The intellectual young Jews and Jewesses who had passed through the Russian public schools made frantic endeavors, not only towards association but also towards complete cultural amalgamation with the Russian people.

Assimilation and Russification became the watchwords of the day.

The literary ideals of young Russia became the sacred tablets of the Jewish youth.
But suddenly, lo and behold! that same Russian people, in which the progressive forces of Jewry were ready to merge their identity, appeared in the shape of a monster, which belched forth hordes upon hordes of rioters and murderers.

The Government had changed front, and adopted a policy of reaction and fierce Jew-hatred, while the liberal classes of Russia showed but scant sympathy with the downtrodden and maltreated nation.

The voice of the hostile press, the _Novoye Vremya_, the _Russ_, and others, resounded through the air with fall vigor, whereas the liberal press, owing partly--but only partly--to the tightening grip of the censor, defended the Jews in a perfunctory manner.