 Sexion XII of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Vol. 2, from the death of Alexander I until the death of Alexander III, 1825-1894, by Shimon Duvenov, translated by Israel Friedlander. This Livrivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by SS Kim, Manik Duvaesho, Portugal, Chapter 18, the era of reforms under Alexander II, Part I, I, the evolution of juvenile conscription. When after the Crimean War, which had exposed the rottenness of the older order of things, a fresh current of air swept through the atmosphere of Russia and the liberation of the peasantry and other great reforms were coming to fruition, the Jewish problem too was in line of being placed in the forefront of these reforms. For after having done away with the institution of serfdom, the state was consistently bound to liberate its three million Jewish serfs who had been ruthlessly oppressed and persecuted during the old regime. Unfortunately, the Jewish question, which was nothing more nor less than the question of equal citizenship for the Jews, was not placed in the line of great reforms, but was pushed to the rear and solved fragmentarily on the installment plane as it was and within narrowly circumscribed limits. Like all the other officially inspired reforms of that period, which proceeded up to a certain point and halted before the prohibited zone of constitutional and political liberties, so too the solution of the Jewish problem was not allowed to pass beyond the borderline. For the crossing of that line would have rendered the whole question null and void by the simple recognition of the equality of all citizens. The regenerated Russia of Alexander II, stubborn in its refusal of political freedom and civil equality, could only choose the path of half-measures. Nevertheless, the transition from the pre-reformatory order of things to the new state of affairs signified a radical departure both in the life of Russia in general and in Jewish life in particular. It did so not because the new conditions were perfect but because the old ones were so inexpressibly ugly and unbearable and the mere loosening of the chains of servitude was hailed as a pledge of complete liberation. Far more intense than the political life of Russia was the crisis in its social life. While a chilling wind was still blowing from the wintery heights of Russian officialdom, while a grim censorship was still holding down the flight of the printed world, the released social energy was holding and swirling in all classes of Russian society, sometimes breaking the fetters of police restraint. The outbursts of young Russia ran far ahead of the slow progress of the reforms inspired from above. It plays the path for political freedom which the west of Europe had long transposed and which was to prove in Russia tortures and thawing. The face of Jewish life which claimed the first thought of Alexander II's government was the military conscription. Prior to the conclusion of the Crimean War, the Committee on Jewish Affairs called the tsar's attention to the necessity of modifying the method of Jewish conscription with his fiendish contrivances of seizing juvenile continuous and enlisting penal and captive recruits. Nevertheless, the removal of this crime evil was postponed for a year until the promulgation of the coronation manifesto of August 26, 1856, when it was granted as an act of grace. Prompted by the desire, the manifestories of making it easier for the Jews to discharge their military duty and of averting the inconveniences attached to their tool, we commend as follows. One, recruits from among the Jews are to be drafted in the same way as from among the other estates, primarily from among those unsettled and not engaged in productive labor. Only in default of able-bodied men among these, the shortage is to be made up from among the category of Jews who by reason of their engaging in productive labor are recognized as useful. Two, the drafting of recruits from among other estates and of those underage is to be repealed. Three, in regard to the making of the shortage of recruits, the general laws are to be applied and the extraction of recruits from Jewish communities as a penalty for all years is to be repealed. Four, the temporary rules enacted by way of experiment in 1853 granting Jewish communities and Jewish individuals the right of presenting as recruits in their own state called religionists seized without passport are to be repealed. The evolution of Jewish conscription followed automatically upon the unelement by virtue of the same coronation manifesto of the general Russian institution of Cantonists and soldier children who are now ordered to be returned to their parents and relatives. Only in the case of the Jews, a rider was attached to the effect that those Jewish children who have embraced Christianity during the term of military service should not be allowed to go back to their parents and relatives if the letter remained in their old faith and should be placed exclusively in Christian families. The coronation manifesto of 1856 marks the end of the recruiting incudition which had lasted for nearly 30 years adding a unique page to the annals of Jewish martyrdom. In the matter of conscription at least the Jews were in a certain measure granted equal rights. The operation of the general statute concerning military service was extended to them with a few limitations which were the heritage of the past. The old plan of the assortment of the Jews is reflected in the close of the manifesto providing for increased conscription from among those unsettled and not engaged in productive labor i.e. of the mess of the proletariat as distinct from the more or less well-to-do classes. No was the old historic crime made good. The Jewish Cantonists who had been forcibly converted to the Greek Orthodox faith were not allowed to return to their kindred. As heretofore baptism remained a conditional sine qua non for the advancement of Jewish soldier and only in 1861 was permission given to promote a Jewish private to the rank of a surgeon for general merit without special distinction on the battlefield which had been formally required. Beyond this rank no Jew could hope to advance. Two, homeopathic emancipation and the policy of fusion. Following upon the removal of the black stain of conscription came the question of lightening the yoke of slavery that heavy burden of rightlessness which pressed so grievously upon the outcasts of the Jewish pale. A lady in March 1856, Count Kizilev, a semi-liberal official and formally the president of the Jewish committee which had been appointed in 1840 and which was composed of the heads of the various ministries, submitted a memorandum to Alexander II in each. He took occasion to point out that the attainment of the goal indicated in the imperial you case of 1840 that of bringing about the fusion of the Jews with the general population is hampered by various provisionally enacted restrictions which when taken in conjunction with the general laws contain contradictions and engender confusion. The result was an imperial order dated March 31 1856 to revise all existing regulations affecting the Jews so as to bring them into harmony with the general policy of fusing these people with the original inhabitants as far as the moral status of the Jews may render it possible. The same ministers who had taken part in the labors of the Jewish committee were instructed to draft the plan looking to the modification of the laws affecting the Jews and to submit their suggestions to the Tsar. In this way, the inception of the new reign was marked by a characteristic slogan, the fusion of the Jews with the Russian people to be promoted by the alleviation in their legal status. The way leading to this fusion was in the judgment of Russian officialdom blocked by the historic unity of the Jewish nation or unity which in government phraseology was styled Jewish separatism and interpreted as the effect of the inferior moral status of the Jews. At the same time, it was implied that the Jews with better morals, i.e. those who have shown a leaning toward justification might be accorded special legal advantages over their retrograde co-religionists. From that moment, the bureaucratic circles of St. Petersburg became obsessed with the idea of picking out special groups from among the Jewish population, distinguished by financial and educational qualifications for the purpose of bestowing upon them certain rights and privileges. It was the old coin, Nikola's idea of the assortment of the Jews with the new legend stamped upon it. Formally, it had been intended to penalize the useless or unsettled burgers by intensifying their rightlessness. Now, this plan gave way to the policy of rewarding the useful elements by enlarging their rights or reducing their rightlessness. The objectionable principle upon which this whole system was founded, the division of people into categories of favourites and outcasts remained in full force. There was only a difference in degree. The threat of legal restrictions for the disobedient was replaced by holding out promises of legal elevations for the obedient. A small group of influential Jewish merchants in St. Petersburg, which stood in close relations to the highest official spheres, the Poveya and Banker Baron Josef Jortzel Ginzburg and others, seized eagerly upon this idea, which made fair to shower privileges upon the well-to-do classes. In June 1856, this group addressed the petition to Alexander II, complaining about the disabilities which weighed so heavily upon all Jews, from the artisan to the first-guild merchant, from the private soldier to the master of art, and forced them down to the level of degraded, suspected, untolerated tribe. At the same time, they assured the Tsar that whether government to give a certain amount of encouragement to the Jews, the latter would gladly meet it halfway and help in the realization of its policy to draw the Jews nearer to the original inhabitants and turn them in the direction of productive labour. The petitioners declared, the new generation which has been brought up in the spirit and under the control of the government, were the higher mercantile class which for many years has diffused life, activity and wealth in the land. Were the consensions, artisans who earned their bread in the sweat of their brow to receive from the government as a mark of distinction, larger rights than those who have done nothing to attest their well-meaningness, usefulness and industry, than the whole Jewish people seeing that these few favoured ones are the object of the government's righteousness and benevolence and model of what it desires the Jews to become would joyfully hasten to attain the goal marked out by the government. Our present petition, therefore, is to the effect that our gracious sovereign may bestow his kindness upon us and by distinguishing the grain from the chap, may be pleased to accord a few moderate privileges to