Temporary Rules" of May 3, 1882, had been passed, so to speak, as
an extraordinary "war measure," outside the usual channel of legislative
action. Yet the Russian Government could not but realize that sooner or
later it would be bound to adopt the customary legal procedure and place
the Jewish question before the highest court of the land, the Council of
State. To meet this eventuality, it was necessary to prepare materials
of a somewhat better quality than had been manufactured by the
"gubernatorial commissions" and the "Central Jewish Committee" which
owed their existence to Ignatyev, forming part and parcel of the general
anti-Jewish policy of the discharged Minister. Even prior to the
promulgation of the "Temporary Rules," the Council of Ministers had
called the Tzar's attention to the necessity of appointing a special
"High Commission" to deal with the Jewish question and to draft legal
measures for submission to the Council of State.

This suggestion was carried out on February 4, 1883, on which day an
imperial ukase was issued calling for the formation of a "High
Commission for the Revision of the Current Laws concerning the Jews."
The chairmanship of the Commission was first entrusted to Makov, a
former Minister of the Interior, and after his untimely death, to Count
Pahlen, a former Minister of Justice, who guided the work of the
Commission during the five years of its existence--hence its popular
designation as the "Pahlen Commission," The membership of the Commission
was made up of six officials representing the various departments of the
Ministry of the Interior, and of one official for each of the Ministries
of Finance, Justice, Public Instruction, Crown Domains, and Foreign
Affairs, and, lastly, of a few experts who were consulted casually.

The new bureaucratic body received no definite instructions as to the
period of time within which it was expected to complete its labors. It
was evidently given to understand that the work entrusted to it could
well afford to wait. The first session of the High Commission was held
fully ten months after its official appointment by the Tzar, and its
business proceeded at a snail's pace, surrounded by the mysterious air
characteristic of Russian officialdom. For several years the High
Commission had to work its way through the sad inheritance of the
defunct "gubernatorial commissions," represented by mounds of paper with
the most fantastic projects of solving the Jewish