d with Western
European ways and fully aware of the fact that the reactionary
governments of Austria and Prussia had invented several contrivances for
handling the Jewish problem which might be usefully applied in their own
country. Though anxious to avoid all contact with the "rotten West," and
being in constant fear of European political movements, the Russian
Government was nevertheless ready to seize upon the relics of
"enlightened absolutism" which were still stalking about, particularly
in Austria, in the early decades of the nineteenth century. As far as
Prussia was concerned, the abundance of assimilated and converted Jews
in that country and their attempts at religious reform, which to a
missionary's imagination were identical with a change of front in favor
of Christianity, had a fascination of its own for the Russian
dignitaries. No wonder then that the Government yielded to the
temptation to use some of the contrivances of Western European reaction,
while holding in reserve the police knout of genuine Russian
manufacture.

In 1840 the Council of State was again busy discussing the Jewish
question, this time from a theoretic point of view. The reports of the
provincial administrators, in particular that of Bibikov,
governor-general of Kiev, dwelled on the fact that even the "Statute" of
1835 had not succeeded in "correcting" the Jews. The root of the evil
lay rather in their "religious fanaticism and separatism," which could
only be removed by changing their inner life. The Ministers of Public
Instruction and of the Interior, Uvarov and Stroganov, took occasion to
expound the principles of their new system of correction before the
Council of State. The discussions culminated in a remarkable memorandum
submitted by the Council to Nicholas I.

In this document the Government confesses its impotence in grappling
with the "defects" of the Jewish masses, such as "the absence of useful
labor, their harmful pursuit of petty trading, vagrancy, and obstinate
aloofness from general civic life." Its failure the Government ascribes
to the fact that the evil of Jewish exclusiveness has hitherto not been
attacked at its root, the latter being imbedded in the religious and
communal organization of the Jews. The fountain-head of all misfortunes
is the Talmud, which "fosters in the Jews utmost contempt towards the
nations of other faiths," and implants in them the desire "to rule over
the rest of the world." As a result of