The Shield/Concerning the Legal Status of the Jews

by Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy

 

 

⁠Count Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy, born in 1858, occupied the post of Minister of Public Instruction at the time of Count Witte's premiership. In 1907 he was a candidate for election to the Duma, as deputy from Petrograd. A distinguished archeologist and connoisseur of art, he was for many years the vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.

 

 

CONCERNING THE LEGAL
STATUS OF THE JEWS

By COUNT IVAN TOLSTOY

"THEREFORE all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." (St. Matthew, 7, 12.) This is the divine law, which it is the task of every one who considers and feels himself a Christian to follow, and which should also be strictly observed by a State. Now, would any one of the Christians who owe their allegiance to the Russian state consent to be treated as the Jews are in Russia? Would he like to be confined within a certain definite zone of settlement, to be kept from giving his children an education, and to find himself excluded from many fields of honest and honourable endeavour? Would he like, all through his life to be humiliated before his co-citizens of other faith and birth?

You despise them, hate them, and accuse them of all that it may please any maniac or liar to invent about them. Yet you demand of the Jews that they should help you, when you stand in need of help. You, Jew-haters, serve somebody or something, but truly it is not God, it is not the cause of goodness that you are serving. In your blindness you harm, above all, yourself and our country, our dear, long-suffering Russia, whom the Jews, your co-citizens, love and cannot help loving more than you do. They know that Russia hates none of her faithful and loving children and that they are hated only by people, who, either by nature or because of a poor education, cannot exist without hating some one or something. By their deeds ye shall know them, these wolves disguised as sheep.

Combat evil and side with good, do good, and do not judge a man by the fact that his parents are Jewish or Christian, or that he was born into one faith or another. Remember that we are all born equally naked and that we must all die. Therefore, do not boast of your birth; bear firmly in mind that we are all equal before God, before Truth and that we must be equal before the Law.

As for the legal disabilities of a portion of citizens who are guilty of no crime,—such as injustice must be completely condemned. In practice, such a policy has always borne and always will bear fruits of evil. The very existence of such an injustice corrupts and puts in jeopardy the social body which tolerates it. . . . No benefits which may be derived by individual persons or social classes from an inequality of rights can justify the State in depriving a group of citizens of their full rights, as a result of their race and faith. This is the A-B-C of justice, and those who do not know it have yet to learn what justice is.

Neither are the Jews better than we are, nor are we better than they. We are all human beings and, as such, we must all be equal before the impartial and dispassionate Law, which determines our rights and duties towards the State and society. Good and bad people, I repeat, are everywhere, and the proportion is roughly the same among us as among them. Let us, therefore, strive for the realisation of justice on earth, and let us believe in the final triumph of truth. The rest will be added unto us. Without such a faith it is hard to live. . . .