The group which prepared the murder of the Tzar comprised but one Jewish member, a woman by the name of Hesia Helfman, who, moreover, played but a secondary role in the conspiracy, by keeping a secret residence for toe revolutionaries.

Nevertheless, in the official circles, which were anxious to justify their oppression of the Jews, it became customary to refer to the "important role" played by the Jews in the Russian revolution.
It was with preconceived notions of this kind that Alexander III.
ascended the throne of Russia, a sovereign with unlimited power but with a very limited political horizon.

Being a Russian of the old-fashioned type and a zealous champion of the Greek-Orthodox Church, he shared the anti-Jewish prejudices of his environment.

Already as crown prince he ordered that a monetary reward be given to the notorious Lutostanski, who had presented him with his libellous pamphlet "Concerning the Use of Christian Blood by the Jews." [1] During the Russo-Turkish war of 1877, when as heir-apparent he was in command of one of the Balkan armies, he allowed himself to be persuaded that the abuses in the Russian commissariat were due to the "Jewish" purveyors who supplied the army.
[2] This was all that was known about Judaism in the circles from which the ruler of five million Jews derived his information.
[Footnote 1: See p.

203.] [Footnote 2: The business firm in question was that of Greger, Horvitz, and Kohan, of whom the first was a Greek, and the second a converted Jew.