 Section 19 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 2, from the Deaths of Alexander I until the Deaths of Alexander III, from 1825 to 1894, by Szymon Dubnov, translated by Israel Friedlander. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by SS Scheme, Manicked Baesho, Portugal. Chapter 21, The Obsession of Alexander III and the Integration of Pogroms. 1. The Triumph of Autocracy On March 1st, 1881, Alexander II met his death on one of the principal thoroughfills of St. Petersburg, smitten by dynamite bombs hauled at him by a group of terrorists. The Tsar, who had freed the Russian peasantry from personal slavery, paid with his life for refusing to free Russian people from political slavery and police tyranny. The red terrorism of the revolutionaries was the counterpart of the white terrorism of the Russian authorities, who for many years had suppressed the faintest striving for liberty, and had sent to jail and prison or deported to Siberia the champions of a constitutional form of government and the spokesmen of social reforms. Forced by the persecution of the police to hide beneath the surface, the revolutionary societies of underground Russia found themselves compelled to resort to a method of terrorism. This terrorism found its expression during the last years of Alexander II in various attempts on the life of that ruler and culminated in the catastrophe of March 1st. Among the members of these revolutionary societies were also some representatives from among the young Jewish intelligentsia. They were in large part college students who had been carried away by the ideals of their Russian comrades, but few of them were counted among the active terrorists. The group, which prepared the model of the Tsar, comprised but one Jewish member or woman by the name of Hesia Helpman, who moreover played a secondary role in the conspiracy by keeping a secret residence for two revolutionaries. Nevertheless, in the official circles which were anxious to justify the operation of the Jews, it became customary to refer to the important role played by the Jews in the Russian Revolution. It was with preconceived notion of this kind that Alexander III ascended the throne of Russia, sovereign with unlimited power, but with a very limited political horizon. Being a Russian of the old fashioned type and zealous champion of the Greek Orthodox Church, he shared the anti-Jewish prejudices of his environment. Already as crown prince, he ordered that a monetary reward be given to the notorious Lutostansky, who had presented him with his Liberals pamphlet concerning the use of Christian blood by the Jews. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, when as a parent he was in command of one of the Balkan armies, he allowed himself to be appreciated that the abuses in the Russian Commissariat were due to the Jewish purveyors who supplied the army. This was all that was known about Judaism in the circles from which the ruler of 5 million Jews derived his information. In March and April 1881, the destinies of Russia were being decided at secret conferences which were held between the Tsar and the highest dignitaries of state in the palace of the quiet little town of Katsina, with the Alexander III had withdrawn after the death of his father. Two parties and two programs were struggling for mastery at these conferences. The party of the Liberal Minister Loris Velikov, championing a program of moderate reforms, pleaded primarily for the establishment of an advisory commission to be composed of the deputies of the rural and urban administration for the purpose of considering all legal projects prior to their submission to the council of states. This plan of partially popular representation which had obtained the approval of Alexander II during the last days of his life, assumed in the eyes of the reactionary party the proportions of a dangerous constitution and was executed by it as an encroachment upon the sacred pre-robotives of autocracy. The head of this party was the procreator general of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Petrovich Pobietonotshev, a former professor at the University of Moscow, who had been Alexander III's tutor in the political sciences when the letter was crown prince. As the exponent of ecclesiastical police state, Pobietonotshev contended that enlightenment and political freedom were harmful to Russia and that the people must be held in a state of patriarchal submission to the authority of the church and of the temporal powers, and that the Greek orthodox masses must be shielded against the influence of alien religion and races, which should accordingly occupy in the Russian monarchy a position subordinate to that of the dominant nation. The ideas of this fanatic reactionary, who was dubbed the Grand Inquisitor and whose name was popularly changed into Pobietonotshev, carried the day at the Gatina conferences. The deliberations culminated in the decision to refrain from making any concessions to the revolutionary element by granting reforms, however modest in character, and to maintain at all cost the regime of police state as counterbalance to the idea of a legal state prevalent in the Latin West. Accordingly, the imperial manifesto promulgated on April 29, 1881, proclaimed to the people that the voice of God had commanded us to take vigorously the reins of government, inspiring us with belief in the strength and truth of autocratic power which we are called upon to establish and safeguard. The manifesto calls upon all faithful subjects to eradicate the hideous sedition and to establish faith and morality. The methods whereby faith and morality were to be established were soon made known in the police constitution which was bestowed upon Russia in August 1881 under the name of the Statute Concerning Enforced Public Safety. This statute confers upon the Russian set-trips of the capitals St. Petersburg and Moscow and of many provincial centers, the Governor's General and the Governor's, the power of issuing special enactments and thereby setting aside the normal laws as well as of placing on the arrest and devoting to Siberia without the due process of law. All citizens suspected of political unsafety. This travesty of the Hybea Scopers Act ensuring the inviolability of police and gendarmerie and practically involving the suspension of the current legislation in a large part of the monarchy has ever since been annually renewed by special imperial enactments and has remained in force until our own days. The genuine police constitution of 1881 has survived the civil sham constitution of 1805, triggering as a symbol of legalized lawlessness. Two, the initiation of the program policy. The catastrophe of March 1st had the natural effect of pushing not only the government but also a large part of the Russian people who had been scared by the specter of anarchy in the direction of reactionary politics. This retrograde tendency was bound to affect the Jewish question. The baseless of Judeophobia became a stir in the politically immature minds which had been unhinged by the act of terrorism. The influential press organs which maintained more or less close relations with the leading government spheres adopted more and more a hostile attitude toward the Jews. The major political newspaper Novoebraemia, the New Time, which at that time embarked upon its infamous career as the semi-official organ of Russian reaction. And the number of provincial newspapers subsidized by the government suddenly began to speak of the Jews in a tone which suggested that they were in the position of some terrible secret. Almost on the day following the attempt on the life of the Tsar, the papers of this ilk began to insinuate that the Jews had a hand in it and shortly thereafter the South Russian press published alarming rumors about the proposed organized attacks upon the Jews of that region. These rumors were based on facts. A sinister agitation was rife among the lowest elements of the Russian population while invisible hands from above seemed to push it on toward the commission of a gigantic crime. In the same month of March, mysterious emissaries from St. Petersburg made their appearance in the large cities of South Russia such as Elisabeth Grat, T.F. and Odessa and entered into secret negotiations with the highest police officials concerning a possible outburst of popular indignation against the Jews, which they expected to take place as a part of the economic conflict, intimating the undesirability of obstructing the will of the Russian populace by police force. Figures of great Russian tradesmen and laborers were cut-ups as the great Russians designated in the Little Russian South began to make their appearance in the railroad cars and at the railroad stations and spoke to the common people of the summary punishment soon to be inflicted upon the Jews who