A Short History of the Russian Military Draft
Berel Melamed (Benjamin Miller) was drafted into the Czar’s army around the turn of the 20th century, serving in the band. He said he deserted the army. Perhaps he deserted shortly before getting married in Kiev in April 1913, and departing Europe for America in July 1914 - at the beginning of WWI. Ben never spoke of his military service except to say he saw his first airplane. We do know that he did not have fond memories of his family; perhaps this had something in part to do with his being drafted. His family was well off and this article leads one to the potential conclusion that he might have been the family ‘donation’ to the draft calls. We may never know all the facts about Ben’s service and desertion, but this article is interesting and might explain why Ben arrived via Canada and changed his name to Miller. And it's probable that other ancestors left Russia to avoid the draft. It’s something to ponder. Only one known photo of Ben in the Czar's Army exists; he’s in the band.
A History of the Russian Military Draft
Adapted from: RU-mil 24282 961122 Military conscription in 19th century Russia
MILITARY CONSCRIPTION IN RUSSIA IN THE 19th CENTURY
By Dan Leeson NOTE: Editing by Ron Miller for this family history website.
A JewishGen InfoFile Subj: Conscription in Russia during the previous century
My original request was to satisfy a personal and genealogical curiosity about this subject since it seems to be a part of the fabric of every Jewish family that came to America from Russia ca. 1840 to ca. 1900. The warp and woof the fabric is that "Grandpa, in order to avoid conscription in the Russian Army ..." did this or that thing (mostly involving name changes but also self mutilation, and even the reported deliberate mutilation of children by their parents or townspeople). The name changing stories (or else a spelling change) is invariably the source for the stories of how "our name got changed from [xxx] to [yyy]." As both professional and amateur genealogists (my category being the latter), we spend years of research based on this kind of information. In my own case, I have been fighting that original name battle for almost a quarter century and I am no further in solving it now than I was at the inception of my research. And all of my effort is based on the family story that "Grandfather, in order to avoid conscription in the Russian Army changed his name from Leeson (or Leisen or Liesan or Leahson or goodness know what) to Rosenberg so as to disguise himself to the conscripting authorities." This family tradition, true or false, pervades my entire generation and will continue unchanged into the 21st century if I can't do something about it.
I became sufficiently interested in the history of the whole period that I spent some time researching it. And frankly, a lot of what I thought I knew is not consistent with the standard reference texts that deal with that epoch and that subject. Ordinarily, I would not bring this matter to Jewish Genealogy because, on the surface, it appears to be interesting history but not really genealogy. But because so many of us have these stories as core to our own genealogies, the reliability and accuracy of them must be examined. Often the direction that our genealogical research takes is based on these handed-down tales, but many of the things that we were told may fall into the realm of bube meises (i.e., old wives tales) that we have all accepted as fact (including me).
Now I find that some of these bube meises, charming and romantic though they may be, fail to pass some basic tests of reason. Let me begin by summarizing the legislation concerning military duty for Jewish males in Russia. Until 1827, Jews in Russia were forbidden to serve in the military. Instead they were taxed for being denied the right to serve their country, but this is simply another discriminatory variation of the Jew's tax. Mind you, the impossibility of a Jew serving in the Russian military did not come at the request of the Jewish community but from Russian law designed to prevent Jews from serving their country in this patriotic way. Any contrary position would have forced the Russian oligarchy into giving Jews a measure of political equality, something they had no intention of doing in any case. (In some countries where it was forbidden for Jews to serve in the armed forces of that nation, their absence in the armies was offered as evidence that Jews were cowards, unwilling to fight for their country.)
In 1827, personal military duty for Jews was first introduced in Russia, with recruits being from 12 to 25 years of age. The fact that 10 Jewish males were selected each year for every 1,000 Jews in the population, while only 7 non-Jewish males were selected every two years for each 1,000 non-Jews in the population shows that the conscription had an important discriminatory purpose that I will address myself to in a moment.
