 Section 5 of History of the Shoes in Russia and Poland. Volume 3, From the Obsession of Nicholas II until the President Day, by Shimon Dubnov, translated by Israel Friedlander. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by SSKIM, Manicked Bioshoh, Portugal. Chapter 32, The National Awakening. Part 2, 3, Spiritual Nationalism or National Cultural Autonomism. Both political and spiritual Zionism have their roots in the same common ground, in the negation of the gullos. In the condition that outside of Palestine, in the lands of the diaspora, the Jewish people has no possibility of continuing its existence as normal national entity. Both political and spiritual Zionists have their eyes equally fixed upon Zion as the anchor of safety for Judaism, whether it be in its material or in its spiritual aspect. Neither doctrine had formulated a clear idea of future destinies of the Jewish diaspora, that is, of the destinies of the entire Jewry of the world, minus the section settled in Palestine. The political Zionists evaded the question as to the fate of the Jewish people, in case their aspirations should not materialize, and faithful to the motto proclaimed by Noldau were ready, as it were, to sentence the entire diaspora to death or to a life worse than death, in the eventuality of the Palestinian Charter being refused. The cultural Zionists protested against this hypothetical Zionism, insisting that the diaspora would preserve its national vitality by mere contact with the small cultural center in Palestine. But how the tremendous bulk of the diaspora Jewry should be organized for a Jewish life on the spot, how it should be enabled to liberate itself from the political and cultural pressure of the environment, that question remained unanswered by both wings of Zionism. An answer to this question could not be found by considering merely the last stage of Jewish history, but by viewing the letter in all its phases beginning with the ancient Greco-Roman and Eastern diaspora. Such an answer based upon the entire Jewish past was attempted by doctrine of spiritual nationalism, or more correctly, national cultural autonomism. Its fundamental principles have been formulated by the present writer in his letters concerning ancient and modern Judaism. The theory of autonomism takes as its point of departure the historic fact that at all times, with the exception of a few brief and partial deflections, the Jewish diaspora, taken as a whole, represented a national organism in which the absence of political or territorial unity was made up by the stronger cohesion of its spiritual and cultural ties and the greater intensity of its social and autonomous life. For many centuries, the entire culture of Judaism assumed religious colouring and its communal autonomy was centred in the synagogue, which circumstance gave the modern champions of assimilation reason for thinking that the Jews were only a religious group scattered among various nations. It was a fatal error on the part of the Parisian Sineadion convoked by Napoleon when, in its declaration of 1807, it proclaimed that Jewry today does not constitute the nation an error which during the 19th century became an article of faith with the Jews of Western Europe. The latest development of the national movement has shown that Jewry, though scattered among various political states, is a nation full of vitality and that the Jewish religion is only one of its functions. The Jewish national idea, secularized to a certain degree, is based on the assumption that all sections of the Jewish people, though divided in their political allegiance from one spiritual or historical cultural nation which like all national minority groups in countries with a mixed population are in duty bound to fight in their several lands at one and at the same time not only for their civil equality but also for their national rights, the autonomy of the Jewish community, school and language. What Jewish orthodoxy has for centuries stood for and still stands for under the guise of religious Judaism progressive Jews should fight for under the banner of a national Jewish culture. The fate of universal Jewry ought not to be bound up with one single center. We should take into account the historic fact of multiplicity of centers of which those that have the largest numbers and can boast of the most genuine development of a national Jewish life are entitled to the hegemony of the Jewish people. In those lands in which civil emancipation has been achieved the fight must go on for national emancipation, the recognition of the Jews as a nation which is entitled to a comprehensive communal and cultural autonomy. In Russia the struggle must be carried on simultaneously for civil as well as national rights. Temporary setbacks in this struggle for a national existence ought not to discourage a nation which has endured the most terrible sufferings for centuries and has been able to preserve its spiritual freedom even in the midst of slavery. A certain measure of relief from these sufferings might be found in the old-time remedy of Jewish history in the emigration from the lands of bondage to countries enjoying a great amount of freedom. If in one of the centers the Jews are subject to prolonged persecution then their gradual transplantation be it partial or complete to another center offering more favorable opportunities in the struggle for existence ought to be attempted. Thus during the last decades the partial exodus of the Jews from Russia has helped to create an important Jewish center in North America and the smaller yet spiritually valuable center in Palestine. The letter may become a medium for the nationalization of the entire diaspora but only then when the diaspora itself will be organized directly upon the foundations of cultural autonomy. Zionism when reduced to its concrete possibilities can form only one plank in the universal platform of the Jewish nation. The Palestinian center may strengthen the national development of the diaspora but it does not constitute or conditio sine qua non for its autonomous existence. Similar to spiritual Zionism which yet not succeeded in forming a special party and yet acted as a lever in the general Zionist movement Autonomism too failed to find its embodiment in a party organization and yet became an integral part of the political national movement of Russian Jewry at the beginning of the present century. During the revolutionary struggle in Russia in 1905 and 1906 the demand for a national cultural autonomy was embodied in various degrees by nearly all Jewish parties and groups in their platforms aside from and in addition to the demand for civil equality. 4. The Jewish Socialistic Movement On a parallel line with the nationalistic ideology which formed the counterbalance to the assimilationist theory of Western Europe the doctrine of socialism came gradually to the fore emphasizing the principle of the class struggle in a more or less intimate connection with the national idea. The Jewish labor movement was born at the end of the 80s in Lithuania in Vilna and other cities. Its adherents were recruited from among the Jewish working men who were mainly engaged in handicrafts. In the 90s the movement spread to the growing manufacturing centers of Lithuania in Poland Bialystok, Smolgan, Warsaw and Utsi. At first the labor societies were established with purely economic ending due the organization of strikes for few working hours increased wages and the like. The leaders of these societies who were recruited from among the young Jewish intelligentsia some of whom had received the university education abroad endeavored to model the movement in the pattern of the West European social democracy. The doctrine of Marxian socialism was applied sometimes rather hastily to the primitive stage of capitalistic production in the payload settlement where it was still very difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the poverty-stricken petty bourgeoisie forming the bulk of the Jewish population and the labor proletariat. In the second half of the 90s the Jewish socialistic societies were drawn into the mainstream of the Russian revolutionary movement. In 1897 all these societies were consolidated in the League of the Jewish Working Men of Lithuania, Poland and Russia known under its abbreviated name as the Ubunt, the League. The first secret convention of the League took place in Vilna in the month of September just one month after the first Zionist congress at Basel. Various party centers were organized in Russia clandestinely of course. The party organ published in the Language of the Jewish Messages in Yiddish appeared abroad under the name of the arbiter Shtime. It is worthy of note that the formation of the Jewish Ubunt deolated the stimulus to the organization of the Russian Social Democratic Party which united the formerly existing Russian labor societies. The Ubunt now joined the ranks of Russian Social Democracy as a separate autonomous group although a number of Jewish Social Democrats who had adopted the viewpoint of assimilation or cosmopolitanism occupied a conspicuous place in the leadership of the Russian party at large. At subsequent conventions the Ubunt endeavored to formulate its national program. At first the tendency prevailed to limit the national elements in the party platform to the use of the popular Jewish vernacular as a propaganda medium among the messes. At the third convention of the Ubunt which took place in Kovno in 1899 the proposal to demand national equality for the Jews was voted down on the ground that the attention of the working men should be concentrated upon their classed interests and ought not to be diverted in the direction of national aspirations. The fourth convention of the party held in 1901 similarly declared that it was premature under the present circumstances to put forward the demand for a national autonomy for the Jews although it realized at the same time that the concept of nationality is also applicable to the Jewish people. Only after prolonged debates in the party press and after a violent struggle with the centralized tendencies of the Russian Social Democratic Party the convention of the Ubunt held in 1905 adopted a resolution demanding national cultural autonomy in the domain of popular education as well as public rights with a language spoken by the Jews. In this wise, the national element gradually permeated even the doctrine of socialism which in its essence had always been opposed to it and had placed in its state the principle of internationalism and class interests. On the other hand, an attempt was made to inject the socialistic element into Zionism. Beginning with 1901 the Palae Zion, the Zionistic working men began to organize themselves in separate societies which proclaimed the territorial principle of Zionism as the only means of solving the Jewish social economic question proceeding from the assumption that in the lens of the diaspora the Jewish message would always be bought from the domain of big industry. 