460 



JEWS. 



Not a month, scarcely a week, has passed 

 since then without some outbreak or other oc- 

 curring to confirm these fears and render them 

 the more acute. 



The outrages recounted above have been se- 

 lected from it list of over 160 towns and villages 

 in which cases of riot, rapine, murder, and spo- 

 liation have been known to occur during the 

 la-t nine months of 1881. Out of these informa- 

 tion was collected from about forty-five towns 

 and villages in Southern Russia. In these alone 

 are reported -J:{ murders of men, women, and 

 children, 17 deaths caused by violation, and no 

 lower than '2'2't cases of outrages on Jewesses. 



Finally, this catalogue of horrors must be 

 concluded by a reference to the riots at Warsaw 

 on Christmas and the following days. The de- 

 tailed events of those days, when 300 houses 

 and 600 shops were pillaged and devastated, 

 and thousands of victims rendered homeless 

 and reduced to beggary, are doubtless fresh in 

 every one's memory, but certain facts must be 

 again referred to, owing to their typical char- 

 acter. In the first place, the riot was clearly 

 planned, the alarm of fire being simultaneously 

 raised in at least two churches, and the mob 

 being directed by men who spoke Polish with 

 a Russian accent. The culpable neglect of the 

 military authorities of Warsaw in refusing to 

 make use of the 20,000 men forming its garri- 

 son, finds its counterpart in the similar behav- 

 ior of the Governors of Kiev, Elizabethgrad, 

 and Odessa, earlier in the year. 



Besides appealing to the blind passions of 

 the mob, the Jew-haters of Russia have, during 

 the year, resorted to more systematic efforts to 

 harass the hapless Israelites. The Russian 

 mnjik has a method almost peculiar to him- 

 self of expressing his rage and hatred. Moscow 

 is but the most celebrated instance of periods 

 of Russian history when incendiarism has been 

 the order of the day. Whenever the fever- 

 point of excitement is reached, arson is usually 

 the direction in which it overflows. So well 

 is this recognized in Russia, that the peasants 

 have a technical name for the deliberate firing 

 of towns the "red cock" is said to crow. 

 During the past year this method of revenge 

 has been resorted to on a large scale against 

 the Jews of Russia, especially in the west. By 

 the end of June the "red cock" had crowed 

 over fifteen towns in Western Russia, includ- 

 ing Mohilev, containing 25,000 inhabitants, Vi- 

 tebsk, with 23,000, and Slonim, with 20,000, as 

 well as smaller towns like Wolcowysk, Scher- 

 wondt, Augustowo, Nowo-Gucdek, Ponovicz, 

 and Lipsk. Many thousands of Jews were 

 rendered homeless by this means, and on July 

 3d, 6,000 Jews lost their homes by fire at Minsk, 

 4,800 being deprived of every means of sub- 

 sistence at the same time. The town of Pinsk, 

 in the same government, suffered a like fate. 

 And shortly afterward a conflagration took 

 place at Koretz, in Volhynia, in which thirty 

 lives were lost, and 5,000 souls left without a 

 home. Every week added to the number of 



fires in towns inhabited by Jews, till, by the 

 end of September, the list extended to forty- 

 one towns. This probably involved the loss of 

 home to 20,000 Jews. 



To the mass of homeless and penniless creat- 

 ures in Southern Russia must be added the 

 many victims of pillage. The violence of the 

 mobs often wrecked whole streets of houses as 

 completely as any fire, and 2,000 were thus 

 rendered homeless at Kiev, 1,600 at Smielo, 

 1,000 at Konotop, 600 at Ouchow, and 300 at 

 Aluchoff. The value of property destroyed in 

 the south has been reckoned to reach 10,- 

 000,000 sterling. 



The steps taken by the Government in rela- 

 tion to these disturbances may be stated in a 

 few words. On May 23d the Czar, having 

 been appealed to by a deputation of Jews in 

 St. Petersburg, expressed his intention of deal- 

 ing with the evil. An agent was dispatched 

 to the south to make inquiries. He returned 

 and reported that further inquiries were nec- 

 essary. General Ignutieff now introduced a 

 measure by which the provincial assemblies 

 might be superseded by local committees of 

 experts on this special subject, and on Sep- 

 tember 3d the following declaration was is- 

 sued : 



For some time the Government has given its atten- 

 tion to the Jews, and to their relations to the rest of 

 the inhabitants of the empire, with the view of ascer- 

 taining the sad condition of the Christian inhabitants 

 brought about by the conduct of the Jews in business 

 matters. 



For the last twenty years the Government has en- 

 deavored, in various'wavs, to bring the Jews near to 

 its other inhabitants, and has given them almost equal 

 rights with the indigenous population. The move- 

 ments, however, against the Jews, which began last 

 spring in the south of Russia, and extended to Central 

 Russia, prove incontestably that all its endeavors have 

 been of no avail, and that ill-feeling prevails now as 

 much as ever between the Jewish and the Christian 

 inhabitants of those parts. Now, the proceedings at 

 the trial of those charged with rioting and other evi- 

 dence bear witness to the fact that the main cause of 

 those movements and riots to which the Russians, as 

 a nation, are strangers was but a commercial one, 

 and is as follows : 



" During the last twenty years the Jews have gradu- 

 ally possessed themselves of not only every trade and 

 business in all its branches, but also of a great part of 

 the land by buying or farming it. With few excep- 

 tions they have, as a body, devoted their attention not 

 to enriching or benefiting the country, but to defraud- 

 ing by their wiles its inhabitants, and particularly its 

 poor inhabitants. This conduct of .theirs has called 

 forth protests on the part of the people, as manifested 

 in acts of violence and robbery. The Government, 

 while on the one hand doing its best to put down the 

 disturbances and to deliver the Jews from oppression 

 and slaughter, have also, on the other hand, thought 

 it a matter of urgency and justice to adopt stringent 

 measures in order to put an end to the oppression 

 practiced by the Jews on the inhabitants, and to free 

 the country from their malpractices, which were, as is 

 known, the cause of the agitation." 



With this view, it has appointed commissions (in 

 all the towns inhabited by Jews), whose duty it is to 

 inquire into the following'matters : 



1. What are the trades of the Jews which are in- 

 jurious to the inhabitants of the place ? 



2. What makes it impracticable to put into force the 

 former laws limiting the rights of the Jews in the 