However, although Jews were permitted to serve in the military, rights for having done so were not granted to them until 1856. For example, prior to 1856, a 25 year non-Jewish veteran would be given land, though it might be in an inaccessible place. In 1856, Jewish veterans also became eligible to receive land for their 25 years of military service. A military code created in 1864 contained no special rules for Jews. At a later time, laws began to change and Jews were explicitly singled out for special and pejorative treatment. For example, in 1876 a law was passed that unfit Jewish recruits had to be replaced by healthy Jewish co-religionists; in 1878, the law was again changed this time to read that any shortage of Jews in a particular precinct had to be made up by drafting Jews from that same precinct even should those drafted be otherwise exempt from duty; in 1886, Jews were forbidden to transfer from one recruiting precinct to another.
General laws applicable to Jews included: (1) the family of a Jew who evaded military service was assessed a fine of 300 rubles; (2) capturing a Jew who evaded military service yielded a cash reward of 50 rubles. Between the years 1874 and 1892 (excluding 1883 for which no reliable figures are available), a total of 173,434 Jewish recruits were drafted. I think that you can see that this entire effort was far more disciplined than we have led to believe and it was not so easy to get out of being conscripted. I point out one final time, that I mention all of this because of its important relationship to our genealogical studies; i.e., I am beginning to be of the opinion that the stories that have sent many of us off in certain research directions, may not be nearly as accurate as we have traditionally been led to believe. The entire subject of conscription of Jews into the Russian army cannot be divorced from the apparently overwhelming desire of the Russian oligarchy to convert all Jews to Christianity. Many measures were instituted to accomplish that end including:
(1) the endowment of all rights accorded to Christians of the same rank to any baptized Jew;
(2) the exemption from taxes for three years to any Jewish convert, and;
(3) the most important, the establishment of an obligatory army service that previously was exclusionary.
The 1827 regulation that permitted Jews to serve in the army was, ostensibly, for the more equitable distribution of military burdens amongst all Russian citizens. But, in fact, the government was motivated solely by the desire to detach a large number of Jews from Jewish society, or else to transplant them elsewhere on Russian soil so as to deprive them of Jewish influence and, where practical, baptize them.
Transfers of this kind under Nicholas I were made with impunity. And any male between the ages of 12 and 25 could be conscripted for a standard period of 25 years. Special and oppressive conditions were devised for the Jews so as to increase the number of Jewish soldiers, including the induction of a far greater percentage of the Jewish population than the non-Jewish population. Further, Jews were obliged to furnish conscripts for every conscription term while non-Jews were exempted at various and unpredictable intervals.
Jews were conscripted for arrears in the payment of taxes (1 conscript for every 1,000 rubles). Eventually, conscripts were taken as a fine for being in arrears in the payment of taxes but without the indebtedness being discharged.
Now, from a genealogical point of view and with respect to the stories told to us, a critical moment arrives: because many able bodied men fled from Russia (thus beginning a new chapter in American immigration history that would lead to a flood of Jews arriving from Russia up to and beyond the turn of the century), the Jewish communities represented by Jewish committees called "kahals," were unable to furnish the number of recruits demanded. And since every conscript not furnished at the required time resulted in two additional conscripts being commanded, it became necessary to recruit cripples, invalids, old men, and others who had previously been held exempt. This included only sons, oldest sons, sole supporters of families, children as young as 8 years of age, and others who were thought to be exempt by virtue of their family or personal situations. The authorities would even go so far as conscripting the members of the kahal itself, and these were generally men of advanced age. But despite these draconian measures, the conscription arrears increased.
In 1853, the Jewish communities began to remedy this situation by seizing all Jews within their own districts who were without passports, or who belonged to other Jewish communities. These seized men were then included in their own quota of recruits. The head of a family, whatever his own standing, was given the right to seize such Jews and to deliver them to the authorities as substitutes for themselves or for members of their own families. It sounds terrible to say this but some of the reported behavior of Jews at this time appears similar to that of the Jewish kapos during the Holocaust. I mean no condemnation of anyone. Who knows how we might have behaved under these circumstances? So accept my comments as reportorial, not as criticism of the people of these awful times. In effect, the situation deteriorated to dog-eat-dog, and the notion of Jews protecting each other through various designs (such as adoptions, name changes, self-mutilation which often did nothing to exempt the mutilated person) may well be an invented and fanciful history created after the fact.
