Upon the Partition of Poland (), territories including western Ukraine were annexed into the Russian Empire. Orthodox Tsarist Russia, which was intolerant of Jews, suddenly acquired a significant Jewish population in the territories annexed from Catholic Poland. As a result, the Pale of Settlement was created, generally restricting Jews to living in the new territories, but not in "Russia proper". Jews during this period had a generally harder time, at best being isolated, and at worst being visited with pogroms. In the census of 1897, the village of Makhnivka had 2,435 Jews out of a total population of 5,343 (about 45%).