under the direction of local governing bodies. As one of-
ficial remarked, "No special Jewish governance would continue to ex-
ist."46Although town councils were given greater authority in local
administrative responsibilities, in actuality the state continued to rely
[144] on members of the Jewish community to collect taxes, fulfill conscrip-
tion quotas, and conduct population counts. Even after 1844, sborsh-
Jewish chiki(community officials elected to supervise the collection of taxes)
Social preserved many of the responsibilities of the former executive board,
Studies and heads of households continued to play administrative functions by
providing vital statistical records of their households. During revisions,
a handful ofJews performed the crucial function of counting members
of their communities and reporting these data to the government.47
The 1844 statute did not claim to do awaywith "community"as an or-
ganizing administrative principle in its entirety. Neither the provincial
bureaucracy nor the Jewish communities were ready for such a radical
redefinition. However, the crown's attempts to implement a number of
reforms to alter significantly the empire's bureaucratic and communal
structures fell far short of its sustained effort to "annihilateJewish sepa-
rateness."48With a poorly developed system of local administration,
local intermediaries were counted on to perform crucial bureaucratic
functions, often blurring the direct links between the individual and
the state. In this context, communal responsibilities brought much
frustration not only to local and central officials (due to false reporting
and other acts of direct and indirect resistance) but also toJews, who at-
tempted to abide by government rules and procedures.
Stories from the Archives
One Jewish community from Mogilev province petitioned authorities

for an extension for the ninth revision, citing illness and death as expla-
nations for their inability to fulfill record-keeping duties. Twenty-eight
members of the community, the petitioners claimed, had become terri-
bly ill and died at the precise time the revision needed to be adminis-
tered.49In a similar fashion, the sborshchik Itsak Rubinchik from the
town of Klimovichi (Mogilev province) petitioned to have the late fee
waived for turning in the necessary documents three weeks late. Mem-
bers of theJewish community asked him to take the documents onJan-
uary 28 to the treasurer, two days before the deadline; on his way,
Rubinchik also became terribly ill and could not fulfill his communal
responsibility until February 19. However, once the treasurer inspected
the documents, other problems arose. Since the revisions did not have
the necessary signatures from the community's rabbi and elders, the
treasurer claimed that he could not receive them because they did not
adhere to the letter of the law. In a report to the Ministry of Finance,
moreover, the Mogilev treasurer complained that he had not received
nearly half of all revisions from theJewish communities by the required [145]
deadline, and the ones he had received were "insuch disorder" (v takom
bezporiadke)that he deemed them unacceptable. Although in some JewishLegibility:
Documentation
cases the dissatisfaction withJews' failure to comply with formal proce-
Practices
dure was warranted-since officials often noted thatJews omitted such 0
pertinent data as birth dates for newborns or failed to record explana-
Eugene M.
tions for those documented as "absent"-in other instances, their refus- Avrutin
als were more examples of the bureaucracy'sconcern with formalism.50
Russian writers often parodied these parochial bureaucratic con-
cerns in novels, short stories, and plays, but the failure to comply with
bureaucratic procedure could have grave consequences forJews in their
everyday lives.51For the Jews of Letichev (Podolia province), for ex-
ample, what appears to us as a humorous and absurd situation led to a
steep fine. SixteenJews petitioned Minister ofJustice Viktor Panin to ex-
tend the deadline for the ninth revision. The community asked these
Jews to compile the revision by November 1,1850. "Webegan to prepare
the necessary paper work as soon as we were nominated," they wrote,
"andrecorded all those who were born, died, conscripted, sent to Sibe-
ria, converted to Christianity,committed crimes, and ran awayfrom our
community after the eighth revision." Since imperial law required the
revision to be written on stamped government paper (gerbovyibumagi),
they proceeded to the town treasury to purchase the paper. The trea-
sury, however, did not have the necessary amount, and so they waited
untilJanuary 1 (which was the grace period given to all imperial subjects
for turning in the revision), but a shipment did not arrivethen either. A
second grace period passed, and there was still no sign of the paper. "We
then became worried that the government would assess a fine for not
turning in the revision,"they wrote, "even though we are completely in-
nocent." They petitioned for a one-month extension as well as for per-
mission to use regular paper. The petition was forwarded to the Ministry
of Finance, and upon further investigation the ministry concluded that
there was plenty of stamped government paper. In the end, the Ministry
ofJustice did not honor the petition and noted that this was an instance
of theJews' unwillingness to fulfill their civic duties.52
In his memoirs, Yekhezkel Kotik described an example of howJews
recorded revisions in his town, Kamenets (Podolsk province), which
consisted of 250 homes but where only 450Jewish souls were counted:
It is of considerableinterestto relatehowrecruitswereproducedin those

daysfrom among the 450 registeredsouls of the town.At a distanceof
four miles from Kamenets lies the shtetl of Wysokie[,] which had in its
registry about 550 souls. Wysokie and Kamenets used to supply their
[146] recruits together. Since soldiers were drafted according to a certain
percentage of a town's inhabitants, say one per thousand, and since Ka-
menets and Wysokie had about a thousand inhabitants in all, only one re-
Jewish cruit from both townships combined was drafted into Tsar Nicholas's
Social
army. Kamenets was required to supply somewhat less than a half recruit,
Studies and Wysokie, with a slightly larger population, something more than half
a recruit. It took a bit of work for the elders of both towns to come to a
compromise. Eventually, it was agreed upon that one year Kamenets was
to supply a recruit, and the following year Wysokie, but once in ten years
Kamenets would not have to provide its soldiers. The reckoning was quite
simple: Everyyear the registered inhabitants of the township would be re-
duced by fifty, which amounted to 500 in ten years, and so there was no
need to supply any recruits at all from either township.
Kotik recounted that almost two-thirds of the Jews in his hometown

