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The Guilds
Below is some information about the “Burgesses Class” (part of the guilds) made up chiefly of traders/merchants. From Sketches of Jewish Life in Russia By the Chief Rabbi Dr. Lillenthal The Occident and American Jewish Advocate Volume 5, No. 9 Kislev 5608 December 1847 http://www.jewish-history.com/Occident/volume5/dec1847/sketches.html Even now the Jews have among them a far greater proportionate number of patented merchants than all the other subjects of the empire. I say patented: because the merchants in Russia are divided in three classes or guilds, where every one has its own proper privileges; the lowest class pays sixty; the second three hundred, and the third eight hundred silver rubels, (per annum.) Nevertheless, the Jews, who thus pay a very considerable sum annually to the government, and are taxed as all other merchants, are only allowed to trade in seventeen provinces, where they are permitted to reside, whilst they are excluded from the remainder of the fifty-two provinces of the empire. In the south is Berditshev, in Volhynia, the Moscow of Russian commerce, where the Jews buy up the products of Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev, which provinces are so greatly blessed as a grain-growing country, in order to carry them to Odessa, on the Black Sea, whence they are again transhipped to all the ports on the Mediterranean Sea. Saint Petersburg 1900 The Garden of an Island Villa http://www.alexanderpalace.org/petersburg1900/44.html sponsored by Pallasart and the Alexander Palace Association Immediately after this official nobility comes the commonalty, or class of burgesses, a free class, consisting chiefly of traders. In this class, also, there are gradations. Highest upon the ladder stand the merchants of the "first guild," the aristocracy of capital and industry. The middle station is occupied by merchants of the second guild, whose commerce has narrower limits; whilst on the lowest range, next the ground, are found traders of the third guild, - petty dealers, who have not even, I believe, the right of drawing bills of exchange. Ch. 3 On Jewish Merchants, Petty Townsmen, and Artisans |
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