The Jews, naturally enough, could not be forgotten. Besides the danger which, in common with the other distressed and disaffected subjects, they constitute to the Russian State, there were less negative reasons for their propitiation. The Russian Government was anxious to replenish the Treasury, emptied by the unfortunate war. The Jewish financiers of the West constitute a great power, and that power is known to entertain a deep and abiding hostility towards Russia. Jewish capitalists the world over are actuated by a strong desire to avenge the wrongs of their co-religionists, and they have the means of gratifying that desire. Once more the Jew’s wealth has proved potent enough to blunt the edge of prejudice. The Czar’s Ministers endeavoured to pacify the Jewish financiers by making a few trivial concessions to their persecuted brethren. M. De Plehve in May 1904, acting in direct contradiction to the views expressed in April, submitted to the Council of the Empire a Bill for repealing the law under which Jews were forbidden to reside within fifty versts of the Western frontier. It is true that the imputation that the Bill was dictated by a Jewish banker as an indispensable condition for a loan was strongly resented and repudiated in official circles. The Russians, in proof of the spontaneous nature of the proposal, declared that the Minister had, long before the necessity for loans arose, been striving towards a relaxation of Jewish disabilities. This statement has been partially corroborated by a distinguished Jewish gentleman, who also affirms from personal knowledge that M. De Plehve had for some time past endeavoured to alleviate the lot of the Russian Jews by granting to them every liberty—save emancipation.[196] It was added that the process had naturally been gradual, owing to Russian social conditions, that as early as May 1903 the Council of the Empire had passed a Bill of M. De Plehve’s permitting the Jews to reside in 103 new places, and that 65 more had been added in the autumn. At the same time a Commission had been appointed to examine the laws relating to the Jews, especially those engaged in productive labour. These statements may, of course, be literally correct. But, until M. De Plehve’s utterances of the previous April be proved to be a forgery, it is permissible to doubt their accuracy in so far as the Minister’s good-will towards the Jews is concerned.
M. De Plehve was in the State what M. Pobiedonostseff was in the Church. The Minister of the Interior, like the Imperial Procurator of the Holy Synod, represented and led for the last two decades or more the party of reaction. By their Panslavist followers these two men were described as the two pillars of the patriotic edifice of Russian national life, which is raised on the ruins of the other nationalities. By their opponents they were denounced as the two ministering demons of Despotism and Dogmatism under their most repulsive aspects. It was, therefore, with no surprise that the civilised world heard on July 28, 1904, that M. De Plehve’s name had been entered on the roll of Russian victims to that ruthless spirit of revenge, whose cult their own ruthlessness helps to promote. He died unlamented, as he had lived unloved; for a tyrant has no friends. But that he was, as an individual, the incarnate fiend that his enemies depicted, is a theory improbable in itself, and disproved by those who came into contact with him. At the very worst he may have been an ambitious man who, by pursuing the course which he did, “sought to win the favour of the reactionary faction which at present controls the Czar, and thus to fight his way towards the highest power.”[197] But a less severe estimate would, perhaps, be nearer the true one. M. De Plehve was the champion of an ideal. He honestly believed that in autocracy lay Russia’s salvation. Though surrounded by dangers, and warned by the fate of his former master Alexander II., of his predecessor Sipyaghin, of his instrument in the oppression of Finland Bobrikoff, and of many of his colleagues and subordinates, he unflinchingly persevered in the path which he had marked out for himself. A man who imperils his own life in the pursuit of a certain object is not the man to treat with tenderness those who strive to thwart him. M. De Plehve’s object was to silence opposition to the principles of autocracy. He pursued that object with the unswerving firmness of a strong man, and crushed the obstacles with the relentless conscientiousness of one who is absolutely convinced of the righteousness of his cause. To such a man political virtue means thoroughness combined with an utter lack of scruple and a total disregard of all moral restraint in the service of the State and the pursuit of its welfare. He was engaged in a game the stakes of which were greatness or death. He lost it.
