<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body> Chekhov, who was one of the most understanding men who ever lived, wrote a short story called "Peasants" which paints a pretty scary picture. Joanna Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid000401c5f758$fcaac580$9e66dc80@WSokolows"> <pre wrap="">Chris: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">weren't all controlled by the state. Personally I doubt that the Okhranka was involved, since I don't see what they would have to gain from a pogrom (property damage was immense, and they hurt the Empire's image abroad badly. The Okhranka were not morons.).\ </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Venting of popular frustrations, which were very intense. My grandma who remembered pre-revolutionary times told me that peasant violence was directed at about everyone they could put their hands on. She told me a story about someone of an upper class origin who was separated from a hunting party and run into an angry peasant mob - the police later could not even recognize his body. Isaak Bashevis Singer - a keen observer of social life - writes about horrible peasant mob violence such as boiling people alive (_The Magician of Lublin_), and description of peasant mob violence are abound in literature (see for example _Painted bird_ by Jerzy Kosinski, who btw was accused of plagiarizing these descriptions from the novel _Peasants_ by the 1924 Nobel laureate Wladyslaw Reymont.) Wojtek ___________________________________ <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html>