5. The revival of Jewish letters This national revival of Russian Jewry found its expression also in Jewish literature. The periodical press, particularly in the Hebrew language exhibited new life and vigor and in other domains of literary productivity various big talents made their appearance. As early as the end of the 80s the two weekly Hebrew events the Har Melits in St. Petersburg and the Har Tsephira in Warsaw were transformed into dailies. The Hebrew annuals pursuing purely literary and scientific aims such as Haasif, the Harvest, Knesset Israel, the Community of Israel, Pardis, the Garden and others made way for the more energetic Haasilua or monthly publication which reacted more rapidly on the questions of the day. This review, which is the equal of the leading periodicals of Europe exercised considerable influence upon the views of the nationalist Jewish youth during the period of transition from the 19th to the 20th century. At one and the same time considerable headway was made by the periodical press in the popular vernacular called Jargon or Yiddish. The Yiddish's Fox Blood or weekly publication appeared in St. Petersburg from 1881 to 1890. The House Freund, the Yiddish Fox Bibliothèque the Yiddish Bibliothèque edited by Spector, Shardom Eleichem and Ayel Peretz respectively were published in Warsaw and Kiev between 1888 and 1895. Their youth, the Yiddish weekly was issued in Warsaw in 1899 and 1902. As for the Jewish press in the Russian language the former mouthpiece of the progressive intelligentsia the Voskot which appeared at the same time as weekly and as a monthly publication leaned more and more towards the national movement. Another Russian Jewish weekly Budoshnost, the Future which appeared in St. Petersburg from 1899 to 1903 was Zionistic Intendancy. In the theoretic branch of publicistic literature the dominant figure during that period was Ahad Ham whose articles endeavored to answer not only the exciting questions of the day but also the perpetual problems of Judaism. His brief semi-philosophic semi-publicistic essays under the general heading Perurim Titbit served as a lodestar for those who hoped to find the synthesis of Jews and men in modern Jewish nationalism. In a series of articles he lashes slavery and freedom while the assimilation of the emancipated Jews of Western Europe. He criticizes the theory of nationalism without Zion and the manifestations of Jewish de-Zionism with its denial of the Jewish ethical doctrine. Not satisfied with mere criticism he formulates in these articles the principles of a spiritual revival in the sense of nationalization of Jewish culture. The essays of Ahad Ham which were subsequently collected under the title Al Parashat Derakim at the parting of the ways represents a profound and closely reasoned system of thought which is firmly grounded in historical philosophical premises. In the forefront of publicists of a less theoretic tone of mind stood the talented Nahum Sokolov the editor of Ha Sefirah in Warsaw who, after some vacillation joined the ranks of political Zionism. In the borderland between journalism and literary criticism the most conspicuous figures were David Frischman and Mika Yosef Berdyczewski. The former emphasized in his brilliant literary essays the necessity of Europeanization of Judaism while the latter championed the cause of Nizeanism protesting against the suppression of the men in the Jew and against the predominance of the spiritual of the material in the doctrine of Judaism. Berdyczewski is also the author of a number of sketches portraying the tragic split in the soul of the Jewish intellectual and the primitive harmoniousness of the old Hasidic world. In the realm of Jewish bell letter S.J. Abramowicz, known under his pen name Mendele Moko Shvorym the right of the era of reforms remained as there to fall the acknowledged leader. The creative energy of this author who mastered with equal skill both the national and the popular language attained to even greater heights during the period of the new Jewish martyrdom. His novel, Wingsh Fingal The Wishing Ring which was originally written in Yiddish and in its Hebrew version grew into a large volume by Emel Ka Baka in the Valley of Tears, 897 to 1907 constitute a great epic depicting Jewish life during the gloomy reign of Nicholas I and the era of enlightenment on the Alexander II. A series of sketches mapped by inimitable humor portrays the disintegration of the old mode of life under the influence of the programs of 1881 and the subsequent emigration from Russia Emel Ka Raj in Stormy Days and others. His autobiographical series Be'Amin Haim in those days and his incomplete Shloim Reb Haim's Solomon the Son of Haim revealed the power of real psychological analysis. Avronovic's literary activity extending over half a century earned for him the title of Grandfather of Neo-Hebrew Literature the outsider. He was privileged to witness the brilliant successes of his sons and grandmothers who came gradually to the fore particularly in Yiddish literature. His younger contemporary Isaac Life Padets wrote during the first period of his literary endeavors clever stories portraying the life of the Jewish masses in Poland and distinguished by a powerful realism often tinged with satire. His series, Isaac Builder, travel pictures and other sketches which were written mostly during the 90s. Later on, Padets leaned more and more towards modern literary symbolism drawing his inspiration mostly from the mystic legend of the Hasidim. His series, Hasidish which was subsequently expanded into two volumes under the title Forfstumliche Geschichten popular stories 1909. Towards the end of the century the talent of the great Jewish nationalist Salom Alaihem as Ravinovitz attained his full bloom. He was particularly successful in his mastery delineation of the Luftmensch type of the paleopsettlement who is constantly on the hunt for a piece of bread who clutches at every possible profession and subsists on illusions. His sketches Menachem Mendel using the popular monocular idioms and witticism as his vehicles of expression Salom Alaihem draws the picture of the little people of the Russian ghetto. His series, Kleine Mezhelik describes the joys and sorrows of their children. Masjofa Yiddishekinda stories for Jewish children and puts into the mouth of the unsophisticated philosopher of the ghetto. Kevye, Tobias the Dairyman the soul-storing epic of the great upheavals in this secluded little world. The series of sketches under the name of Tevye de Milchica. Today's big stars on the sky of Jewish Belletre may be added the host of lesser luminaries who write in the rejuvenated ancient language of the nation or in the monocular of the message the Yiddish. The literary revival manifested itself with particular figure in the domain of poetry. At the beginning of the 90s the voice of Judah Leipgoden the poet of the era of reforms was silenced. He died in 1892. The singer of the national sorrow, Shimon Frug who was carried away by the new ideas of Zionism began to sing his Zionist in the Russian language at the same time with the message sonorous poems in Yiddish though neither of them reveals the poetic charm of his old national allergies. New stars now glisten on the horizon. The middle of the 90s saw the ripening of the might talent of Haim Naaman Beldig who brought the poetic forms of ancient Hebrew speech to unprecedented perfection. The magnificent form matched by the wealth of content. The greatest creative power of Beldig is displayed in his treatment of national motifs. Himself, the product of the rabbinical Yeshiva and Bedha Midrash is things of the spiritual beauty hidden behind these ancient and outwardly unattractive worlds in this antiquated citadel of Jewish spirit where the cult of intellectual went to supreme. Where the spiritual shield was forged which preserved the nation of lambs amidst a horde of wolves. His wonderful poems immissed at the delusion to students and others. The sufferings and humiliations heaped upon his people by its enemies bring the poet to the brink of despair for he realizes that the old shield has been laid aside and no new shield has taken its place. He is filled with indignation at the indifference of the Jewish message to the appeal for regeneration sounded by Zionism. I can't hide the harm readily the people are like grass and others. At the later stage beginning with the Kishinip program of 1903 Baelic's liar becomes more and more pessimistic adapting the tone of red bull rebuke and fury denunciation. In contra distinction to this singer of the national soul another contemporary poet Saul Czernikowski sounds the keynote of general human experience and the joy of living. He demonstratively prostrates himself before the statue of Apollo, the Nobka Paisel Apollo, before the statue of Apollo, offering to the repentant prayer of the Jew for having denied the idea of beauty. He raves about Hellenism the cult of joy and light repudiating the one sided spirituality and rigorism of old Judaism. Erotic motives descriptions of nature values, rustic ideals such as the characteristic features of Czernikowski's poetry which forms as it were a general human pendant to the poetry of Baelic though yielding to it in the depths of literary conception. Both Baelic and Czernikowski fructified the field of Jewish poetry which in the beginning of the 20th century found the whole host of more or less talented cultivators most of them writing in the ancient national language though in a rejuvenated form. Less rapid was the progress of Jewish scholarly endeavors. Yet beginning with the 80s even this domain is marked by an uninterrupted activity which forms a continuation of the scientific achievements of the West. The 90s integrate systematic efforts directed toward the illustration of the history of the Jews in Russia in Poland. A series of scholarly researches, monographs and general accounts of Jewish history written mostly in Russian make their appearance. Particularly noteworthy are the efforts to blaze new paths of Jewish historiography converging towards the national conception of Judaism. The Jewish historians of the 19th century in Western Europe who was swayed by assimilationist ideas of Jewish history primarily from the theological or a spiritualistic point of view. The scholarly endeavors of Russian Jewry constitute an attempt to understand the social development of the diaspora as a peculiar internally autonomous nation which at all times has sought to preserve not only its religious treasures but also the genuine complexion of its diversified national life. End of section 5. Section 6 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 From the Obsession of Nicholas II until the present day by Shimon Dubunov translated by Israel Friedlander. