the envy of medieval inquisitors. The "May laws" of 1882 barred the Jews
from settling outside the cities "anew," i.e. in the future, exempting
those who had settled in the rural districts prior to 1882. These
old-time Jewish rustics were a thorn in the flesh of the Russian
anti-Semites, who hoped for a sudden disappearance of the Jewish
population from the Russian country-side. Accordingly, a whole set of
administrative measures was put in motion, with a view to making the
life of the village Jews unbearable. In another connection [1] we had
occasion to point out that the Russian authorities as well as the
Christian competitors of the Jews made it their business to expel the
latter from the rural localities as "vicious members," by having the
peasant assemblies render special "verdicts" against them. This method
was now supplemented by new contrivances to dislodge the Jews. A village
Jew who happened to absent himself for a few days or weeks to go to town
was frequently barred by the police from returning to his home, on the
ground that he was "a new settler." There are cases of Jewish families
on record which, according to custom, had left the village for the High
Holidays to attend services in an adjacent town or townlet, and which,
on their return home, met with considerable difficulties; because their
return was interpreted by the police as a "new settlement." In the
dominions of the anti-Jewish satrap Drenteln the administration
construed the "Temporary Rules" to mean that Jews were not allowed to
move from one village to another, or even from, one house to another
within the precincts of their native village. [2]

[Footnote 1: See p. 318 et seq.]

[Footnote 2: Evidence of this is found in the circular of the governor
of Chernigov, issued In 1883.]

Moreover, the police was authorized to expel from the villages all those
Jews who did not possess their own houses upon their own land, on the
ground that these Jews, in renting new quarters, would have to make a
new lease with their owners, and such a lease was forbidden by the May
laws. [1] These malicious misinterpretations of the law affected some ten
thousand Jews in the villages of Chernigov and Poltava. These Jews lived
habitually in rented houses or in houses which were their property but
were built upon ground belonging to peasants, and they were consequently
liable to expulsion. The cry of these unfortunates, who were threatened
with eviction in the dead of