[Footnote 1:  See The Jewish Chronicle of August 8, 1890, p. 18b.]

2.  CONTINUED HARASSING

While anxiously endeavoring to appease public opinion abroad, the Russian Government at home did all it could to keep the Jews in an agitated state of mind.  The legal drafts and the circulars which had been sent out secretly by the central Government in St. Petersburg elicited the liveliest sympathy on the part of the provincial administrators.  Not satisfied with signifying to the Ministry their approval of the contemplated disabilities, many officials of high rank began to display openly their bitter hatred of the Jews.

At one and the same time, during the months of June, July, and August of 1890, the heads of various local provincial administrations published circulars calling the attention of the police to the “audacious conduct” of the Jews who, on meeting Russian officials, failed to take off their hats by way of greeting.  The governor of Moghilev instructed the police of his province to impress the local Jewish population with the necessity of “polite manners,” in the sense of a more reverent attitude towards the representatives of Russian authority.  In compliance with this order, the district chiefs of police compelled the rabbis to inculcate their flock in the synagogues with reverence for Russian officialdom.  In Mstislavl, a town in the government of Moghilev, the president of the nobility [1] assembled the leading members of the Jewish community, and cautioned them that those Jews who would fail to comply with the governor’s circular would be subjected to a public whipping by the police.  The governor of Odessa, the well-known despot Zelenoy, issued a police ordinance for the purpose of “curbing the impudence displayed by the Jews in places of public gathering and particularly in the suburban trolley cars” where they do not give up their seats and altogether show disrespect towards “persons of advanced age or those wearing a uniform, testifying to their high position.”  Even more brutal was the conduct of the governor-general of Vilna, Kakhanov, who, despite his high rank, allowed himself, in replying to the speech of welcome of a Jewish deputation, to animadvert not only on Jewish “clannishness” but also on the “licentiousness” of the Jewish population, manifesting itself in congregating on the streets, and similar grave crimes.

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 303.]

The simultaneous occurrence of this sort of official actions in widely separated places point to a common source, probably to some secret instructions from St. Petersburg.  It would seem, however, that the provincial henchmen of the central Government had overreached themselves in their eagerness to carry out the behest of “curbing the Jews.”  The pettiness of their demands, which, moreover, were illegal, such as the order to take off the hats before the officials, or to give up the seats in the trolley cars, merely