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Updated: June 4, 2025
I never was in an actual pogrom, but there were times when it threatened us, even in Polotzk; and in all my fearful imaginings, as I hid in dark corners, thinking of the horrible things the Gentiles were going to do to me, I saw the cross, the cruel cross. I remember a time when I thought a pogrom had broken out in our street, and I wonder that I did not die of fear.
According to newspaper reports, four hundred and fifty Jews were murdered, among these some Jewish soldiers who had been rewarded with "St. George" medals for bravery. Long lists of victims such as could be identified were at that time published in the newspapers. The pogrom was directed exclusively against the Jews, and the Christian population of the city did not suffer in the least.
The murderous hordes realized that the police and military were fully in earnest, and this was enough to sober them from their pogrom intoxication. Towards the end of July, the epidemic of vandalism came to a stop, though it was followed in many cities by a large number of conflagrations.
The bloody saturnalia of Nizhni-Novgorod had, however, the beneficent effect that the Government, fearing the spread of the conflagration outside the Pale and even outside Jewry, took energetic steps to prevent all further excesses. As a matter of fact, the Nizhni-Novgorod pogrom was the last in the annals of the eighties with the exception of a few unimportant occurrences in various localities.
This appeal, which, sounded in unison with the voice of the Russian Jew-baiters and appeared at a time when the wounds of the pogrom victims were not yet healed, aroused profound indignation among the Jews. Shortly afterwards the "Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood" fell asunder.
This quartette developed their policy very successfully and soon saw Wang Tsao-tsun fall in with their schemes. Once more the days of expecting a pogrom in Uliassutai returned to us. The Russian officers anticipated attempts to arrest them. The representative of one of the American firms went with me to the Commissioner for a parley.
All that one saw on the surface were, on the one hand, an irresponsible bureaucracy using the knout, the secret agent, the pogrom, and Siberia for the suppression of anything suspected of threatening existing conditions; and, on the other, a band of devoted reformers and revolutionaries risking all in the cause of political liberty, and dying, the "Marseillaise" on their lips, with the fortitude of Christian martyrs.
The sophistry of the Minister was refuted on the spot by his own confession that the Balta pogrom was due to "a false rumor charging the Jews with having undermined the local Greek-Orthodox church," in other words, that the cause of the Balta pogrom was not to be traced to any tendencies within Jewry but rather to the agitation of evil-minded Jew-baiters.
The pogrom was due primarily to the savagery of brutal and unenlightened mobs, who found an opportunity to vent their beastly instincts, fortified by the conviction of complete immunity, which is referred to in the report of the governor. Even the central Government in St. Petersburg was alarmed by the St. Bartholemew night which had been enacted at Nizhni-Novgorod.
Doubtless that is the military calculation that their crime may be overlooked in a world of criminals. Accordingly, the nearer peace comes, the more eager will they be to force a conflict before their chance vanishes. Is there in Great Britain enough real sympathy with Small Nationalities, enough real hatred of militarism, to frustrate this Pogrom Plot of British Militarist Junkerdom?
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