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Large-scale emigration from Russia to the United States did not begin until the late nineteenth century. The first immigration wave of 3.2 million immigrants occurred between the 1880s and 1914. These Russians fled religious discrimination and political repression, as well as a lack of economic opportunity. Letters from Russian immigrants in the United States convinced many that it was possible to immigrate, make money, and return to Russia with personal wealth that could never be amassed in their homeland.

Russia was an economically underdeveloped country of peasants and industrial workers. European Russia included the land area of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, and a region of Poland that had been partitioned three ways among Germany, Austria, and Russia. This land area was known as the Pale of Settlement and was the only place that Jews were permitted to settle in Russia. Jewish villages like the one made...