spring and summer pogroms, several attempts were made by mysterious persons, through written appeals and oral propaganda, to turn the pogrom movement also against the Russian nobles and officials. [3] 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 Tzar had enslaved the free Ukrainian people and had distributed the lands rightfully belonging to the peasants among the pans [4] 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 Tzar.  “Assist us, therefore,” the appeal continues, “arise, laborers, avenge yourselves on the landlords, plunder the Jews, and slay the officials!”

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 222.]

[Footnote 2:  In Russian, Narodnaya Vola.  It was organized in 1879, and was responsible for the assassination of Alexander II.]

[Footnote 3:  These endeavors were evidently the reason why the Russian Government was originally inclined to ascribe the anti-Jewish movement to revolutionary tactics.]

[Footnote 4:  The Polish noble landowners.  See Vol.  I, p. 93, n. 2.]

True, the appeal was the work of only a part of the Revolutionary Executive Committee, which at that 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the Committee and of the party as a whole, and, being a document that might compromise the revolutionary movement, was withdrawn and destroyed after a number of copies had been circulated.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 a 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 wrath from the source of all evil—­the rule of despotism—­and direct it towards the most unfortunate victims of that despotism.

5.  THE POGROM AT WARSAW

When the July pogroms were over, it seemed as if the pogrom 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 pogrom, lasting three days, had taken, place in the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, in Warsaw.  Least of all was this pogrom 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 pogrom who received their 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 the Holy Cross in