the most educated among us to with one equal rights with the other Russian subjects or with the carerite Jews to the educated and well-deserving Jews who possess the title of honorary citizens to the merchants affiliated for a number of years with the first or second guild and distinguished by their business integrity to the soldiers who have served irreprochably in the army. Two, the right of residence outside the pale of settlement to the best among the artisans who possess lottery certificates from the trade unions. The privileges thus accorded to the best among us will help to realize the consummation of the governments that sharply marked trade which distinguish the Jews from the native Russians should be labeled and that the Jews should in their way of thinking and acting become akin to the letter. Once placed outside the secluded pale, the Jews will succeed in adopting from the genuine Russians the praiseworthy qualities by which they are distinguished and the striving for culture and useful endeavor will become universal. The partition reflects the humiliating attitude of men who were standing on the boundary line between slavery and freedom whose caste of mind had been formed under the regime of oppression and caprice. Pointing to the example of the west, where the bestowal of equal rights had contributed to the success of Jewish assimilation, the St. Petersburg petitioners were not even courageous enough to demand equal rights as the price of assimilation and professed perhaps from diplomatic consideration to content themselves with miserable crumbs of rights and privileges for the best among us. They failed to realize the meanness of their suggestion to divide the nation into best and worst into those worthy of human existence and those unworthy of it. 3. The extension of the right of residence After some wavering, the government decided to adopt the method of picking the best. The intention of the authorities was to apply the gradual relaxation of Jewish rightlessness not to groups of restrictions but to groups of persons. The government entered upon the scheme of abolishing or elevating certain restrictions not for the whole Jewish population but merely for a few useful sections within it. Three such sections were marked off from the rest, merchants of the first guild, university graduates and incorporated artisans. The resuscitated committee for the emulation of the Jews displayed an intense activity during that period, 1856-1863. For fully two years, 1857-1859, the question of granting the right of permanent residence in the interior governments to merchants of the first guild occupied the attention of that committee and of the council of state. The committee had originally proposed to restrict these privileges by imposing series of exceedingly onerous conditions. Thus, the merchants intending to settle in the Russian interior were to be required to have belonged to the first guild within the pale for ten years previously and they were to be allowed to leave the pale only after securing in each case a permit from the minister of the interior and of finance. But the council of states found that circumscribed in this manner the privilege would benefit only a negligible fraction of the Jewish merchant class. There were altogether 108 Jewish first guild merchants within the pale and therefore considered it necessary to reduce the requirements for settling in the interior. A long succession of meetings of this august body was taken up with the perplexing problem how to attract big Jewish capital into the central government and at the same time safeguard the letter against excessive influx of Jews who for the sake of settling there would register in the first guild and under the disguise of relatives would bring with them as one of the members of the council put it, the whole tribe of Israel. After protracted discussions, a resolution was adopted which was in substance as follows. The Jewish merchants who have belonged to the first guild for not less than two years prior to the issuance this present law shall be permitted to settle permanently in the interior governments accompanied by their families and limited number of servants and clerks. These merchants shall be entitled to live and trade on equal terms with the Russian merchants with the proviso that after settlement they shall continue their membership in the first guild as well as the payment of the obtaining membership dues for no less than ten years, failing which they shall be sent back into the pale. Big Jewish merchants and bankers from abroad noted for their social position shall be allowed to trade in Russia under a special permit to be secured in each case from the ministers of the interior and of finance. The resolution of the council of state was sanctioned by the Tsar on March 16, 1859 and thus became law. In this manner the way was opened for big Jewish capital to enter the two Russian capitals and the Tabut interior. The event of the big capitalist was followed by the influx of their less fortunate brethren who, driven by material want from the pale, was forced to seek new domiciles and in the shape of first guild dues paid for many years a heavy toll for their right of residence and commerce. The position of these merchants offers numerous points of contact with the status of the tolerated Jewish merchants in Vienna and lower Austria prior to 1848. Toleration having been granted to the Jews with the proper financial status, the government proceeded to extend the same treatment to persons with educational qualifications. The letter class was the subject of protracted debate in the Jewish committee as well as in the ministers and in the council of state. As early as in 1857 the minister of public instruction Norov had submitted a memorandum to the Jewish committee in which he argued that religious fanaticism and prejudice among the Jews could only be exterminated by inducing the Jewish youth to enter the general educational establishment which and can only be obtained by enlarging their civil rights and by offering them material advantages. Accordingly, Norov suggested that the right of residence in the whole Russian empire should be granted to the graduates of the higher and secondary educational institutions. Those Jews who should have failed to attend school were to be restricted in the rights of entering the mercantile guilds. The Jewish committee refused to limit the rights of those who did not attend the general schools and proposed instead as a bait for the Jews who shunned secular education to confer special privileges in the discharge of military service upon those Jews who had attended the gimnasia or even the Russian district schools or the Jewish ground schools. More exactly to grant them the right of buying themselves off from conscription by the payment of 100 to 200 rubles, 1859. But the military department vetoed this proposal on the ground that education would bestow privileges upon Jews which were denied even to Christians. The suggestion relating to military privileges was therefore abandoned and the promotion of education among Jews reduced itself to an extension of the right of residence. In this connection, the Jewish committee warmly debated the question as to whether the right of residence outside the pale should be accorded to graduates of the higher and secondary educational institutions who are only to those of the higher. The ministers of the interior and public instruction Lanskoi and Kovalevsky advocated the formal more liberal interpretation. But the majority of the committee members acting in the interest of one graduated emancipation rejected the idea of bestowing the universal right of residence upon the graduates of gimnasia and lithium and even upon those of universities and other institutions of higher learning with exception of those who had received a learning degree, doctor, magistrate or candidate. The committee was willing on the other hand to permit the possessor of a learning degree not only to settle in the interior but also to enter the civil service. The Jewish university graduate was thus expected to submit a scholarly paper or even a doctor's dissertation for two purposes for procuring the right of residence in some Siberian locality and for the right of serving the state. Particular circumspection was recommended by the committee with reference to Jewish medical men or Jewish physician without the degree of MD was not to be permitted to pass beyond the pale. In this shape the question was submitted to the council of state in 1861. Here opinions were evenly divided. Twenty members advocated the necessity of bestowing the right of residence not only on graduates of universities but also of gimnasia, advancing the argument that even in the case of Jewish gimnasist it is in all likelihood to be presumed that the gross superstitions and prejudices which hinder the association of the Jews with the original population of the empire will be if not entirely eradicated at least considerably weakened and a further surgeon among Christians will contribute toward the ultimate extermination of these sinister prejudices which stand in the way of every moral improvement. Such was the opinion of the liberal half of the council of state. The conservative half argued differently. Only those Jews deserve the right of residence who have received an education such as may serve as a pledge of their having renounced the errors of fanaticism. The wise measures adopted as a precaution against the influx of Jews into the interior governments would lose their efficacy were permission to settle all over Russia to be granted suddenly to all Jews who have for a short time attended the gimnasium in the western and southwestern region for no other purpose to be sure than that of pursuing on a larger scale the illicit trades and other harmful occupations. Hence only Jews with the reliable education i.e. the graduates of higher educational institutions who have obtained the learning degree should be permitted to pass the boundary of the pale. Alexander II endorsed the opinion of the conservative members of the council of state. The law promulgated on November 27 1861 reads as follows. Jews possessing certificates of the learning degree of doctor of medicine and surgery were doctor of medicine and likewise of doctor, magistrate or candidate of other university faculties are admitted to serve in all government offices without their being confined to the pale established for the residents of Jews. They are also permitted to settle permanently in all the provinces of the empire for the pursuit of commerce and industry. In addition, the law specifies that apart from the members of their families these Jews shall be permitted to keep as a maximum two domestic servants from among their core religionists. The promulgation of this law brought about curious state of affairs the offshore of the genuine Russian homeopathic system of emancipation. A handful of Jews who had obtained learning