Kitabı oku: «History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 3 of 3. From the Accession of Nicholas II until the Present Day», sayfa 6
4. Doctor Herzl's Visit to Russia
The alert bureaucratic mind of Plehve was quick to make its deductions from the Dashevski case. He realized that the Kishinev massacre would inflame the national Jewish sentiment and divert the national or Zionist cause into the channel of the revolutionary movement. Accordingly, on June 24, 1903, Plehve 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 the ideas 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 present domicile." Acting upon these orders, the police began to persecute the Zionists in a number of cities, prohibiting the sale of Jewish Colonial Trust shares, collections for the Jewish National Fund, and meetings 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 a diplomatic pressure upon Turkey in favor of permitting the settlement of Jews in Palestine on a large scale. During his four interviews with Plehve, 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." Plehve 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 towards the attainment of its aims outside of Russia, towards the creation of a Jewish center in Palestine and the emigration 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 Plehve that political Zionism sans phrase had no other aim in view, except the creation of a center outside of the Diaspora.
Both Plehve and Herzl seemed to be satisfied with the results of their conversation. Herzl saw also the Minister of Finance, Witte, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lamsdorff, 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 man on whose forehead was stamped the Cain's mark of Kishinev.
It seems that the severe crisis which had set in for political Zionism, when the hope for obtaining a charter from the Sultan had receded into a distance, had impelled Herzl to catch at a straw, at negotiations with the Russian Government. He was evidently of the opinion that the Russian Pharaohs who had countenanced the methods of reducing the Jewish population in Russia, such as had been practised at Kishinev, might be willing to achieve the same object by rendering its 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 sixth Congress at Basle (August 11-16, 1903). 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 rent 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, a Nachtasyl, 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 the higher aspirations of the movement. After many stormy and soul-stirring scenes, the majority of the Congress adopted a resolution to send an expedition to Uganda to investigate the proffered country from the point of view of its fitness for Jewish colonization. Thereupon, all the opponents of the Uganda project, the so-called Neinsager (the "Nay-sayers"), mostly Russian Zionists, left the Congress hall in a body.
The movement was now rent 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 Kishinev cried out for an exodus from the new Egypt. The emigration to the United States, where the prisoners of Tzardom had in the course of twenty 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 insisted 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 North America, and that practical Jewish politics had the direct duty of organizing this great rising center of Jewry.
CHAPTER XXXIV
CONTINUED POGROMS AND THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR
1. The Pogrom at Homel and the Jewish Self-Defence
No sooner had the Zionist Congress, at which the heated discussions concerning the salvation of Judaism were intermingled with sobs bemoaning the martyrs of Kishinev, concluded its sessions than a new catastrophe broke out in the dominions of the Tzar – the pogrom at Homel, in the Government of Moghilev. In this lively White-Russian town, in which the twenty thousand Jews formed fully one-half of the population, public Jewish life was marked by great vigor. There existed in the city important societies of Zionists and Socialists. Both of these parties had organized several self-defence contingents, and it was to be expected that the disgrace of Kishinev would not be repeated at Homel, 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 market-place 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 storekeeper. The rowdyish purchaser was pushed out of the store, but the peasants on the market-place took sides with him, and in the ensuing fight between them and the Jew, one peasant was accidently 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 pogrom, did they not anticipate the revenge which was sure to be wreaked upon them.
Two days passed in a state of tense agitation. On the third day, on September 1, a crowd of Russian workingmen, numbering about two hundred, issued forth from the railroad shops, and began to demolish Jewish residences and houses of worship. The rioters were joined by a mob of stone-cutters, day-laborers, and ragamuffins. Here and there the crowd was incited by a few "intellectuals": a merchant, a student, and a teacher. On the Konnaya Square, the mob was checked by a large detachment of the Jewish self-defence, consisting of several hundred men. The rioters were on the point of giving way before the gallant attack of the self-defence; but at that moment the troops appeared on the scene, and fired a 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 hordes against the Jewish self-defence 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 let or hindrance. In the evening, the pogrom was stopped; the results were twelve killed or dangerously wounded Jews, eight killed or dangerously wounded Christians, a large number of maltreated and slightly wounded Jews and over two hundred and fifty devastated Jewish residences and stores. Among those arrested by the police was a considerably larger number of self-defending Jews than of attacking Christians.
Two days later, the governor of Moghilev came to Homel, and, having summoned the Jews to the Town Council, treated them to the following harangue:
I am sorry for the unhappy victims, but how could such bitterness have arisen? Religious toleration in Russia is complete. The causes of the latest events lie deeper. The Jews have now become the leaders and instigators in all movements directed against the Government. This entire "Bund" and the Social-Democrats – they are all Jews. You are yourselves to blame for all that has happened. You do not educate your children properly. You 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 an uncivilized population. But the Russian populace does not care for it and turns against you.
It would seem as if Plehve himself had spoken through the mouth of the governor. The Russian functionary expressed with naïve and clumsy frankness the hidden thought 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 pogrom 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-defence." The final deduction was formulated thus: "The cause of the disorders lies in the extremely hostile and defiant attitude of the local Jews toward the Christians." Thus were the actual facts distorted in an official document, and the tortured were put forward as the torturers.
