184 ZYDZIconfined to a marginal intellectual elite; whereas the later educational and
publishing ventures in Yiddish were directed at the masses. At the end of the
century, the cultural patterns were far more complicated than at the beginning.
The principal catalyst in changing Jewish attitudes at the end of the century
had undoubtedly been provided by the repressive legislation of the May Laws,
and by the accompanying pogroms. The physical violence which erupted at this
time in central Russia was largely avoided in the Vistula provinces. The anti-
Jewish riot sparked off in 1881 in Warsaw by news of the Tsar's assassination
seems to have been a spontaneous affair, and there was no instance in Warsaw
or Lodz, as in Moscow or St. Petersburg, where unregistered Jews were expelled
en masse from their homes. Yet the psychological trauma among all sections of
Jewry was enormous. Limited acts of violence gave rise to unlimited rumours,
and to fears of further violence to come. As a result, and in some cases overnight,
moderate men and women became radicals, and radicals became extremists.
The trend towards Assimilation received a setback from which it never recov-
ered. The various cultural movements were seen to be inadequate to the needs
of the day. Zionism-Jewish Nationalism — had reached the moment of take-
off.^11
The disturbances of 1882 aggravated the problems of Polish Jewry in a very
specific manner, however. As a result of the pogroms, considerable numbers of
Jews from the Russian areas of the Pale sought refuge in the Polish gubernias, or
in Galicia. The newcomers, known in Poland somewhat inaccurately as Litvaks
or 'Jews from Lithuania', differed from the native Jews in two important
respects. In the first place, embittered by their humiliating experiences, they con-
tained an unusually large element of political militants. In the second place, the
educated people among them were largely Russian-speaking, and as such essen-
tially indifferent to Polish interests. Their arrival proved unsettling in the
extreme, and was resented no less by the leaders of Orthodox Polish Jewry than
by the Polish Catholics. Their influx seriously damaged the Polish Orientation,
hindered the process of assimilation into Polish culture, and accelerated a wide
variety of radical political programmes. Many of them used their sojourn in the
Polish provinces as a staging-post on their way to Western Europe, America, or
Palestine. But many stayed behind to take a conspicuous part in the socialist,
communist, and Zionist movements. In Polish eyes, these 'alien Jews' were
largely responsible for disrupting the supposed harmony of earlier
Polish-Jewish relations. Unwittingly, they certainly did much to launch the
popular stereotype of the 'Zydo-komuna', associating Marxism and
Communism with Russian Jewish intellectuals, which was destined to enjoy a
long currency in Poland.
In the 1880s the fashion for emigrating to Palestine gained rapid momentum.
An association calling itself Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) spawned local branches
throughout Galicia and the Pale, and staged the first of its federated Conferences
at Kattowitz in Silesia in 1884. In the seventeen years before its merger into
the World Zionist Organization (WZO), it provided a major stimulus to the