solemnly saluted by the officers and men of the Czar's army. But the
rejoicing was premature, as the events of a few hours clearly proved. With
that fatal vacillation which characterized his whole life, Nicholas II had
no sooner issued his Manifesto than he surrendered once more to the evil
forces by which he was surrounded and harked back to the old ways. The day
following the issuance of the Manifesto, while the people were still
rejoicing, there began a series of terrible pogroms. The cry went forth,
"Kill the Intellectuals and the Jews!"

There had been organized in support of the government, and by its agents,
bodies of so-called "patriots." These were, in the main, recruited from the
underworld, a very large number of them being criminals who were released
from the prison for the purpose. Officially known as the Association of
the Russian People and the Association to Combat the Revolution, these
organizations were popularly nicknamed the Black Hundreds. Most of the
members were paid directly by the government for their services, while
others were rewarded with petty official positions. The Czar himself
accepted membership in these infamous organizations of hired assassins.
Within three weeks after the issuance of the Manifesto more than a hundred
organized pogroms took place, the number of killed amounting to nearly four
thousand; the wounded to more than ten thousand, according to the most
competent authorities. In Odessa alone more than one thousand persons were
killed and many thousands wounded in a four-days' massacre. In all the
bloody pages of the history of the Romanovs there is nothing comparable to
the frightful terror of this period.

Naturally, this brutal vengeance and the deception which Nicholas II and
his advisers had practised upon the people had the immediate effect of
increasing the relative strength and prestige of the Socialists in the
revolutionary movement as against the less radical elements. To meet such