Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Rescuing the Surviving Souls: The Great Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, by Adam Teller. 2020. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford

Ukrainian-Jewish Dialogue. At Least Partial Jewish Blame for the Khmelnytsky Revolt. Cossack Intransigence

In today’s Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue, Jews wash themselves of responsibility for the Khmelnytsky Revolt, and portray themselves solely as victims of the same. Better yet, they put all the blame on the Poles for antagonizing the Ukrainians. My review addresses this false narrative.

JEWS WERE MAJOR BENEFICIARIES OF THE “POLISH SYSTEM” IN UKRAINE

To begin with, Teller writes, “The Jews were targets of violence as a result of the economic services they gave the Catholic Polish nobility and the improved social standing that they had enjoyed as a result.” (p. 64).

Nowadays, Jews commonly finger Poles as beneficiaries of the German-made Holocaust, notwithstanding the fact that Poles did not cause the Holocaust itself. Such thinking can be extended. Thus, at minimum, Jews were the prime beneficiaries of the presumed Polish exploitation of Ukrainians, notwithstanding the fact that the Jews were not the ones that had established this presumably exploitative Polish-made system.

POLISH NOBILITY NO MORE “OPPRESSED” UKRAINIANS THAN THEY “OPPRESSED” FELLOW POLES

Olga Tokarczuk has been using the prestige of her Nobel Prize to go around faulting Poles for “oppressing” her Ukrainian forebears. She is clearly wrong.

We must not project modern notions of nationality back in time. In addition, the class structure of the time must be kept in mind. The Khmelnytsky Uprising is a testimony against the feudal system, and not a testimony against “Polish imperialism. Teller realizes that the Polish nobility acted no differently in ethnographically Ukrainian lands than it did in ethnographically Polish lands. He comments, “In order to make the fertile Ukrainian lands as profitable as possible, their noble owners began to implement the feudal system that had been so successful in Crown Poland. It worked like this: instead of paying money dues, peasants had labor duties on the estate farms. The grain that was grown was then sold–either for export or on local markets, or in the form of alcoholic beverages (beer and vodka) marketed to estate subjects through a monopoly held by the owner.” (p. 50).

JEWS WERE NOT PUPPETS OF THE POLISH NOBILITY. ACTIVE JEWISH AGENCY IN DEALINGS WITH UKRAINIANS

As part of the “Jews were victims” and blame-Poles narrative, Jews are portrayed solely as order-fulfillers of the Polish nobility, and merely transmitting the presumably exploitative policies of the Polish nobility onto the Ukrainians, to then have to face the anger of the Ukrainian masses for Polish decisions. This is far from the truth. Jews had considerable agency, and commonly were the ones that set policies. In fact, Jews became the de facto owners of many of the Polish landed estates! Polish nobility were absent landowners or nominal landowners. Teller writes, “In addition, Jews, whose economic prowess had already benefited the estate owners in the realm of trade, also began to find their way into estate management. This came about through the system of estate leasing that developed during the sixteenth century. Rather than devote time and energy to estate management, the noble owners–particularly of the huge estates known as latifundia–preferred to lease out their lands for three years in return for a fixed payment made on signing the contract. This gave them a guaranteed income up front, while leaving the day-to-day administration in the hands of the leaseholder, who had a vested interest in efficient administration, since any income he made over and above the price of the lease formed his profit.” (p. 50).

CONSEQUENCES OF CO-DEPENDENCY

The Jewish presence was not just additive but also interactive. We must ask hard questions about the codependency that had developed between the Jew and the Polish noble. Could the Jews have corrupted the nobility by bribery? This effectively could occur by persuading the nobility to be on the “take” of Jewish profits that had been gotten from the Ukrainian peasantry, in exchange for tacit noble tolerance of such conduct.

