Surh, Ekaterinoslav City in 1905. Workers, Jews, and Violence

International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.
Ekaterinoslav City in 1905: Workers, Jews, and Violence

Author(s): Gerald Surh
Source: International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 64, Workers, Suburbs, and Labor
Geography (Fall, 2003), pp. 139-166
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.
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Ekaterinoslav City in 1905:
Workers, Jews, and Violence
Gerald Surh
North Carolina State University
Abstract
In all the upheaval of 1905 in Russia, one of the most violent and volatile areas was Eka
terinoslav Province, which included Donbass coal miners, militant railroaders, and heavy
industrial factory workers m and around the mines, the towns, and the province's capital
city Although protest and
upheaval were by no means new to the region, m 1905 the
province witnessed not only a chain of strikes, meetings, and demonstrations throughout
the year, but one of the largest and most militant armed uprisings m December and sev
eral destructive an ti-Jewish pogroms among the hundreds that swept South Russia m Oc
1
tober
Studies of Ekatermoslav's workers, while giving a prominent to the strikes and
place
uprising, have either failed to discuss the pogrom violence-as with most Soviet studies
or, more recently, discussed it extensively, but sought explanations for it chiefly among the
rural coal miners Yet the labor movement m the city of Ekaterinoslav had been
province's
distinguished m earlier studies for other reasons which, while not unrelated to its violence,
painted quite a different picture of the city's workers Allan Wildman's work on Russian
Social Democracy characterized revolutionary labor organizing m Ekaterinoslav city as
among the most dynamic before 1905, stressing the political militancy rather than the vi
olence of its labor movement2 The newer studies that emphasize the region's violence
have folded Ekaterinoslav city into the Donbass region, overlooking its distinctive polit
civic 3
ical and history The very focus on worker violence has de-emphasized the role of
the politically more labor movement m Ekaterinoslav city The resulting reval
developed
uation of worker has done little to advance our understanding of the remarkable
politics
and revealing events of 1905
This paper addresses both the violence and the militancy by examining the rela
tionship between Ekatermoslav's factory workers and other parts of the city's popula
as well as class in this provincial
tion, taking account of ethnic differences and gauging
setting the mixture of autonomy and dependence on outside political support and lead
that characterized Russian worker activism everywhere in this period Given the
ership
in past Russian labor studies on purely industrial relations and the great in
emphasis
fluence of the revolutionary parties m shaping worker politics, a consideration of influ
ences that lay outside the underground parties and beyond the point of production
seems overdue In our past stress on the outcast and alienated position of workers m
late Russia, we have
perhaps overlooked the degree to which workers shared
Imperial
the values, and ambitions of other Russians, and m so have
precepts, doing, misjudged
the nature of workers and working-class formation as they m their develop
transpired
ing, but not fully coeval, European society By assuming that worker behavior cannot
be explained by industrial relations and revolutionary ideology alone and by examining
and reevaluatmg its interaction with a wider urban community, this paper will seek fresh
International Labor and Working Class History

No 64, Fall 2003, pp 139-166
2003 International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc

140 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
insights into both 1905 events in Ekaterinoslav and the nature of revolutionary labor
elsewhere in Russia.
The Bolshevik organizer I.Kh. Laliants described Ekaterinoslav around 1900 as

a relatively uncultivated, but energetic and dynamic industrial boom town that
owed its rise to amassive influx of industrial workers beginning in the 1880s. Its
population more than tripled in these years, from 47,000 in 1887 to 157,000 in
1904, making it the largest town in the Donbass. In 1897 itwas already the thir
teenth largest in the Empire.4 Located on the right bank of the Dnepr River,
downstream from Kiev and above the rapids, Ekaterinoslav was the chief river
port of New Russia (Novaia Rossiia). More important to its late nineteenth-cen
tury growth, itwas on the rail line connecting Krivoi Rog iron ore with the Don
bass coal mines. Consequently the city was the site of some of the main iron
smelters and steel mills in the region, the capital of the province and the capital
of the Donbass.
The town's ruling elements remained commercial, industrial, and govern
mental, although there was also a considerable intelligentsia presence. At the
start of the twentieth century Ekaterinoslav was home to a Higher Mining
School, an Orthodox seminary, dental and railroad schools, one classical and one
modern gymnasium, several women's and over
gymnasia thirty elementary
schools. The town had three newspapers, a theater, a music school associ
daily
ated with the Imperial Musical Society, twenty libraries, and a natural history
museum. In this array of institutions, one finds reflected both the new industri
al city, formed since the rapid expansion of the population that began in the
1880s, and the older provincial capital, dominated by the needs and tastes of the
landowning gentry.
The town's economy too reflected its dual heritage. Besides coal and iron,
shipped on the railroad, barge traffic on the Dnepr brought grain and lumber to
the town. In 1900, Ekaterinoslav shipped 6 million puds of grain and repre
sented the second largest lumber market inRussia (after Tsaritsyn). Commerce
was therefore still important in a town where iron was king. In that year, the town
had over 1,800 commercial enterprises earning 40 million rubles (averaging
22,222 r. per firm), but the more than 200 industrial firms-dominated by iron
and steelmaking-brought in 19 million rubles (or 95,000 r. per firm).
The city's ethnic composition around 1900 was dominated by Russians and
Jews with only a smattering of Poles and Germans. Accordingly, Ekaterinoslav
had twenty Orthodox cathedrals, several synagogues, one Catholic and one
Protestant church. By legal estate, fifty-five percent of the population were
meshchane, town dwellers, and percent were peasants. The remain
thirty-three
der were presumably merchants, artisans, dvoriane (gentry) and foreigners. Men
over women to forty-seven
predominated by fifty-three percent.5
city center was
The (and is) concentrated on the southern shore of the
Dnepr, which runs roughly west to east (actually, slightly southeast). Upriver, at
the northwestern edge of town, lay the main railroad station and the buildings
and the locomotive shops of the Ekaterininskii Railroad, and beyond that, the

Ekaterinoslav City m 1905 Workers, Jews, and Violence 141
largest and most politicized metal plant m the city, the Briansk Rail, Iron, and
Machine Works Both the locomotive shops and the Briansk Works had large
concentrations of skilled metalworkers, whom labor radicals as the
regarded
most able and willing recruits to proletarian Across the
revolutionary politics
river, in the industrial of Amur and were
adjacent villages Nizhnedneprovsk,
several more metal encompassing thousands more industrial workers
plants,
Because the Bnansk/railroad area and Amur-Nizhnedneprovsk were the chief
proletarian neighborhoods of the city, they were also the areas where the revo
lutionary left had been active almost since the beginning of rapid industrial
growth in the 1880s In this paper those neighborhoods will be referred to as the
"factory suburbs," and they will often be contrasted, politically, culturally, and
ethnically, with the city proper where the mam commercial and cultural life and
the great bulk of the Jewish population were situated The city was also the seat
of the provincial government, the district court, and the site of the best homes
Besides large commercial enterprises, it contained a multitude of small work
shops and artisan businesses
By and large, the population of this predominantly commercial and indus

trial city was conservative and apathetic, quietly indifferent to politics as long
as
the autocracy guaranteed its safety and security Even when this condition
seemed to be down in 1905, the majority of citizens remained inactive,
breaking
if not indifferent, during most of the year One observer noted that this apathetic
majority found even the local liberals' banquet in the fall of 1904 disturbing
Consistent with this there was as yet no of the extreme
apathy, organization right
in the The liberals themselves, a few individuals,
city represented by prominent
failed to form a party and appear to have had difficulty drawing more than a
handful to their cause 6
As a consequence, the political life of the city in 1905 was dominated by the
revolutionary opposition Much of the extremism and violence of local events m
1905 was a product of the resulting political polarization, whether through action
stemming from the opposition itself or from or
directly government reactionary
political responses to it This of responsiveness to violence or
cycle reciprocal
the perceived violent intent of political opponents was, to a great degree, self
perpetuating But what made the opposition more violent in the first place9
One source of the area's violence has been in the labor movement Char
sought
ters Wynn's study of Ekaterinoslav maintains that worker violence in both rural
and urban locales, whether directed against and the or
employers government
Jewish life and was cut from a single cloth His
against property, study has raised
fundamental question about the labor movement in 1905 ar
revolutionary by
guing that the political valences associated with labor violence shifted easily
from the extreme left to the extieme right Wynn has thus challenged the one
sided Soviet stereotype of the unsullied progressiveness of workers' struggles by
extensive worker in the October even it
claiming participation pogrom, making
7
the pogrom's chief agent Even though these claims are vulnerable to chal
lenge-and they shall be challenged here-the fact that the anti-Jewish violence

142 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
of monarchist bullies arose in response to worker and revolutionary violence

means that labor militancy contributed to the city's violent tenor. But under
standing this violence calls for an inquiry that goes beyond Wynn's focus on the
labor movement alone.
The very social and structure suggests that a greater con

city's demographic
flict may have been built into its composition and culture: the newness and un
rootedness of much of the sizeable factory population; the spatial separateness
and alienation of the city proper from much of its factory workforce (across the
river and up- and downstream from the town center); the ethnic diversity of the
town's composition (especially the large Jewish community, both working class
and merchant); and the presence of several revolutionary organizations backed
by a modest, but not insignificant, student and intelligentsia population. Cer
tainly, these conditions underlay much of the conflict that enveloped Ekateri
noslav in 1905.
Is this a sufficient explanation though? Similar conditions were also present
in St. Petersburg (in a population nine to ten times larger), yet the level of vio
lence from workers and the movement was much low
emanating revolutionary
er there, even in 1905. Like Ekaterinoslav, the capital was full of migrants, both
seasonal and the newly-settled, most of whom had come seeking work. Much of
the factory population was physically separated from the city center, in factory
suburbs and satellite villages, though, like Ekaterinoslav, a number of large
plants and large numbers of skilled workers were also in close proximity to the
city center. Petersburg's ethnic diversity was also a longstanding and well-known
feature of its demography.8 The capital harbored an extensive array of revolu
tionary organizations as well, sustained and supported by influential parts of a
large, educated population. Clearly, however, there were also significant differ
ences between the two cities, and the search for the secret of Ekaterinoslav's vi
olence, or anything else about its political life, must move beyond superficial
comparisons.
One great difference between the two cities lay in the nature of their eth
nic St. Petersburg's was an ethnic ruled over a
diversity. pluralism, securely by
dominant Russian state, culture, and social order, while in Ekaterinoslav an in
secure ethnic dualism prevailed in which Russian and Jew confronted one an
other in every walk of life. InNovaia Rossiia, far from the center of secure Rus
sian dominance, Jews competed with Russians in business and industry, in
education and culture, in factory and workshop, in residential location and hous
ing ownership. South Russia was not only an economic and political frontier,
newly settled, unruly, and rife with opportunity, but an ethnic frontier as well,
peopled by newcomers who had not established secure community boundaries,
so that shaky identities and apprehensions about their unfamiliar neighbors
would have been common. Given Ekaterinoslav's anxieties re
rapid growth,
sulting from this condition would have been peaking around 1900.
The city's Jewish community, concentrated in the city proper, was relative
ly cohesive and well-organized. A small group of Zionist leaders enjoyed un
usually loyal support from a large following of less active adherents, who stood

