A Russian Pogrom Against the Jews

This series has ten easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Peoples Move; Jews Suffer.

Introduction
Earlier persecutions of the Jews have been eclipsed in most people’s memory by the Holocaust of World War II. This is not right. This series covers one of the worst attacks on the Jews. This was the one in the city of Kishineff in 1905.

What is interesting is the outrage exhibited by the two writers here. They wrote just after these events and therefore before the Nazis. If reading these selections give the reader a feeling of oddness, then perhaps this experience helps understand the arc of human rights in the twentieth century.

The selections are from:

• article in Forum by Richard Gottheil.
• House No. 13 by Vladamir Korolenko.

For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

There’s 4.5 installments by Richard Gottheil and 5.5 installments by Vladamir Korolenko.

We begin with Richard Gottheil (1862-1936). He was an American Semitic scholar, Zionist, and founding father of Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity

Time: 1903
Place: Kishineff (modern Chișinău), Moldovia

The history of the advance of Russia and the spread of the influence of the Slav is one of the most interesting stories of the great movement westward known as the “Folk-wandering” — interesting not only because it is being accomplished under our very eyes, but also because the circumstances under which it is working itself out are so different from those which pertained during the preceding waves of this great movement. In former times it was the great number, combined with the presence of a surpassing genius as military leader, that swept everything before it; and the disordered and unsettled state of Europe made combined action against the invasion impossible and left the road almost clear. The Slav invasion, however, found Europe with fixed and well-defined boundaries, and with strong national feelings permeating the countries against which it battered. The simple brutality of armed invasion was out of the question; and the Slav therefore trained himself to acquire by astuteness and diplomatic subterfuges what brute force could not obtain. He went to school in European culture and European diplomacy. He acquired sufficient of the one to enable him to take his place among the modern culture nations, and he outdid his masters in the other to such a degree as to throw them completely in the shade. To his own qualities of daring and doggedness he has added a finesse which makes him a master-hand in the game of chess which we call international politics. Nothing seems to bar his way, neither accepted formulas nor acknowledged understandings. He can find a road out of both; and his steady advance eastward on the one hand and southward on the other shows that he now looms up as the commanding figure in the world’s history for the next one hundred years.

It is unfortunate that every great world movement has been connected with my people, the Jews; unfortunate, for whichever way events turned they were surely the ones to suffer. Carried upon the incoming wave, they have in every case been left high and dry when that wave has receded. Given their Oriental intense nature and their feeling that they were always on trial for their good behavior, they have naturally outdone those whom they wished to serve; and, trying to be all in all to everyone, they have been everything to none. In spreading west ward Russia absorbed a great part of the old kingdom of Poland, and thus received, into a mass that was already most heterogeneous, several millions of Jews. Had these Jews been allowed to disperse themselves naturally over the whole of the vast dominions of the Czar, they would have in time practically dis appeared and been lost to view in the many millions surrounding them. With a policy certainly short-sighted from the states man’s point of view, such a diffusion was made impossible; and by successive ukases and continued legislation they have been kept herded within the fifteen governments of White Russia and Poland, producing that “Pale of Settlement” on the west ern and southwestern frontier of the empire which can only be characterized by the adjective “awful.” In addition to this, free movement even within the Pale has been consistently re fused the Jews, and they have been further herded together in the larger and smaller towns.

One would imagine that such restrictions were sufficient to make life itself a burden for the Russian Jew; but he has had to bear more than this. After free residence and free movements within the Pale had been denied him, the free exercise of his talents and whatever opportunities life presented were also refused. One trade after another, one profession after another, was closed to him; and his cup of misery was filled to the brim when restrictions were placed upon his free use of the educational advantages offered by schools and universities. The notorious Ignatief May Laws of 1882 stand out as the most iniquitous piece of legislation ever enacted by a government that calls itself civilized, and only find their parallel in the recent Romanian legislation concerning the Jews.

The southwestern corner of the Pale of Settlement is formed by the government of Bessarabia — a province that is really not Russian but Romanian. It was acquired by Russia partly in 1818 and partly in 1878. Before this it had been a portion of the principality of Moldavia, and already toward the end of the fourteenth century contained a large Jewish population. From the very moment of its annexation to Russia, the persecution of its Jewish inhabitants commenced. Many of them were expelled, and, having lost their Romanian citizenship by the annexation, found themselves pariahs on the face of the earth. A large number lived in places situated within fifty versts (thirty-three miles) of the frontier; and according to the Russian law of October 27, 1858, only such Jews were allowed to live within tins distance of the frontier who had been settled there before the law was passed or who owned land or houses. Such continued herding was bound to produce the Jewish question; which question could be solved only, from the Russian point of view, by a complete degradation, leading to emigration, or by a whole sale conversion to the orthodox faith. According to the latest census reports there are 167,827 Jews among the 1,385,743 inhabitants of the province. It must not be forgotten that a large portion of the population is still Romanian. This is especially true of the landed gentry; and the anti- Jewish legislation and anti- Jewish campaign in Romania were bound to affect the Jews across the Bessarabian border.

And yet all the accounts agree that the non-Jewish and Jewish population lived in equity and friendship side by side. These accounts are credible; for even in 1881 and 1882, when the whole southern portion of Russia was aflame against the Jews, no trouble occurred in Bessarabia.

Vladamir Korolenko begins here.

More information here and here and below.

The Kishineff Pogrom of 1903 [IN HEBREW]

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