Enforced Enlightenment as a Strategy for De-Judaization: Baltic Jews in the Russian Empire under Nicholas I

This study investigates the complex and often strained relationship between the Russian Empire and the Baltic Jewish diaspora (also known as Ostsee Jews), particularly during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855). Notably, during his rule, approximately six hundred legislative acts concerning Jews were issued, representing half of such legislation enacted in Russia from 1649 to 1881. These laws, often rooted in fears of Jewish missionary activities and broader imperial anxieties, aimed to confine Jews within the Pale of Settlement and foster a specific approach to their integration. Nicholas I’s government used enlightenment as a strategy for the “peaceful subjugation” of minorities to imperial ideology, with the establishment of a state Jewish educational system in the 1840s being a significant reform. Court ideologists of the time argued that previous coercive measures had not altered the Jewish faith and lifestyle, leading to a governmental shift towards education reform aimed at “weakening the Talmud” and facilitating Jewish integration into civil society. This initiative, spearheaded by the Ministry of Education, envisioned a unique network of Jewish schools reflecting the Minister of Education Sergei Uvarov’s principles of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality,” aiming to reconfigure the Jewish community and appoint provincial educated rabbis as government allies. I will engage with the archives of the Riga Educational District, formerly known as the “Dorpat Educational District,” covering the Courland, Livonia, and Estonia Governorates in the annexed Baltic region, notable for its significant Jewish populace forced to settle there. Preliminary research in the Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Russian national archives has uncovered a considerable collection of manuscripts on educational policies towards the Jewish community in the early 19th century. This study aims to identify the primary agents of imperial policies among the Baltic Jews and examine the strategies they developed, in cooperation with Nicholas I’s government from the 1830s to the 1850s, to assimilate Jews into the imperial ideology.