Ekaterinoslav in 1905 Workers, Jews, and Violence 143
City
the cause with such generous and reliable material support as to put Eka
by
termoslav's Jewish community in the first ranks of the Zionist movement9 The
Zionists' among Ekatermoslav's Jews was enhanced the presence of
standing by
Menachem Mendel Ussishkm, the ardent and respected leader of reputedly the
Zionist district in Russia He and facilitated the elec
best-organized sponsored
tion of fellow Zionist Shmarya Levin as the city's chief rabbi in 1898, replacing
an anti-Zionist traditionalist10
The semblance of cohesiveness that Zionism to the Jewish com
brought
munity must have contrasted sharply with the passivity and apolitical attitude
that prevailed in most of Ekatermoslav's Russian community, to the
contributing
Jews' in the civic affairs as well as to their to the de
visibility city's vulnerability
mented scapegoating of anti-Jewish bullies and nghtwing extremists Yet the
Jewish leaders maintained even cordial relations with at
mutually respectful,
least of the town's Russian elite Levin noted the official greeting and con
part
tinuing relations accorded him by the serving governor during his rab
friendly
binate, D S Even Mirskn's successor, A B con
Sviatopolk-Mirskn Neidgart,
u
tinued to maintain correct relations with Ekatermoslav's Jewish leaders
The Jewish community harbored a working population separate from and

not at all integrated with the Russian workforce Jews were refused employment
in the factories on the outskirts and worked instead as clerks
large city's shop
and artisans in the small many of which were also owned
city's workshops, by
Jews Within the Jewish workers over Russian,
city, predominated numerically
just as Russian workers dominated the suburban factories The most pop
large
ular and influential organization among Jewish workers was the radical nation
alist labor party "Paole-Zion"(Workers of Zion), which claimed about 2,000

members in 1905 By contrast, the Socialist-Zionists and the Bund had much
12
smaller followings In addition, individual Jewish workers and revolutionaries
the Russian socialist in Ekaterinoslav in numbers,

joined parties significant
where a even dominant role But Paole-Zion was dominant
they played pivotal,
among the mass of Jewish workers
By 1905, both middle- and working-class Jews in Ekaterinoslav were well

warned of impending trouble In 1883 the city had been the site of one of the
Alexander II's assassination More anti-Jewish vio
pogroms following recently,
13
lence had begun to rise anew following the Kishinev pogrom of April 1903
The Kishinev events sent waves of fear throughout the Pale of Settlement and
produced responses of both flight and fight The politics of Zionism suddenly
made sense to more as the election of Rabbi Levin indicated, but so did
people,
the politics of revolution The growth of Zionism and socialism marked a height
ened self-awareness all strata of Jews in Ekaterinoslav as elsewhere in
among
the Pale By 1905 Paole-Zion and other Jewish radicals had organized armed
self-defense in the sometimes funded anxious and well-off mem
groups city, by
bers of the Jewish communityi4
In the course of 1905, these simmering fears and expectations of conflict
were realized in several attacks on Jews and their attacks to which in
property,
dividual Jews and self-defense groups if not as violently
responded vigorously,

144 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
Although workers' strikes and protests became entwined with this inter-ethnic
confrontation, it is too simple to conclude that they were its prime cause. Its
causes were multiple, and workers were to be found on both sides of the con
flict. A proper appreciation of their role must view the ethnic conflict as a prod
uct of Ekaterinoslav's society as a whole and take account of the great political
and social diversity that the term "workers" had come to represent in 1905.
The events of January 1905 in St. Petersburg both awakened labor militancy in
Russia's provinces and provided the pretext for a series of sympathy strikes that
raised extensive and longstanding demands against local employers. In Ekateri
noslav, this resulted in a near general strike, involving not only the factory pe
riphery, where the strikes began around January 17, but also city workers, in
tobacco workers, tram drivers, and shop clerks.
cluding printers, pharmacists,
But its "general" nature was accidental and spontaneous, the separate factories
raising only workplace demands, without the political demands and unified will
of later general strikes.15
As inmost other labor organizing locales, Ekaterinoslav's revolutionaries
had ministered to a modest number of worker activists for more than a decade
before 1905. The underground labor movement was therefore not without a few
experienced leaders, but when Russia's new labor movement exploded after
January 9, these preparations proved inadequate tomanage the deluge of work
ers suddenly able and willing to listen to criticism of management and govern
ment, yet not for the most part in agreement with revolutionary agendas. Labor
politics in 1905, inEkaterinoslav and elsewhere, consisted by and large of revo
lutionary and labor leaders trying to manage a powerful but highly volatile fol
lowing that may be said to have comprised three elements: a small minority of
old and new converts to the programs of the revolutionaries, a second minority
of opponents of revolutionary leadership and action, and a third, normally larg
er at times even a to a vision in agree
minority, majority, adhering only partly
ment with that of the revolutionaries but in keeping with what the new, open la
bor movement appeared to stand for, on-the-job improvements and mild
political reform. The size and impact of these three elements waxed and waned
during the years of revolutionary upheaval in relation to locale, leadership, and
the stimulus of government action and events. At any one time or
revolutionary
leaders made the greatest when workers felt angry or
place, revolutionary gains
encouraged to hope, as after January 9 or October 17, 1905. But the usual ten
workers was to strike and for more
dency among organize gains considerably
modest than those projected by the revolutionary parties.
From to the summer months, Ekaterinoslavs labor movement
February
was less active than in January. Although there was a small May 1st demonstra
tion in the city, the strike movement came alive again only in June, partly in
spired by the Potemkin affair in Odessa, partly as a continuation of earlier de
mands and protests. The main instigators of the strike that began on June 20
were workers of the locomotive shops and of the Briansk Works. This strike had
a much more character than those in January, and once occurred
political again

Ekaterinoslav City in 1905: Workers, Jews, and Violence 145
in response to strikes, demonstrations and civil disturbances in the city center.
Striking ended after about three days, but not before the strikers were joined by
workers in several Amur and Dnepropetrovsk factories, who renewed their Jan
uary demands.16
The June strikes meshed with events among other citizens and in other
parts of town. By June, the Jewish community was mobilized and many of its
younger members were active in the streets. On 28 a funeral service was
May
held at the "Choral Synagogue" for the victims of the Zhitomir pogrom, which
had claimed twenty-nine lives and wounded 150 on May 11. Afterward, an at
tempt to hold a street demonstration was prevented by the police. A second at
tempt to demonstrate at the synagogue was made on June 4, only to be stopped
again by the police.17 Then, on June 20, during the strikes, a small pogrom broke
out inwhich several shops were damaged, people were injured, and a Jewish art
school student named Goldberg was killed. Eight hundred persons turned out
for his funeral at the Jewish Cemetery on June 28, and the event itself turned
into a political demonstration, with revolutionary oratory and a fight between
supporters of Paole-Zion and the Bund.18
In the meantime, the Goldberg murder inflamed the Jewish community, es
pecially the elements already inclined to act in its defense. On June 22 during the
strike, Jewish youth showed their solidarity with the strikers by aiding them in
other workers from to work.19 The a crowd of
preventing returning previous day
about 200 young Jews had demonstrated with red flags and revolutionary singing
at several in the center, which a church watchman was beaten.
places city during
The demonstrators threw stones, one on the head and severe
hitting patrolman
ly injuring him. Later that day four young Jews were arrested for distributing rev
olutionary appeals to soldiers. The police reports describing these events, dated
July 1905, speak of a "growing animosity of Christians against Jews."20
Predictably, Jewish reaction to the violence done their community in turn
mobilized and emboldened anti-Jewish elements in the city. On July 20 another
broke out in the on the of Eka
one-day pogrom city twenty-second anniversary
termoslav's 1883 pogrom. One report attributed the first violence to a crowd of
70-100 "politically ignorant elements of the city's worker masses" (malo-soz
nateVnye elementy gow ds ko i rabochei massy), who began vandalizing Jewish
homes and small businesses and assaulting passers-by in the city's center after
they failed to attract others to their anti-Jewish agitation.21 This description of

the pogromists as workers from the not the suburbs, indicates-as
city, factory
might be predicted-that pogrom violence was more likely to arise among those
in direct contact and competition with the city's Jewish workers. They were also
described as the denizens of a number of "black hundreds" taverns,22 which some
suburban workers may have with alcoholics, un
frequented, along belligerent
employed migrants, and a reportedly large number of drifters and casual labor
ers constantly brought to town by the barge traffic and railroad. The economic
slump and the dislocations caused by 1905's strikes and protests had undoubt
edly swelled the numbers of such drifter elements in Ekaterinoslav at this time.
By contrast, at least one Jewish self-defense group was a
joined by contingent of

146 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
about 50 workers from the factory suburbs, apparently led by Social Democrats,
who rushed into town to attack the pogromists.23 Several days later, a group of
middle class Jews met with representatives of the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, the
Bund, and Paole-Zion to concert measures another pogrom. formed
against They
a committee to coordinate efforts and collect money for weapons, an
cementing
alliance between the Jewish bourgeoisie and the revolutionary parties.24
What had emerged after months of class and ethnic confrontations was the for
mation of several loose communities of protest in the city and suburbs. Among
workers, those from the locomotive workshops and the Briansk plant, due to
their size, militancy, and spatial proximity, regularly concerted their efforts in ini
tiating strikes. They normally connected with other big plant workers across the
river in Amur and Nizhnedneprovsk sooner than they did with the workers of
the city, who were spatially nearer. The Ekaterininskii Railroad crossed the
river connecting the two blue-collar communities, while the Russian-Jewish di
vision between suburb and city served to diminish mutual contacts. What orga
nization the proletarian group had was provided by revolutionary socialist,
mainly RSDRP, leadership.
Next, there were the Jewish workers in the city who, whether in the ranks
of Paole-Zion or outside them, probably felt more closely allied with the larger
Jewish community due to the long term prejudice and discrimination they suf
fered as Jews and the renewed threat of open violence witnessed throughout the
Pale of Settlement since the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. But as workers, they could
also draw from other workers and Paole-Zion or other rad
inspiration through
ical parties, from the revolutionary movement, and in 1905 such mutual rein
forcement reached an all-time clerks, service workers, laborers and
high. Shop
apprentices in small workshops in the city often followed the lead of the facto
ry workers in 1905 by taking advantage of the disruption caused by strikes at the
big factories to strike themselves and press their own demands. Radicalized Jew
ish workers, and Jews generally played a disproportionately large role in all the
non-ethnic parties.25 Jewish artisans from the city had been prominent in estab
lishing the first Russian Social Democratic Party organization in Ekateri
noslav.26 Many of the young Jews on the streets during the June strikes formed
a link between the labor strikes and the Jewish cause. The decision to cooper
ate against the pogromists signaled by the July meeting of representatives of the
four parties and the Jewish bourgeoisie was thus only the formal part of a broad
er political alliance.
Another identifiable group in the city was the students, who had been
in the streets and in their schools since and who, as al
demonstrating January
most everywhere in 1905, continued to appear at the forefront of protest. Stu
dents at the Higher Mining School suspended classes January 20 inmemory of
those killed in the January 9 Petersburg massacre, then held a commemorative
service January 23 in the teeth of opposition from both state and church au
thorities. On February 7, they canceled studies for the rest of the school year. In
spired by the mining students, the seminarians raised demands against their own

