Power and "native" Jews: the Russian imperial bureaucracy and Mountain Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

The 1880s and 1890s witnessed an intensification of Tsarist policy towards the Jews of the Russian Empire. In 1892, for example, a law directed towards the Jews of Kuban and Cossack areas in the Caucasus was promulgated. In preparing the law, officials failed to notice, either intentionally or accidentally, that alongside European Jews of the Kuban and Terek region resided Mountain Jews. There were, therefore, problems with the implementation of this law especially in relation to Mountain Jews. This led to considerable controversy. This study demonstrates the manner in which officials attempted to solve the Jewish question in the Russian Empire. It focuses on the impact of officialdom at various levels of the Tsarist regime on the lives of Mountain Jews. Its principal sources are drawn from various documents and correspondence between government officials on the matter of the Mountain Jews.(1)