Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920. Oleg Budnitskii

Democrats in industrial centers such as Rostov-on-Don were well aware of the antisemitic tendencies of a significant portion of the working class. A leaflet entitled “To the Dockworkers” is a case in point. On one side, the leaflet called for the masses to take part in the May 1 demonstrations, while on the other side it instructed them not to beat Jews.¹⁴

      All these exhortations would come to naught in October of 1905. For Russian Jews, the first fruits of the “freedom” won in the 1905 revolution were more pogroms. Particularly severe and bloody pogroms were carried out in Odessa, Rostov-on-Don, and Ekaterinoslav. In Odessa, according to police statistics, about 400 Jews were killed, and nearly 300 were seriously wounded. In addition 1,632 Jewish homes, apartments, and places of business were destroyed.¹⁵

      The Rostov-on-Don pogrom, in many ways comparable to the one that occurred in Odessa, was one of the more bloody that took place during the first Russian revolution. Approximately 150 people were killed. On October 18, 1905, a confrontation took place between radicals carrying red flags with the slogans “We won!” (Nasha vziala!) and “Zion,” and participants in a “patriotic demonstration.” In the course of the conflict several people were killed. Among those murdered by the “patriots” was one Klara Reizman, who had been carrying a red banner. The “patriots” killed her by shoving the wooden pole of the banner down her throat. A pogrom ensued over the next three days. Local Jewish and worker militias opposed the pogromists. Thanks to the “neutrality” and sometimes outright support of the pogromists by the local Cossacks and police, the conflict turned out to be one-sided, although data from official sources indicate that the pogromists also suffered significant casualties.¹⁶

      The biographies of Samuel Gurvich and Solomon Reizman, who played a significant role in the revolutionary events in Rostov-on-Don, were fairly typical. Gurvich was the son of Meir Gurvich, a well-known optometrist in Rostov and an active participant in Jewish circles. Samuel Gurvich started out as a Zionist, but quickly switched over to the Social Democrats. He was one of the organizers of a student group with members throughout southern Russia, and was a member of the RSDRP committee for the Don region. During the time of the famous Rostov walkout of 1902, he was one of the speakers at the massive meeting that took place outside the city, although the police agents failed to recognize him at the time. After the schism in the RSDRP in 1903, Gurvich sided with the Mensheviks. He went abroad and received further political indoctrination, and was imprisoned upon his return to Rostov in 1905. Released in accordance with the Imperial Manifesto of October 17, Gurvich, who commanded a great deal of authority in revolutionary circles, was chosen as chairman of the Rostov-on-Don Soviet of Workers' Deputies. Though he himself was an opponent of armed rebellion, an uprising nonetheless broke out in December of 1905. After the insurrection Gurvich was forced to flee, and he reappeared in Rostov only in 1917, having served several years in prison.

      One of the leaders of the uprising was Gurvich's comrade in the southern Russian group, Solomon Reizman. Reizman had fled Rostov-on-Don in 1903 due to pressure from the police. In Petersburg he took part in the organization of the Soviet of Workers Deputies. He returned to Rostov after the October 17 Manifesto for personal reasons: his brother had died, and his sister had been murdered by the Black Hundreds. On November 28 he reported for work at a railroad workshop, and the next day he was elected a delegate of the railroad bureau. He became the chairman that very same evening. This twenty-year-old plumber was now in charge of running the Vladikavkaz railroad. It was here that the strike started, eventually growing into an armed rebellion. After the rebellion was put down, Reizman was arrested and handed over to be tried on charges of seizing the Rostov-on-Don station of the Vladikavkaz railroad. He was the central figure in the trial, which the government attempted to give a decidedly antisemitic character. Poalei Zion drew a lot of attention to the proceedings, even though its Rostov-on-Don organization had not played an active part in the rebellion. As a minor, Reizman received a fairly light sentence—64 months in prison. However, he did not have to serve them out; several months after the trial he died in prison.¹⁷

