f the Interior, under the direction of two fanatic
reactionaries, Durnovo and Plehve, [3] set on foot all the inquisitorial
contrivances of the Police Department, of which both these officials had
formerly been the chiefs.

[Footnote 1: Borki is a village in the government of Kherson. Of the
fifteen cars of the imperial train only five remained intact.
Fifty-eight persons were injured, twenty-one fatally. The members of the
imperial family were saved, although their car had been completely
wrecked.

The following quotation from Harold Frederic, _The New Exodus_, p. 168
et seq., is of interest in this connection: "It was reported about that
the Tzar regarded the escape alive of himself and family from the
terrible railway accident at Borki as the direct and miraculous
intervention of Providence. The facts were that the imperial train was
being driven at the rate of ninety versts an hour over a road calculated
to withstand at the utmost a speed of thirty-five versts; that the
engineer humbly warned the Tzar of the danger, and was gruffly ordered
to go still faster if possible, and that the miracle would have been the
avoidance of calamity."]

[Footnote 2: On the Zemstvos compare p. 173, n. 1. The reactionary law
of June 12, 1890 (see later, p. 358 et seq.) puts in place of the
executives formerly elected by the people the "Zemstvo chiefs,"
officials appointed from among the landed proprietors.]

[Footnote 3: Durnovo became Minister of the Interior in 1889, after the
demise of Tolstoi; Plehve was assistant-minister.]

The press was either tamed or used as a tool of the governmental
policies. The most widely read press organs of the capital, with the
exception of the moderately liberal _Novosti_ ("The News") which managed
to survive the shipwreck of the liberal press, became either openly or
secretly the official mouthpieces of the Government. The venal _Novoye
Vremya,_ which the Russian satirist Shchedrin had branded as "the
sewer," embarked, towards the end of the eighties, on the noble
enterprise of hunting down the Jews with a zeal which was clear evidence
of a higher demand for Judaeophobia in the official world. There was no
accusation, however hideous, which Suvorin's paper, steered
simultaneously by the Holy Synod and by the Police Department, failed to
hurl in the face of the Jews. As an organ generally reflecting the views
of the Government, the _Novoye Vremya_ served at that time as a source
of political in