Summing up, the writer says; “The Kishineff massacre has nothing to do with revolutionary tendencies. It is simply the result of systematic Jew-baiting, organised by M. Plehve, whose position is still unshaken, and who holds the Czar under his thumb by working upon his feelings and persuading him that the country is honeycombed with revolution and anarchy. No change is possible until M. Plehve has ceased to have the ear of the Czar. Further anti-Semitic disturbances are probable.”[181]
An American diplomatist endorses the statement that M. De Plehve was really responsible for the massacre,[182] while a Russian Prince affirms that the instigators of the massacre, such as the Moldavian Kruschevan, editor of the Bessarabets, “were under the personal protection of the Minister.”[183]
Despite the efforts of the Russian Government to represent the brutal outrage as due solely to a spontaneous explosion of popular fury arising from “national, religious, and economic hatred,”[184] certain facts which came to light during the mock trial, held towards the end of that year in the very scene of the massacre, seem to prove that, though such hatred did exist, the spark which set the mine on fire was not of popular origin. The passions of the people had been carefully inflamed by a pamphlet entitled Who is to blame?—the work of an anti-Semitic agitator of the name of Pronin, who was in relations with the proprietor of the Novoe Vremya, the eloquent exponent of Panslavism. But that was not all. Though special envoys of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior kept a watchful eye on the course of the proceedings; though the Court exerted itself to prevent the production of undesirable evidence; and though, in true mediaeval fashion, an attempt was made to lay the blame for the crime on the shoulders of the victims—by stories of a Jew’s assault on a Christian woman, of the desecration of churches and the murder of priests—yet the evidence given, even under such conditions, without absolving the populace, tends to establish the deliberate connivance, not to say the complicity, of the Government.
A Christian ex-mayor of the city and another respectable citizen of Kishineff both declared that, in their opinion, the contemptuous and intolerant attitude of the Christian population towards the Jews is due to the special legislation to which the latter are subjected. The ex-mayor further stated that throughout the riots the police and military authorities refused to intervene on behalf of the victims. The administrator of the properties of the monasteries in Bessarabia and two other witnesses deposed that they had repeatedly appealed to the police to protect the Jews, but in vain. A Jew, whose son had been butchered before his eyes, testified that he had fallen at the feet of a police officer and, leading him to the spot where the bodies of his son and another man were lying in pools of blood, had besought him, with tears in his eyes, to shield the survivors. The officer did not raise a finger in their defence. Several policemen also confessed that, on asking for orders from their superiors, the answer they had received was, “Let the Jews help themselves; we cannot help them.” General Beckmann deposed that at the commencement of the riots he had at his disposal a force amply sufficient to quell the disturbance, but he received no orders to act. “It was only,” he said, “when the Governor grew alarmed for the safety of the Christian population that he took measures to allay the fury of the mob.”[185] The myth of Jewish provocation was also disposed of by a police officer, who stated that, when the outbreak occurred, there was not a single Jew in the square in which the outrage was alleged to have taken place. To conclude, “evidence was given by physicians and others as to the mutilation of the bodies of murdered Jews, and two priests of the Orthodox Church testified that the report that the Jews had desecrated a church and murdered a priest was absolutely without foundation.”[186]
And the punishment for this wholesale assassination of a harmless and defenceless population?
Two men, convicted of murder, were sentenced to seven and five years’ penal servitude respectively.
Twenty-two others to periods of imprisonment, ranging from one to two years, and one to six months.
Forty-eight civil actions for damages that were brought against the accused were all dismissed.[187]
Even Richard the Crusader did better in 1189.
One luminous spot in the gloomy picture is the action of the Eastern Church. Not only did the priests and monks of Bessarabia exculpate the Jews from all provocation of the massacre, but even Father John of Kronstadt publicly condemned the dastardly crime of his co-religionists.