The former Governor of Bessarabia, the General Von Raaben, had not, when in office, sent to the central Government authorities any request whatever, asking for authorisation to use force against the Kishineff miscreants. All communications with the Governor of Bessarabia relating to the disturbances in Kishineff were limited to the following proceedings:
1. Having received in the night on the 7th of April a telegram announcing the outbreak of disturbances, the Minister of the Interior, who was at the time staying in Moscow, had made, on the 7th of April, a personal report of this news to his Majesty, and had received the Emperor’s instructions directing him to send to the Governor von Raaben an implicit order to put an immediate end to the disturbances by any means at his disposal, however they may be resolute and harsh. The Minister, accordingly, sent to the Governor of Bessarabia an urgent telegram giving this order.
2. The same day the Minister of the Interior, of his own accord, sent to the Governor of Bessarabia another telegram declaring the town Kishineff and its district in the state of enforced security (something of a state of siege), and this was made in order to give the Governor the means of inflicting, by way of administrative power, punishment on persons who assemble in crowds on the streets.
3. On receiving the report of the Director of the Police Department who was sent by the Minister to Kishineff in order to investigate in person as to the cause of the disturbances, and the means taken to quell them, and render their recurrence impossible, the Minister of the Interior had written to the General Von Raaben a letter, requesting him to dismiss the chief of the town police in Kishineff for failing to make an effective use of the power he was invested with as an official responsible for the security of the town inhabitants. And, lastly,
4. The Minister of the Interior had, by telegram, informed the General Von Raaben that his Majesty had, for the same reasons, ordered him to be dismissed.
No other communications had passed, on the question of the Kishineff riots, between the Minister of the Interior and the Governor of Bessarabia.
CHAPTER X
IV. AN IMPARTIAL ACCOUNT
IT will be observed that M. de Plehve ignores altogether the part played by the Bessarabetz in the period which led up to the massacres. He makes mention of the fact that he sent the chief Director of Police to investigate the origin of the assassinations and the conduct of the officials. But he omits all mention of the petition presented to the Director-General Lopoukhine, in behalf of the relations of victims, in which the responsibility of this paper was clearly demonstrated in no less than thirty-five marked copies, handed to the Director-General, containing in citations to murder the Jews, and to drive them from Russia.
M. de Plehve next asserts that the “nearest cause of the outburst” was the striking of a Christian woman on Easter Day in the market place “by a Jew proprietor of a carousing machine.” Here again the Minister has been badly informed by his subordinates.