A scuffle in a tavern at Elisabethgrad in Kherson sufficed to ignite this combustible material. The scuffle grew into a riot, the tavern was sacked, and the drunken mob, hounded on by agitators who declared that the Jews were using Christian blood for the manufacture of their Easter bread, attacked and looted the Jewish quarter. The outbreak spread rapidly. On the 7th of May there was a similar riot at Smiela, near Cherkasy, and the following day there was a violent outbreak at Kiev, which left 2000 Jews homeless. Within a few weeks the whole of western Russia, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, was smoking with the ruins of Jewish homes. Scores of Jewish women were dishonoured, hundreds of men, women and children were slaughtered, and tens of thousands were reduced to beggary and left without a shelter. Murderous riots or incendiary outrages took place in no fewer than 167 towns and villages, including Warsaw, Odessa and Kiev. Europe had witnessed no such scenes of mob savagery since the Black Death massacres in the 14th century. As the facts gradually filtered through to the western capitals they caused a thrill of horror everywhere. An indignation meeting held at the Mansion House in London, under the presidency of the lord mayor, was the signal for a long series of popular demonstrations condemning the persecutions, held in most of the chief cities of England and the continent.
Except as stimulated by the Judeophobe revival in Germany the Russian outbreak in its earlier forms does not belong specifically to modern anti-Semitism. It was essentially a medieval uprising animated by the religious fanaticism, gross superstition and predatory instincts of a people still in the medieval stage of their development. This is proved by the fact that, although the Russian peasant was supposed to be a victim of unbearable Jewish “exploitation,” he was not moved to riot until he had been brutalized by drink and excited by the old fable of the Blood Accusation. The modern anti-Semitic element came from above and followed closely on the heels of the riots. It has been freely charged against the Russian government that it promoted the riots in 1881 in order to distract popular attention from the Nihilist propaganda and from the political disappointments involved in the cancellation of the previous tsar’s constitutional project (Lazare, L’Antisémitisme, p. 211). This seems to be true of General Ignatiev, then minister of the interior, and the secret police (Séménoff, The Russian Government and the Massacres, pp. 17, 32, 241). It is certain that the local authorities, both civil and military, favoured the outbreak, and took no steps to suppress it, and that the feudal bureaucracy who had just escaped a great danger were not sorry to see the discontented populace venting their passions on the Jews. In the higher circles of the government, however, other views prevailed. The tsar himself was at first persuaded that the riots were the work of Nihilists, and he publicly promised his protection to the Jews. On the other hand, his ministers, ardent Slavophils, thought they recognized in the outbreak an endorsement of the nationalist teaching of which they were the apostles, and, while reprobating the acts of violence, came to the conclusion that the most reasonable solution was to aggravate the legal disabilities of the persecuted aliens and heretics. To this view the tsar was won over, partly by the clamorous indignation of western Europe, which had wounded his national amour propre to the quick, and partly by the strongly partisan report of a commission appointed to inquire, not into the administrative complaisance which had allowed riot to run loose over the western and southern provinces, but into the “exploitation” alleged against the Jews, the reasons why “the former laws limiting the rights of the Jews” had been mitigated, and how these laws could be altered so as “to stop the pernicious conduct of the Jews” (Rescript of the 3rd of September 1881). The result of this report was the drafting of a “Temporary Order concerning the Jews” by the minister of the interior, which received the assent of the tsar on the 3rd of May 1882. This order, which was so little temporary that it has not yet been repealed, had the effect of creating a number of fresh ghettos within the pale of Jewish settlement. The Jews were cooped up within the towns, and their rural interests were arbitrarily confiscated. The doubtful incidence of the order gave rise to a number of judgments of the senate, by which all its persecuting possibilities were brought out, with the result that the activities of the Jews were completely paralysed, and they became a prey to unparalleled cruelty. As the gruesome effect of this legislation became known, a fresh outburst of horror and indignation swelled up from western Europe. It proved powerless. Count Ignatiev was dismissed owing to the protests of high-placed Russians, who were disgusted by the new Kulturkampf, but his work remained, and, under the influence of Pobêdonostsev, the procurator of the Holy Synod, the policy of the “May Laws,” as they were significantly called, was applied to every aspect of Jewish life with pitiless rigour. The temper of the tsar may be judged by the fact that when an appeal for mercy from an illustrious personage in England was conveyed to him at Fredensborg through the gracious medium of the tsaritsa, he angrily exclaimed within the hearing of an Englishman in the ante-room who was the bearer of the message, “Never let me hear you mention the name of that people again!”