JEWS DOMINATE UKRAINE. JEWS GET RICH OFF UKRAINIANS

One factor in Ukrainian-Jewish-Polish relations was not just the Jewish presence, but even more the rate of increase of Jewish presence and Jewish influence. Teller remarks, “The advantage of the estate leases for the Jews was that the leaseholder could break them down into a series of subleases, each of which he could then give to another Jew. It soon became clear that living in Ukraine could bring great wealth, so many Jews moved there. The region’s Jewish population seems to have grown from some 4,000 in 1569 to about 40,000 in 1648.” (p. 50). Clearly, the Jewish presence in Ukraine had boomed, and this could only add to the sense of Jewish power in the eyes of the Ukrainians.

The author describes the Jewish conduct during the Revolt. In doing so, he alludes to the wealth that Jews had acquired, “Immediately indescribable panic and confusion seized the Jews. Everyone threw silver, gold, utensils, books, pillows, and bed covers from their carts so they could get away more quickly. The field was cluttered with gold, silver, and clothes, but no Jew stopped to take them….” (p. 61).

JEWS ACT INDEPENDENTLY IN “OPPRESSING THE LOCALS”

Teller further describes how much the Jews could and did act on their own to exploit the Ukrainians, furthermore with little Polish involvement. He comments, “What ratcheted up the tension was the fact that the Jewish leaseholders, called in Polish arendarze, found themselves running noble estates in place of the feudal lords. This gave them enormous power over their subjects.” No kidding. We see, once again, that Jews were far from mere servants of the Polish nobility. (p. 50).

For more on this, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jews-not-nobility-exploited-peasants-graetz/

DO NOT BLAME ALL RELIGIOUS CONFLICT ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

One canned reason given for the Khmelnitsky Revolt is the presumed high-handedness of the Polish Catholic Church in forcing the Catholic faith onto the Ukrainians. Even this is not black-and-white. While Teller does not support the Catholic initiatives, he does recognize the fact that the Catholic Church at least tried to accommodate non-Catholic sensitivities. He writes, “Even the 1596 creation of a Greek-Catholic (Uniate) Church, which was meant to allow locals to retain their religious rites and practices while swearing allegiance to the pope in Rome, faltered due to continued Catholic suspicion of the Ukrainian population.” (p. 50). Did it? Or are Ukrainians at least partly responsible for the lack of a better Polish-Ukrainian religious reconciliation?

COSSACK GRUDGES, RATHER THAN “UKRAINIANS OPPRESSED BY POLES”, ANIMATED THE KHMELNYTSKY (CHMIELNICKI) REVOLT

Author Teller candidly writes that, “The Cossacks’ basic grievances were aimed at the Polish authorities–particularly the nobility in the Sejm–and concerned issues of money and status.” (p. 53). Notice that feelings about “not getting enough money or status”, or otherwise not getting everything that one wanted, is not the same thing as being oppressed.

He adds that, “Following the brutal crushing of the 1637-38 rebellion, the number of registered Cossacks, entitled to rights and privileges similar to those of the middling nobility, was reduced to just six thousand.” (p. 51). Is even six thousand a little or a lot? In any case, this is a tacit admission that Poles did not just treat Ukrainians as primitive natives (as sometimes claimed). Clearly, some Cossacks were equal to the Polish nobility under Polish governance, and the fact that more Cossacks did not gain such equality was at least partly the Cossacks’ fault.

In addition to this, many Ukrainians were ennobled, a fact recognized by Teller. (p. 49). Of course, the Polish government did not ennoble most Ukrainians just like it did not ennoble most ethnic Poles.

HOW JEWS ACQUIRED POLISH PROPERTY

Teller surveys the situation after the Revolt. He remarks, “One of the mechanisms Jews used to acquire houses previously owned by Christians was to take them in lieu of debts.” (p. 123). This went on for centuries, and culminated in Jews gradually acquiring the ownership of a considerable number of Polish landed estates. This was unmistakably exploitive, especially because it reduced the former Polish estate owners to penury. For an example of this, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/03/01/how-poles-suffered-from-jewish-usury-and-the-jewish-acquisition-of-polish-landed-estates-an-example-jewish-profiteering-modelska-creech/