While the gubernatorial commissions—­gubernatorial in the literal sense of the word, because entirely dominated by the governors—­were holding their sessions, the satraps-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, Drenteln, 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 arrogant a tribe as the Jews, who refuse on religions 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 straggle for existence.

Similar condemnations of Judaism came from the governors-general of Odessa, Vilna, and Kharkov, although they disagreed as to the dimensions which this repression should assume.  Totleben, 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 Judaeophobia was determined to deprive the Jews even of the right of securing a piece of bread.

The Government was well aware beforehand that the labors of the gubernatorial commissions would yield results satisfactory to it.  It, therefore, found it unnecessary to wait for their reports and resolutions, and proceeded to establish in St. Petersburg, on October 19, “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 Gotovtzev.  The officials were soon busy framing “temporary measures” in the spirit of their patron Ignatyev, 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 was in full swing.

This organized campaign of the enemies of Judaism, who were preparing administrative pogroms as a sequel to the street pogroms, met with no organized resistance on the part of Russian Jewry.  The small conference of Jewish notables in St. Petersburg, which met in September in secret session, presented a sorry spectacle.  The guests from the provinces, who had been invited by Baron Guenzburg, engaged in discussions about the problem of emigration, the struggle with the anti-Semitic press, and similar questions.  After being presented to Ignatyev, who assured them in diplomatic fashion of the “benevolent intentions of the Government,” they returned to their homes, without having achieved anything.