were not recorded. "The government had been aware of this, but, as if
silently, let it go."53
As archival records indicate, the Ministry of Finance and the DDDII
were acutely aware of these issues. Based on a study made by a govern-
ment official for the Jewish Committee, the state lost more than 300
rubles annually for everyJewish soul and around 625 recruits during
each recruitment period. The official reported that for the 3,444 souls
recorded by the Polotsk community (Vitebsk province) more than 900
Jews were presumed missing. TheJewish Committee argued that, with-
out the registration of such basic data as forename and surname, place
and date of birth, religion, social status, profession, and the precise
home and town the individual resided in, any meaningful reforms of
theJews would be problematic. The committee noted, moreover, that
"much energy and efficiency is required to fulfill the revision's in-
tended goals, especially with respect toJews, who are always ready to lie
and hide [from their obligations]."54 For central and local authorities
the problem of Jewish population statistics usually centered around
two specific obstacles that prevented accurate and efficient record
keeping: that Jews were not tied to a discrete body of land, and that
they often used multiple names in official and personal matters.
Jews presented serious concerns for regulating geographic move-
ment in the pre-Reform period.55 Registered as either town dwellers or
merchants, Jews often moved from town to town and region to region
for occupational reasons.56 Even though imperial law required pass-
ports for travel, which were to be issued by the respective community,
the dearth of manpower as well as a lack of comprehensive and accurate
population registers prevented the state from enforcing strict control
over territorial movement. Enough Jews appeared as "absent"in poll
registers for central authorities to recognize that unregulated geo- [147]
graphic mobility presented a significant obstacle to accurate popula-
tion counts. Shortly after the ninth revision, the Ministry of Finance JewishLegibility:
Documentation
suggested that "heads of households need to record the exact number Practices
of male members who reside in the household and the exact number by
0
which they are registered in the revision. ThoseJews who reside without
Eugene M.
a passport or who do not have the required papers from their commu- Avrutin
nities should be immediately sent back to their permanent place of res-
idency."57But these and other measures designed to curtail population
movement were not effective, since the use of multiple names often
prevented authorities from identifyingJews as individuals.
On numerous occasions, officials disagreed whetherJews should be
identified by all the names and nicknames they used in business and
personal matters or only by their sacred names.58 That Jews utilized
vast numbers of personal names and nicknames in business and per-
sonal matters bothered imperial officials, for the arbitraryuse of fore-
names often hindered official efforts to identify Jews. As one author
explained in the Journal of the Ministry of the Interior,"Since ancient
timesJews have customarily used either one or a number of nicknames
instead of their 'real' [sacred] names." The majority of the time, the
author argued, the nicknames have no correlation whatsoever to their
sacred names.59Local police and government officials often confused
the shem ha-kodesh with the kinnui, which, it was routinely argued,
only increased the illegibility ofJews and made the imposition of order
difficult and at times simply impossible. To remedy further problems
in identifying Jews as individuals, the Jewish Committee recom-
mended that they should be recognized only by those names by which
they would be registered in the tenth revision, and which they would
not under any circumstances be able to change.60
But neither fines nor increased government regulation prevented
Jews from doctoring records, leaving for an extended period of time
during revisions, using a variety of different names and nicknames, or
making what were often perceived as outrageous excuses for their al-
leged ineptitude in completing the paper work. In comparing the to-
tals of the eighth and ninth revisions for two regions in Minsk
province, one official noted: "Evenif the number of newly born does
not increase over the number of deaths in these two regions, and even
if we were to exclude those recorded as 'absent' from the totals, then
the number ofJewish souls should be 16,795." But the ninth revision
documented only 10,393, which meant thatJewish communities could
not account for 6,402 souls.61In a similar fashion, one civil servant in-
spected the town Vilkomir (Kovno province) and found in only a
[148] couple of hours of work twoJews who were recorded as "absent"and
eighteen who were not registered at all. ManyJews, he wrote in his re-
Jewish port, "don't have proper documents that they should be registered un-
Social der."62The wild fluctuations in Jewish population statistics so enraged
Studies central authorities that the Rabbinical Commission was asked what, if
any, limits didJewish law place onJews from fulfilling record-keeping
duties. The commission reassured the Jewish Committee that Jewish
law placed no such limitations.63
Unforeseen calamities such as fires and floods, which destroyed vital
documents and forced Jews to miss deadlines and seek extensions,
played havoc with the efficiency of the bureaucratic process as well. The
Jew Aizek Marmor, for example, petitioned on behalf of the Jewish
community of Rodishchak (Volhynia province) for an extension for
the ninth revision. "Foran unknown reason the tax collector's house
caught on fire. All of the belongings disappeared. Nothing was saved,"
he wrote. Outside of valuable property, all of the paperwork prepared
for the ninth revision burned down as well: "Allthe papers, documents,
receipts, notebooks, registers, metrical books, and various other papers
disappeared-in short, all of the papers that were necessary for the cen-
sus." Whether the ministry granted Marmor's request, we cannot tell
from the extant archival sources. But even if Marmor stretched the
truth-since the fire occurred conveniently at midnight January 1,
1851, the precise date the revision was due-this example serves as a
useful reminder that unforeseen misfortunes such as fires, floods, and
deaths could (and often did) delay the fulfillment of civic obligations.64
The requirement that all revisions be written in Russian caused a
number of problems forJews, as for all ethnic minorities, since in the
small towns and villages of the Pale of Settlement it was often difficult,
at times impossible, to find even one Jew who could read and write
Russian.65Jewish communities often hired scribes to fill out the re-
quired government documents. But since these individuals frequently
took bribes from wealthierJews and recorded data at their discretion,
these arbitraryacts of record keeping prompted a number of dissatis-
fied and disgruntledJews to inform on theirJewish neighbors to local
authorities. Beniiamin Tonis, for example, a 19-year-oldJew from the
town Zaslav (Minsk province), claimed that he and three other Jews
(Dovid Lapedus and the brothers Vul'f and Mikhel Frainblyum) ex-
amined the ninth revision records and found over 80 omissions in two
towns alone. "These people," he wrote, "reap big rewards from their
clerical duties, since Jews cannot write in Russian."66Authorities, of
course, often collaborated with local communities and pocketed "pay-
ments" for inspection.
[149]
The Civilizing Process JewishLegibility:

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Practices
If Nicholas's administrative reforms represented an attempt to "grasp"
0
the Jewish population, then the cultural and educational policies rep-
resented a sustained effort to bring "enlightenment" to Jews, to make Eugene M.
Avrutin
them more "useful"and "civilized."During the reign of Nicholas I, the
imperial bureaucracy introduced a series of laws that sought to refash-
ion Jews into productive and "civilized"subjects by reforming their
dress, language, and educational system. Cultural-educational policies
created the foundations for institutionalized, government-supported
programs to "enlighten"Jews. Private and state-sponsored educational
institutions, as well as the founding of rabbinical seminaries in Zhito-
mir (Volhynia province) and Vilna (Vilna province) in the 1840s, pro-
vided unprecedented opportunities for education for boys and girls.67
From the outset, however, a series of tensions determined the impe-
rial administration's policies towardJews. Throughout the long nine-
teenth century, Russia followed a gradualist program of integration
that was predicated on the abandonment of Jewish "differences" or
their substantial diminution.68 In their drive to construct a more legi-
ble civic order, imperial reformers encouraged Jews to remove the
more visible and discernible markers of their identity. In this scenario,
Jews would no longer be identified by their external "differences"but
by social-scientific or universal methods of registration. These changes
in modern Russian statecraft that transpired in the 1830s and 1840s
paralleled a European-wide transformation in the techniques by which
authorities and trained professionals identified and ruled members of
the population. Dress regulations, sumptuary laws, and other forms of
early modern identification practices gave way to more impersonal
and direct means by which states controlled and monitored the move-
ment and place of their subjects.69In the modern period, states no
longer identified Jews by yellow badges or distinctive headgear and
clothing but by documentation techniques that relied on statistics and
numerical representation. In Russia, as in Europe, this shift in identi-
fication politics represented an important moment in the way states
managed societies and created more rational, efficient, and homoge-
nous social orders.70
Nicholas's dress regulations emerged as part of an ethos of gover-
nance that sought to minimize external Jewish differences and corpo-
rate isolation and foster institutional unity among a remarkably
diverse polity. Like Peter's reform of the nobility's costume, Nicholas
[150] envisioned the reformation of the Jewish costume as an important
symbolic step in the overall transformation of Jewish culture, society,
Jewish and institutions that would take place in mid-nineteenth-century Rus-
Social sia.71 Because society endows dress with important symbolic codes and
Studies social values, dress "reveals cleavages, hierarchies, and solidarities"
and perpetuates real and imagined differences between groups of
people.72 Nicholas's dress reforms were implemented in order to pro-
mote a new set of "enlightenment" values and norms and, in the pro-
cess, minimize the more discernible differences that separated Jews
from their neighbors.
The 1804 statute first addressed the problem of Jewish dress. All
Jews who traveled beyond the Pale of Permanent Settlement into the
interior provinces of the empire were instructed to wear "German" at-
tire. Five years later, the imperial administration repeated the request;
this time Jews were instructed to wear "Russian" clothing. The refor-
mation ofJewish dress, the administrators argued, would expedite the
rapprochement ofJews with the population at large, as well as their so-
called productivity. Yet, during the reign of Alexander I, these laws
were not seriously enforced.73
As part of the 1835 statute,Jews who traveled outside the Pale were
instructed to wear clothing that did not differentiate them from those
individuals with similar civil status (odinakovago s nimi grazhdanskago
sostoianiia) .74 In 1839, each individualJewish community could impose
a voluntarily tax on male and female clothing that cost more than ten
rubles to manufacture, and only thoseJews over the age of 60 were ex-
empt from the tax. The voluntary tax was part of the internal tax of the
Jewish community known as the korobka.75Pauline Wengeroff noted in
her memoirs that the wealthierJews spent exorbitant sums on
precious materials and on artisticjewelry. There was a very long shirt with
a high collar made of finest linen.... Wealthy women wore aprons of col-
orful silk, or costly white cambric embroidered with velvet flowers and ar-
tistic patterns in gold thread.... The greatest attention was paid by the
rich to the headdress. In fact, among the rich people the headdress was
one of the most valuable possessions. There was a black velvet scarf very
similar to the kakoshnikthat Russian women wore.... The back of the
head was covered with a smoothly fitting cap, called a kopke.In the middle
of this kopkewas a ribbon fastened with netting and flowers, and over the
back of the neck, from one ear to the other, was a lace ruff.... About her
neck she would wear long strings of pearls, sometimes with a beautiful
silver-graysheen.76
The taxes targeted the richer strata of the Jewish communities in the
hopes that they would change their clothing rather than pay the taxes.
But neither taxes nor fines stimulated Jews to change their style of [151]
dress.77
The more "enlightened"Jewswelcomed the interventions, however. JewishLegibility:
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A group of maskilim from Vilna petitioned the Ministryof Popular En-
Practices
lightenment in 1843 and argued that "the first obstacle to the enlight- 0
enment of the Jewish people is their recognizable costume.... All
Eugene M.
attempts to enlighten theJewish people will be in vain until they change Avrutin
their dress." The more civilized Jews desire to change their costumes,
they continued, but are afraid to do so because they fear their coreli-
gionists.78In a similar petition, another maskil wrote:
In no countrydoes a particularstyleof dressexist for my coreligionists:

not in Europe,not in Asia,and not in Africa.OnlyweJewswho live in Po-
land and Lithuaniadistinguishourselvesfrom our neighborsto our own
harm.... Evenwhen Polishand LithuanianJewstravelto our capital[St.
Petersburg],theydo not countwearingGermanor Russianclothinga sin.
Fromthis,it is evidentthattheseJewscontinueto weartheirdressonlyby
custom,and do not see it as a religiousobligation.79
In their petitions, the maskilim agreed collectively thatJewish law did