The Homel pogrom did not attain to the dimensions of the Kishinev massacre, 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 defence. Had the troops not turned against the self-defence, the pogrom would not have taken place, and the cowardly rabble would have taken to flight before the gallant defenders of their national honor. Already in the spring, Plehve had foreseen that the Jews would attempt to organize a self-defence of their own, and he had in his previously mentioned circular declared in advance that this most fundamental right of human beings to defend their lives was "inadmissible." Accordingly, several Jewish heroes paid with their lives for having violated this ministerial circular. Their death was the foreboding of a 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 a régime which permitted some of its citizens to commit murder and prohibited others to defend their lives.
2. The Kishinev Massacre at the Bar of Russian Justice
In the fall of 1903 the judicial investigation in connection with the spring pogrom in Kishinev was nearing its end. The investigation was conducted with a view to obliterating the traces of the deliberate organization of the pogrom. The representatives of Government authority and of the better classes whose complicity in the Kishinev massacre had been clearly established were carefully eliminated from the trial, and only the hired assassins and plunderers from among the lower classes, numbering about four hundred men, were brought to justice. Prompted by fear lest the terrible truth might leak out in the court, the Ministry of Justice ordered the case to be tried behind closed doors. By this act, the blood-stained 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 court-room, the counsel for the defence from among the best representatives of the Russian bar (Karabchevski, Sokolov, and others, who were Christians, and the Jews Gruzenberg, Kalmanovich, and others) succeeded in proving that the prisoners at the bar were only blind tools in the commission of the crime, whereas the organizers of the butchery and the ringleaders of the mob were escaping justice.40 They demanded that the case be probed to the bottom. The court refused their demand, whereupon the lawyers, having stated their reasons, withdrew from the court-room one after the other.41 The only advocates left were the anti-Semite Shmakov and other whole-hearted defenders of the Kishinev massacre, who regarded the latter 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.
Six months later the Kishinev case came up before the Senate, the Jews appearing as complainants against Governor von Raaben (who had been dismissed after the pogrom), Deputy-Governor Ustrugov, and the Kishinev Chief of Police, upon whom they fastened 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 Vinaver and of his associates failed to convince the judges of the Senate, and the petition for damages was dismissed. The Government did not wish to create a precedent for compensating pogrom victims out of public funds, for "this might place the representatives of the administration in an impossible position," as was stated with naïve frankness by von Raaben, since it might become necessary to increase the imperial budget by several million rubles a year.
In the midst of these ghastly proceedings Plehve 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 extraordinarily 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 and into as harmonious a system as possible." In reply to this circular, the governor of Vilna, Pahlen, submitted an extensive memorial, in which he pointed out that all the restrictive laws within the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement ought to be repealed on account of their pernicious political influence, since they were driving the Jews into the ranks of the paupers 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 Bessarabia, Urussov, 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 conferees 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 Urussov, subsequently stated that after the Kishinev pogrom and the agitation raised by it "one could feel quite tangibly the unfriendly attitude of the highest spheres toward the Jews" – in other words, that the hatred toward the Jews was shared personally by the Tzar and by his camarilla. 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 of Russian Jewry, the Voskhod, wrote 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,42 the pogroms of Kishinev and Homel, 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 barred 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-straps, or distinctions – the blood of our sons will flow as freely as that 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 thirty thousand, owing to the fact that, in accordance with the usual military regulations, the Jewish recruits from the Western governments were generally despatched to Siberia, so that, at the very outset, they were near the theatre 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 lived on their private practice and were not allowed to occupy any state or public office, whereas the Russian physicians were not drawn upon to the same extent, so as not to divert them from their administrative, municipal, or Zemstvo services.43 Hundreds of Jewish physicians had to work and to encounter the murderous 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 disfranchised Jews were fighting for the prestige of Russia in the Far East, the whip of rightlessness 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 forfeited the right of residence, the latter being conditioned by the profession of the husband or father. This policy, however, was too monstrous even for St. Petersburg, and Plehve 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 relax for a while its oppression of the Jews, social Judæophobia, fanned by the chauvinism incident to war time, 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 Novoye Vremya, began to circulate preposterous rumors to the effect that the Jews were secretly helping the Japanese, their "kinsmen by race," in order to wreak their vengeance upon Russia for having perpetrated the Kishinev 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 day gave birth to a rumor more absurd than the other: the Jews are exporting 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 à la Krushevan, who were eager to instigate anti-Jewish pogroms on a modern basis – the accusation of "treachery." This assumption is confirmed by the additional fact that these incendiary rumors were particularly circulated in February and March, before the Easter festival, the old-time pogrom season, just as in the preceding year the ritual murder libel of Dubossary had been kept afloat during the same months. "The incendiaries have already set out upon their work" – with these words the Jewish organ Voskhod warned its readers in its issue 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 Kishinev, a second pogrom was feared, calling forth an intensified emigration to America. In Odessa, the Jews were agitated by sinister rumors, and began to prepare themselves for self-defence. 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 of war was not a fit opportunity for arranging pogroms. The governors received orders to adopt energetic measures for the prevention of Passover excesses. Governor Urussov 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 pogroms were not desired from above, the agitation collapsed; and in April the papers were able to tell their readers that "Passover has passed quietly everywhere." In his Memoirs Urussov tells us that, during the restless day preceding the Easter festival in Kishinev, he had been engaged, together with the Chief of Police, in working out a 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 Plehve a telegram in cipher, calling upon him to prevent pogroms. No sooner had Urussov shown the Chief of Police the deciphered telegram than the latter exclaimed: "Don't trouble yourself – now there will be no disorders in Kishinev." Such was the spirit in which the provincial administrators had been trained. Without a special order from St. Petersburg, they did not have the courage to suppress the pogroms.
