Popular politics' and the Jewish question in the Russian Empire, 1881-2

<plain_text><page sequence="1">'Popular politics5 and the Jewish question in the Russian Empire, 1881-2* JOHN KLIER In the autumn of 1881 the Russian police placed a visiting Englishman, Philip Benn, under secret surveillance.1 A simple reason underlay official interest in Benn's activities: he was a correspondent for the newspaper The Standard, and he was in Russia to report on the recent outbreak of anti-Jewish pogroms across the southern regions of the Empire. The Russian government had good reason to be concerned. Publicity-shy at any time, the tsarist regime had been overwhelmed with negative publicity abroad over the pogrom violence. At best, the regime was pillaried as medieval or bar? baric, and the authorities of this great power portrayed as helpless in the face of public disorder. At worst, the forces of law and order in Russia were depicted as derelict in their obligation to protect the Jews, and local policemen were widely accused of participation in pogroms. Bad publicity had other, more tangible costs. The financial affairs of the Empire were already in disarray as a result of the recent war with the Ottoman Empire. The maintenance of a strong credit rating on foreign exchanges was a state neces? sity in the eyes of the Ministry of Finance, whose officials were well aware of the obstacles posed to Russian forays into the international money-markets by uncontrolled internal violence. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was more concerned with the possibilities of foreign diplomatic initiative in support of persecuted Jews, along the lines of Europe's periodic threats to intervene on behalf of the Tsar's rebellious Polish subjects. Public pressure on the British government for action appeared to be very real. The press carried reports of protest meetings in Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford, Sunderland and Plymouth.2 The public campaign culmin? ated in a huge meeting at the Mansion House in the City on 1 February 1882. It was addressed by leading religious leaders and Lord Shaftesbury. The meeting drew much critical attention from the Russian government, which warned that it would exacerbate tensions between Christian and Jew, and represented an unacceptable intervention in the internal affairs of a Great Power.3 Equally alarming to the Russian authorities was a petition campaign organized throughout Britain at the start of 1882 calling on the Russian government to * An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Society on 21 April 1994. 175</page><page sequence="2">John Klier abrogate all restrictive legislation falling on Russian Jewry. The Ministers of Internal Affairs and Foreign Affairs were in regular contact as to how to treat this matter. In London, the Russian ambassador, A. B. Lobanov-Rostovskii, consulted Nathaniel Rothschild, the head of the English branch of the famous banking family. Lobanov-Rostovskii resolved his dilemma of how to respond by accepting the petition from a Jewish delegation while simultaneously announcing that he would be unable to forward it to the Tsar. This was not a totally successful solution, as Lobanov-Rostovskii advised the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 'Roths? child, qui s'emploie ? calmer l'emotion croissante de ses coreligionnaires, m'af firme que mon refus produirait la plus facheuse impression.'4 Added to these worries were parliamentary interventions, most especially by the Jewish MP Baron Henry De Worms, who called on the British government to find the means, 'alone or in conjunction with others', to urge the Russian government to prevent a repetition of the violence against the Jews.5 All these events took place against the background of hostile press reportage of events in Russia. As The Times editorialized after the parliamentary debate over De Worms' motion: 'The profound misery of a poor, ignorant, superstitious, and perennially misgoverned populace is at the root of the internal disorders of Russia; while the intolerable ennui of a governing class ignorant of the rudiments of the art of governing explains the perpetual restlessness which makes Russia a standing menace to the peace of the world.'6 The Russian government was no more skilled at handling the press with any subtlety than it was at suppressing street disorders. At home the iron gauntlet could be and was employed. Individual Jewish communities were already accus? tomed to being advised by local officials to protest against any potential foreign intervention on their behalf. (Denied a public voice, communal leaders organized a highly effective programme for smuggling pogrom reports out of the country.)7 The chief communal leader of Russian Jewry, Baron Horace Gintsburg, was advised by