History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 of 3. From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day. Dubnow Simon
and small stores, as well as hundreds of houses, were demolished by the crowd, which acted, one might say, with elemental passion, dooming to destruction everything that fell into its hands. The town of Shpola, which is celebrated for its flourishing trade and its comparative prosperity, now presents the picture of a city which has been ravaged by a hostile army. Lines of old women and children may be seen moving [into the town] to carry home with them the property of the "Zhyds." Of essential importance is the fact that these disorders were undoubtedly prearranged. The local Jews knew of the impending disaster four days before it took place; they spoke about it to the local police chief, but the latter assured them that "nothing is going to happen."
Two months later, on April 16 and 17, the Christian inhabitants of the town of Kantakuzenka, in the government of Kherson, indulged in a similar "amusement" at the expense of the Jews. To quote the words of a semi-official report:
A cruel pogrom has taken place. Almost the entire town has been destroyed by an infuriated mob. All Jewish stores were wrecked and the goods found there were thrown about. A part of the merchandise was looted by the rabble. The synagogue alone remained unscathed.
Here, too, it was known beforehand that a pogrom was in the course of preparation. The Jews petitioned the authorities to avert the catastrophe, but the local police force was found inadequate to cope with the situation.
In both devastated towns the governors of the respective provinces eventually appeared on the scene with detachments of troops, but in the meantime the revolting performances were over. Many rioters were placed under arrest and put on trial. More than sixty were sentenced by the courts to a term in prison from eight to fourteen months. One of the defendants, a Little-Russian peasant, who had been arrested for having taken part in an anti-Jewish riot, voiced his amazement in these characteristic words: "They told us we had permission to beat the Jews, and now it appears that it is all a lie."
A pogrom on a more comprehensive scale, arranged in honor of the Easter festival, and lasting for three days (April 19-21, 1899), was allowed to take place in the city of Nicholayev, the South-Russian port of entry. Bands of rioters, to the number of several thousand, among them many newly arrived Great-Russian day laborers, and a few "intellectual" ringleaders, fell upon Jewish stores and residences and destroyed or looted their contents, complying faithfully with the established pogrom ritual, while the police and Cossack forces proved "powerless." On the third day, when the news of the freedom accorded to the rioters and robbers at Nicholayev reached the villages in the vicinity, a whole army of peasants, both men and women, numbering some ten thousand, started towards the city on their wagons, with the intention of carrying off the property of the Jews – but they were too late; for in the meantime Cossacks and soldiers had been ordered to stop the pogroms and disperse the rioters. The peasants were driven off and had to return to their villages on their empty wagons. Exasperated by their failure, the peasants vented their fury upon the Jewish cemetery outside the city, demolishing a large number of tombstones, and then, scattering all over the district, made an attack upon the Jewish population in the neighboring settlements and villages. In the Jewish agricultural colony of Nagartava all farm-houses and stores were wrecked and looted, and the agricultural implements demolished. The Russian peasant was unscrupulously ruining and robbing his Jewish fellow-peasant. In the adjacent colonies, the Jews, being of a robust physique, were able to put up an effective defence.
The only protest against this new outbreak of barbarism was voiced by the "Son of the Fatherland" (Syn Otyechestva), a liberal Russian press organ:
When at last – questioned the paper – will that terrible relic of the gloomy era of the Middle Ages take an end? When will there be a stop to this breaking of windows, this beating of men and this wrecking of houses and stores?
This time the orders from St. Petersburg were explicit: the local authorities were commanded to prevent the further spread of the pogrom agitation. The reason for this unaccustomed attitude is not difficult to guess. Two weeks after the Nicholayev atrocities, the first International Hague Conference opened its sessions (May 6-18), having been called at the initiative of the Russian emperor to discuss the question of disarmament, and this Conference must have suggested to the Tzar the advisability of first disarming the anti-Jewish rioters in Russia itself. However, he failed to draw the more important conclusion from the Conference called by him: that it was necessary to stop, or at least to reduce, the constant arming of his own Government against the Jews and to discard the mediæval weapons of oppression and persecution which spelled destruction to an entire nation. This alone is enough to expose the hollowness of the spectacle at the Hague, which had been designed by the feeble-minded Nicholas as a sort of diplomatic entertainment.
That the Russian authorities, when so minded, were fully capable of grappling with the pogrom agitation was demonstrated by the rapidity with which, on a later occasion, they suppressed the anti-Jewish excesses in the Polish city of Chenstokhov (August 19, 1902). In this hotbed of dismal Polish clericalism, the goal of thousands of Catholic pilgrims, who arrive there to worship the Holy Virgin on the "Bright Mountain," a street brawl between a Jewish tradesman and a Polish woman grew, owing to the instigations of Catholic priests, into a monstrous assault upon Jewish houses and stores by a crowd of fifteen thousand Poles. Here, too, the customary shouts were heard: "Beat the Jews! Nothing will happen to us." But the Chenstokhov rioters made a grievous error in their calculation. The protection of the Russian authorities did not extend to the Poles who were not considered politically "dependable," and were known to be equally hostile to the Zhyds and the "Moskals."16 The excesses had started in the morning, and in the evening they were at an end, a volley from the soldiers having put the tremendous crowd to flight. When the case came up before the courts, the public prosecutor pleaded for the severe punishment of the culprits. The guilty Poles were sentenced to penal servitude and to terms in prison, and in some cases even damages were awarded to the Jewish victims – an extraordinarily rare occurrence in legal proceedings of this kind.
The union of Polish anti-Semitism with Russian Judæophobia brought again to life the old monstrous accusation against the Jews – the ritual murder libel. A Polish servant girl in the employ of David Blondes, a Jewish barber in Vilna, steeped, as she was, in gross superstition and being a pliant tool in the hands of fanatical priests, ran out one night (March, 1900) into the street, shouting that her master had wounded her and had tried to squeeze blood from her for the Matzah. A crowd of Christians quickly assembled, and seeing the scratches on the neck and hands of the girl, fell upon Blondes and gave him a severe beating. The "criminal" was thrown into prison, and the prosecuting authorities, listening to the "voice of the people," were zealous in their search for the threads of the crime. The anti-Semitic press launched a well-planned campaign against the Jews in the hope of influencing the judicial verdict. The lower court recognized the fact of the assault, but denied the presence of any murderous intent, and, leaving aside the possibility of a ritual motive, sentenced Blondes to imprisonment for four months. The counsel for the defence, the well-known lawyer Gruzenberg, and others, fearing lest this sentence might be construed by the enemies of Judaism as a corroboration of the ritual murder libel, appealed from the verdict of the court, and proved victorious: a decision handed down by the Senate ordered the case to be sent back for a second trial to the District Court of Vilna, and the court of jurymen, after listening to the statements of authoritative experts and the brilliant speeches of the defence, rendered a verdict of not guilty (February 1, 1902). The prisoner was set at liberty, and the nightmare of the "ritual murder Dreyfusiad" was dispelled for the time being.
Even the Russian stage was made subservient to the purposes of Jew-baiting. A converted Jew by the name of Efron-Litvin, who had joined the anti-Semitic business firm of the Novoye Vremya, wrote a libelous play under the title "The Sons of Israel," or "The Smugglers," in which Jews and Judaism were made the subject of the most horrible calumnies. The play was first produced at St. Petersburg, in the theatre controlled by Suvorin, the publisher of the Novoye Vremya, and in the course of 1901-1902 it made the rounds of the provincial stage. Everywhere, the Russian Jew-haters welcomed this talentless production, which pictured the Jews as rogues and criminals, and represented the Jewish religion and morality as the fountain-head whence the supposed hatred of the Jews against the Christians derived its origin. Naturally enough the Jews and the best elements among the Russian intelligenzia looked
A contemptuous nickname for Russians customary among the Poles.