The memorandum of the Vilna community made the following addition to the last clause: "As a cultured nation, we demand the same rights of national-cultural self-determination which ought to be granted to all the nationalities that go to make up the Russian body politic."
Memorials and telegrams, addressed to the president of the Committee of Ministers, with the demand for equal rights, were also sent by many individual Jewish communities.
In the meantime, the general revolutionary movement in Russia proceeded apace. Professional organizations were springing into existence, such as the leagues of railroad workers, engineers, and lawyers. Here and there, huge railroad strikes were called. The college youth were in a state of ferment, and often went on strike. The agitation was answered by rifle shots and Cossack whips which were used to disperse the demonstrators. The extreme wing of the Socialist party resorted to terroristic acts. A tremendous sensation was caused by the assassination of Grand Duke Sergius, the governor-general of Moscow (February 4), one of the most detestable members of the house of Romanov. The grand duke, whose name was bound up with the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from Moscow in 1891 and with the cruel oppression of the Jewish colony still left there, was the victim of a bomb thrown by a non-Jew, the Social-Revolutionist Kalayev.
The surging tide of the revolution intimidated Nicholas II., and wrested from him still another concession. On February 18, 1905, three enactments were published: an imperial manifesto condemning the revolutionary "unrest" at a time when "the sanguinary war in the Far East" was going on, and calling upon all "well-intentioned persons" to wage war against "the internal sedition." A rescript addressed to Bulyghin, Minister of the Interior, announced the decision of the Tzar "to invite the worthiest men, invested with the confidence of the nation and chosen by the population, to participate in the consideration of legislative projects"--in other words, a popular representation with merely consultative rights. Finally, an ukase addressed to the Senate granted permission to private persons and institutions to lay before the Government their "views and suggestions relating to the perfection of the wellbeing of the state."