As I just mentioned in my previous post to Woj's, I just read a book on the Black Hundreds that contained lots of interesting stuff about which I knew nothing before. However, as I result of my previous ignorance, I am unable to gauge how accurate it is. Does anybody know anything about the following? (This is a copy of an email I sent to a list-member offlist with whom I have been discussing the subject, plus I add one further thing.):
My, this book is full of interesting stuff. (Too bad it hasn't been translated to my knowledge.) In no particular order:
1. The name Black Hundreds. "Black" is a reference to the peasants who lived on the Black Earth. After the 1905 pogrom(s), it was used as an insulting term for the pogromshiki, like calling them hicks. Later, they took it on themselves as a term of praise -- "we are simple Russian people!".
2. How the pogroms started. Apparently, BH (not called BHs at that time) demonstrations in support of autocracy were attacked. In Odessa, three bombs were thrown into the crowd, supposedly by an anarchist. This seems to have happened in several cities more or less simultaneously (provocation?). The BHs reacted as known.
3. While Jews were a major (probably the main) target of the October pogroms, they were far from the only one. Indeed, some pogroms happened in cities (like in Siberia) where there were no (or almost no) Jews. The targets were "enemies of autocracy" -- Jews, liberals, democrats, students and seminarians (!), plus anybody the pogromshiki didn't like. The entire faculty and student body of Kharkov University tried to flee the city -- only to be met by pogromshiki at the train station. In Yaroslavl, it became very dangerous to appear on the street in a student or seminarian uniform. Government buildings and the homes of government officials were also attacked. The Center of Direction of Siberian Railroads was torched in Omsk.
4. Tatar Muslims in Kazan participated in the pogroms.
5. Shockingly to me, several Black Hundreds bigwigs became part of the Bolshevik government!!! This includes Father Iliodor (the guy who renounced anti-Semitism and was defrocked). Later, he emigrated to New York where he worked as a janitor.
6. In 1919, apparently in revenge, Jewish Cheka agents shot several people involved in the prosecution of the Beilis case* (including Vera what's-her-name). For some bizarre reason, they also shot the team that had defended Beilis.
7. Vasili Shulgin. God, what a weird life. He was a BH activist. After the Civil War, he fled to the West (Germany) to work against the Soviet government and wrote several books (which Lenin apparently read). Though he did not support the Nazis, despite his anti-Semitism, he was arrested while with a group of Hitlerites when the Red Army went into Yugoslavia in 1944 and was sent to prison. When Stalin died, he was released and wrote propaganda aimed at the emigree audience for the USSR -- he was even invited to a Congress of the CPSU. In the 1960s, he played himself in a documentary film that made him famous throughout the USSR. His apartment in Vladimir became a place of pilgrimage for the intelligentsia (Solzhenitsyn, among many other writers and artists, spent time there). He died in 1976 at the age of 98.
8. Although it is commonly believed that the 1905 pogroms were part of a plot by the Tsarist secret police, according to this book there is actually little to no evidence that this is actually true. The author suggests that the origin of this likely myth is that the Russian left/liberal press/intelligentsia at the time, after the 1905 Revo, were unwilling to let themselves believe that the monarchy had mass popular support. (At the time, membership in the BH organizations was larger than that of all political parties in Russia combined.)
* A blood libel case in 1911. The accused was found innocent.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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