the government that any improvement in the legal situation of the Jews was dependent on the cessation of embarrassing activities, such as the much reported Jewish emigration movement. Gintsburg was restricted to classic shtad lanut (intercessory) activity, such as heading a meeting of Jewish notables who called on the Tsar and asked for his protection.8 In the absence of vigorous leadership at the top, a new generation of self-proclaimed leaders became active at this time, generating exactly the kind of publicity the government abhorred.9 Internal critics in the press were simply silenced, as the relative relaxation of press censorship which had characterized the reign of Alexander II came to an end. The most prestigious liberal newspaper in the Empire, the St Petersburg based Golos ('The Voice') was closed, at least in part because of its criticisms of the government's Jewish policies.10 The authorities announced that henceforth no pogrom report could be published in the Russian press which had not first appeared in the official PraviteVstvennyi vestnik ('Government Messenger').11 176</page><page sequence="3">Popular politics and the Jewish question Foreign critics were not so simply dealt with. The government employed cajolery and threats. The official newspaper of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Journal de St Petersbourg, responded conscientiously to all criticism which appeared in the foreign press. Claiming that the Jewish question was a matter of Russian internal affairs, it denied the right of British society to intervene. (Imagine the outcry if Continentals were to organize a committee to intervene on behalf of the downtrodden Irish, the paper observed.)12 Foreign meddling, it concluded, could only make matters worse by heightening tensions between Christians and Jews.13 Limited damage control was secured through the efforts of Madame Olga Novi koff, 'the MP for Russia', a Russian aristocrat who defended Russian policy in letters to the British press under the pseudonym 'OK'.14 There were other volun? teers, such as 'An Englishman and British Subject, resident in Odessa for 16 years', who wrote to The Daily News to counter some of the more exaggerated accounts which had appeared abroad.15 None of these efforts availed much against the hostility of the foreign press, however. One further Russian response to negative publicity has generally been over? looked by historians: efforts to manipulate the press by providing exclusive inter? views which offered a public defence of official policy. The Russian statesman most willing to resort to such unfamiliar tactics was also the one most concerned with the Jewish question, Count N. P. Ignatiev, the Minister for Internal Affairs from May 1881 to May 1882. Ignatiev was accustomed to being in the public eye, since he led high-profile diplomatic missions to China, Central Asia and Istanbul. He became something of a national hero when he negotiated the treaty of San Stefano with the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8. The Treaty, later modified by the Congress of Berlin, gave Russia huge territorial gains in the Balkans, to the delight of expansionist Russian Pan-Slavs. He was appointed to his post with a personal recommendation to Tsar Alexander III from his conser? vative adviser K. P. Pobedonostsev. Ignatiev failed to justify his sponsor's hopes. Far from being a narrow conserva? tive of Pobedonostsev's stripe, he proved an eccentric reformer, keen to blend conservative values with the illusion of public accountability. Critical contempor? aries branded this his 'popular polities'. Ignatiev's approach was to convoke advis? ory commissions to offer recommendations on major issues of the day. In 1881, for example, he convened an 'Assembly of Experts' to offer advice on the correct operation of the state alcohol monopoly. He appointed a prominent senator, M. S. Kakhanov, to head a commission to study the reform of local government. His use of commissions to study the Jewish question will be discussed below. This passion for consultation finally cost Ignatiev his job. He developed a project to resurrect the ancient Zemskii sobor, or 'Assembly of the Land', an institution from the ancient Russian past which had proffered counsel and advice to the tsars. This was too much for Pobedonostsev, who saw Ignatiev playing at those very 177</page><page sequence="4">John Klier democratic games which he was supposed to prevent. Led by Pobedonostsev, Ignatiev's enemies succeeded in bringing about his fall at the end of May 1882.16 This background helps to explain Ignatiev's singular willingness to attempt to use and manipulate the press. It offered him a very high profile, and tended to nonplus his more traditionally minded colleagues. Ignatiev's use of the press, however, highlighted