and Moscow) and of many provincial centers--the
governors-general and the governors--the power of issuing special
enactments and thereby setting aside the normal laws as well as of
placing under arrest and deporting to Siberia, without the due process
of law, all citizens suspected of "political unsafety." This travesty of
a _habeas corpus_ Act, insuring the inviolability of police and
gendarmerie, and practically involving the suspension of the current
legislation in a large part of the monarchy, has ever since been
annually renewed by special imperial enactments, and has remained in
force until our own days. The genuine "Police Constitution" of 1881 has
survived the civil sham Constitution of 1905, figuring as a symbol of
legalized lawlessness.

2. THE INITIATION OF THE POGROM POLICY

The catastrophe of March 1 had the natural effect of pushing not only
the Government but also a large part of the Russian people, who had been
scared by the spectre of anarchy, in the direction of reactionary
politics. This retrograde tendency was bound to affect the Jewish
question. The bacillus of Judaeophobia [1] became astir in the
politically immature minds which had been unhinged by the acts of
terrorism. The influential press organs, which maintained more or less
close relations with the leading Government spheres, adopted more and
more a hostile attitude towards the Jews. The metropolitan newspaper
_Novoye Vremya_ ("The New Time") [2] which at that time embarked upon
its infamous career as the semi-official organ of the Russian reaction,
and a number of provincial newspapers subsidized by the Government
suddenly began to speak of the Jews in a tone which suggested that they
were in the possession of some terrible secret.

[Footnote 1: The term used in Russia for anti-Semitism.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 205.]

Almost on the day following the attempt on the life of the Tzar, the
papers of this ilk began to insinuate that the Jews had a hand in
it, and shortly thereafter the South-Russian press published alarming
rumors about proposed organized attacks upon the Jews of that region.
These rumors were based on facts. A sinister agitation was rife among
the lowest elements of the Russian population, while invisible hands
from above seemed to push it on toward the commission of a gigantic
crime. In the same month of March, mysterious emissaries from St.
Petersburg made their appearance in the large cities of South Russia,
su