Abstract
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Russian anti-Semitism turned savage as Jews became the targets of unprecedented attacks resulting in thousands of casualties and property damage in millions of roubles. Anti-Jewish pogroms occurred in waves: the first started in the wake of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 and petered out several years later, while the second began in 1903 and peaked in the fall of 1905, at the height of Russia’s first revolution. Violence against Russian Jews again reared its ugly head in the aftermath of 1917, when peasant rebels and anti-Bolshevik armies roamed the countryside and massacred tens of thousands of Jews during the Civil War.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See John Klier and Shlomo Lambroza, eds, Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) for the most recent research on pogroms in Russia.
For example, city governor Dmitrii Neidhardt estimated the number of casualties at 2,500, and the Jewish newspaper Voskhod reported that over 800 were killed and another several thousand were wounded. See A. Linden (L. Motzkin), “Die Dimensionen der Oktoberpogrome (1905),” in Die Judenpogrome in Russland, vol. 2, p. 130; Voskhod, November 11, 1905, p. 16; Materialy k istorii russkoi kontr-revoliutsii, vol. 1, Pogromy po offitsial’nym dokumentam (St. Petersburg, 1908), pp. clxvi–clxvii and 201 (hereafter cited as Kuzminskii Report); S. Iu. Witte, Vospominaniia, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1960), p. 615; Maxim Vinaver, “La situation à Odessa,” at the Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Dossier: URSS IC-1. Odessa;
Viktor Obninskii, Polgoda russkoi revoliutsii, vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1906), p. 44.
See Steven Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794–1881 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 114–28 and Lambroza, “The Pogrom Movement in Russia,” in Klier and Lambroza, Pogroms, pp. 275–7.
A. A. Skal’kovskii, Zapiski o torgovykh i promyshlennykh silakh Odessy (St. Petersburg, 1865), p. 12; Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1897 g., vol. 47, Gorod Odessa (St. Petersburg, 1904), pp. 2–3.
A. P. Subbotin, V cherte evreiskoi osedlosti (St. Petersburg, 1890), pp. 212–30; “Odessa,” Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 12 (St. Petersburg, 1910), pp. 59–62; G. Bliumenfel’d, “Torgovo-promyshlennaia deiatel’nost’ evreev v Odesse,” Voskhod, nos 4 (April 1884), pp. 1–14 and 5 (May 1884), pp. 1–14; Patricia Herlihy, “Greek Merchants in Odessa in the Nineteenth Century,” Harvard Ukranian Studies, III–IV, 419; “Odessa,” The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (New York, 1905), pp. 378–80; Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1897 g., vol. 47, pp. 134–49.
I. Brodovskii, Evreiskaia nishcheta v Odesse (Odessa, 1902), pp. 5–6; Iuzhnoe obozrenie, March 22, 1905.
See Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), chap. 1.
TsGAOR, f. 102, 7th delopr., d. 3769, 1905, pp. 16 ob. and 24 and f. 124, d. 3115, p. 80; TsGIA, f.1101, op. 1, d. 1033, p. 4; Richard Hough, The Potemkin Mutiny (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), p. 100.
Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 138.
Some of the more relevant sources on the events of October 18 are: Kuzminskii Report, pp. cxxxiv–cxxxv, 110–11, 138–9, 186, and 196–8; TsGAOR, f 102, OO, d. 1350, ch. 30, lit. A, 1905, pp. 42, 45 ob. and 83, op. 233. d. 1350, ch. 30, 1905, pp. 60–1 and op. 5, d. 3, ch. 49, 1905, pp. 63 ob. and 123 ob.-124; Osip Piatnitskii, Memoirs of a Bolshevik (London, 1930), pp. 84–5.
See, for example, Louis Greenberg, The Jews in Russia: The Struggle for Emancipation, vol. 2, 1881–1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), p. 76.
On the large number of dockworkers, day laborers, and vagrants in the procession, see N. N. Lender (Putnik), “Revoliutsionnye buri na iuge. (‘Potemkin’ i oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia v Odesse),” Istoricheskii vestnik 104, no. 6 (1904): 894; Kuzminskii Report, pp. cxlvii–cxlviii, 128 and 158; Kommercheskaia Rossiia, November 25, 1905; S. Semenov, “Evreiskie pogromy v Odesse i Odesshchine v 1905 g.,” Puti revoliutsii, no. 3 (1925), pp. 119–20.
Semenov, pp. 115–35; D. Hurvits, Der blutiger pogrom in Odessa (Odessa, 1905);
A. Malavich, Odesser pogrom (London, 1906); Khronika evreiskoi zhizni, October 28,1905, pp. 11–14 and November 11, 1905, p. 20; Voskhod, October 27, 1905, p. 29, November 11, 1905, pp. 16–29 and February 9, 1906, pp. 14–15.
Daniel Brower, The Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 1850–1900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), p. 204.
