eside beyond the Pale: men with an academic education,
first guild merchants who had for a number of years paid their guild
dues within the Pale, and handicraftsmen, so long as they confined
themselves to the pursuit of their craft. The influx of "illegal" Jews
into this tabooed region was checked by measures of extraordinary
severity. The example was set by the Russian capital, "the window
towards Europe," which had been broken through by Peter the Great. The
city of St. Petersburg, harboring some 20,000 privileged Jews who lived
there legally, became the center of attraction for a large number of
"illegal" Jews who flocked to the capital with the intention, deemed a
criminal offence by the Government, of engaging in some modest business
pursuit, without paying the high guild dues, or of devoting themselves
to science or literature, without the diploma from a higher educational
institution in their pockets. The number of these Jews who obtained
their right of residence through a legal fiction, by enrolling
themselves as artisans or as employees of the "privileged" Jews, was
very considerable, and the police expended a vast amount of energy in
waging a fierce struggle against them. The city-governor of St.
Petersburg, Gresser, who was notorious for the cruelty of his police
regime, made it his specialty to hunt down the Jews. A contemporary
writer, in reviewing the events of the year 1883, gives the following
description of the exploits of the metropolitan police:

The campaign was started at the very beginning of the year and
continued uninterruptedly until the end of it. Early in March the
metropolitan police received orders to search most rigorously the
Jewish residences and examine the passports. In the police stations
special records were instituted for the Jews. St. Petersburg was to
be purged of the odious Hebrew tribe. The contrivances employed were
no longer novel, and were the same which had been successfully tried
in other cities. The Jews were raided in regular fashion. Those that
were found with doubtful claims to residence in the capital were,
frequently accompanied by their families, immediately dispatched to
the proper railroad stations, escorted by policemen.... The time for
departure was measured by hours. The term of expulsion was generally
limited to twenty-four hours, or forty-eight hours, as if it
involved the execution of a court-martial sentence. And yet, the
majorit