tolerant attitude towards the Jews, as has been demonstrated by the recent manifestation “of an anti-Jewish movement abroad” (German anti-Semitism) and “the popular protest” in Russia itself, where it assumed the form of pogroms.  Since Russia has now chosen the path of a “national policy,” it follows also in regard to the Jewish question that this country cannot but “turn to its ancient tradition, throw aside the innovations which have proved useless, and follow vigorously the principles, evolved by the whole past history of the monarchy, according to which the Jews must be regarded as aliens,” and therefore can lay no claim to full toleration.

This barbarous theory, which brought Russia back to the traditions of ancient Muscovy, was expounded elaborately in the protocol of the session of the “anti-Jewish Committee,” as a sort of preamble to the legal project submitted by it.

While engaged in these labors, the members of the committee received the news of the pogrom in Warsaw, and were greatly heartened by it.  They did not fail to make an entry in the protocol to the effect that the “disorders” which had taken place in the Kingdom of Poland “where the Jews enjoy equal rights” (i.e., the right of residence) tend to support the theory of the “injuriousness” of the Jewish people.  Official pens began to scribble more rapidly, and within a short time, by the spring of 1882, a project was ready, to be inflicted as a severe punishment upon the Jews for the atrocities perpetrated upon them.  The “conquered foe,” represented by the Jewish population, was to be dislodged from a large area within, the Pale of Settlement, overcrowded though the latter had become, by forbidding the Jews to settle anew outside of the cities and towns, i.e., in the country-side.  Those already settled there were either to be evicted by the verdict of the rural communes[1], or to be deprived of a livelihood by the prohibition to buy or lease immovable property and to trade in liquor.

[Footnote 1:  “To allow the communes to evict the Jews by a verdict,” according to the exact wording of the law.]

This project was submitted by Ignatyev to the Committee of Ministers, accompanied by the suggestion that the new disabilities be enacted not in due legal procedure (by the Council of State) but in the form of “Temporary Rules” to be sanctioned in an extra-legal way by the Tzar, with the end in view “to do away with the aggravated relations between the Jews and the original population.”

However, even the members of the reactionary Committee of Ministers were embarrassed by Ignatyev’s project.  The Committee felt that it was impossible to carry out the expropriation of personal and property rights on so extensive a scale without the due process of law and that the permission to be granted to rural communes of expelling the Jews from the villages was tantamount to leaving the latter to the tender mercies of the benighted Russian masses, which would thus more