Chapter XII: Notes and Comments

There is another anti-Semite organ edited by Pavolachi Kroushevan. It is named the _Znamya_, or _Standard_. Though published in St. Petersburg, it has a large sale in Bessarabia.

Both the _Bessarabetz_ and the _Znamya_ have studiously refrained from alluding to the indignation excited in Western Europe and in the United States over the consequences of their savage appeals to fanatical mobs. No other papers being read in Kishineff by the anti-Jewish section of the populace, these people remain unaffected by this outburst of public reprobation in other countries. They are under the impression that the attack on the hated Hebrews was a good work done for the Tsar, the church, and themselves.

The credulity of the average Russian, in all anti-Hebrew matters, is boundless. A Christian lady in Odessa told me that her servant, a very intelligent-looking young girl, informed her a few evenings after the horrible events at Kishineff, that the Jews of Odessa were planning the murder of all the Christian children in the city. When the girl was asked what information she had of this intended wholesale slaughter, she replied: “I was told so! The Jews will put poisoned chocolate on Christian doorsteps some night, and then, when the children come out for school or play the following morning, they will see the chocolate, eat it, and die. All the Jews in Odessa should be burned out!”

* * * * *

The popes, or Russian priests, are not in any special sense anti-Semitic. Anyhow, they wield little, if any, influence of that or any other kind upon even the simple and superstitious peasantry. The Russian pope is, in fact, a man who has neither social nor political importance of any kind. He is not invited to the houses of the nobility, nor is he looked up to or relied upon by the people. He is a badly educated Mujik, as a rule, and commands neither the confidence of his own class nor the esteem of the ruling order. When he marries, his family ties and domestic interests are believed to be his chief considerations, while the worldly benefits of his clerical position, comparatively small though these may be, are believed to be his primary concern in life. Whatever little distinction belongs to his garb and calling arises entirely from the fact that he is, in reality, a clerical soldier of the Tsar; earning his living as an officer of a religious army, whose head and commander-in-chief is the great Emperor of all the Russians. He is, in another sense, the Tsar’s moral policeman among the Russian people.

* * * * *

The ordinary Russian policeman corresponds in many respects to the average member of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He is a man of the peasantry, of fine physique, and of unbounded self-importance. He lacks, however, the education and superior intelligence of his Irish rural prototype, while his reputation is on a lower moral plane. He is badly officered, as a rule, and this accounts largely for the suspicion which attaches to the performance of his duties in districts where the numerous vexatious restrictions in operation against the “Semitic malady” are so many temptations to the guardian of the law “to wink the other eye” at evasions of legal obstructions made profitable _not_ to see. His pay is small, and this, too, is an explanation of his official dereliction in these matters.

Strenuous efforts have been, and are still being, made to induce a more educated class of Russians to officer the police force of the Empire, but with slow and uncertain results, so far. The nobility look upon the army as the only honourable service open to them, apart from diplomatic and administrative posts. Trade and commerce are, of course, _infra dig._, and the police is even more so, from the point of view of all sections of the aristocracy, poor and rich, fortunate and the reverse. There is not, strictly speaking, a Russian middle class, but there will soon be an intellectually developed class of men from a corresponding social grade turned out of Russia’s fine colleges and gymnasiums, from whose ranks an educated body of officials will be recruited for this and kindred public employments. Well officered, and better paid than they now are, the Russian police would soon rank in efficiency, as well as in appearance, with the best peace-preserving forces of any country.

* * * * *

A Russian city mob has little or no fear of the police force. Nor do the ordinary military, as a rule, inspire rioters with any sense of serious apprehensions. The explanation is probably due to the immediate kinship of class and feeling between the rough elements of an urban community and the conscript force of which they are a potential part, and (in anti-Semitic outbreaks) to the fact that policeman, soldier, and artisan share a common sentiment of antipathy towards the Jew. It is emphatically otherwise with Cossacks. The mob exhibits no hesitation when confronted with this arm of the military power. It disperses in double-quick time. I was told by one of the foreign Consuls in Odessa that on one occasion, some fifteen years ago, there was a sudden outbreak of mob violence which neither military nor police could, or would, quell. They attacked the houses of some foreign residents, and the Consul was called upon for protection. He went at once to the Governor, and suggested the employment of a dozen Cossacks to clear that part of the city of the disturbers. A troop of these splendid horsemen was turned loose without delay, and the riots were at an end within an hour. Nothing can stop their sweeping charge through a city’s streets. They ride over or through obstacles, human or otherwise, knout in hand, and spare no one who has not already cleared out of their path. As the Consul remarked to me when discussing the action, and inaction, of the military at Kishineff, “A dozen Don Cossacks would have settled the whole business with the rioters on Easter Sunday in half an hour.”

