History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 3 [of 3]: From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present DayDubnow, Simon
History
History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 3 [of 3]: From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day
Dubnow, Simon
Jews -- Poland -- History; Jews -- Russia -- History; Poland -- History; Russia -- History
Soon afterwards, on August 6, 1905, the so-called "Bulyghin
Constitution" was made public, providing for a truncated Imperial
Duma with a system of representation based on class qualifications
and limited to advisory functions but without any restrictions as
far as the franchise of the Jews was concerned. "Now," wrote the
_Voskhod_, "the Jew has the right to be a popular representative, but
he has no right to reside in the place in which the Imperial Duma
assembles--in the capital." Russian Jewry, with the exception of its
Left wing, was on the point of starting an election campaign to send
its representatives to this mutilated Duma, in the hope of attaining
through it to a more perfect form of representation, when the stormy
course of events brought to the fore new threatening questions. This
counterfeit of a national parliament failed to satisfy the Russian
democracy, and the struggle with the Government broke out anew with
unprecedented energy. Stormy political meetings were held at the
universities and at the other institutions of higher learning, which,
by an ukase of August 27, had been granted academic self-government.
The autonomous professorial councils began to admit Jewish students
to the schools, without any restrictive percentage, and the wave
of an agitated Jewish youth was drawn into the whirling sea of the
Russian student body. A new succession of strikes followed, arranged
by the students, workingmen and railroad workers. A general Russian
strike was being carefully prepared as a last resort in the struggle
for a democratic constitution. The army of the emancipation movement
was instituting a bloodless revolution, the temporary stoppage of
all railroad movements and of all other activities in the country,
in the hope of forcing Tzardom to an act of self-abnegation and the
proclamation of civil liberties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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