scheme was gradually maturing in the mind of
the Tzar: to detach the Jews from Judaism by impressing them into a
military service of a wholly exceptional character.

The plan of introducing personal military service, instead of the
hitherto customary exemption tax, [1] had engaged the attention of the
Russian Government towards the end of Alexander I's reign, and had
caused a great deal of alarm among the Jewish communities. Nicholas I.
was now resolved to carry this plan into effect. Not satisfied with
imposing a civil obligation upon a people deprived of civil rights, the
Tzar desired to use the Russian military service, a service marked by
most extraordinary features, as an educational and disciplinary agency
for his Jewish subjects: the barrack was to serve as a school, or rather
as a factory, for producing a new generation of de-Judaized Jews, who
were completely Russified, and, if possible, Christianized.

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 318.]

The extension of the term of military service, marked by the ferocious
discipline of that age, to a period of twenty-five years, the enrolment
of immature lads or practically boys, their prolonged separation from a
Jewish environment, and finally the employment of such methods as were
likely to produce an immediate effect upon the recruits in the desired
direction--all this was deemed an infallible means of dissolving Russian
Jewry within the dominant nation, nay, within the dominant Church. It
was a direct and simplified scheme which seemed to lead in a straight
line to the goal. But had the ruling spheres of St. Petersburg known the
history of the Jewish people, they might have realized that the
annihilation of Judaism had in past ages been attempted more than once
by other, no less forcible, means and that the attempt had always proved
a failure.

In the very first year of the new reign, the plan of transforming the
Jews by "military" methods was firmly settled in the emperor's mind. In
1826 Nichola instructed his ministers to draft a special statute of
military service for the Jews, departing in some respects from the
general law. In view of the fact that the new military reform was
intended to include the Western region [1], which was under the military
command of the Tzar's brother. Grand Duke Constantine [2], the draft was
sent to him to Warsaw for further suggestions and approval, and was in
turn transmitted by the grand duke to Senator Nicholas Novosiltzev, his
co