History of the Jews in Russia abandoning of Jewish dietary laws. Polish Catholic boys were subject to similar pressure to convert and assimilate as the Russian Empire was hostile to Catholicism and Polish nationalism. The cultural and habitual isolation of the Jews gradually began to be eroded. An ever-increasing number of Jewish people adopted Russian language and customs. Russian education was spread among the Jewish population. A number of Jewish-Russian periodicals appeared. Alexander II was known as the "Tsar liberator" for the 1861 abolition of serfdom in Russia. Under his rule Jewish people could not hire Christian servants, could not own land, and were restricted in
History of the Jews in Russia the 1880s, waves of anti-Jewish pogroms swept across different regions of the empire for several decades. More than two million Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1920, mostly to the United States and what is today the State of Israel. The Pale of Settlement took away many of the rights that the Jewish people of the late 17th century Russia were experiencing. At this time, the Jewish people were restricted to an area of what is current day Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. Where Western Europe was experiencing emancipation at this time, the laws for the Jewish people were getting