However, the "Statute of Conscription and Military Service," subjoined to the ukase, was a lurid illustration of a tendency utterly at variance with the desire "to equalize military duty. " Had the Russian Government been genuinely desirous of rendering military duty uniform for all estates, there would have been no need of issuing separately for the Jews a huge enactment of ninety-five clauses, with supplementary "instructions," consisting of sixty-two clauses, for the guidance of the civil and military authorities. All that was necessary was to declare that the general military statute applied also to the Jews. reverse stipulation is made: "The general laws and institutions are not valid in the case of the Jews" when at variance with the special statute The discriminating character of Jewish conscription looms particularly large in the central portion of the statute. Jewish families were stricken with terror on reading the eighth clause of the statute prescribing that "the Jewish conscripts presented by the [Jewish] communes shall be between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. provision was supplemented by Clause 74: "Jewish minors, i.

which was intensified in its effect by the emigration panic of the "terrible year," resulted in the formation of a number of societies in Russia with the object of purchasing land in Palestine. of 1891 delegates of these societies suddenly appeared in Palestine _en masse_, and, with the co-operation of a Jaffa representative of the Odessa Palestine Society, began feverishly to buy up the land from the This led to a real estate speculation which artificially raised Moreover, the Turkish Government became alarmed, and forbade the wholesale colonization of Jews from Russia. [Footnote 1: The first president of the Society was the exponent of the idea of "Antoemancipation," Dr. Leon Pinsker, who occupied this post until his death, at the end of 1891. The attempt at a wholesale immigration into destitute Palestine with its primitive patriarchal conditions proved a failure. During the following years the colonization of the Holy Land with Russian Jews proceeded again at a slow pace. One colony after another rose gradually into A large part of the old and the new settlers were under the

Pale, worn out, with scared looks, this is the way they stood in their uncomfortable, rough soldier uniforms, with their starched, turned-up collars, fixing an inexpressibly helpless and pitiful gaze upon the garrisoned soldiers, who were handling them rudely. lips, blue lines under the eyes betokened either fever or cold. these poor children, without care, without a caress, exposed to the wind which blows unhindered from the Arctic Ocean, were marching to I seized the officer's hand, and, with the words: "Take good care of them! ", threw myself into my carriage. sobbing, and I knew I could not master myself. The great Russian writer saw the Jewish cantonists on the road, but he knew nothing of what happened to them later on, in the recesses of the barracks into which they were driven. This terrible secret was revealed to the world at a later period by the few survivors among these martyred Having arrived at their destination, the juvenile conscripts were put into the cantonist battalions. The "preparation for military service" began with their religious re-education at the hands of sergeants and No means was, neglected so long as it bade fair to bring the

to those zealous governors and governors-general, who in their "most humble reports" propounded the new-fangled theory of the "injuriousness" of the Jews; the marginal remarks frequently attached by him to these reports assumed the force of binding resolutions. [2] In the beginning of 1883, the governor-general of Odessa, Gurko, took occasion in his report to the Tzar to comment on the excessive growth of the number of Jewish pupils in the _gymnazia_ [3] and on their "injurious effect" upon their Christian fellow-pupils. Gurko proposed to fix a limited percentage for the admission of Jews to these schools, and the Tzar made the annotation: "I share this conviction; the matter ought to receive [Footnote 1: See above, p. [Footnote 2: See on the term "Resolution," Vol. [Footnote 3: See above, p. The matter did of course "receive attention. " It was brought up before the Committee of Ministers. But the latter was reluctant to pass upon it at once, and thought it wiser to have it prepared and duly submitted for

in reality it was the ultimate aim of its policies--in the beginning of the nineties it suddenly cast off its mask and gave its public sanction to a Jewish exodus from the Russian Empire. As if to strengthen the effect of this sanction, the Jews were to taste even more fully the whip of persecution and expulsion than they had done during the preceding JUDAEOPHOBIA TRIUMPHANT INTENSIFIED REACTION The poisonous Judaeophobia bacilli seemed to thrive more than ever in the highest Government circles of St. However, not only the hatred against the Jews but also the fury of general political reaction became more rabid than ever after the "miraculous escape" of the imperial family in the railroad accident near Borki on October 17, 1888. [1] Amidst the ecclesiastic and mystic haze with which Pobyedonostzev and his associates managed to veil this episode the conviction became deeply ingrained in the mind of the Tzar that it was the finger of God which pointed to him the way in which Russia might be saved from "Western" reforms and brought back into the fold of traditional Russian This conviction of Alexander III.