History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 3 [of 3] / From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day

by Simon Dubnow

2. The Russian St. Bartholomew Night

The principal victims of this protracted St. Bartholomew night were the new Huguenots of the emancipation movement—the Jews. They were to pay the penalty for having assisted in wresting from the despotic Government the manifesto with its promise of liberties. In the course of one week, nearly fifty anti-Jewish pogroms, accompanied by bloodshed, took place in various cities (Odessa, Kiev, Kishinev, Kalarash, Simferopol, Romny, Kremenchug, Chernigov, Nicholayev, Yekaterinoslav, Kamenetz-Podolsk, Yelisavetgrad, Orsha, etc.), in addition to several hundred "bloodless" pogroms, marked in regular fashion by the destruction of property, plunder, and incendiarism. The pogroms directed against the Christian participants in the emancipation movement, such as intellectuals, students, etc., in Tver, Tomsk, and other interior Russian cities, amounted in all to a score or two. This disproportion alone shows the direction in which the organized dark forces were active. The strict uniformity and consistency in the carrying out of the counter-revolutionary conspiracy was too palpable to be overlooked.

The customary procedure was as follows: In connection with the manifesto of October 17, the progressive elements would arrange a street procession, frequently adorned by the red flags of the left parties and accompanied by appropriate acclamations and speeches expressive of the new liberty. Simultaneously, the participants in the "patriotic demonstration"—consisting mostly of the scum of society, of detectives and police officials in plain clothes—would emerge from their nooks and crannies, carrying the portrait of the Tzar under the shadow of the national flag, singing the national hymn and shouting, "Hurrah, beat the Zhyds! The Zhyds are eager for liberty. They go against our Tzar to put a Zhyd in his place." These "patriotic" demonstrators would be accompanied by police and Cossack patrols (or soldiers), ostensibly to preserve order, but in reality to enable the hooligans to attack and maltreat the Jews and prevent the victims from defending themselves. As soon as the Jews assembled for self-defence, they would be driven off by the police and troops. Thereupon, the "patriotic" demonstrators and the accomplices, joining them on the way, would break up into small bands and disperse all over the city, invading Jewish houses and stores, ruin, plunder, beat, and sometimes slaughter entire families.

The most terrible pogrom took place in Odessa. It lasted fully four days. The rioters were openly assisted by the police and troops, and were encouraged by the active support of city-governor Neidthart, and the criminal inactivity of the military governor, Kaulbars. The heroism displayed by the Jewish self-defence was strong enough to beat off the hooligans, but it was powerless to defeat the troops and police. Over three hundred dead, thousands of wounded or crippled Jews, among them many who lost their minds from the horrors, one hundred and forty widows, five hundred and ninety-three orphans, and more than forty thousand Jews materially ruined—such were the results of the battle which was fought against the Jews of Odessa during October 18-21.

Approximately along the same lines the pogrom campaign was conducted in scores of other cities, with a few lurid departures from the customary ritual, as, for instance, in Nyezhin, in the government of Chernigov, where the Jewish community, headed by the rabbi, was forced by the rioters, under the pain of death, to pronounce publicly the oath of allegiance to the Tzar. As a rule the pogroms which occurred in hundreds of cities, towns, and villages, were limited to the destruction of property, although even in small localities, such as in Semyonovka, in the government of Chernigov, the riots were occasionally accompanied by massacres. It may be added that the outbreaks were not confined to the Pale of Settlement. In a number of cities outside the Pale, such as in Saratov, Voronyezh, and other places with a small Jewish population, the Jewish communities were ruthlessly attacked.

Contemporary history is not yet in a position to depict all the horrors which were perpetrated upon the Jews in Russia in the latter half of October, 1905, or to trace with any amount of accuracy their underlying causes. Let us draw a veil over this bloody spectacle. There will come a time when the world will shudder on learning the truth about the bloody happenings and about the real culprits of this prolonged Bartholomew night at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The sinister counter-revolution which broke out on October 17, the day on which the manifesto of the Tzar was promulgated, threatened to drag the revolution into the abyss of anarchy. All were profoundly aroused by the perfidious Byzantine policy of Nicholas II., who with one hand waved the peace banner before the progressive section of the Russian people, and with the other plunged a knife into its heart—a knife which most of all was to slash Jewry. Not only the parties of the extreme Left, but even the Constitutionalists who were willing to accept the promises of the October manifesto, had little faith in their ultimate realization. A reign of chaos ensued. The parties of the Left demanded now a democratic, now even a social, republic. The political and labor strikes, among them those arranged by the Jewish "Bund," assumed the character of anarchy. The peasant or agrarian movement burst forth, accompanied by the burning of manors and estates. Poland and the Baltic region were in the throes of terrorism. Moscow witnessed an armed uprising with barricades and with all the paraphernalia of a popular revolution (December, 1905). The Government quelled the Moscow rebellion, and resolutely adopted a policy of repression. Arrests, executions, punitive military expeditions, were the means by which the program of the Witte-Durnovo Cabinet was to be carried into effect.

The reactionary camarilla around the Tzar operated in full force, fanning the hatred against the Jews. On December 23, the Tzar received a deputation of the ringleaders of the Black Hundred, who had organized themselves in the "League of the Russian People." One of the speeches appealing to the Tzar to preserve autocracy was devoted to the Jewish question. The deputation begged the Tzar "not to give equal rights to the Jews." To this Nicholas replied laconically: "I shall think it over."