The October Manifesto, 1905

On August 25, 1905 (n. s.), peace agreements were signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and this raised hopes that domestic order would be restored as well. But when Witte returned from the United States to St. Petersburg, he found, in his words, "complete chaos." In the capital there was no transportation, water, lights, operating telephones, or railroads. Massive strikes continued in the provinces. By the second week of October, Odessa's economic life was once again paralyzed. In desperation, Witte and other ministers advised the tsar to grant a constitution, in order to stem the revolutionary tides. The resulting proclamation is known as the October Manifesto. In it, Tsar Nicholas guaranteed civil liberties and transformed the Duma from a consultative body into a legislature made up of elected representatives. 

The concession did not produce all the hoped-for results. Most workers resumed their jobs; an improving economy also helped to restore social peace. But the Manifesto did not appease either the far left or the far right. Various rightist groups united to form the Union of the Russian People. They objected to the policy of liberal reform and were determined to punish those whom they considered responsible for the October Manifesto and for the economic upheaval of the past year. Or they used these reforms as an excuse to attack their predilected target—Jews. The very day after the issuance of the Manifesto, as if by a given signal, numerous violent pogroms erupted in the Pale: at Kishinev, Kiev, Kherson, Akkerman, Rostov-on-Don, and above all, Odessa. 

Pogroms 

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Odessa's many ethnic groups lived in mutual toleration and even in harmony. Within their own circles they shared social activities and religious worship and arranged for the education of their children; they promoted the welfare of their members through charitable and benevolent associations. Anti-Jewish riots had, to be sure, occurred—in 1821, 1849, 1859, 1871, and 1881. But the friction seems to have been initially limited to an animosity between Greeks and Jews, and the riots themselves did not take on monstrous proportions.

In the latter half of the century, Jews, as we have seen, came to constitute the second largest ethnic community in the city. Odessa's many Jews were for the most part assimilated, Russified, educated, and cultured; many (though far from all) were prosperous. In fact, one Jewish historian observed that the Jews "contributed more than any other nationality to Russifying Odessa, which, owing to its great foreign population was known as the most un-Russian city of Russia." A Jewish expression for prosperity was "to live like God in Odessa." A Lithuanian Jew who visited Odessa in 1861 was impressed not so much with the wealth of the Jewish community (which was considerable). Rather, he admired the fact that Jews walked calmly, with dignity and stateliness, through its streets. They conversed in the Cafe Richelieu, frequented the Italian opera house, obviously feeling comfortable and at home. In the words of one of them, Odessa was "the city in which Jews lived better and more pleasantly than in any other in Russia." The Jews might well have walked proudly in their "Little Paris," for their talents, energy, and capital had contributed to its prosperity. 

The growth in Jewish population was matched by their economic success in various sectors: in the ownership of land and factories, in the crafts and professions, and above all in trade. Once predominantly petty tradesmen engaged in local enterprises, the Jews by mid-century were becoming active participants in the international export-import business. This brought them into direct competition with the hitherto dominant Greeks. This trend did not escape the sharp eye of A. A. Skal'kovskii, who wrote in 1865:

Odessa's Jews are no longer content with small trade. Already 8 of their number are in the first guild and 16 in the second and 24 take part in banking operations on the Odessa Stock Exchange, where they have special freedom, although the means of some of them are still rather limited compared with the Greeks and the Genoese.

In Skal'kovskii's opinion, the chief merchants were still Greek (some with Russian citizenship), Genoese and other Italians, Germans, Russians, and Jews. The ethnic Russians engaged for the most part in local commerce. They rarely traded on the Stock Exchange and even more rarely did they maintain direct contacts with Europe. 

Between 1865 and 1870, Jewish merchants progressed even further. In 1871, the long-seething animosity between Greeks and Jews erupted into violence.

