When I remember what has been done to us, how we have been taught to love Russia and Russian speech, how we have been induced and compelled to introduce the Russian language and everything Russian, into our families so that our children know no other language but Russian, and how we are now repulsed and persecuted, then our hearts are filled with sickening despair from which there seems to be no escape.  This terrible insult gnaws at my vitals.  It may be that I am mistaken, but I do honestly believe that even if I succeeded in moving to a happier country where all men are equal, where there are no pogroms by day and “Jewish commissions” by night, I would yet remain sick at heart to the very end of my life—­to such an extent do I feel worn out by this accursed year, this universal mental eclipse which has visited our dear fatherland.

Russian-Jewish literature of that period is full of similar self-revelations of disillusioned intellectuals.  However, this repentant mood did not always lead to positive results.  Some of these intellectuals, having become part and parcel of Russian cultural life, were no longer able to find their way back to Judaism, and they were carried off by the current of assimilation, culminating in baptism.  Others stood at the cross-roads, wavering between assimilation and Jewish nationalism.  Still others were so stunned by the blow they had received that they reeled violently backward, and proclaimed as their slogan the return “home,” in the sense of a complete renunciation of free criticism and of all strivings for inner reforms.

However, in the healthy part of Russian Jewry this change of mind resulted in turning their ideals definitely in the direction of national rejuvenation upon modern foundations.  The idea of a struggle for national rejuvenation in Eussia itself had not yet matured.  It appeared as an active force only in the following decade. [1] During the era of pogroms the salvation of Judaism was primarily associated with the idea of emigration.  The champions of American emigration were prone to idealize this movement, which had in reality sprung from practical necessity, and they saw in it, not without justification, the beginning of a new free center of Judaism in the Diaspora.  The Hebrew poet Judah Leib Gordon [2] addresses “The Daughter of Jacob [the Jewish people], disgraced by the son of Hamor [the Russian Government]” [3] in the following words: 

[Footnote 1:  That idea was subsequently championed by the writer of this volume.  See more about it in Vol.  III.]

[Footnote 2:  See p. 228 et seq.]

[Footnote 3:  An allusion to Gen. 34, with a play on the words Bem-hamor, “the son of an ass.”]

        Come, let as go where liberty’s light
        Doth shine upon all with equal might,
        Where every man, without disgrace,
        Is free to adhere to his creed and his race,
        Where thou, too, shalt no longer fear
        Dishonor from brutes, my sister dear![1]