The Pale of Settlement (, ; , ; , ) was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 (de facto until 1915) in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. Most Jews were still excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale as well. A few Jews were allowed to live outside the area, including those with university education, the ennobled, members of the most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans, some military personnel and some services associated with them, including their families, and sometimes their servants. The archaic English term pale is derived from the Latin word , a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.
The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line inside the country, westwards to the Imperial Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and Austria-Hungary. Furthermore, it comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia and largely corresponded to historical lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Cossack Hetmanate, the Ottoman Empire (with Yedisan), Crimean Khanate, and eastern Principality of Moldavia (Bessarabia).
Life in the Pale for many was economically bleak. Most people relied on small service or artisan work that could not support the number of inhabitants, which resulted in emigration, especially in the late 19th century. Even so, Jewish culture, especially in Yiddish, developed in the shtetls (small towns), and intellectual culture developed in the yeshivot (religious schools) and was also carried abroad.
The Russian Empire during the existence of the Pale was predominantly Orthodox Christian, in contrast to the area included in the Pale with its large minorities of Jewish, Roman Catholic and until mid-19th century Eastern Catholic population (although much of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova are predominantly Eastern Orthodox). While the religious nature of the edicts creating the Pale is clear (conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, the state religion, released individuals from the strictures), historians argue that the motivations for its creation and maintenance were primarily economic and nationalist in nature.
The end of the enforcement and formal demarcation of the Pale coincided with the beginning of World War I in 1914, when large numbers of Jews fled into the Russian interior to escape the invading German army, and then ultimately in 1917 with the end of the Russian Empire as a result of the February Revolution.
History
The territory that would become the Pale first began to enter Russian hands in 1772, with the First Partition of Poland. At the time, most Jews (and in fact most Russians) were restricted in their movements. The Pale came into being under the rule of Catherine the Great in 1791, initially as a measure to speed colonization of territory on the Black Sea recently acquired from the Ottoman Empire. Jews were allowed to expand the territory available to them, but in exchange Jewish merchants could no longer do business in non-Pale Russia.
The institution of the Pale became more significant following the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, since, until then, Russia's Jewish population had been rather limited. The dramatic westward expansion of the Russian Empire through the annexation of Polish–Lithuanian territory substantially increased the Jewish population. At its height, the Pale had a Jewish population of over five million, and represented the largest component (40 percent) of the world Jewish population at that time. The freedom of movement of non-Jewish Russians was greatly increased, but the freedom of movement of Jews was greatly restricted and officially kept within the boundaries of the pale.
The name "Pale of Settlement" first arose under the rule of Tsar Nicholas I. Under his rule (1825 to 1855), the Pale gradually shrank, and became more restrictive. In 1827, Jews living in Kyiv were severely restricted. In 1835 the provinces of Astrakhan and the North Caucasus were removed from the Pale. Nicholas tried to remove all Jews from within 50 miles of the Austrian Empire's border in 1843. In practice, this was very difficult to enforce, and the restrictions were lessened in 1858.