REFUGEES 
165 
of refugees had already been set up. It had special subcommittees 
at work for each of the following services: statistical, information, 
evacuation, settlement of refugees, transport, children’s aid, public 
health, and labor exchange. 
On August 5, 1915, the Ministry of the Interior introduced in 
the Duma a bill “to provide for the needs of the refugees.” The bill 
contained provision for the organization at Petrograd of a Special 
Council for Refugees which was to be presided over by the Minister 
of the Interior; locally, the executive functions were to be entrusted 
to committees acting under the chairmanship and direction of the 
provincial governors. In the legislative chambers the bill was con- 
siderably amended. In its final form it vested all powers for dealing 
with refugees locally in the municipalities and the zemstvos and it 
did away with the chairmanship of the provincial governors. How- 
ever, the law approved by the Emperor on August 30, 1915, pro- 
vided that the Minister of the Interior should be personally at the 
head of the entire organization of refugee relief. An advisory body 
known as the Special Council, a majority of whose members were to 
be appointed by the Minister, was attached to the Ministry. 
The Ministry did by no means contemplate a concentration of 
refugee relief work under the control of the Unions of Zemstvos and 
of Towns. At first, the Special Council simply ignored the com- 
munications received from the Central Committees of the Unions of 
Zemstvos and of Towns, appropriations were delayed, and the ques- 
tion of the participation of the unions in the relief of the refugees 
was postponed from one meeting to another. To coordinate the 
work of the many and motley organizations in existence, the Special 
Council decided to draw up an “instruction for the settlement of the 
refugees.” The elaboration of the instruction dragged on till March 
2, 1916, and it introduced considerable changes into the law of 
August 30, 1915, by creating provincial joint-committees locally 
under the chairmanship of the governors, a thing that had been 
vigorously opposed in the Duma as well as in the State Council.t 
As a rule, appropriations granted for local needs had to be sub- 
mitted to the approval of the governors. 
In the course of the lengthy discussions of these new regulations, 
the attitude of the Government as regards the place to be assigned 
® The upper house of the Russian legislature.