With these laws and with the opening of the high schools and universities to the Jews, the movement for Russianization received a mighty impetus. Though these reforms, hedged about and limited by onerous conditions, affected comparatively few and hardly touched the life of the Jewish masses in a radical way, nevertheless, the impulse which even these relatively slight reforms gave to the current of Jewish life in Russia was far out of proportion to the relief they afforded. Jewish hopes for a final emancipation soared high: it seemed as if the walls of the Pale needed but little more to be broken down. The reaction that followed the assassination of Alexander II fell upon the Jews as a national calamity. To the feudal party which now came into control, the Jews seemed the very embodiment of the forces in the Empire whose progress they were seeking to stem. No other nationality in the Russian Empire concentrated in itself so many characteristics and tendencies opposed to the ideals and interests of the Russian ruling classes. To the Church, dominated by a religio-national point of view, they were the very opposite of her ideal type of Russian orthodox, their very existence in Russia being regarded as an anomaly and as an actual and possible influence in disintegrating the religious faith of the orthodox peasants. To the nationalists they were an alien people racially and religiously, whose assimilation with the Russian people was neither possible nor desirable. To the autocracy and the bureaucracy there was the added fear from their intellectual superiority and their zeal for education of their playing a powerful part among the liberal forces seeking political freedom. Indeed, the Jews, whose economic and cultural activities and interests bound them closely to Western Europe and were in themselves modernizing and liberalizing influences, growing all the stronger through the greater freedom offered them during the liberal epoch, excited the deep repugnance of the feudal forces now directing the destinies of the state. To them the Jews spelled anathema. Separated from the great masses of the Russian people by race, nationality, religion, occupations and other social and psychological characteristics, they offered an unusually favorable object of attack. It soon became clear that the new regime had determined upon making the Jews a central feature in their policy of reaction. At once a many-sided campaign against the Jews was begun. A powerful machinery of persecution was at hand in the existing Jewish laws. All that was necessary was to revive them, to interpret them rigorously, to tighten the legislative screws which had become loosened during the preceding liberal regime. This, however, seemed insufficient. It was determined that a powerful and definitive blow must be struck at the roots of their very existence in Russia.