not require the Jewish people to wear specific dress. "Ihave searched
in vain to find one place where our holy books regulate clothing for
our religious Israelites," one Jew wrote. "And I have found nothing of
the sort."80
In response, Berdichev rabbis Shneerson and Gal'pern and Odessa
rabbi Shtern argued that the petitions from the VilnaJews did not give
an "accurateportrayal of the Jewish community as a whole.... Twenty
to thirty signatures, out of some sixty thousand, do not accurately de-
scribe the feelings of the majority, especially in a place like Vilna."
They argued that the imperial administration should refrain from tak-
ing such drastic measures; changes in the style of clothing would come
gradually and naturally with enlightenment. "Simple police measures
will not enforce these laws," they warned. 'Jews will pay the taxes on
their clothing until they are broke, and won't give them up under their
own free will."81
Influenced by the maskilim's interpretation of the Jewish costume,
theJewish Committee addressed the problem ofJewish dress as part of
its overall reevaluation ofJewish life and institutions in the 1840s. The
committee noted that in Western Europe, where Jews did not distin-
guish themselves from the other inhabitants by their costume, they
had merged with the majority culture. But in the western provinces of
Russia, where dress distinguished Jews from their neighbors, they
formed a distinct caste and remained steeped in their prejudices no
[152] matter the efforts of the government:
Jewish It is true that the lowerclasses... are deeply attachedto their costume.
Social But the worldlyand the more educatedJewscontinue to weartheir cos-
Studies tumesonly becausetheyare afraidthat theircoreligionistswoulddespise
them.Thisis also true,and anyonewho haseverlivedin the westernprov-
inces or who has interactedwithJewswouldtestifyto this.
The Jewish costume, the committee noted in conclusion, did not play
a larger religious significance in Jews' lives but "is a marker of their
insularity."82
Between 1844 and 1851, the imperial administration enacted the
most comprehensive set of decrees on the reformation of "traditional"
Jewish dress to date. By traditional the reformers meant "silk hoods,
belts, fur hats, and other so-called coverings without peaks, yarmulkes,
short trousers and boots.... Jewish women should wear simple gar-
ments, similar to what Russian women wear. Without question, they are
forbidden to wear wigs of any sort that match their hair color."83The
committee targeted the younger generation ofJews and envisioned the
gradual reformation ofJewish dress. First,Jews in the larger provincial
towns would be required to change their clothing, and only in time
would the reform be enacted in the small villages.84ByJanuary 1, 1851,
the state would require allJews to change their distinctive clothing (Jews
over the age of 60 constituted the sole exception). The committee em-
phasized the gradual nature of the reform project not only because of
likely resistance to changes in Jewish clothing and appearance but also
because it was uncertain if provincial authorities would be able to en-
force such radical measures in the small towns and villages of the Pale.
While a number of the statutes repeated previous attempts to ban,
tax, and fine Jewish dress, revolutionary changes also appeared that
quickly enraged Jewish communities, though the severity of the mea-
sures differed from region to region. In 1845, Jews were taxed from
three to five rubles for wearing yarmulkes in public; three years later
Jews were prohibited from wearing side locks; and in 1851 women
were not allowed to shave their heads upon marriage.85
Shortly after the tsar's edict of 1845, one police official reported
confidently that "the majority of Jews, including the followers of the
Hasidic sect, will dutifully fulfill His Majesty'swishes, and change their
national costume, especially the younger ones." At least 1,034 Jewish
families changed their dress without any difficulties and with only the
slightest persuasion, the police official reported. The younger Jews
"can'twait to change their costumes." Another 166Jews were reported
to have abandoned their costume in Berdichev (Kiev province). And
according to another official, Jews dutifully cut their side locks, [153]
changed their coats and yarmulkes, and wore ordinary clothing.86 This
optimism proved to be short lived, however. In the 1840s such laws JewishLegibility:
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were difficult, if not impossible, to enforce for an extended period of
Practices
time because of police incompetence and Jewish resistance. In 1845,
0
for example, Shmuil Lezinskii, a merchant of the second guild, re-
Eugene M.
fused to take off his yarmulke when prompted by local police officials. Avrutin
After a rumor circulated that police officials did not arrest Lezinskii, a
number of other Jews exclaimed: "Ifwe had more Jews like him then
we would continue to adhere to our traditions and [wear] our cloth-
ing." Other VolhyniaJews continued to wear their "national costumes"
and exclaimed: "When everyone else changes their costume, so will
we. Why should we be the first?"TheJewish philanthropist and spokes-
man Izrail Gal'pern reportedly donated at least 1,000 rubles to help
pay the taxes on yarmulkes for the poorerJews, which seemed to have
only contributed to the overall ineffectiveness of the reform.87
If the dress reforms sought to annihilate external differences, then
in accordance with the tsarist policy of religious toleration of officially
recognized religions they needed to do so without constraining the
basic precepts of indigenous religious practices and institutions.88In
other words, even while the state sought to reaffirm Russian Ortho-
doxy's dominant status, it needed to respect, or at least tolerate,Jewish
religious practices and institutions. Imperial administrators carefully
noted that such items as "prayershawls"and "yarmulkes"were not pro-
hibited in synagogues or prayerhouses-only on the streets, where they
should not be made visible to the public. In reply to a series of angry pe-
titions by one Jewish community from Mogilev province, the adminis-
trators reassured Jews that the "government only wants to minimize
differences in Jewish clothing and not constrain their religious prac-
tices."89Although the tsar's edict of 1851 only banned Jewish women
from shaving their heads, according to the ZhitomirJewish community,
police officials forced women to remove all head coverings as well:
On the streets,districtinspectorstearthe wigsoffJewishwomen'sheads,

bonnets,and other head attire;theypull them by their hairto the police
stationand pour a few bucketsof cold wateron them; they keep them
underarrestfor 48 hours;and then finallymakethem sweepthe streetsin
public.90
TheJewish women of Zhitomir complained similarly that even after an

imperial edict instructed them to pay a five-ruble fine for shaving their
heads, police officials continued to use "allsorts of coercive and illegal
measures. "91
[154] The reforms produced a series of sensational responses from the
Jewish communities that interpreted the tsar's edict as an assault on all
Jewish things Jewish. Simon Dubnow noted in his magisterial history of the
Social Jews that the dress reforms caused "confusion and consternation" in
Studies Jewish circles.92OtherJews interpreted the law as nothing short of an
assault on the Jewish religion. According to Paperna, the laws "under-
mined theJewish religion." Rumors quickly circulated that police offi-
cials shaved beards, cut side locks, and removed women's head
coverings.93Those Jews who could not afford the fines did not leave
their homes, and many otherJews cried, prayed, and fasted.94And ac-
cording to another memoirist, Wengeroff, the reform was a "catastro-
phe" for the majority of Jews: "The ukasewas called 'the gzeyreh'(the
harsh edict)-not one of the many gzeyros that overcame the Jewish
people, but simply 'the gzeyreh.'"95
The reformation ofJewish costume grew out of Nicholas's grander
vision of absolutist control over the social and administrative order.
The reforms echoed loudly in liberal and conservative circles alike,
but in the end did little, if anything, to transformJewish religious prac-
tices and ways of life. They provide, in short, a typical example of the
difficulties and frustrations of reform during the reign of Nicholas I.
In the late 1840s, the Jewish Committee quickly realized that local ad-
ministrators and police officials would encounter numerous difficul-
ties as they attempted to enforce the measures. In fact, as the statutes
were promulgated, numerous questions emerged. How could police
officials differentiateJews who paid their taxes on their dress from the
ones who did not? What was to be done with Jews who changed only
part of their clothing, such as belts, but continued to wear the long caf-
tans?Were rabbis prohibited from wearingJewish attire as well, and on
what legal grounds? What fines should Jewish women pay for shaving
their heads?96
Although the state taxed, fined, and finally outlawed "traditional"
Jewish dress, these regulations produced minimal results in the 1840s
and 1850s. Western and Russian observers routinely noted in their
travels thatJewish men continued to wear typical attire: "a long coat or
frock coat in black cloth edged in front with velvet and fastened from
the neck to the waist; a wide belt, socks, shoes or slippers; a skull cap; a
hat with a wide brim most of which is shaped like a sugar loaf or cut-off
with a deep edge of sable or other fur."97 In other words, Jews con-
tinued to be recognized as 'Jews" by their distinct appearances and
costumes. Even whenJews shaved their beards and side locks, Paperna
recounted, the beards and side locks grew back in time and "things re-
turned to their old ways."98
Although the decrees were reissued in the Kingdom of Poland dur- [155]
ing the reign of Alexander II (1855-81), they were not enforced
there.9 As late as 1883, one newspaper commented that the tax on yar- Jewish Legibility:
Documentation
mulkes "hasnot been enforced for a long time now. And if in some un-
Practices
known provincial town Jews continued to be taxed, then the tax
0
collector surely pocketed the payments.""?Like Peter's reform of dress
Eugene M.
and hair codes that went largely unheeded away from the court, the Avrutin
state did little, if anything, to compelJews to change their style of cloth-
ing.'"' The dress reforms, however, contributed to a powerful myth of
Nicholas's tyrannyagainstJews that played out in the writings ofJewish
intellectuals in the second half of the nineteenth century.'02And, like
Nicholas's conversion of underage recruits, the reforms constituted yet
another symbol of an assault on Jewish life and traditions. Seen in this
light, as one historian has argued, the dress reforms contributed more
to the history of ideas, to the debates between enlightened and conser-
vative camps during the reign of Nicholas I, than to a social history of
cultural change.'03
But the reforms also highlight a larger transformation that began to
take place during the reign of Nicholas I. Unlike in the early modern
period, when states used yellow badges, dress insignia, or other bodily
inscriptions to make "outsiders"visible to the state, Nicholas's reforms
attempted to decrease the visibility ofJews and minimize their cultural
differences. The reign of Nicholas I thus represents a transitional mo-
ment in the way the state documented subjects within its institutional
frameworks. By the mid-nineteenth century, the state began to place
increasing importance on the written document, not on physical
markers, as the primary means by which it classified and identified the
population.
Community and Individual
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the structure and composi-

