Pale of Settlement

The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire, with changing borders, that existed from 1791 to 1917. Jewish subjects were permitted to live there permanently, while residence outside it was mostly forbidden apart from exceptions such as university graduates, members of the wealthiest merchant guilds and certain artisans. It was created under Catherine the Great after the partitions of Poland brought a large Jewish population under Russian rule. It covered all of present-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania and Ukraine, east-central Poland and small parts of Latvia and western Russia, roughly a fifth of European Russia. Its restrictions pushed many people to emigrate, while shtetl life, Yiddish culture and yeshiva learning flourished inside it. The Pale lost its hold during World War I and formally ended with the Russian Empire in 1917.