degrees from universities were permitted not only to reside in the interior of the empire but also admitted here and there to government service in the capacity of civil and military physicians. Yet both of these rights were denied to all other persons with the same university education, physicians and active students who had not obtained learning degrees. On one occasion the minister of public instruction put before the council of state the following legal puzzle. Jewish students while attending the university of Russian capital enjoys the right of residence there but when he has successfully finished his course and has obtained the customary certificate without the learned degree he forbids his right and must return to the pale. Yet the government in its stubbornness refused to make concessions and when it was forced to make them it did so rather in its own interest than in that of the Jews. Owing to the scarcity of medical help in the army and in the interior, U.K.C. is issued in 1865 and 1867 declared Jewish physicians even without the title of doctor of medicine to be admissible to the medical cause and late on to civil service in all places of the empire except the capitals St. Petersburg and Moscow. Nevertheless, the extension of the plain right of domicile without admission to civil service remained for a long time dependent on a learned degree. It was only after two decades of meditation that the law of January 1879 conferred the right of universal residence on all categories of persons with higher education regardless of the nature of the diploma and also including pharmacists, dentists, felt-shears and midwives. The privileges bestowed upon the big merchants and titled intellectuals affected by the few small groups of the Jewish population. The authorities now turned their attention to the mass of the people and in accordance with its rules of political homeopathy commence to pick from it a handful of persons for better treatment. The question of admitting Jewish artisans into the Russian interior occupied the government for a long time. In 1856, Lanskoy, the minister of the interior, entered into an official correspondence concerning this matter with the governor's general and governor's of the western provinces. Most of the replies were favorable to the idea conferring upon Jewish artisans the right of universal residence. Of the three governors general whose opinion had been invited to the governor general of Vilna was the only one who thought that the present situation needed no change. His colleague of Kiev, Count Vasilychkov, was on the contrary of the opinion that it would be a rational measure to transfer the surplus of the Jewish artisans who were cooped up within the pale and had been popularized by excessive competition to the interior governments where there was a scarcity of skilled labor. Quote note, the official statistics of that time about the year 1860 brought out the fact that the number of Jews in the 15th government of pale of the settlement exclusive of the kingdom of Poland but inclusive of the Baltic region amounted to 1,430,800 forming 8% of the total population of that territory. The number of artisans in the Jewish governments was far greater than in the Russian interior. Thus, in the government of Kiev, there were to be found 2.06 artisans to every thousand inhabitants against 0.8 in the nearby government of Kursk, i.e. 2% times more. In reality, the number of Jews in the western region without the kingdom of Poland exceeded considerably one and one half millions, there being no regular registration at that time. End of quote note, a surprisingly liberal pronouncement came from the governor general of new Russia, Count Stroganov. In the world of Russian officialdom professing the dogma of gradation and caution in the question of Jewish rights, he was the only one who had the courage to raise his voice on behalf of complete Jewish emancipation. He wrote, the existence in our times of restrictions in the rights of the Jews as compared with the Christian population in any shape or form is neither in accord with the spirit and tendency of the age nor with the policy of the government looking toward the amalgamation of the Jews with the original population of the empire. The count therefore concluded that it was necessary to permit the Jews to live in all the places of the empire and engage without any restrictions and unequal terms with all Russian subjects in such craft and industries as they themselves may choose in accordance with their habits and abilities. It is scarcely necessary to add that the bold voice of the Russian dignitary who in a lucid interval spoke of in a manner reminiscent of civilized west was not listened to by the bureaucrats of St. Petersburg. Nevertheless, as far as the specific question of Jewish artisans was concerned, the favorable replies were bound to have a decisive effect. However, red-tape sluggishness managed to retard the decision for several years. In 1863, the question was referred back to the Jewish committee only a short time before the dissolution of that body which for a quarter of a century had perpetrated every conceivable experiment over the amalgamation of the Jews. Then the matter was transferred to the committee of ministers and finally to the council of state. In the ministerial body, valyuev, minister of the interior favored the idea of granting the right of settling outside the path to Jewish artisans and mechanics, dependent on certain conditions by practicing caution and endeavoring to avert the rapid influx into the midst of the population of the interior governments of an element he thought to fall into it. In reply to Baron Koff, who had advocated the admission of the Jewish artisans beyond the pale, not only with their families but also with Jewish domestics, valyuev argued that this privilege will enable Jewish businessmen of all kinds to reside in the interior governments under the guise of employees of their co-religionist. The Jews, according to valyuev, will endeavor to transfer their activity to a field economically more favorable to them and it goes without saying that they will not fail to seize the first best opportunity of exploiting the places of the empire he thought to inaccessible to them. The council of state passed law in the formulation of the ministerial of the interior adding the necessary precaution against the entirely legitimate endeavor of Jewish businessmen to transfer their activity to a field economically more favorable to them. After nine years of preparation on June 28, 1865, Alexander II finally gave his sanction to the law, permitting Jewish artisans, mechanics and distillers, including apprentices to reside all over the empire. Both in the wording of the law and in its subsequent application, the privilege was hatched about by numerous safeguards. Thus, the artisan who wished to settle outside the pale had to produce not only a certificate from his trade union testifying to his professional ability but also a testimony from the police that he was not on the trial. At stated intervals he had to procure a passport from his native town in the pale since outside the pale his status was that of a temporary resident. In his new place of residence he was permitted to deal only in the wells of his own workmanship. If he happened to be out of work he was to be sent back to the pale. While opening a valve in the suffocating pale the government took good care to prevent the artificially pent up Jewish energy from rushing through it. However, he being cooped up for so long the Jews began to press through the opening. In the wake of the artisans who on account of the indicated restrictions of the law or because of the lack of traveling expenses emigrated in comparatively small numbers, followed the commercial proletariat using criminal disguise of artisans in order to transport their energies to a field economically more favorable to them. The position of these people were tragic. The fictitious artisans became the tributaries of the local police depending entirely on its favor or disfavor. The detection of such criminal outside the pale was followed by the explosion and the confiscation of their merchandise. As a matter of fact the Russian government did everything in its power to stem the influx of Jews into the interior. Only with the greatest reluctance they did widen the range of the privileged Jewish groups. The tsar himself held in the throes of the old Muscovite tradition frequently put his veto upon the proposers to enlarge the area of Jewish residence. A striking illustration of this attitude may be found in the case of the retired Jewish soldiers who after discharging their galley-like army service over a quarter of a century were expelled from the places where they had been stationed and sent back into the pale. To the report submitted in 1858 by the Jewish committee pointing out the necessity of granting the right of universal residence to these soldiers, the tsar attached the resolution. I decidedly refused to grant it. When petitions to the same effect became more insistent all he did was to permit in 1860 by way of exemption a group of retired soldiers who had served in St. Petersburg in the bodyguard to remain in the capital. Ultimately however he was obliged to yield and in 1867 he revoked the law prohibiting retired Jewish soldiers to live outside the pale. Thus after long wavering the right of domicile was finally bestowed upon the so-called Nicholas soldiers and the offspring rather negatively reward for having served the fatherland under the terrible hardships of the old form of conscription. End of section 12, section 13 of history of the Jews in Russia and Poland, volume 2 from the death of Alexander I until the death of Alexander III, 1825 to 1894 by Shimon Dubunov translated by Israel Friedländer. This liberal works recording is in the public domain, recording by SS Kim, Manicked Baishu, Portugal. Chapter 18, the era of reforms on the Alexander II. Part 2. 