The Russian May Laws are the most conspicuous legislative monument achieved by modern anti-Semitism. It is true that they re-enacted regulations which resemble the oppressive statutes introduced into Poland through the influence of the Jesuits in the 16th century (Sternberg, Gesch. d. Juden in Polen, pp. 141 et seq.), but their Orthodox authors were as little conscious of this irony of history as they were of the Teutonic origins of the whole Slavophil movement. These laws are an experimental application of the political principles extracted by Marr and his German disciples from the metaphysics of Hegel, and as such they afford a valuable means of testing the practical operation of modern anti-Semitism. Their result was a widespread commercial depression which was felt all over the empire. Even before the May Laws were definitely promulgated the passport registers showed that the anti-Semitic movement had driven 67,900 Jews across the frontier, and it was estimated that they had taken with them 13,000,000 roubles, representing a minimum loss of 60,000,000 roubles to the annual turnover of the country’s trade. Towards the end of 1882 it was calculated that the agitation had cost Russia as much as the whole Turkish war of 1877. Trade was everywhere paralysed. The enormous increase of bankruptcies, the transfer of investments to foreign funds, the consequent fall in the value of the rouble and the prices of Russian stocks, the suspension of farming operations owing to advances on growing crops being no longer available, the rise in the prices of the necessaries of life, and lastly, the appearance of famine, filled half the empire with gloom. Banks closed their doors, and the great provincial fairs proved failures. When it was proposed to expel the Jews from Moscow there was a loud outcry all over the sacred city, and even the Orthodox merchants, realizing that the measure would ruin their flourishing trade with the south and west, petitioned against it. The Moscow Exhibition proved a failure. Nevertheless the government persisted with its harsh policy, and Jewish refugees streamed by tens of thousands across the western frontier to seek an asylum in other lands. In 1891 the alarm caused by this emigration led to further protests from abroad. The citizens of London again assembled at Guildhall, and addressed a petition to the tsar on behalf of his Hebrew subjects. It was handed back to the lord mayor by the Russian ambassador, with a curt intimation that the emperor declined to receive it. At the same time orders were defiantly given that the May Laws should be strictly enforced. Meanwhile the Russian minister of finance was at his wits’ ends for money. Negotiations for a large loan had been entered upon with the house of Rothschild, and a preliminary contract had been signed, when, at the instance of the London firm, M. Wyshnigradski, the finance minister, was informed that unless the persecutions of the Jews were stopped the great banking-house would be compelled to withdraw from the operation. Deeply mortified by this attempt to deal with him de puissance à puissance, the tsar peremptorily broke off the negotiations, and ordered that overtures should be made to a non-Jewish French syndicate. In this way anti-Semitism, which had already so profoundly influenced the domestic politics of Europe, set its mark on the international relations of the powers, for it was the urgent need of the Russian treasury quite as much as the termination of Prince Bismarck’s secret treaty of mutual neutrality which brought about the Franco-Russian alliance (Daudet, Hist. Dipl. de l’Alliance Franco-Russe, pp. 259 et. seq.).
For nearly three years more the persecutions continued. Elated by the success of his crusade against the Jews, Pobêdonostsev extended his persecuting policy to other non-Orthodox denominations. The legislation against the Protestant Stundists became almost as unbearable as that imposed on the Jews. In the report of the Holy Synod, presented to the tsar towards the end of 1893, the procurator called for repressive measures against Roman Catholics, Moslems and Buddhists, and denounced the rationalist tendency of the whole system of secular education in the empire (Neue Freie Presse, 31st January 1894). A year later, however, the tsar died, and his successor, without repealing any of the persecuting laws, let it gradually be understood that their rigorous application might be mitigated. The country was tired and exhausted by the persecution, and the tolerant hints which came from high quarters were acted upon with significant alacrity.
