HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III
by S.M. Dubnow
A Project Gutenberg EBook
2. THE INITIATION OF THE POGROM POLICY
The catastrophe of March 1 had the natural effect of
pushing not only
the Government but also a large part of the Russian
people, who had been
scared by the spectre of anarchy, in the direction of
reactionary
politics. This retrograde tendency was bound to affect
the Jewish
question. The bacillus of Judaeophobia [1] became astir
in the
politically immature minds which had been unhinged by the
acts of
terrorism. The influential press organs, which maintained
more or less
close relations with the leading Government spheres,
adopted more and
more a hostile attitude towards the Jews. The
metropolitan newspaper
_Novoye Vremya_ ("The New Time") [2] which at
that time embarked upon
its infamous career as the semi-official organ of the
Russian reaction,
and a number of provincial newspapers subsidized by the
Government
suddenly began to speak of the Jews in a tone which
suggested that they
were in the possession of some terrible secret.
[Footnote 1: The term used in Russia for anti-Semitism.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 205.]
Almost on the day following the attempt on the life of
the Tzar, the
papers of this ilk began to insinuate that the Jews had a
hand in
it, and shortly thereafter the South-Russian press
published alarming
rumors about proposed organized attacks upon the Jews of
that region.
These rumors were based on facts. A sinister agitation
was rife among
the lowest elements of the Russian population, while
invisible hands
from above seemed to push it on toward the commission of
a gigantic
crime. In the same month of March, mysterious emissaries
from St.
Petersburg made their appearance in the large cities of
South Russia,
such as Yelisavetgrad (Elizabethgrad), Kiev, and Odessa,
and entered
into secret negotiations with the highest police
officials concerning a
possible "outburst of popular indignation against
the Jews" which they
expected to take place as part of the economic conflict,
intimating the
undesirability of obstructing the will of the Russian
populace by police
force. Figures of Great-Russian tradesmen and laborers,
or _Katzaps,_ as
the Great Russians are designated in the Little-Russian
South, began to
make their appearance in the railroad cars and at the
railroad stations,
and spoke to the common people of the summary punishment
soon to be
inflicted upon the Jews or read to them anti-Semitic
newspaper articles.
They further assured them that an imperial ukase had been
issued,
calling upon the Christians to attack the Jews during the
days of the
approaching Greek-Orthodox Easter.
Although many years have passed since these events, it
has not yet been
possible to determine the particular agency which carried
on this pogrom
agitation among the Russian masses. Nor has it been
possible to find out
to what extent the secret society of high officials,
which had been
formed in March, 1881, under the name of "The Sacred
League," with the
object of defending the person of the Tzar and engaging
in a terroristic
struggle with the "enemies of the public
order," [1] was implicated in
the movement. But the fact itself that, the pogroms were
carefully
prepared and engineered is beyond doubt: it may be
inferred from the
circumstance that they broke out almost simultaneously in
many places of
the Russian South, and that everywhere they followed the
same routine,
characterized by the well-organized "activity"
of the mob and the
deliberate inactivity of the authorities.
[Footnote 1: The League existed until the autumn of 1882.
Among its
members were Pobyedonostzev and the anti-Jewish Minister
Ignatyev.]
The first outbreak of the storm took place in
Yelisavetgrad
(Elizabethgrad), a large city in New Russia, [1] with a
Jewish
population of fifteen thousand souls. On the eve of the
Greek-Orthodox
Easter, the local Christians, meeting on the streets and
in the stores,
spoke to one another of the fact that "the Zhyds are
about to be
beaten." The Jews became alarmed. The police,
prepared to maintain
public order during the first days of the Passover,
called out a small
detachment of soldiers. In consequence, the first days of
the festival
passed quietly, and on the fourth day, [2] on April 15,
the troops were
removed from the streets.
[Footnote 1: On the term New Russia see p. 40, n. 3.]
[Footnote 2: The Greek-Orthodox Passover lasts officially
three days,
but an additional day is celebrated by the populace.]
