[Footnote 1:  See p. 198 et seq.]

The reactionary, anti-democratic “Municipal Regulation” of 1892 proclaimed publicly this new Jewish disfranchisement.  The new law deprived the Jews of their right of passive and active election to the municipal Dumas, merely granting the local administration the right to appoint at its pleasure a number of Jewish aldermen, not to exceed one-tenth of the total membership of the Duma.  Moreover, these Jewish aldermen “by the grace of the police” were prohibited from serving on the executive organs of the Duma, the administrative council, and the various standing committees.  As a result, even there where the Jews formed sixty and seventy per cent of the total urban population, their only representatives in the municipal administration were men who were the willing tools of the municipal powers and who, moreover, were quantitatively restricted to five or ten per cent of the total number of aldermen.

In this wise, the law providing for an inverse ratio of popular representation came into effect:  four-fifths of the population were limited to one-tenth of the number of aldermen, while one-fifth of it were granted nine-tenths of aldermen in the city government.  The law seemed to tell the Jews:  “True, in a given city you may form the overwhelming majority of tax-payers, yet the city property shall not be managed by you but by the small Christian, minority which shall do with you as it pleases.”

It goes without saying that the Christian minority, which was not infrequently hostile to the Jews, managed the city affairs in a manner subversive of the interests of the majority.  Even the imposts on special Jewish needs, such as the meat and candle tax, were often used by the the municipal Dumas towards the maintenance of institutions and schools to to which Jews were admitted in an insignificant number or not admitted at at all.  This condition of affairs was in full accord with the medieval medieval Church canons:  A Jew living in a Christian country has no right to to dispose of any property and must remain in slavish subjection to his his Christian fellow-citizens.

A number of laws passed during that period are of such a nature as to admit of but one explanation, the desire to insult and humiliate the Jew and to brand him by the medieval Cain’s mark of persecution.  The law, issued in 1893, “Concerning Names” threatens with criminal prosecution those Jews who in their private life call themselves by names differing in form from those recorded in the official registers.  The practice of many educated Jews to Russianize their names, such as Gregory, instead of Hirsch, Vladimir, instead of Wolf, etc., could now land the culprits in prison.  It was even forbidden to correct the disfigurements to which the Jewish names were generally subjected in the registers, such as Yosel, instead of Joseph; Srul, instead of Israel; Itzek, instead of Isaac, and so on.  In several cities the police brought action against such Jews “for having adopted Christian names” in newspaper advertisements, on visiting cards, or on door signs.