4. For the elevations and attempts at reciprocation. Nevertheless, the liberal spirit of the age did its work slowly but surely and partial legal elevations were granted by the government or arrested from it by the force of circumstances. The barriers which had been erected for the Jews within the pale itself were done away with. Thus the right of residence was extended to the cities of Nikolaev and Sebastopol which the geographically situated within the pale had been legally placed outside the way. The obstructions in the way of temporary visit to the holy city of Kiev were mitigated. The disgraceful old time privilege of several cities such as Zittomir and Vilna entitling them to exclude the Jews from certain streets was revoked. Moreover, by the law of 1862 the Jews were permitted to acquire land in the rural districts on those manorial estates in each after the liberations of the peasants. The binding relations of the peasants to the landed proprietors had been completely discontinued. Unfortunately, what the Jews thus gained through the liberation of the peasants, they lost to the large extent soon afterward through the Polish insurrection of 1863 forfeiting the right of acquiring immovable property outside the cities in the great part of the pale. For in 1864, after killing the Polish insurrection, the government undertook to recify the western region and both Poles and Jews were strictly barred from acquiring estates in the nine governments forming the jurisdiction of the governor's general of Vilna and Kiev. The two other great reforms that of rural self-government and the judiciary were not stained by the economic label Gromir Yevlev accepting the Jews so characteristic of Russian legislation. The statute concerning James II organizations issued in 1864 makes no exception for Jews and those among them with the necessary agrarian or commercial qualifications are granted the rights of active and passive suffrage within the scheme of provincial self-government. In fact, in the southern government, the Jews began soon afterwards to participate in the rural assemblies and were occasionally appointed to rural offices. No did the liberally conceived judicial regulations of 1864 contain any important discriminations against the Jews. Within a short time, Jewish lawyers attained to prominence as a member of the Russian bar, although their admission to the bench was limited to a few isolated cases. Little by little, another dismal specter of the past, the missionary activity of the government began to fade away. In the beginning of Alexander's reign, the conversion of Jews was still encouraged by the grant of monetary assistance to conflict. The law of 1859 extended these stipends to persons embracing any other Christian appreciation outside of Greek orthodoxy. But in 1864, the government came to the conclusion that it was not worth its while to reward deserters and began a new policy by discontinuing its allowances to converts serving in the army. A little later, it repealed the law providing for mitigation of sentence for criminal offenders who embrace Christianity during the inquiry or trial. And encouraging the fusion of the Jews with the original population, the government of Alexander II had in mind civil and cultural fusion rather than religious assimilation, which even the inquisitorial contrivances of Nicholas' conscription scheme had failed to accomplish. But as far as the cultural fusion, who are for short the recification of the Jews was concerned, the government even now occasionally indulged in practices which were borrowed from the educated system of enlightened absolutism. The official enlightenment which had been introduced during the 40s was slow in taking root. The year 1848 was the first scholastic year in the two enlightenment nurseries, the rabbinical schools of Vilna and Zitomi. Beginning with that year, a number of elementary crown schools for Jewish children were opened in various cities of the Pale. The cruel persecutions of the outgoing regime affected the development of schools in two-fold manner. On the one hand, the Jewish population could not help turning away with disgust from the gift of enlightenment which its persecutors held out to it. On the other hand, the horrors of conscription induced many Jewish youth to seek refuge in the new rabbinical schools which saved their inmates from the soldiers' uniform. Many parents who regarded both the barracks and the crown schools as trying ground for converts preferred to send his children to the letter where at least they were spared the martyrdom of the barracks. The pupils of the rabbinical schools came from the poorest classes, those that carried on their shoulders the whole weight of conscription. True, the distrustful attitude towards the official schools was gradually weakening as the new government of Alexander II was passing from the formal policy of oppression to death of reforms. By and by, the compulsory attendance at these schools became a voluntary one, prompted by the desire for general culture or for special training as rabbi or teacher. Nevertheless, the expectation of the Russian government under Nicholas I that the new schools would take the place of the time under the educational Jewish institutions, the header and Yeshba remained unfulfilled. Only an insignificant percentage of Jewish children went to the crown schools and even these children did so only after having received their training at the header or Yeshba. Realizing this, the government decided to combat the traditional school as the rival of the new. Immediately upon his accession to the throne, Alexander confirmed the following resolution adopted by the Jewish Committee on May 3, 1855. After the lapse of 20 years, no one shall be appointed rabbi or teacher of Jewish subjects except graduates of the rabbinical schools or of the general educational establishment of a higher or secondary grade. Having fixed the term of 20 years for abolishing the institution of melaments and religious leaders, the products of thousands of years of development, the government frequently brandished this democulase sword over their heads. In 1856, a strict supervision was established over headers and melaments. A year later, the Jewish communities were instructed to elect hence forward as official rabbis or the graduates of the rabbinical crown schools or of secular educational establishments and in default of such to invite educated Jews from Germany. But all these regulations proved of no avail. And in 1859, a new UK's become necessary which loosened the official grip over the headers but made it at the same time obligatory upon the children of Jewish merchants to attend the general Russian schools or the Jewish crown schools. The enforcement of school attendance would scarcely have produced the desired effect. The Orthodox managed somehow to give the sleep to Russian learning. Why not for the fact that under the influence of the inner cultural transformation of Russian Jewry, the general Russian school became during that period more and more popular among the advanced classes of Jewish population. And gimnasium and university took their place alongside of Heather and Yeshiva. Yet the hundreds of pupils in the new schools faded into insignificance when compared with the hundreds of thousands who were educated exclusively in the old schools. The fatal year 1875, the last of the 20 years of respite granted to the melaments for their self-annihilation arrived. But the huge melamet army was not willing to pass out of Jewish life in which they exercised or definite function with no substitute to take its place. The government was forced to yield. After several brief postponements, the melamet were left in peace and by a new case issued in 1879, the idea of abolishing the headers was dropped. Towards the end of this period, the government abandoned altogether its attempts to reform the Jewish schools and decided to liquidate its formal activity in this direction. By a new case issued in 1873, the two rabbinical schools and all Jewish crown schools were closed. On the ruins of the vast educational network, originally projected for the transformation of Judaism, only about 100 elementary schools and two modest teachers institutes which were to supply teachers for these schools were established by the government. The authorities were now inclined to look upon the general Russian schools as the most effective agencies of fusion and put their greatest trust in the elemental process of Russification which had begun to sweep over the upper layers of Jewry. 5. The Jews and the Polish Insurrection of 1863 While the official world of St. Petersburg was obsessed with the idea of Russification of Jewry, in Warsaw, the tendency of colonization as applied to the Jews of the Western region cropped up in the wake of the revolutionary Polish movement in the beginning of the 60s. At the inception of Alexander's reign, the Russian government set out to equalize the legal status of the Jews in the kingdom of Poland with that of the empire and to abolish the surviving special restrictions such as the prohibition of residing in certain towns or in certain parts of towns, these abilities in acquiring property and others. But the highest Polish administration in Warsaw was obstructing in every possible way the liberal attempts of the Russian government. Prior to the insurrection of 1863, the attitude of Polish society towards the Jews was one of the habitual animosity and this notwithstanding the fact that by that time Warsaw harbored already a group of Jewish intellectuals who were eager to assimilate with the Poles and were imbued with Polish patriotism. When in 1859 the Warsaw Gazette published an anti-Semitic article in which the Jews were blended as foreigners, the Polish-Jewish patriots, including the Bank of Kronenburg, a convoy, were stoned to the quick and they came forward with violent protests. This led to passionate debates in the Polish press generally unfriendly to the Jews. The radical Polish organs published abroad by political exiles took occasion to denounce bitterly the anti-Semitic trends of Polish society. The veteran historian Lelewell, who had not yet forgotten Poland's historic injustice of 1831, issued a pamphlet in Brussels calling upon the Poles to live in harmony with the race with which it had existed side by side for 800 years. Lelewell's kindly words would scarcely have brought the anti-Semites to reason had not the Poles at that moment embarked upon an enterprise for the success of which they solely needed the sympathy and cooperation of their Jewish neighbors. The revolutionary movements which engulfed Russian Poland in 1860 to 1863 required the utmost exertion of effort on the part of the entire population in each the half million Jews played no small part. All of a sudden, Polish society opened its arms to those whom it had but recently branded as foreigners and out of the ranks of Warsaw Jewry came a hearty response expressing itself not only in patriotic manifestations but also in sacrifice and achievements for the sake of the common fatherland. At the head of the Warsaw community during this stormy period stood a man who combined Polish patriotism with rabbinic orthodoxy. Formerly, Reba and Krakow, Berusch Meisers, had as far back as 1848 been sent as deputy to the parliament at Kremsier and stood in the forefront of the Polish patriots of Galicia. In 1856 he accepted the post of Reba in Warsaw. When the revolutionary movement had broken out, Meisers endeavored to instruct his flock in the spirit of Polish patriotism. Reward by the Jewish message for his piety and by the intellectuals for his political trend of mind, this spiritual leader of Polish Jewry played in the revolutionary Polish movement a role equal in importance to that of the leading ecclesiastics of Poland. The harmonious cooperation of the orthodox chief Reba Meisers, the reform preacher Marcus Yestrov and the lay representatives of