CHAPTER VII
I. ORIGIN AND AGENCY
KISHINEFF is the capital of Bessarabia, the seat of its government, and the chief centre of its trading industry. It has a present population of 130,000, of a mixed ethnological community. The Russians number about 8000; the Moldavians, 50,000; the Jews, 50,000, with Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks, Macedonians, and Germans accounting for the balance.
In the time of the Romans, Bessarabia formed part of the Imperial colony known as Dacia, and the Moldavian peasantry, who form the greater part of its present population, are said to be descendants of Roman “undesirables” who were forcibly exiled to the Balkan regions. From thence they emigrated, in time, to the rich lands lying west of the Dniester. The succession of conquering and colonising peoples who fought for the possession of this most fruitful region is historically bewildering. Cymri and Scythians, Greeks and Getæ, Romans and Goths, Huns and Avars, Bulgars and Slavonians; until, in the seventh century, the Bessi arrived, and gave the country its name of “Bessarabia.” Then came, in due course, Ugrians, Kumans, Polovtzians, and Mongolians. In the Middle Ages the Republic of Genoa founded colonies along the Dniester, which in turn gave way to an invasion of Turks. During the eighteenth century Russian power asserted itself in the land, and portions of the southern provinces which belonged to Turkey were, in our own time, ceded to the great Empire, thus completing Russian possession of the most fought-for country embraced within the wide dominions of the Tsars.
Thirty years ago Kishineff was on a level with an average Turkish town. According to its present Mayor, M. Karl Schmidt, the city owes its rapid rise and prosperity, and its present flourishing trade, solely to the Jews. They built up its commerce, organised its banks, developed its general business, and made it the handsome, thriving city it is to-day.
The country around the city is a great wine-growing region, and the Moldavian peasants are the chief producers of this most marketable commodity. They are not an intelligent race, and are even more superstitious, if possible, than the average Russian Mujik. They do not migrate from their villages in search of labour, like Russian workers in the central provinces. Their spare time is spent in eating sunflower seeds, and in drinking vodka during the winter months.
The economic relations between these Moldavian wine-growers and the Jews of Kishineff are most intimate. They have no business capacity whatever, and they dispose of their produce to the Jew brokers and dealers, who make, at least, a ten per cent. profit on such transactions.
These intimate trading connections have not led, as recently alleged, to any marked ill-feeling against the intermediaries; though it is only natural to assume that the profits of the skilled exploiter are not always a source of satisfaction to the mind of the peasant producer. What I was assured of, in this connection, from all sources of information sought by me in Kishineff, was that the origin of the outbreak at Easter was not, in any sense, traceable to these dealings between the Jew merchants and brokers of the city and the surrounding Moldavian farmers.
The genesis of the recent massacres is to be found in the special legislation which gives the Jew the mockery of civil rights within a pale of legal domicile. There are, at least, a hundred laws, ordinances, and special regulations having for object the coercing of him in all his religious, social, and industrial rights; even within this Pale of Settlement.[2] He is crowded into urban centres and denied, under penalties, access to where conditions of work and location might relieve him of his poverty and wretched home. Fines are levied upon him for infringements of these coercive regulations, and this fact induces him to circumvent such restrictive measures, while it appeals also to the police to help him to do so—for a consideration.
The first serious trouble experienced by the Jews of Bessarabia began about eight years ago. A sous-prefect of police, named Von Oglio, appointed in the Beltzy district by the present Vice-Governor, Ostrogoff, harassed the Jews by exactions and blackmail until they “struck” against being further bled in this manner. He retaliated as follows:
On the Hebrew festival of Yom Kippur, one of the most solemn ceremonies of the year, Von Oglio entered the local synagogue, seized the Torah, or sacred writing, flung it on the floor, ordered a policeman to pick it up, to seal it, and then had it conveyed to—the local prison! He next expelled the small congregation, and placed his seal upon the lock of the place of worship.