Imbued with the spirit of martyrdom, the Convention remembered the martyr Dashevski, the avenger of the Kishinev massacre,[49] and passed a resolution to convey to the youthful sufferer, who was then languishing in a penal military company, its "enthusiastic greetings."
In an outburst of national enthusiasm the Convention adopted the following bold resolution:
In the interest of realizing to their full extent the civil, political, and national rights of the Jewish nationality in Russia, the Convention resolves as follows:
To proceed without delay to call, on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, without discrimination of sex, and by a direct secret vote, an All-Russian Jewish National Assembly in order to establish, in accordance with the will of the entire Jewish population, the forms and principles of its national self-determination as well as the foundations of its internal organization.
It was the project of a national Synedrion, radically different in its conception from the Napoleonic Synedrion convened in 1807.
The third convention of the "League of Equal Eights" was held on February 10-13, 1906, during the election campaign to the first Imperial Duma. The proposal of the Left wing of the League to boycott the Duma, on the ground that it "will prove a bulwark of reaction"--a prediction which was fully justified by events--and to refrain from taking part in the elections, was voted down. On the contrary, a resolution was passed, calling upon the Jews to take a most active part in the elections, to nominate everywhere their own Jewish candidates, and, wherever this was impossible, to give their votes to the non-Jewish candidates on condition that they pledge themselves to support in the Duma the civil, political, and national rights of the Jewish people. The resolution, moreover, contained this clause: "To insist that the Jewish question in the Duma shall be settled unconditionally in connection with the fundamental articles of the Constitution and with the questions of elementary liberties to be granted to all citizens."
An election campaign was set in motion and carried on under the most difficult circumstances. The police authorities took advantage of the state of war which had been proclaimed in many places to interfere with a comprehensive pre-election propaganda, and at the same time the Black Hundred tried to intimidate the Jews by holding out the menace of pogroms during the approaching Passover season. In Poland, the anti-Semitic chauvinists threatened the Jews with all possible reprisals for their "audacious intention" to nominate their own candidates for the Duma, alongside of the candidates of the Christian Poles. Simultaneously, the Jewish group of the Left, the "Bund" and others, followed the policy of boycotting the Duma and did their best to interfere with the elections. However, all these apprehensions proved groundless. The Passover and election pogroms did not take place, and Russian Jewry displayed a vigorous activity in the elections, with the result that twelve Jewish deputies were sent to the first Duma. The most active among these deputies were M. Vinaver, one of the leaders of the general Russian Constitutional-Democratic party and president of the "League for the Attainment of Equal Rights"; Dr. Shmaryahu Levin, the well-known Zionist; L. Bramson, actively identified with Jewish educational activities, who was affiliated with the Russian Democratic group, known as the _Trudoviki_, or "Laborites." All the Jewish deputies were united on the nationalistic platform formulated by the "League for the Attainment of Equal Rights." By a resolution passed at the fourth Convention of the League, held on May 9-13, 1906, they pledged themselves to co-ordinate their actions in all questions pertaining to Jewish emancipation and to abide by a common discipline, without, however, forming a separate parliamentary fraction.