Alternate Pale of settlement

[mike of mass]

First time trying a thread

Catherine II decides to kill two birds with one stone. After the completion of the St Petersberg to Moscow railway in 1851. She has the grand idea to extend the railroad to Vladivostok. She also wants to segregate the Jews in the empire. So the Entire Jewish community is impressed to build the railroad in the process of being exiled to Alaska . There are tremendous hardships along the way. Great tragic Yiddish novels are written. It is said that for every mile of track are ten Jewish graves. The railway is completed in 1863. The Jewish communities of eastern Poland,Belarus, the Baltics, Moldova , Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakstan are no more. Their people transfered to Alaska. More die of starvation until an agricultural base can be set up. However, the smithing and construction skills learnt on the railroad allow the building of homes , hospitals and schools. The local Inuit are initially ignored by the Exiles. There is some trade and use of Jewish hospitals and schools.The Jewish population is estimated (WAG) as 2 million. There is a very small Russian Garrison to show who's boss.
It is now 1866. Seward has made his offer to Russia.

 

[DanMcCollum]

Shooting from the hip:

1) This is going to make Catherine look like a Monster. anti-Semitism was certainly a thing during this area, bit basically forcing millions of people to move to a frozen waste and the deaths that result are going to confirm much of Europe's fears and stereotypes of Russia (undermining much of Catherine's work)

2) Catherine certainly wants to settle Alaska, but would doing so with an ethnic community that is now sure to hate Russia really the best way to do it? One of the benefits of the Pale is it kept the Jewish elements close, on case they caused problems, and also a minority within the region. Here, you're putting a concentrating a large and hostile population as far away from Russia's center of power as possible and asking them to stay loyal. They may - at first, while they struggle to establish themselves - but after that?

3) Would there even still be a sale? One of the reasons Russia sold in OTL was they needed the money and Alaska was sparcely settled and not productive. Here it IS settled and more productive than in OTL. Of course, it's also likely a hotbed of sedition and anti-Russian sentiment.

 

[mike of mass]

Shooting from the hip:

1) This is going to make Catherine look like a Monster. anti-Semitism was certainly a thing during this area, bit basically forcing millions of people to move to a frozen waste and the deaths that result are going to confirm much of Europe's fears and stereotypes of Russia (undermining much of Catherine's work)

I dare say that at the time most of Western Europe could give two shits about the Jews. Some might even consider using that example to exile the Jews to their remote outposts. I suspect there was a reason that people believed the Jews were being exiled to Madagascar in WW2. It was a trope.

2) Catherine certainly wants to settle Alaska, but would doing so with an ethnic community that is now sure to hate Russia really the best way to do it? One of the benefits of the Pale is it kept the Jewish elements close, on case they caused problems, and also a minority within the region. Here, you're putting a concentrating a large and hostile population as far away from Russia's center of power as possible and asking them to stay loyal. They may - at first, while they struggle to establish themselves - but after that?

The Jews may hate the Russian empire BUT at the time the Jews were thought to be the least martial of the races. The stereotype is weak and cowardly and without access to weapons. Perhaps the garrison is a bit larger.

3) Would there even still be a sale? One of the reasons Russia sold in OTL was they needed the money and Alaska was sparcely settled and not productive. Here it IS settled and more productive than in OTL. Of course, it's also likely a hotbed of sedition and anti-Russian sentiment.

Between 1863 and 1866, I doubt a lot of tax revenues would be flowing into Russia's coffers to consider it valuable. It may be a hotbed of antiRussian incitement but it is far away and soon to be someone else's problem. The bigger question might be would Seward want Alaska knowing it has a large Jewish population? I am not certain of prevailing attitudes towards Jews in the USA at the time.

 

[Coyote_Waits]

I have a somewhat similar idea I've been batting around:

Sometime in 19th century Jews are offered a second Pale of Settlement in southern central asia (ie "the stans" minus Kazakhstan) where their colonial communities will be granted a significant degree of autonomy. This could remove Jews from angry Christian peasants (possibly out of frying pan -> into fire but I don't know enough about attitudes of central asians towards jews to say) and increases development of central asia for Russia.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

Catherine II still alive in 1860s???