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Asif Schim Manikut Baisha, Portugal. Chapter 33 The Kishnev Massacre Part 1 1. Programs as a counter-revolutionary measure The frenzy of political reaction which raged for two decades was graced to the mill of the revolution. Stunned by the blow it had received at the beginning of the 80s the Russian revolutionary movement came back to consciousness at the beginning of the 80th century when the hopes for a change of policy on the part of Nicholas II had been completely blessed. The agitation among the students and the working men, the disorders at the universities, the strikes at the factories, the revolutionary propaganda carried on in the underground press at home and in the public press abroad. All these endeavors were gradually coordinated within the name of the two revolutionary organizations the Social Democratic and the Social Revolutionary Parties, both of which assumed definite shape between 1898 and 1900. The Social Revolutionary Party favored terrorism as a weapon in its struggle with the Russian government which had made use of all the appliances of police terrorism to suppress the suffering for liberty. This official terrorism raged with unrestricted violence. Nocturnal race, rest, prisons and places of deportation or of penal servitude filled to overflowing with political criminals mostly young men and women such were the agencies by means of which the government hoped to stamp out the revolutionary hydra even when manifesting itself in the form of moderate constitutional demands. The revolutionaries fought terrorism with terrorism and one of their victims was the reactionary minister of the interior, C.P. Argin who was assassinated in April 1902. The exasperated Tsar retorted by appointing to the same office von Plath, one of the most experienced henchmen of the Russian political inquisition who had long before in his capacity of chief of the political police brought its mechanism to the top notch of efficiency. He was destined to play an ill-fated role in the meteorology of Russian Jewry. It was easily to be foreseen that the Russian evolutionary movement would make a strong appeal to the Russian Jewish youth had any other cultured nation been tormented and humiliated as cruelly and as systematically as were the Jews in Russia it would surely have given birth to an immense host of desperate terrorists. True, the Jews supplied the revolutionary army with a large number of fighters then was wanted by their numerical proportion to the rest of the Russian population. Yet their number was insignificant when compared with the atrocities which were constantly perpetrated against them. As a rule, the Jewish college youth joined the ranks of the social democratic organization which disapproved of political assassination. There were particularly numerous Marxists among the Jewish young men and women who had been turned away from the Russian institutions of learning and had gone to Western Europe where they imbibed doctrines and methods of German social democracy. There were fewer Jews among the social revolutionaries Gershuni, Götz and others and these two did not as a rule take a direct part in the terroristic plots. As a matter of fact the early terrorist act committed by a Jew was that of the working men Hirsch Leckert in Vilna stung by the barbarous conduct of the governor of Vilna von Waal who had given orders to flock the Jewish working men in public for having arranged a demonstration on May 1st, 1902 Leckert fired upon that official. The governor escaped unscathed and Leckert paid with his life for the attempt. But on the whole, the revolutionary activity of the Jews was limited to the frequent political demonstrations arranged by the Bund and to the organizing endeavors over certain sections of the Jewish intellectuals who had joined the ranks of both Russian socialistic parties. Had the Russian government been guided by a genuine interest in the body politic, the spread of the revolutionary movement among the Jews which was the child of its own system of oppression would have inevitably induced it to mitigate the system which was bound to turn millions of people into desperadoes. But the Russian government was properly speaking not the government. It was a task of officials who had degraded the administration of the country to the systematic endeavor of saving their own personal careers and classed interests both of which were indissolubly bound up with unlimited autocracy. The Russian bureaucracy regarded the revolution as a personal threat as a menace to its existence and looked upon the Jewish participants in the revolution as their own individual enemies whose deeds were to be avenged upon the whole Jewish people. Thus their ripened in the mind of Plav the head of the bureaucratic incudation or truly devilish plan to wage war against the Russian revolution by waging war against the Jews and to divert the attention of the Russian public which was honeycombed with the revolutionary propaganda in the direction of the aliens thereby stigmatizing the entire emancipatory movement in Russia as the work of Jewish hands as in anti-patriotic cause which was falling to the Russian people. It was part of this plan to engineer somewhere a barbarous anti-Jewish program in order to intimidate the Jewish revolutionaries and to put it forward as a protest of the Russian people against the Jewish revolution. Drown the revolution in Jewish blood. This motor underlaid a terrible scheme which beginning with 1903 was put into execution by the underlings of Nicholas II at the most crucial moments in the Russian revolutionary movement. Two, the organized Kishnev battery. Needless to say, there was plenty of inflameable material for such an anti-Jewish conflagration. One of the criminal haunts of these incendiaries was situated at a time in Kishnev, the capital of Semimoltaevion, Bessarabia. Until the end of 19th century the 50,000 Jews of the city had lived in peace and harmony with the Christian neighbors from about some 60,000. At the beginning of the new century, these friendly relations were severed owing to the untrammeled anti-Semitic agitation of a local yellow journalist or petty official by the name of Khrushchevan. This official had been published in Kishnev since 1897 or local sheet under the name of Bessarabets, the Bessarabian. Having originally embarked upon a moderately progressive policy, the paper soon sold itself to the local anti-Semitic reactionaries from among the nobility and bureaucracy and was dense forward, subventioned by the government. For a number of years, Khrushchevan's paper carried on an unbridled agitation against the Jews. The Jews were accused of every possible crime of economic exploitation of socialism of hatred towards the Christians of ritual models and of fathering the godless revolution. Favored by the powers that be, the Bessarabets could do what it pleased. The censorship of the paper lay in the hands of the deputy governor of Kishnev, Ustrogov, who during his administrative activity had proved himself a past master in the art of persecuting the Jews and curtailing the crimes of rights that were still left to them. Under the auspices of such a censor who was in reality a contributor to the paper, the letter was sure of immunity even when it proceeded to print appeals calling on the Christian population to make programs upon the Jews. This agitation was particularly dangerous in view of the fact that the Bessarabets was the only press organ in the province. The government consistently refusing to license the publication of any other paper. As a matter of fact, Khrushchevan's activity in Bessarabia was so well thought of by Plav that in 1902 the mercenary journalist received considerable sum from a special slush fund for the publication of a newspaper in St. Petersburg under the name of a similarly reactionary anti-Semitic tendency. However, in the capital, the filthy sheet was unable to find readers. But as far as the Bessarabets was concerned, its influence was clearly felt. The Russian public opinion was affected by the poisonous doses administered to it daily. The sinister instincts of the mob became inflamed more and more and there was the foreboding of a storm in the air. In the beginning of 1903, Khrushchevan found an occasion to give a definite turn to his accustomed program propaganda. In the town of Tubersary, the mutilated body of a Russian peasant boy Liberlenko had been found who, as was subsequently brought out by the judiciary inquiry, had been slain by his uncle in the hope of appropriating his portion of a pickaxe. The Bessarabets immediately launched a campaign against the Jews, accusing them of ritual murder. That's the Jews, let all these be massacred. Such appeals were almost daily repeated in the paper which was read in all the saloons and public houses of Bessarabia. The unenlightened Russian mob etched for an occasion to lay its hands upon the Jews. An attempt at a pogrom was made at Tubersary, but it was frustrated by the local Jews who were over sturdy physique. On the eve of the Easter festival of 1903, mysterious rumors were set afloat in Kishnev itself telling of the murder of a Christian servant girl whose death was ascribed to the Jews. In reality, the girl had taken poison and died despite the efforts of a Jewish pastor to save her life. The goings-on in Kishnev on the eve of that Easter bore the earmarks of an energetic activity on the part of some secret organization which was hatching an elaborated Finnish scheme. That criminal organization was centered in the local Russian club which was the welling point of the officials of the province. Shortly before the holiday, there suddenly appeared in the city an emissary of the political police the gendarmerie officer Levendal