CHAPTER XVII.
THE LAST YEARS OF NICHOLAS I.
1.

THE "ASSORTMENT" OF THE JEWS The beginning of the "Second Emancipation" of 1848 in Western Europe synchronized with the last phase of the era of oppression in Russia.
That phase, representing the concluding seven years of pre-reformatory Russia, was a dark patch in the life of the country at large, doubly dark in the life of the Jews.

The power of absolutism, banished by the March revolution from the European West, asserted itself with intensified fury in the land of the North, which had about that time earned the unenviable reputation of the "gendarme of Europe." Thrown back on its last stronghold, absolutism concentrated its energy upon the suppression of all kinds of revolutionary movements.

In default of such a movement in Russia itself, this energy broke through the frontier line and found an outlet in the punitive expedition sent to support the Austrians in the pacification of mutinous Hungary.

The triumphant passwords of political freedom which were given out on the other side of the Western frontier only intensified the reactionary rage on this side.
Since it was impossible to punish action--for under the vigilant eye of the terrible "Third Section" [1] revolutionary endeavors were a matter of impossibility--word and thought were subject to punishment.
Censorship ran riot in the subdued literature of Russia, tearing out by the roots anything that did not fit into the mould of the bureaucratic way of thinking.