Pogroms, 1871 and 1881

The trouble began at the site of the Greek Orthodox church. The church stood on the corner of Troitskii and Catherine Streets, that is, in the heart of a heavily Jewish neighborhood. In 1910, a lawyer named M. G. Morgulis published in the Jewish press a detailed and vivid account of the pogrom, based on contemporary investigations and his own memories. According to this source, Greek worshippers gathered in the courtyard of the church on Easter eve. This was, of course, an annual occurrence, as was the noise and revelry that accompanied the end of a forty-day fast and the renewed consumption of alcoholic beverages. But this particular year was marked by even more boisterous behavior. Random revolver shots, whistling, the breaking of bottles—all shattered the nocturnal peace of the Jewish neighborhood. Perhaps in retaliation, someone, presumably a Jew, threw a rock from beyond the walls of the court-yard; the rock struck one of the revelers, who fell down, perhaps from the injury or perhaps from intoxication. (Apparently, the crowd was largely composed of sailors.) His compatriots determined to take revenge. Some of them left the church precincts, accosted and struck the Jews they randomly encountered, and broke the windows of Jewish homes. Then they soon took to looting the shops and homes. 

Whatever the provocation, the rampage continued for three days and three nights. The mob threw stones, broke windows, looted stores, and occasionally assaulted Jews themselves. Russian workers, artisans, artel members, and, according to the Jewish author, even some Jews joined the rioters. The lure of booty rather than religious fervor attracted the dregs of society. During the initial phases of this disturbance, the police kept out of sight. Indeed, the mob had deliberately attacked homes across from the main police station in order to "test the waters." When there was no reaction, the crowd fanned out through the city. A rumor was bruited about that soon the tsar would grant permission for all to seize Jewish property. With their greed aroused, even people from the surrounding countryside entered Odessa to join the looters. According to the same report, the forces of order—police, soldiers, and Cossacks—stood idly by as the pogrom progressed. Finally, the temporary governor general, who had stepped out on his balcony to address the populace, was himself struck by a stone. Only then did the authorities move to end the riots and restore order.

The American consul sent an extensive account of the events to Washington. Hostility toward the Jews, he explained, derived from the presence in the city of some forty to fifty thousand Jews and about half that number of Greeks. The Greeks were "doing generally the larger and better kinds of commerce." In consequence,

. . . between the Jews and Greeks, therefore, there are constant jealousies and animosities, originating no doubt, mostly from differences of race and religion, but also, perhaps, excited and encouraged from the collision of business interests.

He attributed the aggravated violence to remarks made by Jews loitering outside the Greek church on Easter Sunday. Since arguments had occurred on the night before Easter, the writer's version has the ring of accuracy. The consul agreed, however, that the rioters were intent on destruction and not mayhem. The Jews did not attempt to defend themselves nor to take vengeance. Some fifteen hundred persons were ultimately arrested; some were publicly whipped in the marketplaces. The city government set aside funds to compensate Jews rendered destitute by the disorders. 

The pogrom caused destruction of property worth millions of rubles. Six persons were killed, 21 wounded, and 863 houses and 552 businesses damaged or destroyed. As the Russian Orthodox bishop Dmitri wrote in a brochure denouncing the pogrom, "What they could not steal, they smashed. What they could not steal or smash, they burned." What was the motive? Only a year earlier, a writer had noted, "Jews and gentiles live here in an atmosphere of fraternity and friendship." Morgulis, the author of the 1910 article (and one of the editors of the Jewish newspaper Den), attributed the pogrom to widespread resentment against the growing prosperity of the Jewish community. The new Jewish success in the grain trade, achieved at the expense of the Greeks, was especially grating. Since no physical harm had been intended, the destruction of property indicated that some Greeks felt the Jews had become too "puffed up." The Jews allegedly had taken on too many airs, and they "should be taken down a peg or two." The authorities had remained inactive because they initially viewed the battle as a fight between two foreign groups; as long as the interests of "nationals" were not involved, they saw no reason to intervene. 