Ekaterinoslav City in 1905:Workers, Jews, and Violence 147
administration for better conditions and greater freedom at the seminary. In this
case, the administration itself canceled classes for the duration. Apparently,
even students became involved, as parents and school officials met
gymnasium
in March to address the causes of unrest among their In all these
youngsters.27
groups, with the possible exception of the seminarians, Jewish students would
have played a major role in linking one cause with another, both by leading
protests and by modeling protest behavior.
By the end of the summer, news of oppositionist activity traveled much faster
than earlier in the year, and a new political ferment, fueled by unmet demands,
patriotic anger at defeat in the war with Japan, and rising expectations began
the country. In Ekaterinoslav, discontent was
throughout increasing punctuated
by the anarchist shooting of machine plant director M.M. German in the Amur
suburb on October 4. As elsewhere in the there was an increase in po
empire,
litical meetings in the city and a growing readiness in the factory suburbs to join
a strike wave that had begun to sweep the country, promoted by the militant and
now better nationwide union of railroad workers. This strike senti
organized,
ment was promoted in Ekaterinoslav by an alliance of Realgymnasium and
Music School students and the apparently ever-present "Jewish youth," who
worked to bring out students. The strike was begun by the employees in the Eka
terininskii Railroad's administrative offices, along with the line workers, who
first walked out on October 10 at 3:00 p.m. Using a locomotive decorated with
red flags, they drove across the river to the suburban factories and by 6:00 p.m.
had closed them all down.28
Next day, October 11, three great demonstrations took place in the city,
each of which ended in violence, death, and injury. Gymnasium students from
throughout the city walked out of classes or allowed themselves to be drawn out
by fellow students and gathered in front of the No. 1Realgymnasium on the main
street in the center of town, Ekaterinoslavskii Down the Prospect an
Prospect.
other crowd numbering in the thousands had gathered in front of the Rozenberg
Building. Many city workers were striking, so this crowd contained such city cen
ter types as artisans and tram operators,
workshop journeymen, printers, phar
macy power station workers, etc. Some of the students un
employees, city
doubtedly joined them. Revolutionary oratory and the demonstrators' own

boldness in defying the usual bans on gatherings in such large numbers soon fired
up this crowd, and it began to barricade the Prospect with lampposts, fences,
boards, and other material at hand. When a company of and
infantry appeared
its officer ordered the crowd to disperse, he was answered with revolver shots,
then a hail of stones. In response, the soldiers fired two volleys, and the crowd
dispersed, leaving dead and wounded on the street.29
That same a crowd of railroad workers, and ad
day, gigantic engineers,
ministration was met a troop of Cossacks as marched over
employees by they
from one of the railroad's buildings to link up with the Briansk Works in an ad
jacent street. A contingent of police and Cossacks had been following them with
the precise intention of preventing such a link-up. At one point the Cossacks

148 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
overtook the crowd, faced off, and after warning the crowd to disperse, report
edly "many times," fired three volleys, killing or wounding forty-six.30

In Chechelevka, the neighborhood around the Briansk plant, workers be
gan building barricades on the morning of the 11th, binding them together with
wire from downed telephone poles and digging ditches around them. About 1:00
p.m. a reinforced infantry company moved up the street and, flanked by Cos
sacks, began removing the barricades and firing at their defenders. The barri
caded and otherwise concealed workers returned the fire. Then two bombs were
tossed at the troops, one at the soldiers, one at the Cossacks, killing or wound
ing twenty-six. One of the bomb throwers, apparently an anarchist, was killed
by a military marksman, but the resistance continued till the soldiers captured
the last barricades at dusk. This site was the bloodiest of the three, with twenty
six killed and thirty-six wounded. Altogether at the three sites, fifty-one were
killed and eighty-one wounded, according to a local newspaper.31 More people
were killed in Ekaterinoslav in October than in any other city of the Russian
Empire.
How can we account for this for violence,
apparent penchant especially
among the civilians, given that the regime's willingness to shed its subjects' blood
was by now a well-established fact of Russian life? Two general circumstances
may be mentioned. Already in the summer itwas clear that some in the city had
to offer fierce and even resistance to the and other en
begun aggressive police
forcers of state authority. Although there is little direct quantitative evidence of
this, police reports indicate both that the local populace was comparatively well
armed and that shootings and attacks on policemen and on other civilians be
came common and occurrences. from the of
fairly frequent Apart prevalence
firearms associated with a Cossack frontier area like Ekaterinoslav Province,
gun ownership was probably greater in those towns where Jewish self-defense
groups as well as revolutionary worker druzhiny made the acquisition of guns
one of their main aims after 1903, and especially in 1905.32
The local authorities themselves contributed to the violence by the manner
in which they dealt with the disorder. Although provincial towns were notori
Ekaterinoslav's ratio was to
ously under-policed, police-to-resident comparable
Petersburg's, considered to be on par with that of other European cities at the

time.33 Yet army troops were also introduced in Ekaterinoslav all year, even dur
ing the peaceful January strikes, indicating a felt need for stronger force on the
part of fearful local authorities, backed by the Tsarist government, which ap
parently placed a high priority on the region.34 When the copious use of police
and troops against strikers and demonstrators is combined with the greater
amount of gunfire and unprovoked violence directed at them, the level of mu
tual destructiveness was bound to rise. The events of 1905 put the police under
strain all year but when a near war broke out between Ekaterinoslav's cit
long,
izens and the forces of order in October, the patrolmen (gorodovye, the lowest
police rank) apparently revolted and went on strike.35 Knowledge of this and
the absence of police from the streets may have an even greater de
encouraged
gree of lawlessness. Soldiers of the local garrisons, who took the heaviest casu

alties on October 11, remained on the job but nurtured a great desire to avenge
themselves the "anarchists." They would not have long to wait.
against
The bloodletting on October 11 colored the ensuing period to such an extent

that a of civic arose in its wake, a great out
unique style expression combining
pouring of grief and remorse at the loss of life and the shame it brought to the
city with the jubilation and sense of freedom that greeted the Tsar's Manifesto
of October 17. The funeral procession held October 13 was immense, the end of
the march not visible from the van, and the claim that the entire city turned out,
either or from streets, windows, and balconies, seems sub
marching watching
stantially correct.36 Three-quarters of the crowd consisted of non-workers of
age, status, and soslovie a cross section

varying gender, religion, (service estate),
of the entire city, lacking only wealthy bourgeois, officers, and bureaucrats. With
the of Governor A.B. the off the street, re
agreement Neidgart, police stayed
spectfully concealed in building courtyards. The usual class and ethnic barriers
were relaxed as rabbis paraded along with priests, all the political organizations
their on wreaths and banners, and leaflets were
displayed slogans revolutionary
openly distributed and read. After the burials, political speeches were delivered,
and a separate procession accompanied the Jewish dead to the Jewish cemetery
outside of town.37
Not for the first time or the last, a sudden and costly public tragedy gave
rise to a heightened sense of common interest, lowering social barriers and open
ing avenues of The announcement of the October Manifesto only

cooperation.
heightened this mood and gave de facto legality to a storm of meetings held
throughout the city, paralleling the meeting fever that had broken out in St. Pe
tersburg and Moscow. Meetings were held in every possible location, even in the
city park, where thousands, intoxicated by the new freedom, assembled to hear
from six or seven tribunals on a whole array of
speeches topics.38
A great many unions and societies were founded in Ekaterinoslav follow
ing the October Manifesto, including a branch of the liberal Constitutional Dem
ocratic Party ("Kadets"). An Okhrana report drawn up after the arrest of the
Kadet leaders in December lists the Kadet members as physicians, engineers,
army officers, professors, and such solid members of the Establishment as Niko
lai Leonidovich Pokhvistnev, Assistant District Tax Supervisor, and retired Lt.
Colonel Ivan Ignat'evich Makarenko, brother of K.I. Makarenko, chief of the
Ekaterinoslav Railroad Gendarme Police Administration. The report claimed
that these gentlemen (who met at the English Club) held extremely radical
views. Though they began quite modestly, they quickly inclined "to the revolu
side and at the last sessions speakers put forth extreme views and raised
tionary
the question of uniting the party with the local secret revolutionary organiza
tions ..." A Colonel von Frank declared that he intended to join the all-Russian
general strike and cease working till a constituent assembly
was
granted.39 These
men clearly stemmed from the Russian/Ukrainian elite of the city (although one
member with a recognizably Jewish name was listed), and constituted a small
club of political notables rather than a real political party. If the report is to be

150 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
believed, were up in the civic enthusiasm of the of

they probably swept "days
and, with the purest intentions, but a firm and a sta
liberty" lacking organization
ble social base, became carried awaywith their ideas They also bear witness to
the chief causes of the polarization of politics in inex

Ekaterinoslav-political
perience combined with over-reliance on emotional and ideological inspiration
A key occupational group activated at this time was the engineer-managers
of the mines and mills of Ekaterinoslav Province and city In Susan McCaffray's
characterization, their appears to have moved in the course of 1905's
identity
events from that of managers, concerned with the maintenance of order at the
oversaw, to that of a group, conscious of its own

enterprises they professional
civic and
responsibilities opportunities
They were not only the guardians of the old order In 1905 they were also benefi
ciaries of disorder, or at least they tried to be The revolution of 1905 threw the
question of their and social identity into relief There were many among
political
40
them who believed their government to be repressive
estimates that the new awareness some

McCaffray engineer-managers' began
time after August, although it became fully manifest only during the October
days Some of them may have joined political organizations such as the Union
of Liberation or the Kadets, but their mam political initiative was m a semi-pro
fessional vein, affiliation with the Union of Unions' All-Russian Union of Engi
neers and Technicians This process of and radicahzation was
pohticization
not confined to the engineer-managers, but seems to have occurred in a
clearly
number of similarly small professional groups in the city 41Another such group
that had a much on local events than the engineer managers was
greater impact
the white collar employees and workers of the Ekatennmskn Railroad admin
istration, who made common cause with both the blue collar railroad work
shop
ers and with the liberals and active elements without
politically intelligentsia
party affiliation The little information available about this group indicates that
like the engineer-managers, were a radicahzation well
they, undergoing gradual
before that, mainly at the hands of the workers, who had begun disrupting rail
road as as
operations early January
Unfortunately, much of the new political experimentation was cut short by

angry and who seized this critical moment to strike back at
indignant "patriots,"
Russia's perceived enemies Although frustrated by the military defeats and po
litical setbacks the Tsarist regime had suffered at the hands of an alliance they
imagined to exist among Japanese belligerents, "anarchist terrorists," intelli
gentsia liberals and revolutionaries, foreigners, striking workers, students and

even schoolkids, unleashed their aggression on Ekaterinoslav's
they principally
Jewish population
The disorders in Ekaterinoslav began on the night of October 20 when a patri

otic crowd carrying national and of the Tsar was attacked "rev
flags portraits by
olutionary organizations," according to a police report Gunfire was

exchanged,

and attacks on Jews seemed imminent. Violence directed against Jewish indi
viduals, homes, and businesses began the next day and continued for two more
days, finally ending on Monday, October 24. In the course of the pogrom, sixty
seven Jews and over thirty Russians were killed, while more than 189 people
were wounded. was estimated at over 3 million rubles. Be
Property damage
cause there are published accounts of the pogrom as a whole, we shall confine
ourselves to observations about it that bear on the matter at hand.42
subject
Estimates of the composition and motives of the pogromists vary. The most
authoritative description and analysis of the pogrom maintains that a pogrom
leadership existed that planned and supervised a definite strategy, in which
church crowds were drawn into patriotic processions and led to the sites of Jew
ish homes, businesses, and recent "outrages" to patriotic sentiment. At that
point a signal was given and violence instigated, led by pre-appointed henchmen
who joined the demonstration and redirected its purpose. Such a plan was pos
sible on the three successive days of the pogrom because on October 21 a church
service was held to mark the anniversary of the Emperor's coronation, while Oc
tober 22 was a church holiday and October 23 was a Sunday. Once the violence
erupted, other social elements joined in, especially looters more interested in the
plunder than "patriotic justice."43
Accordingly, the social composition varied with the stage of the process de
scribed. The crowd joining the procession is described by one historian of the
pogrom as "officials, merchants, officers, out-of-uniform officials, un
police
armed soldiers, firemen, and many curious people." Once the violence began,
the crowd composition changed to "petit bourgeois, peasants, factory workers,
day-laborers, off-duty soldiers, and school kids."44 This observation is in no wise
contradicted by other sources on the pogrom but, on the contrary, confirmed by
much of the detail they give.45 Whether members of the church crowd joined in
the violence is not clear. It seems likely that some of them at least stood by as
spectators of the violence, as there are reports of the participation of eminent
citizens in the pogrom.
The factory workers mentioned are more likely to have come from the city
than from the factory suburbs, as both the police and the organized workers were
known to block the suburbs from making contact with pogrom crowds when
such a danger existed. The extent of participation by factory workers has not
been clearly established. That some did participate may be indicated by the out
break of a pogrom in the Amur factory suburb on Saturday and part of Sunday,
October 22-23.46 Despite the presence of "black hundreds" agitation and sym
pathy in the Briansk and railroad workshops,47 however, no pogrom activity is
recorded as having emanated from or taken place in Chechelevka. Individual
factory workers undoubtedly took part in the pogroms, but the understanding
in most sources is that workers" workers
"organized (i.e., factory organized by
socialists) as a group did not. This is consistent with the determined and orga
nized opposition to jingoism and pogroms by the dominant socialist leadership
among factory workers in 1905. Those factory workers that did participate were
most likely to have come from the less-educated, secure, and well-paid end of

152 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
the spectrum of factory labor, i.e., that part of the factory population in city or
suburb that merged with the unemployed, drifter, and day laborer elements
(which were, to be sure, more numerous in the city). The types of worker
pogromists listed by the Jewish self-defense activist and eyewitness to the Oc
tober pogrom, V. Dal'man, for instance, were flour millers dock
(mukomoly),
workers (rabochie s pristani), and tramps (bosiaki) [sic].48 It seems clear, how
ever, that factory worker participants would have been joining an enterprise
organized, instigated, and executed mainly by non-workers. Charters Wynn's
notion that frustrated workers were the main force behind the Ekaterinoslav
pogrom is not borne out by a close examination of its origins and composition.49
Most of the literature on pogroms concurs in the view that the stance of the
authorities toward the pogroms was crucial in their outbreak and occurrence.
Evidence from a number of pogroms shows that as soon as the made a

police
show of force, pogroms ceased, but that the authorities normally did not act for
several days, during which murder, arson, robbery and mayhem went on
unchecked. True to a pattern that characterized most of the urban pogroms, Ek

terinoslav's government and law enforcement officials remained effectively in
active the violence, decisive measures the rioters on
during taking against only
the third day. Although the older view that the hundreds of pogroms that broke
out following the October Manifesto were ordered or inspired by the imperial
government has not stood up to close scrutiny,50 the willful inaction of the local
police and the frequent and openly displayed sympathy for the pogromists by
police and troops, in Ekaterinoslav and elsewhere, is an undeniable fact. Gov
ernor Neidgart's decisive action in July helped to contain the pogrom, and he
was afterwards thought of as a reliable protector by the Jewish community. Yet
during the October pogrom, after issuing an initial warning to the first patriotic
procession on October 21, he remained silent and out of touch.51
Meanwhile, the city police and troops on duty during the pogrom were in
open complicity with the violence and lawbreaking. It appears that when ex
plicitly ordered to block the pogromists, they did so, but at other times they were
not so ordered and refused to protect victims or to interfere with the looting,
vandalism, shooting and brutality, even at times siding with the pogromists
against self-defense organs and activists. Indeed, there are not a few of
reports
policemen, often (but not always) out of uniform, taking a direct part in the dis
orders. The guardians of order had their own strongly felt reasons for seeking
scapegoats for the abuse and violence they had experienced in recent months at
the hands of the political opposition. At the same time, there is no greater sym
bol of the breakdown of the imperial regime's ability to keep order in the coun
try than the manner in which its interests and sometimes its orders were so wide
ly flaunted by its lower-ranking servants.52

Because the threat and the of anti-Jewish violence was well-known
reality
by October, the Jewish community was to some degree prepared. A self-defense
effort that attempted to coordinate the separate self-defense units of the vari
ous revolutionary and Jewish parties was established from the first day, with a
staff headquarters and telephone connections to various of the
parts city. Many

of the units were armed and did not hesitate to use their weapons against the
Dal'man, one of the self-defense coordinators, not
gromila (pogromist thugs).
only attributed a number shootings of pogromists to the self-defense groups, in
cluding one inwhich he claimed nine hooligans were killed, he also reported that
one of his activists may have fired the first shot and touched off the pogrom on
the night of October 20.53 The picture sketched by Dal'man, suggests that the
pogrom was not a victimization of innocents, but an war between
only ongoing
two armed camps as well, each side's violence the thirst for revenge
sharpening
and retribution of the other. This evidence of vigorous self-defense in Ekateri
noslav Jewish self-defense measures in other of the Pale and re
parallels parts
minds us that Jews were no strangers to revolutionary violence. Jewish radicals
were as to revolutionary violence as Russian radicals,
apparently sympathetic
and by 1905, there may have been greater support for violent self-defense among
non-radical Jews as well. Jonathan Frankel out that Jewish revolutionar
points
ies had been estranged from orthodox Jews and non-revolutionary Zionists pri
or to the Kishinev pogrom, but the new that anti-Semitism was Rus
perception
sian state policy, evident in the Kishinev events, broke down this barrier and
made broadly based mutual support possible in 1905.54 This development seems
to have taken hold in Ekaterinoslav, where self-defense efforts had community
support, even though some in the Jewish community still had reservations and
to the self-defense efforts as only the situation.55
strenuously objected worsening
The effect of the pogrom on the revolution in Ekaterinoslav was profound. As

the second major bloodletting within two weeks, it certainly reinforced the po
litical inclination of liberals and moderates to retire from extra-parliamentary
politics. Yet the desertion of street politics in Ekaterinoslav, as elsewhere, was
counteracted by the October Manifesto's promise of a new political freedom and
a new order. The Jewish was more and in
parliamentary community frightened
secure than ever in the face of the failure of the authorities to protect them from
the superpatriots and the mob. Yet some Jews hesitated to abandon their self
defense efforts and erstwhile alliance with the radical left due to the continuing
threat of renewed pogrom activity. The October pogrom doubtless proved to
some the uselessness of resistance and the of Russia's Jews,
desperate plight
while to others, it demonstrated the continuing need for vigilance and self-de
fense. Although the widespread sympathy and interest in the victims of govern
ment violence displayed in October's funeral demonstrations could not and
would not be repeated, some commitment to continuing the original struggle
survived the October days in all the protest groups and strata.
Within the revolutionary movement, the long struggle between democrat
ic, worker-based socialism and the more authoritarian and centralized politics of
Lenin's Iskra was being tipped in favor of the latter. Worker "spontaneity"
(stikhiia) had apparently spawned a counterrevolutionary offshoot, a conclusion
drawn from the commonly made association of lower class and working people
with violence, disorder, and lawlessness. Those who advocated greater worker
autonomy and control of the labor movement suffered a setback following the

154 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
October pogroms, and the case for strong intelligentsia tutelage and leadership
of Russia's new mass labor movement more than ever. The po
appeared cogent
larization and violence in areas like Ekaterinoslav discredited moderates and
drove people to perpetuate extremism. The Bolsheviks, having lost control of
the Ekaterinoslav Committee at the start of the year, restored their position in
proletarian politics in the violent and tumultuous months that followed. The
Mensheviks moved to the left, advocating the collection of firearms and
bombs.56
It is difficult to determine how the bulk of organized workers of the facto
ry suburbs was affected by the pogrom, though many apparently agreed with the
anti-pogrom politics of the revolutionary parties. The violent means by which
the authorities suppressed their strikes and demonstrations on October 11 re
mained a fresh memory, and the freer times that one week later contin
opened
ued to inspire many to further struggle, for both the concrete demands they had
raised all year long and for a political settlement that spoke more directly to their
needs than did the October Manifesto.
Indeed, the revolutionary movement lived on in the factory suburbs, and
those groups most closely associated with working-class politics,
non-proletarian
such as railroad white collar employees and radically-inclined students, contin
ued to be drawn to activism in the pre-pogrom manner. But, their con

despite
tinuing readiness for further revolutionary exploits, these groups increasingly

spoke only to themselves. So itwas that, after a fairly quiet November, the same
alliance of factory suburb militants turned their revolution outward, to contact
workers at stations along the railroad lines who were only then entering their
most militant phase, having missed the cycles of upheaval and violence that Eka
terinoslav had already seen. Not surprisingly, the December railroad strike in
Ekaterinoslav Province turned into one of the largest of the many uprisings that
broke out across the that month.
empire
In the meantime, the socialist suburbs had become even better organized.
At the time the October Manifesto was published, the railroad workers, having
ended their own strike, called a "conference of delegates" of all the city's indus
trial workers, which turned out to be the founding meeting of what came to be
called Ekaterinoslav's "soviet of workers' deputies." Its first executive commit
tee drew on workers from the railroad workshops, the Briansk Works, and the
Gantke Plant, including the future president of Ukraine and the USSR, Grigorii
Ivanovich Petrovskii.57 Sometime after October 11 as well, the Briansk workers
promoted the idea of a self-defense league of several factory communities, to be
called the "Chechelevsk Republic."58 This organizational beginning later formed
the basis of the group that led the December strike, the "Fighting Strike Com
mittee," whose able leadership was based on the many trying months of strug
gle in Ekaterinoslav's worker suburbs.
Among the legacies of those months, the socialists of the suburbs tried to
strike a balance between a workers which tended to draw
responsive democracy,
attention inward to factory issues and away from the wider community,59 and ef
forts to reach what it regarded as the citizenry of a new society, which presup

posed worker membership in a broader, democratic community. On October 29,

for instance, forty worker delegates visited the Municipal Durna, demanding
that it 1) immediately remove troops from the city, to be replaced by a city mili
tia drawn from Ekaterinoslav citizens, and 2) disarm the police and assign them
to protect the persons and property of citizens without the use of armed force,
a measure prompted by their behavior in the recent pogrom, which would not
have been possible without the protection they afforded the pogromists. The
delegation claimed to represent 80,000 workers of the city. The City Manager,
Lia. Ezau, agreed to hold a Durna Conference the next day in which the dele
gates were invited to discuss the proposals. Apparently, the discussion did not
satisfy the delegates, because they returned to the Duma's session of October 31
with a statement of protest and condemnation of the Durna, then walked out.60
Although this episode might be dismissed as mere revolutionary grandstanding,
the delegates (led by the Briansk worker, LI. Merenkov) couched their protest
in terms encompassing the broader community, acknowledging in so doing their
acceptance of a civic framework to their own lives and a belief in the need for
responsive representation by public servants. Although they showed their con
tempt for the Durna deputies by their rhetoric and their walkout, pointing out
that several of the deputies had been seen participating in the pogrom, they si
multaneously affirmed the principle of representation by their demands for
more responsible behavior from the Durna deputies and by stressing their own
representative authority, naming each of the forty factories that elected them. In
raising their protest and demands in the Durna, the worker were ask
delegates
ing the deputies to respond to them not only as workers, but also as citizens.
The Durna protest was an indication that the political initiative of "organized
workers" had survived or recovered from the violence of October. At
repressive
the same time, its civic assertiveness fell into step with a flourishing culture of
meetings and rallies among the city's liberals, students, and intelligentsia that
marked their response to the October Manifesto, delayed but not eliminated by
the pogrom. Among the city's railroad and factory workers, protests and indis
cipline increased in November.61 At a meeting of 700 Ekaterininskii Railroad

employees and workers on November 17, held at the city's English Club, the
president of the railroaders' deputies' assembly announced the need to prepare
for a new strike.62
When Russia's railworkers' union called for a new nationwide railroad
strike in early December, local leaders were and a strike
prepared, management
committee immediately seized control of the Ekaterininskii Railroad and, un
opposed, replaced the director and the heads of the road's various services.63
Next, many of the hitherto disparate revolutionary workers and unit

organizers
ed with the railroaders in a new composite,
or "coalitional" group.
leadership
The "Fighting Strike Committee" (FSC, Boevoi stachechnyi komitet) was com
posed of the railroad strike leadership, the Soviet's leaders, representatives of
various revolutionary parties, and delegates from the railroad and work
postal
ers' unions. The FSC was a political as well as an organizational coalition in that

156 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
its leaders represented all the revolutionary parties except Paole Zion (see be
In the face of widespread fears and rumors of another pogrom, the Com
low).
mittee took such decisive countermeasures that a second pogrom was averted
and, while and a new revolt up and down the rail

aiding promoting spreading
road line, directed strikes in both city and suburbs. For a short period, before
the government mobilized sufficient troop strength to move against them, the
strikers and their committee ruled the city.
What was the nature of that rule? The Committee's own Bulletins convey
the outlines of a determined revolutionary strategy,64 reflecting the influence of
a forceful and self-assured leadership. The aim of the strike was to rally not just
workers, but all antigovernment forces and to revive militant opposition after
the relative lull following October's violence and concessions. The FSC there
fore called a strike of all workers in city and suburb, Russians and Jews, shop
clerks and foundrymen, and it halted practically all economic activity in an at
tempt to completely immobilize government in the area.
operations
The Committee used its control of the rail lines to spread and support the
strike at distant stations, occupying them when possible, disarming gendarmes
and policemen, and winning the support of trainloads of soldiers returning from
the Far East.65 The FSC's control of the railroad also denied transportation to
troops sent to quell the uprising. In the city, all newspapers were banned from
publishing during the strike, giving the FSC control of published strike news. At
the same time, the Committee ordered banks and savings funds to remain open
and to pay out deposits upon demand in an attempt to weaken the government
a credit and a run on the banks.66
by shortage
the Committee was directing a political strike aimed at the autocracy, it
As
also sought the broadest possible local support and therefore ruled the city with
a sense of responsibility to the civilian population as a whole. It arranged for the
continued delivery of water and lighting, the operation of hospitals, clinics, and
pharmacies, the availability of bakeries and grocery stores, and the transporta
tion of passengers stranded at suburban stations by the strike, while soldiers and
reservists were home after disarmed. In addition, coal and
conveyed being
kerosene stored at the stations were distributed, and proprietors of the shops
that remained open were warned not to raise on items of prime necessi
prices
ty. To insure an orderly strike, stores were closed, and were
liquor guards post
ed to protect the freight immobilized at the Ekaterinoslav station.67
The FSC's rapid accession to power and the compliance of so many parts
of urban Ekaterinoslav with its policies produced a heady and jubilant mood
during the days just after the strike began on December 8. "On Sunday, De
cember 11, heavier traffic was noticeable in the city from early in the morning,
and an elated, mood was felt." The next "all commercial and in
holiday day,
dustrial activity in the city froze. Nonetheless, all day a great liveliness reigned
on the streets, and at 3:00 meetings began in the Public Assembly (on Club
Street) and in the Peoples Auditorium (on Petersburg [Street]); these sites were
set aside at the behest of the FSC."68
These brave claims in the Bulletin were, however, overshadowed by fre

quent mention in the very same pages of "hooligan" activity and the constant
threat of a renewed pogrom. Despite the fairly rapid and widespread compli
ance with the FSC's strike orders by many, they were not universally popular or
complied with. Petty crime and "hooliganism" increased during the strike, ap
parently due to the material deprivation it brought and the absence of police
from the streets. Given the long months of striking, financial hardship and work
er fatigue reached an all time high at the end of 1905. Hence, the December
strike in Ekaterinoslav witnessed not only the most unified and effective lead
ership of the year, but also the highest levels of worker opposition to it.
If the main cause of anti-Jewish violence in Ekaterinoslav was worker dis
satisfaction with striking and radical militancy, there should have been a pogrom
inDecember. Yet no pogrom occurred in the city after October.69 The reasons
for this come readily enough to mind. First, the FSC took specific measures to
defend against another pogrom, ranging from closing liquor stores and provid
ing canteens for strikers and the unemployed to forming "fighting militias"
(boevye druzhiny), patrolling the streets and posting armed night watchmen.
The police and soldiers, who aided and abetted the pogromists inOctober, were
either absent or on the defensive during the December strike, depriving would
be pogrom makers of the moral and at times even direct material support that
they enjoyed in October. Finally, the nationwide condemnation of the October
pogroms may have convinced some of their organizers and supporters that the
pogrom had actually mobilized more sympathy for the Jews than for the belea
guered monarchy.
Still, anti-strike sentiment, though it received no direct mention in the Bul
letin, fed the strike leaders' sense of unease, or what the news sheet re
surely
peatedly referred to as the fear of a new pogrom. Reinforcing the fear was plen
tiful evidence during the strike of petty crime and that morally aimless activity
called "hooliganism," which so easily blended with pogrom violence. From the
first day of the strike the Bulletin attributed all manner of petty crime and strike
opposition to apparently ubiquitous "hooligans," conveying the impression of
an all-consuming wariness. Here hooligans strangled and robbed a cabby in the
bazaar, there they met in a tavern plotting a pogrom. Now they conspired with
the police to tear down red banners in the Chechelevka and stole materials from
train cars, now they beat up Bulletin peddlers and circulated their own calls to
violate the FSC's decrees.70 Much of this harassment and petty crime, verbally
disguised as "hooliganism," was undoubtedly driven by anti-strike sentiment
and by the renewed deprivation of wages and trade. In either case, the FSC coun
tered itwith the full authority of its armed patrols and watchmen.
Ironically, perhaps, this defense of civic order seems to have won the strike
leaders some support among the propertied interests of the city. Consistent with
earlier contacts made after anti-Jewish attacks in July, some degree of support
to strikers continued to be rendered by elements of the Jewish middle class. In
the aftermath of the December strike, police discovered two bombs concealed
in the forest warehouse of the merchant Goldshtein, and nine days later a num
ber of local Social Democrats were arrested at a workers' canteen housed in an

158 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
other forest warehouse, this one owned by the merchant Rozenberg.71 More sig
nificantly, the FSC collected thousands of rubles from middle class donors, in
cluding 4,000 from the director of the Briansk Works, 2,000 from the Pipe Plant,
and 300 from the Esau Steel Mill.72 In the money raising effort, the FSC ap
pointed a special commission that included Mining Institute professor Alek
sandr M. Terpigorev, Briansk Works engineer Ivan N. Fedorenko, and Dr. Gersh
I. Kupianskii.These strike or FSC supporters from the middle class and intelli
gentsia made the rounds of "plant directors and many private homes,"73 tapping
the apparent readiness of some Jewish and propertied interests in the city to sup
port the FSC as the best guarantee against renewed disorders. This support of
the FSC and its workers by middle class elements is remarkable in light of the
association made between "workers" and pogroms, and it indicates that local
liberals and Jews made a distinction between the kinds of workers so tainted and
what were
commonly referred to as "organized workers," i.e., those who aligned
themselves with anti-pogrom, mainly socialist, leadership.74
As close as the interests of the Jewish community and the strike leadership
came at this juncture, important political reservations also divided them. Paole
Zion, the largest and best-organized of the Jewish radical parties in Ekateri
noslav, twice sought to join the revolutionary coalition and was twice rejected.
By way of explanation, the FSC's first Bulletin stated that the Jewish proletariat
was already well represented in the FSC and that Paole Zion was not so influ
ential among the Jewish proletariat that its membership was necessary. The
statement was signed by the Ekaterinoslav soviet, the Social Democrats, the
Bund, and the Socialist Revolutionaries. Thus dominated by socialists, the FSC
stated that integrating the labor Zionists would affect the FSC's fighting effec
tiveness, but they may also have been taking a principled stand against Paole
Zion's nationalism. However, the FSC's second rejection noted that the denial
of representation did not preclude the coordination of their activities.75 Pre
sumably, this meant that the FSC was ready to work with the labor Zionists to
combat a possible pogrom but did not want to be hampered in its antigovern
ment activities by Paole Zion's possible reservations.
Neither the revolutionary activities of the FSC nor its disagreements with
Paole Zion came to term, however, as strikers returned to work and the gov
ernment sent loyal troops and regained control of Ekaterinoslav within two
weeks. On December 16 Governor Neidgart declared martial law in the city, its
industrial suburbs, and a number of other rebellious regions in the province. The
same day, however, the head of the city's Okhrana reported that the FSC was
still in control of the factory district, which he decided not to enter due to the
of local Meanwhile, some strikers to resume work,
unreliability troops.76 began
and the police reclaimed parts of the city. Nonetheless, troops did not recapture
the factory suburbs of Amur and Nizhnedneprovsk until the December 22. That
same met in full and were re
day Ekaterinoslav's soviet session, its proceedings
ported in the last Bulletin, published December 26. Clashes and armed con
frontations at other stations on the Ekaterininskii Railroad kept troops engaged
in the intervening period. The greatest of these battles, claiming at least 24 lives

at the Gorlovka station, was fought on December 17.77As these uprisings across
the province were due in part to the example, agitation, and leadership of the
FSC, the extension of its existence in the city due to the uprisings was not
serendipitous, but the result of its own work. In addition, the authorities seem
to have deliberately avoided a direct confrontation with the FSC, possibly out
of a desire not to repeat the bloodbaths of October 11. As a result, most of the
strike leaders were not arrested until early 1906-while some of them managed
to escape altogether in the intervening period. But the strike was winding down
by December 22.78
Conclusions
Events in Ekaterinoslav indicate that Jewish activists and interests played a

prominent and decisive role in 1905 in supporting the antigovernment, anti
monarchist cause. Their activism in the revolutionary movement and in defense
of their own community in 1905 was clearly the single most important outside
influence on the labor movement and its revolutionary mod
leadership. Many
erates were by the increased attacks on Jews and by the new politi
radicalized
cal conjuncture brought by the war and urgent demands for reform. Although
far from all moderate Jews actually joined the opposition, those who did so
reached out not only to their own radicals, but also across political and ethnic
lines to labor and revolutionary organizers. The activism of the "Jewish youth"
was a likely indicator of the anger and frustration felt inmany outwardly mod
erate Jewish homes. This alliance within the political opposition in Ekateri
noslav was made in separate but itwas also im
explicit cooperative agreements,
plicit in the dual motivation of many of the numerous Jews active in the
revolutionary movement. Although this alliance was not strong enough to stop
the pogrom in October, itmay have moderated its effect, and it contributed to
preventing a second outbreak inDecember, despite the imminence of such an
outbreak.
While anti-strike sentiment among workers was not in itself productive of
worker violence against Jews or against the strike leadership, it did create a cli
mate of anger and frustration that was conducive to the instigation of such vio
lence, and anti-strike feelings were at their height inDecember. Underlying this
potential for new violence was a political difference between workers support
ing continuation and expansion of the strike and those anxious to end it. Even
among the latter itmay not be assumed that all or most were ready to translate
their frustration into violence. The key issue was whether workers should con
tinue to sacrifice themselves and their families for yet another political struggle
with a questionable outcome. In Ekaterinoslav, as throughout Russia in 1905,
workers were a great many, in striking as
unanimously-and solely-interested
ameans to win better wages and working conditions, and only part of them were
ready to participate in the political struggle necessary to make such gains. Many
unrealistically desired the economic gains without the struggle.79 Given this
strong and well-documented preference among Russian factory workers in 1905

160 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
to limit strikes to immediate and tangible ends, it seems quite unlikely that most
of them could be recruited into monarchist ranks or be to join in con

persuaded
certed and violent attacks on Jews
Yet "workers" are mentioned as pogrom and one

commonly participants,
wonders how to interpret such evidence To
begin with, the term "worker"
is not very precise, referring to a range of social types, from domes
(rabochu)
tics and laborers at one extreme to well-paid, highly skilled
semi-employed day
mechanical or electrical workers at the other That is one en
undoubtedly why
counters the term workers" in contem
"organized (organizovannye rabochie)
porary sources, a term that workers to progres
roughly distinguished adhering
sive from the low awareness connoted the sole
political leadership vaguely by
word "worker" workers" were
{rabochu) "Organized usually disproportion
ately drawn from better-paid, usually skilled workers Those hardest hit by
strikes and therefore to favor a resumption of woik earliest, and
likely possibly
even turn the most
against the strikers, were, naturally, poorly paid workers
All this indicates that those workers that in pogroms came dis
participated
from poorer strata, and this conclusion is existing
proportionately supported by
descriptions of worker participants Certainly, the promise of material gain from
and was a motive in the riots The contingent

looting plunder powerful largest
of participants m Kiev's 1905 pogrom, for instance, appears to have been loot
ers, who followed after a smaller, more destructive group that forced entry and
80
drove Jews out of their homes and businesses In Ekaterinoslav, poorer work
ers would have been concentrated in the rather than the suburbs
city factory
Fischer's account of the October pogrom out that the con
pointed strongarm
tingent that
joined patriotic the
procession midway and initiated the violence
were not from the suburbs, but were Ekaterinoslav residents "without excep
"81
tion This indicates that workers who in the pogrom were,
participated plau
sibly, from among those in direct competition with Jewish workers (rather than
those from the factory suburbs who had little contact with Jews), i e , that they
were Russian and Ukrainian artisans, laborers, and clerks from small fac
mainly
82
tories, workshops, small businesses, and the docks
In industrial era Russia, workers from this milieu mixed with, lived among,
and were often treated and thought of as part of a larger underclass of the ur
ban poor This underclass has long been thought to have provided the muscle of
pogroms Often ignored and overlooked by the revolutionary champions of the
working poor, they were nonetheless once aptly described by Victor Chernov
Besides the proletarian 'demos' there exists m all capitalist countries a proletari
an 'ochlos,' the enormous mass of d classes, chronic paupers, Lumpenproletariat,

'
what may be termed the industrial reserve army Like
'capitahstically superfluous
the proletariat, it is a product of capitalist civilization, but it reflects the destruc
tive, not the constructive aspects of capitalism Exploited and downtrodden, it is
full of bitterness and despair, but has none of the traditions and none of the po
tentialities of organization, of a new consciousness, a new law, and a new culture,

which distinguish the genuine 'hereditary' proletariat In Russia the growth of cap

Ekaterinoslav m 1905 Workers, Jews, and Violence 161
City
italism has been strongest in its destructive, predatory aspects, while its construc
tive achievements have It was a catastrophic growth of

lagged accompanied by
the 'ochlos,' a tremendous mass of uprooted, drifting humanity Wrongly idealized
at times, as in Gorky's early works, this mob supplied the contingents for
(Maxim)
those mass outbursts, pogroms, anti-Jewish and others, for which old
sporadic
83
Russia was famous
It appears that the term "workers," as it has been used by contemporaries

and mislead more than inform us as to the and
by historians alike, may mentality
posture of the working class that began to take shape in 1905 The stance of Eka
termoslav's workers" on the pogrom, their alliance with radical
"organized
Zionist activists and other elements of the Jewish community, and the defense
of civic and social order during the December strike all indicate that that part of
"workers" could at times share more aims and values with the educat
political
ed and propertied middle classes, despite obvious differences, than it did with
the rabble of looters and anti-Jewish rioters, to mind an older
disorderly calling
of European class stratification that may have more accurately charac
concept
terized the Russian situation in 1905 Harriet Martineau that concept
captured
when she wrote toward the mid-nineteenth century that, "Except for the dis
tinction between and there is no social difference in

sovereign subject, England
so wide as that between independent laborer and the pauper "84 Skilled factory
workers were the of Martmeau's laborer" in
equivalent "independent early
twentieth-century Russia, those "organized workers" who, unlike their English
counterparts, had only begun to forge for themselves a new collective identity
in with socialist organizers Her found their Rus
league underground "paupers"
sian counterpart in that demoralized and disoriented of the indus
population
trial centers described by Chernov, although both his and Martmeau's descrip
tions of a monolithic group are In Russia's
single, oversimplifications reality,
demoralized urban underclass consisted of a graduated continuum ranging from
intentional criminal at one end to the of the honest unem

activity quandary
ployed at the other To locate the chief perpetrators of pogrom violence along
that and may be as precise as is short of
deprived unhappy spectrum possible,
coming down to the composition of specific pogrom crowds However, it is suf
ficient to rule out blanket references to "workers" and worker pol

unqualified,
itics as the source of pogroms, as is clear from the case of Ekaterinoslav city
NOTES
*This article was made possible thanks to research travel giants from the College of Hu
manities and Social Sciences, North Carolina State University, to the able library and archival
assistance of Molly Molloy and Diana Dzuba, and to Reginald Zelnik's astute editing sugges
tions
1 This characterization of the region ismost fully and persuasively outlined m Charters
Wynn's important study, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms The Donbass-Dnepr Bend m Late Im
perial Russia, 1870-1905 (Princeton, 1992) The present essay, though greatly indebted to
Wynn's pioneering work, seeks to build on, critique, and modify some of its conclusions
2 Allan K Wildman, The Making of a Workers' Revolution Russian Social Democracy,

162 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
1891-1903 (Chicago, 1967), e g ,pp 103-7, 219-20, 242-44, et passim Wildman did not treat
the miners, who were mostly located far from the city (The further use of "Ekaterinoslav" in
this paper will refer to the city and its immediate environs References to the province will be
clearly indicated )
3 Besides Wynn, see Susan P McCaffray, The Politics of Industrialization in Tsarist Rus
sia The Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers, 1874-1914 (DeKalb, II, 1996), Hi
roaki Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s
1990s (Cambridge, UK, 1998), Theodore H Friedgut, Iuzovka and Revolution Volume II
Politics and Revolution in Russia's Donbass, 1869-1924 (Princeton, 1994)
Fnedgut's and Kuromiya's studies treat the Donbass miners and rural factory workers, but
they mention Ekaterinoslav city only in passing McCaffray's discussion tends to merge urban
and rural labor, a consequence of her focus on engineer-managers, who were employed in both
urban and rural areas, workers were a secondary consideration in her study Wynn's study
merges the qualities of workers from the two settings, overlooking or underestimating the sharp
differences of outlook and behavior resulting from their contrasting social circumstances and
political cultures
4 Almost all information on Ekatermoslav's cultural and economic life stems from a high
ly compressed account inV V Morachevskn, "Ekaterinoslav i raskhodiashchiesia ot nego puti,"
Rossua Polnoe geograficheskoe opisanie nashego otechestva, ed VP Semenov-Tian Shanskn
(St Petersburg, 1910), XIV, [ch 9] pp 556-57 Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms, pp 24
28 (where Lalaiants is cited, p 26) Its population of 112,800 m the 1897 census grew to 211,100
by 1914, when it became the eighth largest city in the Empire A G Rashm, Naselenie Rossu za
100 let (1811-1913 gg) Statistichesku ocherk (Moscow, 1956), pp 89-91
5 More exact figures on ethnic composition show 52 percent to have been Russian-speak
ing (apparently lumping together Russians and Ukrainians, "great" and "little" Russians), 40
percent Jews, 4 5 percent Poles, and 2 percent Germans Morachevskn, "Ekaterinoslav,"
pp 556-7 These figures and percentages probably stem from 1904, as a similar city population
figure is attributed to that year by Wynn, op cit, p 27 But compare Patricia Herhhy, "Ukrai
nian Cities in the Nineteenth Century," Rethinking Ukrainian History, ed I L Rudnytsky (Ed
monton, 1981), p 151 The term "Russians" in this paper will usually imply an indeterminate
mixture of Russians and Ukrainians
6 The observer was M Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw," Die Judenpogrome in Russland, 2 vols
(K ln & Leipzig, 1910) II 175-6 This detailed article is not only an authoritative account of
Ekatermoslav's pogrom, but also an informative brief description of the city's social relations
at the time Ekatermoslav's banquet was held on November 28,1904, according to T Emmons,
"Russia's Banquet Campaign," California Slavic Studies, No 10 (1977), p 59 Unfortunately,
little else is known about it, though the date indicates that itmay have been held, like other No
vember banquets, in commemoration of the 1864 Judiciary Reform
7 Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms The exact nature and extent of worker partici
pation in the Ekaterinoslav pogrom receives further comment below
8 On migrant & newcomer make-up S -Peterburg po perepisi 15 dekabria 1900 goda
(SPb , 1903), Rashin, Naselenie Rossu za 100 let, and James H Bater, St Petersburg Industn
alization and Change (London, 1976), on segregation of factory population see G D Surh, 1905
in St Petersburg Labor, Society, and Revolution (Stanford, 1989), Table 12, pp 40-1, A V
Pogozhev, Uchet chislennosti i sostava rabochikh v Rossu (SPb , 1906), on ethnic diversity N V
Iukhnova, Etnichesku sostav in etnosotsial'naia struktura naselenua Peterburga Vtoraia polov
ina XIX - nachalo XXveka (Leningrad, 1984), and city census, cited above
9 Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw," p 177
10 Shmarya Levin, The Arena, tr M Samuel (New York, 1932, Arno Press, 1975),
pp 185-6 Ekaterinoslav also hosted the later Zionist socialist leader, Ber Borochov, when he
came to work under Ussishkin, 1900-1902 Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics Socialism,
Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 (Cambridge, UK, 1981), pp 334-5
11 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, pp 195-6
12 Paole Zion had been founded in Ekaterinoslav in November 1900 Frankel, Prophecy
and Politics, p 334 Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw," pp 177-8 The Zionist Socialist Labor Party
(SSRP) had been founded only in February 1905, and the General Jewish Workers' Union of
Russia and Poland ("Bund"), while well-established by 1905, was strongest in the western and
northwestern provinces of the Pale
13 There were forty-three pogroms in Russia m 1904 and fifty-four in 1905 prior to Oc
tober Shlomo Lambroza, "The Pogroms of 1903-1906," Pogroms Anti-Jewish Violence in

