The civil New Year of 1882 found the Jews of Russia in a depressed state of mind:  they were under the fresh impression of the excesses at Warsaw and were harassed by rumors of new measures of oppression.  The sufferings of the Jewish people, far from stilling the anti-Jewish fury of the Government, had merely helped to fan it.  “You are maltreated, ergo you are guilty”—­such was the logic of the ruling spheres of Russia.  The official historian of that period is honest enough to confess that “the enforced role of a defender of the Jews against the Russian population [by suppressing the riots] weighed heavily upon the the Government.”  Upon reading the report of the governor-general of Warsaw for the year 1882, in which reference was made to the suppression of the anti-Jewish excesses by military force, Alexander III. appended the following marginal note:  “This is the sad thing in all these Jewish disorders.”

Those among Russian Jewry who could look further ahead were not slow in realizing the consequences which were bound to result from this hostile attitude of the ruling classes.  Those of a less sensitive frame of mind found it necessary to inquire of the Government itself concerning the Jewish future, and received unequivocal replies.  Thus, in January, 1882, Dr. Orshanski, a brother of the well-known publicist, [1] approached Count Ignatyev on the subject, and was authorized to publish the following statement: 

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 238 et seq.]

The Western frontier is open for the Jews.  The Jews have already taken ample advantage of this right, and their emigration has in no way been hampered. [1] As regards your question concerning the transplantation of Jews into the Russian interior, the Government will, of course, avoid everything that may further complicate the relations between the Jews and the original population.  For this reason, though keeping the Pale of Jewish Settlement intact, I have already suggested to the Jewish Committee [attached to the Ministry] [2] to indicate those localities which, being thinly populated and in need of colonization, might admit of the settlement of the Jewish element ... without injury to the original population.

[Footnote 1:  According to an old Russian law which had come into disuse, departure from the country without a special Government permit is punishable as a criminal offence.]

[Footnote 2:  See p. 277.]

This reply of the all-powerful Minister, which was published as a special supplement to the Jewish weekly Razsvyet, increased the panic among the Jews of Russia.  The Jews were publicly told that the Government wished to get rid of them, and that the only “right” they were to be granted was the right to depart; that no enlargement of the Pale of Settlement could possibly be hoped for, and that only as an extreme necessity would the Government allow groups of Jews to colonize the uninhabitable steppes of central Asia or the swamps of Siberia.  Well-informed people were in possession of much more serious information:  they knew that the Jewish Committee attached to the Ministry of the Interior was preparing a monstrous plan of reducing the territory of the Pale of Settlement itself by expelling the Jews from the villages and driving them into the over-crowded cities.