In 1875, a former friend of Kostomarov, one M. Yuzefovich, reported to authorities on the separatist tendencies of this work of the Kiev Hromada. As a result a commission was appointed consisting of him, the Ministers Timashev and Tolstoy and the Chief of the Gendarmes, Potapov, to study the dangerous situation that prevailed in “Little Russia.” The committee reported that, “the entire literary activity of the so-called Ukrainophiles must be considered as an attempt on the national unity and wholeness of Russia, only hidden by plausible forms.” As a result, the Tsar issued an order on May 18, 1876, forbidding the importation of books printed abroad in the Little Russian dialect and also forbidding the printing and publishing in the Empire of original works and translations in this dialect with the exception only of: “(a) historical documents and monuments; (b) works of belles-lettres, but with the proviso that with the printing of historical monuments there must be kept the correct orthography of the originals; in works of belles-lettres there must not be allowed any deviations from the generally accepted Russian orthography and that the permission to print works of belles-lettres should be given not otherwise than after the examination of the manuscripts in the Central Administration of the Press; and (c) forbidding various theatrical presentations and readings in the Little Russian dialect and also the printing of such a text to musical notes.” It is well to note the emphasis laid upon spelling in this decree. In the seventeenth century Great Russian had been taught from Ukrainian Church Slavonic grammars, as that of Smotritsky, and the students had been taught to make the necessary corrections in pronunciation. Once practice had brought to these letters the Russian values during the intervening centuries, the acceptance of the Russian pronunciation made difficulties for the pronunciation of Ukrainian words. Kulish had prepared a new alphabet which retained the Cyrillic script but which was suited to Ukrainian and this was being generally accepted by the modern Ukrainian authors. It was to resist this influence that the government decided not only to bar the new literature, but even where it allowed it, to bar the new alphabet and thus create another obstacle to the spread of the “Little Russian dialect.” The result might have been foreseen. Some of the more timorous souls dropped away from literature and consented to write in Great Russian. The others who were more determined, worked the harder to enter Galicia and to profit by the relative freedom there. The decree merely furnished more fuel to the fire and instead of ending the Ukrainian movement it caused it to take even more extreme forms.