A new era of conflict dawned with the great constitutional struggle towards the end of the century. The conditions, however, were very different from those which prevailed in the ’eighties. The May Laws had avenged themselves with singular fitness. By confining the Jews to the towns at the very moment that Count Witte’s policy of protection was creating an enormous industrial proletariat they placed at the disposal of the disaffected masses an ally powerful in numbers and intelligence, and especially in its bitter sense of wrong, its reckless despair and its cosmopolitan outlook and connexions. As early as 1885 the Jewish workmen assisted by Jewish university students led the way in the formation of trades unions. They also became the colporteurs of western European socialism, and they played an important part in the organization of the Russian Social Democratic Federation which their “Arbeiter Bund” joined in 1898 with no fewer than 30,000 members. The Jewish element in the new democratic movement excited the resentment of the government, and under the minister of the interior, M. Sipiaguine, the persecuting laws were once more rigorously enforced. The “Bund” replied in 1901 by proclaiming itself frankly political and revolutionary, and at once took a leading place in the revolutionary movement. The reactionaries were not slow to profit by this circumstance. With the support of M. Plehve, the new minister of the interior, and the whole of the bureaucratic class they denounced the revolution as a Jewish conspiracy, engineered for exclusively Jewish purposes and designed to establish a Jewish domination over the Russian people. The government and even the intimates of the tsar became persuaded that only by the terrorization of the Jews could the revolutionary movement be effectually dealt with. For this purpose a so-called League of True Russians was formed. Under high patronage, and with the assistance of the secret police and a large number of the local authorities, it set itself to stir up the populace, chiefly the fanatics and the hooligans, against the Jews. Incendiary proclamations were prepared and printed in the ministry of the interior itself, and were circulated by the provincial governors and the police (Prince Urussov’s speech in the Duma, June 8 (21), 1906). The result was another series of massacres which began at Kishinev in 1903 and culminated in wholesale butchery at Odessa and Bielostok in October 1905. An attempt was made to picture and excuse these outbreaks as a national upheaval against the Jew-made revolution but it failed. They only embittered the revolutionists and “intellectuals” throughout the country, and won for them a great deal of outspoken sympathy abroad. The artificiality of the anti-Jewish outbreak was illustrated by the first Duma elections. Thirteen Jews were elected and every constituency which had been the scene of a pogrom returned a liberal member. Unfortunately the Jews benefited little by the new parliamentary constitution. The privileges of voting for members of the Duma and of sitting in the new assembly were granted them, but all their civil and religious disabilities were maintained. Both the first and the second Duma proposed to emancipate them, but they were dissolved before any action could be taken. By the modification of the electoral law under which the third Duma was elected the voting power of the Jews was diminished and further restrictions were imposed upon them through official intimidation during the elections. The result was that only two Jews were elected, while the reactionary tendency of the new electorate virtually removed the question of their emancipation from the field of practical politics.
The only other country in Europe in which a legalized anti-Semitism exists is Rumania. The conditions are very similar to those which obtain in Russia, with the important difference that Rumania is a constitutional country, Rumania. and that the Jewish persecutions are the work of the elected deputies of the nation. Like the Bourgeois Gentilhomme who wrote prose all his life without knowing it, the Rumanians practised the nationalist doctrines of the Hegelian anti-Semites unconsciously long before they were formulated in Germany. In the old days of Turkish domination the lot of the Rumanian Jews was not conspicuously unhappy. It was only when the nation began to be emancipated, and the struggle in the East assumed the form of a crusade against Islam that the Jews were persecuted. Rumanian politicians preached a nationalism limited exclusively to indigenous Christians, and they were strongly supported by all who felt the commercial competition of the Jews. Thus, although the Jews had been settled in the land for many centuries, they were by law declared aliens. This was done in defiance of the treaty of Paris of 1856 and the convention of 1858 which declared all Rumans to be equal before the law. Under the influence of this distinction the Jews became persecuted, and sanguinary riots were of frequent occurrence. The realization of a Jewish question led to legislation imposing disabilities on the Jews. In 1878 the congress of Berlin agreed to recognize the independence of Rumania on condition that all religious disabilities were removed. Rumania agreed to this condition, but ultimately persuaded the powers to allow her to carry out the emancipation of the Jews gradually. Persecutions, however, continued, and in 1902 they led to a great exodus of Jews. The United States addressed a strong remonstrance to the Rumanian government, but the condition of the Jews was in no way improved. Their emancipation was in 1908 as far off as ever, and their disabilities heavier than those of their brethren in Russia. For this state of things the example of the anti-Semites in Germany, Russia, Austria and France was largely to blame, since it had justified the intolerance of the Rumans. Owing, also, to the fact that of late years Rumania had become a sort of annexe of the Triple Alliance, it was found impossible to induce the signatories of the treaty of Berlin to take action to compel the state to fulfil its obligations under that treaty.
