Perhaps this explains why, despite reams of evidence to the contrary in the archives of each respective ministry, Tsar Nicholas received nothing but glowing reports of prohibition’s benefits from the minister of war, Gen. Vladimir Sukhomlinov, Assistant Interior Minister Vasily Gurko, and Finance Minister Bark, among others.13 Widespread reports claimed that the tsar’s prohibition was “universally approved by all his official representatives and Russia’s best people.”14 Such glowing statements accompanied a mass of letters and petitions to the tsar from his grateful subjects imploring that he make the temporary measures into a permanent prohibition decree.15