Historical Background of Fiddler on the Roof
“Dear Ruthie-I am going to do a musical on Sholem Aleichem stories with Harnick and Bock. Stop. I’m in love with it. It’s our people.” – Jerome Robbins in a telegram to friend, Ruth Mitchell
Fiddler on the Roof takes place in 1905 in a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement in Russia. Throughout the musical, the Jewish community are subjected to increasing hostility and eventual expulsion. There is the growing threat of violence in the form of pogroms. Pogroms is a Russian word that directly translated means “to wreak havoc.” It is typically used to describe Russian violence against Jewish people, although the word has now been extended to other minorities. This violence was a direct result of social unrest that triggered a backsliding of liberal rights in Russia. As is often the case, as minorities, Jewish people were scapegoated for the unrest. To understand how the pogroms came about, it is first essential to review the history of Jews in Russia.
Pale of Settlement 1884
Jewish people have lived in Russia since at least the 7th century, and at one point the Russian empire had the largest population of Jews in the world. As is often the case in European history, they were generally relegated to their own quarters separate from the Christian citizens. In addition, when Russia gained territory from the Kingdom of Poland, a large Jewish population was already residing in that area. In 1791, during the reign of Catherine II, they were further restricted to the Pale of Settlement, a specific territory in western Russia that had been recently acquired from the Ottoman Empire, whose boundaries shifted over the next few hundred years. In the Settlement, Jews were subject to waves of special taxes on their traditions, barred from working in the government, and at times forbidden to work certain jobs. Furthermore, they were subject to conscription at a higher percentage of the overall population. Despite the bleak economics, as they could not conduct business outside the Pale (although this was reversed and re-enacted several times), Jewish culture thrived and at its height had a population over five million.
When Czar Alexander II took power in 1855, he began instituting several liberal policies. Notably he freed the serfs, but he also ended certain privileges of the nobility, promoted universal education and abolished corporal punishment. In addition, he expanded the rights of Jewish people, allowing rich or educated Jews to leave and live outside the Pale. These proposals were not only deeply unpopular with the ruling class but also destabilized the established economic and social structure of the country, which had largely been run on unpaid labor. On the other hand, a growing revolutionary movement declared he did not go far enough with his reforms, and they protested, sometimes violently. The turmoil resulted in several assassination attempts, until Alexander II was murdered in 1881. False rumors spread that he had been assassinated by Jews and they were blamed for the revolutionary movement as well as the troubled economy.
An American New Year card with Czar Nicholas II as a chicken to protest the pogroms, circa 1910
The czar’s assassination led to a major backsliding of civil liberties in Russia and greatly increased police brutality. The czar’s son, Alexander III, vowed not to have the same fate befall him and instituted a Russification of Russia initiative, leaning deeply into conservative policies and the Orthodox Church with the hope that this reactionary policy would stabilize the empire and quell unrest. As they followed a different religion and were a different ethnicity, Jewish people were hugely targeted by this initiative. On May 15, 1882, the May Laws were passed, which were a series of restrictions on Jews that suppressed their settlement, removed their property, and forbade them to conduct business on Sundays or other Christian holy days. These were later followed with additional discriminatory laws that established education quotas, loss of voting power and eventual forced expulsions. Furthermore, there were over 200 pogroms initiated both by police and other citizens through 1884 that led to the death of several Jews.
Tsar Alexander III c.1885
The violence intensified when second wave of pogroms began in 1902. The 1903, the Kishinev pogrom became the worst yet and saw the death of 49 Jews, with hundreds wounded, 700 homes destroyed and 600 businesses razed. When the Jews fought back or tried to defend themselves, they were often subject to harsh criminal punishment. In the three years following, almost 660 pogroms were recorded.
Notably, Alexander III’s conservative and discriminatory agenda did not quell the unrest, and he died in 1894, six months after a train derailment seen as a possible assassination attempt left him with blunt trauma. The social and economic situation in Russia deteriorated during the disastrous reign of Alexander III’s son, Nicolas II. The unpopular Russo-Japanese war in 1904 drained the treasury, caused significant loss of life (including a disproportionate amount of conscripted Jews) and directly led to the 1905 Revolution. Again, Jewish people were blamed and targeted and the waves of violence increased. It was at this point, however, that many younger Jews had joined the underground socialist parties – something they had been previously accused of, but had not done in force until now.
Damaged Torah, pogroms, Odessa
In total, from 1881 to 1920 there were 1,326 pograms in Ukraine that led to the death of around 70,000 to 250,000 Jews and the loss of homes for half a million people. To escape the violence, 2.5 million Jews migrated out of the Russian empire during this time.
Fiddler on the Roof is set during the climax of violence after 200 years of oppression.