one of his less admirable characteristics, his extreme menda? city. By any standards, Ignatiev was 'economical with the verite', to steal a contem? porary phrase. In part, this arose from his efforts at self-justification before unsympathetic interviewers, and to a habit of making policy off the cuff. But there can be no doubting his duplicity. A not-unsympathetic colleague, E. M. Feokistov, hardly exaggerated when he remarked on Ignatiev's 'unrestrained and somehow insatiable need to lie. He lies to satisfy the demands of his own nature, as the bird sings, the dog barks; he lies at every turn without the slightest reason or need, even when it harms himself.'17 Journalistic 'scoops' involving Ignatiev were frequently followed by retractions and qualifications. Thus, a review of Ignatiev's use of the press in the implementation of his Jewish policies must reflect the dictum that the wonder is not that he did it well, but that he did it at all. Ignatiev entered office after the pogroms had already broken out, and he initially viewed them as a question of public order, complicated by the fear that they might be the handiwork of members of the 'People's Will' terrorist movement who had assassinated Tsar Alexander II on 1 March 1881 (OS).18 One of his first circulars to the provincial governors declared that 'the movement against the Jews which broke out in the south provides a sad illustration of how people, who are loyal to the throne and fatherland, fall into arrogant disobedience and self-righteousness and unwittingly act according to the designs of the revolutionaries'.19 Ignatiev, who carried existing anti-Jewish prejudices into office, soon abandoned this line of thought. Rather, he began to claim, the pogroms were a response of the 'down? trodden masses' to 'Jewish exploitation'. The best way of preventing clashes between Christians and Jews would be to deny to the latter the opportunity to exploit their non-Jewish neighbours. It was at this point that Ignatiev introduced the Jewish question onto the public agenda. On 22 August 1881 he received the Tsar's authorization to convoke commissions in all the provinces of the Jewish Pale of Settlement (those areas of the Russian Empire, excluding the territory of the Kingdom of Poland, where Jews were permitted to reside without special permission). These commissions, soon nicknamed the 'Ignatiev Commissions', were to study the Jewish question, assemble statistics, and make recommendations. The agenda which Ignatiev set for the commissions guaranteed that the central government would receive opin? ions hostile to the Jews. Ignatiev posed three questions: firsdy, what aspects of Jewish economic activity had an especially harmful influence on the life of the native (i.e., non-Jewish) population of the Pale; secondly, what practical difficulties were encountered in trying to enforce legislation on the Jews pertaining to the 178</page><page sequence="5">Popular politics and the Jewish question sale and lease of farmland, trade in spirits, and usury; and thirdly, what changes in the law were necessary in order to prevent evasion of the law by the Jews, and what legal and administrative measures should be taken in order to paralyse the harmful influence of the Jews over Russian economic life.20 A striking feature of the Ignatiev Commissions was their openness and the publicity which they generated. From the first news of their formation, the Russian press expressed the hope that their activities would be open to the press and the public. The Governor-General of Kharkov wrote to Ignatiev urging that the deliberations of the commissions be fully reported in the press. Ignatiev, intent on public relations, had no objection. It was no accident, surely, that two commis? sions, Kiev and Bessarabia, numbered the editors of local newspapers among their members.21 The proceedings of the Kharkov commission was published in the official paper of the provincial administration, Kharkovskie gubernskie vedomosti. The Podolia commission published its working programme in the local newspaper Podolskie listok, while the Poltava commission opened its meetings to the public.22 Well over half the commissions had some or all of their proceedings reported in the press. All major newspapers, in or out of the Pale, reported on their activities. Predictably, given the virtual bill of indictment which Ignatiev had set before the commissions, most of the Ignatiev Commissions submitted proposals that were unsympathetic toward Jewish social and economic life in the Russian Empire and recommended various pieces of restrictive legislation.23 Ignatiev created a special committee within his ministry, chaired by his subordinate D. V. Gotovtsev, which was given the brief of examining the reports of the provincial commissions and preparing