The Pale of Settlement (in case we 'forget')
The Pale of Settlement (Russian: Черта́ осе́длости, chertá osédlosti; Yiddish: דער תּחום-המושבֿ, der tchum-ha-moyshev; Hebrew: תְּחוּם הַמּוֹשָב, t'ẖum hammosháv) was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary,[1] 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 palus, a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.[2]
The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova, much of Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and 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 composed 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 villages), 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 and then ultimately, the fall of the Russian Empire in the February and October Revolutions of 1917.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement
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