The plan of introducing personal military service, instead of the hitherto customary exemption tax, [1] had engaged the attention of the Russian Government towards the end of Alexander I’s reign, and had caused a great deal of alarm among the Jewish communities.  Nicholas I. was now resolved to carry this plan into effect.  Not satisfied with imposing a civil obligation upon a people deprived of civil rights, the Tzar desired to use the Russian military service, a service marked by most extraordinary features, as an educational and disciplinary agency for his Jewish subjects:  the barrack was to serve as a school, or rather as a factory, for producing a new generation of de-Judaized Jews, who were completely Russified, and, if possible, Christianized.

[Footnote 1:  See Vol.  I, p. 318.]

The extension of the term of military service, marked by the ferocious discipline of that age, to a period of twenty-five years, the enrolment of immature lads or practically boys, their prolonged separation from a Jewish environment, and finally the employment of such methods as were likely to produce an immediate effect upon the recruits in the desired direction—­all this was deemed an infallible means of dissolving Russian Jewry within the dominant nation, nay, within the dominant Church.  It was a direct and simplified scheme which seemed to lead in a straight line to the goal.  But had the ruling spheres of St. Petersburg known the history of the Jewish people, they might have realized that the annihilation of Judaism had in past ages been attempted more than once by other, no less forcible, means and that the attempt had always proved a failure.

In the very first year of the new reign, the plan of transforming the Jews by “military” methods was firmly settled in the emperor’s mind.  In 1826 Nichola instructed his ministers to draft a special statute of military service for the Jews, departing in some respects from the general law.  In view of the fact that the new military reform was intended to include the Western region [1], which was under the military command of the Tzar’s brother.  Grand Duke Constantine [2], the draft was sent to him to Warsaw for further suggestions and approval, and was in turn transmitted by the grand duke to Senator Nicholas Novosiltzev, his co-regent [3], for investigation and report.  As an experienced statesman, who had familiarized himself during his administrative activity with the Jewish conditions obtaining in the Western region, Novosiltzev realized the grave risks involved in the imperial scheme.  In a memorandum submitted by him to the grand duke, he argued convincingly that the sudden imposition of military service upon the Jews was bound to cause an undesirable agitation among them, and that they should, on the contrary, be slowly “prepared for such a radical transformation.”

[Footnote 1:  The official designation for the territories of Western Russia which were formerly a part of the Polish Empire.]