tion of Labor, they directed the socialistic
movement in Russia.[25] Chernichevsky's _What to Do_, Gogol's _Dead
Souls_, Turgenief's _Virgin Soil_ and _Fathers and Sons_, the doctrines
of Pisarev and Bielinsky, and of the other writers who then had their
greatest vogue, were eagerly read and frequently copied by Jewish young
gymnasiasts and passed on to their Christian schoolmates. The
revolutionary spirit seized on men and women alike. Women left their
husbands, girls their devoted parents, and threw themselves into the
swirl of nihilism with a vigor and self-sacrifice almost incredible.
When a squad of police came to disperse the crowd clamoring for "land
and liberty" in front of the Kazanskaya Church in St. Petersburg, a
Jewish maiden of sixteen, taking the place of the leader, inspired her
comrades with such enthusiasm that the efforts of the police were
ineffectual.[26] By 1878, Russia became honeycombed with secret
societies. It fell into spasms of nihilism. One general after another
was assassinated. Attempts were made to wreck the train on which the
czar was travelling (1879) and blow up the palace in which he resided
(1880). Finally, on March 13, 1881, after many hairbreadth escapes, the
carefully laid plans of the revolutionists succeeded, and the Liberator
Czar was no more.

Thus was the deep-rooted yearning for enlightenment finally let loose,
and the gyves of tradition were at last removed. The Maskilim of the
"forties" and "fifties" were antiquated in the "sixties" and
"seventies." They began to see that the fears of the orthodox and their
denunciations of Haskalah were not altogether unfounded. A young
generation had grown up who had never experienced the strife and
struggles of the fathers, and who lacked the submissive temper that had
characterized their ancestors. Faster and farther they rushed on their
headlong way to destruction, while the parents sat and wept. When, in
1872, in Vilna, the police arrested forty Jewish young men suspected of
nihilistic tendencies, Governor-General Patapov "invited" the
representatives of the community to a conference. As soon as they
arrived, Patapov turned on them in this wise, "In addition to all other
good qualities which you Jews possess, about the only thing you need is
to become nihilists, too!" Amazed and panic-stricken, the trembling Jews
denied the allegation and protested their innocence, to which the
Governor-General replied, "Your children are, at any rate