Now it was the turn of the Hasidim to retaliate on their persecutors. In view of the fact that the persecutions against them had been instigated by the Kahal elders of Vilna, who had composed the "Committee of Five," the Hasidim made up their mind to depose these elders and put their own partisans in their places. With the help of bakhshish the Vilna Hasidim managed to secure the good-will of the gubernatorial administration. In the beginning of 1799 they lodged a complaint with the local authorities against the Kahal elders, charging them with having perpetrated all kinds of abuses, including the embezzlement of public funds. This action resulted in the removal and imprisonment of several elders. Under official pressure their places were filled by new elders, who either were themselves Hasidim or had been recommended by them. The community of Vilna was rent in twain. One section remained true to the dismissed elders, the other stood up for the newly-elected. The warring factions were busy sending complaints and denunciations directed against each other to the Government in St. Petersburg. The canker of "informing," which, perhaps not accidentally, had developed in the first years of Russian rule in Lithuania, brought to the front one hideous personality, a rabbi-informer by the name of Avigdor Haïmovich (son of Hayyim), of Pinsk. Avigdor, formerly rabbi of Pinsk and the surrounding district, had been dismissed from office owing to the intrigues of the Hasidic members of the community, who were his opponents. What Avigdor lamented most was the loss of revenue. For a long time the dethroned shepherd had been dragging his flock through the magistracies and law courts. Having failed in his efforts, he decided to wreak vengeance upon the leader of the sect responsible for his ruin. In the beginning of 1800 Avigdor addressed an elaborate petition to Tzar Paul I., in which he described the Hasidic sect as "a pernicious and dangerous organization," which was continuing the work of the former Messianic Sabbatians. By a vast array of distorted quotations from Hasidic literature the informer endeavored to prove that the teachers of the sect enjoined upon their followers to fear only God and not men, in other words, to disregard the authorities, including the Tzar.