History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 of 3. From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day
who were knocking at the doors of the gymnazia and universities. In the beginning of 1898, the post of Minister of Public Instruction, which had been occupied by Dyelanov, was entrusted to Professor Bogolepov of Moscow. While Dyelanov had been occasionally inclined to soften the rigor of the school norm – it was commonly rumored that this good-natured dignitary could not bear to see a woman cry, and the tearful entreaties of the mothers of the rejected scholars made him sanction the admission of a certain number of Jewish children over and above the established percentage norm – his successor Bogolepov, an academic teacher who had become a gendarme of education, was impervious to any sentiment of pity. In the course of the three years of his administration, he not only refused to admit the slightest departure from the established norm, but attempted to curtail it still further. Thus, orders were issued to calculate the percentage norm of the Jewish applicants for admission to the universities not in its relation to the total number of the annual admissions, but separately for each faculty (1898-1899). This provision was designed to limit the number of Jewish students who flocked to the medical and legal faculties, since, in view of the fact that the Jews were entirely barred from appointments in the general educational institutions, the other faculties did not offer them even a sporting chance of earning a livelihood. The ruthlessness displayed by the Ministry of Public Instruction towards the Jewish youth was officially justified on the ground that certain elements among them were affiliated with the revolutionary movement which, just at that time, had assumed particular intensity in the Russian student body. This sentiment was openly voiced in a circular of the Ministry, issued on May 26, 1901, which makes the following statement: "The disorders which took place at the end of the nineties in the institutions of higher learning testified to the fact that the instigators of these disorders were, to a large extent, persons of non-Russian extraction."
Bogolepov himself, the reactionary Minister of enlightenment, fell a victim of this agitation among the student body. He died from the bullet of a Terrorist who happened to be of unadulterated Russian extraction. His successor, General Vannovski (1901-1902), though endeavoring to assuage the university disorders by a policy of "kindly solicitude," maintained the former uncompromising attitude as far as the Jews were concerned. In view of the fact that, in spite of all restrictions, the ratio of Jewish students at all universities actually exceeded the norm prescribed by law, the new Minister decreed that the percentage of Jewish admissions be temporarily curtailed in the following proportion: Two per cent for the capitals (instead of the former three per cent), three per cent for the universities outside of the Pale of Settlement (instead of five per cent), and seven per cent for the Pale of Settlement (instead of ten per cent).
Even the restrictions placed upon the admission of the Jews to the gymnazia were intensified. In 1901, Jewish children who had graduated from a pro-gymnazium15 were forbidden to continue their education in the advanced classes of a gymnazium unless there was a free Jewish vacancy within the percentage norm – a truly miraculous contingency. The same policy was extended to the commercial schools established with funds which were provided by the merchant class and the bulk of which came from Jews. In the commercial schools maintained by the commercial associations Jewish children were admitted only in proportion to the contributions of the Jewish merchants towards the upkeep of the particular school. In private commercial schools, however, percentages of all kinds, varying from ten to fifty per cent, were fixed in the case of Jewish pupils. This provision had the effect that Jewish parents were vitally interested in securing the entrance of as many Christian children as possible in order to increase thereby the number of Jewish vacancies. Occasionally, a Jewish father, in the hope of creating a vacancy for his son, would induce a Christian to send his boy to a commercial school – though the latter, as a rule, offered little attraction for the Christian population – by undertaking to defray all expenses connected with his education. Yet many Jewish children, though enduring all these humiliations, found themselves outside the doors of the intermediate Russian schools.
It is worthy of note that in this attempt at the spiritual extermination of the Jewish children by barring them from intermediate educational institutions the Russian law followed strictly the ancient rule of the Pharaohs: "If it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live." The Government schools for girls were opened to the Jewish population without any restriction, and the influx of Jewesses to these gymnazia was only checked unofficially by the anti-Semitic authorities of this or that institution, thereby turning the tide of applicants in the direction of private girls' schools. But as far as the higher schools were concerned, Jewish girls were subjected to the same restrictions as the boys. The Higher Courses for Women and the Pedagogic Courses in St. Petersburg restricted the admission of Jewesses to five per cent. The constitution of the Medical Institute for Women, founded in 1895, provided at first for the entire exclusion of Jewesses. But in 1897, the doors of this institution were opened to the hated tribe – just enough to admit them to the extent of three per cent.
It was scarcely to be expected that the Jewish youths who had been locked out of the Russian school should entertain particularly friendly sentiments towards a régime which wasted their lives, humiliated their dignity, and sullied their souls. The Jewish lad, driven from the doors of the gymnazia, became an embittered "extern," who was forced to study at home and from year to year present himself for examination before the school authorities. An immense host of young men and women who found their way blocked to the higher educational institutions in Russia went abroad, flocking to foreign universities and higher professional schools, where they learned to estimate at its full value a régime which in their own country denied them the advantages granted to them outside of it. A large number of these college youths returned home permeated with revolutionary ideas – living witnesses to the sagacity of a Government which saw its reason for existence in the suppression of all revolutionary strivings.
6. Anti-Semitic Propaganda and Pogroms
The reactionary Russian press, encouraged and stimulated by the official Jew-baiters, engaged in an increasingly ferocious campaign against the Jews. The Russian censorship, known all over for its merciless cruelty, which was throttling the printed word and trembling at the criminal thought of "inciting hatred toward the Government," yet granted untrammeled freedom to those who propagated hatred to Judaism, and thereby committed the equally criminal offence of "inciting one part of the population against the other." The Novoye Vremya, the most wide-spread semi-official press organ, and its satellites in the provincial capitals were permitted to do what they pleased. They were free to slander the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, and the Jewish communities. When the famous Dreyfus affair had started in France, the Novoye Vremya, the oracle of Russia's ruling spheres, arrayed itself on the side of the Jew-baiters from among the French general staff, and launched a savage campaign of slander against the Jews of the entire globe. Many an article published in the anti-Semitic press was scarcely distinguishable from the proclamations calling upon the mob to massacre the Jews.
By far the most effective propaganda on behalf of pogroms was carried on, sometimes without a conscious realization of the consequences, by the Government itself: by persisting in its anti-Jewish policy. Observing this uninterrupted maltreatment of the Jews on the part of the Russian legislation and administration, which treated the Jews as if they were criminals, witnessing the expulsions inflicted upon the "illegally residing" Jews and the raids engineered against them, watching the constant mockery at the Jewish children who were driven from the doors of the educational institutions, and seeing the endless multitude of other humiliating disabilities, the unenlightened Russian populace necessarily gained the conviction that the extermination of Jewry was a noble and patriotic duty. Coupled with the usual economic and national conflicts, this trend of mind could not but lead to acts of violence.
At the end of the nineties the Russian horizon was darkened again by the ominous shadow of the beginning of the eighties: pogroms, at first sporadic and within circumscribed limits, broke out again in various parts of the Pale. On February 18 and 19, 1897, an anti-Jewish riot took place in Shpola, a town in the government of Kiev. The following officially inspired account of the excesses, in which the facts were undoubtedly toned down, appeared in the Novoye Vremya:
At three o'clock in the afternoon an immense crowd of peasants rushed into our town, and wrecked completely the stores, homes, and warehouses belonging exclusively to the Jews. A large number of rich