According to the 1897 first All-Russian census, over five million Jews lived in the Russian Empire; that is a little more than 4% of the total population. The overwhelming majority consisted of meschanye, i.e. petty bourgeoisie and workers (over 94%), with a little more than 1.5% being merchants and freemen. Naturally, few individuals were classed as hereditary and personal nobles. Jewish peasants lived mostly in agricultural colonies and made up less than 4% of the total Jewish population of the Empire. More than one third were employed in industry and nearly as many in trade. Others were office employees, domestic servants, members of liberal professions and rentiers. Nearly one half of the Jewish population lived in towns, the highest percentage of city dwellers among all ethnic groups.
Craftsmen and petty traders prevailed among Jews engaged in industry and trade. Crowded inside the Pale, they had no opportunities to make use of their abilities and were doomed to the half-hungry life of "people of the air". Office employees were mostly accountants and insurance agents (inside the Pale, 90% of them were Jewish). According to the census, over 64% of men and over 36% of women were literate, but in fact this percentage must be much higher since, in accordance with the commandment "And tell thy son", every man must be literate in the Jewish language. However, as the result of the quota only a little more than one per cent of the Jewish population had a secular education above elementary.
The economic development of the country contributed to greater integration of Jews into Russian society. First of all, this tendency manifested itself in Jews practising liberal professions - lawyers, physicians, journalists, musicians, and architects. To an even greater extent, Jews came to practise such new mass professions as those of photographer, engraver, draftsman, insurance or sales agent, and theatrical entrepreneur. All these professions required professional skills as well as general educational background, including a fluent knowledge of Russian. The need for such skills and knowledge was satisfied by the OPE and ORT educational network, which by that time existed not only in the capitals but also throughout Russia.
The social democratic movement began spreading inside the Pale in the late 1880s. Socialist ideas appealed to Jewish workers and craftsmen, but as the difference in language, customs and religion separated them from the rest of the population, they aimed to create national workers' organizations.
In 1897 several separate Jewish social democratic organizations united into the Universal Jewish Workers' Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (the Bund). The Bund issued the newspapers "Arbeter Shtimme", (published illegally in Russia) and "Yiddishe Arbeiter" (in Geneva). In the late 1890s the Bund was the largest and the most solid workers' organization in the Russian Empire. Some Jewish intellectuals struggled for emancipation via the Jewish People's Party but this party had no success.
At the same time, the Zionist movement also attracted many Russian Jews. In 1890 the "Hovevey Tzion", or "Lovers of Zion" movement, engaged in relocating Jews to Palestine and creating agricultural communities there, held a conference in Odessa. In 1897, the first Zionist congress was convoked in Basel on the initiative of Austrian Jew Theodore Herzl. This was the formal beginning of the Zionist movement. Jews from Eastern Europe, primarily from Russia, began to move to Palestine, fleeing pogroms and oppression. Few of them managed to reach Palestine, but the Jewish population of Palestine kept growing. In the history of Zionism the period before 1903 is called the First Aliyah. It was Jewish immigrants from Russia who created the first agricultural communities, the kibbutzim, in Palestine.
Jewish newspapers and magazines kept up a continuous discussion about the future of the Jewish people, perspectives on life in the Diaspora and settlement of Eretz Israel. Micha Iosef Berdichevsky put forward the idea of the internal development of personality, taking into account the assimilating influence of the Diaspora, and argued that Jewishness is acquired not by birth but by one's free choice to have a full national life: "the holy people is a live people". The same ideas, but in more detail and better argued, were also voiced by Ahad Ha Am (Asher Zvi Ginzberg). He wrote that what was needed to settle and develop Eretz Israel was a group of well-prepared potential leaders, not a mass of unskilled and half-hungry people. The Aliyah must be prepared through a revival of genuine Jewish culture. Jews have need of Zionism, but this need is spiritual, not material.
The late 19th century saw the heyday of Yiddish literature and periodicals in Russia, owing to the increased demand by the Jewish masses for books and newspapers in their native tongue. The title of the "grandfather of Jewish literature" belonged to Mendele Moikher-Sforim, a Haskala writer influenced by Russian democratic critics, who depicted the life of "the little people". At first, readers preferred simplistic novels by Shomer, but by the end of the century they were won over by realistic works. The most outstanding Yiddish writers were Sholom-Aleikhem[*] and .*
In 1903 Russian Jewry as well as the whole of Russian society was shocked by the unprecedented bloody pogrom which occurred in Kishinev on Orthodox Easter, 6-8 April. Forty nine Jews and one Russian were killed, about 500 people injured and almost one third of the buildings in the city destroyed or damaged. Eight hundred and sixteen persons involved in the pogrom were arrested. The investigation revealed involvement of the city authorities. Although Russia's best lawyers, Russian and Jewish, defended the victims of the pogrom, most pogromists were either acquitted or got off with minimum punishment. The Kishinev pogrom sparked an outcry in Russian society, .*