Rosa’s grandfather had first come to the region to farm. He had died five years ago and her father had taken over. An enterprising man, he also traded wheat and acted as local agent for a firm that manufactured agricultural equipment down in Odessa, so that they were now amongst the better-off families in the village.
She was not aware that once, in former times, this southern settlement had borne the name of Russka.
It was not surprising. The settlement had had two names since then; of its past few signs remained. The little fort on the western bank was only some marks upon the turf; of the church the Mongols had burned down, there was not a trace. Even the landscape had altered somewhat, for centuries of farming had led to the cutting down of many trees, and there were no woods on the eastern side of the river now. The pool and its haunting spirits had gone, dried up. Even the bee forest had disappeared. From the last house in the village, the open steppe of south Russia extended to the horizon, and the only way that the place might have been identified from ancient times was by the tiny mound of an ancient kurgan that appeared upon the steppe in the middle distance.
Rosa walked until she receded the end of the village, where she stopped to gaze over the steppe. There was a pale sun. High overhead, trailing white clouds coming from the west receded over the endless, browning grassland towards a violet horizon.
She had been standing there for some time when the cart came in sight. It was a stout affair, containing two people: a huge, thickset man with big black moustaches, who was driving; and a slim, handsome boy, also dark-haired and just a year older than Rosa. These were Taras Karpenko, a Cossack farmer, and his youngest son, Ivan.
Seeing them, Rosa smiled. For as long as she could remember, she had played Cossacks and Robbers with the Karpenko boys and the other village children; young Ivan was her special playmate. And ever since, some years before, her father had sold Taras some farm equipment which had proved successful, the burly Cossack had looked upon the family with a kindly eye.
There was also another reason why Rosa’s father had found favour with Taras.
It was strange to think that the heavyset farmer was the nephew of the illustrious poet Karpenko, whose delicate features still looked out from drawings or prints on the walls of several local houses. Taras was enormously proud of this fact, however, and would mention his uncle’s name in the same breath, and with the same reverence, as that of the most famous of all Ukrainian poets, the great Shevchenko. When he discovered, therefore, that Rosa’s father not only possessed a copy of Karpenko’s verses, but genuinely loved them and knew many by heart, he had clapped him on the back and always thereafter, if anyone mentioned Rosa’s family, he would announce: ‘Not a bad fellow, that.’ Which stood them in good stead in the village and often caused Rosa’s mother to remark: ‘Your father is very wise.’
He was indeed wise – and very unusual – since this knowledge which formed a bond between him and the Cossack was becoming increasingly rare.
For the rule of the Tsars in the Ukraine, with each decade that passed, had become even more heavy-handed. The Tsars liked uniformity. True, in their huge empire it could not always be achieved. In Poland and the westernmost parts of the Ukraine, they had to put up with the Catholics; as the empire continued to expand eastwards into Asia, they had to tolerate increasing numbers of Moslems. But insofar as possible, everything should be Russified: autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality – those were the things. In 1863 therefore, with that genius for official blindness in which it specialized, the Russian government announced that the Ukrainian language, which was spoken by much of the southern population, did not exist! In the years following, Ukrainian language books, newspaper, theatres, schools and even Ukrainian music were banned. The works of Shevchenko, Karpenko and other Ukrainian national heroes passed out of sight. Intellectuals spoke and wrote in Russian. As for the people, while in the north education was spreading, in the south it declined; and by the late-nineteenth century, eighty per cent of Ukrainians were illiterate. The Tsars were pleased: the Ukraine was not disturbed by discordant voices. No wonder then if the proud Cossack Karpenko would occasionally remark to Rosa’s father: ‘Well, my friend, at least you and I seem to know what’s what.’
As the two Cossacks drove by, therefore, they acknowledged her in a friendly manner: young Ivan with a happy grin and his father with a smile and a nod; and seeing this, Rosa felt a sense of reassurance.
They will not come here. There was nothing to be afraid of, she reminded herself.
For Rosa Abramovich was Jewish.
Until a century before when Catherine the Great took most of Poland, there had been hardly any Jews in the empire of Russia. By adding these western lands, however, Russia gained a large Jewish community.
Where did they come from? The history of the Diaspora is confused and often obscure, but the Jews of Russia derived from Germany, the Mediterranean and Black Sea ports; and also, it can hardly be doubted, from the remnants of the Turkish Khazar community that had spread into many parts of south-east Europe. Of their racial origins therefore, it is hard to say anything except that they were mixed.
But they believed in the one God of Israel.
What should be done with them? Some thought the Jews devious, like the Catholics; others called them obstinate, like the Old Believers. But two things were certain: they were not Slavs and they were not Christians, and therefore they were suspect. Like every other nonconformist element in the Tsar’s empire, they must first be contained, then Russified. And so it was, in 1833, that the Tsar decreed that henceforth the Jews must be confined within a particular area: the Jewish Pale of Settlement.
In fact, the famous Jewish Pale was not the ghetto it sounded like. It was a vast territory comprising Poland, Lithuania, the western provinces known as White Russia, and much of the Ukraine, including all the Black Sea ports – in other words, the lands where the Jews already resided, and some more besides. The purpose of the Pale was, mainly, to limit the immigration of Jews into traditional, Orthodox north Russia, although even in this respect it was often only loosely enforced, and there were sizeable Jewish groups in both Moscow and St Petersburg.
The Jews lived mostly in towns or in their own villages – the traditional, tightly knit shtetl communities. They usually spoke Yiddish amongst themselves. Some were craftsmen or traders; many were poor, and partly supported by their fellows. But there were also those who, like Rosa’s grandfather, went to live in ordinary country villages to farm the land.
But still they were not conformist: something had to be done about that. And the solution of successive tsarist governments was always the same: ‘Let them convert.’
It was a steady pressure that the regime applied, over decades. Jews paid extra taxes; their own system of community government – the kahal – was made illegal; their representation in local elections, limited by unfair quotas. More subtly, they were allowed into the school system, then encouraged to convert; less subtly, they were recruited into the army, then beaten if they didn’t. Conversion was enough. Though some people might be suspicious of one whose ancestry was Jewish, as far as the state was concerned, once the Jew had converted to Orthodoxy, he was a good Russian.
This policy met with some success: numbers of Jews did convert. More important, a gradual process of assimilation had begun, for amongst the younger generation there had arisen a liberal movement, the Haskalah, which argued that Jews should participate more actively in gentile society. Rosa’s eldest brother, who was married and lived in Kiev, had told her all about it. ‘If Jews are going to get anywhere in the Russian Empire, then we should go to Russian schools and universities. We have to take part. That doesn’t stop us being Jews.’ But her father was very suspicious. Though he did not take the view of many strict Jews, who isolated themselves as far as possible from the gentile world, he frowned on the Haskalah. ‘It’s the first step down the slippery slope,’ he would say firmly. ‘First you put secular learning on an equal footing with religious education. In no time, the world comes first, religion second. Then you forget even your religion. And at last you have nothing.’ Rosa knew there was truth in this: she had heard of a number of these liberals turning into little better than atheists. So while Rosa’s family kept on good terms with their Ukrainian neighbours, they always observed their religion strictly with the other Jewish families in the area. Both Rosa’s brothers received a religious education, the elder reaching the highest rung, the Yeshiva; and her father had even hoped the young man might become a religious teacher.