a nature as to
admit of but one explanation, the desire to insult and humiliate the Jew
and to brand him by the medieval Cain's mark of persecution. The law,
issued in 1893, "Concerning Names" threatens with criminal prosecution
those Jews who in their private life call themselves by names differing
in form from those recorded in the official registers. The practice of
many educated Jews to Russianize their names, such as Gregory, instead
of Hirsch, Vladimir, instead of Wolf, etc., could now land the culprits
in prison. It was even forbidden to correct the disfigurements to which
the Jewish names were generally subjected in the registers, such as
Yosel, instead of Joseph; Srul, instead of Israel; Itzek, instead of
Isaac, and so on. In several cities the police brought action against
such Jews "for having adopted Christian names" in newspaper
advertisements, on visiting cards, or on door signs.

The new Passport Regulation of 1894 orders to insert in _all_ Jewish
passports a physical description of their owners, even in the case of
their being literate and, therefore, being able to affix their signature
to the passport, whereas such description was omitted from the passports
of literate Christians. In some places the police deliberately tried to
make the Jewish passports more conspicuous by marking on them the
denomination of the owner in red ink. Even in those rare instances in
which the law was intended to bring relief, the Government managed to
emphasize its hostile intent. The law of 1893, legalizing the Jewish
heder and putting an end to the persecutions, which this traditional
Jewish school had suffered at the hands of the police, narrowed at the
same time its function to that of an exclusively religious institution
and indirectly forbade the teaching in it of general secular subjects.
There are cases on record in which the keepers of these heders, the
so-called melammeds, were put on trial for imparting to their pupils a
knowledge of Russian and arithmetic.

However, the most effective whip in the hands of the Government remained
as theretofore the expulsion from the governments of the interior. In
1893, this whip cracked over the backs of thousands of Jewish families.
Durnovo, the Minister of the Interior, issued a circular, repealing the
old decree of 1880, which had sanctioned the residence outside the Pale
of Settlement of all those Jews who had lived there previously.[1] That
decree had been prompted by the