draft legislation. Gotovtsev's Jewish committee submitted proposed legislation to Ignatiev in 1882, which, after some modification, was implemented as 'temporary regulations', but is better known under the title of the 'May Laws'. The May Laws proved burdensome for the Jews, but their draft form reveals that they could have been immeasurably worse. Gotovtsev proposed to limit further the movement of Jews out of the Pale of Settlement, and to return to the Pale those who had already been allowed to leave. Peasant assemblies were to be given the right to expel Jews from their villages. A wide variety of Jewish economic activities, including tavern-keeping and usury, were to be forbidden. Jews' rights in civil suits were to be circumscribed. Quotas were to be set for Jews in schools and in municipal government. In the event, the final form of the May Laws banned new settlement of Jews in the countryside, suspended the right of Jews to acquire land in the countryside, and restricted the right of Jews to trade on Sundays and Christian holidays.24 The preparation of the May Laws, and their progress through the Council of Ministers, was marked by frequent leaks and speculation in the press. The judeophobic machinations of Ignatiev's ministry did nothing to quieten minds, Jewish or non-Jewish. In the areas affected by pogroms (which broke out again in the summer of 1882) some Jews fled across the Austro-Russian frontier 179</page><page sequence="6">John Klier to the town of Brody. Their desperate condition attracted the attention and inter? vention of international Jewish bodies, such as the Alliance Israelite Universelle, and raised the question of the most appropriate destination for Jewish refugees. Out of this crisis arose a three-cornered debate in 1881 as to the appropriateness of emigration from (or within) the Empire, and its ultimate objective, Palestine or America.25 The traditional leaders of Russian Jewry, most notably Baron Gintsburg in St Petersburg, were completely taken aback by the events of 1881-2. They restricted their activity to meetings with the Tsar and high officials (who made them even more aware of the government's concern with 'Jewish exploitation' as a causal factor of the pogroms) and to half-hearted fund-raising to assist the victims. At a meeting with Tsar Alexander they were invited to submit a memo to him through Ignatiev, setting forth their comments on the Jewish question. The memo was completed and submitted, but apparently Ignatiev never forwarded it to the Tsar.26 The perceived inactivity of the old elite in the capital spurred others to action. Three young employees of the Russian-language Jewish newspaper Rassvet devised a plan to galvanize Gintsburg and his circle into action. They devised a fictitious 'Society', and in its name invited a number of communal leaders to meet at Gintsburg's home and discuss the crisis. They provided a tentative agenda which included the convocation of an assembly of Jewish representatives from all over the Empire to discuss the position of the Jews. The meeting at Gintsburg's did in fact take place, but the proposed agenda was given short shrift, especially the young activists' proposal that Jewish emigra? tion from the Empire be expedited.27 What the meeting did suggest to Gintsburg was the force of opinion within the Jewish community, and the need to forestall future eruptions of activism from below. Gintsburg secured permission from the government to convoke a national conference of Jewish representatives, all to be respectable communal leaders selected by the baron himself. Such activity, invol? ving consultations with high-level specialists, was entirely to Ignatiev's taste, and he gave permission for two such meetings which met in September 1881 and April 1882 respectively. It was typical that, having allowed the September conference to take place, Ignatiev insulted the participants when he granted them an audience. 'I did not want to receive you all together', he announced, 'as I cannot of course acknowledge the solidarity of Jewish interests of Russian subjects of the Mosaic Law, living in different cities.' He went on to blame the Jews themselves for the pogroms, condemning them for tavern-keeping, usury and evasion of the law.28 All these phenomena allowed Ignatiev an opportunity to indulge his love of publicity, even if they also demonstrated his duplicity. The process began with the Ignatiev Commissions. They generated much publicity both at home and abroad (the former largely favourable) and produced exactly the sort of recom? mendations which Ignatiev required in order to justify new, restrictive legislation. The excited public discussion of Jewish emigration, which at times appeared to 180</page><page sequence="7">Popular politics and the Jewish question offer a solution