In Austria-Hungary the anti-Semitic impulses came almost simultaneously from the North and East. Already in the ’seventies the doctrinaire anti-Semitism of Berlin had found an echo in Budapest. Two members of the diet, Austria-Hungary. Victor Istoczy and Geza Onody, together with a publicist named Georg Marczianyi, busied themselves in making known the doctrine of Marr in Hungary. Marczianyi, who translated the German Judeophobe pamphlets into Magyar, and the Magyar works of Onody into German, was the chief medium between the northern and southern schools. In 1880 Istoczy tried to establish a “Nichtjuden Bund” in Hungary, with statutes literally translated from those of the German anti-Semitic league. The movement, however, made no progress, owing to the stalwart Liberalism of the predominant political parties, and of the national principles inherited from the revolution of 1848. The large part played by the Jews in that struggle, and the fruitful patriotism with which they had worked for the political and economic progress of the country, had created, too, a strong claim on the gratitude of the best elements in the nation. Nevertheless, among the ultramontane clergy, the higher aristocracy, the ill-paid minor officials, and the ignorant peasantry, the seeds of a tacit anti-Semitism were latent. It was probably the aversion of the nobility from anything in the nature of a demagogic agitation which for a time prevented these seeds from germinating. The news of the uprising in Russia and the appearance of Jewish refugees on the frontier, had the effect of giving a certain prominence to the agitation of Istoczy and Onody and of exciting the rural communities, but it did not succeed in impressing the public with the pseudo-scientific doctrines of the new anti-Semitism. It was not until the agitators resorted to the Blood Accusation—that never-failing decoy of obscurantism and superstition—that Hungary took a definite place in the anti-Semitic movement. The outbreak was short and fortunately bloodless, but while it lasted its scandals shocked the whole of Europe.
Dr August Rohling, professor of Hebrew at the university of Prague, a Roman Catholic theologian of high position but dubious learning, had for some years assisted the Hungarian anti-Semites with réchauffés of Eisenmenger’s Enidecktes Judenthum (Frankfurt a/M. 1700). In 1881 he made a solemn deposition before the Supreme Court accusing the Jews of being bound by their law to work the moral and physical ruin of non-Jews. He followed this up with an offer to depose on oath that the murder of Christians for ritual purposes was a doctrine secretly taught among Jews. Professor Delitzsch and other eminent Hebraists, both Christian and Jewish, exposed and denounced the ignorance and malevolence of Rohling, but were unable to stem the mischief he was causing. In April 1882 a Christian girl named Esther Sobymossi was missed from the Hungarian village of Tisza Eszlar, where a small community of Jews were settled. The rumour got abroad that she had been kidnapped and murdered by the Jews, but it remained the burden of idle gossip, and gave rise to neither judicial complaint nor public disorders. At this moment the question of the Bosnian Pacification credits was before the diet. The unpopularity of the task assumed by Austria-Hungary, under the treaty of Berlin, which was calculated to strengthen the disaffected Croat element in the empire, had reduced the government majority to very small proportions, and all the reactionary factions in the country were accordingly in arms. The government was violently and unscrupulously attacked on all sides. On the 23rd of May there was a debate in the diet when M. Onody, in an incendiary harangue, told the story of the missing girl at Tisza Eszlar, and accused ministers of criminal indulgence to races alien to the national spirit. In the then excited state of the public mind on the Croat question, the manoeuvre was adroitly conceived. The government fell into the trap, and treated the story with lofty disdain. Thereupon the anti-Semites set to work on the case, and M. Joseph Bary, the magistrate at Nyiregyhaza, and a noted anti-Semite, was induced to go to Tisza Eszlar and institute an inquiry. All the anti-liberal elements in the country now became banded together in this effort to discredit the liberal government, and for the first time the Hungarian anti-Semites found themselves at the head of a powerful party. Fifteen Jews were arrested and thrown into prison. No pains were spared in preparing the case for trial. Perjury and even forgery were freely resorted to. The son of one of the accused, a boy of fourteen, was taken into custody by the police, and by threats and cajoleries prevailed upon to give evidence for the prosecution. He was elaborately coached for the terrible rôle he was to play. The trial opened at Nyiregyhaza on the 19th of June, and lasted till the 3rd of August. It was one of the most dramatic causes celèbres of the century. Under the brilliant cross-examination of the advocates for the defence the whole of the shocking conspiracy was gradually exposed. The public prosecutor thereupon withdrew from the case, and the four judges—the chief of whom held strong anti-Semitic opinions—unanimously acquitted all the prisoners. The case proved the death-blow of Hungarian anti-Semitism. Although another phase of the Jewish question, which will be referred to presently, had still to occupy the public mind, the shame brought on the nation by the Tisza Eszlar conspiracy effectually prevented the anti-Semites from raising their voices with any effect again.
