Archive for the ‘moldova’ Category
I first read Russell Hoban in about 1982, at the suggestion of my English literature teacher. Hoban’s post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker is set in East Kent, where I grew up and was attending school, which fact no doubt played some part in the recommendation. Whether it was otherwise an appropriate recommendation for a teenager is rather doubtful (although no more doubtful than the early works of Ian McEwan and the complete oeuvre of Samuel Beckett, which were also on the list my teacher gave me to while away that particular long summer holiday).
It was only when Hoban died earlier this month that I realised that he was not an Englishman but an American, and in fact the American-born child of Jewish immigrants. In the 1930 US census, he appears as the five-year old Pennsylvania-born Russell Conwell (sic), and is described as being the nephew of the newspaper advertising editor Abraham Hochban and his wife Jennie, Yiddish-speaking Russian Jews from Volhynia (or “Poland, Voline”, as it says in the census return). Wikipedia states that Russell was the son of this couple and that Conwell was his middle name not his surname, so presumably there is a clerical error in the census and/or a mistake on Wikipedia.
Abraham or Abram Hochban had married Jennie Dimmermann in Philadelphia in 1915 and became naturalised as a US citizen in 1922.
He had arrived in Philadelphia on 30th November 1913, on board the “Frankfurt” from Bremen in Germany. He appears in the incoming passenger list as Avram Gochbahn, not Hochban or Hochbahn. It is always worth remembering when undertaking genealogical research involving Russian records that the Russian alphabet lacks the letter H and uses the G instead. It is therefore not unusual to find names which we expect to begin with an H to be shown with a G in Russian language records and in English or German language records for which Russian language documents have been the source (as is the case here). Avram is recorded as being aged 19 (i.e. born circa 1894), single, and a clerk; his address (and that of his next of kin, his mother) appears to be Warschau (i.e. Warsaw).
The naturalisation papers give his date of birth as 3 June 1894. The passenger list states that Abraham had been born in Ostrog in Volhynia (now Ostroh in Ukraine). However, the naturalisation papers suggest that he was actually born in “Orgeiw”, Bessarabia (today Orhei in Moldova) but had been resident in Ostrog before emigration. Where was he actually born? Research would be necessary to determine this but it may be that Orhei, which like Ostrog had a thriving Jewish population, is the better candidate. In this instance, the need for caution is thrown up by the discrepancy in the records but, even where records appear consistent, one should still be cautious – across the Russian Empire the names of towns were often also the names of provinces or districts, and it cannot be automatically assumed that the town itself is intended.
Who was recruited?
In the early 18th century, the expectation was that one man would be enlisted into the army from every 20 families within a community each year. All social estates, high and low, were liable for military service. However, over the decades many privileges and exemptions were granted so that by 1858 an estimated 20% of the otherwise eligible male population of the Empire was in fact exempt – this included landowners, members of merchant guilds, those with a higher education and the like, but also all those living in specific regions of empire such as Bessarabia. The burden of “other ranks” military service therefore fell heaviest on the peasantry and the urban poor.
How were recruits selected?
In rural Russia, the peasant community itself – the mir – was responsible for putting forward a list of candidates. While the mir or commune probably knew who among its members was eligible for the draft, the undertaking of the Russian censuses, producing the periodic but somewhat irregular revision lists (now of great value to family historians with roots in the former Russian Empire), formalised the process by identifying and recording the population. Unlike censuses in Britain, for example, which were used solely for social planning, the Russian revisions were used explicitly for taxation and conscription purposes.
Each year, the commune produced a shortlist of potential recruits which was then submitted to an army induction centre set up temporarily for the purpose in the nearest town in the volost or uezd (or district). The requisite number of men would then be conscripted into the army, while those not selected could expect to be put forward again the following year. Of course, some men were rejected by the army for not meeting its physical criteria and would unlikely to be conscripted in any year. Others, such as those with disabilities, were deselected by the commune itself and never made the list. To a certain extent, both the commune and the army were sensitive to the fact that each conscript was a lost worker and a lost taxpayer, with the peasants knowing that someone else would have to make up the deficit in labour and money. This meant that there was usually a conscious effort to spare only sons, or only working males in families. In a household of many brothers or sons, it was almost inevitable that one or more would be drafted. However, it was also possible for wealthier farmers to use influence or to purchase a surrogate from a different community to take the place of their brother or son who had been placed on the shortlist. Finally, commune members perceived to be unproductive, or exhibiting anti-social behaviour or committing petty crimes, would be sure to top the shortlist.
