Kiev, p.28
Kiev, page 28
Rumor added to the excitement of the moment, encouraging the large crowds that followed the mobs picking up clothing and other items that had been strewn about by the looters. “Prominent women” openly purchased looted goods on the streets. At the Haymarket day workers joined the hooligans in carrying off huge slabs of meat. The pace of the looting was often leisurely, and not just in Kiev. Saratov’s pogrom crowd moved “everywhere in the same way. In front there were teenagers with clubs, behind them the Tatars and hooligans with bags and boxes for loot, and finally the baby with sacks picking up what was left.” Surrounding villagers soon joined the crowd.34 Sometimes looting occurred for the sake of sheer destruction rather than for material gain. In Rostov-na-Donu pogromists sold stolen gold and silver items for a few kopecks. One employee of a clothing and fur shop followed the mob and bought back two thousand rubles worth of looted items for six rubles! “Hunger didn’t produce the pogrom,” Donskaia rech’ argued, “for the hungriest didn’t participate.”35 And in Kiev’s Halytsky Bazaar, one looter walked off with eighty pairs of shoes, none of which were matching pairs.
LOCAL AUTHORITY IN KIEV
Who defended Kiev’s Jews? Certainly not the police, although, ironically, special taxes on kosher products raised about fifteen thousand rubles annually for police salaries. Police served the interests of the state officials to whom they were responsible. They determined which Jews could live in Kiev, and for how long, and periodically they carried out nighttime roundups of Jews for the purpose of expelling them from the city. (In 1905 roundups were banned on the grounds that they were a “barbaric measure for a cultured city,” but they began again once officials were able to restore order.) Eyewitnesses told the press that after the violence began on October 18, the crowd broke into small bands which took instructions from neighborhood police. One wrote: “Yesterday in your paper you asked us to turn all our plundered goods over to the police. We ask you to advise the police to turn over all the goods they plundered to us. They took more than we did.”36 As in 1881, some Jews locked their shops with crosses, or displayed icons or portraits of the tsar, hoping to convince the mob that these were Christian shops. It seldom worked, for agitators often had lists of which shops were Jewish, and police also pointed out Jewish shops and apartments.
The fact that police could not be relied upon to keep order in situations where authorities seemed to sympathize with those committing disorder had to concern all property owners. In Solomenka after the pogrom, irate residents, bitter at police refusal to protect lives and property (and possibly at police participation in the disorders), petitioned for the removal of the entire Solomenka police force.37 Zhytomyr’s Volyn accused Kiev’s civilian and military officials of “organizing the bloodbath brazenly and without precedent in modern times” and of simply turning the pogrom over to a small group of hooligans. Given the absence of a reliable police force, it too called for the creation of an urban militia.38 Odessa’s police distinguished themselves by firing mainly at Jews who defended themselves, while in Rostov-na-Donu an angry city council resolved to institute a city militia of one hundred men to keep order and allocated ten thousand rubles for it. The militia was to be paid for by a special tax on business.39
Some soldiers and a few policemen did protect individual pieces of property, either out of compassion or because they had been bribed. Kiev Chief of Police Detectives Rudoi personally defended his house, in which Jews lived, and later testified that a single soldier on horseback or the appearance of two or three Cossacks commonly sufficed to disperse the mob. Lukianivka Bazaar was defended by two or three patrolmen acting on instructions from a precinct police captain who feared that the mob might break into a nearby prison. The mob loudly accused the patrolmen of having been bought off by Jews, but left without committing serious damage. Throughout the city homeowners paid off roving bands to defend their property. A single paid-off soldier successfully defended one five-story home. Said Kievskoe slovo: “The main culprit is the inactivity of the authorities who simply wink their eyes. The banner of a free Russia flies in St. Petersburg, but in Kiev and other provincial towns an oblivious government sanctifies pogroms and anarchy.”40
While the number of Kiev’s police who actually participated in the pogrom can never be known, it is possible that the force was under instructions not to interfere with the pogrom. Commonly, police told desperate victims, “this is a military, not a police, matter.” Just as commonly, soldiers responded that the police were responsible for protection.
