The original Shield was published in 1916 by the Russian Society for the Study of Jewish Life under the joint editorship of three eminent writers, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, and Fyodor Sologub. In the words of William English Walling, "this is not merely a book about the Russian Jews. It is a marvellous revelation of the Russian soul." Nowadays The Shield is as timely as ever. As Pavel Milyukov, the founder of the Constitutional Democratic Party, says, anti-Semitism of the new type "is the product of the constitutional epoch. It is a response to the need for new means of influencing the masses."