I, p.

318.] The extension of the term of military service, marked by the ferocious discipline of that age, to a period of twenty-five years, the enrolment of immature lads or practically boys, their prolonged separation from a Jewish environment, and finally the employment of such methods as were likely to produce an immediate effect upon the recruits in the desired direction--all this was deemed an infallible means of dissolving Russian Jewry within the dominant nation, nay, within the dominant Church.

It was a direct and simplified scheme which seemed to lead in a straight line to the goal.

But had the ruling spheres of St.Petersburg known the history of the Jewish people, they might have realized that the annihilation of Judaism had in past ages been attempted more than once by other, no less forcible, means and that the attempt had always proved a failure.
In the very first year of the new reign, the plan of transforming the Jews by "military" methods was firmly settled in the emperor's mind.

In 1826 Nichola instructed his ministers to draft a special statute of military service for the Jews, departing in some respects from the general law.