was the polozheniye (enactment) of December 9, 1804, according to which Jews were to be eligible to one-third of all municipal offices; they were to be permitted to establish factories, become agriculturists, and either attend the schools and colleges of the empire on the same footing as subjects of the Christian faith, or, if they desired, found and maintain schools of their own.  The approach of the great Usurper and the crushing defeat the Russians sustained at the battle of Friedland (June 4, 1808) also favored the advance of the Jews.  As the short, but troublous, reign of Paul and his wars with Turkey, Persia, Prussia, Poland, and Sweden had impoverished the country and depleted the treasury, the shrewd Alexander was not averse from appealing to Jews for help.  Of course, as in many more enlightened countries and in more modern times, most of the privileges were merely paper privileges.  Few of them ever went into effect.  The noble intentions of the enlightened rulers were steadily thwarted by bigoted councillors and jealous merchants.  Every favor shown the Jews aroused a storm of protests, which resulted in numerous infringements.  The Jews were compelled to pay for the good intentions of Catherine with a double tax (June 25, 1794), and, during Paul’s reign, without the emperor’s knowledge, a law was enacted requiring of Jews double payment of the guild license.  In spite of all efforts, the Jews, instead of being emancipated politically, were burdened with additional discriminations.[1]

Had not the wheel of progress suddenly stopped revolving, Russian Jews might have constituted one of the most useful as well as most intellectual elements in the vast empire.  As it was, the kindly intention of czar or czarina sufficed to arouse them from the asthenia to which they were reduced for want of freedom.  The times were rife with excitement, and the Jewish atmosphere with expectancy.  The mighty changes which were taking place in Russia and Poland; the dismemberment of the latter; the annexation of Balta (1791), Lithuania (1794), and Courland (1797) to the former; the short-lived yet potent German rule in Byelostok (1793-1807), and the rude but memorable contact with France (1807-1812), these and many other important happenings in a brief span of time had a telling effect upon the diverse races under the dominion of Russia, and among them not the least upon the Jewish race.  Everywhere the desire for “liberty, equality, and fraternity” began to manifest itself.  In Courland, the most German of Russian provinces, Georg Gottfried Mylich, a Lutheran pastor at Nerft, made a touching appeal (ab. 1787) in German on behalf of the Jews, insisting that the word Jew “should not be taken to indicate a class of people different from us, but only a different religious body; and as regards his nationality, it should not hinder him from obtaining citizen’s rights and liberties equal to those of the people of Sleswick, the Saxons, Danes, Swedes, Swiss, French,