THERE is another anti-Semite organ edited by Pavolachi Kroushevan. It is named the Znamya, or Standard. Though published in St. Petersburg, it has a large sale in Bessarabia.
Both the Bessarabetz and the Znamya have studiously refrained from alluding to the indignation excited in Western Europe and in the United States over the consequences of their savage appeals to fanatical mobs. No other papers being read in Kishineff by the anti-Jewish section of the populace, these people remain unaffected by this outburst of public reprobation in other countries. They are under the impression that the attack on the hated Hebrews was a good work done for the Tsar, the church, and themselves.
The credulity of the average Russian, in all anti-Hebrew matters, is boundless. A Christian lady in Odessa told me that her servant, a very intelligent-looking young girl, informed her a few evenings after the horrible events at Kishineff, that the Jews of Odessa were planning the murder of all the Christian children in the city. When the girl was asked what information she had of this intended wholesale slaughter, she replied: “I was told so! The Jews will put poisoned chocolate on Christian doorsteps some night, and then, when the children come out for school or play the following morning, they will see the chocolate, eat it, and die. All the Jews in Odessa should be burned out!”
The popes, or Russian priests, are not in any special sense anti-Semitic. Anyhow, they wield little, if any, influence of that or any other kind upon even the simple and superstitious peasantry. The Russian pope is, in fact, a man who has neither social nor political importance of any kind. He is not invited to the houses of the nobility, nor is he looked up to or relied upon by the people. He is a badly educated Mujik, as a rule, and commands neither the confidence of his own class nor the esteem of the ruling order. When he marries, his family ties and domestic interests are believed to be his chief considerations, while the worldly benefits of his clerical position, comparatively small though these may be, are believed to be his primary concern in life. Whatever little distinction belongs to his garb and calling arises entirely from the fact that he is, in reality, a clerical soldier of the Tsar; earning his living as an officer of a religious army, whose head and commander-in-chief is the great Emperor of all the Russians. He is, in another sense, the Tsar’s moral policeman among the Russian people.
The ordinary Russian policeman corresponds in many respects to the average member of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He is a man of the peasantry, of fine physique, and of unbounded self-importance. He lacks, however, the education and superior intelligence of his Irish rural prototype, while his reputation is on a lower moral plane. He is badly officered, as a rule, and this accounts largely for the suspicion which attaches to the performance of his duties in districts where the numerous vexatious restrictions in operation against the “Semitic malady” are so many temptations to the guardian of the law “to wink the other eye” at evasions of legal obstructions made profitable not to see. His pay is small, and this, too, is an explanation of his official dereliction in these matters.
Strenuous efforts have been, and are still being, made to induce a more educated class of Russians to officer the police force of the Empire, but with slow and uncertain results, so far. The nobility look upon the army as the only honourable service open to them, apart from diplomatic and administrative posts. Trade and commerce are, of course, infra dig., and the police is even more so, from the point of view of all sections of the aristocracy, poor and rich, fortunate and the reverse. There is not, strictly speaking, a Russian middle class, but there will soon be an intellectually developed class of men from a corresponding social grade turned out of Russia’s fine colleges and gymnasiums, from whose ranks an educated body of officials will be recruited for this and kindred public employments. Well officered, and better paid than they now are, the Russian police would soon rank in efficiency, as well as in appearance, with the best peace-preserving forces of any country.
A Russian city mob has little or no fear of the police force. Nor do the ordinary military, as a rule, inspire rioters with any sense of serious apprehensions. The explanation is probably due to the immediate kinship of class and feeling between the rough elements of an urban community and the conscript force of which they are a potential part, and (in anti-Semitic outbreaks) to the fact that policeman, soldier, and artisan share a common sentiment of antipathy towards the Jew. It is emphatically otherwise with Cossacks. The mob exhibits no hesitation when confronted with this arm of the military power. It disperses in double-quick time. I was told by one of the foreign Consuls in Odessa that on one occasion, some fifteen years ago, there was a sudden outbreak of mob violence which neither military nor police could, or would, quell. They attacked the houses of some foreign residents, and the Consul was called upon for protection. He went at once to the Governor, and suggested the employment of a dozen Cossacks to clear that part of the city of the disturbers. A troop of these splendid horsemen was turned loose without delay, and the riots were at an end within an hour. Nothing can stop their sweeping charge through a city’s streets. They ride over or through obstacles, human or otherwise, knout in hand, and spare no one who has not already cleared out of their path. As the Consul remarked to me when discussing the action, and inaction, of the military at Kishineff, “A dozen Don Cossacks would have settled the whole business with the rioters on Easter Sunday in half an hour.”
During an attack upon a Jew’s shop in Kishineff, an artillery officer, who was lodging in a Christian house opposite, saw a soldier enter the premises, and join in the looting of the unfortunate Hebrew’s goods. The officer, indignant at the disgraceful act of the soldier, rushed across the street, and seizing the military culprit, tore off his number, with the view of reporting him to the Colonel of his regiment. The mob turned upon the officer, who was compelled to seek shelter in his quarters. The windows were smashed with stones, and he was called upon to return the badge containing the soldier’s number. This he refused to do, and telephoned to the nearest military barracks for assistance. He was ultimately rescued from the mob’s threatening display.
It was difficult to obtain any reliable account of the actual number of persons who were arrested, tried, and punished for the murders and looting on the 19th and 20th of April. M. Polak, the Procurator from Odessa, came to Kishineff to put the law in motion against the rioters. About seven hundred out of the fifteen hundred or two thousand persons implicated were lodged in prison. M. Polak had to rely upon the local authorities to execute the orders of the Government through him. After his return to Odessa no less than five hundred of the prisoners were liberated, following an inquiry before the Juges d’Instruction which was remarkable for the hurried manner in which it was conducted.
Punishment averaging a few months’ imprisonment was meted out to about 150, by the judges of the peace, before whom the cases were sent by the Juges d’Instruction. Some fifty were held on more serious charges, but the results of their trials are not yet made known. They will presumably be tried before the Criminal Court of Assize.