Черта оседлости (Белорусская синагога к царствование Екатерины II)

In 1772 Belorussian Jews were granted Russian citizenship and equal rights with the rest of the Russian population. However, their rights (electoral, economic, etc.) were soon rescinded. Unofficial bans began as early as 1772, continuing the tendency which marked the pre-Partition period. Contends that the leitmotif of the restrictive legislation, which culminated in the formation of the Pale of Settlement, was the striving of the authorities to preserve the nobility's monopoly on trade and processing of agricultural products, in particular liquor distillation; the initiators were the Belorussian nobility, not the Moscow merchants. The main accusation put forward by the nobility against the Jews was that they were the main cause of the growing pauperization of the peasantry. The trade imbalance of the 1780s gave momentum to the accusation against Jews of smuggling and evading trade taxes, which was followed by closing the inner "gubernias" to the Jews, and later with the introduction of the Pale of Settlement in 1794. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism) E.k. Anishchenko. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes.