The government's policies on Jews remained liberal during the 1870s. However, some new restrictions were introduced: a quota on Jewish jurors and special measures against Jews evading military duty. Jews entitled to reside outside the Pale (except persons with academic degrees) were denied permanent residence in the Don Cossack Corps Area. As early as the 1860s, Jews were prohibited from acquiring estate property in the nine western provinces within the Pale. Thus, notwithstanding liberalization of the regime, Jews were still far from acquiring full civil rights in Russia.
After the death of Alexander II a wave of Jewish pogroms swept across Russia from Yelisavetgrad in April 1881. Rumors circulated about the czar's edict permitting beating and looting of Jewish homes. The government tended to accuse revolutionaries of instigating the pogroms (on April 11th the Emperor himself told a Jewish delegation that the pogroms were the work of anarchists), although facts existed (though, as always in such cases, unproven) concerning the involvement of government circles. The new government, which in April 1881 replaced the liberal ministers of Alexander II, blamed the pogroms on the Jews themselves, alleging that they used their dominance in trade and crafts as well as their land holdings for exploiting the local population.
During the 1880s to early 1890s the Russian government proclaimed an openly anti-semitic "national" policy as a basic principle of activity. Jews were deprived of the right to participate in urban and rural self-government; their service on juries depended on the directives of the Ministry of Justice (in practice this nearly ceased). Mass evictions of Jewish craftsmen began in some localities outside the Pale. Official anti-semitism was accompanied by the spread of anti-semitic theories in literature and the press and the growth of anti-semitism among ordinary people.
On May 3, 1882 Alexander III approved the "Temporary Rules", which for several decades served as a permanent law on the rights (or, to be exact, the absence of rights) of the Jews living within the Pale. According to the so-called "May Rules", even within the Pale Jews were prohibited from taking up new residence in rural areas and acquiring land and houses outside cities and townships. The number of populated localities in the Pale where Jews could live was limited. This resulted in further congestion and poverty among the Jewish population.
The government substantially limited the right of Jews to education. The so-called percentage quota fixed in 1887 reduced the number of Jews in higher and secondary public educational institutions. For this reason OPE focused its efforts during the early 1860s on the organization of a new system of Jewish education within the Pale. It is evident from reports that the funds donated to OPE were dispensed with the object of helping Jewish students in townships, acquiring teaching aids, publishing scholarly works and textbooks, and paying wages to teachers and scholarships to badly-off students. All this aid reached the Pale from St. Petersburg.
The 1860s-1870s saw the triumph of the Haskala. Yet, the extremes of the assimilation tendency met with protest. Writer and publicist Perets Smolenskin ardently spoke up for preservation of Jewish national identity. In the magazine "Ha-Shahar" which after 1868 was published abroad but addressed to Russian Jewry, he insisted that, while assimilating European education and eradicating prejudices, Jews should not abandon their national identity, language, history and their main objective - spiritual and political revival of the Jewish people in its ancient homeland, Palestine. The ideas of Perets Smolenskin gained many supporters and prepared for the rise of Jewish national self-awareness.
Pogroms and persecutions discouraged many Russian Jews and dashed the Maskilim's hopes for a gradual improvement in the life and legal status of Jews through enlightenment. Some sought a solution in mass emigration. Others aspired to achieve the emancipation of Jews from oppression through the social liberation of all Russians, and through participation in the revolutionary movement of populists and later social democrats. A third group came to the conclusion that Jews would never solve their problems without a national state. In his brochure "Autoemancipation", published abroad in German in 1882, Lev Pinsker argued that Jews had to create a national state in Palestine through their own efforts. Soon, Pinsker became a renowned leader of Russian Zionists. Writer Moses Lilienblum also called the Jews to their ancient homeland.
The movement of Zionists spread among Russian Jews and laid down the foundations of Zionism.