* * * * *

During an attack upon a Jew’s shop in Kishineff, an artillery officer, who was lodging in a Christian house opposite, saw a soldier enter the premises, and join in the looting of the unfortunate Hebrew’s goods. The officer, indignant at the disgraceful act of the soldier, rushed across the street, and seizing the military culprit, tore off his number, with the view of reporting him to the Colonel of his regiment. The mob turned upon the officer, who was compelled to seek shelter in his quarters. The windows were smashed with stones, and he was called upon to return the badge containing the soldier’s number. This he refused to do, and telephoned to the nearest military barracks for assistance. He was ultimately rescued from the mob’s threatening display.

* * * * *

It was difficult to obtain any reliable account of the actual number of persons who were arrested, tried, and punished for the murders and looting on the 19th and 20th of April. M. Polak, the Procurator from Odessa, came to Kishineff to put the law in motion against the rioters. About seven hundred out of the fifteen hundred or two thousand persons implicated were lodged in prison. M. Polak had to rely upon the local authorities to execute the orders of the Government through him. After his return to Odessa no less than five hundred of the prisoners were liberated, following an inquiry before the _Juges d’Instruction_ which was remarkable for the hurried manner in which it was conducted.

Punishment averaging a few months’ imprisonment was meted out to about 150, by the judges of the peace, before whom the cases were sent by the _Juges d’Instruction_. Some fifty were held on more serious charges, but the results of their trials are not yet made known. They will presumably be tried before the Criminal Court of Assize.

None of the known local instigators of the outbreak were arrested up to the date of my departure from Kishineff.

Some of the rioters protested, on arrest, that they were led to believe that the local authorities had lent their sanction to the massacre and looting, in order to punish the Jews for being the enemies of the Tsar’s Government and the supporters of Socialism.

The _Juge d’Instruction_, M. Davidovitch, who had to deal with the accused in the first instance, was at one time a contributor to the _Bessarabetz_--the active agent of the outbreak. I was informed that he had written an article for the paper shortly after the massacres, showing how the Jews were themselves the sole cause of the attack made upon them at Easter.

Two especially revolting outrages, the particulars of which have been published, one, the killing of a woman who was _enceinte_, and the putting of feathers in her body after disembowelling her; and the murder of a child two months old, were not included in the list of murders which I obtained, and I am not satisfied that these two crimes were actually committed as alleged. The Jewish doctors in the Hebrew Hospital could not confirm the report or particulars of these two cases. In the instance of the infant, they told me that the mother, in defending herself, and subsequently in her flight from the mob, had let the child fall, and that its death really happened in that way.

The foundation for the other and more inhuman story was, I think, this: A Jew named Kainarsky, a dealer in sheep and cattle gut, was attacked, robbed, and murdered in a slaughter-house. The mob cut open his bowels and put feathers inside; prompted, doubtless, to this act of barbarity by the nature of the poor fellow’s calling and business. It was an outrage base and inhuman enough, in all conscience, but not quite so fiendish in character as that of the account which represented a woman with child as the object of this peculiar atrocity.

The man thus murdered is included in the list of victims given to me in Kishineff, while no woman is mentioned as having undergone such mutilation, a circumstance which, it is sincerely to be hoped, disposes of the story as untrue.

* * * * *

“Byei Zhidoff!” the terrible cry which was the signal of slaughter at Easter, means “Kill the Jews!” Zhidoff is a term of Russian contempt for the Jew.

* * * * *

The “Narodovostvo,” or People’s Freedom Party, which is supposed to be a growing movement in Russia, has no branch or supporters in Kishineff, at least I failed to obtain information of its existence. It represents an aspiration rather than an original force. A student who joined the rioters on the first day’s outbreak, with the object of diverting the mob, if possible, from resorting to extreme violence against the Jews, began by raising a cry for constitutional freedom. The crowd did not understand him, whereupon he shouted “Down with the Government at St. Petersburg!” He was instantly knocked down, and would have been killed had the police not interfered on seeing a Russian in danger. He was taken off to prison.

Ten days after the Kishineff massacres there was an attempted Socialist demonstration at Odessa. It was in some way supposed to be a May Day Labour affair, but assumed the form of an Anarchist turnout, of which the police appeared to have had timely intimation. A band of some forty men, workers and _prolétaires_, attempted to march toward the centre of the city, with a red flag at their head. After proceeding along a small street, and raising a few feeble cries, they were pounced upon by the police and taken to prison. It was found, on examination, that nineteen of the forty were Jews. They were all liberated after a few days’ detention.

* * * * *

One ground of objection to the Zionist movement for the repatriation of the Jews is that the Hebrews, who are not a military people, would be shut off from European help while being at the mercy of Turkish rule and of Arab hostility in Palestine. The implied loss of European protection may be an imaginary risk. The record of the Turks in the matter of modern anti-Semitism compares more than favourably with that of the tender feelings of European Christianity. The Arab is of the same racial family as the descendants of Father Abraham, and even were the offspring of Ishmael more numerous in Palestine than they are estimated to be, they might be trusted to show no more savage propensities towards their Israelitish kindred than Russian Seminarists or Roumanian Christians have done in recent years.

Two or three millions of Jews in Palestine would, however, develop a national sentiment and idea that would soon nourish a spirit of patriotism capable of defending them from possible Arab aggression. The Jews of the world would be their foreign friends and allies, while the civilised nations inhabited by the scattered Hebrews could not in reason neglect to take a sympathetic interest in the protection and welfare of one of the oldest peoples in the world, restored again to the Promised Land of Israel.

Russia’s diplomatic common sense should see in the Zionist movement a noble racial effort, worthy of assistance on its merits, but especially calling for Russian help and encouragement. The creators of the Pale of Settlement, and those responsible for the poverty and suffering which are alone due to this cause, owe some reparation to the people who have been thus treated. No ten million pounds which Russia could spend on her army and navy would render her empire a better or more lasting service than what would follow to her domestic peace if a sum of that amount, or more if necessary, were devoted to the carrying out of the great work of the Zionist leaders. If Russia will only trust and obey her better instincts in adopting a humane policy of this kind, coupled with a stern moral warfare against the propagation of the blood-accusation legend inside the Empire, she will cure the “Semitic malady,” which will otherwise grow to be an increasing and more dangerous evil within her borders.

* * * * *

The Russian Jew as an emigrant to the United States is a subject which will demand serious consideration after public interest in the Kishineff horrors subsides. All who can find means to go will leave Bessarabia, unless the Tsar is inclined, or induced, to speak words which will be an Imperial guarantee against further violence. No such words have yet been uttered. This is much to be regretted by all who believe in the humanity of the Emperor’s personal disposition. It tends to create the possibly erroneous and unjust suspicion that the terror created by the massacres in April is to be used by the Tsar’s advisers “_pour encourager les autres_,” to lessen the extent of the “Semitic malady” by emigrating from Russia. But, in any case, large numbers of Jews will endeavour to quit the Pale, and their relatives and friends who fled in 1891, and who have prospered in America, may be counted upon to lend assistance to the new aspirants for United States citizenship and protection.

It is the proletarian Jew and the members of the small huckstering class who are the chief undesirables in Russia now. They are three-fourths of the Semitic population of the Pale, and their numbers are increasing.

I saw thousands of these in the cities and towns, from Odessa to Warsaw. They are not a drunken nor an abnormally immoral class. Russian officials have testified to their general good conduct, on the whole; when due allowance is made for the precarious nature of their employments and the poverty of their lives. I observed how uniform were the healthy looks of their children, even amidst some of the most wretched surroundings. This is a good testimony to personal character and civic qualities. In England the children of the lowest classes are neglected and underfed by parents who expend in gin and beer what would provide more nourishment for their offspring. There is no corresponding bad trait in the average proletarian Jew of the Pale.

There are, as a matter of course, traits of low cunning, of shady subterfuge, and of other obnoxious qualities found among a people who have been hunted and ground down for generations. It would amount to a miracle of racial morality if such results did not follow from the treatment and experiences of the Russian Jew. They are also sufferers from the indifferent sanitary system of towns like Kishineff, where there is an abundance of water badly utilised in municipal management for the health and cleanliness of the poorer quarters and suburbs of the city.

* * * * *

Their poverty and persecution, along with the habits peculiar to the lowest grade of Hebrew humanity in Eastern Europe, render them singularly objectionable in appearance; carrying with them, as they do, all the traces of social degradation which cling to a pariah people as a physical certificate of the wrongs and hardships they have had to endure.

