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Page 41
Aside from the hindrances which Haskalah encountered because of
Nicholas's conversionist policy, it was greatly hampered by the
geographical distribution of the Jews. Here again the czar defeated his
own end by segregating the three or four million of his Jewish subjects
in certain districts, technically called the Pale, the greatest ghetto
the world has ever known. It was a Judea in itself. The Jews there
seldom came in contact with outside civilization. The languages they
used were Hebrew as the literary tongue, Yiddish among themselves, and
the local Slavonic dialect with their non-Jewish neighbors. Russian was
strange, not only to the great majority of Jews, but to the Russians
themselves. 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.[22] 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. Its literature possessed neither
original nor adopted writings, no profound philosophical systems, no
Rousseau or Goethe, no Franklin or Kant, not even any practical
information with which to reward the student. The best writers were
Kryloff, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and Dyerzhavin. The prices of books were so
high as to make them unattainable. Karamzin's _History of the Russian
Empire_ sold at fifty-five rubles per copy. The royal library, which had
been founded by the Jewish court physician Sanchez, contained only 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'�tat; d'ailleurs presque tous sont �trangers_.
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 _p�danterie_
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
unprecedented revolution; that the difference between the Mendelssohnian
generation and the next following was almost as great as that between
the modern American Jew and his brother in the Orient. No wonder, also,
that when Haskalah finally took root in Russia, it was purely German for
fifty years and more; that Nicholas's vigorous attempts, instead of
making the Slavonic Jews better Russians, merely helped to make those he
"re-educated" greater admirers of Germany. The most puissant autocrat of
Russia unwittingly contributed to the downfall of Russian autocracy, and
Gregori Peretz, the Dekabrist, son of the financier who became converted
under Alexander I, was the first of those who were to endeavor, with
book and bomb, to break the backbone of tyranny under Nicholas II.[25]
Till about the "sixties," then, the Russo-Jewish Maskilim were the
recipients, and the German Jews were the donors. The German Jews wrote,
the Russian Jews read. Germany was to the Jewish world, during the early
Haskalah movement, what France, according to Guizot, was to Europe
during the Renaissance: both received an impetus from the outside in the
form of raw ideas, and modified them to suit their environment. Berlin
was still, as it had been during the days of Mendelssohn and Wessely,
the sanctuary of learning, the citadel of culture. In the highly
cultivated German literature they found treasures of wisdom and science.
The poetical gems of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Herder captivated
their fancy; the philosophy of Kant and Fichte, Schelling and Hegel
nourished their intellect. Kant continued to be the favorite guide of
Maimon's countrymen, and in their love for him they interpreted the
initials of his name to mean "For my soul panteth after thee."[26]
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