Modern Russian History, ed John D Kher & Shlomo Lambroza (Cambridge, UK, 1992),
pp 213, 223
14 Lambroza estimates that by 1905, one-third of the Jewish communities in the Pale had
formed self-defense groups "Jewish Self-Defense during the Russian Pogroms of 1903-1906,"
Jewish Journal of Sociology, 23/2 (1981), p 133
15 B Ia Brikker, et al, eds ,Ekaterinoslavshchina v Revohutsu 1905-1907 gg Dokumen
ty imatenaly (Dnepropetrovsk, 1975), pp 52-57 N S Trusova et al, eds ,Nachalo pervoi
-mart 1905
russkoi revohutsu lanvar' goda (Moscow, 1955), pp 401-5, 411-18
16 Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms, pp 184-7, A A Novosel'skn, et al, eds ,Revoh
utsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossu vesnoi i letom 1905 goda ApreT sentiabr', ch 2-aia, Kn 1-aia (Mos
cow, 1961), pp 151-57,159-61 Brikker, Ekaterinoslav shchina, pp 126-130
17 M I Mebel', 1905 god na Ukraine Khronika imatenaly Tom pervyi lanvar'-Sentiabr'
([Khar'kov], 1926), p 323,328 Lambroza, "Pogroms of 1903-1906," p 223
18 Mebel', Khronika, p 328 Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms, p 203, where the
pogrom is dated June 21
19 "Jewish youth" (Evreiskaia molodezh') was a common reference in police reports of
the year Assuming the reports were accurate, the youth probably consisted of students and
young workers
"
20 "usihvavsheesia ozlobleme khnstian protiv evreev Tsentral'nyi Derzhavnyi Istorych
nyi Arkhiv Ukrainy u m Kyivi [hereafter, IAU], Kievskoe Okhrannoe Otdeleme, Fond 275, op
1, delo 650,11 275 ob , 301 ob -302,327-327 ob The document does not claim that the Jews beat
the church watchman, but the innuendo is clear The police documents openly engaged in what
could be called "ethnic profiling" m their reports on "seditious" activity m the city, as the Jew
ish ethnicity of violators is frequently mentioned, but Russians are not similarly tagged with
their religion, ethnicity, or nationality
21 Sotsialdemokrat Rabochaia Gazeta, No ll,4Aug 1905, p 12 This article also stress
es the protection the pogromists received from the local police, who stood by idly m the face of
their agitation and vandalism It notes that one policeman even warned off a witness to the
pogrom violence who complained at the police inaction Ibid
22 "Black Hundreds" (chernye sotentsy, from Chernaia Sotnia) is a generic term com
monly applied to anti-Semitic extremists, especially the unorganized rabble, but including Rus
sian jmgoist associations that encouraged, organized, and sought to profit from anti-Jewish vi
olence Although the term is commonly capitalized as if it referred to a single organization, I
have used a lower case designation to avoid that impression but have added quotation marks
to indicate its special meaning
23 Sotsialdemokrat, 4 Aug 1905, loc cit Cf Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms, p 204,
who cites this source, but neglects to distinguish between city and suburban workers and fails
to mention the article's reference to the fifty workers who came into town from the factory sub
urbs to fight the gromila
24 On the meeting to coordinate defense against pogromists, see Wynn, Workers, Strikes,
& Pogroms, p 205 and Mebel', Khronika, p 332 Although it is unclear how deeply this alliance
reached into the Jewish community, its mere existence points to a wide spectrum of opinion
among the city's Jews and to a likely mediating role by Jewish socialists linking their two com
munities
25 One's impressionistic sense of this finds corroboration m Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw,"
pp 180,182 Count Witte once claimed that Jews constituted "nearly half the membership in
radical parties" m Russia in a conversation with Theodor Herzl, who did not challenge the fig
ure but only asked the reason cited by Leonard Schapiro, "The Role of the Jews m the Rus
sian Revolutionary Movement," Russian Studies (New York, etc Penguin Books, 1988), p 266,
from The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed M Lowenthal (London, 1958), p 395
26 Eg, see the memoirs of E Riskind, E Adamovich, N Drokhanov, and A Kras
noshchekov m Istorua ekaterinoslavskoi sotsial demokraticheskoi organizatsu, 1889-1903, ed
M A Rubach (Ekaterinoslav, 1923), pp 207-14, 236, 248-50, 253, 283
27 Mebel', Khronika, pp 293, 300-301, 309
28 IAU, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhrannoe Otdeleme, Fond 1597, op 1, delo 104,1 6 L M
Ivanov, et al, eds ,Vserossuskaia pohticheskaia stachka v oktiabre 1905 goda, ch 2-aia, (Mos
cow Leningrad, 1955), pp 102-4 (hereafter, VPSO, II)
29 VPSO, II 104-6 Vestmk mga, Oct l8, 1905 Wynn, Workers, Strike, and Pogroms,
pp 191-3
30 VPSO, II 106 A police report numbered the crowd at 10,000 Brikker, Ekateri

164 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
noslavshchina, pp 176-7 The account in Vestnik mga (Oct l8,1905) did not mention the warn
ings but, on the contrary, made it sound as though the shooting happened without a warning
That version, probably taken from a bystander, may reflect the subjective perception of those
fired upon The newspaper report also gave the names of the 46 killed and wounded, showing
that the crowd contained large proportions of both Russians and Jews
31 Vestnik mga, Oct l8,1905 VPSO, II 107 L M Ivanov, "Oktiabr'skaia pohticheskaia
stachka 1905 g na Ukraine," Istoncheskie zapiski, No 54 (1955), pp 60-61
32 In August, Lenin pointed out that the government was deliberately organizing "black
hundreds" groups to combat the revolutionary movement, and he recommended to Iskra or
ganizations in Russia that they arm and organize against the pogrom threat and m preparation
for armed uprisings He also singled out the Ekaterinoslav SD's to praise the anti-pogrom al
liance they had formed among several revolutionary parties See "Chernye sotm i vooruzhen
noe vosstame," Sochinenua, 2d ed , v 8 (M-L, 1929), or Collected Works, v 9 (Moscow, 1962),
pp 200-204
33 Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw," p 186, estimated the number of policemen (apart from the
headquarters staff) to have been 251 If that is divided by Ekatermoslav's 1904 population of
157,000, a ratio of 1 624 results Petersburg's ratio was about 1 600
34 Eg, Brikker, Ekaterinoslavshchina, p 61 Petersburg's secunty-mmdedness was prob
ably due to the large amount of foreign investment m Ekaterinoslav province
35 Vestnik mga, Oct 21, 1905 The patrolmen's twenty-five demands eloquently docu
ments their degrading work conditions and resembles those of striking factory workers, e g ,a
wage raise, payment for the days of the strike, polite treatment, and being addressed with the
formal "you" ivy) They also demanded that police inspectors not send patrolmen on their do
mestic errands
36 [IK] Shevchenko, "O revohutsn 1905 goda," Matenaly po istoru Ekaterinoslav skoi
sotsialdemokraticheskoi orgamzatsu bol'shevikov i revohutsionnykh sobytu 1904-1905-1906
(Ekaterinoslav, 1924), pp 135-6 [Hereafter, Matenaly 1905]
37 Ibid Dal'man, "Oktiabr'skie dm," pp 214-18
38 Dal'man, "Oktiabr'skie dm," 218-23 Brikker, Ekaterinoslav shchina, pp 179-80
39 IAU, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhrannoe Otdeleme, Fond 1597, op 1, d 104,11 16ob 17
40 McCaffray, Politics of Industrialization, p 169
41 Ibid ,pp 180-82 Okhrana chief Ustinov's survey of revolutionary events in Ekateri
noslav inDecember 1905 noted the formation of "a significant number of various political-eco
nomic unions and societies" after October 17 VPR, lilli, p 148-9
42 Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw," pp 185, 186 For other " accounts, see Wynn, Workers,
Strikes, and Pogroms, ch 7 and Dal'man, "Oktiabr'skie dm Soviet histories and documents
collections typically omit mention of the pogrom
43 Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw," p 184
44 Ibid,pp 184-5
45 Other sources include IA U, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhrannoe Otdeleme, Fond 1597, op
l,delo86,ll 297-300 ob, 302-304 ob (reprinted m Matenaly 1905, pp 331-4), Ibid ,delo 104,
11 10 ob -11 ob ,Vestnik mga, Nov 2 & 3,1905, and Dal'man, "Oktiabr'skie dm" One newspa
per reported that a crowd leaving a prayer service on October 23 went directly onto the street
and began to search out Jewish houses and to wreak violence on them and their inhabitants
Vestnik mga, Nov 2,1905, pp 2-3
46 Vestnik mga, Nov 2, 1905
47 Shevchenko, "O revohutsn 1905 goda," p 131, G I Petrovskn, "Shtnkhi," Matenaly
1905, p 111
48 Dal'man, "Oktiabr'skie dm," pp 227-8 Vestnik inga, Nov 2,1905, p 3 This account
makes no mention of worker participation in the Amur pogrom, noting only the presence of
uniformed policemen m the crowd of "hooligans" (the usual term for pogromists) and point
ing out that "During the pogrom many Russians-predominantly workers-concealed Jews
m their homes (u sebia) from the fury of the hooligans
49 Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms, e g ,p 226 "Pogroms did not follow strikes by
accident They were produced by worker frustration and anger over the outcome of general
strikes, frustration and anger that inflamed longstanding ethnic hostility m a region where vio
"
lent behavior was central to working-class culture Such frustration did play a role, yet the gen
eralization is not well documented and seems exaggerated, even for Ekaterinoslav
50 See both Hans Rogger, "The Jewish Policy of Late Tsansm a Reappraisal," Jewish
Policies and Right wing Politics in Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 1986), and Heinz-Dietnch Lowe,

