members of the Committee laid particular emphasis in
their reports on the obnoxiousness of the Talmud and the danger of
Jewish separatism. Needless to say, the conclusions offered by them were
of the kind anticipated in the instructions of the Council of State: the
necessity of wiping out the last vestiges of Jewish self-government,
such as the Jewish community, the school, the mutual relief societies,
in a word, everything that tends to foster "the communal cohesion among
the Jews."

The barbarism of these proposals was covered by the fig-leaf of
enlightenment. When the benighted Jewish masses will have fused with the
highly cultured populance of Russia. In other words, when the Jews will
have ceased to be Jews, then will the Jewish question find its solution.
In the meantime, however, the Jews are to be curbed by the bridle of
disabilities. The referee of the Committee on the question of the Pale
of Settlement, Grigoryev, frankly stated: "What is important in this
question is not whether the Jews will fare better when granted the right
of residence all over the Empire, but rather the effect of this measure
on the economic well-being of an enormous part of the Russian people."
From this point of view the referee finds that it would be dangerous to
let the Jews pass beyond the Pale, since "the plague, which has thus far
been restricted to the Western provinces, will then spread over the
whole Empire."

For a long time the Committee was at a deadlock, held down by
bureaucratic reaction. It was only toward the end of its existence that
the voice from another world, the posthumous voice of dead and buried
liberalism, resounded in its midst. In 1880 the Committee was presented
with a memorandum by two of its members, Nekhludov and Karpov, in which
the bold attempt was made to champion the heretic point of view of
complete Jewish emancipation. The language of the memorandum was one
which the Russian Government had not heard for a long time.

In the name of "morality and justice" the authors of the memorandum call
upon the Government to abandon its grossly utilitarian attitude towards
the Jews who are to be denied civil rights so long as they do not prove
useful to the "original" population. They expose the selfish motive
underlying the bits of emancipation which had been doled out to the Jews
during the preceding spell of liberalism: the desire, not to help the
Jews, but to exploit their services. First-guild merchants, p