were led to them anti-semitic newspaper articles. They further assured them that an imperial U.K. had been issued calling upon the Christians to attack the Jews during the days of the approaching Greek Orthodox Easter. Although many years have passed since these events, it had not yet been possible to determine the particular agency which carried on this program agitation among the Russian masses. Nor has it been possible to find out to what extent the secret society of high officials which had been formed in March 1881 under the name of the sacred league with the object of defending the person of the Tsar and engaging in a terroristic struggle with the enemies of the public order was implicated in the movements. But the fact itself that the programs were carefully prepared and engineered is beyond doubt. It may be inferred from the circumstance that they broke out almost simultaneously in many places of the Russian South and that everywhere they followed the same routine characterized by the well-organized activity of the mob and the deliberate inactivity of the authorities. The first outbreak of the storm took place in Elisabethgrad, a large city in New Russia with the Jewish population of 15,000 souls. On the eve of the Greek Orthodox Easter, the local Christians meeting on the streets and in the stores spoke to one another of the fact that the Zid are about to be beaten. The Jews became alarmed. The police prepared to maintain public order during the first days of the Passover called out a small detachment of soldiers. In consequence, the first days of the festival passed quietly and on the fourth day on April 15, the troops were removed from the streets. At that moment, the program began. The organizers of the riot sent a drunken Russian into a salon kept by a Jew where he began to make himself obnoxious. When the salon keeper pushed the troublemaker out into the street, the crowd, which were waiting outside, began to shout. The Zid are beating out people and threw themselves upon the Jews who happened to pass by. This evidently was the pre-arranged signal for the program. The Jewish stores in the marketplace were attacked and demolished and the goods looted or destroyed. At first, the police, assisted by the troops, managed somehow to disperse the rioters. But on the second day, the program was renewed with greater energy and better leadership amidst the suspicious inactivity both of the military and police authorities. The following description of the event is taken from the records of the official investigation which were not meant for publication and are therefore free from the bureaucratic prevailications characteristic of Russian public documents. During the night from the 15th to the 16th of April, an attack was made upon Jewish houses, primarily upon liquor stores on the outskirts of the town on each occasion one Jew was killed. About 7 o'clock in the morning on April 16, the excesses were renewed, spreading with extraordinary violence all over the city. Clocks, saloon and hotel waiters, artisans, drivers, flunkies, day laborers in the employ of the government and soldiers on furlough, all of these joined the movement. The city presented on extraordinary site, streets covered with feathers and obstructed with broken furniture which had been thrown out of the residences. Houses with broken doors and windows, a raging mark running about yelling and whistling in all directions and continuing its work of destruction without lead or hindrance and as a finishing touch to this picture, complete indifference displayed by the local non-Jewish inhabitants to the havoc road before their eyes. The troops which had been summoned to restore order were without definite instructions and at each attack of the mob on another house would wait for orders of the military or police authorities without knowing what to do. As a result of this attitude of the military, the turbulent mob which was demolishing the houses and stores of the Jews before the eyes of the troops, without being checked by them, was bound to arrive at the conclusion that the excesses in which it indulged were not an illegal undertaking but rather a work which had the approval of the government. Towards evening, the disorder increased in intensity owing to the arrival of a large number of peasants from the adjacent village who were anxious to secure part of the Jewish route. There was no one to check these crowds. The troops and police were helpless. They had all lost heart and were convinced that it was impossible to suppress the disorder with the means at hand. At 8 o'clock at night, a rain came down accompanied by a cold wind which helped in a large measure to disperse the crowd. At 11 o'clock, fresh troops arrived on the spot. On the morning of April 17, a new battalion of infantry came and from that day on, public order was no longer violated in Elizabeth grad. The news of the victory so easily won over the Jews of Elizabeth grad aroused the dormant program energy in the unenlightened Russian masses. In the latter part of April, riots took place in many villages of the Elizabeth grad district and in several towns and towns in the adjoining government of Kersen. In the villages, the work of destruction was limited to the inns kept by Jews, many peasants believing that they were acting in accordance with imperial orders. In the towns and towns that all Jewish houses and stores were demolished and their goods looted. In the town of Ananiyev, in the government of Kersen, the people were incited by a resident named Lashchenko who assured his townsmen that the central government had given orders to massacre the Jews because they had murdered the Tsar and that these orders were purposely kept back by the local administration. The instigator was seized by the police but was arrested from it by the crowd, which therefore drew itself upon the Jews. The riots resulted in some 200 wind houses and stores in the outskirts of the town where the Jewish proletariat was cooped up. The central part of the town where the more well-to-the-Jews had their residences was guarded by the police and by a military detachment and therefore remained intact. Three, the pogrom at Kiev. The movement gained constantly in momentum and the instincts of the mob became more and more unbridled. The mother of Russian cities, ancient Kiev, where at the dawn of Russian history the Jews together with the Khazars had been the banner bearer of civilization became the scene of the lawless fury of savage hordes. Here the pogrom was carefully prepared by a secret organization which spread the rumor that the new Tsar had given orders to exterminate the Jews who had murdered his father and that the civil and military authorities would render assistance to the people, watch the those who would fail to comply with the will of the Tsar would meet with punishment. The local authorities with Governor General Dretln at their head who was a reactionary and fierce Jew hater were aware not only of the imminence of the pogrom but also of the day selected for it Sunday, April 26. As early as April 23rd, a street fight took place which was accompanied by assaults on Jewish passers-by, a prelude to the pogrom. On the day before the fateful Sunday, the Jews were warned by the police not to leave their houses nor to open their stores on the morrow. The Jews were nonplussed. They failed to understand why in the capital of the Governor General with its numerous troops which at a hint from their commander were able to nip in the bud disorders of any kind, peaceful citizens should be told to hide themselves from an impending attack instead of taking measures to forestall the attack itself. Nevertheless, the advice of the police was heeded and on the fateful day no Jews were to be found on the streets. This however did not prevent the numerous bands of rioters from assembling on the streets and embarking upon their criminal activities. The pogrom started in Podol, a part of the town densely populated by Jews. The following is the description of an eyewitness. At 12 o'clock at noon, the air suddenly resounded with wild shouts whistling during hooting and laughing. An immense crowd of young boys, artisans and laborers was on the march. The whole city was obstructed by the barefooted brigade. The destruction of Jewish houses began. Window panes and doors began to fly about and shortly thereafter the mob, having gained access to the houses and stores, began to draw upon the streets absolutely everything that fell into their hands. Clouds of feathers began to haul in the air. The thin or broken window panes and frames, the crying, shouting and despair on the one hand and the terrible yelling and jeering on the other, completed the picture which reminded many of those who had participated in the last Russo-Turkish war of the Manor in each of the Bashe-Busuk had attacked Bulgarian villages. Soon afterwards the mob drew itself upon the Jewish synagogue which, despite its strong bars, locks and shutters, was wrecked in the moment. One should have seen the fury with which the rip-rap fell upon the Torah scrolls, of which there were many in the synagogue. The scrolls were torn to shreds, trampled in the dirt and destroyed with incredible passion. The streets were soon crammed with the trophies of destruction. Everywhere, fragments of dishes, furniture, household utensils, and other articles lay scattered about. Barely two hours after the beginning of the program, the majority of the barefooted brigade were transformed into well-dressed gentlemen, many of them having grown excessively stout in the meantime. The reason for this sudden change was simple enough. Those that had looted the stores of ready-made clothes, put on three or four suits and, not yet satisfied, took under their arms all they could lay their hands on. Others drove off in vehicles, carrying with them bags filled with loot. The Christian population saved itself from the ruinous operations of the crowd, by placing holy icons in their windows and painting crosses on the gates of their houses. While the program was going on, troops were marching up and down the streets of the Podol district. Cossacks were riding about on their horses, and patchers on foot and horseback were moving to and fro. Here and there, army officers would pass through, among them generals and high civil officials. The cavalry would hasten to a place when the noise came. Having arrived there, it would surround the mob and order it to disperse, but the mob would only move to another place. Thus, the work of destruction proceeded undisturbed until 3 o'clock in the morning. Drums were beaten, words of command were shouted. The crowd was encircled by the troops and ordered to disperse, while the mob continued its attacks with ever-increasing fury and savagery. While some of the rubber bands were busy in Podol, others were active in the principal thoroughfares of the city. In each case, the savage and drunken mob that a single subperson could be found among them is the testimony of an eyewitness did its hideous work in the presence of soldiers and policemen, who in a few instances drove off the rioters, but more often accompanied them from place to place, forming as it were on honorary escort. Occasionally, Governor-General Dretlin himself would appear on the streets surrounded by a magnificent military suite, including the governor and chief of police. These representatives of state authority admonished the people and the latter, preserving a funeral silence through back, only to resume their criminal task after the departure of the authorities. In some places, there were neither troops nor police on the spot, and the rioters were able to give full vent their beastly instincts. Demiurka, a suburb of Kiev, was invaded by a horde of rioters during the night. They first destroyed the saloons, filling themselves with alcohol, and then proceeded to lay fire to the Jewish houses. Under the cover of night, indescribable horrors were perpetrated, numerous Jews were beaten to death, were drawn into the flames, and many women were violated. A private investigation carried on subsequently brought out more than 20 cases of rape committed on Jewish girls and married women. Only two of the sufferers confessed their misfortune to the public prosecutor. The others admitted their disgraces in private were concealed altogether for fear of ruining their reputation. It was only on April 27 when the program broke out afresh that the authorities resolved to put a stop to it. Wherever this orderly band made its appearance, it was immediately surrounded by soldiers and Cossacks and driven off with the butt end of their rifles. Here and there, it became necessary to shoot at these human beasts, and some of them were wounded or killed. The rapidity of which the program was suppressed on the second day showed incontrovertibly that if the authorities had already been so minded, the excesses might have been suppressed on the first day and the crime nipped in the butt. The indifferences of the authorities was responsible for the demolition of about a thousand Jewish houses and business places involving monetary laws of several millions of rubles, not to speak of the scores killed and wounded Jews and a goodly number of violated women. In the official reports, these orgies of destruction were politely designated as disorders and the Imperial Messenger limited its account of the horrors perpetrated at Kiev to the following truth-perverting dispatch. On April 26, these orders broke out in Kiev which were directed against the Jews. Several Jews received blows and their stores and warehouses were clandest. On the morning of the following day, the disorders were checked with the help of the troops and 500 men from among the rioters were arrested. The later laconic reports are nearer to the facts. They set the figures of arrested rioters at no less than 1400 and make mention of a number of persons who had been wounded during the suppression of the excesses including one gymnasium and one university students. Yet, even these later dispatches contain no reference to Jewish victims. 4. Further outbreaks in South Russia The barbarism displayed in the Metropolitan Police of the Southwest communicated itself with the force of an infectious disease to the whole region. During the following days, from April to May, some 50 villages and the number of townlets in the government of Kiev and the adjacent governments of Polonia and Podolia were swept by the program epidemic. The Jewish population of the town of Smyrna and the surrounding villages amounting to some 10,000 souls experienced on a smaller scale all the horrors perpetrated at Kiev. It was not until the second day, May 4th, that the troops proceeded to put an end to the violence and pillage which had been going on in the town and which resulted in a number of killed or wounded. In a nearby village, a Jewish woman of dirty was attacked and tortured to death while the seven-year-old son of another woman who had saved herself by flight was killed in beastly fashion for his refusal to make the sign of the cross. In many cases, the pogroms had been instigated by the newly-arrived great Russian bell-footed brigade who, having accomplished their work, vanished without a trace. A similar horde of trams arrived at the railway station of Berdicev, but in this papalus-Juice center, they were met at the station by a large Jewish guard who armed with clubs did not allow the visiting performers to leave the railway cars with the result that they had to turn back. This rare instance of self-defense was only made possible by the indulgence of the local police commissioner, or Izpravnik, who, for large consideration, blinked at the endeavor of the Jews to defend themselves against the rioters. In other places, similar attempts at self-defense were frustrated by the police. Occasionally, they made things worse. Such was the case in the town of Konotov in the government of Chernigov, where, as a result of self-defense of the Jews, the mob passed from plunder to murder. In the villages, the ignorant peasants scrupulously discharged their pogrom duty in the conviction that it had been imposed upon them by the Tsar. In one village, in the government of Chernigov, the following characteristic episode took place. The peasants of the village had assembled for their work of destruction. When the rural chief or elder called upon the peasants to disperse, the latter demanded a written guarantee that they would not be held to account for their failure to comply with the imperial order to beat the Jews. This guarantee was given to them. However, the skeptical rustics were not yet convinced and to make assurance doubly sure destroyed six Jewish houses. In various villages, the priests found it exceedingly difficult to convince the peasants that no order had been issued to attack the Jews. The cities of spring pogroms were kept by a three-day riot in the capital of the south in Odessa, May 3rd to 5th, which harbored a Jewish population of 100,000. In view of the immense riff-raff, which is generally found in a port of entry of these sites, the excesses of the mob might have assumed terrifying dangers had not the authorities remembered that the task entrusted to them. The problem was not exactly that of forming an honorary escort for the rioters as had actually been the case in Kiev. The police and military forces of Odessa attacked the rioting halls, which had spread all over the city and in most cases succeeded in driving them off. The Jewish self-defense, organized and led by Jewish students of the University of Odessa, managed in a number of cases to beat off the blood-thirsty crowds from the gates of Jewish homes. However, when the police began to make arrests among the street mob, they drew no line between the defenders and the assailants with the result that among the 800 arrested persons, there were 150 Jews who were locked up on the charge of carrying firearms. In point of fact, the arms of the Jews consisted of clubs and iron rods, with the exception of very few who were provided with pistols. Those arrested were loaded on three barges which were towed out to sea and for several days were kept in their swimming jail. The Odessa program, which had resulted in the destruction of several city districts populated by poor Jews, did not satisfy the appetite of the savage crowd whose imagination had been fired by stories of the successes attained at Kiev. The mob threatened the Jews with the new riot and even with the massacre. The panic resulting from this threat induced many Jews to flee to more peaceful places or to leave Russia altogether. The same lack of completeness marked the problems which took place simultaneously in several other cities within the jurisdiction of the Governor General of New Russia. In the beginning of May, the destructive manage, characterizing the first program period, began to ebb. A lull ensued in the military operations of the Russian barbarians, which continued until the month of July of the same year. End of section 19, section 20 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 2, from the deaths of Alexander I until the deaths of Alexander III. 1825 to 1894 by Szymon Dubnop, translated by Israel Friedlander. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by SS Kim, Manik Vaiso, Portugal. Chapter 22, The Antichrist Policies of Ignatiev. Part 1, The Vasylating Attitude of the Authorities. In the beginning of May 1881, the well-known diplomatist Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev was called by the Tsar to the post of Minister of the Interior. At one time, ambassador in Constantinople and at all times militant hands lavished. Ignatiev introduced a system of diplomatic intrigues into the inner politics of Russia, owning thereby the unenviable nickname of Father of Lies. A programmatic circular issued by him on May 6 declared that the principal task of the government consisted in the extirpation of solution, i.e. in carrying on a struggle not only against the revolutionary movement, but also against the spirit of liberalism in general. In this connection, Ignatiev took occasion to characterize the anti-Jewish existence in the following typical sentences. The movement against the Jews which has come to light during the last few days in the south is a sad example showing how men otherwise devoted to drone and fatherland yet yielding to the instigations of ill-minded agitators who fan the evil passions of the popular masses giving way to the self-will and mob rule and without being aware of it acting in accordance with the designs of the anarchists. Such violation of the public order must not only be put down vigorously but must also be carefully forestalled for it is the first duty of the government to safeguard the population against all violence and savage mob rule. These lines reflect the theory concerning the origin of the program which was originally held in the highest government spheres of St. Petersburg. This theory assumed that the anti-Jewish campaign had been entirely engineered by revolutionary agitators and that the latter had made deliberate endeavors to focus the resentment of the popular masses upon the Jews as a pre-eminently mercantile class for the purpose of subsequently widening the anti-Jewish campaign into movement directed against the Russian mercantile class, landowners and capitalists in general. Be this as it may, there can be no question that the government was actually afraid lest the revolutionary propaganda attached itself to the agitation of those devotees to drone and fatherland for the purpose of giving the movement a more general scope in accordance with the designs of the anarchists. As a matter of fact, even outside the government circles, the apprehension was voiced that the anti-Jewish movement would, of itself, without any external stimulus, assume the form of mob movement, directed not only against the well-to-do classes but also against the government officials. On May 4, 1881, Baron Horace Ginsberg, a leading representative of the Jewish community of St. Petersburg, waited upon Grand Duke Vladimir, a brother of the Tsar, who expressed the opinion that the anti-Jewish disorders as has now been ascertained by the government are not to be exclusively traced to the resentment against the Jews, but rather due to the endeavor to disturb the peace in general. A week after this visit, the deputies of Russian Jewry had occasion to hear the same opinion expressed by the Tsar himself. The Jewish deputation consisting of Baron Ginsberg and the Banker Tsak, the lawyers Pes Oboe and Bank and the learned Hebraized Berlin, was awaiting this audience with considerable trepidation, anticipating an authoritative imperial verdict regarding the catastrophe that had befallen the Jews. On May 11, the audience took place in the palace at Katzina, Baron Ginsberg voiced the sentiments of boundless gratitude for the measures adopted to safeguard the Jewish population at this sad moment and edit, one more imperial word, and the disturbance will disappear. In reply to the euphemistic utterances concerning the measures adopted, the Tsar stated in the same tone that all Russian subjects were equal before him and expressed the assurance that in the criminal disorders in the south of Russia, the Jews merely served as a pretext and that it is the work of anarchists. This pacifying portion of the Tsar's answer was published in the press. What the public was not allowed to learn was the other portion of the answer in which the Tsar gave utterance to the view that the source of the hatred against the Jews lay in their economic domination and exploitation of the Russian population. In reply to the arguments of the talented loyal Passover and other deputies, the Tsar declared, state all this in a special memorandum. Such a memorandum was subsequently prepared, but it was not submitted to the Tsar. For only a few months later, the official attitude towards the Jewish question took a turn for the worse. The government decided to abandon its formal view on the Jewish programs and to adopt instead the theory of Jewish exploitation, using it as a means of justifying not only the programs which had already been perpetrated upon the Jews, but also the repressive measures which were being contemplated against them. Under these circumstances, Ignatius did not see his way clear to allow the memorandum in defense of Jewry to receive the attention of the Tsar. It is not impossible that the pacifying portion of the imperial reply which had been given at the audience of May 11th was also prompted by the desire to appease the public opinion of Western Europe, for at the time European opinions still carried some weight with bureaucratic circles of Russia. Several days before the audience at Katzina, the English parliament discussed the question of Jewish persecution in Russia. In the House of Commons, the Jewish members, Baron Henley the Worms and so HD Wolf, calling attention to the case of an English Jew who had been expelled from St. Petersburg, interpolated on the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Charles Dilk, whether her Majesty's government have made any representations to the government at St. Petersburg with regard to the atrocious outrages commented on the Jewish population in southern Russia. Dilk replied that the English government was not sure whether such a protest would be likely to be efficacious. A similar reply was given by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Granville to a joint deputation of the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Board of Deputies to leading Anglo-Jewish bodies which waited upon him on May 13, two days after the Katzina audience. After expressing his warm sympathy with the object of the deputation, the Secretary pointed out the inexperience of any interference at the part of England at the moment when the Russian government itself was adopting measures against the pogroms referring to the cordial reception lately given by the Emperor to a deputation of Jews. Subsequent events soon made it clear that the government represented by Ignatiev was far from harboring any sympathy for the victims of the pogroms. The public did not fail to notice the fact that the Russian government which was in the habit of rendering financial help to the population in the case of elemental catastrophe such as conflagrations or inundations had refrained from granting the slightest monetary assistance to the Jewish sufferers from the pogroms. Apart from its material usefulness, such assistance would have had an enormous moral effect in as much as it would have stood forth in the public eye as an official condemnation of the violent act perpetrated against the Jews, particularly if the Tsar himself had made a large donation for the purpose as he was want to in other cases of this kind. As it was, the authorities not only neglected to take such a step but they even went so far as to forbid the Jews of St. Petersburg to start the public collection for the live of the pogrom victims. Nay, the Governor-General of Odessa refused to accept the large sum of money offered to him by well-to-do Jews for the benefit of the sufferers. Nor was this the worst. The local authorities did everything in their power to manifest their solidarity with the enemies of Judaism. The street pogroms were followed by administrative pogroms, Suai generis. Already in the month of May, the police of Kiev began to track all the Jews residing illegally in the city and to expel these criminals by the thousands. Similar wholesale expositions took place in Moscow, Oryol, and other places outside the pale of settlement. These persecutions constituted evidently an object lesson in religious toleration and the Russian message which had but recently shown to what extent they respected the inviolability of Jewish life and property took the lesson too hard. One hope was still left to the Jews. The law courts, at least being the organs of the public conscience of Russia, were bound to condemn severely the sinister pogrom heroes, but this hope to prove illusory. In the majority of cases, the judges treated act of open pillage and of violence committed against life and limbs as petty street brawls, as disturbance of the public peace and imposed upon their perpetrators ridiculous slight penalties such as three months imprisonment. Penalties, moreover, which were simultaneously inflict upon the Jews who, as in the case of Odessa, has resulted to self-defense. When the terrible Kiev pogrom was tried in the local military circuit court, the public prosecutor Strelikov, a well-known reactionary who subsequently met his fate at the hands of the revolutionary, delivered himself on May 18 of a speech which was rather an indictment against the Jews than against the rioters. He argued that these disorders had been called forth entirely by the exploitation of the Jews who had seized the principal economic positions in the province and he conducted his cross-examination of the Jewish witnesses in the same hostile spirit. When one of the witnesses retorted that the aggravation of the economic struggle was due to the artificial congestion of the Jews in the pent up pale of settlement, the prosecutor shouted, If the eastern frontier is closed to the Jews, the western frontier is open to them, why don't they take advantage of it? This summons to leave the country, doubly revolting in the mouth of guardian of the law, addressed to those who under the influence of the pogrom panic had already made up their minds to flee from the land of slavery, produced a staggering effect upon the Jewish public. The last ray of hope, the hope for legal justice finished. The courts of law had become a weapon in the hands of the anti-Jewish leaders. Two, the pogrom panic and the beginning of the exodus. The feeling of safety which had been restored by the published portion of the imperial reply at the audience of May 11 was rapidly evaporating. The Jews were again filled with alarm while the instigators of the pogrom took courage and decided that the time had arrived to finish their interrupted street performance. The early days of July marked the inauguration of the second series of riots, the so called summer pogroms. The new conflagration started in the city of Periaslav in the government of Poltava which had not yet discarded its anti-Jewish Cossack traditions. Periaslav at that time harbored many fugitives from Kiev who had escaped from the spring pogroms in their city. The increase in the Jewish population of Periaslav was evidently displeasing to the local Christian inhabitants. 420 Christian burgers of Periaslav evolved believers in the Cossacks which enjoined Christians to love those that suffer, passed the resolution calling for the expulsion of the Jews from their city and in anticipation of this legalized violence they decided to teach the Jews a lesson on their own responsibility. On June 30th and July 1st Periaslav was the scene of a pogrom marked by all the paraphernalia of the Russian richer though on a competitive time by human sacrifices. The epilogue to the pogrom was marked by an originality of its own. A committee consisting of representatives of the municipal administration for Christians and Jews was appointed to inquire into the causes of the disorders. This committee was presented by the local Christian burgers with a set of demands some of which were in substance as follows. That the Jewish ordermen of the town council as well as the Jewish members of the other municipal parties shall voluntarily resign from these honorary posts as men deprived of civic honesty. That the Jewish women shall not dress themselves in silk, velvet and gold. That the Jews shall refrain from keeping Christian domestics who are corrupted in the Jewish homes religiously and morally. That all Jewish strangers who had sought refuge in Periaslav shall be immediately banished. That the Jews shall be forbidden to buy provisions in the surrounding villages for reselling them. Also to carry on business on Sundays and Russian festivals to keep salons and so on. Thus in addition to being ruined the Jews were presented with an ultimatum implying the threats of further military operations. As in previous cases the example of the city of Periaslav was followed by the townlets and villages in the surrounding region. The unruliness of the crowd which had been trained to destroy and plunder with impunity knew no bounds. In the neighboring town of Brisble a crowd of rioters stimulated by alcohol threatened to pass from village to mother. When checked by the police and Cossacks they threw themselves with fury upon these untoward defenders of the Jewish population and began to maltreat them until a few rifle shots put them to flight. The same was the case in Niezin where a program was enacted on July 20 and 22nd. After several vain attempts to stop the riots the military was forced to shoot at the infuriated crowd killing and wounding some of them. This was followed by the cry. Christian blood is flowing, bitter Jews and the program was renewed with redoubled vigor. It was stopped only on the third day. The energy of the July programs had evidently spent itself in these last ferocious attempts. The murderers who realized that the police and military were fully in earnest and useless enough to sober them from their program intoxication. Towards the end of July the epidemic of vandalism came to a stop though it was followed in many cities by a large number of conflagrations. The cowardly rioters deprived of the opportunity of plundering the Jews with impunity began to set fire to Jewish neighborhoods. This was particularly the case in the northwestern provinces in Lithuania and white Russia where the authorities had from the very beginning set their faces firmly against all organized violence. The cities or programs perpetrated during the spring and summer of that year had inflicted its sufferings on more than 100 localities populated by Jews primarily in the south of Russia. Yet the misery engendered by the panic by the horrible apprehension of unbridled violence was far more extensive for the entire Jewish population of Russia proved its victim. Just as in the Biven Middle Ages whenever Jewish suffering had reached a sad climax so now too the persecuted nation found itself face to face with the problem of emigration. And as if history had been anxious to link up the end of the 19th century with that of the 15th the Jewish affliction in Russia found an echo in that very country which in 1492 had herself banished the Jews from her borders. The Spanish government announced its readiness to receive and shelter the fugitives from Russia. Ancient Catholic Spain held forth a welcoming hand to the victims of modern Greek order of Spain. However, the Spanish offer was immediately recognized as having but little practical value. In the forefront of Jewish interest stood the question as to the land toward which the emigration movement should be directed towards the United States of America which held out the prospect of bread and liberty toward Palestine which offered a shelter to the wounded national soul. While the Jewish writers were busy debating the question life itself decided the direction of the emigration movement. Nearly all fugitives from the south of Russia had left for America by way of the western European centers. The movement proceeded