eply stirred by the sight of the new
sufferings of an ancient people was the Russian satirist,
Shchedrin-Saltykov, and he poured forth his, sentiments in the summer of
1882, after the completion of the first cycle of pogroms, in an article
marked by a lyric strain, so different from his usual style. [1] But
Shchedrin was the only Russian writer of prominence who responded to the
Jewish sorrow. Turgenyev and Tolstoi held their peace, whereas the
literary celebrities of Western Europe, Victor Hugo, Renau, and many
others, came forward with passionate protests. The Russian
_intelligenzia_ remained cold in the face of the burning tortures of
Jewry. The educated classes of Russian Jewry were hurt to the quick by
this chilly attitude, and their former enthusiasm gave way to
disillusionment.

[Footnote 1: The article appeared in the _Otyechestvennyia Zapiski_ in
August, 1882. The following sentences in that article are worthy of
re-production: "History has never recorded in its pages a question more
replete, with sadness, more foreign to the sentiments of humanity, and
more filled with tortures than the Jewish question. The history of
mankind as a whole is one endless martyrology; yet at the same time it
is also a record of endless progress. In the records of martyrology the
Hebrew tribe occupies the first place; in the annals of progress it
stands aside, as if the luminous perspectives of history could never
reach it. There is no more heart-rending tale than the story of this
endless torture of man by man."

In the same article the Russian satirist draws a clever parallel between
the merciless Russian _Kulak_, or "boss," who ruins the peasantry, and
the pitiful Jewish "exploiter," the half-starved tradesman, who in turn
is exploited by everyone.]

This disillusionment found its early expression in the lamentations of
repentant assimilators. One of these assimilators, writing in the first
months of the pogroms, makes the following confession:

The cultured Jewish classes have turned their back upon their
history, have forgotten their traditions, and have conceived a
contempt for everything which might make them realize that they are
the members of the "eternal people." With no definite ideals,
dragging their Judaism behind them as a fugitive galley-slave drags
his heavy chain, how could these men justify their belonging to the
tribe of "Christ-killers" and "exploiters"?... Truly pitiful has
become the posi