tion of Jewish communities in the western provinces began to trans-
form slowly as the result of Nicholas's interventionist policies and of
internal pressures and tensions within the Jewish communities. The
conscription ofJews into the imperial army in 1827 signaled the begin-
ning of this restructuring. The economic and social composition of
the Pale shifted asJews began to abandon customary occupations such
as trade, commerce, and the liquor industry in favor of artisan work.
The modernization ofJewish education promoted-albeit with limited
results-Western languages, customs, and mores among an emerging
[156] Jewish public. Jewish society also began to unravel as the religious and
political schisms between the Hasidim and the Mitnagdim, the maskilim
Jewish and the traditionalistsproduced a host of fissures and tensions in Jewish
Social communal and political life.'04And, most important for our purposes,
Studies the abolition of the kahal weakened the institutional stabilityof theJew-
ish community (however tentatively at first).105Although elected com-
munity officials preserved many of the responsibilities of the former
executive board-mainly, the collection of taxes and the supervision
of military recruits-the conceptionof the Jewish community as an in-
clusive organ that had broad administrative and moral authority over
its members was unequivocally transformed after 1844.106
The administrative changes occurred unevenly, but they were in
line with government policies that gradually abandoned traditional
political practices favoring cooperation with the non-Russian elite, re-
ligious toleration, and the maintenance of corporate status among
ethnic groups.107The cautious reformist agenda taken together with
the durability of the corporate estate structure set the tone and frame-
work for Russia's distinct modernity in the latter half of the nineteenth
century.108By the mid-1850s, as economic, political, and social disloca-
tions began to transform state and society, it became apparent that the
older techniques of documenting, ordering, and policing imperial so-
ciety had become anachronistic.
Although revisions appeared at one point revolutionary in count-
ing the population and in documenting individuals' legal status, they
became less useful by the mid-nineteenth century as the bureaucracy
began to rely increasingly on passports, city censuses, and metrical
books. While passports controlled movement and identified subjects
by signature, residence, and primety (special visible marks) and city
censuses performed the crucial function of counting peoples in spe-
cific urban spaces, metrical books documented individuals' legal sta-
tus and birth in an entirely novel fashion.'09 Only in 1835, when rabbis
were required to record the births, marriages, deaths, and divorces of
all Jewish subjects (female as well as male) did the Russian state take
concrete steps to transform Jews into a legible people, to recognize
them not only as members of a distinct religious community but also as
individuals with civic identities."10Before the registration of vital statis-
tics, Jews could only approximate their age and dates of birth. One
Jewish resident commented that "Iam quite old, but I do not remem-
ber how old," and anotherJew wrote that "I am thirty-eight or thirty-
nine and I am not sure which.""l In his autobiography, Mendele
Moykher Sforim wrote similarly, "Mybirth date is nowhere recorded.
Jews didn't pay attention to such things in those days, particularly in
the small towns. But I have assumed that I was born in the year 1836, [157]
and my family determined December 20 to be my date of birth.""112
In the almost 40 years between the last revision and the first empire- JewishLegibility:
Documentation
wide census in 1897, metrical books often functioned as the primary
Practices
means for counting the population in lieu of reliable statistics. (This
0
was especially so in the case ofJews who resided in the Pale.) The prob-
Eugene M.
lem of recording vital statistics in metrical books was "intimately tied Avrutin
with counting the population of the empire.""'3Or, as Count D. N.
Bludov argued, metrical books "serveas one of the principal means of
monitoring population movements."1'4Metrical books, in short, func-
tioned as the primary way for registering an individual's identity and
origins (proiskhozhdenie) during the imperial period: "who"they were,
"where"they were born, and "what"religion and legal status they were
born into.
Since metrical books played such an importantjuridical function in
Russian society, lawmakers felt it necessary to "place the responsibility
of record keeping on those who were most entrusted" to fulfill this
vital bureaucratic role. Although local police officials constituted the
most obvious choice, in highly populated Jewish regions a variety of
difficulties were bound to arise that an understaffed police force could
not be expected to resolve. Police officials were also utterly ignorant in
religious matters and cultural customs, which was yet another reason
why state rabbis were handed these responsibilities."15According to
the 1835 statute on theJews, rabbis would play an important adminis-
trative function within the imperial administrative order. They would
ensure thatJews not only obeyed moral duties and responsibilities but
also observed the civic law code. In contrast to the 1804 statute, which
decreed rabbis to be the moral and religious authorities of the Jewish
community, the 1835 statute increased rabbis'jurisdiction beyond the
religious domain. Like parish priests who began to record the births,
deaths, and marriages of the Russian Orthodox population as early as
1724, rabbis were required to conduct all religious rites and record
this vital information in the metrical books. The rabbi recorded the
names of newborns in Russian and Hebrew during either the circum-
cision for the boys or the naming ceremony for the girls, and, upon
death, he documented the age, name (and nickname), legal status,
and cause of death.116
As soon as the statute went into effect in 1835, officials found many
flaws and inconsistencies with respect to form as well as content. In
contrast to the Christian confessions for which the clergy supervised
all religious rites, Jewish law did not impose such obligations upon
rabbis. The authors of the StatisticalChronicleof the Russian Empirere-
[158] marked that the "counting of births, deaths, and marriages of the Rus-
sian Orthodox population would be quite close to the truth, save for
Jewish only a few insufficiencies." Chief among these problems was that dates
Social of births were not recorded; the clergy only recorded baptismal dates.
Studies Thus, when infants died before their baptisms (which was not an infre-
quent occurrence), their birth dates would not be statistically ac-
counted for."17For theJewish population, not only did officials have to
contend with similar statistical omissions, but they also had to con-
vince a people with no historical tradition of recording vital statistics of
the books' civic importance. The imperial government amended the
1835 statute five years later with the hopes of ameliorating record-
keeping practices. Rabbis were held responsible for every error re-
corded in the books, fined fifteen rubles for males and seven-and-a-
half rubles for females, subject to trial for an intentional omission,
and, upon conviction, punished for forgery."8 Still, even with the ir-
regularities and inconsistencies, metrical books represented an impor-
tant innovation in documentary practice. While the crown used
revisions primarily to collect taxes and fulfill conscription quotas, met-
rical books identified each individual by confession, legal status, ori-
gins, and place of residency. As a fundamental marker of identity, the
document followed individuals as they changed place of residency, reli-
gious confession, and maritalstatus.The document's civic importance-
as the most important tool by which the state obtained knowledge of its
population-ensured that officials took much time in enforcing proper
registration (or at least spilled much ink in devising methods to improve
record-keeping procedures).
The accurate tabulation of Jewish population statistics emerged as
an important concern for the tsaristgovernment as it sought greater in-
volvement in the daily lives of its subjects and looked for ways to im-
prove social and fiscal conditions while maintaining diligent order and
stability. The lack of manpower, corruption, an unmotivated bureau-
cracy, and theJews' willingness to evade proper registration ensured di-
sastrous results in the tabulation ofJewish population statistics, which
presented, in turn, a host of problems for the bureaucracy as it devised
social policy to reshapeJewish society. On the eve of the Great Reforms,
even while officials often lamented the current state of statistics in the
Russian Empire, reformers noted thatJewish population statisticsoften
lagged behind those of the peasantry and other ethnic groups.119
Although the statute of 1835 standardized the procedures for doc-
umenting births, marriages, and deaths, by the late 1850s, according
to the DDDII, Jewish metrical books were maintained "negligently"
and supervised poorly.120The most pressing problem was the incom-
patibility of the civil code withJewish law. As a member of the Bessara- [159]
bian statistical committee explained:
JewishLegibility.
Documentation
ByJewishlaw,anyeligible and informedJew can performreligiousrites. Practices
These rites need not be observedin an institutionalizedreligiouscere-
0
mony.The biggertheJewishcommunity,the more eligibleJews... [;] of-
ficial governmentrabbisdo not have the means to superviseall naming Eugene M.
Avrutin
ceremonies, or at least force [membersof the community] to report
namesof the new born.121
The incompatibility of religious and cultural customs with the larger