who had been dispatched from St. Petersburg. After Easter, when the signalling crime had already been committed, the same mysterious envoy vanished just as suddenly. The triumvirate Khrushchevan Ustrogov-Levendal was evidently the soul of the terrible antisemitic conspiracy. Printed handbills were scattered about in the city telling the people that an imperial U.K. had been published granting permission to inflict a bloody punishment upon the Jews in the course of the three days of the Christian Passover. The police made no attempt to suppress these circulars for as was subsequently brought out, they were in the conspiracy. Several police officials even hinted at the impending violence in their talks with Jewish acquaintances. In the saloons and in the tea houses the approaching program was the subject of public discussion. The Jews were fully aware of the coming storm though they scarcely realized that it would take the form not merely of an ordinary program but of a regular battery. On the eve of the festival of Passover, the representatives of the Jewish community waited upon the governor and the chief of police praying for protection and received the cool reply that the necessary instructions had already been given and that the proper measures for their safety had been adopted. A local Greek Orthodox bishop asked the rabbi who came to see him on the subject whether it was true that there was a Jewish sect which used Christian blood for ritual purposes. The conflagration which was openly prepared by the incendiaries broke out at the moment determined upon. On Sunday, April 6 the first day of the Christian Passover and the seventh day of the Jewish holiday the church bells began to ring at noon time and a large crowd of Russian burgers and artisans acting undoubtedly upon a given signal scattered all over the town and fell upon houses and stores. The bands were preceded by state urchins who were throwing stones at the windows. The rioters, whose number was swelled by these useful fighters seeing that police made no attempt to interfere began to break into the houses and stores and to throw the contents on the street where everything was destroyed or plundered by the festive crowd. But even then the police and soldiers who were stationed on the streets remained passive and made no attempt to arrest the rioters. This attitude served in the eyes of the mob as a final proof that the rumors concerning the permission of the Tsar to beat the Jews were correct. An immense reflip in a state of intoxication crowded the streets shouting death to the Zeds, beat the Zeds. In the evening routine gave way to killing. The murderers armed with clubs and knives were sailed the Jews in the cars on the streets and in the houses wounding them severely, sometimes even fatally. Even then the police and military remained inactive. Only when in one place a group of Jews armed with sticks attempted to drive off the murderers the police stepped in at once and disarmed their defenders. At 10 o'clock in the evening the looting and killing was suddenly stopped. Rumor had it that the general staff of the rioters were holding a meeting concerning the further plan of military operations and were making arrangements for a systematic butchery. The army soon received the necessary orders in the course of the entire day of April 7 from daybreak until 8 o'clock in the evening. Kishnev was the scene of bestialities such as find few parallels even in the history of the most barbarous ages. Finding themselves defenseless and exposed to the passions of a savage crowd, many Jewish families hid themselves in their cellars or in their garret and sometimes sought safety in the houses of their Christian neighbors. But the murderers succeeded in hunting down their unfortunate victims. The Jews were slain in most barbarous fashion. Many of them were not killed at once but were left writing in premortal agonies. Some had nails driven into their heads or had their eyes put out. Little children were thrown from garrets to the pavement and their brains dashed out upon the stones. Women had their stomachs ripped open or their breasts cut off. Many of them began the victims of rape. One gymnasium pupil who saw his mother attacked by these fins threw himself single-handed upon them and saved at the cost of his life, his mother's honor. He himself was slain and his mother's eyes were put out. The drunken horse broke into the synagogue and getting hold of the Torah scrolls, tore them to shreds, defiled them and trampled upon them. In one synagogue, the old farmer's beader hurried in his prayer shore and shielding with his body, the Ark containing the sacred scrolls was savagely murdered by the desecrators on the threshold of the sanctuary. Throughout the entire day, wagons were seen moving in the streets carrying undead and slain Jews to the hospitals which had been converted into field lesserates. But even this site did not induce the police to step in. The Russian population outside the few isolated cases made no attempt to defend the tormented Jews. The so-called intelligent public, the officials with their wives and children, the students, the lawyers, the physicians worked leisurely upon the streets and looked on indifferently and sometimes even sympathetically while the terrible work was going on. The governor of Bessarabia, von Harben, who on the morning of the second day of the program was waited upon by a Jewish deputation begging for protection, replied that he could do nothing since he had received no instructions from St. Petersburg. At last, at five o'clock in the afternoon, a telegram was received from Klev and at six o'clock large detachment of troops fully armed appeared on the central streets. No snow had the crowd notice that the soldiers were ready to act then it took to its heels without a single shot being fired. Only in the outskirts of the town, which had not yet been reached by the troops, the plunder and massacre continued until late in the evening. It is needless to point out that had this readiness of the police and military to attend to their duty been displayed in Kishnev at the inception of the program, not a single Jew would have been murdered nor a single house destroyed. As it was, the murderers and rioters were given a free hand for two days and the result was that 45 Jews were slain, 86 severely wounded or crippled, 500 slightly wounded apart from cases of rape, the number of which could not be determined. 1,500 houses and stores were demolished and looted. The victims were mostly among the lower classes of the Jewish population since many well-to-do Jewish families were able by bribing the police heavily to secure the protection of the letter and to have the rioters turned away from their houses. As against the enormous number of Jewish victims, there were only two fatalities and intoxicated rioters. The Kishnev Jews seemed unable to resist the murderers and sell their lives dearly. End of Section 6 Section 7 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume 3 From the Obsession of Nicholas II until the Present Day by Szymon Dubunov translated by Israel Friedländer This Liberty Box recording is in the public domain recording by Assykim Manikut Baisha, Portugal Chapter 33 The Kishnev Massacre Part 2 3 Echoes of the Kishnev tragedy A cry of horror rang throughout Russia and the more or less civilized countries of the world when the news of the Kishnev virtually became known. The Russian press voiced its indignation against the Kishnev atrocities. The most prominent Russian writers expressed their sympathy with the victims in letters and telegrams. Lev Tolstoy voiced his sentiments in the letter which could not be published on account of the censorship. The humanitarian writer Koro Lenko portrayed the horrors of Kishnev in a heart-rending story under the title House Number 13 in which, on the basis of personal observation, he pictured how the Jewish residents of one house were tortured to death by the rioters. The story was circulated in an illegal edition its publication having been strictly forbidden by the censor but in Russia itself the cry was stifled by the heavy-handed plebiscic censorship and whatever a fraction of the terrible truth managed to slip through the barriers of the censor, pleb sent out warnings to the papers threatening to discontinue their publication for the pursuit of an injurious policy. Such a fate actually overtook the Russian-Jewish force code in St. Petersburg, the legal journal Pravo, the law, and others. The entire Russian press was forced by the government to publish the falsified version in its official reports in which the organized massacre was turned down to a casual brawl and the inactivity of the troops was explained either by the inadequacy of the numbers. Despite the fact that several battalions were stationed in the city or by the incapacity of the police while the dead and wounded were referred to in a vague manner so as to suggest that the victims of the brawl were found on both sides. But the revelations in the foreign press were over nature to stagger all Europe and America. The correspondent of the London Times published the text of a secret letter addressed by PLEV to the governor of Basilevia. In each two weeks before the program, the letter official was told that in the case of anti-Jewish disorders no records shall be taken to surround the interference with the urban population so as not to arouse hostility to the government in the population which has not yet been affected by the revolutionary propaganda. The authenticity of this letter is not entirely beyond suspicion but there can be no doubt that instructions to the defect rather by word of mouth than in writing probably through the sacred agent to Evender and actually transmitted to the authorities in Kisnev. From the fact that on the second day of the program, the governor was still waiting for instructions from Saint Petersburg permitting him to discontinue the massacre it is evident that he must have received previous orders to allow it to proceed up to a certain point. The horrors of the Armenian massacres in Turkey against which even Russian diplomacy had faced more than once faded into insignificance before the wholesale battery at Kisnev. Europe and America were deeply agitated. The Jews outside of Russia collected large funds for their unhappy Russian brethren but their efforts exhausted themselves in sympathy and philanthropy. The effect of the catastrophe upon Russian Jewry was more lasting. A mixed feeling of hate and shame seized