The Jewish question in Russia presents altogether peculiar aspects.
This is not only because there are in the Empire six million Jews,
i.e., more than in any other State in the world, and because in the
provinces annexed at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth centuries, they form as much as 11 per cent. of the
population--but also for the reason that the legal status of the
Russian Jews completely differs from that of other non-Russian
nationalities which go to make the Empire. These nationalities
endeavour to obtain the many rights of which they are deprived. The
most important of these rights is national autonomy, i.e., the right
of a collective unit to preserve and develop its national
individuality. In this manner they desire to protect themselves from
the danger of assimilation, from the possibility of their fusion with
the dominant nationality. Of course the Jews, too, have been striving,
especially in late years, to realise national autonomy and thus
safeguard the rights and aspirations of their collective unit. But
they lack still other rights. They have still to be granted those
rights which to a considerable degree other Russian subjects, not of
Russian birth, enjoy. The law does not protect the elementary civil
rights of the Jews as members of our common Russian commonwealth.
Consequently, that which the Jews strive for is far more elementary,
far more primitive and simple, than the objective of other non-Russian
nationalities which inhabit Russia.

Anti-Semitism is not peculiar to Russia; it is to be found in other
countries as well. But there it exists as an emotion and a state of
mind, not as a system of legislative definitions. The time has long
since passed when the legislatures of the world failed to guarantee
the elementary civil rights of the Jews. Roumania alone constitutes a
peculiar exception. But, as a rule, in all civilised States the law
guarantees Jewish rights, and religious and racial differences do not
create legal disabilities. Nevertheless, if anti-Semitism is still in
existence in the Western countries, the aims it pursues there are
political. It continues to be the weapon of political reaction. And
its objective, at its extreme, is by no means like the grandiose
programme of utter destruction of the Jews which is pursued by the
"truly-Russian" theoreticians of our reaction.

Consequently, the Jewish question in Russia means, above all, the
legal disabilities