Jews, as a pre-eminently mercantile class, engage in
"unproductive" labor, and thereby "exploit" the productive classes
of the Christian population, the peasantry in particular.

_Second_, the Jews, having "captured" commerce and industry--here
the large participation of the Jews in industrial life, represented
by handicrafts and manufactures, is tacitly admitted--compete with
the Christian urban estates, in other words, interfere with them in
their own "exploitation" of the population.

The first part of this strange theory is based upon, primitive economic
notions, such as are in vogue during periods of transition, when natural
economic production gives way to capitalism, and when all complicated
forms of mediation are regarded as unproductive and harmful. The thought
expressed in the second part of the thesis is implied in the make-up of
a police state, which looks upon the occupation of certain economic
positions by a given national group as an illegitimate "capture" and
regards it as its function to check this competition for the sole
purpose of insuring the success of the dominant nationality.

The Russian Government was disturbed neither by the primitive character
of this theory nor by the resort to brutal police force implied in
it--the idea of supporting the "exploitation" practised by the Russians
at the expense of that carried on by the Jews; nor was it abashed by its
inner logical contradictions. What the Government needed was some means
whereby it could throw off the responsibility for the pogroms and prove
to the world that they were a "popular judgment," the vengeance wreaked
upon the Jews either by the peasants, the victims of exploitation, or by
the Russian burghers, the unsuccessful candidates for the role of
exploiters. This point of view was reflected in the report of Count
Kutaysov, who had been sent by the Tzar to South Russia to inquire into
the causes of the "disorders." [1]

[Footnote 1: It may be added that Kutaysov recognized that the Russian
masses were equally the victims of the commercial exploitation of the
Russian "bosses," but was at a loss to find a reason for the pogroms
perpetrated in the Jewish agricultural colonies, i.e., against those
who, according to this theory, were themselves the victims of
exploitation.]

Ignatyev seized upon this flimsy theory, and embodied it in a more
elaborate form in his report to the Tzar of August 22. In this report he
endeavored t