the Jewish public red against the organizers and competitors of the terrible crime and shame for the tortured and degraded brethren who not having a chance to save their lives had failed to save their honor by offering stout resistance to this beast in human shape who was short of immunity. The poet broke his sentiment in an idyllic poem at the physical helplessness of his nation and confining himself to an appeal to the kind Jewish heart. Too keen and grievous is our pain too weak our hand to blow to Paris. Come on then tender Jewish heart the love and comfort to us carry. Brothers, sisters, pray, have pity, die and dreadful is our need. Throughout we want the dead to bury the bread that is living we may feed. A little later the young poet Bialik gave powerful utterance to his feeling of red and shame in his burden of Nemirov. He makes God address these words to the martyred nation. Your dead have died in vain and neither you nor I can say for what they gave their lives and why. No tears shall flow for you the Lord swears by his name. For though the pain be great great also is the shame and which of them the greater though son of man decide. In picturing the memorial services held in honor of the Kishnev victims at the synagogues he angrily exclaims in the name of God. Lift thine eyes and look how steep they are in grief. You hear them cry and sob and mournful prayers read. You see them beat their breast and for their forgiveness bleed. What are they praying for tell them to protest to shake their fists at me and justice to demand justice for all they have suffered throughout the generations so that my heaven and throne shall quake to their foundations. Neither the pogroms at the beginning of the 1980s nor the Moscow atrocities at the beginning of the 90s can compare in their soul stirring effect upon Russian jury with the massacre of Kishnev. It awakened the burning feeling of martyrdom but we did also the feeling of heroism. All were seized by one and same impulse. The organization of self defense as if to say themselves are bound to defend it. The pogrom panic which spread over the entire south following upon the terrible days of April 6 and 7 led to the organization of self defense societies in a number of cities. Pleve knew of these preparations and found himself in a difficult position. He realized that these endeavors might interfere with the engineering of the pogroms since the latter would no longer be safe for the mothers and plunderers and he was moreover full of apprehension that these self defense societies might become hotbed of revolutionary propaganda and provide training ground for political demonstrations. These apprehensions were voiced in a circular ish at the end of April in which the minister instructed the governors first that no self defense societies should be tolerated and second that the authorities should adopt measures for the prevention of violence and the suppression of lawlessness. Substant event showed that the letter order was never put into effect. The first instruction however was carried out with relentless cruelty and during the following pogroms the troops made it their first business to shoot down the members of the self defense. Such being the frame of mind of Russian Jury the U.K. of May 10, 1903 opening up to the Jews for the free domicile 101 localities in various governments of the pair of settlement which had hitherto been barred to them under the temporary rules of 1882 was received with complete indifference. As a matter of fact many of the rural settlements included in that U.K. were in reality towns which had been converted into villages at the instigation of spiteful officials for their sole purpose of rendering them inaccessible to the Jews. The stolen property was now returned with a slight surplus. The donate gift which seemed to be offered to the Jews as a compensation for the occasion of ours could not but fill them with disgust. Parenthetically it may be remarked that the government itself nullified the moral effect of its act of grace by issuing on the same day a new repressive law prohibiting the privileged Jews who were entitled to the right of domicile outside of the pair of settlement from acquiring real property in the villages and hamlets. The note of rightlessness was loosened by a hair's breath in one place and tightened in another. In shame of the Kishnev days armed the hand of Pinkers Tashevsky or high-minded Jewish youth against the most culpable instigator of the massacre, Khrushchevan. Tashevsky, the son of a military surgeon, traveled from Kiev where he was a student at Polytechnic to St. Petersburg to inflict punishment under miserable hireling of Judeo-phobia who had caused the Kishnev regulation by his criminal newspaper agitation. On June 4th, 1903 he assailed Khrushchevan in the heart of the capital on the so-called Nevsky Prospect, wounding him in the neck with a knife. The wound proved of no consequence and the victim was able to go home without accepting the first aid brought to him in a Jewish drug store nearby. Tashevsky was arrested and brought to trial. At the preliminary examination he frankly confessed that he had intended to avenge the Kishnev massacre by killing Khrushchevan. Khrushchevan, now more ferocious than ever, demanded in his newspaper Znamia that the Jewish Avenger be court-martialled and executed and his demand was echoed by the entire anti-Semitic press. The case was tried in a district court behind closed doors. The government wanted to play evidently fearing the appearance of the Sanctuary Coast of Kishnev in the court room. Khrushchevan was represented by anti-Semitic lawyer Shmakov who subsequently figured in the Baileys trial. The council for Tashevsky the lawyer Grudzenburg and others pleaded that his client's act had been inspired by the intention not to kill but merely to voice against the unbridled criminal activity of Khrushchevan. Tashevsky received a severe sentence of penal military service for five years, August 26. An appeal was taken to the senate but the judgment of the law court was sustained. The youth, who in a fit of righteous indignation had given vent to the outraged feelings of his mother's nation was put in chains and sent into the midst of the murderous sentives while the venerate instigator whose hands were stained with the blood of numerous victims escaped, unscathed and assisted by public funds continued his criminal activity of fanning the hatred of the populace against the Jews. 4. Dr. Herzl's visit to Russia The alert bureaucratic mind of Plef was quick to make its deductions from the Tashevsky case. He realized that the Kishnev Mexico would inflame the national peace sentiment and devote the national Zionist cause into the channel of revolutionary movement. Accordingly, on June 24 1903, Plef issued a circular to the governors which was marked strictly confidential and sent out through the police department ordering the adoption of energetic measures against the propaganda of Zionism which had departed from its original aim. The transfer of Jews to Palestine and had directed its activity towards strengthening the Jewish national idea preaching the organization of the Jews in secluded societies in the places of their prison domicile. Acting upon these orders the police began to persecute the Zionist in a number of cities prohibiting the sale of Jewish colonial trust shares collections for the Jewish national funds and meeting and conferences of the Zionist societies. Shortly thereafter on July 25 the leader of the Zionists Dr. Herzl arrived in St. Petersburg to induce the Russian authorities to discontinue these persecutions. Apart from this immediate object Herzl had another more important mission in mind. He hoped to obtain a promise from the Russian government to exert diplomatic pressure upon Turkey in favor of permitting the settlement of Jews in Palestine on a large scale. During his four interviews with Plev, the Zionist leader succeeded in convincing the minister that it was in keeping with the interests of the Russian government to assist the Zionist movement. Plev replied and subsequently confirmed his reply in writing that the Russian government was willing to help Zionism so long as its political activity would be directed toward the attainment of its aims outside of Russia towards the creation of a Jewish center in Palestine and the immigration of the Jews from Russia. But that as soon as the movement would be turned inwards that is towards the propaganda of the Jewish national idea and the organization of Jewry in Russia itself it would not be tolerated being subversive of the Russian national policies. Herzl assured Plev that political Zionism some of us has no other aim in view except the creation of a center outside of the diaspora. Both Plev and Herzl seem to be satisfied with the results of their conversation. Herzl saw also the Minister of Finance Vitta and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lammstorf and left St. Petersburg in a hopeful mood. On his way to St. Petersburg particularly during his stay in Vilna, Herzl was the object of stormy ovations by the Zionists. At the same time, he was severely criticized by the representatives of other Jewish political groups who thought that he had lowered the national dignity of the Jewish people by conducting negotiations for the salvation of Jewry with the men. On his forehead was stamped the Cain's Mark of Kishnev. It seemed that the severe crisis which had set in for political Zionism when the hope for obtaining a charter from the certain had resided into a distance had impaired Herzl to catch a stroke at the negotiations with the Russian government. It was evidently of the opinion that the Russian pharaohs who had countenanced the method of reducing the Jewish population in Russia such as had been practiced at Kishnev might be willing to achieve the same object by rendering diplomatic assistance to the Zionist plans. A pledge in this direction was actually given to Herzl but Herzl overestimated the importance of the promises made to him by potentates who merely looked upon him as a noble minded dreamer. Two weeks after Herzl's visit to St. Petersburg the acuteness of the Zionist crisis manifested itself at the 6th Congress at Basel, August 11 to 1693. On that occasion Herzl announced his new project, The Colonization of Uganda in British East Africa by virtue of a charter which had been offered to him by the British government. He pointed out that this project had a definite aim in view the amelioration of the terrible condition of Russian Jewry for which purpose Zion at that particular moment was not available. Herzl's pronouncement was held by the Congress in Twain. One section seized enthusiastically upon the Uganda project which held out the promise of at least a temporary shelter in Africa or not a seal for a part of the agonized nation. The other section protested violently against this attempt to create a Zionism without Zion against the abandonment of Palestine and higher aspirations of the movement. After many stormy and soul-stirring scenes the majority of the Congress adopted the resolution to send an expedition to Uganda to investigate the preferred country from the point of view of its fitness for Jewish colonization. Thereupon all the opponents of the Uganda project the so-called Nine Zaga, the Naysayers mostly Russian Zionists left the Congress Hall in a body The movement was now run by a severe conflict the result of the struggle between the two principles which had long been intermingled in the theoretic foundations of Zionism Palestinianism and territorialism. This internal conflict culminated in an open split between these two principles. Out of the Zionist movement was born the territorialist organization which proclaimed as its object the creation of a Jewish autonomous center on any available point of the globe. For the blood of Kishnep cried out for an exodus from the new Egypt. The emigration to the United States where the prisoners of Zadam had in the course of 20 years beginning with 1881 succeeded in forming a big Jewish center had passed the million mark and was expected to assume larger and larger dimensions. The Jewish public press insist on the necessity of regulating the emigration to America not only as a social economic but also as a national factor. It was pointed out that a considerable portion of the historic national center in Russia and Poland was under the pressure of external events in the process of removing to and that practical Jewish politics had the direct duty of organizing this great rising center of Jewry. End of section 7 section 8 of history of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume 3 from the obsession of Nicholas II until the present day by Shimon Duvnov translated by Israel Friedlander this livery box recording is in the public domain of the Soviet system Maniket Baishu Portugal Chapter 34 continued the programs and the Russo-Japanese war Part 1 1 the program at Hommel and the Jewish self-defense No sooner had the Zionist Congress at which the heated discussions concerning the salvation of Judaism were concluded in sessions then a new catastrophe broke out in the dominions of Tsar the program at Hommel in the government of Mogilev in this lively white Russian town in which the 20,000 Jews formed fully one half of the population public Jewish life was marked by great vigor there exist in the city important societies of Zionist and Socialists both of these parties had organized several self-defense contingents and it was to be expected that this grace of Kishnev would not be repeated at Hommel and that in the case of an attack the Jews would give a good account of themselves on August 29 1903 a fight broke out on the marketplace between a crowd of Jews and Christians the cause of the quarrel was a trivial incident one peasant trying to carry off from a Jewish store a barrel of herrings at a lower price than the one demanded by the store keeper the rowdy purchaser was pushed out of the store but the peasants on the marketplace took sides with him and in the ensuing fight between them and the Jew one peasant was accidentally killed the peasants were scared and took to their heels while the police began to make arrests among the Jews the Jews might have been satisfied with the fact that their energetic attitude had succeeded in preventing a program did they not anticipate the revenge which was sure to be wrecked upon them two days passed in a state of tense agitation on the third day on September 1st a crowd of Russian working men numbering about 200 each the fourth from the railroad shops and began to demolish Jewish residences and houses of worship the rioters were joined by mob of stone cutters day laborers and regimuffins here and there the crowd was incited by a few intellectuals a merchant a student and a teacher on the Konaya square the mob was checked by a large detachment of the Jewish self defense consisting of several hundred men the rioters were on the point of giving way before the gallant attack of the self defense but at that moment the troops appeared on the scene and fired the volley in the direction of the Jews resulting in three killed and several wounded the assistance rendered by the troops filled the rioters with fresh courage and they continued their work of destruction with renewed vigor all over the town a chain of soldiers shielded the attacking holds against the Jewish self defense contingents which tried in vain to break through the chain the defenders were driven off with rifle butts and bayonets while the rioters were allowed to destroy and murder without lead or hindrance in the evening the program was stopped the results were 12 killed or dangerously wounded Jews eight killed or dangerously wounded Christians a large number of men treated and slightly wounded Jews and over 250 devastated Jewish residences in stores among those arrested by the police was considerably a larger number of self defending Jews than of attacking Christians two days later the governor of Mogilev came to Homel and having summoned the Jews to the town council treated them to the following hurang I'm sorry for the unhappy victims but how could such bitterness have arisen religious toleration in Russia is complete the cause of the latest events lie deeper the Jews have now become the leaders and instigators in all movements directed against the government this entire bunt and the social democrats who chose you are yourselves to blame for all that has happened you do not educate your children properly we have no influence over them but at least you can surrender them pointing them out to the government whereas you conceal them you propagate disobedience and opposition to the government among uncivilized population but the Russian populace does not care for it and turns against you it seems as if Clef himself had spoken through the mouth of the governor the Russian functionally expressed with naive and clumsy frankness the hidden thoughts of the chief of the political inquisition the idea of punishing the fathers for the revolutionary leanings of their children who were to be surrendered to the police and of discrediting the entire Russian liberty movement as a Jewish cause in a government communication which appeared after the program the events at Homel were reported in such a way as to suggest that they were brought about by an attack of the Jews upon Christian residents and upon the troops in consequence of which the latter had been forced to fire in self-defense the final deduction was formulated thus the cause of the disorder lies in the extremely hostile and defiant attitude of the local Jews towards the Christians those were the actual facts distorted in official documents and the tortured were put forward as the torturers the Homel program did not attain to the dimensions of the kitchen of Mexico nor was it as painful to the moral consciousness of the Jews for in Homel the Jews did not allow themselves to be beaten and slaughtered like sheep but put up a valiant defense had the troops not turned against the self-defense the program would not have taken place and the cowardly rebel would have taken to flight before the gallant defenders of their national honor already in the spring plague had foreseen that the Jews would attempt to organize a self-defense of their own and he had in his previously mentioned circular declared in advance that this most fundamental right being to defend their lives were inadmissible accordingly several Jewish heroes paid with their lives for having violated this ministerial circular their death was the foreboding of new Jewish martyrdom all this had the natural effect of enormously intensifying the revolutionary sentiments of the Jewish youth and of inspiring them with hatred towards the regime committed some of its citizens to commit murder and prohibited others to defend their lives two, the Kishnip massacre at the bar of Russian justice in the fall of 1903 the judicial investigation in connection with the spring program in Kishnip was nearing its end the investigation was conducted with the view to obliterating the traces of the deliberate colonization of pogrom the representatives of government authority and of the better classes whose complicity in the Kishnip massacre had been clearly established were carefully eliminated from the trial and only the hired assassins and plunders from among the lower classes numbering about 400 men were brought to justice prompted by fear however truth might leak out in the court the ministry of justice ordered the case to be tried behind closed doors by this act the bloodstained Russian government refused in advance to rehabilitate itself before the civilized world which looked upon it as the instigator of the catastrophe in the court proceedings the echo of which penetrated beyond the walls of the closed courtroom the counsel for the defense from among the best representatives of the Russian bar Karapchevsky, Sokolov and others who were Christians and the Jews, Kruzenburg and Kalmanovich and others succeeded in proving that the prisoners at the bar were only applying the tools in the commission of the crime whereas the organizers of the battery and the ringleaders of the mob were escaping justice they demanded that the case be probed to the bottom the court refused their demands but upon the lawyers having stated their reasons we drew from the courtroom one after the other the only advocates left were the anti-Semite, Shmakov and other wholehearted defenders of the Kishnev massacre who regarded the letter as a manifestation of the honor and conscience of the Russian people in the end the court sentenced a score of murderers and rioters of the first group to hard labor or penal service dismissing at the same time the civil actions for damages presented by the Jews 6 months later the Kishnev case came up before the Senate the Jews appearing as complainant against Governor von Harben who had been dismissed after the program and the Kishnev chief of police upon whom they facing the responsibility the