with elemental force and entirely unorganized with the result that in the autumn of that year some 10,000 destitute Jewish wanderers found themselves huddled together at the first hunting place the city of Brody which is situated on the Russo-Austrian frontier. They had been attracted either by the rumor that the agents of the French Alliance Israelite University would supply them with the necessary means for continuing their journey across the Atlantic. The Central Committee of the Alliance caught unprepared for such a huge emigration was at its wit's end. It sent out appeals warning the Jews against wholesale emigration to America by way of Brody but it was powerless to stem the tide. When the representatives of the French Alliance the well-known Charles Netter and others arrived in Brody they behaved a terrible spectacle. The streets of the city were filled with thousands of Jews and Jesus who were exhausted from material want with hungry children in their arms. From early morning until late at night the French delegates were surrounded by a crowd clamoring for help. Their way was obstructed by mothers who threw their little ones under their feet begging to rescue them from starvation. The delegates did all they could but the number of fugitives was constantly swelling while the process of dispatching them to America went on at a snail's pace. The exodus of the Jews from Russia was due not only to the pogroms and the panic resulting from them but also to the new blows which were falling upon them from all sides dealt out by the liberal hand of Ignatiev. End of section 20. Section 21 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 2 from the deaths of Alexander I until the deaths of Alexander III. 1825 to 1894 by Szymon Dubnów translated by Israel Friedländer. This livre-voix recording is in the public domain recording by SS Kim, Manicked Baischer, Portugal. Chapter 22. The anti-Jewish police of Ignatiev. Part 2. 3. The gubernatorial commissions. After wavering for some time, the anti-Semitic government of Ignatiev finally made up its mind as to the attitude it was henceforth to adopt toward the Jewish problem. Taken back at the beginning of the pogrom movement, the leading spheres of Russia were first inclined to ascribe it to the effects of the revolutionary propaganda. But they afterwards came to the conclusion that in the interest of the reactionary policies pursued by them and as a means of justifying the disgraceable anti-Jewish excesses before the eyes of Europe, it was more convenient to draw the blame upon the Jews themselves. With this end in view, a new theory that was put forward by the Russian government to cause the economic doctrine of the exploitation of the original population by the Jews. This doctrine consisted of two parts which, properly speaking, were mutually exclusive. First, the Jews as a preeminently mercantile class engage in unproductive labor and thereby exploit the productive classes of Christian population, the peasantry in particular. Second, the Jews having captured commerce and industry, here the large participation of the Jews in industrial life, represented by handicrafts and manufacturers, is testily admitted, compete with the Christian urban estates in other words, interfere with them in their own exploitation of the population. The first part of this strange theory is based upon primitive economic notions such as are invoked during the periods of tradition when natural economic production gives way to capitalism and when all complicated forms of mediation are regarded as unproductive and harmful. The thoughts expressed in the second part of the thesis is implied in the makeup of a police state which looks upon the occupation of certain economic positions by a given national group as an illegitimate capture and regarded as functions to check this competition for the sole purpose of ensuring the success of the dominant nationality. The Russian government was disturbed neither by the primitive character of this theory nor by the resort to brutal police force implied in it. The idea of supporting the exploitation practiced by the Russians at the expense of that carried on by the Jews, nor was it abashed by its inner logical contradictions. What the government needed was some means whereby it could draw off the responsibility for the programs and proved the world that they were a popular judgment. The vengeance wrecked upon the Jews either by the peasants, the victims of exploitation, or by the Russian burgers, the unsuccessful candidates for the role of exploiters. This point of view was reflected in the reports of Count Kutaisov, who had been sent by the Tsar to the South Russia to inquire into the causes of the disorders. Ignatiev seized upon this fringe theory and embodied it in more elaborate form in his report to the Tsar of August 22nd. In this report, he endeavored to prove the futility of the policy he thought to pursued by the Russian governments, which for the last 20 years during the reign of Alexander II had made efforts to bring about the fusion of the Jews with the remaining population and had nearly equalized the rights of the Jews with those of the original inhabitants. In the opinion of the minister, the recent programs had shown that the injurious influence of the Jews could not be suppressed by such liberal measures. The principal source of this movement, the programs which is so incompatible with the temper of the Russian people, lies according to Ignatiev in circumstances which are of an exclusively economic nature. For the last 20 years, the Jews have gradually managed to capture not only commerce and industry, but they have also succeeded in acquiring by means of purchase and lease a large amount of landed property. Owing to their clenishness and solidarity, they have with few exceptions directed their efforts not towards the increase of the productive forces of the country, but towards the exploitation of the original inhabitants, primarily of the purged classes of the population, with the result that they have called forth a protest from this population, manifesting itself in deeper local forms in violence, having taken energetic means to suppress the previous disorders and mob rule and to shields the Jews against the violence. The government recognizes that it is justified in adopting without delay, known as energetic measures to remove the present abnormal relations that exist between the original inhabitants and the Jews, and to shield the Russian population against this harmful Jewish activity, which according to local information was responsible for the disturbances. Alexander III hastened to express his agreement with these views of his minister, who assured him that the government had taken energetic measures to suppress the problems, which was only true in two or three recent cases. At the same time, he authorized Ignatiev to adopt energetic measures of genuine Russian manufacture against those who had but recently been ruined by these programs. The Imperial UK's published on August 22, 1831, dwells on the abnormal relations subsisting between the original population of several government and the Jews. To meet this situation, it provides that in those government which have a considerable Jewish population, special commission should be appointed consisting of representatives of the local estates and communes to be presided over by the governors. These commissions were charged with the task of finding out which aspect of the economic activity of the Jews in general have exerted an injurious influence upon the life of the original population at what measures both legislative and administrative should be adopted for the purpose of weakening that influence. In this way, the UK's in calling for the appointment of the commissions indicated at once the goal towards which their activity was to be directed to determine the injurious influence of the Jews upon Russian economic life. The same thought was expressed even more directly by Ignatiev, who in his circular to the governor's general dated August 225. He produced his report to the Tsar and formally established the dogma of the harmful consequences of the economic activity of the Jews for the Christian population, their racial separatism and religious fanaticism. We are thus made the witness of a singular spectacle, the ruined and plundered Jewish population which had the right to impeach the government for having failed to protect it from violence was itself put on trial. The judges in this legal action were known other than the agent of the ruling powers. The governors, some of whom had been guilty of connivance at the programs on the one hand and on the other hand, the representatives of the Christian estates, urban and rural who were mostly the appointees of these governors. In addition, every commission was allotted to Jewish representatives who