It may be that I am mistaken, but I do honestly believe that even if I succeeded in moving to a happier country where all men are equal, where there are no pogroms by day and "Jewish commissions" by night, I would yet remain sick at heart to the very end of my life--to such an extent do I feel worn out by this accursed year, this universal mental eclipse which has visited our dear fatherland.
Russian-Jewish literature of that period is full of similar self-revelations of disillusioned intellectuals.

However, this repentant mood did not always lead to positive results.

Some of these intellectuals, having become part and parcel of Russian cultural life, were no longer able to find their way back to Judaism, and they were carried off by the current of assimilation, culminating in baptism.

Others stood at the cross-roads, wavering between assimilation and Jewish nationalism.

Still others were so stunned by the blow they had received that they reeled violently backward, and proclaimed as their slogan the return "home," in the sense of a complete renunciation of free criticism and of all strivings for inner reforms.
However, in the healthy part of Russian Jewry this change of mind resulted in turning their ideals definitely in the direction of national rejuvenation upon modern foundations.