The accused were put on the rack and confessed their "crimes." Voznitzin admitted having embraced "the Jewish law," and having uttered "blasphemous words against the Holy Church," while Borukh Leibov owned that he had "seduced" Voznitzin from the path of Greek Orthodoxy. In addition, Borukh was accused of having, "together with other Jews," predisposed the common people in Smolensk in favor of the Jewish religion, and of having insulted, by word and deed, the local Russian Pope Abramius, in connection with the establishment of a Jewish synagogue in the village of Zverovich. The latter crimes, however, were not investigated further in view of the fact that the conversion of Voznitzin was sufficient to inflict the death penalty on Borukh. The Inquisitorial Court hastened to announce its verdict, basing it upon the "statute" of Tzar Alexis Michaelovich. The report of the Senate elicited in 1738 an Imperial resolution,[213] decreeing that "both of them [Voznitzin and Borukh] shall be executed and burned, in order that other ignorant and godless people, witnessing this, shall not turn away from the Christian law, and such seducers as the above-mentioned Jew Borukh shall not dare to lead them astray from the Christian law and convert them to their own laws." The _auto-da-fé_ took place in St. Petersburg, on a public square, in the presence of a large crowd of spectators, on July 15, 1738. This one isolated incident was sufficient to rekindle in the Government circles of St. Petersburg the inveterate Muscovite hatred against "unbaptized Jews" and to justify further violence against them. It had come to the knowledge of the authorities that, contrary to the ukase of 1727, numerous Jews were still residing in Little Russia, being employed on the estates of the Russian landowners as arendars and innkeepers. It had also been ascertained that the Jews who came from the Polish part of the Ukraina to visit the fairs in many cases settled permanently in Little Russia. The Government found such a state of affairs unendurable. In 1739 the Senate decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Little Russia, whither in recent years they had penetrated "from the other side of the Dnieper." In reply to this Senatorial rescript, the Military Chancellery of Little Russia reported that an immediate expulsion of the Jews was fraught with danger, on account of the war with Turkey, which was going on at that time, "since their present expulsion might be accompanied by spying." The Cabinet of Ministers, acting upon the representation of the Senate, passed the resolution, that "the expulsion of the Jews shall be postponed until the termination of the present Turkish War." When the war was over, Empress Anna issued an ukase, in 1740, ordering the execution of the postponed expulsion. The number of Jews liable to expulsion was found to be 292 of the male sex and 281 of the female sex, who resided on 130 manorial estates, altogether a handful of 573 Jewish