We all do the same thing today to avoid reflecting on a difficult moment of our own history. In my case, I remember being in the U.S. army with some affection at this distance of about 35 years, but when I was in it, it was awful. Alternatively, there may have been some early attempts to evade the conscription laws in precisely the ways that have been described to us. But, on seeing that they did not work, I suggest that they were abandoned early-on in favor of fleeing the country. The bottom line here is that exemptions were not protection against induction. If the kahal needed men to fill a quota of conscripts, the fact that a person was an only child (either in fact or out of invention) was not as useful as we have been led to believe.
A good example of this very case can be found in a short story by Sholom Aleichem, entitled "Back From the Draft." In this story, Aleichem describes how the subject's only son had to undergo four physical examinations by the Russian military authorities because his "gilt-edged, first-class exemption" was rendered worthless by a combination of administrative incompetence, a relocation from one district to another, and a peculiar case of Yiddish naming of the child which caused him to be confused with a previous, though dead, child. It is true that this is fiction, but as Norman Miller (nmiller@.trincoll.edu) suggested to me in his helpful note, "When you need the unadorned facts, turn to fiction." I also mention the book "The Journey of David Toback" as brought to my attention by David Chapin (dchapin@er.arco.com).
This is an oral history captured from Toback by his granddaughter. He describes his own conscription and his presentation of himself for medical examination at the induction center in a way that differs little from my military induction in New York City, except that a capricious doctor took a desperately sick Hasid into the army ("because he is strong enough to pray") but rejected Toback who was "ready and anxious to go into the army and fight for my beloved country and for the Tsar" as a joke.
In effect, exemption from military service seemed to mean little if anything and this, to my mind at least, casts considerable doubt on all the stories that we have heard about "Grandpa, in order to avoid conscription in the Russian army ..." So, for all those breaking their heads to find out Grandpa's original name, "before he went to live with the family whose name he took in order to avoid conscription in the Russian army," this may be an exercise in futility. This is because, in my opinion, there is question if these things happened in the way we were told.
I begin my conclusion of this period of history with a discussion of the cantonist movement. The men who were a part of it were, unofficially, called by the Russian "lovchiki" or the Yiddish "khapper" which is translated as both "bounty-hunter" or, more colloquially, "one who grabs." And it is with this activity that the stories of Jews avoiding conscription must come under closest scrutiny. This is what appears to have happened. The high quota that was demanded, the brutally severe conditions of service, and the knowledge that conscripts would be forced to contravene Jewish religious precepts and cut themselves off from their homes and families, made those liable for conscription try every means of evading it. The communal leaders who were made personally responsible for implementing the law took the easiest way out and filled the quota from children of the poorest homes. Every community had special officers, khappers, who seized the children, incarcerated them in the communal building and, finally, handed them over to the military authorities. The khappers were not scrupulous about adhering to the minimum age of 12 and frequently impressed children as young as 8. These were alleged by witnesses on oath to have reached the statutory age. These children were most frequently then spirited away to inaccessible places (cantonist institutions in Kazan, Orenburg [now Chklaov], Perm, and Siberia) from where they could not escape and return home, and where they waited until achieving the age of 12 at which point they were then formally inducted into the army. So it seems that something like half of the inductees would not have been to claim that they were sole supporters of families since this half was no older than 12 and more likely no older than 8. The radical author, A. Herzen, described a meeting in 1835 with a convoy of Jewish cantonists. "The officer who escorted them said, "They have collected a crew of cursed little Jew boys of 8 or 9 years old. Whether they are taking them for the navy or what, I can't say. At first, the orders were to drive them to Perm; then there was a change and we are driving them to Kazan. I took them over a hundred versts farther back.' The officer who handed them over said, 'It's dreadful, and that's all about it; a third were left on the way' (and the officer pointed to the earth). 'Not half will reach their destination,' he said. [material deleted] "They brought the children and formed them into regular ranks: it was one of the most awful sights I have ever seen, those poor, poor children! Boys of 12 or 13 might somehow have survived it, but little fellows of 8 ..." The bottom line of all this cantonist activity is this:
1) the khapper seized even Jews possessing legal (and illegal) passports;
2) the possession of a deferral based on physical condition was irrelevant;
3) the poimaniki (or the ones who were khapper), were impressed into service with no ability secure redress;
4) children were the special objects of such raids though no man was safe upon leaving his home;
5) several sources give the clear impression that the khappers, themselves, were Jews;
it is ironic that the word "khapper" appears to be a variant of "kapo" though, in fact, it is not. Insofar as Jews self-mutilating themselves by cutting off toes, a foot, fingers, an ear, etc., this may indeed have been done by the most desperate. But the stories that parents maimed their children in this way cannot, in my view, be accepted at face value. Does any Jew think that local rabbinic authority would have encouraged, permitted, tolerated (chose whatever word you wish) the physical mutilation of children for any purpose whatsoever? Does any Jew think that a parent would do such a thing to their child, no matter what the provocation? That parents have killed their children in defense of HaShem is well documented both in the times of the Crusades, and also in the best-known case of Masada, but deliberate mutilation of children is not only unknown, it is a disgusting suggestion. And not for one moment do I believe these stories or any others of this nature on the basis of the evidence presented. However, there were reported cases of children who were made unfit for service (or at least an attempt was made to make them unfit) by not permitting them to sleep for days, running them around town for hours until were exhausted, and starving them, etc. I can understand, believe, and accept this, but physical mutilation? No! This leaves us with only one question yet to be addressed: why do these stories exist? And for that, I suggest a plausible but invented hypothesis.
Most of the adult Jewish males who came to the United States came here with forged paper, fleeing Russia as illegal emigrants, which, to a certain extent, made them illegal immigrants. These people were terrified that their illegal presence in the U.S. would become known and both they and their families would be unwillingly returned to Russia. As a consequence, they made up stories that made their presence in the U.S. quasi legal; i.e., as the purported only son of a family (and they had forged documents in support of that - - my great, great uncle Moshe Singer of Reading, PA was such a forger), they would say that this legally excused them from service in the Russian army, and their presence here was much more lawful, at least in their eyes. But if it were to be found out that their entire paperwork trail was based on an illegal flight from a sovereign state, they foresaw nothing but trouble. So they made up bube meises, and their children repeated them, and we heard them, and we pass them on to our children. And we spend years trying to find the "Smith" family whose name they adopted when they became the erstwhile only child of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And there is no such family because the whole thing never happened that way. I ask you to accept that, while I am talking as if I know something, in fact, I do not. This is a lot of speculation based on the principle of Occam's Razor; i.e., given a situation, the most likely cause of that situation is the simplest suggestion, not an elaborate and complicated one. In closing, I end with three points:
1) Under Tsar Alexander (assassinated in the 1880s), the service duration of 25 years was reduced to 5-10 years. When Alexander was assassinated the Jews of Russia considered this a great calamity and the emigration to the United States doubled and tripled right after his death. Why? They feared reinstitution of the 25 year military service requirement.
2) Many Jews considered it their duty to serve in the Russian army and Sholom Aleichem, in a serious story, comments on how two Jews spend Passover, proud of their ability to be of service to their country. When such men completed their 25 years of service, they were considered heros as they returned to an often very different village from that which they had left 25 years earlier.
3) As in every time, Jews felt an obligation to serve their country in a military way. It was only the attitude of the Russian government that prevented them from doing so before 1827. After that date, the military was treated by the Russian government as a vehicle for the persecution of Jews, so it is little wonder that they did not want to serve. Even so, many did. I do not assert that Jews did not serve in the Russian military, only that their service took on characteristics that caused a normally tolerant and patriotic people to try and avoid that service, though not in the ways that have been transmitted to use by our ancestors.