The same thought was expressed even more directly by Ignatyev, who in his circular to the governors-general, dated August 25, reproduced his report to the Tzar, and firmly 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 witnesses of a singular spectacle:  the ruined and plundered Jewish population, which had a 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 none other than the agents of the ruling powers—­the governors, some of whom had been guilty of connivance at the pogroms—­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 two Jewish representatives, who were to act in the capacity of experts but without voting power; they were placed in the position of defendants, and were made to listen to continuous accusations against the Jews, which the; were constantly forced to deny.  Altogether there were sixteen such commissions:  one in each of the fifteen governments of the Pale of Settlement—­exclusive of the Kingdom of Poland—­and one in the government of Kharkov.  The commissions were granted a term of two months within which to complete their labors and present the results to the Minister.

The sessions of all these “gubernatorial commissions” [1] took place simultaneously during the months of September and October.

[Footnote 1:  In Russian, Gubernskiya Kommissit, literally, “Government Commissions,” using “Government” in the sense of “Province.”]

The prisoner at the bar was the Jewish people which was tried on the charges contained in the official bill of indictment—­the imperial ukase as supplemented and interpreted in the ministerial 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 ministerial circular of August 25.  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 Government towards the Jewish population and of their leniency towards the instigators of the disorders, which, according to an assertion made in Ignatyev’s circular, were due exclusively to the Jewish exploitation of the original inhabitants.  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),