.

Out of the six or seven million Jews in the world, over five million live
within the boundaries of the Russian Empire. Russia is therefore the
motherland of the Children of Israel; though, perhaps, the phrase
step-motherland would express more truly the actual relationship, both
in its origin and its character. Russia has inherited her tremendous
responsibilities towards the Hebrew race from Poland, and her vexed "Jewish
question" is in part a just punishment for her complicity in the wicked
partitions of that country in the eighteenth century. The matter, however,
goes back much farther than the eighteenth century. In the Middle Ages
Poland was a more powerful state than Russia, and comprised territory
stretching from the Gulf of Riga to the Black Sea and from the Oder to the
Dnieper. She was also the one country in Europe which offered to the Jews
security from persecution and an opportunity of developing the commercial
instincts of the race without interference. The result was that Jews
settled in large numbers all over the King of Poland's possessions, and the
presence of Jews in any part of modern Russia is almost a sure sign that
that particular town or province has been Polish territory in former times.
The Russian Government has never, except for a short period, allowed the
Jews to live in Russia proper, and it is very rare to find Jews in north
or central Russia. Even in large cities like Petrograd and Moscow their
numbers are small, while it is interesting to note that the Finns have
copied the rest of Russia in this respect at least that they have always
resolutely refused to admit the Hebrew. Where Russia found Jews among the
new subjects which she acquired by her gradual encroachments upon Poland,
she had of course to let them remain, but she has confined them strictly to
these districts. The existence of this Jewish pale is one of the grievances
of the Jews of Russia, but it is not the heaviest. The liberal-minded
Alexander II. had shown himself lenient to them; but his assassination
in 1881 at the hands of terrorists and the accession of the reactionary
Alexander III. began a period of persecution which has continued until the
present day.

Alexander III. was much influenced by his tutor, Pobiedonostsev, who for
the next thirty years was the most prominent exponent of the philosophy of
Slavophilism. This, which in its modern form may be traced back to 1835,
was in fact nothing else than a perverted glo