were generally as keen on, and as successful at, becoming urban and modern as their German, Hungarian, British, or American counterparts—which is to say, much keener and much more successful at being capitalists, professionals, myth keepers, and revolutionary intellectuals than most people around them. The Jews had dominated the commercial life of the Pale for most of the nineteenth century. Jewish banks based in Warsaw, Vilna, and Odessa had been among the first commercial lending institutions in the Russian Empire (in the 1850s, Berdichev had eight active and well-connected banking houses). In 1851, Jews had accounted for 70 percent of all merchants in Kurland, 75 percent in Kovno, 76 percent in Mogilev, 81 percent in Chernigov, 86 percent in Kiev, 87 percent in Minsk, and 96 percent each in Volynia, Grodno, and Podolia. Their representation in the wealthiest commercial elite was particularly strong: in Minsk and Chernigov provinces and in Podolia, all “first guild” merchants without exception (55, 59, and 7, respectively) were Jews. Most were involved in tax-farming, moneylending, and trade (especially foreign trade, with a virtual monopoly on overland cross-border traffic), but the importance of industrial investment had been rising steadily throughout the century. Before the Great Reforms, most of the industry in western Russia had been based on the use of serf labor for the extraction and processing of raw materials found on noble estates. Originally, Jews had been involved as bankers, leaseholders, administrators, and retailers, but already in 1828–32, 93.3 percent of the nonnoble industrial enterprises in Volynia (primarily wool and sugar mills) were owned by Jews. Their reliance on free labor made them more flexible with regard to location, more open to innovation, and ultimately much more efficient. In the sugar industry, Jewish entrepreneurs had pioneered a system of forward contracts, the use of extended warehouse networks, and the employment of traveling salesmen working on commission. By the late 1850s, all serf-based wool mills in the Pale of Settlement had gone out of business. Meanwhile, Jewish entrepreneurs had been able to win lucrative government contracts by speeding up their operations, relying on international connections for credit, and organizing complex networks of trustworthy subcontractors. 19 The Russian industrialization of the late nineteenth century opened up new opportunities for Jewish businessmen and benefited tremendously from their financial backing. Among Russia’s greatest financiers were Evzel (Iossel) Gabrielovich Gintsburg, who had grown rich as a liquor-tax farmer during the Crimean War; Abram Isaakovich Zak, who had begun his career as Gintsburg’s chief accountant; Anton Moiseevich Varshavsky, who had supplied the Russian army with food; and the Poliakov brothers, who had started out as small-time