Plehve. This is indicated by the
heading of the ukase: "The Minister of the Interior has applied most
humbly to his Imperial Majesty begging permission to adopt the following
measures." This succession of illegalities was to be veiled by the
ambiguous formulation of the ukase and the addition of the hackneyed
stipulation: "Pending the revision of the enactments concerning the Jews
in the ordinary course of legislation."]

The first victims were the Jews who resided in Moscow illegally or
semi-legally, the latter living in the suburbs. They were subjected to a
sudden nocturnal attack, a "raid," which was directed by the savage
Cossack general Yurkovski, the police commissioner-in-chief. During the
night following the promulgation of the ukase large detachments of
policemen and firemen made their appearance in the section of the city
called Zaryadye, where the bulk of the "illegal" Jewish residents were
huddled together, more particularly in the immense so-called Glebov
Yard, the former ghetto of Moscow. The police invaded the Jewish homes,
aroused the scared inhabitants from their beds, and drove the semi-naked
men, women, and children to the police stations, where they were kept in
filthy cells for a day and sometimes longer. Some of the prisoners were
released by the police which first wrested from them a written pledge to
leave the city immediately. Others were evicted under a police convoy
and sent out of the city like criminals, through the transportation
prison. [1] Many families, having been forewarned of the impending raid,
decided to spend the night outside their homes to avoid arrest and
maltreatment at the hands of the police. They hid themselves in the
outlying sections of the city and on the cemeteries; they walked or rode
all over the city the whole night. Many an estimable Jew was forced to
shelter his wife and children, stiffened from cold, in houses of ill
repute which were open all night. But even these fugitives ultimately
fell into the hands of the police inquisition.

[Footnote 1: Transportation prisons are prisons in which convicts
sentenced to deportation (primarily to Siberia) are kept pending their
deportation. Such prisons were to be found in the large Russian centers,
among them in Moscow.]

Such were the methods by which Moscow was purged of its rightless Jewish
inhabitants a whole month before Grand Duke Sergius made his entrance
into the city. The grand duke was followed soon afterwards,