This summons to leave the country, doubly revolting in the mouth of a
guardian of the law, addressed to those who under the influence of the
pogrom panic had already made up their minds to flee from the land of
slavery, produced a staggering effect upon the Jewish public. The last
ray of hope, the hope for legal justice, vanished. The courts of law had
become a weapon in the hands of the anti-Jewish leaders.


2. THE POGROM PANIC AND THE BEGINNING OF THE EXODUS

The feeling of safety, which had been restored by the published portion
of the imperial reply at the audience of May 11, was rapidly
evaporating. The Jews were again filled with alarm, while the
instigators of the pogroms took courage and decided that the time had
arrived to finish their interrupted street performance. The early days
of July marked the inauguration of the second series of riots, the
so-called summer pogroms.

The new conflagration started in the city of Pereyaslav, in the
government of Poltava, which had not yet discarded its anti-Jewish
Cossack traditions. [1] Pereyaslav at that time harbored many fugitives
from Kiev, who had escaped from the spring pogroms in that city. The
increase in the Jewish population of Pereyaslav was evidently
displeasing to the local Christian inhabitants. Four hundred and twenty
Christian burghers of Pereyaslav, avowed believers in the Gospels which
enjoin Christians to love those that suffer, passed a resolution calling
for the expulsion of the Jews from their city, and, in anticipation of
this legalized violence, they decided to teach the Jews a "lesson" on
their own responsibility. On June 30 and July 1, Pereyaslav was the
scene of a pogrom, marked by all the paraphernalia of the Russian