The proper organization of Jewish education such as would be in keeping with the social and cultural peculiarities of the Jewish people, will only be possible when the Jews will be placed on a footing of complete equality of rights with the rest of the Russian population. As a firm guarantee of the untrammelled cultural development and the complete equality of all nationalities, it is necessary that the legislative power and the administrative control of the country shall have the co-operation of popular representatives, to be elected upon the basis of the universal, direct, and secret vote of all citizens of the country, without any distinction of nationality, denomination or calling. The need of a non-partisan political organization to direct the struggle for Jewish emancipation which was to be waged by all classes of Jewry--outside the small fraction which had already been united in the labor organization of the "Bund"--was universally felt. Such an organization was formed at the conference of public-spirited Jews which took place in Vilna at the end of March, 1905. It assumed the name of "The League for the Attainment of Equal Rights for the Jewish People in Russia," and proclaimed as its object "the realization to their full extent of the _civil, political, and national rights_ of the Jewish people in Russia." The complete civil emancipation of the Jews, the assurance of their proportionate participation in the Russian popular representation, "the freedom of national-cultural self-determination in all its manifestations," in the shape of "a comprehensive system of communal self-government, the freedom of language and school education"--such was the threefold program of the League. It was the first attempt of a Jewish organization in modern history to inscribe upon its banner not only the demand for the civil and political, but also for the national emancipation of the Jewish people, the first attempt to obtain liberty for Jewry as a nationality, and not as a mere denominational group, forming part of the dominant nation, as had been the case in Western Europe during the nineteenth century. The central bureau of the League was located in St. Petersburg, composed of twenty-two elective members, half of whom lived in the capital (M. Vinaver, G. Sliosberg, L. Bramson, and others), and the other half in the provinces (Dr. Shmaryahu Levin, S. M. Dubnow,[44] M. Ratner, and others). The first resolutions adopted by the League were in substance as follows: