These restrictions were generally passed "outside the law," i.e., without their being previously submitted to the Council of State; they were simply brought up as suggestions before the Council of Ministers, and, after adoption by the latter, received legal sanction through ratification by the Tzar.

Without awaiting the results of the revision of Jewish legislation which it had itself undertaken, the Russian Government embarked enthusiastically upon the task of forging new chains for the hapless Jewish race.

For a number of years the High Commission was nothing more than a cover to screen these cruel experiments of the powers at the helm of the state.

At the very time in which the ministerial officials serving on the High Commission indulged in abstract speculations about the Jewish question and invented various methods for its solution, the Council of Ministers anticipated this solution in the spirit of rabid anti-Semitism, and was quick to give it effect in concrete life.
The wind which was blowing from the heights of Russian bureaucracy was decidedly unfavorable to the Jews.

The belated coronation of Alexander III., which took place in May, 1883, and, in accordance with Russian tradition, brought, in the form of an imperial manifesto, [1] various privileges and alleviations for different sections of the Russian population, left the Jews severely alone.