They filled the schools and the universities of the empire with zealous and intelligent pupils, who carried off most of the honors.  They contributed forty-eight pupils to the gymnasia out of every ten thousand, while the Christians contributed only twenty-two.  This was regarded an unpardonable sin.  “These Jews have the audacity to excel us pure Russians,” Pobyedonostsev is reported to have exclaimed, and measures were taken to suppress their dangerous tendency.  As early as 1875 a law was passed withholding from Jewish students the stipends they had hitherto received from a fund set aside for that purpose.  In 1882 the number of Jewish students in the Military Academy of Medicine was limited to five per cent, and later it was reduced to zero.  Thereafter one professional school after another adopted a percentage provision, and some excluded Jews altogether.  Finally, “seeing that many Jewish young men, eager to benefit by a higher classical, technical, or professional education,” presented themselves every year for admission to the universities, that they passed their examination and continued their studies at the various schools of the empire, the Government deemed it “desirable to put a stop to a state of affairs which is so unsatisfactory.”  Consequently the ministry limited the attendance of Jews residing in places within the Pale to ten per cent in all schools and universities (December 5, 1886; June 26, 1887), in places without the Pale to five per cent, and in Moscow and St. Petersburg to three per cent, of the total number of pupils in each school and university.  Of the four hundred young Jews who had successfully passed their matriculation examination at the beginning of the scholastic year 1887-1888, and had thus acquired the right of entering the university, three hundred and twenty-six were refused admission, and in many schools and universities they were denied even the small per cent the law permitted.

When, nevertheless, in spite of the many restrictions, the Jew at last obtained the coveted degree, the Government rendered it nugatory by depriving him of the right of enjoying the fruit of his labor and self-sacrifice.  He could not practice as an army physician or jurist, nor obtain a position as an engineer or a Government or municipal clerk.  In the army, he was not allowed to hold any office, and, though he might be an expert chemist, he could never fill the post of a dispenser (March 1, 1888).  He was excluded from the schools for the training of officers, and if he passed the examination on the subjects taught there, his certificate could not contain the usual statement that there “was no objection to admitting him to the military schools."[1]