to the intractable Russian Jewish question, was grist for Ignatiev's mill. The meeting of the Jewish notables in April 1882 provided a splendid back? drop for a series of Ignatiev-inspired bombshells. The preferred forum for Ignatiev was the exclusive newspaper interview (or interviews which he authorized to be made public), thus justifying my claim that Ignatiev was one of the first tsarist bureaucrats to recognize the opportunities provided by direct, personal manipulation of the press, as opposed to the creation or financing of loyal, 'reptile' press organs. At the same time, the scandals he repeatedly provoked demonstrated that he had not yet mastered the technique. To complicate matters further, he chose to confront the most difficult issues of the day: official conduct during the pogroms, the whole question of emigration, and national policy on the Jewish question. He employed a diverse variety of newspapers and interlocutors, foreign and domestic, Jewish and non-Jewish. Ignatiev early on begun to toy with the emigration problem - of special signifi? cance because it was technically illegal for Russian subjects to leave the country with the intention of settling abroad.29 Already in late September 1881 he granted an interview to the journalist Alexander Tsederbaum in which he claimed that the government would not obstruct Jews who desired to leave the country. Perhaps because it was published in Hebrew in Ha-Melits, the statement failed to attract any public attention. This was no longer the case at the end of January 1882. Dr Issak Orshanskii, a journalist for the Russian Jewish newspaper Rassvet, was granted an exclusive interview with Ignatiev. The minister's comments were so provocative that the paper issued an exclusive issue, headlining his pronounce? ments.30 'The western frontier is open to the Jews', he declared. 'They have already taken ample advantage of this right, and their emigration has in no way been hindered.' The government restricted only those who had family responsibil? ities to fulfil, or young men who had not completed military service. The only regulation was that emigrants would be forbidden to return to Russia. This was correctly seen as a change in official Russian policy and, as such, an invitation, if not incitement, to depart, a fact noted by both the Russian and the Jewish press.31 The latter resurrected, and published a Russian summary of, Ignatiev's earlier interview with Tsederbaum.32 The editor of Ha-Melits soon published another interview (from a meeting on 6 February 1882) which made Ignatiev sound like a proto-Zionist. Involving himself in the inter-communal debate over the most appropriate destination for the Jews, Ignatiev opted for Palestine. 'Palestine is the holy land for the Jews - there they will work with a will.'33 The excitement surrounding his remarks only encouraged Ignatiev further. He invited the communal rabbi of St Petersburg, A. N. Drabkin, to his office for consultations, specifically authorizing him to inform the press. Ignatiev's reported comments conjured up another storm. Discussing the pogroms, he appeared to blame local administrators for a failure to act in timely fashion. He denied that 181</page><page sequence="8">John Klier the government desired Jewish migration, but promised that it would be placed under formal government supervision. He assured Drabkin that no new legislation for the Jews would be devised without the participation of Jewish representatives in the planning process.34 Virtually the next day the official PraviteVstuennyi vestnik carried a denial of the substance of the Drabkin interview. Unable to leave it at that, Ignatiev scheduled another interview with the correspondent of the Daily News. He denied that he had discussed the conduct of local authorities with Drabkin, or that Jews would participate in the drafting of new laws. At the same time, he agreed that whole families might be allowed to leave Russia, so the emigration issue remained in play. Still greater scope for mischief was offered by the meeting of Jewish communal representatives which met in the capital in April. In the course of its deliberations, Ignatiev received one of its members, the railway magnate S.S. Poliakov, one of those communal notables who had opposed the emigration movement from the very beginning. Ignatiev changed tack, and agreed with Poliakov's known views. He himself had always opposed emigration, Ignatiev affirmed, even though he had permitted the meeting to discuss it. Might it not be better to resettle the Jews in the interior of the Russian Empire, perhaps in newly-conquered Tashkent or Akhal-Teke in Central Asia? He asked Poliakov to transmit his observations to the conference. For many of the delegates, already confused as to what was demanded of them by both the government and the Jewish community, this was the last straw. They were already polarized by the emigration debate, and now Ignatiev was complicat? ing the issue still more. A number of delegates expressed themselves in surpris? ingly direct language, especially because a transcript of the session was being kept (and was published after Ignatiev's fall). The St Petersburg banker I. Bakst complained that the Jews were being asked to colonize the Empire's wild frontiers just as a century earlier they had been enlisted to tame the prairies of New Russia on the shores of the Black Sea. Would they again be moved on once they had completed this mission? Another delegate cried out in rage: 'We do not enjoy the rights which are given to any animal, and suddenly they permit us to go to Tash? kent, no doubt to finish us off there!'35 As the meeting of representatives, one of the last examples of Ignatiev's 'popular polities', drew to an inconclusive close, it was increasingly difficult for Ignatiev to maintain his credibility. Still less could he continue to pose as a friend of the Jews, for the details of his draft temporary regulations - clearly judeophobic - had begun to leak out and were widely debated in the press. The days of his ministerial career were numbered in any event, for by the end of May Pobedonostsev had claimed his head. His replacement, Count D. A. Tolstoi, was a no-nonsense conservative with little patience for Ignatiev's eccentric schemes. One of his first actions on taking office was to issue a ministerial decree ordering the police to arrest anyone who instigated or aided Jewish emigration.36 182</page><page sequence="9">Popular politics and the Jewish question Old habits die hard, and Ignatiev used the foreign press to claim the last word on his policies towards the Jews. After leaving office, he granted an interview to the correspondent of the newspaper Clairon, which constituted an elaborate defence of his treatment of the Jewish question. They blame me for the anti Semitic movement, he declared, when I was the one who sought clinical remedies. The governors-general had demanded mixed commissions whose membership was equally divided between Christians and Jews. 'The Jews didn't have the courage to demand serious reform; from fear of their lives they made proposals which were neither fish nor fowl, and nothing decisive was accomplished.' Ignatiev made the enigmatic claim that 'those in Moscow demanded the most inhumane and severe measures towards the Jews, which I could not approve. To take from the Jews the right to trade in alcohol would have ensured the final ruin of 40,000 families, and therefore I strictly applied the law.'37 It is self-evident that almost every word of this statement was a demonstrable he. The commissions were called entirely at Ignatiev's initiative, and he himself restricted Jewish participants to no more than a handful. The Jews hardly had the opportunity to propose any remedies. Ignatiev sought, through the draft regu? lations, virtually to ban Jews from the alcohol trade, without any intervention from Moscow. In short, the Clairon interview was a virtuoso episode of Ignatiev's duplicity. On this occasion, however, there was one difference: out of office, Ignatiev lost the protection of the Russian censorship, and foreign editorialists saw no need to remain polite in their evaluations of his policies. Moreover, Ignatiev enraged other officials who were not content to play the role of 'Jew-eaters' which he had attempted to assign to them before the court of world public opinion. The Jewish press in particular was allowed to respond fully and critically. The editor of NedeVnaia khronika Voskhoda noted Ignatiev's claim that 'all enlightened and intel? lectual Jews shared his opinion'. This was true, the editor responded, only with the addition of the words 'in the totally opposite sense'. The foreign press was equally unsympathetic. The Times reported that people were joyously embracing in the street, just as they had done two years previously on the fall of the unpopular D. A. Tolstoi as Minister of Education. They now did it to celebrate his return to the Ministry of Interior, and the departure of Ignatiev. The Times suggested that Ignatiev's Jewish policies might have something to do with his fall. In any event, 'the Jews have every ground for delight. Ignatiev, from malice, weakness, perhaps race hatred, if he did not foment persecution, allowed it to spread with terrible cynicism'.38 Few of the schemes arising from Ignatiev's year of office were successful, espe? cially his treatment of the Jewish question. Neither Ignatiev's contemporaries nor modern historians have credited the May Laws with their primary objective, the moderation of the Jewish-Christian tensions which gave rise to pogroms. In the very summer and