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of the coercive method is presented in Russia's persecution of the Jews. Before this cruel regime was started, the Jews were adopting Russian civilization, even to the extent of forgetting their synagogues. But the method of coercion in vogue for the past few years has utterly stopped assimilation. The Jews have too much tradition behind them, are a people of too high an intelligence, of too vigorous a race-consciousness, to be affected by this primitive method of assimilation. 1
In one sense, however, the coercive method has sometimes been successful so successful, indeed, that the government practicing it has overreached itself. Thus Spain through the Inquisition and through expulsion got so well rid of all original thinkers that the unity of opinion thus brought about has proved its doom.
The attractive method of assimilation works mainly through education and allows absolute toleration in regard to language, religion, and custom for individual use, requiring for national purposes one tongue. The best example of this is seen in the assimilation that is going on in the United States today, and which will be treated in detail later on. The two methods can- not be combined. The one arouses resistance to assimilating efforts, and solidifies the passive element. The other awakens
'"The Russians wish to identify their nationality with orthodoxy, not with
Judaism Several years ago, under a regime of relative tolerance, the Jews
began to assimilate quite rapidly and commenced to be actuated by patriotic senti- ments. They began to love the country where destiny had cast them. Little by little they neglected the synagogue, and became indifferent to their own religion. But intolerance has changed all this. The Jews, deprived of a large number of civil and political rights, watched and persecuted on all sides, are recoiling within the bosom of their community. The synagogue has once more become dear to them,
since it has been so persecuted. They are beginning again to frequent it
Formerly numbers of Israelites became Christians. Now those who respect them- selves do not change their faith. Conversions are very rare. Thus it is the Russian government itself which is placing obstacles in the way of Russification of its own subjects." (Novicow, Les Luttesentre Societh humaines, p. 566.) " The Russian persecu- tion .... is the direct act of a government deliberately, systematically, remorse- lessly seeking to reduce to utter misery about four and one-half millions of its own subjects. The laws of General Ignatieff in May, 1882, and the later and more atrocious measures that were taken at the instigation of M. Pobedonostseff, form a code of persecution which well deserves to rank with those that followed the religious wars of the sixteenth century." (LECKY, Democracy and Liberty, Vol. I, p. 559.)
