The Messianic dogma, which the Jews of the West had completely abandoned because of its alleged incompatibility with Jewish citizenship in the Diaspora, is warmly defended by Smolenskin as one of the symbols of national unity.

In the very center of his system stands the cult of Hebrew as a national language, "without which there is no Judaism." In order the more successfully to demolish the idea of assimilation, Smolenskin bombards its substructure, the theory of enlightenment as formulated by Moses Mendelssohn, with its definition of the Jews as a religious community, and not as a nation, though in his polemical ardor he often goes too far, and does occasional violence to historic truth.
[Footnote 1: From Isa.44.

7.] [Footnote 2: From Eccles.3.

2.] In both works one may discern, though in vague outlines only, the theory of a "spiritual nation." [1] However, Smolenskin did not succeed in developing and consolidating his theory.

The pogroms of 1881 and the beginning of the Jewish exodus from Russia upset his equilibrium once more.