quired an official license
from the central Government in St. Petersburg, and the latter was not in
the habit of granting licenses for such purposes.

In Vilna, as in Odessa, the coterie of local Maskilim formed the
mainstay of Lilienthal, the apostle of enlightenment, in, his struggle
with the orthodox. In the year 1840, prior to Lilienthal's arrival, when
the first intimation of Uvarov's plans reached the city of Vilna, the
local Maskilim responded to the call of the Government in a circular
letter, in which the following four cardinal reforms were emphasized:

1. The transformation of the Rabbinate through the establishment of
rabbinical seminaries, the appointment of graduates from German
universities as rabbis, and the formation of consistories after the
pattern of Western Europe.

2. The reform of school education through the opening of secular
schools after the model of Odessa and Riga and the training of new
teachers from among the Maskilim.

3. The struggle with the fiends of obscurantism, who stifle every
endeavor for popular enlightenment.

4. The improvement of Jewish economic life by intensifying
agricultural colonization, the establishment of technical and arts
and crafts schools, and similar measures.

Several years later the authors of this circular had reason to share
Lilienthal's disillusionment over the "benevolent intentions" of the
Government. This, however, was not strong enough to uproot the original
sin of the Haskalah: its constant readiness to lean for support upon
"enlightened absolutism." The despotism of the orthodox and the
intolerance of the unenlightened masses forced the handful of Maskilim
to fall back upon those who in the eyes of the Jewish populace were the
source of its sorrow and tears. There was a profound tragedy in this
incongruity.

The culture movement in Russia of the second quarter of the nineteenth
century corresponds in its complexion to the early stage of the
Mendelssohnian enlightenment in Germany, the period of the
_Me'assefim_. [1] But there were also essential differences between the
two. The beginning of German enlightenment was accompanied by a strong
drift toward assimilation which led to the elimination of the national
language from literature. In Russia the initial period of Haskalah was
not marked by any sudden social and cultural upheavals.

[Footnote 1: So named after the Hebrew periodical _ha-Me'assef_ "The
Collector," which