were to act in the capacity of export, but without voting power. They were placed in the position of defendants and were made to listen to continuous accusations against the Jews, which they were constantly forced to deny. Altogether, there were 16 such commissions, one in each of the 15 governments of the Pale of Settlement, exclusive of the Kingdom of Poland and one in the government of Karkow. The commissions were granted a term of two months within each to complete their labor and present the results to the minister. The prisoner at the bar was the Jewish people which was tried under charges contained in the official Bill of Enlightenment, the Imperial UK's as supplemented and interpreted in the Ministry of Circular. A well-informed contemporary gives the following description of these sessions in an official memorandum. The first session of each commission began with the reading of the Ministry of Circular of August 25th. The reading invariably produced a strong effect in two different directions, on the members from among the peasantry and on those from among the Jews. The former became convinced of the hostile attitude of the governments towards the Jewish population and of their leniency toward the instigators of the disorders, which according to an assertion made in Ignatius Circular were due exclusively to the Jewish exploitation of the original inimitance. Needless to say, the peasants did not fail to communicate this conviction which was strengthened at the subsequent sessions by the failure to put any restraint upon the wholesale attacks on the Jews on the part of the anti-Semitic members to their rural communes. As for the Jewish members of the commissions, the effect of the Ministry of Circular upon them was staggering. In their own persons, they beheld the three millions of Russian Jewry placed at the prison spa. One section of the population put on trial before another. And who were the judges? Not the representatives of the people, duly elected by all the estates of the population, such as rural assemblies by the agents of the administration, bureaucratic office holders who were more or less subordinate to the government. The court proceedings themselves were carried on in secret without a sufficient number of counsel for the defendants who in reality were convicted beforehand. The attitude adopted by the presiding governors, the speeches delivered by the anti-Semitic members who were in an overwhelming majority and characterized by attacks, derisive remarks and subtle offence, substituted the Jewish members to moral torture and made them lose all the hope that they could be of any assistance in attempting a dispassionate, impartial and comprehensive consideration of the question. In the majority of the commissions, their voice was suppressed and silenced. In these circumstances, the Jewish members were forced as a last resort to defend the interests of the coalitionists in writing by submitting memoranda and separate opinions. However, the instances were rare in each, these memoranda and protests were dignified by being read during the sessions. This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the commission brought in their verdict in the spirit of the indictment framed by the authorities. The anti-Semitic officials exhibited their learning in ignorant criticisms of the spirit of Judaism, of the Talmud and the national separatism of the Jews, and they proposed to extirpate all these influences by means of cultural repression, such as the destruction of the autonomy of the Jewish communities, the closing of all special Jewish schools and the placing of all phases of the inner life of the Jews under government control. The representatives of the Russian burgers and peasants, many of whom had but recently cooperated or at least sympathized with the perpetrators of the programs, endeavoured to prove the economic injuriousness of the Jews, and demanded that they should be restricted in their urban and rural pursuits as well as in their right of residence outside the cities. Thatwithstanding the prevailing spirit, five commissions voiced the opinion which from the point of view of the Russian government seemed rank heresy that it was necessary to grant the Jews the right of domicile all over the empire so as to relieve the excessive congestion of Jewish population in the pale of settlement. Four, the spread of anti-Semitism, while the gubernatorial commissions, gubernatorial in the literal sense of the word, because entirely dominated by the governors were holding their sessions, the set trips in chief of the pale of settlement, the governors general were busy sending their expressions of opinion to St. Petersburg. The governor general of Kiev, Dretlin, who himself was liable to prosecution for allowing a two days' pogrom in his own residential city, condemned the entire Jewish people in emphatic terms and demanded the adoption of measures calculated to shield the Christian population against so elegant a tribe as the Jews who refused on religious grounds to have close contact with the Christians. It was necessary in his opinion to resort to legal repression in order to counteract the intellectual superiority of the Jews, which enables them to emerge victorious in the struggle for existence. Similar condemnations of Judaism came from the governors general Vodesa, Vilna and Karkov, although they disagreed as to the dimensions which their repression should assume. Tot Levin, the master of the Vilna province, who had refused to countenance the perpetration of pogroms in Lithuania, nevertheless agreed that the Jews should henceforth be forbidden to settle in the villages, though he was generous enough to add that he found it somewhat inconvenient to rob the whole Jewish nation of the possibility of earning a livelihood by its labor. The impression prevailed that militant Judeo-phobia was determined to deprive the Jews even the right of securing a piece of bread. The government was well aware beforehand that the laborers of the gubernatorial commissions would yield result satisfactory to it, therefore found it unnecessary to wait for their reports and resolutions, and proceeded to establish in St. Petersburg on October 19th a central committee for the revision of the Jewish question. The committee was attached to the ministry of the interior and consisted of several officials under the chairmanship of Assistant Minister Kotovtsev. The officials were soon busy framing temporary measures in the spirit of their patron Ignatiev, and as the resolutions of the gubernatorial commissions were coming in, they were endeavoring to strengthen the foundations for the projected enactment. In January 1882, the machinery for the manufacture of Jewish disabilities were in full swing. This organized campaign of the enemies of Judaism, who were preparing administrative programs as a sequel to the street programs, met with no organized resistance under part of Russian Jewry. The small conference of Jewish notables in St. Petersburg, which met in September in secret sessions, presented a sorry spectacle. The guests from the provinces who had been invited by Baron Ginsburg engaged in discussion about the problem of emigration, the struggle with the anti-Semitic press, and similar questions. After being presented to Ignatiev, who assured them in diplomatic fashion of the benevolent intentions of the government, they returned to their homes without having achieved anything. The only social factor in Jewish life was the press, particularly the three periodicals published in Russian, the Razviet, the Don, the Rusky-Ebre, the Russian Jew, and the Voskhod, the Sunrise, but even they revealed the lack of well-defined policy. The political movements in Russian Jewry were yet in an embryonic stage, and their rise and development were reserved for a later period. True, the Russian Jewish press applied itself assiduously to the task of defending the rights of the Jews, but its voice remained unheard in those circles of Russia, in each the poisonous waters of Judeo-phobia gushed forth in a broad current from the columns of semi-official Norway-Ramia, the pan-Slavic rules, and many of the anti-Semitic contemporaries. While the summer programs were enforcing the Norway-Ramia, reflecting the views of the official spheres, seriously formulated the Jewish question in the paraphrase of Hamlet, to be it or not to be it. Its conclusion was that it was necessary to beat the Jews, but in view of the fact that Russia was a monarchical state with conservative tendencies, this function ought not be discharged by the people but by the government, which by its method of legal repression could beat the Jews much more effectively than the crowds on the streets. The editor of the Moscow newspaper, Ruth Ivan Aksakov, attacked the Russian liberal press for expressing its sympathy with the Jewish program