At the second meeting of the conference, the rabbi of St. Petersburg, Dr. Drabkin, reported to the delegates about his last conversation with Ignatyev. In reply to the rabbi who had stated that the Jews were waiting for an imperial word ordering the suppression of the pogroms, and were anticipating the removal of their legal disabilities, the Minister had characterized these assertions as "commonplaces," and had added in an irritated tone: "The Jews themselves are responsible for the pogroms. By joining the Nihilists they thereby deprive the Government of the possibility of sheltering them against violence." The sophistry of the Minister was refuted on the spot by his own confession that the Balta pogrom was due to "a false rumor charging the Jews with having undermined the local Greek-Orthodox church," in other words, that the cause of the Balta pogrom was not to be traced to any tendencies within Jewry but rather to the agitation of evil-minded Jew-baiters. At the same session, the discussion of the emigration question was side-tracked by a new design of the slippery Minister. The financier Samuel Polakov, who was close to Ignatyev, declared in a spirit of base flunkeyism that the labors of the conference would prove fruitless unless they were carried on in accordance with "Government instructions." On this occasion he informed the conference that in a talk which he had with the Minister the latter had branded the endeavors to stimulate emigration as "an incitement to sedition," on the ground that "emigration does not exist for Russian citizens." Asked by the Minister for suggestions as to the best means of relieving the congestion of the Jews in the Pale, Polakov had replied: "By settling them all over Russia." To this the Minister had retorted that he could not allow the settlement of Jews except in Central Asia and in the newly conquered oasis of Akhal-Tekke, [1] In obedience to these ministerial utterances, the obsequious financier sharply opposed the plan of a Jewish emigration to foreign lands, and seriously recommended to the conference to consider the proposal made by Ignatyev. The Minister's suggestion was bitterly attacked by Dr. Mandelstamm, who saw in it a new attempt to make sport of the Jews, Even Professor Bakst, who objected to emigration on principle, declared that the proposed scheme of settling the Jews amounted in reality to "a deportation to far-off places" and was tantamount to an official "classification of the Jews as criminals." [Footnote 1: In the Trans-Caspian region. It had been occupied by Russian troops shortly before--in 1880.]