It was a Judea in itself. The Jews there
seldom came in contact with outside civilization. The languages they
used were Hebrew as the literary tongue, Yiddish among themselves, and
the local Slavonic dialect with their non-Jewish neighbors. Russian was
strange, not only to the great majority of Jews, but to the Russians
themselves. It was merely the State language, and even the Government
officials fell back on their mother tongue whenever they were at liberty
to do so. It was this that made it very difficult for the Jews to be
Russified.
But even if Russification had been a much easier process, Russian
civilization was hardly worth the having.[22] To become Russified would
have meant not only religious but also intellectual suicide. Whatever
was good in the Russia of that day was an importation. The language was
scarcely beyond the barbarous state. Its literature possessed neither
original nor adopted writings, no profound philosophical systems, no
Rousseau or Goethe, no Franklin or Kant, not even any practical
information with which to reward the student. The best writers were
Kryloff, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and Dyerzhavin.
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