At that moment the pogrom began. The organizers of the
riots sent a
drunken Russian into a saloon kept by a Jew, where he
began to make
himself obnoxious. When the saloon-keeper pushed the
trouble maker out
into the street, the crowd, which was waiting outside,
began to shout:
"The Zhyds are beating our people," and threw
themselves upon the Jews
who happened to pass by.
This evidently was the prearranged signal for the pogrom.
The Jewish
stores in the market-place were attacked and demolished,
and the goods
looted or destroyed. At first, the police, assisted by
the troops,
managed somehow to disperse the rioters. But on the
second day the
pogrom was renewed with greater energy and better
leadership, amidst the
suspicious inactivity both of the military and police
authorities. The
following description of the events is taken from the
records of the
official investigation which were not meant for
publication and are
therefore free from the bureaucratic prevarications
characteristic of
Russian public documents:
During the night from the 15th to the 16th of April, an
attack was
made upon Jewish houses, primarily upon liquor stores,
on the
outskirts of the town, on which occasion one Jew was
killed. About
seven o'clock in the morning, on April 16, the excesses
were
renewed, spreading with extraordinary violence all over
the city.
Clerks, saloon and hotel waiters, artisans, drivers,
flunkeys, day
laborers in the employ of the Government, and soldiers
on
furlough--all of these joined the movement. The city
presented an
extraordinary sight: streets covered with feathers and
obstructed
with broken furniture which had been thrown out of the
residences;
houses with broken doors and windows; a raging mob,
running about
yelling and whistling in all directions and continuing
its work of
destruction without let or hindrance, and, as a
finishing touch to
this picture, complete indifference displayed by the
local
non-Jewish inhabitants to the havoc wrought before
their eyes. The
troops which had been summoned to restore order were
without
definite instructions, and, at each attack of the mob
on another
house, would wait for orders of the military or police
authorities,
without knowing what to do. As a result of this
attitude of the
military, the turbulent mob, which was demolishing the
houses and
stores of the Jews before the eyes of the troops,
without being
checked by them, was bound to arrive at the conclusion
that the
excesses in which it indulged were not an illegal
undertaking but
rather a work which had the approval of the Government.
Toward
evening the disorders increased in intensity, owing to
the arrival
of a large number of peasants from the adjacent
villages, who were
anxious to secure part of the Jewish loot. There was no
one to check
these crowds; the troops and police were helpless. They
had all lost
heart, and were convinced that it was Impossible to
suppress the
disorders with the means at hand. At eight o'clock at
night a rain
came down accompanied by a cold wind which helped in a
large measure
to disperse the crowd. At eleven o'clock fresh troops
arrived on the
spot. On the morning of April 17 a new battalion of infantry
came,
and from that day on public order was no longer
violated in
Yelisavetgrad.
The news of the "victory" so easily won over
the Jews of Yelisavetgrad
aroused the dormant pogrom energy in the unenlightened
Russian masses.
In the latter part of April riots took place in many
villages of the
Yelisavetgrad district and in several towns and townlets
in the
adjoining government of Kherson. In the villages, the
work of
destruction was limited to the inns kept by Jews--many
peasants
believing that they were acting in accordance with
imperial orders. In
the towns and townlets, all Jewish houses and stores were
demolished and
their goods looted. In the town of Ananyev, in the
government of
Kherson, the people were incited by a resident named
Lashchenko, who
assured his townsmen that the central Government had
given orders to
massacre the Jews because they had murdered the Tzar, and
that these
orders were purposely kept back by the local
administration. The
instigator was seized by the police, but was wrested from
it by the
crowd which thereupon threw itself upon the Jews. The
riots resulted in
some two hundred ruined houses and stores in the
outskirts of the town,
where the Jewish proletariat was cooped up. The central
part of the
town, where the more well-to-do Jews had their
residences, was guarded
by the police and by a military detachment, and therefore
remained
intact.
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