--- Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote: This childhood memory would become part of Strauss's own political identity and set part of the backdrop for his writing on Zionism just after WWI---and when he met Valdamir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky (born and raised in Odessa) was involved in organizing a militia against the pogrom in Odessa and went to Kishinev to cover the aftermath of the pogrom there as a journalist. (Any interesting details about either of these cities--or Jabotinshy--and their pogroms would be appreciated.)
---
OK, I looked it up. I'm also going to look up what Solzhenistsyn says about it when I get home -- I'm at an Internet cafe, and I mistakenly picked up the wrong volume of his book when I left the house this morning.
Stepanov, unless I've missed it, does not mention Jabotinsky. Solzhenistyn is more likely to, since his book is specifically about Jewish history, whereas Stepanov is writing about the Black Hundreds.
What follows is all according to Stepanov.
Odessa was the most bloody pogrom of them all. After it was over, the city's police chief estimated the casualties has over 900 wounded and 200 dead, although the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti ran an article at the time reporting 800 dead and 5000 wounded. The government commission found evidence of 618 dead and 561 woiunded. The pogrom seems to have begun when an anarchist by the name of Yakov Breitman threw three bombs into a pro-absolutism demonstration, and then blew himself up. (There is an alternative variant that it was a provocation, but the former scenario is supported by by the memoires of the head of the Odessa anarchists, D.I. Novomirsky.)
The bulk of the defense militias were not specifically Jewish -- they were organized mainly by the social democrats and socialist revolutionaries (a large percentage of which were, however, Jews). Stepanov does however mention one specifically Jewish militia in Bogopol, and another rather more successful one in Starodub.
Stapenov does not discuss Kishenev/Chisinau much. It was relatively small (53 dead/87 wounded).
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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