administrative caprice. Wholesale
expulsions of Jews took place in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov,
and other forbidden centers. The effect of these expulsions upon the
commercial life of the country was so disastrous that the big Russian
merchants of Moscow and Kharkov appealed to the Government to relax the
restrictions surrounding the visits of Jews to these cities.

The civil authorities were now joined by the military powers in hounding
the Jews. There were in the Russian army a large number of Jewish
physicians, many of whom had distinguished themselves during the
preceding Russo-Turkish war. The reactionary Government at the helm of
Russian affairs could not tolerate the sight of a Jewish physician
exercising the rights of an army officer which were otherwise utterly
utterly unattainable for a Jewish soldier. Accordingly, the Minister of
War, Vannovski, issued a rescript dated April 10, 1882, to the following
effect:

_First_, to limit the number of Jewish physicians and _feldshers[1]_
in the Military Department to five per cent of the general number of
medical men.

_Second_, to stop appointing Jews on the medical service in the
military districts of Western Russia, and to transfer the surplus
over and above five per cent into the Eastern districts.

_Third_, to appoint Jewish physicians only in those contingents of
the army in which the budget calls for at least two physicians, with
the proviso that the second physician must be a Christian.

[Footnote 1: See p. 167, n. 2.]

The reason for these provisions was stated in a most offensive form:

It is necessary to stop the constant growth of the number of
physicians of the Mosaic persuasion in the Military Department, in
view of their deficient conscientiousness in discharging their
duties and their unfavorable influence upon the sanitary service in
the army.

This revolting affront had the effect that many Jewish physicians handed
in their resignations immediately. The resignation of one of these
physicians, the well-known novelist Yaroshevski, was couched in such
emphatic terms, and parried the moral blow directed at the Jewish
professional men with such dignity that the Minister of War deemed it
necessary to put the author on trial. Among other things, Yaroshevski
wrote:

So long as the aspersions cast upon the Jewish physicians so
pitilessly are not removed, every superfluous minute spent by them
in serving