autumn in which the regulations were promulgated, a wave of 183</page><page sequence="10">John Klier still fiercer pogroms swept over the southern provinces. The May Laws themselves became an unending source of litigation and dispute which did nothing to cool tempers. Their economic restrictions unquestionably accelerated the spread of poverty and pauperization among the Jews, with the further consequence of encouraging Jewish emigration and accelerating the spread of political dissidence among the Jews of the Empire. The May Laws failed completely as a public relations device. Judeophobes complained that they were never properly enforced, while Judeophiles, at home and abroad, used them as evidence to indict the regime for intolerance and political shortsightedness. If there was a lesson for Ignatiev's ministerial colleagues in his 'popular polities', it was that manipulation of the press, at home and abroad, required much greater precision and skill. NOTES 1 TsentraVnyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv Ukrainy (Kiev), fond 442, opis' 831, delo 261 (1881) 1-5. Archival citations will follow the standard Russian form of fond, opis' and delo. 2 The Daily News, 23 Jan. 1882 and 7 Feb. 1882. The reaction of this newspaper, generally more sympathetic to Russia, is a useful contrast to the positions of The Times, which was usually viewed as more Russophobe. 3 The Times, 30, 429: 13 Feb. 1882. 4 Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (St Petersburg), f. 821, op. 9, ed. khr. 132 (1881 2) 17-19. Hereafter cited as RGIA. 5 The Daily News, 6 Feb. 1882. 6 The Times, 30, 445: 4 March 1882. 7 Stephen M. Berk, Year of Crisis, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms of 1881-1882 (Westport, CT and London 1985) 66. 8 N. M. Gelber, 'Di risishe pogromen onheyb di 80-er yorn in shayn fun estraykhisher diplomatisher korespondents' Historishe shriften II (Vilna 1937) 487; 468. 9 Mordecai ben Hillel HaCohen, Olami I (Jerusalem 1927) 163-6. 10 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow), f. 730, op. 1, ed. khr. 1509 (May 1882) 1-3. Hereafter GARF. 11 As reported in The Times, 30, 488: 22 April 1882. 12 The Daily News, 4 Feb. 1882. 13 The Daily News, 13 Feb. 1882. 14 John D. Klier, ''The Times of London, the Russian Press, and the Pogroms of 1881-2' The Carl Beck Papers, No. 308 (Pittsburgh, PA, 1984) 10-11. 15 The Daily News, 1 Feb. 1882. This is a very accurate and informed account, which could profitably be consulted by investigators of the pogroms. 16 For a full account of this episode, see P. A. Zaionchkovskii, 'Popytka sozyva zemskogo sobora i padenie ministerstva N. P. Ignat'eva' htoriia SSSR, V (September-October i960) 126-39. 17 P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Krizis samoderzhaviia na rubezhe 1870-1880-kh godov (Moscow 1964) 335. Another unadmirable trait was Ignatiev's alleged venality. A number of sources claim that he solicited bribes from Baron Gintsburg as the price of suppressing the infamous May Laws. Zaionchkovskii, Krizis, 417; G. B. Sliozberg, Dela minuvshikh dnei I (Paris 1933) 254. 18 Russian dates are according to the Julian calendar (Old Style, or OS), then still in use in the Russian Empire. They were twelve days behind the Western Gregorian calendar. Dates of Western sources or Western events will be given in New Style. 19 Golos, 125: 7 May 1881. 20 Russkii evrei, 37: 9 Sept. 1881. 21 Kievlianin, 195: 4 Sept. 1881. 22 Rassvet, 44: 30 Oct. 1881. 23 I. Michael Aronson, 'Russian Commissions on the Jewish Question', East European Quarterly XIV1 (1980) 59-74. 24 Iu. I. Gessen, 'Graf N. P. Ignat'ev i "Vremennye pravila" o evreiakh' Pravo, 30: 27 July 1908, 1637. The May Laws are reprinted in NedeVnaia khronika Voskhoda, 20: 15 May 1882. Hereafter NKhV. 25 See, from among many accounts, Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 (Cambridge 1981) 49-132. 184</page><page sequence="11">Popular politics and the Jewish question 26 S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland II (Philadelphia 1918) 261-2. 27 Mordecai ben Hillel HaCohen, Olami I, 163-6. 28 GARF, f. 730, op. 1, ed. khr. 1627, 11. 1-30. 29 Russian subjects did not have the right of unqualified free movement across the national boundaries. See Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia (London 1986) 177 et seq. 30 Rassvet, 4: 22 Jan. 1882. Historians have occasionally confused Issak Orshanskii with his better-known historian brother Il'ia. 31 Odesskii vestnik, 21: 27 Jan. 1882; Sanktpeterburgkie vedomosti, 24: 1882; NKhV, 4: 22 Jan. 1882 et al 32 NKhV, 6: 5 Feb. 1884. 33 As reported in NKhV, 8: 19 Feb. 1882. 34 NKhV, 6: 5 Feb. 1884. 35 Russkii evrei, 32: 11 August 1882. 36 Rogger (see n. 29) 179. 37 NKhV, 26: 26 June 1882. 38 The Times, 30,534: 15 June 1882. i85</page></plain_text>