      Of the 657 pogroms in Russia during the period from October 1905 to January 1906, 41 took place in the Ekaterinoslav gubernia. These pogroms killed 285 people, and the 13.2 million rubles of damage exceeded that in any other region. The three-day pogrom that took place October 21–23 claimed 95 lives, while 245 were severely wounded. The perpetrators raped young girls and pregnant women. They also destroyed 311 businesses and 40 apartment buildings, razing several of them to the ground. In Iuzovka, 10 Jews were killed and 28 were wounded, 84 stores and shops were destroyed, along with over 100 apartments. Overall damages amounted to nearly a million rubles. Several miners who worked in the outskirts, when they heard that a pogrom was taking place, asked the conductor of the local train to head towards the city. Along the way, they forced him to sound the whistle, in order to gather more people interested in participating in the pogrom. The miners were joined by factory workers and other members of the working class. It is readily apparent that workers in industrial regions constituted the majority of the pogromists.¹⁸

      This was not the case everywhere. In Debaltsevo, Lugansk, and Shcherbinovka, miners and workers thwarted attempted pogroms. In Kamenskoe and Ekaterinoslav, groups of workers fought against the miners, peasants, and soldiers who had attacked the local Jewish population. In Krivoi Rog, Annovka, and other towns and cities in the Donbass region, soldiers opened fire on pogromists, wounding several and killing 19 people.¹⁹

      The pogromists “rationale” for carrying out pogroms most often involved accusations that Jews defamed the Tsar, the Orthodox faith, and the Russian people. Occasionally added were claims that Jews organized strikes, which deprived workers of their wages. During the attacks of October 1905, Jews were not the only victims; students, members of the intelligentsia, and “people in glasses” were all in danger. In Transcaucasia, Armenians were targeted alongside the Jews.

      Several scholars maintain that the workers' participation in the pogroms cannot be explained exclusively by conservative beliefs, antisemitic prejudices, or the simple desire to pillage and plunder. Many workers had become disillusioned with the general strike, which, instead of improving their standing, had benefited only the organizers and agitators (of whom many were Jewish). While the workers felt deceived, at the same time they were now aware of their political power. That is why their rage was directed at students, the intelligentsia, and the Jewish population.²⁰ Be that as it may, it is not necessary to directly connect the pogroms with any kind of disillusionment regarding the general strike. For our purposes, it is sufficient to point out the obvious connection between periods of revolutionary violence and upheaval and the marked increase in the scope of pogrom activity.

      For several years, the Russian liberal intelligentsia had been consoling itself with the notion that the pogroms had been organized by the government. As contemporary historians have shown, the sins of the government have been greatly exaggerated. Government officials did not occupy themselves with the organization of pogroms. Putting aside for a moment questions of morality, it would have been irrational for the government to try to increase disorder in a country that was already in the throes of revolution. Moreover, this would hardly have been logistically feasible; the emperor's decision to sign the October Manifesto was sudden, leaving no time for government officials to organize pogroms (even if they had so desired). Antisemitic laws, however, were a completely separate issue. Government policy did contribute to an environment that allowed the pogrom activity to occur on a massive scale.²¹ Such policies included accusing Jews of creating their own misfortune, tolerating an increase in far-right organizations (and, on occasion, providing financial support for such groups), refusing to undertake any serious measures to disavow antisemitic propaganda, rejecting compensation for pogrom victims, and failing to prosecute to the full extent of the law those who participated in pogroms, as well as those who had allowed them to take place. Local authorities often failed to enact measures that would have prevented pogroms. Whether this was due to panic, incompetence, unreliable police and military forces, or any of a number of other reasons can only be discerned on a case-by-case basis.

      The year 1905 served as clear example of how freedom could turn against itself in a country that lacked democratic traditions and a sufficiently strong intelligentsia. The events of the 1905 revolution were to strike terror in the heart of Mikhail Gershenzon, one of the founders of Signposts (Vekhy):