German national unification intensified Russian elite fears of backwardness

Evidence

From the perspective of Russian officials and many other members of educated society, this moment was all the more precarious because a novel and dynamic form of politics was changing Europe, a phenomenon most visible—and disconcerting—in the German states, which by 1871 had been forged together, led by Prussia, as a single, powerful state on the principle of German national unity. Russia, by contrast, was still behind Europe in the metrics that mattered to Russian educated society. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 530