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'etat; d'ailleurs presque tous sont etrangers_. The higher classes were distinguished for "a total absence of all rational tastes on literary topics."