CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ERA OF REFORMS UNDER ALEXANDER II.
1.

THE ABOLITION OF JUVENILE CONSCRIPTION When after the Crimean War, which had exposed the rottenness of the old order of things, a fresh current of air swept through the atmosphere of Russia, and the liberation of the peasantry and other great reforms were coming to fruition, the Jewish problem, too, was in line of being placed in the forefront of these reforms.

For, after having done away with the institution of serfdom, the State was consistently bound to liberate its three million of Jewish serfs who had been ruthlessly oppressed and persecuted during the old regime.
Unfortunately the Jewish question, which was nothing more nor less than the question of equal citizenship for the Jews, was not placed in the line of the great reforms, but was pushed to the rear and solved fragmentarily--on the instalment plan, as it were--and within narrowly circumscribed limits.

Like all the other officially inspired reforms of that period, which proceeded up to a certain point and halted before the prohibited zone of constitutional and political liberties, so, too, the solution of the Jewish problem was not allowed to pass beyond the border-line.

For the crossing of that line would have rendered the whole question null and void by the simple recognition of the equality of all citizens.