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Strange to say, that solitary friend of Arátoff's, Kupfer by name, a German who was Russified to the extent of not knowing a single word of German, and even used the epithet "German" as a term of opprobrium, that friend had, to all appearance, nothing in common with him.
"Cut it short if you can, Stepan Trofimovitch." "Mr. von Lembke is making a tour of the province now. En un mot, this Andrey Antonovitch, though he is a russified German and of the Orthodox persuasion, and even I will say that for him a remarkably handsome man of about forty..." "What makes you think he's a handsome man? He has eyes like a sheep's." "Precisely so.
It was merely the State language, and even the Government officials fell back on their mother tongue whenever they were at liberty to do so. It was this that made it very difficult for the Jews to be Russified. But even if Russification had been a much easier process, Russian civilization was hardly worth the having.
Petersburg, and Moscow, the Jews were fast becoming Russified. Heretofore cooped up, choking each other in the Pale as in a Black Hole, they were now wild with an excessive desire for Russification. What Maimon said of a few, could now be applied to hundreds and thousands, they were "like starving persons suddenly treated to a delicious meal."
To become Russified would have meant not only religious but also intellectual suicide. Whatever was good in the Russia of that day was an importation. The language was scarcely beyond the barbarous state.
It was but natural that the Jews that had become completely Russified should enlist in the ranks of the extreme liberals. They found themselves in every way as progressive and patriotic as the Christian Russians. The language of Russia became their language, its manners and aspirations their manners and aspirations.
The rank and file of the Russian Jewish intellectuals, who formed the backbone of the reading public of this press, became indifferent to it. Living up conscientiously to the principle of a "fusion of interests," they failed to recognize the special interests of their own people, whose only duty they thought was to be Russified, i.e., obliterated and put out of existence.
The one side was anxious to Russify, the other was equally anxious to be Russified, and the natural result was an entente cordiale between the new Jewish intelligenzia and the Government.
In Odessa Lilienblum joined the ranks of the Russified college youth, and became imbued with the radical ideas of Chernyshevski and Pisaryev, gaining the reputation of a "nihilist." His theory of Jewish reform, superannuated by his new materialistic world view, was thrown aside, and a gaping void opened in the soul of the writer.
These have already begun their work. All is to be "Russified": the constitutional bodies are to be virtually abolished; the university is to be brought down to the level of Dorpat once so noted as a German university, now so worthless as a Russian university; for the simple Protestantism of the people is to be substituted the fetishism of the Russo-Greek Church.
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