"There were jews outside of Pale, professionals of the first and second order allowed to move to major cities."
This was extremely rare.
Not only weren't Jews allowed to move to major cities, they were expelled en masse from Kiev. Yes, that's in Ukraine today, but it was under the Czar then.
No matter how you slice it the Russians do not have clean hands. A. Pole and Russian Conservative, rather than trying to rewrite history why not worry about building a tolerant society today? Denying a history of anti-Semitism, which is there, does not make you look good. Quite the contrary.
No nation in Europe with the sole exception of Ireland has failed to persecute their Jewish populations. None.