This energetic pronouncement of the Government had a magic effect.  All provincial administrators realized that the central Government of St. Petersburg had ceased to trifle with the promoters of the pogroms, and the pogrom epidemic was at an end.  Beginning with June, 1882, the pogroms assumed more and more a sporadic character.  Here and there sparks of the old conflagration would flare up again, but only to die out quickly.  In the course of the next twenty years, until the Kishinev massacre of 1903, no more than about ten pogroms of any consequence may be enumerated, and these disorders were all isolated movements, with a purely local coloring, and without the earmarks of a common organization or the force of an epidemic, such as characterized the pogrom campaigns of 1881, or those of 1903-1905.  This is an additional proof for the contention that systematic pogroms in Russia are impossible as long as the central Government and the local authorities are honestly and firmly set against them.

The stringent measures adopted by Tolstoi were soon reflected in the legal trials arising out of the pogroms.  Formerly, the local authorities refrained as a rule from putting the rioters on trial lest their testimony might implicate the local administration, and even when action was finally brought against them, the culprits mostly escaped with slight penalties, such as imprisonment for a few months.  But after the declaration of the Government in June the courts adopted a more rigorous attitude towards the rioters. [1] In the summer of 1882, a number of cases arising out of the pogroms at Balta and in other cities were tried in the courts.  The penalties imposed by the courts were frequently severe, though fully deserved, such as deportation and confinement at hard labor, drafting into penal military companies, etc.  In one case, two soldiers, having been convicted of pillage and murder, were court-martialled and sentenced to death.  When the sentence was submitted for ratification to Drenteln, governor-general of Kiev, the rabbi of Balta, acting on behalf of the local Jewish community, betook himself to Kiev to support the culprits in their petition for pardon.  It was strange to listen to this appeal for mercy on behalf of criminals guilty of violence and murder, coming from the camp of their victims, from the demolished homes which still resounded with the moans of the wounded and with the weeping over lost lives and dishonored women.  One finds it difficult to believe that this appeal for mercy was due entirely to an impulse of forgiveness.  Associated with it was probably the apprehension that the death of the murderers would be avenged by their like-minded accomplices who were still at liberty.

[Footnote 1:  This, by the way, was not always the case.  The court of Chernigov, which was compelled to bring in a verdict of guilty against the perpetrators of the pogrom in the townlet of Karpovitchin the same government, decided to recommend the culprits to the clemency of the superior authorities, in view of the dissatisfaction of the people with the “exploitation” of the Jews.  There were many instances of these anti-Jewish political manifestations in the law-courts.]