Expulsion of the Jews from the two military ports, ordered by Nicholas I

Nikolaïev and Sébastopol were the two great military ports of the Black Sea, seats of the admiralty and the fleet's shipyards. Nicolas Iᵉʳ ordered the expulsion of the Jewish communities from them, on the grounds that the proximity of the arsenals called for a trustworthy population. The families, many of whom had been established there since the founding of the cities, were forced to sell and move inward into the Pale of Settlement. The measure inaugurated a logic that would repeat itself throughout the century: the removal of a city from the zone, pronounced not for any wrongdoing but for the nature of the place itself. It was repealed under Alexandre II, then partly reinstated, the two ports remaining for a long time places where one resided by revocable tolerance.