 

[mike of mass]

Catherine II still alive in 1860s???

whoops! the timeline needs railroads at the beginning of the establishment of the Pale of settlement. I am off by a century. the railroads don't really start until the 1820s and she's dead in 1796. I guess we'll need Alexander II to be the villain here deciding to remove the Jews from the European "civilized" part of the empire to the hinterlands and in the process building his railroads.

 

[DanMcCollum]

Catherine II still alive in 1860s???

Oh god, I missed that in the OP too. Sorry about that!

 

[Nephi]

Well the US may well not purchase Alaska being the racist fucks people were back then, an icebox full of Jews no thanks.

Now maybe we can also delay the discovery of gold, leaving a very Jewish Alaska.

Maybe history still flows kinda the same USSR is established, the Alaskans set up their own state.

Then gold is found, New Israel is quite a good position.

 

[mike of mass]

Let's try this. In order to gain more support in emancipating the serfs, Alexander II forces the Jews of the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, eastern Poland etc to build his transsiberian railroad with their eventual exile to the Pale of Settlement in Alaska. After great hardship and many deaths, a community of some 2 million Jews is established in Myklat ( refuge) what is called New Arkangel IOTL . It is an impoverished settlement of whalers, fishermen, yeshivas and a rudimentary shipyard. The Russians begin finding it difficult to finance Alexander II's reforms having alienated most Jewish bankers and fearing becoming indebted to the British or German crowns. In an act of desperation, they offer Alaska as collateral. A Rothschild takes them up on it.

 

[alexmilman]

First time trying a thread

Catherine II decides to kill two birds with one stone. After the completion of the St Petersberg to Moscow railway in 1851. She has the grand idea to extend the railroad to Vladivostok. She also wants to segregate the Jews in the empire. So the Entire Jewish community is impressed to build the railroad in the process of being exiled to Alaska . There are tremendous hardships along the way. Great tragic Yiddish novels are written. It is said that for every mile of track are ten Jewish graves. The railway is completed in 1863. The Jewish communities of eastern Poland,Belarus, the Baltics, Moldova , Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakstan are no more. Their people transfered to Alaska. More die of starvation until an agricultural base can be set up. However, the smithing and construction skills learnt on the railroad allow the building of homes , hospitals and schools. The local Inuit are initially ignored by the Exiles. There is some trade and use of Jewish hospitals and schools.The Jewish population is estimated (WAG) as 2 million. There is a very small Russian Garrison to show who's boss.
It is now 1866. Seward has made his offer to Russia.

Thanks for the good laugh, the reading was quite entertaining.

As already was established, Catherine II was a little bit dead well before 1851.

Alexander II hardly could be planning the project at that time by two fundamental reasons: he became an emperor only in 1855 and Vladivostok was founded only in 1860 and it’s initial population was 31 people. Formally, it was still on the Chinese territory until 1881 and before that time possession of the area was hotly disputed (Manza War of 1868). So why would anybody decide to build a railroad to this destination during that time is a complete enigma.

Regarding the main idea, you are seriously confusing imperial Russia with the Stalinist SU: things like that could not happen because they could not happen (strange as it may sound, Russian Empire had laws) and an idea of deporting all the Jews to Alaska is beyond being silly (or really silly, whatever you prefer). BTW, in the 1850’s big part of the modern Kazakhstan (not sure if it had any noticeable Jewish population at that time) did not yet belong to Russia so before expelling the (most probably non-existing) Jews from there, the conquest had to be completed. Not sure if there was a noticeable Jewish population in Georgia circa 1850’s either.

