In 1871, the first of a series of massacres (pogromy) took place
in the centre of Jewish culture, Odessa. In 1872, permission was denied
to the ladies of that city to organize a society for the purpose of
maintaining trade schools, to teach poor Jewish girls handicrafts. The
two rabbinical seminaries, of Vilna and Zhitomir, were closed in 1873,
and replaced by institutes for teachers, which were managed in the
spirit that had prevailed under Nicholas I. And in 1878 the absurd blood
accusation, against which four popes, Innocent IV, Paul III, Gregory X,
and Clement XIV, issued their bulls, declaring it a baseless and wicked
superstition, and which not only the Polish kings Boreslav V, Casimir
III, Casimir IV, and Stephen Bathory, but also Alexander I (March 18,
1817), branded as a diabolic invention--that dreadful accusation which
even the commission of Nicholas, despite Durnovo's efforts, had
denounced as a disgrace and an abomination, was revived by the newspaper
Grazhdanin. The ghost of medievalism began to stalk abroad once more in
erstwhile enlightened Russia and under the aegis of the Liberator Czar.
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