country.  Though anxious to avoid all contact with the “rotten West,” and being in constant fear of European political movements, the Russian Government was nevertheless ready to seize upon the relics of “enlightened absolutism” which were still stalking about, particularly in Austria, in the early decades of the nineteenth century.  As far as Prussia was concerned, the abundance of assimilated and converted Jews in that country and their attempts at religious reform, which to a missionary’s imagination were identical with a change of front in favor of Christianity, had a fascination of its own for the Russian dignitaries.  No wonder then that the Government yielded to the temptation to use some of the contrivances of Western European reaction, while holding in reserve the police knout of genuine Russian manufacture.

In 1840 the Council of State was again busy discussing the Jewish question, this time from a theoretic point of view.  The reports of the provincial administrators, in particular that of Bibikov, governor-general of Kiev, dwelled on the fact that even the “Statute” of 1835 had not succeeded in “correcting” the Jews.  The root of the evil lay rather in their “religious fanaticism and separatism,” which could only be removed by changing their inner life.  The Ministers of Public Instruction and of the Interior, Uvarov and Stroganov, took occasion to expound the principles of their new system of correction before the Council of State.  The discussions culminated in a remarkable memorandum submitted by the Council to Nicholas I.

In this document the Government confesses its impotence in grappling with the “defects” of the Jewish masses, such as “the absence of useful labor, their harmful pursuit of petty trading, vagrancy, and obstinate aloofness from general civic life.”  Its failure the Government ascribes to the fact that the evil of Jewish exclusiveness has hitherto not been attacked at its root, the latter being imbedded in the religious and communal organization of the Jews.  The fountain-head of all misfortunes is the Talmud, which “fosters in the Jews utmost contempt towards the nations of other faiths,” and implants in them the desire “to rule over the rest of the world.”  As a result of the obnoxious teachings of the Talmud, “the Jews cannot but regard their presence in any other land except Palestine as a sojourn in captivity,” and “they are held to obey their own authorities rather than a strange government.”  This explains “the omnipotence of the Kahals,” which, contrary to the law of the state, employ secret means to uphold their autonomous authority both in communal and judicial matters, using for this purpose the uncontrolled sums of the special Jewish revenue, the meat tax.  The education of the Jewish youth is entrusted to melammeds, “a class of domestic teachers immersed in profoundest ignorance and superstition,” and, “under the influence of these fanatics, the children imbibe pernicious notions of intolerance towards other nations.”  Finally, the special dress worn by the Jews helps to keep them apart from the surrounding Christian population.