What the Government had in view was to reduce the number of those "privileged" Jews, who, under the law passed in the time of Alexander II., had been rewarded for their completion of a course of studies in an institution of higher learning by the right of unrestricted residence throughout the Empire.

The authorities now found it to their purpose to hamper the spread of education among the Jews rather than promote it.

The highly-placed obscurantists contended that the Jewish students exerted an injurious influence upon their Christian comrades from the religious and moral point of view, while the political police [1] reported that the Jewish college men "are quick in joining the ranks of the revolutionary workers." The fear of educated Russian subjects who were not of the dominant faith was natural in a country in which Pobyedonostzev, the moving spirit of inner Russian politics, looked upon popular education in general as a destructive force, fraught with danger to throne and altar.

There can be but little doubt that the previously-mentioned imperial "resolutions" [2] indicating the necessity of curtailing the number of Jews in the Russian educational establishments were inspired by the "Grand Inquisitor." [Footnote 1: The secret police charged with tracking the followers of liberal and revolutionary tendencies.] [Footnote 2: See p.

339_et seq_.] Notwithstanding the opposition of the majority of the Pahlen Commission, whose members had not yet entirely discarded the enlightened traditions of the reign of Alexander II., the question was decided in accordance with the wishes of the Tzar.