bureaucratic defendants cynically declared that the losses suffered by the Jews have been covered many times over by contributions from Russia Western Europe and America all the eloquence of the well-known lawyer Veneva and of his associates failed to convince the judges of the Senate the petition for damage was dismissed the government did not wish to create the president for compensating program victims out of public funds for this might place the representatives of the administration in an impossible position as was stated with naive frankness by von Harben since it might become necessary to increase the imperial budget by several million rubles a year in the midst of these ghastly proceedings Veneva conceived the plan of regulating the legislation concerning the Jews in August 1903 he sent out a circular to the governors calling upon them in view of the extraordinary complex and tangled condition of the Russian laws affecting the Jews to point out ways and means of bringing these legal enactments into proper order as harmonious a system as possible in reply to this circular the governor of Vilna submitted an extensive memorial in which he pointed out that all the restrictive laws within the boundaries of the paid-up settlement ought to be repealed on account of their pernicious political influence since they were driving the Jews into the ranks of the poplars or revolutionaries at the same time he suggested to retain the repressive measures against the manifestation of the injurious characteristics of Judaism on the part of certain individuals and also to exclude the Jewish youth from the Christian schools and establish for them special elementary and intermediate schools under the supervision of Christian teachers a few other governors among them the new governor of Bezravia, Ustrov also expressed themselves in favor of mitigating the repressive policy against the Jews in January 1904 a committee of governors and of several high officials representing the ministry of the interior met to consider the Jewish question from the very beginning the countries were given to understand that in the highest spheres every thought of the slightest mitigation of the condition of Jewry was taboo the only liberal member of the committee governor Ustrov subsequently stated that after the Kishnip program and the agitation raised by it one could feel quite tangibly the unfriendly attitude of the highest spheres towards the Jews in other words that the hatred towards the Jews was shared personally by the Tsar and his Kamalilas the committee therefore applied itself to the task not of reforming Jewish legislation but rather of systematizing the anti-Jewish code of laws its labors were interrupted by the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War on January 27, 1904 3. The Jews in the Russo-Japanese War on the day following the declaration of war the organ operation Jewry was called wrought as follows this is not the time to irritate the old wounds let us endeavor as far as it is in our power to forget also the recent expulsion from Port Arthur the programs of Kishnip and Hommel and many many other things let the Jewish parents not think of the bitter fate of their children who had been thrown overboard by being bad from the educational establishments the Jews will go forth into battle as plain soldiers without any hope of attaining an officer's rank or shoulder strips or distinctions the blood of our sons will flow as freely as death of the Russians the Jews marched to the far east to assist Russia in making the province of Manchuria part of Siberia in which they were forbidden to reside the number of Jews at the front was disproportionately large it amounted to some 30,000 according to the fact that in accordance with the usual military regulations the Jewish recruits from the western governments were generally dispatched to Siberia so that at the very outset they were near the theater of military operations disproportionately large was also the number of Jewish physicians in the reserves they were mobilized at once evidently for the reason that they have lived on their private practice and were not allowed to occupy any state or public office whereas the Russian physicians were not thrown upon to the same extent so as not to divert them from their administrative, municipal or accessible services hundreds of Jewish physicians had to work and to encounter the mother's fire of the Japanese because of the fact that an unjust law deprived them of the right of civil service in time of peace while scores of thousands of disenfranchised Jews were fighting for the prestige of Russia in the forest the whip of righteousness did not cease to lash their brethren at home in a number of places the authorities began to expel the families of the soldiers and physicians who had been sent to the war on the ground that with the departure of the head of the family the wife and children had forfeit the right of residence the letter being conditioned by the profession of the husband or father this policy however was too monstrous even for St. Petersburg and PLEV was soon forced to decree that the families of the mobilized Jews should be left in their places of residence pending the termination of the war though the government was compelled to relapse for a while its operation of the Jews social Judeophobia fend by the chauvinism instant to wartime broke out with greater violence than ever irritated by the rapid failures of the Russian arms and by the unexpected military superiority of the Japanese the reactionary press headed by the Novi Avremia began to circulate preposterous rumors to the effect that the Jews were secretly helping the Japanese their kinsmen by race in order to wreck their vengeance upon Russia for having perpetrated the kitchen of massacres the story of the Jewish Japanese alliance issued from the public press of the capital to make its rounds through the provinces and each they gave birth to a rumor more absurd than the other the Jews are expecting gold abroad they are purchasing horses for Japan they are collecting money to build cruisers for the Mikado they are provoking England and America against Russia and similar preposterous stories it was clear that these rumors were the work of a gang of unscrupulous agitators a la Krushevan who were eager to instigate anti-Jewish programs on a modern basis the accusation of treachery this assumption is confirmed by the additional effect that these incendiary rumors were particularly circulated in February and March before the Easter festival the old time program season just as in the Pristinae the ritual model rival of Tuber Sari had been kept afloat during the same month the incendiaries have already set out upon their work with this word the Jewish oven Voskot warned its readers in its ish of March 11 a week later the same paper had occasion to publish accounts of the panic which had spread among the Jewish population particularly in the south in Kishnev a second program was filled calling forth unintensified immigration to America in Odessa the Jews were agitated by sinister rumors and began to prepare themselves for self defense this state of alarm was reflected in the foreign press it was rumored that the American ambassador at St. Petersburg had received instructions to make representations to the Russian government which rumor was subsequently officially denied fortunately the government itself came to the conclusion that the time war was not a fit opportunity for arranging programs the governors received orders to adopt energetic measures for the prevention of pass over excesses the governor Uzerov of Bessarabia and the city governor of Odessa addressed serious warnings to the Russian population these steps had the desired effect as soon as the police and population realized that the program were not desired from above the agitation collapsed and in April the papers were able to tell the readers that pass over had passed quietly everywhere in his memoirs Uzerov tells us that during the restless day preceding the Easter festival in Kishnev he had been engaged together with chief of police in working out the plan looking to the maintenance of public order in the city during this conference he noticed that the chief of police was rather hesitant and puzzled this hesitation continued until the governor received from the telegram in Cypher calling upon him to prevent programs North Nohad Uzerov shown the chief of police the disciple telegram then the letter exclaimed don't trouble yourself now there will be no disorders in Kishnev such was the spirit the provincial administrator had been trained without a special order from St. Petersburg they did not have the courage to suppress the programs end of section 8 section 9 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland volume 3 from the obsession of Nicholas II until the present day by Shimon Dubnov translated by Israel Friedlander this livery box recording is in the public domain recording by SS Kim Manicked Baishu Portugal chapter 34 continued programs in the Russo-Japanese war part 2 4, the political spring on the morning of July 15, 1904 the scale before the Warsaw depot in St. Petersburg presented a terrible sight upon the pavement laid a blood-stained body of plague who had been smitten by the bomb of the Russian terrorist Sazanov while on his way to Peterhof where he was to report to the Tsar this meant that the revolution had again raised its head after two years of frenzied police terrorism and in spite of all attempts to divert the attention of the public from the necessity of reforms first by programs and then by the war against Japan plague had insisted upon the declaration of war hoping to drown the seditious movement in chauvinism the revolutionary specter was once more haunting the country the matters of the autocratic inclination perceived the finger of God in the calamities caused by the war and in the miserable end of plague in February 1904 the Russian censor constituted on each of the force code in each or young Jewish civil in a poem entitled to Haman referring to the Biblical Mene Teker or Varsim predicted a shameful death for the new Haman who was easily identified as the hero of Kishnip one could feel in the air the coming of a cleansing tempest even the reactionary government was taken aback by the approaching storm it did not dare to answer the terrorism of the revolution with police terrorism on the contrary it made an attempt to moderate the regime of self-dom on August 11 on the occasion of the birth of the