The fatal enactment was signed on August 26, 1827.
2.

The Recruiting Ukase of 1827 and Juvenile Conscription The ukase announces the desire of the Government "to equalize military duty for all estates," without, be it noted, equalizing them in their rights.

It further expresses the conviction that "the training and accomplishments, acquired by the Jews during their military service, will, on their return home after the completion of the number of years fixed by law (fully a quarter of a century!), be communicated to their families and make for greater usefulness and higher efficiency in their economic life and in the management of their affairs." However, the "Statute of Conscription and Military Service," subjoined to the ukase, was a lurid illustration of a tendency utterly at variance with the desire "to equalize military duty." Had the Russian Government been genuinely desirous of rendering military duty uniform for all estates, there would have been no need of issuing separately for the Jews a huge enactment of ninety-five clauses, with supplementary "instructions," consisting of sixty-two clauses, for the guidance of the civil and military authorities.

All that was necessary was to declare that the general military statute applied also to the Jews.

Instead, the reverse stipulation is made: "The general laws and institutions are not valid in the case of the Jews" when at variance with the special statute (Clause 3).
The discriminating character of Jewish conscription looms particularly large in the central portion of the statute.