the community land unity and organization to the part played by the Jews in preparing the rebellion. The Jews of Warsaw participated in all street manifestation and political processions which took place during the year 1860 to 1861. Among those pierced by Cossack bullets during the manifestation of February 27, 1861 were several Jews. The indignation which this shooting down of defenseless people allows in Warsaw is generally regarded as the immediate cause of the mutiny. Reba Meisers was a member of the deputation which went to visually Gorchakov to demand the satisfaction for the blood that had been spilled. In the demonstrative funeral procession which followed the coffins of the victims, the Jewish clutch headed by Meisers marched alongside of the Catholic priesthood. Many Jews attended the memorial services in the catholic churches at which feary patriotic speeches were delivered. Similar demonstrations of mourning were held in the synagogues. An appeal sent out broadcast by the circle of patriotic Jewish Polish reminded the Jews of the anti-Jewish hatred of the Russian bureaucracy and called upon them to clasp joyfully the brotherly hand held forth by them the Polish to place themselves under the banner of the nation whose ministers of religion have all in churches spoken of us in words of love and brotherhood. The whole year 1861 stood at least as far as the Polish capital was concerned under the sign of Polish Jewish brotherhood. At the synagogue service held in memory of the historian Relebel Yastrov, pre-cheat of Patriotic summon. On the day of Jewish New Year, prayers were offered up in the synagogue for the success of the Polish cause, accompanied by the singing of the national Polish hymn Bozeko's Polske. When, as a protest against the invasion of the churches by the Russian soldiery, the Catholic closed all churches in Warsaw, the Revis and communal elders followed suit and ordered the closing of the synagogues. This action aroused the eye of leaders, the new visceral. Revi Meisters, the preachers Yastrov and Kramshtik as well as the president of the Congressional Board were placed under arrest. The prisoners were kept in the citadel of Warsaw for three months but were then released. In the meantime, Marki Biele Polske acting as mediator between the Russian government and the Polish people had prepared his plan of reform as a means of warding off the mutiny. Among these reforms which aimed at the partial restoration of Polish autonomy and the improvement of the status of the peasantry was included the law providing for the legal equalities of the Jews. Willing considerable influence first as director of the Polish commission of ecclesiastic affairs and public instruction and later as the head of the whole civil administration of the kingdom Biele Polske was able to secure Saint Peter's books ascent to his project. On May 24, 1862, Alexander II signed the new case revoking the suspensory decree of 1808 which had entailed numerous disabilities for the Jews incompatible with the new tendencies in the political and agrarian life of the kingdom. This UK's conferred the following rights upon the Jews. One, to acquire immovable property on all mineral estates on each, the peasants had passed from the state of selves into debt of tenants. Two, to settle freely in the formerly prohibited cities and city districts not excluding those situated within the 21 verse zone along the Prussian and Austrian border. Three, to appear as witnesses in court on an equal footing with Christians in all legal proceedings and to take on all in a new less humiliating form. Bestowing these privileges upon the Polish Jews in the hope of bringing about their amalgamation with the local Christian population the tsar forbids in the same UK's the further use of Hebrew and Yiddish in all civil affairs and legal documents such as contracts, wills, obligations, also in commercial ledgers and even in business correspondence. In conclusion, the UK's directed the administrative council of the Kingdom of Poland to revise and eventually to repeal all the other laws which hampered the Jews in the pursuit of crafts and industries by imposing special taxes upon them. This UK's of Alexander II though revoking all the parts of the inserting restrictions in the elementary civil rights of the Jews was given the high sounding title of an act of emancipation. The secluded Hasidic mass of Poland was glad to accept the legal alleviations offered to it without thinking of any linguistic and other kind of assimilation. On the other hand, the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia which had joined the ranks of the Polish insurgents was dreaming of complete emancipation and confidently hoped to attain it upon the successful termination of the revolutionary enterprise. In the meantime, the revolution was assuming ever larger proportions. The year 1863 arrived. The demonstrations on the streets of Warsaw were succeeded by bloody skirmishes between the Polish insurgents and the Russian troops in the woods of Poland and Lithuania. The Jews took no active part in this phase of the rebellion. As far as Poland proper was concerned, their participation was limited to the secret revolutionary propaganda. In Lithuania again, neither the Jewish masses nor the newly risen class of intellectuals sympathized with the Polish cause. In that part of the country, the systematic jubating of the Polish panse were noble land owners who were still fresh in the mines and the Jews, moreover, were pinning all their faith to the emancipation to be bestowed by St. Petersburg. The will or the wisp of classification had already begun to lure the Jewish professional class. In many Lithuanian localities, the Jews who failed to show their sympathy with the Polish revolutionary rendered the risk of being dealt with severely. Here and there, as had been the case in 1831, the rebels were as good as they were and hanged or shot the Jews suspected of Prussian sympathies. The reserved attitude of the returning Jews throughout the mutiny proved their salvation after the separation of the rebellion when the ferocious Moravi of the Governor General of Vilna took up his bloody work of retribution. As for the Kingdom of Poland, neither the revolution nor its suppression entailed any serious consequences for them. True, the fraternization of the Warsaw Jews with the Polish during the revolutionary years weakened for a little while the hereditary Jew hatred of the Polish people and helped to intensify the fever of colonization which had seized the Jewish upper classes. But indirectly, the effects of the Polish rebellion was detrimental to the Jews of the rest of the empire. The insurrection was not only followed by a general wave of political reaction but it also gave strong impetus to the Polish of classification which was now applied with particular vigor to the western provinces and was damaging to the Jews both from the civil and cultural point of view. End of §13. §14 of history of the Jews in Russia and Poland. §1. Change of attitude toward the Jewish problem. The decided drift toward political reaction in the second part of Alexander's reign affected also the specific Jewish problem which the homeopathic reforms designed to ameliorate a fraction of the Jewish people had tried to solve in vain. The general reaction showed itself in the fact that after having carried out the first great reforms such as the liberation of the peasantry, the introduction of rural self-government and the reorganization of the administration of the law. The government considered the task of Russian regeneration to be completed and stubbornly refused to use the expression current at the time to crown the edifice by the one great political reform, the grant of constitution and political liberty. This refusal widened the bridge between the government and the progressive element of the Russian people whose hopes were riveted on the ultimate goal of political reorganization. The striving for liberty driven underground by police and censorship assumed among the Russian Jews the character of a revolutionary movement. And when the mother's hand of the third section descended heavily upon the champions of liberty, the useful revolutionaries retorted with political terrorism which darkened the last days of Alexander II and led to his assassination. The complete emancipation of the Jews was out of place in this atmosphere of growing official reaction. The same bureaucracy which halted the march of the great reforms for the country at large was not inclined to allow even minor reforms when affecting the Jews only. Even the formal desire for graded and partial amelioration of the position of the Jews had vanished. Instead, the center of the stage was again occupied by the old red tape activities, by discussions about the Jewish question, endless, no less than fruitless, in the recesses of bureaucratic committees and subcommittees by irregular anniversaries of governors and governors general upon the conduct of the Jews and so on. The remongering of the reactionary variety was again at the premium. Once more, the authorities debated the question whether the Jews were to be regarded as useful or harmful to the state instead of putting the diametrically opposite question of simple justice whether the state which is called upon to solve the Jews as a part of civic organism of Russia is useful to them to an extent which may be lawfully claimed by them. Under Nicholas I, the government chancelories had been busy inventing new remedies against the separatism of the Jews and their harmful pursuits. During the first liberal years of Alexander's reign, commerce ceased to be branded as harmful pursuits. Yet as soon as the Jewish merchants stimulated by the partial extension of their rights of residence and occupation, displayed a wider economic activity and became successful competitors of the original Russian businessmen, they were met with shouts of protest demanding that this Jewish exploitation be effectively carved. In this connection, it must be pointed out that the economic advancement of the Jews was not altogether due to the privileges accorded to them by the Russian legislation but was rather the effect of general economic conditions. The great progress in industrial life during the era of reforms, more particularly the expansion of railroad enterprises during the 60s and 70s opened up a wide field for the energies of Jewish capitalists. Moreover, the evolution in 1861 of the old system of farming out the sale of liquor transported a part of the big Jewish capital from the liquor traffic into railroad building. The Jewish excise farmers were converted into railroad men as shareholders, supply merchants or contractors. A new Jewish plutocracy came into being and its growth excited jealousy and fear among the Russian mercantile class. The government filled with enthusiasm for the cultivation of large industries was not as yet prepared to discriminate against the Jews