Of course, building a railroad to Vladivostok with a purpose of transporting big numbers of people to Alaska is an interesting idea because, if you look at the map, you can easily find out that they are separated by more than 3,000 km of the salty water (Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea) and that for getting from point A to point B you need ships (in an absense of Moses, the divine intervention was highly unlikely). And for transporting 2,000,000 people (with some supplies, agricultural implements, livestock, etc.) you need a LOT of ships. Not available in any significant numbers until the end of the XIX and even then not adequate for the task. Not to mention that the main Russian port on the Pacific coast was, during that period, Petropavlovsk and then Nicholaevsk on Amur, not Vladivostok. Well, of course areas along the route would not be able to support couple millions people moving along: local population was too small to produce the needed amounts of food. It is an open question if Alaska of the 1860s could support population of 2M: as of now its population is slightly above 700K with most of the food being imported.

Then, while I’m not a big admirer of AII and his mental capacities, he was well aware of the fact that building railroads in the European Russia is a much higher priority both economically and strategically and that, even as the way to get rid of the Jews, the project would require enormous resources at the expense of those having higher priority. Of course, Alaska as a destination point would be rather preposterous by two main reasons: (a) even its existing population was surviving only due to the food supplies from Hudson Bay Company and (b) along the route there were numerous places with practically no Russian population (and very little population in general).

I’m not sure why deportation of the Jews would somehow provide AII with a greater support for emancipation of the serfs. Support from whom and why? The Jews had been practically absent in the European Russia (as in “Russia proper”) and were not a factor one way or another. On the former PLC territories the problem was the Polish nobility, not the Jews.

Probably I missed few things here and there.

 

[PGSBHurricane]

Also, wasn't Alexander II the Emperor under whom the Jews were best off there? I suppose this scenario COULD work but it would have to be after Alexander II's assassination in 1881. It was in 1882 under his predecessor with the September Laws (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) that the Jews were basically restricted to the Pale and the wave of pogroms and emigration began en masse. Perhaps it would be in 1882 where the POD would be.

 

[alexmilman]

Also, wasn't Alexander II the Emperor under whom the Jews were best off there? I suppose this scenario COULD work but it would have to be after Alexander II's assassination in 1881. It was in 1882 under his predecessor with the September Laws (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) that the Jews were basically restricted to the Pale and the wave of pogroms and emigration began en masse. Perhaps it would be in 1882 where the POD would be.

AIII was successor of AII

Probably you are talking about so-called “Temporary rules” also known as “May rules” which severely restricted ability of the Jews to live and conduct business in the rural areas. With the exception of those with university diplomas these rules applied even to those who had a right to live outside the Pale.

But by the tune of AIII Alaska already was not Russian and idea of the rules was rather opposite to what had been proposed in OP: massive movement of the Jews all over the Empire. Well, using the whole nation as a forced labor would be too much even for AIII.

 

[Peppe]

Since the idea of simply causing a minor Jwish Genocide isn't possible in a variety of ways, do any of you think it's possible for Catherine (or Alexander) to propose the moving of jewish people to Alaska by boat to settle the region? They can even try to sell it to them as "a chance to gain an autonomous region for themselves)

 

[DanMcCollum]

Since the idea of simply causing a minor Jwish Genocide isn't possible in a variety of ways, do any of you think it's possible for Catherine (or Alexander) to propose the moving of jewish people to Alaska by boat to settle the region? They can even try to sell it to them as "a chance to gain an autonomous region for themselves)

Well, Catherine the Great was the one who invited Germans into her realm to help settle the Crimea and Volga region, after offering them land and promising them the right to avoid the draft, have children educated in their own language, and the the maintenance of their own religion

So, the point is, Catherine wasn't against offering ethnic communities certain rights in order to settle land which the Russian Empire wanted settled

So, it's at least possible. I guess I don't know how Catherine viewed the Jewish people of her realm and whether she'd trust them enough to settle a far off region. A lot would depend on those views

 

[alexmilman]

Since the idea of simply causing a minor Jwish Genocide isn't possible in a variety of ways, do any of you think it's possible for Catherine (or Alexander) to propose the moving of jewish people to Alaska by boat to settle the region? They can even try to sell it to them as "a chance to gain an autonomous region for themselves)

A complete and impractical fantasy technically, politically and legally. And a notion of the “autonomous region” terminologicalky belongs to the Soviet times.

