Your dead have died in vain, and neither you nor I Can say for what they gave their lives, and why.... No tears shall flow for you!--the Lord swears by His Name-- For though the pain be great, great also is the shame, And which of them the greater, thou, son of man, decide.... In picturing the memorial services held in honor of the Kishinev victims at the synagogues, he angrily exclaims in the name of God: Lift thine eyes and look how steeped they are in grief. You hear them cry and sob and mournful prayers read. You see them beat their breasts and for forgiveness plead.... What are they praying for?... Tell them to protest! To shake their fists at Me and justice to demand! Justice for all they've suffered throughout the generations, So that My Heaven and Throne shall quake to their foundations! Neither the pogroms at the beginning of the eighties, nor the Moscow atrocities at the beginning of the nineties can compare, in their soul-stirring effect upon Russian Jewry, with the massacre of Kishinev. It awakened the burning feeling of martyrdom, but with it also the feeling of heroism. All were seized by one and the same impulse--the organization of self-defence, as if to say: "Since the Government fails to defend our life and honor, then we ourselves are bound to defend it." The pogrom panic which spread over the entire South following upon the terrible days of April 6-7 led to the organization of self-defence societies in a number of cities. Plehve knew of these preparations, and found himself in a difficult position. He realized that these endeavors might interfere with the engineering of the pogroms, since the latter would no longer be safe for the murderers and plunderers, and he was, moreover, full of apprehension that these self-defence societies might become hotbeds of a revolutionary propaganda and provide a training ground for political demonstrations. These apprehensions were voiced in a circular issued at the end of April, in which the Minister instructed the governors, first, that "no self-defence societies should be tolerated," and, second, that the authorities should adopt measures for the "prevention of violence" and the "suppression of lawlessness." Subsequent events showed that the latter order was never put into effect. The first instruction, however, was carried out with relentless cruelty, and, during the following pogroms, the troops made it their first business to shoot down the members of the self-defence.