[CHAPTER V]
RUSSIFICATION, REFORMATION, AND ASSIMILATION
1856-1881
The year 1856 will always be remembered as the annus mirabilis in the history of Russia. It marked at once the cessation of the Crimean war and the accession of the most liberal and benevolent monarch Russia ever had. On January 16, the heir apparent signified his consent to accept Austrian intervention, which resulted in the Treaty of Paris (March 30), granting the Powers involved "peace with honor"; and in August, in the Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, amidst unprecedented rejoicing, the czarevich placed the imperial crown upon his head. From that time reform followed reform. The condition of the soldiers, who had virtually been slaves under Nicholas I, was greatly improved, and a proclamation was issued for the emancipation of the peasants, slaves not for a limited time only, but for life and from generation to generation. It cost the United States five years of fratricidal agony, a billion of dollars, and about half a million of lives, to liberate five or six millions of negroes; Russia, in one memorable day (February 19, 1861), liberated nearly twenty-two millions of muzhiks (peasants), and gave them full freedom, by a mere stroke of the pen of the "tsar osvobodityel," the Liberator Czar, Alexander II (1856-1881).
Other innovations, of less magnitude but nevertheless of far-reaching importance, were introduced later. Capital punishment, which still disgraces human justice in more enlightened states, was unconditionally abolished; the number of offences amenable to corporal punishment was gradually reduced, until, on April 29, 1863, all the horrors of the gauntlet, the spur, the lash, the cat, and the brand, were consigned to eternal oblivion. The barbarous system of the judiciary was replaced by one that could render justice "speedy, righteous, merciful, and equitable." Railway communication, postal and telegraph service, police protection, the improvement of the existing universities, the opening of many new primary schools, and the introduction of compulsory school attendance, told speedily on the intellectual development of the people. In the words of Shumakr, Russia experienced "a complete inward revival." Old customs seemed to disappear, all things were become new. New life, new hope, new aspirations throbbed in the hearts of the subjects of the gigantic empire, and better times were knocking at their doors. Joli tout le monde, le diable est mort!
This era of great reforms and the resuscitation of all that is good and noble in the Slavonic soul brought about also a moral regeneration. The colossus who, according to Turgenief, preferred to sleep an endless sleep, with a jug of vodka in his clutched fingers, proved that he, too, was human, with a feeling, human heart beating in his bosom. With the restoration of peace and the abolition of serfhood, there began a removal of prejudice even against Jews. Hitherto the foremost litterateurs in Russia, imitating the writers of other lands, had painted the Jew as a monstrosity. Pushkin's prisoner, Gogol's traitor, Lermontoff's spy, and Turgenief's Zhid (Jew) were caricatures and libels, equal in acrimony, and not inferior in art, to Shakespeare's Shylock and Dickens's Fagin. But now the best and ablest men of letters signed a protest against such unjust and impossible characters.
Two thousand years of cruel suffering and affliction—said the historian and humanitarian Professor Granovsky, of the University of Moscow—have at last erased the bloody boundary line separating the Jews from humanity. The honor of this reconciliation, which is becoming firmer from day to day, belongs to our age. The civic status of the Jews is now established in most European countries, and even in the places that are still backward their condition is improved, if not by law, then by enlightenment.
And law and enlightenment radiated their sunshine also upon the Jews of rejuvenated Russia. The Cantonist system was abolished for good; the high schools and universities were opened to Jews without discrimination; and the Governments lying outside the Pale were made accessible to Jewish scholars, professional men, manufacturers, wholesale merchants, and skilled laborers (March 16, 1859; November 27, 1861).[1] Through the efforts of Wolf Kaplan, one of Günzburg's noted pupils, the persecution of Jews by Germans in Riga was stopped, and the eminent publicist Katkoff undertook to defend them in the newspaper Russkiya Vyedomosti. Nazimov, the Governor-General of Vilna, Mukhlinsky, who inspected the Jewish schools in western Russia, Artzimovich, of southern Russia, and many other prominent personages arose as champions of the Jews.[2]