gubernatorial administrations would be held responsible for the adoption of timely measures looking to the prevention of the conditions leading to similar disorders and for the suppression of these disorders at the very outset, and that any negligence in this regard on the part of the administration and the police authorities would result in the dismissal from office of those found guilty.”  This warning was accompanied by the following confession: 

In view of the fact that sad occurrences in the past have made it evident that the local population, incited by evil-minded persons from covetous or other motives, has taken part in the disorders, it is the duty of the gubernatorial administration to make it clear to the local communes that they are obliged to adopt measures for the purpose ... of impressing upon the inhabitants the gross criminal offence implied in willfully perpetrating violent acts against anybody’s person and property.

It would almost seem as if the Government, by promulgating on one and the same day the “Temporary Rules” against the Jews and the circular against the pogroms, wished to intimate to the Russian people that, inasmuch as the Jews were now being exterminated through the agency of the law, there was no further need to exterminate them on the streets.  The originators of the “Temporary Rules” did not seem to realize that the latter were nothing but a variation of those “violent acts against person and property,” from which the street mob was warned to refrain, for the loss of the freedom of movement is violence against the person, and the denial of the right of purchasing real estate is violence against property.  Even the Russian press, though held at that time in the grip of censorship, could not help commenting on the fact that the effect of the official circular against the pogroms had been greatly weakened, by the simultaneous promulgation of the “Temporary Rules.”

It would seem as if the terrible atrocities at Balta had made the highest Government spheres realize that the previous policy of connivance at the pogroms, which had been practised for a whole year, could not but disgrace Russia in the eyes of the world and undermine public order in Russia itself.  As soon as this was realized, the luckless Minister, who had been the pilot of Russian politics throughout that terrible year, was bound to disappear from the scene.  On May 30, Count Ignatyev was made to resign, and Count Demetrius Tolstoi was appointed Minister of the Interior.

Tolstoi was a grim reactionary and a champion of autocracy and police power, but he was at the same time an enemy of all manifestations of mob rule which tended to undermine the authority of the State.  A few days after his appointment the new Minister issued a circular in which he reiterated the recent declaration of his predecessor concerning the “resolve of the Government to prosecute every kind of violence against the Jews,” announcing emphatically that “any manifestation of disorders would unavoidably result in the immediate prosecution of all official persons who are in duty bound to concern themselves with the prevention of disorders.”