act in accordance with the designs of the
anarchists. Such violation of the public order must not only be put
down vigorously, but must also be carefully forestalled, for it is
the first duty of the Government to safeguard the population against
all violence and savage mob rule.

These lines reflect the theory concerning the origin of the pogroms,
which was originally held in the highest Government spheres of St.
Petersburg. This theory assumed that the anti-Jewish campaign had been
entirely engineered by revolutionary agitators and that the latter had
made deliberate endeavors to focus the resentment of the popular masses
upon the Jews, as a pre-eminently mercantile class, for the purpose of
subsequently widening the anti-Jewish campaign into a movement directed
against the Russian mercantile class, land-owners and capitalists in
general. [1] Be this as it may, there can be no question that the
Government was actually afraid lest the revolutionary propaganda attach
itself to the agitation of those "devoted to Throne and Fatherland" for
the purpose of giving the movement a more general scope, "in accordance
with the d signs of the anarchists." As a matter of fact, even outside
of Government circles, the apprehension was voiced that the anti-Jewish
movement would of itself, without any external stimulus, assume the form
of a mob movement, directed not only against the well-to-do classes but
also against the Government officials. On May 4, 1881, Baron Horace
Guenzburg, a leading representative of the Jewish community of St.
Petersburg, waited upon Grand Duke Vladimir, a brother of the Tzar, who
expressed the opinion that the anti-Jewish "disorders, as has now been
ascertained by the Government, are not to be exclusively traced to the
resentment against the Jews, but are rather due to the endeavor to
disturb the peace in general."

[Footnote 1: John W. Poster, United States Minister to Russia, in
reporting to the Secretary of State, on May 24, 1881, about the recent
excesses, which "are more worthy of the dark ages than of the present
century," makes a similar observation: "It is asserted also that the
Nihilist societies have profited by the situation to incite and
encourage the peasants and lower classes of the towns and cities in
order to increase the embarrassments of the Government, but the charge
is probably conjectural and not based on very tangible facts." See
_House of Representatives, 51st Congress, 1st