Kiev's history, as well as its hills and ravines, helped create a number of distinct neighborhoods that were fixed as official districts in the nineteenth century. The upper town, high on the bluffs above the Dnepr River, consisted of Old Kiev (Starokievskaia) with its ancient churches and monasteries, and Dvortsovaia, home of the Royal Palace and aristocratic mansions; Kiev's main avenue, Kreshchatik, cut through the ravine that formed the boundary between the two areas. Further south along the bluffs was the religious and military district of Pechersk, home to the Caves Monastery, one of the holiest in the Russian Empire. The lower town, a port area close to river commerce and transportation, was called Podol. Newer neighborhoods that took shape with Kiev's phenomenal growth in the second half of the nineteenth century were Ploskaia, a northern extension of Podol on the floodplains along the banks of the Dnepr, and Lybed, stretching from the upper town near Kreshchatik south to the railway stations at the edge of the city. In the upper part of the city, Lybed's Bol’shaia and Malo-vasil’kovskaia streets became "the focal point of Jewish life in the city."74
The law required most Jews settling in Kiev to reside in outlying Ploskaia and Lybed, two of the poorest districts that lacked amenities such as running water and sewage systems. Kiev was the only place in the Russian Empire where Jews (or most Jews) were limited to specific neighborhoods, and it was for this reason that the city was often referred to as the only "ghetto" still extant in Russia.75 The Ploskaia Jewish ghetto actually included several blocks in Podol, which seem to have been considered a bit more desirable than the rest of the neighborhood. Ploskaia was home to a number of factories of various sizes—several breweries, a brickworks, a tannery, a candle factory— while Lybed had less industry, with two brickworks and a distillery/brewery, all located at its outer limits. In 1874, Ploskaia, with almost 6,000 Jews out of the city's 13,800, was home to 43 percent of the city's Jews; with just under 2,400 Jews, Podol had 17 percent, and Lybed followed behind with 13 percent (1,900 Jews). Ploskaia also boasted the highest concentration of Jews: 29 percent of its residents, while the figure for Podol was 15 percent. Solomenka and Demievka, small neighborhoods adjacent to Kiev's two railway stations that were outside the bounds of Kiev proper but were actually extensions of Lybed, were also heavily (one-quarter) Jewish.76 Demievka, in particular, as well as Slobodka, a suburb across the Dnepr from Kiev, became very popular destinations because Jews were not required to hold residence permits to settle there; in his memoirs, Jewish communal activist Genrikh Sliozberg claimed that "only the May Laws [of 1882] stopped them from becoming huge Jewish cities," because their village status meant that no new Jewish settlement could be established there.77
According to 1874 census data, Ploskaia and Lybed's Jewish populations were mostly poor and Yiddish-speaking. Only 1.4 percent identified a language other than yiddish as the language customarily used in the home, and two-thirds were unable to read or write in Russian (versus 40 percent in the other neighborhoods). The overwhelming majority belonged to the meshchanstvo, the catch-all "townspeople" estate in which most Jews in the Pale of Settlement were inscribed. There were almost as many Jewish merchants in Ploskaia and Lybed as in the neighborhoods of the upper city; these were likely those who belonged to the second guild or had belonged to the first guild for less than five years, for these categories of merchants did not have the right to live outside of Ploskaia and Lybed. Presumably they moved to finer neighborhoods as soon as they were able to attain a higher estate status.78
In a city that was fairly sparsely populated, Jews lived three times more densely than Christians.79 In the 1870s, Ploskaia and Lybed had the highest mortality rate for Russian Orthodox (30-35 per 1,000), but at 30.7 per 1,000, the Jewish mortality rate for the city as a whole was no better— indeed, it was poorer than for any other group.80 Among the worst areas were the slums of Ploskaia, referred to as "beyond the canal," located north of the open ditch (Glubochitskaia Canal) that carried fetid runoff water from two nearby factories.81 Apartments were cheaper there than almost anywhere else in the city; the average annual rent of 160 rubles was far less than Kiev's overall average, 411 rubles, not to mention the rents in the best neighborhoods, which ranged from 700 to 850 rubles a year. Ploskaia abounded in cheap, low-quality housing, and a working-class individual searching for an apartment or room for 15 rubles or less per year had practically no other choice of neighborhood (it is no surprise that Ploskaia had the highest illiteracy rate, 70 percent, of any central neighborhood).82 Only one-quarter of the buildings in Ploskaia had gardens or kitchen plots, fewer than anywhere else in the city.83 For those unable to afford an apartment or even a room, Ploskaia and Podol offered eleven flophouses where laborers could bunk down for the night.84 With an average annual apartment rent of 325 rubles, Ly-bed was on a somewhat higher plane, but still below the city average. Like other outlying districts, it lacked most of the amenities enjoyed by the central neighborhoods, including access to running water.85