Ekaterinoslav in 1905 Workers, Jews, and Violence 165
City
The Tsars and the Jews Reform, Reaction, and Anti-semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772-1917
(New York, 1993)
51 Fischer, "Jekatermoslaw," pp 180,187
52 Uniformed police in a pogrom crowd were noted in Vestnik tuga, Nov 2,1905, p 3 The
police reported that on the very first day of violence, "Soldiers and especially the cossacks were
very unwilling to carry out the orders of their officers on the establishment of order and ap
"
parently sympathized with the pogrom that was beginning IA U, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhran
noe Otdeleme, Fond 1597, op 1, delo 104,1 11 Fischer, "Jekatermoslaw," pp 186-7
53 "Oktiabr'skie dm," pp 223-6,233
54 Eg, Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, pp 139-41, Jewish narodovol'tsy terrorists in
1880s Ekaterinoslav are described by Erich Haberer, Jews & Revolution inNineteenth Century
Russia (Cambridge, UK, 1995), and numerous instances of Jewish terrorists are documented
by Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917 (Princeton,
1993)
55 Fischer, "Jekatermoslaw," p 191
56 Shevchenko, "O revohutsu 1905 goda," p 137,
57 Merenkov, "Vospominanna Bnantsa," Matenaly 1905, p 55 VPSO, II 99 or Pndne
provsku krai, l8 Oct, 1905 Due to Petrovskn's later celebrity status (Ekaterinoslav was later
renamed "Dnepropetrovsk" in his honor), the founding of the soviet in Ekaterinoslav and much
else has been attributed to him irrespective of the historical record 11 Merenkov's account, al
though written eighteen or nineteen years after the events, is corroborated in part by a con
temporary newspaper account
58 Mentioned in one of the more worshipful biographies of Petrovskn A V Snegov, et
al, Serdtse, otdannoe hudiam Rasskaz o zhizni i deiatel'nosti Grigorua Ivanovicha Petrovsko
go (Moscow, 1964), p 40
59 This was a result of the continuing, preeminent interest of factory workers in the spe
cific issues of their own factories and lives, combined with the sincere efforts of the delegates
to espond to such grassroots demands E g , Shevchenko,"O revohutsu 1905 goda," p 137,
Merenkov, "Vospominanna Bnantsa," p 55
60 Vestnik mga, Oct 30, Nov 1,1905
61 Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms, pp 229-30 Henry Reichman, Railwaymen and
Revolution Russia, 1905 (Berkeley, 1987), pp 225-6
62 Wynn, Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms, p 233 The fact that the meeting was held at the
English Club probably indicates a link between the railroad workers and members of the town's
liberal elite
63 S S Amsimov, Vosstanie v Donetskom basseine (Moscow, 1929), pp 21-2, the best
documented account of the December strike by the defense lawyer in the strikers' later trial It
is a slightly shortened reprinting of the same author's narrative of events from Delo o vosstanu
na linn Ekatenninskoi zheleznoi dorogi (Moscow & Leningrad, 1926), which includes testimo
ny at the trial of those arrested and other related documents Extensive documentation of the
strike is also given m Vysshu pod"em revohutsu 1905-1907 gg Vooruzhennye vosstanua
noiabr'-dekabr' 1905 goda, ch 3-ia, kn 1-ia, ed A L Sidorov, et al (Moscow, 1956), pp 51
180 [part of the series Revohutsua 1905-1907 gg v Rossu Dokumenty imatenaly, ed AM
Pankratova Cited hereafter as VPR, lilli ]
64 All eight budleteny are reproduced in VPR, HI/1, pp 55-59,61-68,69-72,75-79,82
86, 95-98,102-106
65 VPR, III/l,pp 67,78,85
66 VPR, lilli, pp 56, 58, 61, 65 IAU, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhrannoe Otdeleme, Fond
1597, op 1, delo 87,11 164ob-165 Ekaterinoslavshchina, pp 215,225
67 VPR, lilli, pp 53, 57, 58, 61, 64 Pndneprovsku krai, Dec 23, 1905 Amsimov,
Vosstanie, pp 23-4
68 VPR, III/l, pp 66,71-2
69 In fact, the December events offer the clearest argument against linking pogroms with
worker dissatisfaction See note 49 and Wynn, Workeis, Strikes, and Pogroms, pp 226-243, for
a mixed and inconclusive account of the December strike
70 VPR, lilli, pp 57, 63, 66, 72
71 IAU, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhrannoe Otdeleme, F 1597, op l,d 104,1 15 ob It is dif
ficult to judge just how representative such Jewish support was, though the participation of Jew
ish revolutionaries in the December events probably remained at a high level, e g ,of the twen
ty nine SD's arrested at the canteen, fifteen bore recognizably Jewish names Ibid, 11 15

166 ILWCH, 64, Fall 2003
ob -16 Of course, the use of Jewish merchant buildings may have taken place without direct
support or knowledge of the owners
72 Ibid, 1 13 ob Wynn, Workers, Strikes & Pogroms, p 241, citing other sources
73 IAU, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhrannoe Otdeleme, F 1597, op l,d 87,11 165-165ob See
also Ekaterinoslav shchina, pp 236-7, where Terpigorev's arrest and exile are recorded and sup
port of the FSC by a physicians' union organized at the local zemstvo hospital is noted
74 An indication that this distinction was made all along occurred during the October
pogrom, when a group of Jews came to a meeting of suburban factory workers "requesting de
fense against "the thugs (gromily) and summoning the organized workers to the city to beat
[them] up The workers turned them down, but the incident indicates that factory workers
as a whole were assumed by some to oppose the pogromists IA U, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhran
noe Otdeleme, F 1597, op 1, delo 104,1 10 ob
75 VPS, III/l, pp 58, 68 (Bulletins #1 and #3, Dec 11 and 13)
76 Notification of Ekaterinoslav governor to head of the 34th Infantry Division, Dec 16,
Ekaterinoslav shchina, p 223 Telegram of Rotmistr Shul'ts to Department of Police, Dec 16,
VPR, III/l, p 81
77 See note 63 above Wynn, Workers, Strikes, & Pogroms, pp 243-53, also treats these
events
78Eg, the Ekaterinoslav soviet was arrested January 2 1906 IAU, Ekatermoslavskoe
Gosud Zhandarmskoe Upravleme, F 313, op 2, d 1436,11 3-8
79 E g , at one of the factory workers' meetings in October, "the workers made it a con
dition that the speakers not touch on political questions and not touch on the Ruler, but elab
"
orate only on the economic condition of workers IA U, Ekatermoslavskoe Okhrannoe Otde
leme, F 1597, op 1, delo 104,1 10 ob
80 See V V Shulgin's description of the pogrom crowd in Kiev in 1905 inDays of the Rus
sian Revolution Memoirs from the Right 1905-1917, ed & tr Bruce Adams (Gulf Breeze,
1990), pp 19-20
81 Fischer, "Jekatennoslaw," p 184 He also added that "organized workers did not take
"
part m the atrocities Ibid Fischer and Dal'man (cited earlier) are alone m specifying the kinds
of workers who participated in pogroms The police sources and newspapers are socially un
specific, using terms such as "thugs" (gromda) and "hooligans" (khuhgany) to describe the
pogromists
82 Robert Weinberg has noted a similar distinction inworker participation in the Odessa
pogrom The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa Blood on the Steps (Bloomington, IN, 1993),
pp 183-4
83 Victor Chernov, The Great Russian Revolution (New Haven, 1936), pp 414-15, as cit
ed by David Matza, "The Disreputable Poor," Social Structure and Mobility in Economic De
velopment, ed N J Smelser & S M Lipset (Chicago, 1966), p 314
84 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York, 1944), p 100, quoted inMatza,
"The Disreputable Poor," p 316


Surh, Ekaterinoslav City in 1905. Workers, Jews, and Violence

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International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.

Ekaterinoslav City in 1905: Workers, Jews, and Violence

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International Labor and Working Class History

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The Bolshevik organizer I.Kh. Laliants described Ekaterinoslav around 1900 as

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shops and artisan businesses

By and large, the population of this predominantly commercial and indus

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of monarchist bullies arose in response to worker and revolutionary violence

The very social and structure suggests that a greater con

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The Jewish community harbored a working population separate from and

alist labor party "Paole-Zion"(Workers of Zion), which claimed about 2,000

the Russian socialist in Ekaterinoslav in numbers,

By 1905, both middle- and working-class Jews in Ekaterinoslav were well

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This content downloaded from 185.44.77.82 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:58:33 PM

in response to strikes, demonstrations and civil disturbances in the city center.

they failed to attract others to their anti-Jewish agitation.21 This description of

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doubtedly joined them. Revolutionary oratory and the demonstrators' own

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edly "many times," fired three volleys, killing or wounding forty-six.30

Petersburg's, considered to be on par with that of other European cities at the

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The bloodletting on October 11 colored the ensuing period to such an extent

stantially correct.36 Three-quarters of the crowd consisted of non-workers of

age, status, and soslovie a cross section

ing avenues of The announcement of the October Manifesto only

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believed, were up in the civic enthusiasm of the of

the chief causes of the polarization of politics in inex

oversaw, to that of a group, conscious of its own

estimates that the new awareness some

Unfortunately, much of the new political experimentation was cut short by

gentsia liberals and revolutionaries, foreigners, striking workers, students and

The disorders in Ekaterinoslav began on the night of October 20 when a patri

olutionary organizations," according to a police report Gunfire was

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This content downloaded from 185.44.77.82 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:58:33 PM

Evidence from a number of pogroms shows that as soon as the made a

unchecked. True to a pattern that characterized most of the urban pogroms, Ek

ly flaunted by its lower-ranking servants.52

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The effect of the pogrom on the revolution in Ekaterinoslav was profound. As

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.82 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:58:33 PM

ued to be drawn to activism in the pre-pogrom manner. But, their con

tinuing readiness for further revolutionary exploits, these groups increasingly

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posed worker membership in a broader, democratic community. On October 29,

cipline increased in November.61 At a meeting of 700 Ekaterininskii Railroad

Next, many of the hitherto disparate revolutionary workers and unit

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and, while and a new revolt up and down the rail

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This content downloaded from 185.44.77.82 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:58:33 PM

Events in Ekaterinoslav indicate that Jewish activists and interests played a

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of them could be recruited into monarchist ranks or be to join in con

Yet "workers" are mentioned as pogrom and one