Here is a description, by Morgulis, of the struggles and conquests of the new, small, but zealous, group of Maskilim in Russia at about that time:[20]

Those upon whom the sun of civilization and freedom happened to cast a ray of light, showing them the path leading to a new life, were compelled to study the European literatures and sciences in garrets, in cellars, in any nook where they felt themselves secure from interference.  Neither unaffiliated Jews nor the outer world knew anything about them.  Like rebels they kept their secrets unto themselves, stealthily assembling from time to time, to consider how they might realize their ideal, and disclose to their brethren the fountainhead of the living waters out of which they drank and drew new youth and life.  Whatever was novel was accepted with delight.  They looked with envy upon the great intellectual progress of their western brethren.  Fain would they have had their Jewish countrymen recognize the times and their requirements, but they could not give free utterance to their thoughts.  On the contrary, they found it expedient to assume the mask of religion in order to escape the suspicion of alert zealots, and gain, if possible, new recruits.  In many places societies were founded under the name of Lovers of the New Haskalah, the members of which observed such secrecy that even their kinsmen and those among whom they dwelt were unaware of their existence.  If through the discovery of some forbidden book any of them happened to be detected, he never betrayed his friends.  Such a one was usually compelled to marry, so that, being burdened with family cares, he might desist from his unpopular pursuits.

From which it would appear that though the opposition to Haskalah in Russia was by no means as violent as had been the opposition to enlightenment in France, for instance, or even among the Jews of Germany and Austria,[21] it was a bitter and stubborn conflict between parents and children in the adjustment of old ideals to a new environment.

Aside from the hindrances which Haskalah encountered because of Nicholas’s conversionist policy, it was greatly hampered by the geographical distribution of the Jews.  Here again the czar defeated his own end by segregating the three or four million of his Jewish subjects in certain districts, technically called the Pale, the greatest ghetto the world has ever known.  It was a Judea in itself.  The Jews there seldom came in contact with outside civilization.  The languages they used were Hebrew as the literary tongue, Yiddish among themselves, and the local Slavonic dialect with their non-Jewish neighbors.  Russian was strange, not only to the great majority of Jews, but to the Russians themselves.  It was merely the State language, and even the Government officials fell back on their mother tongue whenever they were at liberty to do so.  It was this that made it very difficult for the Jews to be Russified.