integrationist ambitions of administrative practices thus sharpened
the differences between Jewish communities and imperial manage-
ment policies during the last years of Nicholas I.
But there were other issues to deal with, too. ThatJews did not pay
much attention to birth dates represented a significant obstacle. As
Mendele Moykher Sforim wrote, "Ofwhat use was such knowledge? A
Jew remembers an anniversary of a death; but an anniversary of
birth-what for?"122
In an attempt to improve the accurate registration ofJewish births,
marriages, and deaths, the imperial government made yet another
amendment to the statute on metrical books: only officially sanctioned
"state"rabbis would be able to perform religious rites such as circumci-
sions and marriages.'23Unsurprisingly, this ukase immediately caused a
stir in Jewish communities and confirmed all the worst fears of tsarist
oppression.124 Since the books served as the only legitimate source for
validating a person's birth, death, and marriage dates, the stakes were
high for the accurate recording of these vital data. Given the relative
novelty of the books and their manifest civic importance, a number of
technical issues soon emerged in the 1840s and 1850s that needed to be
quickly resolved: What agency should be responsible for distributing
the books to rabbis? Who should pay for the books, and how much
should they cost? Who should be responsible for issuing a certificate if a
person was born, married, or died prior to 1835, if that individual or his
family needed official proof?125The solutions to these pressing issues
were neither alwayssatisfactorynor effective and would continue to be
on the reformers' agendas throughout the imperial period.
On the eve of the Great Reforms, then, many issues that governed
the control ofJewish identities remained unresolved. The documenta-
tion of the Jew as individual certainly broke new ground for the state
in weakening communal segregation and in fostering a greater
engagement with the loftier ideals of imperial management policies of
a more inclusive civic order. For the first time, metrical books allowed
[160] central and local officials to verify and identifyJews as individuals. This
desire to document individual identities was, of course, a pan-
Jewish European-really, worldwide-phenomenon that gripped Russian
Social officialdom and symbolized Russia's turn to creating a more efficient,
Studies homogenous, and legible civic order. But Russia continued to struc-
ture its society through the estate system and continued to utilize the
multiconfessional religious order for its own bureaucratic needs (as
was the case with the "state"rabbis), which made the erasure of com-
munal boundaries difficult. Community remained an important tool
of imperial governance, which often hindered a direct relationship be-
tween the state and its peoples. Indigenous religious practices likewise
stymied effective attempts to subordinate ethnic difference within an
overarching administrative system. In this context, the crown could
not readilyjettison what many astute enlightened reformers regarded
as a "traditional"system of communal self-government in favor of a
more modern approach that relied primarily on local, impersonal in-
stitutions and personnel.
Finally, even thoughJews often did display a profound skepticism of
governmental intervention, resorting to a number of strategies to
evade documentation in fear of taxation and conscription, they soon
began to realize the significance of this act. Indeed, the importance of
correct documentation really only began to concern what may be seen
as the second generation ofJews-that is, thoseJews born in the 1840s,
1850s, and 1860s. It was these Jews who began to experience the con-
sequences of the political and social dislocations that touched the late
imperial period. AsJews began to move from region to region and to
create new communities in areas previously forbidden to them, new
questions and problems emerged that did not have straightforwardan-
swers for local and central authorities. When, for example, Jews
formed small communities in the interior provinces without "state"
rabbis, how were new births, marriages, and deaths to be recorded in
the metrical books? Who, in short, would be responsible for register-
ing an individual's civic identity, and by what means would Jews prove
"who"they were, if their birth dates and names were never recorded in
the first place? However, for these more mobile and in many respects
less legible Jews (the generation of Russian Jewry born in the mid-
nineteenth century), the accurate registration of births, marriages,
and deaths proved to be an absolute necessity if they wished to take
part in civic or professional life, to engage with state and society on
even the most mundane level. But the manner in which the local and
central bureaucracy as well as ordinary and more enlightenedJews at-
tempted to resolve these issues confounded all involved parties well
into the second half of the nineteenth century. [161]
Jewish Legibility:
Documentation
Practices
Notes
0
I would like to thank Todd Endelman, Valerie Kivelson, Bill Rosenberg, Zvi Eugene M.
Avrutin
Gitelman, and the anonymous reviewer for their comments and criticisms. Fi-
nancial support for my research has been provided by the International Re-
search and Exchanges Board, the Social Science Research Council, and the
Frankel Center forJudaic Studies of the University of Michigan. Unless other-
wise indicated, all translations from foreign-language sources are mine.
1 As a consequence of the French Identification in Nineteenth-

