If someone’s wondering what the dots mean: The Russian Empire Census (the only one ever realized) counted the urban population separately. So the colouring of a specific uyezd (which is the smallest unit on this map) refers to the overall population, while the colouring of its dot refers to that uyezd’s urban population.
The dots are mostly darker because most Jews lived in urban settlements (“urban” could still mean a tiny market town as opposed to a village of peasants).
There were Jews in Poland and Lithuania before the partitions, but not that many, especially in Poland, more than a million of Jews from Russia proper were resettled there. The Jews, called Litvaks were russified and after WW1 and independence roughly 70% of Jews living in Poland weren’t even speaking Polish, only 12% used it as primary language.
My clairvoyance powers tell me all of you bent your neck right just now.
Why the heck is that map flipped 90°?
It’s sad that such a lovely language was obliterate thanks to the nazis.
This map makes me dizzy
A lot of it seems to be former commonwealth lands
r/widaczabory
Quite surprising how many of them lived in the Black sea.
11 comments
That map includes 2 of my Yiddish speaking great-grandparents, one in Kiev and one in Łódź.
Data was taken from the 1897 Russian Empire Census
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire_Census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire_Census)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement)
If someone’s wondering what the dots mean: The Russian Empire Census (the only one ever realized) counted the urban population separately. So the colouring of a specific uyezd (which is the smallest unit on this map) refers to the overall population, while the colouring of its dot refers to that uyezd’s urban population.
The dots are mostly darker because most Jews lived in urban settlements (“urban” could still mean a tiny market town as opposed to a village of peasants).
[It was a deliberate policy of Russian Empire to settle all Jews there after partitions of Poland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement) and it created a lot of ethnic tensions.
There were Jews in Poland and Lithuania before the partitions, but not that many, especially in Poland, more than a million of Jews from Russia proper were resettled there. The Jews, called Litvaks were russified and after WW1 and independence roughly 70% of Jews living in Poland weren’t even speaking Polish, only 12% used it as primary language.
My clairvoyance powers tell me all of you bent your neck right just now.
Why the heck is that map flipped 90°?
It’s sad that such a lovely language was obliterate thanks to the nazis.
This map makes me dizzy
A lot of it seems to be former commonwealth lands
r/widaczabory
Quite surprising how many of them lived in the Black sea.