The diffusion of this “document of civilization,” as it is called by the revolutionists, took place in connexion with the planned demonstration. The day passed without an outbreak, although the imminence of the storm could, as one may say, be felt in the air. Not until the evening were a few Jews beaten here and there.
On the second day our people arranged for a second demonstration. From the other side they endeavoured to form a counter-demonstration, and the two came in conflict. The Black Hundreds (drawn from the Lumpenproletariat), who fought in the name of “patriotism,” dispersed the counter-demonstrators, and began to demolish and to plunder in the Jewish quarter of the town.
The breaking of the panes of glass, and the destruction of the goods in the shop-windows and of the furniture in the houses, seemed to inflame the crowd more and more; they must have experienced a sort of voluptuous sensation in connexion with these activities. Finally, they found some Jews who had hidden themselves. A horrible yell was now raised. The Jews were dragged out into the street; they were struck with everything available—with cudgels, hatchets, and knives—until they were completely unrecognizable. The crowd found more and more of them. Most of them threw themselves on their knees and begged for life; it was most horrible to see them, beaten till their features were no longer distinguishable, still pleading for mercy. Now the mob really began to smell blood, and to display its whole true human nature. Each began to murder according to his own individual fancy. Here a man cut the breast from a nursing mother; there they tore the clothes from some girls, and flogged them naked through the streets. In another place they dragged a Jewess, naked, from her house into the street, tied her hand and foot, and fastened her by the hair to the axle of a cab; then they drove off at a gallop until she was battered to death. Behind the cab there ran street-arabs, striking at her body.... But to what purpose is it to describe these scenes, at which one’s heart is convulsed in one’s body with sorrow, and simultaneously one wishes to exult with joy and triumph?
Here I saw once more, in their proper environment, the 50,000 of whom Blanqui speaks. A wave of the hand would have sufficed—although 99 per cent, of them unquestionably felt no hostility towards the Jews—to produce in all of them the most infernal anti-Semitic excesses. If the police would allow it, as they allow the pogrom, another wave of the hand would direct the mob with no less ease to make an attack on another human variety—for example, on the capitalists.
What psychological factor drove them on?... Was it simply a tendency to cruelty?... No!... A love of cruelty considered by itself, without a nobler motive, is inhuman, inharmonious to human nature, and man cannot escape his own nature. There must therefore be other motives at the basis of such actions, motives of a nature more humanly comprehensible.
But look at all those slaughterers! Regard their physiognomy! Not a trace of cruelty—only suffering, unheard-of suffering, is reflected on these faces!... The fear of death and the pain of their victims prepares for themselves incredible torment!... Do you not believe that these people will return to their houses, and will suffer intense mental pain?... They will continually see, in imagination, the last beseeching glance of their victim, full of complaint and reproach, directed upon them!... What hatred, what contempt, will they feel for the animal which has awakened within them! They will feel a longing to spit in their own faces, to strike themselves, to strangle themselves!... Before every one whom they meet they will lower their eyes: “He knows that I have murdered people, amid the most cruel tortures, against whom there was no hatred in my heart—murdered only for this reason: because I had within me the instinctive demand for spiritual torment; because by the situation in which I suddenly found myself one pole of my hermaphrodite nature was suddenly discharged!”
“They are masochists, only they do not know it.”
Self-contempt suddenly seized me amidst this Satanic orgy of suffering on the part of such unconscious, instinctive masochists. The remembrance that all these persons were being led onwards by a blind animal impulse, and that to-morrow they would fall on their knees before their God and pray to Him for pardon, filled me with disgust. I began to hate this stupid mass. I wanted to see them grovel in the dust themselves, and howl for mercy.
For this purpose it was only necessary to organize the Selbstschutz (a union for the prevention of persecution of the Jews). In order to effect this, I tried to get into the Jewish quarter. I succeeded in doing so by means of some side passages. Hardly had I reached this quarter, when I came across masses of these “Self-Protectors.” Finally, I found among them some acquaintances, and I joined them.
A heated contest now began to rage.... As the Black Hundreds were now so energetically attacked, all their heroism was speedily at an end: they took to flight. At this moment the soldiers appeared—not, as one might have imagined, to attack the Black Hundreds, but to attack the “Self-Protectors.”