At the present moment, when it has become fashionable to present the image of Tsar Nicholas in the most attractive and humane colours, it is perhaps as well that we remind ourselves of the real character and role of the man known to his contemporaries as ‘Nicholas the Bloody’. We refer specifically to the attitude of the Little Father to the activities of the pogromists. From the beginning of his reign, Nicholas showed his willingness to resort to violence at the slightest pretext. In 1895, the year following his accession, the Tsar telegraphed to a grenadier regiment that had distinguished itself in suppressing workers’ disorders: “Highly satisfied with the calm and bold conduct of the troops during the factory riots.” In 1905 he reacted in the same spirit: “Terror must be met with terror,” he wrote to his mother in December 1905, in commending the brutal repression of the Baltic peasants. “Orlov, Richter, and the others are doing very good work. Many seditious bands have been dispersed, their homes and property burned.” A little while later, on hearing that Riga had been captured, and that Captain Richter had hanged the chief agitators, the Tsar commented: “Fine fellow!” In 1907 Bernard Pares, author of one of the best-known English histories of Russia, asked a Russian peasant what he thought of what had occurred during the previous five years. After a moment’s thought the peasant replied: “Five years ago there was a belief [in the Tsar] as well as fear. Now the belief is all gone and only the fear remains.” (Quoted in O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, p. 203.)
As an answer to the revolutionary movement of the workers, the regime organised bloody pogroms against Jews, socialists, and ‘intellectuals’. In one month following 17 October, anything up to 4,000 people were murdered, and a further 10,000 injured in bloody pogroms. Many Social Democrats perished in these attacks, notably the Bolshevik leader, Nikolai Bauman, who was murdered in Moscow shortly after being released from prison. Bauman’s funeral turned into a mass workers’ demonstration. The coffin was carried through the streets accompanied by a band playing revolutionary songs.
The party leaders followed with wreaths, red flags and heavy velvet banners, bearing the slogans of their struggle in ornate gold. They were flanked by an armed militia of students and workers. And behind them row upon row of mourners, some 100,000 in all, marched ten abreast in military formation. This religious-like procession continued all day, stopping at various points in the city to pick up reinforcements. As it passed the Conservatory it was joined by a student orchestra, which played, over and over again, the funeral dirge of the revolution: You Fell Victim to a Fateful Struggle. The measured heaviness of the marchers, their melancholy music and their military organisation filled the streets with dark menace. As night fell, thousands of torches were lit, making the red flags glow. The graveside orations were emotional, defiant and uplifting. Bauman’s widow called on the crowds to avenge her husband’s death and, as they made their way to the city centre, sporadic fighting broke out with Black Hundred gangs.
There were many other cases of people brutally tortured and murdered by the Black Hundred gangs financed and armed by the authorities as auxiliaries of the state. It is not difficult to prove the link between the pogroms and the authorities, from the local police chief right up to the Tsar. Nicholas took a personal interest in the work of the Union of the Russian People which was behind the Black Hundreds. The direct connection between Nicholas and the Black Hundreds is not in doubt, as a recent history points out:
The Tsar and his supporters at the court… patronised the Union, as did several leading Churchmen, including Father John of Kronstadt, a close friend of the royal family, Bishop Hermogen, and the monk Iliodor. Nicholas himself wore the Union’s badge and wished its leaders ‘total success’ in their efforts to unify the ‘loyal Russians’ behind the autocracy. Acting on the Tsar’s instructions, the Ministry of the Interior financed its newspapers and secretly channelled arms to it. (O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, pp. 198-99 and p. 196.)
The Tsar’s anti-Semitism is well documented:
He had a particular animus for the Jews. When Stolypin, the chairman of the Council of Ministers 1906-11, proposed to relax certain restrictions imposed on the Jews in the Pale of Settlement, the Tsar replied: “In spite of the most convincing arguments in favour of an affirmative decision in this matter, an inner voice ever more insistently confirms that I should not take this decision upon myself. So far my conscience has never deceived me. Therefore, in this case also, I intend to follow its dictates.” Not for nothing did the Tsar become a member of the anti-Semitic Union of the Russian People, subscribe to the Union’s funds and receive its president, Dr. Dubrovin, on friendly terms. He had no sympathy for the victims of the pogroms that followed the publication of the Manifesto of October 1905. On the contrary, he saw in them a revolt against ‘the impertinence’ of the socialists and revolutionaries. (L. Kochan, Russia in Revolution, pp. 62-3.)