I. Michael Aronson, Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), pp. 82–3.
Kuzminskii Report, pp. cliii–clvi, 4,10, 112, 115, and 137; N. Osipovich, “V grozovye gody,” Kandal’nyi zvon, no. 3 (1926), p. 66; TsGVIA, f. 400, 16th otd., op. 15, d. 2641, 1905, p. 38; Semenov, pp. 118 and 123; TsGAOR, f. 102, OO, d. 2540, 1905, p. 94; T. Forre, “Vospominaniia sestry miloserdiia ob oktiabr’skikh dniakh 1905 goda,” in 1905 god. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Odesse i Odesshchine (Odessa, 1926), 2: 233–4; Odesskii pogrom i samooborona pp. 64–65; Collier’s, December 9, 1905, p. 13.
Salo Baron, The Russian Jews under Tsars and Soviets, 2nd ed. rev. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1976), p. 57;
Simon Dubnow, A Short History of the Jewish People, trans. D. Mowshowitch (London: M. L. Cailingold, 1936), p. 282.
Donald Rawson, “The Union of the Russian People, 1905–1907: A Study of the Radical Right” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1971), p. 195.
Khronika evreiskoi zhizni, November 11, 1905, p. 22; G. Achkanov, “Vospominaniia o revoliutsii 1905 goda,” in 1905 god. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Odesse i Odesshchine, vol. 2 (Odessa, 1926), pp. 199–200; S. Semenov, “Evreiskie pogromy v Odesse i Odesshchine v 1905 g., “Puti revoliutsii, no. 3 (1925), pp. 116–17; Kuzminskii Report, pp. cliii–cliv and 112.
S. Dimanshtein, “Ocherk revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia sredi evreiskikh mass,” in M. N. Pokrovskii, ed., 1905: Istoriia revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v otdel’nykh ocherkakh, vol. 3, Ot oktiabria k dekabriu. Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie natsional’nostei i okrain (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927), p. 171.
Richard Robbins, The Tsar’s Viceroys: Russian Provincial Governors in the Last Years of the Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 196–7.
Kuzminskii Report, pp. clxv and 123–5; William C. Fuller, Jr, Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 211; M. Vinaver, “La situation à Odessa.”
Shlomo Lambroza, “Jewish Responses to Pogroms in Late Imperial Russia,” in Jehuda Reinharz, ed., Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1987), pp. 258 and 268.
P. Almazov, Nasha revoliutsiia (1902–1907) (Kiev, 1908), pp. 586–7;
A. I. Elishev, Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie v Odesse (Moscow, 1908), p. 19; TsGAOR, f. 102, OO, op. 233, d. 1350, ch. 30, 1905, pp. 60–1.
By 1884 there were over 1,700 Jewish dockworkers in Odessa; in some categories, such as those who weighed sacks of grain, Jews filled a majority of positions. Zvi Halevy, Jewish Schools under Czarism and Communism: A Struggle for Cultural Identity (New York: Springer Publishing Co., 1976), p. 21; TsGIA, f. 23, op. 20, d. 1, p. 173; TsGAOR, f. 102, d. 2409, 1903, p. 74 and 4th delopr., d. 84, ch. 12, t. 12, 1907, p. 279; Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1897 g., 47: 88–131 and 134–49;
I. A. Adamov, “Rabochie i moriaki odesskogo porta v revoliutsionnom dvizhenii XIX i nachala XX stoletii” (Candidate of Historical Science dissertation, Odessa University, 1940), p. 59;
Ia. M. Shtemshtein, Morskie vorota Ukrainy (Odessa, 1958), p. 19;
V. K. Vasil’evskaia, “Polozheniia portovykh rabochikh v Odesse,” Trudy Odesskogo otdela Russkogo obshchestva okhraneniia zdraviia, vyp. 4 (1904), p. 37;
M. Tsetterbaum, Klassovye protivorechiia v evreiskom obshchestve (Kiev, 1905), p. 27;
A. P. Subbotin, V cherte evreiskoi osedlosti (St. Petersburg, 1890), p. 230;
N. Vasil’evskii, Ocherk sanitarnogo polozheniia R. Odessy (Odessa, 1901), p. 6.
One observer of the Odessa port stated that dockworkers worked an average of 120 days per year. N. Shelgunov, Ocherki russkoi zhizni (St. Petersburg, 1895), p. 470.
Z. V. Pershina, “Nachalo rabochego dvizheniia. Pervye marksistskie kruzhki v Odesse (1883–1895 gody),” in K. S. Kovalenko, ed., Iz istorii odesskoi partiinoi organizatsii. Ocherki (Odessa, 1964), p. 9.
G. G. Moskvich, Illiustirovannyi prakticheskii putevoditel’ po Odesse (Odessa, 1904), p. 177.
Charters Wynn, “Russian Labor in Revolution and Reaction: The Donbass Working Class, 1870–1905” (Ph.D. dissertation: Stanford University, 1988) and Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms: The Donbass to Dnepr Bend, 1870–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Weinberg, R. (1996). Anti-Jewish Violence and Revolution in Late Imperial Russia: Odessa, 1905. In: Brass, P.R. (eds) Riots and Pogroms. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24867-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24867-4_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-66976-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-24867-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)