Letters

The Text of the Protest against Antisemitism in the Press
Composed by V. S. Solovyov in May 1890

[Editor’s Note: Following letter no. 23 is a version of Solovyov’s protest letter, included below. Getz’s filing of this version with the letter may witness to its date.]

The movement against Jewry, propagated by the Russian press, represents an unprecedented violation of the most fundamental demands of justice and love of humanity. We consider it necessary to remind Russian society of these elementary demands. Forgetting them is the sole cause of the so-called Jewish question, while their simple and sincere recognition is the sole path to its resolution.

1. 1. In all races there are worthless and malicious people, but there are not and cannot be a worthless and malicious race, since this would abolish personal responsibility, wherefore every hostile declaration or action, aimed against Jewry as a whole and against the Jews, as such, demonstrates either an irrational enthusiasm for blind national egoism or a personal selfishness and can in no wise be justified.

2. 2. It is unjust to impose upon Jewry responsibility for those phenomena in its life which were evoked by millennia-long persecutions of the Jews in Europe and by those abnormal conditions in which this people was placed. If during the course of many centuries the Jews were forcefully constrained to engage solely in monetary affairs, being debarred from all other kinds of employment, then the disagreeable consequences of this exclusive channeling of Jewish energies can in no way be eliminated by further constraints which only perpetuate the previous abnormal order.

3. 3. Affiliation to the Semitic race and to the law of Moses presents nothing intrinsically blameworthy, and provides insufficient grounds for giving Jews a special civic status in comparison to Russian subjects belonging to other races and creeds. Since Russian Jews, belonging to their well-known social class, bear the same obligations as all the other representatives of the same social class, then in justice they should also hold the same rights in common.

The recognition and application of these elementary truths are important and necessary first of all for us ourselves. The exacerbated excitation of racial and religious enmity, so contrary to the spirit of Christianity, corrupts society at its root and can lead to moral dehumanization, especially given the already presently noted decline of humanitarian ideas and the weakening of the juridical principle in our life.

This is why even mere concern for national self-preservation should move us decisively to condemn the antisemitic movement not only as immoral in its essence, but as a radical danger to Russia’s future.

Vl. Solovyov

“The Sins of Russia” (1887)

[Editor’s Note: This essay is also letter no. 37 in Getz’s collection of letters.]

So long as your national and unacknowledged sins remain upon you, you will never wage a decisive victory, you will never restore your good name.¹

yuri krizhanich²

In his book Russia and Europe the late N. Y. Danilevsky,³ analyzing our history and progressiveness in his characteristic way, acknowledges that Russia is stricken by heavy illness. This illness, he states, completely impedes the realization of the great destinies of the Russian people and can end, despite all of Russia’s visible state prowess, after draining the original spring of the ethnic spirit, by depriving the historical life of the Russian people of its inner creative energies, consequently rendering useless and redundant its very existence, for all that is deprived of inner substance constitutes mere historical junk (Russia and Europe, 2nd ed., p. 316). That Russia ails with an oppressive and dangerous illness is evident, but it is also evident now for everyone that the honorable Slavophile was decisively mistaken in his diagnosis when he determined this illness to consist in the impoverishment and weakening of the national spirit in Russian society. Had he not made a mistake in his diagnosis, then the remedy he went on to suggest should have taken effect. Let us not forget that Danilevsky wrote at the end of the sixties. “Impoverishment of spirit,” he said, “can...