organization following the assassination of his chief, Moisei Uritsky. Bokii was a participant in the Red Terror which was part and parcel of the Civil War which began in the summer of 1918, for example signing a list of 122 prominent hostages published in the Petrograd official newspaper on September 6, threatening their execution if even one more Soviet official was killed by terrorists. Despite this complicity, historian Alexander Rabinowitch indicates that Bokii was among the more moderate Bolshevik voices on the question of the use of terror in the summer of 1918, siding with Elena Stasova in opposing Grigory Zinoviev's call for a full scale Red Terror at a critical meeting held in the wake of Uritsky's killing. Whatever his personal views, Bokii as head of the Petrograd Cheka in the days after Uritsky's death was the ultimate authority behind the Red Terror in Petrograd and it was to him that the German government directed its complaints. The German consul in Petrograd was bombarded with letters demanding the release of individuals from countries under German protection who were swept up in the dragnet — over 1000 in all. On September 10, 1918 Bokii responded by forwarding to the Consul the text of a message he had sent to district soviets ordering the release of all citizens of nations under German protection against whom no specific evidence supporting charges of speculation or counterrevolutionary activity could be mustered. Bokii's explicit directive was largely ignored, however, and by the end of the month only about 200 out of the 1000 names provided by the Germans had been freed. Bokii's moderation with respect to the use of terror brought him into conflict with Zinoviev, who in mid-September 1918 was advancing the idea of distributing arms to the Petrograd workers and allowing them to administer mob justice against their perceived class enemies as they saw fit. Stasova seems to have felt that her ally Bokii was in physical danger if he remained in Petrograd without protection and she appealed to Yakov Sverdlov for his transfer to Moscow, outside of Zinoviev's fief. According to a biography of Bokii published in the last years of the Soviet Union, Bokii was successfully removed as head of the Petrograd Cheka by Zinoviev by the end of that month. Other sources indicate that Bokii remained as the head of the Petrograd secret police until November 1918, at which time