25. L'ALLIANCE ISRAELITE UNIVERSELLE
It was widely perceived that Disraeli, the anti-Orthodox Jewish Prime Minister of Britain, had been the main architect and beneficiary from Russia’s humiliation at the Congress. And then, as if to rub the point home, the Jews proceeded to punish Russia again: “In 1877-1878 the House of Rothschild, by agreement with Disraeli, first bought up, and then threw out onto the market in Berlin a large quantity of Russian securities, which elicited a sharp fall in their rate.”348 From that moment “the Jewish question”, already a sore point inside Russia because of Jewish revolutionary activity, became an important factor also in Russian foreign policy…
The Jews, supported by the West, were beginning to organize themselves on the international scene. The Alliance Israélite Universelle (in Hebrew: Khaburi Menitsi Indrumim, "Brotherhood Arousing the Sleepy") was founded in 1860 in Paris with a Central Committee led by Adolphe Crémieux. It was the first of a series of national Jewish organisations, such as the Anglo-Jewish Association in Great Britain, the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden in Germany and the Israelitische Allianz zu Wien in Austria, which began to campaign for Jewish rights in this period. Although the Alliance considered itself to be motivated by universalist sentiments, it did not disguise the fact that its aim was the defence of the Jewish faith: "Universal union is among our aspirations without any doubt, and we consider all men our brothers, but just as the family comes before strangers in the order of affection, so religion inspires and memory of common oppression fortifies a family sentiment that in the ordinary course of life surpasses others... Finally, there is the decisive consideration for not going beyond the religious confraternity: all other important faiths are represented in the world by nations - embodied, that is to say, in governments that have a special interest and an official duty to represent and speak for them. Ours alone is without this important advantage; it corresponds neither to a state nor to a society nor again to a specific territory: it is no more than a rallying-cry for scattered individuals - the very people whom it is therefore essential to bring together."349
Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes that, "'insufficiently informed... about the situation of the Jews in Russia', the Alliance Israélite Universelle 'began to interest itself in Russian Jewry', and soon 'began to work for the benefit of the Jews in Russia with great constancy.' The Alliance did not have departments in Russia and 'did not function within her frontiers'. Besides charitable and educational work, the Alliance more than once directly addressed the government of Russia, interceding for Russian Jews, although often inopportunely... Meanwhile, the newly-created Alliance (whose emblem was the Mosaic tablets of the law over the earthly globe), according to the report of the Russian ambassador from Paris, already enjoyed 'exceptional influence on Jewish society in all States'. All this put not only the Russian government, but also Russian society on their guard. [The baptised Jew] Jacob Brafmann also agitated intensively against the Alliance Israélite Universelle. He affirmed that the Alliance, 'like all Jewish societies, has a two-faced character (its official documents tell the government one thing, but its secret documents another)', that the Alliance's task was 'to guard Judaism from the assimilation with Christian civilization that was harmful to it'...
"Fears about the Alliance were nourished by the original very emotional appeal of the Alliance's organizers 'to the Jews of all countries, and by forgeries. With regard to Jewish unity it declared as follows: Jews,... If you believe that the Alliance is for you - good, and that in constituting a part of various peoples, you nevertheless can have common feelings, desires and hope... if you think that your disunited attempts, good intentions and the strivings of individual people could become a powerful force, uniting into a single whole and going in one direction and to one goal... support us by your sympathy and cooperation'.
"But later there appeared a secondary document which was printed in France - supposedly an appeal of Adolphe Crémieux himself 'To the Jews of the Whole World'. It is very probable that this was a forgery. It is not excluded that it was one of the drafts of an appeal that was not accepted by the organizers of the Alliance (however, it fell in with Brafman's accusations that the Alliance had hidden aims): 'We live in foreign lands and we cannot interest ourselves in the passing interests of these countries as long as our own moral and material interests are in peril... the Jewish teaching must fill the world...'350 A sharp controversy broke out in the Russian press, at the peak of which I.S. Aksakov in his newspaper Rus' concluded that 'the question of the inauthenticity... of the appeal does not in the present case have any particular significance in view of the authenticity of the Jewish views and hopes expressed in it'.
