HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY BY S. M. DUBNOW TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY I. FRIEDLAENDER VOLUME I FROM THE BEGINNING UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I (1825) [Illustration] PHILADELPHIA THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA 1916 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE It is not my intention to expatiate in these prefatory remarks on the present work and its author. A history of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the pen of S. M. Dubnow needs neither justification nor recommendation. The want of a work of this kind has long been keenly felt by those interested in Jewish life or Jewish letters, never more keenly than to-day when the flare of the world conflagration has thrown into ghastly relief the tragic plight of the largest Jewry of the Diaspora. As for the author, his power of grasping and presenting the broad aspects of general Jewish history and his lifelong, painstaking labors in the particular field of Russian-Jewish history fit him in singular measure to cope with the task to which this work is dedicated. In what follows I merely wish to render account of the English translation and of the form of the original which it has endeavored to reproduce. The translation is based upon a work in Russian which was especially prepared by Mr. Dubnow for THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA. Those acquainted with modern Jewish literature in the Russian language know that the author of our book has treated the same subject in his general history of the Jewish people, in three volumes, and in a number of special studies published by him in the periodical _Yevreyskaya Starina_ ("Jewish Antiquity"). Upon this material Mr. Dubnow has freely drawn for the present work, after subjecting it to a careful revision, and so supplementing and co-ordinating it that to all intents and purposes the book issued herewith is a new and independent publication. Moreover, the history of Russian Jewry after 1881, comprising the gruesome era of pogroms and expulsions, has been written by Mr. Dubnow entirely anew, and will appear for the first time as part of this work. The present publication may thus properly claim to give the first comprehensive and systematic account of the history of Russo-Polish Jewry.