The very title betrays the underlying motive of the writer, to make the Jews the scapegoat for the economic ruin of the province, in which the squires had always been the masters of the situation. But Dyerzhavin did not confine himself to the evaluation of the economic activity of the Jews. He was no less anxious to depict their inner life, their beliefs, their training and education, their communal institutions, their "moral situation." For all these purposes he drew upon a multitude of sources. While writing his memorandum in Vitebsk, in the fall of 1800, he gathered information about the Jews from the local anti-Jewish merchants and burghers, and from the "scientific" instructors at the Jesuit College in the same city, in the court-houses, and--from "the very Cossacks themselves."
It must be added that Dyerzhavin also had in his possession two projects from the pen of "enlightened Jews." The author of one of them, Nota Shklover by name, a wealthy merchant, who had served as purveyor to Potemkin's army, and, living at that time in St. Petersburg, knew the drift of opinion in Government circles, proposed to attract the Jews to manufacturing, which should be introduced, in connection with agriculture and cattle-breeding, into colonies set apart for this purpose "in the neighborhood of the Black Sea ports." The originator of the second project, a physician from Kreslavka, in the Government of Vitebsk, by the name of Frank,--evidently a German Jew of the Mendelssohnian type--suggested that the Government through Dyerzhavin focus its attention on the reform of the Jewish religion, which "in its original purity rested on unadulterated Deism and the postulates of pure morality," but in the course of time was distorted by "the absurdities of the Talmud." Frank accordingly proposes to follow the example set by Mendelssohn in Germany, to throw open the Russian public schools to the Jews, and to teach their children Russian, German, and Hebrew, implying of course that the Jew thus educated will not fail to prove himself of unquestionable benefit to the country.
Aside from these projects, Dyerzhavin had before him specimens of several Prussian _Juden-Reglements_, as well as the recommendations of the marshals and governors of Western Russia referred to above, and similar documents.[243] This material sufficed for the Russian official, who had caught no more than a fleeting glimpse of the Jews while passing through White Russia, to elaborate a most comprehensive "Opinion" demanding a complete transformation of Jewish life.