The Jews suffered terrible atrocities at the hands of the Black Hundred gangs, liberally plied with vodka and egged on by the police. And these horrors were organised at the top. At the police headquarters in Petersburg, thousands of leaflets were produced, inciting violence against the Jews for ruining Russia, calling upon the populace to “tear them to pieces and kill them all”. General Trepov personally edited the leaflet, which was subsidised by the Minister of the Interior to the tune of 70,000 roubles. The most brutal pogrom took place in Odessa where 800 Jews were murdered, 5,000 wounded, and more than 100,000 rendered homeless. The lumpen-proletariat, the scum of society, protected by the forces of the state, was incited to commit the most unspeakable atrocities against defenceless people.
The doss-house tramp is king. A trembling slave an hour ago, hounded by police and starvation, he is now himself an unlimited despot. Everything is permitted to him, he is capable of anything, he is master of property and honour, of life and death. If he wants to, he can throw an old woman out of a third-floor window together with a grand piano, he can smash a chair against a baby’s head, rape a little girl while the entire crowd looks on, hammer a nail into a living human body… He exterminates whole families, he pours petrol over a house, transforms it into a mass of flames, and if anyone attempts to escape, he finishes him off with a cudgel. A savage horde comes into an Armenian almshouse, knifing old people, sick people, women, children… There exist no tortures, figments of a feverish brain maddened with alcohol and fury, at which he need ever stop. He is capable of everything. God save the Tsar! (L. Trotsky, 1905, pp. 150-51.)
The Bolshevik Piatnitsky who was in Odessa at the time recalls what happened:
There I saw the following scene: a gang of young men, between 25 and 30 years old, among whom there were plain-clothes policemen and members of the Okhrana, were rounding up anyone who looked like a Jew – men, women and children – stripping them naked and beating them mercilessly… We immediately organised a group of revolutionaries armed with revolvers… we ran up to them and fired at them. They ran away. But suddenly between us and the pogromists there appeared a solid wall of soldiers, armed to the teeth and facing us. We retreated. The soldiers went away, and the pogromists came out again. This happened a few times. It became clear to us that the pogromists were acting together with the military. (O. Piatnitsky, Zapiski Bol’shevika, p. 82.)
The official report ordered by Witte clearly exposed the role of the police in this butchery, not only organising the lumpen-proletarian mobs and supplying them with vodka, but directing them to places where Jews were hiding and even participating directly in the massacre of men, women, and children. The governor of Odessa, Neidgart, admitted that “the crowds of hooligans engaged in wrecking and robbing, greeted him enthusiastically”. Baron Kaulbars, commander of the local troops, addressed the police with a speech beginning with the words: “Let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s admit that all of us, in our hearts, sympathise with this pogrom!” (L. Trotsky, 1905, p. 150, note.)
It cannot be argued that the Tsar knew nothing of the pogroms, although naturally, his links with the Black Hundreds were kept on a suitably discreet level. But Nicholas was well aware of what was going on, and approved of it, as his private correspondence reveals. On 27 October he wrote to his mother:
My Dearest Mama…
I’ll begin by saying that the whole situation is better than it was a week ago… In the first days after the Manifesto the subversive elements raised their heads, but a strong reaction set in quickly and a whole mass of loyal people suddenly made their power felt. The result was obvious, and what one would expect in our country. The impertinence of the socialists and revolutionaries had angered the people once more; and because nine-tenths of the troublemakers are Jews, the people’s anger turned against them. That’s how the pogroms happened. It is amazing how they took place simultaneously in all the towns of Russia and Siberia… Cases as far apart as Tomsk, Simferopol, Tver, and Odessa show clearly what an infuriated mob can do; they surrounded the houses where the revolutionaries had taken refuge, set fire to them, and killed everybody trying to escape. (O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, pp. 197-98.)
