The term of expulsion was generally limited to twenty-four hours, or forty-eight hours, as if it involved the execution of a court-martial sentence.

And yet, the majority of the victims of expulsion were people who had lived in St.Petersburg for many years, and had succeeded in establishing homes and business places, which could not be liquidated within twenty-four hours or thereabout....

The hurried expulsions from the capital resulted in numerous conversions to Christianity....

Amusing stories circulated all over town concerning Jews who had decided to join the Christian Church, and had applied for permission to remain in the capital for one or two weeks--the time required by law for a preliminary training in the truths of the new faith--but whose petition was flatly refused because the police believed that a similar training might also be received within the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement.
As a matter of fact, fictitious conversions of this kind were but seldom resorted to in the fight against governmental violence.

As a rule, the evasion of the "law" was effected by less harmful, perhaps, but no less humiliating and even tragic fictions.