Revolution, the law of 1792 im- Century Europe," in Caplan and
posed surnames on all French Torpey, DocumentingIndividual
citizens, includingJews. On Identity,49-66. For a general
Mar. 11, 1812, Prussian authori- treatment of naming practices
ties mandated thatJews bear sur- from ancient Rome to
names. For France, see Gerard twentieth-century Europe, see
Noirel, "The Identification of Stephen Wilson, TheMeans of
the Citizen: The Birth of Repub- Naming:A Socialand Cultural
lican Civil Status in France," in HistoryofPersonalNamingin West-
DocumentingIndividualIdentity: ernEurope(London, 1998), and
TheDevelopmentof StatePractices James C. Scott,John Tehranian,
in theModernWorld,ed. Jane Ca- andJeremy Mathias, "The Pro-
plan andJohn Torpey (Prince- duction of Legal Identities
ton, 2001), 36. More generally Proper to States:The Case of the
on names in France, see Anne Permanent Family Surname,"
Lefebvre-Taillard, Le nom:Droit ComparativeStudiesin Societyand
et histoire(Paris, 1990). On Prus- History44 (2002): 4-44. For Rus-
sia, see Dietz Bering, TheStigma sia, see V. A. Nikonov, Imia i
of Names:Antisemitismin German obshchestvo(Moscow, 1974),
Daily Life, 1812-1933, trans. 160-219.
Neville Place (Ann Arbor, 4 On "legibilityand simplifica-
Mich., 1992), 27-33. tion" practices, seeJames C.
2 PolnoesobraniezakonovRossiiskoi Scott, SeeingLikea State:How Cer-
imperii(hereafter PSZRI),series tain SchemestoImprovetheHuman
I, vol. 28, no. 21547, art. 32 ConditionHaveFailed (New Ha-
(Dec. 9, 1804): 734. ven, Conn., 1998).
3 For a comparative perspective, 5 A. I. Paperna, "Iznikolaevskoi
seeJane Caplan, "'This or That epokhi," Evreiv Rossii, xix vek,
Particular Person': Protocols of ed. V. E. Kel'ner (St. Petersburg,
2000), 63. Paperna's memoir Century:A Genealogyof Modernity
first appeared in the journal (Berkeley, 2004), 7.
[162] Perezhitoe2(1910): 1-53; 3 10 Jewish self-government thus cre-
(1911): 264-364. ated what has been generally ac-
6 Michael Stanislawski, TsarNicho- knowledged as an inclusive and
Jewish las I and theJews:The Transforma- isolated republic that had little,
Social
tion ofJewishSocietyin Russia, if any, contact with the broader
Studies 1825-1855 (Philadelphia, environment. However, as re-
1983); Andreas Kappeler, The cent studies have shown, despite
RussianEmpire:A MultiethnicHis- linguistic, religious, and even so-
tory,trans. Alfred Clayton (New cial distancing, Jews not only
York, 2001), 247-52; Robert participated in a wide spectrum
Crews, "Empire and the Confes- of economic activity but also
sional State: Islam and Religious were influenced by, and shared
Politics in Nineteenth-Century in, Polish culture. See Moshe
Russia,"AmericanHistoricalRe- Rosman, "InnovativeTradition:
view 108, no. 1(2003): 50-83; Jewish Culture in the Polish-
Yanni Kotsonis, "Introduction: Lithuanian Commonwealth," in
A Modern Paradox-Subject Culturesof theJews:A NewHistory,
and Citizen in Nineteenth- and ed. David Biale (New York,
Twentieth-Century Russia,"in 2002), 519-70.
RussianModernity:Politics,Knowl- 11 Gershon David Hundert, "Some
edge,Practices,ed. Yanni Kotsonis Basic Characteristics of the Jew-
and David Hoffmann (New ish Experience in Poland," in
York, 2000). FromShtetlto Socialism,ed.
7 For a recent analysis that exam- Antony Polonsky (London,
ines the waysin which tsaristgov- 1993), 19.
ernance sought to unify the 12 Raphael Mahler, Yidnin amolikn
Russian Empire, see Charles Poylnin likhtfun tsifern(Warsaw,
Steinwedel, "InvisibleThreads 1958), 23.
of Empire: State, Religion, and 13 Shaul Stampfer, "The 1764 Cen-
Ethnicity in Tsarist Bashkiria, sus of Polish Jewry,"Annual of
1773-1917" (Ph.D. diss., Colum- Bar-IlanUniversityStudiesinJuda-
bia University, 1999). ica and theHumanities24-25
8 Marc Raeff, MichaelSperansky: (1989): 47-62; Simon Dubnow,
Statesmanof ImperialRussia, "Vydvorenieevreev iz Malorossii
1772-1839 (The Hague, 1969); vo vtoroi chetverti 18-go veka,"
Richard S. Wortman, Scenariosof and "Perepis' evreev v
Power:Mythand Ceremony in Rus- Malorossii v 1736," Evreiskaiasta-
sian Monarchy,vol. 1 (Princeton, rina6 (1913): 123-24, 400-407,
1995), 255-332; W. Bruce Lin- 526-36; Artur Eisenbach, "The
coln, In the Vanguardof Reform: Jewish Population in Warsawat
Russia'sEnlightenedBureaucrats the Turn of the Eighteenth Cen-
(De Kalb, Ill., 1982). tury,"POLIN3 (1998): 46-77;
9 Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Zenon Guldon and Karol
Poland-Lithuaniain theEighteenth Krzystanek,"TheJewish Popula-
tion in the Towns on the West to count the population in its
Bank of the Vistula in Sando- entirety.
mierz Province from the Six- 18 Kabuzan, NarodyRossiiv XVIII [163]
teenth to the Eighteenth veke,251.
Centuries," in TheJewsin OldPo- 19 E. V. Anisimov, Podatnaiareforma JewishLegibility:
land, 1000-1 795, ed. Antony PetraI: Vvedeniepodushnoipodati Documentation
Polonsky,Jakub Basista, and v Rossii, 1719-1 728 gg. (Lenin- Practices
Andrzej Link-Lenczowski (New grad, 1982), 116-34; V. M. Kabu- 0
York, 1993), 322-39. zan, NarodyRossiiv pervoipolovine Eugene M.
14 John P. LeDonne, Absolutismand XIXv.: Chislennost'i etnicheskii Avrutin
Ruling Class:TheFormationof the sostav(Moscow, 1992).
RussianPoliticalOrder,1700- 20 Iulii Gessen, "Podatnoe obloz-
1825 (New York, 1991), 258-63. henie," Evreiskaiaentsiklopediia:
15 PSZRI,series I, vol. 5, no. 3245 Svodznanii o evreistvei egokul'ture
(Nov. 26, 1719): 597. See also v proshlomi nastoiashchem,16
the discussion in V. M. Kabuzan, vols. (reprint, Moscow, 1991),
NarodyRossiiv XVIIIveke:Chislen- 12: 638; Richard Pipes, "Cathe-
nost'i etnicheskiisostav (Moscow, rine II and theJews: The Origins
1990), 11, 55. of the Pale of Settlement," Soviet
16 LeDonne, Absolutismand Ruling JewishAffairs5 (1975): 10-13.
Class,258-63; David Moon, The See also "Khoziaistvennoe
Russian Peasantry,1600-1930: ustroistvo i sostoianie evreiskikh
TheWorldthePeasantsMade(New obshchestv v Rossii," Zhurnal
York, 1999), 20-21. ministerstvavnutrennikhdel29
17 The 1427-30 census of Florence (1850): 54-55.
and sixteenth- and seventeenth- 21 G. R. Derzhavin, "O sochinenii
century northern Italian cen- novoi evreiskoi pogolovoi
suses constituted notable excep- perepisi," SochineniiaDerzhavina,
tions. SeeJan de Vries, vol. 7, ed. Ia. Grota (St. Peters-
"Population,"HandbookofEuro- burg, 1872), 273.
pean History,1400-1600, vol. 1, 22 Ibid., 274.
ed. Thomas A. BradyJr. et al. 23 Scott, SeeingLikea State,65.
(Grand Rapids, Mich., 1994), 4- 24 For an excellent discussion of
6. For an overview of the history the shemha-kodesh and the kinnui
of population statisticsin the im- in historical perspective, see
perial period, see Lee Schwarz, Rella Israly Cohn, "Yiddish
"AHistory of Russian and Soviet Given Names: A Lexicon," vol. 1
Censuses," in ResearchGuideto (Ph.D. diss., University of Chi-
theRussian and SovietCensuses, cago, 1995), 64-79. To be sure,
ed. Ralph S. Clem (Ithaca, N.Y., this was not a problem sui generis
1986), 48-50. Often revisions to Russiabut was generic to most
excluded the entire female early modern regimes and colo-
population from enumeration. nial encounters. For a global dis-
Only at the end of the eigh- cussion, see Scott et al.,
teenth century did states begin "Production of Legal Identities
to conduct "modern" censuses: Proper to States."See also Alex-
ander Beider, A DictionaryofJew- 31 RGIA,f. 571, op. 6, d. 50,1. 2b;
ish Surnamesfrom theRussian RGIA,f. 1286, op. 13, d. 1360,
[164] Empire(Teaneck, N.J., 1993), 1.4.
10-13; Alexander Beider, 'Jew- 32 Gessen, "Podatnoe oblozhenie,"
ish Given Names in Eastern 638-39.
Jewish
Social Europe," Revuedesetudesjuives 33 Ibid.
157 (1998): 169-98; and Adam 34 lulii Gessen, Istoriiaevreiskago
Studies
Penkalla, "The Socio-Cultural narodav Rossii,vol. 2 (reprint,
Integration of the Jewish Popu- Moscow, 1993), 64.
lation in the Province of Radom, 35 Stanislawski, TsarNicholasI and
1815-1862," POLIN3 (1988): theJews,21-34; Olga Litvak,
218-20. "The Literary Response to Con-
25 PSZRI,series I, vol. 28, no. 21547, scription: Individuality and Au-
