It was taken for granted at that time that the realization of the ideals of Russian democracy would carry with it the solution of the Jewish as well as of all other sectional problems of Russian life, so that these problems might for the moment be safely set aside.
[Footnote 1: In Russian, _narodnichestvo_, from _narod_, "People," a democratic movement In favor of the down-trodden masses, particularly the Russian peasantry.] [Footnote 2: Under the influence of the democratic movement many Russians of higher birth and culture settled among the peasantry, to which they dedicated their lives.

The name of Leo Tolstoi readily suggests itself in this connection.] As far as the Jewish youth was concerned, the whole movement was doubly academic, for the only points of contact of that youth with younger Russia was not living reality but the book, problems of the intellect, the search for new ways, the attempt to work out a _Weltanschauung_.

The fundamental article of faith of the Jewish socialists was cosmopolitanism, and they failed to discern in Russian "Populism" the underlying elements of a Russian national movement.

Jewry was not believed to be a nation, and as a religious entity it was looked upon as a relic of the past, which was doomed to disappearance.
One attempt of coupling socialism with Judaism ought not to be passed over in silence.

In the beginning of the seventies there existed in Vilna a Jewish revolutionary circle made up principally of the pupils of the rabbinical school and of the teachers' institute of the same city.
In 1875, the police tracked the members of the circle.