But though the dispassionate student can have nothing but pity for a brave man perishing in the performance of what he deemed to be his duty, he can also sympathise with those who hailed their arch-enemy’s death with savage delight. They saw in M. De Plehve, not a tragic character drawing upon himself the vengeance of an inexorable Atê, but only the merciless Minister, the oppressor of those who differed from him in their political ideals, the executioner of men whose sole crime was their loyalty to the faith of their fathers and the traditions of their race. As the lawyer Korobchevsky said before the Court, in defence of the assassin: “The bomb which killed the late Minister of the Interior was filled, not with dynamite, but with the burning tears of the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of the men whom he sent to the gallows, or to die slowly in prison or in Siberia.”
Among the sufferers from M. De Plehve’s policy none had greater reasons to hate him than the Jews. He regarded them, not without cause, as the most energetic opponents to his autocratic schemes, and his antipathy towards them on that account was enhanced by his just appreciation of their abilities. Hence the exceptional rigour in his treatment of them. M. De Plehve used to refer to the revolutionary activity of the Jewish youth as a justification for his own measures of coercion. That the Jews should be ready to join, or even lead, in every attempt to overthrow the social and political system under which they suffer so grievously is only natural. Equally natural it is that the man to whom that system was everything should have tried to suppress them. The Kishineff massacre, as we have seen, was universally attributed to M. De Plehve, and when the news of his assassination went forth few surpassed the Jews in their exultation. The Jewish daily paper Forward, of New York, immediately organised a meeting under the auspices of the United Russian Revolutionists. The demonstrators filled one of the largest halls in New York to overflowing, and at every mention of M. De Plehve’s assassin, Sazonoff, burst into delirious applause. He was praised as the worthy son of a noble cause; his victim was described as the captured Port Arthur of Russian despotism, and the interference of the police alone checked the enthusiasm.[198]
But, even granting the spontaneity and the disinterestedness of the concessions which the Russian Government declared itself prepared to make to the Jews, they would have only affected a limited number of them. M. De Plehve’s plan at best was to bring about the conciliation of the race by the absorption of the better class of them and by the half-hearted application of some palliatives to the grievances of the poorer, such as the enlargement of the area within which they are confined, and permission to emigrate.[199] The experiment in assimilation, of which the Baltic provinces, Poland and Finland, supplied a sample, was not one that commended itself to the Jews. But, even if it succeeded, the vast majority of the race would continue in their normal state of slavery. The same remark applies to a remedial scheme drafted and adopted a few weeks later by a departmental conference presided over by M. De Witte. The Financial Minister’s association with the step lent colour to the suspicion that this newly-awakened benevolence towards the Jew was not foreign to Russia’s anxiety to procure fresh supplies of money by the assistance of Jewish bankers abroad. However that may be, the measures taken do not seem to have produced any marked effect on the condition of the Russian Jews. That relief which the wretched people could not gain from the Czar’s compassion, they failed to obtain even from his fears.
