Devoted to medievalism, he urged the return to a Russian civilization. Alexander III attacked and persecuted liberals and revolutionaries alike. He did not though revert to reestablishing serfdom or canceling many of the judicial reforms. The most influential person during his reign was Pobestonostov, his financier and procurator of the Holy Synod, who earned the title "the Second Torquemada". The newspapers in Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa began a campaign against the Jews. The outcome of the anti-Jewish pogroms, which were to continue almost unabated until 1905, sparked the mass emigration of Jews from Russia and its environs to the West.