heir apparent Alexis an imperial manifesto was issued granting favors and privileges to the population the burden of which consisted in the abrogation of corporal punishment for peasants and soldiers on the same day the UK was promulgated in each the Tsar thought it just to introduce pending the general revision of the legislation affecting the Jews several amendments in the enactments concerning the rights of residents at present in force the amendments were trifling the Jews with the higher education were permitted to live in the villages and acquire real property there as well as to carry on business everywhere those who had participated in the Japanese war and had distinguished themselves or had conducted themselves irreproachably were to be accorded the right of universal domicile the wives and underaged children of the Jews with the higher education were granted the rights of residents even after the death of their husband and fathers these rights were the only ones which the government thought it just to confer upon the Jews who had sent 30,000 people into the active army to fight on the fields of Manchuria the Jewish public received this negligently gift with chilly indifference and turned its gaze to wider horizons which were then opening up before Russia the country was on the eve of a political spring on August 26 the post of minister of the interior was entrusted to Svyatopolk Mirsky who in his previous capacity of governor general of Vilna had displayed comparative or administrative leniency the new leader of internal Russian politics promised that he would strive for restoration of confidence between the government and the people by adjusting his actions to the demands of true progress the Jewish deputation which waited upon him at Vilna and the representatives of the foreign press were told that as far as the Jewish question was concerned he would be guided by justice and kindness unfortunately at the very beginning he showed himself powerless to stem the new tide of pogroms at the end of August the Russian south was the scene of several regular pogroms beginning with the corner in a Jewish store and ending with the demolition of Jewish stores and houses as was the case in the town of Smyela in the government of Kiev on August 22 or in the city of Rovno in Vilna where similar attempt was made on the same day soon these regular riots gave way to a new variety of pogroms which were distinguished by a peculiar coloring and might be termed mobilization pogroms the mobilized Russian reserve troops wrote over their impending departure to the fields of deaths in Manchuria where the Russian army suffered defeat after defeat directed their protest along the line of least resistance to Jews the soldiers fortifying themselves with good leaders of alcohol began their gallant exploits and accompanied by the street mobs engaged in the task of devastating Jewish homes nurturing their inmates and looting their property a secondary pogrom took place in Alexandria in the government of Kersen on September 6 and 7 of Yom Kippur a horde of intoxicated assassins invaded the synagogue which was crowded with worshipers and butchered their 20 people in the most barbarous fashion among the severely wounded who soon afterwards died from the wounds were several gymnasium and university students the police made no attempt to stop the killing and looting and only on the second day when the excesses were renewed the Cossacks were summoned from an adjacent town and succeeded in restoring order a month later the mobilized Russian reservists began to perpetrate a series of pogroms in the north in the region of white Russia in the city of Mogilev the lawlessness of the soldiers and the local hooligans assumed appalling dimensions October 10 the poorest quarters of the town among the victims of the riots were also the families of Jewish reservists who had gone to war from the capital of the government the pogrom epidemic spread all over the region everywhere the intoxicated crusaders prior to their departure for Manchuria engaged in destruction, looting and incendialism in some places as was the case in the government of Vitebsk the rioters acted with perfect religious toleration and even attacked the police although the center of the stage was still occupied by the Jews the government was manifestly unwilling to adopt energetic measures against the defenders of the fatherland for fear of irritating them still further and spoiling the progress of mobilization it was not until the end of October that the mobilization pogroms died out 5. the homel pogrom before the Russian court in the same month of October 1904 the case of the homel pogrom of the previous year came up before the court of appeals of the government of Kiev which held its sessions at homel the department of justice has taken a whole year to prepare the evidence prompted by the desire not so much to investigate the case as to entangle it and present it in a perverted political interpretation the investigation which had started in the lifetime of play and proceeded under the pressure of anti-Semitic reactionary minister of justice Bravyov resulted in the bill of indictment which was a flagrant example of deliberate misrepresentation the whole affair was pictured as an anti-Russian pogrom which had been perpetrated by the Jews according to this version the Jews of homel wishing to avenge the kitchen of massacre had taken up arms and attacked the Christian population on August 229 thereby calling forth a counter pogrom on the part of the Russian workmen on September 1st when again the armed Jewish self-defense had taken an aggressive attitude and thereby forced the soldiers to shoot at them 60 people were indicted on this charge among them 36 Jews representing the part of the population which had been the victims of the pogrom the Jews who had dealt to defend themselves stood at the prisoner's bar side by side with their assailants yielding to the pressure of public opinion the government decided to have the homel case tried in open court the president of the tribunal was instructed to eliminate from the judicial proceedings all political revelations which might embarrass the government the elite of the legal profession both among Jews and non-Jews Vinava, Ciliusburg Kalmanovich, Ratno Sokolov, Kubanik Zarutny and others assembled at homel to plead the cause of the indicted Jews and to defend the action for damages brought by the Jewish pogrom victims the trial was drawn out for nearly three months reducing itself to a duel between the council who endeavored to bring out the facts and the bench which was anxious to suppress them the depositions of the witnesses and the cross examinations of the Jewish lawyers succeeded in demolishing the entire structure of the indictment but when the case reached the stage which was bound to lead to the detection of the real orders of the pogrom and labored the conduct of the authorities the president stopped the council despotically denying them the floor the gross partiality manifested by the president of the court had the effect that the council or the defense lost their patience and on December 21 after a violent scene refused to participate in the trial and demonstratively left the court room this action aroused public opinion throughout Russia to an extraordinary degree it caused a storm of indignation against this official miscarriage of justice and the fearless defenders received innumerable expressions of sympathy the indicted Jews too joined in the noble demonstration of their lawyers which was in itself an eloquent plea for the righteous cause the trial terminated in January 1905 and ended in the acquittal of half of the accused Jews and Christians and the verdict of guilty against the other half from among both groups the guilty were sentenced to comparatively light penalties to imprisonment for brief terms and in addition the court decided to petition the Tsar for a mitigation even of these penalties this verdict displayed the JCT character of Russian politics the reprobate, murderers and blunders from among the Russian group were either acquitted altogether or were sentenced to trifling penalties and placed on the same level of culpability with the member of the Jewish self-defense whose only crime was that they had to stood up for their life, honor and property the Russian law journal Pravo the law the organ of the progressive Russian intelligentsia published on this occasion a strong article which concluded with following words the truth stand out in bold relief even in this verdict and it does so against the wish of its orders if as implied in this verdict both the Jews and Christians are guilty of murder, violence and blunder to a minimum degree only for how could otherwise the extraordinary lenience of the verdict be justified then everybody is bound to ask himself the question who then is the real author of all the horrors that were perpetrated at Homer those who have followed the court of the judicial investigation with some degree of attention can only have one answer besides the Christians and the Jews there is still a third culprit the politically rotten official DOM this culprit did not stand at the prison spa but the verdict is against him the best elements of the Russian public and the Jews in particular have been thirsting for justice and for the disclosure of the truth but it was just that third accomplice who was afraid of justice and has managed to cover it up by a general amnesty such was the end of two ill-fated years of Russian-Jewish history 1903 and 1904 years marked by the internal war against the Jews and by the external war against Japan filled with the victories of the reaction at Kishnev and Homer and the defeats of the Russian arms at both other Leo Yang and Mukden this ghastly interval of reactionary terrorism which began to subside only towards the end of 1904 drove from Russia to America more than one of the 25,000 Jewish emigrants who fled for their very lives from the dominions of the tsar however at the end of the long nightmare the political horizon began to clear up the tide of the liberty movement surged forward again and it looked as if the Russian people and with it, tormented Russian Jewry would soon behold the new dawn yet the 6 million Jews of Russia were destined to pass through two more stormy years standing between the firing lines of autocratic despotism and the revolutionary movement and suffering the excruciating agonies of suspense while hovering between degradation and emancipation end of section 9