Jews -- Russia -- Politics and government; Russia -- Politics and government -- 1894-1917
The re-birth of Russia which is now taking place cannot be understood
apart from the Jewish problem. As Russia's leading Liberal statesman,
Prof. Paul Milukov--who is well and favorably known in America because
of extended visits here--points out in the article he contributes to
the present volume, the anti-Semitic parties coincide with the
anti-constitutional parties. At first this seems a strange and
unaccountable fact, but a brief glance at the history of other
countries will show that the party standing for the persecution of weak
foreign neighbours and the oppression of minority races within and
without a country has always and everywhere been the party of reaction.
As Milukov says, there was no need for an anti-constitutional movement
until there was a constitutional movement. As soon as Liberalism
appeared, however, and gained support among the masses, it was
necessary to fabricate some counter movement, and the governmental
bureaucracy fixed upon anti-Semitism as a primitive means of appealing
to the masses, and so of bridling them. It may be further pointed out
that this systematic propaganda against democracy was almost
non-existent in Russia until it had become thoroughly organised and
successful in Germany. Both Kovalevsky and Milukov demonstrate in the
present volume that anti-Semitism became an important factor in Russian
life only after the middle of the Nineteenth Century--that is to say,
after the final victory of Prussian Reactionism over German Liberalism
in 1849 (a victory which has lasted to the present time)--and still
more, after the great military victories of Prussia from 1864 to 1870
had put Prussian militarism in the saddle and had made it the
dominating force in the Russian court and Russian bureaucracy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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