Astoundingly to those familiar with this period and accustomed to lower mortality rates among Jews, in the period 1866-70 Jewish children had a higher mortality rate than any other confessional group in Kiev: 37 percent of children died in their first year, and 56 percent in their first five years; the corresponding rates for Christian Orthodox children were 29 percent and 45 percent while the five-year rate for Catholics and Lutherans dropped to 36-37 percent.86 These high rates may have been due to poor living conditions, hygiene, and sanitation in the crowded neighborhoods where Jews were compelled to live, but they may also have been associated with the particular cohort of Jews who chose to migrate to Kiev and the lives they found upon arrival: the more poorly educated individuals who had more children, working at jobs that paid little, were less likely to be able to create a healthy home for an infant and to be able to provide medical care in case of illness. That the mortality rate was so high in the early years of Jewish migration to Kiev, and the fact that it dropped in subsequent years, may suggest that the earliest arrivals were those most desperate to leave their current circumstances to start a new life elsewhere. The data also points to the undeveloped state of communal support and philanthropy in Kiev at that early stage. Both inferences are supported by anecdotal evidence.87 Given these mortality rates, it is not surprising that Kievlianin should have hinted in 1873 that the ballooning Jewish population was to blame for the increased number and strength of cholera epidemics in Kiev: the two seemed to go hand in hand.88
At the opposite end of the spectrum were the refined neighborhoods of Dvortsovaia (known also as Lipki, after the lime trees along its boulevards), home to the Tsar's Palace (residence of the sovereign on his visits to Kiev) and spacious mansions on tree-lined boulevards, and Starokievskaia, with imposing brick buildings, the latest urban conveniences, and high-style shops and theaters. As might be expected, Jewish merchants, lawyers, and others with wealth and high aspirations settled there; in 1874, these two districts were home to only 5 percent of Kiev Jewry but to 40 percent of its non-Yiddish-speaking Jews. A language other than Yiddish was usually spoken in almost 30 percent of the Jewish homes of Dvortsovaia and Starokievskaia, with a Russian literacy figure of 66 percent. Slightly half of the Jewish population of these elite neighborhoods belonged to the merchant estate, compared to 15 percent in Kiev as a whole.89
Podol seems to have fallen somewhere in between the poverty and traditionalism of Ploskaia and Lybed, the districts where Jews without special privileges were required to live, and the wealth and acculturation of the genteel neighborhoods of the upper city. With the Contract House, site of Kiev's important trade fairs, at its heart, as well as the important mercantile thoroughfare Aleksandrovskaia Street, Podol was the commercial center of Kiev, rivaling Kreshchatik in the upper city in importance. Merchants made up one-quarter of Podol's Jewish population in 1874 (compared to 11 percent in the poor neighborhoods). at its northern end, however, Podol bordered on Ploskaia and in fact included several streets where Jews could live without special authorization, as in Ploskaia. Census data paint a picture of a Yiddish-speaking but educated Jewish population, as one would expect from those who might have been interested in settling in Podol: merchants and traders who wanted access to the lively commerce of the district as well as to the prayer houses within walking distance in the Ploskaia district. almost all of Podol's Jews named yiddish as the language spoken at home, but three-fifths of them could read and write Russian to some extent (a literacy rate similar to the upper town), pointing to a Jewish population that was at home in both languages, speaking yiddish but able to read and write Russian. Thus, it makes sense that in 1867 a group of Jewish merchants wanted to establish a synagogue in Podol, "expressly for the Jewish merchantry"; the wording of the request suggests that they no longer wished to attend synagogues where they had to mingle with the impoverished masses of Ploskaia.90 As in Dvortsovaia and Starokievskaia, Jews in Podol wanted to purchase real estate in the best parts of the neighborhood: in 1871, Moisei Vainshtein, a merchant, communal leader, and one of the overseers of the Jewish Hospital, petitioned for permission to buy a house next to the Church of the Nativity, on central Aleksandrovskaia Street.91
World History
