end 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