The local press openly blamed Chief of Police Tsikhotsky, Lieutenant-General Drake (who was in charge of maintaining order), and Governor-General Karass and Deputy-Governor Rafalsky, who gave orders to police. Turau argues that the military was ready for disorder (although it expected disorder from leftist revolutionaries) and had a plan in place to deal with it. Drake tried to get local officials to act decisively, he contends, but Tsikhotsky and Major-General Bezsonov, who had been put in charge of the troops assigned to protect Podil and Old Kiev, were especially sympathethic to the pogromists. Tsikhotsky had been in hot water before, particularly over alleged violations and abuse of the rules governing Jewish residence in the city. He had rapidly grown rich as police chief and had purchased property in Poltava Province valued at one hundred thousand rubles—a hefty sum at a time when sugar beet refinery workers were making twelve rubles per month! His daughter and her husband had also purchased expensive properties in Kiev and Poltava Provinces. Major-General Trepov was among those who sought to press criminal charges and remove Tsikhotsky from office because of irregularities found in an audit. In May 1905 the police department had filed complaints, setting another investigation in motion. Both investigations were apparently in progress in October, but Tsikhotsky had a powerful protector in Governor-General Kleigels. The knightly Kleigels was a personal favorite of the tsar, but Witte characterizes him as “dull-witted” and “totally unfit” to occupy his position. Kleigels had become inactive, Witte claims, and simply abandoned his post.41 On October 18, the first day of the pogrom, Kleigels was replaced by Lieutenant-General Karass. With Kleigels gone, Turau reasons, the anti-Semitic Tsikhotsky knew he would soon lose his position and thus had little incentive to uphold his duty and protect victimized Jews.42
At the very least, Tsikhotsky’s refusal to instruct his patrolmen to protect property contributed to general confusion in police ranks. Numerous witnesses saw the chief stroll about the city as it was being plundered. Tsikhotsky even took part “in certain patriotic demonstrations,” and stood accused of praising the mob during the sacking of Lev Brodsky’s home. Bezsonov, meanwhile, gave approving smiles to the cry “Beat the Jews” and at one point is said to have told the mob, “You can smash things up, but you can’t plunder.” When Director of the Governor-General’s Chancellery Molchanovsky demanded to know why measures were not being taken to quell the pogrom, Bezsonov replied, “What pogrom? This is a demonstration.” Police Detective Rudoi heard Bezsonov tell the mob, “You know how to stand up for your tsar,” to which the mob yelled, “Hurrah,” stepping up its ravenous pace in the belief that violence “would be tolerated until eight o’clock the next morning.”43
The inexperienced Rafalsky, appointed deputy-governor on August 20, 1905, tried without success to get police and soldiers to intervene, Turau argues. But other sources indicate that Rafalsky had also signed an order enabling police to arrest an undetermined number of potential resisters on October 15, three days before the pogrom began. Once the mob had begun its assault, he was said to have walked through the streets, “lending an official air to the pogrom.” Military officers, even generals, were often seen on the streets. “We’re not allowed to interfere,” they said.44 A group of city councilmen, professors, and public figures approached Rafalsky and Karass, urging them to stop the pogrom, but they were denied an audience. The group then telegraphed Minister of the Interior Witte in St. Petersburg asking him to remove authority from the hands of the military. On October 19 Karass read a telegram from Witte urging that the violence be stopped, but it does not appear that he energetically tried to implement effective measures. Kiev’s mayor, V. N. Protsenko, allegedly a member of the Black Hundreds, conveniently left the city during the pogrom. While it is uncertain who gave what order to whom, it was widely believed by soldiers and civilians that the hooligans could run rampant for three days, the traditional length of pogroms in Imperial Russia. No wonder that when one patrolman pulled a revolver, the mob convinced him to back off, arguing that “the governor had approved” the pogrom and that the tsar himself approved because his portrait had been defaced. Noted city councilman Iassirsky, “Even the izvozchiki [carters] said that the governor would permit only three days of plunder.”45