art. 32 (Dec. 9, 1804): 734. thority in the Russian-Jewish
26 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi Enlightenment" (Ph.D. diss.,
istoricheskii arkhiv (hereafter Columbia University, 1999).
RGIA), f. 821, op. 9, d. 101, 1. 36 Stanislawski, TsarNicholasI and
47b; RGIA, f. 1147, op. 1, d. 626 theJews,132.
(1809). 37 LeDonne, Absolutismand Ruling
27 RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 69,1. 4. Class,261-62. On peasant resis-
Chaired by Count P. D. Kiselev, tance for a slightly later period,
the Committee for the Determi- see Rodney Bohac, "Everyday
nation of Measures for the Fun- Forms of Resistance: Serf Oppo-
damental Transformation of sition to Gentry Exactions,
Jews in Russia (also known as the 1800-1861," in Peasant Economy,
Jewish Committee) carried out Culture,and PoliticsofEuropean
its work between 1840 and 1863. Russia, 1800-1921, ed. Esther
For a detailed discussion, see Kingston-Mann et al. (Prince-
Benjamin Nathans, Beyondthe ton, 1991), chap. 7.
Pale: TheJewishEncounterwith 38 S. Frederick Starr, Decentraliza-
LateImperialRussia (Berkeley, tion and Self-Government in Rus-
2002), 31-79. sia, 1830-1870 (Princeton,
28 RGIA,f. 560, op. 11, d. 45,1. 4; 1972), 40.
and RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 69,1. 39 B. Miliutin, Ustroistvoi sostoianie
4. Evreiskikhobshchestvv Rossii (St.
29 RGIA, f. 1286, op. 5, d. 222,1. 3. Petersburg, 1849-50), 197-98.
On governmental policies with 40 The term inorodtsywas usually
respect to peasants andJews, see applied to Central Asian and Far
the discussion in Hans Rogger, Eastern peoples, but the 1835
"Government,Jews, Peasants statute also designatedJews as
and Land after the Liberation of "aliens."SeeJohn W. Slocum,
the Serfs,"in JewishPoliciesand "Who,and When, Were the
Right-WingPolitics in Imperial Inorodtsy?The Evolution of the
Russia (Berkeley, 1986), 116-17. Category of 'Aliens' in Imperial
30 RGIA,f. 560, op. 1, d. 1338,11.2- Russia," TheRussian Review57,
2b. no. 2 (1998): 173-90.
41 Petr Keppen, Deviataia reviziia: 47 Azriel Shochat, "Ha-hanhagabe-
Isledovanieo chislezhiteleiv Rossiiv kehilot rusiyaim bitul ha-kahal,"
1851 godu (St. Petersburg, Zion42 (1979): 143-233. [165]
1857), x-xi. 48 "Khoziaistvennoe ustroistvo i
42 Petr Keppen, Obetnograficheskoi sostoianie evreiskikh obshchestv Jewish Legibility:
karteEvropeiskoi Rossii (St. Peters- v Rossii," Zhurnalministerstva Documentation
burg, 1852). vnutrennikhdel27 (1849): 68. Practices
43 On statistics,see DavidAlan Rich, 49 RGIA,f. 571, op. 6, d. 50,1. 33b. 0
TheTsar'sColonels: Professionalism, 50 Ibid., 11.37b-38. Eugene M.
Strategy,and Subversionin LateIm- 51 See, e.g., Nikolai Gogol's Dead Avrutin
perialRussia(Cambridge, Mass., Souls (1842) and InspectorGen-
1998), chap. 2; David Alan Rich, eral (1836), and Mikhail
"Imperialism,Reform, and Strat- Saltykov-Shchedrin'sProvincial
egy: Russian MilitaryStatistics, Sketches(1856-57).
1840-1880," SlavonicandEastEu- 52 RGIA,f. 571, op. 6, d. 50,11. 59-
ropeanReview74, no. 4 (1996): 60b.
621-39; Peter Holquist, 'To 53 Yekhezkel Kotik,Journeyto a
Count, to Extract,and to Exter- Nineteenth-Century Shtetl,ed.
minate: Population Statisticsand David Assaf (Detroit, 2002), 110.
Population Politics in Late Impe- 54 RGIA, f. 1269, op. 1, d. 69,11. 4-
rialand SovietRussia,"in A Stateof 4b.
Nations:EmpireandNation-Making 55 On internal migration in the
in theAgeofLeninand Stalin,ed. pre-Reform period, see Boris B.
Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Gorshkov, "Serfson the Move:
Martin (Oxford, 2001), 113-14; Peasant Seasonal Migration in
and A. Kaufmann, 'The History Pre-Reform Russia, 1800-61,"
and Development of the Official and David Moon, "Russia's
Russian Statistics,"in TheHistory Rural Economy, 1800-1930,"
of Statistics:TheirDevelopment and Kritika1, no. 4 (2000): 627-56,
in
Progress Many Countries, ed. 679-83.
John Koren (New York, 1918), 56 On Jewish population move-
469-534. On ethnography, see ment in the eighteenth century,
Nathaniel Knight, "Science,Em- see Hundert, Jews in Poland-
pire, and Nationality:Ethnogra- Lithuania.
phy in the Russian Geographical 57 RGIA,f. 560, op. 1, d. 1338,11.3-
Society, 1845-1855," in Imperial 3b.
Russia:NewHistoriesfortheEmpire, 58 Ibid., 1. 5b, and RGIA, f. 1269,
ed.Jane Burbank and David L. op. 1, d. 69,1.33.
Ransel (Bloomington, Ind., 59 "Sobstvennye imena, upotrebli-
1998), chap. 5. aemye evreiami," Zhurnalminis-
44 Lincoln, In the Vanguardof Re- terstvovnutrennikhdel4 (1843):
form,chap. 4. 100-111.
45 RGIA, f. 821, op. 9, d. 101,11.85- 60 RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 69,1. 33.
86. 61 RGIA,f. 571, op. 6, d. 50,11.7-7b.
46 Miliutin, Ustroistvoi sostoianie 62 Ibid., 1. 185.
Evreiskikhobshchestv, 41. 63 RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 69,1.56b.
The Rabbinical Commission was 68 See the discussion in Rogger,
established to deliberate on so- JewishPoliciesand Right-WingPoli-
[166] cial and familial problems con- tics, 1-24.
cerningJewish life and to 69 In the early modern period,
facilitate the merging ofJewish dress codes stigmatized notjust
Jewish masses with civilian society.
Social Jews; lepers, prostitutes, beg-
ChaeRan Y.Freeze, JewishMar- gars, and other "outsiders"were
Studies
riageandDivorcein ImperialRussia marginalized by clothing restric-
(Hanover, N.H., 2002), chap. 2. tions as well. For a comparative
64 RGIA,f. 571, op. 6, d. 50,11. 17- perspective, see RobertJutte,
17b. "Stigma-symbole:Kleidung als
65 SvodzakonovRossiiskoiimperii, identitatsstiftendes merkmal bei
vol. 9, no. 1679, pril. (1857): spatmittelalterlichen und
416. The problem of language fruhneuzeitlichen randgruppen
appeared and reappeared in a (juden, dirnen, aussatzige,
variety of borderland encoun- bettler)," Saeculum 44, no. 1
ters between non-Russian (1993): 65-89.
groups and Russian officialdom. 70 Caplan and Torpey, Documenting
For other examples that led to IndividualIdentity,8; Amir
"misunderstandings"between Weiner, "Introduction: Land-
indigenous communities and scaping the Human Garden," in
Russian clergy, see Paul W. LandscapingtheHuman Garden:
Werth, At theMarginsof Ortho- Twentieth-CenturyPopulation
doxy:Mission, Governance,and Managementin a Comparative
ConfessionalPolitics,1827-1905 Framework, ed. Amir Weiner
(Ithaca, N.Y., 2002), 25-26. (Stanford, 2003), 2-3.
66 RGIA,f. 571, op. 6, d. 50,11. 204- 71 On Peter's dress reforms and
204b. hair codes, see Lindsey Hughes,
67 The first private school forJew- Russia in theAgeofPetertheGreat
ish girls opened in 1831, and (New Haven, Conn., 1998), 280-
subsequent schools appeared 88; Evgenii V. Anisimov, TheRe-
after 1844. GovernmentJewish formsofPetertheGreat:Progress
schools for boys were estab- ThroughCoercionin Russia,trans.
lished after 1844 as well. For a John T. Alexander (New York,
recent study, see Eliyana R. 1993), 218-20; Christine Ruane,
Adler, "PrivateSchools forJew- "Clothes Make the Comrade: A
ish Girls in Tsarist Russia" History of the Russian Fashion
(Ph.D. diss., Brandeis Univer- Industry,"RussianHistory23
sity, 2003). Educational institu- (1996): 311-43; and Christine
tions were founded to promote Ruane, "Clothes Shopping in
the Russian language in the Imperial Russia:The Develop-
western regions of the empire ment of a Consumer Culture,"
and in Bessarabia, to some ex- Journalof SocialHistory28, no. 4
tent, for other minority groups (1995): 765-82. On Nicholas's
as well (Kappeler, TheRussian reforms ofJewish dress, see Iulii
Empire,250-51). Gessen, "Bor'bapravitel'stvas
evreiskoi odezhdoi v Imperii i 84 RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 36,1. 29b.
Tsarstve Pol'skoi," Perezhitoe 85 Ibid.
(1910): 10-18; Iulii Gessen, 86 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossi- [167]
"Russkoezakonodatel'stvo ob iskoi federatsii (hereafter
odezhde evreev,"in Evreiskaia GARF),f. 109, ekspeditsiia 1, op. Jewish Legibility:
entsiklopediia,12: 46-50; Alfred 20, d. 136,11.5b, 25b, 27b. Documentation
Rubens, A Historyof theJewishCos- 87 Ibid., 11.1-7b. On Gal'pern's ac- Practices
