But even if Russification had been a much easier process, Russian civilization was hardly worth the having.[22] To become Russified would have meant not only religious but also intellectual suicide.  Whatever was good in the Russia of that day was an importation.  The language was scarcely beyond the barbarous state.  Its literature possessed neither original nor adopted writings, no profound philosophical systems, no Rousseau or Goethe, no Franklin or Kant, not even any practical information with which to reward the student.  The best writers were Kryloff, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and Dyerzhavin.  The prices of books were so high as to make them unattainable.  Karamzin’s History of the Russian Empire sold at fifty-five rubles per copy.  The royal library, which had been founded by the Jewish court physician Sanchez, contained only eight Russian books during the reign of Alexander I, and not many more were added by his successor.  The dramatic art developed by the Jewish playwright Nebakhovich remained for a long time in the same state as when he ceased his work.[23] If Russia was the most powerful, it continued to be the most fanatical and uncivilized country in Europe.  All who had occasion to visit and study it during the first half of the nineteenth century testify to its deplorable intellectual status.  According to a very ingenious and observing writer, quoted by Buckle in his History of Civilization, it consisted of but two ranks, the highest and the lowest, or the nobility and the serfs:  Les marchands, qui formaient une classe moyenne, sont en si petit nombre qu’il ne peuvent marquer dans l’etat; d’ailleurs presque tous sont etrangers.  The higher classes were distinguished for “a total absence of all rational tastes on literary topics.”

Here [in Russia]—­the same writer continues—­it is absolutely mauvais genre to discuss a rational subject—­pure pedanterie to be caught upon any topics beyond dressing, dancing, and a jolie tournure.  Military prowess is ranked far above scholarly attainment, and a man in a uniform, no matter how depraved, takes precedence of one in plain clothes, whatever his achievements.  All the energies of the nation are turned towards the army.  Commerce, the law, and the civil employments are held in no esteem; all young men of any consideration betake themselves to the profession of arms.  Nothing astonished them more than to see the estimation in which the civil professions, and especially the bar, are held in Great Britain.[24]

How different was the position of the Jews in other countries, especially in Germany!  Culture streamed upon them from all sides.  As their numbers were small, and as they lived, in most cases, in the larger cities of the empire, their contact with the Christian world was immediate and continuous.  And then the irresistible fascination of German literature, and the easy, almost imperceptible transition from the Judeo-German to the Teutonic-German!  All this