Leaving other issues aside, how many “boats” would you need and what, in your opinion, would be their route? Then try to figure out the shipping capacities of the Russian empire in the XVIII. BTW, just “Alexander” is meaningless: which one?

 

[PGSBHurricane]

AIII was successor of AII

Probably you are talking about so-called “Temporary rules” also known as “May rules” which severely restricted ability of the Jews to live and conduct business in the rural areas. With the exception of those with university diplomas these rules applied even to those who had a right to live outside the Pale.

But by the tune of AIII Alaska already was not Russian and idea of the rules was rather opposite to what had been proposed in OP: massive movement of the Jews all over the Empire. Well, using the whole nation as a forced labor would be too much even for AIII.

Sorry about that. My mistake. It was late at night and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I could have been. I was thinking that AII wasn’t anti-Semitic enough to have the Jews go through with the proposal in the OP.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

Sorry about that. My mistake. It was late at night and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I could have been. I was thinking that AII wasn’t anti-Semitic enough to have the Jews go through with the proposal in the OP.

Alexander II would need to be Hitler-level antisemite to do this. That would be worse than Madagascar Plan (Madagascar, at least, supports population of 25 millions, while Alaska has fewer than 800 000, with almost all food being imported from other parts of US).

 

[DanMcCollum]

Alexander II would need to be Hitler-level antisemite to do this. That would be worse than Madagascar Plan (Madagascar, at least, supports population of 25 millions, while Alaska has fewer than 800 000, with almost all food being imported from other parts of US).

You know, the OP as described, doesn't work - I think we all agree on that. But, as someone who lived in Alaska for a few years (and who has a soft spot for the Yiddish Policemen's Union. Not the most plausible of scenarios, but a beautifully written book!), I'm kinda taken with the idea of a Jewish Alaska colony now.

So, let me try this: let's stop looking at this from a top down imposition upon Russia's Jewish population, and instead look at the idea as coming from the Jewish community itself.

So, let's say that a wealthy Jewish intellectual during the early 19th century is moved by the plight of his brethren in the Pale. He approaches the Czar with a proposal: Russia needs Alaska settled to stop pressure on the colony from Britain and others. He asks for permission to help fund a Jewish colony in the region. The Czar, for whatever reason is taken with the idea - he agrees to the proposal under a few conditions (the governor of the colony would remain a Russian. The colony would have to be self funded, etc).

With the help of a group of other funders, a Colonial Company is formed. The first wave of settlers is neccessarily small, just s few hundred. But, hey, each farmer is granted a large tract of land (not good land, mind you, but farming land is hard to come by in the Pale, and so it's better than nothing). Life isn't easy for the first few years, obviously, but the fishing is good, and there's money to be made in furs.

The community passes the threshold ,and becomes becomes economically self sufficient, and begins to grow. Although it never becomes a huge boon to the company (which, really, was started as a charity project dressed up as a company anyway), it doesn't sink it either. Word spreads that his cold land at least offers religious freedom and is free of the sort of oppression which was all too common in the Pale. There are, it seems, far worse places to be - and some have been able to make a pretty successful living for themselves.

By the time of the OTL sale (which may or may not happen here), the European population of Alaska is majority Jewish, and is mostly huddled around Sitka and the Panhandle region, though some settlements have begun to spread outside of this area of initial settlement.

So, yeah. Pretty vague, and I'm sure there are those who could drive a truck through some of the holes in my reasoning. But, it's a fun scenario to at least consider.

 

[alexmilman]

Sorry about that. My mistake. It was late at night and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I could have been. I was thinking that AII wasn’t anti-Semitic enough to have the Jews go through with the proposal in the OP.

Neither was AIII with all his antisemitism. Not to mention a complete technical, political and economic impracticality of the idea and the fact that Alaska was not Russian anymore.