The central government, on the other hand, felt differently. It immediately became alarmed that the riots might have some revolutionary implications. It dispatched investigators of its own to make sure that the riots were not "a red speck on the horizon." As for the rioters themselves, Morgulis hints that they learned their lesson. The chaotic pogrom of 1871 would not be repeated. A decade later, the pogrom would be better orchestrated. The pogrom of 1881 would use destruction of property to impart a message to the government that the people resented Jewish "exploitation." It was to be a signal to the state that suffer laws and restrictions on the Jews would be welcome. And indeed, it succeeded in that mission. Morgulis concluded with this observation:

The pogrom of 1871 already hid in its womb its future phases. What for historians will be historical documents, for us contemporaries, all these pogroms were dreadful experiences, mixed with torrents of bitter tears and inconceivably horrible deaths.

The American consul made this prediction:

I think it not unlikely that new disturbances may take place and new persecutions may be directed against the Jews at some favorable moment hereafter, for the hatred of that race by both Greeks and Russians is deep rooted and in time, may possibly grow to intolerance.

Unfortunately, the American consul's sentences proved insightful. 

The pogroms of 1881, as Morgulis explained, had been so well timed and coordinated throughout southern Russia as to indicate that some sort of central organization was directing them. In his estimation the most likely ringleaders were members of the reactionary "Holy Brotherhood." The immediate causes are not difficult to locate. In March 1881, the tsar emancipator, Alexander II, was assassinated. Before his son, the new tsar, Alexander III, made public his views concerning the death of his father, reactionaries could vent their hatred against Jews and claim that their acts were retribution against the murderers of the tsar. Rumors circulated throughout the south that the tsar had ordered the destruction of Jewish property. The riots broke out in Ielysavethrad in April, and at Odessa in May. Again, the riots continued for three days and three nights. Again, the local officials looked the other way. The minister of the interior, N. P. Ignat'ev, placed the following interpretation upon these events: 

The main cause of this movement lies in the economic situation. During the previous twenty years, the Jews have taken over trade and industry, purchased areas of land by sale or lease, and by means of their unity have succeeded in exploiting the main body of the poor, hence arousing them to a protest, which has found distressing expression in acts of violence.

The official response to this "exploitation" was of course the infamous May or Ignat'ev Laws issued in 1882, which we have examined elsewhere. The Jews reacted to the threatened violence by organizing a self- defense force, which was largely staffed by university students and by some few workers, and which included a fair number of Christians. But the existence of this private police force also lent credence to the charge that Jews were threatening the public order. 

Pogrom, 1905

The racial atmosphere at Odessa remained surprisingly calm for more than twenty years after the pogrom of 1881, although there was a small disturbance in 1900. This period of relative peace proved to be only the lull before the most violent outburst of them all, the pogrom of October 18-21(o.s.), 1905. 

The October riots resembled the previous pogroms, but several new factors also intervened to worsen the violence. The old economic grievances were still there, but significantly, the highest tensions involved not so much wealthy Jews and their gentile competitors, as poor Jews and unemployed Christian workers. The war, the constriction of trade, and the cutbacks in industrial production had engendered high rates of unemployment within the city. Jewish merchants and industrialists were hated because they laid off workers in this year of depression. Ironically, they were also accused of filling the ranks of the radicals—the socialists, anarchists, and nihilists. Allegedly, Jews were unpatriotic; they did not support the war against Japan; they were also the ringleaders of the strike movement, which only increased the workers' misery. Suspicions of disloyalty, in sum, were added to the old economic rivalries and jealousies. The Ignat'ev laws, which made second-class citizens of the Jews, strengthened the popular sentiment that Jews were an unpatriotic and treasonous group. The failure of the local officials in Odessa to take quick action in repressing the disorders partially reflects this assumption that Jews were both disloyal and subversive radicals. It was no doubt also rooted in a conviction, shared by the local officials, that the imperial government would look with favor upon "punishment" meted out to Jews through the pogrom.

