Jewish Pogroms In Ukraine
The black streak of Jewish pogroms in Ukraine ran through the whole of 1919 and the
beginning of 1920. By their scope, scale and atrocity, these pogroms immeasurably exceeded all
the previous historical instances discussed in this book — the pogroms of 1881-1882, 1903, and
1905. Yu. Larin, a high-placed Soviet functionary, wrote in the 1920s that during the Civil War
Ukraine saw “a very large number of massive Jewish pogroms far exceeding anything from the
past with respect to the number of victims and number of perpetrators.” Vynnychenko allegedly
said that “the pogroms would stop only when the Jews would stop being communists.”
There is no precise estimate of the number of victims of those pogroms. Of course, no
reliable count could be performed in that situation, neither during the events, nor immediately
afterwards. In the book, Jewish Pogroms, we read: “The number of murdered in Ukraine and
Byelorussia between 1917 and 1921 is approximately 180,000-200,000…. The number of
orphans alone, 300,000, bespeaks of the enormous scale of the catastrophe.” The present-day
Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that “by different estimates, from 70,000 to 180,000-200,000 Jews
were killed.”
Compiling data from different Jewish sources, a modern historian comes up with 900
mass pogroms, of which: 40 percent by Petliura’s Ukrainian Directorate troops; 25 percent by
the squads of the various Ukrainian atamans; 17 per cent by Denikin’s White Army troops; and
8.5 per cent by the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny and other Red Army troops.
Yet how many butchered lives are behind these figures!
Already during the Civil War, national and socialist Jewish parties began merging with
the Reds. The Fareynikte, the United Jewish Socialist Worker’s Party, turned into the
“ComFareynikte” [Communist Jewish Socialist Worker’s Party] and adopted the communist
program and together with the communist wing of the Bund formed the All-Russian “ComBund”
in June 1920; in Ukraine, associates and members of the Fareynikte together with the Ukrainian
ComBund formed the ComFarband [the Jewish Communist Union] which later joined the All-
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Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1919 in Kiev, the official Soviet press provided texts
in three languages — Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish.
The Bolsheviks used these pogroms in Ukraine to their enormous advantage, they
extremely skillfully exploited the pogroms in order to influence public opinion in Russia and
abroad in many Jewish and non-Jewish circles in Europe and America. Yet the Reds had the
finger in the pie as well — and they were actually the first ones to slaughter Jews. In the spring
of 1918, units of the Red Army, retreating from Ukraine, perpetrated pogroms using the slogan
“Strike the Yids and the bourgeoisie.” The most atrocious pogroms were carried out by the First
Cavalry Army during its retreat from Poland in the end of August 1920.
Yet historical awareness of the pogroms carried out by the Red Army during the Civil
War has been rather glossed over. Only a few condemning voices have spoken on the topic.
Pasmanik wrote: “During the first winter of Bolshevik rule, the Red troops fighting under the red
banner carried out several bloody pogroms, most notable of which were pogroms in Glukhov and
Novgorod-Siverskiy. By number of victims, deliberate brutality, torture and abuse, those two had
eclipsed even the Kalush massacre. Retreating before the advancing Germans, the Red troops
were destroying Jewish settlements on their route.”
S. Maslov is also quite clear: “The march of the Budyonny’s Cavalry Army during its
relocation from the Polish to the Crimean Front was marked by thousands of murdered Jews,
thousands of raped women and dozens of utterly razed and looted Jewish settlements. In
Zhytomyr, each new authority inaugurated its rule with a pogrom, and often repeatedly after each
time the city changed hands again. The feature of all those pogroms — by Petliura’s troops, the
Poles, or the Soviets — was the large number of killed.” The Bogunskiy and Taraschanskiy
regiments stood out in particular (though those two having come over to Budyonny from the
Directorate); allegedly, those regiments were disarmed because of the pogroms and the
instigators were hanged.
The above-cited socialist S. Schwartz concludes from his historical standpoint (1952):
“During the revolutionary period, particularly during the Civil War, anti-Semitism has grown
extraordinarily and, especially in the South, spread extensively in the broad masses of the urban
and rural population.”
Alas, the resistance of the Russian population to the Bolsheviks (without which we
wouldn’t have a right to call ourselves a people) had faltered and took wrong turns in many
ways, including on the Jewish issue. Meanwhile the Bolshevik regime was touting the Jews and
they were joining it, and the Civil War was more and more broadening that chasm between Reds
and Whites. If the revolution in general has cleared Jewry of suspicion in counter-revolutionary
attitude, the counter-revolution has suspected all Jewry of being pro-revolutionary. And thus, the
Civil War became an unbearable torment for Jewry, further consolidating them on the wrong
revolutionary positions, and so they failed to recognize the genuine redemptive essence of the
White armies.
Let’s not overlook the general situation during the Civil War. It was literally a chaos
which released unbridled anarchy across Russia. Anybody who wanted and was able to rob and
kill was robbing and killing whoever he wanted. Officers of the Russian Army were massacred
in the hundreds and thousands by bands of mutinous rabble. Entire families of landowners were
murdered, estates were burned; valuable pieces of art were pilfered and destroyed in some places
in manors all living things including livestock were exterminated. Mob rule spread terror on the
streets of cities. Owners of plants and factories were driven out of their enterprises and
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dwellings. Tens of thousands people all over Russia were shot for the glory of the proletarian
revolution others rotted in stinking and vermin-infested prisons as hostages.
It was not a crime or personal actions that put a man under the axe but his affiliation with
a certain social stratum or class. It would be an absolute miracle if, under conditions when whole
human groups were designated for extermination, the group named “Jews” remained exempt.
The curse of the time was that it was possible to declare an entire class or a tribe evil. So,
condemning an entire social class to destruction is called revolution, yet to kill and rob Jews is
called a pogrom? The Jewish pogrom in the South of Russia was a component of the All-Russian
pogrom.
Such was the woeful acquisition of all the peoples of Russia, including the Jews, after the
successful attainment of equal rights, after the splendid Revolution of March 1917, that both the
general sympathy of Russian Jews toward the Bolsheviks and the developed attitude of the White
forces toward Jews eclipsed and erased the most important benefit of a possible White victory —
the sane evolution of the Russian state.
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