While therefore the commune exercised a measure of influence over who was recruited and who not, it is easy to see that the whole process of conscription was a source of stress and tension within each community. This was particularly the case as army service was neither short nor sweet…
How long did a soldier serve in the army?
- Before 1793, a soldier could expect to serve in the Russian army for life.
- From 1793, this was reduced to 25 years.
- From 1834, military service was reduced to 20 years.
- From 1874, the term of service was reduced to 18 years, of which initially the first 5 years were to be spent in the regular standing army and the subsequent 13 years in the reserves. However, later this was changed to 3 years in the army and 15 years in the reserves.
What happened to a new recruit?
Enlistment into the army was a transformational experience. Not only would the recruit very probably leave the vicinity of his native village for the first time but he would be unlikely to return for many years, if at all. Instead, he would be swallowed up into the army corpus, be billeted upon unwilling householders and endure all the hardships of army life which were severe even during peacetime.
However, something else rather peculiar immediately happened to a new recruit. His legal status in Russian society changed. That change was a form of emancipation, albeit deferred until such time as he was discharged from the army. Upon joining the army he ceased to be exposed to any of his former tax or labour obligations, whether to state, church or landowner. Effectively, he was now a free man, just a free man conscripted into the unfreedom of army life.
What about soldiers’ wives and children?
If a recruit was already married, with or without children, the usual scenario was long term separation. There was no easy mechanism for wives and children to go upon the strength, although some managed to continue to cohabit with their men when they were stationed in garrisons or fortresses. Instead, the recruit’s family was subject to great uncertainty and potential hardship. Wives, too, became legally free when the soldier attested. This meant also that they were entitled to an internal passport granting freedom of movement and employment. However, a disproportionate number of wives either drifted into prostitution in towns, or had illegitimate children; some remarried bigamously.
Soldiers’ children were a subcategory in the system of social estates. Sons, including until 1856 the illegitimate children of soldiers’ wives (where the soldier was not himself the father), were registered and expected to enter military service when they came of age.
In Imperial Russia, the status of women and children was determined by that of their husbands or fathers. This is why a soldier’s wife became free when he was recruited. However, this also meant that a soldier’s widow who remarried could become a serf or a peasant owing normal dues once again, and similarly a soldier’s daughter who married a serf lost her free status and became herself enserfed (until emancipation).
Unmarried recruits were of course strongly discouraged from marrying.
What happened to a soldier once discharged from the army?
If a soldier survived the hardships of a full term in the army, he would be discharged to enjoy for the first time and as best he could the freedoms he had acquired when he was recruited. Now he had theoretical freedom of movement; he was exempt from taxation; he did not have to labour for the landlord. However, at the same time he received only a small lump sum and had no immediate means of support. Therefore he was also free to become jobless and hungry and poor. In these circumstances, it was not unusual for a discharged soldier to have to live upon charity, or to become a hawker or a casual labourer, or to struggle to ply a trade. Other old soldiers entered state service as messengers or guards, or in the police or fire services. Additionally, until reforms in 1867, significant numbers of retired soldiers were settled in so-called veterans’ towns or on virgin lands owned or claimed by the state, often in frontier situations.
Others where they could returned to their native village to farm the family plot if it still existed, or to buy a new plot if they had the money. In fact, the 1867 returns henceforth required discharged soldiers to return to the community from which they had been recruited, at least partly to prevent the social problems associated with ex-soldiers which were a growing cause for concern in cities and towns.
A family historian in the English-speaking world searching speculatively for the marriage of an ancestor on an unknown date does not usually consider seasonality; that is, they have no preconceptions as to whether a wedding would or would not have taken place at any particular time of year. Furthermore, one rarely comes across any especially noticeable peaks or troughs in the frequency of marriages across the calendar year. Couples get married all year round, perhaps in the post-WW2 world showing a preference for summer weddings.