In his official report, Turau tried to discredit the widely held belief that the pogrom was sanctioned by higher officials, noting that on October 12 and 13, the Ministry of the Interior issued orders to quell public disturbances, and that on October 14 martial law was declared in Kiev. Although it has never been proven that instructions to organize or permit pogroms came from high up in the government, perplexing questions remain. Why was General Kleigels removed as the pogrom began? Why did Lieutenant-General Drake wait until October 20, the third day of the pogrom, to put an end to the plundering? (When troops did act decisively on that day, the pogrom quickly stopped.) As in Odessa, where Robert Weinberg has written that “it is questionable … whether the pogrom was purely spontaneous,”46 the bigotry of some Kiev officials certainly contributed to the permissive attitude toward the violence. Turau’s efforts to place much of the blame on administrative confusion, inexperience, and ineptitude also are probably on the mark. If nothing else, pogroms underscore a fundamental irony in tsarist Russia: for all of the authoritarianism of the imperial system, its cities and its provinces were sorely undergoverned. In times of crisis, few bold and decisive leaders surfaced who were willing or able to take charge and ensure the maintenance of order. In 1905, from the mayor to the governor-general, Kiev seemingly had no such official at all.
“THE BLACK HUNDRED COUNCIL AND THE HOOLIGAN MAYOR”
It had taken a long time in January 1902 to elect the city council that would govern Kiev during the next four years. Voters had to vote yes or no on each candidate, and many candidates were turned down. Some fifty-eight councilmen gained seats in daily voting that ran from January 21 through January 30. The remainder could not win enough votes until supplementary elections were held during the week of February 7.
The election was largely a referendum by the tiny propertied elite on the performance of the 1898 council—a council that stood accused even by the conservative professor Eikhelman of poor management, of favoritism toward concessionaires, and of making no real progress on providing public services. This council had chosen not to build a municipal electric streetlight network; it had failed to take even the most elementary sanitary measure, that of covering the sewage ditch; it had not extended the horse-tram network; nor had it taken “any measure to improve the cultural level of the masses.”47 The new council had thirty-four members who had served in the ranks of the 1898 council; it included twenty-three merchants, thirteen lawyers, eight physicians, six engineers, seven professors, seven military officials, and four teachers. Thirty-six had some higher education. Eikhelman was one of those reelected from the 1898 duma. The son of a well-known St. Petersburg landowner, he was a graduate of the German classical gymnasium in Revel (now Tallinn) and the juridical faculty at Derpt (Dorpat) University, and had come to St. Vladimir in 1880 as a specialist in international law. He wrote numerous articles for the local press, chaired five of the council’s twenty-six committees, and was notably active in the city’s orphanage and in the Kiev Society for the Protection of Animals. Eikhelman ran for mayor but lost to Podil physician Protsenko. Ironically, both Eikhelman and Protsenko would become major figures of controversy in 1905.48
There were councilmen in Kiev who sympathized with the public movement in 1905. In February Kiev councilmen joined representatives from Kharkiv and Nizhnyi Novgorod to select a bureau chaired by Moscow mayor V. M. Golitsyn, which in turn would organize an all-Russian congress of city leaders. But Mayor Protsenko refused to participate in a May 22 meeting of city mayors in Moscow, and he and his clique were accused of acting as if “Kiev didn’t belong to the Russian state and couldn’t benefit from the improvements sought in other towns.”49 The October Days seemed to frighten many in the council, and, aside from A. K. Rzhepetsky, no one spoke out in favor of protecting the public from the police and Cossacks. Finally, on October 17, the council created a twelve-man committee to mediate between public and government. It asked further that preliminary censorship of the press be lifted and that the public be allowed to air its grievances. While noting that censorship matters were beyond his control, the governor-general expressed support for these initiatives.
