An appeal in the “Novoe Vremya,” the semi-official newspaper of St. Petersburg, suggested that all trade should be interdicted to Jews; that all Jewish schools should be closed, and that Jews should be excluded from the secondary and higher schools; that all Jews who returned to Russia should be interned in the northern part of Siberia; that Jews should be debarred from work on all newspapers; and that all Jewish property should be sold within five years. This appeal was printed in the press of the City Prefect on March 4, 1906.[23]
On October 25, 1905, M. Lavroff, who was at that time an official of the ministry of the interior, sent round a circular demanding a general union of “all who love their country” against the Jews. An appeal freely circulated amongst the local troops before the Bielostok “pogrom” runs as follows:
A foreign enemy ... has roused up the Jap against Russia.... On the quiet, across the seas and oceans, the foreign czars [meaning, of course, more particularly, King Edward and the President] armed the enormous Japanese people against us.... Then arose our strength of Russia.... The foreign czars got scared; the hair bristled up on their heads; their skins crinkled with chill. And they thought of a mean idea—to undermine the heart of the Russian soldier, to shake his ancient Christian faith and his love for our father Czar.... They brought into the soldiers’ ranks, almost wholly through Jews and hirelings, whole mountains of print, ... and also heaps of gold, that they might buy base souls.... But our army turned away from these new Judases.... The foreign czars blushed.... There began in Russia an internal confusion. Again the fierce foreign foe sets his snares through his friends, always the Jews and the hirelings.... that he may seize altogether the land of our fathers. But ... he never put his own head in the way of our cannon, but bought, through the Jews, the souls of Russians—Christians.... Brothers, tread in the steps of Christ. Cry out with one voice: “Away with the Jewish kingdom! Down with the red flag! Down with the red Jewish freedom!... At the foe, Russian soldiers! Forward! forward! forward! They go! they go! they go!”
This appeal was printed by the military staff of Odessa.
Odessa is the headquarters, if not the cradle, of the Black Hundred, or League of Russian Men. I had anticipated a certain reluctance on the part of the members to impart to me the details of their program, but to my surprise they told me about their “Jew-sticking” as if it were a most ordinary plank for the platform of a political party.
The rooms of the organization were fitted up like a Salvation Army tea-house, gay with bunting and Russian flags, and a great lot of gilded icons in one corner. Several chromos of the Czar hung on the walls. The rooms were crowded both times I visited them with men of precisely the same type as the loungers who occupy Salvation Army reading-rooms—casual laborers, the shiftless, the workless, life’s derelicts. Among these were a score or more of young boys, ranging from fourteen to twenty, of the type described as young roughs. I remarked that most of these wore brand new student overcoats, so I asked one of these boys pointedly where he got his overcoat.
“From the organization,” he answered.
“Why do you belong to this organization?” I then asked.
“Because of the benefits. We have socials, and private theatricals. And sometimes we get presents like this overcoat.”
“What is the object of the organization?” I asked further.