The mobs that joined the fray had their own economic, political, or religious agenda. Extremists on the right held the Jews responsible for the erosion of the tsar's autocratic powers. While the archreactionaries thought of Odessa's Jews as the leaders of the socialist movements, the leftists remembered them as organizers and enthusiastic supporters of Zubatov's police unions. The Jews had some influential friends at Odessa, notably among the liberal bourgeoisie and the university community, but they formed only a small part of the population. 

The origins of the October pogrom go back to the disturbed summer of 1905. During the celebrated "Potemkin days," a state of martial law had been imposed upon Odessa. The city chief, D. S. Neidhart, with the support of the commandant of the local garrison, Baron von Kaul'bars, wielded absolute authority over the city. Frightened by the disorders, the imperial government lifted the state of martial law in August, over the protests of Neidhart. The government next granted autonomy to the universities, removing them from the authority of the local administrations. At Odessa, the university at once became the center of political activism. Neidhart, stripped of his absolute power, appealed to the Ministry of the Inte- rior, requesting that his powers be strengthened, but his petition was turned down. He was later to use this as an excuse for his failure to suppress the riots quickly. His toleration of the disorders was in part an act of retaliation for his own loss of power. 

The first outbreak of violence occurred on October 14. The lecture halls had become the site of nearly continuous meetings, in which even nonacademicians were participating. Neidhart looked upon the meetings as subversive, but he was powerless to stop them. Several times he allegedly warned the rector of the university: "The lecture halls belong to you, but the streets are ours, and here things will be done without mercy—blood will flow." Unmistakably, he was thinking "pogrom." Whether he actively planned the pogrom remains an open question. 

On the afternoon of the fourteenth, high school students, both boys and girls, tried to march to the university to join in the rallies. Police with drawn sabers waylaid them on the march and dispersed them, wounding several children. On October 16, as rumors reached Odessa about the events in St. Petersburg, other students tried to erect barricades, but the police again dispersed them, killing several and losing one of their own number. The wounded students were taken to the Jewish Hospital, and preparations were made for a public funeral for those who had fallen. But Neidhart abducted the bodies and had them secretly buried. 

October 17, the day on which the Manifesto was promulgated, was ironically both "the Day of the Constitution" and the start of the pogrom. Crowds in the city celebrated the newly granted freedoms. Witnesses are not agreed as to whether or not these crowds unfurled red banners and other symbols of socialist revolution. 

Neidhart responded to the demonstrations by posting placards. On them he claimed to have received a letter signed by thirty thousand citizens, asking that the radical agitation at the university be suppressed. The rector called the placards a provocation and asked the military for troops to protect the university buildings. None were provided. Neidhart responded negatively to a demand that a citizen militia be formed, but at the same time he ordered the police to remain off the streets—allegedly to protect them from shots fired from Jewish houses. Nor did he ask von Kaul'bars for help from the garrison of soldiers, as the law required him to do. He thus left Odessa's Jews completely without police protection. 

In the early afternoon, crowds largely recruited from dock workers and city riff-raff gathered in the Dal'nitskaia region, the traditional capital of local hooliganism. The American consul telegraphed home the following description:

Tuesday night October 31 [n. s.] the Russians attacked the Jews in every part of town and a massacre ensued. From Tuesday till Saturday was terrible and horrible. The Russians lost heavily also, but the number of killed and wounded is not known. The police without uniform were very prominent. Jews who bought exemption received protection. Kishenev, Kiev, Cherson, Akkermann, RostofT and other places suffered terribly, Nicolaev also.

The worst of the riots ran for the traditional three days, from October 19 to 21 (o. s.). The violence spread to the city center and to the suburbs, even into villages. The rioters showed masterful organization, as contingents in numbers corresponding to the size of the neighborhoods plundered. The looting occurred under the eyes and with the participation of policemen and soldiers in civilian garb. The Jewish self-defense forces did succeed in defending houses, and even entire streets and neighborhoods, but suffered heavy casualties and were eventually overwhelmed. The rioting worsened with each day, reaching a kind of climax on October 20. On October 21, the riots ended. Neidhart appeared on the streets and allegedly greeted the hooligans and told them: "Enough brothers, now go home". 

