Whilst the Russian bureaucrats who had been ordered by the Tzar to take “active” measures towards solving the Jewish problem abandoned themselves entirely to a policy of repression, those of their fellow-bureaucrats who had been commissioned to consider and judge the same question from a purely theoretic point of view came to the conclusion that the repressive policy pursued by the Government was not only injurious but even dangerous.  Contrary to expectations, the “High Commission” under the chairmanship of Count Pahlen, consisting of aged dignitaries and members of various ministries, approached the Jewish question, at least as far as the majority of the Commission was concerned, in a much more serious frame of mind than did the promoters of the “active” anti-Jewish policies, who had no time for contemplation and were driven by the pressure of their reactionary energy to go ahead at all cost.  In the course of five years the Pahlen Commission succeeded in investigating the Jewish question in all its aspects.  It studied and itself prepared a large mass of historic, juridic, as well as economic and statistical material.  It probed the labors of Ignatyev’s gubernatorial commissions, quickly ascertaining their biased tendency, and examined the entire history of the preceding legislation concerning the Jews.  It finally came to the conclusion that the whole century-long system of restrictive legislation had failed of its purpose, and must give way to a system of emancipatory measures, to be carried out gradually and with extreme caution.  The majority of the members of the Commission concurred in this opinion, including Count Pahlen, its chairman.  In the following we present a few brief extracts from the conclusions formulated by this conservative and bureaucratic commission in its comprehensive “General Memoir” which was written in the beginning of 1888: 

Can the attitude of the State towards a population of five millions, forming one-twentieth of its subjects—­though belonging to a race different from that of the majority—­whom that State itself had incorporated, together with the territories populated by them, into the Russian body politic, differ from its attitude towards all its other subjects?....  Hence, from the political point of view, the Jew is entitled to equality of citizenship.  Without granting him equal rights, we cannot, properly speaking, demand from him equal civic obligations....  Repression and disfranchisement, discrimination and persecution have never yet leaded to improve groups of human beings and make them more devoted to their rulers.  It is, therefore, not surprising that the Jews, trained in the spirit of a century-long repressive legislation, have remained in the category of those subjects, who are less accurate in the discharge of their civic duty, who shirk their obligations towards the State, and do not fully join Russian life. No less than six hundred and fifty restrictive laws directed against the