victims, contending that the Russian people demolished Jewish houses under the effect of righteous indignation, though he failed to explain why that indignation also took the form of plundering and stealing Jewish property or violating Jewish women. Throwing into one heap the arguments of the medieval church and those of modern German anti-Semitism, Aksakov maintained that Judaism was opposed to Christian civilization and that the Jewish people were striving for world domination, which they hoped attained through their financial power. The vastness of German anti-Semitism had penetrated even into the circles of the Russian radical intelligentsia. Among the populists who were wanted to idealize the Russian peasantry, it became the fashion to look upon the Jews as an economic exploiter with this distinction, however, that they bracket him with the host of Russian exploitors from among the bourgeois class. This resulted in a most unfortunate misunderstanding. A faction of South Russian revolutionists among the party known as the People's Freedom conceived the idea that the same peasants and laborers who had attacked the Jews as the representatives of the non-Russian bourgeoisie might easily be directed against the representatives of the ruling classes in general. During the spring and summer pogroms, several attempts were made by mysterious persons through written appeals and oral propaganda to turn the pogrom movement also against Russian nobles and officials. Towards the end of August 1881, the executive committee of the People's Freedom issued an appeal in which it voiced the thought that the Tsar had enslaved the free Ukrainian people and had distributed the land rightfully belonging to the peasants among the ponds and officials who extended their protection to the Jews and shared the profits with them. Therefore, the people should march against the Jews, the landlords and the Tsar. For sisters, therefore, the appeal continues, rise, laborers, avenge yourselves under landlords, plunder the Jews and slay the officials. True, the appeal was the work of only a part of the revolutionary executive committee which at the time had its headquarters in Moscow. It failed to obtain the approval of the other members of the committee and of the party as a whole and being documents that might compromise the revolutionary movement was withdrawn and destroyed after a number of copies had been circulated. Nevertheless, the champions of the People's Freedom continued for some time to justify theoretically the utilization of the anti-Jewish movement for the aims of the general social revolution. Only at the later stage did this section of the revolutionary party realize that these tactics were not only mistaken but also criminal. For events soon made it clear that the anti-Jewish movement served as an unfailing device in the hands of the Black reactionaries to divert the popular rats from the source of all evil, the rule of despotism and drape it was the most unfortunate victims of that despotism. 5. The Program at Warsaw When the July programs were over, it seemed as if the program epidemic had died out and no one expected that it would soon break out afresh. The greater was the surprise when in December 1881 the news spread that a program lasting three days had taken place in the capital of the Kingdom of Poland in Warsaw. List of all was this program expected in Warsaw itself where the relations between the Poles and the Jews were not yet marked by the animosity they assumed subsequently. But the organizers of the program who received the orders from above managed to adapt themselves to local conditions and the unexpected came to pass. On the Catholic Christmas day when the Church of Holy Cross in the center of the town was crowded with worshipers, somebody suddenly shouted fire. The people rushed to the doors and in the terrible panic that ensued 29 persons were crushed to death and many others were maimed. The alarm proved the first one. There was no trace of fire in the Church and nobody doubted that the alarm had been given by pickpockets. There were a goodly number of them in Warsaw who had resorted to this well-known trick to rob the public during the panic. But right there among the crowd which was assembled in front of the Church gazing in horror at the bodies of the victims, some unknown persons spread the rumor which it may be parenthetically marked proved subsequently unfounded that two Jewish pickpockets had been caught in the Church. At the moment, whispers were suddenly heard, nobody knew whence they came which served as the signal for a pogrom. The street mob began to assert the Jews who happened to pass by and then started according to the established procedure to attack the Jewish stores, saloons and residences in the streets adjoining the church. The whole war under the command of thieves well-known to the police and of some unknown strangers who from time to time gave signals by whistling and directed the mob into this or that street. As in all other cases in which the danger did not threaten the authorities directly, there were but few policemen and soldiers on hand which circumstance stimulated the rioters in their further activity. On the following day, the rioters were busy on many other streets both in the center of the town and in its outskirts except for the streets which were densely populated by Jews where they were afraid of meeting with serious resistance. The police and the troops arrested many rioters and carried them off to the police stations but for some unknown reason they did not summon enough courage to disperse the crowd so that the mob frequently engaged in its criminal work in the very presence of the guardians of public safety. In accordance with the well-known pogrom routine, the authorities remembered only on the third day that it was time to suppress the riots, the lesson being over. On December 15th, the governor general of Warsaw, Albedinsky issued an order dividing the town into four districts and placing every district under the command of a regimental chief. Troops were stationed in the streets and ordered to check oil crowds with the result that on the same day the disorders were stopped. This however came too late for in the meantime some 1500 Jewish residences, business places and houses of prayer had been demolished and pillaged and 24 Jews had been wounded while the monetary loss amounted to several million rubles. Over 3,000 rioters were arrested, among them a large number of underaged youth. On the whole, the rioters were recruited from the drakes of the Polish population but they were also found among them a number of unknown persons that spoke Russian. The Novoebraemia, in commenting upon the pogrom, made special reference to the friendly attitude of the Polish hooligans to the Russians in general and to the officers and soldiers in particular, a rather suspicious attitude, considering the invertebrate hatred of the Poles towards the Russians, especially towards the military and official class. Here and there the soldiers themselves got drunk in the demolished saloons and took part in looting Jewish property. The Polish patriots from among the higher classes were shocked by this attempt to engineer a barbarous Russian pogrom in Warsaw. In an appeal which the representatives of the Polish intellectuals addressed to the people not later than on the second day of the pogrom, they protested emphatically against the hideous sins which had been degrazing the capital of Poland. The archbishop of Warsaw acted similarly and the Catholic priests frequently marched through the streets with crosses in their hands, admonishing the crowds to disperse. It is interesting to note that while the pogrom was going on, the Governor-General of Warsaw refused to comply with the request of a number of Poles who applied for permission to organize a civil guard, pledging themselves to restore order in the city in one day. It would seem as if the official pogrom ritual did not allow of the slightest modification. The disorder had to proceed in accordance with the established routine, so as not to violate the humane commandment. Two days shall go plunder and on the third day shall go rest. Evidently someone had an interest in having the capital of Poland repeat the experiment of Kiev and Odessa, and in seeing to it that the cultured Poles should not fall behind the Russian barbarians in order to convince Europe that the pogrom was not exclusively a Russian manufacturer. As a matter of fact, the opposite result was attained. The revolting events at Warsaw, which completed the pogrom cycle of 1881, made a much stronger impression upon Europe and America than all the preceding pogroms, for the reason that Warsaw stood in close commercial relations with the West, and the Havoc Road there had an immediate effect upon the European market. End of section 21