The Shield: Russia and the Jewish Question - Russian Intellectuals on Anti-Semitism

The original Shield was published in 1916 by the Russian Society for the Study of Jewish Life under the joint editorship of three eminent writers, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, and Fyodor Sologub. In the words of William English Walling, "this is not merely a book about the Russian Jews. It is a marvellous revelation of the Russian soul." Nowadays The Shield is as timely as ever. As Pavel Milyukov, the founder of the Constitutional Democratic Party, says, anti-Semitism of the new type "is the product of the constitutional epoch. It is a response to the need for new means of influencing the masses."

What they said:

Maxim Gorky - "I am inclined to think that anti-Semitism is indisputable, just as leprosy and syphilis are, and that the world will be cured of this shameful disease only by culture, which sets us free, slowly but surely, from ailments and vices."

Maxim Gorky - "I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other, and this not only because of its immemorial age, not only because it is the first-born, but also because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man."

Pavel Milyukov - "Anti-Semitism of the new type, however strange this conclusion may appear, is the product of the constitutional epoch. It is a response to the need for new means of influencing the masses."

Pavel Milyukov - "Bismarck, it will be remembered, called anti-Semitism the socialism of fools. In order to combat the socialism of intelligent people, it is necessary to take hold of the ignorant masses and to mislead them by showing them the imaginary enemy of their welfare instead of the real one."

Mikhail Bernatzky - "Anti-Semitism, from the economic standpoint, is nothing but a tremendous waste of the country's productive powers."

Dmitry Merezhkovsky - "We pity everybody but the Jews. Why? Are they not dying on the battlefields for our sake? Do they not love us--who hate them? Do we not hate them--who love us?"