In the provinces the pogrom mania invaded even the Soviets, not mentioning the Red Army which became more and more infected with it. According to the Kiev _Naiye Zait_, in the Vitebsk Soviet shouts were heard, "Chase the Jews out of the Soviets and its institutions!" In the Yaroslavl Soviet, according to information printed in the Moscow Social-Democratic newspaper, _Vperiod_, there were often heard insulting and shameful cries directed against the Jews. In Smolensk, according to _Svobodnaya Rossia_, members of the Red Army would come to the Soviet and demand that Jews be barred from holding posts as war commissaries and commanders. A lively anti-Semitic propaganda was carried on in Moscow and Petrograd, too, though it never reached the stage of a pogrom. In Petrograd anti-Jewish posters, signed by a "Kamorra of the People's Revenge," were spread broadcast. As a result of the apprehensiveness aroused, detachments for self-defense were organized by the Jews of Moscow. In Petrograd the Bolshevist authorities did not permit the organization of self-defense bodies, fearing lest the weapons of the self-defense detachments be turned against the Soviet. Upon the initiative of the Petrograd Jewish Community the day of May 23, 1918, was designated as a Jewish National Day of Mourning throughout Russia as a protest against the latter-day Jewish pogroms in Russia. On that day the Jews were to close all their business establishments, not to issue newspapers, etc., etc. The May 23d issue of the Petrograd Jewish daily, _Unser Tagblat_, appeared in a black border and was full of articles relating to anti-Jewish attacks and pogroms, entitled: "Protest by Mourning," "Let Jewish Blood Boil," "The Day of Sorrow," "The Bloody Roll (Statistics Concerning Jewish Pogroms)." To convey to the reader the substance of these articles I will quote the closing words of the article, "The Bloody Roll": "The old tsarist, bloody Russia, fell, and a new Russia, a radical-Socialist, a communist, Russia came in its place. And still, as before, we stand facing a roster of Jewish pogroms, a roster which is, as yet, far from ended, as each day adds new names, new victims, and new massacres."