It will be remembered that the principal item in this program was “the assortment of the Jews,” i.e., the segregation from among them of all persons without a certain status as to property or without definite occupations, for the purpose of proceeding against them as criminal members of society.  As far back as 1846 the Government forewarned the Jews of the imminent “bloody operation over a whole class,” against which Governor-General Vorontzov had vainly protested. [1] All Jews were ordered to register at the earliest possible moment among the guilds and estates assigned to them, “with the understanding that in case this measure should fail, the Government would of itself carry out the assortment,” to wit:  “it will set apart the Jews who are not engaged in productive labor, and will subject them, as burdensome to society, to various restrictions.”  The threat fell flat, for it was rather too much to expect that fully a half of the Jewish population, doomed by civil disabilities and general economic conditions to a life of want and distress, could obtain at a stroke the necessary “property status” or “definite occupations.”

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 64 et seq.]

Accordingly, on November 23, 1851, the Tzar gave his sanction to the “Temporary Rules Concerning the Assortment of the Jews.”  All Jews were divided into five categories:  merchants, agriculturists, artisans, settled burghers, and unsettled burghers.  The first three categories were to be made up of those who were enrolled among the corresponding guilds and estates.  “Settled burghers” were to be those engaged in “burgher trade” [1] with business licenses, also the clergy and the learned class.  The remaining huge mass of the proletariat was placed in the category of “unsettled burghers,” who were liable to increased military conscription and to harsher legal restrictions as compared with the first four tolerated classes of Jews.  This hapless proletariat, either out of work or only occasionally at work, was to bear a double measure of oppression and persecution, and was to be branded as despised pariahs.

[Footnote 1:  i.e., petty trade, as distinguished from the more comprehensive business carried on by the merchants who were enrolled in the mercantile guilds.]

By April 1, 1852, the Jews belonging to the four tolerated categories were required to produce their certificates of enrolment before the local authorities.  Those who had failed to do so were to be entered in the fifth category, the criminal class of “unsettled burghers.”  Within the brief space allotted to them the Jews found themselves unable to obtain the necessary documents, and, thanks to the representations of the governors-general of the Western governments, the term was extended till the autumn of 1852, but even then the “assortment” had not yet been accomplished.  The Government was fully prepared to launch a series of Draconian laws against the “parasites,”