[Footnote 1:  Borki is a village in the government of Kherson.  Of the fifteen cars of the imperial train only five remained intact.  Fifty-eight persons were injured, twenty-one fatally.  The members of the imperial family were saved, although their car had been completely wrecked.

The following quotation from Harold Frederic, The New Exodus, p. 168 et seq., is of interest in this connection:  “It was reported about that the Tzar regarded the escape alive of himself and family from the terrible railway accident at Borki as the direct and miraculous intervention of Providence.  The facts were that the imperial train was being driven at the rate of ninety versts an hour over a road calculated to withstand at the utmost a speed of thirty-five versts; that the engineer humbly warned the Tzar of the danger, and was gruffly ordered to go still faster if possible, and that the miracle would have been the avoidance of calamity.”]

[Footnote 2:  On the Zemstvos compare p. 173, n. 1.  The reactionary law of June 12, 1890 (see later, p. 358 et seq.) puts in place of the executives formerly elected by the people the “Zemstvo chiefs,” officials appointed from among the landed proprietors.]

[Footnote 3:  Durnovo became Minister of the Interior in 1889, after the demise of Tolstoi; Plehve was assistant-minister.]

The press was either tamed or used as a tool of the governmental policies.  The most widely read press organs of the capital, with the exception of the moderately liberal Novosti ("The News”) which managed to survive the shipwreck of the liberal press, became either openly or secretly the official mouthpieces of the Government.  The venal Novoye Vremya, which the Russian satirist Shchedrin had branded as “the sewer,” embarked, towards the end of the eighties, on the noble enterprise of hunting down the Jews with a zeal which was clear evidence of a higher demand for Judaeophobia in the official world.  There was no accusation, however hideous, which Suvorin’s paper, steered simultaneously by the Holy Synod and by the Police Department, failed to hurl in the face of the Jews.  As an organ generally reflecting the views of the Government, the Novoye Vremya served at that time as a source of political information for all dignitaries and officials.  The ministers, governors and the vast army of subordinate officials, who wished to ascertain the political course at a given moment, consulted this “well-informed” daily, which, as far as the Jewish question was concerned, pursued but one aim:  to make the life of the Jews in Russia unbearable.  Apart from the Novoye Vremya, which was read by the Tzar himself, the work of Jew-baiting was also carried on with considerable zeal by the Russian weekly Grazhdanin ("The Citizen"), whose editor, Count Meshcherski, enjoyed not only the personal favor of Alexander III. but also a substantial Government subsidy.  These metropolitan organs of publicity gave the tone to the whole official and semi-official press in the provinces, and the public opinion of Russia was systematically poisoned by the venom of Judaeophobia.