Only in the East of Europe restrictions continued. Czar Alexander I in 1804 issued a law which encouraged the Jews to take up agricultural pursuits and acquire secular knowledge. This step was isolated, and in the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855) the Jews were subjected to terrible persecutions, the worst of which was that children were forcibly taken from the houses of their parents and brought up in barracks as soldiers to serve twenty-five years after they had reached the age required for the army. Under Alexander II (1855-1881) a slow improvement in exceptional cases took place. Jews who engaged in manufacturing or business enterprises, skilled mechanics and those who had received a college education, were exempt from most of the disabilities imposed on the masses, but the condition of the latter was not changed. They were still restricted in their rights of residence and occupation and excluded from all political rights. With the assassination of Alexander II a new era of persecutions began. This culminated in bloody riots, which spread over a great part of Southern Russia and were periodically repeated afterwards. The bloodiest persecutions were those of Kishineff and Homel in 1903, and of Odessa and a great many other cities in Southern Russia in 1905, and of Bialystok in 1906, when more than a thousand people lost their lives. Even further restrictions were introduced. Thus a law of May 3, 1882, prohibited the residence of Jews in rural districts and the acquisition of rural estates, and while in former times the acquisition of secular knowledge by Jews was encouraged by the government, laws of December 5, 1886, and July 6, 1887, restricted the attendance of Jewish students at high schools and universities to a percentage ranging from three to ten. While the Jews obtained the right to participate in the elections of the Duma, the Imperial Parliament, they have no right to participate in municipal elections and are represented in the municipal boards only by a few members who are appointed by the government. They are also excluded from the county boards, Zemstvo.