Anti-Semitism serves in Russia one more purpose. It is not sufficient to influence the masses. It is also necessary to act on the powers that be. If it is imperative to get hold of the masses, it is also necessary to frighten the authorities. Thus a new version of the anti-Semitic legend comes into being: the legend of the Jew as the creator of the Russian revolution. It is the Jew,—so our anti-Semites assure us—who created the Russian emancipatory movements, it is he who formed the revolutionary organisation, it is he who marched under the red banners.... The Russian who would give credence to this tale would show his disrespect for the Russian nation. To assert that it is only owing to the help of the Jew that the Russian people freed themselves is tantamount to saying that without the Jew, the Russian nation can not reach the road of its own emancipation. No, however great my respect for the exceptional gifts of the Jewish people may be, I will not refuse the Russian nation the ability of taking the initiative in the cause of its own freedom.
But there is another side to this matter. If there can be no question of the dependence of the emancipation movement on the Jews, the dependence of the Jews on the emancipatory movement is very real. What must be the Jew's attitude toward this movement? There can be only one answer to the question. The Jewish masses have realised the importance for them of the emancipatory movement not only because they are more enlightened, because they are more educated, because they are not addicted to alcoholism, and, hence, are superior to their neighbours in their understanding of their own needs; the Jewish masses were also led to side with the movement for freedom because in their case it was a struggle for elementary rights the importance of which is plain to every one and vitally concerns every one. That is why the entire Jewish mass may actually be reckoned in the ranks of those who are with the Russian emancipatory movement.
One more remark in conclusion. In late years the "inorodtzy" (Russian subjects of non-Russian birth), having lost their hope that the Russian emancipatory movement would bring them any immediate practical results, have sought to influence the Government by means of more direct methods. There are national movements which believe that they would more rapidly get national rights by means of negotiating with the bureaucracy. They are inclined to think that this way is more direct than the participation in the Russian emancipatory movement. Other national groups, in the struggle for their national rights, choose a different kind of tactics: they seek a more direct way in another direction,—not through the bureaucracy, not from above, but from below. They, too, believe that the "inorodtzy" must organise for their specific national aims and keep apart from the common cause of Russia's political emancipation.
From what has been said about the peculiar nature of the Jewish question which results in the sufferings of the Jews not only as a national group, but also as individual citizens, it follows that it is difficult for the Jews more than for any other group of "inorodtzy" to accept either one of the aforenamed tactical methods. The Jews must bear in mind with especial clearness that their fate is closely and inseparably interwoven with the fate of the general emancipatory movement in Russia. They must also keep in mind that the separate national movements which disrupt the bonds of political parties in order to make place for their national programmes, may prove injurious to our common cause. They may lead us away from the common highroad to by-paths where we all run the risk of going apart and losing our way. And here is the practical conclusion to which these considerations lead. The separate national movements should be postponed until the solution of the general problem of all-Russian emancipation. Let us hope that the Jewish nation understands the close connection existing between its fate and that of Russia's freedom, now, as well as it did in those years when it fought in the ranks of the Russian progressive movements. Let us hope that in the future, as in the past, the emancipation of the different nationalities which people the Russian Empire will be fought for in the common ranks of the all-Russian movement for freedom.
THE JEWS AND RUSSIAN ECONOMIC LIFE[ToC]
Mikhail Vladimirovich Bernatzky, born in 1878, is a noted writer on economical topics. He taught economics at the Kiev University and at the Polytechnical Institute, Petrograd.