No country, be it ever so free, hospitable, or humane, could in reason be expected to open its ports to such a class of emigrant in order to relieve the Russian Government and nation of these wronged and unfortunate undesirables. They must first be improved in the land of their birth by more liberty and better treatment, or be sent for change--for better conditions of industrial life and hopes--to Palestine, where land labour could be provided for them. Transplantation would be an effective remedy, if carried out under careful supervision. The root qualities of the Jew--his intelligence, his faith, his intense ambition to possess money--would, under a more favourable environment, reclaim him from the induced vices which have naturally grown out of the congenial surroundings of poverty, suffering, and injustice. The human being who can succeed in living at all the semblance of a civilised existence, under the depressing conditions obtaining for the Jew within the towns of the Pale, could not fail in winning a better livelihood where rural industries and _petit_ culture, such as the soil and situation of Palestine will encourage, would be open to his intelligence, ambition, and energies. Such a Jew has no hope in Russia. He could not possibly meet a worse fate in Palestine. No other country can be expected to give him the privilege of its citizenship. Therefore, if he is not to be improved off the face of the earth by a corroding poverty, or by periodical outbreaks like that of Kishineff, he should be taken by the Zionist movement to where there are both the promise and inspiration of a new life.

The Polish proletarian Jew has more virility than the Hebrew of the same class within the Pale. He is no more prepossessing in appearance, while it is not wronging him to say that he is less desirable, in some other respects, as a citizen of another country. The Jews are sufficiently numerous in Poland to enlist the co-operation of Socialist revolutionary forces there, and thereby to obtain, by some means, a right to live. They are not so powerless as those within the Pale, and Russia may soon find it a wise and necessary policy to allow them to have a freer access than they now enjoy to the resources of the country, in order to lessen their growing numbers in the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Poland. There are over a quarter of a million of them in Warsaw. They would be a dangerous element there if driven to extremities, or in the event of any complications arising between the Russian Empire and Germany. In any case, the Polish Jew will work out his own destiny. He has lived in Poland for over seven hundred years, and this long experience of varied forms of fortune and of oppression gives him a tenure and a hope which may yet win him back some of the rights and privileges he once enjoyed before he lost the tolerant protection of the Polish people in becoming the agent and tool of the Polish landed aristocracy.

* * * * *

Since the foregoing parts of this book were prepared for the press, it has been announced from Russia that Vice-Governor Ostrogoff has been transferred from Kishineff to Stavropol, in the Caucasus. This action marks the severe condemnation of this official’s conduct by the Russian Government.

The head of the _gendarmerie_ at Kishineff has been retired from service.

It has also been reported from apparently reliable sources that several persons who were at first accused of participation in the massacres, and liberated after a short detention in prison, have been re-arrested, and will be tried in September. It is further stated that there are to be 53 indictments for manslaughter in addition to 34 prisoners already held for trial, while 400 other cases are under investigation.

It has likewise been published in the press that former Governor Von Raaben had asked for, and had been denied, an interview with the Emperor.

According to reports circulated from Vienna on the 10th of July, the special visit paid to Kishineff by the Minister of Justice was responsible for the action of the authorities in re-arresting suspected culprits, and for the intention to prosecute several of the prominent instigators of the riots at Easter who had been arrested or accused for their connection with the massacres up to the date of the author’s departure from Kishineff.

From a similar Vienna source, it has been reported that one of these prominent anti-Semites of Kishineff had committed suicide, as a result of an inquiry instituted into his conduct during the disturbances.

The actual murderers of the Christian boy, Ribalenko of Doubossar, who was declared by the _Bessarabetz_ newspaper to have been killed by the Jews for sacrificial purposes, have been discovered and arrested. He was killed by one Tischtchevko, the caretaker of the orchard in which the body was found. The murderer confesses that the uncle of the boy took part in committing the crime. Both the murderers are Russians and Christians.

The latest published report of the Kishineff Relief Committee gives the following account of the moneys received and how expended by that body:

“To the end of June 735,476 roubles have been received as follows:

RECEIPTS

Roubles America, 192,443 England, 16,001 Germany, 35,675 Italy, 5,000 Holland, 1,000 Austria, 10,415 Roumania, 3,023 France, 9,248 Russia, 462,671 ------- Total, 735,476

EXPENDITURES

Roubles Provisions, 14,700 To sufferers (directly), 273,622 To sufferers (indirectly), 30,000 To 35 families of those murdered or who died of wounds, 87,500 To two families of invalids, 4,600 To the Ladies’ Committee, for preparing linen and clothes and for a crèche, 4,000 To settling 50 families in Palestine, 50,000 ------- Total, 464,422 Balance in hand, 271,054 ------- Roubles, 735,476

“The number of families who suffered from the riots is given at about 2750. Applications for relief were received from 2538 families, to the amount of 2,332,890 roubles. The number of persons murdered, or who died of wounds, is put down at 47; severely wounded, 92; slightly wounded, 345. Some of the latter were treated by private doctors. The killed left behind 35 widows and 123 orphans. The number of persons rendered unfit for work has not yet been ascertained, but is so far given as 50. The Committee is of opinion that in order to satisfy all the losses for which only now claims are being made 200,000 roubles will still be required.”

APPENDICES