y eight
Russian books during the reign of Alexander I, and not many more were
added by his successor. The dramatic art developed by the Jewish
playwright Nebakhovich remained for a long time in the same state as
when he ceased his work.[23] If Russia was the most powerful, it
continued to be the most fanatical and uncivilized country in Europe.
All who had occasion to visit and study it during the first half of the
nineteenth century testify to its deplorable intellectual status.
According to a very ingenious and observing writer, quoted by Buckle in
his _History of Civilization_, it consisted of but two ranks, the
highest and the lowest, or the nobility and the serfs: _Les marchands,
qui formaient une classe moyenne, sont en si petit nombre qu'il ne
peuvent marquer dans l'etat; d'ailleurs presque tous sont etrangers_.
The higher classes were distinguished for "a total absence of all
rational tastes on literary topics."

Here [in Russia]--the same writer continues--it is absolutely
_mauvais genre_ to discuss a rational subject--pure _pedanterie_
to be caught upon any topics beyond dressing, dancing, and a
_jolie tournure_. Military prowess is ranked far above scholarly
attainment, and a man in a uniform, no matter how depraved,
takes precedence of one in plain clothes, whatever his
achievements. All the energies of the nation are turned towards
the army. Commerce, the law, and the civil employments are held
in no esteem; all young men of any consideration betake
themselves to the profession of arms. Nothing astonished them
more than to see the estimation in which the civil professions,
and especially the bar, are held in Great Britain.[24]

How different was the position of the Jews in other countries,
especially in Germany! Culture streamed upon them from all sides. As
their numbers were small, and as they lived, in most cases, in the
larger cities of the empire, their contact with the Christian world was
immediate and continuous. And then the irresistible fascination of
German literature, and the easy, almost imperceptible transition from
the Judeo-German to the Teutonic-German! All this and many minor
allurements were potent enough to draw even the heretofore callous
German Jews out of their isolation, and their Germanization by the
middle of the nineteenth century was an established fact. No wonder,
then, that, unlike Russian Jewry, the German Jews experienced an
un