The reserved attitude of the Lithuanian Jews throughout the mutiny proved their salvation after the suppression of the rebellion, when the ferocious Muravyov, 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 Poles during the revolutionary years weakened for a little while the hereditary Jew-hatred of the Polish people, and helped to intensify the fever of Polonization which had seized the Jewish upper classes.  But indirectly the effects of the Polish rebellion were 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 policy of Russification which was now applied with particular vigor to the Western provinces, and was damaging to the Jews both from the civil and the cultural point of view.

CHAPTER XIX

THE REACTION UNDER ALEXANDER II.

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 homoeopathic 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 a constitution and political liberty.  This refusal widened the breach 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 under ground by police and censorship, assumed among the Russian youth the character of a revolutionary movement.  And when the murderous hand of the “Third Section” [1] descended heavily upon the champions of liberty, the youthful revolutionaries retorted with political terrorism which darkened the last days of Alexander II. and led to his assassination.

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 21, n. 1.]

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 former desire for a “graded” and partial amelioration of the position of the Jews had vanished.  Instead, the center of the stage was again occupied by the