siltzev and several high officials in St. Petersburg for the purpose
of receiving their co-operation. But even the intercession of leading
dignitaries was powerless to change the will of the Tzar. He chafed
under the red-tape formalities which obstructed the realization of his
favorite scheme. Without waiting for the transmission of Novosiltzev's
memorandum, the Tzar directed the Minister of the Interior and the Chief
of the General Staff to submit to him for signature an ukase imposing
military service upon the Jews. The fatal enactment was signed on August
26, 1827.

2. The Recruiting Ukase of 1827 and Juvenile Conscription

The ukase announces the desire of the Government "to equalize military
duty for all estates," without, be it noted, equalizing them in their
rights. It further expresses the conviction that "the training and
accomplishments, acquired by the Jews during their military service,
will, on their return home after the completion of the number of years
fixed by law (fully a quarter of a century!), be communicated to their
families and make for greater usefulness and higher efficiency in their
economic life and in the management of their affairs."

However, the "Statute of Conscription and Military Service," subjoined
to the ukase, was a lurid illustration of a tendency utterly at variance
with the desire "to equalize military duty." Had the Russian Government
been genuinely desirous of rendering military duty uniform for all
estates, there would have been no need of issuing separately for the
Jews a huge enactment of ninety-five clauses, with supplementary
"instructions," consisting of sixty-two clauses, for the guidance of the
civil and military authorities. All that was necessary was to declare
that the general military statute applied also to the Jews. Instead, the
reverse stipulation is made: "The general laws and institutions are not
valid in the case of the Jews" when at variance with the special statute
(Clause 3).

The discriminating character of Jewish conscription looms particularly
large in the central portion of the statute. Jewish families were
stricken with terror on reading the eighth clause of the statute
prescribing that "the Jewish conscripts presented by the [Jewish]
communes shall be between the ages of twelve and twenty-five." This
provision was supplemented by Clause 74: "Jewish minors, i.e., below the
age of eighteen, shall be placed in preparatory establishments for
military