 

[alexmilman]

You know, the OP as described, doesn't work - I think we all agree on that. But, as someone who lived in Alaska for a few years (and who has a soft spot for the Yiddish Policemen's Union. Not the most plausible of scenarios, but a beautifully written book!), I'm kinda taken with the idea of a Jewish Alaska colony now.

So, let me try this: let's stop looking at this from a top down imposition upon Russia's Jewish population, and instead look at the idea as coming from the Jewish community itself.

So, let's say that a wealthy Jewish intellectual during the early 19th century is moved by the plight of his brethren in the Pale. He approaches the Czar with a proposal: Russia needs Alaska settled to stop pressure on the colony from Britain and others. He asks for permission to help fund a Jewish colony in the region. The Czar, for whatever reason is taken with the idea - he agrees to the proposal under a few conditions (the governor of the colony would remain a Russian. The colony would have to be self funded, etc).

With the help of a group of other funders, a Colonial Company is formed. The first wave of settlers is neccessarily small, just s few hundred. But, hey, each farmer is granted a large tract of land (not good land, mind you, but farming land is hard to come by in the Pale, and so it's better than nothing). Life isn't easy for the first few years, obviously, but the fishing is good, and there's money to be made in furs.

The community passes the threshold ,and becomes becomes economically self sufficient, and begins to grow. Although it never becomes a huge boon to the company (which, really, was started as a charity project dressed up as a company anyway), it doesn't sink it either. Word spreads that his cold land at least offers religious freedom and is free of the sort of oppression which was all too common in the Pale. There are, it seems, far worse places to be - and some have been able to make a pretty successful living for themselves.

By the time of the OTL sale (which may or may not happen here), the European population of Alaska is majority Jewish, and is mostly huddled around Sitka and the Panhandle region, though some settlements have begun to spread outside of this area of initial settlement.

So, yeah. Pretty vague, and I'm sure there are those who could drive a truck through some of the holes in my reasoning. But, it's a fun scenario to at least consider.

The Russian Jews of that period were not too much into the agriculture so it is not quite obvious why would they suddenly develop any enthusiasm to it. Then, between 1856 and 1867 bringing any noticeable number of people from the European Russia to Alaska was close to impossible: it required sailing all the way from the Baltic or Black Sea ports in an absence of either Suez or Panama Canal (figure out the route) and Russia had practically nothing in the terms of an ocean-going merchant fleet. I’m not quite sure why during that period the Jewish farmers (without any experience) would be noticeably more successful than the Russian ones who at least had been peasants but failed in Alaska and were only marginally successful in California.

Then, the motivations are wrong:

1st, Russia did not need Alaska. Its possession made some sense when it was a big-scale fur supplier but by the mid-XIX the sea otters and other valuable sea mammals of the region were close to extinction and the Russian-American Company (there already was a “colonial company”) existed on the government’s subsidies. After the Treaty of Peking which finalized Russian-Chinese border, providing the newly acquired territories on the Pacific Coast with at least some Russian-speaking population was a much higher priority for Russia (task that was not anywhere close to the completion even by 1917). Still, when a massive settlement of Siberia started, the Jews were (at least for a while) prohibited from moving there. In other words, Alaska was a liability and having few successful farmers or even a gold rush (by that time plenty of gold was discovered in Siberia) would not change this fact. The question was how to get rid of it without loss of the face.(*)

2nd, the ideological basis behind the anti-Semitic programs of AIII was an assumption that the Jews are not loyal to the regime. Which means that creating a region where an overwhelming majority of the population is Jewish is somewhat counterproductive from the “imperial” point of view (forget about Alaska, any region). Much easier and logical (from this perspective) would be just arrange for shipping people to the US, which eventually did happen in OTL. BTW, an overwhelming majority of these immigrants did not became farmers even if the opportunity was there.


Edit:

(*) And preferably getting some money, which Russia desperately needed. Practically all money received for Alaska had been spent on purchase of the railroad equipment abroad.