tume,rev. ed. (London, 1973), tivities as a spokesman for the 0
104-8; Israel Klausner, "Ha- Jewish communities in the Eugene M.
gezerah al tilboshot ha-yehudim, southwestern region of the em- Avrutin
1844-1850," Gal-Ed6 (1982): pire, see Evreiskaiaentsiklopediia,
11-26; and Penkalla, "Socio- 6:117-18.
Cultural Integration," 220-24. 88 On toleration, see Peter Wal-
72 Philippe Perrot, Fashioningthe dron, "Religious Toleration in
Bourgeoisie: A Historyof Clothing Late Imperial Russia,"in Civil
in theNineteenthCentury,trans. Rightsin ImperialRussia,ed. Olga
Richard Bienvenu (Princeton, Crisp and Linda Edmondson
1994), 8. (Oxford, 1989), 103-19, and
73 John Klier, Rossiiasobiraetsvoikh Robert P. Geraci and Michael
evreev,expanded and translated Khodarkovsky,eds., OfReligion
edition (Moscow, 2000), 229; and Empire:Missions, Conversion,
Gessen, "Russkoezakonoda- and Tolerancein TsaristRussia
tel'stvo ob odezhde evreev," 46- (Ithaca, N.Y., 2001), 5-7.
47. 89 RGIA, f. 1269, op. 1, d. 36, 11.
74 PSZRI,series II, vol. 10, no. 8054 105-105b.
(Apr. 13, 1835). 90 The full petition has been re-
75 The Ministry of Finance im- printed in "Goneniia na
posed two types of korobka: a zhenskie golovnye ubory
voluntary as well as a general tax (1853)," Evreiskaiastarina8
on theJewish communities. (1915): 400-401.
76 Pauline Wengeroff, Remember- 91 This petition has also been re-
ings: TheWorldof a Russian-Jewish printed in Evreiskaiastarina8
Womanin theNineteenthCentury, (1915): 401-3.
trans. Henny Wenkart 92 Simon Dubnow, Historyof the
(Bethesda, Md., 2000), 249-51. Jewsin Russia and Poland,vol. 2,
77 Gessen, "Russkoezakonoda- trans. I. Friedlander (Philadel-
tel'stvo ob odezhde evreev," 46. phia, 1918), 144.
78 Gessen, "Bor'bapravitel'stvas 93 Paperna, "Iznikolaevskoi
evreiskoi odezhdoi," 12. epokhi," 53-54.
79 RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 36,1. 7. 94 GARF,f. 109, ekspeditsiia 1, op.
80 Ibid., 11.7-7b. 20, d. 136,1.5 (1845).
81 Gessen, "Bor'bapravitel'stvas 95 Wengeroff, Rememberings, 94-95.
evreiskoi odezhdoi," 14. 96 RGIA, f. 1269, op. 1, d. 36, 11.
82 RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 17,1. 13. 37b-38, 92b.
83 Gessen, "Russkoezakonoda- 97 L. Hollaenderski, LesIsraelitesde
tel'stvo ob odezhde evreev," 49. Pologne(Paris, 1846), 224-25,
cited in Rubens, Historyof theJew- Tsarist Russia, 1847-1873,"
ish Costume,105. For other ex- POLN 14 (2001): 87-88.
[168] amples, see V. L'vovich, comp., 103 Klausner, "Ha-gezerahal
NarodyRusskagoTsarstva:Kniga tilboshot ha-yehudim."
dlia chteniiadomai v shkolev 104 The best history ofJews in Russia
Jewish
Social (Moscow, 1901), 584; A. A. during the reign of Nicholas I is
Alekseev, Ocherkidomashneii Stanislawski's TsarNicholasI and
Studies obshchestvennoi zhizni evreev:Ikh theJews,but see also the impor-
verovaniia,bogosluzhenie, prazd- tant studies by Iokhanan Petro-
niki, obriady,talmud,i kagal,3rd vskii-Shtern,Evreiv russkoiarmii,
ed. (St. Petersburg, 1896); A. Se- 1827-1914 (Moscow, 2003); Ar-
mentovskii, Etnograficheskii obzor cadius Kahan, "Impactof Indus-
Vitebskoigubernii (St. Petersburg, trialization in Tsarist Russia on
1872), 58-67; and M. I. Berlin, the Socioeconomic Condition
Ocherketnografiievreiskagonarodo- of the Jewish Population," in Es-
naseleniia(St. Petersburg, 1861). says in JewishSocialand Economic
For an examination ofJews in History,ed. Roger Weiss (Chi-
nineteenth-century Russian eth- cago, 1986), 1-69; and Eli
nographic literature, see Volf Lederhendler, Road to Modern
Dubnow, "Tsuder ekonomisher JewishPolitics(New York, 1989).
geshikhte fun di yidn in rus- 105 Stanislawski, TsarNicholasI and
land," Shriftnfar ekonomikun theJews;Shochat, "Ha-hanhaga
statistik1 (1928): 92-97. be-kehilot rusiya im bitul ha-
98 Paperna, "Iznikolaevskoi kahal";Isaac Levitats, TheJewish
epokhi," 54. Communityin Russia, 1772-1844
99 On the 1871 dress laws, see (New York, 1943).
RGIA, f. 821, op. 9, d. 82, and 106 Lederhendler, Road to Modern
"Goneniia na evreiskuyu JewishPolitics,52.
odezhdu (1871)," Evreiskaia 107 On Russia's turn to a more uni-
starina5 (1912): 334-38. fied, inclusive civic and religious
100 Kievlianin240 (1883): 2. If the order, see, e.g., Steinwedel, "In-
state would have enforced the visible Threads of Empire," and
decree on yarmulkes, it would Werth, At theMarginsof Ortho-
have collected 15 million rubles doxy,124-46.
annually. According to Kievlia- 108 On Russian modernity, see
nin, for the 25 years of unpaid Kotsonis, "Introduction: A Mod-
taxes, Jews owned at least 375 ern Paradox," and Nathans, Be-
million rubles (without yond thePale.
interest). 109 Only recently has the registra-
101 See Hughes, Russia in theAge of tion of births, marriages, deaths,
Peterthe Great,280-88. and divorces begun to attract
102 On dress as an ideological scholarly attention outside of
marker for theJewish intelligen- the so-called historical demogra-
tsia, see the discussion in Verena phers. See Charles Steinwedel,
Dohrn, "TheRabbinical Schools "MakingSocial Groups One Per-
as Institutions of Socialization in son at a Time: The Identifica-
tion of Individuals by Estate, 112 See Mendele Moykher Sforim,
Religious Confession and Eth- "Notes for My Biography,"in Se-
nicity in Late Imperial Russia," lectedWorks,ed. Marvin Zuker- [169]
in Caplan and Torpey, Docu- man et al. (Malibu, Calif., 1991),
mentingIndividualIdentity,69- 31. The sculptor M. M. An- JewishLegibility:
73; Eugene M. Avrutin, "Power tokol'skii's date of birth was also Documentation
of Documentation: Vital Statis- the subject of some dispute by his Practices
tics andJewish Accommodation biographers. See D. G. Maggid,
in Tsarist Russia,"AbImperio4 "Kogdarodilsia Antokol'skii?" Eugene M.
(2003): 271-300; Freeze,Jewish Perezhitoe2 (1910): 3-4. Avrutin
Marriageand Divorce,110-15; D. 113 RGIA,f. 821, op. 10, d. 772,1.28.
N. Antonov and I. A. Antonova, 114 RGIA,f. 1269, op. 1, d. 69,11.68-
"Metricheskie knigi: Vremia so- 68b.
birat' kamni," Otechestvennye 115 RGIA, f. 821, op. 9, d. 109,1.213.
arkhivy4-5 (1996): 15-28, 29- 116 PSZRI,series II, vol. 10, no.
42; Gregory L. Freeze, "Bringing 8054, art. 96 (Apr. 13,1835):
Order to the Russian Family: 320.
Marriage and Divorce in Impe- vremennikRossiisskoi
117 Statisticheskii
rial Russia, 1760-1860,"Journal imperii 1 (1866): xix.
of ModernHistory62, no. 4 118 PSZRI,series II, vol. 15, no.
(1990): 716-18; and G. Vol'tke, 13750 (Aug. 31, 1840): 547.
"Metricheskie knigi i svide- 119 See the discussion in Nathans,
tel'stva,"Evreiskaiaentsiklopediia, BeyondthePale, 35, 69.
10: 925-27. 120 RGIA,f. 821, op. 10, d. 766,1.53.
110 Although a decree issued in 1826 121 RGIA, f. 821, op. 8, d. 377,1. 6.
obligated rabbis to record vital 122 Mendele Moykher Sforim, "A
events, the 1835 statute was the Little Man," in SelectedWorks,
first systematicdescription of the 144-45.
role that state rabbis would play 123 SvodzakonovRossiiskoiimperii,
in this process (Freeze,Jewish vol. 9, no. 1457 (1857).
Marriageand Divorce,95). 124 See also the general discussion
111 Jacob Goldberg, 'Jewish Mar- on taxation and recruitment
riage in Eighteenth-Century Po- that serves as a useful context to
land," POLIN10 (1997): 20. For this period in Levitats, TheJewish
another example, see V. O. Communityin Russia, chap. 3.
Garkavi,Otryvkivospominanii(St. 125 RGIA,f. 821, op. 10, d. 766, 11.
Petersburg, 1913), 3. 37-39.

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The Politics of Jewish Legibility: Documentation Practices and Reform during the Reign of

But a name, Leyzer-Yankl.Where are you

In 1804, as part of the first systematic statute on Jews of Russia, the

Eugene M. Avrutin, "The Politics of Jewish Legibility: Documentation Prac-

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In no countrydoes a particularstyleof dressexist for my coreligionists:

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1 As a consequence of the French Identification in Nineteenth-

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