Still, Alexander I approached his object only tentatively.  Haskalah during his reign was like the Leviathan in the Talmud legend which resembled an island, so that wayfarers approached it to moor under its lee and find shelter in its shade, but as soon as they began to walk and cook on it, it would turn and submerge them in the stormy and bottomless sea.  The Jews were invited or induced to forsake their religion, and only the less discerning were caught in the snare.  It remained for the “terrible incarnation of autocracy,” Nicholas I (1825-1855), or, as his Jewish subjects called him, Haman II, to fill their cup of woe to overflowing and employ every available means to convert them to his own religion.

Nicholas’s one aim was “to diminish the number of Jews in the empire,” but not by expulsion, the means employed by Ferdinand and Isabella.  He knew too well their value as citizens to allow them to migrate.  He would diminish their numbers by forced baptism.  Baptized Jews were exempted from the payment of taxes for three years; Jewish criminals could have their punishment commuted or could obtain a pardon by ceasing to be Jews.  But as these inducements could naturally appeal only to comparatively few, more stringent measures were resorted to.  Hitherto the Jews had been excused from military service, paying an annual sum of money for the privilege.  On September 7, 1827, an ukase was issued requiring them not only to pay the same amount as theretofore, but also to serve in the army; and while Christians had to furnish only seven recruits per thousand, and only at certain intervals, the Jews had to contribute ten recruits for each thousand, and that at every conscription.  The only exception was made in the case of the Karaites, who, according to Nicholas’s decision, had emigrated from Palestine before the Christian era, and could not therefore have participated in the crucifixion of Jesus.  Jews found outside of their native towns without passports, and those in arrears with their taxes, frequently even those who, having lagged behind in their payment to the Government, eventually discharged their obligations, were to be seized and sentenced to serve in the army, and this meant a lifetime, or at least twenty-five years, of the most abject slavery imaginable.  This grievous measure caused the utmost misery.  No Jewish youth leaving home could be sure of returning and seeing his dear ones again.  The scum of the Jewish population (poimshchiki, or “catchers”) made it their profession to ensnare helpless young men or poor itinerant students suspected of the Haskalah heresy, destroy their passports, and deliver them up as poimaniki (recruits), to spare the rich who paid for the substitutes.  To form an idea of the time we need but read some of the numerous folk-songs of that day.  Here is one of many: 

  Quietly I walk in the street,
  When behind me I hear the rush of feet. 
  Woes have come and sought me,
  Alas, had I bethought me.