"The pre-revolutionary Jewish Encyclopaedia writes that in the 70s in the Russian press 'voices in defence of the Jews began to be heard less frequently... In Russian society the thought began to be entrenched that the Jews of all countries were united by a powerful political organisation, the central administration of which was concentrated in the Alliance Israélite Universelle'. So its creation produced in Russia, and perhaps not only in Russia, a reaction that was the reverse of that aimed at by the Alliance."351
The leader of this trend in Russian thought was I.S. Aksakov. Relying especially on Brafman's testimony, he wrote: "The Jews in the Pale of Settlement constitute a 'state within a state', with its own administrative and judicial organs, and with a national government - a state whose centre lies outside Russia, abroad, whose highest authority is the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris."352
Another country in which the Alliance's influence was felt was Romania. "At the beginning of the nineteenth century," writes Barbara Jelavich, "the Danubian Principalities had no problem with minorities as such. Their population was in the vast majority Romanian in nationality and Orthodox in religion. This situation changed, however, in the second half of the century, when Russian Jews moved in ever-increasing numbers into the Habsburg Empire and the Principalities. In 1859 about 118,000 Jews lived in Moldavia and 9,200 in Wallachia. By 1899 the number had increased to 210,000 in Moldavia and 68,000 in Wallachia. They thus formed a minority of about a quarter of a million in a population of 6 million."353
According to David Vital, the Jews were in a worse situation in Romania than in Russia. "The Jews of Russia... were citizens. Theirs were diminished rights - as were, for different reasons and in different respects, those of the peasants of Russia as well. But they were not without rights; and both in theory and in administrative practice their legal situation and their freedoms were superior to those of the peasants... [However,] contrary to Russian practice, let alone that of the central and western European states, the new rulers of Romania set out not only to deny Jews ordinary civic rights, but to place them outside the law of the country altogether and to subject them to a system of arbitrary and punitive rule..."299
The Convention of Paris in 1858 had stipulated, as a condition of Romania's autonomy from Turkey, that "all Moldavians and Wallachians shall be equal in the eye of the law and with regard to taxation, and shall be equally admissible to public employments in both Principalities" (Article XLVI). However, under pressure from the Prince of Moldavia the Powers had agreed that only Christians in Moldavia and Wallachia should have political rights. And in 1866, as the central synagogue of Bucharest was being destroyed, the national parliament, led by Ion Bratianu, the minister of finance, enacted Article VII of the new constitution which declared that "only foreigners of the Christian religion may obtain the status of a Romanian".
“Jews were also prevented from buying rural property. Because of these limitations, they tended to congregate in the large cities, particularly in Bucharest and Iaşi, where they took up occupations such as that of merchant or small trader. In the countryside they could be found as stewards on large estates, as owners of inns selling alcoholic drinks, and as moneylenders - occupations that could bring them into conflict with the peasant population."354
At this point the Alliance became involved. "When a greatly agitated Adolphe Crémieux, now the grand old man of western European Jewry, turned to Napoleon III in 1867 to protest against [the Romanians'] conduct he was assured that 'this oppression can neither be tolerated nor understood. I intend to show that to the Prince [Charles].' As good as his word, the emperor telegraphed a reprimand to Bucharest, marginally softened by the ironic conclusion that 'I cannot believe that Your Highness's government authorizes measures so incompatible with humanity and civilization'. The Hohenzollern prince, only recently installed as ruler of the country, still sufficiently uncertain of his status and throne not to be embarrassed by the image Romania and he himself might be presenting to 'Europe', took action. Bratianu was made to resign. Émile Picot, one of the prince's private secretaries, was sent to Paris to meet the directors of the AIU in person (on 22 July 1867) and give them as good an account of the government's position as he was able. Crémieux presiding, the meeting passed off civilly enough although, as Picot's assurances of the good intentions of the Romanian government failed to correspond to what the AIU knew of the true conditions on the ground in Romania itself, the effort to mollify the Parisian notables failed. Crémieux then addressed himself directly to Prince Charles. Hardly less than imperious, his language speaks volumes both for the mounting indignation with which the condition of Romanian Jewry had come to be regarded by the leading members of the western European Jewish communities and for the historically unprecedented self-assurance with which many of them now approached their public duty. 'The moment has come, Prince,' Crémieux wrote, 'to employ [your] legitimate authority and break off this odious course of events.' Bratianu should be dismissed 'absolutely'. The savage measures taken against the Jews should be annulled. The unfortunates who had been torn violently from their homes must be allowed to return. For the rest, 'Inform [the country] that nothing will be neglected to erase the traces of this evil, pursue without respite the newspapers that have for the past year continually engaged in incitement to hatred, contempt, assassination, and expulsion of the Jews, dismiss all the cowardly officials who have lent a violent hand to this dreadful persecution and deal energetically with all violence directed at the Jews from this time on.'
"One may assume that this made unpleasant reading for Prince Charles, but it remained without real effect. Bratianu was not dismissed 'absolutely'. He was, on the contrary, given a new post. The press was not restrained. Officials engaged in active persecution of Jews were not removed from office. And after 1870 and the plummeting of French prestige, Émile Picot, a Frenchman, was out of favour in Bucharest anyway and the channel he had opened to western Jewry collapsed - as, of course, did the political weight ascribed in Bucharest to the AIU itself."355
However, the French had another chance at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, demanding that the independence of Romania would be recognized on the same terms as that of Bulgaria and Serbia - that is, acceptance of Article XLIV, which guaranteed equality of treatment in all places and in all circumstances for members of all religious creeds. The Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov "tried to block the move, arguing that the Jews of Russia and Romania were a social scourge, not to be confused with the fine merchants of London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna".356 But the French, supported by Bismarck and Disraeli, won the day.
Since Article XLIV contravened the provisions of the constitution of 1866, it "required a special act of the assembly. Most Romanian leaders regarded the measure as an unwarranted interference in their internal affairs, an issue on which they were particularly sensitive. In fact, the government never fully complied with the intent of the treaty. In 1879, under great pressure, it was agreed that Jews could become naturalized citizens, but special action would have to be taken on each individual case. The Jewish question was to remain controversial and to cause many problems in the future..."357
This seemed to demonstrate the impotence of the Jews in one part of Europe to help their compatriots in another. On the other hand, "the campaign mounted on behalf of Romanian Jewry had been remarkably well organized and well supported... The exertions of the notables and philanthropic organizations of western and central European Jewry on behalf of the Romanian Jews added more than a mite to the mythology of the 'international power' of the Jews"358 - if it was only a myth...
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