Kerensky confirms the blatant complicity between the pogrom-mongers and the authorities, including the Tsar:
Shcheglovitov was encouraged in his attitude by the Tsar, who was irreconcilable in political matters. His policy in the pogrom trials involving members of the Union of the Russian People [that is, the Black Hundreds, the forerunners of the fascists] was revealing. Among the documents of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry into the Activities of Former Ministers and Dignitaries set up by the Provisional Government is a statement made by Lyadov, department head at the Ministry of Justice. Lyadov asserted that among the appeals for pardon that were considered in his department, the Tsar invariably approved those submitted by members of the Union of the Russian People and rejected those submitted by revolutionaries. (A. Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History’s Turning Point, p. 79.)
How to fight the pogromists? Certainly not by appealing to the police and judiciary who, as we have seen, were behind the Black Hundreds. The wave of pogroms posed a question of self-defence in a most concrete and urgent fashion. Not futile appeals to the law, but workers’ self-defence! Defence, first of all, against the Black Hundreds, defence of Jews, Armenians and of intellectuals. Wherever possible, the workers organisations came together and attempted to combat the racist gangs. On such issues, it is necessary to draw in the representatives of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie and the oppressed minorities, but always under the leadership of the workers’ organisations. Trust only in your own forces! The working class must fight fascism with its own methods! That was the position of Lenin, who, in an article on a pogrom in Byelostok, explains the Bolshevik policy.
Here are a few excerpts from a telegram received from a Byelostok elector, Tsirin: “A deliberately organised anti-Jewish pogrom has started”. “In spite of rumours that have been circulated, not a single order has been received from the ministry all day today!” “Vigorous agitation for the pogrom has been carried on for the past two weeks. In the streets, particularly at night, leaflets were distributed calling for the massacre, not only of Jews, but also of intellectuals. The police simply turned a blind eye to all this.”
The old familiar picture! The police organises the pogrom beforehand. The police instigates it; leaflets are printed in government printing offices calling for a massacre of the Jews. When the pogrom begins, the police is inactive. The troops quietly look on at the exploits of the Black Hundreds. But later this very police goes through the farce of prosecution and trial of the pogromists.
Lenin denounces the farce of government investigations and enquiries and poses the alternative in revolutionary terms:
Indict the culprits in unequivocal terms – it is your direct duty to the people. Don’t ask the government whether measures are being taken to protect the Jews and to prevent pogroms, but ask how long the government intends to shield the real culprits, who are members of the government. Ask the government whether it thinks that the people will long be in error as to who it is really responsible for the pogroms. Indict the government openly and publicly; call upon the people to organise a militia and self-defence as the only means of protection against pogroms. (LCW, The Reaction is Taking to Arms, vol. 10, p. 509 and pp. 510-11, my emphasis.)
The bloody wave of pogroms posed the need for workers’ self-defence in a very concrete fashion. The question of armed struggle was a matter of life and death for the working class and the revolution. These activities, however, had nothing in common with the tactic of individual terrorism or ‘urban guerrillaism’. This was no secret conspiracy carried out by small groups of terrorists behind the backs of the workers, but a conscious revolutionary strategy linked to the masses. The fighting squads were closely linked to the Soviets and other workers’ organisations. Legal workers’ clubs set up rifle ranges where workers learned to handle arms under the noses of the police. For their part, the Bolsheviks pressed for the formation of a united front involving the unity in action of all workers’ organisations and also petty bourgeois democratic and nationalist groups – an agreement of all those forces who were prepared to fight in defence of the gains of the revolution and against the Black Hundreds.
Here and there the workers’ fighting squads inflicted defeats against the pogromists. In his memoirs, Piatnitsky describes the horrific pogrom against the Jews in Odessa, and the formation of a united front of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Bundists, Dashnaks (Armenian nationalists), and supporters of Paol-Zion – a group set up in 1905 which attempted to combine Zionism with Marxism, a section of which joined the Bolshevik Party after the October Revolution. Armed detachments were sent to try to defend the Jews. Initially they succeeded in driving off the racist mobs, before coming up against the army and police whose superior forces compelled them to retreat, with some loss of life. Armed struggle was posed initially in terms of defence. However, in warfare the difference between defence and offence is of a relative character. A successful defensive struggle can be transformed into an offensive action. In Kharkov the fighting squads erected barricades and the demoralised troops surrendered without a fight. In Yekaterinoslav the workers fought back against the Cossacks with home made bombs, killing several. In Chita they succeeded in freeing political prisoners, including sailors from the Black Sea Fleet. These partial skirmishes were preparing the way for the decisive showdown between the working class and the autocracy which Lenin knew to be inevitable.