In contrast, in most rural societies across Eastern Europe before WW2 and certainly before WW1 when traditional ways of life were still very much intact, there was marked seasonality of marriage. This is reflected in the pages of any volume of a parish marriage register.
One of the two chief factors was the agricultural year. Throughout the growing season and especially during the harvest, farmers, smallholders and peasants were joined in the fields and in the processing of harvested crops by just about every available hand – villagers of both sexes and all ages would be involved and frequently laboured both long days and by moonlight. During this period, there was generally no time for marriage.
The second factor was the religious calendar. In particular, fasting created marriage seasonality. Especially in Eastern Orthodox communities, marriage was an occasion of extended feasting and therefore incompatible with the fasts, during which meat, dairy produce, rich oils and so on were eschewed. There are various individual feast days during the Orthodox calendar, upon which it would be unthinkable for a wedding to be celebrated. But more to the point there were two fasts of great length.
The first fast was the great or holy fast of the seven weeks of Lent. For instance, in the Serbian Orthodox calendar, traditionally the Church celebrated no marriages between Bele Poklade (a moveable feast, “white Shrovetide”, the last Sunday before Lent) and Đurđevdan (St George’s Day, 6th May).
The second fast took place over the 40 days leading up to Christmas. Again, for the Serbian Orthodox calendar, this is the Božićni Post period from 28th November up to Božić, the Orthodox Christmas itself, on 7th January.
Marriages therefore tended to cluster between these two extended feasts. Factoring in the principal months of agricultural activity, this produced a spate of weddings from mid-January to early March, and again from October to late November.
Of course, for other Orthodox societies, the harvest might move a few weeks according to latitude, altitude, climate and other factors. Similarly, fasting at Lent might well take place over fewer weeks. However, the pattern itself remains largely true and produces the same seasonal peaks in marriage.
The Temporary Regulations of May 1882 required Jews within the Pale of Settlement to settle only in towns and cities. In Bessarabia, which was situated within the Pale, some towns were demoted to the status of village to debar Jews from residence. Town and city limits were also redefined to reduce the immediately surrounding area available to Jews. In addition, Jews were forbidden to reside in an international border strip 50 versts (about 53 km) wide; as Bessarabia was a border province, this meant that a significant area of land along the Russian border with Romania was also out of bounds. Rights of residence for Jews were therefore strictly delimited in Bessarabia to around 40 larger settlements.
And of course they were subject to all the other civil and political disabilities imposed upon the Jews throughout Russia.
They were subject to two special taxes: the box tax (collected on kosher meat, at slaughter and sale) and the candle tax (on candles lit in synagogues). The community as a whole was made to make up the deficit of a Jewish tax defaulter.
Quotas (of from 2% to 10% of intake) controlled the admittance of Jews to high schools and universities, while other higher education institutes elsewhere in the empire (such as the Moscow Medical Academy and the Veterinary Institute in Kharkiv) were completely closed. Jewish school teachers were forbidden from teaching Russian to their pupils.
Jews could not enter government service, with the sole exception of doctors. They were usually prohibited from serving as elected representatives of zemstvo or town assemblies or artisan boards, or were restricted by quotas, as in the case of aldermen and guilds.
Jews could not become officers in the Russian army but were required to undertake military service; for various reasons, a higher proportion of the Jewish population was enlisted. A collective punishment was exacted, so that a Jewish family as a whole was held responsible for draft-dodgers in its midst, to the tune of a 300 ruble fine.
And in Bessarabia, as elsewhere in Russia, the Jews were resented for their acumen and their success in the remaining fields left open to them: as landowners’ preferred tenant farmers, as vine growers and inn keepers, as orchard men and tobacco growers, as middlemen and agents, as traders and exporters, and as money-lenders. What is interesting but probably not at all unusual is that the anti-Semitic feelings which led to the April 1903 pogroms in the Bessarabian capital Kishinev definitely appear to have been orchestrated and encouraged by the provincial government and police, and stoked by local media agitation, rather than being a spontaneous outburst of animosity from the townspeople. 42 Jews were killed, countless Jewish properties damaged and a community temporarily divided.