[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The upper town, high on the bluffs above the Dnepr River, con- 34 THE EARLY YEARSsisted of Old Kiev (Starokievskaia) with its ancient churches and monaster-ies, and Dvortsovaia, home of the Royal Palace and aristocratic mansions;Kiev s main avenue, Kreshchatik, cut through the ravine that formed theboundary between the two areas.Further south along the bluffs was the re-ligious and military district of Pechersk, home to the Caves Monastery, one ofthe holiest in the Russian Empire.The lower town, a port area close to rivercommerce and transportation, was called Podol.Newer neighborhoods thattook shape with Kiev s phenomenal growth in the second half of the nine-teenth century were Ploskaia, a northern extension of Podol on the flood-plains along the banks of the Dnepr, and Lybed, stretching from the uppertown near Kreshchatik south to the railway stations at the edge of the city.Inthe upper part of the city, Lybed s Bol shaia and Malo-Vasil kovskaia streetsbecame the focal point of Jewish life in the city. 74The law required most Jews settling in Kiev to reside in outlying Ploskaiaand Lybed, two of the poorest districts that lacked amenities such as runningwater and sewage systems.Kiev was the only place in the Russian Empirewhere Jews (or most Jews) were limited to specific neighborhoods, and it wasfor this reason that the city was often referred to as the only ghetto still ex-tant in Russia.75 The Ploskaia Jewish ghetto actually included several blocksin Podol, which seem to have been considered a bit more desirable than therest of the neighborhood.Ploskaia was home to a number of factories of vari-ous sizes several breweries, a brickworks, a tannery, a candle factorywhile Lybed had less industry, with two brickworks and a distillery/brewery,all located at its outer limits.In 1874, Ploskaia, with almost 6,000 Jews outof the city s 13,800, was home to 43 percent of the city s Jews; with justunder 2,400 Jews, Podol had 17 percent, and Lybed followed behind with13 percent (1,900 Jews).Ploskaia also boasted the highest concentration ofJews: 29 percent of its residents, while the figure for Podol was 15 percent.Solomenka and Demievka, small neighborhoods adjacent to Kiev s two rail-way stations that were outside the bounds of Kiev proper but were actuallyextensions of Lybed, were also heavily (one-quarter) Jewish.76 Demievka, inparticular, as well as Slobodka, a suburb across the Dnepr from Kiev, becamevery popular destinations because Jews were not required to hold residencepermits to settle there; in his memoirs, Jewish communal activist GenrikhSliozberg claimed that only the May Laws [of 1882] stopped them from be-coming huge Jewish cities, because their village status meant that no newJewish settlement could be established there.77 SETTLEMENT AND GROWTH, 1859 1881 35According to 1874 census data, Ploskaia and Lybed s Jewish populationswere mostly poor and Yiddish-speaking.Only 1.4 percent identified a lan-guage other than Yiddish as the language customarily used in the home,and two-thirds were unable to read or write in Russian (versus 40 percentin the other neighborhoods).The overwhelming majority belonged to themeshchanstvo, the catch-all townspeople estate in which most Jews in thePale of Settlement were inscribed.There were almost as many Jewish mer-chants in Ploskaia and Lybed as in the neighborhoods of the upper city; thesewere likely those who belonged to the second guild or had belonged to thefirst guild for less than five years, for these categories of merchants did nothave the right to live outside of Ploskaia and Lybed.Presumably they movedto finer neighborhoods as soon as they were able to attain a higher estatestatus.78In a city that was fairly sparsely populated, Jews lived three times moredensely than Christians.79 In the 1870s, Ploskaia and Lybed had the high-est mortality rate for Russian Orthodox (30 35 per 1,000), but at 30.7 per1,000, the Jewish mortality rate for the city as a whole was no betterindeed, it was poorer than for any other group.80 Among the worst areas werethe slums of Ploskaia, referred to as beyond the canal, located north of theopen ditch (Glubochitskaia Canal) that carried fetid runoff water from twonearby factories.81 Apartments were cheaper there than almost anywhereelse in the city; the average annual rent of 160 rubles was far less than Kiev soverall average, 411 rubles, not to mention the rents in the best neighbor-hoods, which ranged from 700 to 850 rubles a year.Ploskaia abounded incheap, low-quality housing, and a working-class individual searching foran apartment or room for 15 rubles or less per year had practically no otherchoice of neighborhood (it is no surprise that Ploskaia had the highest illit-eracy rate, 70 percent, of any central neighborhood).82 Only one-quarter ofthe buildings in Ploskaia had gardens or kitchen plots, fewer than anywhereelse in the city.83 For those unable to afford an apartment or even a room, Plo-skaia and Podol offered eleven flophouses where laborers could bunk downfor the night.84 With an average annual apartment rent of 325 rubles, Ly-bed was on a somewhat higher plane, but still below the city average.Likeother outlying districts, it lacked most of the amenities enjoyed by the centralneighborhoods, including access to running water.85Astoundingly to those familiar with this period and accustomed to lowermortality rates among Jews, in the period 1866 70 Jewish children had a 36 THE EARLY YEARShigher mortality rate than any other confessional group in Kiev: 37 percentof children died in their first year, and 56 percent in their first five years; thecorresponding rates for Christian Orthodox children were 29 percent and45 percent while the five-year rate for Catholics and Lutherans dropped to36 37 percent
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]