I had in my hands three proclamations that were printed in the printing-office of the police department. As I positively proved, they were not the only ones; the fourth one was just set up at that moment (February 3). It contained the most ridiculous complaints against the Jews, and urged that they be boycotted in the Duma elections. But of the printed proclamations that I had in my hand one appears especially as law violating; the author, addressing himself to the soldiers, calls upon the army for a campaign against “the Poles, Armenians, and Jews.” Thousands of copies were printed, of every proclamation. Of the proclamation addressed to the soldiers, 5,000 copies were sent to Vilna by the officers on special duty to Mr. Schkott, the governor-general, for distribution in that city. Schkott distributed a portion of them himself in the evening in the streets of the city, and gave the rest of them to the chief of police of Vilna, who, on January 28, telegraphed to the police department that in view of the great success that attended the distribution of the proclamation addressed to the soldiers, to send him a new lot. Several thousand copies more were printed and sent on to the Vilna chief of police. The same proclamation was sent in thousands of copies to Kursk, being taken by Surgeon Michailoff, assigned there to duty, who, at the request of M. Ratschkowski, was appointed secret agent of the police department. Michailoff also telegraphed (February 1 or 2) for a new lot of these proclamations in view of their great success among the soldiers. Aside from these, the appeals printed by the police department were distributed in St. Petersburg through M. Dubrovin, and the League of the Russian People, over which he presided; in Moscow through the publisher of the “Viedomosti,” Gringmut, who was given a large number of these appeals in December, 1905, by Ratschkowski personally.
The provocative appeals of the police department were also distributed in other states, by the police and gendarmerie.
All that is narrated above I imparted in January of this year to Count Witte, president of the committee of ministers, and I gave him specimens of all the proclamations above referred to (for that reason I have none at hand for present use). Count Witte at once called before him Captain Comisaroff, who acknowledged the truth of all this information. To me, also, he confirmed all these statements without exception. At the same time he declared that he acted under orders of Herr Ratschkowski; that he then presented the text of the proclamation to Wuitsch, the director of the police department, and did not at any time put them in type until the director stated in writing that he had read the proclamation.
Express orders were issued by Secretary of State Witte that the printing-office of the police department should be wiped out of existence. However Captain Comisaroff merely took apart the printing-press as a precaution against the printing of further proclamations, by order of Ratschkowski, in spite of Witte’s orders; and to make that altogether impossible the press was taken from the police department to the residence of Captain Comisaroff.
Aside from this and altogether without regard thereto, Your Excellency was confidentially informed that the proclamations which called for the extermination of the Jews in the city of Alexandrovsk (Yekaterinoslaff government) were circulated even after all the uprisings ceased, even after December 27, 1905; I consider it my duty to attach herewith a specimen of a proclamation that was distributed in the city of Alexandrovsk February 7 and 8, and that called for the extermination of the Jews on the 9th of February, the anniversary of the breaking out of the war with Japan.
Your Excellency was confidentially informed that the officer for special duty, Ratschkowski, remained at the head of the political division of the police department until the end of April; that although this office was wiped out by the highest authority, he remained at the head of the entire secret and protective police; that the right was given him to supervise, so far as he deemed it necessary, the course of all political occurrences and trials that affected the police department, and he was further authorized to utilize the social organizations in the interest of the government.
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Permit me, sir, to regard it as my moral duty, aside from imparting to you this information, to convey to you, as a former director of the police department, the reasons, incomprehensible at a first glance, why it is not only impossible for the central government to suppress the pogrom politics of the local authorities when the organization of a pogrom originates with them, but not even to be well informed as to the organization of the pogrom itself. One of these reasons is the freedom from punishment of the officers of the government who are responsible for the pogroms—no proof need be given of this. But there are other reasons of a general character; at the time I was director of the police department a pogrom occurred; that of Kishineff. The foreign and our own illegal press that then had the privilege to speak out on our internal conditions as well as several circles of society, put upon the police department the responsibility for the organization of this pogrom. There was no responsibility that could be attached to the police department; yet the charge was not groundless in so far as they started out with the supposition that the police department and the ministry of the interior were possessed of all possible power. In spite of the closest investigation as to the participation of officers of the government in the organization of the Kishineff pogrom, it was impossible for me; as director of the police department, to absolutely prove the fact, and yet there could be no doubt whatever of their participation. And what is especially characteristic, the secret working of the pogrom organization became clear to me only after I ceased to hold an official position in the ministry of the interior.
And in such a position does every official of the central government find himself if he yields no sympathy to pogrom politics. That is to be accounted for by the fact that the minister of the interior and the central political organization are altogether powerless—the police and the gendarmerie are not in his hands, but precisely the reverse: he is in the hands of the superiors of these officials. The fact is that, through the organization of the secret political police, because of the exceptional law providing for extraordinary military protection, and I the long continuance of that condition in the country, the whole power has been transferred from above to below.
Aside from the continued causes that have been uncovered, the weakness of the governmental authority, there are existing at present other causes.