I deemed it my duty to bring to your attention through my letter of the 26th of May the fact that I gave to the editor of the journal “Retsch” the copy of the report of the chief of the special division of the police department to the minister of the interior, concerning the organization of the pogrom against the Jews in Alexandrovsk (government of Yekaterinoslaff), and touching the participation therein of the authorities of the police department. I did this in the firm conviction that it was only through the imperial Duma, when well informed by the public press, we could hope, once for all, to destroy the great danger menacing the State because of the systematic preparation by government officials of Jewish and other pogroms. I informed you of my action lest some subordinate of Your Excellency might be held responsible for having furnished that journal with the report.
I deemed it unnecessary in my communication to impart to you the facts detailed in the report of Markaroff, and with which I was familiar; I refrained from doing so because it was furthest from my thoughts that it could be possible that Your Excellency would conceal the truth that was revealed by the investigation called forth at the request of the Duma, in connection with the report of Markaroff.
But yet must I be convinced from the newspaper reports of the Duma session of June 21st, that in your answer to the inquiry of the Duma, the material that was put into your hands for the proper preparation thereof, the real facts in the case, were substantially set aside. I, therefore, conceived it to be my bounden duty to impart to you, in this communication, facts that are well known to me.
In January of this year several persons informed me that there were indications of the preparation in different sections of Russia of a Jewish pogrom, and they appealed for my help to prevent such misfortune. Investigations that were made established the truth of their statements, and satisfied me of the participation by public officials in the preparations for a pogrom. They brought me on the trail of a printing-office in the police department.
On January 20, Count Witte, the president of the Council of Ministers, invited me to his office and asked me to give him my views on the Jewish question, and as to the reason for the participation of the Jewish proletariat in the revolutionary movement. After I had clearly presented to him my main point of view on the question, I told him that, aside from the judicial aspect of the question, there was another of great importance, namely, anti-Semitism, that not only existed because of the long-continued period in which the Jews were without rights, but because, as well, of the direct provocations against them on the part of persons in public authority. As a special indication of such provocation, I pointed to the incident of the printing-office in the police department, of whose output, however, I had no sufficient evidence in my hands, and Count Witte assigned to me, as an officer of the Minister of the Interior, the duty of making a close investigation into the matter.
I proved the following conclusively:
After the manifesto of the 17th October, 1905, thanks to the disturbances that broke out in many places after this act of the government, evidence of a reaction appeared in circumscribed sections of society. Ratschkowski, chief of the political division of the police department, an officer assigned to special duty by the Minister of the Interior, undertook to maintain and strengthen this reaction by the issuing of effective proclamations. They were printed by an officer of the gendarmerie, in the building of the gendarmerie in St. Petersburg, upon a printing-press that was taken from revolutionaries when a house search was made. I had in my hand one of these proclamations; it was addressed to the working people, bore the signature “Group of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg,” and sought to destroy the faith of working-men in their radical leaders by maintaining that these leaders had misappropriated funds that had been collected for the political campaign. This proclamation was not the only one that was printed in the headquarters of the gendarmerie; but at the time of investigation I could not get others because they had all been distributed.
As the printing-press that served the purpose of the revolutionaries failed to satisfy the present needs, a complete one was purchased at the expense of the police department that was capable of printing one thousand per hour. This was set up in the secret service section of the police department.
Captain Comisaroff was given its supervision, and two compositors were employed upon the work. On this machine there were printed in December, 1905, and in January, 1906, not one but a vast number of proclamations, all composed variously, but all of the same general tenor.
In all these proclamations, alongside of a condemnation of the revolutionary movement, the information was offered that non-believers, mainly the Jews, were responsible therefor, and their purpose was to provoke an uprising against these people.