Kaul'bars finally warned that his soldiers would shoot at all looters. Order was quickly restored. 

After these events, Neidhart and KauPbars each tried to push the blame onto the other. Neidhart was forced to resign but was not otherwise punished. 

Jewish casualties included 302 known dead (among them 55 from the self-defense forces and an additional 17 Christian members), many missing, and several thousand (perhaps as many as 5,000) wounded. Some reports claim the death toll reached 1,000. Property damage amounted to 3.75 million rubles. There were 1,400 ruined businesses, and some 3,000 artisan families were reduced to begging—in all, in Odessa and its surroundings, 42,975 persons suffered in one way or another from this historic pogrom. 

According to an official report of the Odessa Jewish Central Committee to Aid the Victims of the Pogroms of 1905, the October pogrom was a large and unprecedented hurricane of hatred that swept through southern Russia and hit not only the poor, but also men of means to a great degree.79 The committee helped 2,449 families, or 10,322 individuals, of whom roughly a third were under the age of ten years. Of the 2,549 families, 1,968 were attacked in their own homes. The committee collected 672,833 rubles; some 210,827 rubles were contributed by Odessa's Jews and 257,889 rubles came from abroad, including a sizeable donation from the Rothschilds. 

An eyewitness, a young Polish Jew who had gone to Odessa as an apprentice to a brushmaker, gave this descriptive analysis:

... the city was at that time the scene of frequent clashes between the unskilled laborers from the Russian villages, who earned small wages and were often out of work, and the Jewish shopkeepers or skilled workmen. The Tsar, I was told, wanted to exterminate us and had given orders that mobs should not be restrained too much from loot- ing Jewish stores or injuring Jewish inhabitants. In Odessa several bands of young Jews had organized themselves into bands of defense, the most prominent being the butchers I had seen in action. When the alarm of a pogrom was sounded, they met by prearrangement, long knives in their hands and fought for their own lives and the lives of their co-religionists. Some of my new acquaintances said the priests were at the bottom of the trouble, others who had become Socialists told me that economic jealousy was the cause of the trouble.

As a result of the riots, the American consul in December 1905 judged that some fifty thousand persons left Odessa:

As the greatest majority of these emigrants are Jews, i.e. members of the most mobile portion of the population, and at all times keenest on everything, that may be described as business, it need not be a matter of any surprise to find, that Odessa presents an appearance more dead than alive. And if the acute convulsions affecting the country continue, then this state of things may become still further accentuated.

Indeed, after the pogrom of 1905, counter-revolutionary activity and anti-Jewish activity became so intertwined that it is difficult to separate the strands. Continuing economic troubles at Odessa sowed resentment against the Jews, who were held responsible for the unemployment. To the radicals, the persecuted Jews seemed likely allies against the common enemy—the tsarist regime. But the expec- tation proved ill-founded. In February 1906, when elections for the national Duma were being held, anti-Jewish riots broke out afresh. According to a proclamation issued by the "Hebrew Territorial Organization": 

Amongst the wreckers were nearly all classes of Russian society: there were not only barefoot beggars, but also factory and railroad workers, peasants, chiefs of station, etc., amongst those who defended us Hebrews were only members of the learning youth, the victims who will be remembered. . . . But where were the organized workmen, where the Russian proletariat? They were not to be seen in the ranks of the "Self Defence." . . . We are showered with advice from good- natured assimilators of the Hebrews on one side and the leaders of the Hebrew laborers' organization on the other who tell us to be patient, but we have waited 2000 years. Antisemitism everywhere, everywhere Judophobism and now other comforters will come—the Palestine Zionists. They will also propose to you patiently to wait—to wait for "enlightenment" of the Turkish Sultan, for an expulsion of the Arabs from Palestine and until that time they will propose to our poor sufferers to remain in Russia and to the affluent to go to Palestine.

For Jews, Odessa was not, as it had been, a comfortable home.

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