THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE PAHLEN COMMISSION Whilst the Russian bureaucrats who had been ordered by the Tzar to take "active" measures towards solving the Jewish problem abandoned themselves entirely to a policy of repression, those of their fellow-bureaucrats who had been commissioned to consider and judge the same question from a purely theoretic point of view came to the conclusion that the repressive policy pursued by the Government was not only injurious but even dangerous.

Contrary to expectations, the "High Commission" under the chairmanship of Count Pahlen, consisting of aged dignitaries and members of various ministries, approached the Jewish question, at least as far as the majority of the Commission was concerned, in a much more serious frame of mind than did the promoters of the "active" anti-Jewish policies, who had no time for contemplation and were driven by the pressure of their reactionary energy to go ahead at all cost.

In the course of five years the Pahlen Commission succeeded in investigating the Jewish question in all its aspects.

It studied and itself prepared a large mass of historic, juridic, as well as economic and statistical material.

It probed the labors of Ignatyev's gubernatorial commissions, quickly ascertaining their biased tendency, and examined the entire history of the preceding legislation concerning the Jews.