Meanwhile a more formidable and complicated outburst was preparing in Austria itself. Here the lines of the German agitation were closely followed, but with far more dramatic results. It was exclusively political—that is to say, it appealed to anti-Jewish prejudices for party purposes while it sought to rehabilitate them on a pseudo-scientific basis, racial and economic. At first it was confined to sporadic pamphleteers. By their side there gradually grew up a school of Christian Socialists, recruited from the ultra-Clericals, for the study and application of the doctrines preached at Mainz by Archbishop Ketteler. This constituted a complete Austrian analogue to the Evangelical-Socialist movement started in Germany by Herr Stöcker. For some years the two movements remained distinct, but signs of approximation were early visible. Thus one of the first complaints of the anti-Semites was that the Jews were becoming masters of the soil. This found an echo in the agrarian principles of the Christian Socialists, as expounded by Rudolph Meyer, in which individualism in landed property was admitted on the condition that the landowners were “the families of the nation” and not “cosmopolitan financiers.” A further indication of anti-Semitism is found in a speech delivered in 1878 by Prince Alois von Liechtenstein (b. 1846), the most prominent disciple of Rudolph Meyer, who denounced the national debt as a tribute paid by the state to cosmopolitan rentiers (Nitti, Catholic Socialism, pp. 200, 201, 211, 216). The growing disorder in parliament, due to the bitter struggle between the German and Czech parties, served to bring anti-Semitism into the field of practical politics. Since 1867 the German Liberals had been in power. They had made enemies of the Clericals by tampering with the concordat, and they had split up their own party by the federalist policy adopted by Count Taaffe. The Radical secessionists in their turn found it difficult to agree, and an ultra-national German wing formed itself into a separate party under the leadership of Ritter von Schonerer (b. 1842), a Radical nationalist of the most violent type. In 1882 two anti-Semitic leagues had been founded in Vienna, and to these the Radical nationalists now appealed for support. The growing importance of the party led the premier, Count Taaffe, to angle for the support of the Clericals by accepting a portion of the Christian Socialist programme. The hostility this excited in the liberal press, largely written by Jews, served to bring the feudal Christian Socialists and Radical anti-Semites together. In 1891 these strangely assorted factions became consolidated, and during the elections of that year Prince Liechtenstein came forward as an anti-Semitic candidate and the acknowledged leader of the party. The elections resulted in the return of fifteen anti-Semites to the Reichsrath, chiefly from Vienna.
Although Prince Liechtenstein and the bulk of the Christian Socialists had joined the anti-Semites with the support of the Clerical organ, the Vaterland, the Clerical party as a whole still held aloof from the Jew-baiters. The events of 1892-1895 put an end to their hesitation. The Hungarian government, in compliance with long-standing pledges to the liberal party, introduced into the diet a series of ecclesiastical reform bills providing for civil marriage, freedom of worship, and the legal recognition of Judasim on an equality with other denominations. These proposals, which synchronized with Ahlwardt’s turbulent agitation in Germany, gave a great impulse to anti-Semitism and served to drive into its ranks a large number of Clericals. The agitation was taken in hand by the Roman Catholic clergy, and the pulpits resounded with denunciations of the Jews. One clergyman, Father Deckert, was prosecuted for preaching the Blood Accusation and convicted (1894). Cardinal Schlauch, bishop of Grosswardein, declared in the Hungarian House of Magnates that the Liberals were in league with “cosmopolitans” for the ruin of the country. In October 1894 the magnates adopted two of the ecclesiastical bills with amendments, but threw out the Jewish bill by a majority of six. The crown sided with the magnates, and the ministry resigned, although it had a majority in the Lower House. An effort was made to form a Clerical cabinet, but it failed. Baron Banffy was then entrusted with the construction of a fresh Liberal ministry. The announcement that he would persist with the ecclesiastical bills lashed the Clericals and anti-Semites into a fury, and the agitation broke out afresh. The pope addressed a letter to Count Zichy encouraging the magnates to resist, and once more two of the bills were amended, and the third rejected. The papal nuncio, Mgr. Agliardi, now thought proper to pay a visit to Budapest, where he allowed himself to be interviewed on the crisis. This interference in the domestic concerns of Hungary was deeply resented by the Liberals, and Baron Banffy requested Count Kalnoky, the imperial minister of foreign affairs, to protest against it at the Vatican. Count Kalnoky refused and tendered his resignation to the emperor. Clerical sympathies were predominant in Vienna, and the emperor was induced for a moment to decline the count’s resignation. It soon became clear, however, that the Hungarians were resolved to see the crisis out, and that in the end Vienna would be compelled to give way. The emperor accordingly retraced his steps, Count Kalnoky’s resignation was accepted, the papal nuncio was recalled, a batch of new magnates were created, and the Hungarian ecclesiastical bills passed.