whenever big capital was concerned. But it lent an alternative ear to the original Russian merchants whenever they complained about Jewish competition in petty trade on which the lower Jewish classes depended for their livelihood. The government which had not yet emancipated itself from the habit of assaulting its citizens and dividing them into a protected and tolerated class set out to elaborate measures for curving the Jews belonging to the latter category. The question which confronted the government next was this to what extent have the hopes for a fusion of the Jews with the original population being justified by the events. Here too, the reply was unsatisfactory. The naive expectation that a few gratuities offered the Jews in the shape of privileges would fill them with the eager desire to fuse with the Russians did not come true. Strong as was the trend toward reciprocation in the new Jewish intelligentsia of the 60s the broad message of Jewry knew nothing of such a tendency. The authorities became suspicious. What if these crafty Hebrews should fool us again and refuse to pay for the donated rights by fusing with the Christians? Russian officialdom received new food for reflection which was to last it for years, nay for decades. Two, the informal Jacob Brafman. Several occurrences were instrumental in determining the government to embark upon a new policy that of investigating assiduously the inner life of the Jews. At the end of the 60s, a man appeared in Vilna who offered his services to the authorities as a detective and spy among the Jews. Jacob Brafman, a native of the government of Minsk had deserted his race and religion in the last years of Nicholas' conscription hoping thereby to escape the nets of the vigilant car captors who wished to draft him into the army. Invited against the car agents who had become mere police tools Brafman desired to rep vengeance upon the car as a whole nay upon the very idea of Jewish communal organization. When the fusion or assimilation of the Jews became the watchword for the highest official circles the astute convert found that he could make his way by exposing the influence which in his opinion checked the endeavors of the government. A memorandum presented by him to Alexander II when the letter was passing through Minsk in 1858 opened to him the doors of the Holy Synod. He was appointed instructor of Hebrew at Greek Orthodox Seminary and entrusted with the task of finding ways to remove the difficulties placed by the Jews in the path of their core religionists intending to go over to Christianity. His mission to facilitate apostasy among the Jews proved a failure and his services as detective were not yet appreciated during the liberal years of Alexander's reign. However, with the reactionary turn in Russian politics in the middle of the 60s these services were once more in demand. Brafman hastened to the hotbed of reactionary chauvinism the city of Vilna which was firmly held in the iron grip of Moravyov and there began to expose the separatism of the inner life of the Jews before the highest administration of the province. He contended that the Khar though officially abolished in 1844 continued in reality to exist and to maintain a widely reified tradition but then that it constitutes a secret uncanny sort of organization which wielded despotic power of the communities by employing such weapons as the Harem, excommunication and Hasaka the Jewish legal practice of securing property rights that it incited the Jewish masses against the state the government and the Christian religion and fostered in these masses fanaticism and dangerous national separatism. In the opinion of Brafman the only way to eradicate this secret Jewish government was to destroy the last vestige of Jewish communal autonomy by closing all religious and charitable societies and fraternities the Jewish community itself ought to share the same fate and the Jews forming part of it should be included among the Christian states in the cities and villages. In a world, Judaism as a communal organization should pass out of existence altogether. The Heads of Russian Administration in Lithuania listened eagerly to the sinister revelation of the New Peppercorn. In 1866, Governor General Kaufman appointed a commission which also included a few Jewish experts to look into the material compiled by Brafman. This material consisted of the minutes of the Karl of Minsk from the first half of the 19th century recording the entirely legitimate enactment which the communal administration had passed by virtue of the autonomous right granted to it by the government. Brafman published his material in a series of articles in the official organ of the province the Vilansk-Viestnik, the Vilna herald. The articles were later published in a separate volume under the title Kniga Kahala, the Book of the Kahala. The data collected by Brafman was embellished with the customary anti-Semitic quotations from Talmudic and rabbinic literature and put in such a light that the government was placed on the horns of a dilemma either to destroy with one stroke the entire Jewish communal organization and all the cultural agencies attached to it or to run the risk of seeing Russia captured by the universal Karl. It may be added that Alianz is an elite university which had shortly before been founded in Paris for the purpose of assisting Jews in various countries figured in Brafman's indictment as a constituent society of the universal Jewish Karl organization. The Book of the Karl was printed at public expense and sent out to all government offices to serve as a guide for Russian officials and enabled them to fight the inner enemy. It was in vain that Brafman's ignorance of rabbinic law and his entire distortion of the role played by the Karl in days gone by was exposed by Jewish writers in articles and monographs. It was in vain that Jewish members of the commission appointed by the governor general of Vilna protested against the barbarous proposals of the informer. The authorities of St. Petersburg seized upon Brafman's discoveries as incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Jewish separatism and as justification for the method of cautiousness which they saw fit to apply to the solution of the Jewish problem. Three, the fight against Jewish separatism. Another incident which took place about the same time served in the eyes of the leading government circles as an additional illustration of Jewish separatism. In 1870, Alexander II was on a visit to the Kingdom of Poland and there beheld the sight of dense masses of Hasidim with their long earlocks and flowing cords. The tsar, repelled by the spectacle enjoined upon the Polish governors strictly to enforce in their domains the old Russian law prohibiting the Jewish form of dress. Thereupon, the administration of Kingdom drew itself special gesture upon the important task of eradicating the ugly costumes and earlocks of the Hasidim. Shortly afterwards, the question of Jewish separatism was the subject of discussion before the Council of State. Under the unmistakable influence of the recent revelation of Brafman, the Council of State arrived at the conclusion that the prohibition of external differences in dress is yet far from leading to the goal pursued by the government, namely to destroy the exclusiveness of the Jews and the almost hostile attitude of the Jewish communities towards Christians. These communities forming in our land secluded religious and civil caste or one might say a state in a state. Hence, the Council proposed to entrust a special commission with the task of considering ways and means to weaken as far as possible the communal cohesion among the Jews. December 1870. As a result, a commission of the kind suggested by the Council was established in 1871 consisting of the representatives of the various ministries and presided over by the Assistant Ministers of the Interior Lobonov Rostovsky. The commission received the same commission of the amelioration of the condition of the Jews. While the government was again engaged in one of its numerous experiments over the problem of Jewish separatism, an event unusual in those days took place, the Odessa program of 1871. In this granary of the south, which owed its flourishing commerce to Jews and Greeks, an unfriendly feeling had sprung up between these two nationalities which competed with one another in the corn trade and in the grocery business. This competition, though of great benefit to the consumers, was a thorn in the flesh of the Greek merchants. Time and again, the Greeks would scare the Jews during the Christian Passover by the barbarous custom of discharging pistols in front of their church, which was situated in the heart of the Jewish district. But in 1871, with the approach of the Christian Passover, the Greeks proceeded to organize a regular program. To arouse the mob, the Greeks spread the rumor that the Jews had stolen a cross from the church fence and had thrown stones at the church building. The program began on Palm Sunday, March 28. The Jews were maltreated, and their houses and shops were sacked and loaded. Having started in the immediate vicinity of the church, the riot spread to the neighboring streets and finally engulfed the whole city. For three days, hordes of Greeks and Russians gave free vent to the mob instinct, demolishing burning and robbing Jewish property, desecrating synagogues and beating Jews to senselessness in all parts of the city, undisturbed by the presence of police and troops who did nothing to stop the atrocities. The appeal of representative Odessa Jews to Governor General Kotsupie was met by the retort that the Jews themselves were to blame, having started first and that the necessary measures for restoring order had been adopted. The latter assertion proved to be false. For on the following day, the program was renewed with even greater vigor. Only on the fourth day when thousands of houses and shops had already been destroyed and the rioters intoxicated with their success threatened to start a regular massacre, the authorities decided to step in and to pacify the rip-rap by a rather quaint method. Soldiers were posted on the marketplace with wagon rods of rods and the rioters coat red-handed were given a public whipping on the spot. The fatherly punishment inflicted by the local authorities upon their naughty children sufficed to put a stop to the program. As for the central government in St. Petersburg, the only thing it wanted to know was whether the program had any connection with the secret evolutionary propaganda which beginning with the Jews might next set them up against the nobility and Russian bourgeoisie. Since the official inquiry failed to reveal the political motives behind the Odessa riots, the St. Petersburg authorities were set at ease and were only too glad to take the word of the set traps of the pain who reported that the anti-Jewish movement had started as a crude protest of the masses against the