citizens with higher education; in absolute terms, they were second to the Russians and ahead of the Ukrainians. One-third of all Soviet Jews of college age (19 to 24 years old) were college students. The corresponding figure for the Soviet Union as a whole was between 4 and 5 percent. 25 The most striking consequence of the migration of Jews to Soviet cities was their transformation into white-collar state employees. As early as 1923, 44.3 percent of Moscow Jews and 30.5 percent of Leningrad Jews belonged to that category. In 1926, the white-collar share of all employed Jews was 50.1 percent in Moscow and 40.2 percent in Leningrad (compared to 38.15 and 27.7 percent for non-Jews). By 1939, these percentages had reached 82.5 percent in Moscow and 63.2 percent in Leningrad. From the inception of the Soviet regime, the unique combination of exceptionally high literacy rates and a remarkable degree of political loyalty (“consciousness”) had made Jews the backbone of the new Soviet bureaucracy. The Party considered old tsarist officials—and indeed all non-Bolsheviks educated before the revolution—to be irredeemably untrustworthy. They had to be used (as “bourgeois experts”) for as long as they remained irreplaceable; they were to be purged (as “socially alien elements”) as soon as they became expendable. The best candidates for replacing them (while the proletarians were “mastering knowledge”) were Jews—the only members of the literate classes not compromised by service to the tsarist state (since it had been forbidden them). 26 As Lenin put it, “The fact that there were many Jewish intelligentsia members in the Russian cities was of great importance to the revolution. They put an end to the general sabotage that we were confronted with after the October Revolution. . . . The Jewish elements were mobilized . . . and thus saved the revolution at a difficult time. It was only thanks to this pool of a rational and literate labor force that we succeeded in taking over the state apparatus.” 27 The Soviet state urgently needed new professionals, as well as officials. Jews —especially young Jews from the former Pale—answered the call. In 1939 in Leningrad, Jews made up 69.4 percent of all dentists; 58.6 percent of all pharmacists; 45 percent of all defense lawyers; 38.6 percent of all doctors; 34.7 percent of all legal consultants; 31.3 percent of all writers, journalists, and editors; 24.6 percent of all musicians; 18.5 percent of all librarians; 18.4 percent of all scientists and university professors; 11.7 percent of all artists; and 11.6 percent of all actors and directors. In Moscow, the numbers were very similar. 28 The higher one looks in the status hierarchy, the greater the Jewish share. In 1936/37, Jewish students made up 4.8 percent of all Moscow schoolchildren in grades one through four, 6.7 percent in grades five through seven, and 13.4