From that point Kiev’s city council sank to appalling depths. When the pogrom began, it held a closed emergency meeting but apparently took no action. Only on October 21, after the pogrom had ended, did the council call for calm; on that same day, the council voted 31–19 to thank the troops for their assistance during the pogrom! The issue was then removed from the agenda and the city fathers proceeded quickly to the next order of business, the opening of a new performance at the city theater. No doubt in a voice heavy with sarcasm, Councilman Iassirsky “justified” thanking the troops by noting that “not every Jewish shop had been plundered.”50
From there the situation further deteriorated. Citing the “hopelessness” of trying to get the council to do anything, many progressives apparently resigned, leaving fewer than fifty councilmen (many of whom seldom came to meetings) to deal with the moral, political, and financial crises of the times. The resignations perhaps fulfilled the suggestion offered two years earlier that “the good half of our councilmen ought to resign on the grounds of incompetence, and the other half long ago should have refused the honor of sitting with the first half.”51
Mayor Protsenko simply disappeared during or just before the pogrom, returning only on November 1. Supposedly, he went abroad, but it is possible that he had been warned of the impending pogrom and had chosen to leave the city. Ironically, Protsenko had been a popular physician among Podil’s Jews, many of whom preferred him to the district’s Jewish doctors. Many had supported him because they assumed he would take drastic steps to rid the city of its “Asiatic guest” (cholera). Protsenko failed on all counts, and his anti-Semitism was sensed before the pogrom. Wrote columnist “Starik” (Old-timer) in April: “Perhaps our popular Podol doctor is an anti-Semite, though when he took our rubles, he sure didn’t show it.… Maybe he’s from Odessa.”52
In early November the rump council voted 42–1 against sending delegates to the “sharply political” Congress of Zemstvo and City Officials meeting in Moscow, making it clear that Prince E. N. Trubetskoi and other local councilmen who were already there had no authority to speak for Kiev. In contrast, the Kharkiv city council sent a telegram to the congress asking it to help bring a democratic constitution into existence. Kiev’s council also voted 21–14 against a committee recommendation to grant a paltry five thousand rubles to the pogrom victims. By contrast, Rostov-na-Donu’s council donated ten thousand rubles to pogrom victims in that city.53 The Kiev Merchant Association asked the banks for two hundred thousand rubles of credit to help victimized merchants rebuild. Credit was to run through 1912, and fifty thousand rubles were to be raised by a self-imposed merchant tax that was to be nonobligatory for Jews. The Merchant Society probably included many powerful Jews, but gentile merchants also must have been uneasy over the tolerant attitude toward massive property destruction displayed by local authorities.
Some city councils had taken bold initiatives to help bring about changes in 1905. Saratov’s council called for the release of political prisoners and telegrammed Witte requesting a formal amnesty.54 Moscow city councilmen walked out when fellow councilman and lawyer A. S. Shmakov (a notorious Judeophobe who would defend Kiev’s pogromists at their trial in 1907) took the floor for an anti-Semitic tirade. (Shmakov at one point was challenged to a duel, but a Kiev paper reported that duels were passé and that Moscow public opinion opposed the likes of Shmakov anyway.)55 By contrast, Kiev’s council seemed ill-prepared to meet the challenges of that year, and while it played no apparent role in the pogrom, its actions seemed to sanction it. Kiev’s councilmen must have been reluctant sanctioners, for they were property owners who surely blanched at the sight of rabble run wild, but the council seemed paralyzed, as it had often seemed before. “Popular for its scandals and utter inactivity,” it simply outdid itself; it has immortalized itself as “the hooligan council,” wrote Kievskaia gazeta on November 8. It is “a Black Hundred council with a hooligan mayor,” it concluded on December 9. On the next day, with political reaction rapidly setting in, the newspaper was shut down.
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH
Some church officials had acquired reputations for tolerance and goodwill toward Jews. One late nineteenth-century example was Kiev’s popular Orthodox metropolitan Platon, and Jews participated in an 1887 celebration marking sixty years of Platon’s service to the church. In 1903 the synod urged priests to speak out against pogroms, to let people know that pogroms were insults to Christianity and that Jews were creatures of God and subjects protected by the tsar’s laws.56 The extent to which such pronouncements influenced the parish clergy can never be known.