failure to solve the Jewish question, namely to solve it in the reactionary spirit and as a manifestation of the popular resentment against Jewish exploitation. The old charge of separatism against the Jews thus found the companion in a new accusation the economic exploitation of the Christian population of the pale. The committee appointed at the recommendation of the council of state was enjoined to conduct a strict inquiry into both these charges. Concretely, the work of the committee reduced itself to a consideration of two questions, one related to the kahl or the amelioration of the spiritual life of the Jews and the other referring to the feasibility of deigning out the pale of settlement with the end in view of weakening the economic competition of the Jews. The material bearing on these questions included apart from Brahman's standard work on memorandum concerning the more important administrative problems in the southeast which had been submitted in 1871 by Governor-General of Kyiv Dondakov Korsakov to the Tsar. The order of the memorandum voices his conviction that principal endeavours of the government must be concentrated upon the Jewish question. The Jews are becoming a great economic power in the southwestern provinces. They purchase or mortgage estates and obtain control of the factories and mills as well as of the grain, timber and liquor trade thereby arousing the bitter resentment of the Christian population, particularly in the rural districts. Moreover, the Jewish masses refusing to follow the lead of the handful of crucified Jewish intellectuals live entirely apart and remain in the throes of Talmudic fanaticism and Hasidic obscurantism. They possess complete self-government in their cars, their own system of finance in the basket tax, their separate charitable institutions, their own traditional schools in the headers of which there are in the southwest no less than 6,000. In addition, the Jews possess an international organization, the World Cajal, represented by Allianz Israelite University in Paris, whose president Adolf Kremio had had the audacity to protest the Russian government against the acts of violence perpetrated upon the Jews. For all these reasons, the Governor-General is of the opinion that the revision of the whole legislation affecting the Jews has become an imperative necessity. According to the official figures quoted in the memorandum, the number of Jews in the three southwestern governments, i.e. Volinia, Podolia and the Kiev province amounted to 721,080. Of these, 14% lived in rural districts and 86% in cities and towns. They owned 27 sugar refineries out of 105, 619 districts out of 712, 5,700 mills out of 6,353, and so forth. The production of the industrial establishments in the hands of the Jews reached the sum of 70 million rubles. A similar tone was adopted in the other official documents which came into the hands of the committee for the amelioration of the condition of the Jews. The communications of the Governors and the reports of the members of the committee were all animated by the same street, the street that spoke through Brahman's Book of the Kar. This was but natural. The officials to whom this book had been sent by the central government for guidance drew from it the whole political wisdom in things Jewish and in their replies endeavored to fall in with the instructions of the council of states conveyed to them by the committee, namely to consider ways to weaken the communal equation among the Jews. In the Kingdom of Poland the Governors complained similarly in their reports that the Jews of the province though accorded equal rights by Biele Polski had not complied with the conditions attached to that act to abandon the use of their own language and script in exchange for the favors bestowed upon them. Outside of a handful of assimilated polls of the Mosaic Preciation who were imbued with Polish chauvinism the Hasidic rank and vile war permeated by extreme separatism fostered by the card through its various agencies the congregational boards, the Revenant, the headers and the host of special institutions. These and similar communications form the groundwork of the reports or more correctly the bills of indictment in each the members of the committee charged the Jews with the terrible crime of constituting a religio-political caste, in other words nationality. Following the lead of Brahman the members of the committee laid particular emphasis in their reports on the obnoxiousness of the Talmud and the danger of Jewish separatism. Needless to say the conclusion offered by them or of the kind anticipated in the instructions of the Council of State. The necessity of wiping out the last vestige of the Jewish self-government such as the Jewish community, the school, the mutual relief societies in the world, everything that tends to foster the communal cohesion among the Jews. The barbarism of these proposals were covered by the thick lip of enlightenment. When the benighted Jewish masses will have fused with the highly cultured populace of Russia. In other words when the Jews will have ceased to be Jews then will the Jewish question find its solution. In the meantime however the Jews are to be covered by the bridle of disabilities. The referees of the committee on the question of the paleops settlement Grigoriyev frankly stated what is important in this question is not whether the Jews will fare better when granted the rights of residents all over the empire but rather the effect of these measures on the economic well-being of one enormous part of Russian people. From this point of view the referee finds that it would be dangerous to let the Jews pass beyond the pale since the plague which had thus far been restricted to the western provinces will then spread over the whole empire. For a long time the committee was at a deadlock held down by bureaucratic reaction. It was only towards the end of its existence that the voice from another world the posthumous voice of dead and buried liberalism resounded in its midst. In 1880 the committee was presented with the memorandum by two of its members Mekhludov and Karaphov in each the bold attempt was made to champion the heretic point of view of complete Jewish emancipation The language of the memorandum was one which the Russian government had not heard for a long time. In the name of morality and justice the authors of the memorandum call upon the government to abandon its grossly utilitarian attitude towards the Jews who are to be denied civil rights so long as they do not prove useful to the original population. They exposed the selfish motive underlying the bits of emancipation which had been doled out to the Jews during the preceding spell of liberalism. The desire not to help the Jews but to exploit their services. First killed merchants, physicians, lawyers, artisans were admitted into the interior for the sole purpose of developing business in those places and filling the pulpable shortage in artisans and professional men. As soon as this or that category of Jews was found to be serviceable to the Russian people it was relieved and relieved only in parts from the pressure of exceptional laws and received into the dominant population of Syria. But the millions of plain Jews abandoned by the upper classes have continued to languish in the suffocating pale. The Jewish population is denied the elementary right guaranteeing liberty of pursuit, freedom of movement and land ownership such as only a criminal may be deprived of by a verdict of the courts. As it is, this content is right among these disinherited masses. The rising generation of Jews has already begun to participate in the revolutionary movement to which they had hitherto been strangers. The system of oppression must be set aside. All the Jewish defects, their separatism and one side of the economic activity merely the fruits of this oppression. Where the law has no confidence in the population, there inevitably the population has no confidence in the law and it naturally becomes an enemy of the existing order of things. Human reasons does not admit any consideration which might justify the placing of many millions of the Jewish population on a level with criminal offenders. The first step in the direction of complete emancipation ought to be the immediate grant of the right of domicile all over the empire. Footnote the narrow utilitarianism of the governmental policy in the Jewish question may also be illustrated by the official attitude towards the promotion of agriculture among the Jews. Under Alexander I and Nicholas I Jewish agricultural colonization in the south of Russia was encouraged by the grant of special privileges though the Jewish settlers were subjected to the stern tutelage of bureaucratic inspectors. But under Alexander II when southern Russia was no longer in need of artificial colonization, the government discontinued its polish of promoting Jewish colonization and on UK's issued in 1866 stopped the settlement of Jews in agricultural colonies altogether. A little later the Jewish colonies in the southwest were deprived of a large part of their lands which were distributed among the peasants. End of note these bold wars which turned the Jews from defendants into plaintiffs ran counter to the fundamental task of the committee which according to the original instructions received by it was expected to draft its plans in a spirit of reaction. At any rate these wars were utter too late. A new era was approaching which in solving the Jewish question resulted to the methods such as having horrified even the conservative statement of the 70s, the era of programs and cruel disabilities. End of section 14 section 15 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 2 run the deaths of Alexander I until the deaths of Alexander III 1825 to 1894 Translated by Israel Friedlander This library of recording is in the public domain Recording by SS Kim Manik De Baishu, Portugal Chapter 19 The reaction under Alexander II Part II for the Drip towards oppression During the last decade of Alexander's reign the machinery of Jewish legislation was working at a slow rate pending the full revision of Jewish rights Yet the steps of the approaching reaction could be well-designed. Thus in 1870 during the discussion of the draft of the new municipal statute by a special committee of the Ministry of the Interior which included as experts the bogomesters of the most important Russian cities The question arose whether the formal limitation of the number of Jewish old men in the municipal councils to one-third of the whole number of old men should be upheld or not The cities involved were those of the pale where the Jews formed the majority of the population and the committee was searching for ways and means to weaken the excessive influence of this majority upon the city or the administration and to subordinate it to the Christian minority One solitary member the bogomester of Odessa advocated the repeal of the old