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The struggle between these anti-Maskilim and the Maskilim had ceased in the golden days of Alexander II. But the clouds were gathering and overspreading the camp of Haskalah. The days in which the seekers after light united in one common aim were gone. Russification, assimilation, universalism, and nihilism rent asunder the ties that held them together.
Meanwhile the Society for the Promotion of Haskalah continued its work of Russification and general civilization. After 1880 its activity was greatly enhanced, and its members worked with renewed zeal. It opened elementary schools, and expended large sums on stipends for students, and the publication of useful and scholarly books.
But as far as the cultural fusion or, for short, the Russification of the Jews was concerned, the Government even now occasionally indulged in practices which were borrowed from the antiquated system of enlightened absolutism. The official enlightenment, which had been introduced during the forties, was slow in taking root.
The advocates of moderate Russification did not foresee that the latter was bound, by the force of circumstances, to assume a radical form, while the champions of extreme Russification saw no harm for Jewry in following the example of complete assimilation set by Western Europe.
A Finnish Tribe Finnish Villages Various Stages of Russification Finnish Women Finnish Religions Method of "Laying" Ghosts Curious Mixture of Christianity and Paganism Conversion of the Finns A Tartar Village A Russian Peasant's Conception of Mahometanism A Mahometan's View of Christianity Propaganda The Russian Colonist Migrations of Peoples During the Dark Ages.
Poland preserved her distinct national organisation, in any full degree, only for fifteen years; even in the faintest degree, it was preserved for less than fifty years. Finland was allowed a longer grace, but only, perhaps, because she was isolated and had but a small population: her turn for 'Russification' was to come in due course.
And in 1894 a Tsar mounted the throne, Nicholas II., who did so choose. The word went forth for the "Russification" of Finland. After picking a quarrel with the Diet on the military question, the Tsar on February 18, 1899, issued a manifesto suspending the Finnish Constitution and abolishing the Diet. Finland became with a stroke of the pen a department of the Russian Empire.
Even now the process of Russification is far from complete, and the Russian elements in the population are far from being pure in the nationalist sense.
Assimilation and Russification became the watchwords of the day. The literary ideals of young Russia became the sacred tablets of the Jewish youth. But suddenly, lo and behold! that same Russian people, in which the progressive forces of Jewry were ready to merge their identity, appeared in the shape of a monster, which belched forth hordes upon hordes of rioters and murderers.
What the Society evidently aimed at was to place itself at the head of the Russian-Jewish intelligenzia, which had undertaken to act as negotiators between the Government and the Jews in the cause of Russification. In reality, the mission of the Society was carried out within exceedingly narrow limits. "Education for the sake of Emancipation" became the watchword of the Society.
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