Grand Duke Nicholas on the Jews in Nineteenth Century Russia

“See the account given on his journey through White Russia in 1816 by the Grand Duke Nicholas, who, whilst admitting the support given to the Imperial authority by the Jews, remarks: “The general ruination of the peasantry of these provinces is attributable to the Jews, who are second in import to the landowners only; by their industries they exploit to the utmost the unfortunate population. They are everything here — merchants, contractors, pothouse-keepers, millers, carriers, artisans, etc., and they are so clever in squeezing and cheating the common people that they advance money on the unsown bread and discount the harvest before the fields are sown. They are regular leeches who suck up everything and completely exhaust this province.”

— E. A. Brayley Hodgetts, The Court of Russia in the Nineteenth Century (1908), page 161