3. THE "BLACK HUNDRED" AND THE "PATRIOTIC" POGROMS
In this wise did the Jewish people, though chafing under thraldom and well-nigh crushed by it, strive for the light of liberty. But the forces of reaction were preparing to wreak terrible vengeance upon the prisoner for his endeavor to throw off his bonds. As the revolutionary tide, which had engulfed the best elements of the Russian people, was rolling on, it clashed with the filthy wave of the Black Hundred, which the underlings of Tzardom had called to the surface from the lowest depths of the Russian underworld. _Acheronta movebo_[46]--this threat was now carried out systematically by the Government of Nicholas II. in its struggle with the emancipatory movement. By letting loose the Russian "nether-world" against the liberal _intelligentzia_ and the Zhyds, the reactionaries hoped to achieve three objects at once: to intimidate the liberals and revolutionaries; to demonstrate the unwillingness of the "people" to abolish autocracy in favor of constitutional government, and, finally, to discredit the entire revolutionary movement as "the work of Jewish hands." The latter end could, in the opinion of the reactionaries, be obtained best by convincing the Russian masses that "the enemies of Christ are the only enemies of the Tzar." An open anti-Jewish agitation was set in motion. Proclamations of the Black Hundred with the appeals, "Slay the students and the Zhyds!" "Remember Kishinev and Homel!" were scattered broadcast. The proclamation of the "Nationalist Society" of Kiev, Odessa, Kishinev, and other cities contained the following sentences:
The shouts "Down with autocracy!" are the shouts of those blood-suckers who call themselves Zhyds, Armenians, and Poles.... Be on your guard against the Zhyds! All the misfortunes in our lives are due to the Zhyds. Soon, very soon, the great time will come when there will be no Zhyds in Russia. Down with the traitors! Down with the constitution!
With the approaching Passover season, pogroms were openly organized. The papers were flooded with telegrams from many cities stating that riots were imminent. In some places the governors adopted measures to check the excesses of the savage crowd, but in many localities the pogroms were deliberately permitted or even directly engineered by the police. In the manufacturing city of Bialystok, the center of the Jewish labor movement, the Cossacks assaulted Jewish passers-by on the streets, invaded the synagogues and Jewish homes, cruelly maltreating their inmates and frequently searching them and taking away their money (April 9-10). During the Passover holidays, peasants made an attack upon the Jews in the town of Dusyaty, in the government of Kovno, looting their property and beating those that dared to oppose them. In the city of Melitopol, in the government of Tavrida, an intoxicated mob demolished and set fire to Jewish stores, and thereupon started to attack the houses of Christians, but the self-defence consisting of Jewish and Christian young men checked the pogrom (April 18-19). In Simferopol, in the same government, the Black Hundred spread a rumor that a Jewish boy, the son of a pharmacist, had desecrated a Christian ikon. A pogrom was set in motion which met with the resistance of the armed Jewish youth and was afterwards checked by the troops (April 22).