The rapid growth of the Jewish population of Kiev in the 1860s and 1870s, as of the city as a whole, was due to migration. Many Jews were on the move in search of a living, for they had found that the environment around them was undergoing swift transformations. after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the long-standing economic structure within which Jews had played the roles of middleman, agent, petty trader, and tavern-keeper began to change rapidly; the beginning of the intensive growth of Russian industry and trade and the advent of the railroad in the 1860s and 1870s brought about yet further changes in the economy. Many Jews were adversely affected by these changes, finding that there was less demand for their services and that their unique niche in the economy of the western borderlands was disappearing.12 On the other hand, a small but influential number of Jewish entrepreneurs played a central role in the industrial and commercial development of the western provinces, and their activities would open up new avenues of employment for many of their coreligionists.13 Just as important a motivating factor in Jewish migration was the population explosion among Russian Jewry that began in the early nineteenth century; it increased the Jewish population 150 percent in the years 1820-1880, while the non-Jewish population grew by 87 percent.14 Jewish migration within the Russian Empire was generally north to south, from regions that had been settled by Jews for centuries (Lithuania and Belorussia) to provinces of the southwest (Right-Bank Ukraine and Chernigov and Poltava provinces) and the south (the New Russian and Bessarabian provinces that had been appended to the Pale of Settlement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries).15 From the mid-nineteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War, the Jewish population of these regions increased by 844 percent (seventeen-fold), in comparison to an increase in the general population of 265 percent (five-fold).16 aside from emigration, mostly to the United States, the other leading trend in Jewish migration was urbanization; but whether Jews were city-bound or south-bound, the motivation was almost always economic: they migrated in the hope of finding a better living. Jews looked to communities where a thriving economy could offer more opportunities and, since Jewish society was not diversified economically, where a smaller Jewish community would mean fewer of their coreligionists with whom to compete. Thus, the most popular destinations were the new communities of Odessa, Ekaterinoslav, and Kiev, located in the economically flourishing provinces of the south and southwest. Moreover, in the immediate aftermath of the Polish Uprising of 1863, the authorities broadly approved of intensified Jewish settlement in areas of former Polish influence so as to develop "a socioeconomic force that could stand in opposition" to the once powerful Poles.17
All of these factors contributed to the rapid growth of Kiev in the postemancipation period, its population almost doubling in the decade between 1864 and 1874, when it reached 124,000.18 The tremendous flow of migration to the city can be seen in the fact that in 1874, only 28 percent of its population were natives of Kiev. Indeed, j ust 45 percent were from the southwest region, testifying to the geographical diversity of Kiev's new arrivals.19 The Jewish population grew much more swiftly in the first decade, multiplying five-fold from 3,000 in 1863 to 14,000 in 1874 (11 percent of the total population).20 The Jewish population grew so quickly—and was so heavily migrant-based—that an independent Jewish postal office was established in Kiev in the 1880s, which a local newspaper used for sending subscriptions to nearby towns.21 As Michael Hamm writes, "The rapid growth of the Jewish community constituted the single most dramatic change in the composition of the city's population during the ensuing decades [i. e., after the 1860s]."22 The heavy stream of Jewish migration to Kiev was not difficult to understand: at 253,000, the Jewish population of Kiev province was far and away the most numerous of any province in the Pale in 1864, and the entire southwest region, of which Kiev was capital, had about 635,000 Jews (with another 35,000 across the Dnepr River in Chernigov province).23
The expanding railway network facilitated migration. Kiev was already a water transport hub due to its situation on the Dnepr River, and in the immediate post-emancipation years, the railroad began rapidly to tie Russia's cities together. The Kiev-Moscow line was completed in 1869, and lines to
Odessa and to Poland followed within a few years. Kiev's railway station was opened in 1870, making the city more accessible than ever for visitors, pilgrims, and of course migrants. One of the neighborhoods that sprang up around the station, Solomenka, soon became a heavily Jewish area. In the four years after the inauguration of the station, Kiev's population jumped by 80 percent, from 71,000 to 127,000. Indeed, throughout the 1870s Kiev's growth came exclusively from migration, since deaths outnumbered births among the city's population.24
The establishment of the Kiev Commodities Exchange in 1873 was yet another element drawing migrants, especially Jews, while the annual Contract Fair continued to be a mainstay of the Kiev economy and a contributing factor to its rapid growth, since it drew thousands of visitors every year, some of whom probably made the decision not to leave.25 Of the 60,000 merchants and traders who visited Kiev annually on business in the 1840s, two-thirds were Jews, and they continued to play a significant role in Kiev's commercial fairs throughout the nineteenth century.26 The city played an especially important role as a processing center for agricultural products grown in the rich earth of the surrounding provinces, including sugar beets, tobacco, wheat, fruit, and timber.27 In the 1870s and 1880s, a number of industrial concerns built large, modern factories in the city, drawing large numbers of laborers from the hinterland.28 Kiev's status as the political capital of Kiev, Podol, and volhyn provinces and the principal city of the entire southwest region, comprising five provinces, also made it an attractive base for financial and commercial concerns, and its reputation as an educational and intellectual center attracted students and intelligenty. Though Kiev's significance as a military center was not as great as it had been earlier in the century, the soldiers stationed there and the city's arsenal contributed to its standing and import.
World History
