World War was fought, at least in part, under the banner of liberating small nations and granting them sovereignty and self-determination. But for the five million within the multinational Russian Empire, the war brought new miseries and the antithesis of liberation, renewed oppression. In 1915 much of the fighting on the Eastern front took place in the Pale of Settlement, uprooting thousands of already impoverished Jews, and forcing propertyless hordes to flee eastward into the Empire. Nevertheless, Jewish Duma deputy N. M. Fridman maintained although Jews live and have lived under exceptionally burdensome legal conditions . . . they have always felt they were citizens of Russia and sons of the fatherland.' But as Russian military operations continued to result in a chain of defeats, Russian military officials, particularly General Ianushkevich, began to intensify the persecution of these true sons of the fatherland, who were frequently accused-arbitrarily and often en masse-of betraying the Russian armies. In the Duma, an astonished Social Democratic deputy, N. Chkheidze, queried whether ever before there had been a government so cynical it took hostages from among its own subjects. I declare, he continued, that this has no precedent in history.2 The program of the majority coalition of the Fourth Duma, the Progressive Bloc, drawn up and published in August 1915, included the call for entry upon the path of abolishing restrictions on the rights of Jews, and in particular, further steps toward abolishing the Pale of Settlement, facilitating admission to educational institutions, and removing obstacles to free choice of profession. Restoration of