A special commission is organized by Russian Czar Alexander I to draft a plan for improving the condition of his empire’s Jews. On discussion are the findings of the poet Derzhavin, sent to White Russia in 1799 to investigate the famine there. Derzhavin recommended that a special class of Jewish agriculturists be formed and transferred to the governments of Astrakhan and New Russia, thus relieving White Russia of some of its dense population of Jews engaged in “selfish occupations”