On Aug. 4, 1904, anti-Semitic disturbances broke out at Ostrowez, in the Government of Radom, where, according to private statements, twenty Jews were killed; according to the Russian authorities, one was seriously wounded, and died the following day, while twenty-two persons were slightly injured. The same official account ascribes the disturbances to the fact that a Jewish boy struck a Christian—the blow, it is said, was exaggerated to murder, and the mob set out to revenge themselves on the Jews. At Partscheff also, in the Government of Siedlce, on the following day, it was said that hundreds of Jews perished. The official version of the occurrence stated that “the police dispersed, without using force, a crowd of Jews who had assembled to hide a baptized Jew. In a scuffle that ensued twenty persons were wounded.”[200] On September 4 and 5 anti-Semitic riots occurred at Smela, in the Province of Kieff. This is the official account: “A Jewish shopkeeper struck a peasant woman whom he suspected of having stolen some cloth. Immediately a crowd collected, and plundered and sacked one hundred houses and one hundred and fifty shops belonging to Jews. That evening a party of sixty Jews attacked and beat the Christian inhabitants. When the Jews began to fire on the latter the police were summoned, who made use of their revolvers, wounding two persons. The next evening several hundred railway employés, in spite of the prohibition of the officials, went by train to Smela from the adjacent station of Bobrinskaia. The rioting was renewed, and the troops were summoned. The soldiers made use of their weapons, and five persons were seriously wounded, while a large number were slightly injured. Many arrests were made.”[201] In reading these official statements one must constantly bear in mind the Russian Government’s desire to minimise a misfortune or a misdeed which they dare not deny. A few days later, on September 11, on the occasion of the Jewish New Year, another anti-Jewish disturbance occurred at Sosnowice, a town on the Siberian frontier. A number of boys threw stones at some Jews who were engaged in their annual ceremony, slightly injuring a child. This gave rise to a rumour that the Jews had killed a child. Numbers of workmen marched through the streets in the evening, smashing the window-panes of Jewish dwelling-houses and of the synagogue. Several Jews were injured by stones or knives. Doctors were afraid to render assistance to the injured, owing to the attitude of the mob.[202]
Hardly a month had passed since the last-mentioned event, when a new outrage occurred in Mohileff. The following is a condensed description of the occurrence by a well-qualified observer who supports his statements by references to numerous witnesses: A political demonstration in the town of Mohileff took place exactly one week before the anti-Jewish riots. In Russia it is a crime for even four men to come together in a private room without the knowledge and permission of the police, and it is, therefore, a heinous atrocity for a crowd to gather in the streets for a political purpose. Yet that is what happened on October 15 in Mohileff. The Jewish workmen of the place assembled by way of protesting against the cruelty of the police, who, without a word of warning, had shot down harmless and unarmed Hebrew working women and men; and against the unjust condemnation to twelve years’ penal servitude of their comrades in Yakootsk; and they recorded their wish that the war should stop. A few policemen advanced against the workmen and tried to disperse them, but were themselves scattered by the crowd. Then an overwhelming police force marched against the malcontents, but to their disgust found nobody. At this the Prefect of the Police of Mohileff determined that, during the mobilisation which was to take place in a few days, from Tsukermann’s synagogue to the railway station the Jews should be thrashed until not a stone remained on the pavement.
On October 22 the mobilisation of the Reserves was promulgated. According to law, the vodka-shops should have been shut on this occasion, and the Jewish population had earnestly petitioned the authorities to insist on that precaution against disorders being observed. But the shops were opened. To the Jewish Reserve soldiers, who had assembled by order of the military authorities, the Police Prefect addressed the following remarkable words in the presence of a great crowd: “You contemptible Jews! You are all foreign democrats! You ought to kiss the hands and feet of the Christians! You have been beaten too little as yet! You must be thrashed again!”
“We may pitch into the Jews and loot their shops,” the fellows said; “there will be no punishment. The police allow it; hurrah!” The subsequent attitude of the police amply bore out this expectation. At three p.m. a band of petty local traders, not reserves, who had been steadily gathering since morning, and were now led by striplings, swept across the city, crying, “Pitch into the Jews!” and belabouring all passing Jews with cudgels and stones. That day, however, the matter did not go beyond the assaulting of individuals and the breaking of windows. But none the less several persons were grievously wounded and disfigured in the presence of the police, who looked on approving.
The next morning, Sunday, October 23, the panic-stricken Jews sent a deputation to the Police Prefect to petition for help and to have the dram-shops closed. The Prefect consulted the Governor, and then told the petitioners that he had been authorised to use his own judgment. This answer was construed as a promise that the taverns would not be opened. But shortly before noon notices were posted up in the streets, signed by the Police Prefect himself, informing the public that the reports to the effect that on the day before there had been disorders in the town, in the course of which several persons had been grievously wounded, were misleading. What had really happened was “an ordinary, insignificant street brawl.” This meant that the deeds of violence already done were but the flowers, and that the fruits were yet to come.