ABSTRACT
Compared with the west, the social and political conditions of Eastern European Jewry were conducive to emancipation. After the partitions of Poland in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the decision of the Congress of Vienna to place the Duchy of Warsaw under Alexander I, most of Polish Jewry was under Russian rule. Initially Catherine the Great exhibited tolerance toward her Jewish subjects, but in 1791 Jewish merchants were prohibited from settling in central Russia. In 1804 Alexander I specified territory in western Russia as an area in which Jews would be allowed to reside, and this was known as the Pale of Settlement. In 1824 the deportation of Jews from villages began; in the same year Alexander I died and was succeeded by Nicholas I who adopted a severe attitude to the Jewish community. In the same year Nicholas I abolished the kehillot and put Jewry under the authority of the police as well as municipal government.