restriction with the one previso that the Jewish old men should be required to possess certain educational qualifications in as much as educated Jews and not quite as harmful as uneducated ones A minority of the members of the committee favoured the limitation of the number of Jewish old men to one-half, but the majority staunchly defended the old norm which was wondered The representatives of the majority in particular Count Czerkowski argued that the Jews constituted not only a religious but also a national entity that they were still widely removed from a simulation or a justification that education far from transforming the Jews into Russians made them only more successful in the struggle for existence that it was inadvisable to subject the whole Russian element of the population to the risk of falling under the domination of Judaism The curious principle of municipal justice by virtue of which the majority of house owners and taxpayers were to be ruled by the representatives of the minority carried the day The new municipal statute sanctioned the norm and reaffirmed the ineligibility of Jews to the post of Burgamester The law of 1874 establishing general military service and abolishing the former method of conscription proved the first legal enactment which imposed upon the Jews equal obligations with their fellow citizens prior to bestowing upon them equal rights To be sure the creation brought considerable relief to the Jews in as much as the heavy burden of military duty which had formally been borne entirely by the poor burger class was now distributed over all states while the burden itself was lightened by the reduction of the term of service Moreover, the formal collective responsibility of the community for the supply of recruits which had given rise to the institution of captors and many other evils was replaced by the personal responsibility of every individual conscript All this, however, was not sufficient to change certainly the attitude of the Jewish populace towards military service The formally privileged mercantile class could not reconcile itself easily to the idea of sending their children to the army The horrors of all the conscription were still fresh in their minds and even in its new setting military service was still suggestive of the hideous horrors of the past Those who but yesterday had been direct like criminals to the recruiting stations could not well be expected to change their sentiments overnight and appear there of their own free will The result was that a considerable number of Jews of military age 21 were to obey the summons of the first conscription Immediately, the cry went up that the Jews evaded their military duty and the Christians were forced to make up the shortage The official pens in St. Petersburg and in the provincial chancellor's became busy scribbling The Ministry of War demanded the adoption of draconian measures to stop this evasion As a result, the whole Jewish youth of conscription age was registered in 1875 At the recruiting stations, the age of the young Jews was determined by their external appearance without regard to their birth certificate Finally, in the course of 1876 to 1878 a number of special provisions were enacted by way of exception from the general military statute for the purpose of ensuring the regular discharge of their military duty by the Jews According to the new legal provisions the Jews who had been rejected as unfit for military service were to be replaced by other Jews and under no circumstances by Christians For this purpose, the Jewish conscripts were to be segregated from the Christians after the drawing of lots the first stage in the recruiting process Moreover, in the case of Jews or lower statures and narrow chests were required than in that of non-Jews In the case of a shortage of unprivileged recruits permission was given to draft not only Jews enjoying by their family status the third and second class privileges but also those of the first class i.e. to deprive Jewish parents of their only sons Footnot one Since the number of men of military age greatly exceeds the required number of the recruits the Russian law provides that lots be drawn by the conscripts to determine the order in which they are to present themselves for examination to the recruiting officers When the quota is completed the remaining conscripts i.e. those who having drawn or high number have not yet been examined declared exempt from military service Footnot two According to Russian law the following three categories of recruits are exempt from military service one, the only sons two, the only wage-earning sons though there will be other sons in the family three, those who have an elder brother or brothers in the army the first category is exempt under all circumstances the last two are on condition that the required number of recruits be secured out of the unprivileged conscripts only in the case of the Jews is the first category drawn upon in the case of a shortage Footnot In this manner the government sought to ensure with ruthless figure the discharge of this most honorable duty on the part of the Jews without making any attempt to ensure at the same time the rights of this population of three millions which was made to spill its blood for the fatherland in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 many Jewish soldiers fought for Russia and the goodly number of them were killed or wounded on the battlefield yet in the Russian military headquarters the post of command and chief was occupied by the crown prince the future Alexander III no attention was paid to the thousands of Jewish victims but rather to the fact that the Jewish form of armies pervades Grego Horowitz and Kohan was found to have had a share in the commissariat scandals when at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 a resolution was introduced calling upon the governments of Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria to accord equal rights to the Jews in their respective dominions and was warmly supported by all plenty potentialies such as Warrington, Beaconsfield, Bismarck and others the only one to oppose the emancipation of the Jews on principle was the Russian Chancellor Korchakov in his desire to save the prestige of Russia which herself had failed to grant equal rights to the Jews the Chancellor could not refrain from an anti-Semitic sale remarking during the debate that one ought not to confound the Jews of Berlin, Paris, London and Vienna who cannot be denied civil and political rights with the Jews of Serbia, Romania and several Russian provinces where they are a regular scourge to the native population All together the growth of anti-Semitism in the government circles and in certain layers of Russian society towards the close of the 70s became clearly pronounced the lawyers of Brahman whose exposure of Judaism had netted him many personal benefits and profitable connections in the world of officialdom were apt to stimulate all sorts of adventures in 1876 a new exposer of Judaism appeared on the scene a man with the stained past Hippolyt Lutostanski he was originally a Roman Catholic priest in the government of Kovma having been unfrogged by the Catholic consistory on account of incredible acts of lawlessness and immoral conduct including libel, embezelment, rape committed upon a Jew and similar heroic exploits he joined the Greek Orthodox Church entered the famous Trotsa monastery near Moscow as a monk and was admitted as a student to the ecclesiastic academy of the same city as a subject for his dissertation for the degree of candidate the ignorant monk chose a sensational topic concerning the use of Christian blood by the Jews it was an unlettered and scurrilous pamphlet in each the altar without indicating his sources incorporated the contents of an official memorandum on the ritual murder legend from the time of Nicholas I supplementing it by distorted quotations from the Talmudic and rabbinic literature without the slightest knowledge of that literature or the Hebrew language the monastic adventurer finding himself in the financial streets brought his manuscript to Rabbi Mein of Moscow declaring his willingness to forego the publication of his brochure which no doubt would cause great harm to the Jews for a consideration of 500 rubles 250 dollars his blackmail offer was rejected Lutostansky published his hideous book in 1876 and traveled with it to St. Petersburg where he managed to present it to the crown prince subsequently Alexander III and to secure from him a grateful acknowledgement the book also found the approval of chief of gendarmerie who acquired a large number of copies and distributed them among the secret police all over Russia encouraged by his success Lutostansky ish the few years later in 1879 another libella's work in two volumes another title the Talmud and the Jews which exhibit same cuteness in style and content as his previous achievement a typical specimen of Belyad literature the editor of the Hebrew journal Ha Melit Alexander Zedobam demonstrated clearly that Lutostansky had forged his quotations and summoned him to a public disputation which of was wisely declined nevertheless the agitation of this shameless imposter had a considerable effect on the highest official in each an ever stronger drift toward anti-semitism was clearly noticeable in 1878 this anti-semitic trend gave rise to a new ritual mother trial the discovery in the government of Kutais in the Caucasus of the body of a little Gurusinian girl named Sarah Modabase who had disappeared on the was deemed sufficient reason by the judicial authorities to enter a charge of murder against ten local Jews although the ritual character of the murder was not put forward openly in the indictment the case was tried before the district court of Kutais and the council for the defense succeeded by their brilliant speeches not only to demolish completely the whole structure of incriminating evidence but also to deal a death blow to the sinister ritual legend the case ended in 1879 with the acquittal of all the accused with all the ritual agitation left a nasty sediment in the Russian press when in 1879 the famous orientalist Daniel Chorson converted to Christianity and professor at the Greek Orthodox ecclesiastic seminary of St. Petersburg who had written a learned apologetic treatise concerning the medieval accusations against the Jews published a refutation of the ritual myth under the title Do Jews use Christian blood? He was attacked in the noboe of Ramia by the liberal historian Kostomarov who attempted to disprove the conclusions of the defender of Judaism the paper itself hid to liberal in its tendency changed from about that time and steering its course by the prevailing moves in the leading government circles launched a systematic campaign against the Jews the antisemitic baseline was floating in the social atmosphere of Russia and preparing the way for the program of the following decades end of section 15