All Jews living within the fifty verst zone along the Prussian and Austrian frontier are to be transferred into the interior of the (border) governments.  Those possessing their own houses are to be granted a term of two years within which to sell them. To be carried out without any excuses.

On the receipt of this grim command, the Senate was at first puzzled as to whether the imperial order was a mere repetition of the former law concerning the expulsion of the Jews from the villages and hamlets on the frontier,[1] or whether it was a new law involving the expulsion of all Jews on the border, without discrimination, including those in the cities and towns.  Swayed by the harsh and emphatic tone of the imperial resolution, the Senate decided to interpret the new order in the sense of a complete and absolute expulsion.  This interpretation received the Tzar’s approbation, except that the time-limit for the expulsion of real estate owners was extended for two years more and the ruined exiles were promised temporary relief from taxation.

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 40.]

The new catastrophe which descended upon tens of thousands of families, particularly in the government of Kovno, caused a cry of horror, not only throughout the border-zone but also abroad.  When the Jews doomed to expulsion were ordered by the police to state the places whither they intended to emigrate, nineteen communities refused to comply with this demand, and declared that they would not abandon their hearths and the graves of their forefathers and would only yield to force.  Public opinion in Western Europe was running high with indignation.  The French, German, and English papers condemned in no uncertain terms the policy of “New Spain.”  Many Jewish communities in Germany petitioned the Russian Government to revoke the terrible expulsion decree.  There was even an attempt at diplomatic intervention.  During his stay in England, Nicholas I. was approached on behalf of the Jews by personages of high rank.  Yet the Government would scarcely have yielded to public protests, had it not become patent that it was impossible to carry out the decree without laying waste entire cities and thereby affecting injuriously the interests of the exchequer.  The fatal ukase was not officially repealed, but the Government did not insist on its execution.

In the meantime the “Jewish Committee” kept up a correspondence with the governors-general in regard to the ways and means of carrying into effect the third article of its program, the “assortment,” or “classification” of the Jews.  The plan called for the division of all Russian Jews into two categories, into useful and useless ones.  The former category was to consist of merchants affiliated with guilds, artisans belonging to trade-unions, agriculturists, and those of the burgher class who owned immovable property with a definite income.  All other burghers who could not claim such a financial status and had no definite income, in other words, the large mass of petty tradesmen and paupers, were to be labelled as “useless” or “detrimental,” and subjected to increased disabilities.