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Updated: May 24, 2025
In the beginning of 1883, the governor-general of Odessa, Gurko, took occasion in his report to the Tzar to comment on the excessive growth of the number of Jewish pupils in the gymnazia and on their "injurious effect" upon their Christian fellow-pupils.
This was the genesis of the educational "percentage norm," the source of sorrow and tears for two generation of Russian Jews both fathers and sons now having run the gauntlet. In the months of July and August of every year, thousands of Jewish children were knocking at the doors of the gymnazia and universities, but only tens and hundreds obtained admission.
Moreover, the work of the Society in promoting general culture among the Jews was gradually losing its raison d'être, since, without any effort on its part, the Jews began to flock to the gymnazia and universities.
The Jewish Committee refused to limit the rights of those who did not attend the general schools, and proposed, instead, as a bait for the Jews who shunned secular education, to confer special privileges in the discharge of military service upon those Jews who had attended the gymnazia or even the Russian district schools, or the Jewish Crown schools, more exactly, to grant them the right of buying themselves off from conscription by the payment of one hundred to two hundred rubles . But the Military Department vetoed this proposal on the ground that education would thus bestow privileges upon Jews which were denied even to Christians.
Twenty members advocated the necessity of "bestowing" the right of residence not only on graduates of universities but also of gymnazia, advancing the argument that even in the case of a Jewish gymnazist "it is in all likelihood to be presumed that the gross superstitions and prejudices which hinder the association of the Jews with the original population of the Empire will be, if not entirely eradicated, at least considerably weakened, and a further sojourn among Christians will contribute toward the ultimate extermination of these sinister prejudices which stand in the way of every moral improvement."
But the majority of the Committee members, acting "in the interests of a graduated emancipation," rejected the idea of bestowing the universal right of residence upon the graduates of gymnazia, and lyceums and even upon those of universities and other institutions of higher learning, with the exception of those who had received a learned degree, Doctor, Magister, or Candidate.
In the towns of the Pale where the Jews form from thirty to eighty per cent of the total population, the admission, of Jewish pupils to the gymnazia and "Real schools" was limited to ten per cent, so that the majority of Jewish children were deprived of a secondary education.
Those that had failed to gain admission to the gymnazia completed the prescribed course of studies at home, under the guidance of private tutors or by private study, and afterwards presented themselves for examination for the "maturity certificate" as "externs," braving all the difficulties of this thorny path.
The most efficient factor of cultural regeneration was the secular school, both the general Russian and the Jewish Crown school. A flood of young men, lured by the rosy prospects of a free human existence in the midst of a free Russian people, rushed from the farthermost nooks and corners of the Pale into the gymnazia and universities whose doors were kept wide open for the Jews.
Although decreed before the very beginning of the new scholastic year, the percentage norm was nevertheless immediately applied in the case of the gymnazia, the "Real schools," and the universities.
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