The physician and pedagogue Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov (1810-1881), the superintendent of the Odessa and Kiev school districts, is especially deserving of honorable mention in the history of Haskalah. Of all the Russians of the period who gloried in their liberal convictions, he was the most liberal. In him the last vestige of prejudice and race distinction disappeared, and he conscientiously devoted himself to the study, not only of the present, but also of the past of the Jews, to be in a better position to lend them his assistance. To the Jews he appealed to unite and spread enlightenment among the masses by peaceful means. To the Gentiles, again, he did not hesitate to point out the good qualities of the Jews, and in an article on the Odessa Talmud Torah he held up the institution as a model for the public elementary schools. He admired especially the enthusiasm with which Jewish youths devoted themselves to the acquisition of knowledge. "Where are religion, morality, enlightenment, and the modern spirit," asked he, "when these Jews, who, with courage and self-sacrifice, engage in the struggle against prejudices centuries old, meet no one here to sympathize with them and extend a helping hand to them?" His liberality carried him so far that he established a fund for the support of indigent Jewish students at the University of Kiev, and he advocated strenuously the award of prizes and scholarships to deserving Jewish students. Such as he were rare in any land, but nowhere so rare as in Russia.[3]
Pirogov took the initiative in reorganizing the Jewish schools. It required little observation to understand that they had proved a failure. Instead of attracting the Jewish masses to secular education, they only repelled them. The remedy was not far to seek. "The abolition of these schools" said Count Kotzebu, "would drive the Jews back to their fanaticism and isolation. It is necessary to make the Jews useful citizens, and I see no other means of achieving this than by their education." Pirogov's first move was to order that Jewish instead of Christian principals be put at their head, and he set an example by appointing Rosenzweig to that office. The curriculum was changed, making the lower schools correspond with our grammar schools, and adapting their studies to the needs of those who must discontinue schooling at a comparatively early age. The higher schools were arranged so as to prepare the pupils for the gymnasium. The salaries of the teachers were raised, and books and necessaries were provided for pupils too poor to afford them.
The Government's attention having been directed by General Zelenoy to the Jewish agricultural colonies in southern Russia, Marcus Gurovich was appointed to work out a plan to provide them with graded schools. He proposed that secular and sacred subjects alike be taught by Jewish teachers, and these were to be cautioned to be careful not to offend the religious sensibilities of the parents. The plan appealed to the colonists, and they looked forward anxiously to its fulfilment. Having waited in vain till 1868, they offered to defray the expenses of the schools involved, if the Government would advance the money at the first. Accordingly, ten schools for boys and two for girls were opened in that year.
Such disinterested efforts on their behalf would have evoked the gratitude of Jews at any time and in every country, how much more in Russia, and following close upon the darkest period in their history! The struggle for liberty all over Europe in 1848—the spring of nations—had confirmed Nicholas in his policy of exclusion. The last five years of his reign had surpassed the preceding in cruelty and tyranny. The "Don Quixote of Politics," finding that his attempts to quarantine Russia against European influences had proved futile, that the nationalities constituting the empire remained as distinct as ever, and the desired homogeneity was still far from becoming a reality, finally had lost patience and had determined to execute his conversionist policy at all hazards. He had increased the conscription duties, already unbearable (January 8, 1852; August 16, 1852), restricted the study of Hebrew and Hebrew subjects still further in the Government schools, and, as if to embitter the lives of the Jew by all means available, insisted on the use of the Mitnaggedic ritual even in communities exclusively or largely Hasidic.[4] Even the blood accusation had been revived, and the statements in the pamphlet entitled Information about the Killing of Christians by Jews for the Purpose of Obtaining Their Blood, which Skripitzyn, "the manager of Jewish affairs in Russia," published in 1844, found many believers in Government circles, and caused the Saratoff affair which, though suppressed, ruined numerous Jewish families, and made the breach between Jew and Gentile wider than ever.[5]
Now all this was changed. Christians championed the cause of Jews. The Government, too, appeared to be sincerely anxious for the welfare of its Jewish subjects. It not only promised, but frequently also performed. The Jews were allowed to follow their religious predilections unhindered. The schools were reorganized with rabbinical graduates as their teachers and principals. The Rabbinical Assembly, which, though established by Nicholas (May 26, 1848), had rarely been called together, was summoned to St. Petersburg, and there spent six months in 1857 and five in 1861 in deliberating on means of improving the intellectual and material standing of the Jews. The "learned Jew" (uchony Yevrey) Moses Berlin was invited to become an adviser in the Department of Public Worship (1856), to be consulted concerning the Jewish religion whenever occasion required. Permission was granted to publish Jewish periodicals in Russian, Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish (1860), and on April 26, 1862, the restriction was removed that limited Jewish publishing houses and printing-presses to Vilna and Zhitomir. The Russia Montefiore saw on his visit in 1872, how different from the Russia he had left in 1846!
These auspicious signs renewed the hope of the Maskilim and intensified their zeal. They were convinced of the noble intentions of the Liberator Czar; they were confident that the emperor who emancipated the muzhiks, and expunged many a kromye Yevreyev ("except the Jews") which his father was wont to add to the few privileges he granted his Christian subjects, would ultimately remove the civil disabilities of the Jews altogether. In a very popular song, written by Eliakum Zunser (Vilna, 1836-New York, 1913), then a rising and beloved Badhan (bard) writing in Yiddish and Hebrew, Alexander II was likened to an angel of God who finds the flower of Judah soiled by dirt and trampled in the dust. He rescues it, and revives it with living water, and plants it in his garden, where it flourishes once more.[6] The poets hailed him as the savior and redeemer of Israel. All that the Jews needed was to make themselves deserving of his kindness, and worthy of the citizenship they saw in store for them. In Russian, in Hebrew, and in Yiddish, in prose and in poetry, the one theme uppermost in the mind of all was enlightenment, or rather Russification. From all quarters the reveille was sounded. Abraham Bär Gottlober (1811-1899) exclaimed:
Awake, Israel, and, Judah, arise!
Shake off the dust, open wide thine eyes!
Justice sprouteth, righteousness is here,