On April 19, 1903, the Kishinev pogrom began - one of the largest anti-Jewish actions during the Russian Empire.
A historical paradox - the practice of persecution of Jews has been widespread in Western Europe for hundreds of years, but today these gloomy pages are practically supplanted by what happened in the Russian Empire in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Unfortunately, the Russian word “pogrom” has become an international symbol of violent actions against the Jewish population.
Greek passions
Until the end of the 18th century, Jews constituted an insignificant percentage of the population of the Russian Empire. The situation changed dramatically after the partitions of the Commonwealth, when the empire included territories inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Jews.
In 1791, by decree of Catherine the Great, the so-called "Pale of Settlement" was defined, which determined the territories in which Jewish communities were allowed to settle. The Pale of Settlement did not apply to certain categories, which included serving recruits, merchants of the first guild, persons with higher education, artisans, etc.
Oddly enough, the first Jewish pogroms that took place in the empire had nothing to do with Russian anti-Semites at all.
In 1821, in Odessa, the initiators of the pogrom were the Greeks, agitated by rumors about the involvement of Jews in the murder of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Gregory in Istanbul. Subsequently, the Greeks were the initiators of the pogroms of 1859, 1862 and 1871, and the main reason for them was not religious enmity, but trade competition.
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The peculiarity of these pogroms was that they were not accompanied by mass killings of Jews.
The sovereign silently approves
The coming to power of Alexander III contributed to the tightening of policy towards the Jews. Subsequently, his son, Nicholas II, supported similar sentiments.
“The people are convinced of complete impunity for the most serious crimes, if only they are directed against the Jews,” wrote one of the high-ranking officials of the empire.
The wave of pogroms that followed immediately after the assassination of the People's Will of Emperor Alexander II, provoked the first wave of emigration from Russia.
In the 1890s, emigration continued, as the authorities did not take real measures to suppress such phenomena.
Under Nicholas II, anti-Semitism became an instrument of politics for ultra-reactionaries from the tsarist circle. Pogroms are perceived as a method of "playing off" social tension, a way to distract people from the revolution. The turn of the most famous pogroms in Russian history comes.
April 1903. Pogrom in Chisinau
The reason for this was the death of a 14-year-old teenager Mikhail Rybachenko in Dubossary. The Chisinau newspaper “Bessarabets”, headed by the prominent Black Hundreds Pavel Krushevan, published a series of materials, which stated that the murder was committed by Jews for ritual purposes.
The official investigation established that in reality the teenager was killed by a relative due to inheritance. After that, "Bessarabets" stopped publishing new materials, but rumors of ritual reprisals continued to circulate.
On the eve of Orthodox Easter in Chisinau, there was talk - "the tsar allowed to rob and kill Jews within three days after Easter."
The alarmed representatives of the Jewish community appealed to the authorities to no avail. On April 19, the first day of Passover, stones were thrown into the houses of the Jews. The authorities reacted rather sluggishly to what was happening, which forced the Jews to unite in self-defense squads.
Victims of pogroms in Chisinau
The peak of the pogroms fell on April 20. Jewish attempts to resist only embittered the attackers. The writer Vladimir Korolenko recalled: “I had a sad opportunity to see and talk with one of the victims … This is a certain Meer Zelman Weisman. Before the pogrom, he was blind in one eye. During the pogrom, one of the “Christians” considered it necessary to knock out the other one. When I asked if he knew who did it, he replied completely dispassionately that he didn’t know for sure, but “one boy”, the son of a neighbor, boasted that it was he who did it, using an iron weight tied to a rope."
Meer Weisman was still "lucky". During the pogrom, about 1,500 houses were destroyed and looted, which constituted a third of the city's total housing stock. 49 people were killed, about 600 were injured.
Only in the evening of April 20, the authorities used troops to suppress the riots, after which they stopped. The governor of Bessarabia, Rudolf Samoilovich Raaben, was removed from office. About 300 people were brought to criminal responsibility.
The inaction of the authorities was explained by many by the fact that agents of the Security Department were involved in organizing the pogrom, who carried out a directive aimed at inciting various layers of the empire's population against each other.
August 1903. Pogrom in Gomel
The events began with a brawl in the bazaar, provoked by an attack on Jewish traders. An attempt by the Jewish Self-Defense Unit was thwarted by the police. The thugs, seeing the support of the authorities, attacked Jewish homes. The city is mired in robbery and violence against Jews.
After three days of clashes, the authorities arrested dozens of rioters, as well as dozens of members of Jewish self-defense units.
44 Christians were brought to justice, accused of committing attacks on Jews, and 36 Jews, whom the authorities accused of "Russian pogrom".
October 1905. Pogrom in Odessa
The 1905 revolution provoked a whole series of pogroms by the Black Hundreds. The authorities reacted sluggishly to what was happening, calling the events "the indignation of the people, dissatisfied with the revolutionaries." The peak of the pogroms occurred in October, when up to 690 pogroms occurred in 102 settlements.
The Odessa pogrom became the bloodiest. One of the reasons was that the mayor Dmitry Neidgardt was behind its organization. Among the rioters were police officers disguised as civilians. They robbed Jewish houses and shops and the military.
In the five days of the pogrom, nearly 43,000 people suffered. Over 400 Jews were killed and nearly 5,000 maimed.
The authorities decided to suppress the riots only when it became clear that the rioters were ready to take on the non-Jewish population of the city.
In order to bury all the victims, a new cemetery site had to be allocated. After the events of October 1905, about 50,000 Jews left Odessa for emigration.
Traces of the Jewish pogrom in Odessa.
October 1905. Pogrom in Rostov-on-Don
Like the pogrom in Odessa, the massacre in Rostov was organized by the tsarist authorities together with the Black Hundreds. At that moment, a political strike was taking place in the city, which was part of an all-Russian action. After a mass rally, Black Hundreds and police disguised as civilians attacked a group of workers' activists. When they began to resist, they were attacked by Cossacks and soldiers. A rumor was launched across Rostov that Jews were beating up Russians.
When the resistance of the workers was suppressed, the Black Hundreds attacked the shops of the Jewish merchants, after which the pogrom quickly spread throughout the city.
In three days, during which the authorities did not take measures to stop the atrocities, more than 170 people were killed and over 500 were injured.
Pogroms during the Civil War
Jewish pogroms at the beginning of the century ceased by 1907, when the first Russian revolution began to decline. During the two revolutions of 1917, pogroms did not become a mass phenomenon, but during the Civil War they acquired an unprecedented scale.
According to historians, from 1918 to 1922 on the territory of the former empire, primarily in Ukraine and southern Russia, from 900 to 1500 actions took place, which can be attributed to Jewish pogroms.
At the same time, all parties involved in the war "distinguished themselves". The smallest contribution was made by the Reds - on their conscience about 100, or less than 9 percent of all anti-Jewish actions. Twice as many are on the conscience of the White Guards; in a quarter of all pogroms, various gangs of "greens" are to blame. Out of competition - supporters of Simon Petliura, who committed more than 40 percent of all pogroms.
From 100 to 200 thousand people became victims of anti-Jewish actions during the Civil War, twice as many were injured and maimed. The total number of rapes and robberies is almost incalculable.
The question of the level of anti-Semitism in Soviet society still causes heated debate among historians and political scientists. But we must admit that nothing comparable to the pogroms of the beginning of the century in the USSR has happened in all the years of its existence.
Andrey Sidorchik