ABSTRACT
The Kovno circle of ultra-Orthodox activists headed by Rabbi Yitzhak Elhanan Spektor was active for a score of years from 1881 until the end of the 1890s. It did not leave off when the wave of pogroms ebbed and it busied itself with interceding on all sorts of issues concerning the Jewish community. Since there was no lack of repressive decrees, its hands were full, but these matters, unlike the pogroms, were not used to mobilize public opinion, Jewish and non-Jewish, until 1890, that is to say in the period before the expulsion of Jews from Moscow. The Kovno group had a unique success in bringing in different circles of the public to help in their enterprise, circles often very distant from each other in the Jewish community and which acted under their leadership. In particular this was reflected in cooperation with the maskilim in various cities in Russia.
