Parallel to the official repression, Nicholas, under the influence of Pobedonostsev and another old Mend of his father’s, Prince Vladimir Meshcherski, a paleo-fascist, whose incendiary propaganda sheet, Grashdanin (The Citizen) was the only newspaper he regularly read, encouraged the formation of monarchist-nationalist vigilante groups. These gangs, later known as the “Black Hundred” bands (after one of the medieval guilds), specialized in protecting the throne by beating, robbing, and killing Jews. Nicholas strongly approved. Jews were “nine-tenths of the trouble,” he explained to his mother,
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