humble reports" propounded the new-fangled theory of the "injuriousness"
of the Jews; the marginal remarks frequently attached by him to these
reports assumed the force of binding resolutions. [2] In the beginning
of 1883, the governor-general of Odessa, Gurko, took occasion in his
report to the Tzar to comment on the excessive growth of the number of
Jewish pupils in the _gymnazia_ [3] and on their "injurious effect" upon
their Christian fellow-pupils. Gurko proposed to fix a limited
percentage for the admission of Jews to these schools, and the Tzar made
the annotation: "I share this conviction; the matter ought to receive
attention."

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 246, n. 1]

[Footnote 2: See on the term "Resolution," Vol. I, p. 253, n. 1.]

[Footnote 3: See above, p. 161, n. 1.]

The matter did of course "receive attention." It was brought up before
the Committee of Ministers. But the latter was reluctant to pass upon it
at once, and thought it wiser to have it prepared and duly submitted for
legislative action at some future time. However, when the
governor-general of Odessa and the governor of Kharkov, in their reports
for the following year, expatiated again on the necessity of fixing a
school norm for the Jews, the Tzar made another annotation, in a more
emphatic tone: "It is desirable to decide this question finally." This
sufficed to impress the Committee of Ministers with the conviction "that
the growing influx of the non-Christian element into the educational
establishments exerts, from a moral and religious point of view, a most
injurious influence upon the Christian children." The question was
submitted for consideration to the High Commission under the
chairmanship of Count Pahlen. The Minister of Public Instruction was
ordered to frame post-haste an enactment embodying the spirit of the
imperial resolution. Soon the new fruit of the Russian bureaucratic
genius was ready to be plucked--"the school norm," which was destined to
occupy a prominent place in the fabric of Russian-Jewish disabilities.

The center of gravity of the system of oppression lay, as it always did,
in the restrictions attaching to the right of domicile and free
movement--restrictions which frequently made life for the Jews
physically impossible by cutting off their access to the sources of a
livelihood. The "Temporary Rules" of the third of May displayed in this
domain a dazzling variety of legal tortures such as might have excited