The Pale of Settlement was created by a decree of Czar Nicholas 1 in April 1835 and despite minor modifications remained Russian policy until 1917 when the Bolshevik revolution removed it from the statute books. According to the census of 1897, there were 4,899,300 Jews lived in the Pale forming approximately 11.6% of the total population. However, in the urban areas the Jewish presence was particularly significant where on occasion they constituted the majority of the population.

Following the assassination of Alexander II by radicals, a spate of pogroms was visited upon the Jews particularly in the towns and villages of southern Russia. The number of these attacks is estimated to have been approximately 200 in one year with some forty Jews killed, many times that number wounded and hundreds of women raped. Thousands of Jews were rendered homeless and penniless. The local authorities were particularly slow to intervene and those brought before the courts generally received very light sentences. To add to their sense of despair, the new Czar, Alexander III passed The May Laws ('Temporary Edicts,') which returned the Jews to the Pale. The consequent deterioration of their economic situation led many Jews to leave Russia. By 1914, over two and one half million Jews had left the Pale, the vast majority for the United States although a small minority made their way to Eretz-Israel. (See map above)

The riots convinced a number of Russian integrationist Jews that the solution to the Jewish question lay in the establishment of a Jewish national Home. One of these individuals was Leon Pinsker.

Broadsheet put out by Rabbi Isaac Ruelf of Memel, appealing for help for the victims of the progroms in Russia, May 1881