"Temporary Rules" did not seem to realize that
the latter were nothing but a variation of those "violent acts against
person and property," from which the street mob was warned to refrain,
for the loss of the freedom of movement is violence against the person,
and the denial of the right of purchasing real estate is violence
against property. Even the Russian press, though held at that time in
the grip of censorship, could not help commenting on the fact that the
effect of the official circular against the pogroms had been greatly
weakened, by the simultaneous promulgation of the "Temporary Rules."

It would seem as if the terrible atrocities at Balta had made the
highest Government spheres realize that the previous policy of
connivance at the pogroms, which had been practised for a whole year,
could not but disgrace Russia in the eyes of the world and undermine
public order in Russia itself. As soon as this was realized, the
luckless Minister, who had been the pilot of Russian politics throughout
that terrible year, was bound to disappear from the scene. On May 30,
Count Ignatyev was made to resign, and Count Demetrius Tolstoi was
appointed Minister of the Interior.

Tolstoi was a grim reactionary and a champion of autocracy and police
power, but he was at the same time an enemy of all manifestations of mob
rule which tended to undermine the authority of the State. A few days
after his appointment the new Minister issued a circular in which he
reiterated the recent declaration of his predecessor concerning the
"resolve of the Government to prosecute every kind of violence against
the Jews," announcing emphatically that "any manifestation of disorders
would unavoidably result in the immediate prosecution of all official
persons who are in duty bound to concern themselves with the prevention
of disorders."

This energetic pronouncement of the Government had a magic effect. All
provincial administrators realized that the central Government of St.
Petersburg had ceased to trifle with the promoters of the pogroms, and
the pogrom epidemic was at an end. Beginning with June, 1882, the
pogroms assumed more and more a sporadic character. Here and there
sparks of the old conflagration would flare up again, but only to die
out quickly. In the course of the next twenty years, until the Kishinev
massacre of 1903, no more than about ten pogroms of any consequence may
be enumerated, and these disorders were all isolated movements,